Technology
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Late last week, Queens College announced that they were allowing staff and faculty migrate away from Lotus Notes to a new system, based on Microsoft Exchange, known as MyMail. When I saw the announcement, I signed up as quickly as I could for the migration, even if it meant depending on Exchange for yet another account. As of Friday, I am now free of Lotus Notes, and I could not be happier.
Since I work only as an adjunct instructor, I do not actually work on campus nor collaborate with any staff. Much of Lotus Notes is bloatware for me: I only use the email service and none of it through a Lotus Notes client. Again, I work mostly off-campus and use my own computer, tablet, and smartphone and don’t have a Lotus client.
Even with my limited needs for Lotus Notes, the experience of using email was simply too painful for me. As I wrote of my experience at Fordham, I had lots of problems using Lotus Notes with my own devices. None of my web browsers were “certified” to work with Lotus Notes and thus certain features, such as logging off, were unavailable to me. Also, whenever I checked email on one device, any changes to my messages would not sync across devices. It was like I was using POP, an email protocol I abandoned back in 1998. The old QC email would also be slow. It would take me several minutes to receive an email, either through IMAP or Exchange.
After a weekend of usage, I am happy to report that my QC email works like one would expect email to work. Migration was pretty painless, although that might have to do with the extremely limited use I made of Lotus Notes over the years. After following some very detailed instructions from our IT staff, I was completely migrated from Lotus to MyMail within a day.
If you are considering the migration, do it. I especially encourage you to do so if you currently access your QC email, contacts, and calendars through open standards, such as IMAP, CalDAV, etc. instead of the Lotus Notes clients. And hey, at least it’s not GMail.
On Tuesday, after much anticipation, Fordham University migrated its staff and faculty from Lotus Notes to Gmail. Although I am not thrilled about having to depend on yet another Google product, I welcome this transition as Lotus Notes was simply unusable if you used a Mac or an iOS device:
- I would often find that messages would not appear in my mail program for as long as thirty minutes after they were sent.
- When trying to access via the web, Lotus Notes supported none of my web browsers, even the latest versions of Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, although I could get around.
- Using Lotus Notes with iOS through an Exchange connection worked as if I were using POP. Messages deleted, read, or replied on one device would not synchronize to any other devices.
It appears that migrations such as these trigger scam attempts. Today, one day after we migrated to Gmail, we find a password phishing attempt disguised as a password protection service. Here’s the message:
Subject: Password Review
IMPORTANT SECURITY NOTICE
Due to a recent rise in security breaches in our industry, Congress has mandated higher information security standards. As passwords are the primary mechanism of defense against unauthorized access, we are being required to check the complexity of all employees’ passwords and recommend changes if they fall short of the standards.
Please assist us in being compliant and visit https://www.Fordham.edu/PasswordCheck to test the strength of your passwords.
Thank you for your co-operation,
Corporate Security
Fordham Information Security
The link above takes you to a legitimate-looking page on a verifytoken.com site. It is clearly a site designed to fool Fordham users to enter their usernames and passwords and to steal their security credentials.
When I visited the site and shorted the URL to http://fordham.edu.verifytoken.com/passupload/6715ed/, which is where the link in the email took me, I saw that this was a simulated phishing attempt. I entered my actual username and some password consisting of pounding on keystrokes. It gave me a “fooled ya” message, indicating that this was merely a test and that no passwords were collected.
Well played, @FordhamSecureIT. Well played.
As you might have heard, hackers have released one million iOS device identifications to let the public know that the FBI Blue Toad.com, for some reason, is in possession of these codes for reasons that are unclear. These codes represent a healthy sample of the over 12 million IDs that Antisec say they found on the hacked FBI computer.
Antisec posted the IDs online, and I checked against their list. None of my current iOS devices appeared on the list, but that doesn’t mean my devices are not part of the other 11 million devices.
Whether my devices appear on this list or not is hardly my biggest worry. If true, I am seriously concerned about who provided these IDs to the FBI, why the FBI has these IDs, and how the FBI were going to use them. That’s a lot of unanswered questions.
