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October 06 U3 Smart DrivesToday I'm going to talk about a software solution that is bundled with the purchase of a "thumb" or "flash" drive. The U3 software from U3 LLC resides on a U3 compatible memory device. For the purposes of this conversation I will refer to them as thumb drives, though they are commonly referred to by many different names. The U3 software is set up in such a way that it automatically loads when you connect the thumb drive to a Windows XP machine, as well as a Windows Vista machine, though it does require a mouse click to authorize the security system to allow the software to load. When you insert the U3 thumb drive the system "see" two volumes and assigns them drive letters. One volume contains the U3 software itself, and is recognized by the operating system as a CDROM drive. It is from this volume that the U3 software is launched using autorun. The second volume is the data storage, and it is recognized by the OS just like any other removable media. The operating system uses it just as it would a hard drive, so this is where you can manually store your files, photos, music or any other file type you choose. The beauty of the U3 enabled thumb drives, in my mind, is that for the same cost as a non-U3 capable device, you get some great additional functionality.
The image to the right is a screen shot of my U3 launchpad. The U3 software itself is really just a software loading utility. it has very little functionality itself, outside of a very nice security utility that will allow you to password protect and encrypt the data on the thumb drive. The ability of the U3 system to house software is where it starts getting good. You can see in the image a few of the software packages I have loaded on my thumb drive. These programs operate entirely from the thumb drive, and require no setup or installation on the host PC. This means that you can sit down at virtually any computer and use your own applications, with your own personalized setting without disturbing the computer itself. There's nothing worse than letting someone use your computer and having them install a bunch of oddball software, leaving behind a mess for you to clean up. The U3 system eliminates that hassle. Software must be ported to the U3 system to operate properly, but there are a large number of software titles available (many of them free), and more are added every month. I have a few "must have" software titles that I feel are useful enough to have with me everywhere I go. The thumb drive in question lives on my key chain, so it virtually is everywhere I am. I could probably devote entire blog posts to each individual program, not only because there is a lot to them, but also because I'm incredibly verbose in my posts. I bet you already knew that.... I believe there is a minimum of three applications that everyone should carry with them at all times. Since most of us are able to access our email and email attachments via web based mail apps like Outlook Web Access and GMail, there's not usually a need for an email application. I have two applications that are an absolute must-have, and one that is a convenience for me, but may be a must-have for you, depending on your work flow.
Of course there an many, many other programs an utilities out there for the U2 system. Finding and installing them is a snap from the U3 control panel. As I mentioned many of them are free, and the pricing for the paid software is very reasonable. The U3 system comes pre-installed on selected thumb drive models from manufacturers such as SanDisk, Memorex, PNY and others. Just look for the U3 logo on the packaging or device itself. My current thumb drive (I have gone through several, and usually carry at least two at all times) is a Sandisk Cruzer Contour (see photo to right). It's one of my favorites. It's only drawback is that it does not have an attached key ring loop. It does come with a very nice "leather like" case that attaches to a key ring or lanyard to make up for that. The Contour comes in 4Gb and 8Gb models. The 4Gb model retails for $99.99, but we can discount that quite a bit if you are interested in purchasing one from LKTech. Thumb drives are becoming so common that I usually assume most folks carry them. I know I don't go anywhere without one. It is one of the coolest things technology has brought us in the last ten years, and with the addition of the U3 system, it's going to go down as one of my all time favorite technology tools. Below are some links on the subject you might find interesting. As usual, if you have any questions or there is anything I can help with, don't hesitate to contact me! Samuel U3 LLC September 25 Logitech Harmony RemotesWhen I can I try to make entries here about products that I have used and feel comfortable recommending to others. The Harmony® line of universal remote controls from Logitech® is one of those products that I have not only used and find to be an excellent product, but I can't live without it either. I should tell you before I start in on the Logitech® remotes that I have been using, or more accurately trying to use universal remote controls for quite a few years. I think I have gone through at least 20 different models from four different manufacturers in the last 6 or 7 years, and they are all in a box somewhere in my garage. That doesn't even take into account the remotes that were provided with AV equipment that I have purchased that the manufacturer claims to be "universal". Trust me, they never are. The biggest problem with most universal remotes is the setup. They usually have a limited number of devices pre-programmed, and "training" them is an exercise in futility. The next challenge was getting my wife and kids to use them. Just setting up to watch a DVD, or switch over to the satellite receiver required a 10 click finger aerobics session that would typically culminate in the brand new and very expensive remote being launched across the room. (my family, in general, is my worst customer when it comes to the usability of the toys I bring home). Before the Logitech®, the longest any of my previous universal remotes lasted was about a month. Things are different now. My six year old daughter presses one button which turns on the TV, selects the appropriate signal input (mine has eight!), turns on the audio receiver, turns on the satellite receiver, and tunes in to Nickelodeon. The remote then displays her 6 favorite channels (with network logos!) for one-click access to channel changes. When my wife, teenage son or I