Apple
February 09, 2010
April 27, 2009
Are You Listening Ralph de la Vega?
I fell off my chair yesterday when the local AT&T Retail Sales Manager told me how much it would cost to setup my client's new firm with iPhones. AT&T wants, in addition to the cost of the iPhones and setup fees, a $1000 dollar security deposit for each line. Better yet, they want to hold the security deposit for 1 year to insure that they get paid. My client needs 7 iPhones and 3 international data cards. The deposit would be $10,000!
My client is a law firm. They've been in business for a while as a branch of another firm. But they are now going out on their own. So, they have a new name and a new tax ID. They have a bunch of clients, uniquely specialized skills and revenue. But they have no business history and no record of financial stability. In my view, that's just the way it is for a new business. This gets to the question - Is AT&T interested in attracting new businesses as customers? In this case, AT&T is very anti-new business as it's looking no further than 'new tax ID requires a large deposit'.
Most companies, particularly in our current state of economic recession, are willing to bend over backwards to acquire new customers. The local AT&T Retail Sales Manager is very motivated to get my client's business and he's been very responsive. He's pushed this harebrained decision as high up the ladder as he can. But, it seems like his hands are tied. If it weren't for the iPhone, there is no question that we'd be doing business with Verizon or Sprint. I wonder - would Lowell C. McAdam, CEO of Verizon Wireless let this happen? What about Dan Hesse, Sprint's CEO, would he let this happen? Would he give up a new and profitable account with this firm's potential. Ralph de la Vega is AT&T Mobility's CEO. I wonder if he's listening? Oh, but wait, the story gets better.
Is this where you want to bring your business?
Almost anyone can walk into an AT&T retail store and purchase 5 iPhones on a family plan. I mean almost anyone. The credit check is brief, vague at best. All you need is a credit card. If my client really wants iPhones, they can have one partner purchase 5 and another partner purchase the others until the firm has been in business long enough to satisfy AT&T's inane policy. So, why is AT&T's small business team being so shortsighted and unwilling to support new businesses? Ralph, are you listening? I don't get it. Do you?
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April 01, 2009
Cloud Computing: Moving into the Cloud
For many years, I seek the best computing environment that I can find. I used to think that it was a big, fat laptop. Next, I thought that it was a tablet PC. Then, I became convinced it was an Apple. But today, I've changed. I no longer need the latest and greatest computer. In any given day, I may use 2, 3 or more computers - a Apple laptop, a PC desktop, an iPhone, or my media center connected to a 52 HDTV. What's become my central need is easy and full access to my data no matter what device I'm using. I need applications that store data on the web and can be accessed equally well from a PC, Apple, iPhone, or a web browser. The good news is that many software developers understand this and are building applications that can live in the Cloud. As of today, I am using 5 applications that live in the Cloud that I can't live without.
The Cloud, according to Wikipedia is:
"Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.
The concept incorporates infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service as well as Web 2.0 and other recent technology trends that have the common theme of reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users. Examples of software as a service vendors include Salesforce.com and Google Apps which provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.
The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on how the Internet is depicted in computer network diagrams, and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals."
Here are my top application picks:
Microsoft Exchange. My use of the Cloud began many years ago after I left Microsoft in the late 1990's. I registered my first domain name and set up a hosted Microsoft Exchange account. With ease, I could get access to my email, calendar, contacts from multiple PCs, web browser, and Windows Mobile smartphone. Any change to my data made on any device was synchronized on the server. So, I was always working on current data no matter how I was accessing it. Since that early time, Exchange has evolved to include Apple via Entourage and iPhone, and Linux via Evolution. Using hosted Exchange was my first experience at putting my data on somebody else's server and trusting that they will manage it well. In retrospect, I made a smart decision picking Mailstreet (www.mailstreet.com) as my hosted Exchange provider. I am still with them today.
LassPass (www.lastpass.com). I have used Roboform on my PCs and 1Password on my Apple to manage my passwords and web form filling. I used to use some local synchronization software to copy Roboform's data across my various computers. It was a clever approach and it worked, but it was a bit heavy handed and didn't work at all across platforms. Synchronization, in its early days was rather dangerous. One bad move could create data duplication or loss. I recently learned about LassPass from one of my readers, ran a trial, and quickly migrated to it on all of my computers. It's cross platform (although I'm still waiting on the iPhone client) and manages my passwords, data scraps, and form filling. Any change made on any computer is synchronized and stored on its servers. It works great and I highly recommend it.
