Solution :

You can resolve this driver issue by having the printer attached to the USB Port, then manually pressing ADD PRINTER, choose DOT4 for the port. For the driver, choose the built in Windows 7 HP Laserjet 3055 PCL5 driver and it will work.

You can also share the printer on a network and it will work with other Windows 7 computers not directly attached automatically.

The Printers section in the control panel eventually got rid of the Unspecified Device as it now see’s it as a 3055 printer.

Date of last update: 12/01/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis

Without a doubt, this rogue is designed to scam you out of your money by hijacking your computer and trying to trick you into thinking you are infected. Therefore, please do not purchase this program , and if you have, please contact your credit card company and dispute the charges stating that the program is a computer infection. Finally, to remove Win 7 Antispyware 2012, Vista Antivirus 2012, and XP Security 2012 please use the guide below, which only contains programs that are free to use.

1 : It is possible that the infection you are trying to remove will not allow you to download files on the infected computer. If this is the case, then you will need to download the files requested in this guide on another computer and then transfer them to the infected computer. You can transfer the files via a CD/DVD, external drive, or USB flash drive.

2 : This infection changes settings on your computer so that when you launch an executable, a file ending with .exe, it will instead launch the infection rather than the desired program. To fix this we must first download a Registry file that will fix these changes. From a clean computer, please download the following file and save it to a removable media such as a CD/DVD, external Drive, or USB flash drive.

FixNCR.reg (http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/reg/FixNCR.reg)

Once that file is downloaded and saved on a removable devices, insert the removable device into the infected computer and open the folder the drive letter associated with it. You should now see the FixNCR.reg file that you had downloaded onto it. Double-click on the FixNCR.reg file to fix the Registry on your infected computer. You should now be able to run your normal executable programs and can proceed to the next step.

If you do not have any removable media or another clean computer that you can download the FixNCR.reg file onto, you can try and download it to your infected computer using another method. On the infected computer, right click on the Internet Explorer’s icon, or any other browser’s icon, and select Run As or Run as Administrator. If you are using Windows XP, you will be prompted to select a user and enter its password. It is suggested that you attempt to login as the Administrator user. For Windows 7 or Windows Vista, you will be prompted to enter your Administrator account password.

Once you enter the password, your browser will start and you can download the above FixNCR.reg file. When saving it, make sure you save it to a folder that can be accessed by your normal account. Remember, that you will be launching the browser as another user, so if you save it to a My Documents folder, it will not be your normal My Documents folder that it is downloaded into. Instead it will be the My Documents folder that belongs to the user you ran the browser as. Once the download has finished, close your browser and find the FixNCR.reg file that you downloaded. Now double-click on it and allow the data to be merged. You should now be able to run your normal executable programs and can proceed to the next step.

3 : Now we must first end the processes that belong to Win 7 Antispyware 2012, Vista Antivirus 2012, and XP Security 2012 and clean up some Registry settings so they do not interfere with the cleaning procedure. To do this, please download RKill to your desktop from the following link.

RKill Download Link – (Download page will open in a new tab or browser window.)

When at the download page, click on the Download Now button labeled iExplore.exe download link . When you are prompted where to save it, please save it on your desktop.

4 : Once it is downloaded, double-click on the iExplore.exe icon in order to automatically attempt to stop any processes associated with Win 7 Antispyware 2012, Vista Antivirus 2012, and XP Security 2012 and other Rogue programs. Please be patient while the program looks for various malware programs and ends them. When it has finished, the black window will automatically close and you can continue with the next step. If you get a message that RKill is an infection, do not be concerned. This message is just a fake warning given by Win 7 Antispyware 2012, Vista Antivirus 2012, and XP Security 2012 when it terminates programs that may potentially remove it. If you run into these infections warnings that close RKill, a trick is to leave the warning on the screen and then run RKill again. By not closing the warning, this typically will allow you to bypass the malware trying to protect itself so that rkill can terminate Win 7 Antispyware 2012, Vista Antivirus 2012, and XP Security 2012 . So, please try running RKill until the malware is no longer running. You will then be able to proceed with the rest of the guide. If you continue having problems running RKill, you can download the other renamed versions of RKill from the rkill download page. All of the files are renamed copies of RKill, which you can try instead. Please note that the download page will open in a new browser window or tab.

Do not reboot your computer after running RKill as the malware programs will start again.

5 : Download Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, or MBAM, from the following location and save it to your desktop:

Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware Download Link (Download page will open in a new window)

6 : Once downloaded, close all programs and Windows on your computer, including this one.

7 : Double-click on the icon on your desktop named mbam-setup.exe. This will start the installation of MBAM onto your computer.

8 : When the installation begins, keep following the prompts in order to continue with the installation process. Do not make any changes to default settings and when the program has finished installing, make sure you leave both the Update Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and Launch Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware checked. Then click on the Finish button.

9 : MBAM will now automatically start and you will see a message stating that you should update the program before performing a scan. As MBAM will automatically update itself after the install, you can press the OK button to close that box and you will now be at the main program as shown below.

10 : On the Scanner tab, make sure the the Perform full scan option is selected and then click on the Scan button to start scanning your computer for Win 7 Antispyware 2012, Vista Antivirus 2012, and XP Security 2012 related files.

11 : MBAM will now start scanning your computer for malware. This process can take quite a while, so we suggest you go and do something else and periodically check on the status of the scan. When MBAM is scanning it will look like the image below.

12 : When the scan is finished a message box will appear as shown in the image below.

13 : You should click on the OK button to close the message box and continue with the Vista AntiSpyware 2012, Win 7 Home Security, and XP Antivirus 2012 removal process.

You will now be back at the main Scanner screen. At this point you should click on the Show Results button.

14 : A screen displaying all the malware that the program found will be shown as seen in the image below. Please note that the infections found may be different than what is shown in the image.

You should now click on the Remove Selected button to remove all the listed malware. MBAM will now delete all of the files and registry keys and add them to the programs quarantine. When removing the files, MBAM may require a reboot in order to remove some of them. If it displays a message stating that it needs to reboot, please allow it to do so. Once your computer has rebooted, and you are logged in, please continue with the rest of the steps.

15 : When MBAM has finished removing the malware, it will open the scan log and display it in Notepad. Review the log as desired, and then close the Notepad window.

16 : You can now exit the MBAM program.

Date of last update: 11/28/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Here is a list of what makes Windows Server 2008 great and a worthwhile upgrade from Windows Server 2003:

· Server Manager and the Advanced Event Viewer

Windows Server 2008 includes an entirely new management interface known as the Server Manager. The Server Manager is a one stop shop for configuring, managing, and monitoring the server. This is not like the Server Manager’s you might have used in the past; this one actually works and its one that you will use everyday when managing your Windows Server 2008 machines.

· Server Core

Windows Server 2008 can be installed in one of two ways: full installation or server core. The Server Core installation installs a subset of binaries that are required to get the core operating system running. No optional services are installed or enabled. There is no user interface other than the command line. There is no Windows Explorer shell, and all configuration must be done locally at the command line, or remotely using the MMC console or the new Windows Remote Shell (WinRS) remote management application (similar to SSH).

· Terminal Services Gateway

One of the impediments to fully deploying Terminal Services for remote access users was the fact that a great many administrators did not trust the authentication sequence and the level of encryption of the RDP tunnels. Another problem encountered was the fact that many firewalls at remote locations did not allow outbound TCP 3389. Microsoft has solved these problems by introducing Terminal Services Gateway in Windows Server 2008.

· Terminal Services RemoteApps

The goal of every security admin is to reach least privilege for every user. That is especially true for remote access connections. Security admins lose sleep at night thinking about providing full remote desktop connections to non-administrative users. All it takes is the compromise of one user’s credentials by a dedicated hacker and that hacker has a full desktop environment under his control to compromise your network. That is a scary thought.

· Native IPv6 support

Windows Server 2008 is the first version of Windows Server that has native IPv6 support as part of a single IP stack. In previous versions of Windows before Vista, IPv6 support was done in parallel with IPv4, and there was no integrated support for IPv6 included in network infrastructure services such as DNS and DHCP. That is no longer the case and now IPv6 is tightly woven into the Windows Server 2008 networking stack and infrastructure services.

· Read Only Domain Controllers

With the proliferation of branch offices in many organizations, many recognized the problem regarding authentication. Branch offices are often provisioned with a domain controller that users can authenticate to a local DC rather than having to go over a slow, or even downed, WAN link, which could cause authentication failures and inability to access even local resources.

· Hyper-V

Hyper-V is the Windows Server 2008 hypervisor that allows you to run virtual machines on Windows Server 2008 computers. Hyper-V replaces Virtual Server 2005 and is an integrated part of the operating system, which comes to you at no additional cost. The final bits for Hyper-V are not yet available, so I am going to reserve judgment on Hyper-V at this time. But, from what I have seen so far, I am very impressed with what they have done with Windows Server Virtualization. If you are looking for a no cost virtualization solution, then an upgrade to Windows Server 2008 is a good choice for you.

· Network Access Protection (NAP)

Network Access Protection allows you to control access from all computers who connect to your network. According to Microsoft, Network Access Protection (NAP) is not so much a security methodology as it is a client health mechanism. NAP allows you to create policies that set a minimum state of client health before that computer is allowed to connect to other computers on the network.

· Secure Sockets Tunneling Protocol (SSTP)

The Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) is a true SSL VPN. What I mean by “true” SSL VPN is that SSTP provides full network level VPN access to the corporate network in the same way that the PPTP and L2TP/IPSec protocols provide. However, the advantage with SSTP is that unlike PPTP and L2TP/IPSec, you do not have to worry about firewalls blocking outbound access to your SSTP connections.

· The Windows Advanced Firewall and Policy-based QoS

Windows Vista users will recognize the Windows Advanced Firewall. Now you get the same benefits Vista users have with Windows Server 2008. What is even better is that you can use Group Policy in Windows Server 2008 comprehensive centralized management of the Windows Advanced Firewall. If you have not used the Vista firewall yet, you are in for a treat. The Windows Advanced Firewall included with Vista and Windows Server 2008 allows you fine tuned inbound and outbound access control. The outbound access control was the missing piece with the Windows XP firewall. Now you have control on outbound connections so that if you detected on your firewalls that hosts are infected with a worm aimed at a certain port or collection of ports, you can block those ports on each host centrally through group policy.

Date of last update:11/23/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Please try to fill the blank as best as you can.

To add a category, simply write in the article [ [Category: Name_of_the_category] ]

Please indicate if there is private data in the article by adding a ‘Private’ category.

Exchange Server 2007 Database Portability

This feature enables an organization with multiple 2007 Exchange Servers to simply backup the Exchange Server database on one server and then mount it on another server within the organization using the database portability feature. For example, if you have an Exchange Server 2007 in Tampa and another Exchange Server 2007 in Atlanta, you can move the Exchange Server database from the Tampa server to Atlanta server and vice versa. This feature is critical when planning a disaster recovery plan. If a Hurricane is coming to Tampa you simply bring up the Exchange 2007 Server and mount the database and your instantly up and running again. You can use Windows NT Native backup to backup the database from one server to another. There is no way to replicate databases, you must backup the database and then you can mount multiple databases on one Exchange 2007 Server with the database portability function.

Exchange Server 2007 Integrated Spam Filtering

Exchange Server 2007 comes with state of the art integrated spam filtering technology. It is also now part of the mail flow process which is the part of Exchange that processes email. This was a problem with Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003. Users would have issues with their bad mail folder getting filled up quickly with spam and bouncing back valid email. But now Exchange 2007 has the capability to detect and stop the server from being spammed and can sense if there is an inbound attack on the inbound mail flow of messages going in the mail queue. With Exchange 2007 all of the folders are automatically managed and monitored via the mail flow monitoring system which is built in to Exchange 2007.

Exchange Server 2007 Unified Message

Exchange 2007 offers a Unified Message feature that is more enhanced than the standard messaging system included with Exchange 2003. You are now able to use a VOIP phone system or a PBX and include the functions in your Outlook 2007. For example; let’s say you were leaving the office for the day at 2:00PM and you changed your calendar to out of office at 2:00PM. Well with Exchange 2007 you can have a different greeting play on your phone or email responder by simply changing the schedule on your calendar. This will also allow you to setup voice access from any standard phone and can be integrated with any pbx and setup for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Server.

Exchange Server 2007 Outlook Anywhere

A very new and popular feature with Exchange Server 2007 is Outlook Anywhere. This is setup similar to the previous HTTPS over RPC. This allows users to use Outlook 2007 to connect from around the world and allows Outlook to function like the user was on the network. Setting up this type of functionality was difficult to configure in the past, but is much more robust and easier to configure using the Outlook client. It’s best to configure Outlook Anywhere with a secure certificate from VeriSign. If you don’t purchase a certificate you can create one but you will need to install it on each Windows XP client computer that you plan on using Outlook Anywhere.

If you need assistance setting up Outlook Anywhere please give us a call 888-333-9340

Exchange Server 2007 Outlook Web Access

Exchange 2007 has made a lot of improvements to the Outlook Web Access feature. Several steps have been taken by the Microsoft developers to shorten the amount of bandwidth that Outlook Web Access uses. Also many new features have been added to the Outlook Web Access Windows operating system.

Exchange Server 2007 ActiveSync

One of the key features of Exchange 2007 is the ability to use ActiveSync over the air. That’s right, you are able to ActiveSync all your items in Outlook on your User Mailbox while on the road. You are able to sync an Inbox with Microsoft Exchange 2003, but now with Microsoft Exchange 2007 you are able to sync contacts, tasks and calendars on the road. Exchange ActiveSync technology is also very secure and uses data encryption to ensure that your information isn’t’t exposed over the Internet. ActiveSync can also be used with BlackBerry phones, making it a must have feature for companies using BlackBerry technology.

Date of last update:11/23/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

This is very annoying and confusing to the recipient.

Affects: MAC mail 

SOlution to the issue : 

1. Install Mail Attachments Iconizer. Set Let Me Decide and tick all check boxes, put 128k in each of the entry boxes.

2. In Mail, go to Edit, Attachments, set Windows Friendly Attachments and Insert Attachments At End of Message.

Date of last update:11/23/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

When you log on to Windows XP, it may take longer than you expect. When you use CTRL-ALT-DELETE to log out, you may receive the following error message:

Windows cannot load the locally stored profile: Insufficient security rights or a corrupted local file. Windows has logged you in with a temporary profile any setting you make will not be saved.

If a user gets this message, try logging in with an administrator account and then logging off / logging in as the user.

Date of last update: 11/23/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

This error will appear if the server doesn’t have a 32 bit print driver installed. To eliminate the warning message we need to install the 32 bit print driver on the server.

Affects: SBS 2008

From a Windows XP client:

1 : Logon to a 32 bit XP client with an account that has Administrator rights on the server.

2 : Browse to the server and double click on the Printers and Faxes share.

3 : Click File and then Server Properties.

4 : Go to the Drivers tab.

5 : Click Add.

6 : The Add Printer Driver wizard should appear. Click Next on the welcome screen.

7 : If the client already has a driver for the printer you can select the driver from the list otherwise you would Click Have Disk and browse to the directory containing the print drivers from the printer manufacturer.

8 : Once you select the printer you will be prompted to select the print environment. Check the box for Intel Windows 2000 or XP.

9 : Click to Finish to complete the process and close the wizard.

The add printer driver wizard will now copy the necessary files to the server to support 32 bit clients. Once this process is complete you should be able to install the printer on all the 32 bit clients and the client machine will pull the necessary driver from the server.

From a Vista client:

1 : Logon to a 32 bit Vista client with an account that has Administrator rights on the server.

