XO COMMUNICATIONS & CARL ICAHN

The New York Times has an article today about XO Communications, a company that most of you have never heard of. It gave me a little wave of nostalgia - XO is irrelevant now but I still have accounts there and it meant a lot to me in the old days.

The article goes through Carl Icahn's emergence in 2003 as XO's majority owner and his financial shenanigans with the company since then. It's an interesting story, not untypical, where people with way too much money play games that seem to have nothing to do with the underlying business of the companies involved.

My interest is only because XO evolved from Concentric Networks, the company that was a big player in web hosting in the 90s. I registered bruceb.com with Concentric and set up many of my clients there. Prices were reasonable, the onscreen controls were better than other web hosting companies, and support was good.

None of those things have been true for a few years now. The onscreen controls are cluttered and buggy, service is occasionally erratic, and XO's prices are no longer competitive. (My experiences with tech support by phone have been good, unlike, say, 1and1.com, but I've had to call for support too many times in the last few years.)

Moving a web site from one host to another is a chore, especially for businesses that have to be sure not to disrupt the flow of email, so bruceb.com is still hosted by XO, and a few of my clients are still there. This article reminds me that it's time to move on - there's no need to stay with a company that is sliding into bankruptcy and has no particular interest in its web hosting business.

Labels: business, Internet

posted by bruceb at 8/30/2008 11:15:00 AM | permalink

GRANDCENTRAL & GOOGLE BLACK HOLE

GrandCentral is a wonderful free service for handling phone calls. When you sign up, you pick a new phone number and do a few minutes of easy setup. Then when someone calls that number, all of your phones ring simultaneously and you can answer any of them.

I've relied on GrandCentral for more than a year. When you call me, my office phone and my cell phone ring. I can answer either one and transfer calls between them with a single push of a button. A web-based utility allows calls to be re-routed on the fly - you can literally make your phone calls ring at your parents' house when you arrive and turn off the forwarding when you leave. Call handling can be chosen based on time of day, or by groups, or by individual decisions for different names in your address book. Here's what I wrote about GrandCentral last year.

It's great - you should try it!

Except you can't sign up for it.

Google acquired GrandCentral in July 2007 and immediately stopped signing up new members. Existing members could invite new users for a few more months but no one has been added since the beginning of this year.

There is dead silence about what to expect. It's been months since there have been any meaningful changes on the web site or blog posts by anyone knowledgeable. Nobody from GrandCentral participates on the support forum. No one knows if a new version will be rolled out with even more wonderful features - or if the plug will be pulled on short notice.

It's not the only time this has happened to a company purchased by Google. This article about the "Google black hole" lists several more companies with promising technology that were acquired by Google only to disappear from sight, with the founders and employees gradually shifted away into other projects.

Google's image is starting to tarnish - its non-search products are always on the verge of greatness but never seem to become great. I hope GrandCentral doesn't die! If my phone number changes, it's a bad sign for some good technology.

Labels: business, Google, phone, web_services

posted by bruceb at 8/28/2008 12:39:00 AM | permalink

SETTING UP A WINDOWS LIVE ID

Windows Live ID is a single sign-on service from Microsoft that allows people to log into many websites and services with one account. A Windows Live ID is an email address and a password stored in Microsoft's servers. It's free.

Most people will have a single Windows Live ID. I'm setting them up routinely for each employee in my clients' offices.

More services are being added all the time. Almost all of them are free. They are increasingly tied together so that access to them is easy. This includes instant messaging (Windows Live Messenger), file syncing and sharing (Live Mesh), online file storage and sharing (Windows Live Skydrive), online photo sharing (Windows Live Photo Gallery), and more.

If you don't yet have a Windows Live ID, follow this process. I'm including a couple of extra steps that will save you time later.

Go to this site and click on Sign up on the left.

Use your regular email address.

Choose a safe password. Put it somewhere secure. Remember it.

• (If you're already got a Windows Live ID for the email address, you'll find that out when you leave the signup screen. If so, you'll have to figure out what the password is, or reset it.)

You'll get an email asking you to verify the email address. Follow the instructions - you'll click the link in the message, then go through a couple of very short screens online.

Go to http://account.live.com

Click on "Registered information"

Enter first and last name

Enter birth date (apparently required, but you don't have to tell the truth as long as you make yourself an adult)

Change home and work country to NONE

Change home and work country back to United States. Each one should now have extra lines for addresses. They can be left blank.

The page for "Registered Information" will look like this - on the left when you arrive, on the right when you're done.

   

Click SAVE

You should now see your name and Country/Region: United States on the front page.

You're done!

When you're prompted for your Windows Live ID and you're sitting at your primary computer, watch for the checkboxes to save your login name and password - the Windows Live services can almost always open automatically with no password prompt after the first time.

