Gordon And Mike's Ict Podcast

In this podcast we discuss Erik Eckel's 10 Best IT Certifications for 2010 post along with Mike's recent blog posts on IT certifications.            

This is our third network security podcast with Sam Bowne, Professor of Computer Networking and Information Technology from City College of San Francisco.  We continue our discussion with Sam sharing his thoughts on security and providing us with a snapshot of some of the latest and greatest developments in the field of network security. In the Podcast we discuss - among other things: A living bot army control center. IE and Firefox: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/05/revisiting-the-eleonore-exploit-kit/  The recent Google I/O conference which Sam attended. At the conference Sam got a couple of phones one of which (a Droid)he is awarding as a prize in an IPv6 contest:  http://samsclass.info/ipv6/droid-contest.html  The Hurricane Electric IPv6 Certification program:  http://bit.ly/d4cRAK Sam also discussed and provided a few more IPv6 related links: IPv6 Panel: http://tinyurl.com/2746v7f   IPv6 Summit in Denver: http://tinyurl.com/23mu7u2   IPv6 Certification: http://ipv6.he.net/certification/   IPv6 Tun

On Monday (5/2/10) Mike Q and I recorded a podcast titled Cloud Computing Technologies. The podcast references a couple of Infoworld.com documents that I think you will find interesting: A short white paper written by Eric Knorr and Galen Gruman titled What does Cloud Computing Really Mean A 21-page document titled Cloud Computing Deep Dive Report This Deep Dive report breaks down cloud computing into 11 categories and goes into more detail than the shorter white paper. What's really interesting is the categories are different in each document. You can see where the confusion lies when it comes to defining what cloud computing is. Here's the 11 cloud technologies we discuss: Storage-as-a -service Database-as-a-service Information-as-a-service Process-as-a-service Application-as-a-service (a .k .a . software-as-a-service) Platform-as-a-service Integration-as-a-service Security-as-a-service Management-/governance-as-a-service Testing-as-a-service Infrastructure-as-a-service We also discuss the C

On Sunday (4/25/10) Mike Q shared his initial impressions after some hands-on time with an iPad. Mike does a great job describing the device along with some of his favorite applications for the device. Here’s some of the questions he answers: So Mike you broke down and got an iPad - which one did you get? Why only 16 gig? So how long have you had it? So give us some of your impressions. How is the battery life? What about the screen? What about the keyboard? How much is the case? Did you get any other peripherals? Can you connect it to a projector for presentations? Have you been to the app store? What are some of your favorites so far? What do iPhone apps look like on the iPad? OK, how about some apps? Let's start with the iWork suite. So what's your assessment of these apps? What about Keynote? Have you moved your Kindle content over? And, speaking of the Kindle – I know you have a first generation one – how do they compare as a reader? What about some quick hits on some apps that you've fou

On Tuesday, we did our second network security podcast with Sam Bowne, Professor of Computer Networking and Information Technology from City College of San Francisco. We had a nice discussion with Sam sharing his thoughts on security and providing us with a snapshot of some of the latest and greatest developments in the field of network security. Here’s some of the questions we asked Sam: In our last conversation you mentioned that you got a BS and PhD without ever graduating high school. A number of listeners were amazed that you were able to do this and wanted more details – for example did you get a GED? Did you take the SATs? Mike sent over an article on password cracking – did you see anything interesting in that article? It’s been over a month since we last spoke. You had mentioned the PWN 2 OWN contest and were also planning to attend some training. Could you tell us the outcome of the contest and anything interesting you learned in your training? Any interesting news in network secur

Femtocells are just starting to be deployed in a broad range of applications with major network operators announcing rollouts in the USA, Europe and Asia.  They are basically small cellular base stations that people can put in their homes or businesses. They connect using a broadband connection (DSL, Cable, Fiber, etc) in the home or business. ABI Research forecasts that the total femtocell market in 2010 will reach 2.3 million units, and will exceed 45 million within five years. In this podcast we take a look at this emerging communications technology.Here's some of the questions we discuss and answer: What are femtocells? How many phones can they support? Are products currently available? Let’s pick one and dig a little deeper on the device features. How about AT&T since it is the newest offering. So, you need to have a broadband connection on the site in place? Why is there a GPS radio in a Femtocell device? What about Femtocell Quality of Service or QoS? Are the Sprint and Verizon pro

