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August 29, 2008

Auto Not Run

A USB flash drive in the shape of a piece of i...

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Ever since I was stung by SillyFDC, the malware that spreads over the common USB Flash drive, I've been alert, keeping an eye open every time I insert my pendrive into a publicly used machine - I do that a lot (insert the USB thingy, that is). So, today, a library officer came by to the Helpdesk I sit near and he was concerned about having an infected drive, he had noticed that there had been a rash of incidents affecting teaching staff. One of my colleagues was about to insert the said suspect drive into her machine and I was quite happy to jump up and intercede.

Tip #1 - do it on somebody else's machine - we used a loan notebook which we could reclone easily.

Tip #2 - Disable Windows autorun on all drives. I was amused when I heard some astronaut had taken an infected notebook up to the space station and spread it around. How do you ensure every drive has autorun disabled? See my forum post. If you can't or don't want to carry out Tip #2, try

Tip #3 - Boot Puppy Linux or Ubuntu LiveCD so that you can mount and inspect the Flash Drive

Some of our forum members surprise me by saying "Gee - Linux huh? How does it? What do I? Will it?". Not to worry dear reader. The more friendly and common Linux variants don't take over your machine or damage your Windows. You can boot a Linux LiveCD, mount your USB drive and have a look at what files and folders there are, without fear of Windows malware hopping onto your main hard drive.

Oh, I forgot Tip #0 - don't expect that your Windows malware scanner, super Mr. Security Guard to always know every malware and to always be able to spring into action in the nick of time. Much malware is very clever, very sneaky and very new or metamorphing like a Ranger.

Tip #4 - If you can, run Windows XP in Limited User mode and don't switch off User Access Control (UAC) just because you think it's inconvenient. Default inability to execute and drop something into the system files of Windows beats Mr. Windows Security Guard Scanner anytime.

Yes, I know about the Tip before Tip #0 - Don't use Windows.

Enjoy your weekend.

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Posted by Anandasim at 09:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Building a home for Vista

It’s fair to say that Bleeding Edge has, to say the least, been unconvinced by the purported charms of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operation system. Indeed, since its launch almost two years ago, our principal Vista activity was removing it from any PC on which it had been installed, and replacing it with Windows XP.
We liked a lot of Vista’s features: the new Aero graphic interface, the gadgets sidebar, 3D window flips and transparent windows and the additional security comforts of an advanced operating system. But every time we tried it, we had problems finding drivers; discovered yet another essential program that wouldn’t run properly or had an application crash.
We’d all but decided that we’d wait until all the bugs were ironed out of Windows 7 — the Vista replacement Microsoft says will take three years to develop – before breaking our attachment to Windows XP Pro, and in the meantime we’d be doing more of our essential work through Linux.
But Big Jim, our main Windows box, had other ideas. Over the past few months, the system we’d built on an Asus P5B DeLuxe WiFi motherboard become increasingly cantankerous.

We’ve consistently recommended Gigabyte motherboards for our quarterly workhorse PC specs, and we’d bought this board from its main rival largely to see how it compared. Asus has a formidable reputation, and we know that most users are entirely satisfied with their products, but we encountered a series of problems, some of which, in fairness, almost certainly weren’t related to the board.
First the sound system played up, then it developed a sulky attitude to both our Hewlett Packard laser printers, forcing us to stop and re-start the print spooler to process documents. Eventually it refused even to acknowledge the existence of both printers. Then the Asus SATA DVD drive developed a form of blindness that ignored the existence of files on any optical disc, and eventually it refused to open its little mouth at all.
We reached the point where we were forced to reboot Big Jim several times a week, and our productivity and peace of mind plummeted.
We suspect some of the issues might have been resolved by updating drivers and BIOS through the Asus support website but we didn’t have the time or the patience to engage in a process that can, if you’re not particularly careful, leave you with a brain-dead PC.
We decided to assemble a new PC, using components that were a little better than the workhorse PC specs that we produce every quarter. And we’d use it as a test bed for a final attempt at Windows Vista.
We’d start with an Intel E8500 Core2Duo CPU ($220) and the Gigabyte EP45-DS4P motherboard ($189) that has sufficient advanced features to delight the enthusiast. We liked its two Gigabit Ethernet connectors, support for hard drive RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks that employs multiple disks for greater storage or data reliability) — we were going to mirror two Western Digital Green 750GB drives with RAID 1 — and we particularly liked the miniature internal Christmas tree of diagnostic LED and ACPI LEDS to display system and power status.
We weren’t going to use any old case for this PC. If we had an unlimited budget, we might have gone for a Lian Li, which is still the Rolls Royce of cases.
One of our friends had just bought a Cooler Master Cosmos case, and he was delighted with it. At about $250, we thought we could justify it on the basis that we were saving the $75 assembly fee that we include in our quarterly specs.
We found it difficult to choose between the more recent and slightly more expensive Cosmos S RC-1100 and the Cosmos 1000, so we decided to consult an expert, Rex Hall at Chadstone-based PC Maniacs, which assembles systems for high-end gamers and other ... well ... PC maniacs.
His verdict was that the Cosmos 1000 had better sound-deadening qualities than its sleeker, slightly more sculpted sibling. That, and the fact that we were saving about $40 convinced us.
We were delighted by our choice. The Cosmos 1000 is a massive, steel-chassis tower, with two hand rails that are more than decoration. You need it to manhandle the 18.9 kg weight. The minute you slip off the sides by flicking the simple latches at the rear, and discover the dozen easy-fit drive bays, range of intake and exhaust fans and a complimentary tool box with two quite useful sets of screwdrivers, you realise why choosing a higher-end box is a good idea if you’re going to put together your own system.
The other thing we liked was the array of LED lights and ports on the top of the case. When we got everything hooked up, Windows Vista would have a highly desirable address.

