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Upgrading to Ubiquiti’s EdgeRouter X SFP

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

New house.  New city.  New ISP.  New router.  This time I opted for the big brother of the EdgeRouter Lite, the EdgeRouter X SFP model.  While it includes all of the goodness that I previously reviewed with the EdgeRouter, including the Vyatta based OS, the X SFP model includes some additional hardware capabilities.

Why a new router?  I previously had an EdgeRouter Lite and I really enjoyed the device.  Unfortunately, during the move, my EdgeRouter Lite stopped responding – so I went back to my backup Apple Airport router temporarily – and after we moved into our house, it was time to replace my trusty router with something equally capable.

My requirements this time were:

  • VLAN capable (segregate those guest and route multiple VLANs for my lab environment)
  • Power Over Ethernet to reduce power plugs
  • Ability to setup VPN endpoints and selectively route

SFP Possibilities

As the name implies, the EdgeRouter X SFP offers a single SFP interface, allowing this device to also serve as a fiber converter.  While only 1 gigabit capable, the SFP capability would allow connectivity in environments where normal copper uplinks to remote switches would not work.

I imagine there are some geekier folks – like myself – that might have nicer lab switches where traditional CAT5 wiring is a bummer – but the SFP is a rescue by allowing TwinAx is preferable.

I once consulted for a church that had purchased a former music theater – full stage, lights, sound, etc. – but the office were backstage and they needed WiFi and connectivity in the front lobby area.  Fiber was the answer and a couple of fiber media converters were used to change media format.  With the EdgeRouter X SFP, you could do this without additional hardware.  A couple EdgeRouters would suit this use very well, also allowing multiple VLANs or additional routing to segment traffic on the network and enhance security.

POE & Disappointment

Next up is Power Over Ethernet.  The use cases for the EdgeRouter X SFP lists powering up to 5 of Ubiquiti’s AirMax wireless bridge devices and using the SFP for backhaul, so I made the assumption that the POE capabilities would be more than enough for my Unifi AC Access Point.  While I missed it, Ubiquiti does clearly label the device as a 24V POE product.   That lead me to a rather brash education in POE and standards.

My AP is an Ubiquiti UniFi Enterprise AC (UAP-AC) wireless access point, purchased in 2015.   It runs on IEEE 802.3af/802.3at POE.  My injector for the Enterprise AC AP injects 48V of power on the Ethernet to power the AC, twice what the EdgeRouter support.  This is the same for the current generation of UniFi UAP-AC-PRO, UAC-AC-EDU, & UAC-AC-HD.  These heavier duty, more powerful AP’s require more juice and can be powered by IEEE standard POE switches.

Fortunately, if you really want to power your AC – there are two options in the UniFi line that work with the 24V POE of the EdgeRouter X and EdgeRouter X SFP – the UAP-AC-LITE and UAP-AC-LR models.

ISP Issues

I ran into issues streaming from certain networks on my new ISP.  While the trifecta – Hulu, Netflix and Amazon – stream just fine, some network apps like NBC and CW fail to stream any video content.  This is across all of my Apple mobile devices and Apple TV’s.  It works on the Mac fine, however.  So, lets try it over a VPN connection, I think.  On my iPhone it works perfectly on VPN.  So, I decided to use the same trick to setup a point to point VPN from the EdgeRouter X SFP and selectively route my Apple TV out over the VPN – bingo, I’m streaming.  I have no idea what my ISP is trying to block or has misconfigured, but its good to be able to work around them.

Verdict

I purchased another generation of EdgeRouter because I love the flexibility of the software powering the device.  The device itself is inexpensive and offers a lot of capabilities for the money.  For less than $75 currently on Amazon, you can take one home today…

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Four months with Circle guarding my Internet connection

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

IMG_1075Several months ago, I posted the unboxing photos and an overview of Circle, an Internet safety device that I ordered to protect my family at home.   I fully expected to be able to post a full review in just a few weeks, but I found that it took a bit longer to really test Circle with my family.  We have had the device in and running on our network for about 4 months, as of this review.  That has given me time to really collect a list of the great points and a few drawback of running Circle.

The Problem

I think every parent is concerned about limiting the access of Internet to their children.  There aren’t many easy solutions to the problem. In fact, most solutions available on the market take a lot of configuration.  Most parents are baffled with how to even begin restricting the Internet in a meaningful way.  And many of our kids are far more creative and find ways around the controls that we setup.

