17th Dec 2013 | Salesforce, Security and Safety
It’s a big, bad world out there. There are people who would claim to be things that they were not! (And I don’t mean claims like Sir Bruce Forsythe being entertaining on Strictly Come Dancing.) With Salesforce, until now, you had no way to find out if your Salesforce consultant was qualified or not.
Shock! Horror!
Salesforce has now brought in Certificate Verification. You can find it at:
https://certification.salesforce.com/verification
Of course, I am quite proud to have held my certification since 2011. The details are here:
https://certification.salesforce.com/verification?&fullname=John%20Dray
You can check up anyone, using either their full name, or their email address.
This should help you avoid dealing with people who are other than they claim to be.
Wishing you safe IT,
John
10th Dec 2013 | Defeating spam
I am a patient man… for an IT professional. I have been using Google Apps for over two years. I had found it to be reliable and easy to use.
Recently I upgraded my Mac to Mavericks. (For Microsofties, Mavericks is the latest version of the operating system for Macs.) There are lots of features that I love about Mavericks, but it really broke Google Apps email. I keep getting errors, unread mail counts are wrong, email retrieval is erratic – the lot. In the end this comes down to the Google email (IMAP) protocol being non-standard. That’s OK, the old Apple Mail used to work around it, but I do not use the ‘additional functionality’ that Google has plastered onto the standard. And it is the extras that are breaking my email. (For a similar tale of woe, look at how Google broke its synchronisation with Outlook last year.) Apple have delivered a fix, but it does not fix everything and it seems as if Google have reduced the number of concurrent connections allowed, so I keep getting errors. Lots of them. It is driving me nuts!
So, what do I do?
Do I ditch the Macs that I love or the Google Apps that I tolerate and have more than a suspicion are using my emails to make bigger profits? I could just access Google Mail from the web interface, but I am a road warrior – I like to have my emails downloaded for when there is no internet. I could upgrade to Google Apps for business but, with 10 accounts that would cost Cloud Genius £33 pcm + VAT (£792 + VAT over 2 years). Or I could use my own hosting webhost.cloud-genius.com. That will give me proper IMAP compliant email (and it will work with all those mobile devices, too – even Androids). It will allow me to carry over the cloud-genius.com domain, and it comes with free calendars, unlimited email space and storage space. (Actually, as I purchased my domain through webhost.cloud-genius.com it sorts all that out for me.) If I want to use it, there is even a web interface. All this for £39.36+VAT for 10 accounts for 2 years which works out at 16.4p per account per month! The equivalent from Google would cost £792 (that’s £33 x 24 months). That makes Google Apps 20x the price.
It did take half an hour to switch over the accounts. The emails are flowing in nicely, even emails sent from other Google Apps accounts. I now have to decide what to do with my historic emails… import them or archive them. Decisions.
As a bonus, I know that Google will not be reading my emails any more. Calm has returned to the Cloud Genius office. (The webhost.cloud-genius.com email servers use proper SSL encrypted connections, have proper spam filtering and have no affiliation with Google. It also has proper 24×7 phone support on 020 3027 4996 and 99.9% uptime. They also work with Windows, Linux anything – because they stick to the IMAP standard. You can even use POP3, if you really want to.)
Any questions? Drop us a line!
27th Nov 2013 | General Information, Salesforce, Web Hosting, Websites
Here at Cloud Genius we use our own products… this means that we have a website developed in the way that we would develop one for a client. We use Salesforce in a way that we would set it up for a client. We use the same (excellent value) website hosting that we use for our clients.
Cloud Working, in the Salesforce sense, means that we do it all online. I could be based in Timbuktu or Brazil and I could still work on Salesforce (as long as I had an internet connection). Similarly, I could configure Salesforce for charities and small businesses. I can even offer support through remote-control software. (This is where I temporarily take control of a client’s mouse and keyboard to show them things. They have full control to block me at any time, but it means that I can offer support instantly, rather than visiting their office. This is a lot greener – far fewer travel miles.)
One thing struck me as ironic:
Why is it, when I can do all my work through the web, that most Salesforce consultancies are based in London? (with its inherent sky-high rents and living costs)?
Cloud Genius Ltd is different.
We practise what we preach. We do not ignore the world outside London.
We are proudly based in Wales. (The header picture of rolling hills is from a few miles away from our office.)
We will come to visit you to discuss your needs and deliver training.
The rest of the time we can do everything while in (the rather beautiful surroundings of) Wales.
All our work is cloud-based. We do not need a server room, or expensive air conditioning. Our data is protected in far more ways than if we had it in our office.
If you are in Wales and you have database needs, especially if they are customer relationship based, give us a call.
…and I forgot to mention. The lower running costs of working in Wales can be passed on to you!
11th Nov 2013 | General Information
Google Gmail reads your email Microsoft Outlook.com scans your email. Is there a difference?
