John's New Tech Product Review: The iPad

I first talked to you about the iPad Phenomenon in April 2010 when it first hit the stores.

Back then I wondered if I really needed one at all. I expected that the real key to its success will be those amazing new apps that most of us hadn’t even yet imagined.

I also said I was going to wait before buying and wait and see how the next generation model would do. As you know, there is always a next-generation model.

Well, I waited a few months but temptation got the better of me and I bought an iPad over the summer.

I think it’s cool and a lot of fun. I can surf the web on it. I’ve watched sports on it.

Yes, there are a ton of useful apps on there but, to be honest, I still haven’t found that one “killer app” that says “Buy me” on it.

The best part for me, however, is the “instant on” access to the web and email.

It's nice to be able to flick it on and I’m on the Internet instantly. I don’t have to wait for it to boot up and I don’t have to go to my office computer and open a browser.

Being able to send and receive emails on the iPad is also a big seller to me. It means I’m literally not chained to my office or my desktop computer anymore to keep in touch with friends, clients, and colleagues.

Right now, we just leave the iPad lying on the kitchen counter or in the living room and its really become a part of our lives in such a short time. We like the fact that we can check anything we want quickly on the Internet – whether it’s email, a news item, sports scores, or even recipes.

It’s always on and always handy.

Would I recommend the iPad?

Yes. It’s a nice item to have but . . there are always buts:

1. I still haven’t found that one “killer app” that shouts “SOLD!” in my mind.
2. I’ve heard rumours that the next version will have two cameras for making video phone calls over the Internet. It’s really just a matter of time because the new iPhone already has this capability when you call from one iPhone to another.

If you can wait, I’d say wait . . unless you’re like me.

Ray Ozzie’s Dawn of a New Day: How I See It

On October 28, 2010 Ray Ozzie, posted a blog called, Dawn of a New Day, which caused quite a stir in the IT industry:

Ozzie wrote that the PC-centric/Server-centric model we have today is beginning to crumble due to its complexity as he asked us to imagine a “post-PC” world.

He wrote: "Complexity kills" and "Complexity sucks the life out of users, developers and IT.”  

What’s most amazing about Ozzie’s post is that, although he has just announced he’s leaving, he replaced Bill Gates as Microsoft's Chief Software.

In the blog he stated “. . . I see a great, expansive future for our industry and for our company – a future of amazing, pervasive cloud-centric experiences delivered through a world of innovative devices that surround us.”

How I see it

Think about it – the chief software architect from the world’s biggest software company which makes the bulk of its money selling PC and server software, endorses the cloud computing model!

When the PC first emerged to replace those earlier computing monstrosities, its key selling points were its simplicity and broad approachability.

Ozzie believes the next wave "toward a world of Internet-connected continuous services and appliance-like connected devices . . . would likely arise again from those very same facets.”

Ozzie says we must move away from thinking of computing as meaning "PCs, CD-installed programs, desktops, folders and files.” We’re moving toward another new world, he writes, where:
1) cloud-based continuous services connect us all and do our bidding, and
2) appliance-like connected devices enable us to interact with those cloud-based services.

Smart phones and the tablet systems are the first visible signs that he is correct as they already connect wirelessly to websites and online services. We can only imagine what will be the next new technological wave.

Ozzie believes the next model will consist of simpler devices which are always connected and services that are always available. He basically tossed down the gauntlet and challenged his own company and all the others out there to start building systems and devices that embrace the concept of the cloud paradigm. 

Microsoft has already taken the first steps in that direction with its Windows Live services and now there’s the up-and-coming Office 365 service. We'll talk about the significance of Office 365 in a future post.

Anyway, that’s How I See It.

I'm Back!!

Yes, I’m back and now I’m here to stay.

I’d like to say I was away on some exotic holiday but truthfully, I was really busy with a number of ongoing projects which I’ll soon share with you.

This is my first entry in what will be many over the coming months and years. I plan to keep you posted on a number of new developments in the IT field but I also want to share a number of exciting new technological gadgets and electronic offerings out there right now.

I will, of course, be speaking to you about Cloud Computing. This is a topic that won’t go away and rightly so. You’ve already most likely had experience with some form of cloud computing if you have a web-based email account such as Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and so on. There have been a number of new developments since I last wrote about it in April, including cloud-computing connected gadgets, devices, and appliances.

I’ll also be giving out my honest opinion on technology gadgets, such as the iPad and anything I find interesting out there in the news as it happens.

Once a month, I will bring to your attention, something in that is creating a stir in the media, I will then tell you “How I See It” simply because, as I’ve been told around here, I seem to have an opinion on everything. I don’t expect you to agree with everything I’ll say. In fact, I welcome comments, arguments, and any opinion you may have on any given topic I choose to write about.