Read about the Windows Live services on my news page or online. There are links to many of the services here on my Favorites page. You may find something that you can use right away!

Labels: file_sharing, Internet, Microsoft, OneCare, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 8/27/2008 12:56:00 AM | permalink

NATURAL LANGUAGE SEARCH IN VISTA

Windows Search 4 is an important upgrade for Windows Vista and Windows XP, enabling lightning-fast searches through your files and email for any word or phrase, anywhere. Here's more information about Windows Search.

It's possible to do natural language searches in Vista with Windows Search! Natural language search lets you search using expressions like email from maddie yesterday or music by bowie or stones or email sent directly to me.  You can search for files by typing modified yesterday, modified last week or files created last month.

Natural language search is turned off by default. To turn it on, click Start / Control Panel / Appearance And Personalization / Folder Options. Then click the Search tab and check Use Natural Language Search. (This only works in Vista - not available in Windows XP.)

Windows Search already has a rich syntax for advanced searches - here's the complete search syntax. Those searches will still work after turning on natural language search.

Boolean searches are possible with Windows Search but normally Boolean terms have to be capitalized -

hoover AND dam

hoover NOT herbert

After turning on natural language search, the Boolean terms no longer have to be capitalized.

Natural language search lets you use any column header as a search term. To see what's available, right-click a column heading in any folder and choose More. You'll find a complete list of column headings, any of which may be used in natural language search.

I haven't seen any downside - it's not clear why this isn't enabled by default. If you're using Vista and starting to explore Windows Search, turn on natural language search!

Labels: search, Vista

posted by bruceb at 8/26/2008 12:33:00 AM | permalink

AT&T TECH SUPPORT vs. ETERNAL DAMNATION - A TOSSUP

I'm occasionally asked why I have such a negative opinion of AT&T's DSL service.

This chilling account should answer that question - a complete log of one person's experiences on two different occasions, dealing each time with more than a dozen customer support reps over a period of more than three hours each, on problems that should have been simple. A slow DSL connection at home, a failed login to AT&T wireless service, problems that should have required five minutes but turned into hellish nightmares.

I'll add one more awful, unforgiveable story, just the latest in my own run of unhappy experiences with AT&T.

Last week, AT&T started blocking all outgoing email with no notice for one of my clients running Small Business Server. A business was suddenly, unexpectedly cut off from communicating with its customers. For better or worse, businesses live by email! This was potentially devastating.

When I investigated, I found that port 25 was completely blocked, so no other outgoing email server could be used; AT&T's email servers could only be accessed over port 465 with SSL authentication, which is not supported by Exchange 2003. I researched the problem online and discovered that there was no solution; a handful of people who had survived AT&T's stupefyingly awful tech support process had been told that AT&T was simply not handling outgoing email for anyone with an Exchange Server - no apology, no excuse, no solution.

(This is a variation of the problem I ran into a few months ago. I solved it this time by buying service from NoIP.com that sends outgoing mail on a nonstandard port. Later I learned that ExchangeDefender also can be set up on a nonstandard port. I'm still going to insist that both clients leave AT&T.)

It's still possible to sign up for DSL service with Sonic.net, which consistently employs the nicest people in the world. If you are signing up for DSL service, don't even consider signing up with AT&T. If you currently have AT&T service and you want to do something proactive for your future mental health, think about switching your service. If you're a business, make it a priority.

Labels: broadband, Internet, mail

posted by bruceb at 8/25/2008 12:33:00 AM | permalink

MICROSOFT OFFICE ULTIMATE DISCOUNT

If you're sending a student off to college with a new laptop, Microsoft has a pretty good deal. A student with an email address at an educational institution (typically the email addresses end in .EDU) can buy a copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for $59.95 through this web site.

This suite includes far more software than the Home & Student Edition in the stores for $100-140. This is the suite with all the Office programs, including Outlook, Powerpoint, Publisher, OneNote, Access, and more.  Most students will only use Word and Powerpoint, of course, but it's still a great price.

There's also an upgrade to Vista Ultimate for $64.95, much cheaper than the normal upgrade price. Most student laptops come with Vista Home edition, with all the multimedia programs; upgrading to Ultimate adds shadow copies for some extra protection, an improved backup program that a student would never use, and mildly amusing eye candy in the form of animated desktops. (Here's a comparison of the Vista versions.) The discounted price is nice but the upgrade is anything but essential.

Labels: Microsoft, Office, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 8/24/2008 12:37:00 AM | permalink

ANATOMY OF A MALWARE SCAM

Jesper Johansson has been working in information security for more than 20 years and has earned a good reputation for doggedly identifying and chasing the bad guys. He's written a fascinating article about his attempt to track down the details of a bit of malware. It starts as a simple link in a blog comment but leads to IP addresses in Singapore, servers in Kuala Lumpur, domains registered in the Ukraine, and payment centers in Barbados.

