CONTENTS *** NewsBytes *** Case Study: Family Futures Mean, green G11 servers from Dell Taming your email The Silent Software Subscription revolution Wake up to IT Q&A: How do I know if my anti-virus software is working? Clicks of the Trade - simple multi-day calendars in Outlook

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*** NewsBytes ***
XP lives on inside Windows 7 Microsoft's next operating system, Windows 7, permits a 'Windows XP Mode' for users of what will then be the predecessor-but-one operating system. Users who want to stick with Windows XP or make the transition gradually can run it inside Windows 7 in a virtualised mode. Microsoft would seem to have granted another reprieve to die-hard XP followers who shunned its successor Vista, in an attempt to carry customers with them into 2010. "Windows XP Mode is specifically designed to help small businesses move to Windows 7," posted Scott Woodgate in the Microsoft's team blog. Microsoft announced recently that Windows 7 will be released to manufacturing in August. Will people stick with the old XP, or plump for the unknown Windows 7, or go for established Vista? Check our Next Windows poll: NCVO-recommended supplier now full-time Having trialled working with NCVO in providing Services to its members NCVO and Co-Operative Systems are pleased to announce agreement of a 2-year arrangement to offer ongoing discounted services to NCVO members, with a 10% discount off standard rates for Support and IT management services. For more details about Co-Operative Systems call on 020 7793 0295, email team@coopsys.net or see www.coopsys.net Acer powers up low-power notebook Acer has launched its new ultra-thin Timeline series of low-power notebook computers boasting up to 10 hours battery life for SSD (Solid State Disc) versions and 8 hours conventional platter disc drives. Scraping in under an inch in thickness, and with screen sizes of 13.3, 14.1 and 15.6-inches, these diminutive laptops squeeze out 40% more power from conventional batteries by employing Intel's Core 2 Duo ULV (ultra low voltage) chips, and Intel Display Power Saving Technology. But Acer has taken the power-saving mantra all the through to the AC adapters too: when the laptop is fully charged, detectors put the AC adapter into idle mode, saving on electricity consumption and increasing battery life. Ther is also a manual PowerSmart button at the top of the keyboard. Entry level prices are around $599-799. Come May, when UK retailers are likely to receive shipments, don't expect to get any change from similar figures in UK pounds. www.acer.com/timeline Google Squared Google has announced 3 developments to refine and extend the ability of their search tools. Unveiled at their Searchology update event and on Google's blog are new search options - a pop-out in search results that shows web options for videos, forums, reviews, timeline, a Flash-driven Wonder Wheel showing connections to related sites. Next up on Google's 'tool belt' are search snippets that will feature more information, though only for web publishers adopting microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML pages. Finally, Google Squared is a forthcoming feature that will tabularise searched facts into spreadsheets by automatically fetching and organising facts from across the web - due later in May. Spam: carbon footprint of 3 million cars Climate-change researchers ICF and spam experts have calculated that the annual energy used to generate and filter spam totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), according to McAfee’s "Carbon Footprint of Spam" study That’s equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes, with the same greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using 2 billion gallons of gasoline.	9 out of 10 attacks aim at finance sector A report from Verizon Business identifies the financial services sector as the target for 93% of organised cybercrime in 2008. The study analysed 285 million records from 90 confirmed breaches in from Verizon Business’ actual caseload and found most data breaches were caused by external sources with many emanating from Eastern Europe, though a high 20% were due to insiders. Although over 90% of records were breached by malware of the result or hacking, most of these stemmed from a combination of events rather than a single action and, more worryingly, in 69% of cases were only discovered by a third party. Dr. Peter Tippett, vice president of research and intelligence, Verizon Business Security Solutions said: "Eastern Europe is known as a notorious haven for organized cybercrime outfits which played a major role in breaches throughout 2008. We have a great deal of evidence that malicious activity from Eastern Europe is the work of organized crime. On the bright sight, efforts with law enforcement led to arrests in at least 15 cases (and counting) in 2008." Report in full: http://sn.im/fxue6 200Mbps broadband Doubling even the UK's fastest broadband connections, Virgin Media will trial 200Mbit/sec broadband for just 100 selected triallists. The company's DOCSIS 3.0 technology bonds together 4 of its 50Mbit/sec connections to serve up high-bandwidth entertainment services such as HD and 3D TV, and is being piloted with consumers in Ashford. The speeds achieved are 20 times those used by the majority of Vigin Media customers and many others in the UK. Chrome polish for Linux Google's Chrome browser is slowly making its way to appearing on the Linux platform, joining just two truly multi-platform browsers - Firefox and Opera. Dubbed "Chromium" in its alpha release, the browser has already been been sighted, with reports on how to lever it on your favourite Linux system, though several features such as tabs aren't functional yet. Those wishing to be alerted when Chrome on Linux appears officially should go to Google's Chrome for Linux sign up page to get the email confirmation. Unified Communications Forum Anyone-anywhere-anytime is what Unified Communications (UC) have been designed to allow. Learn about employee mobility and flexibility, efficient support for remote and home workers, centralized management of core systems, reduction in the total cost of ownership for communications systems and much more. This forum is free for end users and is aimed at IT/IS Directors/CIOs and anyone managing networks, telecoms or ICT. Where: Inmarsat Conference Centre, 99 City Road, London EC1 When: Wednesday, 3rd June, 2009. More info and registration NCVO event: Multimedia Explained NCVO's one-day course "Multimedia Explained" takes place at their conference suite on 8th June. The workshops, surgery and case studies aim at those involved in communications, marketing or publishing for charities, voluntary or community organisations. Plenary speakers from key organisations explain how to get your message across using multimedia. More info about booking and fees.
