OnQ : eOnCall

On Spam

eriq — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:11:52 GMT

The May 21 episodes of eOnCall feature spam prevention as a topic again, but this time Eriq is joined by Scott Barlow of Reflexion Networks, a hosted spam prevention vendor, to talk about the continuing battle to fight spam and what the industry is doing to provide the best solutions possible. In Thursday's pair of episodes, Eriq and Scott talk about the ways spam filters work to weed out unwanted messages, the benefits and drawbacks of using a spam solution, and the benefits and drawbacks of using a hosted spam solution.

Check out the episodes at 10am and 1pm Central time at the AirTunz Rock station on the 21st, or if you can't catch them "live," you can listen to them over the holiday weekend at the eOnCall web site.

On Partnerships

eriq — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:11:00 GMT

There's been a lot of scuttlebutt over the last year or so regarding Microsoft's position with their partner community. Most of that has resulted in a general consensus in the SMB community that Microsoft is trying to cut their partner relationships and go direct to your clients. Several people have blogged their opinions about this, but I'm not going to dispute or confirm any of those other posts. The intelligent human being will take in a wide variety of information and make up their own mind about how they're going to deal with any actions they may see in their own sphere of influence.

But one thing I've found out that many Microsoft partners in the SMB space did not know was that there is a group within Microsoft that is actively trying to hook up with Microsoft partners and help promote their businesses in their local communities. No, this is not part of the SBSC program and the TPAMs that may or may not be helpful, this is an entirely different and independent group - the Local Engagement Team.

There are two public facing sites for this team. The first is the MSLocalBiz site (http://www.mslocalbiz.com) which is aimed at consumers. The other is MSLocalPartner (http://www.mslocalpartner.com) which is aimed at MS partners. The goal of this organization is to connect local partners with other local organizations to help promote Microsoft products to help solve issues faced in the small business community.

For more information about what the Local Engagement Team is all about, listen to eOnCall this Thursday, April 9, at 10am and 1pm Central time at the AirTunZ Rock station. I interview one of the Local Engagement reps, Michael Murphy, about the Local Engagement Team and what they're trying to accomplish with the local community. Each episode is only 15 minutes, so it's not a huge time commitment on your part, and you may find out that the Local Engagement Team could be a big boost to you in your local community. [The show in podcast format will be posted next week, and I'll update this blog with the URLs for the shows if you can't listen during the broadcast on Thursday.]

Listen to the show, then check out the MSLocalPartner and MSLocalBiz sites and see how working with the Local Engagement Team could help your business.

Disclaimer: The Local Engagement Team is sponsoring the eOnCall program and has been since March 1. However, my working relationship with Michael Murphy started well over 6 months ago, and the sponsorship of the program grew out of our efforts to help EON Consulting get more involved in the Denton area. But, by sharing information about the Local Engagement Team with other partners, I'm actually reducing the cut of their budget I could be getting to help grow that business locally, so I'm certainly not gaining anything by sharing this information with the rest of you. :)

On Thursday

eriq — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:01:12 GMT

Tomorrow's episode (Jan 15, 2009) of eOnCall (which can be heard live at AIRTunZ http://www.airtunz.com or picked up from the podcast feed at http://www.eoncall.com) features a discussion with Amy Babinchak about Third Tier (http://www.thirdtier.net) and the support that she and I are trying to provide to the IT community through that organization. We also have our January webinar scheduled for 1pm EST (10am PST), where we'll be talking about Group Policy in SBS 2008. Info on January's webinar can be found at http://www.thirdtier.net/blog/2009/01/thursday-managing-sbs-2008-group-policy/. Busy day tomorrow, and this is just the start of things happening in 2009!

I hope you'll try to tune in for at least one of the items tomorrow.

On iPhone, Secure E-mail, and other things

eriq — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:23:00 GMT

I've mentioned the iPhone in previous posts and how I don't think it's really ready for prime time in the business community. Again, don't get me wrong, I think it's an amazing device, but for the folks that I consult with on a regular basis,it's just not going to be "all that" for them as a business communication tool. I do have a couple of clients running the iPhone, and one of them even tried to return it because it wasn't really doing what he wanted (I should also note that he purchased his iPhone prior to consulting with me about it).

Still, there are ways to get some level of e-mail communication set up with a Small Business Server or other Exchange server, but it requires some configuration changes on the back end of the mail server, and I've put up a couple of posts about doing just that (one for SBS Standard, one for SBS Premium with ISA 2004 to be precise).

I really should have put together something like this a long time ago, because as much as I like IMAP, it has the same core problem that POP3 e-mail does - the entire transaction is done over the Internet in clear text. No only are your username and password clearly visible to anyone who happens to be sniffing your network transaction, but all your e-mail contents are transmitted in the clear as well. By setting up IMAP communications over SSL, the entire transaction is encrypted, thereby protecting your account credentials. Unfortunately, the body of the message, unless it was an internal to internal communication, has already been sent in clear text across the internet when it was sent to you in the first place.

And I guess that's really my core point here - e-mail is NOT a secure communication medium. If you have confidential information you need to transmit to someone else, sending that information via e-mail is not going to get it there securely. Sure you can take steps to secure e-mail communications. You can read and compose your e-mail using Outlook Web Access over SSL (note that not all Outlook Web Access servers communicate via SSL). You can set up your remote e-mail client to use IMAP over SSL, or Outlook over SSL, if your back end mail server supports it. You can get an e-mail certificate that can be used to encrypt individual e-mail messages. But these are all extra steps an will not guarantee secure communications every time. If you mail server does not support IMAP over SSL, Outlook Web Access over SSL, Outlook over SSL, or another secure communications interface (how many web-based mail services actually have you both log in and compose/read e-mail over a secure web interface) then at least one portion of your e-mail communications will be sent across the wire in clear text. If you have an e-mail certificate, but the person you want to send to does not, you will not be able to encrypt an e-mail message to that person.