He picked this malware at random. It's the variety that presents warnings that your computer is at risk and insists that you purchase its antivirus software. The dialogs and screens are professionally done and the grammar is correct - there is nothing obvious that gives away that every single thing is faked - the "scan," the progress bar, the lists of infected files, and the dialogs purporting to give you options but in fact leading always to a demand for payment.

There are even phony coverups for the Windows XP Security Center, designed so that every link will bring you to another payment demand. (Real one on the left, phony on the right. If you click through to the full-size version of the phony one, you'll see the first place where some grammatical errors creep in. There are also some shockingly well-designed web pages and dialogs.)

In this case, the bad guys appear only to want the $49.95 and your credit card number - Johansson didn't detect any other evil payload, although he mentions ways it could have been disguised.

Your security software - OneCare, AVG, or the rest - probably update themselves several times a day. OneCare gets virus updates every four hours, I think. Understand this carefully: the bad guys change things so fast that they see four hours as an opportunity. Johanssen found hundreds of variations on the software payload for this scam alone, just one of the many malware scams out there, and he spotted changes happening literally while he was writing the article.

Your daily reminders:

Antivirus software will not always protect you against malware if you click OK at the wrong time!

Don't click on strange URLs! Follow links with carefree abandon to and from legitimate sites, but don't click on links that arrive in spam e-mail, instant messages, web forums, or IRC chats, or that start from an untrustworthy web site.

Never, never, never open email attachments unless you know with 100% certainty that the attachment is something you expected and want to receive.

The bad guys are liars. They will say anything to get past your defenses, without conscience or remorse.

Please, be careful out there!

Labels: security

posted by bruceb at 8/23/2008 12:06:00 AM | permalink

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SBS 2003 & SBS 2008

Small Business Server 2008 is nearly here! The final code was released to manufacturing yesterday. I wrote an overview of SBS 2008 last month.

Here's an exhaustive rundown of the specific differences between Small Business 2003 and Small Business 2008 - not the marketing materials but the nuts and bolts details for SBS specialists and consultants. There are some things on there that are very appealing - they're directly addressing many of the quirks in SBS 2003 that deserved attention. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the final product!

Labels: SBS

posted by bruceb at 8/22/2008 01:23:00 AM | permalink

GLITCHES & ANNOYANCES

Tough week! Here are the kind of things that fill my days. And bear in mind, these are all stories about software and services that I love dearly - this is the good stuff, these are what I recommend because they're better than the rest!

Client with hosted Exchange mailbox at 1and1.com. Mailbox doesn't connect this morning, so no incoming or outgoing mail. Try it from a different computer, try Outlook Web Access - nothing works. Call tech support in India and get through without delay. "Very sorry! That server is down. The experts are working on it." Any idea when it will come back? "No, I'm sorry. But the experts are working on it." It's been down a day and a half now, still no word.

Putting Jungle Disk on a Windows Home Server for online backups. The process to sign up for Amazon's online storage system is not completely straightforward but I've done it before, I know about the "Access Key ID" and the "Secret Access Key," so I'm in business in short order, except the Jungle Disk software delivers an error message, error 403, "NotSignedUp." There are a few dozen lines of gibberish in the detailed error message but it's clear that Amazon doesn't think the service is set up correctly yet. Log in to the Amazon Web Services portal and there's a message about problems with payment for the account - payment that was set up on an Amazon credit card. Hmm. Spent half an hour wrestling with payment options, putting in one good credit card after another and getting more error messages about payment problems, and just about gave up - I was actually drafting the note to the client about the failure when Amazon showed the service was working just fine, thanks, even though I hadn't actually changed anything for a while. Jungle Disk started doing a backup. What was that about?

Setting up Live Mesh to transfer large files between people working in several locations. Installed it on the client's desktop and laptop, created a folder, it started syncing all over the place, everything was automatic and swell, great stuff! Set up Windows Live IDs for three employees, shared a Live Mesh folder with employee number 1, went to that employee's computer and clicked on the invitation to Live Mesh that appeared promptly in the mailbox. Web site pops up inviting me to "Connect," then "Sign In," then displays a message that Live Mesh is only available in the US and they're happy to put me on a waiting list when it's offered in my country. I looked around. It looked a lot like the US where I was standing. I poked around in the Live Mesh forums and found a suggestion that the Windows Live ID account information needed to be updated with the correct country information so I went over there and found it was completely hosed - no matter how many times I picked "United States" and clicked Apply, the front page would stubbornly complain that no country had been chosen. I could change it to the Virgin Islands - that worked fine! It was only the US that it ignored. I dropped it, wrote off the hour that had been spent fussing with it, went back a couple of hours later, and everything worked right away, Live Mesh installed immediately, no issues at all.

