Of course, if you’re broke and have no access to credit you don’t have much choice but to be frugal, but is that all that’s going on here? Or are consumers tired of being pressured to take on massive debt in order to “super size” and “bling” everything? What do you think? Is credit card consumerism over?

I doubt consumerism is over entirely, but a slowdown seems inevitable in light of our current gloomy economic situation. What does this all mean for IT Security? Well, all the credit accounts are still out there, so there’s still plenty of information that is available to be exploited.

But will consumers’ hesitance to go into debt also make them more watchful for ID Theft and other fraud-related crime, and more afraid of hackers online? In other words, is it possible the economic slowdown may also make people more hesitant to use technology for their commerce, and encourage them to check their bank accounts more regularly and thoroughly for fraud, and to make them altogether more cautious about IT Security? What is your thought?

Earlier this week in a joint press release, Microsoft and BearingPoint announced the new BearingPoint Enterprise Governance, Risk, and Compliance product offering. Ok... it will be a while before the more veteran enterprise GRC vendors start really losing sleep over this deal. But BearingPoint continues to be a top risk consulting firm, and Microsoft’s reach through the business user community will be an attractive benefit for compliance and risk professionals trying to get hundreds or thousands of staff members to contribute to the GRC program. There’s potential here for sure.

With software giants IBM, Oracle, SAP, and now Microsoft increasing their level of commitment in the enterprise GRC space, the 2-3 year market outlook continues to change. The risk and regulatory landscape is only going to get tougher to handle, and the more GRC programs can run seamlessly with existing business processes and applications, the better. The vendors focused solely on GRC still have the advantage for now, but market consolidation is on its way... and it’s coming maybe just a tiny bit faster than it was at the start of this week.

The trick to doing this is not to hardcode things like host, port, etc. for your SMTP server when you use System.Net.Mail to send mail. Instead, use the default ctor for SmtpClient as I've done in the code below.

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    // note the use of the MailAddress class
    // this allows me to specify display names as well as email addresses
    MailAddress from = new MailAddress("admin@fabrikam.com", "Fabrikam Website");
    MailAddress to = new MailAddress("mari@fabrikam.com", "Mari Joyce");

    MailMessage msg = new MailMessage(from, to);
    msg.Subject  = "Testing 123";
    msg.Body = "This is only a test!";

    // note use of default ctor
    // this looks in config to figure out how to send mail
    new SmtpClient().Send(msg);
}

What you're telling .NET by using the default ctor for SmtpClient is, "please use my config file to figure out how to send mail". Now you can use the system.net/mailSettings/smtp section in config to specify the details of your mail server, and all of the code in your app that is written to use the default SmtpClient ctor will inherit these settings. Here's an example of what the config on a production server might look like (if you put passwords in your config files, be sure to encrypt those sections):

<configuration>
  <system.net>
    <mailSettings>
      <smtp deliveryMethod="Network">
        <network host="mail.fabrikam.com"
                 port="25"
                 userName="WebsiteMailAccount"
                 password="whatever"/>
      </smtp>
    </mailSettings>
  </system.net>
</configuration>

During development, I use different settings because I don't usually want to deal with the hassle of installing an SMTP server on my development box. Instead, I want email messages delivered as individual files in a directory on my hard drive (I always have a c:\mail directory on my development box for just this purpose):

<configuration>
  <system.net>
    <mailSettings>
      <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">
        <specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="c:\mail"/>
      </smtp>
    </mailSettings>
  </system.net>
</configuration>

Now when I run the program above, I get a .EML file in my c:\mail directory:

Outlook Express is normally registered as the viewer for .EML files, so double-click the file to view it:

If you've never seen this method of simulating email before, I hope you find it as useful as I have. Happy coding!

There’s speculation that falling VMware share prices, with no end in sight because of “poor revenue outlook” is the reason for the ouster.

Hmm. The stock went public at $29, went as high as $125 and is now at $40.26 (and falling as I write), almost a 40% premium over the first offering. Say what you will about the recently launched Microsoft Hyper-V and the Citrix offering that we never hear about, but VMware is the dominant virtualization player (and likely to remain so for at least some time given Microsoft’s track record with new product releases) in an exploding market. Gartner predictions are that the installed base of VMs will grow more than 10x between 2007 and 2011 and that by 2012 the majority of x86 server workloads will be running in a VM.

The future still looks pretty rosy for VMware – perhaps they’ll be taking a smaller chunk of the pie, but the pie’s getting much bigger. And all indications pointed to VMware moving up the stack and providing more management solutions (and more revenue streams) for the x86 virtualization market they helped to build.

So why the change? And why now? Is it a coincidence that it’s an ex-Microsoft exec taking over just as Hyper-V ships? Can only someone who knows the Microsoft Way combat the Microsoft Way? Remember this is the guy who wrote that Microsoft should “cut off Netscape’s air supply”.

So, good idea to say that Microsoft execs are better than VMware execs just as the Hyper-V juggernaut gets rolling? If I didn’t know better, I’d say this is the latest example of a MS FUD campaign…

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A while back I wrote about how much I liked the Xobni email add on for Outlook. A short time later I heard rumors that Microsoft was buying them, but that appears not to be true at this point, though I still think it makes a lot of sense.  In the meantime, I have continued to use and be impressed with Xobni.  I have come to rely on its ultra fast search and the way it organizes threads of conversations and groups of people, as well as attached files.

An interesting thing though about Xobni. As I was given invitations, I would send them out to people I know.  Though many of them liked the functionality of the product, they said that it slowed their Outlook to a crawl and just did not think the performance hit was worth it.  Maybe I got used to the slowness or I am just not seeing it, but I did not see what they saw. In any event, many people were not using the product.

Well the Xobni folks just released a new version of the product that promises improved performance. I hope that helps those people who were complaining about this. It also offers several other new features, the biggest being LinkedIn integration.  I really like this LinkedIn integration as it gives you yet another layer of information on the people writing to you. All in all, I think this just makes the product more indispensable than it is already.  It is now available to the public, so I would encourage you to check it out for yourself!

A while back I wrote about how much I liked the Xobni email add on for Outlook. A short time later I heard rumors that Microsoft was buying them, but that appears not to be true at this point, though I still think it makes a lot of sense.  In the meantime, I have continued to use and be impressed with Xobni.  I have come to rely on its ultra fast search and the way it organizes threads of conversations and groups of people, as well as attached files.

An interesting thing though about Xobni. As I was given invitations, I would send them out to people I know.  Though many of them liked the functionality of the product, they said that it slowed their Outlook to a crawl and just did not think the performance hit was worth it.  Maybe I got used to the slowness or I am just not seeing it, but I did not see what they saw. In any event, many people were not using the product.

Well the Xobni folks just released a new version of the product that promises improved performance. I hope that helps those people who were complaining about this. It also offers several other new features, the biggest being LinkedIn integration.  I really like this LinkedIn integration as it gives you yet another layer of information on the people writing to you. All in all, I think this just makes the product more indispensable than it is already.  It is now available to the public, so I would encourage you to check it out for yourself!