Extra charges for single online pay, 4G outages, the FTC starting to look at their business practices. Verizon, what have you done?

I was going to give a review of the Motorola Droid Razor today, but decided to push that off. See the Razor is available only through Verizon, and I noticed yet the start of another outage of 4G services this morning. Verizon has said these outages are growing pains, and were the 4G network brand new, I would accept that, but it is not. Verizon has had their 4G network up for just over a year, and should know how to handle growth. They were the ones who didn’t have the issues AT&T had with the explosion of smartphones. Of course that was CDMA vs. GSM. Now its LTE vs. LTE, and AT&T might have the advantage.

See both are using the LTE network, which requires the use of a SIM card. AT&T, whose network is still known for poor quality, and lots of drops, at least has a head start in dealing with the issues of a network that requires the SIM cards. I wish I had proof, but it seems that the SIM cards, or at least networks that require them, are not as stable here in the States as a network like CDMA which has no SIM card. (At the time of writing this, the 4G network just came back up after being inaccessible for an hour). It would be interesting to hear from someone on the differences between the two networks and why the ones that need SIM cards seem to be more unreliable.

Now this is on the heels of the FTC announcing it was probing Verizon over the $2 convenience fee it was going to charge and then pulled back on. Verizon’s statement is that even paying online has its costs. And they are right, there is equipment and software costs, maintenance on the systems, and hardening the equipment against hackers and other forms of data breaches. Still the costs are the same, whether for an automated system or if people pay individually. That is, unless they have to use 2 separate systems, or the company that is processing the payments is charging them an extra fee. Either way, there are other options to reduce the cost. If you think about it from a security standpoint though, the single payment, which I use, is a safer bet, not just from people knowing they have the money in their account, but from a security breach standpoint.

Just think about it. If you sign up for Automated payments, Verizon and the third party who processes the payments, both have your bank account or credit card information saved on servers. These servers are supposed to be PCI compliant. Even if they are, PCI compliance is a joke. Think of the banks (all of which have to follow at least PCI compliance) or stores (Which have to be PCI compliant) or anything that does online transactions, and how many breaches we hear of. Now think about how many breaches we don’t hear of, at least not immediately. Now look at single payment options, where you can choose not to save the payment info on their servers. Yes there are still problems that can arise from man in the middle attacks, spoofed SSL certificates, etc.. but once you make that payment, the info is not supposed to be stored anywhere. That means if Verizon, or their third party payment processor, has a security breach, your payment information should not be compromised. In reality it might just me being paranoid, but from a logic standpoint it does seem safer.

Now, Verizon did withdraw the $2 fee idea pretty quick, but expect to see it show back up again and again. The bigger thing Verizon has to worry about right now is the amount of bad press they are receiving. They need to remember that pissing one customer off means that customer is going to tell their friends and family, and eventually it can and will take a toll on business.

The Touchpad isn’t completely Dead. Mostly dead, yes, but is it just a flesh wound? The Touchpad frenzy has proved a point, and now can HP, or any company, really capitalize on it?

Apple has been the cock of the walk, the king of the tablet, since the iPad came out. They came up with something that is a great idea which has spawned a whole tablet market. No competitor seems to be able to come up with anything to seriously threaten its dominance. Its not that the Android tablets aren’t good, it has to do with features, and more importantly price point. I touched on this when talking about the Nook Color in the past. HP though, unwittingly, came up with the plan. Something I had mentioned in those same posts about the Nook Color. Its the same thing that gave the PC the advantage in the PC wars back in the 90′s. that is price point.

I’ve been wondering when we would see a price point that would spur competition. Most Tablets are in the $400 plus range of price. The Nook Color, although a reader, is $250 and offers a lot of tablet features, but its App store is lacking. The demise of the HP Touchpad and the fire sale though has shown that for a lower price point, a tablet that doesn’t have as much app support can compete. Now imagine if you will what would happen if Android had a tablet in the $200 or less range. More people purchase it, more developers see a reason to write apps for it, and bingo, a true competitor to Apple can emerge. Amazon might do that with its rumored tablet, but no solid information on it is out yet.