Client with a SonicWall firewall/router and a Small Business Server that hadn't been set up to use Remote Web Workplace or the other features that make SBS so lovable. There were a few odd networking settings on the SonicWall but nothing alarming. I set up port forwarding on the ports that make SBS do its tricks (80, 443, 4125) and bang! the network went down, all Internet traffic stopped, the workstations couldn't connect to the server, couldn't browse or ping anywhere. Spent an hour and a half backing out of anything that I might conceivably have touched, nearly gave a credit card number to SonicWall tech support, when it came back up. Two days later I set up port forwarding in what I swear was exactly the same way and it works like a charm. I still don't have any idea what that was about, but it scared the hell out of me.

Tried to buy licenses online for StorageCraft's remarkable backup program, ShadowProtect. Everything went perfectly, right up until the final "Finish" button when I was told that the billing address for the credit card didn't match the information on file at the bank. Just for fun, I tried three different credit cards at two different addresses - all of them plausible choices, not trying to pull anything. Same message each time. (Just for fun, I logged in to my bank's web site and confirmed that there were six or eight "pending" charges showing on the various cards. They went away eventually.) Couple of days later, went back and the transaction went through immediately. (And this story doesn't really count, because after I dropped them a note that night, the company immediately put me in touch with a reseller who would have sold me the licenses, then had one of the company's business manager follow up with a phone call to make sure the problem was resolved. Nice folks, great software, great support.)

Set up Netgear Rangemax USB wireless adapters on three workstations. Windows XP doesn't have any builtin drivers so the CD is required, and the CD doesn't have the drivers stored separately - the Netgear software has to be installed, which of course demands to take over control of the wireless settings from the perfectly adequate Windows XP wireless controls. The next morning, no one can get online, all the networking is mucked up, I have to travel onsite and get the stupid Netgear software to stop popping up with its incomprehensible dials and control panels and graphs. I couldn't find any way to get the Netgear software to hand control back to Windows - that required removing and reinstalling the software to get the startup dialog to appear again so I could check the box telling the Netgear software to get out of the way. Once I did that, the connections were immediately rock solid.

And so it goes. This is the good guys, the cream of the crop - I've also had battles with spyware and rootkits and the rest. Some weeks are more tiring than others. Back to the news soon, I promise!

Labels: backup, computers, file_sharing, hardware, Home_Server, mail, network, SBS, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 8/21/2008 01:15:00 AM | permalink

VISTA SERVICE PACK 1 CLEANUP

If you're running Windows Vista, here's a safe way to reclaim some hard drive space.

Before Vista Service Pack 1 is installed, Vista makes an extra copy of all the system files that are updated by the service pack. They're used to restore the system if you decide to uninstall Vista SP1.

You'll never uninstall Vista Service Pack 1. If it's going to cause any problems, you'll know it right away. Once the system is running with Service Pack 1, you'll keep it forever as a big improvement over Vista's original release.

You can remove those archived files with a tool included with Vista SP1.

Click on Start / All Programs / Accessories / Command Prompt.

At the prompt, type  vsp1cln.exe

Hit Enter, then type Y to start the cleanup process.

You'll recover 1-2Gb of space. Not bad! Most of us don't have issues with hard drive space any more but it's always nice to know that you've freed up a bit more.

Labels: Vista

posted by bruceb at 8/18/2008 12:46:00 AM | permalink

VERIZON MOBILE WIRELESS FUN

I have a Verizon mobile wireless adapter built into my Dell Latitude D630. I pay sixty bucks a month so I can connect to a reasonably fast EVDO broadband connection from just about anywhere. It's becoming a standard accessory for business travellers who don't want to hassle with conventional wireless.

A few days ago, there was a lengthy delay when I clicked the Connect button - "wait while your equipment is updated," something like that.

It stopped working after that, although I didn't recognize the coincidence for a while. I just knew that this error message came up when I tried to connect.

Here we go again!

• I logged onto the Verizon Wireless web site and confirmed that the account was active and unchanged. The wireless modems have phone numbers associated with them for billing - in the Dell "Mobile Broadband Card Utility" software, click on File / Device Properties to see the phone number.
• Dell distributes the software on the Drivers page for its notebooks, under Communications. I downloaded an updated version and tried to install it. Nope - "the version on your computer is newer." Nuh uh! <sigh> Uninstall the existing software, restart, install the downloaded software, restart. No change.
• Could another change have killed things? I was testing some VPN software that made me suspicious. I had used System Restore to create a restore point just before I put on that VPN software, so let's roll back to that restore point, when the Verizon card was still working. Hmm. Now the Dell Mobile Broadband software is stuck thinking it's partially installed. Okay, one more time - uninstall the Dell software, restart, reinstall, restart.
• No change.
• Big sigh.

