Friday - February 24, 2006

• "Volume I: Web Protection" of the Infallible Trinity Series is complete. I'll be posting new volumes as I complete them.

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Monday - February 13, 2006

• Firefox 1.5 has been released for a month or so now. I find the Noscript extension to be absolutely necessary. IEView, Customizegoogle, and Forecastfox are also quite useful.

• I'm in the process of writing the "Infallible Trinity: Web Protection”. I'm writing a series of “Infallible Trinity's; three things that make the biggest difference in how we use our PC. Web Protection and PC Speed is almost done and soon to be released. And then the world shall benefit...

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Monday - December 26, 2005

• Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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Monday - October 31, 2005

• Just over a week ago, OpenOffice 2.0 was released (they call it OpenOffice.org, but who's keeping notes?). Go download it, and enjoy the free ride - forever.
It's a really nice suite. Its fast, transparent if you are used to MS office apps, and free. I've been putting it through the paces and I highly recommend it.

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Friday - October 21, 2005

• A relatively unknown OS is getting some heavy attention. It's called Ubuntu, and you read it here first.
At a glance, this OS incorporates all the cutting edge goodies while being user super-friendly, regularly updated on a six month cycle, supported, and bloat free. There's so much that makes it stand out, my advice is to simply try it on a spare PC/partition/drive and see for your self. It's very promising, and currently the best experience I'm having with a Linux distribution. The world is figuring out that many Open Source alternatives are not only free and fun, they're unrestrictive, secure, easy to use, and here to stay.

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Monday - September 26, 2005

• Firefox has been updated to version 1.07.
They also have the 1.5 beta 1 available, but I'd recommend 1.07 for the majority of users.

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Monday - September 12, 2005

• Microsoft's newest OS "Vista" will require a very beefy system. The requirements are huge for basic stuff.
So here's my prediction. Vista will be released with much hype; many copies will be sold to the MS fan base of early adopters. Like all Microsoft Operating Systems, mass adoption will take a couple years, but this time MS has proper Linux competition, and even Apple (as much as I hate to admit it) since it wades into the Intel base. The techs won't be nearly as impressed as the average user; one hand they'll like the pretty graphics and ease of use, other hand they'll complain about the requirements and perhaps the newer ways of doing things (I still can’t stand the XP default “Start Menu”). XP will gain some up-graders and keep the masses happy with what they already have. Linux will gain newfound interest and development. The many OS flavors spawned will be bountiful and become an even more compelling alternative. If MS doesn’t develop more features geared toward techs and the bloatware-resistant informed, it will play out exactly as I just outlined; perhaps even less favorable for Microsoft than I can guess…

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Monday - September 5, 2005

• Happy Labor Day! There's not been much news of late. With the horrible devastation Katrina brought, focus is where it should be - saving lives.

Donate to the Red Cross.

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Monday - August 22, 2005

• I wrote a new article on what the new Microsoft Operating System (currently "Vista") really needs. I wrote it because System Engineers are adjusting installs constantly, making them more secure while improving performance, and think Microsoft should be doing this on install to avoid the initial bloat and vulnerability. There's a whole book I could write on this subject, but I've focused on the most effective improvement they could make. Read on!

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Monday - August 15, 2005

• Nothing major to report so far, so I've added another article on basic hardware optimization. I wrote it for a music site for people who want maximum performance for their DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). It's basic enough to get some real gains without much sweat, but just touches on some of the things that can be very involved. You don't see much in the way of hardware optimization, and this is one area I'm fairly solid with. So read on!

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Monday - August 8, 2005

• Spyware ring uncovered, my customers need not worry.
The bad guys abuse a technology I always recommend my clients avoid - autocomplete. Among many recommendations, autocomplete has always been a top "Do Not Use" feature.. Even in Firefox, you should refrain from using Saved Form and Passwords. If there's any information you want kept private, don't let your computer remember it. Write it down, store it away, burn it on cd, memorize it, but don't let your software remember it for you. And use some sort of simple yet effective password manager like Passkeeper.
Want more safety basics? Manage cookies, surf with a hardware and software firewall, drop your temp file storage to one mb, history at zero, high surfing setting on all internet zones (even trusted and local), no autocomplete, no multiple browsers open at once, etc etc. I know exactly what to do to keep the bad guys out of your personal computer, subsequently keeping your business, friends, family, and kids free of nasty content.