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	1. Case Study: Family Futures Family Futures is an adoption and adoption support management agency based in North London. As a key part of their work they hold and process information about Children. Understandably security and confidentiality are very important.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	However these are very challenging times and, whilst IT networks and the Internet make it very easy for organisations to share information, they also make it very hard to protect that information. A recent study showed that 94% of large enterprises had a security breach in the last 12 months. (BERR Information Security Breaches Survey 2008). For smaller organisations on a budget setting an appropriate strategy can be daunting. Happily for Family Futures, their IT provider Co-Operative Systems is very experienced in these challenges, on a large scale with organisations such as SCIE and Equinox with hundreds of staff and through their work with smaller organisations facing similar issues. Philip Anthony of Co-Operative Systems explains: "The issue of security has existed since people first started using PCs, but in the early days it was just a matter of locking the floppy disks away. Since then, securing an organisation against all the different threats has become increasingly challenging. We have a check list of key items - for example, we insist that everyone we work with is protected by Firewalls, Anti-virus protection, Anti-spam protection and undertakes regular software updates. To be honest, a lot of our clients don't want to know about the technical side, so we just take care of these issues for them as part of our service contracts. But what they do need, is to be sure from a management view point that the policy and practices in place are adequate." Alan Burrell, Director of Family Futures says: "We've worked with Co-Operative Systems for some 4 years now, and from the outset we have had an ongoing dialogue on how best to protect our data. It's not easy. What we have done with Co-Operative Systems' help is secure our network and, equally importantly, raised staff awareness on best practice. We've also put in place Disaster Recovery plans. We haven't spent a fortune, and use mainstream equipment and software and we need to be vigilant on an ongoing basis, but we have now managed our risk level down to an appropriate level." Contacts Family Futures web site: www.familyfutures.co.uk -IB- Acknowledgements: Phil Anthony

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	2. Mean, green G11 servers from Dell Dell's new G11 range of servers offer a big step forward in performance and capacity, as well as environmentally-friendly architecture.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Co-Operative Systems is shipping the latest Dell G11 servers, it announced today, and with discount pricing to NCVO members. Dell's new G11 range of servers offer a big step forward in performance and capacity, as well as environmentally-friendly architecture. The G11 server series comprise the T610 tower model plus the R610 and 710 rack models from the current ranges. The main technical enhancements are that all G11 servers contain the latest Intel Pentium Xeon 5500 processors from Intel. Reckoned to be the most important processor development since the Pentium Pro launched in 2002 and code-named 'Nehalem', the technology has been in the making for the last two years and was released just at the beginning of April 2009. Under the Nehalem micro-architecture, each core has its own multi-threading capability, meaning that several applications can be handled continuously by each processor core at the same time, thus allowing true simultaneous processing of a backup job, a mail queue and database queries at the same time. Green power saver The Xeon 5500 is the first processor to have power auto-saving so that individual cores shut themselves down when the server is in idle mode, thus matching server power to the demands made upon it. The triple whammy achieved is that not only do you save on energy and electricity bills compared to previous Pentiums while at the same time reducing the load on cooling equipment to the server room, but the server hardware enjoys a longer life from reduced wear and tear. Funnel multiple servers into one The G11 hardware is also a virtualisation-friendly with a choice of Embedded Hypervisors from VMware®, Citrix® or Microsoft® for fast, easy virtualisation of multiple servers. The built in Dell Management Console (DMC) is Dell's own configuration interface that allows smart tricks such as customising the server fully with keyboard and mouse clicks and access to scripts that allow operating system deployment. Finally, the prayers of techies' lives have been answered! The fraught mutterings "Oh please, let me be able to find the original system driver CDs" are a curse of the past since all G11 system drivers are embedded on an Secure Digital (SD) chip on the main board. Access to them is gained simply by pressing F10 in the Dell Management Console. Never again will you need to look beyond here if drivers are needed. Use the form below to get up to speed with the new Dell G11 servers. Tell me more Send me a quote Remind me later Email* Org -IB- Acknowledgements: staff team