Posted by cw at 07:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Bleeding Edge 25,000th Forum Message

The Bleeding Edge forum scored its 25,000th post from Dale in the new VoIP forum on telco's and DID's.

"I'd rather sit naked in the snow and thrash myself with barbed wire"

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August 24, 2008

This Week In Review ending August 24th

Aah, Beijing 2008 Olympics photos and photo stories are finally surfacing for those of us to prefer still photos to those rapid fire HDTV movies. One very remarkable shot, for photographers is a panorama of photographers by by Kari Kuuka.

Software wise, a close friend made reference to some clown fronting for Windows Vista on behalf of Microsoft. I didn't dig that tidbit of news until I stumbled on the ars article. I suppose if this works, people will be making a beeline, somehow?

Computers are funny things. They're even waterproof nowadays. Somehow, I kinda guessed the Lenovo wasn't the first to withstand all that water that our swimmers were subjecting it too. I've been brought up to keep anything with wiring away from water.  Guess Dad would have been appalled that the clear roofing sheet in the garage is really clear and I haven't got round (or organised someone to help me) to replace it.

I discovered Zemanta a few days ago, been happy using it, except that I haven't solved the LiveWriter plugin problem specific to me. Jure says he's getting his developer to look at it.

The big news for Microsoft Labs was the launch of their Photosynth system that cumulates normal photos to create a composite, interactive 3D layout. I wonder how a bunch of photos like the one on the left would look like in it.

For me, my WOW moment was with PowerPoint Plex - I can see how Bill Gates in his last presentation for the company would have enjoyed it. Speaking of WOW moments, I thought I had discovered this wonderful feature in Excel 2007 - turned out, it's been in the product line for a long time and it wasn't necessarily a feature as much as a lapse.

And so, to bed.

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August 22, 2008

Discussing VoIP issues

We're attracting a lot more questions about VoIP these days, so Stephen has set up a new Communications section in the Forum where you can ask questions. Or answer them. Or muse about the topic.

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A simpler VoIP phone

The mourning bells in the Bleeding Edge cave had a particularly plangent tone last week, as we grieved over the fact that Telstra had extracted $3.9 billion in profits from our fellow Australians last financial year — an increase of 13.5 per cent.
The implicit acknowledgment that so many Australian consumers, already beset by high interest rates and petrol prices, were continuing to pay unnecessarily high phone bills was for us a matter for great sadness … albeit tinged by grudging respect for the Telstra marketing machine that so consistently triumphs over consumers' common sense.
Fortunately, one brilliant ray of sunshine pierced the gloom, reflecting off the shiny black exterior of the telephone handset we'd just installed.
The Siemens Gigaset C470 IP ($199 RRP) looks like any other cordless telephone handset, if a little more elegantly sculpted. But while it might have been completely overshadowed by the glamour of the iPhone, which in most cases increases mobile phone bills, it could ultimately prove to be far more significant for consumers. It might even be what former Intel CEO Andy Grove called a "strategic inflection point" – something that changes the fundamentals of an industry.
The C470 represents a highly-affordable, seamless link between the familiarity of the "circuit-switched" PSTN telephones we've all grown up with and the modern, so-called IP phone, which allows the consumer to slash the phone bill by using the VoIP (Voice over IP) technology Bleeding Edge has been writing about over the past couple of years.