Enter Circle.   From the reviews that I read on Wired and TechCrunch, this seemed like a new take on an old problem and it was a new take that could potentially take into account mobile devices.  Previously, software-based Internet filters for the PC were required to have any level of control on your child’s Internet access.  For mobile, the best I could do was to remove Safari from my daughter’s iPod and replace it with a filtered browser.  Things like Netflix and YouTube were completely unmanageable from mobile devices and PC’s alike.  Not to mention set-top boxes – like Roku or Apple TV – and then we have all the new Internet of Things devices that can do varying different tasks from new form factors.   I wanted a device that was cross platform, had no monthly charges associated with it, and that allowed me more than just filtering as a parental control device.

The Setup

Installing Circle is simple.  You connect power to the device and once it starts up, you may pair it with the Circle mobile app.  All management occurs from the mobile app – so this is where you set the rules and get your reports.

When you launch the Circle app, it prompts you to pair your Circle with the app and create an account.  Once you have connected Circle to your network, it discovers all of your devices automatically.  The next step is creating profiles in the app and associated devices and rules to a profile.  Profiles can represent members of your family or can a simple grouping category.

Profiles setup with a simple wizard – you add a name, then choose a filter level from a list of pre-defined settings, you set time limits (if you want those, or skip), you set a bedtime and wake-up time (or skip it), and finally, you assign a set of devices to the profile from the list of devices Circle has discovered on your home network.  By default, all devices and any new devices are automatically to the Home category with a default filtering level that you choose.

The pre-defined filtering levels are Pre-K, Kid, Teen, Adult and None.  Each level comes with a set or pre-defined platforms (think Facebook, Netflix and other major outlets),  categories for all websites sites and privacy settings (like Ad Block & Safe Search).  You can manually change the defaults on the profile to suit your needs.

The gallery of screenshots below shows some of the options within the app.  For adults, you can easily setup access from their computers with unrestricted and unlogged access – or with logged access and no restrictions.  I also setup a couple profiles for other connected devices – like switches, routers, access points, and printers – set to the None filtering level with no restrictions and no logging to avoid any problems with their operation.

My biggest problem with this model is shared devices.  This is where the Circle model breaks down.  If a device is dedicated to a single user then it makes it easy to categorize and control.  The one saving grace is the ability to move a device between user profiles on the fly and it changes the access restrictions.  So for my family’s shared iPad, I can move it between my kids profiles to enforce access for my son, age 3, and my daughter, age 9, who have completely different rules and restrictions.

Where it Shines

Circle shines in a number of ways.  First, is bedtime and time limits.  This is a foolproof feature.  It works and can help a parent to enforce good limits for a child.  It also allows all Internet access to be disabled for punishment or other reasons.  Each profile has a simple pause button that enables you to stop all Internet access as long as the parent wants.  The time limits allows you to set time limits on activities online and it accumulates the time across all devices for a user and more importantly, it gives great feedback to the parent to know how much time the child is spending online.

The categorization of Circle is probably the best that I have seen of any filter to date.  This works well and in the event that a particular site is misclassified or you need to enable access, you can take a one-off and add it to a list.  This works great to allow the parent to police and approve certain sites that the child might need or find from a search engine for a school project or other reason.  When you need to allow an entire site, it is really simple to do within the Circle app.

In the same vein, the reports, or Insights as Circle calls them, are very good.  You get feedback on the amount of time, a list of the exact sites visited and these Insights are collected for today, this week and this month.  All of the data is kept on the Circle device and the corporate sponsors, including Disney, never get access to your data.  Under the History section in Insights, you can see a list of sites that have been Filtered for your user – so you can see any attempts that were blocked easily.

Teens can be hard to control.  They’re creative and resourceful and often find a way around the traditional filters that parents put in place.  Circle raises the bar.  Since it is wireless, it sits as part of your network and it is difficult to get it off the network – there is nothing to physically disconnect and allow your teen to bypass the filter.  Circle also has an internal battery which lets it run for hours if your teen tries to simply unplug power.  Add a built-in alert feature that sends an alert to the parent’s Circle app when power goes out, the parent will also know that the child is trying to bypass the Circle security.

Shortfalls

I have honestly found very few shortfalls with Circle.  The main drawback is one that Circle is working to address as a company.  Circle works great for the home network, but many children are not always on the home network.  Their devices are with them on cellular networks, at friend’s homes and school – among other places.  Circle is working on an app-based solution for mobile and cellular-enabled devices to be delivered in the future.

