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A little over ten years ago, before debit cards became ubiquitous and people cared more about having actual bits of paper for the monetary worth, I had a discussion with a friend about how the world would  eventually move to a cashless society.   I argued over the cost and extent of such a venture going forward.   He did have one good point in his argument – anonymity.

He believed due to corruption (or anything else you wish to argue for) that there would always be cash money to allow for citizens to have an anonymous usage of money in society.   I had several more arguments going against this back then, but I couldn’t truly get around the anonymity factor, especially with small unmarked bills.  I don’t believe the anonymity factor is going to last too much longer though.

Enter in RFID dust, this effectively will destroy anonymity in a cash based society.   The technology was developed as an anti-counterfeiting method.   With this knowledge in hand we can make some assumptions.  The first is that the dust can be used to verify the authenticity of the bills.   The second, when it is truly embedded in the bills and not sprinkled into batches of money – that the RFID will contain a serial that will match the serial number on the bill itself.

If the dollar can “beacon” the serial number, then how does it become anonymous.   In theory before you use any paper money you could microwave it, but eventually that will no longer work either.  The next argument would be that only the government has the readers – this would be a “for how long argument”.   Think of the theft and tracking of the flow of money analysis that could be gained solely on a research perspective.  I can see in 20-30 years as the technology becomes cheaper and centralized databases are more available – that this type of tracking could be the norm.

I’ve written about software currently that can track the flow of money, there is no reason we wouldn’t be able to see real time tracking of every single penny in circulation by utilizing this technology.   The only thing stopping it right now is cost, which will drop.

I really didn’t have time to write about this last week when it first came to my attention but it seems that Creeva.com has been banned from Technorati for gaming the system.   It states that I republish materials from other sites onto this blog.   This is not untrue, though 90% of my posts actually originate from there.   If I write something I centralize it all on creeva.com.   It’s simple.  It’s efficient.  It allows me centralize and backup my writing.

That being said, they aren’t wrong.   One of the underlying experiments that this blog does is crossposting.  It crossposts to myspace, facebook, tumblr, blogger, and many more.   I don’t make huge piles of cash (haven’t made a dime in my pocket yet).  I don’t blast people with ads, though on some sites including the main there are some that are there.   I’m not doing it to drive up profit in any way.  I’m doing it so different communities can read my stuff.  I won’t harp on it, I’ve written about my crossposting before.

The question is how relevant is Technorati becoming.   I know this question has been asked before, and I used to believe in Technorati.   I didn’t start 500 blogspot accounts to promote the material.  I used 1 public site per service.  For the point of experimentation and proof of concept.  I also have been slowly working on a whole article series on how to crosspost.   With the myriad of services and the fact that data is not yet truly portable, but beginning to become so.   How can these services accurately  track where information is originating from.

Like I said I’m not annoyed, I can live without technorati.  When people are posting links to their site on tumblr, friendfeed, twitter, and others how long before there are more people like me?   Services like Ping.fm and HelloTxt serve in a market segment only to fuel this further.   I’m not someone who has a targetted truly branded blog beyond self branding.   I don’t have a certain topic set I cover and regulary write about.  I’m a schizophrenic writer that is all over the place.   The only thing I hope is consistent is my voice.  Beyond that take away from my writing what you will.

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Introduction

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E-mail in the clouds.   Essentially back in 1996 when Hotmail was first released (in the pre-purchased by Microsoft era) the dawn of popular cloud computing for e-mail began.   The main issue was storage space.  I believe that Hotmail launched with 5 megs of storage space for all of your e-mail.   It is frustrating to know all the e-mail that’s been lost over the years due to inadequate storage space.   I now have single pictures in my email archive that are larger then 5 megs.   Times change and space get’s cheap.

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When Google released Gmail into the wild it was a game changer.  By offering 1GB of storage space it made it seem that you literally could keep your e-mail forever.   Other providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo were maxing out at 25 MB at the time, this seemed ridiculous in comparison.

Currently Gmail supports almost 7 GB of storage space and Hotmail and Yahoo went to “unlimited”.  I consolidate almost all of my e-mail to Gmail.

Data Types

To utilize e-mail storage you can attach any (supported) file and keep it in your mailbox.

Data Security

While you have to rely on a username and password to access your e-mail as the security barrier entry, if you want true protection from snooping it is suggested that you either get a web plugin that allows you to do encryption with Gmail, or keep your private messages encrypted and use them with an offline client.

Data Redundancy

Since you can forward e-mail from Gmail, I have it configured to forward all incoming mail to both my Yahoo Mail account and my Hotmail account.  If for some reason GMail loses my data or in the unlikely event Google goes out of business I’ll still be able to access my e-mail messages.

It is recommended that you keep an offline backup of your mail messages so they can be accessible while being off the grid.

Data Accessibility

With Gmail offering accessing via a rich web interface, a basic web interface, a mobile web interface, POP3, SMTP, and IMAP; it seems unlikely that you are going to find an Internet device that can not access it in some way or fashion.

Conclusion

This is the e-mail scenario that works for me.  Since encryption really isn’t ubiquitous across the board I don’t use it like I should.   Beyond that this scenario is highly redundant and should allow you operate from anywhere with a network connection without worrying about losing your data.

Previous entries in the Living in the Clouds Series:

Living In The Clouds Part 1 – Introduction To Cloud Computing

]]> http://creeva.com/2008/06/11/living-in-the-clouds-part-2-e-mail/feed/ 0 http://creeva.com/2008/06/10/the-crossposting-god-series-part-7-where-can-you-post-by-e-mail/ http://creeva.com/2008/06/10/the-crossposting-god-series-part-7-where-can-you-post-by-e-mail/#comments Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:48:07 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=2831

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Where can you post by E-mail?  Well this is the easiest of crossposting methods (especially if you use Blogger).  There are lots of plugins for wordpress or movable type that can send out your full post as an e-mail to another address.   In most cases you would send this to your own e-mail address so you had it for reference.  What about sending it to another site entirely?  What if that site could send it to another site?  You can see how this chain can work.   If you are using Blogger then you can send out your post to ten e-mail addresses.   This means that your post can replicate like bunnies.   What are some of the sites that can receive e-mail posts?  Let’s get into that.

The original Creeva’s World was hosted on Blogger at creeva.blogspot.com.  This is where I started writing and I didn’t want to abandon it after migrating over to wordpress.  This was the very first site I crossposted to from my wordpress blog.  Crossposting allowed me to not abandon my site and any readers that may go to that address, but I could enhance my own experience while keeping theirs the same.

Lifelogger is the “cooler” blogging service, at least that’s what they say.   I’m not going to use any blogging platform again that I can’t customize to the fullest extent.  WordPress has spoiled me.   Though I do maintain a site there.

Unlike some major social networks (I’m looking at you Facebook and Myspace), Friendster does support e-mailing in your blog messages.

Blogr is just another blogging host that accepts e-mail.  Very blogger like, but crossposting friendly.

Evernote is unique unlock some of the rest of these sites, Evernote is a notebook service.   It allows you to e-mail in snippets (or use the desktop applications) to send in information that you can then share with your friends.  You can e-mail in text notes, audio, or video.

Busy Thumbs is a simple moblog site that accepts posts via e-mail.

Twine is similar to Evernote, but it’s about collections and community.   Think of it as sharing what you have with your friends.

Google Groups is a spot that I used to use as an online backup for my blog.   I have a private google group that only handles my own blog posts.   No you can’t join, not like you would want to.

I’ve just recently start crossposting to an old Yahoo Group that I used to moderate.   Mostly this is because I can share my thoughts with my friends that are still in that group, but that group is essentially dead.   So this is the only thing that it’s around for to keep me from pulling the complete axe on it.

Each Day is designed to handle your memories and save them so you can go back over your life.  It handles multiple media formats but all I’m concerned about is the e-mail option.

Multiply is a social network in the same vein as Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook.

Over at Vox I maintain a page to integrate with their community.  I’ve posted in the past how vox is a unique community and because of that I receive unique feedback.   They refer to their e-mail inbound service as moblogging.

I like to think of all of my blog posts as separate documents.   After working on this for awhile, I decided to start e-mailing all of my entries to my google docs account let’s me to search and repurpose documents a little easier then searching through the blog.   It’s my dump all account for documents.  I am annoyed that I can’t e-mail blog posts to Zoho Writer for redundancy, they only take documents as attachments.

