OrlandoITPRO: SBS Networking Essentials

Posted: 4:00 pm
January 17, 2006
Events
2 Comments

Discussion of basic networking concepts and how they apply to Small Business Server. This will be a very engaging discussion meeting with the concept presentation lead by Vlad Mazek, Own Web Now Corp and JJ Antequino, Microsoft Corp. Vlad will review the basics of TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP and NAP as well as the associated gear. JJ Antequno will talk about basic concepts of Active Directory such as domains, queries and MMC. Two of our leading SBSers, Robert Belon and R. Scott Buchanan will offer their best practices after each concept and explain how it applies to their SBS deployments. Meeting is from 6 PM till 9PM on Thursday, January 26, 2006. Please RSVP: http://www.orlandoitpro.com/rsvp.asp

Exchange 2003 SP2 Release Notes Updated

Posted: 3:56 pm
January 17, 2006
Exchange
1 Comment

The release notes for Exchange 2003 SP2 have been updated to reflect the changes in Exchange SP2 in more detail. Judging by the traffic on Vladville.com, I'm sure that both of the guys that read the Release Notes will be extatic to hear about this news. Download updated Exchange 2003 SP2 Notes Joke aside, looks very thorough and each of the subsections is a good Vladville article on Exchange as far as I'm concerned. If you'd like me to explore some of this stuff in more detail please let me know. In the meantime, check out the articles section.

Laptop Internet Access via Treo 700W

Posted: 1:30 am
January 16, 2006
Gadgets, Mobility
6 Comments

Much to my dismay the most popular Windows Mobile 5 phone is the Palm Treo 700W which is currently only available from Verizon Wireless. Well, what if you had a Palm Treo 700W and paid a ton of money ($50) for a data plan on top of the $50 you were paying for a voice plan… Wouldn't it be awesome to just use the standard bluetooth on Treo 700W to connect to the Internet with your laptop via bluetooth dialup networking? Of course it would! However, that would mean you wouldn't pay the extra $59 a month to Verizon Wireless for a wireless broadband card! Verizon turned off modem over bluetooth functionality in Treo 700W (its a phone company guys, don't act surprised) but there is a way around it. You can still get on the Internet via your laptop through Treo 700W, you just have to use a USB connection and this software. Check out PdaNet software, for just $34 one-time you can say bye-bye to Verizon Wireless gauging your wallet every month for the service you're already paying for – wireless broadband! PdaNet for Palm Treo 700W

Evangelism in Technology

Posted: 9:42 am
January 15, 2006
IT Business, IT Culture
Comments Off on Evangelism in Technology

This opinion piece comes on the heels of a discussion started on two groups I belong to, the Greater Orlando Linux Users Group and SBS 2K group. Being Microsoft and Linux biased these two bunches would claim to be worlds apart but they are quite similar in their struggles with evangelism, especially when the product they promote drasticly changes or falls behind times: be it Slackware or SBS 2003. When it comes to promoting technology you have to first understand what makes a good evangelist and what makes for someone whose opinion is actually respected. For example, your church preacher and stoned guy on the corner of the intersection holding "Honk for Jesus" sign probably have a similar message, but who would you trust more? The guy with a big building, and why? Credibility! What establishes credibility over time is being able to provide the right answers for the right situation. If you continuously provide the same answer no mater how much the question changes it does not make you a good evangelist, it turns you into the guy on the corner. You earn respect and professional respect of your peers by being able to evaluate the situation and provide a solution based on your knowledge, experience and understanding of whats available. You become an evangelist when you find a product that helps solve problems of so many people that you take it upon yourself to help them… Congratulations, way to go. But beware of promoting this product to peole whom it doesn't actually help — at this point not only do you lose your peers respect, you turn into the guy on the corner holding a sign. I guess at the end of the day you have a decision to make: Do I want do be a respected professional in this field or someone whose radio dial got stuck on a station in 2003? Things change, solutions change, demands change. Learn to be dynamic, never compromise your ethics for a product you do not develop yourself!