Finally, too late, I google "RAS Error 691" and "Error QA920." There are a few frustrated souls out there, with the longest discussion on this page, describing people's miserable experiences with Verizon technical support. It looks like Verizon needs to reset the account, which takes only a couple of minutes after a tech support rep becomes convinced it's necessary.

It's midnight, so tech support isn't answering, and frankly I'm none too excited by the prospect of that conversation.

One of the tips on that page catches my eye - a way to force the device to be re-activated in Verizon's system.

• Log back in to Verizon Wireless web site, go to the page for the device, and find "Activate Phone."
• On the next screen, click on "Activate Equipment."
• On the next screen, pick the phone number assigned to the line and type in a new ESN, one digit different than the correct one. (The ESN is the unique number assigned to the device. In the Dell software, it's also under File / Device Properties.)
• Wait ten minutes.
• Go back and put in the correct ESN. Wait ten minutes.

Push the Connect button and, Voila! Simple as that, the modem connects again.

If the guesses are right in the forum posts, the firmware upgrade kills the device for some people. I'm not aware of any way to avoid the "upgrades" - they seem to happen randomly when I try to connect.

What a pain!

Labels: broadband, computers, hardware, mobile, software, wireless

posted by bruceb at 8/15/2008 12:19:00 AM | permalink

NEW DELL LATITUDE NOTEBOOKS

Dell introduced seven new models of Latitude business notebooks today. There are details, videos, and some screen shots on this page.

Here's a partial list of new and improved features:

• Vastly improved battery life, in some cases up to 19 hours.
• Lots of connectivity options - Wi-Fi (802.11n), mobile broadband, WWAN, Ultra-wideband, Bluetooth, WiMAX, GPS. 
• Lots of security options: smart card and fingerprint readers, hardware-based disk encryption, smart card.
• Color options on some models - shiny black, matte black, blue, red.
• Full-frame magnesium alloy construction.

Labels: computers, hardware

posted by bruceb at 8/14/2008 12:39:00 AM | permalink

OFFICE LIVE WORKSPACE UPDATE

Microsoft Office Live Workspace is one of the more interesting ways to store documents online and share them easily. Access is obtained through your Windows Live ID, the password that is becoming increasingly important as Microsoft pulls the various Windows Live services together. Here's some background on Office Live Workspace.

An update was released this week:

"The Office Live Update 1.2 installs (1) performance updates to make using Office Live Workspace with Microsoft Office programs faster, (2) the latest Office Live Add-in for Microsoft Office that enables you to access your workspaces directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and (3) the Multiple Document Upload Tool and (4) the Firefox add-in to allow users of the Firefox browser to use Office Live Workspace with Microsoft Office."

Once the OLW software is installed, the files stored online can be opened from a web browser, or directly from Office programs - OLW is added to the menu in Office 2007, or on a new toolbar in Office 2003/XP.

Although I'd encourage you to try the service if you're interested, I've found there are still a couple of things missing. One is a little thing - the file list does not remain sorted the way I left it. If I sort the files alphabetically, I want it sorted alphabetically when I return. (For some reason, the file sorting cannot be changed from its random order when I open the list from inside an Office program, which is impractical for more than a fairly small number of files.) And there's no support for keeping previous versions of items that are edited, which can be enormously valuable when you're collaborating with people.

Labels: file_sharing, Microsoft, Office, web_services

posted by bruceb at 8/14/2008 12:16:00 AM | permalink

JUNGLE DISK ONLINE BACKUP

Take a look at Jungle Disk, a service for online backups with a good reputation. I'm testing it now and finding a lot of things to like.

The idea is simple - back up folders to a secure place online at regular intervals, and retrieve them any time but especially in the event of a computer crash.

Jungle Disk's backup software is extremely simple to use - pick the interval for backups and put checkmarks by the folders to be backed up. The software can be installed on Windows servers and desktops as well as supporting Linux and Macs.

After a disaster, you'd install the Jungle Disk software on the new computer, then run Restore. By default, Jungle Disk keeps multiple versions of files, so you can also use it to recover earlier versions of individual documents.

The interesting thing about Jungle Disk is that it has almost no investment in this process at all. All of the hard work is done by Amazon. Yup, Amazon.

You see, Amazon has built a simply unbelievable global array of servers, capable of providing nearly unlimited amounts of storage. A tiny fraction of that is used for Amazon's online stores.

