My latest video product screencast review is an update to Symantec’s Endpoint Protection software, v12.1. The new version adds better protective features and is less demanding on endpoint computing resources. You can view the video here on my site at Webinformant.tv.
If you are tired of patching your many security solutions and are looking for a simple yet effective managed security appliance, Network Box offers a new protection direction. Combining several dozen active scanning technologies, they can provide advanced anti-malware and network protection within seconds of discovering an attack.
You can view my latest screencast video review here of this product.
My latest screencast review is for Blue Coat Networkson using their MACH5 Web optimization appliance to better manage video use across enterprise networks.
We all know that video can be a network bandwidth hog, but these days there are more and more legitimate business needs for video, such as Intel’s site here. . Each minute on You Tube alone, people from all over are uploading more than 24 hours of video content!
It works for live, streaming, and on-demand video, and is easy to setup and configure.
So maybe the iPad is the must-have cool portable device at the moment. But Apple still has a few things to learn about building the best tablet. And since trying out the Blackberry Playbook over the weekend, I have a few suggestions (not that Apple is going to listen to me):
First there is multitasking. The playbook can handle running –and more importantly, switching among apps — better, although still not as your easy as a desktop. There is an odd combination of finger swipes to switch apps, but it a lot easier than the cut-and-paste dance that the iPad has. Something as simple as browsing the Internet and copying the URL into a document is downright painful on the iPad. On the Playbook, it is just slightly annoying.
Second is a built in Samba file server, so that once you connect the Playbook to your Wifi network, you have an IP address on your network just like any other device. With Samba, you can share files and also copy them between the Playbook and your desktop with ease. The documentation could be better, though.
Speaking of copying files. Playbook suppots either Windows Media Player v.11 or iTunes to move music and videos back and forth. And you have access to your file system from the device so you can download files to the Playbook and access them from other applications. What a concept: something that we had since DOS. On the iPad, it is pretty much a closed system: you can’t browse around like you can in Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder.
The Playbook has better sound. Ironic, isn’t it? The Blackberry just sounds better with its built in speakers than the iPad in my unofficial tests.
The Playbook comes with built-in Office apps. I am typing this now on the built in word processor. I am not sure that I would want to compose a magnum opus on it, and using a Bluetooth keyboard makes the whole process much improved. Both Apple and RIM devices have a similar annoyance when you pair them to Bluetooth keyboards: you can’t bring up the on screen ones unless you specifically turn off the Bluetooth connectivity of the unit itself.
With the iPad, you have to pay extra and use either Apple’s own apps or Quickoffice. Quickoffice Presenter is not for me, I miss the speaker notes and slide ahead preview functionality that I have come to like with Powerpoint when I give one of my speeches. Still, I have used the iPad to drive a projector and for short presentations where I don’t need access to my notes it has a certain cachet.
But the Playbook isn’t perfect. Its power button is way too small and you have to hit it a few times to bring up the unit. Browsing the Web is still pretty much hit or miss: yes, you do have Flash support unlike the iPad, but some sites (such as Hulu) don’t work at all. There isn’t a Netflix client, which is a shame because its screen is gorgeous. Another frustration is the navigation buttons on its Web browser sometimes work and sometimes don’t. I ended up having to close and restart the browser to move back a page, for example. Some sites recognize the special Playbook browser and present their mobile-friendly pages (such as Google), and some don’t.
Both units require special video dongles to connect them to external monitors, and the Playbook requires special USB and power ones too. That is just downright stupid.
RIM has taken the tactic to use the Playbook as a bigger screen for its traditional Blackberry smartphone line, which is both interesting and frustrating. You download the Blackberry Bridge app to your phone and link them together via Bluetooth. Once that is done, you have access to all of your phone’s content, including BBM, contacts, emails, and your calendar. And if you pair a Bluetooth keyboard to the Playbook, provided you have enough lap space to juggle everything, you can compose a document on your Playbook’s word processor and save it to your phone and send it out over the phone’s broadband Internet connection. Or conversely, you can bring up your stored documents from the phone on the Playbook’s larger screen and make edits. This pairing to a Blackberry phone is the only way you can use a native email client on the Playbook: otherwise, you have to bring up a Webmail client.
