Foxtrot Systems Blog

Latvian Hackers Target Star Tribune

2011-07-05T08:09:00.003-06:00

Turns out one of our local papers, The Star Tribune got hacked via classified ad - from Latvia (with love?)! Read this FBI press release, including:

According to the indictment, the defendants created a phony advertising agency and claimed that they represented a hotel chain that wanted to purchase online advertising space on the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s news website, startribune.com. The defendants provided an electronic version of the advertisement for the hotel chain to the Star Tribune, and technical staff at startribune.com tested the advertising and found it to operate normally.
According to court documents, after the advertisement began running on the website, the defendants changed the computer code in the ad so that the computers of visitors to the startribune.com were infected with a malicious software program that launched scareware on their systems. The scareware caused users’ computers to “freeze up” and then generate a series of pop-up warnings in an attempt to trick users into purchasing purported “antivirus” software, which was in fact fake.

I’m going to bookmark this one so I can refer people back to it when they ask, “how could I have gotten infected with this? I didn't open any e-mail or go on any weird sites!” Malware is everywhere . . . eternal vigilance!

The Laser Printer Game

2010-11-01T08:42:00.004-06:00

Most people are aware of the game that printer manufacturers play - that they basically give away their printers in the hope of snagging a consumables (ink/ toner, etc.) customer "annuity" for years to come.

The following is a response to a customer whose 1-year-old Dell color laser printer (which was super-cheap) is getting more expensive to supply and maintain.

Customer: (Dell order update attached, stating the fuser part that they need to get their printer back running, is no longer available and the order will be cancelled.) Hey Pete, just an FYI on the printer parts issue. See email below - I guess we’re stuck with a useless printer. I’ll contact “spare parts” but looks like we may need to start looking for a new printer – and not a Dell.

Me: (I found another source for the part, and provided a sub-$200 quote for the fuser assembly.)

Customer: Thanks for contacting them about the part. The printer itself was less than the cost of that part. It’s an okay printer, not all that great, beside the toner is expensive, the drum was expensive, and now this part…I think we may need to look at a new printer. I think we can get a new one for less if not the same as the cost of that part. HP’s are reliable and ink/toner is usually reasonably priced. Do you have any suggestions?

Me: Color laser is still very expensive, pretty much no matter how you slice it – between 10 and 15 cents per page for consumables, versus 2 to 4 cents per page for B/W. We have a moderately-priced color Ricoh in our office and the four color toner drums for it cost around $500.

In fact, you’ll almost always find that printer mfr’s will sell their printers at-cost or even at a loss, then give you a small-capacity (~2,000 pages) “starter toner.” A few months into your use (or sooner, if you print a lot), you’ll find you need to pony up for the ~$500 set of toner carts . . . and that’s when the mfr’s get their profit out of you. They make little (or lose) on the printer, but then they have an annuity stream for a long time on the consumables.

Sometimes the math seems to work out such that you can just buy a new color laser printer rather than buying their toners again. But the mfr’s know that, so that’s why they only give you a small-capacity set of “starter toner.” Take this into account when deciding on what to do here. If you can spend $200 on a new fuser now and get to use the $500 worth of toner that’s sitting in that printer, it could last you another year or so. Or, you could plunk down a few hundred bucks for a new cheap-o color laser, burn through the starter toner in a few months, and spend another $500 for a full supply of toner.

Anyway, I agree that HP is good stuff, though they do clearly play some of the same games with initial pricing, and actually their ongoing toner costs are not that great. For instance, you can buy an HP CP2025X for about $500 plus shipping, which is a pretty decent deal. But it’s only got two 250-sheet trays, not a big 500-sheeter (not sure why they did that), and the toner is still 4 (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) x $120ea . . . about $500 for consumables! And those are only good for 3,500 pages. So, $500 divided by 3,500 impressions = $.14 per page.

Or, we’ve had very good luck with Ricoh. The C311N, for instance, goes for about $700 and the toner cartridges are about $150ea, but they yield 6,000 pages per set. So, $600 divided by 6,000 = $.10 per page.

Or, if you have a copier company, you may be able to get a better deal on a printer like this through them. They might be able to make a better promise than Dell with respect to the repair and maintenance parts as well. I know, lots to absorb . . . let me know what you think.

The customer ordered the replacement part, we installed it and they are working again. They've been hooked by the cheap Dell printer - for now.

Office 2010 Comes Into Focus

2010-05-13T08:29:00.003-06:00

Office 2010 has officially launched, at least for businesses. Microsoft says consumers will be waiting about another month. Important features of Office 2010 include:

There's a free online version. Or at least there will be. It has nothing to do with whether you own and pay for a full version of Office 2010 - it'll be free to anyone. Very similar to Google Apps and Zoho, Office Web Apps will allow users to use Excel, PowerPoint, Word and OneNote online, in a web browser. The apps are scaled-down for use online, perhaps a little too scaled-down for some early reviewers. Hopefully some of these issues will be addressed prior to launch. I do very much like Office Web Apps' integration with its free online storage service Skydrive, which I've blogged about previously.
Ribbons - the tabbed function buttons introduced with Office 2007 - have been enhanced. For apps that already had ribbons in 2007 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), they are now more customizable in that you can create your own new ribbons and populate them with your own set of functions. And apps where ribbons were not deployed in 2007 (Publisher, and especially Outlook) have been given the full enhanced ribbon functionality.
Editing objects embedded in documents has been enhanced greatly. If you embed a photo, you can modify the coloration, background and other properties of the photo (a great time-saver for those who have done the modify-the-image-and-re-save-it-then-reattach-in-the-document hokey pokey). There's also the ability to modify embedded videos.
"Backstage View." I'm not sure who was asking for this or what was wrong with the old way, but Office 2010 basically re-packages the "File" menu into a whole-screen dialog called Backstage View, which controls printing and the standard File menu properties and functions. More info and screen shots of each app's Backstage View here.

All in all, Office 2010 is a nice little evolution enhancing Office 2007 and making it easier to use. While it's not compelling enough to recommend that anyone should put down hard-earned money to go from 2007 to 2010, it is one more step in the right direction for the suite.

90% of Windows 7 flaws fixed by removing admin rights

2010-04-01T08:49:00.004-06:00

Here's a quick, interesting article from Ars Technica (based on a study by BeyondTrust)regarding Windows 7 vulnerabilities and administrative rights in Windows.

It's always a delicate balancing act for us, between giving users enough rights to get their jobs done (and not having to continually ask us to install things for them), and giving every user local admin rights on their computer, allowing them to infect themselves with all manner of viruses, malware and other "unapproved applications" (unsafe screen savers, p2p file sharing apps, etc.).

I'm not surprised that admin rights are a root cause of many security vulnerabilities, but I never would have guessed 90%.

Office 2007 buyers get free upgrade to Office 2010

2010-03-08T11:20:00.007-06:00

Starting last Friday (3/5/10), anyone who buys Office 2007 will get a free upgrade to Office 2010 when it’s released. Details: http://office2010.microsoft.com/en-us/tech-guarantee/

It looks like they are changing around the contents of the suites a little bit, so they’re giving some fairly generous Office 2007-to-2010 version upgrades in the process. They’re basically giving Office Basic 2007 buyers a free upgrade to Office Home and Business 2010 (adds OneNote and PowerPoint), and they’re giving Office Small Biz 2007 buyers a free upgrade to Office Pro 2010 (adds MS Access).

Here is the table describing which 2010 version canbe upgraded from which 2010 license:

OFFICE 2007 PRODUCT ----- OFFICE 2010 UPGRADE PRODUCT
Office Ultimate 2007 ----- Office Professional 2010
Office Professional 2007 ----- Office Professional 2010
Office Small Business 2007 ----- Office Professional 2010
Office Standard 2007 ----- Office Home and Business 2010
Office Home and Student 2007 ----- Office Home and Student 2010
Office Basic 2007 ----- Office Home and Business 2010

And, if anyone's curious to see how Office 2010 looks, you can become part of the Beta program for it, for free. Remember this program is in Beta (testing!), so please don't download this program for use in a production environment.

FTC recourse against spammers

2009-12-17T13:23:00.003-06:00

Through my many weird little connections, I get on a lot of these computer hardware inventory lists, where people are trying to sell me some grey-market components at a discount. We don't buy stuff like this (especially not from sources like this), so I usually request removal and they eventually comply.

