Extension 437

VPN? We don't got no VPN. We don't need no STINKING VPN!

Clients ask me all the time for remote access. Up until recently the answer has been "Select, buy, install and configure a VPN router, then figure out how to train your end users to connect via VPN from home and manage to open files on a remote file server."

Now, more often than not, my response will be: "you need a new server anyway. Let's look at Small Business Server 2003 and the Remote Web Workplace feature".

Ninja Feature: Remote Web Workplace in SBS2003

Remote Web Workplace is (in my humble opinion) The Ninja Feature of SBS2003. In fact, it gets the inaugural EBTDF Ninja Feature award for being so cool.

Speakeasy - Firefox Web Browser Download

Link: Speakeasy - Firefox Web Browser Download.

Here's an idea. Speakeasy has created a FireFox extension to customize the browser. What if TechSoup did the same thing? We could brand the browser with our logo, add bookmarks and RSS feeds.

Girls in Ghana Get Computerized

My childhood pal Trevor Harmon spent two years in Ghana with the Peace Corps. While there he taught computer classes. He shares some of his insights on his Web site.

Link: Girls in Ghana Get Computerized.

Lessons Learned

If you are thinking of starting a computer class for young women, keep the following ideas in mind:

 

• Don’t think you need a full-blown computer lab just to get started. Even a few computers can support around fifteen students if they triple-up. For larger numbers, you can teach the same lesson to different groups, or you can use the classes as a reward for good grades in school. (The best students are the ones who can do the most with computer literacy, anyway.) It’s not ideal, but it at least gives them exposure to computers and can take away the intimidation of technology that they might have had.

• Your lessons can never be too easy. You might think that a keyboard is simple once you explain what it does--you press a key and the letter appears--but what about capital letters? What does "Tab" mean? And why does the question mark key produce a slash instead? Remember: If it’s not obvious to your students, it’s not obvious.

• Classes without boys can make more of a difference than you might expect. I’ve discovered that when boys aren’t around, the girls ask more questions, help each other more often, and generally seem to enjoy themselves a bit more. They also have the opportunity to draw pictures, sing songs, and do other "girl stuff" (sorry) without fear of being mocked by the boys. In my classes, I try to promote any activity that shows the computer as more than just an electronic typewriter.

• Self-learning is, I believe, the best learning. At the end of each lesson, I like to quietly excuse myself and let the students use the computer on their own, without any teacher looming over them watching for mistakes. These days computers are quite forgiving about mess-ups; they can give a polite error message without crashing (usually). Students are free to make mistakes and correct them independently, so the computer is an ideal tool for self-learning.

• Beware of cultural traditions that might confuse your students. In Ghana, for instance, students often bring to school a "white board", which is a thin piece of wood about the size of a sheet of paper, with one side painted white and given a clear varnish. The students write on it in pencil, then erase it using a mixture of soap and water. It saves them money because they don’t need to buy paper for scratch work and practice problems. Naturally, my students carried this idea with them to computer class. Before shutting down for the day, they would carefully erase anything they didn’t want to save by holding down the backspace key. I had to explain that simply closing the document and not saving the text would erase it instantly.

Search engine for me blogs

I need a search engine on these blogs. I'm kind of surprised Typepad doesn't just include one. Hmm.

extension 337: OPML file of Nonprofit blogs

What a great idea, making a list of feeds available to others as an OPML download.

Link: extension 337: OPML file of Nonprofit blogs.

I started collecting some nonprofit blogs on CompuMentor/TechSoup's Omidyar group pages. I just pulled those weblogs into a bloglines account, exported them as an OPML file and made that file available: npoblogs.xml.

Marnie's TechSoup Feed

This is pretty clever. I've been wondering how to keep my list of TechSoup articles up to date. Maybe I'll set up a feed of my own.

Smallworldmedia | Organising data with TypePad

Link: Smallworldmedia | Organising data with TypePad.

I opened up a help ticket to ask if there were any plans to add an image field to weblog entries and Brenna said, What? You mean you've used up all your other fields?

That was the slap-the-forehead of course moment. Just because it says "Title" or "Body" or "Excerpt" on the TypePad "compost a post" form doesn't mean you have to put a title or body or excerpt in those fields.

It may seem obvious now, but jumping that hurdle made it so much easier to complete the design of smallworldmedia.co.uk. And once I'd finished I started looking for ways to push the concept further.

Remote Administration for Scheduled Support Clients

All clients signed up for Scheduled Support can be remotely administered via remote desktop. Which means that if they call us for support, we don't have to trot over there in order to diagnose or even solve the problem.

The next step is to implement Remote Assistance for those clients which run Windows XP exclusively (there aren't many of these). That will enable real-time remote control of individual desktops on demand.

Bloglines

Link: Bloglines.

I remember signing up for bloglines some time ago and thinking "eh, this is just OK". The other day I looked at it again. Either I was blind before or it's gotten a whole lot better! Firefox extensions and notifier applets for Mac OS X and Windows (Oh, My!). I'm totally sold. Bloglines rocks.

Redistributing custom software installers

In our discussion of Healthy and Secure Computing, there is talk of preparing software for deployment, to save consultants and nonprofits time. For example, we could apply all the security patches to a copy of the  installation files for Microsoft Office XP, and deliver this "administrative installation" ready to deploy.

How would we do this? Would we burn copies to CD? Or permit downloads over the Internet? If we were not engaging directly with the clients, would we require a contract asserting that they have a license for Office XP? Or would we need to see a copy of their license agreement?

If we could do this sort of thing it would save a lot of hassle and money for nonprofits. But we have to figure out how to do it correctly.