Working in IT is a double edge sword

I came to the conclusion today that working in IT can be a double edge sword. The upper management at my job really does not have a full understanding of what all my job entails. This can be a blessing when everything is working well and I can do a little techno babble and buy some extra time on a project. The flip side of that is when other departments need some extra help with something they seem to think that my department has all the time in the world to help out. It can be quite the tight rope act some times to balance that fine edge and not get overwhelmed. Sometimes I wish I was in a dark little corner where they forgot about me as long as everything ran smooth.

How important is keeping your system up to date?

Hello all I’m back after another rather long hiatus. Anew Job and family matters have kept me away .Summer time seems to be a hard time for me to keep up my blogging so I apologize for the long time I have been gone. Recently I was visiting family and as usual I get asked to look at their computers that are acting up. I noticed a startling trend on each of the systems . All the systems had notifications in the system tray of updates that needed to be downloaded and installed. What is this system tray I speak of? Take a look at your computer screen now look in the bottom right hand corner. Yeah where you see the time displayed. That is what is commonly called the system tray and it does more than tell you the time. Some applications can put icons in the notification area to indicate the status of an operation or to notify the user about an event that needs your attention. If you have a newer system you may have to click on the little up arrow right next to the time to see the icons. Do You see a yellow triangle with and exclamation mark in it? Or any other icons that show yellow exclamation marks if so you need to update your system in some fashion. It may be you need to download and install a windows update or your antivirus program may need some attention. Ok go ahead and click on it and see what it says. It’s really easy just follow the instructions on the screen and let your system fix what it needs to fix, your system will run better and you will be more secure in your computing. Be sure to check the system tray periodically to see if there is anything that needs some attention(like service pack 1 that recently was released for windows 7.   If you have any question or a suggestion for a topic you would like me to cover just drop me a line and I will do it.

Keeping Your computer Safe

Today’s modern computing environment can be a dangerous place. Just think of how much stuff you do on your computer that involves you being online and connected to the internet. Once you expose you computer to the internet YOU ARE VONERABLE TO ATTACK. There is no getting around it. The days of a disgruntled nerdy teen in their moms basement hacking into a computer just to prove they can do it are long gone. Don’t get me wrong this still happens but hacking people’s computer has moved into a money making business. Before you secure your system it is good to know why people want into your system.

The most common type of virus is better classified as a trojan. These types of viruses are usually downloaded unknowingly by the computer user thinking that the file is something else, such as a file sent from an instant messenger friend or email attachment.

Once the host computer has been infected (known as a zombie computer), the trojan joins a private chat channel and awaits orders from its “Zombie Master”. This Zombie Master who is often the virus creator, will gather thousands of infected machines called a botnet and use them to mount attacks on web servers. The Zombie Master can command each of these infected computers to send a tiny bit of information to a web server – because there are potentially thousands of computers doing this at once, it often overloads the server. The Zombie Master may want to do this to another website because it is a rival website, a figurehead website (such as whitehouse.gov) or it may be part of an extortion plan. “Send me $5000 or your mail order website will be offline during your new product launch”. The Zombie Master can also use these infected computers to send spam while the zombie master remains anonymous and the blame goes to the infected computers

Another reason to hack your system is to Generate Money.
These types of infections often masquerade as freeware or virus removal tools (known as rogueware). Once ran, these fake applications will “scan” your computer and say it found has some viruses (even if there aren’t any) and in order to remove them, you must pay for the full version of the application.

People will also hack your system to Steal sensitive information
These types of viruses can sniff the traffic going in or out of a computer for interesting information such as passwords or credit card numbers and send it back to the virus creator. These types of viruses often use keylogging as a method of stealing information where it maintains a record of everything that is typed into the computer such as emails, passwords, home banking data, instant messenger chats etc..
The above mentioned methods also allows an attacker to gather an incredible amount of data about a person which can be used for identity theft purposes

There are many other reasons people do this but those are the main ones that normal users need to be on the look out for. Now what can we do about it?

 

First thing you need to do is change your mindset.
Most victims of computer crime do not think of themselves as a target for an attack.  Problem is, the majority of those who prowl the Internet don’t really care about your email messages or file content.  Prowlers do care about finding a platform from which to launch anonymous attacks against other computers, or about your credit card number and personal information.  Any computer connected to the Internet becomes worthwhile prey. With this in mind you need to change your behavior. Don’t click on links in email and don’t click on pop up ads from sites you visit.

Next you need to use strong passwords.