2 : Browse to the server and double click on the Printers share.

3 : Right click on a blank spot on the printers and choose Server Properties.

4 : Go to the Drivers Tab and click Add.

5 : The Add Printer Driver Wizard will launch. Click Next on the welcome screen.

6 : Check x86 Type 3 – User Mode and click Next.

7 : If the client already has a driver for the printer you can select the driver from the list otherwise you would Click Have Disk and browse to the directory containing the print drivers from the printer manufacturer.

8 : Click to Finish to complete the process and close the wizard.

The add printer driver wizard will now copy the necessary files to the server to support 32 bit clients. Once this process is complete you should be able to install the printer on all the 32 bit clients and the client machine will pull the necessary driver from the server.

Date of last update:11/21/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Affects: MAC OS X Lion 

To resolve the issue, go to filevault and click on enable other user then check your name. 

Date of last update: 11/17/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Here are instructions on how to turn it on:

Open Terminal and type the following commands to turn on the TFTP server.

sudo launchctl load -F /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/tftp.plist

sudo launchctl start com.apple.tftpd

The default tftp file path is /private/tftpboot but you can change that by editing /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/tftp.plist and re-starting with launchctl…

sudo launchctl restart com.apple.tftpd

Date of last update:11/14/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

You can fix this by setting up a default outlook profile, it was set as “always prompt” and Acrobat was sending through the wrong profile.

Date of last update: 11/11/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Please try to fill the blank as best as you can.

To add a category, simply write in the article [ [Category: Name_of_the_category] ]

Please indicate if there is private data in the article by adding a ‘Private’ category.

Is it worth the business risk?

This one is taking advantage of the storage provisionning feature of Windows server

- In vSphere, edit settings of the VM, select the hard disk and increase capacity to maximum.

- On Windows Server, go to Computer Management, and Disk Management

- Convert the partition to dynamic if it is not already

- Extend the volume to the new unallocated space

- Check new volume size

Date of last update: 11/10/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

As soon as you’ve setup a Linux instance on Amazon EC2 you’re likely next step is to get FTP access so you can move files about.

First of all make sure port 22 is open in your instance’s Security Group in Amazon’s AWS site. You can test this from a Terminal using the following command:

ssh Address-Of-EC2-Instance

If that times out then most likely port 22 isn’t open. Otherwise you’re ok. SFTP uses the same port so we can carry on and set it up.

The error is “No supported authentication methods available”. To get round it you need to tell FileZilla about the .PEM file that was created when you built the Amazon instance. Assuming you already downloaded it to you PC, open FileZilla and select the Edit->Settings menu.

Click the “Add key file…” button and locate your PEM file. At this point FileZilla will ask if you want to convert it to a format it can use. Say yes and tell it where to put the new .PPK file. Once this is done press ok and try to connect again. You should have more luck!

Date of last update:11/10/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Solution :

First set a sudo password if you don’t have one:

-open terminal and type “sudo passwd root” then enter admin password and a new password for root

And rebuild the index :

-”sudo mdutil –E” 

Date of last update: 11/09/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

someone had installed a pirated version of photoshop on her machine which blocked access to adobe.com using the /etc/hosts (in order to get around the software phoning home with it’s serial number)

Date of last update: 11/08/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

This message pops up on Lenovo laptops when Outlook is opening because of a conflict with the Veriface application.

Process:

Start

All programes

Lenovo

Right click Veriface

Open file location

Then scroll to the bottom and there should be uninstall Variface.

Uninstall Variface and everything will be ok. 

Date of last update: 11/07/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Please try to fill the blank as best as you can.

To add a category, simply write in the article [ [Category: Name_of_the_category] ]

Please indicate if there is private data in the article by adding a ‘Private’ category.

Administrators can download mailbox accounts within their domain for audit purposes. To prepare a mailbox for export, the Email Audit service creates an encrypted copy of a user’s mailbox. When the export preparation is completed, the system returns the URLs to the encrypted mailbox files which, when downloaded and decrypted, are available in mbox format. The downloading steps are:

1 : Upload a public key — The administrator provides a public encryption key for downloading mailboxes. The creation of this public key is only done once. If you have already created a public key for accessing account information, you do not need to complete this step. This public encryption key is in Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) format using the ASCII-encoded RSA key encryption. One way this key can be generated is to use GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) fromwww.gnupg.org. If using GPG, specify the –expert flag in order to generate an RSA encryption key. Export the public part of the GPG key using gpg –armor –export. This key is used to encrypt the mailbox export files available through HTTP URLs.

2 : Create an export version of a user’s mailbox — The mailbox export process starts when an administrator requests the creation of a copy of a user’s mailbox. The Email Audit API’s operation authenticates and authorizes the administrator’s credentials and returns a unique request id. The mailbox creation process can be time consuming and may take several days depending upon the mailbox size.

3 : Retrieve the mailbox download status or retrieve all mailbox status using a date — Use the mailbox export request ID to get the status of the pending request. Once the mailbox is copied and prepared for export, the response returns a status of “COMPLETED” along with the list of encrypted mailbox files as HTTP URLs. Use this set of URLs to download the mailbox files.

4 : Obtain the downloaded mailbox files — After downloading the encrypted files, the administrator decrypts the mailbox files using the domain’s private key. Once decrypted, the files are viewed in mbox format.

Detailed Instructions:

Before doing anything with the google apps Audit API one must autheticate to the the service

1.Turn on the Provisioning API in the Google apps admin panel.

It is under Domain Settings -> User Settings

2.From the command line use this script to generate an auth token:

curl https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin \

–data-urlencode Email=<domain admin account> –data-urlencode Passwd=<domain admin password> \

-d accountType=GOOGLE \

-d source=Audit_Request \

-d service=apps

The server will respond with something that looks like this only uglier:

SID=DQAAAOQAAACM317shtJ7I0-Ak_M10kQaZNs6g66GbiKvr7MShntuW1i1qGhdLQIbwtqplbaB_3pIlzY8CIq1TQKnUZ3sYqnKrpm-1wVoN22cgfmyhGSnhFyPP4506QkKQuortDv3bYIDt6klp0XGVAeVlCYNAqVetGpqL_DakbRKRam3yFXaIhHhK998Pr7fQO2cg2jacbNUtGRk-1ezUJco8KrX5hpFusBokMbDKdeM81pLtLWEz2zcd0zoegQqIJ-NT0AV8vViC5xcZPXyL1nvI_LQarAK9WPUOEcy_eDepWSijcRoFvXft7xgyEVfzJdpX75rdGY

LSID=DQAAAOUAAAD_GGb7uP2cSYJewekD5vwVX6jQU2FhbMC0ljMCyDYn15P8KAklahPj_K7oVLNMWZ0U1n2gAnk_4DAMz–Xd2nxZqH9izqdwjAFykI7vuGB_YZcnaIBVmbz9-xBTaNzYrBVxZaURr-2YwB2NWcMyPiqgNC6ZM_cGGreqZQ1IkKlEjXLiLxEMA_4igIjGSQxVzfUO-H9HmOwVo8_dp4TV4a-ZA80Z-mGGwLv9qLa58d44lDqs_8jsUIa6kxKrm39nVMOXN8e1d_hiNKN9bAUAfjFDA4W7RtlkwkA_VoX39YCN9DZvGwqsVQbGBLeAOSmga4

Auth=DQAAAOQAAAD_GGb7uP2cSYJewekD5vwVPIZ7fsH6x1mHhaW5J4EEdetYMFE2qWfDPh927HwAVRABb7ATZGwqPoEwqu6vMTHC7r1jPgdwAzHvIfCLzIauF6p27wB3cR4pnsEF-D8gNUEke9fTJXwIFaZG2_q30RfsAQD_dIprBlSmRFn-bdC1I8aqBNtKspLgcK_JjFhiYDIEL5385DbixUDwW6vmrQ45mpq3liXZhYNKXpYMLphlivXNn4Mr45cTuDD3TScBLei-EQ7FYoPzVgM6ZhZgPm3cNKnwmN5e-NDG-N9cOAkND-QftdvslsU15o0S6txk3Lc.

Take the Auth Value that it returns and use it in all the following cURL commands

3.If you have not already generate a GPG key to encrypt the mailboxes.

(you can use Linux, Windows or Mac to do this)

a. Export the Public Key to a Text File

b. encode the Public Key into Base64 using this website: http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp

c. Create a file called publicKey.xml that contains the following:

<atom:entry xmlns:atom=’http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom’ xmlns:apps=’http://schemas.google.com/apps/2006′>

<apps:property name=”publicKey” value=”LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBQR1AgUFVCTElDIEtFWSBCTE9DSy0tLS0tDQpWZXJzaW9uOiBHbnVQRy9NYWNH

UEcyIHYyLjAuMTcgKERhcndpbikNCkNvbW1lbnQ6IEdQR1Rvb2xzIC0gaHR0cDovL2dwZ3Rvb2xz

—Bunches of Different Text that you copied and pasted from the website above—–

NkFVdjRnaWdRDQpxVDdXZTRkYys5YXlsVXRxUm13QUlDWVJJK1RnODA4TkhTSGhTeXZTZnhzZ2RE

RXIxcDdnDQo9bWRmeA0KLS0tLS1FTkQgUEdQIFBVQkxJQyBLRVkgQkxPQ0stLS0tLQ==”/>

</atom:entry>

d. In the terminal, navigate to the directory that holds the publicKey.xml file and run this command:

curl –silent –request POST –data-binary “@publicKey.xml” –header “Content-Type: application/atom+xml” –header “Authorization: GoogleLogin auth=<the auth token from above>” “https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/compliance/audit/publickey/ipsofactoinfo.com” | tidy -xml -indent -quiet

e. You should recieve something that looks like this:

<?xml version=’1.0′ encoding=’utf-8′?>

<entry xmlns=’http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom’

xmlns:apps=’http://schemas.google.com/apps/2006′>

<id>

https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/compliance/audit/publickey/<domain name>/0</id>

<updated>2011-11-08T00:38:19.008Z</updated>

<link rel=’self’ type=’application/atom+xml’

href=’https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/compliance/audit/publickey/<domain name>/0′ />

<link rel=’edit’ type=’application/atom+xml’

href=’https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/compliance/audit/publickey/<domain name>/0′ />

<apps:property name=’publicKey’

value=’LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBQR1AgUFVCTElDIEtFWSBCTE9DSy0tLS0tDQpWZXJzaW9uOiBHbnVQRy9NYWNH UEcyIHYyLjAuMTcgKERhcndpbikNCkNvbW1lbnQ6IEdQR1Rvb2xzIC0gaHR0cDovL2dwZ3Rvb2xz

—Bunches of Different Text —

RXIxcDdnDQo9bWRmeA0KLS0tLS1FTkQgUEdQIFBVQkxJQyBLRVkgQkxPQ0stLS0tLQ==’ />

</entry>

4. create a mailbox request:

a. Create the file googleappscreatereq.xml (or something that scans better) that contains the following:

<atom:entry xmlns:atom=’http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom’ xmlns:apps=’http://schemas.google.com/apps/2006′>

<apps:property name=’includeDeleted’ value=’true’/>

<apps:property name=’packageContent’ value=’FULL_MESSAGE’/>

</atom:entry>

b.again from the same directory as googleappscreatereq.xml run:

curl –silent –request POST –data-binary “@googleappscreatereq.xml” –header “Content-Type: application/atom+xml” –header “Authorization: GoogleLogin auth=<your auth code>” “https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/compliance/audit/mail/export/<domain name>/<mailbox name>” | tidy -xml -indent -quiet

c. You should recieve something that looks like this:

<?xml version=’1.0′ encoding=’utf-8′?>

<entry xmlns=’http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom’

xmlns:apps=’http://schemas.google.com/apps/2006′>

<id>

https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/compliance/audit/mail/export/<domain name>/<mailbox name>/37496561</id>

<updated>2011-11-08T00:54:14.912Z</updated>

<link rel=’self’ type=’application/atom+xml’

href=’https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/compliance/audit/mail/export/<domain name>/<mailbox name>/37496561′ />

<link rel=’edit’ type=’application/atom+xml’

href=’https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/compliance/audit/mail/export/<domain name>/<mailbox name>/37496561′ />

<apps:property name=’packageContent’ value=’FULL_MESSAGE’ />

<apps:property name=’includeDeleted’ value=’true’ />

<apps:property name=’status’ value=’PENDING’ />

<apps:property name=’requestId’ value=’37496561′ />

<apps:property name=’userEmailAddress’

value=’<email>’ />

<apps:property name=’adminEmailAddress’

value=’<admin email>’ />

<apps:property name=’requestDate’ value=’2011-11-08 00:54′ />

</entry>

5. Check all requests in the past three weeks using this command (you can narrow the search as well):

curl –silent –request GET –header “Authorization: GoogleLogin auth=D<your auth code>” “https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/compliance/audit/mail/export/<domain name>” | tidy -xml -indent -quiet

Date of last update: 11/07/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis and Andrew Hunzeker

What you have to do :

1 : Go to dnsstuff.com and test the domain.

2 : You will probably see that the server cannot accept email to postmaster@domain.com

You will have to add the address postmaster@domain.com as an alias to spamadmin@domain.com in Mxlogic.

- Check the credentials.

- Go to alias and add the address.

Then you will have to add postmaster@domain.com as an alias to administrator@domain.com in the clients server.

- Check the credentials to connect within Remote Desktop Control.

- Connect to client’s server.

- Add the address as an alias.

Date of last update: 11/04/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Affects: MAC 

Fixing the permissions via the disk utility didn’t fix the issue

Downloading mac pilot then go to tools tab and run wipe the acl settings.

Select the home folder and click continue.

Once done, she was able to access all the files again

Note that this is certainly caused by transferring files from her old

computer to new one

Date of last update: 11/04/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

When you open the app for the first time click on configure your accont. 

Follow this steps : 

- Enter your User ID. Note that you should check with your administrator about what to use here. Sometimes your alias (e.g: jsmith) might be enough. And sometimes it may be your email address, depending on the server configuration.

- If you are required to enter a Domain name to gain access to your account, please enter that in the next box. Note that this is not always the same as your company’s web site domain.

- Enter your email address if it is different from your user ID.

- Enter your password, taking care not to mistype (a large number of errors

in configuration result from mistyping the password)

- Enter the address of the ExchangeTM server. Please make sure you enter just the server name, as in mail.mycompany.com. You should also take care to enter the server name as you access it from outside your company network, from the internet. Typically these names end in .com, .net. .info etc. You may also enter an IP address here if that is accessible from the internet. You may suffix the server name with a port number as in mail.mycompany.com:8082

Click next and click next again. 

In the next screen you can choose what protocols the program should check for. If you are unsure of what is available, it is advised to leave the defaults as they are.

Click Next.

Click Next on the next screen if you are sure that you wish to perform the process. Note that starting this process will delete and re-sync all existing data from TouchDown.

Once completed, you can click the Close button, which will take you to the main screen. Here, you may have to wait for a while until touchdown automatically updates the data to the phone.

Date of last update: 11/02/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Please try to fill the blank as best as you can.

To add a category, simply write in the article [ [Category: Name_of_the_category] ]

Please indicate if there is private data in the article by adding a ‘Private’ category.

You have to log in as an administrator to change the group policy 

Point and Print Restrictions which seemed to do the trick! This policy can be found in the following location:

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Tempates -> Printers

Note that you must be on a Vista/Win7/2008 machine to be able to see this policy in the group policy editor.

Date of last update: 11/02/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Please try to fill the blank as best as you can.

