226: Ubuntu

South Africa is in the eye of the world cup storm. The Spirit of Ubuntu (Humanity towards others) in full swing. Incidentally my favorite (so is Dr. Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory) Ubuntu Linux use the Ubuntu philosphy in developing software for the world to use. Back to soccer,  I always like Argentina. More so with the legendary Diego Maradona ( now in his 50's) who instead of firing those booming goals is now calling the shots from the sideline.

#147: What a fraction of a second can do

I had expressed my frustration about elastix VOIP PBX System on this post a couple of days ago. Not anymore because I finally solved the puzzle.

It took just the letter "w" that made the difference. A "w" when dialing a phone number from a handset translates to a 0.5 second pause before dialing the rest of the number. 

0.5 Seconds is eternity in technology when you think of high speed computers running millions of processes in seconds. Or when you have to have 99.9999% system availability. So it's not surprising that a fraction of a second can make or break this PBX system.

I spent more that 30 hours trying to figure out the solution. It wasn't a waste of time though, because I also learned more about the core asterisk codes which is the underlying platform of this amazing open source PBX System.

Lesson learned: Sometimes complicated problems can have very simple answers, you just have to know where to look for it.

#117: Microsoft vs Linux

Big news in the tech world, Windows 7 just hit the PC market. Microsoft is hoping to redeem itself after the infamous debacle of Windows Vista.

Executives from Microsoft have fanned out to celebrate the launch of the company's core product upon which the rest of Redmond's empire has been built. The software giant is counting on favorable reviews and new features to help Windows rebuilt its image in the face of a disappointing response to Windows Vista.  

As always home users who will buy a new computer will be the first to experience the new OS. As for businesses it will be hard to predict when or if they will ever switch to Windows 7.

But of course Linux is again challenging Windows 7 with IBM and Canonical for Ubuntu Linux  announcing the launch of Linux and cloud-based desktop software in the U.S.

IBM and Canonical in their press release have stated that the cost of migrating to Windows 7  will be as much as $2,000 for most PC users, with hardware accounting for much of the expense. Linux (and specifically Ubuntu) together with the IBM software is according to the two partners, cheaper to deploy.

"If a company is a 'Windows shop,' at some point it will need to evaluate the significant costs of migrating its base to Microsoft's next desktop and bolstering its defenses against virus and other attacks," said Bob Picciano, general manager, IBM Lotus in a statement. "American businesses have asked for a compelling alternative and today we are delivering IBM Client for Smart Work in the U.S."

 Our office had stick to windows XP and even run Ubuntu Linux on some of our desktop. I don't foresee the use of windows 7 in the near future. Our major applications such as our Medical Software, Email and knowledge-based system are all using web-based technology, This means that all we need is a web browser such as Firefox to run our applications.

With the release of windows 7 and eventually the sun-setting of windows XP, there's no choice but to switch to Linux.

#95: Microsoft non-essential

Microsoft just announced the released of Microsoft Security Essentials, their new free anti-virus program.

Microsoft today lifted the curtain on its Microsoft Security Essentials, the free successor to its OneCare security program. MSE uses the same antivirus engine as the phased-out OneCare, but the new free program focuses only on malware blocking. It doesn't include a firewall, system optimizer or other security suite-type features.

 I downloaded the MSE program and installed it in my laptop.

Once installed, I started scanning my computer for virus and my computer crashed and there's no way to recover until I decided to turn off my computer and do a complete reboot. MSE tried to start automatically but then I got an error message that the program failed to load and suggested I re-install it.

I proceeded to re-install the program and this time it went through without a hitch. I decided to restart my computer before doing the scan. This time MSE loaded automatically. I ran the quick scan and it seems to be very slow. It took more half an hour to complete the scan. It didn't find anything wrong on mine.

MSE is not very impressive. No wonder it was not ranked as one of the top 3 free anti-virus program from this review. You may be better off using one of these products instead.

Or better yet use Linux for trouble free computing.

#56: Hannah Montana Linux

The hit TV show Hannah Montana products are everywhere. It's printed on shirts, bags, even shoes. But what about a computer that has the look and feel of Hannah Montana?

Well there's Hannah Montana Linux powered computer!

I am a little bit familiar with Hannah Montana. I've seen a glimpse of the TV show when Nadire's watching it. For the benefit to those who's not familiar with the show:

Hannah Montana is an Emmy Award-nominated[1] American television series, which debuted on March 24, 2006 on Disney Channel. The series focuses on a girl who lives a double life as an average teenage school girl named Miley Stewart (played by Miley Cyrus) by day and a famous pop singer named Hannah Montana by night, concealing her real identity from the public, other than her close friends and family.

