CIO Podcast

DMVG Joins NCCCC

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Delmarva Group, LLC is very pleasd to announce we have joined the New Castle County Chamber of Commerce. We whole heartedly support the "Be Loyal Buy Local" approach to helping spawn our economy. We're not new to the NCCCC as some of us have experience with it from other organizations. We'd like to take this opportunity to announce a forthcoming discount for all current members of the NCCCC. At this point, we'll provide a 10% discount for NCCCC members who come to us and mention the NCCCC. Our other ventures will also offer a similar discount. Stay tuned for those later.One key to success is marketing. We believe the NCCCC will provide a key channel for our business to meet yours. We look forward to meeting our co-members, perhaps hitting some golf balls and sharing a toast.

iPhone 3GS

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Yep, it's out. And we have our hands on several. First impressions of this phone combined with Apple's new 3.0 iphone software appear to make this a solid "smartphone" system. Access to email is excellent and (as it has for some time) can connect to servers those corporations who feel Microsoft Exchange is the right way. On a side note, the iPhone has supported MAPI (Microsoft Proprietary Protocol) for email for quite some time now. So it can fit in nicely with a corporate structure. Combined with the upcoming Snow Leopard server system, this phone can make a very strong ally to the traveling road warrior. Snow Leopard will offer shared calendars along with Push email, which some people seem so wed to. Shared contacts calanders are also in play. There is lots going on if you are willing to break from the 'safe' choice and look at some very strong competitors for the server market. Aside from the native applications there are over 50,000 available on the iTunes Application store. These applications really set this environment apart. Everything from games to real world business applications, such as time tracking and credit card authorization systems are easily available. Additionally, the ability to remotely wipe the phone has filtered into the consumer market. Leveraging Apple's MobileMe system the consumer can now locate their phones and even wipe them remotely. The process is simple and straight forward. MobileMe also offers realtime synchronization of contacts and calendars. We're currently examining these features with our own Snow Leopard server. Soon we'll know (and post) more about it.I can personally attest to the advantage the iPhone environments effect on my professional life. I'm clearly more productive and responsive to my clients with this phone in my pocket.

Oracle to Stay in Hardware Business

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:00:00 +0100

While we kinda saw this one coming, it's good to hear from Larry Ellison's mouth."While most hardware businesses are low-margin, companies like Apple and Cisco enjoy very high-margins because they do a good job of designing their hardware and software to work together," Ellison said. "If a company designs both hardware and software, it can build much better systems than if they only design the software. That's why Apple's iPhone is so much better than Microsoft phones." Oracle will stay in the hardware business, Ellison says, Summer Lemon INFOWORLD (http://www.infoworld.com/t/mergers-and-acquisitions/oracle-will-stay-in-hardware-business-ellison-says-802)Note he particularly pays hommage to Apple. With the ability to design both the hardware and the software, companies can and have created better products. Better in all senses too... from quality to performance to "feel."

Oracle and Sun, what does it mean for MySQL?

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0100

On the bright site, at least they're not trying to call it a merger. Come to think of it, it's been a long time since I've heard that term. Nope, Oracle has is purchasing Sun Microsystems... and with it get a number of interesting things.

Mac vs. PC

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Just when we thought we'd heard enough, well, I guess we'll never really hear the end of this one. But AppleInsider posted a nice rebuttal to some of the Redmond rhetoric with the new "I'm a PC" purchasing ads. While we use and support all technologies here at DMVG, we favor the Mac platform for our workstations. The quality is unparalleled and the ability to run OS X, Linux and/or Windows on any machine we use simply cannot be beat.

More Fun with Conficker

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0100

This past week has seen Conficker wake up. One of the suggested things it will do is flood the internet with spam. That's just what we need. More spam."Windows PCs infected with the Conficker worm have turned into junk mail-spewing robots capable of sending billions of spam messages a day, a security company warned today."-- ComputerWorld, Conficker botnet could flood Web with spam (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9131448)"According to Kaspersky Lab (http://www.kaspersky.com), a Moscow-based antivirus firm, yesterday's update to Conficker, which in some cases was accompanied by the Waledac spam bot, has resulted in a floodtide of junk e-mail."-- ComputerWorld, Conficker botnet could flood Web with spam (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9131448)

Conficker Test

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0100

As conficker continues to grow and update (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7991422.stm), more and more machines will become infected. Recent virus developers have been able to block a computer from contacting anti-virus sites. Why is this important?Simply, they do this to prevent the anti-virus software on the machine such as AVG (http://free.avg.com), Norton Anti-Virus (http://www.symantec.com), mcafee (http://www.mcafee.com) from updating their definitions files. This prevents the computer from being able to detect whether it's even infected. Here is a website (http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart.html) that works like an eye chart. Basically, if all 6 boxes at the top have images... you "might" be okay. It's a quick test, but worth it.

