Over the weekend, many TRU users received an email request that asked for their ID and password. The email was from “webmaster@tru.ca” so it looked legitimate but the actual “reply-to” message went elsewhere. While we were able to notify everyone that this was a targeted spear phishing attack on our institution, it may have fooled some people.

Just to be clear, IT Services would never ask for your user name and password in an email.

To learn more about spear-phishing to protect yourself, your identity and TRU, play the Carnegie-Melon’s Anti-Phishing Phil game.  ITSecurity.com created a nice list to check if a message is real or spam. Finally, be sure to check out the our IT Security site for more information on how to protect TRU and yourself online.

I’m currently attending the Oracle World conference in San Francisco. Of course Oracle is the world’s third largest  software company with over $1 Billion in profit in the last quarter alone. There are 40,000 or so people at this years event. For all it’s corporate splendor, I’ve still not been able to track down a wireless signal.

The  modern equivalent of hunter-gathering is Man’s endless search for wireless connectivity. Tighter security on most wireless routers means that free airtime is getting more scarce. That’s not the case for TRU students, faculty and staff anymore. While we have had a wireless bubble on campus for many years, getting wireless connectivity at other institutions has been a big hassle. Wireless roaming off campus has been made much easier with a new service called Eduroam.

The link above will tell you how to get connected so that  every time you flip your laptop open on campus, or at campuses throughout British Columbia all you need to do is point at the EDUROAM SSID, login with your TRU ID and password and bingo you are connected.

Eduroam has been in use at universities throughout Europe for some time. TRU is proud to be a  Canadian pioneer with this service. Yes, we are awesome. With the leadership of CUCCIO, the Canadian University Council of CIO’s – Conseil des dirigeants principaux de l’information des universités canadiennes, the goal is to roll out this service to universities throughout Canada in the immediate future.

The Eduroam Project is an excellent example of a number of things:

• It is a quick hit in the world of Identity Management. Because a TRU student is trusted at TRU, they automatically become “trusted” to use resources at all public unversites.
• Because Eduroam uses 801.1X and is secured by WPA, it helps improve TRU’s security posture, and,
• Eduroam is an excellent showcase of inter-institutional collaboration at its best.

Contact the gurus on the  IT Service desk for more information or assistance.

I’ve noticed that reading traditional print media like newspapers and magazines sends me to the computer more often than I’d expect. Case in point: today’s Vancouver Sun had “wordled” the week’s reader’s comments into a “word cloud.” No surprise that biggest words this week were “market” and “storm.”

Of course I had to wordle my blog and some others as well.  Glad to see my technology blogs’ number one wordle is “new.” This is a fun tool to create meme maps. Besides from trend-spotting, I find that there is something interesting in looking at the non-linear relationships between related words. Subliminal messages appear like “better like shudder interfaces.” Try it on your favourite blog to find out what they are really saying…

Another rainy Vancouver day.

Given the state of the ulcer-inducing stock market, today is probably not a day to talk about web entrepreneurism. Any investment bankers or venture capitalists surviving this week are probably hiding somewhere, waiting for the hurricane to pass.

As a dot-com refugee myself, I take an interest in new web start-ups. Danish boy-wonder David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the wildly successful Ruby-on-Rails open-source web application framework and project management tool basecamp, did a long talk recently on what it takes to be a successful start-up. His approach to building his successful company is a focus on old fashioned, sensible things like cash flow, customers, subscription, and loyalty etc. (Imagine that?) He warned his audience to keep their delusions of  winning the facebook or youtube lottery well suppressed.

A novel aspect of Hansson’s approach is to consider marketing your web product to the fortune “5 million”; all those small to medium businesses that require tools and services. These customers, not the large fortune 500’s (or fickle consumers), are where new software services will succeed. This was his formula for success of the Basecamp product.

This common sense advice from one of IT’s rising stars is refreshing.

Had a good laugh at the new Jerry Seinfeld Bill Gates Microsoft ad. While it may seem a bit bizarre at first blush I think it actually quite clever.

As everyone knows, the Apple “I’m a Mac” series is a masterstroke in TV advertising. I enjoy watching the ads on the apple site as pure entertainment. Trouble is, I cheer for my hero John Hodgman (you need to read his book “The Areas of my Expertise” to get the full extent of his humour), the bumbling, middle-aged pale and tweedy “PC” in the ads and askew the young, cool but smug and annoying “Mac.” It seems the Redmond marketers and their ad firm have picked up on this and cast Seinfeld and Gates as regular guys just buying shoes. Besides from the presence of Mr Microsoft, there is no shilling of the Microsoft brand except for some subliminal “Why Pay More?” banner in the store background.

In my mind, nothing could be more entertaining than watching two “Hodgmans” going about everyday life which is the genius of the ads. Maybe it’s okay to be middle-aged and ordinary and use a PC?

Like the Apple ads, people will stop and play these commercials as others are fast forwarded with the DVR. Top marks Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Spent some time today playing with the new Google chrome web browser. The minimalist look and tab controls are very elegant and I can clearly see this as an excellent browser for mobile devices. Google Engineers have gone for an “invisible look” to the browser that belies its real strength – as an operating system or platform for next-gen web applications. I also like how they have eliminated all those annoying tool-bars.

Back in the  day, I used to think we’d be moving more and more to a world without browsers; rich interfaces and ubiquitous connectivity – think Google Earth. Java would create this platform independence that would render browsers unnecessary. It seems once again that I am 100% wrong as the browser becomes the launch-pad for all applications. This will only lead to the second browser war with new browser platforms appearing. The reason for this is that you probably interact with most of your applications through a browser already.These interfaces will only improve with Rich Internet Application (RIA) interfaces like Flash getting better all the time and the Canvas html element taking told.

So I have seen the future and it may or may not be Google Chrome. (It’s sometimes hard to tell with Google what will be a hit and what will miss – think Google Talk.) Whether Google Chrome wins or not, watch the browser space for some exciting new software applications and a even more stressed out Microsoft.

PS But whats this – no Mac support?