March – 2010 – TechVirtuoso

Google Chrome to include Adobe Flash player

March 30th, 2010 at 2:27 PM No Comments Michael Stanclift

In a move that is sure to anger those who like total control over the software on their computers, Google has teamed up with Adobe to bundle Flash player with their Chrome browser. From the announcement on the Chromium Blog:

Today, we’re making available an initial integration of Flash Player with Chrome in the developer channel. We plan to bring this functionality to all Chrome users as quickly as we can.

We believe this initiative will help our users in the following ways:

When users download Chrome, they will also receive the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. There will be no need to install Flash Player separately.

Users will automatically receive updates related to Flash Player using Google Chrome’s auto-update mechanism. This eliminates the need to manually download separate updates and reduces the security risk of using outdated versions.

With Adobe’s help, we plan to further protect users by extending Chrome’s “sandbox” to web pages with Flash content.

Improving the traditional browser plug-in model will make it possible for plug-ins to be just as fast, stable, and secure as the browser’s HTML and JavaScript engines. Over time this will enable HTML, Flash, and other plug-ins to be used together more seamlessly in rendering and scripting.

Those who were hoping to see HTML5 deal a killshot to Flash, should be very disappointed.

TV Guide for March 30

March 30th, 2010 at 11:01 AM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

This is the introduction post to the TechVirtuoso Guide, what we hope will become a daily breakdown of important IT tidbits from the previous day, and what we expect to happen that day.

Yet again, someone has come forward with another rumor that a CDMA iPhone is coming this summer. This time, it comes from the Wall Street Journal. The new iPhone would work on Verizon Wireless, as well as Sprint Nextel in the United States and a handful of carriers in other countries including South Korea and Japan. The current iPhone is designed to work on the vast majority of carriers world-wide, including AT&T and T-Mobile in the US, using a signaling technology called GSM.

It would seem that SSL isn’t as secure as once thought. The problem isn’t the encryption, but the certificate providers. Ars has a breakdown of how governments are working with the CAs to “subvert the entire system to allow them to spy on anyone they wish to keep tabs on.”

Apple has released a major update to OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” — fixes in version 10.6.3 include enhancements to USB, OpenGL, DNS, QuickTime X, AirPort, iCal, Mail, MobileMe, Time Machine, and numerous other areas of the operating system. Choose Software Update from the Apple menu to check for the latest Apple software via the Internet, including this update.

Future versions of the Ubuntu Linux operating system will change the way units are measured in the operating system and enforced throughout applications used in the OS. Starting in Ubuntu 10.10, coming this October, SI prefixes (base-10) will denote 1 kB as 1000 bytes, 1 MB as 1000 kB, 1 GB as 1000 MB, and so on. This is similar to the way OS X started measuring data in Snow Leopard. Neowin has a full breakdown of the measuring guidelines.

You will soon be able to jailbreak an iPhone over the air, instead of having it tethered to a computer. Your move Apple.

Need help running Linux as a guest OS in Microsoft Hyper-V? Sounds strange, but Microsoft has released a best practices guide to do just that. Download it off their website. Don’t blame us if you create a black hole in your datacenter though. In related news, Hypervizor.net has a great article on anti-virus exemptions in Hyper-V. Proper configuration of your antivirus can prevent performance issues, but also keep your VMs from being eaten alive by an aggressive scanning engine.

Virtual PBXs, are they the future?

March 11th, 2010 at 12:23 AM 2 Comments Frank Owen

Phone Systems have evolved over the last 10 years. With the death of the traditional PBX and the new VoIP movement businesses have more reasons to upgrade and more feature sets to choose from. I previously managed the IT department for a small company that relied heavily on the phone system.

They purchased a (at the time) a state of the art system and spent a big chunk of change thinking it would last them forever. Fast Forward 10 years and that same system that cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars is now worth 30K (if they found a sucker on the street) and they were spending thousands of dollars every month on maintenance for the ancient piece of equipment sitting on the wall. They were stuck with a dinosaur and were quickly falling behind their competitors.

(more…)

Not everything made by Cisco is made of gold

March 8th, 2010 at 3:14 PM 5 Comments Jake Sonelly

The scenario: You’ve found yourself working at a company that is experiencing phenomenal growth. The employees have actually decupled in the past year and show no signs of slowing in the near future (on this note, when was the last time you saw the “decupled” in print?). You have inherited a network that is truly a Frankensteinian creation that not even the original architects understand any more. You have noticed that you neither have a working firewall nor a decent VPN system, though Cisco VPN is used by a handful of key employees to connect to a Cisco 1800 series router. The IP scheme for the organization, which spans three sites, is using the 192.x.x.x address space. You wish to straighten everything out with a minimum of downtime and as seamless as possible for the end-users. What do you do?

Well, instead of telling you what to do, allow me to tell you what not to do. Not just that, let me drill into your collective skulls what not to do. Are you ready? Here it comes:

Do not, and this is key, so write it down… do not buy a Cisco SA 500 series device.

(more…)

HTC Supersonic coming sooner then expected?

March 3rd, 2010 at 12:29 AM 2 Comments Frank Owen

Sprints soon to be flagship Android device may be coming to big yellow sooner then anyone expected. According to a article at Forbes.com the HTC Monster could be available by Summer of 2010. Is it coincidence that this date has been pushed up a week after Verizon announced that they are looking better then expected for the LTE rollout of 2010? Is Sprint trying to 1 up Verizon by getting their first WiMAX enabled phone out the door before Verizon gets their first LTE roll out functional?

No matter the reason I cannot wait to get my hands on this device. The rumored Snapdragon processor, slim form factor and large display should make this phone a winner among many Sprint fans. Look below for some leaked photos of the new device, these photos have been taken from EngadgetMobile.com, androidmobileos.com and youhtc.ru.

View Full Album