Youssef Kassab

PRTG: A Network Monitoring Tool for your Computer Networks

Computer networks are being the target of many attacks in addition to abuse from internal users making network and systems engineers life harder.

Over the years I tried many open source network monitoring solutions but none could satisfy all the needs and requirements of my network environment.

PRTG is a commercial network monitoring software that is powerful and easy to use. I downloaded it and installed a free trial for 30 days. The setup was very easy and the configuration guru helped me auto-discover the devices on the network and it was running in almost no time. Continue reading PRTG: A Network Monitoring Tool for your Computer Networks

Near Field Communication – Applications & Opportunities

NFC is a set of short-range wireless technologies that allow communication and exchange of data between devices by touching or bringing them within a radius of more or less 10 centimeters. NFC is an extension of the RFID technology. It requires 13.56 MHz frequency and has short working range which makes it more suitable for secure communication between devices.

NFC allows a device, usually a mobile phone, to collect data from another device or NFC tag at close range. In many ways, it’s like a contactless payment card that is integrated into a phone. In other ways, it’s similar to Bluetooth, except that instead of programming two devices to work together, they can simply touch to establish a connection. Continue reading Near Field Communication – Applications & Opportunities

Back up Your Data Online While You Are Working

Most of us use flash drives to store our data but what if you lose it somewhere or damage it somehow? Some of us external hard disks but what happens if it suddenly crashes? What if your computer’s hard disk fails? There are alternative solutions for backing up your data online while you are working.

There are several free services that offer online backups solutions. Dropbox (click here to download) is a very popular service which “syncs your files online and across your computers”, providing an initial 2GB of space (that can be increased to 8GB for free if you refer other users). You can pay and get more space if you need it. Continue reading Back up Your Data Online While You Are Working

How Do You Keep Your Passwords Safe?

How many passwords do you have to remember? How do you remember your passwords? Do you use the same password for all your accounts?

We have lots of passwords to remember: our personal emails, our Facebook accounts, twitter accounts, our work email accounts, some FTP accounts and much more. We all know we should use different passwords for each account because if we use only one password everywhere and someone gets this password we have a serious problem. Still we have hard times trying to remember what password we used on which website or for which account. Continue reading How Do You Keep Your Passwords Safe?

How Do You Manage Your eBooks?

Most of us have eBooks stored on our computers or on our tablets (iPad, Galaxy tab, Kindle, Kobo…). With our collection growing it will be hard to find a certain eBook. Personally I classify my eBooks by topics in sub directories but I still can’t find what I am searching for easily and that’s why I needed a better solution.

Continue reading How Do You Manage Your eBooks?

Is Your Business Ready to Move to IPv6?

Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is a version of the Internet Protocol that is designed to succeed Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) that has been in operation since 1981. The main reason for the redesign of the Internet Protocol was the IPv4 address exhaustion. As of January 2011, a report projected that the IPv4 address pool would be exhausted before the end of 2011.

IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It uses a 128-bit address, whereas IPv4 uses only 32 bits. This expansion provides considerable flexibility in allocating addresses and routing traffic. It also eliminates the primary need for network address translation (NAT), which was deployed in order to alleviate IPv4 address exhaustion. Continue reading Is Your Business Ready to Move to IPv6?

Monetize Your Tweets!

It is time for Twitter to let its users monetize their tweets! Users should have the option to allow daily/weekly “Ad” tweets to be sent to their followers. The tweets could be based on certain keywords specified by the publishing user or even better based on the keywords in the tweets of the user. This will help advertisers in their online marketing efforts, will help Twitter make more profit and will let publishing users make some money.

Another way to monetize tweets is by subscribing to affiliate programs and selling items to your followers. Sites like adbrite.com and many others will let you sell their items from your website with a special link that identifies you as a publisher. You can use the same link (using a URL shortener is still possible) with a sexy message to incite your followers buy the products. Some affiliate programs offer up to 50% commissions. Continue reading Monetize Your Tweets!