Dave’s Guide to the Best of the Web

    My real job is as a network engineer for Collages.Net Inc. As anyone who works in the industry will know the field of knowledge is vast and the challenges continuous. How does one deal with the continuous expansion of knowledge and challenges? One way is by subscribing to Informit’s Safari Tech Books Online.

Safari is an online bookshelf with hundreds of titles from many of the most renowned publishers (O’Reilly, Addison-Wesley, Sams, Que, Cisco, Microsoft) and authors (Gary McGraw, Michael Miller, Jesse Liberty) in the industry. Topics covered include applied sciences, artificial intelligence, technical certifications (e.g. A+, CCNA, MCSE), computer science, databases, desktop publishing, desktop applications, e-business/e-commerce, enterprise computing, internet, programming, multimedia, networking, and security amongst others.

Here is a quick sampling of the sort of volumes you can expect from Safari:

• Programming Collective Intelligence, Toby Segaran (Artificial Intelligence).
• Cisco ASA, PIX, and FWSM Firewall Handbook by David Hucaby  (Networking/Security).
• Beautiful Code by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson (Computer Science).
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Unleashed by Ray Rankins, & co. (Databases).
• Java in a Nutshell by David Flanagan (Programming).

Okay, those are some pretty technical volumes, but for those just getting started there are some excellent volumes as well. Whether you need to learn basic web design, how to edit multimedia files, it management skills, or any of dozens of areas of expertise - Safari InformIT can help.

It does cost money - but the cost is reasonable. Technical volumes don’t sell many copies (how many people want to read about low-level kernel details?) so authors and publishers have to make up for this lack in readership by increasing the price of volumes. A good technical volume can oftentimes run $50 or more at a traditional bookstore. With Safari InformIT you can read several books at a time for $9.95 per month, or get even more at a higher price. You really can’t argue with the price.

The internet was designed with a limited number of IP addresses. These addresses are essentially phone numbers by which computers can locate and communicate with each other. Because of this limited number of IP addresses most home users, and many business users, have what are known as dynamic IP addresses. This means that there IP address changes over time, as opposed to a static IP address which always stays the same. How does this help the problem? In the old days when everyone was using dial-up no one was connected to the internet 24/7 so it made a lot of sense - whenever you weren’t online your IP address was given to someone else and you would acquire the IP address of someone else who wasn’t online the next time you connected. These days the benefits have become significantly less - consumers are beginning to use broadband as their mainstay, and this means they are constantly connected. Still, most companies don’t give out static IP’s - they charge extra.

So, we have all these people with dynamic IP addresses - including you and me. Now imagine trying to call your friend (John Doe) but every day his phone number changes. How frustrating would that be? It’d be nearly impossible to get a hold of him. On the internet we are mainly establishing communications (e.g. we reach out to yahoo, aol, google) but in this case someone is trying to contact us. Oftentimes we wouldn’t want them to contact us, but what when we do? How can we get remote assistance when we need it?

Add to this the fact that there are many unethical individuals who enjoy or for monetary reasons hack computers. This means that even if you have a static IP address you probably have protection (such as a firewall) to protect you from hackers. But the firewall isn’t very intelligent - it can’t tell that Jane Doe is your computer whiz sister and not a hacker. We could go on to talk about other technologies like NAT (Network Address Translation) and PAT (Port Address Translation) that make it extremely difficult to give remote assistance but the point is - there are a lot of hurdles to jump to remotely assist or receive assistance from someone else for our computer, and just talking over the phone about an issue is a slow and inefficient way to communicate about computers.

So what is the solution? What solution is a new application called CrossLoop. Its free (woohoo!) and built on an old open source application called TightVNC. TightVNC allows one to remotely access computers. So why do you need CrossLoop? Well, TightVNC was written for geeks, CrossLoop was written for everyone. It allows all of us to remotely assist or receive assistance.