To add a category, simply write in the article [ [Category: Name_of_the_category] ]

Please indicate if there is private data in the article by adding a ‘Private’ category.

Affects: MAC

If password hints are turned on, after three unsuccessful attempts, a password hint will be shown, if one is set in for the user’s account. If there is no user password hint, or the user still enters an incorrect password, the loginwindow will change, showing text directing the user (or an admin) to enter the FileVault master password to reset the user’s password and to unlock FileVault.

Unlock a filevault protected directory using command line  : 

Here’s how to recover the disk image from the command line. Log in as root, or with an account that has sudo privileges to act as root (Admin accounts by default on OS X have this ability):

[troup:~] gneagle% sudo security unlock-keychain /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain

password to unlock /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain:

[troup:~] gneagle% sudo hdiutil attach /Users/someuser/someuser.sparseimage-owners on -recover /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain

/dev/disk1 Apple_partition_scheme

/dev/disk1s1 Apple_partition_map

/dev/disk1s2 Apple_HFS /Volumes/someuser

The “key” here is that you must unlock the FileVaultMaster keychain before you can use it to unlock the disk image. Once the disk image is mounted, you can then copy the data elsewhere. Here is a step-by-step session where I unlock the image, copy the contents back to the users’ home, and modify theDirectory Services entry so that the account uses the now unencrypted home:

First, lets move the FileVault-encrypted home off to the side:

[troup:~] gneagle% sudo mv /Users/someuser /Users/.someuser

Now, unlock the FileVaultMaster keychain:

[troup:~] gneagle% sudo security unlock-keychain /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain

password to unlock /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain:

Next, mount the .sparseimage file using the FileVaultMaster keychain instead of the password, and make sure owners/permissions are on:

[troup:~] gneagle% sudo hdiutil attach /Users/.someuser/someuser.sparseimage -owners on -recover /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain

/dev/disk1 Apple_partition_scheme

/dev/disk1s1 Apple_partition_map

/dev/disk1s2 Apple_HFS /Volumes/someuser

Copy the data from the mounted disk to the user’s home directory (this will create a new directory at /Users/someuser):

[troup:~] gneagle% sudo ditto /Volumes/someuser /Users/someuser

Unmount the disk image:

[troup:~] gneagle% sudo hdiutil detach /Volumes/someuser

“disk1″ unmounted.

“disk1″ ejected.

Modify the account info in Directory Services so that the home no longer points to the.sparseimage:

[troup:~] gneagle% sudo dscl . delete /Users/someuser HomeDirectory

The user should now be able to log in and access their (now) unencrypted home directory. The FileVault .sparseimage file is still in /Users/.someuser; once we verify everything is okay, we should remove it:

[troup:~] gneagle% sudo rm -R /Users/.someuser

Date of last update 11/01/2011:

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

322756 How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

To enable NUM LOCK before a user logs on, follow these steps:

1 : Run Registry Editor.

2 : Move to

HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Keyboard

.

3 : Change the value for InitialKeyboardIndicators from 0 to 2.

Date of last update: 10/31/2011

Author:  Yassine Bennis 

If you upload documents created with the 2007 Office System to your WSS 2.0/SharePoint 2003 server you will see that the file icon in front of the file name is missing. This is because those versions of SharePoint essentially are not aware of the new file types. You’ll have to register the new file types with SharePoint and provide icons for them.

1 : Download Office 2007 icons for SharePoint. 

The archive contains 16×16 icons in 32-bits color-depth for all new file types. You’ll also find five subfolders with the icons saved in the GIF, JPEG and PNG formats (GIF and JPEG with light and dark backgrounds for transparency). The Photoshop Automation.jsx script can be used to create all five images on the fly using Photoshop’s scripting functionality – be sure to install the Photoshop ICO plugin first.

If you want to extract other icons, these are embedded resources of the executables inside the C:\WINDOWS\Installer\{90120000-0030-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}\ folder.

2 : Choose an image format appropriate to your SharePoint style – I went with the images from the gif-light folder as these suit the default SharePoint theme.

3 : Copy the images to the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\ folder on your SharePoint server.

4 : Open the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\XML\docicon.xml file with an editor. Add the following lines under the ByExtension element. Be sure to change the file extension (Value attribute) based on the image format you chose.

<Mapping Key=”docx” Value=”docx.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office Word” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”docm” Value=”docm.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office Word” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”dotx” Value=”dotx.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office Word” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”dotm” Value=”dotm.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office Word” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”xlsx” Value=”xlsx.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office Excel” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”xlsm” Value=”xlsm.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office Excel” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”xltx” Value=”xltx.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office Excel” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”xltm” Value=”xltm.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office Excel” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”xlsb” Value=”xlsb.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office Excel” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”xlam” Value=”xlam.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office Excel” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”pptx” Value=”pptx.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office PowerPoint” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”pptm” Value=”pptm.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office PowerPoint” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”potx” Value=”potx.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office PowerPoint” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”potm” Value=”potm.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office PowerPoint” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”ppam” Value=”ppam.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office PowerPoint” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”ppsx” Value=”ppsx.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office PowerPoint” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

<Mapping Key=”ppsm” Value=”ppsm.gif” EditText=”Microsoft Office PowerPoint” OpenControl=”SharePoint.OpenDocuments”/>

5 : Reset IIS by running iisreset.exe.

6 : You can test if the new icons work if you download this zip with sample documents. Upload the files to a document library. If everything worked, you should see something like this:

The next step would be to let SharePoint index the new file types making them searchable. Unfortunately there are publicly available IFilters available yet. Even the new Windows Desktop Search 3.0 doesn’t crawl docx and the like. Update: It appears there’s a configuration issue with Windows Desktop Search on my machine as WDS just does not crawl my documents folder.

Date of last update: Yassine Bennis 

Author: 10/31/2011

Solution : 

1 : Logon to Quickbooks as the master admin account.

2 : Hit F2 to bring up the Quickbooks info page. Check “DB File Fragmentation” number. It should be a single digit.

3 : If that number is anything other than a single digit, then create a Portable file by using the ‘Save File as’ command.

4 : Close and re-open QB. Select ‘Restore’ and choose the portable file that you just created.

5 : Check the QB info page by hitting F2 and the ‘DB File Fragmentation’ should be a single digit, now.

Date of last update: 10/28/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

In order to get your iPhone 4S go on www.apple.com > appstore. 

Choose iPhone and select the storage you want and your telecom operator. 

Enter your personal informations and finish your order. 

Date of last update: 10/28/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

What can be reused : 



When you upgrade from Mac OS X Server v10.6 or later, virtually all existing data and settings remain available for use, but note the following:

· NetBoot images created using Mac OS X Server v10.5 or later can be reused. NetBoot images created using earlier versions cannot be used.

· When upgrading to Lion Server, the launch daemons (/System/Library/ LaunchDaemons) are replaced by the Lion Server version of these daemons.

· Open Directory on Lion Server cannot be configured as a primary domain controller (PDC) or a backup domain controller (BDC) using the SMB service.

· Lion Server does not support Print service, MySQL, Mobile Access, Tomcat, Axis, or QuickTime Streaming Server (QTSS).

· Wiki-based mailing list and archives are not available in Lion Server.

· If you are using Mail service with Mac OS X Server v10.6 and are performing the upgrade to Lion Server, make sure your mail data partitions and the mail database are accessible during the upgrade process. This automates the mail migration process and requires you to have no interaction.

· Lion Server uses the Server app to administer many services featured on Lion Server.

· Other administration tools aren’t installed by default, including Server Admin, Workgroup Manager, System Image Utility, Podcast Composer, and Xgrid Admin. You can install these tools by downloading the Server Admin Tools for Mac OS X Lion Server from the AppleCare Support Downloads website at www.apple.com/support/downloads/.

Step 1 : Update your server to v10.6.6 or later

If necessary, use Software Update to update your server to v10.6.6 or later.

Step 2 : Save service settings

Use serveradmin or Server Admin to export service settings for reference. Also, use System Profiler to generate a full profile of your system. Store the exported service settings and your server’s profile on a removable drive or another system.

Important: Before upgrading, create a full, bootable, tested-by-booting clone of your server as a backup in case you need it in the future.

Step 3 : Record Print service settings

Print service is no longer supported in Server Admin. You must use System Preferences > Print & Scan to add printers or control print jobs. You can also use CUPS to add and manage printers and control print jobs. Record your current printer configuration settings so you can reconfigure your shared printers using Print & Scan preferences or CUPS.

Step 4 : Perform an upgrade to Lion Server

You can use the Install Mac OS X Lion assistant to perform the upgrade locally on your server computer if it has a display and keyboard.

After the upgrade is complete, the computer restarts and the server setup assistant leads you through initial server setup.

To upgrade to Lion Server and perform initial server setup locally:

1 : Make sure that the DHCP or DNS servers your server depends on are running.

2 : On the server you are going to upgrade, open the App Store, find Mac OS X Lion, and install it.

3 : When the Installer opens, follow the onscreen instructions to proceed through each pane.

4 : When the Installer asks where to install, select the disk or partition that Mac OS X Server v10.6.6 or later is installed on.

5 : Click Install.

During installation, progress information appears.

After the installation is complete, the computer restarts and Server Assistant opens so you can perform initial setup.

6 : Move through the assistant’s panes, following the onscreen instructions.

Note: Mail service is disabled after upgrading or migrating your server, to give you the opportunity to inspect mailboxes and manually migrate mailboxes that may have been on previously unmounted volumes.

To perform initial server setup remotely:

1 : Make sure that the DHCP or DNS servers your server depends on are running.

Make sure the server has an active connection to the same network as the administrator computer you’re using and that your administrator computer has the Server app installed.

2 : If the server is off, turn it on.

When the server starts up, the server setup assistant opens and waits for the setup to begin.

3 : On an administrator computer, open Server app, choose Manage > Connect to Server, select the new server in the “Choose a Mac” dialog, and click Continue.

The new server may be listed with a name generated from the computer model and the Ethernet hardware address (the MAC address), or with a name from your DNS server.

If the server you want to set up is listed in the Server app sidebar, you can begin setup by selecting it and clicking Set Up This Mac.

4 : Enter the server’s complete hardware serial number.

You can find the serial number on the case of the product, on the original product packaging, and on the original product receipt or invoice. For more information about finding the serial number, see the Apple Support article at support.apple.com/kb/HT1349.

5 : Click Continue and proceed through the server setup assistant panes.

Step 5 : Make adjustments as needed after initial server setup

Now use the Server app, Workgroup Manager, Server Admin, Terminal, and other applications to refine your server’s settings and take advantage of Lion Server features.

For an explanation of new and changed features, see the Lion Server: Advanced Administration for individual services. Following are a few suggestions of interest.

Print server settings

Print service is no longer supported in Server Admin. You must use System Preferences > Print & Scan to add printers or control print jobs. For more advanced print service settings you can use the web interface of CUPS at http://localhost:631/admin to manage printer sharing. You can find documentation for CUPS at http://localhost:631/help.

For printers connected to the server through USB, CUPS create the queues when the printers are plugged in and turned on. However, for network printers, add the printers using System Preferences > Print & Scan (for all printer types) or the CUPS web interface.

When you set up printer sharing in the Print & Scan pane of System Preferences or in CUPS, you cannot configure specific protocols on which the printer is to be shared. The printer is shared over all protocols.

In CUPS the description is equivalent to the printer sharing name and is set using the web interface at http://localhost:631/admin. See instructions below.

CUPS classes is the equivalent to printer pools.

To set the description (printer sharing name):

1 : Open the CUPS admin web interface http://localhost:631/admin.

2 : Click Manage Printers, then click on the printer queue name.

3 : From the Administration popup menu, select Modify printer. This presents a page for modifying common settings.

4 : Click Continue.

5 : Change the description and location strings associated with the printer.

The description string is used by CUPS to advertise the print queue through Bonjour for IPP connections. CUPS does not provide Bonjour services for LPR queues, and these must be manually configured for clients.

To set a banner page (cover sheet):

1 : Open the CUPS admin web interface http://localhost:631/admin.

2 : Click Manage Printers, then click on the printer queue name.

3 : From the Administration popup menu, select Set Default Options.

4 : Click Banners and choose starting and ending banner pages in the popup menus.

Secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates

When you upgrade to Lion Server from v10.6.6 or later, the self-signed certificates in v10.6 are migrated unmodified. If your services used v10.6 self-signed certificates, the services’ SSL settings are migrated and configured to use default certificates on Lion Server.

Some services might reject the default certificate because the name in the certificate does not match the host name of the server. If a service rejects the certificate, use the Open Directory generated hostname certificates or generate new self-signed certificates using Server app, and then distribute them to your client computers.

Use Server app to import existing SSL certificates you want to continue to use for iChat, Open Directory, Mail, or Web services.

The SSL keys and certificates must be in Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) format. If your certificates and keys aren’t in PEM format, you must convert them.

To import an SSL certificate:

1 : In the Server app, select your server’s name under Hardware in the Server app sidebar.

2 : In the Settings pane, click the Edit button at the right of SSL Certificate.

3 : From the Action pop-up menu, choose Manage Certificates.

4 : Click + and then choose Import a Certificate Identity from the menu.

You can also create a self-signed certificate and generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to obtain an SSL certificate from a certificate authority (CA) and then install the certificate.

5 : Drag the files containing the certificate and private key to the middle of the dialog.

6 : Click the Import button and, if prompted, enter the private key passphrase.

7 : Activate the certificates per service.

For more information about importing, creating, and activating self-signed certificates, see Lion Server: Advanced Administration or Server Help.

Directory services

If user accounts have crypt passwords, use Workgroup Manager to upgrade them to Open Directory passwords.

To use Workgroup Manager, open the application and access the directory where the user accounts reside. Authenticate as domain administrator, then select a user with a crypt password. Click Advanced, choose Open Directory from the User Password Type pop-up menu, click Basic, specify a password, and click Save.

LDAP schemas

Schema changes must be made under OlcSchemaConfig and custom schemas should be added to the {9}customschema record. Changes to configure slapd can be made to the back-config backend using inspector in Workgroup Manager, Directory Editor in Directory Utility (Open the Server app, choose Tools > Directory Utility), or ldap tools. If changes require slapd to be restarted, you can use the following commands:

 slapconfig -stopldapserver  slapconfig -startldapserver

For more information about slapconfig, see its man page.

NetBoot images

You can reuse NetBoot images created using Mac OS X Server v10.5 and v10.6 following the upgrade.

To manage NetBoot images, you use System Image Utility.

The Open Directory upgrade log

Information about the upgrade tasks that were performed during the Open Directory LDAP server upgrade are viewable in the /Library/Logs/slapconfig.log file.

Date of last update: 10/26/2010

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Affects: windows 

If Drag and Drop stops working press the ESC key and it will be fixed 

Date of last update: 10/24/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

[1]

Solutions to the issue:

To add the keyboard follow this steps :

Go to Control Panel->Regions and Langauage

Select “add East Asian Language support”

Insert Windows XP cd

copy files

install keyboard

Date of last update: 10/17/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Please try to fill the blank as best as you can.

To add a category, simply write in the article [ [Category: Name_of_the_category] ]

Please indicate if there is private data in the article by adding a ‘Private’ category.

Impacting: best on Win Vista

Solution: Disable cache mode in Account settings -> Change

Restart Outlook, search will work again but Outlook startup will be a bit slower depending on quantity of emails.

Date of last update: 10/17/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis

Pricing and distribution :

The first two bits of good stuff are the price and the way you get it. Lion Server will sell for $50; that’s on top of the price of Lion itself (which you have to buy, too), but the total will still be less than $100. That’s a huge discount from Mac Snow Leopard Server, which cost $499, making this great way for small companies to start using Mac OS X Server.

