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Grant seekers meet givers
A pilot Government web-site which provides information for voluntary and community organisations is underway at www.volcomgrants.gov.uk, Although only listing 9 grants from 4 government departments at the time of writing, the site is the first stage of a larger project to develop a Voluntary and Community Sector Portal. However, it already boasts useful resources such as sources of funding, types of grant, how to apply and a FAQ section. The online Eligibility Checker takes about 10 seconds to complete and find out if you are eligible for grants. With the emphasis on electronic exchanges and the likes of free software programmes available from funderfinder.org.uk, perhaps an end to the incessant filling in of paper forms is at last in sight!
Office rumours
Microsoft has released the Beta 1 code of its next 'Office 11' suite, but the 6000 copies worldwide only go privileged beta testers. The next Beta 2 release, expected in 2003, will further include 3000 UK customers.
The new suite is based heavily on XML and 'Smart Documents' - the MS name for linking web services to the desktop - and aims to enhance business process information flow and productivity. Final release is predicted in Summer 2003.
Tax office to axe Office?
The possibility that the Inland Revenue is considering moving from its current Microsoft PC software to an open source alternative, like Linux and Sun Microsystems' StarOffice, has signalled a potential body-blow rejection of MS and its new controversial licensing policies. Poised with 70,000 NT4 desktop PCs - soon to lose MS support - and a likely purchase of 30,000 new ones in 2003, the tax office won't necessarily be seeking to install Windows 2000 or XP. Sun's newly-supported, packaged open source desktops and low purchase and operating costs could fit well with the Revenue's requirements.
Losing our memories
Several hundred boxes of memory chips were stolen in the early hours from a cargo centre near Heathrow Airport. The 'white van men' made off with over £2.6m-worth. Police asked those in the computer industry to be on the look out for cut-price chips in what they believe was a planned theft.
**** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes ****
trnsprt alrts 4u
Transport for London launched a new free personal alerts service in mid-September. The service pops up real time travel news as text messages on your mobile phone or emails to your desktop and allows you to monitor your commuting route continuously. Register at: www.tflwap.gov.uk/
A pain in the printer
A network-aware worm called W32/Bugbear-A started spreading rapidly last month by sending emails with attachments and copying itself across shared resources on local networks. One nuisance side effect is that any printer attached as a shared network resource turned into a producer of heaps of binary-rubbished paper - not an infection, but more of a sore.
**** end of NewsBytes ****
The story of a saboteur in the sorting office
Scenario ....
You could dismiss it as a curiosity.
But the plot thickens, because this disturbing reply has dropped into your work email not your personal one and although you've never had direct contact with Maria, you are vaguely aware that she's a friend of one of your friends (let's call him Bruce).
It's not spam. Your anti-virus checker isn't complaining. Doesn't seem like a joke. Is it a hoax?
By now, you're pretty baffled, right? And probably also a little intrigued!
The explanation is that Bruce has (or has recently had) an email-borne virus in his PC.
The subject and body text could be anything, but if the virus is clever enough it will also pick snippets from Bruce's recent conversations with friends and colleagues. Typically, it is less clever and will warn recipients, falsely, of a virus and in doing so, immediately puts them on their collective guard.
The 'loose cannons' in this situation are stand-alone PCs with Internet access, typically a home user and a blissfully ignorant one at that.
We know the addresses are forged because in at least one case the domain (the bit after the @ symbol) was a domain we can receive, but never broadcast with. Even more curiously were those addresses which had usernames from one email bolted on to domain names from another. The result was a postmaster account throwing up bounces displaying usernames that have never crossed the threshold of my organisation, eg JaneAusten@yourorg.org.uk, in our fictional example.
One or two of these constitute a mild distraction. Half a dozen emails simply labels the experience as "time waster" but if you're the postmaster or sys admin at your work place, it becomes a real pain in the mail server!
Mmmm. Tricky.
The most effective measure you can take at present are preventative ones:
Main vendors of anti-virus software:
Learn about email headers.
'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon', Director: Ang Lee. -IB-
Paul Craig
Personal information is the new 'gold rush' and the pan handlers of the digital age out there will do anything to get hold of your details.
When commercial firms can't persuade you to buy their products directly, they frequently employ demographic and statistical information to better their odds of selling to a particular sector of population or a geographical area.