The Linux Distro is based in Kubuntu, a variant of Ubuntu. Interestingly, you can grab a live CD to try it on your (or your kid's) computer at the project's official website. Creating such a distribution is easy due to fact that Linux codes are available to anyone and can be freely modified.

So next time your kid's acting up and you know Hanna Montana is their favorite show, pop in that live CD and turn your computer to a Hannah Montana nanny. And Don't worry because the program won't modify anything in your computer

#54: Sharing knowledge online

One big headache for a company is how to manage internal documents in either electronic or paper formats. You'll be surprised how much this information grows through the years. But these are valuable information that needs to be kept indefinitely.

Today, I am starting a project to implement a company-wide Knowledge-based system to make available every internal documents online for easy retrieval.

I opted to use KBPublisher, a web-based system written in PHP. The nice thing about using such as system is to be able to centralized all information, categorize documents, create FAQ, create user manuals and even use it as a support help desk.

I couldn't be more happier having such a system since my department (IT) seems to be a natural go to department when staff needs copies for a particular document. Although sometimes that same document was already requested before and was sent to them for the nth time. With this new system, they can grab it themselves.

KBPublisher is not free (we did got a reduced price because we are non-profit). But paying a one time fee will give you access to the code and the license is perpetual.

note: If you can't afford such a system, there's 68kb which is totally free and open source. This product has a lot of potential but it's still in the early stage of development. It can be more useful for a smaller project.

#47: Dead Zone

I'm in San Francisco attending the Open Source World Conference.

I am typing this on my phone via text to blog.

I can't believe I am on a dead zone considering I am probably in the most high tech place on earth.

Anyway, I hope this will reach my blog. I will tell you more about my trip on tomorrow's post.

#16: Getting into the Cloud

Doing business of all sorts these days needs to have some kind of a computer system infrastructure in place.

You need to buy hardware (e.g. computers). You need to buy business automation suites (e.g. word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation software).

You may also need to buy a specialize accounting program to manage your finances, maybe an inventory software, a CRM (Customer Relations Management) System. These applications would then requires a computer server so users can have simultaneous access to your data. Computer server can be 10 times more expensive that your normal desktop computer.

It doesn't stop there though, depending on how many users you have, you may need to buy more licenses. You would also have to have a good backup system to protect your most important asset - your data.

And lastly of course you would need internet connection for your online activities, email system and your corporate website. Oh what about maintenance costs??? constant software and hardware updates, and then of course IT support can be very expensive too.

Adding up all these technology factors, your cost will definitely go through the roof.

Today, these expensive cost can be avoided my using the cloud computing technology. The cloud is actually a metaphor of the Internet.

In a cloud computing system, applications are running on the Internet. Accessing the cloud will not require installing any software. All you need is a web browser such as firefox or internet explorer. The beauty of cloud computing is that, you can have access to your applications anywhere you are as long as there's an internet connection available.

Most of us are already using cloud computing. If you have an e-mail account with a Web-based e-mail service like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Gmail, then you are already using cloud computing.

Google actually offers cloud computing services (for free) on their gmail, google docs (word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation), calendaring and task management. Using these services, you can easily collaborate in the cloud by sharing these applications to other users.

Building Cloud Services is straight forward. Right now am playing around Amazon EC2 AWS (Amazon Web Services) to run different web Applications. I am quite impressed as I was able to install a complete web server running a LAMPP (Linux, apache, mysql, php, perl) stack and installed hosting control panel ispconfig and run Joomla CMS in under 10 minutes. I plan to move abrenian.com soon to AWS.

If you think you're spending a lot on your technology needs, maybe cloud computing is your solution...shoot me an email if you do.

#9: Try Ubuntu Linux the easy way

Linux is an OS (operating system) much like windows. Both are used to control the operations of a computer. A big difference is that Linux is free. Free means you can modify the codes to your liking.

There are hundreds of variants (more popularly called distos) of Linux you can choose from. Redhat, Debian and Ubuntu are some of the more popular distos out there. The way to choose the right one for you is to try some and with your experience you can decide which one to use.

I have been using Linux for quite a while. For server I like installing Ubuntu or CentOS. For the desktop or laptop, I like Ubuntu.

The safest way to try Linux in your existing windows-based computer is to do dual-booting. In this way, you will not mess up your windows installation while test driving Linux.

A cool program to do just that is using wubi - an Ubuntu Installer for windows, you can install and uninstall Linux much like you do when installing a windows application.

