Contrary to popular belief, the Tech Talk Radio panelists are not sponsored by Kaspersky.

About 10 months ago I purchased a “3 PC” licence pack for a couple of computers at home.  This provided me with an activation code that could be used on 3 PCs, for home use.  I installed Kaspersky Anti-Virus on two PCs and put the remaining  licence away for a rainy day.

Well, it started raining a few days ago and I thought I’d use the remaining licence on a new PC.

When I typed in the activation code, Kaspersky (the software, not the man himself) congratulated me on installing the software, and smugly informed me that I had a good 62 days left, at least, on this licence for this computer.

Huh?!?!?  I paid for a licence for a year for this PC!

It seems that Kaspersky starts the clock ticking for its activation codes from the time the first one is used – or possibly from the time the activation code is purchased, I don’t know.  I can’t find it in their fine print.

Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive, but I feel decidedly jibbed by Kaspersky on this occasion.

Who or what is a Kaspersky? Kaspersky Lab is an organisation which produces robust, easy-to-use anti-virus, anti-spyware and internet security software for the PC and Mac.  It seems to detect viruses, threats and malware where other products fall short.  The name “Kaspersky” is highly regarded in the IT industry.

We always rave about it on-air because it works well.  It costs a few bucks, but when it comes to internet security software, you get what you pay for.  (AVG users take note!!)

The founder of the organisation, Eugene Kaspersky, spoke to Andrew in 2007 about the life and times of his internet security organisation.

But it’s software, with a licensing regime like any other commercial software.  Caveat Emptor.  Read the fine print.

anti-virus · Kaspersky · licensing · malware · software · spyware · Tech Talk Radio

Woooaah … truckloads.

There are 1001 blog-worthy things to blog in my blog about.

Sadly, time (lusty and blithe) is at his apogee.

In brief, I have:

• Had a shave, since the last blog post;
• Upgraded The Surgery WordPress blog from 2.8.3 to 2.9;
• Moved WordPress blog from Fedora 9 machine with crappy dynamic IP address (it was killing me) to shiny Fedora 11 machine with static IP address;
• Marveled at my ability to upgrade WordPress, SQL databases and move them across Linux machines, AND make grown-up changes to DNS zone files – am surely a guru of such things now and legend in my own lunchbox;
• Undertaken 2 of 8 Tech Talk Radio Summer Series productions, time-consuming but rewarding;
• Upgraded the HTC Dream / Google phone to the next Android operating system, very successful;
• Teetered on the brink of e-mail bankruptcy;
• Ordered a new PC for Christmas;
• Ventured inside an Apple Store for the very first time, and escaped by making only a minor purchase (a new iPod Touch); and
• Just today, assisted Mrs Dr Ron in restoring her iTunes library, after she deleted all the music files from her PC’s hard disk  - successfully achieved restoration by using a third-party app called iRip which we’ve spoken about on Tech Talk in the past (thanks JD, saviour of Dr Ron’s marriage).

I have also Tweeted mercilessly about our well-intentioned (yet incompetent, foolish and mis-informed) Senator for Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy.  In case you hadn’t caught up with the news (which the good Senator saved until after the last live episode of Tech Talk for 2009), Australia will be ranked highly with the United Arab Emirates, Iran and China in its foolish deployment of an ISP-based Net Filter.

Adam Turner has had a lot to say about this, and made a clever analogy with a different type of infrastructure.  His blog posts here and here in The Age last week should be mandatory reading.

I’ll blog in more detail about these and other things soon.

I hope you have a great Chrissy and a safe and prosperous New Year.

#nocleanfeed · adam turner · andorid · apple · apple store · blog · fedora · Google Phone · HTC Dream · ipod touch · irip · linux · net filter · news · stephen conroy · tech talk · Tech Talk Radio · the age · the age tech · updates · what's happening · wordpress

Last week the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission released its Interim Report into the tragic events of the 7th of February 2009.

On Tech Talk Radio we discussed the Interim Report with respect to identified technology issues, and technological recommendations which the Royal Commission might make for the 2009–10 bushfire season.

