Storage – Need to SHARE a FILE Quickly….

We have all had times when you’re talking to someone, or dealing with someone and you want to SEND a file, but it’s too big for yours or their email service.  You try to send a large file to someone and it’s rejected because of space on the recipients email service.  I am sure there are many other reasons as well.

Well  – a simple solution that requires no LOGIN, just an internet connection – drag drop and email the address and the file is available for 30 minutes.  If you want more features, sign up and you get 6 crates to use, this is nice since you can have multiple files per crate – each crate has its own address so organization becomes very easy if you want only certain people to have access to specific files.   As a registered user you get 200MB and unlimited time limit for your files.

What could be easier…

CRATE it!

Security – Passwords TOO MANY or TOO Little!

Passwords – you have two camps – for those that are involved in the industry I would say most try to be as secure as possble when creating passwords.  Well I would hope! 

The other side is those that use the same password for everything just because they have forgotten passwords in the past and it’s easy – no thinking involved.

Today no matter what – we have to be more secure in our methods of creating and maintaining passwords.  We have too much of our personal information and there are too many people ready to take advantage of your situation not to do the right thing.

NEVER

–       use the same password more than once

–       Don’t use anything associated with you personally – phone number, Address, family names, birthdays etc – these are the first things people try to use

–       Short passwords are also not good

–       Shouldn’t write your passwords down.

I have over the last few days reviewed and tested a number of Password managers.  I wanted to have a package that would allow me access to the data from three different computers, one being my work systems that doesn’t allow the installation of any software.  I found two packages that matched what I wanted in different ways, both are good and currently I am using both to determine which one I will finally go to.

The two packages are KeePass and LastPass – these both come in a FREE version and do what I need them to.   I find KeePass to be the easier version at this point, everything is just there and I had didn’t have to go looking.  LastPass advantage would be that it does a lot more and is available for Smartphones as well.  I had a 90 plus passwords that I had to import into both packages and in both cases it was not the easiest, but I got it done.

If you don’t have a huge list and you are willing to wait and add your passwords as you load up the web pages, LastPass makes that really easy – Login and it asks you if you would like to add the location and password to your database.  Really nice!  Your database is available to you from anywhere through the WEB as well.

With KeePass I had to save my database on a CLOUD storage sync program in order to have the access from any of my computers.  The program can be loaded up on a USB Key which will allow you to open the program from any computer.  As I said I had to work around things to get KeePass working. 

For people who just want access on a single computer the KeePass product I believe would be the better choice, it’s a little easier to use and very familiar in look to many other programs.  If you’re like me and have several computers that you would like to have access, plus a smartphone then LastPass is the product you should be using.

THE LINKS:

Keypass

LastPass

Utility – CREATING MULTIBOOT USB/ISO – MADE Easy!

Anyone in the service / support field who needs to move from building to building supporting your customers – this tool can make it so much easier getting the job done.

Simple program that creates multiboot USB/ISO from various ISO Files.

Lifehacker – Xboot Creates your own custom, Multi-image bootable USB Drive

Virtualization – VirtualBox – FREE – Learn about Virtualization & Start using it!

As many Districts are moving to Virtualization, many more are thinking about. 

This by any means is not a simple process, it requires an enormous amount of  planning and time.  All of which we all know, no one has!  But if you don’t spend that time and do that planning up front, you’re in for a very difficult ride.  Things can go REALLY BAD – REALLY QUICKLY!

My thought has always been start small with servers that are not critical – take your time and do lots of research.

This is where VirtualBox can come into play – This is open source product that has matured to a point where someone who is not fully up on virtualization can get it up and running with ease.  This is a full featured product with lots of information on the WEB and full manual to help you get up and running.

 Lifehacker asked the question – What is your favorite Virtual Machine – with 22,393 votes – VirtualBox got 50% of the vote!  Take a look at the top 5 packages…

FINDOUT more @ VIRTUALBOX

NOTEBOOKS – in the CLOUD – It’s more then just NOTES

I have a few times talked about Notebooks in the cloud and I have really only used the WEB application to quickly put something down so I could view and review later at home or the office.  I recently installed the desktop application for Evernote and started doing a little more research and found out just how powerful this tool really is.  If nothing else you need remember that these documents you create are FULLY SEARCHABLE – even notes that you scan or take a picture of!  Yes you can scan a document, put it in Evernote and your able to search that document.  Two other great features if you have the application or plugins working you can mark anything and add it as a note, you can also send an email to your account and it becomes a note.  Sorting is based on Notebook name and/or tags, plus search.

Evernote posted a great little article for STUDENTS – this is more for University students, but HS kids with Notebook in the classroom should be able to benefit as well.

For sure this can apply to anyone sitting at home or in an office.  With most business computers being locked down so you can’t install software, but that is OK because whatever you do at home on your desktop is SYNC‘d with the WEB and you can access the WEB version of your notes anywhere.

10 Evernote Tips For School – Education Series

10 Great Ways Students Can Use Evernote to Study Smarter, Not Harder.

Security – NEW VERSION – Windows Security Essentials 2

If your thinking of changing your Anti-Virus software this might be the time.  If your using a payed version, you might want to safe yourself some money and switch.   Before last year I was using AVG FREE service, but each time it updated and did a SCAN I would see a noticable difference in my computer performance during that time.  When I switched to MSE – I have no idea when the scan or update is happening.

