New FedEx Virus Email
Back in November, I wrote about an airline ticket virus email. Now it’s FedEx: today I received this email supposedly from FedEx with a zip file attachment: If you open …
Office 365 Lync vs. Live Messenger for Small Business
I’ve used Windows Messenger for years to exchange instant messages with clients, friends, and family. The current iteration of Microsoft’s free IM client, Live Messenger, has been commercialized (displays ads) …
Reduce US Bank Fraud with Check Card Alerts
On December 24, I received an email from US Bank informing me that a purchase had been made the previous day about two thousand miles away using my VISA debit …
Machine Online but Programs Can’t Connect
I maintain a remote Windows XP Pro workstation that’s three or four years old. Today I had a strange situation: I could reach the machine using vPro and see that …
Use Postini with Office 365
The hosted Exchange part of Office 365 has been performing pretty well once I got it configured. However, I continue to have issues with Forefront, a separate-but-integrated piece that sits …
SBS 2008 Attempts Multiple Simultaneous Backups
I first had this issue in July 2010. SBS 2008 would attempt to run two identical backups for each one that was scheduled. The duplicate backup would fail with Microsoft-Windows-Backup …
Linksys SPA942 Busy Lamp Field with PiaF
A client has an old PBX in a Flash 1.3 installation running Asterisk 1.4.21.2. I’ve upgraded their Linksys SPA942 phones to the latest firmware, version 6.1.5(a). Can we get Busy …
Set Up VLAN and Site-to-Site VPN with Tomato
I wrote recently about setting up guest wireless with the Tomato router firmware. I also needed to be able to use site-to-site OpenVPN between two routers running Tomato. I’m using …
Can’t Ping Server after Changing Router
After installing a new router, I was no longer able to ping my Hyper-V server. Why not? The router sits at the edge of the network—how could it affect pinging …
Get Asterisk to Use the G.729a Codec
I’m using Asterisk 1.8.5 under FreePBX 2.8.1.4. My endpoints (Polycom IP430 phone, SPA3102 ATA) and my ITSP all support the G.729a codec. I wanted to test audio quality using this …