Bill Read, Charleston, SC

Gmail Tips for Apple Mail

2018-08-14T14:59:00.001-05:00

If you use Gmail or G Suite for your email, and you use the Apple Macintosh built-in Mail App, changes in Gmail over the past few years may impact your Mail performance. Most noticeably are the uses of Social Inbox, and the Important flag for mail messages.

Fortunately, there are a few minor settings changes that you can make in Gmail that will help your Mail client perform better.

Recommended Settings Changes

Google enabled multiple versions of the standard Inbox: Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. Also, Google automatically added categories, including "Important", to your mail messages. If you aren't familiar with these, or if you simply do not use them, then make/check the following settings in Gmail.

First, if you have the Mail App open, QUIT it.

Next login to https://www.gmail.com with your web browser.

Then go into Settings from the menu shown below.

Next, click on the Inbox Tab, and make your settings look like the ones shown below.

Then move on to the Labels tab, and make your settings for Important and Chats look like the ones below; also, under Categories, copy the settings shown. Leave everything else as-is.

That's it. The next time you open your Mail App, it will sync-in these changes, and the extra mailboxes and categories will go away (depending on how much mail you handle, this can take minutes to hours). Afterwards, your Mail app should perform much better.

Recover a PowerCADD File Lost on a MacOS Server

2017-12-13T15:44:00.000-05:00

Twice now I have had a client lose a PowerCADD file on a MacOS server. This has happened at two different offices, using different versions of PowerCADD and MacOS Server.

Days Worth of Work Lost

In both cases the users opened a file directly from the server by double-clicking the file icon; then had saved and closed the file, and reopened it a number of times over a period of days. In one instance the user had been using the "Recents" menu in PowerCADD for these subsequent accesses — perhaps both had, but I can't verify in the other instance.

At some point the users went back to the server to open the file, only to discover the file on the server showed a last modified date days prior to the last known save; in both cases the last time the file had been opened and saved was only hours earlier the same day. None of the server backups showed a version of the file later than the last modified time on the server (both using Time Machine, configured by default to backup hourly).

Nowhere to Be Found

After desperately searching both server and local computer (using Spotlight, but also randomly searching possible places it might have been stashed), no other version of the file could be found. To their knowledge, neither user ever copied the file to their computer, nor moved the file.

This first time this occurred, I blamed it on the server. But I spent quite a while searching cache files, etc., on the server — thinking that the file must have gotten lost during the last save. No joy.

The second time this occurred, I abandoned the server theory and focused on the user's Mac. I decided NOT to do a regular search. Rather, I went to the Command Line in the Terminal to do a comprehensive search. All I needed was a "piece" of the file name. The client gave me a partial file name, and this is what I entered into the terminal:

sudo find / -name “*Example*”

After a couple of minutes, the command returned a matching file, which turned out to be the missing last-saved version. The location was a hidden system directory:

/private/var/folders/xx/somerandomcharacters/etc

The xx/somerandomcharacters/etc were system generated folder names that will be unique to every case. If you poke around these folders, there is lots of stuff about which you will have no idea, and should be avoided.

How to Find the Missing File (If Possible)

The take-away is this: If you lose a file that you _know_ you were saving to a MacOS server (perhaps any server), and you know at least part of the file name, do the following:

1) Open the Terminal (Applications/Utilites)

2) Enter the following:

sudo find / -name “*filename*”

Replace filename with the part of the file name you are looking for. Be sure to put the replacement inside the quotes (") and the asterisks (*). Bear in mind that this command is Case Sensitive. If you aren't sure about the case, you need to try different variants of your file name.

3) Hit Enter.

4) You will be required to enter your computer login password.

5) Wait... the output will be a list of complete path-names of the files, showing the location and name of each found file.

6) IF your file is found, select the text of the path name you want; select from the left up until the file name (do not copy the file name part). Example:

/private/var/folders/36/cbkgp7812mz6_n3kyxcsbq1r0000gn/myfile.PC9

Select and COPY only what is in red in the example (yours won't be in red).

7) Go to the Finder, and choose Go->Go to Folder... from the main menu.

8) Paste what you copied into the Go to the folder: field, then hit Go.

9) Find your file, and drag it to your desktop (or preferred location).

You're welcome.

Better Mikrotik Config to Block YouTube Video

2017-11-17T12:32:00.001-05:00

Some Solutions Create New Problems

In my last post I outlined a method for effectively blocking YouTube by throttling the video content servers to speeds so slow that effectively make it unusable. The methodology of this approach was to build two lists of IP Addresses: one of local devices that need to be affected, and one of Google Servers that serve video; then create mangle rules and a Queue Tree to throttle those connections.