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	3. Taming your email Who's in control of your email: it or you? Bob Hallewell examines the issue of why organisations aren't addressing the problem of email.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	A recent poll of IT professionals and email end-users highlighted some highly schizophrenic attitudes to managing email. When asked "Which one factor contributes most to the good/poor functioning of an organisation", 80% said "Communication" When asked "What's the main way people in your organisation communicate," an overwhelming majority said "Email" When asked which problems the organisation has with email, most tick all of these: time; unnecessary copies; stress; full inboxes; passing the buck; death by email (and others) Some organisations cope with email. The conundrum for the rest is: How can senior people hold these three pieces of information in their heads at the same time - and not address the problem in their organisation? Why don't organisations address the problem of email? Today's cheap disc storage means we can save as many messages as we like – a veritable bottomless pit for our textual torrents - but not everyone stays on top of answering and managing their messages. It's as if most organisations are in denial about the extent of their email problem, and what benefits they would realise by changing their behaviours; in this respect too much mail storage space can be as damaging as too little. But when it comes to email management, not everyone exhibits the same behaviour. The odd thing is often that IT staff experience few difficulties, but others do. Why is this? In training sessions run by Expert Messaging, the perception is that IT people change their behaviour less than others, perhaps because they don't 'experience' email as a problem, as opposed to not having it as one. (Compare nail-biters: if someone is worried about biting their nails there are two ways out: stop biting or stop perceiving it as a problem). If IT folk are better at dealing with their mail, what are they doing that others are not? Opinion: The HR/IT split The dilemma arises from the split between HR and IT departments. IT's job is to take care of email and they interpret that as delivering low-cost messaging that works when the computer is booted up. And HR's job is not email. Therefore, the non-technical problems of email are not being picked up. Email problems increase with an organisation's size: the impact of "Reply-to-all" messages to 18 staff is manageable, but the same behaviour with 500 staff can engulf their ability to work at all. The email function normally falls within the remit of IT. Staff often just get IT training (if any) on how to send/edit/copy/save drafts, and the like. Conversely, HR deal with soft skills training (managing relationships, how to present yourself, communicating clearly). Because they view staff as having 'already been trained on email', the soft-skills side of email is overlooked. Thus, over-simplifying the issue enormously, staff are taught how to send multiple copies to their colleagues, but not why not to. What needs to happen? HR need to take ownership of the human issues connected with email. In the same way they take responsibility for the culture of their organisation when it comes to such issues as attitudes to diversity, bullying, time-keeping, absenteeism, performance appraisal, staff morale (the list goes on), they need to take responsibility for attitudes and working practices around email, such as setting standards around the (mis)use of email, and developing an effective email charter for their organisation, all of which should be embedded within the culture of the organisation. And that is not the job of IT. It could be that they have the same volume of dross in their inboxes, but they may have set up a technical fix to delete the dross automatically. Indeed they are among the few people who actually do something about email stress, partly because they spend a lot of time using email, but mainly because they are interested in IT and are therefore predisposed to find a fix (such as folder redirection rules, archiving, pop-ups for skim reading and quick deletion). Essentially they put in the time to do some (DIY) training, which is what the rest do not. Letters litter Most email users can manage sending and receiving - it's dead simple for them. But step up a level to managing it with some sophistication and many don't feel they have the time. The stress seems to arise in organisations who can't afford additional staff, nor (as they see it) training time. Email took off because it had the advantage of simulating the age-old concept of letter writing and delivery, however most of its users still haven't come to terms with the consequences of their globally available 'letter box' and how to manage it. Perhaps the statistical percentages of email-stressed people and the culture surrounding them will decline as new generations take over; the email-aware generations growing up now will be in the majority. Perhaps not. No problem here then ... In a remarkable parody of Homer Simpson's wilful ignorance in dire situations, the email stress issue is not addressed as there is no perceived need. Take road accidents. Every week 50 or so people die on roads in the UK - and nobody 'notices' because they occur all over the place. But if 50 people all died in one big accident every week, action would be taken. Hence, when a quarter of an organisation's staff suffer from email stress, nobody appears to care because the malaise is distributed, whereas if the sufferers all started queueing outside the HR department to complain, then (hopefully) action would follow. Retention requires attention Most organisations have data retention polices, but fail to alert their end-users of the polices or what to do with old information valuable enough to be kept. Neither do they mandate how information is stored or the filing structure that should be