Open Source is freedom of Choice, not necessarily a cheaper option.
I was speaking to a Windows Support engineer on the phone last week who uses linux for some aspects of the enterprise needs. He asked me if I use Open Source Software because it is cheaper than the alternatives. I told him no, it’s for the freedom of choice.
I have the freedom to install, configure the software and to adapt it for my needs. I can also choose to make any modifications available to anyone else by contributing it back. Well I don’t as I’m not a coder, but I can feed back any problems that I have as a bug report, and can ask someone else to code it and get them to contribute their code back.
Admittedly Open Source can be cheaper if you think of the code itself not costing anything. However nothing is free, time and therefore money will have been spent creating and modifying that code. To have adequate technical support and installation businesses should be prepared to value the product and the support provided. With Open Source you have the freedom of choice. You can choose to look at the online documentation and the wealth of technical books out there to implement what you need, you can also choose to support the Open Source Product. Or you can choose to hire an experienced professional (or even pay for training in house) to implement and support the product for you. Saying a product is cheaper can be interpreted that the product is somehow lesser than the competition. I do not feel that this is always the case, superior products can develop from close contact between developers and their clients. This is the value add that Open Source can bring to the table.
At the end of the day, whether a product is Open Source or proprietary, any business needs to consider how critical the product is to their business processes and invest in the product accordingly. I’ve come across excellent installations of Windows Server/Exchange with full shared calendering and other communication enhancements, but I’ve also some across some very basic and flaky installations of exchange that just handle the email. It all depends on how it was installed and how good the documentation is. Yes, and experience is also needed in order to support it.
It’s about the experts you hire to install and maintain your business software and information. At the same time businesses also need to consider investing in training. There is always a risk that you may loose the person to another role, but if you don’t train your employees then you can restrict yourself to any new starts that tick the technical boxes rather than the people boxes. You can get loyal employees that come back or never leave but any business needs to be prepared to invest in them as people. Not just the training but in building a group dynamic.
Any investment into any new technology needs to be paid for in some way. People have to eat, if you want professional support and some one to take your problems away from you so that you can concentrate on your business then you have to at least pay a bit for that time. Larger support companies like for example a large hosting provider cannot afford to hire someone who knows everything about the client and cares enough to help them. It’s not in their business plan, if a business want’s technical expertise and hand holding then it has to be paid for. Most people will not need to contact them either, until somethings gone wrong, or a task needs to be carried out. Then be prepared to wait and be charged while you wait to be connected.
If you have an Open Source product that you use and you have the spare cash, consider a donation to that friendly developer who’s taking your bug report and improving your product. They will appreciate that effort.
Friendly Technical experts have to eat too you know.
Using the Internet Classifieds to Rent out a flat.
I’d recently finished doing up the flat so that I could rent it out. I had considered using a factoring agency to fix the flat and rent it out for me. But in the end I ended up getting the flat upt o spec and arranging for it to be rented.
I managed to get the flat rewired up to standards which included a mains wired smoke alarm and the carbon monoxide detector. I also got my gas fire looked at as I had been informed when the kitchen was put in, that it needed to be fixed or replaced. As it turns out the person who had condemned the fire was wrong to as I got another qualified gas guy to look at it and he did not understand how it was condemned in the first place. Brett also did up the bathroom by tiling it and replacing the shower head and rail.
With this done we put up an advert in gumtree and waited. At first we did an advert without pictures. We managed to get some responses. However we re-posted the advert with pictures, which got some more attention.
The advert was roughly worded like this:
Bright Spacious 1 Bedroom Flat with Dining Kitchen.
10 minutes minutes walk to the city centre and 5 minutes walk from the beach. Close to two supermarkets, two cinemas and 3 gyms. 5 minutes walk to King Street for easy access to Bridge of Don and Altens. Also handy for Buses to Garthdee. Easy distance for Aberdeen University and The Robert Gordon University City Centre Campus.
Rent £amount per month short Assured tenancy with option to renew, 1 month deposit, plus 1 month in advance. Bills and council tax not included.
