Download Pick of the Week: Moodle Course Management System

Hello Everyone,
This week I have for you a very neat FREE open source Course Management System that you can easily implement on your companies Intranet in order to provide training and testing for your Employees or potential candidates. It is called MOODLE. While this is not necessarily Windows or Terminal Services related I feel that it is something that many people can use and therefore I chose it as my pick for this week.

Moodle is an out of the box system that you can easily install in minutes and start preparing online courses and test's for employees or potential employees.

A Good article describing what it does is at:

http://business.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/05/09/2117200

Note that since the above article was written Moodle has had several updates and enhancements. There is a bundled package for download on the Moodle site that gives you the system as well as the apache server and mysql so that you can easily install it on a vanilla server with minimal experience.

Our company was looking for an easy way to create online timed test's for our potential employees...Moodle fits that bill nicely. Check out the demo on the Moodle website.

http://Moodle.Org

Download the package at: http://download.moodle.org/

Jim Kenzig

CEO The Kenzig Group

http://www.kenzig.com

Sponsorships Available!

Blog: http://www.techblink.com

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From Nigeria now to Russia...the scammers can't get enough!

Just when you think you can tell a scam email from Nigeria, here come the Russians!

Russian Tycoon Is Spammers' New Target
By ALEX NICHOLSON, Associated Press WriterSun Jan 15, 3:11 AM ET

Russia has more in common with Nigeria these days than just oil. Following up on the politically charged jailing of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a wave of scam e-mails in the style of Nigeria's notorious spammers have been popping up in inboxes from Moscow to Kentucky.

But instead of impassioned pleas by dead African dictators' aides to move millions of dollars overseas, the appeals appear to come from the inner circle of the man who was once Russia's richest.

"Dear friend, I got your reliable contact from my husband's business diary ..." begins one letter from "Leila Khodorkovsky," claiming to be the billionaire's wife — whose actual name is Inna. The letter requests assistance investing US$45 million (euro37 million) of the tycoon's money and promises compensation.

Another is signed by "Larissa Sosnitskaya," who describes herself as a personal treasurer to Khodorkovsky, seeking a beneficiary for a similar sum that she intends to use "to relocate to the American continent and never to be connected to any of Mikhail Khodorkovsky conglomerates."

While their details — and often grammar — are muddled, the Khodorkovsky-themed spam highlights the notoriety of his case and his eight-year sentence on tax and fraud charges, which critics called Kremlin revenge for his sponsoring of opposition parties.

Worth some US$15 billion (euro12 billion) before his arrest at gunpoint on a Siberian airfield in 2003 — and currently an inmate of a bleak prison colony on Russia's border with China — Khodorkovsky was an obvious choice for the authors of the Nigerian-style spam, experts say.

"This is a well-developed business — they choose what is up-to-date," said Yevgeny Altovsky, who coordinates a UNESCO-backed anti-spamming program in Moscow.

"The main thing is it has to involve some kind of rich person," he said. "If a major court case against Bill Gates were to start tomorrow I'm sure he would appear in these messages."

Yukos spokeswoman Claire Davidson declined to comment on why spammers might have selected Khodorkovsky and the company he founded as subject matter.

"They aren't being issued from within the company," she said, referring to one letter in circulation allegedly signed by Bruce Misamore, Yukos' former chief financial officer.

While versions of the letter from Khodorkovsky's managers have been sent out in Russian, Altovsky said Russian Internet users are wise to such scams and were unlikely to be fooled.

Indeed, the Russian market for spam differs widely from the more aggressive U.S. fare of online casinos, porn sites and Viagra, and is used primarily by small and medium businesses as a means to advertise. Nonetheless, the Russian practice causes some US$30 million (euro25 million) a year in damages from traffic costs, Altovsky said.

Nigeria — globally recognized as a base for criminals exploiting the reach of the Internet — said in October that it is considering making spamming a criminal offense that could land senders of unsolicited e-mails in jail for three years.

Africa's most populous country is known for its "advance fee" scammers — criminals scouting for victims by sending millions of unsolicited e-mails with false proposals around the world.

Among the most common are e-mails proposing to share portions of dead African dictators' ill-gotten estates in exchange for an advance payment to help move the money overseas. The scammers keep the "fees" while victims receive nothing.

Khodorkovsky's case was accompanied by a sweeping back tax investigation at his Yukos oil company that eventually saw its main production unit sold in a disputed auction and eventually ending up in state hands. Yukos managers have since fled Russia as their colleagues were jailed and arrested in the continuing probe.

The auction of Yukos' production unit lead to the state regaining a large chunk of the strategically important

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Mozilla Releases Thunderbird 1.5 E-Mail Client

Get it at http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/releases/1.5.html#download
JK
Mozilla Releases Thunderbird 1.5 E-Mail Client

Jay Wrolstad, newsfactor.comFri Jan 13, 6:32 PM ET

http://www.mozilla.com/press/mozilla-2006-01-12.html

Mozilla Corp. has formally released a new version of its Thunderbird e-mail client, which promises improved security features and tools designed to make the open-source product more user-friendly.