Here are some tips for creating a strong password.

• Use BOTH upper- and lower-case letters.
• Place numbers and punctuation marks randomly in your password.
• Make your password long and complex, so it is hard to crack. Between 8 to 20 characters long is recommended.
• Use one or more of these special characters: ! @ # $ % * ( ) – + = , < > : : “ ‘
• To help you easily remember your password, consider using a phrase or a song title as a password. For example, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” becomes “Sw0tR8nBO” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit” becomes “sMll10nspT.”
• Make your password easy to type quickly. This will make it harder for someone looking over your shoulder to steal it.

Protect passwords from misuse.  Don’t let anyone else know or use your password.  Don’t write it down; or if you must, keep it in a locked area or in your wallet.  Don’t post it on your computer or anywhere around your desk.  Don’t include the name of the system or the associated login ID with the password.  Change your password periodically, even if it hasn’t been compromised.  Don’t type your password while anyone is watching.

Next you need to Patch Frequently.

Along with weak passwords and virus-spreading email attachments, unpatched computer systems constitute one of the greatest security threats on the Internet.  All major operating system vendors offer mechanisms that will allow you to regularly check for updates and apply them.  It is important to keep your operating system up to date to minimize your exposure. Microsoft windows usually patches on the second Tuesday of every month unless there is a major issue that needs to be fixed fast. Turn on auto update if you run windows.

Use Antivirus Software & Keep It Current. 

Keep Your System Protected Against viruses.  A system without antivirus software can be infected within minutes of going online. Once you have antivirus software it is important to keep it up to date just like your operating system. Antivirus software works by checking the code on software installed on your computer for what is called a virus signature. New viruses are being released all the time so the anti virus software is always having to update it’s virus definition database to find and block these bad programs. If you have an antivirus program that requires a subscription like McAfee or Norton and the subscription runs out it’s just like not having an antivirus program. A very good free anti virus program that I use is AVG.  

Remove Spyware
In addition to virus protection you also need to Remove Spyware. Spyware is software that is installed on your computer without your knowledge or is bundled with other software you download from the internet. 

Spyware can:

• Track what you are doing on your computer for marketing purposes
• Reset the homepage and search pages on your browser
• Create pop-up advertisements
• Slow down your computer’s Internet connection
• Interfere with your computer’s normal operations

Spyware removal programs are available free for download from the Internet.  Two popular ones are Windows Defender  and Spybot Search and Destroy.

Avoid Phishing Scams

Phishing is the practice of sending millions of bogus emails that appear to come from popular Web sites or from your bank or credit card company.  The emails look so official that many people will respond to requests for their password, credit card information, and other personal information.  Microsoft recommends the below four steps to avoid Phishing Scams.  View the entire article from Microsoft.com.

• Don’t respond to e-mails requesting personal information.
• Don’t click on a link in an e-mail that you suspect might be fake.
• Check a Web site’s security certificate before you enter any personal information.
• Routinely review your credit card and bank statements

Back up your data regularly and keep copies in another location.
How important is your data to you?  If it’s important, it should be backed up. If it matters enough to get upset over losing, it’s worth protecting, and backups are an essential part of data protection. Part of your preventive maintenance and system care should include regular, reliable data backups. No matter how well you treat your system, no matter how much care you take, you cannot guarantee that your data will be safe if it exists in only one place. The risks are much greater than most people realize.

 In case all these steps fail keep your original system software handy

If your computer is compromised or you fall prey to a nasty virus, it may be necessary to reformat the disk drive and reload the operating system and drivers.  Keeping your original system software in a safe and easily reachable place ensures that you won’t have to waste valuable time searching for these items or downloading them from the Web.

Like I said  today’s modern computing environment can be a dangerous place, But if you follow the steps outlined here you can minimize your risk and increase you computing enjoyment.

Windows Office’s grab for a piece of the online pie

It is easy is to underestimate Microsoft when it comes to online applications.  A workspace that can be shared with others and is accessible from anywhere is fast becoming a necessity for individuals that are always on the move. Microsoft’s free Office Live Workspace is an online space provided by Microsoft for saving, accessing, and sharing documents and files. Using it one can access his/her documents from anywhere over an Internet connection via Web browser with a downloadable plug-in. This tool can be used for grouping information for work, school, and personal projects

Office Live Workspace anticipates the kinds of jobs you’re likely to collaborate on, providing prefab workspace templates geared to specific business, school, and home tasks such as organizing a group meeting, launching a product, writing a term paper, throwing a party, or managing a little-league team. Individual templates contain document templates designed for the task, such as a project proposal outline in Word or a presentation in PowerPoint.