I had a guy recently that just kept sending and sending and sending - daily. And his unsubscribe mechanism - which I tried no less than four times - never removed me.

What to do? I could have just blocked him at our firewall, or flagged him as junk mail, or folderized him in some semi-junk folder in my e-mail program . . . but not this time. I felt the frequency of his e-mails warranted more effort.

So, I started looking into the CAN-SPAM Act. It's an act signed in 2003, which sets rules about what can be e-mailed, requires unsubscribe capability and other things. Clearly, this guy was in violation of that, but can a lowly Average Joe like me use this law in any way?

Yes, in two ways. One is that I could send a complaint to the FTC, via their ComplaintAssist system. Hard to say where these complaints go, and surely there's only a small portion that are actually investigated, but it's something.

The other way is the threat of action. In my fifth attempt to unsubscribe-by-e-mail, I let the spammer know (and copied the admin contact for his company's domain) that I would be filing a complaint with the FTC regarding his practices if I received one more of his solicitations.

The previous four e-mails were never responded to; this fifth one threatening action got a polite and apologetic personal response from him, promising to remove me from the list. I never did place that complaint, but the threat of someone willing to follow the process and use a legal system did the trick!

iPhone becomes less business-friendly - for now?

2009-09-15T15:29:00.005-06:00

For the past 5-or-so years, Macs have been increasingly made to be more business-friendly. That is to say, more Microsoft-friendly, since Microsoft Windows Server software is such a dominant force in the user-facing server space (e-mail, remote access, file sharing, etc.).

The iPhone has been a challenge for us to get to work nicely with either of Microsoft's e-mail server juggernauts, Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007. From synchronization issues to certificate complications, there just have not been a lot of full Exchange-on-iPhone integration projects that I would call "challenge free."

After the first generation of iPhone basically offered no support for synchronizing with Exchange, I welcomed the news that the second generation of iPhones would gain Exchange synch capability as a feature. It still wasn't perfect, but movement in the right direction nonetheless.

Today, I'm simply speechless at the news that iPhone OS 3.1 has gone the other way - it is less Exchange-friendly than before. Specifically, it no longer supports encryption that the default Exchange 2007 setup - and most corporate IT departments - require of mobile devices.

So, let me get this straight. Apple releases a "bug fix" 3.0-to-3.1 update to roll out an AppStore and ringtones enhancement, and breaks the corporate functionality of the software? Interesting priorities . . . some things don't change, I guess.

When Open Source is Less-open

2009-09-07T20:50:00.005-06:00

As a guy who's all for more competition in the marketplace, the creative free-marketeering presented by the open source movement is a welcome one. Small businesses need to really be careful, though. When a company adopts an open source solution, what are they really getting themselves into? On the face of it, it seems like a win-win situation. It's a platform that is low- or no-cost, it can be enhanced and upgraded without copyright infringement worries, the company has a competent architect (presumably) to put it all in place and there is usually a fairly robust support community behind the technology. What could go wrong?

I've seen a few situations lately where companies have been talked into an open source solution whose upkeep and administration is a complete mystery to anyone other than the original implementation team (typically just one person). You can see where this goes: the implementer and the company part ways, and now the company's actually got a system that's more proprietary than if they'd just plunked down the money and bought a retail package.

Yes, there's a support community, but it's usually online-only . . . so the company still needs to find a specific resource willing to take on the task and unravel the Gordian Knot of their open source mess.

Money spent on mainstream solutions not only buys the software. It also usually buys the assurance that there is a healthy supply of actual human beings ready to work on the solution (not just an "online community"), and/or a company willing to step in and assist (for a fee, of course) with any need a company might have with their software.

Example 1: a company had been talked into converting one of their old file servers into an advanced Linux software firewall. It worked OK even when the Linux consultant left, but when they needed some more advanced VPN functionality they failed to find anyone who could make it do what they needed. The solution was to buy a $1,500 Juniper firewall and pay Foxtrot for a half-day of configuration time.

Example 2: a company had a Linux-based file server which was installed by a former employee. Nobody knew how or why it worked, and when it failed they had no idea what to do. They have a few people who are tech savvy enough to take care of some issues, but because none of their people are familiar with Linux, this problem was unsolvable for them. They asked us to come in and install a Windows Small Business Server, and now their people can at least have the familiar Windows desktop to deal with . . . and they've got Foxtrot and the rest of the Microsoft consultant community ready to fall back on.

FTC delivers major blow to spam facilitator ISP

2009-06-04T15:35:00.013-06:00

A company, most prominently operating as Triple Fiber Networks (3fn.net), got a rude awakening from the FTC last Tuesday. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/06/3fn.shtm. The data center was not shut down; their bandwidth providers were petitioned to turn off the "internet spigot," effectively leaving the servers running with no way to get to the rest of the digital world.

Turns out, the company is not only allowing/tolerating spam bots, child porn hosts and online scammers to operate from its datacenter, 3FN has been actively positioning and advertising themselves as a premium solution for such dirtbags. Their ads have been spotted on several identity theft and other community sites where "high-risk hosting" services may be sought. These guys were pretty seriously nasty, and it's nice to have them out of the game.

Here's the government filing PDF. Actually, not too heavy reading, and some very interesting little tidbits of information collected to get the court order to shut down. http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0923148/0906043fncmpt.pdf

The other side of the coin is that this move seems to have shut down many legitimate sites. One example I can cite is: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/free_software_magazine_caught_3fn_shutdown_crossfire. Thankfully, it looks like they landed on their feet OK. I know of other companies, and indeed entire web hosting companies (legit ones - yes) whose sites were hosted through 3FN. Some of these legit business sites have been dark since Tuesday, as their owners seek to retrieve their data and quickly move the sites over to another host.

I'm not sure what the alternative was, and certainly "the perps" needed to be taken down suddenly and without detection, but I must wonder whether another substitute/temporary host could have been arranged beforehand to avoid the downtime for legit operators. The ingenuity and creative thinking involved in web sites these days always amazes me; seems like it could have been employed to help alleviate some of the pain.

The ne'er-do-wells will of course also move their sites, but if this move sends a message about what the US will tolerate to happen on our turf, this is a victory for the good guys. Overall, I think we've done more good than harm here.

9 Tips for running a better webinar

2009-06-03T14:09:00.002-06:00

I'm on so many technical and business webinars, I thought I'd give my little Top 9 list of do's and don'ts for delivering one.

Callers muted!! I cannot tell you how many times some goofball talking in the background, combined with the host's inability to isolate and/or remove that line has led to a completely ruined webinar.
No phone bridge if you don't need one. If you don't need to have people talking, don't force them to call a phone number - deliver the audio online with the video and don't make people take that extra step. Some webinars I've been on will offer the phone bridge, but it's only for people who want to comment - fine. People can give themselves the option of calling in if they think they might need to chat, versus people like me who are always listeners-only with questions afterward offline. Unnecessarily requiring a phone bridge will lose some participants.
Communicate beforehand. Remind them at least twice (one of which being within 2-4 hours of the start of the webinar). Can't tell you how many webinars I've casually signed up for and then never attended because I forgot and was never reminded, or only reminded once, days in advance and forgot the day-of.
Communicate during. A good alternative to phone bridges is to just allow viewers to comment-and-question in a little chat box right in the viewer. The talker needs to have someone monitor this while they're speaking, otherwise they will miss questions.
Communicate afterward. Webinars also *must* publish a replay. Basic stuff, but some do not. I missed the webinar, and now I get no info? We're all losers in that equation. Publish the replay, and make it easy to get to (no convoluted logins, please!).
Keep the thread going. Either on the replay page (via a comments section), or in an actual billboard/forum-type posting area, allow people to anonymously (again - without &$%^#%# login requirements) comment on the webinar and discuss the topics. This gives the moderators the ability to easily publish answers to "I'll have to check on that" questions, and for offline-question-askers like me to ask and get answered.
Slides work and applications transfer nicely. It's awkward having to divert our eyes from someone's half-naked son on their desktop background as they close their PowerPoint deck so they can move over to the video player. It's called a hyperlink - embed it in your PowerPoint slide, test it and use it. *Click* and you're playing video. Video finishes, and you're back on the slide deck. No half-naked sons.
Time wasting. People either with their decks out of order ("This is someone else's slide deck that I'm using, so I'll skip around a little") or otherwise not able to deliver succinctly are wasting that time *multiplied by* the number of viewers on the webinar. This kind of behavior tells me this is not very important to you to get right . . . so it's probably not worth my time either!
Have I mentioned no logins? You will probably have to require some kind of login or authenticating link, but then everything else should be free to do whatever without having to jump through more security hoops. You're providing information and mainly filtering out bots, not guarding Fort Knox. If you're collecting info for marketing purposes, do it as non-invasively as possible.