Readers who recall our epic encounter with the complex programming required to set up dial plans using the Linksys SPA3102 analogue telephone adapter (ATA) — a device which manages a standard analogue telephone and digital IP phone — will know one of the major reasons relatively few people have so far switched to VoIP: complexity.
The other is the widespread belief that the quality of VoIP calls is grossly inferior to PSTN calls. While that may have been true in the early years of VoIP technology, these days high-speed ADSL services and carrier-grade equipment and services make it virtually impossible to detect the difference.
The C470 is, and behaves like a particularly good DECT (Digitally Enhanced Cordless Technology) handset — the sort of device that has become ubiquitous in homes and small businesses around the world —but it also serves as a simple but powerful gateway to IP telephony, via your cable or ADSL broadband connection.
It allows you to make calls either via the PSTN line, or VoIP, without using a PC. The base station, which is much easier to program than an ATA — while lacking some of the advanced functionality — can handle up to six handsets, and can simultaneously handle two VoIP calls and one fixed-line call.
You plug your PSTN line into the base station, connect it to your router with an Ethernet cable, then register your handsets. You then set up various features either via the handset, or through a browser interface.
Because you can have up to six VoIP accounts with different providers, your phone can be reached by up to seven different phone numbers, which can, if you like, be in different cities. In Bleeding Edge's case, for instance, one of our numbers is a Sydney number which allows friends and business contacts in that city to ring us for the cost of a local call. That's one of the great things about VoIP: you can spread your savings around.
It's much easier to set up a dial plan with the C470. While we use Melbourne-based Freshtel — which is the Australian importer of the phone — for most of our calls, we've used the simple Web interface to the phone to instruct it that whenever we dial a number beginning with "04", it connects via our $14.95 monthly GoTalk package which gives us 100 free mobile calls each month.
There are some useful advantages in having one's phone system connected to the internet. Firmware updates, for instance, can be done automatically. If you enter your time zone details via the Web interface, it will keep your time and date details accurate via an internet time server.
You can download the full manual (choose "full version en AUS" ) to get an idea of what's possible.
One development which could make it easier for Victorian users to take advantage of VoIP is the likely move by the not-for-profit Melbourne PC User Group (phone 03 9567 8000) into VoIP. It's negotiating to offer the C470 to members and friends at a reduced price. While Freshtel does offer excellent support, the group's free online help service would mean people who still find the topic too complex would have another source of information. That might cause a bit of grief at Telstra.

Posted by cw at 04:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 20, 2008

Zemanted lately?

I don't often browse Techmeme - but it was a slow day on my other favourite URL haunts. Spotted Zemanta - it's an interesting browser plugin or a Microsoft Livewriter plugin for blogging. You can be blogging away and Zemanta will display relevant photos from the web as well as other website urls that are similar in subject to the content you are writing You can click on a photo and Zemanta will generate HTML to embed the photo

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Seems to work differently for different publishing platforms - for example, I'm getting more features in the Blogger editing screen than the Movable type editing screen. My Live Writer Build 12 does not appear to load the plugin.

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Posted by Anandasim at 11:48 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

August 17, 2008

This Week in Review

Browsing and the Web

In what I thought was an uneventful week tech wise, I gave the Zone Alarm Force Field 1 year lifetime freebie a try. Not often am I impulsed to install an unresearched product on my production desktop PC. It sort of worked - Firefox and IE responded with toolbars to denote virtualisation of browser activity - but I eventually found the virtualisation slowed down web page rendering to a crawl and uninstalled the thing.

Firefox 3 on my machines has been giving me a hard time - slowdowns, freezes after 5 seconds, not persisting last use state. It's due to probably corrupted user profiles caused by overuse of Firefox Extensions or something but it could be something else - either Firefox itself has some problems or some global extension (McAffee SiteAdvisor, Evernote) etc... On one machine, I am reverted to the scared Opera Portable. Opera is quite a pleasure to use, problem is, it does not have enough market share and is significantly different in programming Object Model / behaviour to break several favourite Google facilities. The magnified text and fit-to-width when browsing is still superb.

My favourite bookmarking facility - deli.cio.us is now delicious.com with a re-designed presentation. Retrieval and reviews of your recent bookmarks is now a lot nicer. I do have some regular bookmarks that I keep locally in the browser but delicious gives me browser independent, machine independent bookmarks - that's my number one in-the-cloud facility.

Microsoft Office 2007 - are you moving on?

It's now past mid-year 2008. Office 2007 has been out for a long time. CAE's courses are now predominantly Office 2007 and some corporates are rolling out Office 2007. Some migration are very abrupt - one day, you're out of office, the next day you're out of Office 2003. Leaves users staring at the Office 2007 Button and the massive Ribbon. Other corporate IT approaches are more kind and have engaged a migration plan. In this day and age, some IT departments are still living in confinement - Microsoft has gone the extra mile to provide the Enterprise Learning Framework except that no one appears to have heard about it - don't worry, it's not ITIL. It's just a web wizard. Microsoft knows how to make user assistance Wizards. Well, they do, they just took a few detours from time to time, Bob's manager being, I think, Melinda Gates notwithstanding. Anyway, ELF is a an interview wizard that filters the list of Microsoft Technet articles based on your responses as IT guru and then downloads a Word file with hyperlinks and one liner descriptions - for staff to read on their journey to Office 2007 and Vista.

For the third time, I think, I'm moving my Microsoft Office resource notes to a new blog - I try to add my own slant to things.

Photography wise

We saw aussieboykie recommend the Epson V700 in the forum. By reputation and word-of-mouth, that is one fine film scanner and it is speedy since it does things in bulk.

Life was easier in the analogue world - you just walked around with Pantone swatches or something. Nowadays, people talk about mysterious things like Colour Gamut - guess you need the Gamut Vision. After which you wish you had the budget to acquire a Dell 2408WFP which features 104% of AdobeRGB Colour Gamut because it's an S-PVA panel. Or consider whether a Samsung 2493HM cheaper T/N panel would do.

