InfoBulletin
February 2009
Issue 108
Laptops feel the pinch, Virtualisation first steps, CMS backups, Destroying sensitive data
coopsys.net
InfoBulletin
February 2009
Issue 108
Laptops feel the pinch, Virtualisation first steps, CMS backups, Destroying sensitive data
coopsys.net
May 2008 Outlook Time Recording: Journal, Video to ruin your ISP? Zoho: software at your service, OCR tips, BGInfo, How to audit my PC?
August 2008 Risky business, Salesforce review, SteadyState manages multi-user PCs, Do you really need a web site?
June 2008 Time Recording: Outlook Times plug-in, Windows Server 2008 storage, data protection, Convert PDF documents into Word format
*** NewsBytes ***
Virus to go
A pre-packaged worm called Conficker
is sitting on over 9 million machines waiting for instructions. As yet
without purpose, the worm (aka downadup and Kido) affects most Windows
machines that still have not been patched for the MS08-067,
a fix for was distributed in October 2008. When Conficker does decide
to download its malware, the Internet could see spam and
denial-of-service attacks launched from millions of PCs. The malware
download sources appear to come from hundreds of domains, some not even
registered yet, confounding efforts to block similar techniques based
on a single domain.
IT Conference 2009 CFDG
Come and see Co-Operative Systems at the Charity Finance Director's Group IT Conference 2009, IT Risks and Rewards.
It's the place to catch up with new trends in information technology
and this year examines the 3 main themes of IT governance (ROI, return
on investment, board support, corporate politics), Security (data
protection, e-banking, disaster recovery, data leakage.) and 'horizon
solutions' (sustainable performance, homeworking solutions, 'Internet
deglobalisation’). Put 19th March in your diary now.
Gmail - look no Internet!
Google has started to roll-out an offline-usable version of GoogleMail/Gmail, thanks to its underlying Google Gears
technology, bringing relief to all those Gmail users with intermittent
connections. Thus it means one can continue to read Gmail offline and
compose replies until the next time your laptop resyncs via an Internet
connection. Pity then the ordeals of Andy Palay, Gmail engineer, whose
home is beset by squirrels that love to chew through his outside
broadband wires! Although the roll-out is a beta currently limited to
US and UK English versions, it will become indispensable to morning
commuters in tunnel-hopping trains and hotel warriors hooking up to
unreliable wi-fi spots, as well as rodent-besieged remote workers.
PCs take a pounding
Falling
inflation should mean prices dropping, but with dollar-priced
US-designed computer hardware and software and a falling pound to both
Euro and Dollar, import prices rise instead. A £500 PC at a $2 pound
rises to £725 at today's rate of $1.38, so end of year budgets are
better made out sooner than later.
Salesforce donations for NCVO members
Aside from promoting Dell special pricing,
NCVO has brokered a donation of Salesforce CRM products worth up to
£10,000 per applicant via the Salesforce.com Foundation and its
specialist provider of fundraising services, Sho-net. The NCVO launch event is on 3rd February and NCVO members will be able to save 5% on Sho-net prices.
Enterprise IP VPN 2009 Forum 10th Feb
Recent developments in standards and security now make IP VPNs an
attractive option for anywhere, anytime access, reduced costs and
increased mobility for employees and remote workers while maintaining
high levels of security. The 2009 forum discusses secure site-to-site
and remote access IP VPNs, looking at the pros and cons, developing an
IP VPN strategy, choosing appropriate technologies and suppliers,
security and the rewards and risks of implementation. More information
and free registration at the IBA Forum. The event takes place on 10th February at the Inmarsat Conference Centre, London.
Public trust in charities increased
It's a good time for the third sector to establish new communications
with its audience following a 23% rise in confidence over 12 months,
according to a new report by research consultancy nfpSynergy.
The public's trust in charities moves up 2 places from a 6th place low
point in July 2007 into 4th place, to give a running order of Armed
forces, NHS, Schools, Charitable organisations, Scouts & Guides,
Police, Royal Mail. Joe Saxton, nfpSynergy's Driver of Ideas, said:
"These latest figures (Nov 2008) should encourage a charity sector
facing obvious challenges in the economic downturn. Two thirds (65%) of
British adults now claim they trust our charities." Full figures in the
nfpSynergy Trust in Public Bodies press release.
