Today concludes our RJS Movember campaign. We had 17 RJS men participate in this charity initiative. Thanks go out to Dan C., Larry, Jeremy, Mike B., Josh W., Mike E., Bill, Sam, Derek, Adam, Nick, Dan K., Mark, Caleb, Leigh, Brad and Greg S. for all completing an entire month of untamed facial hair cultivation!

In the process, our Movember team raised over $300 for the Prostate Cancer Foundation and LIVESTRONG.

Check out our Facebook photo album, complete with before and after pictures!

In China, there is a large group of professional posters who are paid to write comments, gossip, information and disinformation on chat room boards, forums and blogs. For the right price, they’ll post literally anything you want. They’re called the “Internet Water Army” according to an undercover team of computer scientists since their intent is to flood the internet.

This raises major concerns for anyone who utilizes user comments as an opinion in their decision-making. Which comments can you truly take at face value?

As published in www.technologyreview.com.

When I research new technology and hardware products, there are only a dozen or so sites I trust to give me the real scoop on how the product compares to its competition. Like many other purchasers, I also base a substantial part of my buying decision on user reviews because they are generally unbiased. I feel confident in selecting a product that has both a positive review on a respected technology-based website and a base of users who openly praise the product’s capabilities on blogs, forums or comment sections.

Where people struggle is with sites whose only review process is via user comments, like the Official Android Market for instance. Occasionally an XDA Developer will review an app, but I’m usually on my own to dig through the user reviews and separate the wheat from the chaff.

It is in this situation, where the Internet Water Army has the greatest ability to influence view points and purchasing decisions. Am I reading a comment from a legitimate customer or a paid poster’s review lampooning a good product or championing a piece of garbage?

Cheng Chen, of the University of Victoria in Canada, was able to infiltrate the Internet Water Army and work as an undercover paid poster. He and several friends captured datasets from two large Chinese websites and manually analyzed every posted comment to identify Internet Water Army behavior. Since these posters are paid on volume of fake comments/posts, many take shortcuts and simply copy and paste the same information over and over again.

Using this information, Chen and his friends designed a new anti-spam logic which filters out artificial paid poster comments. It can flag a comment based on how frequently a given user posts reviews, or other specific behavior patterns associated with prepared information or canned sales pitches. The impressive program achieved an 88% catch rate on its first attempt.

Now that’s an impressive use of technology!

We’re wrapping up our Movember campaign at RJS and let me tell you, the facial artistry has been impressive – moustaches, beards, goatees and everything in between! Nearly the entire staff of RJS men have donated their faces and have collected donations in the name of men’s health awareness.

This Wednesday, the women of RJS will be selecting their favorite moustachioed man of the office and the competition promises to be fierce. Although the title will be hotly contested, every participant will be a winner as RJS is making a donation to the cause for each contestant. Before and after photos will be posted later this week, but here’s a sneak peek of one of our salesmen, Bill Whalen!

You can also support our initiative by visiting our team page and making a small contribution. The funds raised are directed to programs run directly by Movember and their men’s health partners, the Prostate Cancer Foundation and LIVESTRONG, the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

About Movember:
During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in the US and around the world. With their Mo’s, these men raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. For the month of November, these selfless and generous men, known as Mo Bros, groom, trim and wax their way into the annals of fine moustachery. Supported by the women in their lives, Mo Sistas, Movember Mo Bros raise funds by seeking out sponsorship for their Mo-growing efforts. Mo Bros effectively become walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November. Through their actions and words they raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health.

To our customers, employees, partners and friends, we wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving. We can’t thank you enough for playing a substantial role in the most successful year RJS has ever had. Enjoy a wonderful holiday weekend complete with food, football, family and friends. Happy Thanksgiving!

Deals so confidential you need a security clearance to view them.

RJS has several year-end deals that aren’t available to the general public. In fact, they’re so confidential we can’t tell you what they are in a blog post. If you want to learn more, contact your sales rep directly, call us at 1 (888) 757-7638 or email us at sales@rjssoftware.com. For security reasons, you didn’t hear about this from me.

