Microsoft Philippines Geo-Expansion Lead Boy Bawal said the product will help small companies grow their businesses and boost their competitiveness.

Windows Server 2008 Foundation is a server solution that allows a company with less than 15 computer users to set up a network with file and print sharing, remote access, security and other general server capabilities. It comes bundled with server hardware that can cost as low as P57,000. Bawal said this is the first time that a server software is offered at this price point.

The product, Microsoft officials say, is targeted at first time server users.

For the first time, Bawal said companies no longer have to pay client access license for each user of the system.

SERVER FOR SMALL COMPANIES. Boy Bawal of Microsoft Philippines says that Windows Server 2008 Foundation is the first time that a server software is offered as a hardware bundle for as low as P57,000. He said the product will help small companies grow their businesses and boost their competitiveness.

Bill Hilf, general manager of Microsoft Corp. server and tools, said anyone with rudimentary computer skills can deploy the basic server function of the package. He said Windows Server 2008 Foundation offers onscreen software wizards that guide users in setting the system as a file server or any other network configuration.

Hilf said that in making the product, they had two key principles in mind: lower the price to make it affordable to smaller companies and make it simple to deploy.

Nicky Eala, server business group head of Microsoft Philippines, said the system is something small businesses can just buy, turn on and have a working office network.

Hilf said more advance functions of the server can be set up with the help of solutions providers. He said deployment of the system can help spur local information technology (IT) solutions providers. Hilf also said they system also offers an upgrade path to other more advance Microsoft server products.

Hilf said the Philippines is an unusual market because 99.7 percent of establishments are micro, small and medium enterprises. He said 92 percent are micro-enterprises that employ one to nine employees. He said these businesses employ 70 percent of the labor market.

Hilf said his team stayed with small companies throughout the world to figure out their IT needs and how Microsoft can help provide them with solutions. He said they would typically see workers of small companies line up at the end of the day to log out from a single PC terminal with their attendance being printed out by an attached printer.

He said they also saw company workers burn data generated throughout the working day on a compact disc (CD) or DVD to serve as backup.

He said many of these companies typically use multiple desktops and just share files using CDs and other devices.

Hilf said these types of companies will greatly benefit from a networked solution.

He also said that unlike regular desktops, servers are designed to be always on and fault-tolerant.

By packaging the system with the hardware of partners like HP and IBM, Hilf said users can just go to the vendor for both hardware and software support.

Hilf also said that for every purchase of the system, Microsoft will donate a portion to Techsoup.org and Telecentre.org, which are groups working to build the capabilities of nongovernment organizations worldwide.

Related posts:

1. Sony Expo 2008 opens in Cebu City
2. ümobile: ad-funded mobile network launches in Cebu
3. Synchronize Microsoft Office documents with Google Docs using DocSyncer

I recently started accepting paid web development work and website management. Several weeks back, I bought a domain, Tugkaran.com (from the Bisaya word for staging ground), and created a static HTML page as placeholder because I did not have time to configure WordPress to run the site.

FROM SKETCH TO WORDPRESS DESIGN. The steps I took from planning a site to deploying a custom WordPress theme for it using Yahoo UI Grids Builder, Aptana, and Bluefish.

But when one of my projects was about to go live, I needed to quickly build Tugkaran because I already placed a link to it in the footer. I spent whatever time I could spare from newsroom and web development work building Tugkaran, 30 minutes or so here, an hour there, a few minutes here.

It took me five hours to go from sketching the site on paper, protoyping the design in HTML, and setting up WordPress with the custom theme. The site was designed “live.” Developing it locally and then replicating the work in the server would take more time—which I didn’t have.

The Tugkaran website still needs a lot of work but it will do for now. I’ll polish it when I have more time. If you want to study the files I worked on, you can download it at the end of this post.

CMS choice
When I was still planning the site, there was no question that I had to use WordPress.

The open source blogging platform fits my need for a lean but feature-packed CMS I can use to run Tugkaran without the hassles of manual publishing—writing copy, laying out web pages, editing links, uploading these to the site and repeating the cycle for every iteration.

I chose WordPress for Tugkaran even if I use Drupal for many of my sites for 5 reasons:

1. I am the only person updating the site. I write all the copy and post all the articles myself. If somebody else from the team writes something, I still need to go over it before the article gets published. Using Drupal for the site would be like using a pneumatic power drill when all I needed was to tighten a screw on a picture frame.

2. I find it easier to take control over the behavior of a WordPress-driven site than one run by Drupal.

3. I work faster with WordPress than with Drupal.

4. I find it easier to design a WordPress theme than a Drupal template.

The blocks module of Drupal makes it easy to add snippets of content into your site and customize not only their display but specify on which nodes or node types they will appear in.

With WordPress, I can do that while lightening the load on the server by directly editing the .php template files to do away with database queries for displaying blocks of content. I’m sure there’s a way to do this in Drupal that I haven’t learned just yet.