are finally able to wrench the remote from her little, but strong hands, one click will take us to the living room computer (it's output goes to the HD TV), the DVD player, the XBox 360 or just about anything else with one click. Keep in mind that this requires changes to at least three different devices at the same time. When we're done, one button turns everything off for the night. If something doesn't work quite right, we can click the "Help" button and the remote will ask us questions concerning what went wrong until the problem is rectified. There are six remotes in the Harmony® line that I would like to talk about. First I'll talk about the features common to all of them, then I'll list a short rundown of each model. Devices You Can Control This was always a problem for other universal remotes. It was inevitable that no matter which one I purchased there would be at least one thing in my AV system that it wouldn't control, completely negating the whole idea of owning a universal remote. Logitech® fixed this with a database of 175,000 devices to choose from, which is updated regularly. Another thing about the old remotes was the number of devices you could program into the unit. You would typically buy a remote that could control four, six, or eight devices. If you had more devices than your remote could handle, you were out of luck. The Harmony® line handles up to 15 different devices, and not just your standard DVD players and TVs. It also handled lighting, security and HVAC thermostats! You name it, if you can remote control it, you can use a Harmony® remote for it. Setup/Programming This used to be a huge pain. First you would have to look up the four to eight digit code for the device you wanted to control. Then you would go through about 12 clicks on the remote (no menus, you have to follow the steps in the manual) just to get to the point where you can enter the device code. If you didn't get the "Save" click sequence right you'd be right back to the start. I can't tell you how many times I programmed a device into a remote six times before I was done. With the Harmony® you plug a USB cable into your computer and go through a very easy to follow menu to set up a device, and for that matter, everything else with the remote. Tivo and other DVR unit control Even the remotes that I bought that claimed to be designed for DVR's never really worked very well. The Harmony® remotes are a different story altogether. It's almost like the engineers at Logitech® had heard of DVR technology when they designed the Harmony®. Go figure. Ease of Use and Support This is one area where Logitech® definitely got it right. The help function on the remote is fantastic. So much so that my six year old can run through the troubleshooting menu easily when something doesn't work quite right. Logitech's® free tech support is one of the best in the business, and if you can't manage to get things setup or running on your own (not likely), they can help. One Touch Use The old style universal remotes usually had a "macro" feature to turn on or off several devices with one click, but good luck programming it, let alone getting it to work. The Harmony® remotes seem to have been built around the idea of one touch use, and they set up and operate seamlessly. So let's take a look at some of the Logitech® Harmony® remotes. I'm going to list some pricing information for you as well. While we don't typically sell home electronics products on a regular basis, I like these products so much we're going to start taking special orders for them. We're even going to have special pricing until the end of October, 2007, so look closely. You can also click on the images for more information from Logitech®. We'll start with the mother of all universal remotes, the Logitech® Harmony® 1000 Advanced Universal Remote
Just looking at it will fill any gadget freak with envy.
Logitech® Harmony® 890 Advanced Universal Remote
My personal favorite. Logitech® Harmony® 880 Advanced Universal Remote
Killer sales price! Logitech® Harmony® 670 Advanced Universal Remote
Great Tivo remote! Logitech® Harmony® 550 Advanced Universal Remote
Great features, great price Logitech® Harmony® 360 Advanced Universal Remote
Unlock the power of your Xbox 360! Give us a call at (208) 672-1922, or contact me directly if you would like to order one of these units, or if you have questions. Gadget Junkies Unite! Samuel September 20 How Gateway's tech support tortured an editor - Network WorldYou have probably heard from me at one point or another my distaste for Gateway, as well as another un-named PC manufacturer or two. Probably more that once. Read the article linked below from Network World Magazine. Third party verification that I'm not just holding a grudge.... How Gateway's tech support tortured an editor - Network World September 17 Phishing AttacksI'm going to keep this one short, but I need to say a little something about Phishing. by 10:00 AM on my Monday morning I had already received three "support issues" concerning phishing emails.
First, what is phishing? Here is the definition from wikipedia.com:
"In computing, phishing is a criminal activity using social engineering techniques.[1] Phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. eBay and PayPal are two of the most targeted companies, and online banks are also common targets. Phishing is typically carried out by email or instant messaging,[2] and often directs users to give details at a website, although phone contact has been used as well.[3] Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, and technical measures."
The important thing to note here is that the website that users are are directed to input information is the phisher's website, and they collect personal information, passwords and account information in order to steal from the users accounts in some way.
Here are a couple of examples of how these nefarious links work in an email (I've puposely replaced HTTP:// with H77P:// so the links will not work):
H77P://147.46.236.55/PayPal/login.html
This link is pointing to a server by IP address, and there is no visual way of determining that the site is legitimate. Don't trust URLs with all numbers in the front.
H77P://secure-signin.ebay.com.ttps.us/
Don't be fooled by the word ebay.com in there, this site belongs to ttps.us!
H77P://www.msn-verify.com
H77P://www.ebay-accept.com/login.php
Beware of a company name followed by a hyphen, they are almost never legitimate. Companies don't typically register domain names with security related keywords, they use their primary domain name.
