JasonMonty.com

Phew. I made it through the first 12 hours of the Apple reality distortion field. The frenzy and buzz that surrounds the launch of the iPhone is still in full force. But I have decided I won’t get one and here are my five reasons why. 1. I’m still in contract with Three for five months. An obvious show stopper.2. The iPhone is awesome – but not for a power user. Sounds a bit arrogant I know. But the iPhone is without a doubt the best overall consumer cellphone on the market. From form factor to software, from touch to web implementation this system rocks for the masses.But my requirements make the iPhone significantly under spec. I require 3g (and wifi), I require third party apps (now), I require Skype, I require an IM client, I require full mobile computing. I absolutely require full web experience and now blogging on the go. I simply do not want to compromise on my technology.  3. The price is not right. As a free marketer I believe for the spec., the iPhone is set at a price I am not willing to pay. It simply costs too much for too little. 4. Mass appeal: Yes I admit it. I am a slightly snobbish uber geek. I tend to loose interest when a device enters the realm of spotty teenager. 5. 18 months is too long for me. I am not prepared to suffer an 18 month contract. Tech moves on – and so will I in that period.  Make no mistake. The iPhone rocks – big time. It is fantastic and I genuinely believe it will change the cellphone market for the better. But it’s not there yet. It comes painfully close to being the greatest mobile device in consumer history. But not yet.  So my solution. The Nokia n810. 

I have been running OS X 10.5, better known as Leopard for about two hours now. My first impression – awesome. I opted for an upgrade install rather than a clean install or install/archive.  My first impression is that this os X rocks. The installation was painless, took around one hour. Once installed, Spotlight took a further thirty minutes or so to index my data. I am discovering new features all the time. But what stands out so far is a feature I didn’t actually think would be that impressive. I was wrong. The ‘cover flow’ in the finder is fantastic. I can now look browse through mini documents across my harddrive. Clearly this came across from iTunes . Very impressive. Secondly, Front Row has had a major makeover. It is now basically an Apple TV! Yes that’s right. I can stream content from across my network through to it. A major step. Think of the possibilities……A server or even a NAT could be installed on the network. It would only have media on it. I could then call it up on any Mac running 10.5…… All this so far….I’ve not even begun with Time Machine yet 🙂    

So the guys at Ubuntu have released 7.10 earlier this week. From all accounts it seems like a pretty awesome update. The FT give it a glowing review. Perhaps a sign of just how far Linux has come these last few years…..Now I just need a laptop to run it on 🙂

Welcome to my new blog

Phase two 

So now the interesting work begins. To recap briefly. All 

three computers are now fired up and connected via the 

ADSL Gateway/router to the internet. The basics are there. 

Now the task in hand is three-fold. 

 

Firstly, to run all the necessary Windows patches on each 

machine. (And as you know Microsoft do tend to release a lot 

of these). This was a pain free process, if somewhat time 

consuming – due to the 512k link. 

 

Secondly, to install all the relevant applications on the 

machines. Specifically, to decide the appropriate software on 

the client machines. The one golden rule I applied to this 

project was that I did not want your average cyber cafe 

customer to install / or  tamper with software on the 

machines. It would be very difficult to manage and open up 

all sorts of vulnerabilities. 

 

Assuming some of the key user requirements for the client 

computers I installed the following applications : 

. 

1 • Open Office (of course) 

. 

2 • MSN Messenger 

. 

3 • Yahoo Messenger 

. 

4 • Skype 

. 

5 • Internet Explorer 7 (I did review Firefox – but felt IE7 

was surprisingly good – and users would be familiar 

with it) 

 

6 • Antivirus software 

 

So in addition to the standard applications on a vanilla 

Windows XP box I installed the above applications on all 

three computers. Again, a relatively standard procedure – but 

it required a bit of manual labour, toggling between the three 

machines. Bandwidth limitation, proving, the main constraint. 

But I’m not complaining – 512k is fit for purpose for a small 

cyber cafe with just two primary client computers. 

 

Finally, I made sure that the firewalls were up and running on 

all three computers. Then the next step.  

 

Phase three – cyber cafe management of software 

Thirdly, I begun a short one day review of appropriate cyber 

cafe management software. It is day two now. I am getting to 

the crucial part of the project. The computers are now ready 

for the next major step.  If the project was to succeed  this 

was to be the key. 