Office Live Workspace supports Excel files. On the other hand, I could not find that the service supports Microsoft’s Access database format, which is too bad Access users looking to delegate data entry and to simplify reporting tasks might benefit greatly from an online database-sharing arrangement.

You can view documents in the three supported Office file types online, but to edit the files, you must download and open them in your local copy of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, or in a compatible suite such as OpenOffice.org, and then reupload them when you’re done

If you work with only a few collaborators, Office Live Workspace provides just the right combination of file-sharing controls and ease of use. As the workspace administrator, you create a new shared workspace and then invite other users by e-mail to join it, either as viewers (who can see but not modify files) or as editors (who can see, create, and modify files). You can share workspaces with invited users, make them public, or keep them private. Files are easy to move from one workspace to another.  Office Live Workspace displays a log of file creation, editing, and deletion activity and the administrator can retrieve an earlier version of a file if an editing blunder happens.  Office Live Workspace gives you just 500MB, with individual file size limited to 25MB. But if you and a few of your coworkers or family members want to collaborate in a lightweight fashion using Microsoft Office apps, Microsoft’s unique response to Web-hosted applications could be a free and easy no-brainer. And as we all know I’m cheap so as I have said before free is good. I also have to wonder what the future holds for other apps getting online components added to them is true cloud computing that far off. Well that’s a discussion for the next time I emerge from the murky depths of the interwebs. Till then happy browsing

Sharkey

How powerful is your Windows Live Account? Part 4

Here is the wrap up for my windows live series and I’m going to group all the rest of my favorite features in this post. We’ll start with Windows Live Groups. Basically, it’s like SharePoint for consumers, offering a way for any group of individuals to share things like documents and other files, calendars, and photos, and a place to connect, discuss things, and discover what’s going on. When you create a group, a group calendar is created for you in Windows Live Calendar, and you can overlay your group calendars in your own private calendar if you’d like. Groups also get their own dedicated storage in SkyDrive that is separate from your individual storage, and you can privately share photos among members of a group very easily. Unique to Groups is the ability to start and participate in discussions, which are essentially Web-based newsgroups, but private, of course, to the group. This is a grate way to collaborate on projects or to set up your own private news group.

 Next let’s talk about Windows Live People a service that serves as a central address book for all of your contacts, including those from Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, and elsewhere in the Windows Live network. Windows Live People has a few interesting features. Duplicate contacts resolution You can invite contacts from third party services, like Facebook, My Space and others to join your Windows Live network. Windows Live People includes new functionality around permissions so that you can determine which groups get access to which information you’re publishing online. Put simply, Windows Live People is like the ultimate cloud-based contacts management system. Very handy in managing all those friends you made online.

Now lets talk photo sharing you can access your online photo albums from just about anywhere in Windows Live. You can share photos and photo albums with friends via Windows Live Messenger, for example, and email them from Windows Live Mail. On the services end, your photos are available from Hotmail (for emailing), accessible from Windows Live Profile, can be posted to blogs and Web sites with Windows Live Spaces, and can be shared via Windows Live Events.

Some of the functionality in Windows Live Photos is obvious browsing to the Windows Live Photos Web site, you can view photo album thumbnails and see animated slideshows. You can push albums to digital photo frames via Windows Live FrameIt. The storage back-end? It’s all handled by Windows Live SkyDrive. And yes, you can browse your photos there as well. Looking at the Windows Live Photos site specifically, you’ll see mostly basic functionality. You can create and view photo albums, which don’t support sub-folders of any kind, which will be problematic for people with large photo collections. You can view photos inside an album by thumbnail or via List or Details view.You can also play slideshows, which are attractive enough, but don’t offer much in the way of options You can add a caption, tag people in the photo, or add a comment. Others who have permission to do so can also add comments.  As far as protecting photos go, Windows Live Photos offers various sharing options on a per-album basis. You choose to make albums public (available to one and all), or set permissions to your network (view or add, edit, delete) or your extended network. You can also filter permissions based on the groups you’ve set up in Windows Live People, Windows Live Messenger, and in other places, so you might set up an album to be viewable only by family members or whatever. You can also enter specific email addresses if you’d like.