What does a LOST laptop cost?

2009-04-24T11:23:00.004-06:00

Much has been made in the past 3-5 years regarding the attractiveness of laptops, and dwindling purchase cost premium over desktops. Laptops are more popular than ever. What people often forget is that there are higher costs of ownership in laptops, and one of those is the "risk cost" associated with having company data out there in the world.

Laptops are more easily broken or lost/stolen, and we have certainly found that they are FAR more likely to contain data that has not been backed-up. Laptops are on the network with the server less often, and when they are the users usually want to be 100% productive (won't understand the performance hit while their data synchronizes).

This combination of fragility/lose-ability of the systems, plus the "untethered" nature of the data makes for a very dangerous combination.

Here's a great article about the cost of a lost laptop. Some of it's probably exaggerated/overblown, but the fact remains that data security and backup are the biggest challenges when dealing with a laptop-mobile workforce.

Anatomy of an IT Debacle: Norm Coleman Campaign

2009-03-13T12:36:00.004-06:00

As many in MN know, the Norm Coleman campaign had a pretty serious security breach, to the tune of exposing 40,000+ e-mail addresses and 4,500+ credit card numbers to any anonymous person on the internet.

This was not a case of a web site being forced-entry hacked. Rather, as the Mpls-based consultant who discovered it explains, the database was actually published - without any security layer at all - to their web server. It may have been a database backup and not live data, but the fact remains that irresponsible action - backing up a sensitive database in public view - by someone who (presumably) did not know what they were doing has jeopardized the personal information of tens of thousands of people.

The vulnerability was secured fairly shortly after it happened back in January, but it was open long enough for ne'er-do-wells to acquire the database and it has now been posted for download (with credit card numbers strategically scrubbed) on a site which shall remain nameless (shameless?).

This opens debate on another issue altogether. It's certainly not legal to publish an e-mail list that you gather yourself; why should posting someone else's data breach be any different? It's going to make a very bad situation into a complete nightmare for thousands of people, and it's disappointing to me that (apparently) no legal action has/can be taken to stop this posting. It's surely serving as a nice little source for a whole array of scam artists. I can't for the life of me figure out how it could be that now, almost two full days after the list was posted on the internet, the ISP of the poster has not been petitioned to take it down. I'm not on the list, but for those who are . . .

A place to park files online

2009-03-09T16:11:00.003-06:00

In troubleshooting computer issues, I'm always looking for a place to quickly, simply "park" a file or two online.

A great service for this is found at www.drop.io. The things I like the best are that it's free (of course), and there is no login required. It just gives you a randomized URL when you drop your file on their site, and you just pull it up on the other end . . . and you're good to go. There are encryption and time-to-live settings as well, which is also cool.

How to: Automatically Receive Craigslist Search Updates by E-mail

2009-02-08T22:22:00.005-06:00

Who doesn't love Craigslist . . . but it's a bit of a pain to check all the time if you're looking for something specific. Here's how to use a free service to receive the latest postings of whatever search you choose - by e-mail, automatically.

First, go to Craigslist and pull up the page of stuff that you want to be notified about. For instance, a search for "wii" in Mpls/St Paul is: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=wii. This is an RSS feed, so you can just subscribe directly to it in IE7 or Outlook 2007 if that's what you prefer.

If you're old-fashioned like me and want to actually receive e-mail the updates to this search every single day, go to http://www.feedblitz.com/ and sign up for a free account. Once you've got an account, go to Subscriptions, select New and paste the URL you copied from Craigslist.

That's it! (I believe Feedblitz e-mails send every day in the morning sometime.) Of course, you could do this to subscribe to any kind of feed you like, such as Astronomy Picture of the day, popular Diggs page, or whatever you like. Anyone have another cool application for this?

Did PayPal get hacked?

2009-01-31T23:35:00.004-06:00

I very rarely use PayPal, especially the account I have set up for Foxtrot use. I had to get a used/old part for a server the other day, so I sucked it up and eBayed/PayPalled.

When I went in to use my PayPal account, what appeared to be a verification screen came up - IN CHINESE!

I could not figure out how to switch back to English, so I called PayPal. After quite an interesting jaunt through their phone customer service system, I finally got to a guy who was able to set my account back to English. I did indeed need to verify my account, so this was also "interesting."

I asked the customer service guy why my account would have been switched to Chinese, and without hesitation he said, "Because it was compromised." This was also the reason for the account verification. He suggested the possibility of a keylogger virus or something snagging my password as I entered it.

Then I logged in . . . and there was a balance there. This is very strange, as I rarely keep a balance. I investigated further, and saw four transactions for 10 Euros each, to Skype . . . and then four apparent refunds back into the PayPal account. This was the shyster's method for getting money out of my linked bank account and into "cash" in my Skype account, which presumably they would have wired to their e-mail address and PayPal account.

Apparently, PayPal caught wind of the shenanigans because they suspended the transactions and required a verification on the account. Once I verified the account, I was able to restore the money back to my bank account, so no money lost.

So, what happened? Was it a keylogger as the customer service guy suggested? I don't think so, because I have not logged into my PayPal account for at least 9 months, probably more like a year. Zero transactions this year up until this snafu.

Was it a good guess at my password? I just don't see it, as my password is kind of jibberish and not prone to being guessed. It should also be noted that my password was what I expected it to be, so it was not a guess at my verification info and a reset password.

It seems more likely that PayPal itself got hacked somehow. PayPal figured it out and suspended the accounts and the transactions before the ploy could unfold completely. There are lots of stories similar to this one out there on the net - most much worse. That's my theory . . . check your PayPal account.

Free Wireless . . . or Evil Twin?

2008-11-11T22:45:00.000-06:00

Just a thought, to encourage all you coffeshop surfers out there to think twice about what you're doing when connected to the Free WiFi links that you know so little about. The truth might be that you're not as secure as you think, and you may not even be connecting to the access point that you think.

With the proliferation of WiFi hotspots, there has also been an increasing incidence of techie ne'er-do-wells hijacking public WiFi sites, filtering all the traffic through their computers, passing the traffic through to the internet and stealing any snagging the "pertinent bits" (credit card numbers, bank account info, etc.) for themselves.

These so-called Evil Twins are relatively easy to set up, and sky's the limit as to what they're able to extract from the traffic that you put through them.

PC World lays out the case for basically not trusting any WiFi access points that you don't personally control. Most people would never notice the difference when attaching to an Evil Twin . . . so best to just keep the sensitive financial dealings to a non-public network that you trust!

Notebook power: hibernate, sleep, or ???

2008-10-11T20:18:00.001-06:00

More and more people are going toward notebook computers these days, it seems. With this movement comes new challenges and options that people need to be aware of. One of the most frequently misunderstood facets of notebook computing is how to tell the computer to shutdown or stop work. Here are a couple tips:

Sleep mode (standby on some computers) will park the hard drive (stop spinning) and turn off the display, fans and other larger consumers of power. The system "session" is saved (open docs and all) and will fire up immediately the next time the computer turns on. Data is retained in standard system memory (RAM), which requires a small amount of power consumption. You know your computer is in sleep/standby by the intermittant "glowing" (usually amber color) of the power light.

Hibernate mode will do exactly the same thing, but instead of keeping the session in internal RAM and continuing to use power, it actually saves the data from RAM off to a file on the hard drive, and shuts down power to all system components. It does require an extra 5-10 seconds on startup because the computer does actually need to retrieve this data from the hard drive, and to load Windows.

So, the difference probably depends on how much you'll be starting up and shutting down. I myself prefer the zero-battery-drain so I always train my notebooks to use hibernate by default.

Another thing to think about (and that I always train on my notebooks) is the behavior when the power button is pressed, and when the lid is closed. These settings are in Control Panel - Power Management in Windows. I usually have the computer shut down when the power button is pressed, and to hibernate when the lid is closed. Then, when I'm done working I usually just shut the lid and know my battery will not run down and my session will be saved exactly where I am.

If you're finding that your computer is depleting its battery and/or is losing the place where you were, you're probably using sleep/standby. Consider switching to hibernate.

