Author: Zealus

Categories
technology

Little Common Sense Problem

Wi-Fi Security Threat You May Not Realize Is Hunting You There’s an old trick out there to catch all the new dogs that come into town. The screenshot is taken in the middle of the busy Brooklyn neighborhood, in the middle of the day. Do you see the danger already?

If not – here’s a little hint: there are Time Warner Wi-Fi hot spots in New York, but they are in Manhattan and Queens, not Brooklyn. Something else – the location of the spot where I got this reading is exactly out of reach the only 3 available Optimum Wi-Fi hot spots on their map, so I definitely did not expect to see 69% of signal power – more like 10 – 20%. So what the heck is going on with all three networks, including XFinity Wi-Fi, having the same signal strength? Someone had set up a rogue router that poses as XFinity WiFi, Optimum WiFi and Time Warner WiFi at the same time to capture your data. Those network SSIDs you’re seeing – all fake.

If you bought any recent laptop, chances are you have your firewall set up and enabled and it will take some time and dedication to break into your laptop. Not to say it’s impossible – it’s just requires time and effort and knowing you’re actually there. With fake Wi-Fi hot spots, you can set up a script that will capture anything you send over rogue Wi-Fi network automatically, so anyone connected through is just voluntarily giving up their data to someone who’s willing to listen. Since your device will most likely connect to a known Wi-Fi automatically – it will hook you up with fake one just as easy, without you even realizing it. No time, no effort – everything just happens automatically as long as the rogue SSIDs match those of real SSIDs of public networks. It’s like you’re shouting all your secrets and passwords in the middle of the street: if anyone listens close enough – you’re going to have a problem.

How to prevent this? Make sure your device – be it laptop, iPhone or iPad – asks for your explicit permission to connect to Wi-Fi that’s not your at your home or at work. Before you go someplace – check what Wi-Fi options are available and don’t use those that seem to good to be true. Apply some common sense to the situation and don’t fall into the trap of fake Wi-Fi hot spot, or it may prove to be too hot.

Categories
blog

Fall-Back

After taking a rather long vacation from this blog I am back. This fall is promising to be rather interesting as during summer I have picked up a few new business engagements. All in due time, of course, but this is a brief update of all things.

Informal Project Management is always around us – interesting thing, I thought about it exactly 3 years ago, in September 2007. This time, however, it wasn’t a home project, it was a photo shoot, and it had more to do with actually organizing things rather than building (although going from mock-up to beta to release is there undeniably). What has caught my attention this time was how administrative flow of things tend to greatly influence the outcome of the process. You have to gather resources, make sure they present on time and at the place to complete the project, then you get your project going and at the end you have your lessons learned thing, if you are lucky.

Small Business owners still need to be educated – you thought they would know by now everything about Facebook, Twitter and search engine optimization? Wrong! Your average small business owner is having a hard time getting the idea of how these things work. Latest quote: “But I have these 5 domain names, if I point them all to my web site I should be on top of Google, no?”. Yeah, how, exactly?

It’s Upgrade Time – PHP4 is almost dead of old age. How do you make your clients switch on the basis that the technology you have used to build their web sites 3 – 4 years ago is already obsolete and they need to upgrade. Not all of them lease cars, so idea of “new every two” (or three or four) isn’t entirely their motto. And they don’t buy into all this technology talk either. However, what they do buy into are security concerns. Old technology equals less secure environment.

Stop That Gadget Rainfall – personally I am hair away from being fed up with all the new gadgets that revolve around same decade old concept of a shiny thing that you poke with your fingers to watch a tiny little screen show you something. Whether you take iPhone 4, HTC Evo or whatever else will be running Windows Mobile 7 – it’s same old thing nonetheless, limited by “revolutionary” 3G technology. Reminds me of an old game of Civilization I used to spend hours playing. The funniest scenario was when you thought you’re on top of the chain, you have just invented Gunpowder and two turns later you get a visit from some other nation with battleships, carriers and tanks. Same seems to be the case with our wireless technology in US.

Categories
business clients

Understanding The Web Designer – 10 Critical Questions You Should NOT Be Asking

There is an interesting article on Small Business Branding blog – “10 Critical Questions To Ask A Web Designer”. The post is wrong on so many accounts, it’s would have been easier to ignore it altogether. However, being a lead to a Zealus web design studio for so many years I can’t help but notice how irrelevant most of these questions are – and here’s why:

1. What skills do you or your team posses? HTML, CSS, Drupal, WordPress, MySQL, PHP, CGI, Ruby on Rails? – author argues that by listening to the white noise the project lead makes while trying to answer your question you will be able to pick something useful. Wrong – you won’t. If he’s technically savvy he (or she, doesn’t matter) will sink you in the sea of gibberish technology talk, and if he’s not – he will sink you even deeper in semi-technology blabber. Point is – you will leave thinking that you have talked to a smart guy while in reality you have learned nothing.
What you should be asking – what’s the technology called, how widespread is it, how mature is it. These are the things you can understand, remember and cross-check after the conversation. What’s important – you will be able to make a business decision based on things you can comprehend.

