“I’m even greater than I thought I was”, Bender Bending Rodríguez , Futurama, S05E01
Posts tagged ‘Politehnica’
The largest Romanian IXP is Interlan . Funny enough, Interlan is a response of the smaller ISPs to the other big Romanian IXP, Ronix. Because 3 years ago joining Ronix was a complicated affair, a few small companies decided to take matters into their own hands. Currently, Interlan has 3 times more traffic than Ronix.
(that’s what Borat would say)
Today I’ve received wonderful news! I have been accepted to the System And Network Engineering Master at the University of Amsterdam! Starting from the end of August I’ll be relocating to Amsterdam for one year of full geek experience (hopefully!). I can not thank enough my girlfriend on being such a great support and motivator.Without her nothing could have happened. Also my teachers (esp prof. Rughinis and prof. Tapus) at the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science at University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest have been great mentors and supporters of my admission.
This could be a good time to add this blog to your RSS reader as starting from September I’ll be posting regularly on both geek related stuff and the lifestyle of an international student in the Netherlands.
Most people use free email services like yahoo, gmail or live. Unfortunately all the nice sounding email addresses are taken by now so new users have to come up with strange combinations like johndoe19__smth_smth@yahoo.com. That’s very hard to remember and it sounds very unprofessional.
Having an online presence is no longer such a big deal. With a few dollars a year you can get your own .com (or other top-level-domain) and another few dollars a month get you a hosting plan which provides you a couple megabytes for website storage and a number of email accounts. So with a small investment you can have a decent email like name.sourname@somedomain.com . That’s something that you could put on your personal business card. Few know that you can skip the email service offered by your webhost and instead use a more reliable service.
Both Microsoft and Google offer domain email hosting as a free service. Microsoft calls this Windows Live Custom Domains ( https://domains.live.com/ ) while Google calls it’s service Google Apps ( http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html )
Using these services is quite simple. You just have to prove that you are indeed the owner of the domain and make some DNS modifications so that emails will be handled by Google or Microsoft. Modifying the DNS records is a process that can be made using the web interface set up by your hosting provider (the one that hosts your DNS records) or by directly edition your DNS configuration in case you manage the DNS yourself. Either way both Microsoft and Google give you directions on how and what to modify.
For the tech savvy readers there are 2 basic steps: add a CNAME record containing a random string to prove that you are the rightful owner and then modify the MX records with the one provided in the instructions. It’s not that complicated.
Why should you do this?
Well both Microsoft and Google provide a better service than a normal hosting company when it comes to reliability. Sure, you don’t sign a contract that mentions any SLA but statistically speaking both offer a kick-ass service. You don’t have to worry about backups, downtime, spam and so on. It just works. For small operations, say personal email or small companies like startups , this kind of service is ideal as it cuts costs and/or gives less headaches.
Using the administration page you can create, delete or reset any email account. If someone messes up his/hers password you can simply reset the account.
By using either the Microsoft based service or the Google one you get access to other related services like Office Online or Google Docs because the created email accounts serve as Live IDs or Google Accounts. This opens a new world of online collaboration. I know a few startups that use these kind of services.
What are the downsides?
You don’t own your email (carefully read the EULA’s ) and some may not like this.
You are limited to 50 or 100 email accounts and when you hit that limit you have to upgrade to a paid service. Individuals and small companies will just ignore this.
The web mail interface will display ads just as gmail.com or live.com. Adblocker type software could make this a non-issue.
You get little to no tech support. This can be neglected by individuals or small companies considering the advantages.
Access to the email account is made either by browser or by email client. Google Apps email can be accessed by POP3, IMAP and webmail. Unfortunately Windows Live Custom Domains does not offer access using the IMAP or POP3 protocols. To use Outlook you need to install a small piece of software called Office Outlook connector. The advantage of this approach is that besides email you can synchronize your address book and calendars. The IMAP and POP3 protocols don’t allow that. For Thunderbird + live you need a plugin but you get only basic service : get/send emails, no calendar 
.
With 9$ a year you could get a .com domain. You just need a public DNS server to host your records and that’s it, you can sign up for free email hosting.
Regarding DNS hosting, this is really not an issue. http://freedns.afraid.org/ is a very good option. If you don’t like it you could always ask your geek friend to help you out.
It’s hard to tell which service is best. Right now I’m using both Live Custom Domains and Google Apps and I’m quite happy with either one. It all depends on what you want to achieve.
After a year or more of using Goggle Apps I’m thinking of decommissioning all of my postfix installs (yes postfix is better than qmail) and switching to one of the above options. Having a full blown email server (even if it’s just a virtual machine with just enough resources serving many domains by means of sql and virtual domains) seems more and more a waste of time and resources for small operations.
I have a gut feeling that more and more companies will outsource the email service. I’ve seen this happening on a large scale in a few Universities in Romania. The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies is using Google Apps to offer email accounts to all it’s students ( that’s more than 20.000 accounts!). Likewise there’s a small implementation of Live @EDU , a Microsoft programme that basically does the same thing, in the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers at the POLITEHNICA University in Bucharest (that’s about 3000 accounts, give or take).
Colegii mei mai tineri au placerea sa va invite la Summer Activities, un proiect ce se va desfasura pe parcursul a 4 saptamani incepand cu 25 august.
Scopul evenimentului este de a ii familiariza pe studenti cu tehnolgii Microsoft precum:
Pagina de inscriere este: http://studentclub.ro/evenimente/DetaliiEveniment.aspx?ID=675
O observatie pentru studentii de la Automatica si Calculatoare, UPB: particparea la Summer Activities implica si primirea din partea Facultatii a adeverintei de practica de vara.
La apelul lui Vlad Posea am incropit cateva scurte descrieri ale cursurilor urmate de mine in semestrul trecut. Textul de mai jos contine o doza puternica de subiectivism.
Continue reading ‘Specializarea C1’ »
Avand in vedere “succesul” prezentarii de Powershell de saptamana trecuta am decis sa public prezentarea si codul demo. Have fun!
Donez 4 stickere 1 sticker cu Ubuntu (4cmx1cm) si 1 cd cu ubuntu desktop 9.04 si 1 cd cu Ubuntu Server 9.04.
Doritorii sa se prezinte in EG101.
Joi 7 Mai ora 14.00 in sala EC105 din Facultatea de Automatica si Calculatoare are loc Microsoft Academic Tour. Hot Topics: Windows 7 RC1 si Internet Explorer 8.
Joi 14 Mai ora 14.00 in sala EC105 din Facultatea de Automatica si Calculatoare are loc Microsoft Innovation Briefing. Hot Topics: Windows Azure si Windows Powershell.
Prezentarea de Powershell e tinuta de subsemnatul. Daca te simti cu bashul pe caciula vino sa vezi ca se poate si altfel!
Pentru inregistrare :
http://studentclub.ro/evenimente/DetaliiEveniment.aspx?ID=655
si
http://studentclub.ro/evenimente/DetaliiEveniment.aspx?ID=656
PS: mai mult ca sigur ca pe 7 mai o sa vedem windows 7 RC1 in limba romana! Tocmai m-am inrolat in programul de beta testing!
Cu dedicatie pentru unul dintre asistentii materiei “baze de date” de la ACS,UPB
“I swear there are 10 ways to write any given SQL query, but only 1 of them performs well.”
Dupa o vizita pe http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/ si un restart de firefox obtinem asta:
Silverlight on linux
