Mokafive aka Moka5

I just started working with this new product I wanted share with you all. It's called Mokafive. It's basically a VMware based product that makes it much easier to manage VMware images. (A VMWare image is a virtual version of a computer environment. Think of it as a software-based computer running inside your real computer).

For example, say I have 4 different VMware images that I share with users in my organization on a regular basis. The first challenge I have is distribution. If my users are local, I could just give them instructions on where they could download the images. However, these images large (3-10 gig usually). So, if they're remote users, this starts to become almost impracticle. Worse yet, what if I make a change to one of the VMware images and I need to get everyone of my users updated to the newer image? Do I tell them all to simply re-download the image? Think about it... even if it was just 20 users and they were all trying to download 5 gig images off the server on the same day. How good is that going to be for LAN traffic?

It's reasonable to expect that with patches, policies, and software updates occuring quite regularly, that these images would need to be refreshed, at a minimum, every month. But, probably sooner.

Well, this is what Mokafive does really well. It does three things:
1. provides a slick and friendly interface for users to pull down the images they need (there could be more than one image).
2. silently sends the deltas (only the changes) to the users machines when I make a change to the master image.
3. provides the user with a friendly menu so they can choose which image to launch.

Here's a screen shot of the user interface:


In the above picture, this menu contains the five different demonstration environment (VMWare images) that can be launched from the Mokafive menu. The little green circle with the black arrow is the START button, but you probably figured that out by now.

And, not every user has to have the same menu. As the admin, I can control who can get what. Or, I can decide in advance "this is what you're getting whether you like it or not" ;-D

Moreover, an admin can control the versioning too. When an updated image is distributed. If there's a problem with it, you can roll-back to just about any point at which you saved a previous version.

I'll probably be talking more about this cool little tool. But, that's enough for now.

I'm curious to hear from anyone else who's using M5. And, I'll freely admin when I'm wrong, so if anything I wrote might be in error, I'd sure like to hear about it.

:-)

Antivirus System Pro and other scams

I'm spitting mad right now. If you've not heard about one of the latest, and popular, internet scams out right now called "antivirus system pro 2009". Well, it's basically a deal where the website that you inadvertently come in to contact with flashes something up on your screen alerting you to the fact that you've got a virus. It then prompts you to take action now by clicking on some button they provide.

The program then proceeds to identify several viruses on you computer (viruses, that the program its self planted there) and offers to rid these virus for you and restore your computer's health. HOWEVER.. there's one little catch - you have to fork over some money, about $50 us, to activate the rescue portion of this program.

Unfortunately, my roommate fell for this. I don't fault her, it could have happened to anyone (and apparently it did! from what I've read on the net). Anyway, the program takes your money and you go on about your way thinking that your computer is all better now - or so it seems.

But, later you notice that you can't get to certain websites. "What the heck?" Or, when you click on a link, you end up and some other website that you never intended to arrive-at.

If this unfortunate event has happened to you, just use another computer (not the one that's infected) to google "Antivirus system pro removal". There's a ton of information out there about it.

Now, on to my next point - SCAMS. Folks, I hate to sound radical here - OK, I sound radical, but I don't care. But, these types of scams are just going to get worse before they get better.

Three reasons why:
1. the bad guys (people who come-up with these scams) are getting more and more sophisticated.
2. As more and more people are accepting the internet as a way to conduct everyday tasks such as banking, shopping, email, and finding information. There will simply be more targets out there.
3. as the economy declines the ability to make an honest buck declines too. However, most of these do-bads are from places outside our country. Well again, as the economy declines so does the generosity of the first-world nations. My take is their thinking goes kind of like this: "hey, if my people are starving and I can scam some fat American out of $50, I'm not going to have any problem sleeping at night".

So, where am I going with this?

First....FOLKS... BE CAREFUL. Don't just buy things without really understanding from whom you're making the purchase. My rule of thumb is I check three different sources (reliable ones that I trust) to see if I get any conflicting evidence. Another little trick I do is to see if there is a phone number and I call it to see what kind of impression I get. Does it sound cheesy? That might be a clue.

For instance, if my roommate had just googled the words "Antivirus System Pro" before making that purchase, she would have seen all kinds of hits to the effect that it was a scam.

SECONDLY, be careful about to whom and how much, information about yourself you're giving away. For one thing, I can't think of a single reason why your bank would send you an email asking for your ATM code. Don't laugh, it's a common scam - an old one too!

THIRDLY, Use a CREDIT CARD, not a Debit Card to buy things if you're not very trusting of the source from which you're purchasing. Again, my poor roommate, she used a debit card so the money came right out of her bank account when she made the purchase. But, if she'd used a CREDIT card, she probably could have called the card company and explained. Then, they could have refused payment to the vendor. Again, not faulting her. Hindsight is 20/20.

I could probably go on and on about this topic. I think you get my point so I'll wrap it up. But, basically, I want you to take away two things:

1. Because of a declining economy and technological advance for the bad guys - SCAMS are going to be on the RISE.

2. Be skeptical. It's okay to be paranoid when you're exposing your money or your identity on the internet.

Be safe. =)

Sprint Instinct - Samsung M800

I've been a Sprint customer since 1997. This is when they opened the first Sprint PCS store in Newington CT.

In the time that has elapsed since then, I've had .. well, let me count... 5 different cell phones from Sprint. Yeah, that averages more than 2 year per phone. I'm good that way!

The latest phone I'm using is the Samsung M800 (aka: the Instinct). If you're not familiar with it or what it looks like, think of it as a slightly smaller iPhone - however, with a little more functionality. I love the phone. I've had it for 8 months now, and I still find a new feature every once in a while.