Terry's been giving advice on the Fine Art of Pointing and Shooting and I've been pondering what drives "normal" guys nuts in internet forums.

New Hardware Goodies

Walking round the shops I see a few Acer Aspire Ones - compared to the early ASUS EEE PCs, the Acer for once, looks more chic, more glossy. The Intel Atom seems quite a good, low power chip, fairly responsive - of course compared to a dual core, you wouldn't like to multi-task too much. Maybe I'll get over my aversion to that brand.

The Centrino 2 brand stickers are out. You can see them on some attractive Toshiba notebooks (again nice glossy lids, really nice keycaps which look like the print will take wear) as well as HP Pavilions. HP I think, reached a peak with their high gloss, wear resistant palm rests last year. This year, they've gone over the top - the palm rests look shinier than a stainless steel fridge and the keycaps don't match the finish or look wear resistant

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August 15, 2008

Yeah, right, about that ringtone

I guess I follow the weirdest blogs. Amit Agarwal usually writes reasonably strait laced blog articles. His latest has a quirky ring to it. He refers to the Gates Foundation funded campaign, produced by the equally respectable BBC World Service Trust. There are all kinds of Flashy activities introduced by a turban wearing green parrot.

 

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August 14, 2008

Boy Scout approach to VoIP

We at the Bleeding Edge Centre for the Study of Computer-Induced Psychopathologies are particularly proud of our latest contribution to DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition).
Only our intimate involvement with technology allowed us to identify Obsessive Boy Scout Syndrome: a condition which leads to an overwhelming desire to Be Prepared.
Unfortunately, as frequently happens with our particular field of specialisation, we developed the condition ourselves: a fact which has allowed us to track the progress of OBSS, and identify the apparent cause.
Our studies have proved conclusively that OBSS is directly associated with internet telephony. The symptoms generally occur shortly after the subject is introduced to VoIP (Voice over IP) telephony, and realises just how much money might be saved — provided one has carefully deployed one's resources and has carefully studied the fine print.
The preparations begin with the choice of VoIP carrier. Most people are happy with one. The OBSS sufferer, however, finds his woggle tightening about his throat at the very idea of having only one VoIP service … and possibly paying more than he needs to for particular calls, or depriving himself of a particular advantage.

They're not the same, you see. When the director of the Bleeding Edge Centre for the Study of COmputer-Induced Psychopathologies first set up VoIP services for his spouse's practice, he used the services of Melbourne-based Mytel.
Mytel's call quality is excellent, but its call rates are significantly higher than some of its competitors. Its advantage, at the time, was the availability of a hosted PBX service which provided some of the advantages of having an in-house Asterisk open source PBX system on a rental basis. When it became obvious that the business would make substantial savings by having its own Asterisk server, however, Mytel was no longer attractive.
Earlier, the director had been using MyNetFone as his personal and home office provider. On a Whirlpool Saver account, which is available to members of the free Whirlpool VoIP forum, MyNetFone is only slightly more expensive than the cheapest of its competitors, and its customer service is very good, although the Web ordering process can at times be a touch byzantine.
But their Web services meant they had to be one of the VoIP providers. In fact it was the MyNetFone DID (dial-in number) which the service chose to advertise, on the basis that users can divert incoming calls to another number if their Asterisk server comes down. If you're obsessed with Being Prepared, that sort of facility is extremely important.
On the other hand, one also has to Be Prepared for the high cost of calls to mobile phones. Although most VoIP services offer substantially cheaper rates for calls to mobiles than the telcos, none can compare with the GoVoIP Aussie Pack offered by Queensland based GoTalk. For $14.95 a month, users get 300 free local calls, 300 free national calls, and 100 free calls (up to 500 minutes) to Australian mobile phones.
GoTalk accomplishes this by having a cheap interconnect fee with mobile carriers, which has largely arisen from the huge phone card business which is the company's principal activity. Its chief executive, Steve Picton, who spent nine years with British Telecomand was director of marketing at AAPT, has built a substantial business from the philosophy that the average caller has better things to do with his time than taking every available opportunity to make enough mobile calls to destroy the company's profit margin.
That would have left only one area of unpreparedness in the director's VoIP strategy: calls to 13 and 1 300 numbers. There has been an increasing trend by companies to use these numbers, which are widely perceived as being the same cost as a local call. In fact they're considerably more expensive.
A preparatory MyNetFone and Pennytel, whose cheap call rates make it an obvious candidate for any well-prepared VoIP plan, as an example, charges 25c for each of those calls. A local call on Pennytel's untimed plan is just 8c. GoTalk does not regard 13 and 1 300 numbers as free local calls. The unprepared user will instead be paying 14c per minute.
Last week, however, this gaping hole of unpreparedness was suddenly filled by Melbourne-based VoIP provider Freshtel. If you sign up to their $9.95 monthly plan, and take the $5 per month National option, All calls to Australian landlines — including those 13 and 1300 numbers — up to a maximum of three hours per call and a total of 10,000 minutes per month, are free. That makes Freshtel an obvious choice for any small business that's worth its woggle.
That, of course, is only the first step in the well-prepared VoIP strategy. The next step involves choosing hardware like handsets and computers and Uninterruptible Power Supplies. But we'll prepare you for that in a future column.