How does it work? Well, first you go to crossloop.com. There you and the person you want to assist download a very small program. You install and run the program. You then click the host tab. The person who needs assistance then tells the person they are receiving assistance from the access code they have on their screen and click connect. Meanwhile the person who is assisting types in the access code on the join tab and clicks connect as well. After a moment the assisting person will be able to see the individual in need of assistance’s screen and take control of the computer, just as if they were sitting in front of the computer. They can then perform any troubleshooting or diagnosis that needs to be performed. Close out of the program and they can no longer access your computer. Its an easy, free, and safe (as far as anything can be safe - e.g. even banks can be robbed) method of giving and receiving remote assistance.

Let’s talk a minute about how this magic works. Essentially when you click Connect you are sending a message out to the CrossLoop servers uniquely identifying yourself with the access code and whether you are the host or the assister. CrossLoop then acts as an intermediary who can point both of you into communication with each other and can keep track of where you. All of this occurs transparently to you, which is the beauty of CrossLoop.

If any of this seems confusing or scary, don’t worry - just pass it off to the person who is assisting you. They may just not be aware this application exists.

LiveScience is an online news site that offers a wide variety of articles on topics related to science as it relates to space, animals, health, the environment, technology, history, and the strange. It is a place where one could spend ten minutes - or several hours.

Want to know Corey Binns thinks toilets need to be radically redesigned for environmental reasons? Or how a glimpse of time before the big bang is possible according to Charles Q. Choi? Interesting in what’s technology will bring us soon? How about Top 10 Emerging Environmental Technologies. Or read Ker Than’s report on The Surprising Realities of Mythical Creatures which looks at an exhibit currently on-display at the American Museum of Natural History.

Of course, there is always so much to read and so little time - but if you are in for a snack of science - take a look at LiveScience. The articles are interesting, the photos and interactive materials are plentiful and a few minutes couldn’t hurt - could it?

The image of the Daphnia Pulex is with many thanks to V. Gewin’s Functional Genomics Thickens the Biological Plot. PLoS Biology Vol. 3/6/2005, e219.

    Active Server Pages (ASP) allowed rapid web application development using a subset of popular programming languages - such as VBScript (Visual Basic). Then Microsoft changed everything. They created the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework was an underlying base on which applications could be written - whether based around the desktop or the web. This brought about a whole new series of languages, including web-based languages…Including ASP.NET. ASP.NET no longer is restricted to a subset of Visual Basic or C#, now it has the languages full power. It is a reasonable, a viable, a powerful alternative to open source programming languages for the web such as PHP and Ruby.

ASP.NET is Microsoft’s homepage for all things ASP.NET related. It includes downloads for Visual Web Designer Express, a full-featured development application for creating ASP.NET applications. It is very similar in design to Visual Studio and includes all the essential web design features of Visual Studio. It is also home of ASP.NET AJAX - formerly known as Atlas. A library and set of extensions that allows for rapid development of web 2.0 features using the popular AJAX technology (a combination of JavaScript and XML).

ASP.NET also includes large numbers of tutorials, videos, and sample code to help you learn the language. It has gigantic forums which are an excellent source for answering technical questions.

When I was employed by Philadelphia Biblical University as a Computer Lab Supervisor I would spend my spare time working through the various tutorials that where on the ASP.NET website - and this is how I learned ASP.NET. I didn’t need to spend money on books or development tools - ASP.NET had it all for me.

If you are interested in developing a web application - give ASP.NET a gander.

    I like software. One of the new startups that recently gained my attention is Wakoopa. A website with a small software application. This application runs continuously in the background monitoring what applications you are using. Then it uploads this information to their website and creates a social page where you can share the applications you use and your thoughts on these applications.

What applications do I use most? Since starting Wakoopa on my machine I’ve spent nearly 228 hours using Firefox (or  9.5 days), 36 hrs. using Microsoft Outlook (1.5 days), 34 hrs. using Remote Desktop Connection (1.5 days). Below these are Mozilla Thunderbird (30 hrs.), Feedreader (20 hrs.), OpenOffice.Org (20 hrs.), Visual Studio 2005 (20 hrs.), Internet Explorer (6 hrs.) and so on down the list.

Do you wonder how you spend your time on the computer? Here’s how to find out. Then share this information with friends and family. Learn what programs others like, talk with the developers of many of the applications, and share your own comments. For those who enjoy Facebook, there is also a widget for Facebook.