The other major drawback is with video platforms.  Unfortunately, Circle is like many other filtering solutions – it is binary choices – either on or off and restricted or unrestricted – for video platforms.  Circle doesn’t do a great job when you have a large library of content that needs to be categorized and blocked. With Circle, it is easy to block all YouTube or Netflix, but harder to control selected access to the content.  Circle, like so many others, is as the disposal of the platform’s built-in tools to control content and these controls are weak, at best.  Sure, you can do keyword filtering on text content, but this becomes a huge challenge with video content.

So My Gripes are really with the Platforms

My gripes with Circle are basically the same as with any other solution on the market and it is not Circle’s fault – it is the landscape of the video services currently available.  Circle does no better or worse than any other filtering software.  But filtering video is difficult when the vendor themselves does not have a granular rating system.  iTunes/Apple TV is the only library that seems to have strong and granular ratings, but this forces you to buy all video content from iTunes to be able to enforce those ratings – and there is no streaming subscription from Apple – so for most families, that is not viable.   In general, parental control is still very limited for video libraries.

Netflix

Ratings are my biggest complaint with Netflix.  Everything in the Netflix library has a rating.  The entire library is comprised of TV shows and Movies – all of which have ratings associated with them, yet as a parent, the most frustrating thing about Netflix is not being able to enforce a ban on certain types of content.  Sure, Netflix has the profiles feature but all my child needs to do is click on my profile (no password or pin available for a profile) and then they can watch anything they want in the library.

Video players like Apple TV offer the ability to filter and limit content based on ratings, but this only applies to the iTunes library of content on Apple TV.  How hard would it be to take those settings and make them apply within the Netflix app?  This metadata is fully available for every piece of media in their library.  This is a solvable problem, but Netflix seems unwilling or unmotivated to do so.

Circle also offers no enhanced way to police content from Netflix.  You are left with the same anemic profiles that do little to solve a parent’s ability to police the content their child can access.  If they could figure out a way to access the Netflix metadata and actually enforce TV and Movie ratings with the limits set for the child’s profile, it would be a wonderful combination.

YouTube

YouTube is a different animal when it comes to parental controls (and even workplace Internet proxies).  Since the media on YouTube is user produced, it relies on the user to categorize and mark content appropriately.  So much new content is created every day, it is unrealistic that YouTube can do the correct policing of new content.

In this case, Circle depends on YouTube’s Restricted Mode feature, which will drive you crazy as a parent.  With Restricted Mode enabled, certain YouTube videos will be off-limits to your child.  But, my child brought me more than a few examples where videos were restricted but I could not find any objectionable content – and I’m fairly conservative with what I allow for my child.  One was a taste-test challenge for jelly beans that was labeled as restricted.

There is no one-off bypass for videos and content with Circle.  There is no way to approve a particular video and this is a feature that would greatly help enhance the YouTube experience.   While Circle makes it easy to add a particular website – top-level domain name – to a specially allowed list for a user, there isn’t a similar feature for a particular video on YouTube or another video site.

For the life of me, I was unable to find a way to flag content that was mis-labeled and restricted.  I could find ways to report things that weren’t restricted that should be but not the other way around.  So, some series on YouTube that my daughter loves to watch, had missing episodes due to mislabeling them as restricted.

The Verdict

Taking it all into account, Circle is a great filtering platform for parents.  While it is not perfect and while it doesn’t address some major problems with video platforms, it is a strong parental control tool and one that I think parents should take a look at seriously.  I have not seen anything similar or close on the market.  The good clearly outweighs the bad and I’m happy with the purchase.

Disclosure:  I purchased Circle with my own money and this is my unbiased review. 

 

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Unboxing Circle, an Internet safety device for your home

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

Meet Circle.  Circle is a new take on the age old parental controls for your home’s internet connection.  Circle is a small box that joins your home wireless network or that plus into your home’s wired network and becomes the enforcer for all of your traffic.

Unboxing Photos

 

Technical Details

Circle does not replace your home router.  Circle joins your internal network and then begins to work it’s magic.  Circle actually uses an ARP poisoning technique to assume the function of your default route on the network, thereby controlling all of the traffic flow while enforcing the policies you’ve setup for your devices.   ARP poisoning sounds dangerous and when employed as a hacking technique, it is definitely not a good thing, but Circle makes uses of this hacking technique for good.