When you are looking for a new site to crosspost to check and see if they have an option where you can post by e-mail.  Some sites may refer to this as moblogging.  Also remember to e-mail your post to yourself so you have a backup you can control.

Oh, I use the DJ E-Mail Publish plugin to push out posts from WordPress.

In the next part of our crossposting god series we are going to cover Blogger more in depth.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 – The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 – Vox

The Crossposting God Series Part 3 – Live Journal and Derivative Sites

The Crossposting God Series Part 4 – Entry, Distribution, and End Points

The Crossposting God Series Part 5 – Myspace

The Crossposting God Series Part 6 – RSS Feeds to Crosspost

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RSS, I love RSS.   RSS makes crossposting easy.   It also allows me to read all of my news in Google Reader instead of jumping to 50 different sites that I used to visit once a day.  RSS allows users to subscribe to your site and read them where they want to, this may be good or bad based on your advertising style.  If you are like me and don’t really make a dime on your blog, then it doesn’t really matter.

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I use feedburner as a choke point for every web service that has an RSS feed (and I’m a member).   This allows me a couple things, the first is I can easily remember all the web services I sign up for.  The second thing is I have feeds that I can automatically plugin to lifestreaming services that don’t support the sites I use natively.

Through RSS I cross post my blog to Tumblr, Profilactic, Friendfeed, Suprglu, and any other life service I come across (just search for Creeva as the username).   Now At this point I’ve made feedburner to do all the heavy lifting and bandwidth intensive work for feed readers.  I even use my feed (a filtered version) to post notifications to Twitter when I have a new story published using the Twitterfeed service.

The other key thing to remember with RSS is when we get to the widget space.   Some sites don’t have an option for crossposting, they are completely locked.   You can however (in some cases) place a widget in your profile on these sites.  More times then not you can manage to place an RSS widget.  An RSS widget shows your current RSS feed items and allows you to place them on these profiles that otherwise have locked data.

With wordpress there is a plugin called feedwordpress that aggregates feeds and publishes them as items on your blog.   They keep trying to make this plugin better, but I can tell you it doesn’t seem ready for prime time yet.  I’ve tried every trick imaginable and I always end up receiving duplicate entries in my main blog.   Because of that I don’t use feedwordpress anymore, I may try in the future.  This would lead to the ultimate life caching solution, by allowing my blog to pull in all the data I generate everywhere else, and then crosspost it to all my friends across the web.  Unfortunately it’s a pipedream at this moment.

Now click the logo to subscribe to Creeva’s World 2.0:

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In the next part of our crossposting god series we are going to cover services that allow you to publish by e-mail.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 – The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 – Vox

The Crossposting God Series Part 3 – Live Journal and Derivative Sites

The Crossposting God Series Part 4 – Entry, Distribution, and End Points

The Crossposting God Series Part 5 – Myspace

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The other day I wrote an article in which I briefly discussed cloud computing and how I accomplish it in my life. I wanted to start a new series called “Living in the Clouds” which goes over the functions that you can do to migrate over to a cloud computing setup yourself.

First we need to define what is cloud computing?  Cloud computing is placing and manipulating on the Internet.  While part of this is cloud storage, where you store your data online so you can access it anywhere, the other part is being able to use and manipulate your data anywhere.   Whether this is from your home computer, your work computer, or any other device you have access to an internet connection with a browser, this is computing in the clouds.

I wanted to outline what I’m trying to accomplish with this series.   What I want to do is go beyond the normal here is a cloud service, isn’t it shiny?  You can get that form anywhere.   What I want to work through in each section of this series is as follows:

Data Types: What type of data can you store or manipulate and what are the best services for that.

Data Security: How can you trust your data and the providers you are using.  How can you minimize the effect of data leakage.

Data Redundancy:  This includes redundant services with the same data, how to make your data portable, and how to back this data up.

Data Accessibility:  What devices and items other then web browsers can you manipulate your data with, what API’s are available.

I’m taking all of this from a perspective of what do I use and how do I use it.   I want to let you know what works for me instead of dovetailing in a goo goo gah gah review over something new and exciting.   If I don’t use it to a decent extent I will let you know.   I will include speculation and theory sometimes, but when I do I will alert you to such.

Hopefully this is a series you will enjoy.

Going further into my reviews of kiosk systems we acquired the Surferquest system here at work.   Unlike my piece on SteadyState I’m not going to have a bunch of screen shots to show you this time.   However I will give you my analysis and what I’ve found out.

The Surferquest system is an off the shelf software with minimal customization.  We ordered an evaluation unit and I was tasked to try it out.   I can say for our needs as a company that requires centralized management and control of machines in our environment that the Surferquest system was not quite a correct fit for us.

In our environment we don’t normally place a machine on our network until it is fully tested and verified secure, but this product is pretty much useless until it has a network connection.   I had to contact support and they gave me an unlock code that would allow me to make changes to installed software.  The unlock code lasted only 24 hours, but they sent me a utility later on that would allow me generate unlock codes for myself.

Almost all of the customization that can be done is performed remotely by Surferquest.  This means if there is a major application change that needs to be completed you need to contact them.   Do you wish to customization your login screen?  You must contact them or upload the images to their server.    You can not perform these changes locally on the box or locally within your environment.  Wish to change the active desktop they used?  Same steps apply as changing the login screen.

Restrictions applied to the software:

Disable Windows Updates
Remove from Start Menu:
My Music
My Pictures
Favorites
Recent Documents
Frequently Used Programs
Recent Network Docs
Network Places
Help
Run
My Documents
Configure Programs
Disable Windows Keys
Lock Taskbar
Disable Control Panel
Disable Balloon Tips
Remove OEM Link
Disable Task Manager
Disable Registry
Disable Find Files with F3 in Explorer
Prevents Control Panel, Printers, and Network and Dial-up Connections from running, and removes the corresponding menu items.
Removes Shut Down from the Start menu and disables the Shut Down button in the Windows Security dialog box.
Disable System Restore
Clears Recent Documents on Exit
Disable access to Recent Network Documents
CTRL key disabled

As you can see, though they use a different product to achieve the same goal, it has similar technology to the Microsoft Steadystate product I reviewed in part 3.

You can put the software within you domain, but the software will still be phoning home to the Surferquest company. While I’m positive that there is nothing sensitive being pushed across, like any company that you would have do remote assistance make sure you trust them in case of any possible data leakage.  The official answer is that it only sends out IP address information and the last time connected.  You can view this information on the stat web page they provide you

If the drive in the unit should fail or there is a hardware issue in need of support, no software is supplied.   You must receive new hardware from the vendor and return your old unit.  They state that turn around time is usually 24 hours.   Any remote management or patching must be performed by the vendor and is done via remote monitoring software that they have access to.    The software is caused Netsupport and it sneaks out your firewall on port 22 – now all you admins that left it open for SSH can feel silly (actually that’s how the firewall support team snuck out the corporate firewall there and back to their home computers when I worked at Symantec on that team).

Quick Notes

• Idle timeouts can be configured, but they default at 10 minutes.
• They use the Deep Freeze product to maintain their disk image
• When we received the unit PXE booting was enabled (and we didn’t have a BIOS password – they stated this was a mistake)
• The unit we received had PowerDVD installed, ironically no DVD drive (another oversight they admit)
• Unlock Steadystate there is no method for restricting USB drive usage

Box the unit shipped in

Front of the unit

Top of the unit

Rear of the unit

If you deploying this in your environment you need to make certain you can accept the security and loss of control you have over this unit compared to other machine in your environment.   I see this fitting more in the public space kiosk scenarios suchs as libraries or hotels.   Because they do lack the centralized control that you would normally deploy in corporate environments I say give this one a pass or at least look hard at what you are trying to accomplish.   For the public space this is a great product, extremely low maintenance, the ability to monetize but charging a fee (customized through the stat page),  and extremely well versed and fast techinical support.   If you want to deploy an Internet Cafe in your area this is the product for you.

The Kiosk Series:

The Kiosk Series – Part One – Choices For Your Environment

The Kiosk Series – Part Two – Management Considerations For Your Environment

The Kiosk Series – Part Three – Microsoft SteadyState vs Group Policies

A couple days ago I asked the blogosphere should I get an N810 and like the blogosphere normally answers I got nothing back. That’s fine, I’m used to talking to myself on my blog.  However I decided that I would give it a go.   I knew that if things didn’t work out I would return it.   It arrived last night and I thought I would describe what I went through.   It is also interesting that this morning from the blogosphere I got a comment on my article that was crossposted to my vox blog (hey I’m sorry vox users get weird characters).