Foxmarks (www.foxmarks.com). Foxmarks began as a tool to synchronize bookmarks across several computers as long as you use Firefox. It has evolved and is now supporting Internet Explorer, Safari, and web access. More recently it started the process of changing it's name to Xmarks as it's no longer a Firefox only utility. It is just too sweet to open up a browser on any of my computers and have access to all of my bookmarks. If I'm not at my PC, I can access my bookmarks from the web or my iPhone. If you're like me and have hundreds of bookmarks, this is a killer app. It works reliably, it's free, and comes with my personal recommendation.
Dropbox (www.mydropbox.com). Dropbox is virtual and synchronized storage for PCs, Apples, and the web. Put a file in it, change it on one computer and it's updated and available to all of your computers. Put a file in it and you can share it with others. I put a video file in it and my daughter who's away at college can have access to it. She can even play the file directly from the Dropbox via a web browser. I use Dropbox daily to make my data available across my computers - accounting data, spreadsheets, documents that I'm working on and other stuff that I just always need access too. Because it's in the Cloud, my data is safe and always backed up. You can setup a trial account for free with 2GB of storage.
Evernote (www.evernote.com). Evernote is the latest addition to my Cloud. I used to keep my client information in Microsoft Onenote. Then I move to Apple and started to use NoteTaker. In both cases, the data was not portable. So, I had to manually migrate it to my most popular platform of the month. As you can imagine - quite a pain. Enter Evernote - it's a cross platform, note creation and management program. It runs on the PC, Apple, web, and iPhone. No matter where I am, I have access to my client records. Each note is a container that can hold text, graphics, and data files. It's simple to setup and easy to use and it just works. Evernote has a free version that is quite capable. So, you can give it a try for free.
Cloud computing is here to stay. It's a significant move from PC-centric computing to data-centric computing. The idea is to not worry about your data, but to simply have flexible and easy access to it. An added benefit of the Cloud, is that a crashed hard drive doesn't need to be such a big deal anymore. Your data is safely living in the Cloud, not vulnerable to hardware failure and the sometimes doubtful success of your last backup. If my computer doesn't work, I just go to another without missing a beat. Can you do that?
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February 10, 2009
Is LastPass the Last Password Manager that I Will Ever Need?
I have been using a password manager for a long time. My first was Roboform on the PC. When I moved to the Mac, it was 1Password. Both password management programs are excellent. In fact, many would say 'best in class'. But, and this is a big BUT, neither program is cross-platform. By my viewpoint, that is unacceptable today.
In an effort to find a strong, cross-platform solution, I turned to my blog and wrote, Password Managers with Cross Platform Support: Where Are They? The next day, a reader commented, "LastPass.com is what you are looking for." So, went to check it out. I now use it on all of my computers including Windows XP, Vista, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu.
Screen shot of LastPass Vault
Screen shot of LastPass site sidebar in FireFox OS X
The program has a wide range of capabilities, but it is well constructed and installs easily so you don't need to be a nerd to use it. It works in IE and Firefox browsers. It synchronizes information between machines and my LastPass Vault is available to any computer on the Internet. It recognizes webpage logins, autofils forms, manages scraps of data, displays logins effectively as a sidebar in the browser, and much, much more. If you are looking for a better way to manage your passwords and fill forms, LastPass may be it. You can check it out here: lastpass.com
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January 16, 2009
Microsoft Windows 7: Vista 2.0
Before you read on, you need to understand that I spent the best years of my career life working for Microsoft. I started evangelizing Windows to corporate America in 1989. I lived, breathed and knew everything about Microsoft Windows. I recently began evaluating Microsoft Windows 7 in a most unorthodox way. I'm evaluating it on a MacBook Pro. Oh, shame on me!
Here is what I did. I started a virtual machine (VM) running Windows XP on my Macbook Pro. I opened Internet Explorer, connected to the Windows 7 download page and downloaded the WIndows 7 image file (ISO) to my desktop. Next, I opened up Parallels Desktop for Mac version 4 (build 4.0.3810) and setup a new VM using the Parallels profile called 'Windows 7 (experimental)'. I simply pointed the VM wizard at the ISO file, allocated 2GB of RAM and 32GB of hard drive space, and that was it. Installation completed without a problem, I restarted the VM, installed Parallel Tools, restarted the VM, and Windows 7.0 came to life in a Window on my Mac desktop.
