Google Training with Nick Fraser

Contributed by John Sieka

The administration and staff of the New African Technology Company benefited from a one day training seminar yesterday at its office situated on Randall Street just above the Master Trading Center in Monrovia. Our guest lecturer was Mr. Nick Fraser from England.

Search

We learned about how Google search engine works. Mr. Fraser further explained the origin of the search engine and the origin of the word “Google” and its meaning. Google revolutionised search on the Internet where before, it was difficult to actually get what one was looking for. 

Documents

For Documents, which is sometimes called Google Docs for short, we learned how a word processing document or excel spread sheet can be created and use simultaneously by different users in one geographical location and in different location around the world using Google docs. A document when created in google doc can be made to have permission rights and privileges. We even learn that there are options for a user or creator of a document to choose who view, who edit, and what they are allow to edit. Working with google doc, a particular document when created in can be view to by whoever the creator wants to view the document. The administration of NATC has even plan to use google doc so the one staff can see, edit or take part in what that the other working on.

Google Maps

Google map has already being incorporated by the technical department of NATC. It will aid technicians during site surveys of wide area network (WAN) to give the actual distance between two sites, or the distance from a outdoor router or meraki that a user can be to still have access his network. Google map is a feature of Gmail that enable a person to pin point a particular place, city, county, country, street, or even a particular building on a particular street. It also calculates distances and coordinates. With Google map, it is also possible to see the map of a particular place. Google map is also interesting in that it can helps in finding streets, cities, countries, and gives clue of how those places look like before you even get there.

Google Groups

A Google group is a collection of people with the same idea, skill set, professions, etc. We learn of two prominent Google groups in Liberia; namely: “Liberia Expats” and “Liberia IT.” Being a member of a google group can be so interesting and exciting in that, you find people of your same skill set, belief, religion, etc in one place where one can post, make comments, share ideas and so on.

Google Reader

Google reader is an exciting features in Gmail that enables you to place all of you frequent visit site in one collection in order to avoid you having to go to individual site all the time to access the same things daily. Google reader will allow you to gather all those sites through RSS feeds and place them in one collection and have you inform whenever there is a change on either of the site. Mr. Fraser demonstrated this on his laptop too.

Google Calendar

Enables you to organize your entire daily, monthly, and even yearly events .This feature of Gmail is also going to be incorporated into the technical department of the New Africa Technology Company. It will help them organize the entire maintenance schedule of their client so that they don’t miss out on them. This feature will also be synchronize with google alert so that an e-mail will be sent to all members of the technical department at least three day ahead of time to remind them of a pending maintenance.

Alerts

This serves as a reminder to a daily task. Once configure, it will remind you of a friend wedding, celebration, birthday, or some daily task, etc. it has ability to even send you email to remind you of upcoming events. A text message can even be sent to your phone if you have google on your phone.

It was so amazing the all these features of Gmail could be learned in one just one and some of which are being incorporated into New African Technology Company to aid the staff in their daily operations. Interestingly, there are still other features of Gmail that were not discussed in the seminar. Some of those are: 1. Google Chrome 2.Google desktop 3. Google Dictionary 4. Google health 5. Google earth. 6. iGoogle 7. Google Toolbar 8. Google Finance 9. Google books etc….. These features of Google that were not talk about were discovered after I personally tried to explore google.

It will be of great interest for you to make further research on them. It is an exciting new world of adventures!

NATC Test Piloted a SMS Broadcast Service

Contributed by Farzana Rasheed

NATC recently successfully tested an SMS Service for a customer that needed to reach its rural beneficiaries. We were able to get a good rate per SMS with a local Telco which will make this is an economically viable service to market and execute. The pilot was done directly by the Telco because it was a small number of texts. However, we are in the process of executing this service through the use of desktop software deployed at our offices or on the client site.   

There are 5 Telco's in Liberia that provide GSM and Internet Services. Most customers that need to broadcast information go to a Telco for a mass blast across that Telco's network. Our service will be tailored, instead, towards a specific set of end receivers making this a truly value-added service.   