• The Interim Report is publicly available and can be viewed here (link to external site).
• The Panel’s discussion about the Interim Report can be downloaded here (MP3 audio file – 13 minute discussion – file size 12 MB).

bushfires · royal commission · tech · Tech Talk Radio

What’s Tethering?

If you have a laptop or netbook, chances are you might want to access the internet.

If you’ve got a blue network cable handy, then that might be useful.  If not, and you’ve got WiFi built-in to your laptop, or a WiFi adapter, AND you’re in a wireless hotspot, then you might be able to connect to the internet via wireless.

If you’ve purchased a data plan from one of Australia’s several mobile telecommunications service providers, and you’ve also purchased a data modem which plugs into a USB port, or a PCMCIA broadband card, then that’s a good option too.

But if you’ve got a data plan and your mobile telephone already operates on one of Australia’s 3G mobile networks, then surely you can use your telephone as a modem and connect to the internet through your mobile telephone?

Yep, you can.  That’s tethering.

Is it easy?  Technically, yes.  Practically, no.

Why not?

Because Australian telecommunications carriers want you to spend more money and buy their network adapters.  Like these.  IT Wire journalist and Tech Talk Radio’s Adam Turner explains it well in this article written for The Age Digital Life.

The Australian Android Market has no tethering applications and isn’t likely to in the near future, for reasons explained by Adam.  But is it mandatory to have applications listed in the Android Market, in order to install 3rd-party software on an Android-powered device?

No, not at all.

Introducing… Android Tethering!

Here’s what you need;

• An Android-powered phone, like the HTC Dream (aka T-Mobile G1, or “Google phone”); or an HTC Magic for example;
• A laptop / netbook / desktop computer;
• A USB cable to connect your phone to your laptop / netbook / desktop; and
• A data plan attached to your mobile telephone service.

Follow the steps at cp.blog, which are, in brief:

• Install the Tetherbot tethering application on your Google phone.  You need to tell your phone to allow installation of non-Android Market applications;
• Ensure the latest Android driver is installed on your laptop;
• Install the Android SDK or “adb” utility on your laptop;
• Open a command prompt and type “adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080″ to start the proxy server on your laptop (use  Task Manager to kill the process when you’re done – maybe setup a desktop shortcut to streamline this process);
• Use a web browser like Mozilla Firefox, and install a proxy manager like FoxyProxy.  Follow the configuration instructions in Mike’s post;
• Connect your Google phone, start Tetherbot and press “Start Socks”;

• Click on the web browser FoxyProxy button to force all traffic through the proxy server (“adb”) you have installed and started.  It would have looked something like this:

Bingo! All your web traffic is now routed through your Google phone.  You now have web access to the internet via your mobile telephone network.

I tested my new tethering by first checking my local IP address, through the WiFi connection:

…and then through the new tethered connection, via my mobile phone network:

Yep … definitely using a different network route now!

Warning! Watch your data usage.

Another Warning! Pay close attention to your data usage.

I would be interested to hear from people who have had similar success with this process, or modified the process slightly in order to use other handsets, proxy servers, browsers or browser plug-ins.

Many thanks to Mike Thompson and the Android Developer Community for assistance with this blog post.

android · android sdk · Google Android · Google Phone · HTC Dream · t-mobile g1 · tethering

On Tech Talk Radio this week we spoke about the current onslaught of “Commonwealth Bank” hoax emails, requesting or “phishing” for account details or personal information.

Source: Commonwealth Bank

Normally I wouldn”t give these schemes the time of day, but the size of this current campaign bombarding our mail servers is enormous.

The ‘real’ Commonwealth Bank site says:

“The Commonwealth Bank does not send emails requesting you to confirm, update or disclose your confidential banking information.”

Well that sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?

The problem is that unscrupulous spammers are riding the wave of the Commonwealth’s success, registering similar or deceptive domain names and sending hundreds of thousands of spam messages, in an effort to elicit a response from unwary Commonwealth customers.