The worrying part is - fully admitted by the above scheme - that the make-up of the "participating companies" is highly likely to change; as might be expected, any successful marketing venture is going to attract more eager companies. Thus, by providing the bare minimum of information, you are likely to be targeted by a wide range of marketing of little interest. So the catch is that the only way to ensure you do receive relevant material is to provide companies with a great deal of personal data.
Fortunately, the various "Preference Schemes" (see Contacts below) for mail, telephone and fax allow you to opt out of marketing bumf in a wholesale fashion - but only if you haven't already voided those preferences by signing an agreement with a cartel that includes statements such as those above.
In a similar cartel style agreement, your MS Passport (assuming you agreed) permits Microsoft to share your email address irrevocably among its partners, the only come-back being for you to unsubscribe from all the partner e-mail lists in turn - an arduous and sometimes almost impossible task. We have direct experience of marketing companies who are reluctant (whether deliberately or through inefficiency) to remove addresses from their lists despite direct requests to do so!
The profound security weaknesses of the Passport single sign-on authentication system and a consumer's resulting e-commerce account also mean that passwords could be at risk, especially where those passwords are easily guessable and may have already been stolen into from a previous trojan-infected Windows 9x or Me machine.
All of which, rather worryingly, leads to the potential exposure of credit card details via the MS Hotmail account (Messenger and Hotmail now require Passport) as well as web browsing information held in user cookies.
Not that reputable companies out there will be racking up credit card withdrawals illegally, but then it's not the reputable ones we have to worry about.
Poorly installed LANs (yep - we're talking about internal networks here) that rely on wireless communication standards have become a target for unscrupulous information seekers who can effectively log in to your network, if they can get near enough - even outside the building!
Surely these 'wireless holes' must be hard to find, after all it's not so easy to spot a wireless network from the street? More nasty surprises: successfully hacked networks have often been advertised by war-chalking the geographical spot (literally highlighting the location) by chalking up special symbols, so that others can tap in too.
The Direct Marketing Association’s Preference Services
Mailing Preference Service:
Telephone Preference Service:
Fax Preference Service:
-IB-
[Acknowledgements: X-News, Brian Livingston]
Mitigating the risks of "speaking before you think".
Ever sent an email without an attachment?
Haven't we all!
We really need someone to protect us from ourselves - or maybe some mechanism ....
In MS Outlook, you can delay any email by a few minutes, hours, etc, but the one time you make an enormous 'booboo' will be that one time you forget - it's not exactly a one-click operation.
Here's how to set up a default rule to delay all your emails by say, 5 minutes.
The trick here is is to delay all those everyday emails that go into your Outbox marked as "Normal importance" (the default), so that the ones you mark "Urgent" (with the red exclamation button) or "Low importance" (with the navy down-arrow button) pass through the Outbox instantly.
To make the Outbox easier to view, you can also set it to show the "Defer Until" field - not necessary but a nice trimming.
That's it!
Deferred messages now appear in italics with their transmission times - 5 minutes from when you clicked "Send".
Be warned that opening deferred messages prevents them from being delivered and you will have to resend them.
In Pegasus Mail - from version 4.02 onwards - has a built-in detector which prompts you if it thought an attachment was supposed to be included. A simple piece of programming but invaluable!
Save yourself heaps of embarrassment and shame. Nuff said
-IB-
When newcomers join your organisation, the one thing you can bet on is that they all have wildly differing computer expertise. What's needed is a level playing field for IT knowledge ....
... or - to use old-fashioned motoring parlance - a "Computer Driving Licence".
Such a test exists and has been taken by over half a million UK folks. Furthermore, it doesn't require any prior knowledge of IT or computer skills before you sit it - though you may need to do a little homework!
The basics covered include IT concepts, file management, word processing, spreadsheets, databases, presentations and communications - all the office essentials in fact. See the full syllabus here.
Led by Thames Valley University, the idea of the MaP>IT (Mature People into IT) project is to provide free IT training to mature employees of small to medium-sized companies (SMEs) and self-employed people. The MaP>IT London venture is financed by the European Social Fund and is available to people aged over 40, living or working in the London
Boroughs who are self employed or employed by companies with up to 250
employees.
http://www.tvu.ac.uk/courses/map_it/index_lon.html
In the UK, ECDL activities are co-ordinated by the British Computer Society who maintain a database of training providers who have registered with the BCS. Once you have completed training, you find your local test centre (out of 2500 accredited) to sit the tests.