Posted by cw at 01:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 12, 2008

As time goes by...

Seems like only yesterday, Boing Boing have a great list of '101 Classic Computer Ads'

I can chalk up the Commodore Vic-20, C-64, TRS-80, Amiga and an Atari console, what is your computer lineage?

Posted by Stephen at 02:34 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

August 10, 2008

Learning from Dan Bernstein

Dan Bernstein (DJB) is someone who you've probably never heard of - yet his work has covered an astonishing amount of territory and benefited everyone who today uses the Internet or e-commerce. His achievements include forcing the US government to allow import/export of cryptography, working out how to protect the Internet from debilitating attacks, writing what may be the world's most secure email server (used on over 700,000 servers), and discovering faster algorithms in key areas of mathematics.

Unfortunately, despite all this, most of the world decided to ignore him when he claimed 8 years ago that DNS can be forged. In order to counteract these problems he even wrote his own DNS server (djbdns). Most people didn't use it, instead using the far less secure BIND server. (I don't know why - I've been using djbdns for 8 years and it's faster, easier to use, and more reliable than BIND.)

So, to those who know the history, it wasn't so surprising to learn that the huge security hole that hit most of the Internet last month  would have been nearly entirely avoided if only they had used DJB's DNS software.

I've been going back over DJB's writings on the topic of DNS to see what else he's been trying to tell us. One of the pages that came up (from 1999!) was his description of how even SSL-secured web sites are vulnerable to DNS attacks. SSL "security" has not improved at all since then - it's still incredibly easy to create an effective phishing site.

This all goes to show that, if there's anything we can learn from history, it's that we very rarely learn from history...

Posted by Jeremy at 10:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 09, 2008

Paranoid about security? Hello Beijing

If I am not seen for a couple of weeks some may think I am glued to the tube watching the Olympics and sadly that carries little weight whilst I can watch TV in a window I am wondering if I should just pull the internet plug.

After adding some updated information to Jeremy's "A Good time to be paranoid" and a quick scan around I find that the Internet DNS still has issues, Apple has issues, Windows has issues and Electronic payment systems have issues. If you think that is enough to induce a heart attack even that is covered now that your Pacemaker can be Turned Off.

Now go for the headline grabber “Vista's Security Rendered Completely Useless by New Exploit" that will be demonstrated at the upcoming Black Hat Security Conference this week by Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov, of VMware Inc.

“These techniques are being seen as an advance that many in the security community say will have far-reaching implications not only for Microsoft, but also on how the entire technology industry thinks about attacks. Expect to be hearing more about this in the near future and possibly being faced with the prospect of your "secure" server being stripped completely naked of all its protection.”

With all that Aussie Aussie Aussie... See you in a few weeks......

Posted by Stephen at 11:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 08, 2008

Diagnosing USB Storage problems

A Wow! find after I completed my most recent post. I've been keeping an eye and an ear open for USB diagnostic utilities ever since my early (bad) experiences with USB hard disks and USB Flash storage devices year. Free Download A Day spotted software called USB Drive Letter Manager - the thing looks interesting enough to try out this wet and cold Sunday. However, Uwe Sieber's other Troubleshooting USB pen drives under Windows XP webpage is fantabulous - it's exhaustively researched, rich with hyperlinks to command line Device Manager info, Filter Drivers, managing AutoRun (pretty useful when the USB Flash malware is virulating through computer labs used in training and teaching). Do be clear about disabling AutoRun though - it's a prudent security measure but it also breaks user expectations of "shove in a device, something happens".

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What passed by my eyes - this week's bytes.

Well, it's COB Friday and the working week is over. Been quite eventful and I guess the Beijing Olympics will hold a fair bit of interest for a fair number of people for a while. What did pass my eyes this week? A recent article about putting solar powered GPS units on cows by spotted by Mike Elgan.

And in lead up to Photokina, Nikon's unusual P6000 camera (using a new NRW RAW file format that Nikon's standard software doesn't know how to process, containing, yes a GPS for geotagging, and an wired ethernet connector. Mount the thing on a panoramic pole, tether it to a notebook and guess you could do your own Streetview then eh?

The big buzz in the consumer digital camera industry industry is of course, the announcement of the Micro Four Thirds Standard. This lays the foundations for building an EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) consumer camera, but interestingly is not a fully open standard - hmm - I guess "Standard" has now joined the list of English words subverted to marketingese. Some people are already planning wishlists for such cameras, others are denouncing it as the usurper of the genuine Four Thirds Standard models, others are saying "The King is Dead, Long Live the King". Outside of an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) though, no actual hardware has been sighted. Real Soon Now. Or not.

Charles has had his head in the clouds, more and more. People started writing about a cloudy Notepad - MyTextFile. Initially, I was puzzled and then realised, it's supposed to prove that Google App Engine will work.