Meanwhile, the FBI has issued a public statement about these UDIDs, and the Commons are working to identify the source of these device IDs.
Update
According to NBC News, it appears that the source of the UDIDs was a company called Blue Toad, not the FBI as Antisec has claimed.
Starting today, my Sony Blu-ray player, which was what we used to stream Hulu Plus on my HDTV, will join my DVD player and VHS recorder as electronic bricks because Hulu Plus arrives on Apple TV.
Since 2009, I have watched a total of three Blu-ray disks at home, and although they looked beautiful, there was never an easy supply of Blu-ray disks. At the time, there were not many Blu-ray titles available on Netflix, which also charged a $3 monthly surcharge for Blu-ray disks, and there were no remaining video stores in my neighborhood. Even today, the Blockbuster Express kiosks only carry a very small selection of Blu-ray titles.
Eventually, the Blu-ray deck became a streaming player for Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Amazon. Most of my Netflix viewing is with the Apple TV because of the better interface and much lower latency. The Blu-ray player will not start playing video for almost fifteen seconds, while the Apple TV (and Roku for that matter) are much faster.
Now, with Hulu available on the Apple TV, I can’t see myself using the Blu-ray player much after this. I mean, after all, why would I buy/rent video from Amazon if I can’t watch with my iPad?
If you wouldn’t mind, could you subscribe to Hulu Plus using my affiliate link? Thanks.
(Via Daring Fireball.)
The above link to Amazon is an affiliate link. If you buy something that link, I will earn a commission fee.
Apparently, in the time I left my apartment (9:30 AM EDT) and rode my bike to work (10:00 AM EDT), Mountain Lion went live in the Mac App Store. Athough I had promised myself that I would wait to download it until tonight, I had brought my MacBook Pro to work and could not fight my impatience.
At 10:05 AM, I bought the thing and began the download.
And at 10:29 AM, the download was complete.
The last time I downloaded a major OS update was iOS 5, and that took nearly six hours to download. Clearly, this was much better.
Good luck, everyone!
Update
Although the download was very quick, it took well over an hour to install. This was despite the “Time Remaining” indicated 34 minutes when the installation started.
Once the installation was complete, running Mountain Lion was pretty slow. However after an hour or so, my MacBook Pro was operating at its Lion pace…maybe even a little faster. It seemed as if there was some behind-the-scenes configuring and finalizing that needed to take place.
The upgrade to Mountain Lion still needed to update several of my Apple apps, such as Aperture, iPhoto, iWork, and iMovie. Those updates weighed in at over 2 gigabytes but were done downloading and installing in less than 15 minutes. Finally, Aperture and Mail needed to update their internal databases for photos and messages, respectively. That process was pretty fast.
The only problem I had with the installation came when I was testing Dictation. For some reason, the Sound control panel preference pane was not registering any audio in or out. To solve this problem, I resorted to a rather primitive solution: rebooting the machine fixed the problem. Dictation works pretty well and pretty fast, much faster than when I was trying it with my mom’s iPhone 4s last fall.
Just before heading to one of the best Independence Day parties ever, I spilled a full pint glass of seltzer on my open 13″ unibody Mid-2009 MacBook Pro. The computer immediately shut down, but I unplugged the Mag Safe A/C adapter. As fast as I could, I grabbed my computer screwdriver set and took apart the computer, removing the battery, hard disk drive, and two memory DIMMs.
We’re in the middle of a pretty oppressive heat wave at the moment and since we don’t have an air conditioner running in the apartment, the room temperature is about 90°. I left the computer opened up on the kitchen table, propped up like a pyramid with the hinge pointing up.
The next morning, after the computer had been drying out for about 16 hours, I put it back together. Thankfully, it powered up normally and since the computer had essentially crashed, it took awhile for it complete the start-up process. The only problem was that the P key would not work.