The idea being that in a down economy that we are in does put limits on what people are willing to purchase. Done properly though, a low cost tablet can bring in a nice profit to a company. Yes they might loose on the initial hardware, but if partnered up with the developers, it can be possible to turn a profit through the purchasing of apps. It might mean the developer makes a little less, or the apps are a bit more expensive, say $2 for most apps instead of $1, but it is possible.

Barnes and Noble could have done it completely, instead of halfway. Now the question is will others learn from this or not?

We all know Social Engineering is the most commonly used way to spread malware. There seems to be a device that can help with that, as far as e-mails go. Its not a cheap form of protection though.

We all know that Social Engineering is the easiest way to spread malware. As P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and in the age of the Internet, it is even easier to get to those suckers. Pyramid Schemes, Malware, Phishing Attacks, all heavily rely on the mark being trusting. Anti-Malware, Firewalls, and security devices have always had a problem with this angle of attack.

Now a company called Cyveillance is touting a new appliance to help mitigate the Social Engineering front. Two problems though. First, like all first generation, innovative ideas, the cost is more than most people make in a year. Over $100,000 for the device alone, not including all the scan types, and extra protection licenses added on.

Second, it only scans e-mail. This is nice for those instances where it is e-mail that has a bad link, but a lot of the malware is coming through hijacked ads on websites. This device doesn’t take any of that into account.

More information is available here and here. Overall the idea of a device like this, or algorithms and heuristics that can defend on this front, and be reliable, is where we need to focus our defenses on. Hopefully, someone can go the next step on this. After all, we are only as secure as the weakest link in the chain.

Going from Blackberry Enterprise 4.1 to Blackberry Enterprise Express 5.0.2 looks like a daunting task, but really it is not that tough.

So there I was, ready to find the stash of nukes I hid somewhere. In anticipation of the migration from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 coming up real soon, I had to upgrade our BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) to the most recent version. the prior guy who had gone through 2 weeks of Blackberry training kept putting it off, coming up with excuses, and now is no longer with the company. I had done what anyone should do. I read up on the product and learned how to do the upgrade. Then the worst thing happened. Upon running Windows Update and Rebooting, the Blackberry Server came up but only enough to be pingable. I couldn’t remote into it, which meant so much for doing everything after hours.

First thing in the morning I went to our server room at the office where the BES is located, forced a hard reboot and the server came up normally. then came the task at hand. Few small things about going from BES 4.1 to BES Express 5.0.2. First you have to completely uninstall 4.1. Second, 5.0.2 is extremely slick. Once installed, and I got the users added into it, the majority of phones were found and automatically connected, as if they had always been on the 5.0.2 version of the BES. There were a couple of problem phones, but for the most part, all the planning on having to reactivate 50 Blackberrys went to the trash.

Sometimes, when things get done right, good surprises happen. Just never let it stop you from planning for the worst case scenario. Next step will be the final Exchange Migration.

Just over a month ago, I decided to get a Nook Color. Now after a month of using it, here is the good, and the bad.

I have friends who have the Kindle, and family with the regular Nook, but I wanted something more than just an e-reader, since I would be using it for IT related items. An iPad or Galaxy Tab were right out of my budget, as much as I felt a tablet would be fantastic. Besides their higher initial fees, then you needed a monthly data plan for 3G. Sorry but I’m not going to cut down on what I spend on items I really need, like food, just to have a tablet. I had been hearing good things about the e-readers out there, but everyone agreed that the web experience was not as good, and PDF rendering was poor at best. Then I saw the Nook Color, and I did a double take.