Employers can sign up with their specific requirements using the online ECDL form.
European Computer Driving Licence site:
Thames Valley University: -IB-
An insidious piece of advertising.
Ignore it, close it, stay away, save your time.
Playing on the fears of less well informed computer users, it's an attempt to sell.
If you see such a browser pop-up, then right-clicking and looking at the properties quickly reveals an advertising web site.
True, every computer has to 'broadcast' an IP address, or more correctly "have assigned" an IP number - it's one of the basic tenets of the Internet Protocol.
Most users in a organisation or office will be behind a firewall , probably with Network Address Translation and a dynamic address assigned by the ISP, for those with dial-up systems - three methods that go together to build a good defence.
Kit out home, SoHo or teleworkers with a personal firewall and ensure they have advice on securing their computer
Want to see how secure your Windows PC is?
The 20K free download called Shields UP! by grc.com will reveal whether your Windows configuration and ports are accessible by (possibly malicious) outsiders. Needless to say, if you operate behind a firewall, Shields UP should not be able to penetrate as far as your machine.
One of the other basic tenets of the Internet is "Do you believe in what you see?"
-IB-
Same Download, Speedier Line ... ?
To most of us Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) will simply be a balanced version of Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (see What is ADSL?).
BT is finally rolling out Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) broadband internet services in tens of exchanges this Autumn, but only as a trial. Full commercial versions are expected to begin from the middle of next year.
The initial trial will test two 'flavours' of SDSL running at 256Kbps and 2Mbps.
Wholesale pricing for the two products will be £75 and £200 per month respectively, so expect it to be higher once resold through ISPs.
Inevitably, it doesn't come any cheaper.
If you want SDSL now, go to Star Internet, Easynet and Bulldog Communications who already offer services.
www.bulldogcommunications.com/
-IB-
Getting the message - or rather the pictures - across is becoming increasingly important. Fortunately it's also becoming less dependent on what users have set up at their end.
The term "Streaming Media" encompasses any digital format that relays sound and/or video and has opened up a whole new world in the delivery of your message.
Instead of having a static set of pictures or text illustrating your campaign or catalogue or projects, you can display the items in moving 3D video with an accompanying sound track - say, music or a voice-over - and the obvious and increasingly popular distribution point is your web site.
Bringing interactivity to your site with by pushing the full weight of multimedia into the web browser may help your cause or simply better inform your audience, but to make the experience worthwhile for them needs a little understanding of what's going on behind the scenes, because the end-user's desktop computer and their Internet connection has thus far creaked under the impact that this stream (or torrent) of data has on their systems. And what's more, competing player systems make for a busy web developer!
Beginning at the typical user's end, there are currently three major tools that are used to view/stream such media:
Rival applications on the market such as ShockWave and ShoutCast command only small market sectors and hence receive less time and effort on behalf web developers devoted to supporting their formats. A recent survey by Jupiter Media Metrix revealed that media players (such as the ones above) are pre-installed on nearly all computers. RealPlayer is most commonly found with a 28% market share, closely followed by Windows Media Player with 22%, while QuickTime has a 4% share.
From the point of view of the person at the browser-end of things, there are currently two methods of viewing web site multimedia content :
In the past the tendency for web developers has been to take the first option; this means allowing for the absence of any media player and prompting the user with a link to download one - if you want to hold their attention! This option has many drawbacks, such as the user having an extra window open on their desktop or a poorly-installed or out-of-date local player. Thus, embedding the media player into the actual web page is becoming increasingly popular because:
Of the three media players mentioned, Microsoft's Media Player allows a web developer to reach the widest potential audience, purely due to the prevalence of Windows operating systems, but also because it has good compatibility with most browser types and standards for file formats and display resolutions - though given the survey results above, RealPlayer is just leading the field. However, users running (non-MS) Linux, Unix and Mac operating systems are much more likely to have Netscape browsers and RealPlayer installed.
Windows Media Player starts at a low entry-level resolution of 640 x 480 x 16 colours, compared to RealPlayer's 800 x 600 x 256 colours, however the latter better indicates buffering progress even when embedded.
