Geek Shui Living’s “Top 10″ Reasons to be Thankful
Here at Geek Shui Living, we are thankful for many things, not just on Thanksgiving, but throughout the year. Obviously, being geeky people with a penchant for techy kinds of stuff, we have put together our “Top 10 List of Virtual Thankfulness”. This way, we can make sure our appreciation is apparent to the people and companies responsible for enabling our addictions to all things virtual!
10. Ubuntu Linux – An open source, community-supported operating system, Ubuntu Linux is usable by even the average computer user. When coupled with Open Office, an open source office productivity software (similar and in some ways superior to Microsoft Office), you have a computer that is truly a cost-effective, dependable alternative during tough economic times. Think your old 30GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, and “antiquated” Intel Processor aren’t good enough? Think again. Ubuntu requires less space to install and run. Since its built on Linux, the files sizes are much smaller. Installing Ubuntu on the machine will breathe at least one to two years of life into it! On several occasions, Geek Shui Living has used it to rescue and rehabilitate old PC’s that were bound for the landfill. By reviving them with Ubuntu, they can be passed on free of charge to those less fortunate, without licensing or software availability worries. Its a win-win situation…good for the earth and good for the people!
9. The Jail Break Gurus & Cydia – While Apple and AT&T might not agree, these noble, mobile-coding gurus have made it possible for technophiles on many cellular networks to have the happiness of the iPhone. Whether your tool of choice is Pwnage or Blackra1n, the techno-saavy can safely jailbreak, unlock, and unwarrantize their iPhone. For its part, the Cydia folks have provided a platform for uber-nerds to find ways to create App equivalents and unlock the true power of the iPhone OS. Hopefully, they will keep doing their thing for years to come.
8. Microsoft Windows 7 – Here, we are thankful for several things. First and foremost, thanks to Microsoft for introducing the replacement for Vista. Secondly, Microsoft has given its customers a reason to logon with a smile again. Stability and speed are the primary improvements and bring back memories of the original XP days. Additionally, they were able to make the interface attractive to users and packed with extras that are very, very similar to those in Mac, which may ultimately keep some PC users from switching to the file-based OS dark side!
7. URL Shortners – It’s true they have been around for a while. Sites like Bit.ly and Tiny URL used to be recognized for its use by the music and movie sharing crowd to cloak download links. With the proliferation of Twitter, though, and its requirement to keep it under 140 characters, URL shortners have made it easy to express a full thought and include a link to more information. This is one of the main reasons that news seems to spread faster on Twitter, than anywhere else in the virtual world!
6. Carnegie Mellon University’s “School of Virtual Nerdery” – We became groupies of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science via the late Dr. Randy Pausch’s book, The Last Lecture. After reading it and seeing his inspirational last lecture (Download it here. Save in your iPod/iPhone. View each time you need inspiration.), we actually took the time to look into this marvelous program he mentioned called “Alice”. This groundbreaking software was developed at Carnegie Mellon to provide students, from middle school to college, with an easy way to learn 3D Programming in an environment thats both educational and fun. What’s the best part? It’s free! That’s right. Just visit the Alice Project website to learn more about it and download it for Windows or Mac.
5. Shazam iPhone App – While there are many iPhone apps that increase productivity, stream news and media, and calculate tips for large dinner parties, there are few that are both simple and invaluable. Shazam is one of them. The premise is basic. Here a song on the radio, in a department store, or at a concert. Open the application. Select “Tag Now”. Wait for Shazam to listen intently and analyze the music. The result? You’ll magically have the song’s title, artist, and accompanying album. You can save the results for later downloading, buy it in iTunes immediately, email it to a friend, or create a tweet with the information. The best part is that never again (or at least as long as you have an iPhone) will you have to wonder, “Who sings that song?”
4. CNN iPhone App – We don’t want to litter our list with only iPhone Apps (Lest we be accused of favoritism…), but the CNN iPhone App is another stellar one. Arriving relatively late in the continuing flood of iPhone Apps, the CNN application allows you to read news and see video streams. The design is simple, yet complete. It also allows for customization to see your local news. The coolest part for Geek Shui Living is that we were able to create an iReport account and upload breaking news, as it happened! The result of this wizardry? We received a call less than an hour later from the CNN iReports Editor, to ask for permission to use Geek Shui Living’ photos in the online news story. Our answer? Of course, we would love the publicity! So, procrastinate no longer! Download this application today and be ready to join the ranks of Clark Kent and become a CNN reporter at large!
