WiFi bounty hunter

After reading “The great WiFi robbery: police to patrol down your street” what I want to know is there some sort of bounty that I can claim if I find an open WiFi hotspot? It is interesting that police are now diverting resources to warn people about the issues of unprotected wireless.

 

“All unsecured WiFi networks out there are open for exploitation by the crooks and the average mum and dad don’t understand the vulnerabilities”

I have no argument with this statement but is it likely that others are going to appreciate the seriousness of the issue? As I mentioned in another recent post, most people still have no idea about the differences a digital world has created. An even earlier post I detailed how, on a recent visit to a friend, I found an unprotected WiFi hot spot in the street. This is not a new issue.

 

The article also says:

 

“He blamed computer equipment sellers for not doing enough to educate customers on the importance of security.”

 

Again no argument there. For my part I have created a YouTube video that highlights the issues with WiFi security. When I teach my Wireless Networking course at community college I ensure that I drum into attendees that wireless is ALWAYS more insecure that wired. It can be made more secure but it can never be made totally invulnerable to attack or compromise. The biggest problem is that generally out of the box most WiFi is totally insecure.

 

So where does the responsibility for WiFi security lie? With the user? With the equipment provider? With the installer? With the police? As the article highlights:

 

“The Queensland operation could attract criticism from those who believe police time would be better spent seeking out drug dealers and robbers, but Detective Superintendent Hay said the issue was just as important as any other.”

 

Which again harks back to my thoughts on how little most people really understand our digital world and the interaction it plays in the real world. The best advice I can give is to take responsibility for your own digital security. If you don’t understand then learn, otherwise sooner or later you’ll become a victim.

Big lights city

There is no place in the world like Las Vegas. If you have never been there and you get the opportunity I’d say go and take a look. Sure it can be tacky, sleazy and money grubbing but man you just gotta admire what they’ve managed to build in the desert there. If you can’t find something to enjoy about Las Vegas then you just ain’t trying.

This year the SMB Nation Fall 2009 has moved from Seattle to Las Vegas and I’m happy to say that I’ve been asked to make a return visit to speak on SharePoint again. The conference runs from Oct 2 to 4 at the Riviera Hotel and Casino. I appreciate the opportunity SMB Nation and Harry Brelsford has again given me to not only attend but also speak.

So what’s my topic? The title is “So you’ve got SharePoint now what?” and it is a look at how you can extend the capabilities and features of a plain vanilla SharePoint to maximize returns. The opportunity for resellers is that using the right tools you can extend SharePoint and really stand out from the crowd. It seems to me that everyone talks about the opportunities SharePoint provides but no one really seems to do anything about it. My presentation will show you how to make your SharePoint skills and installations a truly unique business selling proposition so you can take advantage of the huge opportunity there exists in the SharePoint space.

Since October is still a little way off I love to hear any feedback you may have on what you reckon should be or could be presented. I know what I want to present but I always find that any presentation improves when it receives input. So by all means feel free to get in contact with me (director@ciaops.com) and let me know, I’d love to hear from you.

The other thing that I am really looking forward to (apart from the other great content at SMB Nation) is catching up with many of the people I met last year. Even if we have never met and you’d like to catch up for a discussion on SharePoint or my opinion on the ‘new world order’ then again feel free to drop me an email (director@ciaops.com) and we can hook up. The first drink’s on me!

Like I did last year, I’ll be making all the information available on my presentation via slideshare so you can review it at your leisure. However, that won’t happen until well after the completion of the conference so if you have some input for me, now is the time.

Luckily, I have been to Vegas before but even then I know that will have changed significantly since my last visit. I can’t wait to check out all the new casinos and attractions that have gone up in this playground in the desert. If you are thinking about attending then I encourage you to do so because not only is the content fantastic but you’ll also meet some great people from all around the world who all have something to offer that can improve your business. When I look at my experiences from last year I know that it helped mine and I look forward to that even more so this year.

Come and join me at SMB Nation Fall 2009. As I said, the first drink’s on me.