If you are building a web site and considering streaming some media content from it, there a few options to think about:
... is a technique which attempts to smooth out the sometimes 'bursty' delivery of audio/video that arrives at your Internet connection or local network so that you can view/listen to your media without continuous starts and stops
Presenting live media does present a time-critical problem; your audience can't 'go back' and re-visit a section, unlike a clip. Audio on its own requires less bandwidth and a good quality continuous stream can be produced relatively easily. BBC Radio 4 makes good use of this in their "Listen Live" and Listen Again" slots - the latter streaming highlights and programmes previously broadcast.
However, live video webcasts means slow connections are on a 'hiding to nothing' (similar to this '70's Clangers clip) due to the huge bandwidth demands. To compensate, many pop music video offer a range of download qualities to match your connection (56K modem, ISDN, xDSL), although with a modem option it will seem less like video and more like music plus a bunch of ropey still photos.
If, at the receiving end in your organisation, you are expecting users to make more use of video, then the bandwidth requirement will affect you again; two people downloading/looking at the same media stream constitutes double the demand, unless you employ a central caching utility, like say the one bundled in Wingate.
Effectively, we the users do!
Microsoft bundles its players in with operating system packages, while RealMedia (originally the first to market) hides a wily default configuration in its RealPlayer that ultimately annoys you with a pervasive stream of offers, begging you to upgrade to the paid 'Pro' version.
Real Networks:
Windows Media Player:
Apple QuickTime: -IB-
[Acknowledgements: Cieran Brown]
All the stats in one place ...
... and quicker than you can say Internet-Traffic-Report !
It's the Internet Traffic Report - a neat site showing Internet router activity by continent and country - live!.
Stats are shown by the hour and you can drill down through the pages to find response times and packet loss for your local long-distance router.
For instance, our local ebone.net seems to have been down for the last month at the time of writing.
Pin down Internet connection problems. Determine whether unreliabilities are just a little 'local difficulty' between you and your ISP or a country-wide problem or a 9/11 situation.
http://www.internettrafficreport.com/
-IB-
Want to know more? Talk to us or write to us here.
^ Back to contents ^
1. Crouching Virus, Hidden Email
Seen this lately ?
Out of the blue, an email turns up from someone you've never met nor spoken to.
This fictional correspondent - let's call her Jane - is pretty irate about a message she claims you sent her. Jane doesn't like the personal and, frankly, emotional tone it conveys nor the way it breaks off in mid-sentence.
OK, you're dying to solve the riddle ...
Email viruses cause masquerading as third parties
The virus has mailed people found in his address book, including Jane. And it's mailed them all so that it appears to originate from you, because you are on Bruce's list too.
What's the answer ? (see panel)
We've had a few of these 'crossed-wire' emails through my organisation lately, and here's the rub:
Our own network security is screwed down tight and our anti-virus protection is updated regularly and promptly, creating a virus-free environment, as is the case increasingly with most organisations.
What's the solution ?
So what do you do ?
Such 'crossed-wire' emails don't necessarily contain a virus and might not be caught by a spam net because the subject, address and body text components are all, to some degree, genuine - just mixed up.
Contacts
http://www.coopsys.net/downloads/jun2002.htm#avvendors
A story of "Bruce Lee meets Jane Austen"
I B
^ Back to contents ^
2. Your privacy on the line
However, emails and digital communications are shifting their focus of attentions. Here are three very different examples:
Cutting down the amount of junk post you receive is relatively easy through the Mailing Preference Scheme, but is presumably fairly unpopular with commercial marketers as it puts you out of bounds at a stroke, as far as they are concerned. So new loyalty card schemes are hoping to entice you away from your desire for an empty door mat (or email inbox) by signing new overriding opt-in agreements.
Look at part of the privacy and data protection policy from one of them:
"Any information (including your name and address) that does not relate to specific goods or services that you buy (for example, the number of points you earn every month) may be used by us to analyse where and how you use your card. We may also use that information, and share it with participating companies so they can use it, to select and send you offers (which may include bonus offers) which we or they believe are likely to interest you. Participating companies may use and analyse that information to market their services to you outside the programme."
Commonly, such loyalty programmes have opt-out options, but effecting them may place the onus on you to contact the scheme's administrators.
Many potential consumers of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system are being deterred from taking it up by XP's repeatedly asking the user to sign up for a Microsoft Passport, a component part its .NET strategy, although XP does give in eventually to the truly stubborn among us.