employed. Mail users relying on Outlook style .pst files are often unaware of size limits, until mailboxes grow too large and corrupt. Another problem is the growing volume of useful information in people’s inboxes: what happens to that information when the person leaves? It's not a good strategy just to give the old inbox to the next post-holder and say "There you go. Get on with it." Moving emails into folders or a Document Management System (DMS) will help solve these predicaments, as well as instituting good systems for information management generally. Stress-busting solutions Starting with the basics and moving up in sophistication ... Get online spam filtering and chuck out the junk before it even enters your network Help users with training, both technical and behavioural Get HR involved in the people problems associated with Information Technology Use rules in your local mail client - the time needed will pay itself back in a day Look at archiving systems (some services are bundled with online filtering like MessageLabs) in tandem with training users to respect size limits Investigate email storage as part of a document management system to comply with your data retention/expiry policies Develop an organisation-wide and integrated approach to people, information and technology Expert Messaging was created to promote the work of award-winning international facilitator Bob Hallewell. Courses are run in the form of a core email training module with optional add-ons that cover Outlook, Instant Messaging and the law. Contacts To find out more, please visit www.expert-messaging.com Learn more email tips -IB-

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	4. The Silent Software Subscription revolution Upgrade or be damned. Are we seeing the end of software as an outright purchase?
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Time was when you purchased a software package and that was it - end of story. Nowadays you're likely to to find that your mission-critical office software, backup program or disc imaging program suddenly stops working and it's all because you haven't 'kept up the payments'. It's been a logical place for software houses to go; moving into Sky-style subscriptions rather than an outright purchase generates more revenue for them and attempts to overcome customers' natural resistance to paid software upgrades. Symantec's Backup Exec, Adobe's Creative suite, Acronis disc imaging and IBM's Lotus groupware are all software packages on a regular subscription model. Support is the cash driver It's not all bad news though. Two of the main drivers for the subscription model have been security updates and software support. Your average hobbyist downloader might get the program running in couple of minutes and won't be interested in updates or further technical support, until that is, the point at which something goes horribly wrong or they get stuck. Probably both. And at the same time. The move to subscription-based software has advantages for manufacturers, over and above what we cynical punters might see as a pure cash grab. Barely an hour passes by without some security firm discovering a bug in some major program, and that can spell doom for big name software vendor, especially if said security firm doesn't negotiate on publicising their discoveries before a fix can be released. The same publicity killer can apply to usability features. The absence of a menu item or the inability to, say, do a PDF export is less serious, but once-avid fans of a given software application soon drift away in droves if the company can't fund the effort to ship upgrades and convince users to apply them - all the more so when a rival package starts doing it better. Satisfying all of the customers all of the time: Freeware Providing a path for automatic upgrades via subscriptions thus solves a whole host of problems in one go, if the manufacturer can persuade its clientèle of the benefits. Recognising their customers' propensity to stay with the software status quo and keep their wallets tightly shut, manufacturers have sought to offer solutions for all. We see these in the form of extra 'Starter/Freeware Editions', providing an "as-is" package for evaluation or home use, with no support or upgrades. Occasionally a 'no-commerce' ruling is waived for those organisations with charitable status. Hotly promoted on the back of these loss-leaders (sometimes inside the package code itself) are Pro or Premium editions, at subscribed rates with full support and with automatic upgrades rolling out the second they are released. In a stroke they have funded a support team, guaranteed to keep products out there as secure a possible, and satisfied the no-cost hobbyists. In effect, all we are witnessing is the shift to a situation where the licence to use the software is now limited, rather than for the lifetime of the product. But basically this may mean that your software won't work after a year is up. There's a significant trend towards this stance and herd mentality could make software subscriptions the rule rather than the exception, but understandably this is one aspect that software houses are not 'bigging up'. Subbing out: A strategy for renewals Clearly charities need to choose their applications carefully, but increasingly they must factor associated maintenance costs into the budget too. Take the strategy a stage further though and it becomes obvious that a maintaining a calendar of expiry dates makes sense for all your IT-related subscriptions. For instance - web site space and domains, crucial software such as backups, router and firewall maintenance, support contracts for particular software, SSL certificates for your secure web sites. Make your life easier by taking out a complete maintenance package of renewals with us. Check the form below. Tell me moreHelp me set it upSend me a quoteRemind me later Email* Org Rate this article * ** *** **** ***** -IB- Acknowledgements: staff team