I also included a few of these pictures:
In the end we ended up filming a walk through of of the flat.
Gumtree has an option to embed you-tube videos. I would advise anyone thinking of renting out their flat to do a video walk through. It gives a good impression of the layout of your property. Keep yourself out of it, otherwise it may look a bit cheesy.
It does look really cool with a video option in the advert.
It also sorts out who is seriously interested.
We got a phonecall from a tenant who is currently in Austria. They haven’t set foot in the flat, but on the basis of that video the flat has been secured by deposit. Ironically on the same day someone else was interested in renting the flat out as well. However the Austrian tennant got in there first.
So to summarise:
To rent out the flat using gumtree
- Clean your flat from top to bottom. Get the most unsightly jobs fixed.
- Take pictures of your flat, ideally on a bright sunny day, but failing that with some light.
- Take a video of your flat and do a walk through
- Upload the video to youtube, take a note of the embed link details
- Create an advert on gumtree, choose 3 pictures and include your video.
- For the text tell people about the flat and the advantages of your location. (E.g Close to the shops and leisure facilities. )
- Include useful details like council tax bands.
Extras to remember:
- Register as a private landlord at http://www.landlordregistrationscotland.gov.uk/. This is not optional. You are required to do this by law. Even if your flat is not multiple occupancy. You will get fined heavily if you are not registered.
- Get the electrical wiring checked and certified, arrange for this yearly.
- Get a Gas Safety Certificate. Arrange a check yearly.
- Take a copy of all of the manuals for the appliances. Give the tenants a copy.
- You can get copy of legal forms and advice from the city councils. Edinburgh Council has a fairly helpful website and some form templates for the legalities.
Twitter account hacking
I was informed by my partner that my twitter account had been hacked. Now I had a secure password set for my account and I do not have a windows desktop or laptop. I run Ubuntu Linux Jaunty Jackalobe. Of course the only windows device I have is an htc touch pro, which is windows mobile 6 pocket PC. I use hellotwitface to tweet when I’m out and about. So could that have compromised me? I’m unsure. The passwords been changed on my twitter account and I’ll see what happens before I tweet from my phone.
My account tweeted one weightloss spam advert. The tweet was done from the web. You’ll see my initial tweets after the event on the site as I have a twitter feed on it. The thing is I have advertising on this blog. However I try to keep it discreet and on the sidebar and at the bottom of the web page. But I expect my microblogging to be ad-free. No one want’s ad-spam.
According to my initial google foo, my account was one of hundreds being used to send out this spam. According to Ben Parr on mashable, last week twitter apparently suspended thousands of accounts that had been compromised and were sending out spam after being infected with malware Koobface/Win32. The only advise symantec gives is make sure bluetooth isn’t turned on. There’s no sign of infection on the phone, plus no initial sign of hellotwitface being the culprit.
Of course it isn’t the first time twitter’s been hacked. Back in july drabdavid wondered if twitter had been hacked. Although this was because of all the porn followers that that appear out of no where and do not tweet. I suspect that’s just bot account creation though.
Although perhaps someone has guessed the password to a twitter staffer again and has managed to use the account to send out tweets with thousands of accounts. The staffer compromise happened earlier this year and thetechherald has a bit more detail about the account compromisation and how the news broke as someone posted images of how they got the staffers password through social engineering. So does ZDNET which details how the person got onto the account in the first place and promptly offered access to various high profile accounts back in January.
I’ve always felt that you do need a bit of psychology to be able to get past peoples barriers to get at secure system. The greatest danger to the security of any system is always the human element.
It’s very embarrassing being told that your method of communication is being hacked. I remember losing my mobile and thinking I’d left it in my flat. I only got alerted to the fact that someone else was using my phone by my partner when he got rude messages from my phone that were completely out of character. Of course they’d signed my phone for porn and I had to change my mobile number. So I feel I’ve got off lightly this time.
Regardless of what’s happened or how it’s happened, I’ve changed my password. Deleted the tweet and explained what happened to my few followers. I’m just waiting to see what happens with my facebook account. In fact I think I’ll head over there and change the password on that too . Then I’ll need to put a lock on my phone.
