Let us now praise LogMeIn

I've talked about LogMeIn before, it is a web-based remote access application that works through firewalls; and is generally very easy to set up. It replaces programs like PC-Anyware, Windows Terminal Server and similar programs. LogMeIn is available in various flavors. There is a free version which just does the remote access, a "Pro" version for a monthly or yearly fee which inlcudes a file transfer function. There is the IT-Reach version, which combines the functions of Pro with some monitoring and computer management functions; indeed it does such a nice job on the latter that I use it when managaing my own server, (five feet away). The client piece can sit on your workstation with a memory consumption of about 9K of RAM.

Now, they have a new product LogMeIn Himachi which allows you to set up VPNs (virtual private networks) quickly over the web. At first I was thinking...Ok, this means I can map a data drive to my office server over the web, or even print to a printer on my office server when I'm sitting at home. But wait...there's more!

Since the connections are encrypted, and they go through (most) firewalls this has the potential of being a component that can be used in situations where you would normally have to adjust a firewall manually. In particular, I'm thinking of a Voice over IP connection which requires ports 5060 or 4569 to be opened on the firewall. This means you could potentially have an encrypted phone conversation, that would traverse a local firewall between the home office and laptops in the field.

Himachi allows you to create a local peer-to-peer network over the Internet. You could use this for sharing ITunes (assuming your machines are all part of the registered ITunes 5-count for your installation), or use it for peer-to-peer gaming.
Unlike regular LogMeIn....

Himachi also works with Linux. There is a how-to for setting up the Linux version, and then running VNC to see the desktop.

BaseCamp: Web-Based Workflow

I was working with a trade association that has been struggling for a couple of years to transform itself from a volunteer association to having paid staff. I attended a meeting on Wednesday, and we were told that there was three-week deadline to complete a business plan and pro forma budget to submit to our state economic development authority. After lengthy discussion we agreed amoung the ten people in the meeting that we needed to produce essentially two documents which would be combined for the proposal. We assigned champions for both documents, and then one of our members said:

Well, we're really all software developers in this room; we should be eating our own dog food here and using some kind of web-based project manager or workflow manager, instead of attempting to send copies of eMails around with huge attachments.

Fair enough. I waited for the other shoe to drop. The suspense was tangible:
Would the Microsoft SharePoint guy offer to host a site? Would the open source guru offer to put up a LAMP site with one of the open source workflow applications? Should I offer my usual FTP site+web bulletin board/Google Groups thing that I've used for clients for yonks?

Tense moments passed. We mulled features, development effort and cost. Finally a third guy said, "I'll put up a BaseCamp project. It should take about thirty minutes." And indeed, a couple hours laster we had our ten-user web site with:

• Dashboard (home page)
  
• Task List
  
• File upload and download (with version control)
  
• Writeboard (online word-processor with version control)
  
• Messageboard
  
• Calendar
  
• User login with security settings
  
• User and site administratration
  

You can have all changes pushed to eMail...but that means that you end up reading everything twice. You can have all changes appear in the RSS feed. That is a great way to be alerted of changes without having to fish through them in eMail. The free Basecamp service offers everything except the File upload and download function...I sprang for the $12.00/month to allow this feature and that also allows the hosting of 15 projects per site. If this works out for our current project, we'll probably find other uses pretty quickly.

This is what Web 2.0 is all about. Lightweight, Hosted, Quick, Easy. No IT Guru Required.

Remote Administration for Ubuntu Server

Over at Debian Admin there is an article about remote server administration for Ubuntu Server. Since Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian, many of the articles there are relevant, and the site is a model for no B.S. practical assistance.

Network Troubleshooting Tools

Wireshark is the new name for Ethereal. It is a GUI packet sniffing program which watches your network traffic and reports on what's going on at the network level. Ethereal has been around for years, but it is an ongoing project that just seems to be getting better all the time. Among other things, it will discriminate and display packets that are typical VoIP packets, that is SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), and IAX2 (InterAsterisk Exchange).

Set up a Wireshark capture and you are bound to find a ton of stuff that may be irrelevant. You'll see requests for web pages, OutLook going out and checking for new mail, DNS requests (where is mxdesign.net?) and ARP broadcasts (who is 192.168.0.9?). So, one of the first things to consider is filtering the captured packets as they are being examined. This is done by using a capture "language" to create filters that are compatible with a predecessor program called tcpdump. Mike Horn has written a tutorial on these, which includes a basic set of capture filters.

