Small Business Tech

The American Red Cross has been on the scene through out Florida's flood zones this week. As of Friday they have sheltered 2000 people and fed 15,000 victims of Tropical Storm Fay. I am sure that they will not be done as flooding will continue along Florida waterways for weeks.

Help them out with a donation if you can. I have worked with the Red Cross in the past, and I know that their services are needed and valuable to those stricken to a wide-variety of disasters.

Labels: American Red Cross

In response to my post about Bucket Explorer, an anonymous reader left this comment...

SMEStorage.com offer a front end rich Web Interface to Amazon S3 also, as well as Iphone, Mobile, Google and Facebook access - been using it for 3 months now since it launched and its excellent.

I am going to investigate this service, and tell you more soon.

Labels: Amazon, Bucket Explorer, Cloud Computing, Jungle Disk, SMEStorage.com

It appears that the hurricane season really gets started tomorrow in Florida with the arrival of TS/Hurricane Fay. It is just like Summer begins on June 21st, but it really begins when you make your first trip to the beach. This storm is requiring everyone to make judgment calls about opening their offices or not. I think that most are dependent upon their location in relationship to the land-fall location and projected patch. The next decision is if you should shut down the computer equipment or leave it running.

Your main consideration is whether or not you will have employees working. Remember that your local employees might just log in remotely and work. It is not like they can go to the beach. You may also have remote employees that will be totally unaffected by the storm. If your server and/or other interconnecting equipment is shutdown, then you have even greater loss than you could already be facing.

The key is a good battery backup and management software. I have long been a fan of the APC UPS products coupled with the included power management software. It can effectively monitor your battery during a power outage and shut down your server in a safe manner. Windows server software on correctly configured hardware will even restart automatically if power is restored.

One thing to remember about your power supply needs. Be sure to have your router and modem as well as other network infrastructure on a UPS. This can be a smaller unit since these devices take very little power. They should run for hours without electrical main power.

If you are in Florida stay safe. It could be a great day to organize the office.

Labels: APC, Small Business Server, UPS

I got the call this past weekend from a computer user that she was hearing voices in addition to a notice from her anti-virus software about malware on her computer. I could tell in the message that she was intrepid about relaying the information about the voices. I must admit I was skeptical, but I went in with my eyes open.

I did find some out-of-place processes including afinding.exe and wserving.exe. I knew these did not look right and began a search via Google. Sure enough. These processes are part of a Trojan-Downloader that will play short snippets of music or speech through the computer speakers. Maybe someone can tell me what the purpose would be for this malware to do this. The only explanation that I could find is that it would make the computer user sound maybe just a bit crazy.

A fairly quick run through with SDFix corrected the problem. The lesson is do not discount any explanation as a clue from your computer users.

Labels: malware, repair, Windows, Windows XP

We have referred to Amazon's S3 storage infrastructure in past reviews of Jungledisk. If you are searching for a more direct method of using Amazon S3 for file storage and retrieval then you should try Bucket Explorer.

Bucket Explorer is exactly what the name implies. The explorer means that you will be able to upload, download, and perform common file operations on an Amazon S3 bucket. The operations are somewhat similar to Windows Explorer except much more powerful and intuitive. By the way, a bucket on S3 is simply a folder. For some reason Amazon decided it was up to them to change the vernacular. They could have just stuck with share or something a bit more universal. Amazon does not have a trademark on the word "Bucket" They could possibly do so though. LOUIS VUITTON of France tried to trademark the word in relation to a purse. The application died on July 30th, 2008.

You can download the software for a free, 30-day trial. After the trial, you will need to purchase a copy for $49.95 per user. This includes versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux. There are not any volume discounts. You will also need an Amazon S3 account of course to utilize the software, because Amazon does charge for the storage based on the amount stored as well as upload and download.

The Bucket Explorer web site does have some great demonstration videos on not only how to use the software, but also how to use S3 as a web site host. They walk you through how to create a URL to your Amazon hosted files, sharing to users, and even how to enable bucket logging so you can count visitors.

Another feature of Bucket Explorer is the ease to setup shared buckets. This would allow you to share files with another S3 user that you choose. Great application for large collaborative projects such as large print files or such. Just remember that the party sets up the shared bucket will also be responsible for any upload, download, or storage fees associated with the bucket. Your friend will also need an Amazon account. You will use their Amazon identity email to share the bucket. This is a lot like having a server share without all of the upfront costs, setup hassles, and electric bill for a constant running server.

Jungledisk now also offers ostensibly what is supposed to be a similar service called Jungledisk Workgroups. I have not tested it, but I hope to do so soon.

Labels: Amazon, Cloud Computing, Jungle Disk

Google has a great tool to find event schedules for the Summer '08 Olympics which get underway this evening in Beijing.

Simply enter the sport and then "olympics"

ie: volleyball Olympics, 100 M Olympics

The schedule will be listed right above the search results.

Labels: Google, Olympics

Microsoft has began renting their application suite - Office. The cost is $70 per year for three computers in your home. You can currently rent a copy at Circuit City who is the current distribution partner for Microsoft. The name is a bit odd - Equipt.

From the Microsoft press release

...latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for their personal and school projects; Windows Live OneCare, the all-in-one security and PC management service; Windows Live tools, such as Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Photo Gallery so they can connect and share with people they care about most; and Office Live Workspace, a new service from Microsoft that makes it easy to save documents to a dedicated online Workspace and share them with friends and classmates. Anytime a new version of Office or Windows Live OneCare is released, Microsoft Equipt customers will get the version upgrades as part of their subscriptions.

If you like to have the latest version of Office around the house for yourself and the kids, this is a good deal. A copy of Office Home and Student 2007 currently costs $129 with Windows Live OneCare costing near $30 per year. Since Microsoft releases a new version of Office every couple of years, then you would be ahead with the rental plan.

Do not get excited if you are a business owner, though. The only version available is Office Home and Student. You could run into trouble with support as a business owner using this version. Also note that this version does not include Outlook - the popular application for reading email.

This is a good deal for those that love Microsoft Office. A person should consider alternatives such as Open Office or even Google Docs or Zoho, though. All of these alternatives are free, and some as capable as Microsoft Office.

Labels: Equipt, Microsoft, Office

Delta Airlines is going to be offering in-fight wifi beginning next year. Engadget has more information.

Labels: airline, Delta, wireless

If you use Google's Gmail or Docs or any other Google service that requires you to sign-in there is some good news from the Google team. You can now monitor where and when your account was accessed, and you can log out remotely.

If you are like me, you use web-based services such as Gmail, Google Docs, and many others at various computers. On many occasions, I have wondered later if I remembered to sign out of the service when I left the host computer.

Worry no more. Along the bottom of some Google services pages such as on Gmail, you will notice in small print the number of minutes logged into the service. There is also a link called "details". Clicking this link will give you a pop-up listing recent activity times and locations by IP address. The page also gives you your current IP address for comparison. The greatest part of this feature is the button that allows you to log out of all other sessions. No more worrying if you forgot to log out.

This is something that other online software services need to go ahead and just copy. Do not worry about pride in saying that you wish that you had thought of it first. Swallow your pride and do it for your users.

Labels: Gmail, Google Docs, software