3. Twitter & Twitter’s Third Party Tools – Anyone who visits our site, reads or blogs, or just happens to google Geek Shui (Hey, it could happen!) knows that we Tweet…a lot. We originally started out with blogs, but, as you can see from previous posts, our geeks tend to be a bid long-winded! The solution? Enter the 140-character limit. Twitter allows Geek Shui friends, fans and customers to keep up with our daily geekiness, without having to visit our site each day. It also gave us a great opportunity to follow like-minded individuals and companies that geek out just as much or more than we do. The plethora of third-part Twitter tools ensures there is at least one or two that you will find useful in your daily tweeting. When the 140-character limit just can’t be met, Twitlonger gives us a little more room. Need to share a little musical inspiration? Twt.fm lets post a clip for the world to hear. Want to know your tweeting patterns? You can see it in pretty graphs via TweetStats. Whether Twitter is a fleeting fad or here to stay, it definitely rules the here and now of social media.
2. VMWare Fusion for Mac – Anyone who knows us will tell you that we are dependent upon Mac and the Leopard and Snow Leopard OS, to live. Just like anyone else, we work with Microsoft Windows, as well, since its what the world in general uses. Also, let’s face it. There are some sites, applications, and other code-filled things that just don’t work correctly on anything but a PC. For day-to-day productivity, creative endeavors, and whatever else we can make up, we come home to Mac. VMWare Fusion for Mac made our Microsoft requirements a little easier to bear. This versatile and powerful virtualization software from VMWare allows us to simultaneously run Windows Vista, Windows 7, Ubuntu Linux, and Chrome, on one machine. What’s more. Our Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB of RAM make everything run smoothly! So, if you have a requirement to use Microsoft Windows, flex your VMWare muscle!
1. Tim Berners-Lee – Let’s face it. Without this guy, Geek Shui wouldn’t be writing this blog list of our Thanksgiving favorites. He has worked at CERN and wrote the first web client and server. Oh yeah, he also invented that thing called the “World Wide Web”. Need we say more? You can follow him on Twitter at @TimBerners_Lee and keep up with his ever-evolving nerdery!
Well, that’s it. The Geek Shui Living “Top 10 List of Virtual Thankfulness” is complete for 2009. From our virtual world to yours, we wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving filled with Tryptophan, football, and, of course, a little geekiness….
Cisco’s “SIO To Go” App Brings Network Security Management to the iPhone
On November 18, 2009, Cisco’s latest venture into the iPhone Application market hit the iTunes Store in the form of SIO To Go. The official description of this free application states, “The Cisco SIO To Go iPhone application informs, protects, and enables you to respond to alerts and real-time threats to your network and users.” Unlike some of the bulkier security applications, its footprint is small (less than 1MB) and allows for over the air downloading, without a Wi-Fi connection.
Launching the application provides the user with a screen displaying “All” Feeds relating to CISCO security news, blogs, advisories, etc. Selecting the “About” icon allows for customizable view of feeds. By default, all are visible. Individual feeds can be viewed by scrolling left and right using the “<<” and “>>” icons. Like most other applications, touching a specific title will open the full contents of the topic. The “Cisco Threat Outbreaks” feed provides near real-time awareness of emerging and severe threats to networks. Sub-categories such as “Urgency”, “Credibility”, and “Severity” and the brief, yet succinct, overview of the threat will allow network security professionals to determine the potential impact to their individual networks.
The application also includes a “Lookup” function that serves two purposes. At a glance security professionals are readily informed if a virus outbreak is ongoing. Additionally, domain names and IP addresses can be searched to obtain basic information and statistics, to include the “Web Reputation Score”. While all of this information may not be useful to all users, it does provide professionals with a quick way to determine if ongoing or potential inbound/outbound activity on their network necessitates immediate preventive or reactionary action.