5. It’s easier to update WordPress to the latest release. I don’t want to spend a lot of time in the upgrade process for a site that I will be rarely updating.

Tools
All work on Tugkaran was done in my Ubuntu Linux laptop. The only time I used Windows was to check whether the site displayed properly in Internet Explorer (as of this writing, I still have a mistake to correct to make transparency of layers in certain pages work in Explorer.)

The tools I used for the project were:

1. Graph paper
For someone with several online notes repositories and TiddlyWikis, I’m still a paper-and-pen-or- pencil type of guy. For certain tasks, nothing beats doing it on paper and ink. The initial stage of planning a site is among these tasks. I use Konigi’s graph paper to let clients communicate what they want for the website. For Tugkaran, I only needed a quick sketch of what I wanted because the basic design was already percolating in my mind for weeks.

2. Yahoo UI Grids and CSS
I neither have the patience nor the skills to create web layouts that work across major browsers. With CSS frameworks like Yahoo UI Grids and CSS, creating multi-column layouts is just a matter of clicking buttons to build your page.

3. Aptana Studio
In working with web designs, nothing beats Aptana Studio as tool. I used to work with Dreamweaver, which you can use to edit WordPress themes, but when I found Aptana, I never looked back. Not only is Aptana free, it’s also a great tool to work on your site’s HTML and CSS codes and get instant previews of the design. It does much more than that, but that’s basically how I use it.

4. Bluefish
Another great text editor. While I alternate between Gedit and Bluefish, I used Bluefish exclusively for this project because of the code snippets that come with it. Aptana Studio now has code snippets in its code editor but I prefer Bluefish’s implementation.

5. Filezilla
When tweaking the theme, I needed to upload and download files to fix errors (I was, after all, designing it live.)

Design process

Sketch

I sketched my website plan in Konigi’s Wireframe with notes graph paper. I wanted Jon’s Smooth Gallery as centerpiece of the home page. The gallery will cycle through articles I wanted to highlight.

Initial CSS/HTML layout

I then created a basic layout of the site using Yahoo UI Grids Builder. The tool makes it easy to design a basic web page layout pages and specify such things as its width and whether it is fixed or fluid; and the number of columns and rows.

I configured just one page because my plan for the Tugkaran site is that individual pages will have the same layout as the home page–single column in the main content area with four columns under it. I see no need for a sidebar to the main content but if I decide later that I wanted a sidebar, that would be easy to add using the Grids Builder.

If you plan to lay out certain pages of your site differently from your home page, just configure other layouts and name these after the section you want to use it on: archives.html, single.html (for the layout of the individual post—when porting the design to WordPress, you’ll name this single.php), page.html etc. Just study the layout codes and look for sections you can reuse, for starters the beginning and end parts typically can be reused and would comprise your header.php and footer.php templates.)

The advantage of using Yahoo UI Grids for your layout is that it offers a lot of page layout combinations with A-grade browser support. You don’t have to worry about the layout being broken in browsers like Internet Explorer—although I make it a habit to check my final HTML design in Explorer.

If you use Yahoo UI Grids, you can choose to have the CSS file hosted in Yahoo. Don’t worry about upgrades breaking your layout, the CSS file path given to you for embedding in the header is version-specific.

HTML prototype

After getting the website layout code from Yahoo UI Grids Builder, I then edited this on Aptana.

I created three files:

1.) home.html
This file is used for the home page. The layout contains the Smooth Gallery script that pulls content from my Features category (more on this later). After finalizing the HTML layout, I stripped it of reusable elements (header, footer) and then saved it as home.php.

In displaying your home page, WordPress looks for a home.php template file and if it can’t fine one, it uses the index.php file.

2.) single.html
I created a single.html to plot the layout of individual article pages as well as the site’s fixed pages such as the About page. The single.html page is just the home page without the Smooth Gallery code.

3.) style.css
The stylesheet. Since the CSS styles for the layout are hosted with Yahoo, this file contains only the customizations for the design. I also included theme information, which is a must, according to the WordPress Codex:

/*
Theme Name: Tugkaran
Theme URI: http://www.tugkaran.com
Description: WordPress theme for Tugkaran website.
Author: Max Limpag
Author URI: http://max.limpag.com
Version: 1.0
*/

I then looked into which parts of the pages can be reused. The obvious choices are the upper part for the header and the bottom section for the footer. I then marked the the sections in the HTML code to make it easier for cutting up in Bluefish, where I will be working on the individual WordPress template files.

I decided to use the four columns in the bottom row as part of the footer because I wanted these displayed in all pages.

I then looked around for a CSS menu that I can add to the page and found Matt Black Tabs in Dynamic Drive and incorporated it into the design.

Turning design into WordPress theme
After finalizing my HTML design, I then used Bluefish to cut it up into the different .php files that make up a WordPress theme.