OneNote news

A while back I was converted to the HUGE benefits of OneNote. Linked with SharePoint it is an absolutely awesome product. I recently published a document that shows you how to create a free shared OneNote notebook using Office Live Small Business. Now comes news of the soon to be released OneNote 2010 available with the new Office 2010. I’ve just been reading David Rasmussen’s blog and wanted to highlight these additions:

 

With OneNote 2010 we’ve added:

 

Sync to Cloud (Windows Live): Your notebooks sync and are available anywhere from any machine. Of course this is in addition to all the existing ways you can sync notebooks (file shares, SharePoint, USB drives etc.)

 

OneNote Web App: You can access and edit your entire notebook from a browser. Even on a machine that doesn’t have OneNote installed.

 

OneNote Mobile: A more complete OneNote version for Windows Mobile phones. Syncs whole notebooks. Syncs directly to the cloud. No need to tether your device. Richer editing support.

Note: The above are not yet available in the Tech Preview unfortunately. We’re still finishing some integration work for sync to Windows Live.

There are heaps of great improvements and I recommend that you take a look at this post from David to get the full run down.

 

I have also learnt that OneNote is going to available in EVERY version of Office 2010! This is absolutely BLOODY BRILLIANT in my opinion. My understanding of the upcoming versions of Office 2010 are:

 

Office Home and Student edition includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote.

 

Office Home and Business edition replaces the previous Office Small Business edition. It includes all the programs from the Home and Student edition and adds Outlook.

Office Standard is the entry-level enterprise edition; it includes the programs from the Home and Business edition and adds Publisher.

 

Office Professional continues to be the high-end package for consumers and small businesses. It includes the programs in Standard edition and adds the Access database management program.

 

Office Professional Plus is the high-end enterprise offering, adding SharePoint Workspace (formerly Groove Workspace) and InfoPath.

 

Much simpler than what we had before I reckon.

 

So with OneNote 2010 you are going to get the ability to sync with the cloud as well as viewing through a web browser. That alone is worth the upgrade to me but when you throw in everything else OneNote is now offering I reckon it is going to be THE product that drives adoption of Office 2010. If you haven’t looked at OneNote I’d suggest you get up to speed now because it is going to HUGE.

Brave New World

I came across an interesting example the other day that illustrates how most people still don’t understand this new digital world of ours.

This particular party had just finished upgrading to a new PC. They had conscientiously copied all their data across and reinstalled all the applications. Once it was up and going they decided that they no longer had a need for the old PC. Rather than donating it to a worth cause (which is what I recommended they do), they decided to take to it with a hammer in an attempt to “destroy” it.

Now I will admit that the box certainly didn’t look like a PC when I saw it but I asked them whether I could test a theory of mine. They agreed and I proceeded to extract the hard disk, which seemed ok physically just a little scratched, and see whether I could read the information that was on there. Low and behold, in manner of moments I could see all the data. So the hard disk remained intact and well enough to be read, even after being subject to some pretty heavy physical abuse.

The owner was utterly shocked that it took me so little time to recover their precious information. “As you can see”, I pointed out, “it isn’t very hard at all”. So what should they have done? They needed to destroy the digital information digitally. How can you easily accomplish that? Use Darik’s Boot n’ Nuke.

All you need to do is download the software and use it make a bootable CD. Pop that into the drive of the computer, allowing it boot from the CD and follow the instructions. The time required to completely erase a drive will depend on its size but afterwards you can be pretty sure there ain’t anything left there for someone to recover.

I was intrigued with the contrasts between the two different ‘destruction’ methods and their results. It illustrates that even thought most people use computers these days and are generally comfortable with them they really have not concept of the idea of ‘digital information’. It is like a completely parallel universe. As Mr. Spock might have said in this situation “No, Jim. We must destroy it digitally. It can’t be harmed any other way”.

If you really want to spin people out about the differences that digital data bring to their lives explain to them how all the information they are uploading to the Internet has to live on a hard disk somewhere. Now ask them what happens when that gets “retired”? Is it digitally erased? How would you ever know? The reaction I get from most people is most interesting.

Even though we may live in a brave new world, seems to me very few people really understand what that means.

OneNote and Office Live

   

I’ve just uploaded a new document that takes you through the process of setting up a shared OneNote notebook that is available from anywhere you have Internet access using Microsoft Office Live Small Business.

Once you have created the OneNote notebook on Microsoft Office Live Small Business you can work with it offline until you are ready to connect back online. When you do so it will automatically synchronize all changes. You can therefore use this feature to share the notebook between different locations, different machines or even different people. Best of all using Microsoft Office Live Small Business it is totally free.