Old Things I spotted while searching for references:

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Posted by Anandasim at 07:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Gold medal VoIP savings

We elite athletes in the Savings Olympics know that gold medals are not won purely by individual ability. Success requires the sustained efforts of a team of dedicated experts and supporters.
That's particularly true for the David and Goliath event of our Olympiad, which pits competitors against the might of telecommunications giants like Telstra. We've won silver and bronze medals in this event with the deployment of a Linksys SPA3102 analogue telephone adapter, which we wrote about last year, and with a basic installation of an Asterisk open source PBX solution at the Bleeding Edge cave a few months ago.
But to have a chance at gold, we knew we'd have to install an Asterisk system in the spouse's business, which handles many more calls on several extensions and requires sophisticated facilities like interactive voice response.

In the establishment phase of the business, we'd used a hosted PBX plan offered by Melbourne-based Mytel, which is essentially an Asterisk service hosted in a data centre. For a $49 set-up fee, and $12.95 per month per extension, it allowed us to make cheaper VoIP calls over the internet, with voice, mail, IVR and other facilities that are normally available only to larger companies with much bigger budgets.
Our arrangements allowed us to trim our office and home phone bills from $359 per month in mid-2007 to less than a third of that, despite a dramatic increase in the number of calls. But while mobile calls over Mytel are considerably cheaper than Telstra's rates, they were becoming an ever-larger component of the bill.
As the business grew, we would also have to introduce some more handsets. At $12.95 per month apiece, we knew it was time to have our own Asterisk box on-site, despite the hardware costs and the prospect of having to provide our own tech support if something went wrong. Even with our reduced call costs, the savings would pay for the equipment in less than a year, and it would be easier to add features like call filtering and call monitoring.
For that we'd have to have an expert team that could navigate a system that is beyond the capabilities of even quite experienced computer users. We could have paid a couple of thousand dollars to a professional team to do the job, but fortunately the world of Asterisk seems to attract enthusiasts who are prepared to offer the benefit of their experience, either for free, or for very competitive rates.
Our first indication of that was Ben Sharif, a retired systems analyst who lives in Penrith, NSW, from where he has maintained an active presence on the Whirlpool VoIP forum and more recently in elastixconnection.com.
A phone call to his home gives you an indication of the power of Asterisk. The call is picked up by Asterisk's inbuilt IVR system. His wife Rohani's recorded voice first informs the caller that they do not accept calls from direct marketers or political parties, then allocates numbers 1 to 5 to each member of the family. We pressed 1 for Ben.
If we'd called from a number without caller identification, we'd have been met with another menu that requires identification and a brief description of the purpose of the call. That gives the Sharifs the option of rejecting the call, without the knowledge of the caller. The IVR acts as an automated white lie generator, simply informing the caller that "The party is not available". Somehow, we feel those automatic counter measures should be available in every home, in an era where companies are using advanced technology to pester prospective customers.
Ben has entered the numbers of direct diallers into the Asterisk filters, so the system automatically blocks a good proportion of unwelcome callers.
He's written a series of free guides to Asterisk-based systems: Trixbox Without Tears, Elastix without Tears and PiAF (PBX In A Flash) Without Tears, which prospective Asterisk users can download as PDF files. The detailed explanation contained in TrixBox 2 Without Tears allowed us to get an understanding of the Asterisk distribution we eventually decided on, and would have allowed us — albeit with a good deal of tinkering — to put together our own box.
Fortunately, however, we had an even better source of assistance: Nathan Pinskier, director of a company called Medi 7 (voip@medi7.com.au) which has five medical clinics in inner and south-east Melbourne. The Asterisk servers rolled out by Nathan and his 19-year-old son Samuel — an aerospace engineering student who has become an Asterisk expert — has trimmed the company's phone bill from $5000 under Telstra in 2005, to around $2000, which includes the cost of about 10 broadband services.
They guided us through the process of selecting all the components for the PC that would run our Asterisk solution; pointed us towards a couple of investments to avoid potential problems; helped up choose handsets and VoIP providers and eventually packaged up the TrixBox application.

Posted by cw at 10:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 07, 2008

Hey Steve. Stay off our cloud

It must have been the Papal visit that misled us. All those spiritually-minded youths descending on the place; all those gratuitous blessings being bestowed on us Australians by the Holy Father … well … it was bound to go to our head.
We'd spent an entire week bathed in some form of ethereal calm, completely unperturbed by the petty irritations that have so often had us indulging in unseemly displays of ill temper, criticism and associated negativity.
And then, just as we were starting to think that we'd become a more highly evolved person, Steve Jobs updated iTunes again, and we found ourselves, yet again, thinking uncharitable thoughts, and failing once more to love our brothers and/or sisters in Silicon Valley.
Still, we think we should be granted some form of dispensation, on the grounds of provocation. This time the sneaky devil installed an icon for Apple's MobileMe service, without our knowledge and permission, in our Windows Control Panel. Having resisted buying an iPhone, it was useless to Bleeding Edge, so we were forced to go searching through the Add/Remove Programs section and uninstall something called "Apple Mobile Device Support". That brought back the memory of just a few months ago, when Jobs tried to sneak in an installation of his Safari Web browser, under the guise of "updating" iTunes.
We've been meditating on the possible motivations for this, and we've come up with an explanation. While it may seem a touch fanciful, we're pretty sure we are on the right track: Jobs is trying to climb onto our cloud.