I cut the codes in the header section, added <?php wp_head(); ?> and saved the file as header.php. The <?php wp_head(); ?> needs to be inside the element. It is used by some plugins. I then cut the codes in my footer section, added <?php wp_footer(); ?> and then saved the file as footer.php.
All that was left in my home.html file was the code for the Smooth Gallery. I added <?php get_header(); ?> at the start of the file to call the contents of header.php and added <?php get_footer(); ?> at the end of it to grab the contents of footer.php.

Making Smooth Gallery work with WordPress
I then worked on making Smooth Gallery pull content from my Featured category to highlight key articles of the site. The code that runs it is a custom WordPress query:

<div id="myGallery">
<?php $posts = get_posts( "category=3&numberposts=5" ); ?>
<?php if( $posts ) : ?>
<?php foreach( $posts as $post ) : setup_postdata( $post ); ?>
<div class="imageElement">
<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
<p><?php $values = get_post_custom_values("summary"); echo $values[0]; ?> <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>" >Read more.</a></p>
<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>" class="open"></a>
<img src="<?php $values = get_post_custom_values("bannerimage"); echo $values[0]; ?>" class="full" />
</div>
<?php endforeach; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>

The code above:

1.Gets articles in category 3, my Features category, and displays the last 5 articles in that category.
2.Gets the one paragraph summary I entered in WordPress’ custom fields and prints it as the introductory paragraph. The custom field I designated for this is “summary.”
3.Grabs the image I designated in the custom fields as “banner image” and then displays it as part of the slideshow. I just uploaded a 600px by 300px image in WordPress’ post editor, grabbed the full URL path for the image location and entered the URL as “bannerimage” custom field.

Other WordPress template files
I then used the single.html file I designed to create single.php (the file WordPress uses to display posts), page.php (the file WordPress uses for pages), and index.php. All these files are identical, they grab the header, runs the WordPress loop (which processes and displays content), and then grabs the footer:

<?php get_header(); ?>
<div id="bd">
<div class="yui-g">
<div class="pagecontent">
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

I no longer bothered creating a comments.php file because I turned off commenting since I just wanted the site to showcase Tugkaran’s services. I also didn’t create an archives page.

My custom theme only has 8 files: style.css, home.php, index.php, single.php, page.php, header.php, footer.php, and 404.php. But this could even be fewer. I can, for example, do away with single.php and page.php nad just let index.php do their jobs.

After I finished creating the template files, I then uploaded these to the server and fixed errors that I encountered.

Next steps

I will be redesigning the site. I still don’t have time to do it, however, and will have to put off the redesign at least until the week after next. I might go over the design again this weekend to fix an error on the rendering of transparency in individual pages in Explorer.

If you spot errors or have suggestions on improving the design, feel free to leave a comment in this post.

Download files used in this tutorial

If you want to go over the files I created in building Tugkaran, you can download the initial HTML files here and the final WordPress theme here. A warning, these files were hastily done and I didn’t have the time to clean these up so you might find an image that is no longer in use or code snippets that were abandoned.

The whole thing is released on copyleft, with all wrongs reserved . You can do with it whatever you want. If you want to link to me, I’ll be more than happy. If you don’t want to add a link to my site, it’s also perfectly fine with me. But if you spot errors or have suggestions on how to improve the theme, leave a comment below.

Related posts:

1. How to edit Wordpress themes using Dreamweaver
2. How to create a WordPress theme: A guide for the design-challenged non-geek
3. How to use WordPress to run a magazine, news website

The meeting is preparatory to the Joomla Day that will be held in UP Diliman on June 14. During the meeting, members of the Joomla community in Cebu are scheduled to plan activities for a year and consider participation in a coming Open Source summit in Cebu on June 23 to 24 at the Cebu International Convention Center. The Open Source summit will have a track on Drupal, another popular open source CMS.

The “Panag-abot sa Cebu” (Cebu meet) on June 7 will start at 8 p.m. Lawyer Magdalena Lepiten and Guilliam Roque will be holding a lecture on “Copyright and Creative Commons, License on Open Source Application.”

During the meet, Roque will brief attendees on Joomla and its history. He will also talk about Joomla Philippines.

I am not a Joomla user but I am an open source CMS fanatic. The last time I tried Joomla, it was still Mambo. My CMSes of choice are WordPress and Drupal but I’ve long been meaning to try Joomla although I still haven’t found the time to try it out, what with my full-time schedule at the Sun.Star Cebu newsroom.

For those who want to attend the Joomla “Panag-abot sa Cebu,” here’s a map to the venue:

Related posts:

1. Going to school—Drupal school
2. Philippine Open Source Summit opens
3. Trying out Drupal as content management system

I had initially decided to stay away from using the beta version—the amount of updates you have to download on the run-up to the final version can be huge. I had several urgent tasks and didn’t want to deal with regularly updating my laptop.

HARDY HERON running on my MSI S260 laptop. Click to enlarge photo.

But Chin Wong made me do it. The devil, in turn, made him do it, or at least that line kept playing in his head as he installed the beta version in his desktop computer. During the installation, he had problems with sound in his system.

A day later, however, he posted a fix to the problem.

