Welcome Chris and Michael

Feedwire welcomes two new members to the team. Chris is our new field technician and Michael is our new office manager / apprentice. They both bring personality and buku mojo to the company, along with requisite technical skills. In honor of their musical background we took a band photo.

Feedwire Staff in its Natural Habitat

Feedwire is Hiring

Boutique IT consulting firm in its 10th year seeks computer nerd rockstars to participate in all aspects of business. Work includes field work (installation, troubleshooting, application support, networking), office work (filing, billing, writing, blogging), and business development (finding new clients, building and maintaining clients). Client base is entertainment industry heavy and includes sizes ranging from one computer to 100 computers. Academy Awards, Endemol, and Quincy Jones are typical clients. Must support Mac OS and Windows desktops and servers. Chops are more important than certificates. Job starts with part-time trial period, but the right person will land a full time job with opportunity for six-figure salary.

Send resume and salary history to [email protected]

iTunes Duplicates? Dupin to the Rescue.

First, a little background. I am a collector. It is just part of my personality - I like to collect and file and organize. I am not quite OCD, but I am certainly on the spectrum. Apple has recently changed their iTunes track quality and DRM policies by making iTunes Plus universal on the iTunes store. This means that every track will eventually be available in a higher quality, DRM-free format. To avoid screwing people who have already purchased music, and to avoid losing money themselves, they have offered to upgrade previously-purchased music for $0.30 per track. A chance to improve the quality of my collection? The OCD-spectrum part of my personality cannot resist.

There is, of course, a catch. iTunes is supposed to automatically replace the old track with the new update track. Unfortunately this process is imperfect and not every track is properly replaced. After an iTunes Plus upgrade, I have suddenly found myself with multiple copies of the same tracks, some in playlists, some not, some with ratings, some without. In short, my precious, meticulously-organized collection has been thrashed. This is an OCD nightmare.

iTunes includes a "Show Duplicates" feature, but there is no way to use this feature to place replacement songs in playlists or to update playcounts, ratings, or skip information. It is also time consuming to page through thousands of tracks and select which version is the keeper. Luckily, I am not the only one with this problem. A solution exists, and that solution is Dupin.

Dupin, written by Doug Adams (not the late author), is not an iTunes duplicate finder, it is an iTunes Duplicate manager. It not only finds duplicates, but it can merge playlist, playcount, and other metadata before purging the unwanted tracks from the iTunes library. This software is what the iTunes Show Duplicates feature should be. By using Dupin instead of iTunes built-in duplicate handling features I've saved at least 3 hours of tedious work, easily worth the $15 price tag. Thank you Doug Adams and Dupin.

Daily Candy

Good news! Damien of Feedwire (that's me!) has been nominated by a client and selected by the editors of Daily Candy as a top-eleven finalist in Daily Candy's Get with the Programmer "hot computer nerd" contest. If I win, both my long-time Big Brother compatriot Lindsay and I receive a laptop as a prize. Get your vote out!

Common Pitfalls

We see computer and technology problems every day. These are the greatest hits and they're in heavy rotation. Do us a favor -- avoid these common problems and give us more interesting problems to solve.

Backup


Backing up data is important. Hard drives are machines that break. When they do it can be very expensive if not impossible to recover the data they contain. Fortunately, it is possible and affordable to make exact copies of digital information. The question is not whether you can afford to back up, it's why you think you can afford not to.

Square Peg, Square Hole


Computers use different connectors for different purposed. Displays are connected via VGA or DVI, Keyboards and mice via PS/2 and USB, and copper ethernet networks are connected via RJ-45. Unfortunately IT is not a realm in which it is safe to adopt an “if the shoe fits, wear it,” or “if the connector fits, plug it” mentality. It's common for both ends of one wire to end up plugged into a switch or hub, which creates a loopback on the network and generates infinite traffic and breaking the network. It's also common for multiple routers to be connected to a network via their LAN ports, often with identical IP information, defeating the network's ability to properly route traffic to the internet. Improperly connected network hardware and cables is a big cause of network downtime and can be extremely difficult to track down.

Reset Button


Reset =/= Restart. Restarting or rebooting a network device is a common troubleshooting technique. Routers and switches and wireless access points are actually little computers. They sometimes crash too, especially less robust models. In that case, rebooting can be a quick and easy and effective fix. Resetting the device, however, reloads the factory default configuration, which is probably not appropriate for your network.

Email and Scope


Email is the first indicator. There are many problems with the same symptom that people notice before anything else. When email stops flowing, our phones start ringing. These problems can exist at any step along a long chain. The local computer, local network, network perimeter, ISP, and the mail server itself are all required for email to flow, and a hitch in any one of them can cause the same symptom. Some of these problems might require professional help to solve, some you might be able to handle yourself. To determine where the problem lies, or at least a likely candidate, run down this list:

  1. Does rebooting my computer solve this problem? If yes, it's probably something on my computer that's acting up.

  2. Can I print to a network printer or see file servers on my local network? If yes, the local network is probably healthy.

  3. Do I get a response from my router if I type its IP address into my browser? If yes, the perimeter is probably OK.

  4. Can I open web pages? If yes, the ISP is probably in good shape.

  5. Can I access my email via the webmail login? If yes, the mail server probably isn't broken.


Knowing the answers to these questions might not fix your problem, but it will certainly help us fix your problem.

Internet


Businesses are internet addicts. Financial information, email, research, data shared with customers, data shared with vendors, business web presence, instant messages and more all require a working internet connection. It's relatively inexpensive to upgrade your office to a dual-WAN configuration with automatic failover. Save yourself the worry and hassle of internet downtime in your office and make this small investment.

Preventative Medicine


One client insisted that their server's hard drive was being backed up. It turns out that it was not. Data was recovered, but at a cost of $2,400. Another ignored our recommendations for managed switches. Network downtime cost three-quarters of a day of productivity. Both of these problems could have been identified and mitigated in advance for much less money than the eventual cost of cleaning up after a disaster. Rebuilding the levee is cheaper than rebuilding the city.

A Blog to Call your Own

Both one of my friends and my mother asked me about blogging this weekend. This is a topic that's been beat to death on the internet, and this probably won't be the most thorough report on what it takes to get a blog started, but it should be among the most succinct.


  1. Visit wordpress.com/signup.

  2. Fill out the form.

  3. Start blogging.


That's it - that's all you need to get your feet wet. It's free to start, cheap to upgrade to custom features like control over ads and your own domain name, and easy to migrate to your own server should you decide you need added flexibility down the road. Jump in, the water's fine!

A Blog to Call your Own

Both one of my friends and my mother asked me about blogging this weekend. This is a topic that's been beat to death on the internet, and this probably won't be the most thorough report on what it takes to get a blog started, but it should be among the most succinct.

  1. Visit wordpress.com/signup.

  2. Fill out the form.

  3. Start blogging.


That's it - that's all you need to get your feet wet. It's free to start, cheap to upgrade to custom features like control over ads and your own domain name, and easy to migrate to your own server should you decide you need added flexibility down the road. Jump in, the water's fine!

Dave Barnett

For all things technical, my first call, IM, or e-mail is to Damien Clark and his company Feedwire.  His knowledge is vast, his explanations concise, and he is easy to get a hold of even with the strange hours that we keep in television. I highly recommend him for any small company looking to get a hassle free IT infrastructure in place.  In fact, that is the words I would use to describe Feedwire - hassle free.  They are able to really take all the guess work out of IT infrastructure, they are able to fix problems very quickly and make sure to always be accessible, so we never are left alone with an emergency.

Dave Barnett
Coordinating Producer
Big Brother

Scott Storey

I am Scott Storey, a Production Designer who works primarily in the variety/reality side of television.  I have a small design studio in my Venice house with 4 work stations.  Design work depends heavily on computers and complicated software.  Damien has built a smooth network, dependable back up systems and works space that can accommodate artists (not technicians).  His attitude is fantastic and I totally trust him.  and his tee-shirts are pretty smooth as well.

Scott Storey
Production Designer

Jeff Probst

Damien has been my go-to "computer guy" for many years now.   He has helped me through many a computer jam.  Most recently I was on location shooting Survivor and my entire computer went down. I lost everything.  Fortunately Damien had created an excellent back up system for me that I left behind for safe keeping in Los Angeles. Damien got me a new computer, re-installed everything I needed and got it sent out to me on location.  I barely missed a beat.  Damien and his entire team are reliable and trustworthy.  I recommend him highly.     

Jeff Probst
Producer Host 
Survivor

Google / Desktop Integration

Most of us are used to software that runs locally - we use Mail or Outlook for our email, Office for our word processing and spreadsheets, and iCal or Outlook for our calendars. Google Apps, Gmail, and the Google Calendar duplicate much of the functionality of these desktop programs, but they require an internet connection to work. The engineers at Google and some enterprising independent developers have come up with a few tools we can use to more closely replicate the desktop application experience even when NOT online.

Google Gears


Google Gears is a browser plugin that adds new features to your web browser. Today we're looking at its local data storage and syncing features. After downloading and installing the plugin by following the instructions listed on gears.google.com, you'll see a new item in the upper right of the Google Docs screen: "Offline."

Clicking this link and granting their site permission to access your Google Gears plugin will enable offline sync and access to your Google docs. You'll be able to get to docs.google.com, even when disconnected from the internet, and your changes will sync up once you reconnect to the internet and log back in to your Google docs account.

Gmail IMAP


Given the very large amount of data stored in a Gmail account, syncing Gmail is more complicated than Docs. Google is working on implementing Gears support for Gmail, but they're not there yet. Fortunately, we already have an email syncing technique called IMAP. If you need offline access to your email, It's worth setting up one of the desktop email clients (Mail.app, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc) to connect to your Gmail account. Google provides terrific instructions here.

Clicking Links


We're used to clicking links in our web browser and having those links launch the appropriate software to deal with the content we're trying to access. Online email throws a wrench into the works, but not one that we can't extract. Google has written a small desktop app that directs web browser email address link clicks to Gmail rather than to a desktop email client. It's called the Google Notifier and it's free from Google.

Once installed, it has to be configured as the default mail program on your desktop.

To do so in Windows:


  1. Download the Gmail Notifier.

  2. Right-click the Notifier icon in your system tray, and select Options.

  3. Check the box next to Use Gmail for internet mailto: links.

  4. Click OK.


If you decide later that you don't want to use Gmail as your default email application, simply uncheck the box.And, if you're using a Mac, you can set your default mailto handler by following these steps:

  1. Download the Google Notifier.

  2. Open the Notifier.

  3. Click the Mail icon on the Menu bar and go to Preferences...

  4. Select the Gmail tab and choose Gmail as the program from the Compose mail in drop-down menu.


Calendar


Gears support for Google Calendar is also still a work in progress. Google's added support for a different Calendar syncing technique called CalDAV to Google Calendar. Apple's iCal on OS X 10.5 (and up) also supports this protocol. Google has posted instructions for enabling it here.

There are a few cases in which a more robust syncing solution will be necessary. CalDAV syncing on Google Calendar has problems with event notifications, and if you're using MobileMe to sync iCal with your iPhone, there's no support yet for CalDAV. BusySync, a tool I use, is an alternative technology for syncing iCal with Google Calendar.

If you need help understanding any of these concepts or implementing any of these solutions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us. Happy syncing!

Google / Desktop Integration

Most of us are used to software that runs locally - we use Mail or Outlook for our email, Office for our word processing and spreadsheets, and iCal or Outlook for our calendars. Google Apps, Gmail, and the Google Calendar duplicate much of the functionality of these desktop programs, but they require an internet connection to work. The engineers at Google and some enterprising independent developers have come up with a few tools we can use to more closely replicate the desktop application experience even when NOT online.

Top Tools and Software

We use a variety of software and services to keep our business and our lives up and running. These are the heavy hitters in our list - the software that we use daily. In the web 2.0 world, not all software is installed and run on the desktop. The majority of this software is accessed via a web browser. There are several players in each of these fields, but these are the choices that work best for us. Get in touch with us and we can find the right matches for you.

Basecamp

I can't rave enough about Basecamp. I use this software to provide a virtual meeting place for me and my staff, and to keep my clients informed of the status of their systems and accounts. I've never felt more in touch and on the same page with my team as I do now. It's an office with no walls.

Highrise

This is a call sheet on steroids. In an executive/assistant scenario, this software trumps kludgey excel and filemaker solutions that I've come across. Everyone I've converted is hooked. Will you be next?

Zendesk

Zendesk forces me to respond to problems. Every time someone asks a question, leaves a voicemail, or reaches out for help, we make a ticket in our Zendesk app. I can then view tickets by context, urgency, client, or age. This tool helps us keep response time down and accountability up.

Freshbooks

Freshbooks makes invoicing simple and saves the planet (if only slightly) while doing it. Invoices generated with Freshbooks are delivered to my clients via email and the status is tracked online. This enables faster delivery, and tracking of statistics like payment time and average invoice size. They even offer postal mail delivery of invoices for those who insist on paper.

BusySync

BusySync keeps us on-time. Both our appointment information and our time tracking for invoices is done in iCal, so calendars are important to us. There are a few players out there in the calendar syncing world, but our requirements are strict. We need by-calendar permission control, offline access to calendars, and near-realtime syncing. BusySync delivers.

Time Machine

Apple's OS X 10.5 Leopard's built-in backup software is called Time Machine. It's brilliant. This software protects against the three types of data loss: hardware failure, software corruption, and accidental data loss. Paired with a Time Capsule it's almost a perfect backup solution.

Drive Backup Express

This is the closest thing to Time Machine I've found for the PC. It basically replicates the Time Machine feature set, though it's not quite as pretty.

Mozy & SpiderOak

Offsite backup. Network connections are finally robust enough that online offsite backup is practical for most small business and even some home users. This is not a replacement for local backup -- recovery times can be quite long for large data sets -- but offsite backup protects against disaster and theft. A backup is no good if it gets stolen.

PhoneTag

If you're already a Feedwire customer, you've probably seen that voicemails you leave for us are transcribed into emails. This is a great time-saver. PhoneTag is the company that does this for us. It gives us only one in-box, which helps us to focus and keep our response times down.

Dropbox

Cloud based file storage systems are great, but nothing beats having a local copy of the files. Dropbox handles syncing our project files between Feedwire employees. We operate a distributed office and don't always have internet connectivity, so a traditional file server doesn't work for us. Dropbox keeps all of our computers synced and even allows us to roll back to old versions of files. How cool is that?

Top Tools and Software

We use a variety of software and services to keep our business and our lives up and running. These are the heavy hitters in our list - the software that we use daily. In the web 2.0 world, not all software is installed and run on the desktop. The majority of this software is accessed via a web browser. There are several players in each of these fields, but these are the choices that work best for us. Get in touch with us and we can find the right matches for you.

Cloud Computing Pitfalls

Outsourcing software and services can be a great boon to efficiency and productivity. The trend toward Web 2.0 SaaS (Software as a Service) and cloud computing is simplifying once complex software and licensing issues. Your business is only a few clicks away from implementing a secure intranet, online accounting software, or a unified office, calendar, and email suite.

There are, however, things that can go wrong. It's the responsibility of every business and business owner to mitigate risks that threaten business continuity and integrity. Responsibility and accountability cannot be outsourced. If your business relies heavily on cloud computing, there are a few things you can do to reduce the damage done by outages and problems in the cloud. I'll use Google Apps as an example, but these principals apply to any hosted software.

Connectivity


Your internet connection is not 100% reliable. No internet connection is. Modems break, wires are cut or unplugged, billing issues occur, and ISPs go down. In the past, this hasn't been as big a problem as it can be now. In a traditional local computing office, most of the information needed to work is stored on local hard drives and servers. An internet outage can mean no email or web browsing, but documents can be written, old emails can be read and responded to, spreadsheets can be adjusted. In short, digital office work can continue through an internet outage.

In an office which relies heavily on web-based applications, an internet outage puts a stop to work. Access to documents, schedules, perhaps the business logic on which the whole company is run is abruptly cut off. Fortunately, we can plan for this and install a redundant internet connection. This used to be available only in very high-end installations requiring equipment expenditures in the thousands of dollars. Now, it's hundreds. You need only three things:


  1. An internet connection

  2. Another internet connection from a different provider via a different medium

  3. A router with multiple WAN connections


This is $200 - $300 of equipment and approximately 2 hours of labor to set up. If you're interested in increasing your resistance to internet outages, get in touch with us.

Backup


It's easy to imagine that Google is eternal and perfect. They employ some of the brightest computer scientists in the world, their products are free and easy to use, and they are somewhat of an icon of Web 2.0 goodness. Google is not eternal or perfect. Their systems can fail, or you might even be targeted by a malicious hacker or competitor. Though they employ best-in-class solutions to prevent data loss, Google disavows any responsibility for your data.

Making regular backups of your data is important, no matter where it is stored. When your data's primary home is your computer, we can use online services to keep remote backups. When your data's primary home is an online service, we can utilize local copies as backups.

If you're relying heavily on email and calendars, be sure to configure your local email and calendar software to sync with Google. This way you retain access to your email, contacts, and calendars even if Google's services have trouble.

It takes only minutes to set up local syncing of documents, contacts, calendars, and email. If you're interested in backing up your important information, get in touch with us.

Plan B


This is more philosophy than specific advice. For every system on which your business relies, do you have a plan B? If your stapler breaks, you grab a paperclip. Easy. What's your plan for an internet outage? A broken hard drive? A disgruntled employee who decides to erase the calendar and send vulgarities to the email lists? You don't need a formal plan for every eventuality, but you should reflect on your business and prepare for issues that you know are likely to occur.

Band of Brothers

We're stealing this policy from Bonobos, a company that has absolutely nothing to do with computers or technology. In fact, they make pants. The best pants.

Presenting Feedwire's new Band of Brothers policy:

If you are a public school teacher, a fireman, a public servant, a nurse, or any other profession where you’ve chosen to serve rather than to earn as a first priority, then you may qualify for a Feedwire Band of Brothers discount.

We’d rather live in a society where school social workers earn just as much as commercial lenders, and people who save lives don’t have to work all their lives to save. We don’t love Ayn Rand, but we respect some of her ideas. Essentially, we’d like to make our services a bit more affordable for people that have consciously chosen a career that is less lucrative.

All you need to do to join the Band is to write us a short letter (200-500 words) explaining who you are, what you do, and why you think you qualify.  We aim to accept all applications, and we try to respond within 24 hours.

Cloud Computing Pitfalls

Outsourcing software and services can be a great boon to efficiency and productivity. The trend toward Web 2.0 SaaS (Software as a Service) and cloud computing is simplifying once complex software and licensing issues. Your business is only a few clicks away from implementing a secure intranet, online accounting software, or a unified office, calendar, and email suite.

There are, however, things that can go wrong. It's the responsibility of every business and business owner to mitigate risks that threaten business continuity and integrity. Responsibility and accountability cannot be outsourced. If your business relies heavily on cloud computing, there are a few things you can do to reduce the damage done by outages and problems in the cloud. I'll use Google Apps as an example, but these principals apply to any hosted software.

Band of Brothers

We're stealing this policy from Bonobos, a company that has absolutely nothing to do with computers or technology. In fact, they make pants. The best pants.

Presenting Feedwire's new Band of Brothers policy:
If you are a public school teacher, a fireman, a public servant, a nurse, or any other profession where you’ve chosen to serve rather than to earn as a first priority, then you may qualify for a Feedwire Band of Brothers discount.

We’d rather live in a society where school social workers earn just as much as commercial lenders, and people who save lives don’t have to work all their lives to save. We don’t love Ayn Rand, but we respect some of her ideas. Essentially, we’d like to make our services a bit more affordable for people that have consciously chosen a career that is less lucrative.

All you need to do to join the Band is to write us a short letter (200-500 words) explaining who you are, what you do, and why you think you qualify. We aim to accept all applications, and we try to respond within 24 hours.

Backstage with Email

Email. It's become one of the most important personal and business communication tools. When my customers email stops working, for whatever reason, they very quickly move from concern, to worry, to distress, to panic. As with most computer problems, a lack of knowledge about the system only increases the intensity of the panic - not only are they unable to access their email, they have no idea how it works. Hopefully after reading this article, you'll have a better understanding of the multitude of systems that have to coordinate for your email to make it to you.

If you're using someone else's domain, such as gmail.com, hotmail.com, aol.com, comcast.com, or yahoo.com, this article isn't for you. You are tied to the fate of that particular host. I could write an entire article on why it's important for you to own and use your own domain for email, but I'll let an anecdote suffice. In 2001, the ISP I used at the time, Primenet, was purchased by Earthlink. I was informed that my email address, [email protected], was going to be terminated and that I had 30 days to pick a new email address @earthlink.net. It didn't matter that I had years of contacts who would try to email me at the old address or that I had hundreds of dollars of printed promotional material, both on a shelf and in circulation, featuring the primenet.com address. If you're using email hosted at a domain that you don't control, I urge you to make the switch to your own domain on your own terms, not on terms set by big corporations. The costs are small ($40 a year or less) and your own terms will be better for you.

1. Registrar


The registrar is the company from whom you purchased your domain name. Companies like Network Solutions and Go Daddy are popular registrars. They perform a function similar to the trademark office — they enforce domain name uniqueness. There can be only one feedwire.com and only one aol.com.

It's important for you to verify that you know which registrar your domain name is registered with, that your name is listed as the owner of the domain and not some third party or consultant, and what username and password you can use if you need to make changes to your domain configuration.

Registrars establish ownership of domains, but they don't route email. The DNS (Domain Name Server) is the first step in the email routing chain.


  • With which registrar is my domain registered?

  • Is my domain registered to me?

  • What username and password can I use to make changes to my domain?


2. Authoritative Domain Name Server


The DNS system is the white pages of the internet. Much like a telephone number, each computer on the internet has a distinct IP address. Names are easier to remember than numbers — I get much more traffic when I direct people to feedwire.com than when I direct them to 207.7.108.213.  This is an important task. When DNS stops working, the internet effectively stops working.

In most cases, DNS is handled either by the Registrar (above) or the Email Host (below), but this is not necessarily true. Since your email is important to you, dear reader, it's your responsibility to know the state of your DNS. Additionally, you should be comfortable with the redundancies they have in place and guarantees they make about their DNS service.


  • Who is my DNS host?

  • Do I have a username and password which gives me access to make DNS changes?


3. Email Host


Your email host is the big kahuna of this article and your email systems. This is the server to which your DNS directs other email servers seeking to deliver email addressed to your domain. Email is vitally important to communication throughout your organization and all of the organizations with which you interact. We're all familiar with the idiom, "You get what you pay for." What do most people pay for email hosting? Zero.

Most individuals and many organizations trust their email either to a free host or to their web host as a free bonus for their hosting account. Dreamhost, a huge web hosting company, reports that just over half of its customer service inquiries concern email. Can you imagine if you had to devote half of your staff and resources to servicing a product that industry habits force you to give away for free? Dreamhost writes about how much they hate hosting email here.

What's better than free email? Business email. Companies like Mailtrust and AppRiver specialize in hosting email for businesses. They are email specialists, not hosting generalists. They have redundancies in place, automatic backups, fantastic webmail and management consoles. They understand how important email is to you and to everyone, and they want to host yours.


  • Who is my email host?

  • Am I comfortable with their service, redundancies, and backups?

  • What username and password do I need to make changes to the email addresses at my domain?

  • What is the username and password for my own email account?


4. Internet Connection


To retrieve your email from your email host, you've got to traverse the internet. Whether you're using webmail, a mobile device, or a desktop email client, you've got to somehow be online. When the internet at your office goes down, email access goes with it. This is not as catastrophic as a downed DNS or Email Host — your email will be waiting for you when you're able to get back online. Still, you need to know how to get back online.

  • Who is my ISP?

  • How can I reach them for service?


5. Your Computer


New emails are important, but old emails can be too. Once your email is downloaded from the server, it becomes your responsibility to ensure its safety and longevity. You've got to keep backups of your data, on separate physical media. This is a good idea in general, for reasons that reach far beyond email health.

  • Do I backup my computer regularly?

  • Is my old email included in this backup?

  • If someone stole my computer, would I still have a copy of all of my old email?


Full Disclosure


Yes, we are a reseller for Mailtrust, but only because that enables Feedwire to offer Mailtrust email hosting to our clients at lower prices than Mailtrust offers directly, in smaller units, and better, faster management of the email hosting.

Backstage with Email

Email. It's become one of the most important personal and business communication tools. When my customers email stops working, for whatever reason, they very quickly move from concern, to worry, to distress, to panic. As with most computer problems, a lack of knowledge about the system only increases the intensity of the panic - not only are they unable to access their email, they have no idea how it works. Hopefully after reading this article, you'll have a better understanding of the multitude of systems that have to coordinate for your email to make it to you.