To view and download the document go to: http://www.slideshare.net/directorcia/onenote-and-office-live 

If you haven’t seen the benefits that a digital notebook like OneNote can offer then I recommend you take a look at www.onenote.com. While you are there download a 60 day free trial so you can start using it right away. If you love it as much as I do then I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you find out how cheap it is to actually buy.

To those people that helped proof read the document and make suggestions before it went out I thank you and hope you can make yourself available for other documents I have in the works. It always help to have at least another set of eyes across a document because it always improves it.

So feel free to download the document, forward it to others and give me any feedback via director@ciaops.com.

Office 2010

Want to know what’s coming in Office 2010? Then visit http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/ where you’ll find all sorts of information. There are a whole heaps of short videos on each of the Office products that’ll give you an idea of what to expect.

From the site you can also visit http://www.microsoft.com/officebusiness/office2010/ which is specifically about Office 2010 for business. There is plenty of really good information about what new features the product will have specifically for business.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of information around the new version of SharePoint. There is however on the Office business site information about SharePoint Workspace 2010 (ex Groove) which allows you to take SharePoint information offline.

I would expect the content in this site to continue to grow as the product reaches a release date but for now if you want to see what’s coming in Office 2010 take a look.

Illusion of freedom

We tell ourselves that technologies like the Internet, email, BlackBerry’s and mobile phones have given us more freedom. I believe that the situation is actually the reverse, that we have allowed technology to enslave us in a ways that we simply fail to even acknowledge now.

 

Don’t believe me? Well consider this situation and what would be the standard reaction (even more so in the current economic environment).

 

– You receive an email at home from you boss or a customer at 9.17pm on a week night.

 

what would be the most likely response do you think?

 

A. Ignore it.

B. Reply saying that you only deal with such matters during normal office hours.

C. Snap to attention and complete whatever the email asked.

 

I think most people would agree that in today’s environment option C. is going to be the likely course of action. Doesn’t that seem to indicate that the loss of boundaries between work and leisure? How has that happened? Because we have allowed technology to take control. We are no longer in control, we are no longer free to make our own choices. We ‘think’ we have more freedom but it is an illusion.

 

Here’s another analogy that I read recently. Imagine the reaction back in the mid 1950’s if you had tried to make an airline reservation and been told:

 

– You need to purchase a computer and set it up inside your house.

– You also need to pay for the electricity to run it.

– You also need to buy a printer, the ink to print and the paper that it uses.

– You now need to use the computer to do the work airline reservations people used to do since we don’t employ them anymore.

– Now, make your own reservations, print out your own ticket all on YOUR time.

 

Back in the 1950’s people would have thought this to be completely unbelievable while today we simply refer to it as ‘progress’! Isn’t the reality that you are now working for the airline to which you are also paying money?

 

So now you are working during the day, answering and attending to emails after hours (i.e. still working), then working for the airlines as well when do you get down time? How has you life been made better by technology if you are now effectively working from the moment you wake to the moment you fall asleep? How can you honesty say that technology like a Blackberry has improved the quality of your life? How can you say it has given you greater freedom? It hasn’t. It is all simply an illusion that we have allowed ourselves to believe.

SBS 2008 Unleashed

 Windows Small Business Server 2008 Unleashed by Eriq Oliver Neale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you are planning to install, manage or maintain Windows Small Business Server 2008 then this book is a must have. It goes beyond the standard information and delves into the areas that the average installer simply doesn’t know about. The information provided in this book will ensure that Small Business Server 2008 machines in you care will not only be correctly configured they will have all the additional options enabled to ensure that users get the most from the product.

This book goes beyond the standard information that Microsoft provides by encompassing the knowledge and experience from a range of MVPs (Most Valued Professionals). That is just something money can’t buy these days. Sure you maybe able to find the same information on the Internet by why would you when it is perfectly encapsulated in this book. Along with in depth technical information it contains a whole raft of practical suggestions from people who know the product inside out.

The book covers a wide range of topics about Small Business Server 2008 from installation to configuration to maintenance. If you want information that goes beyond the ‘usual’ with Windows Small Business Server 2008 then this is book for you. It is a must have reference for anyone working with the product.

View all my reviews >>