The Most Versatile VoIP Provider: FREE PORTING
JUST RELEASED: Visit the Incredible PBX WikiPC Killer: The $500 Mac mini
While visiting some friends a few weeks back, I happened to notice a message from somebody@somewhere.ru which popped up on their XP notebook computer sitting beside the bar (where I was seated) in the kitchen. I asked whether they had anti-virus software and was told that it came with the machine … three years ago. Knowing that the computer was always on and connected to a DSL line, I volunteered to take the machine home and fix it, a sure sign that you’ve had too much to drink. What I found the next day, unbeknownst to my friends, was a full-blown web server hosting porno movies, feature-length films including The Matrix, a hacked, downloadable version of Windows XP with the registration ‘features’ disabled, and an incredible array of hacker tools. To make a long story short, just before the sun set, I had managed to shut down the Russian web server as well as a very good spam generator and restored the notebook to normal operation, at least as normal as XP can be. It also freed up about 35 gigs of disk space. Later I was telling this story to a colleague who works in the federal courts, and he mentioned that one of their secretaries had recently been paid a visit by the FBI. The rest of the scenario was pretty much the same. The poor woman had no idea her PC had become one of the busiest porno sites in the state of Virginia.
Today’s message is a simple one. If you have non-technical friends with PCs and high speed Internet connections, do them and your country a favor. Encourage them, beg them, or buy them a Mac so that we can begin to clean up Bill Gates’ mess. "Will all of my Microsoft Office documents work?" Yes. In fact, if you have a kid of school age, you can buy the student edition of Microsoft Office for about $129 and install it on three Macs, and only one person has to be a student! "Can I get my office email?" Yes. VPNs work better on a Mac than they do on a PC. "Can I still surf the Internet?" Yes. And you can do it without using one of the world’s worst security threats, Internet Explorer. "Can I use my existing monitor and USB keyboard and mouse?" Yes. "How much will it cost?" Finally, you can say, "The same as you would pay for a comparable PC." An in-depth hardware review is available here.
What Apple’s Mac mini has really done with its introduction last week is level the playing field by now providing a comparable Mac product for every price point in the PC product line. For any age student or a second family machine in the kitchen or den, the Mac mini is almost perfect: small footprint (stack up 5 CD cases and you’ll have an object the size of a Mac mini), uses existing peripherals, and costs about what you’d pay for an iPod photo. Yes, you’ll probably want to add some RAM (512MB is adequate) when you buy the machine. Even with the additional RAM and a copy of Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition, the cost still is under $750 for a networkable, rock-solid, dependable personal computer. The first Mac OS X virus was reported (but still not confirmed) a couple weeks ago so Apple’s track record has been pretty good considering that PC zombies, worms, and viruses now number in the hundreds of thousands. Be sure to caution your friends that initially they may miss not receiving their weekly message from Microsoft announcing yet another security patch, but they’ll get used to it. I have.
Web Hosting (Is Not) For Dummies
There’s nothing quite like discovering that you really can build your own Apache web server and host your own web site even running Windows XP Home Edition. Having done that, the next question you need to ask yourself is why anyone would want the everyday chore of wrestling with security patches, dependencies, libraries, compilers, and on and on unless you just happen to do this sort of thing for a living. Assuming you’re still with me, the next question becomes where to turn for web hosting services. Typing "web hosting" into Google returns just over 25 million hits so that’s probably not the best approach. Having used five fairly good web hosting companies over the past two years, I thought it might be more helpful to sketch out what to look for rather than just providing an outright endorsement of a particular vendor, but we’ll get to that. To begin, here’s a short list of the Top 5 Things to Look For in a Web Hosting Provider.
Reliability means so much more than 99.9% uptime. Is there a guarantee? What do you get if the system isn’t up 99.9% of the time? For many businesses, the guarantee isn’t nearly as important as finding a service that really, really is up 99.9% of the time. After all, you really don’t want your $20 back. You want customers to be able to order from or see your web site. So here’s what to look for in reliability. Does the provider use the latest and greatest web server hardware? Visit Dell and compare. Does the provider use multiple pipes to the Internet from different companies? Is the provider hosting from a network operations center that has backup power? Does the provider make system backups? Many don’t! Does the provider publish a phone number to call when the servers go down? Is the provider using the latest versions of Linux and/or Windows Server?
Performance also matters. The latest hardware and big pipes to the Internet help but, once you leave the mom-and-pop operations behind, most providers meet these two criteria. The true measure of performance has more to do with how many users share a server with your domain, what types of customer applications are running on that server, and how carefully the provider monitors activity on your shared server. How do you know? The short answer is you really don’t until you sign up. So look for a provider that gives you short-term rates (preferably month to month) and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Having said that, even with good providers, the addition of one disreputable customer who runs a hundred spam scripts an hour will cause immediate problems for you.
Response Time Solving Problems. There are two pieces to this puzzle: how quickly can you get word to the provider that your server has croaked and how quickly can they fix it. Good providers have multiple ways for customers to report problems: through the web, pagers, faxes, and phone calls. If your provider only offers a web form, there’s probably a reason. How quickly a provider fixes problems is quantifiable, but it will be unusual for you to know about most issues other than your own. The bottom line on response time is pretty simple. If you’re having frequent outages that are forcing you to worry about response time to fix problems, your provider has problems. Look elsewhere!
