EICAR Test File

Today I stumbled across this nifty little thing called the EICAR Test File.  It is a file that is completely safe, but has a virus signature that has been incorporated into most antivirus products.  This means you can use it to test the effectiveness of your antivirus software.  This is just a basic test of being able to identify a known signature and is not in anyway a measure of how effective your software is against new attacks or anything else.  I find it particularly useful for testing email filtering.

 Read more here…  Eicar Test File

Gmail Tips

I just read an interesting article in Network World Magazine that gives the reader some great tips for gmail.

1) Gmail ignores periods.

2) Gmail lets you tag your account by appending a “+” ex: accountname+whatever@gmail.com

These could be useful. For instance you can send email to joesomebody@gmail.com or send it to joe.somebody@gmail.com or joesome.body@gmail.com it all goes to the same place.

The second tip is useful when you consider that you can apply rules to messages based on the address the message was sent to. If you would like to have all emails from a client go into a specific folder, you could give them a tagged address like joesomebody+clientABC@gmail.com. Then assign a rule to messages sent to that address. Sure there are other ways to do this, but you get the idea.

You can also use this for tracking purposes. Do you suspect that a specific vendor is reselling your personal information? Try giving ebay the address joesomebody+ebay@gmail.com. This way, if you start getting emails from spammers that are addressed to joesomebody+ebay@gmail.com you now know that ebay gave out your address.

Have fun…

How much is IT worth?

Do you know anyone with a small business that could really use an I.T. person (a computer person) but can only afford to pay a wage far too low to attract a good IT person? I am seeking companies like this to participate in an IT time-sharing opportunity. For as low as $8.00/hr you can have an IT department. Thats right, for the price of one unskilled full-time worker, you can have at your disposal, a talented, highly experienced IT person to help your company meet its IT goals.

Your answers are just a phone call away. We will come meet with you and assess your IT needs. Then we will install an agent on your PC’s that will allow us to remotely access your machines (with permission of course). If the problem can not be addressed remotely, we can come out and perform a site visit*.

Contact me if you are interested. Limited opportunities available.

*For full details, please contact me.

Podcasts

I had always heard the term “podcast” and was slightly confused as to what this meant.  I thought it had something to do with the iPod and that was about it.

I got an iPod for Christmas and decided it was time to find out.  It turns out that the iPod is actually optional, and that the podcast is a recorded broadcast that you can listen to on your time. (If you don’t have an iPod, you can burn to cd or download to your mp3 player of choice.)  This is a really cool concept.  Most of them are also free. I love listening to talk radio, but it stinks when you have to get out of your car without hearing the punchline of the joke, or hearing the rest of the story.  I also detest driving around and not being able to find anything good on the radio.

Now, I can listen to my own radio station whenever I want, with the option of rewinding, pause, etc.  My favorites are the Dave Ramsey podcast and some other educational ones that I found.

http://www.daveramsey.com/etc/cms/index.cfm?intContentID=3236