Circle boasts four major features:

  1. Filtering
  2. Time Limits
  3. Bedtime
  4. Insights

Using the Circle app on your mobile phone, you setup the profiles for your family members.  Each profile has a policy of what sites and content are allowed (Filtering), how much time can be spent online (Time Limits) and Bedtime enforcement.  The Insights for each profile provide a list of time spent, where the family member has visited, a traffic history and list of sites that have been filtered.  If a legitimate site is being blocked, you may allow it for the profile in the app also.  Oh, and need to put a family member on restriction, you may pause their Internet access and stop them from getting anywhere immediately.

All of the devices found on your network are assigned to a profile and for any new or unassigned devices, these go automatically in a Home profile.  Devices can also be set to unmanaged where their traffic is not filtered at all – great for printers and network gear like WiFi access points.  Devices can move from person to person by reassigning them by the app – which is great for shared tablets.  The app sends notifications when new devices join your network to alert you and allow you to assign them appropriately.

When you have a device or service watching and logging your Internet traffic, privacy becomes a really big concern.  The makers of Circle tell buyers that all the data is stored directly on the device and is not shared with any third parties, including Disney – whose execs liked the idea so much after finding it so much that they forged a co-branding deal that does push Disney content via the MyCircle portals.

A Full Review

My Circle arrived this past week – it was on a 3 week backorder when I placed my order in December.  It was setup and configured this past weekend and so its too early to say how it works and what the potential gotchas are — but I will be posting a full review online after I use it with my family for a few weeks.

Disclaimer:  My Circle device was purchased and paid for out of pocket and this is not a paid endorsement or review for Circle.  

 

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Running WordPress? Here’s some plugins to keep you safe and secure…

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

wordpress-logoI have been a longtime WordPress user.  I love the platform and how easy it makes maintaining a blog.  Not only is a great blogging platform, but its great for many other types of websites.  I have helped friends who are musicians, who own businesses and who need a simple resume site setup and get running on WordPress.

A couple years ago, I discovered a plugin called Sucuri WordPress Security plug-in.  It is a free plugin that scans your site for malware and alerts you to changes in the core files that run WordPress.  It can alert you to changes in these files which point to a possible hack that has been made on your site.  One great feature of this plugin is that it can alert you to brute force login attempts.  I thought that was a great feature and I turned it on.

A week later, my eyes were opened to how many brute force attempts were being made on my site and to others who I suggested add the plugin.  It was downright scary.  In this case, ignorance was bliss, because once I knew about the attempts, I wanted to do something about it.

So, here’s a quick list of security related plugins that I suggest you run on your WordPress sites.

  1. Akismet – Comment Spam is the probably the most prevalent problem with WordPress that most users will face.  Many hackers have devised way to automatically submit hundreds or thousands of comments with links to malicous sites and content to hook and trick users into compromising their system.  If you run a WordPress site, I think its your duty to try and prevent this type of comment spam and proliferation of malicious site links across your site.  Akismet is a must have.  It is made by Automattic, the same company who is responsible for WordPress.  This service was formerly free for personal sites, but now works on a donation based system to give you a site key which you can use to active the plugin.
  2. Sucuri WordPress Security – The mother of all WordPress security plugins, Sucuri has several functions.  It scans your site for changes to the core files that make WordPress run.  These alerts will show when plugin files or core WordPress files change contents, whether you’ve updated the plugin or a hacker has made a malicous change.  Sucuri Security provides a scanner to look for best practices and automatically remediate any problems it finds – like writable directories or showing the WordPress version in the underlying code of your site.  It also has a Post-Hack remediation toolkit to help you get back to a healthy state after an attack.  Another great feature of this free plugin is the ability to send email notifications when files are uploaded, posts are posted or updated and when pages are posted or updated.  This keeps informed when changes occur on the site so you know when someone malicious made a change ‘for’ you.
  3. JetPack – made by Automattic, the same company that makes WordPress, JetPack is a collection of add-ons to WordPress to increase functionality.  One of the add-ons is called Protect.  Added earlier in 2015, Protect will help to stop brute force attempts by blocking an IP that has too many failed login attempts in an amount of time.  It also leverages a cloud service to block known offending IP’s from accessing your site.  There are plenty of other great enhancement in JetPack, all the more reason to run it.
  4. WP-DBManager – While not specifically security software, WP-DBManager is a great tool to help you create automatic database backups of your WordPress site.  As much as it may be possible to cleanup after an attack, capturing a good and clean backup of your database is sometimes critical to fixing the problems created by an attacker.