Tis six days before my favorite holiday and I can hardly contain my excitement! Here are a handful of Friday Fun Links to pass the time until turkey day.

Here’s a rather curious video of “astronauts falling on the moon.” I can’t say I ever imagined an astronaut losing his or her balance while skipping along the moon’s surface until I watched this collection of follies. It is pretty funny watching them lose their balance in an environment without gravity – an almost slow-motion capture of the inevitable.

Jung von Matt/next is a German advertising agency who created The Museum of Obsolete Objects to “house and exhibit those fading memories, not only, to jog our aging brains but to also show future generations the lost technological marvels of the 20th century.” The museum is rather fascinating and includes objects like the rotary telephone, floppy disk, light bulb and computer mouse, complete with stylish retro videos detailing the product’s invention and obsolescence.

Forbes released its list of America’s Top 20 Healthiest Cities. Each city is ranked on “everything from the availability of farmers markets and various types of recreation facilities to the percentage of people who smoke, suffer from diabetes and cardiovascular disease, or are obese compared with those numbers in other cities.” Those measurements are then compiled to form each city’s American Fitness Index. This might be surprising to some people because of the snow this metropolitan area accumulates, but the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul slot in at #1.

Finally, if you’re looking to be a little adventurous with your Thanksgiving stuffing, perhaps you want to consider this recipe:

Since its introduction in January of 2010, Apple’s iPad has basically controlled the entire tablet technology sector despite product offerings from Sony, Samsung, Motorola and others. Apple’s elegant design, simple functionality, superior quality and faithful customers have proven to be too formidable an opponent to anyone entering the marketplace. In the fall of 2011, however, that all began to change.

On September 28^th, Amazon announced their foray into the tablet space with the unveiling of the Amazon Kindle Fire. Building off their incredible success with the basic Kindle, an electronic device that allows users to digitally read books, Amazon added simple tweaks and additional functionality to a product already loved by thousands. But where others have failed to match Apple’s success, Amazon matches Apple stride-for-stride on ease of use and then delivers the knock-out blow with a price point of $199 … an incredible $300 cheaper than the iPad!

Perfectly timed to capture holiday sales, the Kindle Fire became available in mid-November and has seen impressive initial sales. Amazon saw an incredible 95,000 pre-orders its first day available (well short of Apple’s 300,000 record one-day take) and was tracking to exceed one million total pre-orders according to market researcher eDataSource. Demand has been so rampant, Amazon was reportedly boosting 2011 production from 3.5 million units to 5 million units.

Amazon is certainly ecstatic to be reaching such lofty numbers in their tablet debut. With industry-wide tablet sales beating personal computer sales and quickly catching up to laptop sales, Amazon will achieve an incredible 12% of the total tablet market in 2011, despite only being available the last quarter of the year.

Just like any product, however, the Kindle Fire does have its shortcomings. It lacks the additional memory most tablets provide, does not have a camera or microphone and perhaps most importantly, the screen is 2.7 inches smaller than the iPad. It makes up for these problems by providing immediate access to a digital media store, automatically backs up content on Amazon’s cloud service and utilizes Google’s amazingly popular Android operating system. And then there’s that affordable price. According to Fox News, Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly said he views the Kindle Fire’s pricing model as “challenging.”

Although I believe the Apple iPad will still reign supreme, the Amazon Kindle Fire will still carve out a large market share based on its price, cloud capabilities and accessibility to Amazon’s book, movie and music services … a mix no other tablet has been able to achieve to rival Apple. As PCMag.com appropriately reviews, “the first easy-to-use, affordable small-screen tablet, the Amazon Kindle Fire is revolutionary.”

Would you like to be the owner of a brand-new Amazon Kindle Fire? We’re rewarding one of our loyal Facebook fans on January 16th with a free Kindle Fire just for “liking” us. Simply follow us on Facebook and you’re entered!