After running with that solution for a couple of weeks I discovered that many of the targeted servers also serve data for Google Docs, etc. Thus, this approach ultimately ended up targeting a broader range of servers, and caused other side-effects, such as rendering Google Docs unusable for the affected devices.

After building and documenting that approach, it occurred to me to target the DNS requests directly. Thus, if a server goes by more than one name (definitely something Google is doing), we target only the use-case we desire.

A Simpler Method for Blocking

In thinking through the problem, I realized that targeting the servers by IP address created the problem of overlap, where the same server might serve multiple kinds of data. Indeed Google uses the same servers, identified by different host names, to serve different kinds of data. So a server that serves YouTube video data can (and often does, it turns out) serve Google Docs or Gmail data.

Thus, we have to attack the problem by attacking the host NAME and not IP address. To do that, we have to attack the DNS request, but only for certain workstations.

The New Approach

Basic Outline:

Take over all DNS requests for the local LAN
Make an Address List of LAN IP Addresses to be affected
Create an IP Firewall Layer 7 Protocol regexp to match the potential hostname
Create an IP Firewall Filter rule to block these requests

1. Take Over All Local DNS Requests

Setup DNS Server

Go to IP->Firewall->DNS
At Servers, add your desired upstream DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 if you want to use Google)
Check the box "Allow Remote Requests"
You can leave all other settings at their default
Apply

Tell LAN Computers to Use Your Router for DNS

Go to IP->DHCP-Server-Networks
Click on the network you are targeting (likely the only one in the list)
Remove all DNS Servers in the list, if any
Add the IP address of your Mikrotik router

Now you have a DNS server running on your Mikrotik, and you are telling computers on your LAN to use it for DNS. If you have any devices with static IPs & DNS, don't worry, the next step will cover them. You will still want to update those devices, but for the time being they will continue to work.

Intercept All DNS Requests on your LAN, Regardless of DNS Server Setup

Go to IP->Firewall->NAT
Click Add New
Chain: dstnat
Protocol: 17 (ump)
Dst. Port: 53
In Interface: <use your LAN bridge or master port>
Action: redirect
Comment: DNS Redirect

Now you have told your router to intercept and respond to ALL DNS requests, without exception. Even devices that specify other DNS servers in their interface setups will get their DNS info from your Mikrotik.

2. Make a List of Local IP Addresses

You need to know the IP Addresses of your target LAN devices.

Go to: IP->DHCP Server->Leases
Click on a device in the list
Click Make Static
Note the IP Address for each as you go
Click Close
Repeat for each device

(If you know your way around, you can create a new Pool and assign these devices to this pool, thereby grouping them neatly. Devices will have to refresh their IP to get the new one. For this exercise this is not needed.)

Go to: IP->Firewall->Address Lists
Click Add New
Enter a Name ("Throttle" is what I used)
Enter an IP Address from your list from above
Click Ok
Repeat for each IP Address

Later you can add or remove additional IP Addresses to this list as needed.

3. Create a Layer 7 Protocol Regexp

Go to: IP->Firewall->Layer7 Protocols
Click Add New
Name: googlevideo
Regexp: ^.*googlevideo.*
Click Ok

4. Create a Firewall Filter Rule to Block

Create the Rule

Go to: IP->Firewall->Filter Rules
Click Add New
Check Enabled
Chain: input
Scr. Address List: Throttle (or whatever name you used above)
Layer7 Protocol: googlevideo
Action: drop
Comment: googlevideo
Click Ok

Move the Rule

Still in IP->Firewall->Filter Rules
Scroll to the bottom of the list
Drag the rule with the label googlevideo to the top of the list

For those who know how firewall rules work, you can move this rule to another location in your firewall rules list. If you have the default set, put it at the top.

That's it. Now your Mikrotik will hijack and server every DNS request on your LAN, mark any request for a googlevideo related domain, check your list of affected IP Addresses, and block the request if the request matches the list. Pretty simple, and very efficient.

Mikrotik Config to Block/Throttle YouTube for Your Kids Devices

2017-10-27T17:11:00.001-05:00

The Problem with the Internet

Each of my children at some point has asked me to block them from YouTube (Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) as a plea to eliminate the distraction from homework. I am careful to talk to them about taking responsibility for their own internet use, and offer to help them with the various issues. My approach is to come along side them to help them fight whatever demon they need to fight. However, at midnight, when mom and dad are asleep, and homework still must get done, well, it's a different battle, but one in which I will concede that they need dad to put a stop to the distraction.