Hyphn on vox asked:

Nice article. I’m in a similar situation to yourself. I’ve got a Palm TX and an Nokia 770 (& N95 8GB).

I use the N95 8GB for all of my music and podcasts (it automatically downloads them over the air). I have a Palm Infrared keyboard for my TX, which is nice, but the problem is that you just can’t really see the screen when you are out in bright sunshine. – Is the N810 screen readable in bright sunshine?

The N770 is ok, but it’s a bit slow and the lack of a keyboard (of any description) is a killer…. Not sure I can justify the extra 280GBP for another device thought…. (?)

So I’m going to cover this comment in this article.

I’ve never had a keyboard for the TX, I’m a fast on screen keyboard typer.  I knew however when my wife tried out the N800 it wasn’t for me since I’m more active online these days, the keyboard would be essential.  I never really wrote long blog articles on the TX so this is a hope for the N810.  I tried it the N810 outside today and in bright clear sky direct sunlight the screen was washed out but readable.  So I think the transreflective coating they advertise does work as designed.    For thoughts on whether the device is worth money, well I’m going to be writing about the device for the next couple weeks or so, what I find, how I make things work, and some things that people may not know because they are not widely published.   Hopefully yhis will help you make a sound decision.

New Toy

So everyone now knows I have an N810, I also added an 8 GB micro SD card (with mini SD converter card so it would fit).   Xie ‘anthia still feels that I’m going to feel cramped on space.   I unpacked the device last night and imeediatly had it flashed to the newest OS 2008 revision, curse the mobile ubuntu team for not having the port finished and ready to go.   I then paired it with my phone and installed everything that seemed interesting.

After trying to uninstall somethign I discovered that I had the rare N810 bug that sets the internal card read only and corrupts the data.   At this point I reflashed the device, formatted the internal memory card (virtual ram made it so I had to reflash before I hear any comments), and started over.   I had spent so much time installing software on the previous run that I wasn’t going to go through all of that again in one sitting.  Let’s however looked at what I did do.

I went through and chose a theme to my liking, I cleaned out the bundled maps and documentation.  I removed the demo music, video, and images.   I removed the map application and the welcome application.  In essence I stripped down the device as far as possible befoer starting over.    I didn’t need those things, and for map GPS data I plan on using maemo mapper, so I’ll get to that in a future blog article.

So what did I install?

Seeing as I have some guidance from Xie ‘lanthia on what is good and what is not so good, I followed her lead on some of my applications.  The first thing I installed was Pidgin, if you are unfamilar with Pidgin think of it as an IM product similar to Trillian.  It allows you to connect to many other IM networks at once.   The included chat progam bundled with the N810 really is good for gtalk, but what if I wanted more.   Pidgin right now is configured to connect to the following IM networks (some I rarely use) – Gtalk, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and Myspace Chat.   Also I installed Skype, thought I would mention it here while I was talking about IM.   So the N810 allows me to connect six instant messenger networks at the same time.   I’m all about ubuiquitous internet communication, especially when I can talk or broadcast across everywhere from a single point.

Pidgin Screenshot from maemo.org

Next I needed a media player.   I had read that the Canola2 would subscribe to podcasts as well as scrobble tracks to last.fm (last.fm connectivity is important from me in this device’s grand future).   However there seemed to be a bug in Canola2 that wouldn’t allow either copying and pasting a url in to the subscription field, and it wouldn’t allow me to use the function keys, so that ment no forward slashes.   Essentially the data entry for podcasts is broken.    Well this thing is going to keep me from carrying an Ipod around so I wanted some way that was simple to get podcasts on to my unit.  I found a way, but I wouldn’t use simple to be an accurate description, I used the Gpodder podcatcher to handle pulling down podcasts.

Conola2 Screenshot from maemo.org

gPodder Screenshot from maemo.org

The thing that drove me nuts over Gpodder was the fact that I had no easy way to add subscriptions.  Sure they tell you just point to a directory.opml online, but goodluck finding one.  I think I spent an hour on this before I found an article that explained that I could setup subscription in Itunes, export the opml file, put it on my N810, and then subscribe to the correct feeds in Gpodder once I opened the opml file there.   *WHEW*.   Then it seems that gpodder isn’t a fast and responsive application if you attempt to queu two or more songs it hardly moves, so load your subscriptions one at a time for the best response.  I limited it downloading one podcast at a time but that didn’t make much difference.   The last problem with Gpodder was that it doesn’t (rarely) save the podcast in it’s naming scheme, it downloaded most of my podcasts in a 34598745893475.mp3 style format.   These aren’t bob’s podcasts, except for one or two they are all from twit or revision3.   I can say gpodder will work since it will be a set it and let it do it’s thing overnight application, I wouldn’t however recommend living in it.

The next thing I installed was rdesktop.  This allows you to use the windows remote desktop function, so last night I was able to access my Windows 2k3 server from my N810.   The responsiveness was adequate and I can definetly see myself utilizing this.   I use RDP quite often and I think this is a life saver.   If you want to know how to setup and see screenshots, I just found this article on another blog (I figured it out myself).

The last thing I installed before fighting Gpodder to sync my podcasts for the next day was Maemo Wordpy this application is a blogging client (wonder what I want that for).  It allows me to post directly to my wordpress blog, like the test post I did last night before I reflashed the device.  It works, it’s a bit complex and you have to jump to different tabs for more options for you post but it works.  I had to however disable my myspace crossing plugin on my blog because I was getting duplicate post issues.   Wordpy still allows me to post a notification or blog post across about a dozen services (well my blog does all that work).   Wordpy does however support Blogger if WordPress isn’t you cup of tea.

Maemo Wordpy Screenshot from maemo.org

Some of the side things that I discovered last night.

• I can pull pictures directly off my phone, before I had to use esoteric software on windows or ubuntu to get them off via USB, with the N810 it just works via bluetooth (I have a RZR since I’m a cheap bastard and take the free phone).
• The Samba implementation on the N810 allows you to see hidden windows shares by default – good for me, bad for windows.
• Too many large files or directories in a share will absolutely lock up the N810′s file manager.
• The keyboard get’s easier to use the more you force yourself into it, with more training I may not need another bluetooth keyboard for “serious” writing
• Exchange Webmail works in the browser

Tonight’s goals (after I do some automotive repair unrelated to the N810) is to get a mail client working that I like (I’m leaning toward IMAP versus POP3, we’ll see how that goes.   I would also like to get a decent media player that can scrobble my songs to last.fm (who knows it might be great to find one that supports last.fm and pandora).  I did have some problems getting online via my cell phone so I’m probably going to following Xie’s article on how to set it up to properly use t-mobile as an internet connection.   I’m sure I’ll have some other information for you also.

To get an n810 or not is the question.   A few days ago I wrote a couple blog posts from my wife’s new n810.   I have some reservations about the keyboard for “power writing”, but that can be handled by a seperate bluetooth keyboard.   I think that’s not an issue.

Would I use it instead of a laptop – kind of.    Right now through work I have a Mac Book Air for my mobile device.   It’s great, it’s light, it does most of what i need it to do (what it can’t do would require linux or windows so it’s forgiven).    The one thing I run into with the air is the same thing I run into with my normal laptop, accessibility.   For normal computer use they are highly accessible, but if I do make it to HOPE this year or other travel venues it would be MUCH better to not bring a full laptop (if I do take an 810 to HOPE I’ll be accessing the internet through an encrypted Hamachi VPN tunnel to home and using a proxy there to access the Internet – no clear text information is going to be slipping by me – I can deal with the speed hit that will cause).

It’s much easier to have a bluetooth keyboard and an N810 to haul around to these places more so then a full laptop.   WIth a full laptop I need to worry about power (n810 has better battery life), privacy due to larger screen size,  finding a place to sit versus standing and using the n810.    These things are all things that go through my head while debating this purchase.

So yes the N810 would make me more mobile, and be more convenient.   I know for me (extreme power user) it won’t replace a computer or laptop, but for some people (like my sister) I could see this as a 100% computer replacement.   Too much geekery for me it seems.   So then we open up the question, could I live for a week with just the N810?

The N810 isn’t really designed for offline use.    If it has an internet connection that’s great.  I would be able to do most my blogposting and status updates via email so when I hit wifi I could sync up and go.   In alot ways I think this is enough.   To check this I need to menally compare it to my my Palm TX.