That broke my resolve to stay away from the Hardy Heron beta and proceeded to install it, as opposed to upgrade, in my MSI S260 laptop.

Clean install

I’ve never upgraded Ubuntu in my laptop. What I do is perform a clean install of a new version. This is a habit carried over from Windows and retained because I hate to wait for downloading of files to complete while doing an update to a new release over the Internet.

A new install, after all, takes just a few minutes and I take pleasure at customizing my installation all over again.

I downloaded the beta version of the desktop edition via Bittorrent and burned the ISO file. Installation was a breeze and after just a two-stick cigarette break, Hardy Heron was already running in my laptop.

The first thing I did upon logging in was check for updates. The update manager listed 287 files to download, amounting to a whopping 128 megabytes. At least two more update queues had more than 200 megabytes of files each.

UPDATE QUEUE. When you install the beta release, be prepared for frequent application updates. If you install the final release, you won’t have to download huge file updates. Click on photo to enlarge.

What I did was I left the laptop on and worked either on my office desktop or my Asus Eee PC.

If you want to go over the details, including the minutia, of the new things in Ubuntu Hardy Heron, just go to the Ubuntu website. Hardy Heron is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, this means it will be supported for three years.

Desktop eye candy

Compiz, with all its snazzy desktop effects, is installed by default in Hardy Heron but not its configurations manager. It’s easy to add it, though, through the synaptic package manager, just look for compizconfig-settings-manager.

The network manager applet has improved compared to when I last used it in Feisty Fawn and I saw no need to install wicd, my manager of choice for LAN and wireless connections. Firefox 3 beta was installed by default but then removed in one of the updates. I just reinstalled it after a few days.

GET YOUR DOCK HERE. Avant Windows Navigator, a cool applications launcher dock, can be easily installed from the repository. Click on photo to enlarge.

Avant Windows Navigator or AWN, a cool Mac OS X-like dock, is now in the repositories and can be installed easily using the package manager. If you want to start AWN, just include it in the list of startup programs in System > Preferences > Sessions. The command is avant-window-navigator.

Using Bluetooth also seems so much easier in Hardy Heron. In previous versions, I had to wrestle with using the command line to detect my Bluetooth USB dongle. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I gave up (what can I say? I’m lazy). With the Bluetooth tools in Hardy Heron, pairing is easier. I haven’t tried sending files from my Sony Ericsson P1i, though, because I encountered an error that I had no time to check yet.

Hardy Heron also comes with the latest stable version of Open Office, which is 2.4. If is a full office software suite for writing documents, creating presentations, managing spreadsheets, among other tasks.

JDarkRoom

But while Writer is a good writing software, I’ve always preferred to write my first draft on the minimalist and full-screen editor JDarkroom.

NO-DISTRACTION WRITING. I write my drafts on JDarkRoom, a minimalist and full-screen editor.

It’s easy to install JDarkRoom in Ubuntu. Just go to this site and download the jar file. To start the application, just open up a terminal and navigate to the folder where you stored the jar file and then type java -jar JDarkRoom.jar.

To save myself from the tedium of having to do this every time I needed to write something, I created a batch script using instructions in this forum post. In my case, I saved the JDarkroom jar file in its own folder in my home directory so my script is:

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/max/jdarkroom
java -jar JDarkRoom.jar

After that, I CHMODed the file, again using the instruction in the forum post. I could now start JDarkroom by typing jdarkroom in the terminal. But, as I’ve repeatedly said, I have a terminal case of hatred for the terminal and so I created a panel launcher using whatever icon I could find in the system that had a pencil on it.

Web development tools

With my writing tool installed, I proceeded to add other web development tools. The first program I added was Bluefish, a really good text editor that I use alternately with gedit, depending on my mood. I then added Filezilla for my FTP needs.

Since I use versioning for some of my work, I installed the SVN Nautilus scripts via the package manager but couldn’t get it working. I just installed RapidSVN, taking time to say a short prayer for the emergence of a Linux tool akin to what TortoiseSVN does in Windows.

With all the other tools installed, I then went on to download Aptana Studio, a really good IDE for web development. Aptana is my HTML and CSS editor of choice and I use it extensively for initial work with WordPress themes.

I installed Aptana Studio last because I thought I’d encounter problems with it. It turned out installation was as easy as just unzipping the downloaded file. I then created a launcher for Aptana using the icon from this site.

The Hardy Heron beta did not come with Wine, a software that allows you to run Windows programs in Linux. I wrote about installing Adobe Photoshop 7 in Linux previously. The current Wine version allows you to install and run Adobe Photoshop CS 2 in Ubuntu Linux smoothly. I had to install Photoshop because I still haven’t gotten around to learning how to use Gimp (soon, I know, soon).

Adobe Photoshop CS 2 running in Ubuntu Hardy Heron using Wine.

Overall, Hardy Heron is a great release. With its ability to be installed in Windows, I’m sure more people will be trying out Linux for the first time using the Hardy Heron release.