Overall, the application seems to be solidly built. Is this application going to save the cyber-universe? It probably won’t, but anyone whose job requires real-time awareness of cyber threats should definitely include this in their “on-the-go” security toolbox.
Click “Continue Reading this Post…” (below) to view more screenshots taken during Geek Shui Living’s basic functionality testing of this application.
Take the Geek Shui Living SPAM Poll!
SPAM. It used to be a word that referred only to a food product made by Hormel. Monty Python’s gracious intervention catapulted it to a food with cult-like status. In recent years, though, it is also a word that has become synonymous with large amounts of unsolicited and unwanted email. An overload of either kind of SPAM can cause system congestion (of different types, of course). Both are more easily consumed, depending upon how we handle it. The similarities pretty much end there. Thinking about the subject, though, the ever-curious geeks at Geek Shui Living wondered. Are there people who might actually prefer SPAM emails over the edible kind? Not ones to leave statistically calculable data in question, Geek Shui living put together a poll. Take a few minutes. Compare their merits. Then, let us know by voting for the type of SPAM you prefer. Though we can imagine what they’ll look like, we won’t let that stand in the way of the critical thinking process. The results will tell the true story!
Justin E. Gehrke is the founder of Geek Shui Living. As a right and left-brained geek, he is available for consulting in the areas of Information Technology, Network Security, and creative web design and development. You can contact him via the Geek Shui Living Contact page. Alternatively, you can follow him, via twitter, and be privileged to his technology news commentary and random geek ramblings: http://twitter.com/GeekShui
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Disaster Recovery Planning for Teachers
Recently, my son’s school was forced to close for several weeks due to damage sustained from an explosion at a nearby company. While the first few days were negligible in importance, the continued closure for a week raised concerns about student’s progress and the retention of key skills.
As an IT and INFOSEC professional, I am all too familiar with Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) and Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP). I am also familiar with the concept of a calculable, Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD), which indicates the point at which a financial recovery becomes improbable. While I have given thought to DRP and COOP as it applies to a school’s network assets and operability, I had never really given much thought to the effects of an extended school closure. More specifically, I never really stopped to consider that schools and their students could have an MTD, themselves. Their MTD, though, had nothing to do with IT and network assets. Their primary concern deals with the most important (and often overlooked) component…the real person at the end of the chain. I considered these things after the fact, which is all too often the case for IT managers and staff!
Fortunately, in this case, the school had considered it. I learned that each grade had its own emergency plan, which was designed to be provided to parents via email. The plan contained URL links and descriptions for websites that covered each major area of the curriculum. Coursework was both printable and web-based. The intention was to provide parents with resources to ensure their children stayed up-to-date with their peers in other schools.
While this type of plan is dependent upon parents having a computer, internet connection, and printer (which could preclude low income families), it at least constitutes a concerted effort by the school, to mitigate the impact of the time lost. Ultimately, no DRP or COOP can cover every eventuality, so the most important part is that a well-thought out and comprehensive plan is developed, period.
Below, I’ve included a few examples of the links suggested, by category. With a little Google magic, you’re bound to find a thousand more. So whether your are an educator whose institution needs a plan or just a loving parent who wants to help their child get ahead, take advantage and use them. Remember, too, that anyone can possess knowledge, but a person with wisdom passes their knowledge (and links!) on to and share with others.
1. Language Arts: Guided Reading Story - http://www.roythezebra.com/guided-reading-story.html
2. Spelling: Word Builder – http://www.eduplace.com/kids/sv/books/gr2/wordbuilder/
3. Math: Addition & Subtraction – http://www.kidport.com/Grade2/Math/NumberSense/
4. Science: Online Stories & Activities – http://www.storylineonline.net/
Justin E. Gehrke (CISSP, CIWSP, MCSA, CompTIA Security+/Project+/A+) is the founder of Geek Shui Living. As a right and left-brained geek, he regularly blogs on IT and Information Security related issues and is available for consulting in the areas of Information Technology, Network Security, and creative web design and development. He really does appreciate feedback from the computing masses, so feel free to transmit your packets to him, via the Geek Shui Living Contact page.