This didn't dawn on us until quite recently, due to the fact that we weren't aware of the existence of this cloud, or our personal proximity to it. We discovered it only when we started to explore further the concept of the network as computer which we mentioned last week.
We thought we were embarked on a purely personal journey, but it seems we're just one more participant in a movement that has been dubbed "Working in the Cloud".
In our case, we probably started levitating towards this condition quite innocently, a few years ago, when we began using the IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) email services of Fastmail.fm. Because IMAP email is stored on the server, rather than being immediately forwarded to an email client under the more common POP (Post Office Protocol), users can access it from any internet-connected device.
We experimented with several IMAP-enabled email clients to access our Inbox, but we've always reverted to the web interface, which we access through the Firefox browser. In cloud computing, it's the browser that becomes the focus of activity, which is no doubt why Steve Jobs tried to spirit Safari on to Windows PCs.
Despite the subterfuge, Jobs and for that matter Bill Gates' Microsoft have found themselves playing second or third fiddle to the browser of choice for us denizens of cloud computer land — Firefox, which has become even more attractive for these sorts of activities with the release of version 3 (recently updated to version 3.0.1). We particularly enjoy using keyboard shortcuts like Alt-D to jump directly to the address bar, or typing in a word then hitting Ctrl+Enter to turn it into a www.something.com address. You might be interested in some useful Firefox shortcuts.
The other winner is Google, with its own IMAP-capable service Gmail becoming the spearhead for powerful browser-based applications. While we still rate FastMail as a superior email service, we've also got a couple of Gmail accounts. They're free, powerful and a useful backup, but they also serve as the gateway to invaluable cloudish services including Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Maps and iGoogle, the personalised home page and "gadget" centre, which we've found compelling. You can learn how to get the most from them with these iGoogle tips.
If you use Gmail, you'll probably be interested in several Greasemonkey scripts that enhance its utility, and have been packaged as Better Gmail, available from
Google's focus on cloud-dwelling workers is being continually updated and improved, requiring one to track its developments at, say, the Google Systems blog.. Last week, for instance, there was the public release of Google Knol — a Wikipedia-like knowledge sharing tool which allows authors to write, share and potentially "monetise" articles
Many cloud workers use Google Docs (docs.google.com) to create and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Others use Campfire to create online collaboration spaces for group chats and document sharing. We went looking for some ideas for a typical cloud-based collaboration system.
We'd be interested in readers' suggestions for other useful cloud-based applications.
Recently we've started using Penzu. It's a free Web-based journaling service that works with Firefox or Opera (but not Windows Explorer). One of our first entries, which we've decided to share with Steve Jobs, explores our feelings about people who board our little cloud without permission.

Posted by cw at 12:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 06, 2008

Throwing out the baby with the bath water

There are two schools of thought about what to do when you think Windows gets dirty. Some people clean it with a vengeance. Some people don't. The Pro Cleaners often outnumber the Abstainers. Because cleaning seems to be logical and a way to a higher plane of existence. LifeHacker has an abstaining article for the non believers.

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Posted by Anandasim at 09:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A good time to be paranoid

In the rushes around the Bleeding Edge pond one of our favourite ways to pass the time is to relax with a good book by the terrific science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle. Jerry was kind enough today to send us a warning about a fake "Flash Player Update" which seems to be doing a particularly good job of getting unsuspecting users to install a particularly nasty piece of malware. The fake update is being spread by sites that are linked in an email titled "CNN Daily Top 10".

What's slightly depressing about this is that it isn't even newsworthy - it's just one of three malware threats appearing today. Just another day on the Internet...

So, why are so many people spending so much time creating fake web sites, virus laden emails, trojan downloaders, and other goodies? Money, of course! The days when viruses destroyed the contents of your hard drive are now long gone. Today, viruses generally do most of the following:

It's big business, and with the majority of Australians now online, it's a big threat. It's a good time to be paranoid.

Posted by Jeremy at 09:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 05, 2008

No shame

Just one day after our article about consumers being apparently ripped off by beijingticketing.com, they've now mysteriously disappeared from the Internet. But they're not gone - they're just hiding elsewhere. To be more precise, they're hiding over at www.theonlineticketshop.com - yup, that's the same gang, just with a different address.

Apparently a worldwide media storm and two lawsuits isn't enough to stop these guys from trying to make a quick buck from unwary online consumers.

Posted by Jeremy at 11:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Australian streets go Google

The official release of the local version of Google Streetview allowed us to inspect the passing traffic's view of the Bleeding Edge cave. It's somewhat greener than the current view - what with having a couple of trees die off as a result of the brilliant management of Melbourne's water resources - but it was quite exciting, none the less.