I connected the external keyboard from my iMac, and when I typed P, it registered fine. That was reassuring because it suggested that logic board wasn’t damaged and the non-functioning P was due to some residual moisture keeping it from working properly.
Some web searches revealed that when people spill liquids on their computer, it is often the P key that malfunctions. Some went to the trouble of replacing their logic board, but I didn’t think that would be necessary.
After a few minutes of leaving the computer powered up, I noticed that the P key was registering on its own but was repeating as I had been holding down the key (i.e, PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP).
By late afternoon, the computer was working normally. I consider myself lucky that I spilled plain seltzer water on the keyboard. Being able to take apart the computer and remove the battery was clearly an important step in fixing my MacBook Pro. Also, it was fortunate that it’s currently very hot but not very humid. The high heat and low humidity helped dry the depths of the computer’s innards in very little time. If the temperature was more mild, I would have left the computer drying for as long as three days.
Sarah has a newish (2011) MacBook Air, and those computer cases require a Pentalobe screwdriver to open the case and disconnect the battery. I am about to buy one just from iFixit just in case she ever spills something like I did.
Why do I see an ad on Facebook.com when I log out?:
When you log out of Facebook you may see an ad that looks like a Page timeline on the homepage. This allows advertisers to show larger format ads on Facebook without interrupting your experience when you’re logged in and connecting with your friends. Advertising keeps Facebook free for everyone.
I certainly don’t have any data on this, but I imagine that very few people actually log out of Facebook instead of just closing or quitting their browser window. And if they do, it’s probably about once a day.
Does this seem like a good use of advertising dollars? I also like the closing line as it implies that users better like the big ad or pay for Facebook.
Apparently, Apple’s forthcoming iOS 6 Maps app lacks public transit directions. The folks behind Walk Score have started a petition to get them back.
At the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference yesterday, Apple announced that iOS 6 (the new iPhone and iPad operating system) will require customers to install 3rd party applications for public transit directions.
In all fairness, iOS 6 is still in beta so thing might change. Apple could implement the directions later, or they can open up some API to integrate local public transit schedules and routes with the Maps app. In either case, I hope independent developers take advantage of opening and produce some great transit apps that will outclass navigational aids designed for driving a car.
(Via StreetsBlog New York City)
Brilliant!
To help raise awareness of the demand for a standalone HBO streaming service, a new site — Takemymoneyhbo.com — has sprung up, allowing members of the public to say (and tweet) how much they’d pay for the service each month.
I said $8 because that’s the same price as Netflix streaming and a Hulu Plus subscription.
(Via The Next Web.)
Over the last month, we in Long Island City have experienced some very poor upload speeds over Verizon FiOS. My earlier post on this subject has roused some interest among the geekier among us here in north Brooklyn and Western Queens.
Stephen Mike in Greenpoint posted on this site on Tuesday that our FiOS upload problems have been fixed. He’s right! My upload speeds, according to SamKnows, have indeed improved since yesterday.
| Date |
Average (Mbps) |
| May 15, 2012 |
3.98 |
| May 16, 2012 |
7.36 |
| May 17, 2012 |
7.00 |
| May 18, 2012 |
6.87 |
| May 19, 2012 |
5.50 |
| May 20, 2012 |
7.01 |
| May 21, 2012 |
5.30 |
| May 22, 2012 |
31.14 |
As you can see, I am now getting above the advertised 25 Mbps symmetrical downstream and upstream rates.
One troubling sign is that Packet Loss still remains consistent, although I might have to wait until the monthly report to get a sense of its condition.
| Date |
Failure Rate (%) |
| May 15, 2012 |
3.74 |
| May 16, 2012 |
2.48 |
| May 17, 2012 |
1.99 |
| May 18, 2012 |
2.30 |
| May 19, 2012 |
2.99 |
| May 20, 2012 |
1.91 |
| May 21, 2012 |
2.58 |
| May 22, 2012 |
3.33 |
Thanks, StephenMike in Greenpoint!