Several of the newly-configured wireless networks have been found to conceal serious holes in their security. And guess who's finding them fastest?
... hackers parking outside your window.
Aside from the implications to confidential, personal or commercial data on such a LAN, so-called 'drive-by spamming' has become a by-product of this security weakness, whereby a malicious spammer parks up by the window, dumps thousands of junk emails through the mail server and then drives away. Online mailing cost to them: zero, due to the additional perk of a free Internet connection via the hacked network.
Contacts
DMA home page www.dma.org.uk
5th Floor, Haymarket House, 1 Oxendon Street, London SW1Y 4EE
Tel: 020 7766 4410
Email: mps@dma.org.uk
5th Floor, Haymarket House, 1 Oxendon Street, London SW1Y 4EE
Tel: 020 7766 4420
Email: tps@dma.org.uk
5th Floor, Haymarket House, 1 Oxendon Street, London SW1Y 4EE
Tel: 020 7766 4422
Email: fps@dma.org.uk
I B
^ Back to contents ^
3. Hold that email!
What is it ?
Ever fired off an angry message and then regretted it?
Delay your emails by default
How to make it happen
Benefits
I B
^ Back to contents ^
4. Learning to drive IT - for free!
What is it ?
The MaP>IT project
So if you are less of a Teenage Dirt Bag and more of a dirt-aged teabag, you could be signing up for not only the European Computer Driving Licence, but also CADCAM, eBusiness and Digital Entrepreneurship, networking, and expensive CISCO router courses - all for free and with a formal qualification to show for it.
Benefits
How to make it happen
Contacts
http://www.ecdl.co.uk/
http://www.tvu.ac.uk/
I B
^ Back to contents ^
5. Online sales adopt scare tactics
What is it ?
This pop-up has been appearing when visiting some Web sites, apparently warning users that their machines are insecure.
What to do about it ?
How the scam works
The window is even 'dressed up' to look like a Windows alert dialogue box, but the tell-tale signs are that the font is wrong and the American-style capitalisations don't feature in Windows alerts.
Is my computer secure ?
But that kind of alarmism is akin to saying your dwelling has a number, ergo burglars will find you!
Test your computer security online
This quick test works for stand-alone and networked computers and only takes a few minutes.
Moral
I B
^ Back to contents ^
6. What is SDSL ?
What is it ?
Essentially, SDSL uploads and downloads data at the same speeds simultaneously, whereas ADSL is half the speed in the outgoing direction (from the customer's point of view).
When ?
How fast ?
How much ?
Benefits
Drawbacks
How to make it happen
Contacts
I B
^ Back to contents ^
7. Interpreting Streaming Media Technology
An Overview
The Big Players
The user must download the appropriate media file (sound and/or video) for their player, usually via their default browser or download manager, and then open the file using that locally-installed player.
The web site designer embeds one of the above media players into their actual web page to enable remote playing of the media through that.
What is JavaScript?
JS is an interpreted programming or script language from Netscape (cf. Microsoft's Visual Basic or UNIX-derived Perl) . Script languages generally take browsers longer to process, but since they are easier and faster for us to write than more structured languages, such as C++, (which need to be compiled first), scripts are very useful for shorter programs.
File extension
Media type
.aif
Audio Interchange File
.au
Music File
.avi
Audio Video Interleave File
.mov
QuickTime for Windows movie
.mp3
Motion Picture Experts Group Audio Stream, Layer III
.mpg, .mpeg
MPEG movie/animation
.ra
RealMedia file
.ram
RealMedia Metafile
.wav
waveform audio
.wmf
Windows Metafile
More file extensions at http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/reference/fext/fexta.htm
How to make it happen
Live versus recorded
Audio and video clips are relatively time-uncritical in that the listener/viewer waits for the download to complete, then plays it. Depending on the speed of their connection and the player buffering, they should hear/see a fairly uninterrupted session.
Buffering ...
- if you have one live audio feed (say Parliament) and then start another (say BBC radio) you may
Who pays for all this free player software?
Contacts
http://uk.real.com
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/
I B
^ Back to contents ^
8. How busy is the Internet ?
What is it ?
Benefits
No need to jump to DefCon 5 in a panic!
Contacts
I B
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We hope you found it useful!
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