Here's what I like about it:
* the touch screen interface
* GPS & navigation feature
* visual voice mail
* Text message conversations are kept as a threads
* doubles as a media device for music and video.

Now.. what I don't like about it.
* touch screen slows me down sometimes when I'm typing. My last phone was a PPC-6700 and I could type much faster on that.
* Speaker phone tends to clip the begining and end of your spoken phrases. So, the result is the caller constantly asking you to repeat yourself if you're using the speaker function.
* No speach-to-text or voice dial. This seemed odd that such a powerful phone would not have these features because one of my previous Samsung phones the A900, has both these features. Oh well, I'm sure it was a cost thing (it always is).

Now, I'll agree it may be a little late for me to be blogging a review about the Samsung M800 since it's pretty much yesterday's phone. But, there are still new ones available and Sprint has really dropped the price on them.

Bottom line, if you like a PDA phone that is more fun and entertainment oriented I would highly recommend. On the otherhand, if you're more business-than-pleasure, then there are better phones out there for you.

I think I'm qualified to say this because right before I got the Instinct, my previous phone was a PPC-6700 which was a very powerful business type PDA phone. I find there are serveral things I used to do that I just either can't do or can't do very well with the Instinct. But, that's not a bash on the Instinct, I just accept it for what it is - a very cool, slick iPhone type device.

PS: you're not supposed to use the phone in Phone-as-modem mode, but a friend told me it's blazingly fast! I might post what my friend has to say about that later ;-)

VMWare

just a quick blog entry while I'm thinking about it. For any of you technical-types (and maybe you non-techie types), if you're not at least playing around with VMWare, then you're going to be blind-sided by the next big IT wave.

No, it's not that VMWare the product will dominate the industry, but it is what VMWare does - VIRTUALIZATION of PC's, Servers, and Server Appliances. And, don't gimme the "I can't afford it". Many wonderful VMWare products are free from their website. No, not just 60-day trials, I mean FREE.

Here are the few I think you should get (and they're all free).

- VMWare Server - you could think of this as a very basic version of the workstation product VMWare sells called "VM worksation". The biggest difference is that the server version doesn't let you do snap-shots and some other little features. But, if all you want to do is create some virturalized environments (aka: images), this will do the trick.

- VMWare Player - this is a tool that you would put on a PC to run the VMWare images you created. Don't let the name "player" fool you. When you run an image in the Player, you still have the full ability to execute programs and make changes within the image. You just can't adjust parameters outside the image.

- ESXi server - this is a much more advanced (and powerful) version of the VMWare server, unlike the previous server version that could run on a workstation, win2k3 box, or a Linux box, ... ESXi is it's own operating system so therefore requires a dedicated box. Think of this as the thing you would graduate to when you feel limited by the other server program I mentioned.

- VMWare Converter - Honestly, I can't believe they give this tool away for free! It's so powerful. Converter is what you use to take and existing machine (i.e. a running PC or Server) and capture the running OS and convert it into a VMWare image. I won't go into details here, but the ability to do a conversion to a VM image WHILE the source machine is RUNNING, is just sooooo cool to me. And, extremely handy.

Lastly, if anything I said is confusing, it probably means you're over due to play with some virtualization tools. VMWare is not the only game in town. Look around for yourself. This is going to be a huge paradygm shitf in the IT industry because it is central to Cloud Computing. And, if you've not heard of Cloud Computing....

.... it's time to catch up buddy!!! :-)

Nortel 2050 softphones

I deal with these softphones a lot at my work. I manage a Nortel cs1000 PBX. And, almost all my subscribers use the 2050 softphone. As I've gotten used to the particulars of these little software phones. I thought there was a few things I could share here that might make life easier on someone else. There is not particular structure to this. Just a kind of random list or "brain dump" if you will.

- the older version of the softphone is prefered (2.60 or earlier) if you can get it because it doesn't require a licence. So, long as you've got a Nortel PBX or BCM that has 2050 licenses available for IP users, then you can install this code over and over again.

- unless I've not been shown yet, there is a big security flaw with the 2050. It's simply this. If I have access to your network, and I have a basic idea of what your TN numbers are. I should be able to take a laptop with a 2050 softphone installed on it and hunt around through the TN's until I find an available one. The only way that I've found to prevent this would be to collect the IP address or MAC address and build some kind of an ACL list in the switch to keep out un-registered devices.

- for the most part, the phone is pretty reliable. I rarely have them lock up on me. However, what I do get sometimes is my users having troulbe with the phone when they're connecting to the PBX from a remote office via a VPN connection. (phone wont' connect or if it does, no audio)This is a common problem and you can search the web and find tons of write-ups about this. But, not a lot of fixes.

- the 2050 seems to work "ok" in a Citrix environment. I've done some initial testing and in my experiement, my citrix server was 500 miles away from my pbx. And, my terminal (the computer I used to connect to the citrix server) was 500 miles away from the citrix server. So, considering that the audio leaving my mouth had to travel 1000 miles before it even began it's journey to the other caller, I though the delay was not bad. And, the audio quality was "acceptable".

- One bad thing I've been wrestling with lately is some of my users registering withe wrong TN and as a result registered with the wrong DN (phone number). At first this was a real problem when I couldn't find out who it was (yes, this was after I'd tried to call the DN to ask them who/where they are). Eventually, I did find a way that you can identify the IP address of the TN user. But, if they away from there desk for an extented period of time, I don't have a way to kill their softphone so I can re-claim the TN for the rightful owner. Yeah, doesn't seem like a big deal until it's your boss that can't start his phone because some other numb skull has his TN.

Well, that's if for now. I'll have more to say about the 2050 and NORTEL stuff soon.