I told a colleague, who is about to embark on a career-changing project, to use Ubuntu for the computer component of his program. He agreed and I’m excited for it to start.

Since I started using Ubuntu last year, I’ve never encountered major problems in my laptop. Maybe I’m just lucky with my MSI S260 hardware since I still read posts trashing Ubuntu hardware support.

The only thing that’s not working in my laptop is the built-in card reader. I tried looking for fixes last year but just gave up and bought a cheap USB multi-card reader.

Part of me keeps saying Hardy Heron will be the last version in this laptop. I don’t know whether its specifications can still meet requirements of coming development releases. But let’s see. Six months from now. But from here on, it’s Hardy Heron.

Related posts:

1. Installing Ubuntu Linux Gutsy Gibbon
2. New Aptana IDE version makes Linux installation easy
3. Hey, Ubuntu’s sending stickers with its free CDs

Unlike the previous Cebu Living theme, which I ported from an open source CSS/XHTML design, I built this new one from scratch. And it shows. I’m not a designer, in fact, I’m bad at designs. But the new theme incorporates elements I, as publisher, wanted from a site run as an e-zine and using WordPress as content management system (CMS).

I will be releasing the theme as soon as I finalize it. If you have comments on the new design, please leave it in this post or send it as an e-mail so that I can consider incorporating it in the theme.

I would have wanted to give svn write access to anyone who wants to work on it but not right now. The theme will not work out of the box because you need to replace category IDs in template files. Work on the theme is geared toward a specific site and having multiple people with svn write access simply will not do, unless we share the same test WordPress install as reference.

I built the theme using Yahoo UI grids and pieces of code I discussed in a previous article on how to use WordPress as CMS for magazine and news websites. I will be writing a new article on the subject.

The major difference between this version and my earlier template is that I did the homepage customizations in home.php, which I should have done in the first place.

The index.php file is used as default template whenever other template files, say for rendering a single post, archive, or search results, are missing. If you have an index.php file that contains custom queries, it will not be able to render parts of your site whenever a template file for a certain task is missing.

WordPress recently got criticized for being a “blogware, not a content management system (CMS).”

I disagree. I think WordPress is a lean CMS that can be used for more than just a blog. I think it’s a great online publishing solution, especially for independent publishers.

Related posts:

1. How to use WordPress to run a magazine, news website
2. Announcing nautica-magazine WordPress theme for webzines
3. Nautica05-WordPress theme released

For more than a year, I’ve been trying one service after another in an effort to get my e-mails sent as text messages to my mobile phone. The answer, you might say, is simple: buy a Blackberry.

I’m not, however, prepared to spend thousands of pesos for the device and its mobile e-mail solution when I have only very specific alerts in mind: website availability and tasks reminders. For regular e-mails, I am perfectly satisfied with the GMail for mobile Java application.

ONLINE PLANNER. My current online planner of choice, Scrybe. The free service allows me to manage my tasks and get alerted of deadlines via SMS messages sent through Smart TextMail. Click on photo to enlarge image.

I run and help oversee several websites and need to know whenever the servers where these are hosted encounter problems so that I can work on fixing it or submitting a support ticket. All the sites I run are monitored by free web server monitoring services that check every few minutes or so whether these are available.

Whenever the monitoring services I use detect any of the my sites to be down, it immediately sends an e-mail to alert me of the problem. I wanted to be able to get that message as an SMS alert. Sure many of these services offer SMS alerts, but for a fee.

Tasks management

I also manage my tasks online. For projects where I work with other people, I use ProjectPier or Basecamp. But all my tasks—whether work-related, blog-related, or personal—are managed from a single online application.

I tested one application after the other, looking for one that offered SMS notification of deadlines. Google Calendar offers SMS notifications for the Philippines. The listings page says you can enable notifications for Smart, Globe, and Digitel. I have a Smart phone but have never been able to enable it. The settings page gives me an “invalid carrier” error message after I enter my Smart number.

I then decided to use Remember The Milk, a free online tasks manager that offers SMS reminders to Philippine phone numbers. The problem was that in several instances, the SMS messages came late, several hours after when I wanted to be reminded of a task. Remember The Milk is also limited to task management. I’ve also tried Backpack and it’s great for managing tasks but again, some SMS alerts are received later.

I found a better service with Scrybe. I say it’s better because it also allows me to manage my web notes. Scrybe is a really cool service for managing tasks and storing notes and it has an interface that’s such a joy to use. (Blogger’s note: I’ll write more about the service later.) Scrybe is an invitation-only service so if you want an account, leave me a note below and I’ll send you one.

Scrybe and SMS alerts

I transferred my tasks management to Scrybe because with it, I did not need to use another service for my notes whenever I need to do web research. The only problem with Scrybe is that it doesn’t offer SMS alerts for Philippine phone numbers. What it offers is sending alerts to a mobile phone e-mail address (your mobile phone number@your provider’s web address). For several months, I wasn’t able to use its SMS alerts.