2. How quickly can you provide a first draft of the site and how long does a job like this normally take? – author argues that such preliminary estimates can help you manage your schedule. Wrong – before signing the contract all dates are so grossly underestimated that you really have to live outside of the reality to base anything but future negotiations on those dates.
What you should be asking – how long projects like these take typically? What are the pitfalls, what could drag the project, how to prevent dragging from happening.

3. What is your working procedure and how will you communicate your progress? – if you are working with freelancers they most likely have no procedure in place and if you have with some established group they will tell you about project status reports even before you have to ask. The reason being that people who’s been around long enough know that if they fail to communicate properly they fail to get paid. So they will make damn sure their client knows all the hard work they put in, they will create a dashboard with tasks, timelines, heck, you might even see Gantt chart!
What you should be asking – what is the phone number of the person responsible for the project. One single person has to be responsible, if there is more than one – walk away.

4. How much support comes with this package deal? – obvious statement that no one works for free is obvious. Make sure you ask this question before negotiations begin, otherwise you can negotiate that sweet low price only to find out that support costs painfully extra. Unless you’re dealing with “Cheap web sites for r$499 per 5 pages” type of designers – there is no point in asking this question aside from the other negotiations.

5. What kind of after support do you offer? – same thing. Best thing to do is negotiate a support contract for some period immediately after launch so you will be covered in case something comes out immediately after your web project is live. In addition to that you might want to get a per-incident support after initial support contract is expired.
What to ask – nothing, keep negotiating.

6. What is your normal procedure if the job does not turn out satisfactorily? – author is then ventures on a journey of how everyone is spoiled by generous refund policies. Well, you just go and try to get a refund from anyone, I just want to watch how easy it would be. Speaking of service contracts, I may not live long enough to see the end of it anyway.
What you should be asking – nothing, just get a copy of the contract BEFORE you sign in and show it to your lawyer. It just another one of those things you want to negotiate as hard as you can. We have actually dropped a number of contracts because we could not successfully negotiate this single point. Everything else was set, but because client wanted a full refund or had some other crazy idea about how he gets all of his money back at the end when he tells us he doesn’t like it – it was dropped. It’s cheaper than a lawsuit anyway.

7. What software or technology will you be using to build my site and will I be able to use and update it myself? – the tragic story of a person who was asking for white noise in question #1 and ended up with useless application without anyone around to support it. That’s the illustration right there why pretty much everything that post is telling you is wrong.
What you should be asking – see question number 1: how widespread this technology, how mature is it. Is is Open Source or is it proprietary (former is better than the latter, unless you’re talking about Flash which is a whole another can of worms altogether).

8. Does it cost extra for this software or does anything you recommend to build this site going to require additional license purchased? – this is the only sane question in the whole ten, however, the justification is flawed nonetheless. As with any contractor, he brings his own tools. If your project lead is a geek he will force you into buying the top-notch hardware and software so that he could play with new shiny toys that he otherwise could not afford. If your project lead is a sales agent she will sell you whatever she will make the most of. Either case – you loose.
What you should be asking – is for a detailed chart of costs, including anything and everything your project needs to be completed successfully. Let your future contractors know that you have such and such assets and if anything needs to be purchased – it has to be put on that chart. Time, licenses, hardware, image and sound rights and royalties – everything goes there. This way you can cross-check with other contractors and actual vendors to see who’s charging you and for what. It’s your money, don’t waste it.

9. We would like the domain name administrator to be in our representative’s name and email. Can you arrange that? – unless you trust your contractor sleep in the bed with your husband (or wife) – never ever even mention this to them. Spend as much time as it requires, but BUY THE DOMAIN YOURSELF! Do not give access to your domain to anyone else, if there are any modifications – learn how to do them yourself or register a domain with registrar who has telephone support – like GoDaddy. You can rebuild the site in months, but rebuilding a reputable brand name, replacing domain that all your customers know can take years.
What should I ask – can you develop on test platform and them move the site to our domain? But any decent developer should do that anyway.

10. Can I see a portfolio of previous sites built. Or is there a demo of a site similar to what you will be building us? – this should be first question that you ask a contractor (designer, programmer or whatnot). Why is it #10 – I have no idea, I guess just to reiterate how much wrong is with initial post. In addition to portfolio (if there is any) you should briefly explain what you are trying to do and how does the designer see it solved. That should be the first thing – before you put anything else on the table.