What’s IT all about?

In a prior existence as an IT Manager, I implemented a Websense server on our network, primarily to monitor website usage and enforce our internet use policy. It was, and probably still is, a very good product offering a huge level of detail on who is accessing what on the network.

For a small business, however, Websense and it’s competing products just don’t make sense. Financially they are aimed at corporations, not a small office, and they require quite a bit of work to set up and maintain, let alone keep on top of the reports that are generated.

There are hosted services out there, through the likes of Messagelabs and Blackspider, that take the need for installing your own equipment away. However, there is still an ongoing cost involved, and you are likely to be faced with significant configuration and monitoring still.

If, however, all you want is basic web filtering (i.e. don’t let anyone access gambling sites) then this can be achieved for free. How, well it’s quite easy really, and it’s all achieved through DNS. For those that don’t know, DNS (Domain Name Services) converts those ever-so friendly website and email address names (e.g. www.fourlakes.co.uk) into much less friendly but very necessary IP addresses (e.g. 72.52.225.30) which tell your PC exactly where to find the relevant web page. Your network is probably set up to use your ISP’s DNS servers, which makes sense as they are located quite close (in network terms anyway) to your computer. However, if you change your DNS server settings on your ADSL or Cable router to point at those run by OpenDNS.com (namely 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220) then you open up basic web filtering for your network. You need to register on the OpenDNS site first, but once you’ve done that it will recognise any traffic from your network and filter it against a whole raft of website categories. You can choose which ones you want blocked, resulting in a standard message which can be tailored to include your logo. This page also contains some fairly discrete advertising which is how the service pays for itself.

Additional feature include some pretty basic stats…you won’t get filtering or reporting to a user level, but you will find out if someone is trying to access unwanted websites on your network, allowing you to take action to track down the culprit if you so wish.

Worth a look.

Work on the new, improved Four Lakes website has started in earnest now, and for the moment I’m looking at Joomla as a CMS solution. My current site, whilst reasonably professional looking, is extremely limited in functionality and, indeed, in the total number of pages I can publish. The current plan is to develop a LAMP/Joomla based site* using one of the hundreds (if not thousands) of Joomla templates out there. As a result I should end up with something professional, modern, and capable of boosting business rather than holding it back. And bringing my Joomla skills up to scratch is probably not a bad move either !

* Using VMWare to provide a LAMP/Joomla development environment on a Windows PC is a real boon here.

As mentioned a while ago, Four Lakes is moving from the Surrey/Hants border to Kent, now confirmed for 24th May. As part of the whole operation I will be moving house, which has been described as one of the three most stressful activities that can be undertaken. This particular move, so far, has been probably one of the smoother one, and yet there have been negotiations over work needed on part of the roof, and pressure from our vendor to move in a certain timeframe. Still, we have managed to exchange contracts successfully, and the moving date is set.

One of the painful aspects of moving house, I have found, is sending out change of address notices to all and sundry. Email has eased that problem somewhat, and online services like Plaxo have the potential to help too, but notifying the myriad of companies we deal with in our personal lives has always been a chore. Whether it’s the utilities, banks, credit cards or whatever, finding the right address to send your ‘Please update your records with our new address’ letter is most definitely a chore.

However, I came across a service the other day that has given me some significant help with this particular problem. Iammoving.com asks you a few pertinient questions (old and new addresses, moving date, etc.) and then asks you to choose from a list of companies to inform, categorised by type. Once you’ve built your list and, if necessary, added company-specific information (such as your bank account number) to some of the selections, you can press the button and electronic notifications are sent to your list. Or, at least, electronic notifications are sent to some of the companies on your list. The others produce a pdf which you can print and stuff into an envelope.

So it’s not as easy as it might be, due no doubt to the reluctance of certain companies to accept electronic change of address notifications, but still a useful service. If you’re moving house then it’s worth a look.

People are sharing lots of things online these days. This blog is a prime example of me sharing my knowledge and expertise on IT (what little of it there is) with the wider community. Wiki’s, such as Wikipedia, are another great example of this. People also share photographs (see Flickr as a leading example) online too, sometimes photos that you would think are quite personal. But, would you, as a company, share your data?

Well, why not? OK, you’d probably want to hang on to some of it, your sales per customer, that sort of thing. But I’m sure there’s a load of data sitting in your network that you wouldn’t have a problem  sharing and that would be useful to someone else. And it’s that expectation that’s driving a new site called Swivel.

But why would you freely give up something that you’ve spent time and money acquiring? Well, like every single blogger, it’s really about publicity…telling everyone that you have a unique skill-set, and here’s an example of it. So if your company is know for producing widgets, then publicising how many widgets you’ve sold is a means of saying “Look how good our widgets are, lots of people buy them!”.