IBM & Sun, Telecommuting is Good,

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0100

It looks like the IBM/Sun deal is dying on the vine. (http://is.gd/qU89) This was something we followed with interest, as now Sun owns MySQL, one of the most popular database packages out there. We certainly hope that Sun finds its funding somewhere. In other news, it appears that Telecommuting is Good for the Environment. (http://is.gd/r2t8) The World Wildlife Fund sees lower carbon emissions for Telecommuters than regular commuters. This is something we've long known and continue to advocate. For employees who can prove they can work in said environments, telecommuting can be a huge benefit. Indeed, another article suggested that people will take a pay cut to have the ability to work at home. Cutting Costs in this environment, that might not be a bad idea. Netgear has released a 4-bay ReadyNAS NVX. (http://is.gd/r3CC) This device will allow local Network Attached Storage (NAS) to be access by devices on the LAN. Additionally, via a NetGear provided service it can be backed up over the internet for offsite storage. What a great idea for the small business that should have offsite storage.

LaCie Ethernet Big Disk Problems (UPDATED:CLOSED)

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100

To date, I've been a big fan of this device. For about 300 bucks it lets you hang a terabyte of storage on your network. Well... at least until the HD crashed. That's my current assessment as the drive makes the tell tale clicking noises when booting. Enter LaCIE support. In time, we'll see how well they do... look for a report... and potentially a review of this product soon.

Vista Rollout

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Spam, 3 quick todos

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100

We all have to deal with it... and some use real company dollars to fight spam. Companies like Postini (http://postini.com/) and SpamSoap (http://www.spamsoap.com/) have clients all paying hard earned dollars to prevent it from entering their email environments. We've certainly had decent success using SpamAssassin and filtering rules and such.... But many of our clients continue to ask why do we get it.

WEP/WPA fully hacked

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Based upon this (http://dl.aircrack-ng.org/breakingwepandwpa.pdf) white paper, WPA is now hacked. Long seen as a good alternative to WEP encryption, it's now just another encryption that's been hacked. The answer? a rather obvious migrate to WPA2 as quickly as possible. While we're not sure if this is still an issue, we did have some problems a while back getting a windows XP machine to connect to a WPA2 protected wireless network provided by an Apple Airport Base station... We'll test this again later in the week.

Apple Support Round 3

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Here we area again. For the second time in it's life, my MacBook Pro's 17" screen has gone blank. Zippo... dark... blank. During my last (http://ciopodcast.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=181&Itemid=2) tangle with them, I was less than pleased with their in-store support. So, this time my machine is headed to Texas.

New Apple MacBook Pros Lack Firewire 400

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0100

We've been plodding along over here... working on what was the latest generation of MacBook Pros.. and being relatively happy with them.. and their quality. Sure, we've had a couple of issues with this one machine, but Apple remedied the issues and all is functioning well. All was going relatively well, until the new MacBook Pros were released. We love everything about them... with one major exception. The lack of Firewire 400 could be a significant problem. See, firewire 400 has been around so long that many people have these drives all over the place. Upgrading to to a new MacBook Pro means either replacing the external drives with FW 800 devices.... or... well... having to finally use that ExpressCard/34 slot. Wired's Brian Chen elaborates....

Emergency Patch for Microsoft Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Yet again, our brethren from Redmond feel the need to issue an emergency patch. Robert McMillian states in his advisory (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-oct.mspx) about the issue also states that the patch will be available sometime on October 23, 2008.... today. Enjoy!

Which administration would be best for IT

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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Ballmer says it's okay to wait

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0100

In our latest Vista update, we now have Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) stating that, "it's okay to wait for Windows 7." Wow.. so much can be said about this. For us, this means that Vista is so bad, that even the CEO of the company has given up trying to convince customers that it should roll out Vista. With Vista's limited appeal to the business community, we never expected businesses to embrace Vista en masse anyway. There are very few compelling reasons and many more problems with a Vista rollout. The ROI just isn't there. The general concession here is enough to convince us that there is no reason for any of our clients to implement Windows Vista today or at any time in the near future. We recommend to continue waiting until Windows 7 before any enterprise deployment be considered.

Does your company have an IT/HR integrated employee process that prevents loss of data?

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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Cause for proper employee processes.

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0100

According to this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7635622.stm) BBC article, someone picked up some networking gear that still had proper access to the "home office" environment. Wow, this should be a clear reminder to wipe all gear before being sold to the public. Of course, this does bring up the possible scenario that the user selling the gear was an ex-employee which opens up a plethora of problems.

With Microsoft Pushing Windows 7.x Just Around the Corner, are you concerned about long term support

podcast@ciopodcast.com (JTK) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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