We do a lot of work with Microsoft Windows Smartphones, so we have anxiously been awaiting the next generation of phones. Verizon has been the clear leader in the US, offering the Palm 700W, the Motorola Q, & the HTC XV6700. Those of us with Cingular contracts have suffered from phone envy for a long time.
According to our friends over at MS Mobiles, the situation changes Thursday, the 16th of November. Cingular is set to ship 2 new smartphones:
The Samsung Blackjack is a Q killer. It offers G3 HSDPA broadband speeds, which are more than double the speeds of Verizon’s “high-speed” broadband. It is also a quad-band phone, making it well suited for world travelers.
The HTC Hermes, aka Cingular 8525 is the latest version of its popular pocket PC phone, which offers full touch screen PDA functionality. It is similar to the Verizon XV6700, but like the Blackjack, the 8525 offers HSDPA broadband. The 8525 also has a 2 megapixel camera and 802.11 support.
Both of these have great multimedia capabilities, such as streaming audio and video, but they really shine as business tools. If you have Microsoft Exchange 2003, these phones are a must-have. In Exchange 2003, Microsoft beefed up its wireless activesync. With a Windows-based phone and an accessible Exchange 2003 web access server, you can synchronize e-mail, contacts and calendars over the cellular network. With Exchange SP2, Exchange can push data to your phone, but this is a huge battery drain. The better option is to set your phone to synchronize every 5-15 minutes. Exchange combines with a Windows Smartphone blows away the capabilities of blackberrys and you don’t need any extra software to roll this out to your entire company.
I’m going to order the Blackjack as soon as it is released on Thursday, and hope to have a real-world review up soon.
Whether you know it or not, there is a booming marketplace out there called the Internet and one of the most successful uses for it has been E-Commerce. There are many markets, from grandma who wants pictures of her grandkids delivered to her doorstep to, yes, Geeks. In this article, we’re going to focus on how to provide E-Commerce to Geeks; how to get them, how to keep them, and how to get them back if you lost them. Please try to remember that the scope of selling to Geeks isn’t just restricted to shops like ThinkGeek (which target individuals) but businesses of all shapes and sizes with very diversified markets; geeks have jobs too.
Everyone knows that the best marketing is word of mouth! You do know this, right? Word of mouth can either make you, or it can break you. It all depends on what is being said about your business. The key is to both drive new business and to retain old business (repeat customers rock!). The path to success in each of these areas is your customer service. Customer service is the lifeblood of your organization. Almost anyone can sell something once – it’s selling the second time around that is the difficult part, especially if the customer (henceforth, your Geek) has had a bad experience with your company.
Try to follow these rules (listed below in semi-random order), and you’ll be well on your way to success when selling to Geeks. Many of these rules can apply to more than just Geek E-Commerce. These are basic rules that any organization can and should follow.
I recently was asked by some colleagues how an IT admin can get into infosec. It’s a tough question for 3 reasons: 1) Most administrators are not wired to be security professionals. The goal of admins is to provide services to users. The goal of infosec is to limit services to only authorized users. These goals often conflict. 2) Most admins specialize in a single technology; good security pros need to be fluent in a wide range of technologies. 3) Security requires a deep knowledge of computing and networking theory, which many admins lack. Modern operating systems provide a high level of abstraction from issues such as the proper format of TCP headers. I know some very skilled systems engineers who do not fully understand a 3-way handshake, nor do they need to. But for a security engineer, understanding this process, how to exploit it, and how to recognize when someone else is exploiting it is critical.
My best advice for those crazy enough to desire a career in infosec is always to start with the technology they already know, learn how it works at a low level and how to break it, and then learn how to protect it. After that, security is a non-stop learning process. The best security guys I know spend hours reading, surfing, and studying every night. Sleep is for the weak!
I compiled the list of books below as a representative sample of the books on my shelf that I reach for regularly. In my (never) humble opinion, every infosec professional should own (and read) each of these, or others in the same category. Originally, I intended this to be a Top 10 list, but I had too many books on my list. 20 is the shortest I could get it and still be representative.
EdgeBack’s consultants rarely sit still for long. Because he aparently has too much free time, Jerry Gilreath just launched his new site dedicated to “the gadgets we own, the gadgets we want, and the gadgets that are kinda cool… and some neat things to do with them.” Jerry claims the site is like MAKE meets engadget. I say it is just plain cool. Look for future posts here in the security section and at Gadget Workshop on the security threats many of these “gadgets” represent. I posted a short review of the Vantec NexStarLX NAS enclosure. My next project will involve creative ways to exploit U3 software found on many USB flash drives including SanDisk to gain control of target PCs. -Bill
We do a lot of work with Microsoft Windows Smartphones, so we have anxiously been awaiting the next generation of phones. Verizon has been the clear leader in the US, offering the Palm 700W, the Motorola Q, & the HTC XV6700. Those of us with Cingular contracts have suffered from phone envy for a long time.