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	5. Wake up to IT Computing has to be the industry where everyone's always "thinking about tomorrow", while yesterday's IT 'goners' still remain with us. And yet, the short step that's required to enter a virtuous IT circle is elementary.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	The price of an IT project It would be nice to think that pioneering strides and efficient cost savings are always the key advances that are achieved solely by investing in new IT infrastructure, but actually the truth is more mundane. From our experience of the third sector as a whole, organisations are generally slow to embrace new possibilities and technology. However what we have witnessed in recent years is those that do, go from strength to strength, and they leverage IT to meet their objectives far more productively. It's often a virtuous circle: forward-looking organisations embrace new technologies that then move them forward. Another key statistic that crops up time and again is that many IT projects often have a price tag over their life span of about the price of a cup of coffee per user per day. Staff costs generally dwarf all other expenditure, so any project that offers the chance to make a team, say, 3% more effective for the price of a latte, has to be a winner. After all, the expenses begin to rack up when your staff and volunteers have to stop working because that's the time that projects and campaigns come to a grinding halt, deadlines get missed and morale takes a dive. And that productivity bonus can be achieved by simple measures such as eliminating system crashes to improve reliability; faster Internet connections; ensuring that backups are running smoothly; protecting switches, routers and cables from accidental disconnection; or even as banal as reducing the time it takes for a PC to start up. Take a leaf out of big industries' enterprise handbook: when corporates update all their equipment and give it to charities, their motivation isn’t philanthropy. It’s to make their processes faster. -IB- Phil Anthony

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	6. Q&A: How do I know if my anti-virus software is working? Question Mark Hi Mark, We bought some new anti-virus software to install on our machines as some of them previously had viruses and we didn’t trust the old software. Now we have the new program set up on all our computers, how do we know it’s actually doing its job? Hopefully we don’t have to catch a virus to test it!
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Obviously nobody wants to go out there in the great world-wide web and deliberately snare a virus just to confirm your defences are up to scratch. Fortunately a guy called Paul Ducklin thought about all this way back in the 1990s and eventually set up kind of test virus with the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research (EICAR), which you can fetch from eicar.org - specifically http://eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm. This one isn’t harmful, but has been agreed as a standard to trigger all anti-virus software for the express purpose of demonstrating that its alerts are running. The file comes in four formats (text and/or program un/zipped) and is a legitimate program which simply prints the message "EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!" Clearly this anti-malware test file can't show whether your program will defend your systems against the very latest viruses as it’s merely intended to show that your AV systems are deployed correctly and turned on. Anyone who contemplates an online scanner would be well-advised to pull down an EICAR file and see if that gets detected. Some do indeed ignore EICAR, perhaps to prevent scaring the unwary, but you may want to make your judgement on the basis that if it can or will miss one, then it may also be an oversight. Whatever you do, it’s worth downloading all four files to ensure your chosen AV software can detect inside zip files too. Discover answers in more Q&A topics -IB- Found this article helpful? Rate it * ** *** **** ***** Got a "Q" for which you would like an "A" ? Submit your IT question here:

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	Clicks of the Trade - simple multi-day calendars in Outlook --- Quick tips for happier clicks! ---
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Take a look at your Outlook calendar in Work Week mode and it probably looks like this (hopefully a bit busier!), but it shows just 5 days. Switch to full Week mode and you lose all the nice columnar timings. But there is a way to have your workday week 'cake' and eat it, with just 2 keys. While you're there in Work Week mode, simply hold down the Alt key and press the number key for the number of days you want to show. Hence Alt+7 expands the same view to a 7-day work week. You can choose anything number up to a 10-day week! Take it a stage further: the dates don't even need to be consecutive. By holding down the Ctrl key and clicking each Monday in turn, you get a month with just 5 days in it (hey!) - all Mondays. Logically enough, holding down the Shift key and clicking dates groups batches of days together, but only up to 14 days. ** try it now ** More Clicks of the Trade -IB-

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