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**** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes ****
Vista - the new view on Windows
The Microsoft folks at Redmond finally announced the new name for the much-heralded next version of Windows, which is to be called "Vista". The operating-system-formerly-known-as-Longhorn has a suitably corporate title to reflect the focus on its user interface as a major step forwards in design. Also labelled as "Arriving 2006" on its web site, Vista now has a practical deadline to meet.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.mspx
Co-Op recycles cartridges and phones via Action Aid
Co-Op has now signed up to recycle ink cartridges/toners and mobile phones through Action Aid Recycling. What else could you do that is free, simple to do and helps to reduce waste and poverty? The Action Aid web site provides clear guide and fact sheets on which manufacturers' cartridges are collected, and which manufacturers' mobile phones are collected.
www.actionaidrecycling.org.uk
Email misuse: it's a joke
Almost half of all UK office workers receive and forward jokes and inappropriate material while perhaps not realising they could be exposing their trustees and directors to legal action. Downloading illegal software and transmitting confidential information are also high on the list of threats revealed in a YouGov survey.
Learn more about email etiquette.
MS Anti-Spyware expires
Version 1.0.615 of Microsoft's long-running Beta of AntiSpyware expired at the end of July. If you haven't already run a product update from within the program, you will now have to download the latest version from the MS site and uninstall the previous version. The newer version is still a Beta version though.
THE THINGY'S STOPPED WORKING!
Too late for our last issue, Happy Sysadmin Day is an annual time to celebrate your the tech-talking, pony-tailed, fast-food-fed, troglodytic, but above all, indispensable computer geek - the one that lives somewhere deep in the bowels of your building, though you're never exactly sure where that is. Even the unloved (and unkempt) have their own IT Rage Page, or "Advice To Employees" Guide, which details how they'd love us to behave (NOT) all year round.
http://www.sysadminday.com/Time.htm
txt = £
smstextgiving, a venture to promote donating to charities via mobile phone texting, is itself now handled by a charity. The Charity Technology Trust (CTT) has agreed to take over the operation of smstextgiving Ltd and aims to continue to develop the venture by incorporating the operation into its broad range of new media technology services available to charities. Dozens of charitable organisations have signed up to use smstextgiving’s service since the concept was launched 2 years ago.
www.ctt.org
Update Rollup 1 to SP4 for windows 2000 SP4
A "not-the-Service-Pack-5-for-Windows-2000" rollup of fixes has been released for the Windows operating system that went out of mainstream support at the end of June. SP4 has to be installed before this is applied and the rollup contains several 'issues' so it's worth reading the relevant bulletin. A later update of this rollup is promised (a service pack rollup update?)
Update Rollup 1 for Windows 2000 SP4 and known issues
Microsoft's sassy blaster
As part of its Windows Updates service, Microsoft has launched a special detection and removal tool for the most prevalent viral infectors including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom. Although many anti-viral products and removers exist to deal with these infections, Microsoft is releasing an updated version of this tool every second Tuesday of the month precisely because even infected computers appear to function normally. If you don't want to wait for the update, you can run the remover tool from this web page anytime or download it to your computer.
http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/
PowerChute 6 down the chute
Customers of APC's industry standard server power management program were warned that version 6.x of PowerChute Business Edition would fail to operate normally after 27 July 2005. The result is that a power failure would trigger a graceful server shutdown as normal, but will never restart, with the result that subsequent server monitoring and power failure shutdowns is not provided. The reason for the dramatic demise is the expiry of Sun's Java Runtime Environment certificate, upon which Powerchute versions 6.x rely. Manufacturers APC issued a critical update warning to customers urging them to upgrade to version 7.x immediately. Contact us if your Powerchute 6 software has not yet been upgraded
PowerChute Business Edition 6.x customers must upgrade to 7.x
**** end of NewsBytes ****
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1. Going back to uni
When charities are faced with the prospect of homelessness, few of them imagine a return to university as the solution. For CARA, it was a master stroke. | ||||
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I spoke to Liz Cafferty, Deputy Executive Secretary of The Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA). Down and out in Paris and LondonWhat prompted the move?