Web hosting :

My Snow Leopard Server is confined strictly to web hosting: Apache, PHP, MySQL, and a dab of FTP. I host multiple sites and use a combination of the Server Preferences app and the Server Admin app to manage everything. Setting up websites in Snow Leopard is really easy via the Server Preferences app, and you have a pretty good assortment of settings to tweak in the Server Admin app if you want to fine-tune things.

Lion Server discarded both the Server Preferences app and the Server Admin app in favor of a new, streamlined “Server” app. It’s even easier to set up a website in Lion than it was in Snow Leopard. BUT… Server doesn’t provide ANY of the fine-tuning options that Server Admin provided in Snow Leopard. If you’re a total server admin n00b who only wants bare-minimum web hosting, this is probably good. But if you’d like any level of real control, you’ll be forced to use the command line. For me — not a n00b anymore but certainly not a command line guru — I’m left in the lurch a bit. I expect to be doing a ton of Google searches in the near future.

MySQL

Apple discarded MySQL in favor of PostgreSQL. This will cause problems for many who depend on MySQL, such as WordPress users. The good news is that you can install MySQL using an installer available for free from mysql.com. The bad news is you’re on your own when it comes to security patches and updates… Apple’s system update will no longer handle patches for you. (To be fair, Apple is notoriously slow to release security updates for server components anyway, so you probably shouldn’t rely on them to keep your system secure.) Not a showstopper, but definitely a stumbling block.

File Sharing :

Snow Leopard’s file sharing GUI was decent, but I frequently had to tweak settings in multiple places. It was a bit disjointed and I was never quite able to get my FTP access set up the way I preferred. In Lion, the file sharing GUI is extremely simple and much easier to use. Maybe it’s because Apple removed the FTP option in the file sharing preferences! In Lion, you must use the Terminal to control your FTP services (or maybe find a 3rd party app). On the bright side, AFP is a cinch to set up. Since I’m only using AFP at the moment, I can be generous in my grading. If I depended on FTP, I’d grade much lower.

User management :

Configuring the directory in Snow Leopard Server was the single most painful experience  (well, at least since the emergence of OS X — Mac OS 9 caused quite a bit of pain back in the day!). Configuring the directory required hours and hours of troubleshooting, including multiple calls to Apple support. One little mistake when you first set up your system and it’s hosed, requiring a clean install.

Lion Server simplifies the process, and was astoundingly easy to set up. In fact, one of the key differences between the two systems is what happens when you first install the Server system: Snow Leopard forces you to configure your directory right away (even if you only intend to have a single user), while Lion doesn’t even mention the directory until you try to configure a service that relies on it. In this event, the configuration screen pops up and the process is so quick you’re done before you realize it. I can’t begin to tell you how happy that made me.

Snow Leopard has an app dedicated to user management (Workgroup Manager). Lion took the most basic elements of Workgroup Manager and turned them into a pane inside Server.app.

Since neither of my servers are used by clients (I only have a handful of accounts), I’m much happier with the slimmer approach used by Lion. Of course if you have many clients, you may prefer Snow Leopard’s far-reaching Workgroup Manager app.

Firewall :

Snow Leopard Server includes a Firewall pane in Server Admin app, which makes it very easy to configure your firewall settings. This is gone in Lion.

Managed Clients :

A “Managed Client” is a Mac that is associated with your server, allowing you to perform remote updates, enforce security options, etc. This is basically the feature that allows you to be an IT department and lock down computers registered on your system.

One downside: all the Mac clients must have the Lion OS if they’re to be managed by Lion Server.

Summary :

Lion Server really trimmed the fat, and Apple appears to have gotten so carried away they trimmed some of the good meat as well. If you’re looking for a GUI with lots of options, go with Snow Leopard Server. If you want the most streamlined experience you can get and only need to do basic web hosting, go with Lion. If you’re comfortable with Terminal and the command line, I’d suggest going with Lion because the GUI won’t get in your way as much and you probably already know what you’re doing.

Date of last update: 10/18/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Follow the following steps to connect your mobile phone to your Office 365 account :

1. Start the Mobile Phone Setup wizard.

2. Under Choose your mobile phone provider, from the drop-down list, select the carrier that provides service for your phone.

3. Under Which mobile phone would you like to set up?, from the drop-down list, select the type of phone that you’d like to connect to Office 365.

4. Under What would you like to do?, you are provided with a list of choices regarding how to set up your phone, based on the type of phone you selected. Mainly you will get two options, Setup Microsoft Exchange Email or Setup POP or IMAP Email on your device.

5. Make a selection from the drop-down list and the appropriate instructions will appear.

6. Connect your phone by following the instructions specific to your phone.

For BlackBerry devices, you will only be able to send and receive email.

Date : 10/17/2011

Author : Yassine Bennis 

Issue: remove an email address from auto-complete list 

INTRODUCTION 

Everyone know the auto complete MAC OS X Mail feature that consist on automatically completing the email address you are typing in the to: field of an email, that’s great but it has some limits like for example when one of your contacts change his email address you will be easily able to make a mistake and send the email to his previous address.

SOLUTION

Fortunately there is a solution, you have to delete the email address from your list, for that select window | previous recipients from the MAC OS X Mail menu, select the address you want to delete and finally click on remove.

Date of last update: 31/08/2011

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Please try to fill the blank as best as you can.

To add a category, simply write in the article [ [Category: Name_of_the_category] ]

Please indicate if there is private data in the article by adding a ‘Private’ category.

Apple hid the Library folder which is usually in your Home folder. After a little bit of searching, I found the answer on how to unhide it.

Because it is a folder hidden by Apple, it is flagged, so the Terminal command would be:

chflags nohidden /Users/<Username>/Library

or use an easier way.

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

Author: Yassine Bennis 

Please try to fill the blank as best as you can.

To add a category, simply write in the article [ [Category: Name_of_the_category] ]

Please indicate if there is private data in the article by adding a ‘Private’ category.

Active@ Password Changer is designed for resetting local administrator and user passwords on Windows XP / VISTA / 2008 / 2003 / 2000 & Windows 7 systems in case an Administrator’s password is forgotten or lost. You do not need to re-install and re-configure the operating system.

Step 1 : creat a boot disk using the .exe file 

Step 2 : Restart the computer in which you want to reset the password by using the booth CD.

Step 3 : Select the user account for which you want to reset the pasword (usually the best way is to select the administrator account)

Follow the instructions and you will be able to access your computer. 

- Search for a term exclusively within a specific site with a colon. (lion:sfzoo.org)

- Exclude a word by a placing a minus sign immediately before it. (Searching for “lion”, but don’t want to see apple products? Search: lion -apple)

- Use an asterisk as a placeholder for an unknown word. (lions eat * in the zoo)

- Put a phrase in quotes to search for that exact phrase. (lions and lion tamers unite)

Affects: Mac computers

Solution/Process:

To uninstall VMware Fusion…

Shutdown, not suspend, any running Virtual Machines.

Close VMware Fusion (VMware Fusion menu > Quit VMware Fusion).

Uninstall VMware Fusion (Execute /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Uninstall VMware Fusion or run the uninstaller from the .dmg you downloaded.).

Delete the following File(s) and or Folder(s) if they remain.

/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.vmware.launchd.vmware.plist

/Library/Receipts/Install VMware Fusion.pkg

Note: ~ is your Home Folder.

~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.plist

~/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion

Date of last update: 8-29-11

Author: Keller Medlin

Close Mail.app

Open Terminal

Type in:

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes

Close terminal

Open Mail.app

Author: Drew Hunzeker

Symptoms

When you send a meeting request in Microsoft Office Outlook 2010 to a mailbox that is configured for direct booking, the meeting is not successfully booked. You do not receive an error message in this scenario. If you open the mailbox that is configured for direct booking, the meeting request is in the Inbox folder.

Cause

By default, Outlook 2010 does not implement the direct booking code that is used in earlier versions of Outlook. 

How to fix it ?

Method 1: Manual modification of the registry

Make sure that you follow these steps carefully and f’or added protection, back up the registry before you modify’it. 

To use the direct booking feature in Outlook 2010, you must add registry data to your Outlook client. Use the following steps to add this registry data to enable direct booking:

                   1.Exit Outlook.

                   2.Start Registry Editor :

                                        *  In Windows Vista, click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.

                                           If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

                                         * In Windows XP, click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

                     3.Locate and then select the following subkey in the registry:

‘                                      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Options\Calendar

                     4.On theEdit menu, point to New, and then clickDWORD Value.

                     5.Type EnableDirectBooking, and then press ENTER.

                     6.Right-click EnableDirectBooking, and then click Modify.

                     7.In the Value ‘data box, type 1, and then click OK.

                      8.Exit Registry Editor.

                      9.Start Outlook.

Method 2: Configure the registry by using Group Policy

                       1.Download the file  ”Outlk14-DirectBooking.adm” 

                       2. Outlk14-DirectBooking.adm

                        3.Add the Outlk14-DirectBooking.adm file to your Group Policy Editor.

                        4.In the Group Policy Editor, follow these steps:

                                Expand User Configuration.

                                Expand Policies.

                                Expand Administrative Templates: Policy definitions.

                                ExpandClassic Administrative Templates (ADM) to locate the policy node for your custom template.

                                        The custom .adm template that you extracted in step 2 is in this location. The template is named “Outlook 2010 Direct Booking.”

                         5.Click Outlook 2010 Direct Booking.

                         6.Under Settings, double-click Enable or disable direct booking.

                         7.Click Enabled, and then click OK.

                         After you enable the policy, the policy setting will be applied to the Outlook client workstations when the Group Policy update is replicated.

                         To test this change, run the following command at a command prompt on a client workstation:

‘                                      ‘gpupdate /force

                          After you run this command, start Registry Editor on the client workstation to make sure that the following registry data exists on the client:

                                      Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Options\Calendar

                                      DWORD: EnableDirectBooking

                                      Value:1

                           If you see this registry data in the registry, the Group Policy setting is applied to this client. Start Outlook to verify that this change resolves the problem.

Method 3: Deployment of the registry data by using the Office Customization Tool

                           1.Start the OCT by using a command similar to the following:

                                      \\server_name\share_name\Office2010\Setup.exe /admin

                           2.In the Select Product dialog box, click Create a new Setup customization file for the following product.

                           3.In the Select Product dialog box, select your Office product. Then, click OK.

                           4.In the navigation pane of the OCT, select Add registry entries, and then click Add.

                           5.In the Add/Modify Registry Entry dialog box, specify the following settings, and then click OK:

                                       Root: HKEY_CURRENT_USER

                                        Data type: REG_DWORD

                                        Key: Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Options\Calendar

                                        Value name: EnableDirectBooking

                                        Value data: 1

                                 Note : After you click OK in the Add/Modify Registry Entry dialog box, the OCT displays the registry data

                           6.Complete any remaining tasks in the OCT, and then save the .msp file.

                           7.Deploy Office 2010 by including this .msp file.

Method 4: Fix it

                            You can also fix it by using the automatic tool made Microsoft :

                                                   FIX IT

Issue’: Direct Booking does not successfully book a resource in Outlook 2010

Affects: Outlook 2010 :

Date of last update:8/15/11

Author: Antony Gomes

OS X Lion provides a new version of FileVault =>  FileVault 2 uses full disk, XTS-AES 128 encryption to help keep your data secure.

With FileVault 2 you can encrypt the content of your entire drive (system files, user files, applications, and anything else), as long as your files are saved to the internal drive.

How to turn on FileVault 2

To turn on FileVault 2, you have to go to your System Preferences and go on Security & Privacy pane, then you should be able to see the FileVault tab.

After click on it, you will be asked to select the user accounts that will be allowed to unlock the encrypted drive.

After enabling users for disk unlock, you will be shown your recovery key.

” Record and keep in a safe place. It’s the only way to decrypt your drive if you forget your password. Highlight, copy, write down, print it out or otherwise way”

Apple also provide the opportunity to store your recovery key.

After saw your key, you will be able to store your recovery key with Apple, you just need to select the option “Sotre the recovery key with Apple” then select and answer to the three required questions.

You will have to restart you mac to be able to start the ecryption process.

“This can take several hours; fortunately, the encryption process occurs in the background, so you can still continue working”

Note:  If you migrated a home directory that was encrypted by an earlier version of FileVault, you will not be able to turn on FileVault 2.

Affects: Mac OS X Lion

Date of last update:8/1/2011

Author: Antony Gomes

Affects: Mobile phones using active-sync

Solution/Process:

This is caused by a feature in Outlook being turned on. If you navigate to the Suggested contacts link under Contacts and then click “Folder” and “Folder Properties” you will be able to see and turn off the option that says “Show this folder as an email address book” under the “Outlook Address Book” tab.

More info here: http://www.itechtalk.com/thread10111.html

Date of last update: 7-25-11

Author: Keller Medlin

IPSOFACTO has built networks for startups since 1995, including TI Labs, NDD, Sepialine, and a host of other well-known firms.

 To have a successful startup, you must have winning management, winning backers, a winning product, and winning vendors.

 Partner with one of the Bay Area’s most successful IT Vendors and know that IPSOFACTO has the experts who can address your bio-science needs from an IT perspective.

Author: Simon Watiau

Date : 18/07/2011

Affects: Exchange 2003 users / Outlook

Solution/Process:

If a TargetAddress is created (either manually or automatically with a plugin or sync tool) it could potentially disrupt email flow. SMTP connectors, Recipient policies, or forwarders will not provide any insight into what is happening or why mail is not flowing.

For this example, I setup an automatic migration from an on-premise Exchange 2003 server to Microsoft’s hosted Office 365 Exchange. During the migration, the sync tool (installed on the local domain) created a TargetAddress pointing the user to the hosted Exchange – therefore email was not flowing to the local server anymore and was only accessible in the hosted environment.

The solution was to launch the ADSIEdit.msc, browse to the user’s folder and find the “TargetAddress” attribute. This was showing the default hosted email address. After removing the email address and making sure it was set to “<Not Set>”, the user started receiving email again to the on-premise Exchange server.

‘Date of last update’: 7-13-11

Author: Keller Medlin

This is done with the line :

 box-shadow:inset 0 1px 5px #ccc;

Example :

 <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
 <head>
   <style>
     .button:active{
       box-shadow: inset 0 1px 5px #CCC;
       -moz-box-shadow: inset 0 1px 5px #CCC;
       -webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 1px 5px #CCC;
     }
     .button{
       background-image:-webkit-gradient(linear,left top,left bottom,from(#EEE),to(#E0E0E0));
       background-image: -o-linear-gradient(top,#EEE,#E0E0E0);
       background-image:-moz-linear-gradient(top,#EEE,#E0E0E0);
       border:1px solid #BBB;
     }
   </style>
 </head>
 <body>
   <input type="submit" class="button">
     Button
   </input>
 </body>
</html>

Author: Simon Watiau

Date 06/11/2011

A good one is gomockingbird, a webapp to create generic wireframes.

Interface Builder is also a really good way to do beautiful screenshots of an interface.

It also allows you to get the iPhone skin and so improve the impact of your proposals. 

The solution is to set the background color of your cell to

 [UIColor clearColor];

You can also set the UITableView background to this color instead of using the alpha value in IB.

This class take a date format and return a string according to this format :

 NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormat setDateFormat:@"EEEE MMMM d, YYYY HH:mm"];
NSString *dateString = [dateFormat stringFromDate:myDate];
[dateFormat release];

Author : Simon Watiau

Date : June 21, 2011

A UIColor can also be created from an image pattern with the constructor :

 [UIColor colorWithPatternImage:myUIImage]

You can then use this color as an image background.

