The Pinged Hobbit

In my day job I deal with the installation and support of IT software for businesses. I share the role of managing the department with a colleague. As part of my responsibilites I have to recruit new engineers from time to time. Personally now that I have experience of both sides of the coin I have no more liking for the recruitment process than when I was looking for a job. As a candidate its an awkward process, from the start when you first apply you are never sure to get a response from an application and even if you get to interview you are going to probably be nervous as hell. From a recruiter’s point of view, looking at a CV does not always give an accurate picture of the candidate and when you get them to an interview you might get the wrong impression due to nerves.

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Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is something I have talked about before when I talked about the concept of a Web OS. Currently Cloud Computing is the media buzz term, its taken the place of SQL as the thing everyone wants to be able to do. It’s the latest fashion craze of the IT world, everyone wants to do it.

Now I don’t have a problem with Web based applications, they have their place. I have previously talked about Google Calendar and Docs, two web based applications which I use extensively as a business tool. Used correctly they are very useful. The thing I find worrying about the Cloud Computing idea is that if you are going to switch to exclusively web based applications then your data has to be available to these web based applications. Continue reading »

Providing support of any kind a to a customer can be a challenge. Providing IT support remotely is particularly hard though. What makes it hard is that you have no way of judging the IT knowledge level of the person you are supporting. They could be as IT literate as you are, or they could be as bad as your 70 year old grandma who thinks a computer virus is an infection passed to humans by computers. Some times the IT literate ones can be more of a problem than the novice users, the novice users will at least listen to what you tell them to do where as the ones that consider themselves pro’s will mix your advice with their own feelings on how it should work.

If you are unable to get remote access to the computer you are supporting then you have to learn how to modulate your instructions and advice to the user in a way that they will understand. It’s no good just treating everyone the same, a savvy IT user will not take too kindly to instructions for dummies. While a novice will not grasp the more detailed instructions given to advnanced users. If you want the user to be able to get past their problem then you have to work out the kind of user you are dealing with and give advice at the level they need.

If I am supporting a person I have never dealt with before I tend to assume that they are at a novice standard, this doesn’t mean they have just started using a computer more that they are not at home using them they are the kind of people that think Internet Explorer is the only way to access the Internet (or AOL browser yuck!). You can usually tell with in a few moments of starting the call what kind of user they are, the way they carry out your instructions and the responses they give will indictate if they need their status upgrading. If a user doesn’t understand when you ask them to click on Windows Start menu then there is a good chance that they are going to fall into the novice IT user classification. This kind of user need to be hand held all the way through the solution, if you cant get remote access to help them then you are going to need to be patient and stay on the phone with them. Feeding them information a bit at a time so that they do not get lost or confused as they follow your instructions. You need to remember that what is second nature to you isn’t always the easiest thing to them. When dealing with this kind of user I tend to find it helps to set my mind to work as if I am supporting my mum. My mother is a novice IT user like most of her generation. She has come to them late in life and while she is getting better its at a very slow rate. By thinking I am dealing with my mother I tend to keep my patience a lot longer than I would normally, if im sstruggling to get through I think back to times when I have had to work around problems with her that she doesn’t understand. The thing to remember is that this kind of user is not stupid or dumb, they just don’t understand computers because they don’t need to.

The other end of the scale is the user who is proficient in IT, the instructions for this kind of user don’t need to be broken down as much as they would for a novice user. This kind of user can be given more detail on the steps they are following and about how the system works in general. Just remember not to give them too much information, not because it could negate your own usefulness to them but because if they think they understand the system to will be apt to wonder around on their own trying to fix things and end up causing you more problems that are even harder to fix. There is such a thing as enough knowledge to be dangerous and a person like that can cause some of the most awkward problems to fix.

One of the hardest things about being a mobile worker is keeping in contact with people. If you are not at your own computer if can be hard to access your own emails and contacts list. As you may have noticed I am not a big fan of the idea of web based desktops. I like web based apps such as Google Calendar and Documents but I do not want to be running an extra layer of program on my normally computer all the time. I want to have access to my emails no matter where I am, I need to be able to see my sent and recieved emails not just the ones I haven’t downloaded yet.

I have a Gmail account, have had since Gmail was in beta release in fact (mind you most Google apps spend an age in beta release). It is a good send, the size limit on the account makes it ideal for users like myself who move between computers and need access to all their emails there. With the addition of an IMAP server rather than normal POP accounts Gmail made my life easier, I could pull all my emails in to one account and then have that account accessible on all of my computers, keeping my sent and received synchronised between them all.

That covers when I am working on my own computer. But what about when I am working on a machine that isn’t my own. I don’t want to be setting up my Gmail account to temporarily pull down my emails to a loaned machines do I? I could use the Gmail web interface, but to be honest while I like the size of the Gmail account and I like the IMAP facility the Gmail web interface sucks. Its messy to look at and it doesn’t always split conversions down the way I would like. The answer I have found for this problem is to add Portable Thunderbird to the applications I carry upon my USB data stick. Thunderbird is my email application of choice on both Mac and Windows (i don’t use email on Linux box) so having Thunderbird as my portable email app made sense

Portable  Thunderbird installs on the stick very easily, simply follow the instructions in the download on the page I have linked to. The beauty of this version that I have is that it is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS meaning no matter what kind of machine I am loaned I can access it. Once its running it works just the same as it would when running natively on the machine. Everything is in the same place and all your emails are accessible, your own SMTP is used to send emails an not trace of your correspondence is left behind (privacy is key after all). This app could also be used by those working on a shared pc at home, allowing them to be absolutely certain that no one was accessing their emails by some less that honorable method keeping things private if they need them to be

The world is changing. The evolution of the Internet and the drift in the business world towards being more open and collaborating with their customers on the creation and development of products old and new is having a profound effect on the way we communicate and do business with each other. In this new and changing world there is a new generation growing up who will be best placed to take advantage of this technologically infused world. This new generation have a grown up with the digital age, they are used to being surrounded by all the gagets, all the toys that our creativity has been able to produce over the last few years. This group is called the Net Generation.