CARA occupied one of those typical, old central London offices, the Africa Centre in fact, but because of imminent redevelopment, an uncertainty hung over their future as a tenant and a possibility of a forced move to another location was in the air. Aside from the confined, corridor-like existence experienced in the Covent Garden offices, CARA's IT system was similarly cramped in style, with ageing PCs carrying the full daily workload. Further, it appeared that staff knowledge and competence about basics like security and data backup was rapidly outstripping the ability of their machines to cope with new demands. Building a new home
The organisation finally settled on moving in with London South Bank University (LSBU) not so much Fellows as bedfellows, as it were. So what won approval for the eventual choice?
CARA already maintained academic links with LSBU and the university further endorsed itself by being a centre with a multi-cultural background, running courses on refugee studies and allowing access to the vast library. In other words, it was a Good Fit. On a more practical, down-to-earth scale, the workspace itself turned out to be a pleasant open-plan room with a balcony overlooking the interior courtyard. and with benefits ... At your serviceIn a single - though by no means simple - stroke, CARA had also latched on to an expert provider of IT services, as well as a tenancy. Does that mean a full Service Level Agreement (SLA) with guaranteed response times? No, but overall they are happy with the arrangement in place, especially considering no such services were available at the previous offices. A good first contact with the head of LSBU's IT department meant both parties hit it off well and thus far the technicians generally respond in an appropriate time given the level of priority for any IT crisis. Plug-n-PlaySo what do you get as a uni tenant? Broadly, an organisation brings its own PCs and plugs them into the sockets on the wall - then the rest of it is taken care of. That means broadband Internet, document storage, printer sharing and so on. Oh and even backup. On the technical front this means that LSBU provides a subnet of its own Local Area Network to CARA and administers Internet routing, DNS, email addresses and mail handling and security on their behalf. Backup too? The traditional missing part in many a small charity's IT system is managed too. In time-honoured fashion, CARA's backup used to be a local affair copied on to another machine or spare discs. With the move, they negotiated backups on the main university server, a service they rate as a "big plus"! Says Liz "It's made our system much more stable, and we are confident, we don't have to worry anymore". Learning the uni-cycleFrom this exchange, one detects the first clue that CARA has tendencies towards being an 'early adopter', probing carefully into other university benefits they could enjoy, and finding they are often the first to ask about, say, the reprographic services and all the marketing and delivery that surrounds those. Budding buddiesThis process has been something of a flowing and developing relationship - not surprising when a group of half a dozen individuals aims to fit in with an institution of several thousand - so, on occasion, such investigations have been met with a baffled response of "Oh - you're not a uni department then?" It appears that LSBU has been as unclear about the marketability of its services as it is of which label to apply to its tenants, especially the more adventurous ones! However, progress is undeniably steady and it seems that what both outfits have in common is that they are on a learning curve. New equipment such as PCs and printers have been purchased with LSBU acting as supplier; a reception following CARA's AGM was effectively underwritten, providing all the catering an ancillary services one would expect; university designers and a photographer were brought in to help on CARA press releases and brochures for Higher Education Pathways. All in all CARA anticipates more of this work in future, with a joint conference and more refugee studies in the offing. What do you get for your money?For the 700 square feet or so of office space that CARA occupies, the rent includes most of the IT and other services already referred to. The rate is perhaps slightly over the odds for the Elephant & Castle area, but then one has to weigh up other factors like the proximity to London's centre and all the extended academic hub that the university imparts, with the bundling of IT services alone probably amounting to around at least a £2500 saving for CARA's needs. Were there particular IT elements that moved the organisation forward? Liz pauses, before reeling off: "Guaranteed backups, no computer crashes and photocopying facilities to hand so that we don't spend a whole day on committee papers anymore!" Now she simply sums up their IT infrastructure as: "We don't even think about it, to be honest." Sounds like the Nirvana of a thousand TV adverts. The same, but moreI must confess a past link to South Bank, having studied there myself. Although the buildings have changed and expanded to cover more territory, it seems as if its inhabitants still play out their rôles according to type. The 'boys' are technical geniuses, slightly geeky and with little idea of sales and marketing skills, while the 'girls' excel in design faculties, customer relationships and touchy-feely skills, while still being largely absent in technical departments. Plus ça change ... Contacts
-IB- |
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2. Backup: What is it for?