 

Being the open source geek I am, I begun the application 

review of a piece of opensource cyber cafe management 

software called, Cybera .  This initially seemed like a sound 

piece of software. It was relatively straightforward  to install, 

but alas a documented bug revealed its ugly head during 

testing. It was proving tricky to find a work around, and I was 

not impressed with some of the functionality. The 

customization was quite good, but I felt it was clumsy and far 

from intuitive. Failed. The search continued….. 

 

Having tested a further two further applications (they were 

too poor to mention) I opted for a proprietary application 

called, CafeZee . This programme simply stood out amongst 

all the others. It is based around a standard client / server 

relationship.  Having installed the server  element on the 

managers PC, I then installed the client element of the 

software on the client computers. A no brainer so far. 

 

I must confess I did struggle to get the three computers seeing 

each other. Then I realized the firewalls were all running. I 

disabled them all temporarily  and bingo, all three could see 

each other. 

 

The user-interface (GUI) was very easy to use and it 

immediately became obvious how the software worked. I 

won’t go into all the features – far too many to name – but 

essentially, the server controls all aspects of the clients. 

Everything from simultaneous reboots through to 

simultaneous shutdowns were all possible via the server. 

 

One of the features that sold this killer application for me – 

was the ability to apply lock-downs on the clients. Via the 

server I was able to apply two preset security settings on the 

clients. Given the nature of a cyber cafe I wanted security to 

be high. I restricted everything from rebooting, software 

installs, downloads and visibility of the desktop. Additionally, 

I set the cache, history and cookies of IE7 to reset after each 

client session – just be be sure. So each computer would 

revert to its standard settings after each session. 

 

Given the dual purpose of the computers, I set a low-level 

security preset for when the computers were being used for 

computer training classes. As with the whole design of the 

setup, I trained the cyber cafe manager on how to make the 

security switches. 

 

Client session based approach 

Cafezee proved outstanding on managing the sessions for 

each client. Essentially, the software generates codes and the 

user, once paid, can input the code to gain access to the 

computer. The pre-pay code based service, offered a 

minimum of one hour per session.  I also enabled a post-pay 

minimum session of 30mins.  The server side did all the work 

– and it really impressed me. The codes could be printed out 

for the customer, invoices could be prepared and  sessions 

could easily be extended or terminated if necessary. A 

professional setup. 

 

Other functionality included the client computers being able 

to order additional services from the cyber cafe, such as 

drinks, media and other services. This was simple to set up – 

but the project executive decided not to use this functionality,

but the project executive decided not to use this functionality, 

at this stage. 

 

Phase four 

With the hardware and software all configured, running and 

tested I begun the most important part of the project – 

training. This could make or break the success of the cyber 

cafe. 

 

The senior user, was a friend of the project executive – an IT 

teacher in a local school. Whist she would not be able to 

work daily in the cyber cafe, she would be running the IT 

training classes. Furthermore, after I trained her, she would 

then, in turn, train the project executive and Rene family in 

running the cyber cafe. 

 

I ran through the design, specifications and importantly, 

Cafezee with the IT teacher. Clearly, she knew her stuff – and 

having tested her – she was quickly able to pick up even the 

most advanced features in Cafezee. I must add at this stage, 

that she does have a background in IT, so it made this 

potentially difficult stage very easy. 

 

Project hand-over 

With everything running and the IT teacher up to speed, I ran 

through Cafezee and the computers with the project executive 

and family. Again, they quickly grasped the basics. Further 

training would be had via the IT trainer. 

 

So, by roughly day 6 the work was done. Project complete 

and accepted by the customer. I am sure the cyber cafe will 

be a success – and I wish them well. 

 

Conclusion 

This was a first for me. I had a theoretical understanding of 

how I might set a cyber cafe up, but had never actually put it 

into practice. I don’t pretend to claim this is the best setup – 

far from it. There are open-source alternatives out there, 

which may be superior. In particularly I know a thin-client 

terminal server setup is often used in this type of 

environment. However, I opted for a compromise solution 

that everyone would be familiar with.  I will state , for the 

record, that Windows is far from perfect. However, in this 

instance it proved the idea OS for a simple, hopefully, 

sustainable cyber cafe. 

 

I will return back to the cyber cafe in December. I’ll post a 

post-project review in January next year. 

The purpose of my visit to Mauritius last week was to set up 

a cyber cafe in the small village of Trou Deau Douce on the 

east coast of the island. It was an interesting job and 

presented a number of challenges which I will identify later. 

