Scott Hanselman

Wow. I just got nailed. A trusted friend sent me a standard "check this out" instant message on MSN saying I should take a look at a site called http://www.newmsnlive.info also known as http://www.msnforyou.info and http://www.get-messenger.com.

Do NOT visit these links.

I didn't read the FAQ, but there's these gems:

"By using the Online Delete Checker you authorize Get-Messenger to temporarily change your nick to "http://www.get-messenger.com: Find out who removed you from his/her contact list" only for advertising purposes. You can change the nick again the next time you log into your regular MSN Messenger® client."

By using the Online Delete Checker you authorize Get-Messenger to send Instant Messages on your behalf to your online contacts advertising the site.

It is quite simple. We just try to get visits in order to make money publishing ads. There are no dark or mischievous intentions behind."

I don't know what I was thinking, but I figured I could just change my password afterwards. What I didn't expect, though, was that the website would send out Instant Messages to 300 of my closet friends, some of the messages in Spanish, asking THEM to visit the site.

Of course, these terms of service are buried at the bottom of a long FAQ I didn't read. I appreciate that they are 'honest' but I really find this way of viral advertising to be disingenuous.  Fortunately, I'm not the only one who is finding this to be very uncool, and the site(s) are starting to show up in Anti-Phishing Databases.

The issue is also being escalated with Windows Live Messenger Operations with the intent to get the URL blocked. And I've changed my Live Password.

I'm so embarrassed. This is the first time I've ever been "successfully" phished. And hopefully the last.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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We're running a dasBlog Theme Contest! As we get ready for the 2.0 Medium Trust release, we thought it'd be nice to get a few more themes together.

What do you get for your troubles? Well, you get fame beyond measure as we'll ship your theme along with DasBlog. If lots of folks use your theme and you include a link to your own blog in your theme, you could get Google Juice.

But wait, that's not all, if your theme is selected as the most awesome by the DasBlog team (the folks on the developer's list) you also get a US$100 Amazon Gift Certificate.

If you've got a great theme you want to share, or even if you just want learn How to make a DasBlog Theme, head on over to Ben's blog as he's got a writeup on how you can get started with your own custom theme, and possibly walk away with 10,000 pennies in Amazon Cash.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I truly must be losing it, but my intern and I fought with this simple task for at least 15 minutes today and it REALLY shouldn't be this hard.

Anyway, this is what we came up with to figure out if a user is a Local Administrator. It's not very "terse" PowerShell because the goal is (trying to) teach him so there's temporary variables.

$userToFind = $args[0] 
$administratorsAccount = Get-WmiObject Win32_Group -filter "LocalAccount=True AND SID='S-1-5-32-544'" 
$administratorQuery = "GroupComponent = `"Win32_Group.Domain='" + $administratorsAccount.Domain + "',NAME='" + $administratorsAccount.Name + "'`"" 
$user = Get-WmiObject Win32_GroupUser -filter $administratorQuery | select PartComponent |where {$_ -match $userToFind} 
$user 

Nonte that SID value for the Administrators group is a "Magic Number" that's hardcoded, but we get around that because it's always been that way and can never change. Instead I call it a "Well-Known Value" and sleep better at night.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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When signing up for an Mvelopes Personal trial, I selected my traditional unique super secure crazy password special for this site and was told "Please enter a valid Password (Password should not contain any special characters, symbols or spaces)."

Patrick was standing with me while I tried to sign up. After we picked our jaws up off the ground he said:

"Seriously, how about a dialog box that says 'Please ensure your password is all lowercase and only contains words from the dictionary.'"

Folks, please, use strong passwords. For me, I'm going to pass on financial institutions that encourage passwords like "password" to protect my money.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I've been banking online as long as I've been online. I've always avoided checks, preferring to do as much as I can electronically.

I used QuickBooks under DOS, and ComputerServe Finance under OS/2. Even though I took "Home Economics" in school - we were all required to learn how to balance a checkbook - it never made sense to me why I should have to reconcile how much I THINK I have with how much the Bank knows I have.

I used QuickBooks, then OFX (Open Financial eXchange - arguably the first public "Web Service," even though it's SGML and bailing-wire - and moved forward as new, better personal finance managers (PFM) came out.

I diligently have exported and imported, massaged and cajoled over 20 years (yes, twenty) of financial data from my first sole-proprietorship at 15 until today moving accounts and account data from bank to bank and from PFM to PFM.

To this day, I'm convinced that Microsoft Money 95 was brilliant, wonderful and before its time. It had a forward/backward browser like metaphor and was unapologetic about it. It wasn't trying to be like the MDI (Multiple Document Interface) "peer applications" of time. It focused on one thing and one thing only - to be a local register for all your money.

Then came the fancy stuff, and the advertising and upselling. I upgraded like clockwork. Oh! A new version of money! It must be 365 days better! I paid my $49.95, then got the Deluxe the next year for $79.95, then the super Deluxe Business Edition. It got slower and slower. Remember I've got Money files with data going back decades, plural. I tried culling the data, to include just the last 10, then 5, then 2 years. Still slow. Painting slow.

Accounts open and closed, banks changed account numbers, banks changed OFX servers, things broke. I got downloaded transaction data like "JITB#45,21312323423,$%@#$@ - $4.95" and wondered why my bank was swearing at me, rather than telling me I spent $4.95 at Jack In the Box on the corner of Walker and Jenkins then plotting it on a map.

Of course, this isn't all Money's fault, it's the banks, it's the data consortiums like OFX and IFX (disclosure, I was the OFX Vendor Committee Chairman for 2 years and I suck too. I could have done a LOT more.) and it's the back end systems.

Data's not pretty, and Money and Quicken are forced to create local rules to parse out the data they get from bank and the bill payment clearing house and built lists of rules of regular expressions to convert JITB#45 into "Jack In The Box."

Plus, if you don't log into your Money or Quicken for a few months, just try catching up and reconciling, especially if your bank only holds 90 days or less of account history.

I switched this year from Money 2006 to Quicken. Sadly, it's even worse. It paints unspeakably slowly, and in the 5 months I've been using it, it's updated itself at least three times, presumably in order to play well with Vista. Regardless, it's the same old story. Chasing data feeds in order to get my small mind around my smaller money. Even more, these OFX feeds that bring this data into Microsoft Money and Quicken may starting costing extra.

So, I stopped. I log into my bank's websites directly. I use their online tools, and they continue to get better, adding Ajaxy goodness, some powered by Corillian/CheckFree (my employer).

(By the way that's not a screenshot of my account...whoever that is did a lousy blurring job.)

I never thought I'd say it and I know Chris "Mr. Desktop App" Sells will disagree vehemently, but if I can get an application online, I'm more likely to use it, and use it often.

Sure, a lot, if not all, of the cool features of a site like Wesabe could be had via a connected local desktop application, but then there's all the updating and what not.

Maybe there's a space in the world for a Personal Finance Manager - a MoneyKiller or QuickenKiller - written in Adobe Apollo, Flash or Silverlight. Maybe online apps that manage money will get smarter with new Browser Plugins like Google Gears (once there's a security story). Either way, I don't think the future of my money involves a 350 megabyte CD-based installer.

Do you use Quicken, QuickBooks or Microsoft Money? Do you connect to your bank from inside those apps?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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