The Nook Color is the next generation of Nook e-readers. Yes it did away with the e-ink display. This allows for better web site viewing. The drawback is a bit more reflections when reading in bright light, although I have not had a major issue with that. The special coating that Barnes and Noble say they put on the touchscreen to help cut down on the glare seems to do its job decently.

The Nook Color runs on Android 2.1, with a special front end which was developed with help from Adobe. The fact that it is Android 2.1 is noticeable in speed and sensitivity of the touchscreen. while not completely awful, if you don’t do a hard power down every now and then, the lag time between opening a book, and the time it opens becomes unbearable, let alone the slowness of page turning. I haven’t had to do a lot of reboots, but once every few weeks seems to do the trick. This isn’t a game breaker for anyone, but more of an annoyance. It should get better with Froyo when that comes out early in 2011, but there is no exact time frame on it arriving. Also coming out in Early 2011 is supposed to be a marketplace, which I am curious to see. I really feel that the Nook Color could become the perfect thing for students, but alas while you can view Word Documents, you can’t edit or create them. I am hoping that sort ability comes from apps in the marketplace.

There are some other disappointments with the Nook Color also. One being that Watermarked PDFs do not open. I haven’t tried the DRM PDFs, which are supposed to open on it, but the watermarked ones will not. Regular PDFs open nicely, but if there is graphics behind the letters, you well get a light red X on the screen because it cannot display the graphics properly, which is another annoyance. Yes you can still read the PDF with the red X through it, or at least I could, but this is something else they might want to fin a solution for. I know plenty of people who play RPGs, and while the Nook Color is better than the Kindle or regular Nook for dumping all those source books onto, the Watermark and red X issues do cause pause for thought. Considering Adobe helped with the technology behind the Nook Color, these issues are a bit surprising.

The Nook Color comes with WiFi only, no 3G. Considering how much WiFi is out there now this isn’t that big of a deal, although it would be nice to see some sort of plug in 3G modem that would work with it. Web browsing is as good as any Android device, although it won’t have flash until Froyo comes out for it.

Small thing to note if you do decide to get the Nook Color, it is larger than the regular Nook. As of the last time I went into Best Buy, they still did not have any cases for the device, and had no clue as to when they would have cases. Barnes and Noble stores do have the cases plus the devices.

Overall, the Nook color is a solid device, and I have been enjoying it. I keep my tech books on it, along with some magazine subscriptions, and find it very nice that I don’t have to carry 1000 page tech books anymore. For $250 you get a mini tablet that really can become a full tablet and overtake the market if Barnes and Noble make the right choices.

So here we are, a society that considers itself civilized. A society that has tons of issues. A society that loves clogging up the court system with litigation. You get litigation if you buy coffee at McDonald’s and spill it on yourself, if you are a 4 year old who hit an older lady while riding your bicycle, and especially if you try to make anything in the technology field.

I look at the lawsuits being brought out recently. Apple Sues Motorola, Motorola sues Apple, Microsoft sues Motorola, some company that bought a software patent sues major websites, and so on, and so on. Heck I’m waiting to see who is going to sue whom over what next.

With all the big companies suing each other, its no wonder that you don’t have much technological advancement anymore. You get repackaged versions of older ideas that work better cause of faster processing power. No real innovation, and this is I feel is due to 2 things. Patent trolling, and lack of entrepreneurial spirit.

Seriously, who wants to try to build new things when you can just keep making money off what you already have, and who wants to try to start up a new company, when virtually every method of doing anything is patented, and thereby a potential death by litigation for a small company.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There is a good reason to have patents, just like copyrights. The issue is the length of time they last for. At some point you need to reduce that amount of time back to something more normal, just so that we can innovate and move forward.  Of course, that is just my opinion.

I’ve gone off a bit about Apple here and there. I flat out hate the iPhone and (max)iPad. I feel they are overrated pieces of equipment. There is much more to my dislike of Apple than just that.

