Wed, 12 Nov 2008

Microsoft has announced a fix in a bug that they have known about for more than 7 and a half years!
Microsoft have fixed a "important" flaw in Windows networking in the way it shares files over the internet that was discovered in 2000 by a hacker at a hacking convention. This in turn was based on work by another hacker in 1997.

Consequently, this flaw affects Windows 2000, XP and Vista and recommends users install this patch at their earliest opportunity. The patch is KB957097

posted at: 23:11 | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 08 Nov 2008

Homeplug internet as an alternative to wireless
Homeplug has been around for a while, you buy two adapters in a pack and simply plug one near your router and the other plugs near your computer and the signal travels down the power cable.

This has the advantage of giving wireless internet in houses where there is material in the walls or in the floor that prevent a wireless signal passing through or if the signal is too weak.

The downside of homeplug is they offer weak protection against surges and spikes so are easily damaged by a local lightning strike. Also the recorded speed is a maximum and you may not be able to obtain anything like the speeds quoted on the box

There are 3 main types of homeplug available, their speeds are the "physical" or the speed thay communicate to the mains at. Their actual speed is much lower:

1. 14Mb/s - the basic model homeplug, ideal for home use broadband and VoIP service. It will give you a average throughput of around 4-6Mb with a maximum of 8Mb but this technology has become obsolete by the turbo system below.
2. 85Mb/s "Turbo" - the turbo model gives a higher throughput of around 15-20Mb with a maximum of 40Mb which makes this ideal for use as a wireless extender or for IPTV.
3. 200Mbps "AV" - the AV model gives a much higher throughput of 50-70Mb with a max of 120Mb and is ideal for high and standard definition, triple play and home theatre.
4. Homeplug Audio - This is the basic model homeplug that instead of extending internet it provides two RCA cable connections that give the possibility of running audio to any room in the house.

When ordering homeplug please be aware that you need two devices for homeplug to work.

A typical homeplug setup follows:


posted at: 14:56 | permanent link to this entry

Advantages to ditching your current broadband modem and going with a router
One of the banes of existence has been the USB broadband modem, not only because it has no protection built in for your computer from hackers on the Internet but your connection is dependent on your computer being dialled up to the Internet.

A USB dialup broadband modem has a series of performance hurdles for the computer. It has to use a driver to use the USB port, another for the modem and yet another to convert the signals the broadband provider uses to something the computer can use on the Internet. Your computer also has to display your email and web pages on top of maintaining that connection.

A router does the conversion of the signals passed down the telephone line and signals the broadband provider uses to something that can be used on a network. The computer only has a need for one driver to work the network card.

A router also provides the connection to the Internet for as long as it has power together with a firewall and connection sharing that allows more than one computer (or device such as Internet radio; games console; VoIP telephone adapter; etc) to use the Internet at any one time.

Routers have fallen in price recently to just less than 20 pounds each for both wired and wireless versions.

Digidave offer a free wireless router if you signup for a VoIP account, you just pay the postage.

posted at: 13:35 | permanent link to this entry

AOL changing broadband details for customers
I so wish broadband providers would stick to one way of connecting and not change a customer's connection detail without informing them.

In the past, Orange have been guilty of turning off their freeserve and wanadoo accounts apparently at random, then turning them into orangehome accounts.

A few months ago (or was is last year) AOL switched some of their customers from their older PPPoA service (which works like a dialup connection) to PPPoE. Now some of their customers are being switched from screenname@aol.com to telephonenumber@dialbb.com

If your broadband mysteriously stops working and you are on AOL, you probably have been a victim of AOL changing your details without telling you. If you are lucky, the switchover will be straightforward however, if you have an old BT modem supplied by AOL, you may find yourself out of luck.

posted at: 12:59 | permanent link to this entry

Thu, 06 Nov 2008

Wireless Encryption just got easier to crack
A new technique has been developed that makes cracking the more secure WPA encryption much quicker and easier to crack. The cracking time for Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) has been reduced to between 12 and 15 minutes, removing the need for a lot of computing power or a dictionary attack.

