Alexander’s Blog

AVG AntiVirus is a free and popular antivirus application that people have been using on their desktop computers for years to protect their desktop operating system, such as Windows XP or Windows 7. Did you know that AVG also has an Anti-Theft Service for Android devices? Here’s how it works.

1. Download and install the AVG AntiVirus software from the Play Store on your Android device.
2. Once you have configured the software for protection, performance and privacy, click on the Anti-Theft icon to activate the service.
3. You will receive an e-mail from AVG that your service is activated, along with the instructions on how to use this service.
4. Go to any computer and visit AVG’s Anti-Theft Web page at http://www.avgmobilation.com/anti-theft.
5. Login with your Google account. Select the appropriate option, such as Shout, Locate, Lock, Unlock, Wipe, or Scan.
6. You can use the Shout option to make the device sound an alarm. Essentially, this will play a ringtone on the device. This can come handy if you can’t find your smart phone in your house and there is no other phone in the house to dial your number.
7. When you use the Locate option, it can take several minutes to locate the phone and will give you its proximity in a Google map.
8. The Lock option can be used to lock the device remotely so others can’t use it. This will require someone to enter the password that you will enter. This password is a temporary password and has nothing to do with any other password on your device or Gmail account.
9. You can use the Unlock option to send the unlock command to the device but it can’t actually unlock your device remotely. You must enter the password you provided when you used the Lock option to unlock the device
10. Using the Wipe option will wipe your Android device remotely. Needless to say, I didn’t try this feature and will have to trust AVG that it works.
11. If you select the Scan option from a desktop computer, within seconds your Android device will start scanning your computer for security threats. This is the same action that you can take from the AVG mobile application on your Android device.

Does the Service Work?

So what about security and does this Anti-Theft service really work? In my tests, I found that the application works for the most part and can be useful to lock a stolen device remotely (and potentially wipe out the device, which I didn’t try). The features work, except that the first time I used the Locate feature, it didn’t even come close to the actual location of the device. While my smart phone was in my had, it showed that my device was located in a different zip code about 10 miles away from me. After a while it did show the exact location, so decide for yourself if this is good, bad, or ugly.

Another weak point that I discovered is that the application itself doesn’t use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to encrypt the pages on the Web site. This surprised me. A company that makes AntiVirus software should be securing pages where customers are entering passwords and working on Anti-Theft software. In other words, you are using AVG’s unsecure page to secure your Android device. Really? This makes no sense.

Not only the Web site is unsecure, the password that you provide to lock the device can only be 4-6 characters. In other words, the password you provide is going to be very weak. While this may be good enough to keep an average “Joe” out, it won’t be good enough to keep a serious hacker out.

Hopefully, over time AVG will improve this application. It’s a good start but in my opinion the application appears to be more for fun and games than to offer a serious anti-theft service……mainly due to the quality of service and the fact that AVG doesn’t offer encryption to use a security software on their Web site. As I mentioned already, it does seem to get the job done for the most part so I am not ruling it out as a totally useless application. I believe it needs work to offer better reliability for locating the device and also needs some security improvements. After all it is a security application.

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Copyright ©2013 Zubair Alexander. All rights reserved.

Microsoft Lync is a unified communications platform that users can use keep track of their contacts’ availability, send an IM; start or join an audio, video, or Web conference; or make a phone call—all through a consistent, familiar interface. Lync is built to fully integrate with Microsoft Office. The Microsoft Lync 2010 desktop client is available for Windows and for Mac and mobile versions are available for Windows Phone, iPhone/iPad, and Android devices.

There are some known issues with Lync Online that I thought might be helpful for you to know if you use the product. Sometimes it is good to know a product’s limitations so that you can either find workarounds or not waste time in fixing something that is a known limitation of the product. I have gathered the following information from various sources. I ran this by some of my Microsoft contacts and they were able to confirm almost all of these limitations, except for #4, #5 and #11 that they were unable to test.

1. There is no way to record the meeting. This could be an issue if you were recording in Live Meeting before and then you decide to move to Lync.
2. You can only mute a caller, but not unmute him/her. This too can be a serious problem.
3. There is no way to close the conference. This can burn your conference minutes with your conference provider and people can hang around even after the conference is closed.
4. Lync technology does not support coexistence between Lync Online and Lync Server using a single domain. Therefore, it is not possible to deploy a subset of users in Lync Online and other users on-premises using a single domain name. Lync federation can be used to enable users to communicate between Lync Online and Lync on-premises deployments, however only using different domain names.
5. Federated Lync does not support file transfer.
6. Dial-in audio conferencing is not provided in Lync Online. In other words, you can’t dial into a scheduled Lync meeting using your phone. You’ll have to use a third-party audio conferencing service for this.
7. There is no anti-malware scanning for meeting content and file transfers.
8. There is no privacy mode. Therefore, users cannot restrict their presence information only to the contacts listed in their Lync Contacts list.
9. There is no IM/Presence federation with XMPP networks (Jabber, Google Talk).
10. There is no interoperability with on-premises video conferencing systems.
11. Communicator for Mac client and Lync 2010 Phone Edition (for Lync-based IP phones) are not supported.
12. No IM Archiving.
13. SharePoint (both online and on-premise) skill search via Lync is not supported with Lync Online.

You can read more about Microsoft Lync here.

Today a friend of mine called me and said that all of a sudden all his text messages have disappeared on his HTC EVO 4G. I did a little research on this issue and discovered that it appears to be a bug in the Android operating system (OS), rather than HTC EVO 4G because there are thousands of people reporting this error with different phones running Android OS (HTC EVO, Incredible, Droid, etc.).