End User Security Consulting Bootcamp

Posted: 11:56 am
January 14, 2006
Security
3 Comments

Laugh all you want but there are a ton of folks out there who as either a hobby or the part time job go around and help small businesses or small-office, home-office (SOHO) users that just do not have the same computing priorities us geeks do. Most of those show up at the local Microsoft Connections and TS2 events since that is their only interaction with Microsoft and by far the only way for them to get some IT training on their level (where no TechNet has gone before). So guys, this one is for you. This week Microsoft started doing something interesting with their security patches. They started offering ISO images with the latest security bulletins mainly geared at the enterprise computing environments without SUS, WSUS or SMS. This CD is jam packed with the security fixes in every architecture and language supported by Microsoft and its a great tool. But how does that help you? Well, it gives you a single CD you can take to the client and install the update. I know there are many people looking at this post now and just scratching their head, "Why not just go to Windows Update?" SOHO usually doesn't have broadband. So you can burn about 12 CD's a year and carry them around with you but that sounds like a bit too much of a hassle. You have to document which fix is on which CD, carry around a package of CD's and this doesn't even help you with the stuff outside of Windows because these ISO images do not have anything to update Office. So what is a smallbiz guy to do? First of all, get very very comfortable with Technet Security Center. This is where you can go every second Tuesday of the month (the Microsoft Patchday) and download the latest security updates in terms of bulletins that are named MS06-001 (06 for 2006, 001 for first update) and burn them on a CD yourself. Just create little folders named after the bulletin and save it for the common platforms you support (for example, lets say all your clients used XP Home, Pro and 64 bit edition. You save those). Save them in a directory and just drag them to a new CD every month. This way you have a single CD to carry around and you have all your security patches neatly organized and mobile. You don't need any extra software, XP will burn these files to your CD like a champ. Now you're at the clients site. They have a 56k modem and things are going slow. How do you quickly find out which patches to deploy? Enter Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer — Install MBSA from your CD, click on Scan and let it update itself and scan the system for missing security patches. Look at the MBSA list of missing security patches (they will be identified with a red X) and navigate to your patch CD to install it — this is why you named folders according to the security bulletin number, so you can easilly track them down. Reboot if neccessary and re-run the MBSA to make sure you took care of everything. Other ideas Most important thing is that you can do this with other applications you support, like Office or Adobe products. You can bring any machine up to date through this process. Another idea is to use a USB thumb-drive. Look at dealnews.com for a deal, you can get a gig for under $50 on a good day and not have to put up with scratched CD's or burning. I'm sure there are many other ways to skin this cat so please drop a comment if you have a practice that you are particularly successful with in SOHO or low-bandwidth environment.

SBS Show #13 – Small Business IT Consulting with Harry Brelsford

Posted: 8:21 pm
January 12, 2006
SBS Show
9 Comments

It's good to be the king! Harry Brelsford took a break from his skiing trip to stay at his cabin and talk to us about the state of small business IT, franchising, starting and growing and IT practice, world-wide trends even down to new business ideas, personal style and plastic surgery advice. Harry, like everyone else we invite on the show, is a big contributor to the SBS community and will certainly be back to discuss some of the subjects in depth but we wanted to get to know Harry… for those of you that don't get to sit down and have coffee with the big time SBSers this is a good intro and overview on what IT business involves and where its going. Download the SBS Show: http://www.vladville.com/sbsshow/sbsshow-episode13.mp3 Show Notes: Time Description ===== ======================================= 1:37 Who are you? 6:44 Where is SMB Nation going next? 10:12 How did you get started? 12:46 What are you talking about now? 15:49 So whats new? 17:20 How does Microsoft work? Workshops? 20:15 Is there an opportunity in IT franchises? 26:19 How do you build a consulting practice? 32:08 Succcessful franchise organizations 43:00 One-man-band vs. Build-and-grow IT firm? 44:03 Whats the value in SBS user groups? 50:40 Whats the current buzz word in smallbizit? 52:20 Grilling time: Do you have a stylist? 55:00 Where are the ebooks? Opinion on piracy? Harry Brelsford's notes (www.smbnation.com): SMB Nation Amsterdam 2006 (April 6-7 2006) registration NOW OPEN! SMB Nation complimentary evening workshops: January = USA, February-April = EMEA SMB Technology Watch newsletter, free and goes bi-weekly starting in February!!! Join our 7,000 readers.

What in the world is a Podcast?