All in all, Playbook is an interesting device. Yes, Apple could learn from RIM, but I get the feeling that we are back in time to 1988, when IBM and Microsoft were working on OS/2 and graphical operating systems were first coming of age. Why we have devices like the iPad that we can’t browse their file systems or bring up as full network clients is frustrating. Blackberry phone users should consider the Playbook if they want to leave their laptops at home and can put up with the spotty Web site support when on the road. And RIM needs to energize developers and make it easier to create apps for the Playbook: right now the choices are abysmal.
If you want to test a new piece of software, most of the time you reimage your PC or install a new OS from scratch to make sure you start with a clean copy. But now CloudShare ProPlus makes testing easier and cheaper. You can read my review published this week in Computerworld here.
Do you need to take credit card payments on the go for your business? Do you operate a food truck, maybe, or sell your wares from a booth at trade shows or craft fairs? There are now several different hardware add-ons that can turn your iPhone into a credit card processor.
Amazon this week announced the availability of its Cloud Drive to consumers; the global retailer will give away 5 GB of storage to anyone who has an Amazon account. How does this compare with existing offerings from Google and Microsoft? The short answer is: not very well.
You can read the article in ITworld here.
If you have the kind of business that requires getting paid when on the go, you have probably heard that your iPhone can be used for this purpose. If you have a mobile food truck, or set up a booth at a tradeshow, or need to take credit cards for your business, there are now several different hardware add-ons that can scan credit cards, and several additional apps that can work by typing in the credit card number manually.
In the olden times (say last year), retailers had to go through a lengthy process to accept credit cards and often had to purchase a card reader for $150 or more that could only attach to a land phone line. Those days are officially over, and with these iPhone readers, you can get paid wherever and whenever you might be.
All of these apps are still somewhat rough around the edges. There are usually two different fee structures: one in which the card is physically present and is swiped through the reader, and a higher set of fees charged if it isn’t (this is because of credit card policies that carry a greater risk of fraud for cards not present).
Before the portable readers were invented, there were a number of iPhone apps that offered payment processing. The problem with these apps is that because they didn’t have any way to physically swipe the card, they had to charge you the higher transaction fees.
So what is involved with each reader? First, you sign up online with a Web form (or in some cases within the iPhone app itself) to create your merchant account, the type of account that banks require for anyone to accept credit card payments. Part of this process is to identify yourself and authorize your checking account that will collect your deposits. Once your account is setup, you can begin accepting payments with your iPhone.
All of these apps have the ability to email receipts to your purchasers as well as to yourself, and have Web-based management dashboards that show you the status of your purchases and collections. These are nice features and some users of the typical point-of-sale credit card machine might be interested in switching to the iPhone readers too.
If you already have a merchant account with your bank, you still need to setup a new one on some of the readers because each device is tied to a particular payment processor. In the past, merchant accounts took lots of time and effort to setup and had monthly account fees even if you never charged a single credit card on them. That is all changing now with these devices. In each case it was a matter of hours between getting started and being able to accept payments.
All of these solutions are limited to US account holders, and in some cases will only authorize cards issued to US-based addresses too. For a review in ITworld, I looked at three hardware credit card readers, some of which are free:
Some of the readers are for v3 or v4 of the iPhone only because of they way the fit around the phone’s data connector, while others like Roam and Square fit into the phone’s headphone jack and can support a wider variety of phones. I liked the simplicity of the Square setup and use, but the additional features of the Mophie reader might be useful. You can see the results of my tests here.
As enterprises move toward virtualizing more of their servers and data center infrastructure, the security technologies that are plentiful and common-place in the physical world become few and far between. In this review for Network World this week, I look at five common VM security tools that offer a range of protective features. Included in the review are:
DataCore’s latest version of its storage networking management tool solves the biggest problem stalling server and desktop virtualization projects. It provides a powerful and graphical mechanism to set up storage pools and provide multipath and continuous data protection for a wide variety of SANs.
Pricing: DataCore-authorized solution providers offer packages starting under $10K for a two-node, high-availability environment.
Requirements: Windows Server 2008 R2
Management console runs on Windows desktop versions from XP SP3 to Windows 7.
You can watch my three minute screencast video review here.