I was puzzled why I couldn't see traffic from my Asterisk/Trixbox computer on my desktop workstation. It turns out they were connected with a network switch which isolates traffic from individual devices. This makes network sniffing more difficult than in the old days when most LAN segments were connected via hubs. I ended up rummaging in the garage and found an older NetGear 16 port hub which I used to connect both stations, and Voila now I could see everything, the SIP phone calling the Trixbox, and the Trixbox calling out on the internet to Voicepulse. The Voicepulse tech support people want to see a capture file of just IAX2 packets, which should show (or not show) why my Trixbox occasionally loses the registration to the Voicepulse server. We'll see.

Windows Troubleshooting Tools

Readers may be familiar with Mark Russinovich of SysInternals. They make cool tools for troubleshooting Windows networking problems. Their company was recently bought by Microsoft, and the SysInternals Toolkit has been made available in a complete rolled-up zip file. This includes all the current tools, and the relevant help files. Several are these are Windows versions of Unix tools.

Screencast shows building Excel Charts

Over at Juice Analytics they have posted a screencast showing how to make "square piecharts" like this one. (Click on the graphic to view full size.) The JA blog is full of ideas and hints on how to use Excel.

Other sources for ideas about presentation graphics, useability, and inteface design:

Edward Tufte's web site and Q and A Forum

Jakob Nielson's Web Site - UseIt.Com

No discussion about these topics would be complete without mentioning Kathy Sierra's site, Creating Passionate Users. A favorite post is A Crash Course on Learning Theory.

Patent Search via Google

Google is piloting a new patent search site. Results are a couple years old, but it is interesting, to say the least, to do a search to find patents related to Voice over IP.

Look and Stuff in Microsoft Access

I think any database analyst or programmer has heard this common client request when doing mailing lists:

I want to be able to look up the organization data if the person is a member of an organization, and copy all of the relevant information into my mailing list. But I also want to be able to type in (or over) any existing organization information. And if the person isn't a member of an organization, or if the organization doesn't exist in the table, then I want to be able to add it right then...

So we stand in really odd positions to make this work, trying to relate the person table to an organization table and put together some kind of logic that works like QuickBooks (which no doubt cost $2.45 million to develop...)

This recently came up again, and because it turns out that the Organzation table gets replaced periodically, I gave up on the idea of relating the two tables, and just decided to duplicate the organization's fields in the person table. So shoot me.

If you press the "Look and Stuff" button, it brings up a subform which contains a single control, a combo-box pick list which picks an organization from the organization table.



The code behind this takes the field contents for the chosen Organization record and copies them to equivalent fields in the person table. The code:

Private Sub cmdFill_Click()
On Error GoTo Err_cmdFill_Click
Dim dbs As DAO.Database
Dim strSQL As String
Dim rstTemp As Recordset
Set dbs = CurrentDb

'Only do the following if the user has chosen a company 
If Me.cboCompany.Value > 0 Then
   strSQL = _
     "Select * FROM Company Where Company_id =" & Me.cboCompany.Value
   Set rstTemp = _
      CurrentDb.OpenRecordset(strSQL, dbOpenDynaset, dbReadOnly)

   'Stuff the results into the Mailing List Form
   Form_Maillist.txtOrganization = rstTemp![Organization]
   Form_Maillist.txtAddress = rstTemp![Address]
   Form_Maillist.txtCity = rstTemp![City]
   Form_Maillist.txtZip = rstTemp![Zip]
   Form_Maillist.txtState = rstTemp![State]

End If
'Close the chooser form    
DoCmd.Close
Exit_cmdFill_Click:
    Exit Sub
Err_cmdFill_Click:
    MsgBox Err.Description
    Resume Exit_cmdFill_Click  
End Sub

Find Non-Profit Buddies

And while we're on the subject of on-line databases...you can find non-profit organizations at TaxExemptWorld.Org
You can search by name, zip code, county or city. Full results of your search with enhanced data can be downloaded into a spreadsheet for $10.00.