I’m not sure that the N810 will fully replace my Palm TX (then again no one said I couldn’t keep it).  WIth my palm TX I use it as an email platform, a web access device, a centralized syncing device, and an ebook reader.   Anything else I use it for is mostly games so that’s not really an issue – IM has always been painful on it do to .

Since the N810 does not have heavy document handling and I don’t think the resolution is quite right for ebook reading (the two thing I think I would keep my TX for)  it does have better web page filtering (my blog almost breaks the TX).   I would also be able to do IM since I wouldn’t be forced to stay on the IM screen like I do on the TX.   Email should be equal or better on the N810 versus the TX, Web Browsing would be better, and IM would be better.   The occasional full need to document editing and e-book reading would mean the TX could sit on the bottom of my bag (and a bluetooth keyboard would work with it – two devices one keyboard).

So theoretically I could replace my laptop about 90-95% with the two devices.   With having a much smaller footproint and ease of use in carrying these devices with me.   Having the N810 would mean that I no longer have to carry an iPod around since it would handle my podcast playing – bonus to the fact that it will auto scrobble to last.fm something that I have never gone working to a level I liked with an iPod and linux.

Movies however I’ll probably still use my palm TX – I can play full divx movies on it without having to re-encode them.   Bonus to me.    This will also have the side effect of saving me battery life on the N810 if the TX is with me.   I don’t watch movies too often on the go though.

Through hackery I would be able to sync my calender on google with my N810 – something that never worked right on the TX.   I would be able to compose music on the N810 (yes it can compose music).   Someone is also working on an instrument tuner – which is something I was going to buy this summer – so I’ll save 30.00 there.     I was going to buy an iPod, but with the 10 GB I can max out on the N810 and the fact that I only really use an ipod for podcasts would mostly make that that a non issue  – so a savings of 150.00 – so far I’ve saved myself 180.00 on stuff I would probably buy this summer.

There is an NES emulator (that works better on then on the TX) and a GBA emulator – this should save me from carrying around my GBA (which I ironically use more then my DS).   I also play RPG’s so the slight frame drop won’t really effect me.    I can use skype which really isn’t to much of an issue for me since I mostly would call my wife and we have free phone calles between us.   With utterz I can use my phone to “call in” blog posts.

I would be able to start geo caching with the N810 built in GPS, I’ve watned a gps for a long time, not for driving directions since I can look at a map easily and I’m able to figure out where I am.   My wife is sometimes jealous of my innate directional sense.   Usually I get way to lost sometimes by actually reading a map, wrongly at that.   I could get a cheap GPS for 90.00 – but that would take my total electronic purchases to 270.00.   We are approaching the N810 price.   (We actually match it if you figure out it would handle my gaming needs – but I already own those devices)

I like the N810′s keyboard versus the N800′s touch screen which my wife tried out first, but it still a small small keyboard and I have bigger fingers then her.   I can enter information quickly enough for a mobile device I can whip out real quick – and 500% faster then I can do on my phones keypad.     If I utilize bookmarks and saved password this should help limit my typing.   The less need I have on this the better.    Once again if I’m going to write a long blog post like this one is becoming i would have to have a bluetooth keyboard.

My tmobile internet connection is very slow on my cellphone, but being able to stop by any mcdonalds or burger king for quick internet access kind of alleviates that concern.   Granted wifi coverage isn’t ubiquitous but it’s common enough that I think I would be fine.

I’m probably going to decide tonight to get one.   Working through this post has helped alot.   I think I started with the fact that this would replace my palm TX, and going through that thought process I don’t think it would.   I think it will however handle the fact if I’m gone for a week or two away from a computer (though I can fathom two weeks away from a regular computer) that I could be just fine in a solely mobile solution without a laptop.    Using the host mode hack on the N810 coupled with the card reader program on the Palm TX means I’ll be able to utilize the Palm TX as a removable storage space on the N810 if I need it with normal SD cards instead of needing a thumb drive that would drain the N810′s power quicker.    This would allow me to throw another 8 GB and make the card switch out very easy for me.

I’ll keep everyone updated on what I decide.

Earlier I had written that Google really needs to integrate it’s reporting services across the board.  Now I still hope that do unyfi their reporting experience, but it seems Feedburner is going to eb the first to get sucked into the already fractured reporting structure that exists for Google‘s many services.

Earlier today on April 25 Feedburner posted that they were finally going to integrate their service with the standard google account logins.  This means the same account I login into Gmail, Adsense, etc, and etc. will work with Feedburner.   Using this unification I’m hoping that we’ll be able ot finally embed Adsense into out RSS feeds.   I’m also hoping that the reporting (hint hint Google) can be blended in with Web Analytics.

Whether the reporting structure is going to be absorbed or if this will stay a single login structure for the foreseeable future has yet to be seen.   I have hopes though.

One thing I’ve been working on for awhile is and Internet Deadman’s Switch.  With all of my crossposting and media re-usage activities in the grand scheme this should be fairly trivial.   I am sure however that some things will slip me up.   We’ll start in this section of identifying the goals I wish to acomplish and work through some of the stages in part two.

What do I mean by Deadman’s Switch?

A deadman’s switch is something that is triggered normally to keep you alive.   A quick example is the pressure plate on a riding lawn mower.   The pressure plate must have weight on it or the lawn more will not start and if the weight is removed the lawn mower will shut off.  So essentially one action cause another action to occur when certain variables are met.   My trigger would be my death.  If I didn’t verify if I was alive after a certain period of time to a program/website/etc.  the a serious of scripts and actions would trigger leaving behind all the information I wish to impart on those behind me.

Why do I want a Deadman’s Switch?

This idea started in my head about 7-8 years.   There used to be a website that had you check in once a month and if you didn’t log in it will send off emails to the ones you care about (or the ones you don’t).   This gives you the final word and allows you to send of those things that might be important.   I can leave my wife information about all my accounts and password, any relevant information that she may need and won’t be able to gather up, parting words to friends and families.   I would also thanks to my current setup be able to post to all my social networks and make an announcement of my death.   This I find intriguing and I’ll at least go through all the steps of implementing this (whether I actually use it and maintain it will remain to be seen).

What would I send?

I’ve broken down what I would want to send into four sections:

• My wife – I can deliver my final message, copies of important documents, access to all of my accounts and any other relevant information she needs
• My family – I would send each family member a personal message from the beyond – I also would send them a follow up to do with my wife in case something happened to her at the same time, that way there would still be someone i could trust that would have access to the information they may need to clean up my estate.
• Friends – I would send each of my “high level” friends an individual message – if somehow my whole family is taken out in one full attack – I don’t think I’m passing any of my personal information off to them.
• Public Internet at Large – this is broken into a few more sections, but essentially I’ll be leaving a video, audio postings, status updates to my social networks (“I’m dead thanks for all the fish”)), and a few final blog postings.

The trick to all of this is of course is reliant on a few things.   The first and foremost being that I can send email after I’m dead.   It also can not be reliant on my home PC (if a housefire hits or a tornado takes me out I don’t want my home to be the weakest link).   Finally whatever script I use must be able to pull from an FTP site (for the audio and video).    Once those can be accompished I’m fairly sure I can get everything else done.

When would I send it?

This is the other conundrum isn’t it?  How do you net tell everyone you have passed on while you are still alive (that could be embarrassing).    You need to pick a time period that seems suitable to you (every 12 hours is not suitable).  I’m thinking either every two weeks or every month I would have to login and verify that yes I am still alive and kicking.  The only problem this would really cause is if I’m kidnapped or held hostage.   The chances of those being so minimal that it is unlikely so I won’t really take those into account.   So to be safe I’ll set it for somewhere between 14 and 31 days.

Another thing I would like to do is configure it to be staggered.  That way I’ll be able to send a message to my wife warning her about the upcoming announcement of what is going to occur before it actually does.  Then to family, then to friends, and finally to the Internet as a whole.   This would keep it from being one big whirlwind hitting everyone at once like a ton of bricks.   I don’t want someone completely freaked out when they see a new youtube movie of my me uploaded.    So a staggered release would be the best scenario (if it’s possible).

How am I going to do this?

You’ll just have to wait for part 2.

Ping.fm allows me to sync my status from the following services:

• Bebo
• Blogger
• Facebook
• Hi5
• Jaiku
• Linkedin
• Myspace
• Pownce
• Tumblr
• Twitter

Keeping all the statuses in sync across all my services is a life saver.   If you would like to sign up use the beta code “pingfriends” and get in on the beta action.

