Just a quick note to let everyone know that I fixed the registration bug yesterday. You should be able to register and post just fine now.

You may have noticed that I’ve been a bit lax on Jason’s Toolbox. Unfortunately, Jason’s Toolbox is run in my free time and, due to recent developments in my life (the birth of my son, the purchase of my first house), I’ve had much less free time to spare.



Of course, I don’t want to just shut down Jason’s Toolbox and walk away so I’m looking into ways to remove some of the burden of development and support. This may involve some programs/services being discontinued. I’d appreciate it if you could answer the questions in this survey to help decide what goes and what stays.



(Anything that is discontinued will remain on line for archival purposes. I just won’t do any new development work on it and won’t support it anymore.)



You can find the survey at: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/survey.asp



Thanks in advance.

It has been quite awhile since I’ve posted an update, so there’s a lot to catch up on. First of all, when I last posted my wife and I were expecting our first child. I’m proud to (belatedly) announce that on August 17th, Noah Harrison Levine was born. He came into this world weighing 7lbs 10oz and measuring about 20 inches. Now, at five months old, he’s much heavier and is a very happy baby boy. (Well, except when his teething is bothering him. Or when he’s overtired. Or hungry. ) Here’s a photo of him. As you might guess, having a baby has left me with very little free time.



The other big news is that Jason’s Toolbox has had a facelift. Along with the new look are some new features, such as an RSS newsfeed for updates. For those of you who don’t know what RSS feeds are, they are a means of subscribing to get content from a website without any worries about spam. The content is downloaded by a program called an Aggregator. Since control of the subscription is entirely in your hands, you will never see any content that you didn’t actually choose to see. You can also choose to stop getting the content at any time. Click on RSS Feed for more information.



There is one last item to report. After quite a lot of work, I’m pleased to introduce Trust Setter 2.0. One of the major changes to Trust Setter is that it is now a HTA application. Just like with HTABackup, Trust Setter can now support advanced functionality by using a HTML-based interface. See the new Trust Setter page (located under Programs) for more information on the changes.

I’ve just released another new script. This one, called OpenPorts, can let you know just which ports are open on your system. If that port is connected to another computer, it will let you know what the computer’s name and/or IP address is. It also will give you more information about the port that is open, thanks to DSLReports. You can download it at OpenPorts.



I also have another happy announcement to make. My wife and I recently learned that we’ll be expecting our first child this August/September. Unfortunately, this means that I’ll probably have less free time to run Jason’s Toolbox. While I won’t be shutting down the Toolbox, there probably will be less updates. I’ll also be researching ways to automate support requests more. I’ll make another announcement about this once I have more information.

I wish I was sending this update with some Script Sentry bug fix news or a new review, but, unfortunately, I’m updating with some bad news. Sometime yesterday, a hacker from Turkey exploited a vulnerability in the Snitz forum scripts. He deleted all of the forums and posts and changed the forum look and feel to red text on black.



Since the forum passwords might have been compromised, I’ve changed all of the forum passwords. If you have a Toolbox user account, you’ll have to get the temp password I set up e-mailed to you.



NOTE: If you put a “Nospam” or something in your Toolbox e-mail address listing, this won’t work. If that’s the case, e-mail me and I’ll send you your password.

The next version of Script Sentry is still deep in beta testing, with some issues in Windows 2000 and XP still to be ironed out. While I can’t announce a new release of Script Sentry, I do have three new features to announce. First of all, to aid subscriptions to the Toolbox Update, I’ve launched the new Toolbox Update Subscription Center. Here you can subscribe, unsubscribe, and change your e-mail address.



I’ve also beefed up the Toolbox Donations page. While the Paypal option is still there, I’ve now added the option to snail-mail a check. I’ve also posted exactly how much Paypal removes in fees. I might look at alternative donation options, so if you know of one let me know.