Speed Up Your Broadband

2008-10-04T11:45:00.006-06:00

Here's a nice article from MSN on helping to speed your broadband connection. Most of the suggestions are throw-aways, but #1 and #2 definitely highlight some real potential for improvement.

Most DSL customers in the Mpls/St Paul area are given/sold a DSL modem (usually Actiontec) by Qwest, and I have found instances where upgrading the device's firmware has indeed yielded better speeds. This step is not for the tech newbie, however, as firmware upgrades are not quite as simple as downloading and running a program. There are also cases (usually cable) where the customer is not given access to their device, so it's not an option for those situations.

I do highly recommend speedtest.net for testing connection speeds. Always seems in line with what it should be.

Is Your Printer Lying To You?

2008-08-25T11:58:00.003-06:00

I just wanted to quickly share an article from slate.com that examines how and why printers lie about their toner levels . . . and what to do about it. FixYourOwnPrinter.com is a helpful web site (cited in the story as well) . . . though it appears to be down at the time of this posting!

Use Your Idle Computer To Help Find a Cure

2008-08-17T10:48:00.003-06:00

Distributed computing is the process of solving very complex computing projects through the use of many, geographically-dispersed computers. Basically, the "problem" is split up into sub-tasks scaled for execution on almost any hardware platform, and the results are then transmitted back to a central system that incorporates the sub-task results into the ongoing solution.

You load software on your computer, and it processes for one of these organizations that are seeking "big answers to big questions." You can turn it on and off as you please (e.g. I turn it off when I'm working with video editing), and you can throttle it to only use a certain percentage of your CPU. And, you can usually login to a web portal to allow you to see how many "work units" you have processed.

My first encounter came in Berkeley's SetiAtHome initiative, in which individuals can load a program to help process data from radio telescopes to search for signs of alien life.

I never got fired up enough about that to actually try it, but now I've found something much more compelling: Stanford University's FoldingAtHome. It's a human biology project, seeking the causes and cures for protein mutation-related illnesses such as cancer, Parkinson's, Huntinton's, Alzheimers and ALS.

I've got plenty of experience in the past few years (as I'm sure most reading this have) with these diseases, and this is such a miniscule amount of effort that it's embarrassing to even call it a "sacrifice".

If you decide to do FoldingAtHome, you can join my "team" (143189) and track your individual results, and our collective team results. Comments encouraged!

Alert: UPS E-mail Virus

2008-07-24T13:06:00.004-06:00

Whew! It's been a while. Sorry for the little summer hiatus!

We've had a few customers fall prey to a "UPS virus" lately. The virus code has been out for a few months now, but the fake UPS e-mail wrapper is new. The victim will receive an e-mail something like this:

From: United Parcel Service [some spoofed return e-mail address]
Sent:
To:
Subject: UPS Tracking Number 4126976729

Unfortunately we were not able to deliver postal package you sent on July the 1st in time because the recipient's address is not correct.
Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office

Your UPS

There's an attached zip file that will launch a virus if clicked.

I have not yet figured out why or how, but both AVG and Symantec only seem to partially detect and clean the virus. It's a relatively harmless virus, as I have not seen it re-sending itself or anything like that. It does produce some phony Windows XP Security errors (red X in the Taskbar, with a message about being infected and "click here to fix"). Following the link leads to a phony virus removal application for sale.

We've seen at least two variations of the virus. Here are a couple of Symantec posts on the variations, with cleaning instructions: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2008-051910-0118-99&tabid=3

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2008-050916-1055-99&tabid=1

A Few Thoughts on Battery Backups

2008-05-22T09:56:00.012-06:00

It's important to have good battery backup, especially for business servers, as a sudden power loss means sudden crash of the operating system. We've seen our share of corrupt Windows and other files, as well as physical hard drive damage, as a result of power failures. The solutions to such issues are rarely cheap, so battery backups can be thought of as an insurance policy against such events.

Something a little bothersome that I've seen lately, even in very knowledgeable technicians, is a penchant for under-powering their power backup solutions. Part of the confusion comes from the fact that UPSes (battery backup units, to the non-techie) are usually rated on VA (volt-amps), whereas computer products only list consumption of Watts. In my experience, it's best to multiply by 1.2 the total wattage of the systems being plugged into a UPS, to determine the number of VA the devices will consume.

So, for a basic server with a 500 watt power supply, many people would purchase a 500 VA UPS . . . and then wonder why their server still crashes violently every time the power goes out. 600VA would be a minimum size for protecting such a machine; I'd even size it a bit bigger at 750 or 850VA to allow enough time to make sure everything shuts down and/or to allow for other low-voltage peripherals (monitor, network switch, etc.).

APC, one of my favorite UPS manufacturers, has some nice resources, including an online UPS selector tool. It really helps think about issues like Watts-to-VA conversion and continuous uptime after the power goes out.

APC also has a nice computer power FAQ section on their web site. Here's one tip I found interesting and useful, regarding chaining surge suppressors off of UPSes. Interesting things to think about.

Microsoft Skydrive Online Storage: Free and Useful

2008-05-13T09:19:00.007-06:00

Have you ever wanted to just put some files "online somewhere," either to have later or to share with someone? Google's got its offering, and if your company has a server there are always tools like FTP, but Microsoft's new Skydrive online file storage service might fill the need better than either of those.

The Pros:

Clientless - just uses an internet browser - and works across OSes (not limited to Windows).
5GB of data, which is more than Google offers, and probably more than enough for most
Sub-folder capability, to help separate and organize your files
Shareability allows you to invite other people to retrieve the files, or even upload their own files. This is on a folder-by-folder level, and you can launch invitations to people for access to specific folders.
Public Folder capability, to allow anonymous users to access files you designate as Public.

The Cons:

You can only upload or download 5 files at a time, and no files bigger than 50MB. (I assume these rules are to attempt to thwart P2P music and movie sharing.)
Transfer rates are fairly slow.
You and your users must have a Windows Live login (except for folders made Public). No big deal for me, as it's free and pretty easy to sign up, and I've not seen a deluge of MS-related spam as a result.
This is not a "corporate" solution, in that there is no guarantee that your data will be there tomorrow, there is no way to ensure/verify privacy and intrusion protection is not very strong.

In short, Skydrive is good for non-critical data that needs to be available quickly and easily, and perhaps even shared with mutliple users. It's definitely not a corporate solution, and is far from being compliant with standards like HIPAA . . . but it fills the "casual sharing" need very well.

Worldwide Free Calling - Coming

2008-04-25T13:33:00.005-06:00

I think most people reading this already know about Skype and the wonderful - and free - things possible using Skype.

Coming soon (the makers say May 15th) is a new hardware device that has a new angle: internet speakerphones that allow free international calling over the web. The device is the Snap Personal Internet Communicator. Worth checking out if you're spending a bunch of money on standard international long-distance fees.

Photoshop for Free - Kind of

2008-04-04T08:51:00.006-06:00

Just a quick note for any shutterbugs out there. If you've been looking for some good photo manipulation software and don't want to pay the full-boat price (~$900) for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe recently announced their online Photoshop Express version.

I'm definitely going to try it out. This sounds interesting: "Do what you want with your photos. Give them cartoon colors. Distort them . . . Pop Color, Sketch, Hue, Black & White, Tint, and more."

I normally use MS Picture Manager, which is a great-but-little-known utility included with Microsoft Office Suites. If you own either Office 2003 or 2007, you might need to dig for it on the CD (doesn't install automatically), but it is there . . . and it doesn't cost any extra.

One-page Intro to Linux

2008-03-13T11:33:00.003-06:00

We build Linux systems, I use Linux some myself, and I talk (sometimes kind of advanced-ly) on this blog about it quite a bit.

For those who are not familiar - and I know there are a lot of you - this is the nicest, most concise article I've seen to lay it all out for you. Right down to the penguin mascot!

And for those who are familiar, this is a good resource to bookmark, so you can refer your "uninitiated" friends to the world of Linux (without getting too geeky and intimidating about it).

Foxtrot's fave Linux version right now is Ubuntu. It's free to download and try, the setup is simple (no real techie jargon questions to install), and the device support is unrivaled among Linux distros. I'm not sure how they do it, but just about every time I've loaded Linux it has found all my devices and made them work without any interference from me.

Disappointment at Comcast's Network Blocking

2008-03-11T08:14:00.005-06:00

We've had a couple interesting episodes lately, with Comcast unilaterally and without warning permanently blocking certain traffic to/from some of our customers.