Lately I’ve been playing with utterz, it’s kind of hard to explain but think of it as the gateway to blog from your cell phone.  It’s a short term blip based podcast – call in and leave a message and it can post the audio to your blog.   Send Utterz a picture, it will send it to your blog or service.   Send it a video and utterz will post it on your blog and youtube.

The coolest thing about Utterz is they keep adding connections, thereby making you more likely to use their service as your gateway for interacting with the online world.   It also seems to have a vox-like community that really intereacts with each other instead of some other web services.   The great thing that prompted this post however was not about the great community, it’s about crossposting.

Here are the innate services that Utterz will crosspost to:

Blogger

Livejournal

Tumblr

Pownce

Flickr

Yahoo Groups

Typepad

Twitter

WordPress

Movable Type

Twitxer

Drupal

Live Spaces

YouTube

Blip.tv

and MetaWeblog API compatible sites

(if I missed one I’m sorry Utterz)

Going to one places allows you to hit up everyone else,  I would almost wish to use Utterz as a distribution point instead of a web service, but I already have most of those covered (hey wordpress plugin writers, compose a pownce crosspost plugin).   I’m not sure how often I’ll use it, but it’s a nice option to literally just call in a blog post.   So with this I’ll use it for what it is.  I’ll let my wordpress handle most of the data dissemination across the blogosphere.

But this brings up the question, what am I crossposting to from Utterz?

Well the obvious is that is posts from Utterz to my main blog, the other settings I configured more mood.   All videos I post will go to my blip.tv profile and youtube accounts.  Pictures will go to my twitxer account and flickr accounts to be publically displayed.  Any additional messages will also cross post over to my pownce account (this will go away once I have a way to post to pownce from wordpress).

The only thing I’m unsure of  at this point is archiving my utterz – utterz uses a flash player to play the locally stored audio file.   WIth video files I do have a recourse of pulling them off of another service or using the source file for life caching purposes.   This is really the only bummer about the whole thing.

The awesome thing is when I call up utterz to post an audio clip now, my voice is now spread across about 15 sites at once.   That is true internet broadcasting of yourself.

If you head over to Utterz make sure you add me as a friend, here is a link to my profile.

Google is all about consolidation of data, there whole mantra is behind it.  They have released oodles and oodles of services that I utilize (yes I’m a google whore – there I said it), but only minimal correlation between the tools other then a common login.   Many of their tools generate reports or data that could be transformed into reports.  Some of their services it’s almost brain dead that they haven’t integrated the services.   Let’s go through the services and how I would design “Google Reports”.

The most obvious Google “products” I would lump together would be Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Adsense, and Google Adwords.  All four of these products are usually used together – so why can’t we get reporting for all three on one page?  All of these products can give a webmaster an overview on where his site(s) are going and what he can work on.   There is absolutely no reason to go through four different interfaces to get this information.   Yes I can set up email reports from some of them – but a singlular report and page to view them at a quick glance would be great.   If I click on something to drill down on it could then take me to to the specific related products page.  While we are the subject of Google Analytics – a listing of recent page views ala the way statcounter does it would be great.   To be honest that’s the only reason I still use my statcounter account.

Those were the four products that prompted me thinking about this in total from the beginning.   Now let’s move on to the other products, video for example.   Google Video and Youtube both fit different niches in the google video structure.   Youtube allows you to upload video more quickly but has time and size limits, Google Video however allows downloads and unlimited sized and no time limits when you use their external (non browser based) uploader.  Now Google Video’s reporting very frequently fails to work – loosing view and download counts so this needs to be addressed.   But a report that would include subscribers, views, and downloads would be fantastic.

Feedburner should be tied into analytics also for the amount of information it gives you and stats, while I’m on a mini rant here when are we going to be able to inject adsense into our feedburner items?

Now let’s break into the quickies:

Google Base – ok I still don’t understand this product so I have no idea.

Blogger and Page Creator would tie in easily with Analytics – so there is no reason not to make this automated.

Browser Sync – The number of synchronizations and all machine that you ahve synchronized against.

Calender – Ok trickier but the number of appointments from a given day/month/week

Docs – Number of edits, number of documents, space they take up, and how many of your colloboration documents have had edits.

Gmail – Number of emails received, sent, spam caught, most frequent contacts, amount of free disk space.

Groups – could tie into Analytics if your the group owner but beyond that – number of members and messages – how many new messages if your just a reader.

Igoogle – um no clues

Reader – number of stories read

Picasaweb – how many times each photo was viewed, who has linked to it, and any subscribers

Finally webhistory – the amount of searches performed, and a concise list of sites embedded in the reports.

I would want to see report being able to be generated automatically on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis.   The ability to customize reports by date or time period would also be great.   The ability to atomically email them to you at a preset time would be fantastic.

The last feature I would add is an open API so we could plugin new reports and send them to google to collect and have other programs able to fetch and manipulate the data on a client side.  I know I’m asking pie in the sky at this point.

Google literally has all this data on us and more.  They are preaching data portability and openness so why don’t they consolidate and show us more of the data they are holding.  I’m not asking for all of the secret sauce just what’s relevant to me.  Combing the original few things before I went into quickie mode though would be utterly fantastic and an excellent starting place.

Original From Journey To Get Paid: Google’s Next Service Should Be – Google Reporting.

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Posted By Creeva Murkado to Journey To Get Paid at 4/11/2008 12:19:00 PM

Yesterday on my main blog I wrote a quip on my battle for the search term “creeva” in google and how many hits it brings back.  It flucuates up and down and was more of a joke then anything.   However I started thinking about it a little more deeply last night.

I’m a huge crossposter, I don’t deny it.  My friends can track me down and find me whereever.   I manage to get new readers by utilizing diffferent sources to store my data.   When I wrote a blog post on my main blog, it gets copied or notification goes to many other sites.   The path it takes is that I write an article when I click publish it sends out the article to my myspace, my live spaces account, my vox account, my tumblr account, my suprglu account, my facebook news, my old blogger page, my xanga account, my livejournal page, my multiply account, and a google group for back up (that one is private though).   On top of that livejournal also sends it on it’s way over to my dandelife account.  I’m also copying things over to www.creeva.net which is my by beta testing blog.

If I listen to a song that get’s scrobbled to my last.fm account, upload a picture to my flickr account, digg a story, favorite a video, share an RSS news item, write an article on a blog other then my main (like this article) or mark something down in all consuming; these all get pulled into my main blog, which at that point goes through the data dissemination process all over again.

This is data portability at it’s finast (at least for the content side of the equation) and I work it well.   Some people prefer to go to a single location and that’s fine, that is what I have a main blog for.   Get everything from everywhere all in one location.   Google loves the idea of everything in one place, it’s their whole mantra.   However you will get penalized in Google for having duplicate content.   So my google score will drop theoretically the more places I cross post to that it indexes.

So by disseminating my content to everywhere in the world Google will penalize me in it’s search ratings.   It seems my main blog still gets the most traffic and it’s hits don’t suffer.   So all and all I don’t truly mind.   However I’m sure that sometimes I do suffer when my vox account for example rises to the top instead of my main account.

How can Google truly and actively support data portability when it’s anti ethical to it’s search rankings?  I can understand that it’s an attempt to fight spammers and such, but we all end up hitting pure spam BS blogs all the time.  The crap floats and rises to the top while the rest of things drown in the data deluge.   I don’t think that google necessarily needs to adjust it’s algorithm but in the coming months or years it will need to take it into account.

Original From: Does Data Portability Hurt You in Google?

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Posted By Creeva Murkado to Journey To Get Paid at 4/10/2008 06:29:00 AM

Kiosk System Management Strategy

There are multiple issues involved with managing a “kiosk system”.   We have to look at the problems we will face whether they are considered to be internal or external.  From a security and management scope of this document we are going to assume they are located on the company guest network.  If the machines are located within the internal network the current maintenance procedures will apply.

While this is still in the design period the final abilities of both the kiosk system and the where it falls have not been decided upon.   Until another strategy is decided upon we are going to assume that these systems will be a member of the domain.

Hotfixing and Patching: Within the internal network we currently use a mixture of WSUS, SMS, and Antivirus servers to keep computers up to date.   Something similar would have to be replicated either on the guest or DMZ network.   If it is located on the DMZ network controls would have to be in place that the communication is pushed to the client for updates instead of the client pulling the information.  If the information absolutely must be pulled, this will be addressed in the section below titled “Securing Connections”.