When my grandma went away on holidays, she always used to send us postcards. To slow down our post-lady from reading them, she would write the message upside down (compared to the address). An abiding memory is of said postwoman nearly falling off her bike when one of grandma’s postcards arrived. General email security is like that of a postcard. Emails fly around the internet fly around the internet without any form of envelope. They are in plain, open text and can be read by any of the computers that they pass through on their way from sender to recipient. Here is an advert with Microsoft’s (not impartial) take on the matter. [ss_screenshot width=’300′ site=’https://www.keepyouremailprivate.com’]
Back in the early 1990’s, when the internet was young, most people had not heard of a computer virus. Then again, the internet was, for most people, very slow – it would have taken too long to download a virus. You would have simply cut the connection.
Now, everything has to be scanned for viruses, trojans, key loggers, ‘bots and countless other malware. Failure to do so would almost guarantee that your computer would become infected. There are also scams and charlatans on the internet who send out massive amounts of spam, hoping that someone will fall for their cons and tricks. We take it for granted that our email will be scanned to put malware in some safe dumpster and scams in our junk email (in case we did want to read about fake Rolexes and a chap who is having difficulty getting unfeasibly large quantities of money out of his bank account). In other words, a computer program reads your email and decides what is good for you and what is bad.
What Google then does is retain that list of words from the scanning and uses it to target adverts at their account holders when using Gmail on the web. Their calculation is that people will not mind a bit of advertising in exchange for free email. Being able to target the adverts to the recipient makes their advertising more likely to result in a sale for their advertisers (so Google sell more adverts). Is that wrong, or unfair?
Now, while that is (possibly) fine for a person who has signed up to Gmail. What about the sender or recipient who has not? If I send an email to someone with a Gmail account Google will read it. If that person sends an email to someone who does not have a Gmail account, Google will still read it.
There is no way to opt out.
An alternative is to download your emails with Outlook or Mac Mail or some other application, so that you do not see Google’s advertising (if you use a Gmail account). The emails will still have been read/scanned, but you will not see the adverts.
For total security, you can go down the Public-key Infrastructure (PKI) route. This encrypts all your traffic so that no-one can read (or scan) it. It will mean that you need the public encryption key of everyone you want to send an encrypted message to. (There are services to do this.) Recipients can then decrypt the message with their private key. You need to distribute your public key to everyone who will send you an email. (The clever bit about PKI is that the ‘public keys’ are truly public – you can distribute them freely or publish them on your web page. Only the private key, which allows the decryption, must remain private.) There are services that will distribute these keys for you. At that point we are heading towards James Bond territory.
The balance is between how important your privacy is to you, how much inconvenience you are prepared to put up with (e.g. distributing encryption keys) and how much you are prepared to pay.
You decide, please comment (below) and if you want to discuss the encryption options, get in touch.
John
John holds a CompTIA Security+ qualification and still uses Google Apps!
He also has the facility to encrypt emails.
7th Nov 2013 | General Information, Web Hosting, Websites, WordPress
Dear reader,
I recognise that not everyone wants to sign up with our website services straight away.
Perhaps you want a free WordPress.com website and do it all yourself – to get going and try it out.
I have been writing a guide to help you do this.
The guide is completely free of charge. Just click the Download button.
Download
This guide will get you started using WordPress on WordPress.com.
With WordPress.com you will notice certain limitations. For instance, you cannot add new plug-ins. (These are extras for your website that add functionality, like contact gathering, search engine optimisation enhancements, conversion of your WordPress site into a membership site, etc). Where these functions are present in WordPress, they tend to be less powerful than third-party versions. You are stuck with what WordPress lets you have (which, to be fair is pretty awesome).
With our WordPress sites hosted on our high-performance servers you get a lot more flexibility. The other thing you will find is that when you start paying for WordPress.com’s paid-for extras the costs start mounting up, quickly. So, when you are ready to upgrade to our servers, just contact us. We can transfer your pages and posts from your WordPress.com site, put it on a personalised domain. (Compare our cost for a domain name of around £6 per year to WordPress.com’s)
Most important thing is that you get started and Happy Web Publishing!
John
Download
PS This guide is a work in progress – as WordPress evolves the guide will need to evolve. You may feel that I have missed out something. Just email me at info@cloud-genius.com (click on the link) and I will get back to you. Your suggestion will help shape newer versions of the guide.
5th Nov 2013 | Charity, General Information, Web Hosting, Websites
It is not often that I promote a particular client, so there must be a really good reason!
The reason is that they make life better for local communities.
Community Spirit Partnership (CSP) work with communities to bring about Neighbourhood Development Plans. These plans are for the betterment of the local community and they only become a reality if the whole of the local community keeps informed and is in agreement. (Not just the ‘interested few’ who are seeking to make the local area better for themselves.)
[ss_screenshot width=’300′ site=’https://communityspiritpartnershipcic.org’ align=’right’]As you can imagine, this is quite a shift for many communities. Often there are those who get involved in local planning and ‘the rest’. CSP helps local communities get over these hurdles. It brings communities together. CSP itself is a cross between a company and a charity – a Community Interest Company (CIC), which is a special type of organisation that was created for just this sort of work. I have also known some of the people involved for more years than I care to remember – so I know that they are brilliant.