Scope of Services. The most important feature you can have with your domain hosting account is a quick way to move to another provider when things go south. If you use MySQL databases and cron scripts, backing up your own data (assuming you can get access to it) is painful to put it mildly. If a provider uses cPanel as the shell for your accounts, there are tools that will let your next provider grab virtually everything in your account and transparently move it to your new provider’s server. So, unless you have little more than static web pages which you back up regularly, look for a provider that runs the latest (commercial) version of RedHat Enterprise Linux with Web Host Manager (WHM) and cPanel for managing your account. The standard mix of applications should include POP and IMAP email accounts, web mail, MySQL and PostgreSQL data base management systems, PHP and PHPmyAdmin, and SpamAssassin. Virtually all the providers give you FTP access to upload and download materials for your web site. Some provide Secure Shell access (SSH) for an additional fee, but this exposes them to additional security risks so don’t count on it. If your needs are more for creative web tools such as e-commerce, project management, customer service and support, photo galleries, discussion forums, or blogs, then you also should look for a provider that includes Fantastico which makes complex script installations a breeze. For example, this WordPress blog was installed, configured, and ready for use in less than five minutes using Fantastico.
Cost. Luckily for us, it’s a buyers’ market for web hosting services. So long as you get 25 million hits on the words "web hosting" in Google, cost will be the least of your worries. To host one or a few domains should rarely cost more than $10 a month with plenty of bandwidth to support normal access. You do pay for bandwidth which is measured with virtually all reputable providers. If a provider advertises "unlimited bandwidth" and the price is too good to be true, it probably is. Either the provider will terminate your account when you begin using excessive bandwidth (by their definition, not yours) or the performance of your site will be so miserable that it won’t matter how much free bandwidth you have. Unless you’re hosting something illegal (such as music) or pornography, both of which most reputable providers frown upon, 20GB of monthly bandwidth will usually suffice for all but the most heavily traveled web sites. Another issue to explore, of course, is the cost of switching hosting plans or upgrading bandwidth as your requirements grow.
Bottom Line: WestNIC.net gets my vote for the best overall hosting company. And an honorable mention no longer goes to HostDime.com. Since leaving HostDime a year ago, many of my colleagues have followed so things appear to be headed in the wrong direction there. Your mileage may vary.
palmOne’s Treo 650 Smartphone
Since the advent of the cellphone, perhaps no device has been more anticipated or hyped than palmOne’s new Treo 650 Smartphone. Finally released by Sprint in December 2004, the Treo 650 has been a mixed bag of incredible technology coupled with some significant design gaffes. Because of the device’s new NVRAM memory architecture which eliminated the need to always have power to retain the contents of the phone, the decision to retain the 32MB internal memory capacity of its predecessor, the Treo 600, appears short-sighted. 
This is especially true given the 30-40% additional overhead of the new memory scheme. Surprisingly, most of the remaining serious technical flaws in the device (crippled Bluetooth functionality, lack of WiFi support, and voice quality problems) all were solved or at least minimized by a single, talented programmer who happened to like his Treo 650 and wanted to perfect it. A loyal following of Treo users who all but deified programmer Shadowmite on the premier Treo support forum, TreoCentral, have apparently insulated him from attacks by Sprint’s and palmOne’s legal departments for fear of alienating the very users who have turned the Treo 650 into what is unquestionably the finest smartphone available anywhere in the world … today. If you’re looking for a great cellphone with POP, IMAP, and Microsoft Exchange email support, a very capable web browser, availability of an add-on MP3 player with streaming audio support, a terrific add-on movie player, an incredible 640×480 digital camera, a speakerphone, voice dialing support, Bluetooth connectivity with wireless headsets and automobile speakerphones, and high-speed Bluetooth dial-up networking support to wirelessly link PCs and Macs to the Internet (even while riding down the highway at 70 MPH), then look no further than the Treo 650. While Sprint has been the exclusive supplier of phone service thus far, that is about to change with Verizon and Cingular scheduled to support the phone within the next few weeks. A couple of must-have add-on’s are at least a 1GB SD memory card and BackupMan backup software capable of cloning the phone’s applications and data to the memory card. And for guys that would never stop to ask for directions, there’s now a full-blown GPS unit for the Treo 650 which can improve your golf game and also provide door-to-door directions using the first-rate Mapopolis Navigator software. The GPS device is a great example of a product that sounds great on paper but is in use about as impractical as any item could be. Why? Because the designers didn’t bother to include RAM on the SD device, all of your maps and software must be loaded into the phone’s internal RAM. Translation: If you use this GPS unit for anything other than driving around the block, you might as well plan to dedicate most of your smartphone to nothing more than a GPS unit. Oh well! Last but not least, all your favorite Palm OS games work just fine when you’re stranded in your favorite airport.
Bottom Line: If you’ve ever wanted a PDA or if you’re in the market for a new cellphone that will do 90% of what you could do on your home or office PC, the Treo 650 just may be the ticket.
Welcome to Ward Mundy’s Technology Blog aka Nerd Vittles
We’re 18 days late on our New Year’s Resolution to launch a blog, but we finally have lift-off. If reinventing the wheel is your thing, then stop reading now. This blog is dedicated to saving folks some time if there is a topic we happen to know a little about. The word ‘little’ is used advisedly. It emphasizes that the discussion of issues and topics here is intended to serve as a starting point for anyone interested in pursuing a particular technology. Where appropriate, additional references will be provided to assist interested users in delving more deeply into a particular subject. Our special thanks for WordPress, the premier blogging tool, which makes this all so easy. If you’re reading this on an iPad, lucky you! Just double-tap in the body of any article to see Nerd Vittles in its fully glory. We’ll try to keep things interesting as we move forward. Hope you enjoy the show!
Free Asterisk Solutions
