When I first started to use Spiceworks, one of my main complaints was that you couldn’t access the data outside of the Spiceworks desktop interface. Well, turns out I was wrong.

I first had my eye’s opened from this thread on the Spiceworks forums. It informed me that it uses a SQLite database to store all its information. So, I asumed getting at the data would be easy. As with most things I was mistaken.

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Last week the boys over at Microsoft launched the first beta of Internet Explorer 8, you can download it now from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/Install.htm (be warned its a beta so could go pear shaped yada yada ya)

Reading through the docs, looks like the main new thing with this version is improved compliance. Finally, it might be possible to create a website that looks (and behaviors)  the same in all the Major browsers, without having to put in a lot of extra code and css. Only question I have is why the hell has it taken them so long (and were they scared by the impending release of Firefox 3?)

However, not to jump on the Microsoft bashing bandwagon to much, there are a couple of cool new features in there that might prove to be useful. You can read more about them at Readiness Toolkit page, but they are:

•  Activities - Now when you click on the IE8 page menu, you get a list of activities you can perform on that page. These include thing like sharing it on Facebook, Digging the page, Translating the page, blogging the page etc. There is a framework for this that allows you to create your own ‘activities’, so you are not limited to what they want.
• Webslices - This for me is the most interesting new function. You can add some code to your websites so that the user can subscribe directly to content on your page. Its kind of like a better version of RSS integration with the browser. You can do things like subscribe to Friend status’s on Facebook, when you hit the webslice (it lives in the favorites bar) a drop down appears with pics of your recently updated friends, there status and the time of the status. I am going to try and code a simple one for this website hopfully this week, and ill post my findings up.

Something else that occurs to me is that are they trying to take on traditional RSS feeds with there webslice function, and how long will it be until there is a Firefox extension that will emulate it?

Last week a new version of Spiceworks (2.1) was released. You can see the official release note at http://www.spiceworks.com/2.1/, it mainly seems to me like a bug fix release, but there are a couple of new features. Once you run up the console it should download the update for you (as long as you are online of course)

One thing that has caught my attention is they are using feedback from the community to drive the product forwards. According to the press release email, they visited an office in New York and acted on there suggestions. You can also request a feature be added through the feature request forum at http://community.spiceworks.com/forum/1

If you feel like there is something missing from the product get on here and let them know. I am going to log a request now that they open up there database a bit more so you can use external products (Reporting Services, Crystal etc) to pull data out.

Recently Orange (my isp) sent me a LiveBox, an all in one wireless router solution for my broadband package.

I used to use an old pc running smoothwall connected to a little wireless router I was given. I moved away from the Linux solution (I kind of wished I hadn’t now) cos: a) The disk on the old pc was starting to go a bit flaky and b) I had to run a cable upstairs as there was no room for it near the phone socket.

The Livebox wasn’t to bad (apart from a crap wireless signal strength), until i tried to connect my Wii to it. The Wii connected to the web fine under my old setup, so I thought it would under this one. I was mistaken.

Doing a scan reveled my network ok, so i gave it my WEP key, it did it’s test and kept coming back with a variety of error message. I did a quick Google on the matter and it turned out that other people have had the same problem. I tried a couple of there solutions but all they did was result in a different error code.

I was certain is was something to do with security, and just befor I turned of all the encryption on the livebox i noticed something on the Wii, on the screen where you input the key. It said the security was WPA-PSK (TKIP, as you can see from the screen shot

As far as I could tell, the Livebox was using WEP. So, I hit the Change security settings option, selected WEP, input my key and it connected! Problem solved, more by luck than judgment.