Throughout the planning and implementation process it is vital for the local community to be kept up-to-date. Part of keeping a community informed is an up-to-date website. One that is easy for the various parties to update, but allows for editorial controls, automatic, consistent formatting, allows for the posting of plans and comments and send out emails alerting people to updates and links in with social media and is rock solid…
Please check out CSP – their work is changing lives and communities. I cannot do them justice in this short article. Go to their website CSP for the full information.
It would also be GREAT if you would leave a comment. Go on – just hit that comment button. I don’t often open comments, but I would really love to know what you think about this.
1st Nov 2013 | General Information
Cloud Genius is very excited to announce a new association.
We are very pleased to have many happy customers. Now we can offer you even more!
From 1 November 2013 Cloud Genius will be working more closely with Naturally IQ Ltd. The prime players in this are John Dray of Cloud Genius and Paul Ginsberg of Naturally IQ.
This new association of friends enables us to offer more support options and draw upon a broader range of Salesforce implementation experience. We will, of course, maintain our ethos of transparency and flexibility that defines Cloud Genius and makes us so proud of our work.
29th Oct 2013 | Transferring, Web Hosting, Websites
Are you fed up with the hosting of your current provider?
The bad news
In the ‘old’ days, transferring a website used to be a matter of copying files to your new hosting. Updating the interweb (OK techies, re-pointing the DNS and possibly transferring the domain registration) and away you would go.
These days things are not so easy. There is usually a database to transfer. More often than not it will need some sort of alteration. If this is done badly, it will corrupt your database. I have used a number of utilities that are supposed to do this automatically, but often they either do not make all the changes necessary or they break the database or (in some cases worse) they send out notifications to all your subscribers about all your historic posts!
The good news
I can do these transitions for you remarkably quickly, as long as you have all the various usernames and passwords. Even if you don’t (for instance, your existing provider does not want you to have all the passwords), I can often help you gain access and do the transfer for you. This may take a bit longer. I pride myself in doing this with minimal (a few minutes) or zero downtime.
I love WordPress for my clients, but can transfer a number of other content management systems (e.g. Joomla!, Drupal.)
Once you are with us, we will give you all the passwords, etc. that you need in order to transfer away from Cloud Genius. Strangely that does not often seem to happen. We do not believe in chaining you to us. We want you to be free to leave but happy to stay.
See you soon!
John.
21st Oct 2013 | General Information
Hello!
I have been spending some time writing tutorials on setting up websites and website hosting. I am doing this partly to ensure that I have consistent documentation, but I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be good if people found out how to set up things themselves’. I have been in the IT business a long time. So long that I soldered my first computer together!
For four years I set up and ran a department for a multi-million pound IT outsourcing company. I used that time to find the best suppliers, find the best ways to set up website hosting and domain names (and enterprise email filtering/archiving and security certificates and administer/set-up CRM packages…) Things have changed over the years and now I think things are ripe for people to do it themselves. True it is possible to use some services (e.g. 1 & 1, Wix) to set up everything for you. However, you do tend to be stuck with templates that look the same as everyone else, you cannot add all the features you want, or they may be a significant extra expense. If you want flexibility of your own website domain (e.g. cloud-genius.com, widgets.co.uk) you suddenly find them becoming expensive or inflexible. What starts out looking cheap suddenly costs an arm and a leg.
If you use my techniques, you can end up with websites that are truly unique, easy to administer (you supply the text/pictures, the website looks after the formatting), work well on mobiles as well as desktop PCs and perform excellently on Google search. You own the domain name (e.g. cloud-genius.com), you have full access to the hosting (so you can move it elsewhere if necessary). You will find that the costs are low and predictable. You want to add new features? No problem (and no cost)!
As I say, I have already had people asking me about this, but I am interested in what you think.
You can either comment on this post to let me know what you think, or sign up for information about my course – then I will let you know when it is coming.
Happy websites!
John
PS I would love to know what you are thinking. Just hit the comment button right now and let me know.
7th Oct 2013 | Defeating spam, General Information, Security and Safety
I am writing about this particular scam because it is so plausible. (First, this does not originate from Microsoft, just people purporting to be from Microsoft.)
I have received a phone call. The person on the other end of the phone informs me that I have a problem with my computer. This is causing issues and may cause my computer to be blocked from the internet. Now, as someone who knows the capabilities of malware, this is not beyond the realms of possibility. The main slip-up was that they told me how to access Windows control panel. I did play along for a while before revealing that I do not use Windows.
Here is an article from someone who played along for a little longer before revealing his hand. He was blocked from the internet, because they deleted his network driver!
[ss_screenshot width=’300′ site=’https://blog.malwarebytes.org/intelligence/2013/04/phone-scammers-call-the-wrong-guy-get-mad-and-trash-pc/’ align=’right’]
My expectation was that they would install a Trojan… I had not expected them to be so ‘hands-on’. Other scammers may try other ways to affect your computer. In the most recent call, I asked them who they were calling from – the line went dead.
Do you have experience of this type of scam? Let me know, as I am thinking of writing a tutorial, if enough people are interested.
By the way, the linked blog is from Malwarebytes. I have used their anti-malware software with Windows to great effect.
Thanks