My final thoughts of Windows Live are the sheer scope of what Microsoft is trying to accomplish with Windows Live is amazing. There’s a lot going on here, and it’s not all happening at once. The sum of Windows Live is greater than its individual parts thanks to the deep integration Microsoft has fashioned between these services, their Windows Live Essentials application counterparts, and the dozens of third party services that will be coming together over the next several weeks and beyond. Microsoft’s vision of creating a hub for your digital life is a good one, and its implementation is impressive. I think this release is really going to change people’s minds about Windows Live and what a powerful tool it can be. I have not listed all the possibilities in Windows Live, but I hope I have piqued your intrest enough to give it a closer look.

How powerful is your Windows Live Account? Part 3

Got and event coming up that you need to get the word out about? Windows Live Events , may be just right for you. It is an attempt to carve out a specific niche for Windows Live around events. It’s like Evite with a little social-networking added for good mesure. You can manage invitations and RSVPs for a party, wedding, group events or any other type of gathering by setting up an invite list and sending out a mass e-mail with a link back to your Windows Live Event site. All the event details are also available as an RSS feed, making it easy to export the information. On the site itself you can post information about the event, but it is also a place where attendees are encouraged to come back to share their photos, videos, or blog posts after the fact.

Now every event big or small can have its own social Website. “We want it to be a place where people can share their memories and stories after an event,” says Windows Live group product manager Jay Fluegel. Your guests always take better pictures than you at your kid’s birthday party. Now they have an easy way to share those pictures with everyone who was there.

Windows Live Events is very customizable. You can change the color, fonts, background, and play with the design and different features on the site, including adding discussion boards, blog posts, and photo- and video-sharing modules. You can also take your pick from the assorted gadgets (aka widgets) available in the Windows Live gallery . For instance, you could add a countdown-to-the-birth gadget for a baby shower or an Amazon wish list for a birthday party. This is a very easy to deploy and is perfect for small groups like car clubs, SCA groups, local craft shows or any another group that does not want to or can’t afford to maintain a domain website. In the next installment I’m going to take a look at Windows Live Groupsan intriguing idea. It’s like SharePoint for consumers, offering a way for any group of individuals to share things like documents and other files, calendars, and photos, and a place to connect, discuss things, and discover what’s going on. Till the next time I emerge from the murk depths of the interwebs happy browsing.

Sharkey

How powerful is your Windows Live Account? Part 2

So are you looking to get organized and make you life easier, well windows live may have the answer for you. Microsoft has been working on its online calendar and tasks service, Windows Live Calendar, for years now, but in Wave 3, it’s finally starting to come together into something that can finally rival Google Calendar. It supports all the standard calendar views–Day, Week, Month–as well as a useful Agenda view and a To-do list. You can subscribe to iCal-based Web calendars, overlay shared calendars, and share your own calendars via a variety of permissions. This is great if you are part of a group or club you can all share a common calendar and get updates from all users.  Of course, Windows Live Calendar is aimed squarely at consumers, and it’s likely that this free calendar and to-do offering will meet most people needs. Any time you start or join a group, that group’s calendar is automatically added to your list of available calendars so that you can optionally overlay them with your personal calendar and other calendars. This is just another component of the windows live experience and it is free. The more I look at windows live the more I like it. I have used several other separate applications to accomplish all the tasks I can do in windows live and it’s all centralized under one log-in. In the next part of this multi part post I’ll take a quick look at a companion to Windows Live Calendar, Windows Live Events an online event invitation and sharing service. Till the next time I emerge from the murky depths of the interwebs happy surfing.

 

Sharkey

How powerful is your Windows Live Account? Part 1

Think that Windows Live is just e-mail or instant messaging? Well then let me ask you this mate, how many online persona’s do you have, such as email (Hotmail, Gmail), instant messaging (Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger), social networking services (Facebook, MySpace), online retailers (Amazon.com), photo sharing services (Flickr, Google PicasaWeb), blogs (WordPress, Windows Live Spaces), and many, many others. How much time do you spend managing these persona’s? I think I have found a way to cut down the time and effort required to maintain said persona’s mate. Microsoft is releasing its most recent, or Wave 3, version of Windows Live to be open and inter operable with both its own services and those created elsewhere. The goal, of course, is to provide consumers with a central location from which they can manage these many online personas, reach out to people they care about, and share things with others. I’d like to discuss the Windows Live online services, which Microsoft refers to, simply, as Windows Live. This will be a multi-part post and the first thing I want to talk about is the SkyDrive online file storage service.