Amazon is providing access to that online storage to anyone, at trivially cheap prices. When you install Jungle Disk, the first thing you'll do is set up your personal account with Amazon for storage space in Amazon's S3 service. The cost is fifteen cents per month per gigabyte, plus trivial charges for transferring files to and from the service, billed through your Amazon account. You can store as much or as little as you like - there is a size limit of 5Gb for an individual file but there are otherwise no limits whatsoever.

The Amazon storage space cannot be accessed directly, however. Developers are given the technical tools to build whatever they like for people to use with the service. Jungle Disk built a backup program. There are lots of other backup programs as well as web hosting companies, photo sharing services and many more services built around the Amazon S3 online storage.

The Jungle Disk software costs twenty bucks for a lifetime license. If the company went out of business, chances are somebody else would write software to recover data stored in Jungle Disk's proprietary format. But Jungle Disk was immediately profitable because it just wrote some simple software - it did not try to build a global network of secure servers to go with it.

Jungle Disk is secure and simple. The first backup is slow - it's going through your Internet connection, after all. It might take days for the first backup to complete. After that, only changed files are sent. You wouldn't back up your entire hard drive to Jungle Disk - it can't be used for a bare metal restore.

Personally, for the reasons I wrote up recently, I would use it in addition to another backup method.

I'm going to start using it to store another backup of my files, my Quickbooks & Quicken data, and my family photos. That's about 35Gb of data, so that should be about five bucks a month. Nice! If I have trouble (like I did last year when I had a poor experience with another online backup service), I'll let you know.

Labels: backup, business, Internet, web_services

posted by bruceb at 8/13/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

OLYMPIC TECHNOLOGY

By the close of the 2008 Olympic Games, NBC will have broadcast 2,900 hours of live coverage - more than the total number of US television hours for all previous summer Olympic Games combined.

In addition to the broadcasts on the primary NBC channel, video coverage will be virtually nonstop on NBC's Spanish-language outlet, Telemundo, and on five of seven major NBC Universal-owned cable channels. Huge amounts of video covering every sport will be served up by streamed video on NBC's Olympics Web site, NBCOlympics.com. Here's a good article about the monolithic coverage and the accompanying promotional effort.

This article examines the technical challenge of handling that much video - 11 terabytes of high definition content alone. NBC has spent billions on storage (180TB of available space in Beijing), servers, and creative technology to make it possible for editors around the world to stitch together the coverage from the available shots and create a finished piece without choking up all the bandwidth moving the HD video around.

The NBC Olympics web site will be streaming video using Microsoft's Silverlight technology - you'll have to install "Silverlight v.2 (beta)" to see the video. Microsoft paid large amounts of money to get the opportunity to install Silverlight on computers around the world, and it's putting on a very impressive show - the high quality 720x480 video is quite remarkable after the last couple of years spent enduring miserable low-quality streaming Flash video on YouTube. Check it out - watch the incredible men's swimming 4x100 relay. (When the video starts, click the button to "Enlarge" in the lower right corner.)

You'll get a quick screen to indicate who your television provider is - if you don't claim to have service from one of NBC's "partners" (like, say, Comcast Cable in zip code 95404), you don't get to watch the online video. There's no check on the information you put in. I've seen one unconfirmed report that if you put in Time Warner in zip code 10001, you can see some coverage three hours earlier than it's turned on for the west coast.

There is a link to the NBC Olympics web site on the bruceb.com Favorites page - near the top, under the Amazon search box.

Enjoy the Games!

Labels: business, games, Internet, video

posted by bruceb at 8/12/2008 12:15:00 AM | permalink

FAKE FLASH UPDATE - SPYWARE ALERT!
There is a massive spam attack underway masquerading as messages from CNN.com. The first set of messages had links to the "Top 10 Headlines" and "Top 10 Videos"; now there are new variations presenting a "custom news alert." Clicking on any link in the messages will bring up a dialog that says an incorrect version of Flash Player has been detected that needs to be updated to a newer edition.

You will be caught in an endless loop - if you click "Cancel" another box will immediately appear, over and over. The only way to get out is to force your browser to close with Task Manager, or shut down your computer.

If you click OK, malware is installed. You will immediately get a blizzard of popups, advertisements for fake "antivirus" software, and the likelihood that something more sinister is happening on your computer behind the scenes. It is increasingly difficult or impossible to remove this stuff once it gets on your computer!

At the malicious web sites, you'll see something like this:

Antivirus software will not always protect you against malware if you click OK at the wrong time! Sorry, that's just the way it is.

Here's an article about the spam blitz. Links to the malicious web sites are also being left in comments on MySpace and Facebook, according to this article.