Back in the 80′s Apple computers were all the rage. You had the Apple II series, then the Macintosh came out. Pricing was similar to PC prices. You got bang for the buck. Then Apple went and got rid of Steve Jobs, and it went downhill. In the mean time Jobs continued on and refined his business acumen to become the CEO he is for Apple now.

While all that happened, PCs came down in price. Microsoft was the evil empire, and Apple was a nice alternative, if not a little out of most peoples price ranges. Microsoft helped Apple avoid going out of business by investing in Apple. Then the iPod came out, and all bets were off.

Now I will disclaimer this by saying flat out, I have no affiliation with any company I mention in this piece. I don’t get pre-release items to review outside of my company’s Action Pack subscription, which the company pays for.

Now that that is over with, lets continue. The iPod was a much needed item in the marketplace. It combined with iTunes worked so well initially. The iPod still does work well. iTunes became something else. A cash cow. Proprietary file formats that would not play on non-iPod mp3 players. Digital Rights Management that would lock the song into one machine. The worst was (and still is) trying to port your bought music collection to a new PC. Still people flock to it (I use eMusic and Amazon).

Then came the iPhone, and initially, I thought it was a decent idea. I still think its a good idea, but poorly implemented. It is overly restrictive, you can only put on there Apple approved apps, and it is on a network that cannot handle the data flow. The iPad is nothing more than the iPhone in larger format. Same OS, same restrictions.

Now comes the new Apple developer rules. To put in in simple terms, you cannot write something in a non-Apple approved language, and cross compile it to run natively on the iPhone and iPad. this hurts for websites especially because of Adobe Flash, which is not nor will be supported on the iPhone or iPad. How do you get away with not supporting one of the most popular web systems out there and say that you offer the best experience? Personally if I was a developer, I would just cut Apple out. Write for the Android phones, which you can set to load non-marketplace apps. The Android OS is nice, robust and can do anything that the iPhone can. Plus it will give you control back over what you do, and show Apple that it is not the be all end all.

Speaking of Apple being the be all end all, it seems that unless you kiss Jobs rear, and only write good reviews and hype, otherwise you don’t get early access to Apple stuff. If that isn’t blackmail and a way to force good reviews to get more sales early on, then I don’t know what is. Heck it sounds to me like it should be illegal, because the bad reviews seem to get buried, so the consumer is fed incomplete information.

Don’t get me wrong, the Mac is a nice machine, and one day maybe I can afford one. while its nowhere near as secure as Apple touts, it is a machine that does just work. Unfortunately, it is too darn expensive for me right now. The bang for the buck isn’t there.

Apple is heading down a major slippery slope right now. Using lawsuits to try and stifle competition, locking out developers, lying to the public, I swear I’ve heard of these things before. Oh yeah, it was the same stuff Microsoft was doing right before it got hit with an Anti-Trust lawsuit.

Windows 7, overall I love it. It works on my laptop like a champ. No real issues, nor any odd things occurring. My desktop on the other hand, seems to have some really odd issues with it.

I’ve written about the problems I’ve had with homegroup working properly, and those issues are still there. Yet I am beginning to believe they are just a symptom of some other problem with my desktop and Windows 7.

Let me start by saying that my desktop is an Athalon 4200+ with 4 GB of Ram and a 320 GB SATA drive. Yes, its around 4 years old now, so its not the best machine out on the market. Still it works and at a high level for the most part.

The machine needed to be wiped and reloaded last year. Too much crap, too many things tested and removed, it was running like a dog. I wanted a clean registry, a system that didn’t have a bunch of crap on it, and of course to use Windows 7.

Now, 5 months later, I’m seeing weird activity. Out of nowhere I won’t be able to save things to either my local or external hard drive. Everything will be fine and then I go to save something and get a permission error. So I reboot the machine to get it to work again. Then there is the homegroup issue, which I am convinced is due to the Desktop. My laptop running Windows 7 Ultimate (which is what the desktop is running), has 4 GB of Ram and a Centrino 2 Processor, and has no issues with writing to drives at all.