Watch out for this space!

Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition R2 x 64-bit

Contributed by Jonathan Barwon

We have recently completed a server installation project of Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition R2 x 64-bit for one of clients. We are pretty sure this is one of the few deployments of this particular edition of Windows Servers here in Liberia because almost everyone is still using the 2003 version.

This blog entry will describe how we went about setting up the Server which took us a couple of weeks. We started in the second week of December but had to pause it over the Christmas & New Year break as our client had shut down its offices over the holidays. We completed and handed over the project in the second week of January. 

Brief Description of Project:

The objective of the project was to create a domain and a workgroup for common file sharing with high security among users; to have better control of the network end users’ devices i.e. to deny users' access to sites that use a lot of bandwidth (downloadable sites).

Hardware Requirements:

To deploy the Windows Server 2008 you need to meet the following hardware requirements:

Component	Requirement
Processor	Minimum: Single processor with 1.4 GHz (x64 processor) or 1.3GHz (Dual Core) Note: An Intel Itanium 2 processor is required for Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-Based Systems
Memory	Minimum: 512 MB RAM Maximum: 8 GB (Foundation) or 32 GB (Standard) or 2 TB (Enterprise, Datacenter, and Itanium-Based Systems)
Disk Space Requirements	Minimum: 32 GB or greater Note: Computers with more than 16 GB of RAM will require more disk space for paging, hibernation, and dump files
Display	Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher resolution monitor
Other	DVD Drive, Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse (or compatible pointing device), Internet access (fees may apply)

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/system-requirements.aspx

We were lucky enough to be working with a brand new and really sleek desktop – the Dell Studio XPS100 which we had imported for the client. The XPS100 was not intended to host the server but the client decided to use it anyway. As you can see the specs are significantly higher than the basic requirement: 

Processor:  Intel® CoreTM i7-870 processor (8MB Cache, 2.93GHz)

Memory: 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 4 DIMMs

Available Disk Space: 1TB - 7200RPM,  SATA 3.0Gb/s,  16MB Cache

Drive: 16X CD/DVD Burner + Roxio Creator 10 Premier - Ultimate Burn/Authoring

Display/ Peripherals: 

21.5" Dell SX2210 Full HD Monitor with Integrated 2.0 Megapixel  Webcam

Installing and Configuration of the ABA windows server 2008

December 28 2010 - January 14, 2011

Installation was quite easy and you can even find a step-by-step instruction on the Internet i.e. http://www.arabhardware.net/forum/showthread.php?t=76780. 

As for the configuration, here's what I did:

Day .1

It took me 2 hours to install the windows server 2008 standard edition.

I also installed McAfee antivirus and updated it, this took almost the whole day because of the slow Internet speed. 

Day .2

a. I started configuring the server by creating a common domain name for the server, with the domain name and a static IP address.

b. I created Accounts and Passwords for 15 users and their logon names to access the server. Active Directory configuration was done along with Active Directory Controller.

c. I also created personal folders for each of the 15 users to be able to save their document.

Day .3

a. I started configuration of Domain Name Service (DNS), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), win service to enable client access the Internet, and Configuration of User and Computer Environment using Group Policy. I also did the Accounts lock out policies, account management events, user rights assignments, restricted groups, and security options password settings all of these were done. 

b. I also set up the Preferred DNS server IPv4 addresses. 

I opted not to use WINS on the network and I clicked Next.

Then, I was promoted to configure a DHCP scope for the new DHCP server. I  opted to configure an IP address range of 192.168.0.20-150 to cover the 40+ PC Clients on the client's local network. To do this, I clicked Add to a new scope. I named the scope Client-local, configured the starting and ending IP addresses of 192.168.0.20-192.192.168.0.150.

Subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, default gateway of 192.168.1.1, type of subnet and activated the scope.

c. Apart from the main office, I also had to set up a static IP address for 20 computers in the Computer Lab. I added these computers to the domain and set up their network printer on the network with a static IP address. 

After the first 3 days I had to pause the project, because client was closed down over the Christmas/New Year period. 