Break/Fix Issues: Next to the computer there will have to be a phone located so users can report any issues that a kiosk should have.   Upon receiving the call and logging it, normal break/fix procedures would apply.

Remote Desktop: Going from the DMZ to the guest network we should be able to RDP into the kiosk unit.

Remote Monitoring: For the best security standpoint all of these units should include full auditing.   The audit trail could be maintained locally with a remote server from the DMZ pulling in the logs via either a script or an off the shelf utility designed for pulling log files off of the machine.

Utilization Report: Similar to the Audit log we can get a utility that monitors the utilization with these units and pull them into the internal network.  This can be done after tracking down a third party program that allows for utilization monitoring or by parsing the audit log and turning that into a utilization report.

Seat Type: A new seat type would have to be established to accommodate the additional costs incurred from the environment set up and maintenance of these units including but not limited the additional costs possibly incurred by having a phone nearby to inform the help desk of any issues.

Security Plan: A new security plan would have to be established since there will configuration settings that do not fit into the current security plans that the company has established.  While these will fall under a site security plan, none of our existing would not be able to fit these systems under their configuration options.

Privacy Controls: Depending on the kiosk solution we go with – whether it be a login based solution where they have a full application suite or a web kiosk something must be done to maintain user privacy.   After an inactivity time (amount to be specified later) which would either clear the process from memory or log the user out of the kiosk completely depending on which kiosk method we are using in a couple methods. One would be an off the shelf software product to this, at this point I would assume we would use all of their privacy and utilization reports. Another option would be to setup a script to kill the process or automatically log out the user and utilize the screensaver in the kiosk to run this functionality and monitor idle time.

Securing Connections: If the machines must pull information from the machines in the DMZ, then the best method would be to utilize IPSEC.  This would limit the amount of ports needed and allow us to lockdown communication to only the specific server that the kiosk would need to talk to.

Kiosk Options

When discussing kiosk system we need to discuss the scope, security issues, and functionality requirements that we must maintain to achieve a successful deployment.   There are many types of kiosk systems that we can implement within the Company network.   The solutions we are going to describe in this document are based on product literature that we have received after scope is finalized actual product testing will be done so we can verify that all the features work as described and will function within the deployed environment.

For the sake of categorization the following options were identified as possible for use within a kiosk environment.   This list is not meant to be all encompassing but rather a list of desired features that we feel can be accomplished from the products we are looking at.

·    Internal Websites – company Designated
·    External Websites – Completely open from a kiosk standpoint
·    SSL VPN – For access to the internal network
·    Citrix – for terminal server capabilities
·    Printing – locally attached print
·    Sound – for hearing active embedded media
·    USB Mounting – for USB memory sticks
·    Run Apps Locally (Read Only) – from either the memory stick or kiosk directly
·    Run Apps Locally (Read / Write) – from either the memory stick or kiosk directly
·    Write to USB Memory Stick – from kiosk
·    Access to User Documents
·    No Login – completely is designed to start being used without login
·    Boiler Plate Website – standard start page
·    Full application list
·    Internal – Authentication
·    External – No Authentication
·    Browser Plug-ins – for enhanced compatibility
·    Restricted To Certain Web Sites – Company Designated

Kiosk mode systems come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and functions.   To help narrow the design gap for our needs we have devised eight categories in which we can work around design structures for:

·    Full web only access kiosk on the company guest network
·    Limited web access on the company guest network with a locked down browser
·    Full web only access kiosk on the internal network
·    Limited web access on the internal network with a locked down browser
·    Limited seat with security controls on the company guest network
·    Limited seat with security controls on the internal network
·    Full seat with security controls on the company guest network
·    Full seat open use office solution – internal network
·    Full seat with security Controls open use office on the internal network

Each solution has its own benefits and concerns for deployment.  We will be going over these one by one to analyze and work with company to implement the correct and desired solution.  The analysis will include which functions identified above can be implemented, target placement, target users, benefits and disadvantages of each solutions, and possible security concerns.

Full web only access kiosk on the company guest network:

Description: This would be a fully open web kiosk with an address bar located at the top with the web browser being the only application available to the end user.  All functions must be done within the browser.

Possible targeted functions:

·    Internal Websites – via SSL VPN
·    External Websites –
·    SSL VPN
·    Citrix – via SSL VPN
·    Printing – locally attached print
·    Sound – for hearing active embedded media
·    Access to My Docs – Via SSL VPN
·    No Login – completely is designed to start being used without login
·    Boiler Plate Website – standard start page
·    External – No Authentication
·    Browser Plug-ins – for enhanced compatibility

Target placement:

·    Public areas where guests are most likely

Target users:

·    Visitors
·    Visiting Contractors
·    Local Contractors
·    Company Employees

Benefits:

·    Allows users access to information at placement points
·    User will not have access to the local computer beyond the web browser

Disadvantages:

·    All functions must be performed must be performed within a browser
·    Won’t be able to perform other application tasks

Security concerns:

·    If a user leaves an authenticated session up there will be a time delay before the profile resets, risking possible exposure of private data or company data if the SSL VPN was used.
·    Unsigned Active-X controls could cause issues and it would be recommended denying unsigned Active-X controls.

Limited web access on the company guest network with a locked down browser:

Description: This solution can be configured with or without an address bar allowing the option to restrict this to certain web sites.   Active X would be disabled.

Possible targeted functions:

·    External Websites
·    Printing
·    Sound
·    No Login
·    Boiler Plate Website External – No Authentication
·    Restricted To Certain Web Sites

Target placement:

·    Public areas where guests are most likely

Target users:

·    Visitors
·    Visiting Contractors
·    Local Contractors
·    Company Employees

Benefits:

·    Tighter Security Controls
·    Limited Risk Exposure
·    Option of controlling where the users can go via the browser

Disadvantages:

·    SSL VPN will not work if active-x controls are disabled
·    All functions must be performed must be performed within a browser
·    Won’t be able to perform other application tasks
·    With no SSL-VPN – no access to internal company data

Security concerns:

·    If a user leaves an authenticated session up there will be a time delay before the profile resets, risking possible exposure of private data.

Full web only access kiosk on the internal network:

Description: While not recommended this is being offered as an option for choice.  It has the same features as the Full web only access kiosk on the company guest network, but would require user authentication due to the network access it has.

Possible targeted functions:

·    Internal Websites
·    External Websites
·    Citrix
·    Printing
·    Sound
·    Access to My Docs
·    Boiler Plate Website
·    Internal
·    Browser Plug-ins

Target placement:

·    Public sites within company buildings that are not commonly visited by the large amounts of visitors at once.  This would be to limit the amount of time that authenticated data is available if a user walks away from the kiosk.
·    Would not be recommended at location that the general public has access to

Target users:

·    Local Contractors
·    Company Employees

Benefits:

·    Company employees would be able to access their Webmail from anywhere these are placed
·    Company employees would be able to access a terminal server session from anywhere these are placed

Disadvantages:

·    All functions must be performed must be performed within a browser
·    Won’t be able to perform other application tasks

Security concerns:

·    Possible information leakage due to open Webmail or terminal server session.
·    Unsigned Active-X controls could cause issues and it would be recommended denying unsigned Active-X controls.

Limited web access on the internal network with a locked down browser:

Description: While not recommended this is being offered as an option for choice.  It has the same features as the limited access kiosk on the company guest network, but would require user authentication due to the network access it has.

Possible targeted functions:

·    External Websites
·    Printing
·    Sound
·    No Login
·    Boiler Plate Website External – No Authentication
·    Restricted To Certain Web Sites

Target placement:

·    Public sites within company buildings that are not commonly visited by the large amounts of visitors at once.  This would be to limit the amount of time that authenticated data is available if a user walks away from the kiosk.
·    Would not be recommended at location that the general public has access to

Target users:

·    Local Contractors
·    Company Employees

Benefits:

·    Company employees would be able to access their Webmail from anywhere these are placed
·    Company employees would be able to access a terminal server session from anywhere these are placed
·    Tighter Security Controls
·    Limited Risk Exposure
·    Option of controlling where the users can go via the browser

Disadvantages:

·    All functions must be performed must be performed within a browser
·    Won’t be able to perform other application tasks
·    Some sites won’t work due to Active-X being disabled

Security concerns:

·    Possible information leakage due to open Webmail or terminal server session.

Limited seat with security controls on the company guest network:

Description: This would be a scenario where we would have an open standard windows desktop for the user to access.  It would allow only certain applications to run but will give the user access to a portable memory stick for use.