Travel round London on your mobile
Transport for London (TfL) have assembled a series of online tools for
use on computers and mobile phones to keep you up to date. Aside from
traditional timetables, you can choose from tube maps on your mobile,
journey planning by text, and cabs in your area to emails showing
weekend closures or even widgets to put on your own web site. TfL online travel tools.
The case of the eBook
Possibly the greatest development since the printing press, the eBook
allows you download novels, text and more and read them on a specially
designed book-sized device. We ordered Sony's new Reader eBook, but
shipments are being delayed. However the leather cover has arrived,
which - irony of ironies - is the right size to fit a paperback. 
Popular competitors remain thus far elusive, Amazon's Kindle
staying firmly on the US side of the Atlantic, while Plastic Logic's
A4-sized paper-pad eBook is not slated to début until early 2010. This
despite (or perhaps because of) the latter supporting a startling range
of formats (docs, Powerpoints, PDFs, texts, other eBooks) and being
transferable over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Micro-USB, yet nevertheless
remains an eBook that survives a beating with a shoe (yep, really)!
Compare your server investment
Another thought-provoking 10-minute survey that lets you benchmark your
IT investment against those of your peers and comes up with a
percentage rating. This one covers server investment strategy and asks whether you get best value from that investment.
*** More NewsBytes ***
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1.
Laptops feel the pinch
Portable computers are increasingly complex beasts and will sulk just like their living counterparts if abused.
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Help at hand. |
"I promise to stop juggling a mug of tea in one hand with a £1000+ laptop balanced in the other"
Portable computer technology marches on as relentlessly as ever, but are the lighter, thinner breeds of laptops as robust as their predecessors? Proud owners of new machines should treat their expensive Christmas dreams-come-true with even more care than ever. Like cashflow in the economy, laptops are getting thinner. Physically, that is. Your average high-end laptop now measures less than its owner's thumb-width in profile, and your average owner is an equally high-flying exec, one who is frequently forced by time pressures to snatch up their mobile workstation and run. 
MacBook Air 0.16-0.76 inch (0.4-1.94 cm) thick The ultimate put-downUnfortunately, the one-hand laptop grab can spell its demise too, for today's sophisticated computer assemblies are squeezed into near impossible shapes to fit components into that sub-20mm form factor. Picking up today's slim Sonys, Dells, Macbooks, HPs and the like by a corner with one hand can distort the casing and cause motherboards and components to touch the metal case and each other, as well as bending the screen and hinges. If the computer is still on at the time, these live components will short-circuit and no amount of software protection can mitigate such killer consequences. 
Lenovo ThinkPad X300: 19mm thick So if you only make one New Year's resolution, then that has to be to be: "I promise to stop juggling a mug of tea in one hand with a £1000+ laptop balanced in the other as I wend my way precariously between desks". Of course manufacturers of laptops, notebooks and netbooks aim to prevent such catastrophes in the first place or at least work around them. Hence, the strident marketing campaigns that bray 'housed in a titanium shell' or a 'precision unibody enclosure sculpted from a single block of aluminium'. Assaulted batteryHowever, the story doesn't end there, because even those who have suffered the consequences of 'playing tea trays' with their valuable notebook, and then trod the grief-stricken route to some dubious repair shop, often find that the thing still doesn't work as the battery no longer plays ball. Is this some perverse pleasure that manufacturers exert on their consumers to bump up servicing fees? Well, not exactly. Believe it or not, it's for the consumer's benefit. The diminutive powerhouses that run today's portable computers bear little resemblance to the simple cells that kids excitedly stuff into their latest Christmas gadget. Laptop battery units now commonly embed a processor, inevitably perhaps, that monitor power usage, regulate output and, crucially, shut the unit down when is detects some sort of internal 'abuse', like a short-circuit. That's for the health of the battery unit and computer motherboard alike. However, its fear-and-flight mechanism sends the battery metaphorically scurrying up a tree and it won't come down until the coast is clear. In engineering terms, this means getting a techie to open the battery and reset the processor's memory - effectively forcing it to forget the terrible short-circuit trauma. In 2009, your new resolution should by now include the two-hander laptop lift. Better still, power it down first. -IB- |
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2.
First Steps To Virtualisation
Real goals and real products to start your virtualisation project.
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Help at hand. |
Back in November we looked at the emerging virtualisation market and which companies were the leading contenders. Dell Virtualisation Starter Kit 
A comprehensive introduction to virtualisation for small organisation from around £3,800.