It may sound like a daft question, but unless we understand why we are continually making copies of our data, we can't formulate an appropriate solution. And the options are beginning to change. | ||||
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We all know it's because computers are not infallible. They break down (too often) and risk losing our information, but they are also very good at copying. So the theory runs: let's just take advantage of that and make spare copies of our data. Of late, the backup scene has become more sophisticated and diversified, so with more options available it is now important to know what we are trying to achieve, so as to avoid that completely false sense of security that is shattered when you realise your backups have failed or are useless. 
Our Backup to basics article originally covered the main points, but the mere existence of a traditional tape-drive-in-the-server solution does not inherently tell us what its purpose is. A portfolio of backup aimsOverall, we are trying to achieve 3 aims and, in the order of the frequency with which we resort to these reserves, they are:
What to protect againstThe main threats to the safety and integrity of our data come from:
With a simple bit of comparison and mapping, it's fairly easy to deduce that the higher level aims (1 and 2) will help defend against the more common threats (a, b, c, d), whereas disaster scenarios (e) need an independently-workable strategy (3). The nature of backup is changingThe central server in a typical charity may contain several different types of files. Rather than classifying them by their file extensions (.doc, .xls, etc), we need to grade them according to the importance of their contents. In order of how often we require access to such files, we commonly encounter these categories:
The current technologies
Understanding the technologies means we can now fine-tune the types of backup we need according to our aims. A backup strategyWe can now formulate a suitable scenario for a backup strategy, summarised as:
References
-IB-
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3. Add-ons for Outlook Web Access (OWA)
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Older versions of Outlook Web Access (OWA) were relatively undeveloped and lacked essentials like right-click, a spell checker and several other features that would today be considered indispensable. Into the breach sprang various start-up companies offering shareware add-ons like a spellchecker, but no sooner have these appeared than they are superseded by a new OWA version, the most recent being OWA 2003. If you haven't upgraded to OWA 2003, or you already have it but didn't know about the new features, here is a small selection to consider:
OWA Add-onsHowever, there are still more add-ons available, crafted by companies filling gaps in the OWA market. 
Contacts-IB-
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4. Remote access and disaster recovery
Things can only get better? | ||||
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The terrible events of 7th July left a tragic bookmark in the history of terrorism, with the shocking loss of life leaving an anxious veil of insecurity over the Capital.
As those affected battled with their mobiles to make contact with friends and families, major mobile networks struggled under the surge of calls. Yet the overload imposed on telecommunications was relatively short, with the networks in fact surviving a meltdown and, in general, human communications and were re-established and work patterns resumed steadily, if haltingly. One only has to cast back to around 5 years ago to see that things were very different, when dial-up networking to the Internet was the norm. This summer's tragedy would perhaps have told a very different story then. Nowadays we commonly employ broadband, Virtual Private Networks (VPN), Webmail and Outlook Web Access (OWA, Instant Messaging (IM) and GPRS (modems inside phones if you like) - multi-modal ways of informing each other and the world - to choose from services that can despatch instant, urgent messages while keeping the wheels turning in the rest of our work and private lives at the same time. Increasingly we use remote access to support not just central servers, but even user's own computers. We connect, diagnose and solve a problem in your office from our office. Products like VNC, Windows Terminal Services, LogMeIn and GoToMyPC have begun to revolutionise this kind of support service, if only because the person doing the supporting (the technician) can see exactly what the user is experiencing on the screen. On the disaster recovery front, ever more organisations are now familiar with backing up their data in a routine manner, but fewer have come to terms with preparing for disaster in its widest sense - which goes by the modern label of "Business Continuity Planning". A worryingly prophetic line from a year-old paper resurfaced precisely on 7th July in the process of archiving emails. The excerpt from a study by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) indicated that over 50% of the UK's organisations had no business continuity plan. Moreover half of the top charities had offices premises based within five miles of central London, constituting a significant threat from terrorist activity. While technological advances in communications are making networks and messaging systems more robust and their redundancy imparts more and more fault-tolerance, the tangibly physical aspects of humans travelling to and congregating inside workplaces need more attention if we are to avert and hopefully side-step the disadvantages of heavily populated cities. Contacts
-IB- Acknowledgements: Tony Benjamin |