The Foundation Center Web Site

The Foundation Center web site has a two-page Foundation Giving Preview which is a prelude to their full report to be issued in February 2007.

Education and health remained the top priorities of private
and community foundations included in the Foundation
Center’s grants sample in 2005. Support for most major
subject areas grew, with international affairs and the
environment posting the largest gains. By type of support,
the share of foundation grant dollars allocated for capital
projects rose to 18.5 percent, following five consecutive
years of decline. These findings are based on all grants of
$10,000 or more awarded by 1,154 of the largest
foundations.

The site includes a free search engine for foundations for searching on name, state or zip code. Once you have found a list there are links directly to the 990 reports for each foundation. There are prospect worksheets for both institutional and individual donors. They have listings of Requests For Proposals as well as a training materials for proposal writing.

Desktop Hardware Costs Going Toward Zero?

Prompted by an entry over on Jeff Dunteman's Contrapositive Diary, (scroll down past the fluffy dogs...) I have been I've been watching with interest some eBay sales in the $250, range for Dell Optiplexes. I just saw an SX270 Pentium 4 3.2 Mhz with 512 K of RAM and Window XP Professional Service Pack 2 go for $255.00. This is a small notebook sized unit. Even with $40.00 shipping it still seems to be pretty interesting. As Jeff mentions, these were going for $1800 or more just a couple years ago. Little guys like these are ideal for mini servers or media center PCs.

Other low-end machines seem to be going for $150.00 and under. Many times you'll see that they have things like 10 gigabyte hard drives; you have to wonder if perhaps the parts have been diddled. (a technical term for "swapped out with junk lying around on the bench...") But, say, you find one with a 2.4Ghz processor, and 256Kb or maybe 512Kb of RAM and a 20 gig hard drive. Install kubuntu for an operating system and desktop applications. Total cost $300.00?

For the past few years, PC hardware has been relatively static. Each new generation of hardware brought only incremental performance improvements. I'm still using 2.8Ghz processors in my office machines (both refurbs as is my Dell laptop), and servers are using slower processors. I'd recommend avoiding the Intel Celeron processors, but Pentium 4s at 2.4Ghz and up still have legs, especially with Linux.

The new Windows Vista wants to see more of everything; duel core processors and two gigs of RAM will help it on its way. But that means recent hardware that led up to Vista is both a bargain, and viable for the medium term, when matched with Windows XP Service Pack 2. If I was looking to round out my office with a couple new machines, and I had more time than money, I'd check eBay and the Dell Outlet for refurbished desktop machines. Look at the Optiplex line especially.

Chron: This Week

This week's Chronicle of Philanthropy has a couple of themes:

The cover story is about conservation, land trust, and housing organizations.

Inside there are several articles about foundations, and how foundations need to be more accountable and transparent.

This week the Chron quotes a study by the Center for Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College which compares giving by state, adjusted for the state's cost of living and tax burden. Utah is listed as the top giving state, with an average after-tax income per household of $53,425, and an average charitable donation of $3405. The data is from 2004. In the study, there is an extensive discussion of Massachusetts demographics and giving.

Also this week is a discussion of non-profit blogs, with a list of "10 Non-Profit Blogs That Get Attention". (the main article is free, the list of ten blogs requires registration).

Tech Friday: Asterisk/Trixbox quirks

A couple of interesting quirks have come up after about ten days of using Asterisk/Trixbox as our "home office" phone system.

1. The Grandstream Budgetone 101 and 102 SIP phones that we are using are not (apparently) FCC Type-B accepted. That means that they are not shielded to prevent television or other interference. So the phones make a hash of Channels 5 and 33 on our non-cable television....thereby rendering these phones essentially useless in a home environment. To be fair, they are a couple years old....maybe the new Grandstream phones are better shielded? So, the way we're coping is to plug in the phone when we want to make a call. Saves power, that way, of course.