In the worst case, they started blocking port 25 for one of our customers, which is the SMTP port for sending/receiving e-mail. I have many issues with how they've handled the issue:

It was completely without warning. Apparently, there was a large outbound e-mail sent, that triggered some (spam/virus) alarm within Comcast's network management systems. Either way - whether the traffic was actually nefarious or non-threatening, which Comcast could not possibly know - why not alert the customer? The customer needs to take action to take care of a virus problem, or they now need to change their port to get mail to send.

There was no intelligence. We manage routers (not expensive ones, even) that know how much bandwidth goes through certain ports, and when to be concerned and possibly temporarily disable connection to/from certain IPs. If someone creates a virus that does something simple like ping the heck out of our IP, the firewall will sense X packets on port Y within Z seconds, and will put that IP in temporary quarantine. I think it's typically either 10 or 30 minutes of no traffic to/from that address. It would have been appropriate in a case like this, because if the traffic was bad-intentioned (spam, etc.) it would have continually retried its action and a more pemanent escalation could have been enacted. Since this was a one-time big e-mail, there's no way a sophisticated network like Comcast's should have been so touchy about it and taken such permanent action.

Comcast staff denied it as even a possibility. I had not heard about it before, but looking around the internet, there are posts galore, dating back as far as 2004, documenting this exact issue with Comcat's network. So, their staff either knew and denied it (lied) or they just don't know their network very well. After the third call (and the third hour on hold), they finally "noticed" that they did indeed have a block in place on port 25 for this customer.

It wasn't immediately corrected. Their admission happened on a call last week, and I don't believe they have yet figured a fix or attempted a follow-up call to provide an update on what's happening (stay tuned for updates).

I grasp the fact that most spammers and virus-disseminators operate on port 25, but I totally disagree with something as stupid as just blocking a port and telling the customer (as Comcast did here) to "use another port." In our case, since our customer's mail service is through a third party, switching to another port did not work because the server is not answering on that port.

Also, how long before the spammers start sending on port 26 or 587 or whatever other port they move us to? Let's get intelligent and understand the "profile" of nasty traffic, and block that. Spammers can always change ports, but it's much more challenging to force them to vary the profile of their traffic (timing and IPs involved in their attacks).

Comcast is definitely disappointing in this episode. They could choose to take the route that's technically more difficult but more customer-freindly . . . but instead they chose to hit the problem with the biggest mallet they could and let the customers sort things out or call with issues. I don't see how that makes business sense at all.

Soon to be Managing Macs, and More!

2008-02-29T15:37:00.004-06:00

I'm very excited to see the news from our managed services software provider Kaseya. As some know, Kaseya is one of the pieces of software that we use to provide our Managed IT service (shameless plug).

The new release allows us to run scripts on, and remotely control Mac machines. We already support a number of Mac machines in Windows networks, but we've never really gone so far as to load any remote access software. This is a huge improvement, and I'm sure one that Kaseya went through great efforts to effect.

The vPro improvement is cool as well, as it will allow us to be a little "greener." Users will be able to shut down their computers rather than leaving them running, and we'll be able to run a script to wake the machines up, perform updates and other scripts, and shut the computer down - all remotely. Of course, the machines need to have the right hardware, but that will be coming as the workstations turn over in the coming months and years.

The article's dead-on that it is by far Kaseya's biggest enhancement ever, and I couldn't be happier to have chosen such a best-in-breed technology to build our business upon.

RealPlayer: Just Avoid It!

2008-02-03T10:29:00.000-06:00

I've thought this for a long time now, but this press release from stopbadware.org makes it official: RealPlayer is badware.

I've always thought it was an annoying piece of software, so much so that I - despite my enjoyment of viral web videos - have refused to watch many web videos if the only choice was to download RealPlayer and watch in that format. I've kept it off any of my personal computers for at least 3-4 years now.

Foxtrot builds and sells >200 computers per year, and this is a good example of the kind of software that we *won't* load exactly because of what the press release states: too many strings attached.

Do-it-yourself Wiki: Not just for encyclopedias

2008-02-02T15:02:00.000-06:00

Wikipedia is just the latest example of a free online resource putting well-established old economy businesses out of business (Britannica, MS Encarta, etc.).

But, did you know you can create your own wiki for personal or business use? As one might imagine, Foxtrot has a lot of customer-specific data to store and retrieve. So, we have a wiki appliance by MindTouch (actually we used to build their appliances when they still sold hardware). It's served on the web, but secured only for our internal users. All we need is a web connection, and we have any customer's vital info at our fingertips. Settings, special customer-specific processes, user information, and more are all stored on our wiki.

Custom wikis can either be private to select users like Foxtrot's, or public and open for all to contribute. Here are a few good free wiki sites:

wikia
wik.is (MindTouch's free hosted offering)
pbwiki (one of the originals)
viawiki (a joint effort of MindTouch and MN-based ISP Visi)
opengarden (where you can download MindTouch's wiki software and host/run your own wiki)

Wikis are great for secure, online group collaboration, as anyone with access can post anything - start a new page, add ideas to existing content, etc.

Members can subscribe to pages, so they see any edits or additions to that topic.

The interface is almost entirely wysiwyg (what you see is what you get - type away, and save when you're done), so no special programming skills are required.

Files and documents can be uploaded, downloaded and modified. Most wikis even provide an archive feature so you can view previous version of each document and roll back to a previous version if the latest one is not right.

Some of the newer wikis can even link and/or embed videos, maps, etc. Combine data from two or more disperate sources to create interesting mashups.

If you have a situation where you want to put information on the web for your internal reference, or for collaboration, wiki technology is something to think seriously about.

8 Steps for Building an Online Business

2008-01-17T20:36:00.001-06:00

Just a quick post with a link to a super article about building an online business.

The author, Derek Gehl, is a guy whose newsletter I've subscribed to. There are lots of ersatz "Internet pros" out there, but Mr. Gehl packs so much valuable insight it's pretty clear that he's a the real deal. Check out his official site at: http://www.marketingtips.com/.

Tech Tip: Default Office 2007 to Save in Office 2003 Format

2008-01-15T12:30:00.000-06:00

Office 2003 had a great run (a very valuable upgrade from XP), but Microsoft is forcing all new purchasers to buy Office 2007.

Not everyone has Office 2007 yet, so for some people saving back into older versions of Office makes most sense. There's also the option of having the 2003 users download the Compatibility Pack. To default your Office 2007 app to save back to 2003 format by default (on every document, without prompting):

1) Click the Office Icon (upper-left corner of screen) and click on the box where it says Word Options (or Excel Options, or whatever app your're in).

2) When the new box opens, select Save on the left-hand side.

3) Once that box opens, the first option is Save Files in This Format. Click the dropdown, and select whichever format you want to default to (Office 2003, etc.).

4) Make sure to click OK to save your changes. When the rest your colleagues catch up and you want to save in 2007 format, simple do the same steps and select Office 2007 format (the first option in the dropdown).

People are always wondering what's in each version of Office, how much they cost, etc. I put up a page with a matrix of applications included in the various Office suites, and the prices for the versions that we sell the most of.

Time for a RAM Upgrade? Probably

2008-01-09T12:59:00.001-06:00

"My computer is really slow lately." This is probably the one issue I hear more often than anything else. Computer slowness is attributable to many factors, of course, but the first piece of info I collect is always: "How much RAM does the system have?" It's for sure the easiest hardware upgrade that users can do to noticeably improve the performance of any computer.

Lately, a few forces have come together to make this a very good time for adding RAM:

Most RAM is dirt-cheap right now. We're upgrading a bunch of Sony laptops (1-2 years old) from 512MB to 2GB of RAM for a customer, and it's costing them less than $85 per system for the parts (the labor's free for them, since they're a Managed IT customer). These same sticks of RAM would have cost $200-$250 just a year or so ago.
Are you on Vista yet? We're not really recommending "the leap" due to lingering compatibility issues (which is another blog post in itself), but that said I have it running on a laptop of mine. I just upgraded the RA M from 1GB to 2GB, and my experience with the thing has gone from about a 5-out-of-10, to an 8 or 9. I seriously think it's the fastest web-surfing computer I have, including desktops and even a Linux workstation.
Even if you're not yet running Vista, you might have Office 2007. With its highly-interactive interface (full top-of-screen toolbar changeouts instead of dropdown menu-driven functions), Office 2007 is an app that will benefit from more RAM. Same with the newer versions of any Adobe product. If you're using Illustrator, Photoshop or even Acrobat Standard/Pro without having at least 1GB of RAM, you're probably wasting valuable time waiting for your computer.