One PowerEdge 2950 2U Rackserver including:
This time around we present some accessible products that you can actually buy to get on the road to benefits such as reducing physical server count and energy consumption, optimising server management, improving processor utilisation, running multiple operating systems on the same hardware and eliminating performance bottlenecks. First of all, one has to decide what sort of virtualisation is right for your organisation's needs.
One route for clarifying the burgeoning offers available is to start with Dell's Virtualisation Advisor, a quick survey of around 10 steps. 
A Complete Virtualisation Solution 
The ideal mix of true consolidation and management simplicity, designed for future growth from around £18,100.
Two PowerEdge 2950 2U Rackservers including:
One PowerEdge 1950 1U Rackserver including:
Two PowerConnect 5424 Switches
One PowerVault MD3000i External iSCSI RAID Array
The online advisor helps you decide between rack/blade/tower servers, a storage network based around local server discs, Fibre-channel, or iSCSI, options for centralised management and backup of virtual machines, the workload type of each virtual machine and even how hard you want run your processors! Once again the 3 main virtualisation suppliers are here as options to choose from:
Learn more about virtualisation. If you would like help choosing a suitable virtualisation infrastructure for your organisation, follow up using the form below: -IB- |
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3.
Backups forgotten in the rush to CMS
So many organisations have switched from dry, unchanging web sites
based on static web pages to dynamic content-managed systems, one can't
help thinking it can only be the best thing since the HTML equivalent
of sliced bread. But is it a winner for everyone?
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Help at hand. |
The benefits of Content Management Systems (CMS) are numerous and easy to reel off:
If the web-hosting company went bang, you didn't lose your web content forever
Backup a second though, quite literally. What's been lost with the move from static web pages to content management is an inherent backup. Old-style HTML pages were easy to design with any HTML editor, and ended up as files on your local drive. No fancy applications and databases needed there, just a browser to view them. The publishing job was typically to copy those files up to a web server via an FTP tool - another trivial task. The process effectively created a master set of files (the local ones) and a published set (the web-hosted ones). If the web-hosting company went bang or lost its Internet connectivity for a while, at least you didn't lose the hard graft of your web content forever. This had other benefits in that you could test 'what-ifs' by cloning the local files in a new directory and playing around with them while keeping the masters intact. Web-hosting - the new masterGear up to a content-managed system and the files are now all on the web-hosted server; these now are the masters. In this situation the web hoster's robustness and stability becomes an issue, and possibly a threat to your content. So surely a quick reverse-FTP copy will put all the copies back on your local system where you can feel they are safely stored? Nice theory, and an FTP copy will indeed will pull down all those images and bits of text your organisation compiled, but on its own, that structure can't be restored to replicate your original site if it gets vaporised. Secret sqlThere's an extra dimension - one that stores all the information about which editors and contributors have rights to edit which pages, or install new modules, or whether a news module will allow anonymous visitors to submit news, or blogs or comments. That kind of stuff needs to be held in a database, often a MySQL database. Trouble is, these database files (ending in .sql) are not even directly visible, being kept tucked away from your main hosted space and out of tampering reach. Some web-hosting companies supply tools like phpadmin online for developers and content-management geeks to tinker with, but your average static page designer will need a bit of coaching in both the theory and practice before diving in. Backing up CMS databasesThe good news is that most web-hosters provide simple backup utilities to copy both the files and the MySQL databases down to a local machine within your control. So you are likely to end with 2 files - a large backup20081222.gz for the images and text, and a smaller drpl_mysite.sql.gz for the rights databases. If you haven't discovered such utilities yet, it's to login and investigate them, pronto! Of course this is a manual operation run from the control panel at your web host and should ideally be executed every time changes are made. But with a publishing workforce that is now distributed across contributors - possibly across time zones and countries too - web site changes can be harder to determine. Automated backups can be implemented but are often harder to set up. Full CMS web site backup can be relatively easy to achieve, but may require command line directives and, of course a remote machine that is on and ready to accept the backup across the Internet at the scheduled times. It is often possible to set up an automated daily back up on the web-hosted server itself, but all you have done then is to consume more storage space without circumventing the danger of web-hoster meltdown. If you need help with any of the issues covered here, get in touch with the form below. Learn more about content management. -IB- |
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4.
Script of the month
An occasional series that lays out scripts that can run when your computer or server starts up.