This is just a few examples of how phishing attempts use bogus URLs to lure you in. Another common one is a small typo or misspelling of the target domain name that is not easily spotted.
Most of you probably view your email in HTML format, which means that the actual URL for links is hidden in the background. for an example, click on this: www.sams-website.com.
As you can see, there are no obvious signs that this link goes anywhere other than sams-website.com.
So what do you do? It's really difficult for most people to examine every link in an email to make sure they are legitimate. My recommendation is NEVER follow a link in an email to a site that will ultimately require a username and password, or any personal/account information. open a web browser and type the URL in manually.
Keep an eye on the address bar in your browser. If you see anything that doesn't look right, DON'T PROCEDE. If you are concerned about something that doesn't look right on your online banking web page, IMMEDIATELY CALL YOUR BANK. They will be able to put you in touch with someone in their security or tech support department that can help you verify the legitimacy of the site you are viewing, and probably give you some security advice along the way to help prevent you getting caught up in a phishing attack.
There are phishing prevention schemes built in to many email programs and web browsers, but they are not 100% accurate.
Phishing is a devastating and very efficient method of identity theft. Don't' think that it can't happen to you, thousands of people every day get cleaned out by one form or another of this kind of attack. Be vigilant, be safe.
August 10 SPAM!Aside from the entire cast of Monty Python, I have yet to meet anyone that has any appreciation whatsoever for spam. If you are one of my network support customers, we have probably had several conversations about it, and I've been telling you the same thing for years: "We do what we can, but it's a losing battle no matter how we attack it. The best we can do is reduce it's impact as much as possible". Today (8/9/2007) NPR's Neal Conan hosted a discussion of spam on Talk of the Nation. The link to the audio is listed below. There were some interesting facts raised in the conversation, and it has prompted me to talk about it here. The story is available online if you would like to listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12633463 (click on the "Listen" icon under the title of the story). I highly recommend that you take the time to listen to the show, which is only about 20 minutes in length and is very informative. I currently have three main spam solutions in use on customers systems. In order of preference they are:
It should be noted that each of these products not only filters spam, but also scans and removes virus infected email messages. Each of these systems have their positive and negative traits. My personal choice is the DigiTar service, which is a true service and does not require any on-site server resources, which is a huge plus. It also has the highest accuracy rate of anything I've ever used. The downside to the DigiTar service is that it carries the highest cost of the three, but is still an excellent value because of it's performance and features. SMS has a couple of major check marks in "Pro's" column on the comparison sheet with the others, which features that are completely lacking in the others. First of all, SMS is a zero administration system. That means there are no worries about ensuring that the latest spam and anti-virus definition updates are applied, and no software updates or upgrades. That is all handled by the folks at DigiTar, which makes the system itself completely hands off for customers and system administrators. The second the Portal feature. Each user in your email system has direct access to his or her own quarantine, white list and black list. That means that there is no longer any need for a user to contact an administrator to determine wether or not the filter trapped a message they were expecting to receive. The white and black lists can also be used very effectively basis on the user level to further control the filtering of incoming email. Concerning accuracy, SMS beats Antigen and Symantec MS hands down. DigiTar boasts a 99.9% accuracy rate, and not just for positive hits. They track false positives as well as false negatives to come to the 99.9% figure. One of my favorite selling points for DigiTar SMS is that not only does it save on server resources (there is no software or services required on the local network), it also saves your Internet bandwidth. Since all of the processing is done on DigiTar's network, offending email never touches yours, which can drastically reduce the network load on your WAN link. To be fair, Antigen and Symantec MS for Exchange have a couple of features that, depending on your needs, could be big selling points. They have the ability to scan outgoing email for specific language or keywords, can be configured to block specific attachment types and filenames, and will add disclaimer text to the bottom of every outgoing email as it leaves the system. Depending on your corporate policies, these may be "must have" features on your system. My last word on spam: No matter what we do, even if we do nothing at all, spam costs us money. It is negatively impacting our bottom line. That's right, our bottom line. As a service provider we spend quite a bit of our monthly time budgets dealing with spam, making it more expensive for us to do business. Our customers spend money on software and services, and a substantial portion of their labor costs can be attributed to users dealing with spam as well. If you want to go even further, a small fortune in our federal tax dollars is spent every year in the war against spam, and network carriers have to bolster their systems to handle the added bandwidth, increasing our cost for Internet connections. We all pay. What is the solution? I'd love to hear your ideas, because I am fresh out. For quite a while I thought legislation was the answer, and while it has proven to have at least some positive effect, enforcement issues and the constantly changing nature of spam itself have kept it from making event a dent in the problem. Andrew Lockart, senior director of marketing for Postini (a messaging security firm in California) sad that of the 25 billion messages the firm processed in May 2006, 86% were malicious or spam. Nothing we've done in the last several years, legislation included, has made a difference. Useless trivia: SPAM is a trademark of Hormel Foods Corporation. spam, on the other hand, is not. If you have any questions concerning spam, or anything mentioned in this article, feel free to contact me. |
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