Strike while the iron is hot right now, because it won't stay that way. As your computer ages and the RAM spec goes out of date, less of that RAM is manufactured and it becomes more expensive to make, and for distribution to stock. For example, RAM for computers from 2005 (usually single-DDR) or earlier is a bit more expensive than newer computers' RAM. That's the bad news; the even worse news is that it'll only get more expensive as less and less of that RAM is produced.

Not sure what RAM to get? E-mail pete@foxtrotsystems.com with your computer make and model (with full computer part number, if possible) and we will get you the guaranteed-compatible RAM for your system.

Beware the Free (Gmail) Service

2007-12-26T11:41:00.000-06:00

Google's a cool company and has a lot of really useful tools and services. But, I never signed up for Gmail. There still are lots of concern about privacy, such as (from Gmail's own privacy page):
- "Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems." and
- "The Gmail service includes relevant advertising and related links based on the IP address, content of messages and other information related to your use of Gmail."

OK, I get that there are things that Google needs to do to make the service free (*nothing's* free, really). But this recent post about Gmail hacking reveals a new vulnerability, that I liken to the viruses that plague Windows: when you get so big and ubiquitous, it starts making sense for people to custom-create software hacks to manipulate and use your system to scam your users/customers. It seems that Gmail has gotten big enough and popular enough for scammers to actually study and figure out the backdoors to ply their trade.

Our recommendation is that people sign up for a cheap (via GoDaddy or 1and1, for example) domain name and host, and create a simple POP3 mailbox with them. It might cost $50-$100 per year depending on features, but it's a great insurance policy against some of these Gmail limitations. It also immunizes you from a future locked in with one company. If, for instance, Google decides to do something "evil" (their motto: "Don't be evil."), you might not want to be associated with them any more. Well, if you have business cards and other marketing materials all over the place with yourname@gmail.com on them, you've got an expensive dilemma on your hands.

Simple advice: think about what you're giving up when you sign up for something "free." Most likely, there's something of value that you're giving up for the service, and it almost certainly involves your privacy.

Two Sites: Lots of Product for Little Money

2007-11-14T22:32:00.000-06:00

We're all always looking for great things for cheap on the web, right? Well, if you haven't heard of them let me tell you about 37signals and CoffeeCup Software.

I've actually been using Coffee Cup for about a year now on Foxtrot's site. Here's a sample of their nifty form builder product at work. It doesn't take long to get working, and it does work. I've also purchased the RSS news program, though it stopped working on our site due to a change to a PHP setting at our host (working on that!). Their whole philosophy is so simple: 1) sell decent software cheaply ($20-30 for most titles), 2) provide prompt e-mail support, and 3) never require customers to pay for an upgrade of a product they've already purchased. When you buy the product, you get access to a download site where they control which programs your login is able to retrieve, but you're always able to retrieve the latest of the ones you've purchased.

37signals is a site I'm still exploring. I've delved a little into basecamp, the online project management and collaboration site, as well as backpack, a nifty little online organizer. Ever wanted a quick web whiteboard to communicate something to a person in another location? How about 37signals' writeboard? Now that's providing value!! They've also got a book out, and some blogs that I'll probably subscribe to.

Chime in if there are sites that you find interesting . . .

Intel's Built-in PC Remote Control

2007-11-06T14:45:00.000-06:00

It's been out on the market for a while now, but it seems Intel's vPro technology might finally be appearing on more businesses' radar screens.

Short summary of the technology: it's an embedded technology on select Intel motherboards. It requires Intel's new Q35 chipset, a Core 2 Duo Processor and Intel 10/100/1000 Networking (though the LAN does not need to be running Gigabit). It allows BIOS-level remote access - basically KVM via IP. Unlike most other protocols (MS Terminal Services, VNC, etc.), it does not require a functional OS.

Here are four of my favorite features about the technology:

1) Remote diagnostic and control for failing system. Since vPro does not require a functional OS, RAM and hard drive failures can still be diagnosed remotely. This is very handy for Foxtrot, as we have several customers for whom we do on-site hardware support . . . so it allows us to know what to bring before we even move our wheels to go on-site.

2) Remote wake-up. Remote control capability is great - except when they're off!! vPro provides a slick interface for sending a wake-on-LAN signal to start a computer up. It'll be a nice energy saver to let end users turn their computers off at the end of the day, knowing that the computer can be woken up for updates, patches and other middle-of-the-night maintenance . . . and then shut back down.

3) OS Agnostic. Because it runs at the BIOS level, it does not matter whether the system is running Windows, Linux, or whatever. The software just sends whatever's on the screen, regardless of the bits on the back-end.

4) Remote image deployment. vPro can be used to deploy an image from an image repository to a desktop that may have become corrupted or needed to have its hard drive replaced. It's kind of like old PXE boot, but with the ability to control and execute the boot from a remote location.

We have a reasonably-priced vPro-compatible config posted and ready for purchase. And of course we'll help with the vPro setup for those who require assistance. Call or e-mail for more info.

Business Plan Checklist

2007-10-18T10:03:00.000-06:00

I am one of the principals involved in Foxtrot Systems (almost six years now!), and as a first-time business owner I've learned a lot.

This is a terriffic, highly-detailed checklist for developing a business plan. The biggest thing I always stress to anyone thinking about a business or a new product idea is, "who will buy it, and how will you get them to know about it?"

The main goal of the business plan is to solicit funding. Before you even think about developing a business plan and soliciting the funds, you should sit down and develop a detailed marketing plan. It will become part of your business plan, but this is the first part to start thinking about.

Project worst-case sales scenarios, and build contingency planning into the final business plan (see Risk Assessment section in the article). This might entail cutting some staff and/or re-allocating funds toward stepped-up marketing efforts. This kind of flexibility and realism will be a breath of fresh air to most people evaluating your business plan (read: will increase the likelihood of getting funded).

Web Address Theft a Real Concern

2007-09-25T08:54:00.001-06:00

A bit on the basic side, but this Wall Street Journal article documents and provides some tips for avoiding web address theft.

One that they didn't really cover, that's not really even in the scope of "stealing," is when domain squatters swoop in when companies accidentally let their domains expire. There are lots of bots out there crawling the internet and recording traffic patterns, so if the registration on a well-traveled site expires there will almost always be a squatter in line to pick it up for at least a short time.

These cases are especially tough, because the squatter technically did nothing wrong. They represent themselves accurately and all that, so it's not like they're impersonating someone to "steal" a domain. That said, they certainly are shady since their goal is either to sell the domain name back to the original company that let it expire, or to simply capitalize (using Adwords, etc.) on the traffic that the former owner had built up. Sometimes the registrars and hosts will work together to make it right; sometimes the ransom costs thousands of dollars, even for small, relatively-unknown domain names.

Godaddy.com is nice that they automatically extend domains registered through them for another full year. I suspect they badger you daily or weekly if they do this favor for you and extend your domain without making you pay.

Windows Server 2008 Preview

2007-09-07T09:35:00.000-06:00

SearchSystemsChannel.com provides a nice little roundup of new features in Windows Server 2008.

The Terminal Services Gateway sounds very intriguing . . . Microsoft continues to deploy features that are eating Citrix's lunch. Maybe not, considering that Citrix does not seem to be putting much effort into its Terminal Services overal products like Presentation Server. We've had much more contact from Citrix regarding their push into optimization and performance enhancements found in NetScaler.

Another nice feature will be IIS 7.0, which is an enhancement to Microsoft's industry-leading Internet Information Services. Mostly pretty obvious enhancements in IIS - more modular, better .NET integration, better diagnostics.

Windows Server is absolutely vital to Microsoft (yes, understatement of the year -haha). It's the place where Apple and Linux still trail by a fairly wide margin (yes, I'm aware of Apache server and its popularity, but look at the numbers and you'll see IIS more than holding its own in that space). Largely driven by Microsoft themselves in their Small Business Server, business are more and more reliant on client-server-based computing. MS made a great play to release SBS and extend their Server product to small business, to ensure that their desktop OS, which is all but required if you're running a Windows Server, would remain popular and viable. No word on Small Business Server 2008 that I've seen yet, but I'm sure it won't trail Server 2008 by too much. Knowing Microsoft, they'll probably give it a totally different name anyway . . .