Thunderbird 1.5 includes a new phishing detector that issues an alert to users when a suspicious link appears in an e-mail message.

It also includes support for server-side spam filters used by Internet service providers, said Scott MacGregor, the lead engineer for Thunderbird at Mozilla.

Auto Upgrades Offered

Other enhancements include a spell checker, a message-autosave feature, and the ability to input and sort addresses by frequency of usage. Support for podcasts via RSS has been added as well, said MacGregor.

Basic features of the client include IMAP/POP e-mail support, a built-in RSS reader, support for HTML mail, mail-search capabilities, message filtering, message grouping, labels, return receipts, and the ability to manage multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts.

"One of the best features of version 1.5 is automatic software upgrades as they become available," MacGregor said. "The spam control has been enhanced and we now provide a two-layer defense against phishing attacks by flagging suspicious e-mail messages for users."

18 Million and Counting

Thunderbird's support for RSS allows users to receive feed updates as e-mail messages, filtering and organizing these updates as they would ordinary e-mail.

Thunderbird 1.5 also allows users to access podcasts via a dialog box that provides direct access to the associated "helper" application, such as a Web browser or audio player. p> The software, runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, reportedly has drawn some 18 million downloads since the launch of Thunderbird 1.0 in December 2004.

"We have improved the e-mail experience by protecting users' privacy, eliminating junk mail, and adding quick-search capabilities with the built-in search bar as well," MacGrgor said.

Open-Source Advantage

"The biggest advantage of our e-mail client is that it is open source, based on the same platform as the Firefox browser, which lets enterprise I.T. managers and others in the open-source community look at the code and create customized Thunderbird extensions for their own purposes," he said.

"We are beginning to see an evolving ecosystem built on Mozilla, with Google integrating its desktop search with the platform and other companies adding their support," he said.

The latest version of Thunderbird can be downloaded at the Mozilla Web site.

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A couple of little known SBC Sites: Konect and Seamless RDP

In going back over some of the blogs on blogger over the year I happened upon two web sites that
I haven't seen mentioned anyplace in the better known SBC sites that I thought I would pass along.

One kept secret is a page on a site called CodeProject.com that has an article and applications
entitled Extending Microsoft Terminal Services Client to Provide Seamless Windows by
Martin Wickett. This gem explains how to use a virtual channel to publish an app via
RDP seamlessly and even gives you the code to do it via an activex web page!
Worth checking out and playing with at:
http://www.codeproject.com/internet/tswindowclipper.asp

Next is a site I came across at desktopsites.com that has a product called Konect.
Here is the hype from the site: Konect is a serverware solution for small and mid-size businesses that enables simplified networked resource management, deployment, security and remote access to employees within and outside of the workplace. Konect seamlessly integrates and delivers server-hosted applications, networked files, data sources, web resources and services to user computers in a highly secure environment without a second Windows desktop. The delivery of these services is done seamlessly through your users' normal desktop environment.

Basically the product is an extension of Terminal Services that also offers seamless RDP apps.
Check it out at:
https://www.desktopsites.com/konect.htm

~Jim

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Download Pick of the Week: Google Pack

At CES in Las Vegas this past week Google announced a bundled software offering
called Google Pack. The download requires Windows XP but is a great set of utilities
some of which google has had in Beta for quite some time.

Google Pack is:
Essential: Enjoy safe, useful software for your computer
Simple: Download and install everything in just a few clicks
Customizable: Choose only the software you want
Up to date: Get updates and new software via Google Updater

Google Pack includes Google Earth, Picasa, Photo Organizer, Google
Screen Saver, Google Desktop and Toolbar, Mozilla Firefox, Norton Antivirus 2005 SE,
Adaware SE and Adobe Acrobat 7. This pack is basically everything a new computer
user needs to use and get started on the internet and protect their PC while doing it.

Check it out at:
http://pack.google.com/pack_installer_required.html

~Jim

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Microsoft Launches Redesigned Vista Site

If you haven't been here lately check it out.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.aspx

Pretty cool.

Also of note is there will be a new PE version for Vista...
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/deploy/winpe.mspx#EGAA

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Download Pick of the Week MOA-Live Boot CD

Lets boot What ever - Where ever is the catch phrase for the Multi-OS-Anonymous
(MOA) Live Boot CD kit.

It is based on Bart's PE boot cd and adds the ability to boot into multiple OS's
with the addition of the VMware Player (with the ability to use other proprietary
versions of VMware).

Imagine a CD where you can stick it in your drive and choose
between a Windows or a Linux OS instantly!

You'll have to build the disk yourself so this is not
for the faint of heart.

If you got some time on your hands and love to tinker it is worth building.

http://sanbarrow.com/moa-intro.html

~Jim

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