After a long holiday the client resumed work on January 10, 2011 and I was able to continue with my work. There was not much to do except to make sure all the users were on the server and able to share and access files. 

This Windows server 2008 x64 standard edition which was purchased by my company, New Africa Technology Company, from the Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052 USA. It came with 40 user’s license (CAL's). 

How'd it go?

Building this server was not an easy thing for me to do because I have not worked on or built a Windows Server 2008 before. This was my very first time working in Server 2008,  I have only built and work within Windows Server 2003. But when I started things began working well as was planed. I had also done some reading on the Internet to familiarise myself. Towards the close of the configuration process, the clients' users were unable to access the Internet. The problem was that I did not share the network connection of the second network card of the server. I tried to get some help from other techies in the country but to no avail. I ended up e-mailing my IT teacher in Ghana and explained the problem to him and he told the problem was that because I did not share the second network. And, as soon as I shared the second network card, the problem was solved! 

The project was completed and handed over to the client who is quite happy! I am sure the next time I have to do it, it'll be quite easy and straightforward. 

We also supply GENUINE Toner Cartridges!!

Contributed by Haresh Karamchandani

We have been having several complaints from one of our IMPORTANT clients with regards to their network printer.

The client called and was blaming our technician’s incompetence and even threatened to end our contract. (Exaggeration? Not really, just adding a bit of drama to the blog entry). Therefore we decided that a senior manager of the company should attend to the call personally along with our chief IT Specialist Technician. Normally call-outs are taken care of routinely by the techies.

On arrival at the site we switched on the HP5550dn Printer and it showed a 54.18 Printer error message.

We then queried the in-house techie and tried to dig out the sequence of events that led to the Printer not working. He explained that he got a Printer Error message that the Magenta Toner HP C9733A level was zero and needed to be replaced. He said that after he replaced the Toner, the printer would not work!!!

We asked him for the original empty toner and put it back into the printer and restarted it. The printer came on well but could not print because the toner was empty.

Then we checked the replacement toner and realized that it was a fake toner. Genuine HP toners have a reflective color sticker. This one did not have one. And to add insult to injury the sticker on the cartridge was stuck UPSIDE DOWN!! (By the way, we know who is supplying these fake cartridges but for the sake of diplomacy and how small Monrovia is, we shall not dare mention their name.) 

We then asked the client if he had any other toners available so that we could try and see if they work. They had a couple more. But fake. We nevertheless opened another one and installed it. The printer still did not work. Then we opened the third one and installed it, and the printer worked for a few printouts and then again started showing the same error message.

It was confirmed that all this was being caused due to the substandard cartridge.

We advised our important client that they should not use the substandard cartridge as the ink leaks out and also may end up damaging the sensor inside the printer.

They have agreed with us and have placed an order with us to supply them Genuine Toner Cartridges!. Yaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy.!!! One more happy client.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Here are some of the customised cards we got made by Richard (a student at Stella Maris Polytechnic) for our clients: 

What an idyllic setting - sitting under a tree and doing your e-mails!

Green envelopes to go with the colour of our logo.

What an idyllic setting - surfing Facebook under a palm tree.

It's a bit like a Chinese landscape - small human beings  almost un detected  amongst trees and mountains.
This is a picture of a guy chilling in the forest working on his laptop - I wonder who is his ISP? 

The V-SAT on the Palava Hut! We had this concept featured in last year's Greeting Cards as well. We love it! 

My name is Cecelia Cooper and I work at NATC

Contributed by Cecelia Cooper

Group photo: that's me in the lower left hand corner
 in the yellow and purple shirt. 

I am Miss Cecelia Cooper. I was born unto the union of Miss Sarah W. Wah and Mr. David D. Cooper in Maryland County the 26 of July 1987.

I am a high school graduate from the Lamco Area School (LASS) in Yekepa, Nimba County. During my high school days I always told my mother that I will become a nurse in the future. I worked with IRC as a community Peer Educator from 2004-2007. I also worked with Liberia Institute of Statistic and Geo-Information Service (LISGIS) in Gbarnga as a field Enumerator.