Don't click on strange URLs! Follow links with carefree abandon to and from legitimate sites, but don't click on links that arrive in spam e-mail, instant messages, web forums, or IRC chats, or that start from an untrustworthy web site. Be paranoid and surf carefully!

Labels: IE, Internet, security, spam

posted by bruceb at 8/11/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

SECURITY EXHAUSTION

Labels: humor, security

posted by bruceb at 8/09/2008 12:53:00 PM | permalink

DROWNING IN JAVA

There are frequent updates for Java, the technology used by many web sites to make interesting things happen in your browser. You've probably seen the Java update bubble popping up far too often down in the lower right corner of the screen.

The updates are issued to fix security problems, problems that are being exploited by the bad guys. If you're fooled into visiting a malicious web site, there's a chance that your computer might load some malware through a security hole in an old version of Java, even after you've installed a more recent version. Here's an article from the Washington Post about the security hole caused by these leftover versions.

That's why it's so frustrating that the updates do not uninstall the older versions of Java, resulting in a complete mess of Java versions on almost everyone's computer. Take a look in Add/Remove Programs and see if you have a list that looks something like this:

That's just dumb.

Each of those can be removed individually, which is a pain in the neck. An annoyed blogger created a script to remove all versions of Java from a computer in one operation. He sounds like a reasonable person so I ran it on my computer; it appeared to do what it promised. I can't vouch for it - we should never run software from an unknown source - but if you run it and wind up being sold as a slave by the Russian mafia, at least you know I'll be there too.

After running the script, you'll have to reinstall the latest version of Java from here.

Remember, as Windows becomes more secure, the bad guys are increasingly using programs like Flash, Java and Quicktime to deliver malware to our computers. The free Secunia Online Software Inspector is a very helpful tool to identify updates that might be needed on your computer. Here's more information about the Secunia Inspector. Upgrades are a pain but keep your computer up to date!

Labels: IE, security, software

posted by bruceb at 8/08/2008 01:18:00 AM | permalink

ACTIVESYNC FOR BLACKBERRY

ActiveSync is the technology from Microsoft that connects a mobile device to Exchange Server. For businesses running Small Business Server, it is ActiveSync that makes a Windows Mobile-based device so compelling - over the air syncing of Outlook mail, calendar & contacts.

Apple licensed ActiveSync for the new generation of iPhone, making it more appealing for businesses.

Blackberry devices don't run ActiveSync and cannot connect to an Exchange Server directly. That's why I've written frequently about the difficulty of setting up a Blackberry in offices running Small Business Server.

This web site announces a third party plugin for Blackberry devices that uses ActiveSync to sync with Exchange Servers, claiming it will be available this month.

That would be great! It's been overdue for a long time.

Will it work? Is this company for real? Will it suck the battery dry like ActiveSync does on the iPhone? Will it void the warranty on the Blackberry? Stay tuned. No one knows.

Labels: mobile, Outlook, phone, SBS

posted by bruceb at 8/06/2008 12:01:00 AM | permalink

STEP 1 - BACKUP. STEP 2 - BACKUP AGAIN.

Let me tell you a scary story.

When we plan our backups, the idea is to have a duplicate copy of our data on something separate from where it is normally stored and used. In theory, it is unlikely that both sources will fail simultaneously.

Even very small businesses would be devastated by a loss of data or an extended network outage. On Monday I had a simultaneous failure of a server and the primary backup device. We were dealing with the potential loss of a lot of data and a long outage indeed.

The firm will live on because there was a secondary backup device.

The moral of the story is: if your data is business critical, pay attention to your backups and use more than one device to hold them.

Fortunately the call this Monday morning does not happen frequently. The server running Small Business Server 2003 in a small law office was not responding.

• The firm's Internet connection runs through a second network card in the server, so no one had Internet access. (That used to be the preferred way to set up Small Business Server. The proliferation of inexpensive firewall devices has changed that and SBS 2008 will not support that setup; instead it will assume that small businesses have a SonicWall or Snapgear firewall/router or something like it.)
• Firm documents were completely inaccessible. Individual My Documents folders could be opened (they're stored on the server but a local copy is stored on the individual workstations using "Offline Files") but they're rarely used - everything important is in the shared "Company" folder.
• Outlook is running in cached mode so all copies could be opened, but of course no mail could be sent or received.
• Specialized programs run from the server were unavailable - Abacus, Timeslips.

A very bad thing.

The server is aging and a little underpowered, running on a single IDE hard drive. The symptoms made me think that the hard drive had failed. I got a replacement and stood ready to restore the server from the backup image.

I could not open the file folder where the backups were stored.

The primary backup device was a Buffalo Terastation Pro II, less than a year old. I've set up several of them, I use one myself - 1Gb network attached storage, with four 250Gb hard drives running in a RAID5 array, meaning if any one of the hard drives fails, the box continues working with no interruption other than a beep to remind you to change the bad drive.