In addition to three to four blogs a month, I will also be sending out a monthly newsletter on things I find interesting or exciting in our business. Our field, as you know, changes almost daily with new advances and new ideas. We’re never bored and we’re never really done but that’s a good thing.

Pinch Hitting for Anita

Some of you have noticed a new voice on the telephone when you call our office. Rose Warren has stepped in to take over for Anita while she is on her leave of absence. We're please to have Rose on board and are confident she can deliver the high level of service you've come to appreciate from Anita. Please join us in welcoming Rose to the team.

As always, for hardware and software orders, please send your requests to orders@carefreeit.ca and for administrative issues, please e-mail admin@carefreeit.ca.

Thanks again for your business! Please pass this information on to other members of your team where appropriate.

New "Porn" E-mail Virus

Many large companies have been hit by a new e-mail virus making the rounds today.   To quote the attached article...

"Sometimes it offers a link to “free sex movies” and sometimes it offers a link to a PDF.  In the PDF version of the scam, the e-mails are titled “Here you have” or “Just For you.” The body text reads: “This is The Document I told you about, you can find it Here,” followed by a link."

It's hard to believe this kind of stuff still works today but people are still getting fooled by them.  As always, please stay vigilant and just delete this nonsense if it makes it as far as your inbox.   Here's the link to the story:


http://www.torontosun.com/money/2010/09/10/15306456.html

The Spam Flow Never Quits

Every month I get a report from our anti-spam service, Spam Soap, on the spam e-mail traffic for the previous month.  I thought you might find it interesting to hear the statistics.    For May 2010, the total number of messages that Spam Soap handled on our behalf for all our clients was 1,728,327.    The total number of messages actually allowed through was only 133,473.   If my math is correct, spam accounted for over 92% of the e-mail flow coming to our clients last month!   Unbelievable.

The vast majority of the spam messages were denied delivery outright with only about 10,709 messages quarantined (because Spam Soap couldn't be sure about them).  

So, like the oil flow from the spill in the gulf, the spam e-mail flow just keeps coming and coming and coming.   Fortunately, though, we have the technology to keep our mail systems clear of this garbage.

Facebook Announces New Privacy Settings

Facebook has given in to public pressure and has made some siginficant improvements (i.e. simplications) to its privacy settings.    These changes are significant and every Facebook user should review the changes and make adjustments to keep your information protected.  These changes are being rolled out over the next few weeks so, if you don't see them in your Facebook privacy settings yet, check back again in a few days.

Here is a link to an article that explains the changes in plain English: http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/05/facebook-privacy-must-know/

Below is an excerpt from the Facebook announcement e-mail:

Starting today, Facebook will: 



* Provide an easy-to-use "master" control that enables users to set who can see the content they share through Facebook. This enables users to choose, with just one click, the overall privacy level they're comfortable with for the content they share on Facebook. Of course, users can still use all of the granular controls we've always offered, if they wish.


* Significantly reduce the amount of information that must be visible to everyone on Facebook. Facebook will no longer require that users' friends and connections are visible to everyone. Only Name, Profile Picture, Networks and Gender must be publicly available. Users can opt to make all other connections private.



* Make it simple to control whether other applications and websites access any user information. While a majority of our users love Facebook apps and Facebook-enhanced websites, some may prefer not to share their information outside of Facebook. Users can now opt out with just one click.


Concerned About Facebook Privacy?

If you aren't, you probably should be.   Facebook has come under a lot of heat lately for the way it shares information about you and for the complexity of the privacy settings.   There are over 170 privacy options throughout Facebook and if you think you've got a good handle on all of them, then you're way ahead of most people.   What about your kids?  Are they vulnerable? 

Here's an article from PC World by JR Raphael that talks about the issue and it points to an excellent Facebook Privacy Scanner.   Check your own Facebook account and pass this on to those you care about who also might be vulnerable.  

PC World Article:  http://www.pcworld.com/article/196464/test_your_facebook_privacy_settings_heres_how.html

Facebook Privacy Scanner:  http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/

Excellent Cloud Computing Article in National Post

Today's National Post published a excellent article about cloud computing.  It talks about Microsoft's focus on the cloud and gives a great explanation of cloud computing and its benefits.  

Check it out at: http://www.financialpost.com/executive/smart-shift/story.html?id=3011213

Sharing Office Docs via Facebook

Microsoft has partnered with Facebook on a new venture that will allow you to share Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) with your Facebook friends by posting the documents on your Facebook page. It is still in beta and isn't available to everyone yet but you can go to www.docs.com and sign up for the beta. Is this going to be a useful tool? Well, with over 400 million users on Facebook, it's quite likely. Obviously, Microsoft thinks so. Give it a try and let me know if you get into the beta test and what you think.

Is Firefox Really More Secure Than Internet Explorer? Guess not...