E-MAIL, SMS ALERTS. Scribe notifies you via e-mail or SMS of deadlines of your tasks. I was able to activate SMS notification by using Smart’s TextMail service. Click on photo to eenlarge.

I knew the best solution was Smart’s TextMail but for several days of playing with the service a few months back, I couldn’t activate it, not even when a tech support staff from Smart guided me through it. When I still couldn’t activate the service, I gave up trying and made a mental note to try it again after a few months.

Early this month, I tried Smart TextMail again and found that it had been improved. I was told that it’s now being managed by a content provider, Mobile Arts (warning: the web site plays horrendous music so you better turn off your speaker.)

Registration

The service has also been transferred to www.mySmart.com.ph. I tried registering for the service about two weeks back and in no time, my mobile e-mail address was set up. If you don’t explicitly register for a username, your mobile e-mail will be your Smart number @mySmart.com.ph. The mobile number is in international format so if yours starts with 0918, it will be written as 63918.

To get your own personalized Smart TextMail address, send REG USERNAME PASSWORD YOURNAME to 200. The username you enter will become the first part of your e-mail address. After registration, add the e-mail address of the servers that send you alerts so that their messages are immediately sent to your phone.

If you get a message from someone not in the address book, the server just notifies you of the message and asks you to reply with G if you want to get the entire message. In my case, I added to my address book the e-mail addresses of the senders of my website availability notices and the e-mail address Scrybe uses to send reminders.

In using the service for more than a week, I find that I get the alerts as soon as these are sent. I now know immediately whenever any of the web servers I use is down. With the alert, I can then check the site and send a support request to the web host.

Scrybe notifications for tasks deadlines are also received on time and I’m now able to fully take advantage of it’s task management service.

I’m just using some of my TextMail account’s services. It is a full mobile e-mail solution if you’re comfortable with managing e-mail using text. It even generates access numbers for e-mail addresses. Any text message you send to these access numbers are processed and sent as an e-mail message to your contact. The SMS alerts are free but you are charged P2.50 each time you send a message.

I just hope that Smart TextMail maintains this quality of service. It has become an indispensable tool for me.

Related posts:

1. It works: Gmail mobile app on SE K750i and Smart connection
2. Get things done faster on your mobile phone and PC with FMA
3. Smart launches mobile TV service

Sophos said 54 percent of 560 respondents who took their online survey admitted to using other people’s Wi-Fi connection without their permission. The survey is not scientific and I don’t see how you can see a “widespread” trend from it. But it does provide a timely warning to home users who have gone wireless.

Sophos said “many Internet-enabled homes fail to properly secure their wireless connection with passwords and encryption, allowing freeloading passers-by and neighbors to steal Internet access rather than paying an internet service provider (ISP) for their own.”

I don’t know how common Wi-Fi piggybacking is in Cebu or in the Philippines, save for anecdotal feedback from geeks I know. I’ve heard of maybe three persons who said they were able to use an unsecured wireless network.

Still, the absence of reports should not be a reason to be complacent and just leave your home Wi-Fi network unsecured. This absence of reports may be because none have been caught.

And with more mobile devices like phones having the capability to use Wi-Fi, the risk will only get higher.

Sophos gave 6 tips for securing your Wi-Fi network.

1. Use encryption
Sophos suggests using WPA or WPA2 as a better and stronger encryption system than WEP. Linksys WRT54G, the Wi-Fi router I use, provides an easy point-and-click web interface into setting up these encryption systems. But I had difficulty connecting my Ubuntu Linux laptop using wicd to the router when using WPA2. I’m sure I made a mistake in the setting somewhere and I’ve put off using encryption for later this week.

2. Use a strong password
The first thing you do when you set up your router is to change its default password. The Linksys setup CD prompts you to enter a new password to replace the default one, which is “admin.” The password gives anyone access to the router’s settings.

3. Use MAC address filtering
This is something that I’m set on implementing. Wi-Fi routers and access points can prevent unlisted devices from connecting to the network. It does this by allowing only certain devices, identified through their MAC addresses, to connect to the network.

The Linksys web admin interface allows you to easily enter a list of allowed MAC addresses if you want to enable filtering. To get the MAC addresses of your Windows computers, click the Start icon, then Run, then type cmd in the box. Type ipconfig/all. Go through the details listed an copy the 12-digit Physical Address. Just copy the addresses of both the wired and wireless network adapters in case you’d need to connect to the router using a network cable.

In Linux, just open a terminal and type ifconfig, the MAC address is the 12-digit number beside HWaddr. The wireless card in my case is eth0 but I also copied eth1, my network adapter, in case I needed to connect to the router via a cable.

This isn’t fool-proof, though, as hackers can clone MAC addresses. But then again, how many people in your neighborhood can clone MAC addresses? I know all the people within range of my Wi-Fi network and the only MAC they know is either a sleek computer or else one that comes with juicy beef patty.

Filtering MAC addresses also provides an added hassle of entering new ones whenever you have visitors who may need to use the connection. I’ll probably just turn off filtering for the duration of the visit and tell him or her, “for you, I’m leaving my home network wide open.”

4. Don’t broadcast the name of your wireless network or SSID
Sophos recommends that you turn off broadcasting of the service set identifier (SSID) or your wireless network’s name. It’s a private network, after all, and there’s no need to broadcast this information. It’s not as if your home’s a cafe that has clients who need to discover your network to connect to it.

Sophos also recommends that you choose a hard-to-guess SSID not generic ones like home, internet, or [your family name] home.

5. Restrict Internet access to certain hours
This is something I’m never implementing. I’m online most of the time. But this is something you can easily do with the Linksys web admin. Sophos recommends this for people with set online schedules at home. The company recommends that you disable Internet access in hours when you don’t need it. Hey, why not just turn your router off?

6. Make sure your computers are properly secured
Sophos also recommends that the computers connecting to your network be secured with updated anti-virus software and security patches. I use Ubuntu Linux. Period.

But my wife uses Windows so I have to check her laptop once in a while.

Related posts:

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2. Smart unveils USB modem for mobile Internet access anywhere
3. GlobeQuest rolls out Wi-Fi in Manila malls

I bought a Linksys WRT54G after reading about its storied history. Mark Stephens, writing as Rober X. Cringely, calls the WRT54G and its Linux system “The Little Engine That Could.”

LINKSYS WRT54G. I used this Wi-Fi router to set up a wireless broadband connection at home. Click to enlarge image.

In my case, it was “the sleep-deprived blogger who couldn’t with the little engine that could.” I did eventually set it up—and I’m now using it to publish this post while downloading tons of files—but only after I went Internet-deprived cold turkey, at home at least.

Problem

The problem was the PLDT myDSL modem at home—it was a modem router. The Linksys WRT54G comes with a setup CD that guides you visually into setting up the Wi-Fi router. It wouldn’t work for me because I needed to make the PLDT myDSL router bridge the connection and let the WRT54G handle the routing function.

PLDT myDSL uses PPPoE to establish Internet connection. I called up tech support to request my username and password (they explicitly told me they wouldn’t help in setting up the Wi-Fi router because it was beyond PLDT’s scope) and was given [myphonenumber]@pldt as user name and [my account number] as password.

There’s the rub. I later learned from the PLDT tech guy who went into my house that my username is just my phone number.

I entered the admin interface of my PLDT router (accessible at 192.168.1.1) to bridge the connection and then entered into the Wi-Fi router the PPPoE username and password combination given to me by the PLDT call center support staff. Despite repeated attempts, the Linksys WRT54G couldn’t establish a connection.

ROUTER SETUP GUIDE. The Linksys Wi-Fi router comes with a CD containing a visual and step-by-step installation guide. Click to enlarge image.

I reentered the PLDT router’s admin interface and changed a few settings. I couldn’t recall clearly what the changes were, but I’m sure one had to do with DHCP. After I saved the new settings, I was locked out of the PLDT myDSL router. I could no longer access it. What’s worse, I had no Internet connection. To compound the disaster, I did it close to dawn on a Sunday.

I called up PLDT support to log a ticket and told them what happened. A PLDT technician called me up early Tuesday morning and kept saying “di man unta ka pwede musud sa admin sa modem” (you’re not supposed to enter the admin interface of the modem). He said it twice over the phone and twice when he went to my house. By his tone, I thought he would make me write “I promise not to play around with my modem’s settings again” a hundred times on a whiteboard.

Setting it up

After he fixed the modem, he said he’d leave the router setup to me. I got the impression that PLDT doesn’t want to help you set up third-party routers for your connection. I’m a bit perplexed because it’s a service I’m willing to pay for. Not that I wouldn’t attempt it myself (I’m a tech masochist, after all). Maybe it’s because I just have a residential plan.

After the PLDT man left, I didn’t bother with the setup CD and accessed the WRT54g using its web interface (accessible at 192.168.1.1). I entered the PPPoE username and password combination, this time without the @pldt suffix, and I was able to establish a connection.

The first thing I did after setting up the connection is to set up port forwarding. It’s ridiculously easy to forward a port to get good Bittorrent speeds. But to be able to do this, you have to set up your computer to use static IPs when connecting to the router. In Ubuntu Linux, I use wicd and it’s very easy to set this up using the application.

I tested download speeds using a torrent with less than 50 seeders and I was getting 50kbps, which is good enough for me considering I was just getting less than half that before.

EASY PORT FORWARDING. The admin interface of the Linksys WRT54G allows you to easily forward ports for your applications and Bittorrent downloading. Click to view larger image.

I still have to secure the router. I had problems connecting my Linux laptop to it using WPA2, so I just disabled security. I might use MAC filtering plus encryption and a few other things later. Right now, the only security is the power switch in the extension cord.

I was disappointed the Linksys WRT54G package did not come with a wall mount. But here’s a great tip from a YouTube user on how to easily mount it. I might try this in a few days.

Related posts:

1. Wi-Fi piggybacking widespread, anti-virus firm warns
2. On the road but still “in the cloud”
3. End of the Affair

After the beta was released, I started preparing to upgrade. I downloaded a disk image of the installer via Bittorrent while backing up files in my laptop. Since there were many seeders, the download took less than two hours.

RESTRICTED EXTRAS. Among the packages in the repositories of the next Ubuntu Linux version is “restricted extras,” which comes with Microsoft fonts, MP3 playback support and the Flash plugin. Click on photo to enlarge.

You can upgrade to Gutsy Gibbon from Feisty Fawn, the version prior to it. I chose to do a fresh install partly because I was reared in a Windows world and that’s how I installed new operating system versions—starting from scratch.

The installation was easy and went without a hitch. The installer detected my built-in dial-up modem, which I haven’t used since I bought the laptop, and informed that “restricted drivers” were available for it.

Gutsy comes with the latest version of Gnome: 2.20. The latest Gnome version comes with a lot of new features, among them assisted codec downloading in the Totem movie player; note synchronization via WebDAV or ssh for the note-taking application tomboy; and syntax highlighting (yay!!!) in the gedit text editor.

GEORGIA ON MY MIND. Microsoft’s True Type core fonts being installed via the restricted package. I prefer Georgia on my screen. Click on photo to enlarge.

According to the beta announcement, in Gutsy “several drivers, including ones for ATI, nVidia, and Intel graphics chips now support the X Resize and Rotate Extension (xrandr). This enables dynamic monitor detection, and resizing and rotating of video output, for no-fuss support for projectors and external monitors.”

Gutsy also includes the latest Linux kernel and “allows the processor to use less power and produce less heat.” This is particularly useful for laptops as it extends their battery lives.

What’s good about the Ubuntu 7.10 installer is that it includes in the packages “Ubuntu restricted extras,” which comes with it Microsoft fonts, MP3 playback support, Flash plugin, Java runtime environment, LAME, and DVD playback. These packages are not included in the Ubuntu package by default because of licensing issues.

Gutsy also enables Compiz Fusion by default to give users with compatible hardware stunning 3D desktop visual effects. You can enable the effects by going to System > Preferences > Appearance.

The Compiz Fusion configuration manager, however, isn’t installed by default but can be easily added via the package manager by going to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.

PROPRIETARY DRIVERS. The Gutsy installer detects my laptop’s modem and installs proprietary drivers for it. Click on photo to enlarge.

Gutsy also comes with an “improved plugin finder wizard” for Firefox and you can now also add Firefox extensions from the Ubuntu application installer.

I still haven’t tried adding a dock although I’ve read in the forums that Avant Window Navigator will be added to Gutsy’ repositories.

On the server installation side, Gutsy includes among the pre-configured installation options: mail server, file server, print server, and database server options. The previous option was for a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server environment.

Since it’s still in beta, there are tons of updates daily. A few hours back I had to download about 60 of them and these came a day after I downloaded more than 300. This provides a peek at the rapid development of parts of the Ubuntu system as it moves toward releasing the final Gutsy version.

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ActiveCollab is a clone of the popular Basecamp project management application. The main difference is that while Basecamp is a hosted service with various account levels, activeCollab is something you install in your own server and on which you have full control.

PROJECTPIER. The ProjectPier installation that replaced activeCollab in my webserver. I’m using the goCollab monochrome theme that came it.

The project management application appealed to do-it-yourself type geeks who wanted to host the data on their own and deal with less restrictions on accounts. Plus, it was free.

When it was first released, activeCollab came with an open source license and that was what attracted me to the project. I thought it held promise of being a very powerful and useful project management application if developed by an active community of users.

But the developer has decided to stop open source development on the project. Development will now be closed source, at least on the core features. The next release, version 1.0 due out next week, will also not have a free version. Your only options for activeCollab 1.0 are SmallBiz ($199) and Corporate ($399).

I do not begrudge the developer of his choice in taking the closed source path and releasing the product on a commercial license. It is within his rights and I hope he makes a lot of money out of it.

But for those who can’t or don’t want to pay for the new activeCollab version, a new group has forked the project’s last open source release, version 0.7.1. The group, ProjectPier, already has a release and development, based on activities in its site, seems to be already starting.

I’ve long been waiting for an activeCollab fork ever since the announcement on the change of license. When I spotted the link to ProjectPier, I immediately downloaded its release and installed it in my server—replacing the activeCollab 0.7.1 running in it.

Since ProjectPier is still basically a rebranded activeCollab, the installation is just the same. After you upload the files, an online installer will guide you into setting up your account. What’s good about ProjectPier is that it comes with several themes that you can use to customize your site’s design.

ProjectPier offers you a way to upgrade from activeCollab to its first release but I chose to start fresh, copying the remaining pending tasks in the system and then deleting my old installation.

I have high hopes for ProjectPier. I hope more people will start using it and getting involved in the development process. I also hope that web hosting companies like Dreamhost will replace their one-click activeCollab installs with that of ProjectPier.

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