Thanks to Dana Lee for permission to use this Photo.
Have you seen the recent commercials from Verizon Wireless touting their wireless service, contrasting their service with the seemingly restrictive confinement of WIFI. This is part of a battle for wireless dominance. WIFI is the current wireless standard leader. If you have a laptop, chances are you have some sort of WIFI router device in your home to provide WIFI access for it and other devices in your house such as the newest IPOD release. You have probably utilized the WIFI offerings of a local coffee shop or hotel (I couldn’t imagine staying in a hotel today that didn’t offer WIFI or at least Ethernet network access). If you download a free program called NetStumbler and install it on a computer that has a wireless card, you can discover wireless access points wherever you are. The program makes a sound every time a new WIFI point is discovered. Driving around with your laptop running NetStumbler can make your computer sound like a video game as it will sound off repeatedly like a machine gun as it find the plethora of WIFE points in the area.
The problem with WIFI is that it is spotty and not predictable. WIFI has a limited range and many WIFI hotspots are now guarded with security such as WPA, disallowing public access. This has created a demand for a more streamlined wireless standard that offers blanket coverage.
One option is the cell phone companies such as Verizon. These services can offer as much as much as 3.5 Gig of network throughput, putting WIFI to shame. WIMAX is another option in which metropolitan areas can offer blanket coverage throughout the area with speeds up to 4 Gig. Both of these offerings work on some sort of subscription plan which can cost as much as $60 a month. Unlike WIFI, each and every device must have a separate subscription, making these alternatives very expensive. Over a dozen metropolitan WIMAX projects have been dismantled over the past year due to higher than predicted costs and a shortage of willing subscribers. WIFI has also fired back with the new 802.11n WIFI standard this year which offers greater throughput and coverage than its WIFI predecessors. The battle has just begun for wireless dominance…
Thanks to conskeptical for permission to use this Photo.
Have you ever wanted to revisit a link that was fifty or more characters long and was impossible to remember? Have you tried to tell someone about a site with an extensively elongated URL? A great example is the link for a specific link on YouTube.
If you access such a site from the same computer all the time you can simply save that site as a favorite in your browser. But what if you want to access the site from any computer you want? Here is a great website to help you do just that,
This is a nasty link that only someone with a photographic memory could possibly remember. Simply go to tinyurl.com and paste in the link. Then assign it an easy to remember name such as
win2008book_i_want
And save it. You would then access the link by simply typing
You have to type in unique names that no one else has used before because each link has to be unique. Most easy links such as www.tinyurl.com/Brad are already used. Of course, like most technological tools, this site poses a security risk to organizations as well as a great benefit. People who use computers at organizations that utilize web filtering, such as schools and businesses, can create personal custom links for websites that are filtered by the organization, allowing them full access to these sites. For this reason, Tiny Url is sometimes blocked by organizations to prevent this. I recommend that you try it out for yourself…
The 2008 Global Information Security Workforce Study was recently released. A total of 7,548 professionals in the field were surveyed. The complete study can be downloaded at https://www.isc2.org/cgi-bin/content.cgi?category=510
The most interesting headline from the study was the fact that 70 percent of all respondents reported that their own employees are the biggest threat to their organization’s security. This is contrary to the common belief that organizations must throw most of their resources at the outside perimeter of the organization’s network to prevent outsiders from accessing their network.
This premise is supported by a recent finding that email is now no longer the number one manner in which viruses access an organization’s network. With the ease at which employers now bring in thumb drives, personal laptops and PDA’s. Network security plans must focus on an umbrella approach that guards the entire network.
One of the security weaknesses experienced with laptops and other portable computer devices for many years is the simplicity in which their drives could be compromised if the device is stolen. This was especially true before Windows XP and Windows 2000 when a thief could simply install a second operating system on the laptop, logon to the new operating system and gain admin rights to all the data on the drive.
Windows XP and Windows 2000 introduced EFS, Encryption File System, which allowed users to encrypt files of their choosing. Because the encryption was centered on an encryption key based upon the original operating system, an intruder couldn’t access that file simply by accessing it through another operating system. However, this required the user to individually encrypt every file or folder in order to protect all of their data. Needless to say, the majority of users failed to do this.
Microsoft has introduced a new technology called BitLocker with Windows2008 and premium flavors of Windows Vista. BitLocker encrypts the entire drive, including the Windows system files necessary for startup and logon, which could give an intruder the ability to discover passwords and logon information. What’s more, BitLocker utilizes a feature called Integrity checking which analyzes the early boot components and helps to ensure that data decryption is performed only if those components appear unmolested and that the encrypted drive is located in the original computer. This prevents thieves from stealing your hard drive and putting it into another computer to access the data.
It will also make it much easier for organizations to recycle old computers as they will not have to worry about erasing data on machines being decommissioned as the drives will be inaccessible. BitLocker is a great new addition to the Windows operating system and should be implemented by any organization or individual that works with sensitive data.
Blip.tv is regarded as “the world’s leading videoblogging and podcasting service,” but it’s their community based ethos and collaborative principles that really persuaded our Ashworth University Student Life team to deveop our own television channel through this incredible company. Blip.tv’s video publishing, sharing, and syndication features make it easy for anyone to get their message heard in the increasingly crowded online video marketplace. We here at Ashworth University would like to thank Blip.tv for their outstanding service. We’d also like to encourage you to check out our Ashworth University Television channel on Blip.tv. If you are a video content creator and would like to work with Ashworth University, please feel free to contact me at the following email address to discuss the possibilities. Thank You!