WPA2 is not yet vulnerable to this kind of attack, yet is still vulnerable to cracking with a dictionary attack.

WEP cloaking has recently been introduced to prevent the key from being discovered, so the crackers have devised a de-cloaking tool that simply strips off the protection in seconds and the key is discovered in a matter of minutes.

posted at: 23:47 | permanent link to this entry

Sun, 02 Nov 2008

Access your Apple Macintosh files on a Windows PC with MacDrive
If you have files on a Mac, an old hard drive or floppies that you need to access on a PC, MacDrive is the program for you. I'm recovering files for a customer who has a dead PowerMac 6100/66 and needs to access some files from it.

Luckily, I still have SCSI cables and a controller to access this aging drive and MacDrive let me explore it just like a Windows hard drive.

posted at: 21:03 | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 29 Oct 2008

Problems since updating to Service Pack 3
I've had a number of customers with problems with Service Pack 3, it seems that it doesn't check that any of the files are corrupted before installing and in a few cases computers stop working in bizarre ways.

My first caused the customer's machine not to come back after a System Restore, but after repairing the drive and running another System Restore (which removed SP3) the problem was resolved.

The current customer with a problem is intermittent DNS resolution, so some pages display and others don't, escalating to total DNS failure. I've heard it could be a bad installation of Service Pack 3, so that will be removed on Friday so I'll be able to update this then.

posted at: 17:51 | permanent link to this entry

Sun, 19 Oct 2008

Encoding and converting video
If you own a mobile phone or a camcorder that you wish to convert the captured video to another format, for instance to use on your website or on youtube you will need some software. MediaCoder is a free application that converts your video into a vast range of formats. The link ishttp://mediacoder.sourceforge.net

MobiDVD is a free application for ripping from a DVD, VCD or CD to all popular video and audio formats. The link is: http://mobidvd.xulsoft.org

posted at: 19:00 | permanent link to this entry

Thu, 16 Oct 2008

Firefox releases 3.1 beta 1
Mozilla has just released a well tested beta release of their popular browser, Firefox that boasts a much faster javascript code. Javascript is a programing language that improves web pages by adding dynamic changes such as popups and effects when you hover over images and text.

You can see Javascript working when you hover over the bar just below my main logo above, for example.

They have also enhanced switching between tabs with a Coolswitch like view of each tab when you press Ctrl-Tab on the keyboard.

A visibility change is support for the latest CSS 3 (Cascading Style Sheets) which is a set of rules that govern how content in pages should be displayed, as well as supporting the bulk of the latest features in HTML 5 (the latest version web language, each version adds enhancements and improvements)

posted at: 07:42 | permanent link to this entry

Sun, 12 Oct 2008

What is a CRM?
In the past, companies kept different pieces of software, ideas and resources to deal with the different parts of their company. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system merges all these parts together into a single package.

The common parts of a CRM can be broken down into 3 main categories of business:

• Front Office - Direct interaction with customers, e.g. face to face meetings, phone calls, e-mail, online services etc.
• Back Office - Billing, maintenance, planning, marketing, advertising, finance, manufacturing, etc.
• Business relationships — Interaction with other companies and partners, such as suppliers/vendors and retail outlets/distributors, industry networks etc.

• Operational - Focused towards the requirements of the Front Office.
• Sales Force - Specific focus on the sales department for tracking leads and scheduling calls and mailings
• Analytical - Focused towards marketing: designing campaigns and analysing customer behaviour together with financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis
• Sales Intelligence - Direct sales tool identifying different sales opportunities together with sales trends, customer margins and customer drift
• Campaign Management - This uses elements of Operational and Analytical together to send and track advertising campaigns including trends, statistics and customer responses
• Collaborative - This covers aspects where different parts of the company work together, such as sales, technical support and marketing. For example, feedback received by customer support agents can provide other staff members with information on the services and features requested by customers.