Author : Simon Watiau

Date : June 21, 2011

We’ll improve your AdWords, and you’ll pay less money to Google.

 myTableView.editing= TRUE or FALSE

This mode will display the delete sign on the right of each cell.

Once the user delete the row, the following method of the delegate is called :

 - (void)tableView:(UITableView *)aTableView commitEditingStyle:(UITableViewCellEditingStyle)editingStyle forRowAtIndexPath:
(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
 if (editingStyle == UITableViewCellEditingStyleDelete) {
   // delete the row
 }
}

You have to test that the action is UITableViewCellEditingStyleDelete because the user can also move the row and not only delete it. After this call, the table view is reloaded (you don’t need to call[myTableView reloadData])

 - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed: @"myImg.png"];
[image drawInRect:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.frame.size.width, self.frame.size.height)];
self.tintColor = [UIColor redColor];
}

This code will draw a UIImage in the space of the toolbar (320×44).

You should also change the tint color to match your background image.

 BOOL contains = [bigString rangeOfString:smallString options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch].location!=NSNotFound;

With this, we try to get the position of the searched string. if the string is not found, the location attribute will have the value NSNotFound.

Author: Simon Watiau

Date of last update : 05/03/2011

First install PowerShell from Microsoft, then download the PowerCLI package from VMware.

To include the PowerCLI commands to your script start with 

 Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core

The first then is to connect to your ESX or VM server with 

 Connect-VIServer -Server 10.1.0.120 -Protocol https -User LOGIN -Password PASSWORD

Then use Start-VM and Stop-VM (you can get the list of the running VMs with get-VM)

Start-VM my_vm -confirm:$false
Stop-VM my_vm -confirm:$false

Documentation : http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI/PowerCLI41/html/

Author : Simon Watiau

Date of last update : June 2, 2011

Never open strange attachments or click unfamiliar pop-ups. 

 Common Virus Threats:

- UPS/Fedex Email Scam

- Pop-ups stating your computer is infected that are not from your Anti-Virus program

- Mac Protector, the new Mac virus

Keep a good Anti-Virus program installed and updated!

 If your computer is infected, call an IPSOFACTO Engineer to quickly diagnose and repair your computer.

One of these is http://code.google.com/p/json-framework/

It’s a strict parser really easy to use.

The first step is to add all the required files to your project. Then simply use :

SBJSON* json;
jsonResults;
NSError* error;
json = [SBJSON new];
NSDictionary* jsonResults = [json objectWithString:myJSONText error:&error];

To parse a JSON string into a NSDictionnary.

Author : Simon Watiau

‘Date’of update : 05-31-2011

 cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone;

The second step is to disable the focus on this cell with :

 cell.userInteractionEnabled=false;

Date of last update:05-25-2011

Author: Simon Watiau

Apple has posted instructions on how to fix and MacDefender Malware installation:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4650

Date of last update:5-24-2011

Author: Drew Hunzeker

Cross-border data transfers

Information that IPSOFACTO, LLC collects may be stored and processed in and transferred between any of the countries in which IPSOFACTO, LLC operates to enable the use of the information in accordance with this privacy policy.

In addition, personal information that you submit for publication on the website will be published on the internet and may be available around the world.

You agree to such cross-border transfers of personal information.

Updating this statement

IPSOFACTO, LLC may update this privacy policy by posting a new version on this website.

You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are familiar with any changes.

Other websites

This website contains links to other websites.

IPSOFACTO, LLC is not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of any third party.

Contact IPSOFACTO, LLC

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or IPSOFACTO, LLC’S treatment of your personal information, please write to:

• by email to info@ipsofacto.info; or

• by post to 944 Market Street, Suite 712, San Francisco, CA 94102.

This class is part of the MessageUI framework and will require you to add 

 #import <MessageUI/MessageUI.h>

where you want to use it.

if ([MFMailComposeViewController canSendMail]){
 NSLog(@"Can send emails");
}else{
 NSLog(@"can not");
}

Date of last update : Simon Watiau

Author : Simon Watiau  

To see your work in Interface Builder, the layout menu have an option to see your view in high resolution.

Date of last update: 24-05-2011

Author : Simon Watiau   

You can set or remove the focus on an element by using the two methods resignFirstResponder and becomeFirstResponder.

‘Author ’: Simon Watiau.

Date of last update : 24-05-11

 [self.view.layer setShouldRasterize:YES];
[self.view.layer setRasterizationScale:0.5];

Author: Simon Watiau.

Affects: Windows XP

The live conversion of the Windows XP machine appeared to be successful but the new virtual Windows XP on our ESX server was not able to boot up correctly.

I tried running an MBR repair with the Windows XP Recovery Console, but that didn’t work.

Solution: I downloaded a 60 day trail version of Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery for Desktops and created a backup image file of the Windows XP machine.  Then, I ran the Stand-alone Convertor on the BESR image file.  This worked.

Date of last update: May 20, 2011

Author: Luis Baptista

As you can see the iPhone 4 have a twice the density of the 3GS.

To target these two resolutions you just have to provide two versions of your graphics.

• example.png will be used for the standard display
• example@2x.png will be used for the retina display

For instance a TabBar icon will have to be provided in 30×30 and 60×60.

Author : Simon Watiau

 -(IBAction)shareOnTwitter{
  [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[[NSURL alloc] initWithString: [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=http%%3A%%2F%%2Fwww.ipsofacto.net/%d&via=ipsofacto",self.currentPostID]]];
}

Author : Simon Watiau

Copyrights and Trademarks

• All materials contained on the Web Site are Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
• No person is authorized to use, copy or distribute any portion of the Web Site, including related graphics.
• IPSOFACTO IT Services, Civilized IT and other trademarks / service marks (including logos and designs) found on the Web Site are trademarks / service marks that identify IPSOFACTO and the goods or service provided by IPSOFACTO. Such marks may not be used under any circumstances without the prior written authorization of IPSOFACTO.

Links to Third-Party Web Sites

IPSOFACTO may provide hyperlinks to the third-party web sites as a convenience to users of the Web site. IPSOFACTO does not control third-party websites and is not responsible for the contents of any linked-to, third-party web sites or any hyperlink in a linked-to website. IPSOFACTO does not endorse, recommend or approve any third-party web site hyperlinked from the Web Site. IPSOFACTO will have no liability to any entity for the content or use of the content available through such hyperlink.

No Representations or Warranties; Limitations on Liability

The information and materials on the Web Site could include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically made to the information contained herein. IPSOFACTO MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO ANY INFORMATION, MATERIALS OR GRAPHICS ON THE WEBSITE, ALL OF WHICH IS PROVIDED ON A STRICTLY “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND AND HEREBY EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO ANY INFORMATION, MATERIALS OR GRAPHICS ON THE WEB SITE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL THE SITE OWNER OR PUBLISHER BE LIABLE UNDER ANY THEORY OF RECOVERY, AT LAW OR IN EQUITY, FOR ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, SPECIAL, DIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITITVE DAMAGES (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF USE OR LOST PROFITS) ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY MANNER CONNECTED WITH THE USE OF INFORMATION OR SERVICE, OR THE FAILURE TO PROVIDE INFORMATION OR SERVICES, FROM THE WEB SITE.

Changes to These Terms of Use

IPSOFACTO reserves the right To change these Terms of Use at any time by posting new Terms of Use at this location. You can send email to support@ipsofacto.net with any questions relating to these Terms of Use.

 table.rowHeight=<height in pixels>

You might also need to resize a cell and change its content when the user do an action.

To do that we will use the delegate’s method :

 - (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath;

which set the height of the current rendered cell

and the two methods :

 [self.table beginUpdates];
[self.table endUpdates];

which are used to dynamically notify the table when we add/remove cells.

 - (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath{
  NSMutableArray* arr = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
  if (selectedIndex!=-1){
    /* selectedIndex is the current selected row */
    [arr addObject:[NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:selectedIndex inSection:0]];
  }
  [arr addObject:[NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:indexPath.row inSection:0]];
  selectedIndex=indexPath.row;
  /* We also change the content of the cell in the method cellForRowAtIndexPath */
  [self.table reloadRowsAtIndexPaths:arr withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationFade];
  /* To make sure the cell is visible */
  [self.table scrollToRowAtIndexPath:[NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:indexPath.row inSection:0] atScrollPosition:UITableViewScrollPositionTop animated:YES];
  /* notify the table of these changes (animated !) */ [self.table beginUpdates]; [self.table endUpdates];
}

The method heightForRowAtIndexPath will be called on [self.table beginUpdates];[self.table endUpdates]; and will return the new size of the selected cell.

 - (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath{
  if (indexPath.row==selectedIndex){
    return 100;
  }else{
    return 50;
  }
}

Malware is basically malicious software.  Spyware is basically software which tracks your web usage, often without your permission.  Malware is in many ways more dangerous than viruses and spyware, because they appear to be non-threatening, but they have the capacity to steal personal information from you like address, drivers license and credit card information.  A good rule of thumb is to NEVER give personal information (credit card, address, social security number, etc) to a web page pop-up or application pop-up window, unless you absolutely know and trust the publisher of the pop-up.

Examples of recent malware: Antivirus 2011, Windows Essential Cleaner , Windows 7 Recovery.

Three basic tools to remove most malware are:

1. Malwarebytes

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

2. Combofix

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/anti-virus/combofix

3. rKill

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/anti-virus/rkill

Note: Very often you will need to boot Windows in safe mode and you will need to run the tools several times to completely remove the malware.

To find other methods to remove malware:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/

http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html

Comments:

Date of last update:  5/16//2011

Author: Luis Baptista

Skype Voip Upgrade Notification‏

This is to notify that new updates have been released for Skype.

http://www.2011-new-skype-upgrades.com [do not go to this website]

Following are major new features :

• Up to 5-way group video call.
  
  * Redesigned calling experience.
  
  * Improved video snapshots gallery.
  
  * Improved browser plugins performance on some websites.
  
  * Reduced false positives on browser plugin phone number recognition.
  
  * New presence icons.
  
  * Improved handling of calling attempts made when the user has run out of credit.
  
  * Improved access to sharing functionality

To download the latest version , go to :

http://www.2011-new-skype-upgrades.com [do not go to this website]

Start downloading the update right now and let us know what you think about it.

We’re working on making Skype better all the time !

Talk soon,

The people at Skype

====================== PROTECT YOUR PASSWORD ===========================

Skype or Skype Staff will NEVER ask you for your password via email. The only place you are asked for your password is when you sign in to the Skype application or our website. 

This is a phishing scheme!  Do not go to any of the websites listed in this email and especially do not enter any personal information!

It is a pretty nice email, the English is good, it addresses an issue that people have complained about (Skype 5 on Mac’s horrible UI) and it actually tells you not to give anyone your password!  

But always look at the urls in emails before clicking them.  2011-new-skype-upgrades is not a domain that is used by skype.  The WHOIS information is:

Domain Name: 2011-NEW-SKYPE-UPGRADES.COM

Registrar: REGIONAL NETWORK INFORMATION CENTER, JSC DBA RU-CENTER

Whois Server: whois.nic.ru

Referral URL: http://www.nic.ru

Name Server: NS1.2011-SKYPE-VOIP-DOWNLOAD.COM

Name Server: NS2.2011-SKYPE-VOIP-DOWNLOAD.COM

Status: clientTransferProhibited

Updated Date: 17-may-2011

Creation Date: 16-may-2011

Expiration Date: 16-may-2012

Which is based in Russia and was only created on the 16th of May.  

Affects: Mac OS X and cisco VPN client

Solutions to the issue:

If you are running Cisco’s VPNClient on Mac OSX, you might be familiar with (or tormented by) “Error 51: Unable to communicate with the VPN subsystem”. The simple fix is to quit VPNClient, open a Terminal window, (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal) and type one of the following:

(for older versions)

sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

(for newer versions)

sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/CiscoVPN.kext

and give your password when it asks. This will stop and start the “VPN Subsystem”, or in other words restart the CiscoVPN.kext extension. Cisco seems to have problems when network adapters disappear and reappear, something that happens commonly in Wireless or Dial-up scenerios. Sometimes putting a system to sleep, disconnecting an Ethernet cable or simply reconnecting your wireless will cause CiscoVPN to loose track of the network adapters on the system.

Date of last update: 05-16-2011

Author: Gaetan Barthelemy

Affects: Exchange 2003 environments

Solution/Process:

As an admin logged into the Exchange server, open the system manager and navigate to “Administrative Groups” > “first administrative group” > “Folders” and right click “Public Folders” and go to properties.

Then go to the security tab and add the user(s) who need to add to the public folders.

Give the users full permissions and then they can copy or add folders to the public folders directly from their Outlook.

Date of last update: 5-16-11

Author: Keller Medlin

When you create a new iOS project, you can see that a plist file is created.

This format is a way to store data in key/values.

NSDictionnary (or NSMutableDictionnary) have too very useful methods to deal with .plist files :

dictionaryWithContentsOfFile: to create a dictionnary from a .plist file and writeToFile:atomically: to save a dictionnary in a .plist file.

Even if a .plist file is a simple XML document (you can see that if you open the file with a simple text editor) you can add binary data which will be serialized in string of hex values.

Author: Simon Watiau.

The term VPN stands for Virtual Private Network which is a way of creating an encrypted tunnel from a network to an outside user. It is also known as an IPSec VPN (IPSec is a way of encrypting data across the internet).

IPSec works at the IP packet level, while HTTPS works a little higher up the networking stack.

IPSec VPNs require setting up a VPN client on the outside users computer before hand and sometimes have issues with Firewalls and Network Address Translation (if the outside user is behind a lot of firewalls when they try to connect to the VPN).  IPSec VPNs require setup before hand and are usually tied to the machine,

An HTTPS/VPN allows users to create a VPN over an HTTPS connection which is usually open on networks. HTTPS/VPN licenses are a little more expensive, but are a tad easier to maintain since the user does not have to contact the IT support when they are out of the country and cannot connect. HTTPS/VPNs are tied to the user account so that if the users laptop is stolen or broken they would still be able to connect to the network (which can be a security concern if the computer they use is infected with a keylogger).

HTTPS/VPN = higher upfront costs for licensing, but less maintenance costs. Does not require assistance to set up on users workstation. Can be less secure if used from unmanaged public computers.

IPSec VPN = lower upfront costs but can cause issues when connecting from strange places. Requires an IT person to set up VPN client on users workstation. More Secure.

• The X position
• The Y position
• The radius of the blur effect
• The color of the shadow element

For instance

 box-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #BBBBBB

Will do :

As for a lot of CSS3 properties you should also set this property through :

 -moz-box-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #BBB;
-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #BBB;

To target webkit and gecko based browser (since CSS3 is still experimental).

Author: Simon Watiau

Affects: Windows 7

Solution/Process:

This is usually caused by shell extension errors.

First download shell extension viewer: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

If you go to the event log after one of the crashes and take note in the Application section you will see something like this:

Faulting application path: C:\Windows\Explorer.EXE

Faulting module path: C:\PROGRA~1\Intuit\DMS\DMSRTL.bpl

Report Id: 01222f40-7c23-11e0-b9f1-4061864f004b

Notice that the faulting module is with an Intuit (QuickBooks) program. DMS usually stands for document management system, so after taking down that error message if you open the shell extension program you can find the QuickBooks DMS extension name. Then if you disable it and reboot the computer the issue will be resolved.

There is a complete guide to using the shell extension program here: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm

Date of last update: 5-12-11

Author: Keller Medlin

 attr_accessor :my_transient_field

In your model class.

Author : Simon Watiau.

But you don’t need to create a custom class just for that.

Instead you can use this in your application delegate :

 @implementation UINavigationBar (UINavigationBarCategory)
  - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
    UIImage *img = [UIImage imageNamed: @"background.png"];
    [img drawInRect:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.frame.size.width, self.frame.size.height)];
    self.tintColor = [UIColor lightGrayColor];
  }
@end

Author : Simon Watiau

Check out the instructions here:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-mac-protector



Date of last update: 05/09/2011

Author: Drew Hunzeker

 [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"tel:4153622922"]];

Will start a call to +1 (415) 362-292.

A few other “protocols” are available like sms: mailto: or even google maps by open links likehttp://maps.google.com/maps?q=IPSOFACTO.

Author: Simon Watiau.

Affects: Intel GMA

Solutions to the issue: This is related to mcafee asap firewall blocking the Intel Graphic manager application to connect to internet to download resource. It will keep requesting data but mcafee keeps blocking those requests resulting in your CPU to be hogged for no reasons.

open mcafee and go to firewall; you will see in the list of blocked applications one named GMA intel. check it and click on approve. the CPU should go back directly to normal

Date of last update: 5-9-11

Author: Gaetan Barthelemy

Issue:

You want to do a snapshot of your Amazon instance and MySQL is running on it.

Process:

You can either put a lock on the entire engine or put the database in read-only mode.

The safest thing is to get a lock on the engine so keep the database integrity.

From the MySQL command-line, execute the following command:

FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK

Leave the command line open, lock your filesystem and create the snapshot.

Date of last update: 5-6-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

Example: pathping -n pc01

Date of last update: May 5, 2011

Author: Luis Baptista

For more information, take our survey!

Affects: Windows 7 machines

Solution/Process:

First go to Control Panel and then Power Options. Next click on change plan settings and then change advanced power settings. Scroll down and expand sleep. If hibernation is enabled it will show up and you can change the setting here.

Date of last update: 5-5-11

Author:  Keller Medlin

You want to display the list of the entries of your model. For example a model containing users.

Process:

Create /app/views/users/index.html.erb:

This will display every entry and a link to the profile of each user.

We also need to add the following piece in the /app/controllers/users_controller.rb:

Check out the result on your browser on /users!

Date of last update: 5-5-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

We’re sorry, but something went wrong.

We’ve been notified about this issue and we’ll take a look at it shortly.

Process:

You want to migrate the database from the development environment to the production environment.

Just try the following command:

heroku rake db:migrate

The database structure is then replicated on the production environment. And your app is now ready for production.

Date of last update: 5-4-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

Add an email policy that will add an X500 email address to each exchange account that is in this form:

O=Domain/OU=ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=User

Date of last update:05-04-2011

Author: Drew Hunzeker

Affects: Windows & Mac

Solution/Process:

First you go to File> Import and Export on Internet Explorer. Pick export to a file and choose your bookmarks.

Then save this file on a shared drive or USB stick and bring it to the Mac.

Next on Safari, choose File> Import Bookmarks. Make sure the file is a .htm file.

Date of last update: 5-4-11

Author: Keller Medlin

Process:

Other relevant commands are:

Date of last update: 5-3-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

image: wordle

We just found an excellent tool for creating infographics!  Wordle can create a wordpile from the URL for your website.  It gives you choices for color, font and word orientation.  If you’d like to give someone a feeling for your business in a new and more dynamic way, check it out.

The great thing about Heroku is that you don’t have to worry about servers. Just get the coding done and Heroku is making your application run smoothly. Best friend of Heroku is Github. Your git repositories are centralized at Github. Just push your code from Git to Heroku and it will be available online.

Process:

- Create an account on Heroku.com

- Install the Heroku gem:

gem install heroku

- Set up your SSH keys:

heroku keys:add

- Create a new application:

heroku create

- Push the application to Heroku using Git:

git push heroku master

- See your app in action in your browser. It’s that simple.

Date of last update: 5-2-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

Process:

- You define the data requirements while creating your model and form.

- From there, we create a partial to verify that there is no error in the data entered:

- Insert the partial into the view:

- If the user made a mistake in the email format or passwords that doesn’t match, an error will be displayed.

Date of last update: 4-29-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

For example:

getmac /s hostname /v

Date of last update: 4/29/11

Author: Luis Baptista

Compare that with the average IT consultant who works alone and finds gigs on Craigslist.

IPSOFACTO Engineers are well supported, so that YOU can get top-quality service.

Issue:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:

on 4/28/2011 12:00 PM

This email message was not sent because you are unable to send from the address iv1i0rt2c3g40m56q3kevl2t74@group.calendar.google.com. Please change the From address to your primary email address or to an email address specified in the Settings > Accounts and Import > Send mail as section of GMail settings.

Process:

Act as delegate in Google Apps Sync:

- Have your manager grand you access to their Gmail account of Google Calendar

- Go to Windows Start menu, All Programs, and choose Google Apps Sync > Add account for delegation

- Then choose your Google Apps profile and enter your manager’s email address.

- Configure your calendar notifications if you’re accessing your manager’s calendar to receive her calendar notifications in your own mail inbox.

- If you’ve been granted access to your manager’s calendar but not their email, configure your Gmail settings to send from the manager’s address.

Date of last update: 4-28-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

When you run a NSUrlConnection in the main thread of your app, this thread is guaranteed to stay alive until the user quit your app.

But when you use the method performSelector of NSObject, the method you are calling is run in another thread, this thread will end as soon as the call to this method end.

The issue is that if you create a NSUrlConnection in this method, this object will asynchronously start a connection and in the meantime, your method (as the thread) will end .

When the NSUrlConnection try to call a callback of the delegate (we assume you use “self” as the delegate) the delegate doesn’t exist anymore because the thread is dead.

To fix that make sure your thread is alive until the last call to the delegate or run your NSURLConnection in the main thread.

Let’s say you want to look for all the devices connected to a specific vlan. a solution is to type show vlan but then you are going to see all the VLAN and this might eb a bit overwhelming.

a solution is to use the following syntax after the show:

| beg xxx will show you the line starting by the word xxx

| incl xxx will show you the line with the word xxx in it

for example show ardp | incl 192.168.50  will give you all the device on the 192.168.50.x subnet

of course you can use this with any show command

Date of last update: 4-28-2011

Author: Gaetan Barthelemy

First look for the SIM Tray Ejecting Tool which comes with iphone, it must be there in iphone box.

If you don’t have the sim ejecting tool with you, you can use a paper clip.

Procedure To Put SIM Card In iPhone 4 :

1. Insert the end of a paper clip or SIM eject tool into the hole on the SIM card tray, Push firmly, straight in until the tray pops out.
2. Pull out the SIM card tray and place the SIM card in the tray as shown.
3. With the tray aligned and the SIM card on top as shown, carefully replace the tray.

Affects: iPhone/exchange

Solution/Process:

Some tips for troubleshooting:

-Make sure the server name is correct: sometimes you think it’s “mail.domain.com” when it could be “home” or “remote”

-Try taking out the domain field and leaving it blank

-Verify that you don’t have to add the /exchange at the end of the server name

Date of last update: 4-27-11

Author: Keller Medlin

Process:

- Create the object model. We specify two fields here.

rails generate model User name:string email:string

- Create the views form. The following code is creating a form that’s directly using the Rails model:

<%= form_for(@user) do |f| %>

<%= f.label :name %>:

<%= f.text_field :name %>

<%= f.label :email %>:

<%= f.text_field :email %>

<%= f.submit “Save” %>

- The data are then saved in the database.

Date of last update: 4-27-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

As in C, each file (.m) come with a header (.h). The main file contains a class and the header an interface of this file.

That’s where things are different. In Objective-C, an interface contains the public methods of a class, but it’s not supposed to be used as an interface for other classes.

To define methods that should be implemented by a class, you have to use a protocol.

Author: Simon

Process:

- Create a new Rails application:

- Enter your database credentials in /config/database.yml

Date of last update: 4-25-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

Process:

In basic HTML, you would tell the browser to use a stylesheet using the following:

With Ruby on Rails, you can define dynamic stylesheets depending on the format:

You can then edit your stylesheets by looking at:

Date of last update: 4-22-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

Issue: You’re unable to send your email because the attachment is too big

Affects: Anyone using an Exchange account on an email client

Solution/Process:

- Open Exchange Management Console

- Click on “Hub Transport” which is under “Organization Configuration”

- Go on the tab “Global Settings”

- Under the “General” tab, adjust the “Maximum send size”. Example: if you want to increase the attachment limit to 25 MB, you want to set 25000. Then validate by clicking OK

- Restart your email client so change takes effect.

Date of last update: 4-21-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

Affects: Outlook

Solution/Process:

For this example we will pretend that we want to archive all the email from 2010 in the main inbox. First you go to File>export to a file and choose .pst file.

Then choose Filter and go to the advanced tab. Here you will add a field modifier “date and time” and a condition “received”. Then change the condition to “between” and type the date range as follows:

<1-01-2010> and <12-31-2010>

Then click okay and next. Name your pst file and decide where to export it. You now have an archive pst file with all emails from 2010.

Date of last update: 4-21-11

Author: Keller Medlin

Our wireless networks are perfect for businesses, residences or even Wi-Fi Hot Zones.

Process:

- Go to Settings, Mail

- Select your account

- Click on “Mail Folders to Push”

- Select the folders you want to push on your iPhone

Date of last update: 4-20-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

Affects: Outlook for Mac 2011

Solution/Process:

Open Outlook and go to File>Export. Then select all of the items you want to export and click the right arrow. Decide whether or not you want to delete the data after exporting. Enter the name of the backup file and click save – it will create a .olm file. You can also import these files if needed.

Date of last update: 4-20-11

Author: Keller Medlin

An object is removed of the memory only when its reference counter is at zero.

NSMutableArray* myArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
myArray = nil;

In this snippet, the alloc increment the reference counter but then the label myArray is affected to nil.

We have an object with a reference counter greater than zero but we can’t access this object anymore because we don’t have a label to this object. The memory allocated for this object will never be freed.

A leak is not fatal to your app, but you should always try to avoid them. The worst case is to have a leak in a loop like in this example :

NSString* str=nil;
for (int i=0;i<2000000;i++){
str = @"my string";
[str retain];
NSLog(@"%@",str);
}

Because, depending of the size of your loop, you can leak a lot of data and saturate your memory (which is fatal to your app).

Instruments can help you finding these memory leaks.

(To launch it, in the Run menu of Xcode choose Run with performance tool and then Leaks )

Instruments will run your app and every few seconds check the memory for objects that are no longer accessible (leaked objects).

You can change this delay in the left panel : “sec Between Auto Detections”

To force the detection, you can click the button Ceck For Leaks Now.

The interface provides two lines. The first one is the number of allocations during the runtime.

This is the memory which is allocated for your objects, this value will only grows since it’s not decreased when you free an object.

The most important thing is the second line and the table below it.

You can see on this screen four leaks of a NSMutableArray. You can have more details on a leak by clicking on the third icon under “View” (left of “Library” and “Search”)

It give us the line where the leaked object was allocated but not where the las reference was lost.

The objective here is to use your app and test as many things as possible to discover leaks. For instance don’t forget to test when the connectivity is down.

NSObject which is the master object of everything have a method retainCount which can help you to find leaks.

Affects: Workstations with Windows 7

Solution/Process:

The solution may be as simple as syncing the clocks on both machines. In one example the win2k clock was a few hours fast and as soon as the time was corrected the windows7 machine could see the shares.

Other solutions may have to do with group policy, network discovery, or authentication.

Date of last update: 4-19-11

Author: Keller Medlin

Unfortunately, it doesn’t provide multiple levels.

Inside the file .pch of your app you can redefine the behavior of this function.

For instance you can add :

 define trace(a) NSLog(a);
define debug(a) NSLog(a);
define info(a) NSLog(a);
define warning(a) NSLog(a);
define error(a) NSLog(a);

To disable a log level just assign the command to nothing :

 define trace(a);

• The model is where data are saved.
• The controller transforms the input of the view in understandable commands to the model.
• The view read the model to display information.

On iOS the view is a simple XML file with the .xib extension. These files are edited with interface builder, events (IBAction) and objects (IBOutlet) are linked in the model.

The controller is registered in the view as the file owner.

The controller usually inherit of the original controller class. For instance a basic view controller will inherit of UIViewController, a table view controller of UITableViewController, etc.

The model is built by you.

To avoid that, Objective C use the concept of properties.

How to create a property :

 @interface myObject : NSObj {
 NSString* var1;
 int var2;
}
@property(nonatomic,retain) NSString* var1;
@property(nonatomic,assign) int var2;

As you can see we use @property outside of the @interface block. The format is :

 @property(options) type var.

The type and the name of the variable must be the same than in the @interface block.

Several options are available to customize the behavior of a property.

The option atomic guarantee that the setter will be called in one atomic operation, this is useful when a property can be modified by more than one thread.

With nonatomic, you don’t have this guarantee. It can be compared to the @synchronized block which guarantee an atomic operation but slower.

The retain option will increment the reference counter when the getter is called (do a retain). The opposite is assign and will just assign the new value to the variable.

We can’t do a retain on a primitive data type, that’s why we use the assign option.

The Apple documentation provide a full list of all available parameters.

A cache system will allow you to call your services without having to worry if you already did this request.

How it works

We need a layer between our code and the server, the solution is to have a class that will be used to call our services but will also keep a cache of our requests.

 static NSMutableDictionary* cache;
@implementation SendQuery
- (void)download:(NSString*)url del:(id)delegate{
  if ([cache objectForKey:url]!=nil){
    delegate performSelector:@selector(done:) withObject:[cache objectForKey:url]];
    return;
  }
  […]
}
@end

As you can see, we use a class variable to save all the requests and the responses received from the server.

Each time we make a request, the SendQuery instance will look in the cache.

If this request was already done, we return the result. if not, we do the request and add the result in the cache.

That is a very simple way to implement a cache in your App.

For a more efficient system, you will probably need to add the case when you don’t want to cache a query and to clear the cache when its too big.

This is also a very good example of how to use the Command design pattern.

Here is a process that is working with VMware ESX. You can import any Linux OS. As for Windows, Server 2008 only is supported as of today.

Process:

- Export the VM on the vSphere Client: shutdown your VM and click on File, Export and Export OVF Template.

- Install the Amazon API tools to manage your account by command line. See here.

- In a terminal, type the following command to prepare the upload to Amazon S3:

ec2-import-instance ./WinSvr8-2-32-disk1.vmdk  –f VMDK -a i386 -b MyBucket -o AKIADQKE4SARGYLE -w eW91dHViZS5jb20vd2F0Y2g/dj1SU3NKMTlzeTNKSQ==

Options -o and -w reffer to the owner and associated key of the Amazon account.

- Type this command to start the upload:

ec2-upload-disk-image -t import-i-ffvko9js -o AKIADQKE4SARGYLE -w eW91dHViZS5jb20vd2F0Y2g/dj1SU3NKMTlzeTNKSQ== ./WinSvr8-2-32-disk1.vmdk

Option -t reffers to the task ID that you get in the result in the previous command

- Once upload is done, check out your admin panel, the new instance should be ready to start.

Date of last update: 4-14-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

The two required methods are :

 numberOfRowsInSection:
cellForRowAtIndexPath:

The first one will be called by the UITableView to know how many lines should be displayed. The second one will be called to get the UITableViewCell that should be displayed for a position.

 - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
 UITableViewCell *cell   = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"cellID"];
 if (!cell) {
   cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero reuseIdentifier:@"MyIdentifier"] autorelease];
 }
 cell.textLabel.text=@"My Cell";
 return cell;
}

iOS display only the visible cells. That means when you scroll, the method cellForRowAtIndexPath is called to draw the next visible cells. If you scroll up and down a couple of time, you will have more call to this method than you have lines in your UITableView. To avoid creating a cell each time, you can use the method dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier. This method will return an available cell (an existing object which is not currently displayed).

Let’s start with this example:

You want to display a list of thumbnails.

For that, you have a UIView (which will be used to display your thumbnail) and the right controller to download and display this UIView.

So basically what you need to do is to put a few of those views on the screen.

When the user switch to portrait you want to display more thumbnails because you have more space (for instance if you use the SplitViewController).

You can’t just use a master view and put your thumbnails inside because then you will keep the same number of views in portrait.

One of the solution is to dynamically put your UIView on the screen to be able to add or remove it depending of the space you have.

A space on the screen is called a frame.

When you don’t specify a frame, it’s the one of the parent view which is used.

So a subview will by default use the full space of it’s parent.

To change this, UIViews have an attribute frame which can be set like this :

myView.frame =myNewFrame

myNewFrame is a structure CGRect. To create this structure you have tu use : 

CGRect CGRectMake (
CGFloat x,
CGFloat y,
CGFloat width,
CGFloat height
);

Then you still have to add the view to the screen (as a subview for instance).

It’s the same thing with HTML : you can build an element and set its size and position but you still have to add it to the DOM to display it.

String str = "my string";
str="my other string";

• The first line create an object String and assign it to the label str.
• The second line create another String object and assign it to the label str.

Since str is mapped to the second String object. The first one is no longer reachable from your code because you don’t have to access it.

The garbabe collector will go through all the objects in memory and look at the reference counter. if it’s at zero, the object is deleted.

This is a very convenient way to manage the memory because the developer don’t have to think about it.

But the garbage collector is also a little bit heavy since it have to go through all your objects to find the ones which can be deleted.

On a PC that works perfectly because there is enough memory to run the garbage collector regularly and there is enough power to run it without slowing down the app.

On a mobile device like the iPhone or the iPad, the quantity of memory is lower than on a PC and the processor is not as fast.

That’s why there is no gabarge collector on iOS.

How to manage the memory ?

Instead of having a garbage collector that clean your memory, you will have do it manually. That’s is done by changing the value of the counter of references.

[myObject alloc]+1
[myObject retain]+1
[myObject release]-1

alloc and retain will increment the counter of references, release decrement it.

When the counter is at zero, the object is deleted.

Each thread have also an autorelease pool. Each object of this pool will be released with the pool, usually at the end of the thread’s life.

For instance the code

 NSString* str= @"my str";

create a NSString object an put it in the autorelease pool of the thread. You don’t have to worry about this object anymore.

An easy rule is to have : count(alloc)+count(retain)=count(release)+count(autorelease)

Autorelease is easy to use since you don’t have to worry about when to release an object, but objects in this pool are kept in memory until the pool is released, which can occur in a long time.

A bad memory management will result in memory leaks that can crash your app. Lukely Xcode provide a tool to find leaks called instrument.

IPv4 is the current Internet version and provides about 4.3 billion addresses and it is expected to run out in the near future.

IPv6 is the updated internet protocol and provides 3.4 x 10³⁸ possible addresses.  That’s a lot!

In addition to having more IP’s, IPv6 provides built-in QoS, improved security from protential hackers and spam, easier configurations and more efficient use of bandwidth thus increasing performance.

Structure:

An IPv6 address is composed of 8 blocks of four hexadecimal digits.

For example: 2001:0DB8:2F8C:0000:0000:0000:00A8:9B4A

An IPv6 unicast address is divided into two parts: the 64-bit network  component and the 64-bit host component.  It doesn’t use the slash notation, like in IPv4, to express the network.

Types:

There are three types os addresses: Global Addresss (GA), Link-Local Addresses (LLA), and Unique Local Addresses (ULA).

Global Addresses are equivalent to public address in IPv4.  Example: 2001:B89A:FF8B:2E4B:0000:AC47:80DB:3EAB

Link Local Addresses are equivalent to APIPA in IPv4.  They will always begin with FE80. These addresses are non-routable.  Example: FE80::BF4E:29AB:FC77:A8C8

Unique Local Address are equivalent to private addresses in IPv4.  These will begin with FD.  These addresses are routable only within your internal network.  Example: FD81::D89B:384A

Date of last update:4/8/11

Author: Luis Baptista

If you own an iPhone or an iPad you probably know how it’s easy to understand a new app.

A reason is that Apple provide a set of rules and advices on how to design the user interface.

All these rules are compiled in the document Human Interface Guidelines(PDF).

This document is a must-read before starting iPad or iPhone development.

Three examples of advices :

Think twice before you redesign a standard control

An iPhone user is used to native iOS controls such as the title bar, tool bar, etc.

That’s also true for the size of these controls. Each button have the size of a fingerprint, which is the best size for a touch device.

Feedback

Our instinct requires to feel a feedback in response of our actions. For instance pushing a button will give a feedback to your finger.

This is not possible for a touch device. That’s why your app have to provide a visual feedback each time the user do an action.

Look closer at a UITableView, the bouncing animation when you reach the end is a feedback that there is nothing more.

Metaphors

When we discover something new, we use our previous experiences to guess how to use it.

If you see a button on an object, you know it can be pushed and you know that something will happen.

You can even guess if its a good(gree) or bad(red) thing depending of the color of the button.

If you open the contact app on iPad, you instantaneously understand how it works because it looks like a real contact book.

Be focus

A popular thing is that we can remember seven chumks of information. But recent studies say that we can only remember around 3 or 4 !

The point here is that out brain can handle less that eight information units at a time.

User interface design is really complex and require specific competences to understand how the user think.

At IPSOFACTO we focus on our competences, and we work with great designer to build a unique user experience.

Author: Simon Watiau

netstat -tulp

And you should get something like this:

What we see here is that MySQL, the web, SMTP and SSH servers are currently working fine.

Date of last update: 4-12-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

CoreData is a framework to work with databases and persistence on iPhone/iPad/Mac.

It’s similar to an ORM–your data will be managed in memory through a graph of objects.

Then, you can request CoreData to serialize this data to a file.

Model

CoreData uses a model which describes how your data should be written on the disk.

Fortunately, Xcode has a great tool to create models: Right click on your project and Add…, New File, under Resource choose Mapping Model.

Each entity require a type, by default NSManagedObject is used. You can also change the type of your entities from NSManagedObject to a class of your choice.

The model you create is then saved in a file with the extension .xcdatamodel.

Core Data

To interact with your model, three steps are required:

1. Load your model to memory
2. Init the layer to write and read your data from the disk
3. Init the context to interact with your data (query, search, etc…)

The first step is to load your model in a NSManagedObjectModel–for that you have to use a URL to your .xcdatafile.

 NSManagedObjectModel* managedObjectModel = [[NSManagedObjectModel alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:URLToMyModel];

The NSPersistentStoreCoordinator is the layer that will allow your context to interact with your data on the disk, you can compare that to a driver.

 coordinator = [[NSPersistentStoreCoordinator alloc] initWithManagedObjectModel:managedObjectModel];

The last step is to create your context :

 NSManagedObjectContext* context = [[NSManagedObjectContext alloc] init];
 [context setPersistentStoreCoordinator:coordinator];

Some relationships disapear when I save and then restore my data.

Don’t forget that CoreData will use your model to write your data to the disk!

For instance, if you set a relationship as 1-n in your model but use it as a n-n in your code, superfluous relationships will not be written (and CoreData will say nothing about that !).

To learn more, see the CoreData guide of Apple.

Author: Simon Watiau

Switch from a view to another

The Apple documentation provides this snippet :

 [UIView transitionWithView:containerView
    duration:0.2
    options:UIViewAnimationOptionTransitionFlipFromLeft
    animations:^{ [fromView removeFromSuperview]; [containerView addSubview:toView]; }
    completion:NULL];

In this sample, we want to change the current view with a flip effect. So what we want to do in fact is just : remove the current view, add a sub view, and an animation between these two states.

The line 4 is exactly that. As you can see, we remove a view from its parent (let’s say that fromView is container.view) and add a sub view to containerView.

If we use these two lines directly we will blink the interface from one view to the other.

An animation is missing.

The static method transitionWithView of UIView will give us this animation. This command uses a subject (containerView), an action([fromView removeFromSuperview]; [containerView addSubview:toView];), a duration (0.2) and finally the animation type (UIViewAnimationOptionTransitionFlipFromLeft).

The method transitionWithView will basically uses the subject view (containerView here), apply the animation we choose and in the meantime do the action (remove a view and add the other).

There is a few other animations in the UIView Class Reference Documentation.

Another way to animate a change is to use the block begin/commit animation :

imageView.alpha=0;
[UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL];
[UIView setAnimationDuration:0.4];
imageView.alpha=1;
[UIView commitAnimations];

Here we want to change the alpha of our imageView (fade-in).

The block between [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL]; and [UIView commitAnimations]; will be animated in 0.4 seconds. I you come from a Javascript background, it’s similar to the animate function of jQuery.

Present view

Another type of animation is about presenting a modal view.

 [self presentModalViewController:modalView animated:YES];

Changing the default animation is really easy. You just have to set the animation type on the presented view with :

 modalView.modalTransitionStyle=UIModalTransitionStyleCoverVertical

More fancy animations are available in the UIView Documentation.

Animations on iPad are really easy, allowing you to build high quality User Interface. The difficulty is to build a great user experience.

Author: Simon Watiau

Why using threads

A thread is a flow of instructions which will be executed sequentially.

By default your iPad app is run in one thread, that includes your code but also the instructions needed to display views or handle events (see Scheduling)

The issues is that a block of your instructions can be executed during a rendering of the interface or an animation.

You can easily test that by displaying a UITableView and in the meantime run a loop. You will see a jerky interface.

It’s usually not an issue since most of the time apps are event-driven.

You will probably use another thread when you need to pass through your instructions really fast or if you need to do a long processing job.

For instance you can use a thread in the method cellForRowAtIndexPath of the UITableViewDataSource if you can’t set an UITableViewCell fast enough to don’t affect the scrolling (at IPSOFACTO our caching framework use a thread to get the cached data without slowing down the main thread).

How to

[self performSelectorInBackground:@selector(myHeavyMethod) withObject:nil];

This method will execute the selector myHeavyMethod on the object self with the parameter nil (unfortunately you can use only one argument).

The iPad wil create a new execution stack and duplicate all the attributes of the current one. As you can see creating a thread is a heavy operation for the system and you should use it only when it’s necessary.

If you are in a background thread and want to run some instructions in the main thread (for instance if this thread is editing the UI) you should use the method performSelectorOnMyThread.

Warning

Keep in my mind that threads can be executed in the same time.

For instance you can have two threads executing the same method :

 BOOL  display=true;
+(void) myMethod{
if (display){
  display=false;
  NSLog("foo");
}else{
  NSLog("bar");
}
}

With display a class variable, if two threads execute this method, it’s possible to see two times “foo” because the two threads can execute it exactly in the same time.

To avoid that, you must be sure that all methods executed by more than one thread are thread-safe.(synchronisation in Objective-C ).

Author : Simon Watiau

Running out of storage space happens while working with Amazon EC2. There is two solutions allowing you not to recreate a new instance with more storage space. The first is to resize the EBS volume accordingly, and the second is to add a new EBS volume mounted on the instance. We’ll have a look on the latter in the case of an instance running Debian 6.0.

Process:

- In the Amazon Web Services administration panel, create a new EBS volume under the EC2 tab and attach it to your instance.

- Log into the instance withSSH and create a new partition on the new EBS volume using fdisk. Don’t forget to write.

- Create the ext3 filesystem on the partition using mkfs:

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdg1

mkdir /mnt/EBS(numberofEBS)

- Mount the EBS volume:

mount /dev/sd(?)1 /mnt/EBS(numberofEBS)

- Edit /etc/fstab to automount the volume at startup.

You now have additional storage space ready to use.

Date of last update: 4-8-11

Author: Adrien Magnus

That way we combine the best of both backup softwares. BESR is great at creating full server images, Crashplan is doing good at transferring the data in multiple locations.

We monitor everything.

If something is amiss, we will know fast. We login remotely to find and fix problems, without needing onsite service.

If slow internet is a problem for you, we’ll know why.  We can let you know if the problem is caused by streaming video or cloud computing, or virus and spam problems.

We can monitor firewalls, routers, packets, servers and workstations—PCs and Macs, your entire network monitored from our engineering center, by nice people, at IPSOFACTO.

Click here for full article.

MSOffice 2011 contains all the familiar programs, such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint.  It also features Exchange connectivity, so your mail, contacts and calendars are accessible from almost anywhere.  Data that you’ve stored in Entourage can be effortlessly transferred to Office 2011, making the switch completely painless.  For even greater ease, IPSOFACTO engineers are able to setup any kind of email delivery, whether you have hosted exchange such as Google Apps or BPOS, a local exchange server, or old fashioned Pop/IMAP email.

Please contact us if you have any questions, or if you’d like to make the switch!

Click here for full article.

Affects: Quickbooks 2011

Solution/Process:

This could be caused by custom fonts being used that quickbooks can’t read. If that is the case then you simply go to “print invoice” instead of create pdf and then print it to Adobe which can read the fonts. The invoice will now show up properly.

Date of last update: 3-8-11

Author: Keller Medlin

Intel Core Solo            32 bit

Intel Core Duo             32 bit

Intel Core 2 Duo          64 bit

Intel Quad-Core Xeon   64 bit

Dual-Core Intel Xeon    64 bit

Quad-Core Intel Xeon   64 bit

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3696

Author: Keller Medlin

Date of last update: 2-28-11

Click here for full article.

Affects: Outlook / IE8

Solution/Process:

You may notice that when you try to install a certificate in IE8 the “Install Certificate” button is missing:

To make the button appear you need to close IE and then re-open it, running as administrator. The “Install Certificate” button will then re-appear.More information: http://www.windows7taskforce.com/view/3076

Date of last update: 2-18-11

Author: Keller Medlin

Click here for full article.  (cnn.com)

Affects: Mac OSX, iCal, & Mobile Me accounts

Solution/Process:

The Mobile Me account should be setup in iCal with the correct account name and password. Then you will notice in iCal that there are two sections of calendars: “On my Mac” and the calendars under the Mobile Me account. The only calendars that sync to Mobile Me are the calendars under that section. So you will need to do the following:

1.) Export all the calendars from “On my Mac”

2.) Create new calendars under the Mobile Me section with the same name

3.) Import the “On my Mac” calendars into the Mobile Me calendars

4.) Delete the “On my Mac” calendars or do not add events to these calendars anymore

More information: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4340?viewlocale=en_US

Date of last update: 2-11-11

Author: Keller Medlin

Affects: Microsoft Office products

Solution/Process:

Most of the time this can be resolved by opening Word and going to Tools>Macro>Microsoft script editor. Then going to Tools>Options>Debugging and clicking “JIT Settings”. You should then clear the checkbox for JIT Debugging.

There is also a registry key you can edit if necessary but be careful when editing the registry. This has worked for some people and not for others.

The registry key that controls this option is called HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\.NETFramework\DbgJITDebugLaunchSetting.

• If value = 0, prompt the user by means of a message box. The choices are:

• Continue. This results in a stack dump and process termination.

• Attach a debugger. In this case, the runtime spawns the debugger listed in the DbgManagedDebugger registry key. If none, control is returned, and the process is terminated.