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5. Text alerts for home phone voicemails
Got a voicemail at home? Get a text alert on your mobile. | ||
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If you have BT 1571 answer service on your home phone, you can now get a text alert sent to your mobile. To pick up the voicemail you then just dial in remotely to access your home line if needed. This is a brilliant feature for me because there is otherwise no indication that I have message at home, other than checking in at random on the off-chance. Tedious and not very elegant as a tech solution. Now you can have all of your messaging alerts end up in one place, say your mobile phone, which saves a lot of time and frustration if you have to worry about home deliveries, pet minders, builders appointments, or elderly relatives. The Call Minder menu guide has a menu map shows you how to do it. To link your mobile for text alertsAfter listening to messages, select:
To listen to voicemail messages while away from your landline
The normal Call Minder menu options are now available. Contacts
-IB- Acknowledgements: Philip Anthony |
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6. Remote access software review
Operating one computer remotely from another, maybe thousands of miles away across the Internet, is now becoming an essential tool for support, diagnosis and training. We look at some popular tools. | ||||
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Windows Terminal ServerWindows Terminal Server has since 2000 been the remote access application of choice for 'dialling in' simply because it integrates with Windows Servers and has a straightforward interface. The login appears as below and opens another window showing the server's console, allowing the operator, say, to add or remove users, set up an email account or check backups, just as if they were sitting physically in front of the server screen. 
The title "Terminal Server" and "Terminal Services" hark back to a time long, long ago when all people wore flared trousers and all computers consisted of just keyboards and screens (so-called 'dumb terminals', without discs or processors) connected to one central computer - the mainframe, self-evidently because it was the main computer and was often housed in a frame or rack. Nowadays, it is common to run this modern version of an old idea over the top of our existing networks for instances where it is inconvenient or expensive to travel to where the server is located. At Co-Op Systems we use this method daily on all our installations at customer sites where it is feasible to carry out tasks remotely, as opposed those that require a physical presence like changing a server hard drive. One accessibility benefit is that all the licensing occurs at the server, so the Microsoft Remote Desktop (MSRDP) can be downloaded freely from the Microsoft web site. To find out more, read our article Terminal Server licensing. VNC
VNC (Virtual Network Computing) software started at the end of the 1990s with a freely (and still) available open source application that enables remote access to a wide variety of platforms including Windows, Linux and various flavours of Unix. Simple to install and operate, VNC comes in two parts - a VNC Server that runs on the remote computer, and VNC Viewer that the client computer uses to make a connection to its other half. Thus a VNC Viewer will open a window something like this below, which shows a view on to another Windows PC, complete with Start button, taskbar and everything just as presented on the screen at the far end. As here, the remote session window automatically adds scroll bars when the size is too small to include the entire console. 
Remote users who seek support like this may be slightly alarmed to have a distant techie waggling their mouse cursor and typing without the keyboard keys being depressed, and VNC provides to 'lock-out' (or not) the remote user should they feel the urge to leap back in on their PC and wrest the controls away! Although the free edition of VNC provides encryption during the initial connection, the rest of the session is unencrypted so could potentially result in exposures, assuming something or someone just happened to be scanning the system. This is less of a concern inside a well-secured Local Area Network where internal hacking is less of an issue, and system administrators of large organisations frequently employ VNC to sort out quick computer fixes by seeing what is actually on the user's screen and saving themselves a great deal of trekking around the building at the same time! Created by a bunch of super-intelligent beings at Cambridge University's computer science department, VNC has now spawned Personal and Enterprise Editions (both chargeable), adding high-levels of encryption for both server authentication and tamper-proofing of remote sessions, making them ideal for cross-Internet support. Both of these products have saved countless individuals an infinite number of miles of travel across the planet, but have the significant disadvantage that a firewall at the remote computer end must be bridged. That means creating a 'hole' in the firewall either on the local PC or, more dauntingly for millions of broadband newcomers, in their router. ("What's a router?" you can almost hear them say before they've said it). Since every router currently has a different setup, most give up at the first hurdle, but a rash of new web-based services promises a workaround. Web-based remote accessBelow, consultant Lawrence Griffiths relates his recent experience with two further commonly-used remote access services. In the past year I have had to employ two different Remote Access Software (RAS) products to support a client’s system in the North West of England from my SoHo office just north of London. In this article I’ll provide an overview of how I used GotoMyPc and logmein and the main differences between the two products. How the services workBoth products use a services-based model, rather than a conventionally installed program, to access to a remote Windows-based PC securely through the Internet. You access the remote PC by first logging on to the web service, which then provides a secure end-to-end link between you and the remote computer see figure 1.  