Wikis in the Enterprise

The most famous “wiki” is probably Wikipedia. In case you don’t know, “wikis” are web sites that can be updated, essentially by anyone, to share collaborative information. Now, there is beginning to be a demand made on Enterprises (large businesses) to bring Wikis into the corporate world. And, there is resistance. Why? Can you say, “Lack of control?”

Wikis Are Alive and Kicking in the Enterprise

“If you haven’t heard that cry already, chances are you will soon, as the use of wikis in enterprise environments spreads like wildfire. Proliferating virally, wiki usage has grown exponentially in recent months, along with other consumer-centric technologies—including blogs, podcasts and RSS—that have made their way into the workplace thanks in part to the influx of the tech-savvy entry-level employees of so-called Generation Y. A wiki, which means ‘quick’ in Hawaiian, is a Web site that enables users to easily edit and update shared content. Computer programmer Ward Cunningham originated the wiki concept and gave it its name more than a decade ago. After slow growth initially, wiki use has exploded in the past couple of years. Wiki technology, which has been popularized by the widely used Web encyclopedia Wikipedia, took a big leap in mind share when Google purchased wiki software maker JotSpot for an undisclosed amount on Oct. 31.”

The “Everyone Corrects the Doctor” Edition of the Dr. Bill Podcast #63!

Dr. Bill Podcast – 63 – (11/18/06)
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Audio quality is poor this week… I didn’t have my usual mic and headset… sigh! It will be better on the next show! It has been a slightly frustrating program to make… everyone was out to correct me, and I am grumpy! (Just kidding… a little!) Sean writes from Indonesia to correct my grammar… and offer a poem! Sean wins this week’s “Brownie Point!” A famous quote from my Dad! Techpodcast.com Network promos! This is your brain on Linux! Geek Culture video from “We Are the Web.” Here’s the link I promised to the video:

https://wearetheweb.org/videos.html

Notes from the Blog (Dr. Bill – The Computer Curmudgeon, of course!) “Feisty Fawn” Ubuntu report – what’s coming from Ubuntu! NO misquoting Mark Shuttleworth! A tip from the Doctor to Mark… lose the brown! Sun releases Java to Open Source! The “G” in Gnu is silent. More mistakes from the Doctor this week! An “Air Guitar” shirt! Dr. Bill drops a tiny hint about a secret! Microsoft is mega-huge and doesn’t know what some other areas of the company are doing! Info about my family: wife, Belinda, and son, Ben! About Ben’s BBS-based games… wild! Zune in the Microsoft sense. Zune and Vista, not compatible. Geek Software of the Week! Vibe Streamer! You can share your MP3s over your network to other machines via a special web page! Don’t call the RIAA! The MP3s CAN be restricted! Russian Spam! Monty Python fans UNTIE! Speeling misteaks from colleagues! (Misspellings intentional!) Dr. Bill sings the Spam song! Air is air-ish! About botnets and Spam! How to be safe on the Internet:

https://www.drbillbailey.net/safe.html

Let be safe out there! Dr. Bill gets an e-mail! Scott interrupts the Podcast! He sends two redundant e-mails! And… why! Scott doesn’t spam… and his graphics truly rock! Do turkeys really drown in the rain when they look up? Russians dewds… we don’t your spam! 10 minutes, 55 seconds over time! The Doctor is out!

Russian Spam “Bump”

Have you noticed more spam lately? Well, it is real. Some Russians running a botnet network are pumping out way more spam than normal!

‘Pump-and-Dump’ Spam Surge Linked to Russian Bot Herders

“The recent surge in e-mail spam hawking penny stocks and penis enlargement pills is the handiwork of Russian hackers running a botnet powered by tens of thousands of hijacked computers. Internet security researchers and law enforcement authorities have traced the operation to a well-organized hacking gang controlling a 70,000-strong peer-to-peer botnet seeded with the SpamThru Trojan. According to Joe Stewart, senior security researcher at SecureWorks, in Atlanta, the gang functions with a level of sophistication rarely seen in the hacking underworld. For starters, the Trojan comes with its own anti-virus scanner—a pirated copy of Kaspersky’s security software—that removes competing malware files from the hijacked machine. Once a Windows machine is infected, it becomes a peer in a peer-to-peer botnet controlled by a central server. If the control server is disabled by botnet hunters, the spammer simply has to control a single peer to retain control of all the bots and send instructions on the location of a new control server.”

Please help eradicate spam! How? Never buy ANYTHING you get from an unsolicited message. Go out of your way not to. Once they can’t make money, they will stop. Do your part!

Geek Software of the Week: Vibe Streamer!

More and more we are going to see streaming services in our homes. I still believe that the future of TV is actually “IPTV,” meaning TV shows will be streamed over the Internet to our homes and we will be able to have “narrowcasting” of only what we want to watch shown on our TV sets! Well, you can do that now with MP3 music in your home!

Vibe Streamer – Free MP3 Streaming Music Server for Windows

Check out these features on this FREE software!