So we come to the troubleshooting, which right now consists of a lot of research, and looking at logs. Is it a problem with the AMD processor not integrating with Windows 7 nicely, or is it a problem with Windows 7 itself. That is the question I will try to answer, and take all of you along with me for the ride.

Apple has announced the long rumored iPad. Will the iPad bring about a new age of tablet PC growth or not is the real question. I say no.

It will bring about a series of wars with the eBook readers. Looking at the specs and what the iPad does, I can’t call it a tablet PC. You load software from the app store like the iPhone. You can’t just go out and buy software for it. There is no CD/DVD drive. Heck even the developer kit is included as part of the new iPhone developer kit. How is this a tablet PC instead of an overgrown iPod touch (there is no phone or camera on the iPad also) with eBook capabilities?

Microsoft has been trying to crack the whole tablet PC area for years. They have come a long way, but its still not perfect. The plus side is that if you get a tablet from a vendor like Lenovo, its a laptop with a special screen than can rotate into a position on top of the keyboard so you have a tablet. You get the best of both worlds, even though the OS is still shaky (I have not seen the tablet features of Windows 7 to make a comparison with).

Lets look at the other issue with the iPad. The versions with cellular capabilities are partnered with AT&T. We all know about the overtaxed network due to the iPod. Not only that but most of AT&T’s coverage areas are still 2G compared to 3G. If the iPad takes off as a gadget, and that is what I look at it as, AT&T is going to have more problems.

The iPad’s price could be its downfall in the near term. With the way the economy is, I can’t see why someone would choose this over a lower end laptop in the same price range.

I am a geek. I post here, I twitter, I read a number of tech sites. I also am a Network Engineer and have Microsoft certifications. Oh yeah, I have the CompTIA A+ and Network+ Certifications. I went with the CompTIA certifications because of the standard they are. They are entry level, and never need to be renewed, or at least that was the case for all but a few days this year.

While going through my tech news this morning, Ars Technica had an article up titled, “ Thought that A+ cert was good for life? Think again.” It talks about how CompTIA was making the entry level certifications renewable, and making it retroactive. Yes, you would have to pay a yearly fee to keep the certification plus do continuing education or take the exam over again every three years. Also if you had originally been certified over 3 years ago, you would have to take the newest version of the exam to get recertified.

The announcement was originally made back on January 11, 2010. The geek world went ballistic. Discussions on forum after forum popped up. Grass roots organizations started on Facebook. Finally, Ars Technica got a hold of the info and posted it. The embers of discontent were fanned into an even larger fire. CompTIA has backed down and made adjustments to when changes would occur.

The question is, how much has it hurt CompTIA in the computer world. Yes they are honoring the Lifetime Certifications as valid again, plus if you get the certification before the end of 2010 it will be lifetime still. The new rules take effect Jan 1, 2011.

The dropping of the ball on this was two fold. First off, CompTIA gave no forewarning that they were thinking of changing the terms of the 3 certifications (A+, Network+, Security+). The surprise factor of the announcement would have caused a large ruckus anyway, but then you had to add factor 2. They were revoking thousands, if not millions of people’s certifications. One of the first certifications most people get is the A+, because it shows a basic knowledge of the computer world. All of a sudden, the agreement we had signed saying we were getting a lifetime certification was null and void.

Don’t get me wrong, I can’t complain that they would make the exams renewable. It makes sense. Think of the people who will pass the A+ and then never use it. It is time for it to loose the lifetime certification. Cisco, Microsoft, and most of the other certifications out there expire and have to be upgraded or renewed. Time frames differ, but it makes sense. CompTIA though went about it the wrong way. CompTIA deals with enough certifications that it will survive this. The question is, will the exams affected by this PR disaster survive, and will CompTIA be looked at differently for a long time, or will this just pass into oblivion?