First impressions are very important. People adopt or abandon products based on this. My first impression of Windows 7 was that it looked an awful lot like Windows Vista. The only immediately noticeable difference was in the look of the Windows Taskbar. Windows 7 looked good, ran very responsively, and I immediately noticed that it didn't appear to suffer from the lag in performance that Windows Vista did under Parallels. I do have Windows Vista installed on my Mac, but I rarely use it because I think that the performance is poor. I use Windows XP under Parallels, because it runs much better and lets me run the same Windows applications as Windows Vista. So, it's sort of a 'no brainer' to select Windows XP over Vista. I played around with Windows 7 for a couple of hours, installed Kaspersky's virus protection, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Money. All went smoothly and I continued to like what I saw. The performance combined with the user interface refinements looked good. You could sort of say that Windows 7 is really Windows Vista 2. Too bad that Microsoft seems to want to forget Windows Vista.
Next, I started to test some of the settings in Parallels to see how Windows 7 would integrate in the Mac environment. Parallels offers a few different way to run VMs. They are referred to as Coherence, Full Screen, Window, and Modality. I typically use everything by Modality as I still haven't figured out what it's for. Running Windows 7 under Coherence really caught my attention. Coherence runs Windows applications in individual windows on the Mac desktop. It's pretty cool. But in previous builds of Parallels, there was a rather awkward Windows menu bar that hovered just above the Mac Dock bar. It was odd and didn't look too good. In the new build of Parallels, the Windows Taskbar is hidden by default. So, you start with a very clean, highly integrated look. To access the Windows menu system, you can simply click on the Parallels icon or the icon for any of the Windows applications that are running. I found this to be very cool and totally enjoyed the level of integration and performance that I was seeing. I found myself marveling at the combined level of integration between the 2 operating systems. It looks like the computing world will have something very nice to use from Microsoft by the end of this year. Running it on a Mac makes it even better as you can choose the best of class applications from both worlds.
This image shows Windows 7 running in coherence mode under Parallels running Internet Explorer beside Apple Safari with a Windows Gadget sitting on the desktop.
Please post a comment if this has been helpful to you.
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December 21, 2008
Password Managers with Cross Platform Support: Where Are They?
It not new news that computer users have too many passwords, key codes, and bits and pieces of important information. To complicate matters, we often have more than one computer. Any many of us have computers running Windows, OS X, and increasingly Linux. My current count includes 266 logins, 104 notes, 3 credit cards, and 2 different profiles. I could never keep this information organized and safe without a software utility that manages this stuff. This category of software utility is often called a password manager. But that's actually a misnomer. This type of software does much more than just manage passwords. It manages and auto fills usernames and passwords; fills in web page forms; keeps bits and pieces of useful information; generates secure passwords; and maintains electric wallets. The good news is that there is a small number of reasonably priced products available that do this well. Many are now expanding their offerings to include web interfaces and one way support for mobile platforms like Windows Mobile, Palm and iPhone.
My two favorite products are 1Password for OS X and Roboform for Windows. I use both daily and don't know what I would do without them. The are well designed, reliable and mature, and do the job well. But there is one thing that they don't do at all that is starting to make me crazy - neither product offers any type of reasonable cross platform support and synchronization. 1Password does offer very broad support to import password data from a large number of competing products. Roboform does this too, but is more limited.
This is very useful when you are evaluating their software. You can get up to speed quickly as you don't have too much information to re-key. Also, both products offer good ways to synchronize data between multiple computers of the same platform. And both products offer one way synchronization to popular mobile platforms. But neither product offers synchronization between Windows and OS X. This is what I need desperately. I've been combing the Internet looking for a good solution and I can't find one. So, I'm asking - Does anyone know of a good password/form filler/data scrap manager that is as good as 1Password or Roboform that is cross platform? If so, please tell me. I know there are many of us out there looking for a solution.
Please post a comment if this has been helpful to you.
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February 15, 2008
iPod Touch Email Settings for Comcast
A friend recently told me that she was very frustrated. She'd been unsuccessful with setting up her new iPod Touch to get email from her Comcast account. She tried to set it up. It didn't work. She went to the Apple store. The Genius couldn't get it to work. She called Comcast. Their tech support couldn't get it to work. And so on. All told, she spent about 4 hours trying to get it to work and failed. I like a challenge, so I told her that I would take a look into it. I came up with 3 working solutions.