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Help at hand. |
The idea is to automate many tasks that occur once-off on start-up or when a user logs in instead of having to type and run them manually. Script: ADOutlookSigThe basic concept of ADOutlookSig is to generate each user's email signature automatically when they log into a PC. All of the information within the signature comes from the server's Active Directory and will be displayed with the same look and feel for everyone. This means that users, managers, and engineers do not have to spend any time developing signatures for new users. It also allows a global change of the signature format from one single location. ADOutlookSig is compatible with all versions of Outlook and will activate if run as part of a logon script or even if run individually by a user/engineer. The script will generate an HTML signature in the following format:
Full Name
| Mobile: MOBILE NO. | Tel: TELEPHONE NO. | Fax: FAX NO. | Since the script is fully commented, the layout and style can be changed easily by anyone with basic HTML knowledge. Also, an optional disclaimer can be added to the end of the signature if required. The mobile, Skype, and MSN sections will only display if these fields are populated in Active Directory. Additional fields can easily be added by modifying the script. So it's simply a matter of populating Active Directory with all the relevant details on your users and then running the script at logon and everyone will receive the above signature the next time they write an email. To get the signature to work on Outlook Web Access (OWA), just copy it from a sent email and placing it in the Signature section in OWA's options page. Have you read the script?Co-Operative Systems is increasingly using automated scripts to improve IT services in a number of different ways, so do contact us to find out how we can help you save time and increase reliability. Follow up on this topic using the form below. -IB- Arik Fletcher |
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5.
Q&A: Destroying sensitive data before passing on a PC
Question 
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Help at hand. |
It's true that deleting files and even emptying the Windows Recycle Bin wouldn't hinder a skilled amateur in recovering information such as credit card numbers, bank account details, passwords, emails and web sites visited by users of the PC. You can even download free software to do just that. Perhaps you've also seen various articles stating that the only way to pass on your old computers second-hand and subsequent users recovering sensitive data is to hammer the hard drive - quite literally. Indeed this is still what large commercial enterprises do, or pay to have done for them. Effective as the hammer blow is in its single issue task, its crude outcome creates another problem for the next owner, in that the machine becomes unusable unless you replace the hard drive. The bottom line for you should be to minimise the cost of disposing or recycling your unwanted hardware while maintaining your data security, and make no mistake there are plenty of costs to avoid. The options for rendering your data inaccessible are broadly:
Options 1) and 2) can be expensive and potentially dangerous respectively, and will make refurbishing the ravaged PC prohibitively expensive for either the recycling company or ultimate end user. Option 3) requires some knowledge and skill in determining where your sensitive files are stored; aside from the obvious My Documents there are emails, browsing history, temporary Internet files, cookies and financial data, the latter often being stored in the Program Files folder belonging to the finance program. You need to delete these by using wiping software (see below) that overwrites your data with ones and zeros - preferably randomly. Option 4) - a complete wipe and restore - is probably the easiest for those wanting to DIY. It's relatively thrifty in terms of your time and could even be handed to a volunteer with some simple instruction and the end user gets a machine that runs the original Windows supplied. The steps for this last option run something like:
Now you have restored the machine to its original working state - with any sensitive data safely overwritten - ready for another owner. If a DIY solution isn't for you, contact us for help with wiping and reinstating a hard drive.
-IB-
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Clicks of the Trade - strip out vertical text in Word
--- Quick tips for happier clicks! ---
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Help at hand. |
It's a horizontal world we live in. Text goes left-to-right and then top-to-bottom, or so it appears for most computer users. Fortunately software producers have strenuous efforts in recent years to accommodate those whose languages go top-right to bottom-left. But there are huge numbers of English-speaking Word users that still maintain the left-to-right, top-to-bottom view of their sentences composed in Word. Faced with removing the first character of a list of a hundred sentences pasted in from a web page, most of us would resort to laborious manual deletions, distorted by their left-to-right overview. Smarter thinkers might try Find and Replace. However, Word can 'think' vertically as well as horizontally, by making a vertical text selection and a simple, but rarely known trick can save vast amounts of time and keying errors. So in this example, you might want to remove the words "Plan for" from the whole of this pasted list. 
Although this example selects text from the beginning of lines, you could equally make vertical selections at say, 10 characters in - very useful for tabulated text - just so long as you remember to hold down the Alt key before dragging. For OpenOffice fans, the same technique works in OpenOffice Writer too. ** try it now **-IB-
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