For the people who want to go a step further, you can consider placing your WordPress site behind a web application firewall.  Sucuri, the same company who makes the plugin, offers this service for $9.99 per month and it blocks brute force login attempts, blocks all access to wp-admin except for a specific whitelist of IP addresses, and provide reports and analytics of the types of attacked attempted and blocked by the service.  The WAF service also caches your site to make it faster for your audience.

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Endless possibilities for a MicroServer

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

ReviewMicroserver

Lots and lots of Possibilities

This weekend, I was able to get the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 setup and powered on in my lab.  Its currently burning in and I’m doing some testing with it.  What do I think?  Well, you’ll have to wait until I have had more time with it before I share my impressions.  But that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about use cases.

Use Case – Creating a Lab environment

Beyond the stylish exterior, the HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 can fit into a lot of possible environments and use cases.  The first one that comes to mind is my own – the home lab.  As an IT professional, its become imperative that I have a lab environment at home where I can test software and solutions. I have gotten lots of offers for trials and software from blogging and for solving my problems at work.

Many of my peers build their own whitebox systems and I have attempted recently, too.  I hadn’t built a computer in close to a decade. And my first experience trying to build a whitebox has been bumpy.  I’ll admit, I have enjoyed using a soldering iron again, but it can be frustrating trying to piece together a compatible solution.  I’d prefer to buy something ready made and that makes the MicroServer Gen8 really compelling to me.  Time is valuable, so the time I’ve spent tinkering could have been more productive if I just bought a ready-made system.

Use Case – Networked Storage

With four drive bays, the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 is capable of up to 12TB of storage on board with 3TB drives in each bay.  That makes it a viable candidate as a NAS solution for home or business.  There are so many implementations like FreeNAS and Openfiler to turn the MicroServer into a NAS appliance.

In addition to just file sharing, these software storage solutions have lots of add-on functionality to take basic file storage and make it useful in the home for being your media repository of movies, TV shows and music and being the source for streaming to your TV-connected box, your Android or iPhone or even some home stereo systems.  Add-on a VPN solution and it becomes your personal media cloud when you’re away from home, too.   FreeNAS can also serve as a destination for TimeMachine or other backup software solutions, so now not only primary storage but backup of your PCs and Macs.

Even again in a home lab situation, NAS distributions support iSCSI and NFS, making the MicroServer a viable storage target for VMware and other virtualization in a lab environment.   The NAS proposition has uses in so many ways.  In a lot of ways, this use case of a Proliant MicroServer offers a better performing and possibly lower cost alternative to a Synology or Drobo NAS device.  And if your needs change, you can alway repurpose or hand-me-down this server, where the others are only ever capable of being a NAS.

Use Case – Virtual Host

Running a hypervisor on the MicroServer should just be reserved for the lab – its capable of prime time.  A lot of small businesses don’t have space or need for racks, rackmount hardware or even pedestal servers.  In many cases, these small businesses run on three to five physical servers anyways, so consolidating these aging physical servers to two or three MicroServers would allow the business to save power and footprint.

The Proliant MicroServer Gen8 has a remarkably small footprint, low power consumption and small heat output.    It can easily sit on a desktop or a shelf and is not nearly as obtrusive as a tower, pedestal or rackmount server.  While not as condensed as a blade, it could serve a similar purpose in a small business environment.

Use Case – Microbusiness

There are a lot of one and two person businesses and the number of micro businesses seems to have exploded in recent years.  Perhaps its a combination of the Internet lowering the barriers of entry and the terrible economy pushing people out of traditional jobs.  These businesses still have traditional needs and while many use the cloud, the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 offers a compelling self hosted solution at a price point that is competative to many cloud solutions.  A micro business may need to file or print share, have a VPN or prehaps run Remote Desktop to host a local accounting or line of business application.  And a MicroServer hosted onsite provides those features – along with the ability to access a Remote Desktop session from a mobile device on the road.