The Bleeding Edge spouse was amused by our delight, in much the same way as she's amused by grand-daughter Indigo's fascination for the contents of the toy box. Her immediate reaction was a sense of invasion. The dialogue went like this:

"I don't want everyone knowing where I live."

"But everyone doesn't know where you live."

"Well, if they knew where I lived they could check it out."

"Yes, but they could just drive past and see it, couldn't they?"

"But they wouldn't."

Maybe people will case the joint from their desktops.. Maybe this will become the new national pastime ... checking out where people live without having to fill the petrol tank. If we'd known Google was taking pictures, we could have popped outside and waved from the porch. Or possibly held up a "Do Not Disturb" sign.

The press release suggests it could be the basis for a new form of virtual tourism.

Andrew Foster, Product Manager at Google Australia, commented: "Google Maps has its origins as an Australian invention so we're thrilled to bring Street View here as one of the first countries in the world. A lot of remote and regional Australia is now available to explore virtually - Tom Price, Gundagai, Longreach, Esperance, and so much more. Street View will allow people to visit places in Australia they may not have had a chance to experience before." "Google Maps and Google Earth are incredibly popular with Australians and are used by Governments, businesses and individuals as essential and informative tools every day of the week. Street View provides an added experience by enabling users to see street-level panoramas of Australia's public roads, including dusty outback highways, tropical northern beach roads and major city arteries".

What do you think about it. Delight? Or fright? And are you happy with the picture of your place? Did you make it into the shot?

Posted by cw at 10:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 04, 2008

Beijing olympics ticketing fraud

The news is all over the media about the  Beijing Olympics ticketing fraud. I was interviewed on ABC news today about this issue - I'll post a link to the video as soon as I have it available. It's a big story, and a tough reminder of how easy it is to get scammed online.

The allegedly fraudulent site is still up and still taking orders. It's hosted by Servepath, with domain hosting by Enom. If they are legally ordered to take the domain or site down, then they'll have to do that - but in the meantime it's their responsibility to fulfil the terms of their contract with their customer. We can't ask them to play "judge and jury".

On the other hand, the fact that the fake sites made they way up towards the top of Google's rankings is all due to sloppy reporting - Forbes Traveller (hosted on MSNBC) linked to fake sites for 3 of their 5 listed "official ticketing Web sites" (in fact, the fake 3 were all listed first!) One would think that before such an august publication created such a list that they might call the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ask, but apparently just a Google search is all that's required to be considered a journalist nowadays...

Also in the firing line should be Google, which is running an advertisement for a scam site as their first link for the search term "Beijing Tickets".

But the real question is this - how can it have taken so long for Aussie consumers to get notified that they need to cancel their holidays because they don't have tickets? The Washington Post run an article on this scam site way back in February, and it was 2 weeks ago that the IOC and USOC filed suit against the companies involved. If the Australian authorities had at least taken action then, those caught up in this would have had time to make other plans - but now it's too little, too late for Australian consumers.

Posted by Jeremy at 03:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 02, 2008

Buying Spinach

Recently, I've been participating in computer forums and photography forums. It's a wonder to us who've been playing with these gadgets for years now, what we take for granted and what other people don't. Over the past 20 years, more and more high tech has been packaged into retail, off the shelf gadgets for the typical consumer. It is a good thing, to actualise, in your hand or otherwise, the work that our researchers and producers have laboured to produce. You may need a University degree or higher to carry out the research, development and design but you certainly don't need a degree to use this stuff. The mobile phone is one example - as long as you can dial a number, you're already using the third generation of wireless communication.

But what about the products where the consumer wants to choose? What criteria and what knowledge does the consumer need? Well, for the mobile phone, a choice of colour (pink, anyone?), size, bling value and yeah, it's gotta turn on and receive your provider's wireless signal. For a car, well, it's gotta have your personality match, not drink like the blazes and again, what colour please?

In some cultures, the choice is easy. Most of the buyer's are followers - "I want the one that my bro-in-law bought please". Someone buys one, shows it off to kin and a whole bunch of sales eventuates.

In Internet cultures though, we have the exact opposite - forums. You've never seen so much pixel peeping in your life. They compare Image Quality, Sensor Dynamic Range, Image Noise for digital cameras, they compare the 3D gaming performance in frames per sec for 3D video cards, the angle of view for LCD screens. As long as some lab makes a test, you have a lot of armchair evaluators giving their opinion. Everyone's an expert - courtesy of the internet where the most passionate essays are written and archived. Sometimes, you think you can see some crazys in the assessment but other times, you're not quite sure - the fellow could have 30 years in the industry and a Ph.D in something or other.

Where does this leave the "normal" person who doesn't want to just follow the herd, but wants to make a decision between competing models? Well, in my opinion, with a splitting headache, long hours of argument, research. And the possibility that, at the end of the day, after purchase, they still get buyer's remorse. Maybe that's what feeds eBay - lots of buyers remorse searching for a balm.

So, what or how do you make up your mind when you make a high tech, electronic purchase? Do you:

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Posted by Anandasim at 07:01 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack