The Rev's Tek Blog
Xtreme Tek Tips and Tricks
Network Scanner Saved My Life
Sep 8th
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Let me start off this post by telling you how important it is to document everything in the world of IT, and then keep those documents somewhere where they are easy to find. Today, I ran into a problem with not being able to find my notes. So, I got to finally use this tool I downloaded awhile back. It is called LanSpy 2.0. You can find it here: http://lantricks.com/lanspy/
LanSpy 2.0 is a network security and port scanner. Let me give you a little back story before I tell you about the beauty of this tool.
Today, I was at one of my client’s stores working on a wireless issue. This is a small grocery store, so the network setup isn’t anything fancy. They have a few switches, two VOIP boxes, a couple of routers, and an access point. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my notes for the IP addresses of the different devices. The router is easy to get, but I needed to get into the access point box. Usually if we have multiple network devices that require an IP, we make it either one up or one down from the IP we give the router. That wasn’t the case with this one.
What is awesome about LanSpy, is when it scans the IPs, it also gives the MAC address of each device. Since I had access to the access point, I could get get the MAC address from the bottom of the device and go down the search results until I found the IP that was assigned to it. Pretty painless.
LanSpy also gathers a ton of other useful information such as users, logged in users, shared resources, open files, etc. For a complete list, please visit their site at http://lantricks.com/lanspy/.
So if you get stuck in a pickle, like I did, or just want to make sure your own network is secure, give this tool a try.
The Rev
Fantasy Football Season is Upon Us
Aug 27th
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With the start of the NFL season right around the corner, it is time for another season of Fantasy Football. My friends and I recently had our draft this past weekend. As I was sitting at my computer looking over my team and getting my lineup ready, I was wondering how awesome it would be if they had an app for this. So I grabbed my phone and searched the Market, and to my surprise, there is one. It is called Fantasy Guru. This app is designed specifically for Yahoo Fantasy Sports. Since that is who we are using for our league, I immediately downloaded it.
This app is awesome. Not only is it free, it is simple to use and navigate. To set it up, you enter your Yahoo ID, and then it asks if you would like the app to be able to make changes via your phone. After you set that up, you can do anything and everything from your Android phone that you can do sitting in front of your computer. You can check your roster, change your line up, make trades, check stats, check standing, check for any league news, and research players.
So if you have an Android phone, and use Yahoo for any of your Fantasy leagues, then this is a must have. If football is not your thing, you can also manage your fantasy basketball, baseball, and hockey teams.
If you use this app, or have another favorite, please discuss below. I would love to hear about it.
The Rev
TweetDeck for Android
Aug 18th
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So last week the first beta version of TweetDeck came out for the Android OS. Previously it was only available for iPhone, iPad, or your desktop. I have been using it on my laptop for a while now and love it. So when I found out it was available for the Android, I was excited. I have had it installed for about a week now, and haven’t had any issues. If you don’t know what TweetDeck is, it is an application that lets you get your updates for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn all in one application. It separates the feeds into columns. It also lets you select which column you would like to update, or you can do all at once. Below are my likes and dislikes for the Android version.
Likes:
- A yellow bar down the right side notates unread items.
- Puts everything in one column. Twitter updates are in grey boxes, Facebook updates are in blue boxes, and Foursquare updates are light blue.
- If a tweet or Facebook update has a picture attached, you just click on the box, and it shows a preview of the picture, so you don’t have to go to the site to view it.
- It will notify you on the status bar of your phone if your update failed.
- It will notify you if you have new updates, and you can adjust the frequency that it checks for updates.
- The Android version lets you update Foursquare as well.
Dislikes:
- The Android version does not let you link with LinkedIn.
- They made it difficult to actually find the download. You have to register on the website, and then they send you a link with the download. This information wasn’t on the website.
So that is my review so far in a nutshell. If you have an Android phone and use both Twitter and Facebook, I highly recommend it. Let mw know your thoughts below.
The Rev