If you’re looking for an insanely cool holiday gift or just want to dress up your cube or office, look no further than the latest gem from our friends at Pop Chart Lab.

As you may have noticed, infographics have become all the rage and Pop Chart Lab takes it to a whole new level by creating poster-sized charts graphing various clever data collections. Their most recent print is “The Insanely Great History of Apple.”

I’ll let them explain the awesomeness of this informative poster:

The world’s most comprehensive mapping of Apple products, this print shows every computer released by Apple in the last thirty years, from the original Mac through the MacBook Air. Products are sorted according to type, including the connections between various form factors which have arisen as Apple has invented–and reinvented–insanely great products.

Pretty cool, right? Click on the image to visit the website and zoom in on the incredible detail!

It’s time for a quick review of important security updates released in November.

But before we get started, I want you to imagine your house, apartment, condominium… wherever you call home. Obviously you do not want random people entering this place, so you close the doors and lock them tight. Imagine your surprise then when you receive the following note from the company that makes your door locks:

ACME Lock Company is writing to notify you of a problem with the locks you’ve installed. Attackers have found a way to enter your house with no effort, but don’t worry, it’s only a problem IF YOUR DOORS ARE CLOSED.

Sound far fetched? Well, that’s exactly what Microsoft did with MS11-083. This update fixes a problem where attackers can crash or take over a system through an attack against closed UDP ports. . . something every system has. The only difference between the Microsoft problem and my ridiculous house example is you can patch the Microsoft problem, so please go patch.

Yes, now.  I can wait.

…

All patched?  Good.  Here are the other patches and fixes you should know about.

Microsoft
Other than the problem mentioned above, there were three additional patches. They are unlikely to be exploited en mass, so patch when you can. Odds are they were patched when you updated MS11-083, as directed above.

Learn more.

Adobe

Adobe updated Shockwave Player. Most people are running Flash these days, so if you have Shockwave, take a moment and ask yourself if you really need it. If you don’t, remove it and you’ll be a lot safer. If, however, you must run Shockwave, apply the update.

Adobe Air has also been updated.

Learn more.

Apple
Apple released a plethora of updates. Per usual, there are many and you cannot pick and choose which ones to apply. They also don’t tell you which ones are critical, so you better apply them all. It is known that this updates Java to 1.6.0_29.

Learn more.

Duqu
A new malware attack called Duqu hit the news recently. This is another example of the increasingly malicious sort of malware that zeroes in on specific environments. Supposedly based on Stuxnet, it leverages a fundamental design flaw in Windows to run code by manipulating the font system.

Use this or this to see if you’re infected. Visit here to apply a temporary fix from Microsoft.

WordPress
The TimThumb problem from earlier this year is still spreading through WordPress sites. Frameworks, like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla are not inherently bad, but you must keep them patched at all times. If you are using modules that do not have active updates, they should be replaced. If you don’t know if this is the case, ask your administrators or hosting company. If they don’t know, it might be time to bring in some outside help.

Learn more.

As always, if you need assistance with any security issues, please feel free to drop us a note or give us a call.

Are you in the Chicago area and want to meet our President and Chief Technology Officer, Richard Schoen? Richard will be the keynote speaker at the Omni User Group meeting this Tuesday, November 15th. Richard’s presentation will teach developers how to utilize .Net technology to build IBM i applications.

Here are the details:

Omni User Group Meeting
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Pompei
17W744 22nd St
Oakbrook Terrace, IL

5:00 – Registration and Networking
6:00 – Dinner and Break
6:45 – Business Meeting, Presentation, Q & A

Leveraging Microsoft .Net to Build IBM i Applications
This session will introduce IBM i developers to a fast track roadmap for developing Windows and web based applications and web services using VB.Net and ASP.Net in conjunction with IBM i database connectivity and access to existing programs written in RPG and CL. Build value into your system by showing the network guys how IBM i can be used as a database backend for .Net applications.

Register today!