Because Google, the maker of Android, does not have a fix for this bug at this time, even though they have known about this bug for a long time, all you can do at this time to prevent from potential disaster is backup your text messages if they are important to you. Resetting, rebooting, and other similar solutions don’t seem to help. The tech support for cell phone providers don’t know what to do so they may just tell you to reset your phone. It’s like you complaining that you accidentally deleted a file and would like to recover it and the tech support telling you why don’t you format your hard drive. Hello? that will wipe out all your data and everything on your computer. All kidding aside, I do sympathize with the tech support because they are not responsible for fixing bugs in Google’s operating systems. They only hope that you won’t lose your text messages again in future after the reset but unfortunately people still have the same problem after resetting their phones.

According to my research, Google is aware of this issue since December 26, 2009 and has listed this bug as a high priority (no kidding). The case number is 5569: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5669. As of today (October 1, 2011) Google does not have a fix for this bug in almost two years. If you have an Android phone and have not run into this issue, you are lucky like me (I have an HTC EVO 4G). If you have lost your text messages there is not really much you can do. If you haven’t, here’s my recommendation on what to do.

Download the FREE SMS Backup+ app from the Android Market which will allow you to backup all your text messages and your call logs. Although there are lots of other similar apps, I like this particular app. It connects you to your Gmail account and backs up all your text messages in a Gmail Label called SMS (you can choose a different label if you want). Obviously, you can print, forward, or do whatever you want once they are in Gmail. If you use Microsoft Outlook, you can add your Gmail account as a POP3 or IMAP account in Outlook and receive all your text messages from SMS Backup+ in your Outlook Inbox. If you want to automatically move them to a different folder, just set up an Outlook rule. Here are a couple of screenshots from the Android Market Web site.

You can configure SMS Backup+ to automatically back up your messages at a regular interval using the Auto Backup feature. At this time the apps let you  backup both SMS and MMS messages, however, you can only restore SMS messages. Another nice feature is that you can also backup your Contacts to Gmail, if you want, otherwise just backup text messages. I think this app is way better than relying on your cell phone provider (Sprint, Verizon, etc.) to restore your messages or contacts.

If you are not worried about getting your text messages disappearing then you may not be interested in this post. However, be aware that one issue reported on HTC Forums is that if you send a message and notice that suddenly all your text messages have disappeared, all the people who received your message may also have their messages completely disappear. It’s like your messages committing a team suicide of sorts. This behavior makes you wonder if it is related to some kind of virus. At this point we don’t know for sure. Talking about antivirus, you might want to install an antivirus app on your smartphone, if you haven’t already. For example, you can download and install the free AVG antivirus app from the Market.

When you backup the messages and contacts for the first time you will connect to your Gmail account and will be asked to allow SMS Backup+ access to your Google account. According to the developer, the app will not have access to your password or other personal information. Depending on the number of text messages and contacts it can take hours so it might not be a bad idea to first delete any unwanted text messages and contacts and then start the back.

You may have seen software that turns your Windows 7 computer into a wireless router. In the past, I have downloaded Connectify software. On paper it looked good but when I installed the free version of Connectify I discovered that I could only use WEP. There was no support for WPA2-PSK as advertised on their homepage. I am guessing they must have a paid version of Connectify that will allow people to use security. Anyone referring to WEP protocol as secure loses credibility right off the bat. WEP does not provide end-to-end security and is not considered secure by most security experts today. If that wasn’t bad, Connectify only allowed me to use a password that was limited to something like 4-12 characters and the password was limited to numbers 0-9 and letters a-f. That’s right, you can only use letters a-f. Bottom line: Do not let your friends and family install the free version of Connectify. It’s security a joke.

Recently I ran across another software, developed by a fellow MVP by the name of Chris Pietschmann. Chris is a Windows Live Platform MVP and his free, virtual router software is available from Microsoft’s CodePlex community site, which is a distribution point for open source software. The Virtual Router software turns any Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 computer into a WiFi Hotspot using Windows 7′s Wireless Hosted Network (Virtual WiFi) technology. Virtual Router allows you to wirelessly share any Internet connection (LAN, WiFi, Cable Modem, Cellular, or even dial-up modem) with any WiFi device (Laptop, Smart Phone, iPod Touch, iPhone, Android Phone, Zune, Netbook, wireless printer, etc.).

The software, written entirely in C#, does not have the password limitations of Connectify. Another good thing about the Virtual Router is that it is completely free of ads. And the best thing about the Virtual Router is that it defaults to WPA2 for secure wireless connectivity. WPA2 is one of the most, if not the most, secure wireless encryption available today.

The software is currently in its beta version. You can download beta 0.9 here.

The other day I was experimenting with the screen options in my WordPress blog. On my Dashboard I changed the Screen Options from 2 columns to 1. Then when I tried to switch back to 2 columns again I was unsuccessful. I spent a lot of time Googling the issue and discovered that this bug has been driving people crazy for a long time…..over a  year. People are experiencing this problem since WordPress version 2.6. I am using WordPress version 3.0.

Problem

In WordPress 2.6 or later, once you switch your Screen Options layout from 2 columns to 1 column you cannot go back to the 2 column layout again. You are stuck. By getting stuck in a single column layout, all the panels are lined up in one column so you have to go way down in the page to select items, such as categories. By using two columns you can easily select categories or publishing options at the top of the screen in the right hand column.

Solution

The solution that worked for me was simple. I made sure the Screen Options was set to 2 columns and then I clicked and dragged the panels that I wanted to the right side of my screen, such as Author, Publish and Categories.

Another possible solution is to remove one of your screen options and then exit the edit screen. Re-enter the edit screen and choose a different option. This may work for some of you but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t.