Use Case – App Server

A lot of small businesses who have either outgrown or need more tailored solutions than Quickbooks and those accounting packages usually require databases and other shared access.  This server is more than capable of running SQL Express or full Microsoft SQL and an application on bare metal along with the application.   Then there are all the customized line of business applications – from hotels, to legal, to doctor’s offices, restaurants and even mechanics.  While a lot of these have cloud solutions, many companies still rely on installed, local software to run their business and a MicroServer fits nicely.  Specifically thinking about point of sale in restaurants as a use case – having deployed several of those in my time – a compact server like this would be a welcome platform – especially at the price of these boxes.

Use Case – Policy, Accounts and Security in the Small Business

Then, there is always the business whose growing beyond the two or three person mark and needs to begin thinking about accounts, security and enforcing policy and automating some management.  The Proliant MicroServer is great for a basic AD implementation, too.  With a domain controller deployed, accounts and policy becomes possible, file shares can be more tightly secured and controlled and systems can be tied down to accounts that offer access from multiple devices.  I implemented so many of these small office when I was a consultant.  Managers or owners needed to lock down systems or ensure that only certain employees had access to some resources and AD makes that all possible.  Add solutions like WSUS and patch management becomes streamlined and managed.

The biggest competition for MicroServer

But the biggest competition for the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 is cloud, possibly more than the bigger Proliants in the portfolio.  Cloud adoption may be least resistant in the small business where the MicroServer aims for adoption.  There are certainly a lot of businesses who are abandoning their client-server applications in favor of cloud solutions, but its not for everyone.  But the days of client-server are far from over.

Disclaimer: HP provided me with both the HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 for review at no charge.  The opinions and views of the hardware written here are entirely my own and have not been influenced or outlined by HP.  The hardware came with no strings attached.    

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A mystery product is on its way to review…

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

ReviewTime

That’s right readers.  I’m expecting something to be delivered any day now for me to review.  I’m incredibly excited to get my hands on this particular hardware and I have been admiring it since it was released this summer.  I’ll give you a clue – I work with this particular hardware’s big brothers every day in the datacenter, but this particular item is built for the small office or home office.  I imagine there are lots of inventive ways this thing can be put to use.  And best of all, not only do I get a review unit, but you’ll have a chance to win one, as well.  Stay tuned…

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Returning from HP Cloud Tech Day

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

I am currently sitting in Atlanta airport waiting on my flight to return to Myrtle Beach.  I am returning from Houston, TX, where I have been on-site at HP’s facility to learn more about cloud and HP’s CloudSystem in particular.  Although cloud was our primary focus, we also spent some time looking at other innovations like the EcoPOD and Pod Modular Data Centers.  For me, the EcoPOD was an highlight of my past couple days and I have lots to tell my wife about what HP is doing to condense and improve efficiencies of data centers to make them green.

We spent the week diving deep into the HP CloudSystem solution – viewing the workflows and automation that make it tick, learning about the products included and how they are used, and learning about directions for networking and storage for cloud.  Coming out of the event, I have a stronger understanding of how we could transition our organization towards a cloud and a better idea of the tangible benefits it would enable, something I have struggled to understand thus far.

I was fortunate to be with a diverse and intelligent group of bloggers for the event.  Each of us came from a different background and represented a large cross section of the customers HP services, from small business to enterprise and government resellers.  It left for lots of great conversations and debate about products, offerings, use cases and other details for the businesses we represented.  I’ll encourge you to follow these folks below and their blogs:

Patrick Pushor
http://cloudchronicle.com
@CloudChronicle

Christopher White
http://www.neowin.net
@Fezmid

Phillip Jaenke
http://rootwyrm.us.to
@rootwyrm

Matt Vogt
http://mattvogt.posterous.com
@mattvogt

Bob Stein
http://www.activewin.com
@ActiveWin
John Obeto
http://absolutelywindows.com
@JohnObeto

Chris Wahl
http://www.wahlnetwork.com
@chriswahl

Frank Owen
http://techvirtuoso.com
@fowen

Michael Letschin
http://thesolutionsarchitect.net
@mletschin

Ofir Nachmani
http://www.iamondemand.com
@iamondemand
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On this day, three years ago…

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

On this day, three years ago, I posted my first entry on Tech Talk.  At the time, the idea was to try to contribute back to a community of technical resources whose blogs had contributed so much knowledge to me.  I had found their blog posts about VMware ESX and vCenter invaluable and the information contained guided me along my road of implementation and kept me from making mistakes they had made.   Many times, they offered caution signs and even an occasional on-ramp or off-ramp to features I had not previously explored.

