Eric Longman

Internet geek. Project Manager. Propellerhead.

For the supremely geeky among us… Recently, my copy of SQL Server 2008 Management Studio began failing with this error message: Unable to cast COM object of type ‘System.__ComObject’ to interface type ‘Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop.IServiceProvider’.  This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID ‘{6D5140C1-7436-11CE-8034-00AA006009FA}’ failed due to the following [...]

After applying updates, I was unable to launch Microsoft Outlook 2007. Every time I tried, it would open the frame of the main window, then fail with a modal dialog box: Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. I ran Microsoft Office Diagnostics (which usually can fix these kinds of issues — [...]

I had a client ask me today to help with converting a bunch of WMV video files (Windows Media – Video) so that he could store them on his T-Mobile G1 and watch them.  After a bit of digging, I found a wonderful tool called HandBrake that exists to do nothing but convert videos between [...]

This is wonderful!  A company in South Africa is going to begin using homing pigeons to transfer data between its two offices, which are roughly 50 miles apart.  Currently they use broadband to transfer about 4GB of encrypted data between the facilities.  It takes about six hours to transfer the data.  Instead, they’ll put the [...]

Google released their own browser a couple of days ago, and it’s fantastic.  As with all things Google, it’s sparse and simple, but hides lots of sophisticated capabilities underneath it all.  I’ve been running it since it came out, and have had virtually zero problems with it (with the exception of one really poorly done [...]

If you manage lots of Windows servers like I do, then you’ve doubtless found Microsoft’s very nice “Remote Desktops” utility.  This one isn’t the built-in “Remote Desktop Connection” tool which allows you to connect to one server at a time.  No, this one has a little more smarts, and will save multiple server definitions and [...]

Here are a couple of outstanding pieces of software that I’ve run across lately.  One is highly recommended because you need it.  The other is highly recommended if you need it. SyncBackSE from 2BrightSparks You need to back up your data.  Trust me on this, you NEED to do it.  I’m on the tail end of [...]

A friend turned me on to SugarCRM yesterday.  What a fantastic app!  This is a “CRM” (or Customer Relationship Management) application that runs entirely on a web server.  There's a free version of Sugar available, too, if you've got the know-how to install it.  It's a relatively painless install on a LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) server.  I'm [...]

ISO Recorder Power Toy: File this under “must-have free Windows XP extensions“.  ISO Recorder Power Toy is a UI component that allows to use CD-Recording capabilities of Windows XPr to record ISO images and copy CD to CD – a piece of functionality missing in Windows XPr The ISO Recorder itself does not record CDs [...]

Now, this is an interesting development. Boardtown is the maker of an ISP billing package called Platypus that's generally regarded as one of the better ones in the industry (along with Rodopi, Emerald and OptiGold). They also have software packages to handle help desk, mail lists, shopping carts, and spam filtering. Clearly, Tucows has its [...]