Protecting your Online Presence
It’s no longer a question of whether you should go on-line, but how, and as with anything else, there is a range of products and service levels that vary in price and quality. Sometimes a cheap service wih occasional downtime for web pages or email is fine - for example, a site for a hobby or a local pub band. For business purposes, being online is more than just advertising, it is also a vital means of communication. So companies need to be careful how they buy!
The term ‘online presence’ simply means that a company has agreed to display your web pages and accept mail on your behalf. These companies are called ‘hosting providers’, and they have computers in air-conditioned data centres who do this job for many companies at once.
If you’re shopping around for a hosting provider, ask them what happens when:
- The Hosting Provider’s machines stop working (do they have spares?)
- Lines to the Hosting Provider’s data-centres are cut (Do they have alternatives)
- The Hosting Provider goes out of business (Will you lose your email?)
Then there is your domain, the words after the @ sign in your email address, and after the “www.” in your web address. For example, http://www.bbc.co.uk. Do you own your domain? If you do not own your domain then you can’t control what happens to it, and if you’re not happy with your current website or email provider (or they go out of business) then you can’t easily move that domain to be hosted by a new provider.
If you search the web for ‘whois’, you will find websites that run the whois tool on their website for you to list information about a domain. You put in the name of a domain e.g. ‘bbc.co.uk’ and can find out who it is registered to and who has the rights to administer it.
If you find that you do not own your domain then follow these steps.
- Contact who set up your website and ask them to arrange to put the registrant information for your domain in your or your companies name.
- Ask them to change the contact email for the registrant in your email address.
- If you have no joy with this, then you can contact the registrar directly. Different registrars have different procedures so you may have to contact the, directly to find your position
- Contact the registry for the domain (for .co.uk domains the registry is nominet)
- Consider asking help from another Hosting Provider.
Unfortunately it’s often not until a website owner would like to change providers that they find out that their movements are restricted. It can take longer to move a website to another provider if your last website provider has entered in the wrong details in the domain owners (registrants) area in the domain listing.
You can prevent that just by checking if you own domain. This can help to remove a possible issue or threat to your business.
Originally Published in Kirknewton Konnect Directory as Esther Payne, Operations Manager, Gladserv Limited.
Domain hosting pain
A friend of mine registered a domain with a large on-line provider. Then she asked for help from her friends for advice on hosting her website. She’s not a technical web expert, so this is perfectly reasonable.
I responded with what I did and that fact that I work for a hosted services company and we were a nominet registrar like the large online provider. She didn’t know that the work I did involved that.
I also gave her some advice regarding the fact that the large provider would probably provide web-hosting as part of the deal or for a bit extra per month. Of course I did also tell my friend that we could host the web site and email, although it would be easier for us to administer the hosting and any backend changes (like moving a server or changing to a shiny new one) if we were the registrar for the domain and could look after the DNS records directly. Otherwise there there would always be an additional delay in any domain changes. Either way it was up to her.
My friend decided that she would prefer my company hosting it as at least she can trust me. Meanwhile she had a rather frustrating afternoon trying to get the password to access her current hosted providers cpanel as they had not sent the password yet. She is also trying to get them to change the tag to us. The provider should do this for free, but not everyone does. A domain owner can change the tag through nominet itself (if the domain is a uk top level domain). However this can cost 11.50 per domain. This I suspect is because an ordinary domain owner is not a member of nominet so there is a charge.
The help desk for this company also charged 50p for phoning their support. Their online pages were also running rather slowly (during office hours). Needless to say my friend is less than impressed with their service so far. My friend still doesn’t have her control panel password.
What annoys me is that if I thought to actually let people know what I do and socialise more both online and offline, I could find out what my friends need and either help them directly or point them at the appropriate resources.
So for a start I’m posting an article that I wrote for a local magazine. It’s a basic article and not very technical.
At somepoint I will also put the link here to my personal blog. I’ve been under a rock for a bit too long, and it’s caused some pain points for others who did not necessarily have to go through the frustration.
