Have you ever taken a moment to imagine what would happen if you lost some or all of your computer files? Whether you only use your computer for personal reasons; or for school or work, file or data loss can be devastating! Think of all of those family photographs, music files or class assignments! Think of the report you spent weeks working on. Some files can be replaced with time and effort, while others (particularly your photos or home videos) cannot.

Numerous reports tell us that over a third of computer users don’t back up their files; and of those that actually do perform some data backup – 76% of people don’t do it often enough.

Most people tend to think computer files are lost only due to catastrophic events – like tornadoes and hurricanes. Don’t forget about slightly more common events, including fire, flood or computer viruses. A computer "disaster" does not necessarily have to be one from Mother Nature, either. Suppose you dropped your laptop down the stairs or spilled your coffee on the keyboard?

Losing personal files is devastating because of their sentimental value – while business owners who rely on content and files can consider the loss of data fatal to their business if they don’t have a data backup plan in place.

Before Disaster Strikes

Just like many human health issues can be prevented with proper diet and care, having a complete backup plan in place can prevent disaster from occurring to your precious data. Data backup isn’t as complicated or expensive as you might believe. It is far easier to back up your files to be able to restore them after something damages your computer, than it is to recover them after disaster strikes. Consider a data backup plan to be your computer’s insurance policy!

Picking Up The Pieces

If you’ve already experienced the loss of data and you hadn’t backed up your data and files, you’ll need to use data recovery services to recover as much of the lost information as possible. Data recovery makes it possible to save some of the data from damaged, corrupted or failed storage devices, but it’s expensive, and you may never recover 100% of the data you’ve lost.

Data Backup and Recovery Solution

Your best solution is to use a remote data backup system. This will backup and store your data files and information at regularly scheduled intervals to an online data store accessed via the web. Your backed-up information can then be restored to any computer if your computer’s hard disk fails, or if it has been attacked by a virus, or physically damaged. Some people back up their files to CDs or flash drives – and then keep these storage devices in the same location as the computer. If there is a natural disaster, chances are the computer and the backup copies will be ruined.

Remote data backup services exist for both personal computer users and businesses of all sizes. Prices range from very reasonable to very expensive – based on how much storage you require and other factors. Prevention is the best medicine – give yourself peace of mind with a data backup insurance policy for your computer files.

Content by Managed Services Provider University

Anyway – this is a classic.

Many wireless routers available at local big-box stores are unsecured right out of the box. The reasoning for this is that the less complicated the manufacturer can make the configuration of their product, the less potential frustration for the end user – but this is a double edged sword as ease of use and security tend to be mutually exclusive.

Some simple things you can do to secure a wireless router are as follows:

1.) Change the default configuration.

This should be the first thing you do with a new router. Every manufacturer ships their devices with a default username and password as well as a default SSID (which is the "name" of your wireless network). Change the password and wireless SSID (or name) in the router’s configuration. Many routers will include a CD that will help you to configure these parameters. If you have questions, consult the manufacturer for specific instructions.

Also, its never a good idea to name your wireless network based on your address, business name or last name. This just gives any potential attacker even more information. Its always best to use a non-identifiable name.

2.) Enable encryption -

All wireless routers will support some kind of encryption. The three most popular are WEP, WPA and WPA2. Of these three, WPA2 is the most secure. WEP and WPA have some inherent technical weaknesses that can allow, even a novice hacker to circumvent relatively easily (which, in this case is very relative). Encryption can be enabled either by accessing your router’s configuration interface via a Web Browser from your computer or by using the manufacturer’s supplied CDs. Enabling encryption will prevent the casual would-be thief from accessing your wireless network but as the old adage goes, where there is a will, there’s a way – which is a resonating undertone to all things computer security related. For businesses or individuals dealing in highly-sensitive information, basic encryption is not enough. Businesses should always consult an IT professional before setting up wireless access to their computer networks and/or information systems.

Doing these two things will go a long way to secure a person’s home network.

This service does limit you to 2GB of attached data – but I suspect this will suffice for most people.

Next time you find yourself needing to send large files to someone, give this service a shot.

https://www.wetransfer.com/ 

Thanks,

-Justin

• Speed up your Windows Vista / Windows 7 Computer – There is a feature called ReadyBoost present in Vista and Windows 7 that will allow you to use a USB drive to essentially increase the speed of your computer. ReadyBoost creates an extra cache memory on your USB drive. It does seem to be more beneficial to older computers or heavy multi-taskers. Instructions – Windows Vista and Windows 7
• Portable Firefox – Now I’m no Firefox zealot by any stretch but with Portable Firefox, you can take your bookmarks, settings, and plugins with you – basically your whole web browsing “experience” on your thumb-drive. More information and download here.
• Make your files portable and back them up at the same time – Microsoft has a tool they have released called Microsoft Synctoy. With this tool you can configure your computer to automatically synchronize the documents on your PC with your flash drive. This ensures you always have the most up-to-date copy in both locations allowing you to pop out the drive and roll knowing your stuff is all there – and when you bring it back it will update your PC with the changes. Instructions and Download
• Create a suite of Portable Applications to use Anywhere – A portable application is simply a program that will run without being installed – you can use your USB drive to contain the applications and settings and use any computer to run them. PortableApps.com has created a single download that you can extract to your USB drive and have access to 147 different portable applications to run off your USB Drive. This is an awesome compilation that allows you to get all the apps in one download – More Information and download here
• Backup and Encrypt your files – Using the portable version of TrueCrypt (included in PortableApps.com’s package)and Microsoft SyncToy (mentioned above) you can create an encrypted, portably accessible backup of your computer’s files.