The first is to setup the Touch's mail app to receive email. This solution is detailed below. The second it to use the new Comcast micro browser portal. Any device that has a WAP 2.0 browser and a link to the world wide web can navigate to this new portal which can be found at http://m.comcast.net. The third is to forward Comcast's email to another email service, like Gmail, which the Touch is pre-configured to receive. Comcast allows you to permanently forward email for any of its email accounts.
Here are the setting to set up Comcast email in the iPod Touch email application.
Select Settings, Mail, Add Account, Other as in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Select POP as the mail server. Put your information in as shown in Figure 2. Make sure that you type in your correct password. If you are not absolutely certain of your password, you can reset it on http://www.comcast.net. Once your settings are in, click on Save at the top of the display. The email app will try to verify your settings and we return to the setting screen. This may take a while so be patient.
Figure 2
Now you will need to configure the Advanced settings. Select Mail from the Settings menu. Select the Comcast account under the Accounts section. Select the Advanced option toward the bottom of the screen as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Configure your setting as shown in Figure 4. Make sure that you change the outgoing Server Port to 465. Save these settings. Go back to home and launch the mail app. It may take a while for mail to download and setup on your Touch. This will be dependent on the amount of email that you have stored on the Comcast server. Now you can consider it fixed.
Figure 4
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January 28, 2008
Update: Microsoft Entourage 2008
I’ve been using Microsoft Entourage 2008 for 13 days. Initially, I was disappointed with its lack of key Exchange support over the 2004 release. I don’t know what you need. But I need task and note synchronization with Exchange server. When I purchased Mac Office 2008 and discovered its limited Exchange support, I got pretty upset.
In my view, Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit (MacBU) has been very evasive about Exchange support in Entourage 2008. During development, they fed us bits and pieces about Entourage, but were pretty mum about Exchange support. How many years has it been since the last release of Office – humm…4? Wouldn’t you think that they’d listen and release 2008 with Exchange support on parity with Outlook? The answer that I found is no. To add more salt to this wound – the MacBU is charging extra money for Office with Entourage over its 2004 packaging. Right after Mac Office 2008’s release, a lot of users made the same discovery that I did and many were pissed off.
I went looking in the Mac user forums for some explanation, some information on how I could get task and note sync. Brave Andy Ruff, Microsoft’s MacBU Lead Program Manager for Entourage, has been active in the forums. I sent him an email voicing my concerns hoping that Microsoft would come clean and explain itself. You know – why didn’t you do what everyone was asking for? Brave Andy answered my email and gave an explanation. Now, you may not know it, but I used to work for Microsoft when most people considered it a very cool company. So, I can understand Andy’s reply. Here’s our dialog:
Ian: “I'm looking for task and notes sync with Exchange - like all Mac/Exchange users. It's really frustrating to wait for release to find out that it's not included in Entourage 2008. The MacBU has been incredibly vague about Exchange support. From my viewpoint, and as an ex-MSFT employee, you guys really missed the mark with this release. Full exchange support should have been on the top of the list. At least, help us better understand why we don't have it now, and if we can ever expect it.”
Andy: “I agree that these are top demands from customers and we do intend to deliver them to the product. As I stated on the forums, we’ve added dozens of new Exchange features to Entourage in the last few years as regular, free updates to the product. We had a quality and reliability issue as a result of adding so much to the app. For 2008, we stepped-back and focused on solidifying the app, making things work as you’d expect, so that, in future releases, what you get is reliable. While we could have checked-off more features in a list, we want to bring the functionality in a way that truly works.”
Ian: “Thanks for the reply. I understand that you are balancing many priorities with Entourage. But, I find myself saying, “yes, but.”
“As a Windows, Windows Mobile, Exchange and Mac user, I feel that my Exchange data (tasks 1st, notes a distant second) is land-locked on the Windows platform. Entourage is the only reasonable client for Mac/Exchange integration. So, how do I get my tasks sync’d across all of my devices and PCs? I was hoping that you’d do it for me. You didn’t. Like many users, I’ve been waiting a long time to get this fixed.”
“The missing info is - how much longer do I have to wait to get parity with Outlook in terms of sync services (read that as tasks 1st, notes whenever)? Can you offer any guidance? A lot of us want to know.”