Early on, I got a taste of success (particularly for a blogger with NO following) by blogging during VMworld 2008 about the announcements being made from VMware.  It was the first time I had content picked up and linked to from others, and I’ll admit, it felt good.  To this day, my blog still gets some traffic from web searches about VMware’s Fault Tolerence feature.

Those early results did not turn into overnight success.  After VMworld 2008 and 2009, the blog has received relatively low numbers of visits, participation and readership. I allowed it to languish with only a few updates here and there.  The growth has been relatively slow, but recently doors are opening up.  Opportunities, like attending HP Discover and the Blogger Reality Contest, are allowing me to attend great networking and technical events,  to report on great new technology being introduced, and to refine my skills as a blogger.  The future for this blog is looking as bright as ever and I just wanted to to take time to thank those involved for the opportunities, support and encouragement.

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DatacenterPersonalProjectsStorage

Preserving and protecting old (and new) photos

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

Quite a while ago, I began trying to scan old family photos and preserve them.  Some were in pretty rough shape and took a while to restore and fill in blemishes to the prints.  Most were in very good shape, though, so I was able to go through some of my family’s oldest photos and get those back into shape rather quickly.

That was last year.  My photo preservation project has been pretty idle for the past year, but it hasn’t stopped me from thinking about it from time to time.  I’m thankful to have those photos, to be able to show them with my daughter and future generations and to have digital files to make prints from.

After tackling some of our family’s historical photos, I looked at my file of snapshots from my younger years and even early in my marriage – a time before we had digital cameras.  Two things are evident – we take lots more photos with the digital cameras than back in the film days and, secondly, prints are easy to get very disorganized.

What I am also struggling with is the best way to store and share these scans.  As of today, the most sharing that has happened with the scans is loading them to Facebook or Geni.com.  Unfortunately, neither site stores the photos in high-resolution (as far as I can tell) for sharing with others, so they aren’t print quality.   I don’t have my solution yet for this, but I suspect I’ll use something similar to Gallery, which I have used before for personal photo galleries prior to moving everything to PicasaWeb.

My project so far has left me with a few lessons learned and a few tips to share for you if you’re looking to preserve your family’s historical photos as well as your current snapshots.

Tip One – Organize your photos
The first tip is to start with organized files of photos.  This will greatly aid you once the photos are digitized and I’ll leave it at that.  If you have photos grouped before scanning, you’ll have a much easier time with the digital files once they are scanned.  One thing I’ve also been trying to do is get dates of events with groups of photos (if possible).  This additional information (metadata) will help a lot once you move from scanning to cataloging your photos (in Picasa or iPhoto or whatever photo management software you prefer).

Tip Two – Choose the best scanner for the job…
Before you say “no duh”, there are a few interesting tid-bits.  Scanners come in lots of shapes and sizes.  I picked up a $100 CanoScan a few years ago which is a great portable scanner.  For documents, I use the document feeder and scanner on my HP Officejet.

What I have been missing is a great portable scanner which you can use without a computer and I found a very good deal on one in December.  Radio Shack has previous generation Pandigital Photolink 4″x6″ photo scanners on clearance for only $15 at its company stores (company stores and not franchise stores — I found out in my own experience that franchisees do not honor the clearance price).  The Pandigital scanners are great because they scan directly to an SD card and do not require a computer and they only take a few second per print to scan them, as opposed to putting photos on a flat bed, previewing them, scanning in the images individually and naming them on a computer.  These Pandigital scanners are ultra-portable and come in a variety of sizes from 4″x6″ up to 8.5″x11″ (larger scanners are capable of scanning smaller prints, by the way).

My coworker, Jamie, purchased one of the larger 8.5″x11″ earlier in the year and raved about how good it worked for his snapshots.  On his advice, I began looking at these.  The 8.5″x11″ model is available from Amazon for $99.   I have found Kodak also makes a simliar scanner.

Tip Three – Catalog the scans
When I say catalog the scans, I don’t just mean to import them into iPhoto or Picasa and forget about them.  Cataloging, as any librarian will tell you, is a lot more than just collecting things.  It involves a process of categorizing, organizing and sorting through your items and assembling them in a way that you can search an easily find a particular subject.

Lifehacker recommends that you also spend the time to delete and purge any unwanted digital photos.  As I mentioned earlier, this is a big issue because most of us snap far more photos now with our digital cameras than taking the time to get good photos from back in the film days.  We don’t need ten out of focus photos of weird rock formations.