2. As described earlier, I'm using VoicePulse as our outbound call service, and it seems to work very well indeed. However, the IAX2 channels sometimes become unregistered with VP during the course of a day. When this happens, if you place a call via the VoicePulse trunk...you get a ring-no-answer...that sounds just like a conventional ring-no-answer..i.e. you can't distinguish whether this is a problem with the VoicePulse registration, or if in fact the person really isn't at home. As a precaution, in the morning, I've been making check calls to my cell phone....if the cell phone rings, then I know my outbound trunk is working. At the Asterisk command line, if I type IAX2 show channels, it should show two registered VoicePulse channels. Even if channel voicepulse1 is unregistered, I would have hoped that channel 2 would take the call, but there doesn't appear any to be any logic that can deal with this issue. What I'd really like to see is some kind of real-time indication that the channels are not working, and/or some kind of fall-back or re-registering function.

3. I'll be checking the power consumption of all the components, but I was pleased to see that the idle power consumption of the Dell server that I'm using goes at about 44 watts. This seems pretty reasonable for a server.

Online Diagnostic Tools

Time to mention some online, free diagnostic tools:

www.dnsstuff.com
Are people having trouble finding your web site, or is expected eMail not getting through? Use this site to verify your DNS mappings and Mail Server mappings.

www.broadbandreports.com
Are you getting all the bandwidth that you are paying for? Find out by running the speed tests from this site, and find out how your site is compared to others in your region, or from the same provider.
My current results:

Hmmmmm...

Shields Up!
Go to this site to see your current "public" IP address. The site will also check for open or closed ports on your firewall.

All three sites have tons of information explaining how the tests work, and the underlying internet plumbing.

Earn $600.00 in ten minutes -- Web Hosting Change

My web host, intermedia.net who provides space for this blog as well as my modest corporate website has a number of hosting plans which include a variety of options. They have full Windows plans, with SharePoint and ColdFusion (but not both on each plan). They also have Apache/Linux plans. Plans include database back ends, mySQL, SQL-Server, and add-ons like MIVA for web stores, Coppermine for photo sharing, bulletin boards, Exchange eMail, you name it. Technical support is fast and usually excellent.

So, I downgraded my web server, which involves changing IP addresses and the DNS pointers. So if you find that TFNP is "blinking"... that's why...we'll be back momentarily and we regret any inconvenience this may cause. I figure this change will save more than $600 next year. Not bad for sending a couple eMails, and spending a few minutes to make sure that everything will work.

Also, if you read TFNP via an RSS feed, you may need to reset it after the change happens in a couple days.

Monthly Introduction: December 2006

Welecome to Tech for Non-Profits, the unplugged version of Microdesign Consulting. We feel that non-profit corporations and NGOs deserve the same advantages that technology can bring to for-profit business. To that end, we've dedicated ourselves to finding cost-effective ways to bring the benefits of wide-area networks, computer databases, IP videoconferencing and Voice over IP to our clients and friends. Check out our (mostly) annotated VoIP resource guide.

Ongoing projects this month will include our small office PBX using TrixBox and Asterisk, database development projects, and some additional hardware evaluations.

It seems to be a personality quirk of ours that our default position is one of optimism and interest when confronted with a new product or new version of an older product. This is especially true if it passes the Five Minute Test(tm), i.e. if I can actually create or do something after fooling with the product for five minutes. The critical juncture is what happens immediately after the five minutes... Does it hold our interest? Does it get incorporated into our daily work? Is it something to recommend to others?

A little about our shop: If you look at previous entries, you'll see we've dated Linux, but are married to Microsoft. We have two Windows XP desktops, 1 Windows XP laptop and a Windows 2003 Small Business Server as our production machines. These have to work every day, and they do. We use these for programming, database development, web development and general office stuff like accounting. We depend on several entities located in cyberspace, including Intermedia.net for our web site and eMail, and as host for a couple production web-based applications, and Logmein for remote access to clients for whom we have ongoing network management or software development projects. Oh, and our ISP, Comcast, (only recently changed from Adelphia).

Comments are welcome (Thanks Mom!) and are moderated, so they may not show up immediatly.

One Book: Fixing Microsoft Access Anoyances

If I was allowed only one book about Microsoft Access, This is the one, Fixing Access Annoyances by Phil Michell and Evan Callahan. Just their discussion about Access' workgroup security is worth the price of the book. They cover mostly Access 2000-2003, with a few notes regarding Access 97. The book includes a fair amount of VBA code, which can also be downloaded from their web site.

The book covers a lot of ground and includes internet resources. One of the best of these remains the community web site, UtterAccess.