Both GotoMyPc and logmein systems require a program to be running on the client and the remote PC. These programs provide a secure end-to-end (E2E) connection between the client PC (normally yours) and the remote PC (the one you need to control). The end-to-end connection runs over the common HTTPS protocol which provides a 'secure tunnel' over the public Internet, preventing potential snoopers spying on the data transmitted between your two machines. The benefit of this approach that there is no firewall setup as HTTPS is enabled by default on most systems to allow everyday transactions like online credit card purchases. On the client PC, a Java Applet or ActiveX control (a small piece of executable software) is installed automatically and runs within your web browser. On the remote PC, sometimes referred to as the host, a service runs in the background with an icon in the Taskbar at the bottom right of the screen. So what can you do remotely?Well - anything you can do as if you were logged on locally at the remote machine, even including dealing with those Doh! moments ("You have successfully updated your computer. Restart now?") with a remote re-boot! To give you an idea of how scalable such a system is, I run power management applications on five remote servers. But I only have one of those servers running logmein. I access the other four via a remote desk top (RDP) connection from the logmein remote machine - it's like bunny-hopping between PCs hundreds of miles away! One of the typical tasks I need to do is copy files between my client PC and a remote PC. Note that the logmein free version doesn't permit you to copy files between PCs, so you'll need to upgrade to the logmein Pro version. For short-term work, an alternative get-around is to use a cheap Web-based file store like www.filesanywhere.com. What else? You can cut and paste between local and remote PCs, even taking screen shots from the remote PC. You can print to remote printers, BUT ... take care with this feature: you could end up printing your CV to a printer in another building and - guess what - your boss is standing right by it! (How does he know this, we ask. - Ed) Remote support
So far I’ve talked about accessing a remote PC, but these systems also allow for remote support when you are logged locally to a PC, indeed it's one one of their primary aims. In this scenario you can invite a remote user - typically a systems administrator, support technician or your brother-in-law who has nothing better to do (delete according to your budget) - to share the local PC. Both products provide this feature but logmein enables you to add and manage secondary users. This powerful feature was one of the main reasons I eventually ditched GotoMyPc. I’m not the only remote user of my client's servers; three different companies take advantage of the same logmein service so it has been useful here for me to create one-time logmein passwords enabling me to define when other remote users can access the system. GotoMyPc does have a useful text chat window. On logmein I just open Notepad to chat which is just as effective and you don’t loose a large chunk of screen 'real estate'. Other featuresBoth systems allow you to operate multiple remote PCs from your client PC, but GotoMyPc requires that you buy the right package for such access. With logmein, this feature is free and, as far as I’m aware, without limit on the number of remote PCs. Another feature in common is being able to run over dial-up (though I’ve never tried it) and it is possible to set screen sizes and resolution which will help operation over a low bandwidth connection. Versions for larger organisations, that enable the management of multiple PCs and users, are available from both of these companies and in terms of product support, I’ve found the help desks of both of them to be responsive and friendly as well as offering free telephone support and upgrades. Feel like trying it?These products are easy to set up, but note that if you’re going to install logmein, make sure to select the Home & Personal link from the home page or you will end up installing the Pro version on a free trial not the free version! However, you can convert your Pro trial to the free version at any time according to their web site.
SummaryI couldn’t provide the service my client requires without remote access. Logmein has been great, though I have had a small issue getting through the rigours (riggers?) of a corporate firewall. GoToMyPC might appeal to some as it’s now owned by Citrix. Both companies are offering new remote support products based on this powerful technology. One company is providing support to residential customers using remote access technology and some nerds even stream music from their home PC to the office. Before long we won’t think twice about where a PC is, we’ll just reach out and connect to it. Lawrence Griffiths runs Avek Consulting which provides software solutions to corporates and NGOs. lawrence @ avek .co.uk Contacts
-IB-
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Clicks of the Trade - BCC for Outlook public folders
--- Quick tips for happier clicks! --- | |||
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-IB-
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