Yes, there are ways to secure e-mail. It will take some effort. Last year, I had reason to have secure communications with a local vendor that I worked with. My side was secure (Outlook over SSL, Outlook Web Access over SSL, etc.) and we both had e-mail certificates so that I could encrypt messages to him, and he to me. I feel fairly certain that those encrypted messages we exchanged were as secure as reasonably possible. But one he received and decrypted the message, Ihave no idea if or how it stayed secure afterward.

So if you've been thinking that e-mail is a nice, convenient, and SECURE way to communicate with business or other associates, please clear this myth from your mind. If you haven't had to jump through a few hoops to set up secure e-mail, you don't have it.

This sounds like a good topic for a radio show. I'll probably work that in for next week's eOnCall episode.

On Mac (Again)

eriq — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 13:16:00 GMT

Today's episodes of eOnCall start a two-week series on using the Macintosh in a Windows network. This is not a technical how-to like the Fresno session, but a business discussion of when it makes sense and how can it be done. If you or any of your clients have been asking about how to incorporate a Mac into their business network, or even if it's possible, you should find these next four episodes of interest.

Today's shows run at 10am and 1pm Central time on AIRTunz, and the episodes will be available at the eOnCall web site later today or tomorrow.

On Variety

eriq — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 17:05:00 GMT

Variety is the spice of life, so we're told, unless you live on Dune, but that's another story (literally). One of the things I really love about what I do in my business is that every day is a completely unexpected experience. I never know who's going to call or what issue they're going to need help with. In doing remote support through smallbizserver.net, each of the remote requests is about as different from the previous ones as posible. Bottom line, I love the fact that I never know exactly what to expect when I wake up in the morning. This is mostly good, but sometimes it can be a bit more interesting that you would like. But, for me anyway, it beats getting up and knowing *exactly* what is going to happen over the next 16 hours, because it's happened the same way every day since the last millenium.

We also try to throw a bit of variety into the eOnCall show. Last week (February 22, 2007), Anne Stanton sat in to talk about CRM software. Today's show (March 1, 2007) Sandi Hardmeier talks about the lastest hiccup in spyware attacks, coming at you through IM clients. Yikes. Next week, well, next week will be addressed next week.

Still, I think it's good to have a bit of the unexpected whenever possible. That's why there's been absolutely no pattern to the posts on this blog. Yeah, that's it. That's the reason...

On Radio

eriq — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 02:27:00 GMT

Well, Internet Radio, actually,and more like podcasts, but I digress.

I'm a little behind on posting information about the latest eOnCall episodes. In the last couple of weeks, we've had episodes discussing the whole DST issue, as well as an episode about possible technologies that will be a big hit in 2007.

But what may be of more immeidate interest is the special episode we did with Jeff Middleton discussing the upcoming SBS Migration Conference in New Orleans Memorial Day weekend of 2007. Grab the episode from the eOnCall web site and listen to the conversation between me and Jeff about the conference and what attendees can get out of it, besides just a very cool cruise (but I must admit, I'm really excited about that part).

On Planning

eriq — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:13:00 GMT

What's the exact phrase? "The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry"? Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Sometimes Mother Nature just gets in the way. Take this past week, for instance. Tuesday, I started getting the head cold that's been going around on. Wednesday, I end up all day on a server migration that should have taken about 6 hours (sound familiar?) Thursday, i take a very rare day off and visit my doctor, to confirm that I have a sinus infection, but am also told that I've got the beginnings of walking pneumonia. Friday I have an all-day activity that ends up being walking tours of several areas, and I have to bail out early in the afternoon because I just don't have the energy to keep up. Then, with the ice covering the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex area al weekend (or at least the threat that finally comes through late Sunday), I opt to stay in bed all weekend to try and recover.

All that to say that even though the regularly-scheduled broadcast of eOnCall ran on time last Thursday, I didn't get the podcast version posted to the web site. And i've yet to get in to record the show for this coming week, so teh broadcast version may well be a repeat. Since we got iced in again today in Texas, perhaps I'll be able to get together with the crew at Tucker Communications and get a show put together later this afternoon.

In any case, the show from last week is finally up, and there will be some show broadcast on Thursday, but we'll have to see if it's new content or a repeat.

On Broadcast

eriq — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 21:18:00 GMT

We ran our second live broadcast this morning for eOnCall. Tim Barrett of No Geek Left Behind joined me for a discussion on communities in the relam of small businesses. We also videotaped the broadcast so at some point in the future, for those who may be interested, you can see us pull back the curtains and witness just what we go through to put on a live show (it's not really as interesting as you might otherwise think).

Getting ready for the broadcast was a bit of an adventure, though. After being up for 22 straight hours (and only getting two hours sleep before that) I was about to crash in the hotel room when I noticed it was a bit warm in the room. I had turned down the AC earlier in the day, but it wasn't anywhere near that temperature. So I placed a quick call to the front desk and they sent someone right up. He got the fan blowing, but the compressor wouldn't come on, so I could either take a new room or let him spend a couple of hours trying to get it working. It was cool enough that I opted to open the balcony window to let the cool night air in and give it a go at that, and the thought of packing up the room and moving right then wasn't very palatable.

Unfortunately, I should have requested a room move right then and there, because it never did cool down and there was (surprisingly) a lot of traffic noise, and so I didn't get much sleep. So, at 5am local time, I called down and requested another room. I got a new room key brought up to me immediately, and I packed up and moved with an hour to spare before hooking up to get online for the broadcast.

At any rate, the show went off without a hitch, and the episode is already available on the archive site and on iTunes as well. Enjoy!