Messages purporting to be from the following domains have all tried relaying through my mail server in the last 24 hours:

commbiz.commbank.com.au
commonwealths.com
commbank.au.com
bankofthecommonwealth.com
thecommonwealth.org
commbnk.com
commbank.net.au

…and the list goes on.

Fortunately SpamAssassin seems to be knocking them all on the head, by my server at least.

But not all mail servers run real-time anti-spam software, and lots of servers are delivering these messages.

Technology journalist Angus Kidman, writing for APC Magazine, says that the sheer variety of messages means that many anti-spam services are finding it impossible to identify all the problem emails, even if their text sounds familiar and seems easy to detect; also that according to email security vendor MessageLabs (a division of Symantec), in the first week of the campaign more than 22 different core messages were being sent out en masse, with more than 11 variants.

Read the APC article here.

So what can you do to combat the problem?

• Make sure you’re running anti-spam software, and a good email software (like Mozilla Thunderbird, NOT like Microsoft Outlook Express) that detects and quarantines spam;
• DON’T CLICK ON or RESPOND TO spam emails – doing so just verifies to the spammer that your email address is legitimate and active, and invites a thousand-fold increase in spam to your email address;
• Never disclose personal information or credit card details online, unless you’re 100% confident about the security of the website you’re visiting.  Always double-check SSL certificates and the website address in your web browser’s title bar.

If in doubt, don’t click!

apc · apc magazine · commonwealth · commonwealth bank · commonwealth bank spam · email · email scam · hoax email · junk · phishing · spam · Tech Talk Radio · thunderbird · TTR

Wow.

It’s only taken us six months.

Have a look.

Photo: Robert Broomhead (Monday night's guest)

Tech Talk Radio · TTR · ustream · ustream.tv · webcam

On Saturday I was invited to attend the AGM of the Wireless Institute of Australia in Traralgon, Gippsland.

The WIA is the organisation which represents amateur radio operators to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, and purports to be the world’s oldest national radio society, having been founded in 1910!

The WIA AGM “Weekend Of Activities” included conference speakers, informative radio-related technical presentations and off-site activities, like a tour of the Powerworks Energy Technology and Visitors’ Centre.

Yours truly did a short presentation on Social Media and Social Networking on Saturday night.  We had a great evening, the meal was delish and fun was had by all.

Photo: Robert Broomhead

Many thanks to Robert Broomhead for inviting me to attend, and for the terrific audio-visual system which “just worked” with my Asus netbook.

(Audio here: Dr Ron’s diatribe on Social Media and Social Networking at the 2009 WIA AGM.)

agm · amateur radio · social media · Social Networking · Tech Talk Radio · wia

Create a “word cloud” from a blog or RSS feed.  This site is awesome!  Check it out:

http://www.wordle.net/

tech · Tech Talk Radio · web · Web 2.0 · Website of the Week · wordle

Have you ever watched one of those fancy “webinars” or live video podcasts, and wondered how they broadcast “picture in picture” with different camera angles, or clever switching between cameras, desktop demonstrations and pre-recorded video?

I always thought fancy video switching hardware was required, not to mention some big, big bucks.

But… not so!

I was perusing the Ustream.tv help centre today, and saw a topic which immediately grabbed my eye: “…quickly and easily add scrolling text, logos, RSS feeds, special guests windows, picture in picture, pre-recorded video…”

Woooa, are they serious?  It can’t be that easy, can it?

Yep, it sure is.  Straight away I clicked the link to download WebcamMax for the PC.  This is a nifty utility which gives you significantly more control over your webcam and imaging devices than the default Ustream “broadcast applet”.  My mission was to set-up a “picture in picture” video stream, and it only took a matter of minutes to get this working with WebcamMax.

Setup and installation

Download the 8 MB installer.  Setup is fairly painless and after clicking the “Try” button (you get a 30 day free trial) you’re asked to nominate which applications you want WebcamMax to control video.  I unticked all except UStream.  Then you’re presented with an intuitive GUI which displays any video source that’s currently connected to your PC.  In my case, this was video from a traditional camera, piped through an external USB device like this one.