Posted: 8:16 am
January 12, 2006
Podcast
10 Comments

I was at the Tampa Bay SBS group meeting last night and a few guys asked if there was supposed to be any video in these podcasts. While I'm sure plenty of folks would pay for some video of our Queenie, no, there is no video in podcasts. Not to mention that Chris and I "have the face for the radio" and would effectively have to kiss our audience goodbye. But the guys I spoke to are pretty active SBSers and if they didn't know what to expect out of a podcast then its likely that most people out there don't get it either so let me see if I can sum up what a podcast is, how to use one, etc. What is a podcast? Podcast (personal on-demand broadcast) is a recording of a radio show you can download off the Internet. No video, just sound, and usually quite low quality to make it a smaller download. Unlike a streamed audio file, podcasts are intended to be downloaded and listened your own pace, time and place – on your computer, on your mp3 player, on your media center PC or while driving. Files are quite small (less than 20 megs for over an hour of talk) and traditionally involve one person with nothing to say recording a show for someone that has nothing to do. SBS Show is technically an icecast because we always have guests and more than 1 person talking which basically makes it a lot like talk radio except without Garliq commercials. So I just download this? You can, but that is not the preferred form of transfering these. Much like blogs the cool thing behind podcasts is that they are wrapped in xml/rss enclosures and come with a wide set of tools to make subscription to these shows easy and effortless. For example, the SBS Show has a feed which is integrated into places like Yahoo and Itunes. You can just go to these sites, subscribe to "SBS Show" and those clients will automatically download the mp3 of the show when it becomes available to your mp3 player or your computer. You can also use series of aggregators which are programs designed to collect podcasts and download them for you so you don't have to navigate to places like www.sbsshow.com every week – its done automatically. Got it! What now? Once you have the mp3 file you sit and listen to it. Or in Joey's case you put it on an mp3 player and take it to the gym. There is a big misconception that podcasts are somehow related to Apple, they are not. You do not need an Ipod and for the love of god don't give money to Apple. Any dinky $30 mp3 player will be a champ at playing back podcasts, after all, they are just mp3 files. You can play it at the office, in the gym, on your way to work/client/wedding/during sex. It is just a very versatile form of distributing information and quite entertaining at that – for those of you in the business world think about getting useful technical and business information without powerpoint. Whoa, sounds pretty complex. Dumb it down. Ok. Go to podcasts.yahoo.com and search for SBS Show (or click here) – Scroll down the list until you find the show you wish to listen to. Click listen and enjoy. Now lets say you had an mp3 player or wanted to listen on your computer. Well, go to http://www.sbsshow.com and click on the download link and either save to the mp3 player or open with the media player of your choice. If thats too complex just open up a recent version of iTunes, click on Podcasts and in the search field type SBS Show – list will drop down, pick the one you like the most and hit play. Thats it! But wait, I'm a power user! Wooohooo. Okay, in that case you'll want to subscribe to podcasts and really waste some hard drive space. First thing you need to get is an aggregator which will collect these podcasts for you. They are called podcast aggregators or podcatchers. Yes, they are all free. At the simplest level there are Yahoo Media Player and iTunes. Both will collect podcasts for you. If you'd rather put the mp3's on something more exotic, such as a Media Center PC or a PocketPC (or a Linux workstation) there are things to that as well. My personal favourites are Doppler which is available both for your Windows desktop and your mobile PocketPC. If you're looking for something cross-platform there is always iPodder. Whichever software you select you'll need to find a feed. Feed what? We ain't on a farm boy! RSS/XML feed is the file that podcasters use to format their podcasts for syndication. They include the link to the file, date it was made, length of the recording, brief description, etc. It is how iTunes tells you what you're about to get. While most people will never see this because 99% of people use Yahoo and iTunes I figured I'd mention it. Let's say you're browsing around a random site and you really find a podcast that you're really interested in but you're experiencing an out-of-attention issue. You can't find it in iTunes but they have this little RSS/XML orange icon. Well, that means they published their podcast feed. Right click and copy the address and paste it into your aggregator. Few minutes later you'll be downloading a collection of that podcasts recordings. Subscribe to the SBS Show Overview Don't buy an iPod. If you've found stuff you enjoy lisitening to online you can use an aggregator to subscribe to your favourite digital radio shows and listen to them at your own pace. And no, SBS Show has no video's of Susanne you can download.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-003

Posted: 9:55 pm
January 10, 2006
Security
Comments Off on Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-003

Microsoft released a security bulletin today that may be panicking a few more people than usual, namely the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-003 titled Vulnerability in TNEF Decoding in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Could Allow Remote Code Execution (902412). Now if you read the bulletin all the way through, and I know for a fact nobody out there actually does this so here it goes: This security bulletin does not affect Microsoft Exchange 2003 SP1 and SP2, just Exchange 2000. There is another one that does affect the server so get ready to patch. Tomorrow as usual is the Technet webcast to discuss these patches.