Tip Four – Archive your photos
Once you have assembled a good catalog of your photos, archiving becomes a big deal.  You have a lot invested in your library now and so you want to protect both the images and their metadata.  There are a lot of ways to go here, so what works for me may not work best for you.

Online backup is my first recommendation here.  If its not your first time on my site, you’ve probably heard me talk about Mozy and other online backup solutions.  These are my preferred backup method for anything you want to survive a fire.  #1 – Online backup moves your data offsite, which is a hallmark of backup strategy.  #2 – Online backup generally provides online download or offline download as part of its service.  #3 – Most services are generally cheap – Mozy, for instance, is $59 per year per computer.  I keep my library on one computer, so it costs me less than $5 per month — less than one Starbucks drink.

External hard drives would be my second recommendation.  These provide quick and easy recovery from a hard drive crash or accidental deletion.  Most external hard drives come with some sort of backup software — and if not — Windows has Windows Backup and the Mac has Time Machine.  I would recommend making it something automatically schedule and not something you must remember to do — because we are all human and forget.

Archival disks would be my third recommendation.  I don’t think that any one backup method is sufficient.  For instance, I use Mozy and Time Machine to backup my Macs at home.  The two protect differently and from different threats.  Mozy is for the most important — cannot part with this if my house burns down — data.  Time Machine is for the oh crap, my hard drive crashed situations (the external hard drive method).  In the same way, I think investing in Archival CD or DVD media is smart.  Once you create collections in your library, move these files onto archival media and then store them with your other valuables — offsite — in a safety deposit box or other form of offsite storage.  Ritz Camera has a nice description of Archival disks and why they are better than regular CD or DVD media.  (They also have a good set of tips for preserving photo prints). I recommend this because these have a greater chance of surviving for future generations.  And of course, keeping your archival media current is crucial.  Whatever replaces DVD’s as a format — you should move your data to that format in the future.  Same with file formats (but that’s a bigger discussion).  And most importantly – label these archival disks!

More Tips:

By no means am I an expert.  These sites have some great advice on the subject and so I want to share these links and articles with you:

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PersonalProjects

WordPress for musicians

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

I have had the privilege of working with close friends updating their website as they were working on a new album.  The husband approached me, asking my opinion about a couple different hosted website solutions.  After talking with him about what they’d like to do, I found that their biggest desire was getting a good-looking website together for the new album, but also finding something easy to maintain and update in the future.  I suggested WordPress.

A week after our conversation, I began playing with WordPress on my own webserver and started putting together a website mock up with a template from WooThemes and content from their existing site.  It was fairly easy and I like playing around with websites like that.  Wordpress worked pretty well for the basic site.

WordPress also provided them with an easy way to keep the website up-to-date from the road or from their iPhones as they traveled and snapped photos.  Wordpress is supported and updated as security problems were found and should help them stay secure in the future.

Useful Plugins for Musicians
After putting their existing information into the site, I started looking at what else would be good on the site.  I located the fantastic website of developer Dan Coulter, http://blogsforbands.com/.  He had developed several WordPress plug-ins for bands, including a gig calendar and discography.  I added the discography plug-in to a new install of WordPress and began adding songs from the past album that I had.  It worked wondefully — allowing me to post each album, the songs, words to the songs and links to buy the songs from iTunes, Napster or Amazon’s MP3 store. It also allowed a link to buy a physical copy…  but from where?

Enter another plug-in – Tips & Tricks HQ – developers of the WordPress eStore.  I had used WP E-Commerce in the past, but it didn’t want to install on my musician’s web host and it didn’t easily offer digital downloads, but WordPress eStore did…   We added the plugin and began populating it items, like T-Shirts and CD’s.

Our musician friends utilize ReverbNation heavily and so I was able to find their widgets (which our friends were already using on their original site) and place those into text widgets on the sidebar.  The cool thing about this approach is that it allows them to update their music players, gig calendar and mailing list all within ReverbNation and have it feed their website.  Likewise, their website is feeding ReverbNation new mailing list addresses for future mailings and it is collecting stats of who is listening to their music.   ReverbNation is a free service, but offers enhanced and additional pay-for services.

As we were going live and testing everything, I found a couple things – like emails being sent from the eStore were sending from “WordPress”, but Tips & Tricks HQ had another plugin to allow us to customize the friendly name of the sender.

If any other bands or musicians are looking for a solution, I’ll be the first to recommend WordPress!

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