Next, click on the ‘Sources’ button.  The ‘Main Source’ is your primary video input, and ‘Webcam’ is selected by default.  Look to the right and you’ll see that you can select any other video source simply by clicking the combo box.  Now I’ve also got an in-built webcam in the netbook, which appears as ‘USB video device’.  I switched to that and suddenly I’m looking through the eye of a different camera.  WebcamMax makes it easy to switch between cameras or video sources in this way.

Click the combo to select your main source video device.

You can also click other items in the list, such as:

• ‘Screen’ – live-streams the desktop, by following your mouse pointer or sending the entire screen;
• ‘Movie’ – streams a movie of choice;
• ‘Picture’ – sends a JPG or other image (defaulting to your ‘My Pictures’ folder); and
• ‘Color’ – which lets you set a background colour of any desired shade.

Picture in Picture

But how good is this? Click the button at the bottom of the list control labelled ‘PinP Source 1′.  The same controls appear, duplicated, for a different video source.  Wow!  In no time at all I can display my netbook webcam as a picture inside the main picture.  No expensive video amplifiers or professional switching equipment required!

Picture-in-picture, just like that!

You can get much, much cleverer than this.  Play around with the advanced options and you can move the position of your “picture in picture”, maintain proportions or re-scale, and even have images display as a slide-show.

But wait, there’s more!

I only needed WebcamMax to do “picture in picture”, but it does heaps more than that.  By opening the ‘Effects’ dialogue you can simulate a chroma-key function with different backgrounds.  You can add lighting and shadow effects, grid lines, digital snow, scrolling text… the list goes on.  Select from local or online effects libraries.  There’s even a record feature which lets you write an AVI file to a local disk.

But how does it work with Ustream.tv?

WebcamMax emulates a video device in software.  This means that when you start the Ustream.tv broadcast applet, the WebcamMax “device” will appear in your Video Source drop-down, like this:

The Ustream.tv broadcast applet.  Note the 'Video Source' combo -
just select WebcamMax Capture and you're done.

Simply select WebcamMax as your video device and start broadcasting!

Road test

We’ll put WebcamMax through the hoops over the next few weeks at Tech Talk.  We’ll let you know how it performs, and we’ll listen to your feedback too.  One thing we’re mindful of is not becoming too distracted by the studio webcam; it is, after all, designed to supplement a radio programme, and 99% of our listeners don’t watch the webcam.  We’re hoping to change that, and we hope that using cool utilities like WebcamMax will help us along the way.

Visit the website: http://webcammax.com/

Tech Talk Radio · webcam · WebcamMax

Early January this year, international VoIP-provider Skype announced the release of Skype Lite for Google Android and other Java-enabled phones.

For Android-powered phones like my trusty HTC Dream, all I have to do is connect to the Android Market from my phone, search for Skype, select install, and Bob’s-your-auntie’s-livin’-lover.

This all sounds great, but (*sigh*) Google appears to be maintaining separate Android Markets for Australia and the rest of the world.

Searching the Android Market for “Skype”, “Lite” or “VoIP” reveals diddly-squat.

A media release which appears on many news services and blogs says:

The Android version of Skype Lite will be / is available through the Android Market.

Java-enabled phones, including those from LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, can simply visit www.skype.com/m Skype website.

(Read more.)

Tech Talk Radio host Andrew McColm has Skype Lite working brilliantly on his new Nokia E61, and Hutchison 3 even offers Andrew and me “Skype minutes” on our current phone contracts.

But I’m faced with two problems:

1. International disparity with Google’s Android Market means that Australian users can’t download the application easily, if at all; and
2. Skype are not offering the application via any method other than the Android Market.

Bummer.  Come on Google, Skype, there are plenty of us waiting to chew-through those thousands of Skype minutes on our phone contracts which are currently going to waste.

android · australia · dream · google · HTC · lite · skype · voip