I hooked up my notebook, set the IP address within the range being used by the Terastation - and I couldn't open the file folder on the Terastation.

I opened Internet Explorer and got a login screen to the Terastation's web interface but it would not finish loading the main screen so I could use any of the Terastation's built-in tools.

The next two hours were spent trying to talk to the Terastation - confirming IP addresses, checking firewall settings, hooking the Terastation up to my office network in case it wanted a working DHCP or WINS server, trying to do soft resets, pulling various combinations of the hard drives, and a lot of other things. At the end of that time it threw up a "Kernel error" message on its little LCD screen and nothing I did gave me any hope that it would recover. Sure, I'll call Buffalo for warranty support tomorrow but that wasn't going to help a law office that was completely down.

We had also been doing backups to external hard drives on Thursday night, and swapping between two external USB hard drives every Friday.

I was able to use the external hard drive to restore the server to life as of Thursday night at midnight. Documents created or edited on Friday are lost but Outlook is completely up to date - all changes on Friday were synced from the offline copies, and Exchange Defender delivered all mail that arrived while the server was down.

Do you appreciate why I was sweating? If we hadn't had that second backup device, we'd have been left staring at each other with nothing to do but sharpen knives - seppuku in my case, murder in my client's case.

I've got some Small Business Server clients that are not currently using two different backup devices. I'll be contacting them to urge them to buy more external hard drives or an NAS or whatever will provide extra redundancy.

If you've got a single external hard drive for your computer, get another one and rotate them.

If you're backing up onto CDs, buy an external hard drive and start using it for backups - and occasionally keep backing up onto the CDs!

Look into online backups, but also use a local device.

Backup backup backup! I hate losing data!

My guess is that the hard drives in the Terastation are just fine and the failure is deeper in the hardware. (The Terastation was working at least until Friday night. There was no indication of a power surge or something else that took out both the server and the Terastation. This is a very weird coincidence.) A Google search turns up lots of complaints about the Terastation. I take that with a grain of salt because every device has generated a score of complaints that could be turned up in a Google search.

There is a part of this story that is full of magic and light and goodness. The software used by this client is StorageCraft ShadowProtect, and it is just swell. I'll tell you about it someday.

Labels: backup, computers, hardware, network, SBS

posted by bruceb at 8/05/2008 01:40:00 AM | permalink

SECURITY PROGRAM RANT

An interesting perspective on the state of security programs, from Susan Bradley's invaluable blog:

"Anti-virus, you have lost. You sit there filling up our system trays with your little icons and flashing bubbles, constantly seeking attention with your false positives and pleas for updates and money. Your ugly self-advertising user interfaces make us feel physically sick. You cripple our machines' performance and stability with your hundred processes and services loading at bootup and klunging up the system hooks. It takes a lot to bring a modern, powerful PC to its knees with swapping and bluescreens, but you manage it.

"Yet despite all this, you still don't protect us. Oh, sure, AV is still effective against old-school viruses and the more widespread mail worms. But come on, what idiot still gets infected by those? No, the bulk of today's infections - including my neighbour's - are driven by web browser-based exploits and related fake-software downloads, against which today's AV tools are woefully ineffective.

"The payloads involved are enormous in quantity and range, and are mutated constantly. Against this, signature-based AV has no chance to keep up. Woollier signatures and heuristic-based detection increases the chances of detection a little, but at the cost of so many false positives the user can't trust it any more. Or worse, they do trust it and end up deleting a bunch of random files that happened to be compressed using an application compressor (packer=virus, according to stupid AV). Oh, and Windows Explorer.

"Oh sure, you might get an alert from your AV when visiting an exploit, because it peeks into your Internet cache folder and manages to recognize part of the payload, or an intermediate downloader file, or the original exploit itself. 'I've removed a virus for you!' it says, 'aren't I super! It's 'Delf', or 'Agent', or 'Small', or one of the other names we give to specimens we don't really know what they are but they're probably not good?.

"By that point it's far too late; either your browser wasn't vulnerable, and the AV has valiantly protected you from nothing at all, or the suspect code has already been run, downloading a whole bunch of other bad stuff. Even if it did miraculously catch all of those (and the odds aren't looking good), how could you possibly know for sure you were still clean? There are some very hard-to-spot rootkits out there that your average PC-using clod hasn't the faintest hope of detecting."

I've lost a couple of nice computers in the last few months, reformatting hard drives when malware got onboard and could not be cleaned off economically, even though security software was running and theoretically up to date. I've got no answer here, just a bad feeling that the problem will get worse.

Labels: security

posted by bruceb at 8/02/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink