With everyone looking to cut costs for travel, web conferencing is a great way to reduce the burden of meetings. Heck, around here we have fights over conference room booking - it seems some folks can’t control an agenda with time constraints. Enter DimDim
DimDim is a web collaboration tool much in the vein of Webex, GotoWebinar, and Intercall. In their own words: 
With no software to download or install, Dimdim forever democratizes webbased live meetings. In seconds - right from your browser - you easily host or attend web conferences complete with audio and video, chat, screen and web page sharing.
In layman’s (my) terms - you can have useful web conferences, even with stupid folk engineers, executives, and the special group of paradoxical professionals that I call ‘PHDumbs’ who are both quantum chemistry smart and dumber-than-dirt at the same time. All of this is available for free for up to 20 participants via the dimdim.com site. Sweet.
But wait, there’s more!
DimDim also has awesomely (technical term) set up a free GPL open source version, which can be installed as an in house conference server, or downloaded as a VMware appliance. This allows for internal meetings while keeping any touchy intellectual property data within the confines of the corporate network. It also removes any restrictions on the amount of participants (up to whatever the server can handle).
Here’s some of the applications where I see DimDim kicking some serious ButtButt:
- Online Webinar Training - an internal trainer can host training to groups of people both inside and outside the office, without the pesky setup of a conference room.
- Record Training sessions - Webinars can be recorded, which frees up trainer time. This is really important if trainer is just one of the many hats you have to wear.
- IT support - While not specifically designed for it, you can control another attendant’s PC if given permission. This has come in handy as a poor man’s VPN when needed (i.e. out of state family tech support), and eliminates the somewhat amusing yet mostly painful practice of reading long-winded error messages during phone troubleshooting.
- Extracurricular Activities - I am looking into this as a tool for my own quasi-social mastermind group, as a way to network with peers, facilitate introductions, and grow relations with kindred spirits without having to settle on a physical meeting place (or run up a large bar tab).
Posted in Software.
Tagged with DimDim, Open Source, Remote Administration, Software, Webinar.
In the course of my day, I often find myself scratching out my ideas on paper. Some people call this process brainstorming, but I prefer the term ‘mental vomiting’ which I feel captures the cathartic process a bit better (YMMV). A toxic byproduct of this modus operandi is that I have lost many of these scraps, or partially recover frail scraps of them later at the end of the wash cycle. As a result I have searched around for an electronic version for this and came across Freemind, an open source, java based mind mapping tool.
Most people grossly underestimate the value of mind mapping software, and to be honest I was quite skeptical at first. Since I started using Freemind, I have found it more and more useful in my software toolkit.
Posted in Software.
Tagged with Java, Mind Mapping, Open Source.
As we all know, being an admin is tough business, and we can’t be in two places at once.. or can we?
What would you do if you could magically teleport all around the business campus, performing surgical strike tasks with lightning efficiency while avoiding the inevitable hallway ambush?
VNCScan (now known as VENM) from Bozteck is a product that I have personally used for quite a while now, and it has enabled me to do so much, it’s silly. While the product is not free ($59 per admin or $995 for an all-you-can-eat site license), it is definitely worth its weight in cash (Take it from me as an IT army of one). Add a dual display and you can multitask multiple machines across a campus like they were on your desk. I also like that I can see the user’s screen as they see it which makes phone troubleshooting SOHOHOHO much easier.. (without having to touch their biohazard keyboards to boot - think of how much less Purell you’ll need!!),
So what can it do?
From their site:
With VNCScan, you can remote control desktops, capture remote screen shots into thumbnails, execute scripts on remote computers, and do a TON of other time saving administrative tasks. VNCScan is like the Swiss Army Knife for anyone who manages computers on a network. It uses the standard open source VNC utility for remote desktop control. In addition to this, it can perform many time saving functions on your Windows 2000 and better workstations and servers.
The scripting features make it easy to customize the functionality more than any other product of it’s kind.
VNC Management
- Support for UltraVNC 104 in Vista
- Strong UltraVNC encryption support
- VNC access while in safe mode
- Wizard driven VNC deployment
- Support for all major VNC distributions
- Include additional registry files with VNC deployment
- Multithreaded (super fast) VNC and RDP scanner
- Windows domain authentication
- Uninstall VNC Remotely
- Remotely change VNC passwords
- Full UltraVNC Encryption support
- Thumbnail UltraVNC support
- Custom Command Line Support
- and more!
Network Management
- Ping monitoring for uptime
- SSH for remote management
- RDP Connection Manager
- Remotely execute CMD, VBS, KIX, and Auto-IT scripts
- Wake On LAN Magic Packet support
- Remotely reboot with safe mode support
- Remotely enable/disable RDP on XP computers
- Extend the console with custom commands
- Find who is logged into remote computers
- Remotely change Windows passwords in mass
- View installed software remotely
- Manage processes remotely
- Computer Management MMC Integration
- System Information MMC Integration
- Remotely Rename Workstations
- and more!
For the paranoid admin
Many security-minded people tend to freak out when they think about loading VNC on network machines. I must admit that I have been of this mindset for some time, and I have made it one of my priorities not to play mailbox baseball with a wasps’ nest. To really whittle down the attack surface, I have configured VNCscan to not only utilize encryption (which counters one of the bigger issues with VNC), but also push install and removal remotely. This way, VNC server is not on the network machines unless you are actually administering them.
I will go into this in more depth in a follow-up post.
Posted in Software.
Tagged with Remote Administration, VNC, VNCScan.
In today’s corporate culture, it is often the people that are the lifeblood of the business to be overlooked. Money is usually more likely to flow to the overly stylish (and mostly clueless) marketing department, than to the people that are slugging away at keeping the enterprise functioning. The result of this is that the business itself begins to resemble an old Honda Civic with chrome rims and bald tires (yes, the hood has been painted flat black krylon to cover the bondo.) IT departments everywhere have been shifted from a modus operandi of ‘doing more with less’ to ‘getting something from nothing.’ At this stage reading Dilbert becomes painful to the point of tears.
If this resembles your current state of affairs, this site is for you, by someone that is in the same leaky boat.
Let me tell you a little about myself. I have been in IT for 10 years now, and have worked in the same facility by myself for over 6 years. In that time, this facility has gone from under 50 people to close to 300 spanning 3 shifts. I am responsible for basically everything that requires electricity, so all PC’s, the network (wired and not), the phones (including PBX), the wiring, the printers, the copiers, the videoconferencing equipment, the projectors, and several industrial machines that utilize an IP address. I have done this alone, while juggling projects for our other facility.
I aim to share my most valuable kung fu with you, from software to office politics. Leave me some comments with requests or topics to be addressed, or share your methods.
Posted in Uncategorized.