• If value = 1, simply return control. This results in a stack dump, after which the process is terminated. (No more dialog)

• If value = 2, spawn the debugger listed in the DbgManagedDebugger registry key.

Date of last update: 1-27-11

Author: Keller Medlin

photo: business insider

Business Insider reports that Facebook gives its engineers unusual freedom.  They get to manage themselves, choose their tasks, and work on all aspects of their pet projects, from interface to database.  This means that top-talent wants to work at Facebook, but does it result in more successful website?  It’s hard to gauge when they have such little competition, but many users are tired of their constantly changing features.

Click here for full article.

1. Remove the file, OfficePID.plist from /Applications/Office 2008/Office

2. Remove the folder Office 2008 from ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft.  

3. Restart Office and enter the new key.

Affects: Quickbooks 2008 for sure and possibly other versions

Solution/Process:

If you are importing IIF files into QuickBooks, you will need to edit the IIF file being imported in a text editor. Excel works well because the row number in Excel will correspond with the line number in the error message. Since QuickBooks does not allow duplicate names and importing a name cannot change the type of name, you get this error message.

After you have opened the file, go to the line (or row) that corresponds to the error message.

Change the name to something simple (for example “test”).

Then save the file, open quickbooks and re-import the file. It will still show the error until you rebuild the data. After rebuilding then restart quickbooks and it should work properly.

Date of last update: 1-18-11

Author: Keller Medlin

Comments:

Exmerge has its limitation of exporting maximum 2GB. On exchange server 2007, using export-mailbox doesn’t have that drawback.

a. Requirements:

1. make sure that the login you are going to use to export the mailbox has exchange server administrator permissions

2. work on a 32-bit computer with outlook 2003 or 2007 installed

3. powershell is installed

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6ccb7e0d-8f1d-4b97-a397-47bcc8ba3806&displaylang=en&Hash=nYXIUGZ3G5HPunRM25u2yv2THPFzloTVbitpvXAiuXhN0tLbPMaEDkLJoJLCJqu2k3vBzRgdVubA%2bIVQC2Hopw%3d%3d

4. exchange server maintenance tools are installed

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6BE38633-7248-4532-929B-76E9C677E802&displaylang=en

5. Install the IIS Components

On the Start menu, click Control Panel.

Double-click Add or Remove Programs.

Click Add/Remove Windows Components.

In the Components list click the Internet Information Services (IIS) check box.

Click Details.

Click the Common Files check box.

Click OK until you are returned to the Windows Component Wizard.

Click Next and complete the Windows Component Wizard.

might need the XP CD

6. Run through the exchange set up wizard (setup.exe).

7. Select Custom Server Install and install only the Management Tools.  (make sure your workstation is joined to the domain and that you have Installed).

b. Export administrator’s mailbox to a pst file using the ipsofacto account

1. give ipsofacto full access to the adminsitrator mailbox

Add-MailboxPermission -Identity aminsitrator -User ipsofacto -AccessRights FullAccess

2. export the mailbox to C:\PSTs folder.

Export-Mailbox -Identity administrator -PSTFolderPath C:\PSTs\

note that this will create a pst file with the same name as the account you exported (i.e. administrator.pst in this case)

if you want to change that then type the name of the pst file after the folder: for example C:\PSTs\backup.pst

more information can be found here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266964%28EXCHG.80%29.aspx

Date of last update: 05/03/2010

Author: Gaetan Barthelemy

photo : mobile roar

Kushler, inventor of the T9 and Swype text messaging methods, is adept at seeing how to mold technology to support people.  He began his work in augmentative communication, finding ways to help disabled people speak.  He continued on to change the slow process of typing a text message number by number to the far quicker T9 predictive algorithms.  Recently, he developed Swype, yet another improvement in the ease of texting.

After a holiday season flooded with a sense of overeager aquisativeness, it’s a relief to read about technology that actually aids connection.

Click here for full article. (cnn.com)

Affects: Outlook for Mac 2011

Solution/Process:

Make sure you have incoming port as 993 and outgoing port as 465. Use SSL for both connections and click “More Options” to enable authentication using the incoming server info.

Date of last update: 1/28/11

Author: Keller Medlin

photo: cnet.com

There will be a full lunar eclipse tonight from 11:41PM – 12:53AM.  This is only the second time since the year 1 that a full lunar eclipse has occured on the winter solstice.  Turn away from your glowing screens this evening to enjoy the mystery!

Click here for full article. (cnet.com)

Click here for full article.  (money.cnn.com)

Affects: Outlook 2003

Solution/Process:

Outlook 2003 is inherently faster than 2007, however there are sometimes when users may notice it locking up or freezing.

Steps to try:

-Disable any add-ons that may be interfering with performance. For example: Mcafee has an “Exchange scan” add-on that scans email. It is possible that this slows down performance especially for larger mailboxes

-Rebuild .ost file by closing Outlook and deleting the old .ost file located in Local Settings> App Data> Microsoft> Outlook for Windows XP or Users> App Data> Local > Microsoft> Outlook for Windows 7

-Check that other applications are not interfering. For example: Skype has an option to index Outlook contacts which should be disabled if Outlook is running slow

-Verify that public folders and email are cached locally

-From Add/Remove programs remove the “Outlook addin installer” program if it is there. Also, run a repair on Microsoft Office 2003

Date of last update: 12-15-10

Author: Keller Medlin

Affects: Google Apps email

Solution/Process:

To setup a group in Google Apps go to “€œGroups”€ and “Create a new group”€

Next, name the group and add members.

Finally, click on —Roles and permissions”€ and assign any special routing that needs to take place. For outside users to send to the group make sure you enable the check box for “Anyone on the internet”

Date of last update: 12-14-10

Author: Keller Medlin

Click here for full article. (Guardian)

Affects: Outlook

Solution/Process:

This problem can occur when file that maintains the Navigation Pane settings becomes corrupted.

To resolve this problem, use the following steps.

1. On the Start menu click Run.

2. In the Run dialog box, type the following command:

Outlook.exe /resetnavpane

Note: There is a space between “Outlook.exe” and “/resetnavpane”

3. Click OK.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2022778

Date of last update: 12-3-10

Author: Keller Medlin

Affects: Apple OS 10.4 and higher

Solutions to the issue:

Command line method:

Open the Terminal application and type in the line:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

followed by:

killall Finder

(To reverse, replace TRUE with FALSE)

Application method:

You can install a program that will ‘show’ or ‘hide’ hidden files:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26729/houdini

or

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/developer/hiddenfiles.html

Also, see the ‘Secrets’ method for more Mac preference modifications:

http://secrets.blacktree.com/

Date of last update: Dec 3, 2010

Author: Luis Baptista

Click here for full article. (techcrunch)

photo: techcrunch

A design flaw in the Kindle renders it almost useless in an academic setting; there are no page numbers.  Without the ability to cite quotes with page numbers, it’s very challenging to reference anything read on a Kindle in a footnote of an essay or article.  If you were thinking about getting a Kindle as a holiday present for a student in your life, think again. 

Click here for full text. (techcrunch)

Click here for full article. (cnn.com)

Solution One:

-Go to the Quickbooks website and download the latest version of the QB Pro 2010.

Solution Two:

-Insert qb2010 CD into DVD drive.

-Go to My Computer.

-Right click on the DVD drive with the qb2010 CD to open the folder.

-Right click Setup. (near the bottom of the drop down menu.)

-Go to the Compatibility tab.

-Uncheck the check mark on Compatibility.

-Click Apply.

-If you are asked for permission, click ignore all and continue.

-Close the screen and proceed to normal installation.

Date of last update: 11-12-2010

Author: Gaetan Barthelemy

photo: etc.usf.edu

When I run into a technology problem, my first assumption is usually that I’m making a mistake.  Last week, while I was creating a project-specific Gmail account, I could not believe that my Facebook contacts would not export to my new address book.  However, the mistake was not mine; Facebook is currently hoarding data, and blocking information from being transfered to Google.

Click here for full article. (cnn.com)

Click here for full article. (philanthropy.com)

photo: cnet.com

Losing anything can be quite upsetting, but when it’s a device with all your personal information, you definitely want to get it back.  This article has several suggestions for apps and services to help you recover a misplaced phone.  Of the solutions in this article, our engineers have experience with MobileMe and say that it’s a bit pricey but definitely reliable.

Click here for full article. (cnet.com)

Click here for full article. (cnn.com)

photo: ednotes

The new search engine Blekko hopes to provide more useful search results by limiting the sites that it searches.  It keeps a categorized list of legitimate sites to answer questions on specific topics, which should reduce the amount of spam a user receives.  Blekko also encourages users to add their own lists, so experts will share their prefered sites.  Definitely seems worth checking out!

Click here for full article. (cnet)

It is becoming harder and harder to find workstations and laptops that come preloaded with Windows XP which is a good thing for many IT professionals, but an amazing headache if your business has any web applicaions that require Internet Explorer six (ie6).  If you do not have a plan to update your web apps you may find yourself with spiking IT costs as support for these legacy systems

Click here (computerworld)

photo: DeVilla

Though we’re not in the business of selling TVs, as an environmentally concious company, we’re happy to see that the FTC is expanding consumer education programs about energy efficeny.  Beginning in May 2011, all TVs will be labeled with their yearly energy cost.

Click here for full article. (cnn.com)

photo: spie.org

 I hadn’t.  It’s the transparent, conductive material that’s in every smartphone and touchscreen, and supplies are predicted to run low by 2020.  Fortunately, other solutions are in the works, including other similiar compounds an optical sensors.

Click here for full article.  (new scientist)

Affects: Network adapters on Macs and PCs

Solution/Process: For Mac simply go to System Preferences> Network> and set the service order, placing the 1st priority at the top.

For PC Right click Network> Properties then Change adapter settings (Windows 7)> Advanced > Advanced settings (you may have to enable the menu bar). Here you can set the order.

You can also use Bridgechecker http://www.wlanbook.com/disable-wireless-connected-lan-xp-vista/ for some wireless cards to assist in prioritizing.

Date of last update: 10-27-10

Author: Keller Medlin

photo: tech crunch

Will Iphone service be better on Verizon than AT&T?  Tech Crunch thinks so.

Click here for full article.  (tech crunch)

Affects: iPad and 4G iPhone; entourage 2004 and 2008 on exchange 2003

Solutions to the issue:

Exchange users with new iPhones are re-discovering an old bug where messages sent through ActiveSync for mobile devices do not appear properly in both Entourage 2004 and Entourage 2008. The messages sometimes look like a mix of HTML, E-mail headers and what is left of the original message or they look like an unintelligible jumble of letters and numbers. The recipient and the subject are also empty.

ActiveSync is munging the headers of the mail messages. Notice in the above screenshot that the mail message includes X-MimeOLE, Received, MIME-Version and other lines of information you normally wouldn’t see. These are the headers, or the envelope of your mail message. They are suppose to be in a specific format so that mail applications can translate them and make the message presentable but ActiveSync is doing something to the message you send. The headers are now appearing in the body of the message, which is not normal.

Why isn’t Outlook for Windows susceptible to this problem? Most likely it has simply been programmed to realize these two headers are bogus and to continue reading the rest of the headers properly.

The best solution is to run a script on the sent folder that will clean up the messages.

1. open the apple script application and copy the following code. Save the script as Fixed_Sent_Items

http://files.macscripter.net/ScriptBuilders/Entourage/fix%20iphone%20sent%20mail.scpt.zip

''tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
set theProcessedItemsCounter to 0
set theFaildItemsCounter to 0
set theExchangeAccount to item 1 of every Exchange account
set theSentbox to sent items folder of theExchangeAccount
set theSentMessages to current messages
set tmpfolderpath to (path to temporary items folder from user domain) as Unicode text

repeat with theMessage in theSentMessages
set theSource to source of theMessage

set theheader to headers of theMessage
if theheader contains "Subject" then
--return -- do not continue if this is a properly formatted message
else
try
set sourceMacPath to (tmpfolderpath & "entourage-message-" &
theProcessedItemsCounter)
set sourcePosixPath to POSIX path of sourceMacPath
set fd to open for access sourceMacPath with write permission
set eof of fd to 0
write theSource to fd
close access fd

-- translate mac to unix line endings
set targetPosixPath to (sourcePosixPath & ".unix")
do shell script "tr '\\r' '\\n' < " & sourcePosixPath & " > " & targetPosixPath

-- get rid of the malformed headers
set fixedMessagePath to (sourcePosixPath & ".fixed")
do shell script "sed -e '1,/^$/d' " & targetPosixPath & " > " & fixedMessagePath

-- read in the corrected message
tell application "Finder"
set fd to POSIX file fixedMessagePath as alias
set newSource to (read fd)
end tell
set theEntourageMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {source:newSource}
move theEntourageMessage to theSentbox
set properties of theEntourageMessage to {color:{0, 0, 0}, priority:normal, read status:read, delivery status:sent, replied to:false, redirected:false, forwarded:false, connection action:keep on server, flagged:false}

-- clean up
do shell script "rm " & sourcePosixPath
do shell script "rm " & targetPosixPath
do shell script "rm " & fixedMessagePath
delete theMessage

set theProcessedItemsCounter to theProcessedItemsCounter + 1

on error
set theFaildItemsCounter to theFaildItemsCounter + 1
end try

end if
end repeat

-- give feedback
if the theFaildItemsCounter > 0 then
set theText to theFaildItemsCounter & " messages failed to process"
as text
display dialog theText buttons {"OK"} default button "OK"
end if
end tell ''

2. Copy that script file in Documents/Microsoft User Data/Entourage Script Menu Items

3. Open entourage and create a rule for your exchange (Tools; Rules; mail (Exchange))

4. Name if Fixed_Sent_Items and use the following criteria:

If

Folder is “Sent Items”

Specific Header > Subject > Does not exist

Then

Run AppleScript “Fix_Sent_Items”

5. Make sure to enable it

now all the emails going to the sent items will be checked and update if needed.

If you want to run the rules on the current sent items, click right on the sent items folder and select rules. Click on the Fix_Sent_Items rule to update your sent folder

Date of last update: 10-22-10

Author: Gaetan Barthelemy

First Download and install Windows debugging tools from Microsoft:

1) Install the windows 7 SDK from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=6b6c21d2-2006-4afa-9702-529fa782d63b&displaylang=en

2) During the install select the Debugging Tools option under Common Utilities. This will detect the server architecture that you are using you. 

Then Connect Windows Debugger to the Microsoft Symbol Server:

1) open WINdbg.exe (part of the SDK)

2) Under the File Menu Select Symbol File Path:

3) Add http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols as a Symbol Path

Finally open the dump file:

1) Under the File menu click open Crashdump.

2) Dump Files are usually found in C:\windows\minidump, open one a new window will spawn

3) Click on the link !analyze -v to get more information about the crash.

Last Modified: 10-22-10

Author: Drew Hunzeker

Affects:Outlook

Solutions to the issue:

Please check with your network administrator first to get the right permissions on the user’s mailbox you want to access.

If you don’t have the right permissions, you will be able to add the mailbox but won’t be able to expand it and then check the folders.

To add the mailbox open outlook

• go to tools; emails accounts
• in outlook 2003, click next
• in outlook 2007, highlight your exchange account and click on change
• click on more settings
• go to the advanced tab
• click on add and type the name of the mailbox you would like to access
• click ok
• restart your outlook
• once back in your outlook you should see the extra mailbox on the left side panel. Note that you might have to click on the folder icon on the bottom right side of that panel to expand all the folders

Date of last update: 10-22-10

Author: Gaetan Barthelemy