Fun with Microsoft’s CEO

Posted: 4:42 pm
January 10, 2006
Microsoft, Misc
27 Comments

This has been quite a good week so lets see if we can have a little fun with this one shall we? Below is the picture of Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) presenting at the Microsoft TechReady conference. Steve is famous for… well… his hurling ability. I have $5 worth of advertising that Vladville has collected over the past 12 hour or so and I'm sharing the wealth. So here is the game: So the person to put the best quote into Steve's mouth gets $5 😉 My guess is: "Wanna bet I can throw this podium over that wall?" P.S. Picture credit 2006 (c) Kevin Remde.

Preparing for Windows Vista in Small Business

Posted: 11:48 am
January 10, 2006
Microsoft, OS, SMB
5 Comments

So in today's mailbag comes a question from Nick asking: "Love the SBS Show especially one thing questions and I have one for you: What should we do to prepare for the Windows Vista?"; Just among the many folks in the one thing fan base so let me look at this from as many angles as possible: Find or become Microsoft Small Business Specialist Microsoft Registered Partner Program is running towards extinction, rightfully so, and all the money is going into the SBSC program. If it were not for Microsofts insecurity about their monopoly (god forbid someone find out there are folks other than Microsoft writing software) the Action Pack would go off the cliff as well but the risk of having Action Pack on eBay and massive licensing fraud actively practiced by many small business consultants is a small price to pay for locking them into the Microsoft platform for decades. Those are the just the ugly realities of the marketplace, you can't expect everyone to behave ethically and MAPS does benefit a fair amount of partners that are just starting their businesses. In my humble opinion, that will be the only perk left for the uncertified partners. Now sit back, relax and even if you're a consultant consider who you would trust with your systems and your network. One-man-band or a Microsoft Certified Partner / Microsoft Small Business Specialist? That ought to be a really simple question to answer. Microsoft is thinking the same way. Microsoft is finding competent consultants and businesses that understand their platform and can support it. They are also Microsoft's sales force, and Microsoft is putting the money into the pockets of Small Business Specialists. For example, this month will be the last PEP (Partner Engagement Program) extended to people NOT in the Microsoft Small Business Specialist program. What does this mean? Better network deployments for the small business clients. Actually competent, certified and backed by Microsoft. It will also be cheaper. Yes, cheaper. Microsoft is throwing many incentives down the Small Business Specialist chain, for example you will almost be totally compensated for costs involved in consulting/deployment if you buy Windows XP / Office 2003. So if there is one, I repeat, one thing you should to on your road to Vista its to get a Microsoft Small Business Specialist certification or at least partner with someone who is. The second, third and fourth… In no real order there are more than a few non-business technical things you should pay attention to. Remember that you're looking at something that will not be available for another year (which probably means you will not be deploying it until at least next Spring/Summer). We still do not even know which features Vista will offer so its a little too presumptious to assume you'll even want to move up immediately (if even in the mid to long term). There are several features (such as Limited User Access) that might be very appealing but I'd argue its more a factor of the poorly written application than an OS. Either way, if you're sure you'll be upgrading your existing infrastructure right away Start purchasing AMD 64 X2 series workstations. Dual core is quite affordable and offers a lot more performance than single core processors. Look for things that have hardware DEP (or if you're going with Intel Execute Disable Bit switch) so you don't have to relive the recent WMF scare. Spend the extra money on the upgraded video card. Yes, really. Vista is very graphics intensive and there is a lot of talk about Microsoft DRM requiring hardware co-operation. Keeping that in mind you might want to get a video card that is actually supported by the designer (ATI, Nvidia) and not the El Cheapo of East Taiwan. Of course there is the going concern of turning your workforce into a big deathmatch party every Friday but those things do boost morale. Finally, the more things change the more they stay the same. Get more ram. Lot more ram. There are so many memory intensive things coming out already before Vista (like Microsoft Bloat-namics CRM which recommends over 1GB of ram just for the client piece) so spend the extra money on memory. Vista will (hopefully) include a feature that allows you to apply a security patch and reboot w/out losing your work state. Imagine a process by which a security patch is installed without you having to exit Excel or stop that long email to me 🙂 There is a lot of evidence that Microsoft will make Vista easy to move up the feature chain. Media will include all the bits for everything from Home up to Enterprise, so if you ever need a feature that requires a higher-up edition of Vista you can do so by just re-entering the product code. Keep that in mind when you're making a decision on whether or not to spend extra $15 on a memory upgrade – if you do minimum spec for a Home edition and then one day need it to work in a domain the last thing you'll want to learn is how to add more RAM or try to swap out a CPU 🙂