Happy Holidays to everyone from your friends at Teklogic!

1.) Windows 7 is faster – Microsoft has recognized that one of the many reasons Vista has flopped so hard was that Vista performed more slowly and required more memory and graphics horsepower to run than Windows XP. Microsoft has been hard at work getting Windows 7 to be streamlined and run well, even on older hardware – even low-powered “netbooks”. Here is a great ZDNet article illustrating just how much of a performance improvement we are talking http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236&page=2

2.) Improved User Account Control – Anyone who has used Vista has seen the infamous “Cancel or Allow” window that is created by the User Account Control feature. This is a security mechanism that is supposed to protect the user from unintended malicious changes to their computer. The problem was that the message was so ubiquitous that you would start to click “allow” almost instinctually – thusly negating any added security benefit. The notifications tend to get very annoying, very fast.  Windows 7 has redesigned the UAC to be less obtrusive and can be set in different levels ranging from bug-me-all-the-time to bug-me-seldom.

3.) More compatible – Now this has to be my favorite one. This is a feature I have been hard at work exploring. Windows 7 can  launch legacy applications in “XP Mode”. That is, it can actually run an application under Windows XP inside Windows 7 using virtualization technology. I’ve run into more than one poorly written legacy application that a client uses for a mission critical piece of their business that simply wont run under Vista. Replacing this application is often too costly or time-intensive to be an option and we have been forced to stick with Windows XP Downgrades when purchasing new machines. Not any more – we can run the application under Windows 7’s “XP Mode”. This will allow companies to buy into current technology and still retain their legacy applications!

Microsoft is offering six versions of Windows 7: Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, OEM and Enterprise. The three versions that Redmond will be promoting most heavily are Home Premium, Professional and Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, although Starter will also be available to consumers and is designed specifically for Netbook computers.

look for Windows 7 to be available in the last weeks of August.

Hail the Missing Attachment Powertoy! This simple freeware utility basically checks your message for keywords that indicate that you intended to attach a file. You can customize the list of trigger words based on your personal email habits. This utility only seems to work for Office 2007.

See: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/missingattach.html for download.

• S: (n) Google (a widely used search engine that uses text-matching techniques to find web pages that are important and relevant to a user’s search)

Verb

• S: (v) Google (search the Internet (for information) using the Google search engine) "He googled the woman he had met at the party"; "My children are googling all day"
  

I did a write up at the beginning of the month where I wrote about Google Usage Tips and Tricks. I wanted to share a few more uses for Google that I personally leverage all the time to be more productive and quickly find information.

NOTE:  you can save Google in your cell phone’s web browser – enabling you to use these tips wherever you have your phone… This can even be done on plain-Jane phones. That is, it doesn’t require an iPhone, Blackberry or Windows Mobile phone.

Word Definitions: (define:)

I use this one all the time. If you don’t know a word or want to become more clear on a word’s exact definition, try using the define: operand in a Google search. All you have to do is type define: word in a Google search. This gets you the definition and also will correct your spelling. A very useful feature!

Weather Forecast (weather:)

Ok this one is great too – a simple, no frills 3 day weather report. Just type weather: zipcode into a Google search.

Local Movies Lookup (movies:)

This one is great when you are out and you want to go see a movie but you don’t know what’s playing where. Instead of trying to find a computer to look it up on – or worse -calling the theatre and listening to the recording. Why not use your cell phone and "Google" movies: zipcode .

This will get you a brief 3 liner of the most popular movies that are playing within 5 miles of your zipcode as well as a link to a full list sortable by Movie or Theatre.

—

I hope this is helpful to some of you!