Solving the Problem with Mikrotik

If you have a Mikrotik Router, I have a solution that has taken me countless hours to run-down and perfect (well, it will never be perfected). This solution can work as a potential throttle, to avoid excessive bandwidth use; or as an effective block, to prevent use of certain sites.

The Basic Outline:

Make a list of the internal IP Addresses (LAN) that need to be protected (Address List)
Make a list of the offending external IP Addresses (Address List)
Mark the traffic (mangle) between any of these sources (Mangle)
Block or throttle the traffic (Queue Tree)

Step by Step

Assumption: Your router is setup to provide DNS for your network. This is not covered here. If you aren't sure, or it is not, stop here and set it up.

1. Make a list of internal IP Addresses

You need to know the IP Addresses of your children's devices. To find this, in your Mikrotik interface (I use the webfig interface) go to:

IP->DHCP Server->Leases

Click on a device in the list
Click Make Static
Note the IP Address for each as you go
Click Close
Repeat for each device

Next go: IP->Firewall->Address Lists

Click Add New
Enter a Name ("Throttle" is what I used)
Enter an IP Address from your list from above
Click Ok
Repeat for each IP Address

2. Make a list of the offending external IP Addresses

Ok, now we get to some fun automation, where the Mikrotik will create and maintain this list for you.

Go to System->Scheduler

Click Add New
Give the item a name (I used "List of Sites")
Set the Start Date to yesterday's date (so it will start running right away)
Set the Start Time to 01:00:00 (or PRIOR to now, but ending in 00)
Set the Interval to 00:00:10 (ten seconds)
Under Policy check "read" and "write"
Copy-and-paste the following code into On Event (it will expand):

:local hosts {"googlevideo";}
:local listname "streaming"
:foreach k,v in=$hosts do={
  :foreach i in=[/ip dns cache all find where name~$v and type="A"] do={
    :local ipaddr [/ip dns cache all get $i data]
    :do {
        /ip firewall address-list add list=$listname address=$ipaddr comment=$v
        :log info "IP address: $ipaddr"
    } on-error {}
    :delay delay-time=10ms
  }
  :foreach i in=[/ip dns cache all find where name~$v and type="AAAA"] do={
    :local ipaddr [/ip dns cache all get $i data]
    :do {
        /ipv6 firewall address-list add list=$listname address=$ipaddr comment=$v
        :log info "IPv6 address: $ipaddr"
    } on-error {}
    :delay delay-time=10ms
  }
}

Note: If you DO NOT have IPv6 in the left menu of your Mikrotik webfig, you MUST nuke lines 12-19 above, otherwise the script will fail.

Now click OK to accept the changes and return to the Scheduler list. Stay and watch this list for a minute, to be sure you see the "Run Count" increment -- it should do so every 10 seconds.
Now go to IP->Firewall->Address Lists
On the right site choose "all" from the pull-down menu
You should see IP Addresses begin appearing in this list (actually they should already be there) with the Name "streaming" and a comment indicating the "host" from the first line of the code above. If you do NOT see these entries, go visit YouTube and start a video. They should then start appearing. If you still aren't seeing them, did you check to be sure your router is doing DNS (red warning above)?

Step-by-Step Explanation of the Code

The first line is a list of the domains you need to affect. You can put more than one in here so long as you put it in quotes, with a semi-colon between each item, and at the end. Note that I used a partial name in the case of YouTube. You will also notice that I used "googlevideo" and NOT YouTube. Almost all assets and video for YouTube are served from domains that look like "r6.sn-hp57kn6e.googlevideo.com" -- this script will catch all variations.
The second line is the name of the list (used later).
Sets up the loop for each domain
Sets up the loop to look through all IPv4 name entries matching domain
Grabs the IPv4 address for a matching entry
:do to catch errors in the next line without causing a failure
add the IPv4 address to the list
write an entry to the log
catch errors
pause (to prevent consuming all CPU time)
From 12 -19 are identical to 2 - 9 except it grabs IPv6 addresses

3. Mark the traffic between these sources

Now we need to identify any traffic going between our devices and these sites.

Go to IP->Firewall->Mangle

Marking the Connections

Click Add New
Set Chain to "prerouting"
Set Src. Address List to "Throttle" (or whatever you used for your devices list above)
Set Dst. Address List to "streaming" (or whatever you used in the code above)
Set Action to "mark connection"
Set New Connection Mark to "throttle"
UNCHECK Passthrough
Click Ok

Repeat with 1 change

Click Add New
Set Chain to "prerouting"
Set Src. Address List to "streaming" (or whatever you used for your devices list above)
Set Dst. Address List to "Throttle" (or whatever you used in the code above)
Set Action to "mark connection"
Set New Connection Mark to "throttle"
UNCHECK Passthrough
Click Ok

Notice that we flipped the Src. and Dst. Address Lists in the second version. One of these two rules will be obsolete in your router -- but it won't hurt either.

