A while back when the MagicJack surfaced, I purchased one. (First thing I ever purchased from a TV Infomercial). I was happy to say it arrived quickly and worked. The only problem I had with it was the annoying popup screen. I quickly found a way to stop the popup and all was well. Then I learned of NetTalk and their claim was that the device DID NOT require a computer and could be plugged into a Router. This made much more sense to me and from a practical standpoint was better suited as it did not require a PC for it to operate. So, I purchased one and was very happy with its operation. I also kept my MagicJack just in case and to take on the road. Since then, I have done my best to let everyone know about NetTalk. Friends, family, clients as it save lots of money. Continue reading “Don’t Buy NetTalk”
Category: Blogs
Blogs and Website
That Wasn’t So Bad
Well the conversion, migration from the old ‘theme’ to the new twentlyelven child theme was pretty straightforward. There are a few issues, quirks that I have with the new twentlyevlen theme, but once worked through, it does the job well. For more in-depth posts on my trials and tribulations with twentyeleven you can view them at blogsGuaranteed.
About That Time
This site is currently being updated to the new WP Twentyeleven theme. Please bear with us as accomplish this task. For those interested, we have found this theme to be great core theme especially when employed as a parent theme. Issue here is I spent many an hours getting the horizontal Navigation bar to work properly for the Solutions & Services branch that I have put off updating the plugins for a long long time. Now hopefully I can do away with the plugins. Continue reading “About That Time”
Take it on the road.
Just installed the WP Android app on my Galaxy S. After a simple change to the site to allow XML-RPC, and entering my blog info in the app I am up and running. Now I might find more free time to post, like now as I wait patiently as the wife shops.
Internet Backup
Years ago, when the Internet was in its early stages and High Speed was the “New” thing many of us relied on a “dial-up” connection for backup. And as HS became more stable and the need for dial-up lessened we dropped our dial-up lines and thus our backup. Not really a good thing, however, today’s network would barely survive if we had to use a dial-up connection. Mainly it doesn’t support a fast enough bandwidth to support today’s internet needs. However, as the HS race continues, we are faced with troubling times when there is an outage. And often, the outage has nothing to do with us, or even our Local ISP from which we get our service. Internet traffic flows along the www highway between many nodes. If some some reason, one of those nodes goes down. So might our traffic. And if the node is close enough, it might bring out entire internet down. Now, this may be infrequent, but, should it happen can you survive without, and for how long. If this is a concern for you, then you need to employ failover technology to your network. Usually, this requires the need for specific failover routers which allow the connection of multiple internet providers. Obviously, this would require two ISP accounts and thus a costly one, but, how much is lost if you go down. Some of today’s devices also allow for the use of Wireless Aircards (cell phone carriers) for the failover or backup.
If downtime is a concern, or already a problem, don’t wait til it happens again.
Just Love It
About a month ago I dropped my cell phone while running and it broke — so I was now forced to get a new phone. I had test drove the Sprint Instinct when it hit the market and returned it. Even with all it great features, it did less of what I wanted then my flip phone. But, now I had no choice and settled the HTC Hero. Can’t say I truly love it, as it has some serious issues. But, it get’s the job done. Yes, there are some cool apps, but about the only plus it has over the old phone is the ability of getting and viewing my emails. However, that is not the purpose of this post.
I had also recently purchased a Netbook, for portability. As for workability (actually doing work on them), they are pretty bad. Any who, the introduction of this device created a new problem in that it does not have a slot for my wireless air card – not good.
Now, I could have purchased a new USB air card and swapped between the two, but opted for the ‘cooler’ toy the Sprint MiFi. The MiFi is an air-card and 5 user wireless router all in one tiny package. So, using my current data account, I can now share a wireless (Wifi) connection for upto 5 devices. Now, I can have both my laptop and netbook online – all at the same time.
No more plugging in a usb device into the laptop. No more applications to run. Simply connect to a Wifi account an you are good to go. And now you can share the signal if needed.
The device is about the size of a credit card and slips into my top pocket. Takes a few seconds to go from on to broadcasting the Wifi SSID. The only drawback is battery life, and the more users or bandwidth used, the faster it drains. I usually only need it for short durations, but towards the end of a day it is wasted. Unfortunately, you cannot plug the USB into the laptop and keep it charging while using it. You can plug the ac adapter in, but that doesn’t do much for you one the road. I did discover that you can keep it chaaring by plugging it into a 12V usb car adapter via a usb cable.
So, for all you mobile air card users, the MiFi is the way to to go….
UTM – Explain
UTM stands for Universal Threat Management. In today’s market we are no longer in fear of viruses as they are now only a small part of the threats against us and our computers. Let’s take a look at some of the key threats; gateway and network anti-Virus (GAV/NAV); anti-Spam (AS), Phishing (AP), Intrusion Protection (IP), Application Intelligence (AI) and Content Filtering (CF).
How do we manage all of this? If you have a business or even a small home office with more than one computer you address these threats at the point of attack. Each computer. And the more computers you have the more UTM applications you have running. As the number of computers grows, so does the number of application and along with it, yearly renewals to keep it up to date. And as you increase this number, you magically increase the chance of something going wrong. And the last thing you want is an unprotected device.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could take the UTM from each device and put it in one place and have it protect the network instead of the computer. That is primarily what a Firewall Device is designed to do. Not only does it greatly reduce the overhead of maintaining UTM on each device, it centrally controls it. It also increases the security level of your network as now as any would be attacks are now at the firewall device rather than your computer.
Yourimage.org Has a New Face
Welcome to the new yourimage.org site. Out goal of this site is to keep it updated with new information, technologies and solutions. As we move into the new era of Managed Services, away from the traditional “Break-Fix” way of life we need to keep up with the times and provide a means of defining the many benefits of taking a pro-active approach.
In addition, we have purposefully migrated our website design and support on the Content Management System model. This has proven itself over and over from both an end-user and support aspect. So, in keeping with the ‘new’ and to practice what we preach, we have built the new site accordingly.
As the new site get off the ground, we will be doing our best to keep it fresh with new content. We hope to see you soon.