We're running 2008 Server on a test server and are just starting to play with it. Like Vista-versus-XP Pro, it's largely the same experience, but with a few nice little features and tweaks. Looking forward to the launch.

Help Us Help You: Making it Easy for Your IT Dept

2007-08-14T11:21:00.000-06:00

The Wall Street Journal published a great piece on making it easier and faster for your IT department to help you.

I love #'s 2, 4 and 6 on the list. These are all things that we try to explicitly encourage in our customers. The ones that "get it" do get better service, because it's easier to help them!

Red Hat Whiteboxes are Coming!

2007-08-06T11:40:00.001-06:00

Red Hat announced a partnership with Intel, which is very long overdue on both parts. As an Intel-authorized reseller and a Red Hat Ready (RH authorized) company, we're positively chomping at the bit for something similar to Microsoft's pre-install kit.

Hopefully, this partnership will ease the RH licensing process and automate much (if not all) of the RH desktop load process, including driver configs and selection/loading of add-on software.

Also, I'm looking for Red Hat to improve its compatibility. Say what you will about both distros, but Ubuntu just seems to fire up, recognize devices and work better out of the box than Red Hat. I've been saying for a good year now that Red Hat has the coordination and the channel-friendliness, but Ubuntu has the ease-of-use. Hopefully this is RH's attempt to fulfill the best of both worlds . . .

Cool Freeware of the Week: Launchy

2007-08-01T11:24:00.000-06:00

If you've never tried Launchy, it's time you thought about it. Launchy is started using a hotkey combination (alt-space) and allows you to quickly launch other applications, do calculations, use Google search, browse Windows and even (with some customization) run Windows terminal commands.

If you're looking for Foxtrot-endorsed (useful, unique) free downloads, please visit our free downloads page. And if you have other free software recommendations, please post in the form of a comment. Thanks!

Careful, Counterfeiters: Color Lasers Identify Themselves

2007-07-23T23:13:00.000-06:00

Apparently at the behest of the Federal Government, manufacturers of color laser printers are quietly embedding individual-unit-identifying yellow marks on each print they spit out.

Of course, it's a huge concern for civil libertarians who are seeing red over the yellow dots. The long arm of the law on the printer manufacturers will be tested by consumeristic efforts like Seeing Yellow, whose "buffer overflow" campaign is apparently more than the Feds are willing to continue chasing down . . . but will it prove compelling enough for manufacturers to change their stripes (and dots)?

Tips for Extending Notebook Battery Life

2007-07-09T12:08:00.000-06:00

Basically, these tips all boil down to one of just a few rules: 1) manufacturers are improving battery life, so new products have better battery life; 2) a well-maintained notebook is a battery-life-efficient notebook; and the 3) the more stuff you ask your laptop to do (multi-tasking, running CDs, etc.), the worse its battery life will be. A nice little primer . . .

Networking Gear Default Passwords

2007-07-09T12:04:00.000-06:00

Just ran across a great little addition to the ol' "online toolkit": an online listing of the manufacturer's default passwords for hundreds of networking devices.

Need to read Office 2007 files in Office 2003 or earlier?

2007-06-08T16:04:00.000-06:00

You can do it! You just need to get the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack.

In contrast to Microsoft's "viewer" apps which only allow you to see the content, the Compatibility Pack actually does allow you to create, edit, save, etc. in XML file format.

Could Your Company Benefit From CRM?

2007-05-15T11:00:00.000-06:00

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been around for many years in the form of Goldmine and ACT!. The past 5 years have seen Microsoft challenge the market some, and innovative companies like SugarCRM, OnContact and salesforce.com are great viable options for small and medium-sized businesses.

But before deciding *which* solution is the right one, a company first needs to decide *whether* to move forward with CRM at all. What are the benefits? CRM is not for every business, so it's important to think about your company, products, customers, personnel, intelligence needs, etc. It's a complex decision, but this article is a fantastic primer and guide for making the decision.

9 Things to Not Have on a Business Web Site

2007-04-26T08:23:00.000-06:00

As a followup to last week's 10 things to have on your home page, here are some (even more helpful, I think) tips on what *not* to have on your web page.

I can't even express how much I agree with #1. I had a marketing consultant a few years ago insist on having her clients put their pictures and a personal letter right on their home page (she drinks her own Kool-Aid, at least). I grasped the "folksy," one-on-one approach, but I thought the overriding effect was simply unprofessional. She actually was the catalyst for getting going with Managed Services, but once the business model and concepts were out there, the follow-on advice for marketing it seemed "overly guerilla" and annoying.

10 Rules for Your Small Business Home Page

2007-04-22T14:03:00.000-06:00

Here's some sage advice about keeping your business web page succinct and effective. I believe it was Winston Churchill who said, "Be brief, be concise, and be seated." And so it is with web pages, I believe.

It's always a struggle for me, since I do the content for our website, to be descriptive enough to pique interest and get people to understand how *differently* we do things, yet not get to be so technical and such a bulk of words that it all gets ignored. I find help in tools like bulletpoints and headlines.

Linux in the Enterprise, But Maybe Not Yet Small Biz

2007-04-14T12:21:00.000-06:00

Linux is certainly graduating from its roots as a "enthusiast-only" technology. Foxtrot has delivered a few systems, and we keep a few "sandbox" PCs here in the shop loaded up with different distros, just for experimenting and what-not.

I know some small businesses who have embraced - and installed - Linux, but typically only on a server or two. I think the main updraft for Linux-on-the-desktop will be larger enterprise customers. HP's claims validate this, and we're even starting to see "bake-off" articles where distros are actually compared based specifically on their enterprise supportability and viability.

For the meantime, in the small business space I think Linux-on-the-desktop might actually best be reserved for "blank slate" users, where little technology infrastrucutre exists and users' knowledge of Windows is not quite so deep.

The biggest hurdle for Linux in small business, however, is probably the lack of well-developed vertical apps. Yes, I understand there are CRM apps, financials apps, and lots of solutions, but none of these solutions that I've seen are anywhere as easy-to-use, or as well-supported, as the Windows world likes of Quickbooks, Act! Goldmine, etc. Comments from the legion of Linux blog-crawlers are encouraged! I'm Always interested to hear about new solutions out there.

H1-B Hiring Under Fire

2007-04-09T12:06:00.000-06:00

I understand that this bill is well-intentioned, with the idea of increasing the number of domestic workers filling technical jobs. However, it seems that - like most government interventions - the main end result is higher prices, more harassment and less efficiency.

It is axiomatic that government never makes *anything* more efficient, and the labor market is certainly a prime example of that.

There are already many barriers for H-1B visa-holders to overcome to get here and be successful: significant physical relocation, language and culture barriers, and of course the H-1B process itself. If after all that, they're still able to work for such a significant discount to the US-born applicants and they do as good a job, then perhaps the US workers need to accept a smaller number.

It's the force of the marketplace, and whether it's in the labor market or in the finished product market, placing inefficiencies on the markets always come around and result in a negative impact for the company doing the restricting.

Let's play this to the logical conclusion: the bill passes, and limitations are placed on hiring H-1B applicants. Fewer qualified H-1B workers are available here, so more are available off-shore. This glut of supply of talent in India and elsewhere probably creates a decrease in the cost to run off-shore operations in the native countries, which makes them that much more an option that hiring an internal staff or domestic outsourcing.

Also, if the US companies have to now pay more despite not getting any better talent (other than being born in the right place), the company's costs go up. Throw in the cost of complying to and documenting this "good faith" effort and we've got still higher costs at the corporation.

So, either their product prices go up, or the speed, quality and quantity of their products decreases. Any way you slice it, the product is a worse value and may lose in the global marketplace to 100% foreign-grown products and services . . . maybe even to the companies in India (or wherever) enjoying the cheaper labor they've got as a result of fewer of their citizens emmigrating to the US. Hey, guess what happens when the US company's product becomes less attractive and loses customers? People get let go . . . so the American workers are back in the unemployment line.

Plus, on top of all that, you have 200 more employees (at least!!) at the DOL, which is paid-for by the taxpayers. So, the end net-effect of all this will be less globally-competitive US companies, greater taxpayer expense, and a questionably-positive benefit to any US-born workers. Not looking that great, guys!

Business Expo March 7

2007-02-28T14:23:00.000-06:00

Foxtrot will have a booth at next week's SHARP Upswing Business Expo up in Brooklyn Park. Stop by and see us!!