Cheers,

-Justin

I was recently configuring – or rather – trying to configure, a customer’s Palm Centro Smartphone to sync Outlook (Exchange) information with their shiny new SBS08 Server. I quickly realized that this can prove to be a lesson in futility…

The first thing to know is that, for whatever reason, the Palm Centro does not support SSL Certificates encoded using the newer RFC5280 (UTF-8) standard – but instead requires a cert that is generated based on RFC3280 (Printstring). This means that Certificate Authorities locked into generating certificates based on the new RFC will not  produce certs that are compatible with PalmOS devices. I personally used a GoDaddy Standard SSL cert and had this issue. This took quite awhile to narrow down because all of the other phones syncing with this server, which included iPhones and Windows Mobile phones, worked without an issue. This seems like something that Palm could patch – there are all kinds of posts out there in Google-land looking for definitive answers to their Centro and Exchange 2007 Activesync woes…My guess is that with Palm’s upcoming release of the new "Palm Pre" – support for their previously released products is wavering. Aside from not supporting the UTF-8 "method" certificates, they also do not support SSL v3 certs – this from the Palm site:

"SSL v3 certificates which rely on the Subject Alternate Name field to do load balancing across virtual site names do not work with Palm OS devices"

AND – They DO NOT support 256bit Encryption. So, for me the PalmOS/Versamail phones (Centro, 700p, 655p, 800p) have been placed a notch just below a Blackberry as my least-favorite "Smartphone flavor" out there. I just hope they get it right with the Pre. There are literally dozens and dozens of posts out there with people looking for a definitive answer to their Centro <-> Exchange syncing problems…

The bottom line for Admins wanting to configure Palm Centro Phones with Small Business Server 2008 using Versamail EAS, you have two options.

1.) If you are using a Self Signed Certificate you must use the Palm CertModTool to install your SBS Server’s CA onto the phone itself

2.) If you want a "proper" SSL Cert you will need to buy a supported cert – I hear people having good luck with the Geotrust QuickSSL certificates. These tend to be pricey at about $250.00.

I was told my a GoDaddy rep that if the CSR is produced in printstring format, the cert would be generated appropriately – I assume this would entail generating the CSR on a a 2003 Server (IIS6) – getting the Cert and exporting it to a *.PFX and then importing it to the SBS08 machine – this just seems like a failure-prone procedure – but I did see some people discussing this method of getting around the issue.

All in all this was a frustrating, but educational process. Below is some other useful information for those running into this article in a Google search – likely pulling your hair out (trust me, I was there)…

-SSL v3 and "Subject Alternate Name"

-Palm Forum Post about Importing "External" SSL Certs

-Exchange 2007 lessons learned – generating a certificate with a 3rd party CA

-Another Palm Forum Post

The most simple example is the usage of a Quotation Mark in your search query. When you use a Quotation mark, Google will match exact phrase in that order, instead of just the individual words in the phrase. There are many other such things you can do to fine-tune your search:

Searching within a specific site (site:)
If you know you like MSNBC you can search that specific site for specific information. For example the query [ pirates site:msnbc.com ] will return pages about Pirates but only from msnbc.com. Queries missing the ’site:’ operand [ pirates msnbc.com] will still work as well, although they might return results from other sites that mention MSNBC.com. You can also specify a whole class of sites, for example [ iraq site:.gov ] will return results only from a .gov domain and [ iraq site:.iq ] will return results only from Iraqi sites.

Excluding Specific Terms (-)
Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the query [ anti-virus software ], the minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the query [ anti-virus -software ] will search for the words ‘anti-virus’ but exclude references to software. You can exclude as many words as you want by using the – sign in front of all of them, for example [ jaguar -cars -football -os ]. The – sign can be used to exclude more than just words. For example, place a hyphen before the ’site:’ operator (without a space) to exclude a specific site from your search results.

Use of ‘Wildcards’ (*)
The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results about many of Google’s products. The query [ Obama voted * on the * bill ] will give you stories about different votes on different bills. Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

Google Phone Number Lookup (phonebook:)
Who wants a big fat ugly yellow book sitting around anyway – a phone book? What’s that??? Google allows you to look up phone numbers directly from the search bar. If you start your query with phonebook:, Google shows all public U.S. residence telephone listings (name, address, phone number) for the person you specify. For example, [ phonebook: John Doe New York NY ] will show phonebook listings of everyone named John Doe in New York, NY.

Google Calculator Functions:
Google can do a host of mathematical calculations – even trigonometry! For the rest of us – here are the basics.

 Here is a link to a more comprehensive list of calculation capabilities and usages:

http://www.googleguide.com/help/calculator.html

Google Unit Conversions:

No – not done yet. Unit conversion can be very helpful with currency and even conversion between unit types:

Convert from one set of units to another by using the notation, x units in y units.

• [ three quarters of a cup in teaspoons ]
• [ 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit in degrees Celsius ]
• [ 130 lbs in kg ]
• [ 130 lbs in stones ]
• [ 65 mph in kph ] or
• [ 65 mph in km/h ]
• [ 2 meters + 5 feet ]

Convert from one numbering system to another.

• [ 1500 in hex ] or [ 1500 in hexadecimal ]
• [ 64 in binary ]
• [ LVII in decimal ]
• [ meters per mile ]
• [ furlongs per fortnight ]

Google is a great tool for technicians and business-people alike. With a bit of education we can be just that much more productive withour searches. There are several more things I will consider going over in another blog entry… I hope this is helpful!

Thanks!

-Justin