Finally, I’ve added the first Toolbox Software Review. While setting up my computer to install Windows XP (to debug Script Sentry), I tried BootIt Next Generation — a $30 shareware program that can take the place of $140 worth of software. I’ve typed up my impressions of it at: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/articles/BootItNG/.

One year ago today I joined a conference call where I was told that Winmag.com no longer fit into the business plan for the rest of CMP and it would be shut down. At the time I was in complete shock. (We were posting record page views — more than any other CMP site — and were hitting our editorial stride.) However, out of that dark moment sprang Jason’s Toolbox.

I’d much rather celebrate happy occasions than sad ones. So while this might be the first anniversary of the death of Winmag.com, please join me in celebrating Jason’s Toolbox’s first birthday. As a birthday present for all of you, I’d like to unveil two new developments. The first development is what might be the first in a series of Toolbox Articles: Spring Cleaning Your PC.



The second development is the announcement of a new version of Script Sentry in the works. While it’s not ready for prime time just yet (some stubborn bugs refuse to vacate), you can follow the beta progress, and perhaps even join in on the fun, over at the Toolbox Forums.



Thanks to everyone for making the past year a great one and here’s to many, many more!

Just a small update today to let everyone know that I’ve opened a CafePress store. CafePress is a website that allows anyone to open up a store with customized T-shirts, mugs and more. In my case, I’ve placed an image of the Script Sentry knight on various items. CafePress takes care of the orders, production, shipping, customer service, returns, etc. They only require a base price (which covers their costs) and I set the final price over that. All money over CafePress’ base price will go to the Toolbox to help keep this site running. Plus I get some free advertising with everyone walking around with Script Sentry t-shirts on. So head over to the brand new Jason’s Toolbox store at http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/store/.

It’s been awhile since I posted an update, but I’ve got a good one today. First of all, I’ve uploaded a new version of Script Sentry. Version 2.2 contains a new feature I’ve been meaning to build in for a while. “Automatically Run DOC/XLS files if no Warnings are found.” I had Script Sentry set up here to check DOC/XLS files, but to be honest, I found myself annoyed that I had to go through the “all clear” screen just to get to my document. Adding the document to the safe files list wouldn’t help either, since any edit would cause Script Sentry to report a possible malicious modification. Now, however, you can have the benefit of checking DOC/XLS files without the pain of “all clear” screens. If Script Sentry doesn’t find anything wrong with a DOC/XLS file, it can launch the file and shut itself down automatically. Script Sentry also sports a much-improved and overhauled Error Reporter, which will hopefully aid in debugging future issues. Some minor color bugs in the Configuration dialog box have also been fixed. You can download the new version from http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/scriptsentry.asp.



In addition, I’d like to unveil a new section of Jason’s Toolbox: The Script Repository. I’ve said for a while that Windows Scripting Host can be useful. The Script Repository will be an area where Windows Scripting Host developers can post useful scripts that they come up with. To get the ball rolling, Steve Yandl of PC911 and I have posted a couple of scripts. One of these, Trust Setter, allows you to determine which web sites are allowed to use JavaScript or write cookies to your hard drive by using IE’s built-in Trusted and Restricted Security Zones. (Sorry, Netscape users, but Trust Setter will only work in IE. If there’s a way of doing the same thing within Netscape, I haven’t found it.) The Script Repository can be found at http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/ScriptRepository/.

Now that the Toolbox is on a more stable web host, I’ve turned my eye to that stack of e-mail that’s been piling up. While I still plan on catching up with the e-mails I’ve received, I’ve also been thinking of ways to help alleviate this problem. That’s when I came upon the Snitz Forum. It’s a free, open-source, ASP-based forum tool that was surprisingly rich in features.



I still need to add questions to the FAQ sections I added, but having a forum (and later a FAQ section) should help people find answers to problems that other people have asked and should help me squash Toolbox bugs more effectively. Just go to http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/forum/ or click on the “Toolbox Forum” item on the left navigation bar.