Once you completed the installation, you will notice when you restart your computer, you will now be prompted to choose which OS you want to load. To uninstall Ubuntu, just go to your add/remove program in your control panel and remove the software. That's it!

I've tried wubi on different desktops and laptops and it's quite great detecting every devices. It even detects my PCMCIA aircard for my anywhere internet connection.

note: the initial file installer is very small but when you start the installation, it has to download the complete OS which is about 650MB. So make sure you have a broadband connection to speed up the process.

#8: Serendipity on the web

Serendipity (not the movie by John Cusack) according to wikipedia is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. Often times this happens to me a lot when I am on the web finding something.

Today, I downloaded a program called winscp, a program i normally use to access my remote linux servers. As I started installing the program, I was asked if I want to install Flock too. Flock? I have no idea what it is but it sound harmless, I thought. So sure why not.

After some few minutes, the installation was completed. I have my winscp and flock. I fired up flock and what do you know, it's an internet browser. As I play with the program a little bit, it looked like it was designed to streamline interface with popular social networking sites, video sites, photo sites and webmails.

Digging more information, flock actually was built on mozilla firefox code according to this review from cnet.

My first impression is that it's a little bit overwhelming at first because there's to many icons. it may take me sometime to get used to it. Flock maybe useful to social networking junkies who want to have a convenient screen to access all their accounts.

Try flock and who knows you might love it. Now back to my winscp, gotta start building the new abrenian.com web 2.0 beta.

#7: Filter Unwanted Internet Contents For Free

Ever wonder where your kids are surfing on the Internet? If you have a business, do you wonder if your employees are using company time to update their facebook status or searching the latest bargain on craigslist instead of working? Do you want to protect your home or office network from visiting dangerous websites?

There are ways to do it. One way is you can buy a content filtering appliance which will cost you thousands of dollars. Another is to build your own (if you are tech savvy enough) using an open source program like dansguard.

At some point I did tried using dansguards but I gave up after few weeks because it's just not working for me until I discovered OpenDNS.

OpenDNS is a free service that make the Internet safer through integrated Web content filtering, anti-phishing and DNS. There a three ways to setup openDNS. Either on your computer, through your router, or through your existing DNS Server.

Once you're up and running, you can start by choosing different pre-configured security setup that will block unwanted traffic such as porn, ad-wares, phishing websites, known rouge sites and more. You can also have the option to block specific website by just adding to your blocked list. The changes is almost instantaneous. In addition, you can turn on access log to record websites that are being visited.

I have implemented OpenDNS in our office and the effect is remarkable. Traffic went down by almost 50%. Productivity went up and calls for virus warning just went down. Although it made me unpopular to some staff who can no longer access their favorite music sites or social networking sites. I didn't mind because it's my job to keep the company's network safe and secure.

If you decide to use OpenDNS, I would love to hear how it worked for you.

#5: Surf the web faster and safer with Firefox 3.5

I just upgraded my firefox browser to version 3.5, a day after it's release and already am loving it. It's definitely much snappier than the previous version. So far the new version has reach 5 million downloads in just one day.

I've been using firefox since it was first released in 2004 and I haven't stop using it ever since. It's definitely much much better than internet explorer specially when it comes to virus protection and security.

It is now a part of my routine when I setup new computers or fix old ones to install firefox. Aside from your anti-virus software, installing firefox should be a must.

If you have not heard of firefox before, it's not to late to start. Grab your copy for free at mozilla.com. The new features are pretty awesome.

#2: Desktop Software Applications for free, anyone?

It may not be known to a lot of people but there are abundant desktop applications that can save you hundreds of dollar.

If you can't afford to buy Microsoft Office, you can opt for openoffice.org which is a complete suite that includes wordprocessing, spreadsheet and presentation. Don't even worry because files you created on each of this applications can be saved into different file formats such such as word, excel or powerpoint. Openoffice runs on windows, linux and mac operating systems.

What about editing your photos and adding some special effect? Most would say photoshop right? Well there's gimp which has all the features comparable to expensive graphics editor. Again this software is available for windows, linux and mac.

Can't afford quarkXpress, Pagemaker or Microsoft Publisher for your newspaper layouts? check out scribus.

And lastly, I love using thunderbird and evolution for my email clients instead of using outlook or outlook express. These email client can access virtually any type of email server (e.g. gmail, hotmail, yahoo).

These are just some of the thousands of free software on the internet. A great place for searching free and open source applications is sourceforge.net

So why pay if you can get them for free?