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Following hot on the heels of my recent article about Social Engineering tricks used to deceive users into downloading dangerous software on to their computers comes news of a study conducted in to how users react to popups. Sadly it merely goes to prove that the average computer user is servery lacking in the understanding of the dangers of the online world. The study looked at how a group of students reacted when popups were inserted into a task they had been given. All the popups where of a different style, some looking like a typical Windows warning, some looking completely different. Quite a few of the warnings acting in various ways that would have pointed out that it was a web based popup rather than a system generated warning (i.e. cursor becomes a hand when rolling over the Ok button) Continue reading »

One of the points I stressed when I talked about how to be good at IT support was being able to access the computer of the person you are trying to support. The hardest part about supporting some one is getting an understanding of what is actually happening on screen. Human beings make very bad eye witnesses, they have a tendency to put their own interpretation on to what they see. Sometimes adding information, sometimes missing out things they don’t see as being relevant. Plus the person you are supporting will have a tendancy to try to hide anything they might have done that caused the error (and as any support person knows 90% of all errors are user related). Continue reading »

Open source is the way ahead for business. Involving your user base in the development of your project not only cuts down on your research and development costs but making your users feel like they belong and are a part of the project is the best advertising and promotion you can get. A person who feels involved and valued will be more inclined to recommend something to a friend than a person left out in the cold! As I’ve previously stated, the times where a company had to have the best minds in a field working directly for them are long gone (not to mention the fact that it is next to impossible to do so now).  For your project to succeed it is a good idea to engage the users, let them bring to bear their creative and technical skills. Their talents can then be put to use in pushing the boundaries. The Open Source model works on this principle, large groups of users join together to create and develop with out much in the way of organisation. This model/practise can be applied to areas outside that of traditional open source with great success though. A good example of this is the game Second Life from Linden Labs. Continue reading »

Moving between multiple computers can be making having upto date copies of files with you rather hard and there are times you just need to be able to access a program on your own computer. Previously I have touched on tools such as Dropbox that allow you to keep files synchronised between computers quite easily.

One problem I have with Dropbox is that any file that you are synchronising has a copy on their servers as well as your own computers, for most people this isn’t a worry but when dealing with sensitive information it might be a little off putting to know that in theory your data is open to reading from some faceless employee at this company you don’t really know. If this is a concern for you then you might be interested in Gbridge. Gbridge is an app developed as an add on to Google’s Gtalk infrastructure although it isn’t affiliated or endoursed by Google. Gbridge allows you to create a Virtual Private Network (VPN between two computers with very little in the way of end user configuration.

Normally if you wanted to run a VPN between multiple machines you it would require setting up a VPN server and probably some port forwarding on your router. For some one with a reasonable amount of technically knowledge this isn’t a hard task but it can be a chore. Gbrdige gets around this however, it uses your Google account to create a zero configuration VPN between your machines. Simple install Gbrdige on each machine and log in with your google credentials. Gbridge deals with configuring the link between machines for you.

Once the VPN is created you can set up shared folders similar to how you would in Windows, these shared folders can then be accessed from the other computers in your VPN. Alternatively you can can set up tasks to sync and backup your folders and files for you. These backups don’t depend upon an intermmediate server however you do need to have both machines switched on for it to work. Gbridge also allows you to share out access to your files to your Gtalk friends with out any additional configuration, effectively allowing you to share large files without the use of tools such as MailBigFile which again depend on using thrid party servers.

One advantage Gbridge offers over Dropbox and the others is the ability to not only share files but also share control of a computer. Gbridge runs a built in version of Ultra VNC to allow you to remotely connect to and control your machines from each other. This can also be shared out to your GTalk friends just as files can. There is also the facility to set it up to use Windows Remote Desktop. This could be very useful for accessing machines behind a firewall as once again there would be no need to put in place any port forwarding.

In theory you should even be able to play multiplayer lan games across the network, good for when you want to run a private game of something like Comand & Conqure Red Alert (yes I know I am showing my age there!)

Yesterday I talked about a method used by some companies to trick people into downloading and installing some software on to their computer that was less than good. Lets face it, there are a lot of people out there looking to download something on to people’s computers that is less than good. Some are relatively harmless but annoying like the MBS Payment and Windows Antivirus 2008, but others are rather malicious pieces of code. I like a lot of other people probably get asked to look at computers quite often that are running some malicious code on start up. This never used to be a problem Things that ran at startup used to be easy to locate, it was enough to open up msconfig and scroll down the list of processes running and disable the one you want. Of course things evolve, after a while the people creating these programs found ways to start their programs with out showing them on this list. They created registry keys that were hard to find.

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