In this podcast, we’d like to introduce Dr Sam Bowne – Professor of Computer Networking and Information Technology from City College of San Francisco. Gordon and I have known or known of Sam since 2004. Sam is a tremendous classroom instructor bringing his extensive expertise in and passion for networking and network security to his students and his colleagues. Sam is also generous with his knowledge, making his lectures and classroom materials available to anyone who wants to learn. In what we hope will be a recurring role, Sam joins us today to share his thoughts on security and provide us with a snapshot of the latest and greatest developments in the field of network security. Here's some of the questions Sam answers: 1. Sam you have a BS and a PhD in Physics – how did you end up in networking and security? 2. You’ve been at CCSF since 2000 – what classes do you teach? 3. Ethical hacking? Sounds like an oxymoron – what do you mean by ethical hacking? 4. I know you’ve taken some of your students to DEFCON i

In our last podcast we discussed the past 20 years and how things have changed when it comes to broadband and cellular wireless service. In this podcast we provide an update on 4G services including LTE and WiMax. I know we’re seeing Voice over IP services in our homes over wired connections. How about the wireless industry? LTE is considered a fourth generation wireless technology - correct? What's the history with LTE? How did it get started? How about some LTE performance details? Besides just bandwidth (whish is nothing to ignore), what would you consider to be the big difference between LTE and earlier technologies? So, LTE is faster and in a way similar. Could you summarize some of the major features? Now, WiMAX is a little different than LTE but still considered 4G. Can you explain? Wasn't WiMAX originally proposed as a stationary technology? But now WiMAX supports mobility? How would you describe WiMAX architecture? So, how would you compare WiMAX, LTE and 3G? So, we talked about Mark's dilemma in th

In this podcast we take a look at the emergence of broadband and wireless technologies over the past 20 years. Mike: What lead to this podcast? Gordon: It was an email from a colleague of ours - Mark at the MATEC NSF center. Here’s what he said: I  was reading this PC Magazine article on why Apple stayed with AT&T (not happy about that since AT&T really stinks in Phoenix on coverage – if I remember correctly, one of the worst coverages and signals here.  In fact, Sprint is really the only company that works well by the mountains (where I live and work).  But the article stated: CDMA, the way Verizon and Sprint are doing it, is a dead end. Apple hates dead-end technologies. They look forward, not back. Remember how they got rid of floppy disks earlier than any other PC manufacturer? The current CDMA technology that Sprint and Verizon use still has some years of life left on it, but it's not where wireless is heading. Ok, so CDMA is dead.  But what is 4G?  And is all 4G using GSM?  Sprint is starti

In this podcast we discuss the emerging threat of steganography in voice over IP. This is really interesting - is it something that is already happening? Currently, this seems to be confined to research labs. The primary reference for this podcast is an IEEE Spectrum article by three professors - Józef Lubacz, Wojciech Mazurczyk & Krzysztof Szczypiorsk - at Warsaw University of Technology. This is part of their ongoing research, as part of the Network Security Group, to identify emerging threats and develop countermeasures. Before we delve into this new topic, lets provide the audience with a little background. First what is steganography - sounds like a dinosaur? Yeah - the Stegosaurus. I'm not sure how or if the two are related; we'll leave that one for the Paleontologists in the audience.  Steganography is something that has been around a long time - some say as far back as 440 BC. While encryption takes our message and scrambles it, so that an unintended recipient cannot read it, steganography att

On January 14, 2010 we hosted Online Impact 2010 in the Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) Technology Park. This was the second business and industry Online Impact event held at STCC - we had the first one in June 2009. Both events focused on the use of social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to reach out to customers and prospects. We had an excellent half-day of panels and workshop sessions that focused on social media tips and tactics. This podcast is a recording of the first panel, moderated by Dave Sweeney from viz-bang.com. I won’t introduce the panelists – Dave does it as part of the podcast. We’re already planning the next Online Impact event – watch our website at ictcenter.org for details.

In this podcast, Setta McCabe from WTCC 90.7 FM and Gordon talk about social media on her weekly radio program. During the show they discussed blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media applications. This is a recording of the interview. We’ve left Setta’s intro and exit pieces but have removed the public service announcements. Setta is great - and the interview was a lot of fun. We hope you enjoy listening.                      

Maybe "decibel" is not part of your normal vocabulary but it is a term we all occasionally read or hear used. Typically it has to do with noise levels - we use decibels to describe loud or soft sounds. US government research even suggests a safe exposure sound limit of 85 decibels for eight hours a day. We frequently hear the term but - have you ever wondered what a "decibel" really is? We take a look in this podcast.

Mike and Gordon discuss the Barnes and Noble Nook and compare it to the Amazon Kindle.