I came to Monrovia 2009 to run after my education but due to my parental background and the death of my father I was unable to enter school. As God could have it I heard that there was an IT company in Monrovia on Randall Street training young Liberians to become an IT technician so I decided to apply for the training through the grace of God I was successful and that’s how I started my training.  Presently I’m a trainee in the company. I have achieved a lot from the company and praying to learn more to become a professional IT technician in this company.

Here are some lists of what all I have learned as a trainee:

• The basic components that make up the computer system
• Installation of Windows XP
• Windows system maintenance
• Extension of local area network and designing it etc

Some of the projects and every task I have been involved in are making sure that the office tools are in proper order and shutting down all the machines before going home.

I have been trained directly by the IT supervisor. My favorite project or job so far is Extension of local area network and designing it for the clients. I have interacted with many different clients. Among all the clients I have interacted with I learn a lot from big mining corporations because they always put safety first at their job site and how a technician should conduct their selves on any client’s site.

I enjoy working at an office because it teaches you how to organize your job and meeting your customers to please them when ever you are doing a job. The value of team work is that, it helps to spread up the job faster and encourage your customers that you are ready for any work any time they call upon you as a technician to solve their problem on site. I can say I’m a professional. Some of the key elements of being a professional are time management, keeping your profession away from personal life, expression, presentation (dress code).

In the future I would to like to take the responsibilities of extending a local area network and designing it for our clients.

I pray for long life to learn more in order to do a better and professional job for this company.

My name is Onesimus Borkuah and I work at NATC

Contributed by Onesimus Borkuah

Warmest greetings to all!

My name is G-Onesimus K. Borkuah, a young gentleman (18yrs., 6”2') in pursuit of the highest certificate or degree in networking/communications. After my graduation from high school (October 4, 2009), I planned on studying to become a pilot but due to the poor infrastructural development in my country so I had a quick plan with the help of my parents. Since I was home tutored in the basics of computer science and had the passion of exploring new features of technology, I decided to perfect that passion by getting more practical trainings in networking.

While I was in search of suitable and convenient college, work or training center, I was told about the New Liberia Technology Company (NLTC) currently New Africa Technology Company (NATC).

I started up as a trainee at this company and have made a year and two months here now. Wit h my little/no skill in IT at the time, I first started my training on the basic hardware components of a computer (the Hard Drive, RAM, Processor, Power Supply, etc...), knowing their functions and how they work together to the use of the end users. 

One of the most fascinating things I like about this company is their interest, use and promotion of Open Source (Linux); thus far, I have learned how to operate and maintain the Linux systems: File Sharing Server, Firewall (Smooth Wall Express). The way networking jobs are carried out in this company is one of a kind I have ever seen- channels/conduits layout, data cabling and termination, configuration of switches and routers (Cisco Systems) and the design/setup of equipment racks.

Lately, I have been involved with local and wide area networking (which I enjoy being on because they carry a different trend every time there is a new project and they help broaden your mind to more designing strategies).

Talking about clients? The most clients I have enjoyed interacting with are the mining companies and international organisations. The mining companies we deal with provide all the necessary safety equipments just to make sure you are 100%+ safe on the job. As for finance, just make them happy with what we do or satisfy their networking needs; you'll get paid without delay! With the interntional organisations, the always encourage our new ideas that we bring up to help with scrutinize their network infrastructure.

I feel that I have been trained here indirectly because I always get to learn and explore new problems on site and resolve them; and I prefer learning both directly and indirectly. I have learned good team work which requires a lot of time and efforts to speed up and meet the scope of a particular project.

Professionalism is one of the key values one should possess when working in an office; that is, one should be punctual, always abiding by the rules/dos and don't s of the company, well attired, etc... I have always worked my best out to be professional and now I can boast of this character (that I am professional)!

I hope for more years with this company in the areas of like Wide Area Networking (WAN) and the building of more Linux Servers and Firewalls. And also for more responsibilities in these areas.

* Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value to which all other values are subordinate* -The Wisdom of Einstein-