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Monday - August 1, 2005

• Look out Internet, here comes Firefox!
We all know Firefox has been steadily gaining followers for awhile now, and with good reason. But with all the publicity about browser security that's leaking into average peoples brains, I predict IE7 won't have such a hearty welcome once it's released. In fact, I guarantee it. Unless it's completely removed from the core OS and proves highly security conscious, it just won't have an overwhelming reception from the majority of advanced users. And advanced users are the ones making it known to their clients or business...

• Cisco router flaw getting lots of publicity.
As pointed out a week or so ago by Mike Lynn, there's a flaw that affects, basically, the internet's infrastructure. Cisco routers power the majority of the internet as we know it, and the flaw that was revealed with it's IOS could be exploited in the future by unscrupulous madmen. I'm sure Cisco will roll out a new revision soon, causing Cisco engineers throughout the world busy ...for a few days at least.

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Friday - July 22, 2005

• Pittsburgh (Monroeville) is getting a pilot opportunity for broadband over power line (BPL).
Nice to see Pittsburgh getting some technology lovin. I'm curious to see how it plays out. For the consumer, we have a multitude of technologies already available in quantity (wireless, cable, dsl, etc). For the power companies it would likely mean an intelligent and efficient infrastructure, as opposed becoming ISP's. BPL has been around awhile overseas and parts of the US. There's plenty of issues to overcome, but since it's Pittsburgh, it's worthy of mention.

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Wednesday - July 20, 2005

• Firefox has released a new version.
It's not updated to newer versions often, but the last release broke some extensions. Extensions are user made "programs" that install into the browser to give even more control when surfing, like CustomizeGoogle, Noscript, and IE View. There's hundreds of them, some extremely useful depending on your surfing like and dislikes.

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Tuesday - July 19, 2005

• Another security problem with windows, this time it's RDP and affects many operating systems.
Fortunately for my customers, this is one of the first things I disable when they get a new PC. It's the Remote Desktop that allows users to "remotely control" their PC. It's a convenience rarely used, and something I always knew to be a possible problem. If you want to make sure it's disabled in XP, just follow this lead...: Start | Settings | Control Panel | System | Remote tab | Uncheck Remote Desktop. While you're there, uncheck remote assistance, which I also disable by default.

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Friday - July 15, 2005

• More AIM attacks from nasty worms.
Everyone knows I dislike Instant Messengers in business environments. My own experiences show that email is a much more productive and safe way of "Instant Messaging". There's no reason to have one of these applications installed if you are in a production environment, but many compelling reasons to avoid them. Again I urge my customers or anyone reading this to take heed, and keep IM's off the corporate PC.

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Thursday - July 14, 2005

• Want uncompromising free security applications for personal use? Grisoft AVG is a fantastic antivirus program. Zonealarm is a simple but very effective software firewall. Microsoft's Antispyware beta comes in handy to stop spyware before it starts, and does a good job eliminating it too.
I personally have used Grisoft and Zonealarm for several years now, and have never needed anything else. There's many reasons Grisoft is such a great antivirus program, and one of them is: because it's good at what it does while being slightly under the radar. By this I mean a majority of viruses circumvent protection from the most well-known checkers like Norton or MacAfee. My customers can attest, I've used my advice for a long time and it works like a charm... "find a lesser known but solid virus checker, and you're better off than the one everyone else uses."
Course it's getting popular recently, but holding up like a gem.

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Wednesday - July 13, 2005

• Firefox has been updated to 1.0.5 and contains various stability fixes and security updates.
I recomend using Firefox as your main browser. With the Noscript addon it's even better. It does everything you are used to with Explorer, and it's focus is Security. Also very easy to configure via Extensions like the JavaScript one I linked, and it's preferences give complete control of the web back to you.

• Microsoft released more critical updates for IE, Windows, and Word.
Please look at replacing Explorer with Firefox. Although a good technician can lock down explorer, it takes a lot of constant "toying" to keep properly secure (swapping between "Internet Zones", cookies, etc). Microsoft makes great stuff, but it's also the most targeted. If Explorer wasn't built into the OS itself, it would be easier to keep safe.