This is a very light, easy to install and use Anti-Virus software, one that Microsoft puts out and just by the history of this product are working in keeping this product fresh and new. 

Windows Security Essentials 2

WINSUPERSITE Post

Windows Firewall integration. MSE 2 integrates with the built-in Windows Firewall and will prompt you to enable this integration during Setup. This way, MSE can include firewall monitoring as part of its overall PC health monitoring.

New protection engine. The MSE antimalware engine has been updated to offer enhanced detection and cleanup capabilities with better performance.

Network inspection system. MSE 2 now helps protect against network-based exploits.

Other improvements. MSE 2 includes other important, if hard-to-find, changes. You can specify that CPU usage not exceed a certain limit (the default is 50 percent) during scheduled scans. MSE 2 reports when definitions were checked in addition to when they were updated so that you can be sure it’s working properly if a long time has elapsed between definition updates. The real-time protection functionality offers more fine-grained control. You can now auto-remove quarantined files after a specified interval, though that option is disabled by default. And Microsoft now allows you to opt out of Microsoft SpyNet, the online community that ensures that MSE stays up to date; I don’t recommend doing this for obvious reasons.

Online Storage – Backup and Sync files and folders FREE

On-line storage can be used in so many ways…  It can be used as BACKUP of important files and depending on the service can be done manually or you can use services that auto-sync your files or directories that you pick.  Another great benefit of online storage is the ability to access that data from any computer connected to the WEB.

For a lot of people a single service will work great and will give them the storage they want or need and it’s FREE!  For those that have a lot to save or others that would like to keep personal and business stuff separate there are many services available.

I believe most people understand why they should backup, but most still don’t!  In most cases if you have never had a computer fail or your hard drive die, they just don’t take the time to figure out a method to back up at least the most important files – like your pictures, personal documents and invoices etc.  What would your wife say if you lost all your pictures!

Key benefits

–          Backup of important files

–          Sync between computers and Cloud to have access of data from any computer with an internet connection.  You had or change any file and it’s updated at all the locations you have added.

OFFERINGS

 

BookMarks – WEB Favorites – Access anywhere!

I am always surprised when I see  people keying in www.websites name when they get on their own computer for locations that they go to all the time.  Others I hear them saying I wish I could remember that website, I have it as a favorite at home.  Then there is me, who bookmarks everything and was a happy user of Google bookmarks till my current position doesn’t allow me to add any software to my office PC, so access to my bookmarks has gone away.  You can access your bookmarks on google web, but they are not organized at all.

I have been looking for something that could replace Google Bookmarks, be easy to use and not blocked by my employer.  Well my in-depth search is over, but not completely.  I have found a website that comes with a bunch of pre-loaded addresses which you can change or modify, plus add your own.  This is a manual process, so not automated from your own favorites list, which I would have liked.  It works well, but takes time to get it right – you organize them in groups which can be moved around etc.  Limited modification – your list is public or not, you don’t have the option of picking certain addresses going either way.  You can also use this for you RSS feeds based on the WEBSITES you add to the list.

Overall it is a nice product and I will continue to use it till I find something else that can modified a little more automate the process of importing your favorites.

43MARK Beta

Windows LIVE – Plug-ins – Photo Gallery – MovieMaker – Writer

Personally I use a number of the LIVE applications and feel they are very good, not always the best, but they get the job done.  I know for certain there are a lot of schools using MovieMaker and PhotaGallery and you might want to know about the new website for plug-ins for these products. 

Inside Windows live Blog

This week we are introducing a new Windows Live plug-ins website, which allows you to download and submit plug-ins for Windows Live Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, and Writer.

From the new plug-ins site, you can download and add the Inkubook Photo Book Uploader to Windows Live Photo Gallery to create beautiful professional quality photo books, or get the Insert Video plug-in for Windows Live Writer, which allows you to insert videos into your blog posts from places like YouTube and MySpace.  We’ve updated our submission process to make it easier for developers to contribute new plug-ins to the community, and we encourage you to create and upload your own plug-ins.

MS Update Tuesday – December 14th – Announcement

I started this sometime ago and will continue to post this just for information.

First, for December we’re releasing 17 updates addressing 40 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, SharePoint and Exchange. Of the 17, two bulletins are rated Critical, 14 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate. As always, we recommend that customers review the ANS summary page for more information and prepare for the testing and deployment of these bulletins as soon as possible.

Back to this month’s bulletins. We’re addressing two issues this month that have attracted interest recently. First, we will be closing the last Stuxnet-related issues this month. This is a local Elevation of Privilege vulnerability and we’ve seen no evidence of its use in active exploits aside from the Stuxnet malware. We’re also addressing the Internet Explorer vulnerability described in Security Advisory 2458511. Over the past month, Microsoft and our MAPP partners actively monitored the threat landscape surrounding this vulnerability and the total number of exploit attempts we monitored remained pretty low. Furthermore, customers running Internet Explorer 8 remained protected by default due to the extra protection provided by Data Execution Prevention (DEP). On that note, I want to point you to a new post on the Security Research & Defense team blog describing the effectiveness of DEP and ASLR against the types of exploits we see in the wild today.

FULL ARTICLE