Geek Squad Horror Stories

2007-02-28T14:12:00.000-06:00

I hear questionable or flat-out terrible things about Best Buy/ Geek Squad service fairly frequently, actually.

I recently had someone point out that Best Buy for Business is stepping up their efforts to make inroads in small business . . . and aren't I concerned about that? Not only does this not concern me, it actually kind of validates Foxtrot's business model.

For one thing, I can name several accounts that I've taken away from poor GS/BB service, and cannot name one instance where they've directly beaten me out. Of course, their marketing machine will get to some customers that I don't have the resources to, but I'm not sweating that much, either.

I like the fact that Best Buy sees a tremendously underserved sector in small business, because I see it as well. So many companies can benefit so greatly from more effective use of the relatively-inexpensive tech products that are out there. It's just a matter of getting to the people and building awareness of what's possible!

Generally, I have a friendly disposition toward competitors. My philosophy with regard to competition is that there's plenty of work to go around for companies that provide good products and services that consumers want, at reasonable prices.

Google Continues Push for Online Office Apps

2007-02-22T11:21:00.000-06:00

Google continues to push their online software-as-a-service business model, in clear competition with MS Office.

So many interesting dynamics here:

1) Microsoft versus Google. I'm not sure if either would admit it, but this is another chapter in a pretty heavy competition. I wonder if Microsoft will respond to this competition the way they have responded to most: by taking their competitor's idea, making it their own, and using their existing foothold and integration with other MS apps to muscle out the competition.

Microsoft already kind of did this to Google once, in the desktop search. Vista has a far-improved integrated desktop (and beyond the desktop) search tool that takes some of the wind out of the sails for Google Desktop.

2) Google's direct-sales philosophy versus Microsoft's partner- and channel-centric philosophy. Foxtrot is a Microsoft partner, so of course there's some belief here in how they do things. However, I haven't drunk quite enough MS Kool-aid to believe there *can't* be a better answer. Google really has no formal partnership or channel opportunities for little ol' Foxtrot, so probably the only thing for me to do for Foxtrot right now is to watch and be aware.

Verifying IDs to Prevent Cyber-crime

2007-02-13T11:43:00.000-06:00

I don't normally look to MSNBC for useful tech news, but this is a great article on inroads being made with TPM technology, against the growing tide of crime on the internet.

To say the least, I never knew all the network-ability features to TPM. We sell some notebooks with TPM onboard, but I usually advertise it as a theft deterrence system. If someone steals your NB (or you leave it on a plane with super top-secret info onboard, like has happened several times recently), the person who gets it cannot do anything with it. All the ones that have TPM also have a fingerprint scanner, so it basically serves as the on button - no fingerprint, no startup. That's my understanding, at least - never have had a chance to play around with it.

This internet verification is huge, I think. Just like telephone calls are more are more being placed to *people* (personal cell phones) rather than the olden-days' *places* (home/office phones), this seems like it would transform "machine-based" computing into "verified person-based" computing. Then again, fingerprint and TPM info is sure to be stored on internet-accessible servers . . . which opens the can o' worms right back up, for hackers and other ne'er-do-wells.

SMB tech trends for 2007

2007-02-08T10:05:00.000-06:00

ConnectIT, a business technology online mag angled toward resellers and solution providers writes about the upcoming trends for SMBs (Small/ Medium Businesses).

Since I've been crafting and re-orienting Foxtrot as a Managed Service Provider for about 18 months now, I certainly agree with his notions that managed services and outsourcing will continue their upward trend.

The MSP market here in the Twin Cities is interesting. I like to think we've got things dialed in - at least operationally, and marketing is getting there finally - with being an MSP. I'm aware of several other MSPs here in the Twin Cities, and have heard nothing but negative stories about quality of service, the way they deliver, etc. I always try to get more info on how they're going wrong, and it seems the biggest downfall for them is spreading themselves too thin. They grow too fast, don't use software to automate simple tasks, and don't have standard procedures.

My days at SimonDelivers.com certainly taught me about BPM (Business Process Management), and I try to bring that into Foxtrot as much as possible. One of the ex-military techs here likes to call it SOP (Standard Operating Procedures). It kind of dehumanizes the process (for better or worse): just follow the documented process, and if the BPM design was right to start with things should all go smoothly.

If you blow your volume too high too fast, though, BPM can break down because there wind up not being enough hours in the day to get through the processes. This is where automation of tasks comes in. We try to leverage our software investments to automate simple tasks, so the only human interaction winds up being configuring and monitoring a whole slew of tasks.

This is a constant concern of mine still - how big can we grow? One can forecast all day long, talk to peers, use industry benchmarks . . . but when all's said and done it's a fairly case-by-case situation. The systems, the employees and the customers all determine exactly how big we'll be able to get, and how quickly.

Spam = 94% of all e-mail in December

2007-01-30T23:24:00.000-06:00

Nice summary-of-a-summary piece from Information Week, reporting on Postini's report. Of course, Postini has everything to gain from singing from the mountaintops about today's spam crisis.

It is something we get asked about frequently: controlling, filtering, and handling spam. I've seen Postini's service and it is quite nice, though not very reseller-friendly (minimum 250 seat commitment) so Foxtrot's not reselling.

One nice solution we do use is Sunbelt Software's Messaging Ninja. Formerly called I Hate Spam, Ninja basically sets up an SMTP sink in MS Exchange that traps, scans and sorts spam right into each user's Exchange folder structure (in a designated spam folder).

We've also done some work with Symantec's Anti-spam plug-in for Mail Security, and it works similarly-well. Actually, we had to have a customer show it to us, but Symantec has a great suite combining Enterprise Antivirus and their Premium Anti-Spam product in one bundle for only about $30 per user (~$150 for a 5-pack).

I've always wanted to set up a dedicated Linux SMPT spam filter (have seen good things from Spam Assassin), but the one person I had interested in doing for Foxtrot wound up leaving town. Might be interested in picking it up, if anyone's out there and is interested.

What's the difference between CAT5 and CAT6 cabling?

2007-01-30T11:07:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the uber-nerdy post here, but I had this question come up recently and thought this was a really nice technical summation of it.

Lifting the lid on the next-gen Intel CPU

2007-01-27T14:20:00.000-06:00

Dailytech.com publishes an interesting "interview" (though there are few actual direct quotes) with a couple Intel execs.

Intel is just another great example of the wonders of Capitalism at work. Intel was fat and happy, resting on its laurels for a good five years (2000 - 2005). AMD, with its Athlon and Opteron CPUs, started winning the speed wars and a resulting increasing marketshare.

Voila, just like that Intel completely ditches the over-heating and under-performing Microburst architecture. They created the new "Core" (Conroe) series of CPUs, have a repeatedly-demonstrated performance advantage. And, this article is proof they are not going to rest on their laurels, but rather continue to push the envelope of smaller, faster, more efficient chips.

What people must realize is that, in that five year hiatus from meaningful new product development, a lot of Intel's focus was on its manufacturing capacity. They pushed from 130, to 90, to 65nm . . . and are now poised to convert plants to 45nm and (apparently) continue the pace every two years. Meanwhile at AMD, while their Athlon and Opteron chips were gaining market share and out-performing, their manufacturing advances lagged. Now, they're just getting to 65nm process and anything smaller than that is but a pipe dream.

So, the lesson is that Intel is a much stronger company - and we consumers are getting a better product - as a result of AMD's competitive influence. Beautiful!

Dispute over wiki.com

2007-01-20T10:55:00.000-06:00

Some interesting wrangling going on between MindTouch (a company Foxtrot has done a bunch of business with) and Wikia. Seems we're a little short on details as to what exactly went wrong with wiki.com that has everyone being pushed over to wik.is.

I check with MT to see what the deal is, but have not yet heard back. Will update as I learn more . . .

Free Software

2006-10-09T21:56:00.000-06:00

In addition to what I capture here, I have also created a page at http://www.foxtrotsystems.com/resources/free_dls.html where I keep a running list of downloads that I have found useful. Oh, and all of them are free!

I'm sure I'll be blogging here about some of them, as well as others that may be free, or available through Foxtrot for a nominal sum, or available elsewhere.

Commence blogging

2006-10-09T21:38:00.000-06:00

This is first-and-foremost a technology business blog. It will deal with media snippets, new products, etc. that I come across and want to capture/record in my daily dealings with my company, Foxtrot Systems (www.foxtrotsystems.com).