  • Free MP3 Streaming Server.
  • Easy installation and configuration.
  • Share unlimited files and directories.
  • Full support for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003.
  • Protect your directories with user accounts and groups.
  • Easily manage your users, groups and their access rights.
  • Restrict access to your server based on the clients IP address, for better security.
    Unlimited skin possibilities, create your own or download new skins as they appear on our website.
  • The included standard skin supports the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera.
  • Our own Vibe Script Language, for unlimited possibilities in skin creation.
  • Guaranteed free from backdoors, spyware, adware and other non-requested software.
  • Very nice! Check it out! And, if you set up your outgoing ports through your firewall correctly, you can even listen over the Internet from anywhere (say, at work!) Keep all your music in one place, yet securely listen to them when you want to, anywhere you have an Internet connection!

    The New “Zune” from Microsoft is Incompatible with Windows Vista!

    You HAVE to be kidding! You would think Microsoft would have “talked among themselves” and made sure that this embarrassing issue would not have happened!

    It’s true: The Zune is incompatible with Vista

    “I had heard the Windows Media Player DRM and the Zune DRM were not going to be compatible. (According to this Knowledge Base article, Zune supports Windows Media Player 10’s DRM, but not WMP 11’s. And ‘Zune software and devices only play protected music files from Zune Marketplace.’) That was bad enough. But there is absolutely no way Microsoft would allow the Zune to work only with Windows XP SP2 and Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2, I said. It is going to have to support Vista — or at least have a clear-cut upgrade path and timetable as to when Vista support will be provided. But on November 14, Microsoft rolled out the Zune player, which doesn’t work with Vista. And so far, the Softies haven’t provided any public info (that I’ve heard/seen) about when the company will introduce a patch or update enabling the Zune to work with Vista. I already know Microsoft’s justification: Vista only RTM’d on November 8. So there was no way that the Zune team could have made sure the final Vista bits would work with Zunes. All I can say is Microsoft really needs to have a Vista update — or at least a public Vista support strategy — for Zune by the time the company does the business launch of Vista on November 30.”

    “Air Guitar Shirt”… I Want One!

    This is one of those, “I gotta get one” things! A T-Shirt that you can wear that actually allows your “air guitar” playing to generate sound. Whoa!

    Australian air guitar T-shirt actually rocks

    Australian scientists have invented a T-shirt that allows air guitarists to play actual music as they strum the air. The T-shirt, created by scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), is called a ‘wearable instrument shirt.’ The shirt has censors in each elbow and sleeves to detect and interpret the air guitarist’s arm movements — one arm chooses chords and the other strums imaginary strings. The gestures are then connected wirelessly to guitar audio samples to generate the music. ‘It’s an easy to use, virtual instrument that allows real time music making, even by players without significant musical or computing skills,’ said CSIRO engineer Richard Helmer. ‘It allows you to jump around and the sound generated is just like an original mp3,’ Helmer said in a statement on Monday.”

    Sun Releases Java to Open Source!

    Well, it has happened! Sun Microsystems announced that it is releasing all of Java under the GPL! Wow!

    Sun Pours Out Java Cup

    “Sun on Nov. 13 released at www.sun.com/java all versions of Java—Standard, Enterprise and Micro Edition—under GNU GPL (General Public License) Version 2.0. Sun will maintain its commercial license and its CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License) in a multiple-license menu for certain customers that have already built systems based on previous contracts. ‘This undoubtedly is the largest single open-source contribution in the history of IT,’ Rich Green, executive vice president of software for Sun, said in an interview here. ‘It’s the mental final step for Sun and Java.'”

    Release Dates and Info on “Feisty Fawn” Ubuntu

    The next release of Ubuntu is already under development. And, this time they are concentrating on user experience more than “back end” development.

    Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Release Dates

    Mark Shuttleworth says of “Feisty”: “The main themes for development in this release will be improvements to hardware support in the laptop, desktop and high-end server market, and an aggressive adoption of emerging desktop technologies. Ubuntu’s Feisty release will put the spotlight on multimedia enablement and desktop effects. We expect this to be a very gratifying release for both users and developers. Edgy has been a wild ride, with some remarkable achievements (nothing like re-inventing and substantially improving on init!) Feisty will be a little more focused on features that are very visible to end-users.”

    Dr. Bill’s “I Digress” Version of the Podcast is Finally Out!

    Dr. Bill Podcast – 62 – (11/12/06)
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    The podcast was delayed… and why. The Techpodcasts Network has info about this show and others. The Geek Software of Week: Sandboxie! A weird and lame name, but a cool tool. What a “sandbox” is in “geek terms.” “Sandboxie” comes via the “Security Now!” podcast… that’s where the doctor found out about it. “Netcast,” “podcast,” “broadcast…” which to use?!? An e-mail from Robert. Send us questions! Answering Elio’s question on Spyware Eliminators and Windows “Safe Mode.” Darkmoon straightens me out AGAIN! Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) the problems… maybe some day! Microsoft Office 2007 goes gold… and the Doctor doesn’t care. Office is no longer “lean and fast.” Just use OpenOffice.org. ‘Nuff Said! The universal peace brought by Open Source! IBM’s cool “little kid” Linux commercial. “His name is… Linux.” Microsoft pays Novell “big bucks!” $348 MILLION!?!?! What’s up with that?! Open Source is like air… it is free! Red Hat and others are like selling compressed air in cylinders… they have to add a service. A guy got the “Windows Tax” refund from Dell! Whoa! The server war is over and Linux has won! The definition of “bumfuzzled.” IBM study shows Linux won over Windows on servers. Vista has gone “gold” too! And, again, the Doctor doesn’t care! The podcast is done, so it is no longer late… weird, huh?

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