Possible targeted functions:

·    Internal Websites – via SSL VPN
·    External Websites
·    SSL VPN
·    Citrix – via SSL VPN
·    Printing
·    Sound
·    Access to My Docs – Via SSL VPN
·    No Login
·    Boiler Plate Website
·    External
·    Browser Plug-ins
·    USB Mounting
·    Write to USB Memory Stick
·    No Login
·    Boiler Plate Website
·    Browser Plug-ins
·    Restricted To Certain Web Sites – company Designated

Target placement:

·    Public open use office space

Target users:

·    Visiting Contractors
·    Local Contractors
·    Company Employees

Benefits:

·    Allows users access to information at placement points
·    Access to certain designated applications
·    Controlled environment

Disadvantages:

·    Won’t be able to perform non designated application tasks

Security concerns:

·    Possible information leakage due to open Webmail or SSL VPN session.
·    Unsigned Active-X controls could cause issues and it would be recommended denying unsigned Active-X controls.
·    Possible application vulnerabilities could compromise the unit

Limited seat with security controls on the internal network:

Description: Same as the limited seat on the company guest network but designed for internal GRC employees.   Smart card access would be recommended and roaming profiles blocked.

Possible targeted functions:

·    Internal Websites
·    External Websites
·    Citrix
·    Printing
·    Sound
·    Access to My Docs
·    Boiler Plate Website
·    Browser Plug-ins
·    USB Mounting
·    Write to USB Memory Stick
·    Boiler Plate Website
·    Internal – Authentication
·    Browser Plug-ins
·    Restricted To Certain Web Sites – company Designated

Target placement:

·    Public open use office space

Target users:

·    Local Contractors
·    Company Employees

Benefits:

·    Allows users access to information at placement points
·    Access to certain designated applications
·    Controlled environment

Disadvantages:

·    Won’t be able to perform non designated application tasks
·    Large threat to data being exposed

Security concerns:

·    Unsigned Active-X controls could cause issues and it would be recommended denying unsigned Active-X controls.
·    Possible information leakage due to be on the open internal network
·    Large data exposure footprint
·    Possible application vulnerabilities could compromise the unit

Full seat with security controls on the company guest network:

Description: This option would give users to the same standard applications as their normal desktop.   The hard drive would not be written to for data storage.  Roaming profiles would be blocked.  These seat would also have full security controls applied to it.

Possible targeted functions:

·    Internal Websites
·    External Websites
·    SSL VPN
·    Citrix
·    Printing
·    Sound
·    USB Mounting
·    Run Apps Locally (Read Only)
·    Run Apps Locally (Read / Write)
·    Write to USB Memory Stick
·    Access to My Docs
·    No Login – completely is designed to start being used without login
·    Boiler Plate Website
·    Full Application Suite
·    External – No Authentication
·    Browser Plug-ins
·    Restricted To Certain Web Sites – company Designated

Target placement:

·    Public open use office space

Target users:

·    Local Contractors
·    company Employees

Benefits:

·    Users are able to function as they would at their desks
·    Allows users access to information at placement points

Disadvantages:

·    No login requirements
·    Possible data exposure

Security concerns:

·    Unsigned Active-X controls could cause issues and it would be recommended denying unsigned Active-X controls.
·    Possible information leakage due to open Webmail or SSL VPN session.

Full seat open use office solution on the internal network:

Description: Standard full seat for user to use on the internal network located at open access points for any user to access.  Security settinga would be applied and user profile data removed upon log out.   It is recommended to require smart card access to these units.

Possible targeted functions:

·    Internal Websites
·    External Websites
·    Citrix
·    Printing
·    Sound
·    USB Mounting
·    Run Apps Locally (Read Only)
·    Run Apps Locally (Read / Write)
·    Write to USB Memory Stick
·    Access to My Docs
·    Boiler Plate Website
·    Full Application Suite
·    Internal Authentication
·    Browser Plug-ins

Target placement:

·    Public open use office space

Target users:

·    Local Contractors
·    Company Employees

Benefits:

·    Users are able to function as they would at their desks
·    Allows users access to information at placement points

Disadvantages:

·    Requires smart card
·    No access to local profiles

Security concerns:

·    Possible information leakage due to open sessions.

I’ve written a few articles on life caching.  For those that need to catch up check out this article. For those that don’t need the refresher course, let’s dig in.

What is coComment?

I’ll let them speak for themselves:

coComment keeps track of all the online conversations you’re following in one convenient place, and informs you whenever something is added to a conversation.

coComment will centralize all your conversations in one convenient place so you won’t lose any more contributions you have made on other websites. Stop bookmarking your comments to keep track of them, we will do that for you!

• We will inform you when somebody follows up on your comments, turning the web into a true and reactive global conversation. No need to go back and check on every comment you’ve made to see if the conversation has developed. We’ll let you know!
• Interested in following what people are commenting on? If they’re coComment users, (like heavyweight tech bloggers Pete Cashmore or Robert Scoble), you can follow what they’re saying in the “commentosphere” by checking their comments on their respective pages!
• Keep your conversations organized using tags so you find and follow them more efficiently.

Now why is this useful to you? 

Do you ever post on a blog and say something that comes out so  well written that you wished you saved it?  Do you want to keep track of all the online discussions you participate in?   Do you want to have a copy of all that data you post that Google is going to cache away on their servers? If you said yes to any of the above statements, for the low cost of 19.95 a month….er sorry mindset of what I was saying.  If you said yes then coComment can help you on your journey to maintaining this.

CoComment works as a browser plugin.   Currently I have tested it with Firefox 2.x-3.x and Flock.  Tranparently in the background it looks at the type of web site you are looking at, if you try to make a comment it sends a copy to the coComment servers.   The supported forums/blogs/etc that it supports are:

You participate in many online conversations on blogs and others websites. coComment supports most existing conversational spaces and additionnally lets you start conversations on any webpage:

On blogs and community websites:

• coComment helps you managing existing conversations
• coComment works all major blogging platforms, on services like Digg, Flickr or Youtube and some Forums.
• coComment automatically collects your participations, add conversations to your account, and let you organize them with tags directly from the current page

On conventional websites:

• coComment let you initiate new conversations
• In a single click, every website has now a commenting section
• Being on CNN.com or any other website, feel free to discuss the information.

OK that’s cool it’s another social network based around comments, but what does this have to do with life caching?

The key feature that this does is that it gives you an RSS feed output of all of your comments.   If you are doing a simple life stream application or a full blown life caching that involves archiving all of your data, this allows you the input to save it.   Until EVERYTHING suppors a data portability initiative this is just one more tool to get you closer.

If you decide to try out it, go ahead and add Creeva to your friends list.

The company putting on this seminar is Carahsoft. The presenter is Monica Girolami Senior Product Marketing Manager from Symantec.

When I dialed in I was the 26th caller – so take that for whatever level of review that you want.

The speaker started only 3 minutes late.

Valued of Backup Exec 11d Agents and Options:

Agenda:
Windows Recovery Challenge
Backup Exec 11d for windows servers
Current Upgrade promotions
Questions and Answers

This is about keeping your data secure and available against malicious threats, infrastructure failures, natural disasters, and etc.

It’s about your ability for recovery not about backup *I feel I’m’ getting brainwashed

More press notes self promoting

Advantages:
Continuous Protection for exchange
Recover Critical Data in seconds
Enhanced Data Security – Encryption – 128/256 AES encryption
New Platform Support (x64 bit) -
and more….. * did they really need to add this?????

Exchange Backup old way – daily (weekly full backup) daily second backup of the mailboxes – so it’s taking twice the time. With 11d eliminates the mailbox backups – still having the ability to recover individual emails or accounts. They do this through granular recovery technology. With the continuous data protection you can continuously protect and granularly recover the data. * Roll eyes

Granular recovery requires you to have a backup up to disc – full backup would go to tape or disc.

current method of backup – sample customer – 7 hour exchange database job – mailbox backup – 23 hours – total of 30 hours. With 11d it took a total of 3 hour for everything – moving the database to tape it took a total of 5 hours. 80% reduction of time with up to the minute restoration available.

Continuous protection is now available for exchange – previously it was available for file servers. You can setup the recovery points – you can set this up down to every 15 minutes – default is 8 hours. So you could recover your system up to the last time point (down to 15 minutes ago). You can do recovery to this.