Thanks to Kit Cowan for permission to use this Photo.
I had to go about shopping for a new KVM switch at my work to replace one that had gone bad. This gave me the idea to write a short blog piece about KVM switches. A KVM switch allows a user to control multiple servers or workstations with a single monitor and mouse/keyboard. In a typical datacenter, each rack of servers will be connected to a KVM switch which has an assigned monitor/mouse/keyboard. Because of KVM switches, organizations don’t have to purchase a monitor and keyboard/mouse set for every single machine. This makes sense since users do not dedicate themselves to a server desktop as they do a workstation.
Each computer is connected to the KVM switch with a special VGA or USB cable. Higher end KVMs allow standard Ethernet cables to connect computers. KVMs usually come in 4, 8 and 16 port versions, meaning that it can accommodate that many machines. When a user wants to access a particular machine, he simply hits an assigned key on the keyboard to view a menu of the computers that are managed by that KVM. He then selects the machine he wishes to view and the monitor then brings it up. Imagine if you were downloading and installing Windows Updates on 8 servers. You could pull up each server at a single monitor and complete the tasks without leaving your chair.
KVM switches are not utilized as much as they have been in the past due to the ease of tools such as Microsoft Remote Desktop which allows one to remote into any windows server at will and pull up the server desktop wherever they are in the world. These remote applications due have one big limitation in that they do not allow a user to view the booting process of the server or access the BIOS as one normally is able to. Unlike a KVM, if you reboot a machine while remoting into it, you lose your connection. Because of this, KVM switches continue to be a valuable tool for networks today.
One of the biggest players in the KVM market is Avocent. Visit their website at www.avocent.com to learn more about their product line and KVMs in general.
Thanks to entropy for permission to use this Photo.
Kaspersky Anti-Virus is one of the most effective anti-virus programs I’ve ever come across. Not only it has good detection rate, it’s light on the system memory too. I was happy to see that Kaspersky has released the free scanner for the users. However, please note that this is just an on-demand scanner and it won’t clean the virus or remove it for you.
Now the question rises that why do you want to use it, when it can’t clean or stop viruses and here’s the answer to this tricky question :Well, I always vouch for having two anti-viruses on a system! (C’mon linux fans, you have a chance to speak) I know that most of the anti-virus firms say that it’s not good to have to anti-virus software but let me make my statement a little bit clear. It’s always good to have one full anti-virus software which runs in real-time, however it’s even better when you have an anti-virus software whose real-time scanning should be disabled and runs as an on-demand scanner. (more…)
Tom Raftery is a technologist based out of Ireland specializing in social media. A friend of the Ashworth community, Tom was one of the first members of our contributing bloggers’ network and has been incredibly gracious in sharing his always insightful perspectives with our students. I’m a frequent reader of Tom’s blog, an Irish award winner by the way, and I thought that his video thoughts on the iPod Touch as Internet Tablet would be of interest to you guys. It’s a brief example of one of Tom’s greatest strengths; the ability to creatively interpret how a technology’s features and capabilities can be maximized. The term “ingenuity” seems appropriate. Click on Tom’s image above to watch this video and spend a few minutes exploring his terrific blog while you’re there. What can I say, he’s the James Joyce of IT!
Another level closer to enlightenment, Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s latest piece of reverse engineered alien technology today: the MacBook Air. As I watched the video of Steve Jobs taking the “world’s thinnest” notebook out of a manila envelope before presenting it to the audience, like something other than a computer, a pizza maybe, I couldn’t help but laugh on the inside. It was a private laugh, nothing disrespectful of course. Like many other people obsessed with techno-design culture, my respect for Jobs sometimes crosses the line into idolatry. That being said, for a moment today, I felt as if I was watching an alternative ending to Zoolander. What world has this man transcended more? Technology or Fashion? Click on the image above to watch this video. I’m curious to see if you draw a similar parallel. If any members of our student community have already found a way to purchase a MacBook Air, drop in for a minute to share your insights.
Thanks to Andreas Pizsa for permission to use this Photo.
Last year, Microsoft released their most recent version of their popular Exchange email server called appropriately, Exchange 2007. The new upgrade has a number of valuable new tools and methodologies. The two most important facets of this new version is the integration of Unified Messaging and Malware Defense. Unified messaging refers to the aspect of conglomerating various messaging types - email, voicemail and faxes into one unified form. This has been available for several years through other vendors such as Cisco. Exchange 2007 will convert voice mails to email and send faxes directly to designated email boxes. It will also have the ability to integrate another new Microsoft product, Forefront Security to combat malware infections in email communications.
With the plethora of new features inherit in Exchange 2007, most organizations will want to upgrade their old Exchange servers to the latest version. However, there is hidden cost in deploying Exchange 2007. The new version only works on 64-bit architecture (most servers today are 32 bit, the same as your PC). This means that for most customers, the necessary hardware will also have to be purchased as well which adds thousands of dollars to the price. (more…)
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