Microsoft is trying hard to show people that they are serious about online storage, and I’d say they are doing a darn good job of it. They just updated their SkyDrive online file storage service with numerous new features, but more importantly they bumped up the free storage quota from a mere 5GB to 25GB. While the new limit sounds rather appetizing you should take into consideration that they do restrict individual file sizes to under 50MB. So no, you won’t be able to upload your video library.

Here are some of SkyDrive’s features (new features are highlighted in green):

• Storage: Store up to 25 gigabytes (GB) of photos and files.

• Organization: Arrange your files in top-level folders (A folder that appears in the Documents, Favorites, or Photos sections on the Windows Live SkyDrive home page. Also known as a root folder.) and subfolders (A folder that you create inside a top-level folder.) that you create.

• Ease of use: Upload any photo or file up to 50 megabytes (MB) in size, and move, copy, delete, rename, and caption your photos and files after you upload them. Entire folders can be downloaded as a single ZIP file.

• Display: Photos saved as the JPG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, TIF, and TIFF file types display with thumbnail images, and can be viewed by other users on SkyDrive or in an online slide show, if they have the right permissions to view them.

• Control: Choose permissions for each top-level folder that you create. Keep your photos, files, and favorites in personal folders Only you can view or edit files in this top-level folder. You can use personal folders to store private files so only you can access them. For each person that you allow to access the top-level folder, you can assign the role of reader or editor. so you can share them with your Windows Live network, your extended network, and people on your contact list or in public folders so that they can be viewed by anyone on the Internet.

• Sharing: Share links directly to your folders, files, and photos, or embed your photos and files in your blog or webpage. You can also share files with users who don’t have a Windows Live ID, and they won’t be required to create an account.

The only thing the service lacks is a tool to bulk upload files and folders through a desktop application. Having to go to the site and upload items one-by-one can get rather time consuming, but I suspect that’s how they are getting away with offering such an enormous amount of free storage. Lifehacker did find a free tool that will let you do just this, but I’d still like to see something come from Microsoft.

You may not agree with me, but I believe SkyDrive could be on the verge of becoming a terrific tool for keeping an offsite copy of you most important files as well as sharing files and photos. I am currently using mine to keep cpoies of all the files that I can not recreate easily such as resumes contact information references etc. So if my system fails and my back up fails I have the most critical data in an off site backup format, and it’s free (we all should know how cheap I am by now) I have to admit I am surpized this is coming from Microsoft. I thought for sure Google would beat Microsoft to the punch in terms of online file storage, but they proved me wrong. Next time I will discuss Windows Live Calendar. So till the next time I emerge from the murky depths of the interwebs happy surfing .

Sharkey

Does Google hate Microsoft?

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I noticed a funny thing while researching my post about the different browsers available and their performance. If you go to the Google home page while using any version of Internet explorer you get an add that prompts you to download and install the Google Chrome browser. But if you go to the same Google home page using Firefox no add appears. this led me to think Does Google hate Microsoft and the Internet Explorer Browser? Google had in the past paid for some of its own employees to work part-time or more on Firefox. Most notably, Google hired Firefox lead engineer Ben Goodger in January 2005 under the condition that he would continue to work at least half-time on Mozilla projects. And who should turn out to be one of the lead engineers on Chrome but Goodger himself. When asked  about the circumstances surrounding his stopping work on Firefox, Goodger said the Chrome project had begun  after he was hired, and he was grateful to Mozilla for giving him his first experience in the space. (As confirmation, Goodger’s blog states he stopped contributing to the Mozilla project in 2006.) Google  renewed its Firefox search deal through November 2011. So why are Firefox and Google teaming up on Internet explorer? Could a deal be in the works for Google to acquire Firefox or are they just trying to get a larger piece of the add revenue pie by diluting Internet Explores usage base? This is  a story I’m gonna have to keep and eye on and see what develops.

Have you been bit by the early adopter remorse bug

Are you the type that has to have the newest tech toy’s out as soon as they become available? If you are you know what the early adopter remorse bug is. Do you have a library of laser discs or a collection of DAT tapes or an Atari Jaguar? This is just the curse of the early adopter. But recently there has been a ray of hope that one technology will not just be collecting dust on a shelf in your home. Warner today introduced Red2Blu, offering to let users “trade up” their Warner Bros. HD-DVD discs for the same Blu-ray titles. Users can trade in their discs by visiting Warner’s Red2Blu.com site. They can claim “virtually any” Warner title, up to 25 discs. The trade includes shipping and handling prices and a “small fee.” It’s available only to U.S. residents. So if you were a victim of the HD vs. Blu-ray war you can now do a prisoner exchange.