 

I thought it would be interesting to run through this small 

project and how I went about setting it up. 

 

The Mandate    

The mandate for the cyber cafe came from the owner of the 

existing cafe. The request was straight forward, to create a 

cyber cafe. The location of the cafe would be a small room 

off the existing cafe. It was decided that three computers 

would be used for the project. 

 

The primary business driver for the cyber cafe was to add an 

additional service to the existing cafe. The cafe, is off the 

main road in the village. As such, it was struggling to attract a 

wide range of customers. It was felt that introducing a cyber 

cafe would attract new customers and therefore a new 

revenue stream. 

 

The Cyber Cafe Project 

In addition to charging customers for computer access. The 

mandate also required that the computers could be used for 

IT training in the evening. Office services, such as 

photocopying, faxing and printing were additional 

requirements. 

 

Organization 

Given the small scale of the project, I felt the mandate was all 

that was required to successfully deliver the project. It would 

serve as both business case and project initiation document.  

 

With the mandate agreed I quickly ran through the 

organization of the project board. I identified the following: 

 

 

             

                        

   

                                                    

                                               

                        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So with the project board in place, I took to organising the 

procurement of the hardware. I purchased an intel celeron 

windows XP box in London, along with a 14inch LCD panel 

monitor. Having decided on specifications and price I then 

preordered two: ASUS Intel Celeron 2.8 GHZ Windows XP 

boxes and two Viewsonic 15 LCD monitors. These were 

ordered locally in Mauritius.

 

I took the computer and monitor purchased from the UK with 

me. I then arranged for the other computers to be delivered to 

the cyber cafe the day I arrived there. 

 

Prior to my arrival I recommended that we use Mauritius 

Telecom’s 512k ADSL service as the internet backbone for 

the computers. I gave advance notice of this and the line was 

enabled ready for use when I got there. 

 

The desks, chairs and other furniture were also in place, ready 

for the arrival of the computers. 

 

Phase one 

 

I arrived at the cafe in time for the delivery of the two 

computers. The supplier set up the computers and showed me 

they were in full working order. 

 

Shortly after this, I then setup the computer purchased in the 

UK. The two computers purchased locally would serve as the 

the computers for customers, the UK computer would be used 

for the administration of the cyber cafe, the latter was located 

on the cyber cafe managers desk. 

 

Now that all three computers were in full working order – it 

was time to set up the ADSL and networking. 

 

That morning we purchased a wired ADSL Gateway /router 

from Mauritius Telecom. This was the key component in the 

setup. As  an ADSL modem it provided the internet 

connection to the network. As a router, with four ethernet 

ports, it provided the networking for all the computers. The 

forth ethernet port was used as the gateway to a small, 

wireless FON router I put in. I do not expect the cyber cafe to 

be inundated with customers wanting to connect wirelessly 

with their laptops – but you never know. Besides, it is 

officially the first FON social router in Mauritius! 

 

I begun by physically connecting the three computers to the 

Gateway/router. I had purchased five ethernet cables on EbaY 

and brought them with me. Each computer was now 

connected via ethernet cabling to the Gateway/router. 

 

Configuring the ADSL Gateway/router 

Using the managers computer, I begun setting up the ADSL 

Gateway/router, specifically, setting up the ADSL connection.

 

Gateway/router, specifically, setting up the ADSL connection. 

The router configuration was fairly standard. it was web 

based, using the routers IP address as the entry point in. 

 

The only complication I had was a ‘mistranslation’ from 

customer support at Mauritian Telecom. The had incorrectly 

told me that one of the letters of the ADSL username was G, 

when actually it was J . A common mistake when translating 

French to English. It was eventually resolved after I got them 

to spell out the username to me again. 

 

I enabled the ADSL connection and, eureka, internet – on all 

three computers! Well after a small glitch. One of the ASUS 

computers did not want to connect to the network. After 

calling the supplier, it turned out that whilst he was building 

the computer he had connected it to a proxy server in the 

workshop. It was still trying to connect to that proxy server. I 

simply tweaked the network card settings to auto connect – 

and it worked. I then turned on the router’s built in firewall 

and moved on to phase two… 

 

Stay tuned for Part two – in the next phase I will describe 

the software I put on the machines, how I prepared ghost 

images of the computers and the cyber cafe management 

software I selected…. 

Well what do you think so far? Feel free to comment below.