Andy: “Totally understand the “yes, but.” I’d love to knock-off that last part and just make it, “yes!” and that’s pretty much our primary goal. You will see the results of our work, just this wasn’t the time yet. We’re not sharing the timeframe right now, but we will in the future.”
So, that’s that and we can expect improved Exchange support at sometime in the future. Humm…am I any happier now? To be honest, a bit. The new Entourage client is very nice. It looks good and works very well. Its interface is clean. Its performance is good. Its searches are fast. I do miss the drag and drop capabilities that I take for granted in Outlook. But it’s so greatly improved over the 2004 release. Now, MacBU, please, please, please…get us task and note sync as soon as you can.
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November 10, 2007
October 07, 2007
I’m a Believer – Apple’s Airport Extreme is Very Good
Recently, I added a MacBook Pro to my home - all PC - network. I had setup the network using a wireless router and an old Windows XP PC as a print server to share a Canon MP780 multifunction printer. After setting up the Mac, I tried to get it to print to the shared printer. I followed the tech note that I found on the Apple support site. I couldn’t get it to work. I searched the net and found a bunch of suggestions. Some didn’t work. Some were ridiculously complex. All said and tried, I couldn’t get the Mac to print on my Windows network.
So, I decided to take a different approach and consider using a wireless print server. I looked at the product offerings from the key network hardware players. I was genuinely surprised that I couldn’t find a PC and Mac compatible solution that would support a multifunction printer. I started to think that it would be far easier and less expensive to purchase another printer to connect to the Mac. That was a good and bad solution - I don’t need another printer, nor do I have space for it.
So, I decided to take a different approach and consider using a wireless router with USB printer support. Again I looked to the key network hardware players. Again, I couldn’t find a solution that would support both PCs and Macs and multifunction printers. I then looked at the Apple Airport Extreme. The Apple site says, “The same USB port does double duty by letting you share a printer throughout the network.” This sounded too simple, so I set off looking for a printer compatibility list. I couldn’t find one on the Apple website. I headed over to the local Apple store and ask about printer compatibility. After a bit of confusion, I was told that the Airport works well with most Canon printers and that I have 14 days to return the Airport should it not work. So, I paid double what I’d pay for any other wireless router and headed home with another Apple product.
Setup was simple and quick. I configured the Airport from my Mac. I setup the router, then the printer. It worked first try. Next I setup the PCs. All I had to do was install Bonjour for Windows on the PCs and run the Bonjour Printer Wizard. I setup 4 PCs – each saw the printer first try and printed without a problem! In fact, on of the PCs is a Parallels virtual machine running on my MacBook Pro.
I setup PCs and networks for a living. Usually, there are a number of problems I encounter with each network and I have some insider magic that I do to get things working. This wasn’t the case here at all. The Airport works as advertised – setup is a breeze and its performance and range so far has been fine. I suspect that I’ll be recommending the Airport Extreme to my clients with a mixed PC/Mac environments going forward.
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May 14, 2007
Carbonite - Good Backup Cheap
Backup is something that you do after you lose your data. It's the truth. Your Mother can't teach you about backup. You simply learn about it after you crash, or delete, or overwrite. And it hurts.
Every week, I get a call from some freaked out user. The common complaint, "I turned off my
computer last night. This morning I turned it on and it says something about not being able to find the operating system. Does this mean that I've lost my files?"
It's important to understand that hard drives crash. They are mechanical devices that are measured in an honest statistic call mean time between failures (MTBF). It's not mean time between successes. While the MTBF continues to increase with the release of new hard drives, which is good, in any production run of hard drives, some are going to last 5 seconds and others will last 10 years. So, which one did you purchase?
Enter the need for backup. There is a program available that will automatically backup the data on your hard drive over the Internet. It simply works reliably, and get this, you can get unlimited data storage space for $49.95 a year. Now you have to trust me on this – I've tried nearly all of the Internet-based backup systems available. If you have a large amount of data as I do, they cost a lot, and don't work well. The secret to successful Internet-based backup is to be able to first make a complete backup of all data and then backup only changed or new data. If you try to do this with a large amount of data, most of these programs fail miserably. Some companies even resort to suggesting that you send your data to them on an external hard drive to create the initial backup. Humm… doesn't sound like the Internet-based services that I want.
The program that I am talking about is called Carbonite - www.carbonite.com. Check it out. You will be impressed. Now you can Consider It Fixed!
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