IT World Canada recently published an interesting article entitled "5 Technology Security Myths, Busted".  You can read the article at: http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/5-technology-security-myths-busted/140601

Mozilla's Firefox browser has the reputation - especially among "techies" - as being a very secure way browsing the Internet.  Most of these techie types are very fond of looking down their noses at Microsoft's Internet Explorer because of it's security exploits, in particular.  I've always assumed they were correct and it made me feel a little guilty at not having switched to Firefox but this article gives me reason to feel better about being an IE user almost exclusively. 

In part, the article says:

"Microsoft's Internet Explorer gets a lot of bad press, and you might think it's got more security holes than a chunk of Swiss cheese. Not exactly.

According to a recent report by Symantec, Mozilla Firefox had the most new vulnerabilities in 2009, with 169, while Internet Explorer had just 45. However, Internet Explorer was still the most attacked browser for the reason we mentioned earlier: Hackers, like advertisers, go for market share, and despite big gains by Firefox, IE is still number one.

Looking at browsers with a smaller market share, Symantec found that Safari (remember what we said Apple products being vulnerable?) had 94 new vulnerabilities, Opera had 25, and Chrome 41. All of the browsers had an average window of exposure--the time between when exploit code affecting vulnerability is made public and when it is patched--of less than 1 day, on average, except for Chrome (2 days) and Safari (13 days), according to the report."

So, if you're like me and just prefer IE... don't feel bad about it.   That's not to say that we shouldn't always be vigilant because we should.   IE is still a large target for hackers and, in the same article above, they make the point that 20,000 new exploits (i.e. viruses, etc) are discovered every day.   That's scary.

HP Offers Zero Percent Financing

HP is offering 0% financing on new notebook and desktop systems. So, if you're looking to finance new systems, you'll never get lower rates. The only catch is that the minimum required is $1500.

They also have a trade-in program if you're thinking of replacing old hardware (see http://www.hp.com/united-states/tradein/promo/notebook/index.html).

We believe strongly in the HP product line. The quality of their products is second-to-none. E-mail us at orders@carefreeit.ca for a quote or information.

Cloud Computing - Part 6 - Online Backups - What if it happened to you?

Last week there was a major fire at Waterloo plaza.  It destroyed several businesses including a bar, some restaurants, and an optometry business that lost charts for 40,000 patients.   See the Waterloo Region Record article: http://news.therecord.com/news/article/700674

I'm sure it's not something any of the affected business owners ever contemplated or imagined could happen but it did.  This happened right in our back yard.  Of course this wasn't a disaster on the scale of a hurricane in New Orleans or an earthquake in Haiti but this clearly has had a major impact on these businesses.  

If this was to happen to your business would your business survive?   How do you know?

I was planning on re-starting my blog posts on ready-to-go applications of cloud computing anyway but this just reinforced the idea that one of the most important cloud computing technologies is online backup.   It's not sexy... it's not exciting and, if it's working properly, you'll likely even forget about it but it could very well be the most important cloud computing technology that you implement!    I don't know if the businesses affected by the Waterloo fire had offsite backups or not.  I hope they did but statistics show that most businesses either don't have one at all or don't have a reliable offsite backup and disaster recovery system and, in the event of such a disaster, they won't be able to recover.

So, what's the deal with online backup?  There are many different ways to build or implement an online backup system and there are many vendors doing just that.   All of them, though, have some common features and functions.   So, here's how they generally work.      You install some backup software and/or hardware on your server, desktop systems and/or network.   The software (or hardware) backs up selected files or entire systems but, instead of writing the data to a tape drive, it typically compresses and encrypts the data and transmits it over your Internet connection to a data vault out on the Internet.   The backup can be scheduled to run each night or some of them even run continuously.    If you ever need to restore data you copy the data back from the Internet vault to your system (typically using the vendor's software to do so).   

The advantages to online backups are clear.   There are no mechanical tape drives or tapes to fail (and they always do).   Once it is set up, it can be set-it-and-forget-it as no human intervention is required to change tapes.    Nobody has to remember to take tapes offsite (and protect them from cold, sun, magnetics, etc).   They also are typically cheaper to implement than tape backup systems.   Finally, they have nearly unlimited capacity so you're never in the position of outgrowing your backup system.  

You may ask... how is online backup a cloud application?   Remember that two key enabling cloud technologies are high speed Internet and virtualization.  Well, your high speed Internet is used to transmit and restore data.    Some implementations of online backup make use of virtualization technology in the vault so that your systems can be re-created virtually in the event of a major system disaster.