Intro: Twitter has become a household word for many of us - just like Google , YouTube , MySpace and Facebook (among others) have in the past. Chris Brogan (in this video) even calls Twitter his "central nervous system". We first podcast on Twitter almost two years ago. In this podcast we take an updated look at Twitter. Two years is a long time ago it seems. Probably one of the biggest things in my arsenal is my iPhone today. Two years ago the iPhone did not exist. What's changed in two years with Twitter? What are some of your favorite apps? What's up with all this Twitter following - how should we be handling?I've been hearing the term "jump the shark" recently when some discuss Twitter. What does that mean? I notice a lot of business people using Twitter, maybe it has jumped the shark. What are they doing? How are business people using it? So, lots of people seem to be giving Twitter a try but how do we know who has actually drank the kool-aid and has become a daily Twitter user? B

German graduate students Erik Tews and Martin Beck have discovered an exploitable hole in WPA, a popular wireless encryption protocol. This week, Tews will present a paper on the topic at the PacSec conference in Tokyo. In this podcast Mike Qaissaunee and I discuss wireless network security and this newly discovered WPA hole. Here's a list of questions asked during the podcast: Where is the information for this podcast coming from? Why is this important? So, we've now got a security issue with WPA encryption! Before we get to WPA - can you give us a little background on wireless encryption? So, the first attempt was WEP. Most devices still support it - why should we not use it? So, that's not good. What did the IEEE do? What else did the 802.11i group do - what was the second solution? So, let me make sure I understand. Older wireless devices can be updated to support WPA which includes TKIP. Now, I've heard of WPA2 - what is that? So, the new products support both but old

On Oct 1, 2008 Nart Villeneuve and the Information Warfare Monitor released an interesting joint report titled BREACHING TRUST: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China’s TOM-Skype platform. Villeneuve is CTO of psiphon inc and the psiphon research fellow at the Citizen Lab, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto. In this podcast we discuss the report, confidentiality and security issues with TOM-Skype, the Chinese version of SkypeMike: Gordon, Can you tell us a little more about this report?The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada focusing on advanced research and development at the intersection of digital media and world civic politics. The author, Nart Villeneuve's research focuses on International Internet censorship and the evasion tactics used to bypass Internet filtering systems. Other Questions: How about some background on Skype in China? How about some detail

This is a series of  interviews Dan Greenwood, Brookdale Community College's Instructional Designer, recorded with Mike.  This is part of Dan's Project Emit (Engaging Methods in Teaching) podcast.  You can find Dan's podcast at http://www.brookdalecc.edu/pages/613.asp Here are descriptions for the interviews, which we've combined as one podcast.  Associate Professor Michael Qaissaunee of the Engineering and Technology Department shares some of his innovative ideas on using video in courses. In Part 1 of this interview topic, Mike explains how both students and faculty can become involved in creating videos to improve learning.In the second part of our Video conversation, Mike shares some excellent examples of using video. We also discuss the use of video hosting services and Mike provides some ideas on how you can get started creating your own video content.Our conversation continues with Professor Qaissaunee explaining what viral videos are and the concept of viral PowerPoints and how they can be used with o

Intro: The Moving Picture Experts Group or MPEG, is a working group of ISO/IEC charged with the development of video and audio encoding standards. In this podcast we look at the MPEG standards and video delivery systems. Mike: Gordon, what sources are we referring to here?Wikipedia and white paper from the MPEG Industry Forum at www.m4if.org/public/documents/vault/m4-out-20027.pdf. we've also got a couple of diagrams from the Verizon website. Mike: What's the history of MPEG? Mike: Are these open standards? Mike: What's the history? Can you tell us about MPEG-1? Mike: How about MPEG-2? Mike: We don't hear much about MPEG-3 - what's up with that? Mike: Let's talk about MPEG-4 now. Mike: What are some of the advantages of MPEG-4? Mike: Let's switch gears and talk about carried video delivery systems - specifically the telcos and cable companies. How is this technology used?It's different for broadcast and video on demand (VOD) content. Let's discuss broadcast systems and look at how Verizon (as an exam

Intro: In this podcast we take a look at modern fiber delivery systems. Podcast Questions: Mike: Passive Optical Networks use Fiber – could you talk a little but about Fiber to the Premise or Home (FTTP or H) Mike: So what exactly is a Fiber P2P Network? Mike: OK, so what’s a PON? Mike: What are the PON Architectural Choices? Mike: What is Centralized Splitting? Mike: What is Distributed/Cascaded Splitting? Mike: What are some of the Protocols and Standards used with PONs? Mike: What are the Outside Plant Components? Mike: What’s an ONT? Mike: Are Technicians typically terminating fiber in the field? Reference List: FiOS: Our FutureJames Armstrong, Chris Cote, Stan McCoy, James ToddSTCC Verizon NextStep Class of 2008 Passive Optical Network SplitterLawrence Graham, Mike Thompson, Jodi Lewandowski, Jeremy Dillensneider, Stephen BooherSTCC Verizon NextStep Class of 2006 FTTH Explained: Delivering efficient customer bandwidth and enhanced service