This product seems to be missing the new standard Symantec Web Interface

Active Directory Agent:

Recovery individual users, attributes, computers without reboots. Much easier then the MS method – just run a full backup job – from there you can recover the individual objects from that.
Recovers Share point databases and documents with the GRT previously mentioned

MS SQL now has continuous protection also – the agent can backup locally instead of over the network for the best continuous backup in the fastest method. 11d secures the restore selection to make sure the recovery job runs successfully.

Central Admin Server Option (CASO)- Simple Three Tier Management:

You can protect your entire environment from one location – the central admin server allows you to manage your protected servers, computers, and media servers from one location. This includes defining and distributing backup jobs, monitoring and reporting on job activity. This option was first introduced in Backup Exec 10.0

Does not require persistent architecture for remote offices
Distributed catalog architecture
simple monitoring of remote managed media server jobs

Desktop and Laptop Option – Protecting Critical work stations

5 free license with BE 11d
Continuous Protection
DLO (desktop laptop option)is ideal for a mobile work force
synchronization of users work stations
end user file retrieval
easy to manage and deploy
Licenses are available in 10 packs

Backup exec system recovery options – Do you have a disaster recovery strategy?

Formally livestate recovery – the old system recovery method was manual and was long and tedious – repair – reinstall OS – reinstall drivers – reinstall apps – re configure settings – apply journal changes – test – go live. With new method select recovery point and it can recover the entire system – only taking minutes and is more reliable with the disk based backup. Disimilar hardware recovery in minutes – enhanced P2V/V2P virtual conversion capabilities – streamlined lower priced offering of Backup Exec System Recovery 7.0.

More press quotes

Dissimilar system recovery – allows you to recover to different hardware configuration with the same data – it can even restore to a virtual machine. Backup Exec for Windows Server System Recovery Option – lower cost then the full solution – it’s a stand alone unintegrated solution – which you could run backup exec 11d on mission critical servers that would allow you to recover in just a few minutes.

Extended platform support
X64 windows media server support
Vista Support
Centralized management
NDMP support
Oracle
Linux/UNIX
DB2
Mac OSX – PPC/Intel

Free 60 day trial from www.backupexec.com
* there are even forums there WOWWEE /sarcasm off

For Exchange 2007 and Vista you need the latest Backup Exec 11d patches.

Questions and Answers:

Symantec: Please type your questions for the speaker into this chat pod.

Guest: can we ask tech questions?

Symantec: Liza, you are welcome to ask any questions. We’ll do our best to answer them. If we can’t answer them, we’ll make sure to follow up with you off line.

Guest: my back up wld not restore even if I applied sp5

Guest: with the new version does it come with tech support?

Guest: VMWARE consolidated backup support on 11d

Guest: Does the Sharepoint Agent give posting item level recovery?

Symantec: BE11d includes support if u purchased it w/ support

Guest: Running BE 11d and had need for Exchange restore of databases. I had been running D2D2T and the restore could not be done with tape. We were able to restore from disk. Could you provide best practice set up D2D2T with Exchange agent?

Guest: compare cps with cdp for exchangebackup

guest: We have had some serious issues with Lotus Notes 7.0.2 mail client and the Backup Exec remote agent, has anyone else had issues with this? The agent prevents Lotus from opening.

Guest: will cps on exchange replace brcik level backup

Rod Sellers: cps itself is very nice

Guest: We always have files being skipped in the back log in ver. 9.1. How do we prevent that? Thanks

Guest: I’m running 11d remote agents to backup my NEtware servers. I use Pre/Post options – but the Post doesn’t run. Are there any known issues around this?

Symantec: Recommend reading Exchange Best Practices wp on www.backupexec.com/save

Guest: HI, we have 400/800G tapes for our backup. Weekly we have a full backup. It is about 399G. What is the best praktice to do a full backup and do not need to use a secound tape? (incremental Backup?)

Guest: Thanks

Guest: Backup Exec 11d has been release since 11/06. How come there have been no live updates for this program?

Guest: On the topic of encryption, can Backup Exec backup laptops protected with PGP Whole Disk Encryption?

Guest: Why do they not have updated native support for NetWare and GroupWise? Not everyone runs Exchange

Symantec: Apologies everyone, slight technical problems.

Guest: On the subject of Lotus Domino, we are also having problems using the Domino option. It skips too many files.

Guest: We are using tapes. we want to convert to disk and do a virtual bkup

Symantec: Backup Exec 11d launched in Nov06 and build 11d.7170 launched March07 with support for MS Exchange 2007, MS Vista, EMC Celerra devices etc

Guest: we need to talk to u abt the conversion

Guest: is this all about MS?

Guest: AD meaning backing up individual users’ files in pcs?

guest: We have also had issues with 11d and the backup jobs not completing/failing when not being able to connect to machines assigned in the backup job. The Symantec techs also said there is a limit to the amount of machines you can have in one job, what is the limit?

Guest: We are currently using 10D, and would like to upgrade to 11D, however we are still running Exchange 5.5, with a plan to upgrade Exchange to 2003 this year.. Its my understanding that 11D does NOT support less than Exchange 2000. Am I correct here?

Guest: We have been getting weekly updates by liveupdate including SP1. Automatic doesn’t seem to work though. Try from the tools menu.

Guest: How will the desktop & laptop options work with Windows Vista? Windows Vista already has a built in snapshot for machines?

Guest: Is the automatic feature being looked at as to why is doesn’t work? Is that a feature they may take out in the next verison?

Guest: Is System Recovery like System Restore in Windows?

Guest: When is the next verison coming out?

Guest: scott, I’m just another customer. I have other priorities at my site. I just assumed it was because we were using central admin console. I do all the servers manually.

Guest: is this the IDR?

Guest: We have just upgraded to 11d. I am getting the following error message on the sever Backup Exec is running on. Backup- THC1 V-79-57344-3844 – The media server was unable to connect to the Remote Agent on machine THC1. The media server will use the local agent to try to complete the operation.Remote Agent not detected on \\THC1. The folder it is trying to backup is the Utility Partition. The rest of the server backup up fine without asking for the remote agent.

Guest: is this included in 11d?

Symantec: To get current 11d updates go to: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/289968.htm

Guest: Does Symantec have an Archiving solution that works w/ Backup Exec? We have about 1 TB of data that needs to be archived off in a near line device that can be accessed when necessary.

Symantec: Yes, BE11d for Exchage w/ CPS eliminates Brick Level Backup

Symantec: Ceballos – Enterprise Vault http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/products/overview.jsp?pcid=2244&pvid=322_1

Guest: Is the Advanced File Open option free with 11D?

Guest: migration from 9.1 to 11d is free?

Guest: I need help in migration after the 11d comes.

Guest: Is the Advanced Open File option free with 11d?

Symantec: Frandin – Yes BE11d only supports Exchange 2K, 2K3, 2k7

Guest: how to get the ppt presentation

Guest: ok ty!

Guest: give an over view os sss

Symantec: MClark – AOFO is a purchased addonn

Guest: Is it per server?

Guest: I understand that I need a VIP Update for 11.0. Where can I get this?

Guest: please review share storage option

Symantec: live update http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/289968.htm

Guest: Could you do an overview on the Backup to Disk to Tape technologies?

Guest: Do you have a whitepaper that compares your product to others? Specifically we are using Syncsort and I want to convert but will have to do justification and any help would be appreciated.

Symantec: Agents /Options: http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/products/agents_options.jsp?pcid=2244&pvid=57_1
Symantec: Nick, today’s webcast is being recorded. A link to this recording will be available shortly on http://www.carahsoft.com/events/index.php. It will also be sent to you in a follow-up email.

Guest: how can we tell if we are current on maintenance?

Guest: can you give us teh link to the upgrade

Symantec: www.backupexec.com/save

Guest: 9.1 version support has expired. I just ordered 11d does this mean I have to order support separately?

Symantec: You can order 11d with or without support

Guest: if we have IDR in 10d, does it get upgraded to live state?

Guest: vmware review

Guest: Does BackUp Exec cover laptops encrypted with PGP Whole Disk Encryption?

Guest: presentation ppt file

Symantec: http://www.carahsoft.com/events/index.php

Guest: system recovery has to be ordered separate?

As you can see some questions went unanswered

This seminar used Adobe Acrobat Connect – this is the first time I’ve run across this remote seminar solution. I’m not too impressed with the look and feel being a spectator – maybe it is more powerful on the moderator side. Though it did have that new web 2.0 technology where you enter in your phone number and it calls you – so it has that going for it.