Many online backup solutions have appeared over the past year or two.  Some of them are tailored to home systems or very small businesses and others are geared to larger companies.   As our first venture into creating a concrete cloud computing application, we developed our own "Total Restore" service for our clients (see http://www.carefreeit.ca/services/business-continuityctr).     It combines both hardware and software and your data is backed up to an appliance on your network AND shipped offsite to our vault.   We believe it's very affordable at $99 per month and allows for unlimited data capacity.  The really cool thing about it (in my humble opinion) is that the backup appliance we install on your network can, using virtualization technology, take over the role of your server system if it it should become incapacitated.   We're now backing up 15 client servers to our vault in Toronto.

Over the coming weeks I'll continue to explore other applications of cloud technology as well as looking at other industry events and providing the odd tech tip.   As always, your comments, suggestions and ideas are welcome.

Free Anti-virus Software? Why Not?

Several months ago Microsoft fairly quietly released a free anti-virus tool called "Microsoft Security Essentials" (MES).   We've been testing it since then and are happy to report it works great!   It's fairly compact and non-intrusive - unlike some other products you have to pay for.   It runs on all versions of Windows - including the new Windows 7.    It doesn't scan incoming e-mail but, generally speaking, most Internet Service Providers who provide e-mail hosting are scanning your mail before you even see it so that's probably not such a big issue.

Since it doesn't include any kind of central management or centralized update facility, the target audience for MES is very small businesses (one to five users) or home computers.     It would be too time-consuming and difficult to manage in a medium or larger office.  

The independent reviews on MES have generally been good.  Here's one if you're interested:
http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/articles/64365.aspx

So, if the anti-virus software on your home computer is up for renewal you might want to check out Microsoft Security Essentials and save yourself a few dollars.  

You can download it at: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

As always, remember the best protection against viruses is common sense.   Stay off shady websites, don't trade files online, and don't download anything unless it's from a reputable source.

The iPad Phenomenon is Underway

The new Apple iPad went on sale in the U.S. this past weekend and early reports are that up to 700,000 of them have sold already.  Amazing.   So far, only Wi-Fi models are available.   The 3G ones (that you can use on the telcom data networks) won't be available for a few months yet.  That means that, right now, you need a wireless network to go online with it.   Neither model will be available in Canada until the end of April and there is still no pricing information available yet.

So, what can you do with them?  Well, you can watch TV programs, watch movies, surf the Internet, do e-mail, play games, and read books.  That's just a start.  All the apps written for the iPhone or iPod Touch will run on them as well as new applications being written specifically for the iPad.  

Do I really need one?   That's the question many people are asking.   Some commentators are saying that it doesn't provide anything that we don't already have (for example, on the iPhone) - just a bigger screen.  Other people are saying it's going to revolutionize our lives.   The truth is probably somewhere in between.  

It's true that if you just think of the iPad as a gaming device or an e-book reader or an e-mail client then you probably will have a hard time justifying the $500 or more it will cost you.

I believe the key determinant in whether it really does "revolutionize" our lives will be in the new applications that we haven't yet envisioned and can't imagine.    Take the iPhone as an example.   Tonight I was out but was able to watch the opening game of the new baseball season live on my iPhone.    You don't have to go back too many years to a point where it would have been difficult to imagine watching a live sporting event on your phone.  Certainly I wouldn't say that has revolutionized my life but the point is to hold off judgement on these new devices until you see how they're used once people get them in their hands and the application developers start to use their imaginations.

Will I buy one?  Yes, I likely will.  But, I'm going to wait a bit.  With the iPhone, they really got it right with the third generation so I will wait until at least the second generation of the iPad before I get one.  That will give Apple the time to work out some of the design flaws and it will give me some time to see how it's used.

Watch out for Phishing Scams!

There seems to be another rash of phishing e-mail scams making the rounds lately.   These e-mail messages look very authentic and the links inside of them even look real.   Check out the one below that I received today.  It is claiming to be from Scotiabank and is asking me to log in to their online banking site in order to "update and verify" my information.  If you had clicked on the link embedded in the message it took you to a VERY real looking website that you'd have to look very closely at to determine it wasn't really Scotiabank. It has the real Scotiabank logo and look-and-feel.  The website has since been removed so somebody (probably Scotiabank) got to them.  
Anyway, the point is that banks NEVER ask you to verify information in this way and they NEVER send out unsolicited e-mail to their customers.   So, when you see this type of e-mail, delete it. 

As always, please be vigilant for strange-looking e-mails. In this case, a little bit of paranoia is a good thing. 

Here's the e-mail...  it lost the formatting and logo when I copied and pasted it into the blog but you can still the idea and see how real and official-looking they can be.

______________________________________________________________


Dear Customer,

During our regularly scheduled account maintenance and verification

procedures, we have detected a slight error in your online profile.



Hence our online security team has suspended your online banking

service. As a security measure, your account needs to be updated.

Please update and verify your information by clicking the link below:



https://www.scotiaonline.scotiabank.com/online/start.jsp?update=



Sincerely,

Scotia Bank.

Online Customer Service

________________________________________