Marking the Packets

Click Add New
Set Chain to "forward"
Set Connection Mark to "throttle"
Set Action to "mark packet"
Set New Packet Mark to "streaming"
UNCHECK Passthrough
Click Ok

What is going on here is we are marking any traffic that matches an IP Address in BOTH of our lists. We mark the connection, and then each packet, now we can "find" these packets and start to block or limit them.

4. Block or throttle the traffic

Go to Queue->Queue Tree

Click Add New
Name "Parent Queue"
Parent "global"
Click Ok

This creates an overall parent queue which can be used to limit the TOTAL amount of traffic for ALL users in our address list. We won't apply any limit here at this time. You might find a use for this YMMV.

Click Add New
Name "My Devices"
Parent "Parent Queue"
Packet Marks "streaming"
Queue Type: pcq-download-default
Priority: 8
Bucket Size: 0.100
Limit at: 200
Max Limit: 200
Click Ok

Test

Go ahead, grab one of your kids devices and see if YouTube (or your sites) are functioning. Now grab device NOT in your list and see if it CAN view YouTube.

You can play with Limit at and Max Limit. 200 is pretty ridiculously slow, effectively blocking sites. 20 will block them so effectively that your browser will typically give up with an error.

Why not 0? And Why not block "youtube" as well. Well, in the particular case of YouTube, if you block "youtube" you inadvertently block ALL of Google for authentication purposes. By using 200, you make authentication go slowly, but you don't kill all of it. This is because when you login to a Google service, google ALWAYS checks-in with YouTube -- don't ask me why, ask Google.

Network Solutions, You've Lost Me

2012-12-06T11:54:00.000-05:00

This is a warning. I have been a user and defender of Network Solutions for a long time. No more.

I have had a relationship with Network Solutions since 1996. Today marks the beginning of the end. I started being unhappy with them about two years ago. I am a Gold VIP member — which is supposed to give me benefits, such as better pricing. In order to get better pricing, I have to call them — you would think this costs them more. But I imagine that by forcing VIPs to call, then keeping them on hold, many VIPs just give up and pay the higher price. Now I have to spend far longer renewing a domain that just doing it online.

How I became a Gold VIP customer is a mystery to me — perhaps it is because I have been gullible enough to trust them with so many domains. One day my account just started showing as Gold VIP status. It went this way for years, and I never saw a difference until I had to call them for another reason. This is when I learned I could get better pricing — by wasting more of my time.

Today I got a notice of the auto-renewal of a domain, owned by a client, that was NOT set to auto-renew. My credit card had already been charged (but the rate used wasn't the pricing I am supposed to get). This particular domain was not due for renewal until February (I write in early December).

It turns out that my Gold VIP status gave me another "benefit": SafeRenew. Essentially, SafeRenew will automatically renew your expiring domains if you don't renew them in time. Sounds like a good idea until you realize that there is already an AutoRenew service — which is ON by default, and you have to choose to turn it off. On top of that, since this particular domain was not due for renewal until February, it's hardly like I didn't get to it on time.

SafeRenew effectively overrides your choice not to auto-renew. Huh? This makes no sense. Well, it makes no sense unless you are Network Solutions, because this means you get your revenue 60 days earlier. I had never heard about SafeRenew — although I am quite sure some email, in the sea of endless emails sent out by Network Solutions, mentioned it. I never agreed to it. It was silently added to my account. As far as I can see, there is no way to turn it off.

How do you opt-out of an automatic choice to override your opt-out decision? Because I am a Gold VIP customer, somehow I get LESS choice than non-Gold VIP customers.

So, to be clear: Network Solutions charged my credit card, without my permission, to renew a domain that is not due to expire until February, despite the fact that I had turned OFF Auto-Renew. It was renewed for 3 years at full price. Even though it is my Gold VIP status that enabled them to do this, they didn't extend the courtesy of giving me my Gold VIP discount. This has got to be criminal on some level.

In my opinion, this is both fraudulent and criminal. This is what I told the poor phone rep today. She could do little more than refund my account, and turn OFF Auto-renew. Of course, it will automatically be turned-back on as the expiration data approaches next time because of the SafeRenew feature.

So, my warning to you is shop around for a better domain registrar. Personally, I'm moving to Hover.com.

Mac mini with Fusion Drive

2012-12-03T12:17:00.002-05:00

The other day I had the opportunity to install a new Mac mini with 16Gb RAM, a 1Tb Fusion drive, and a 27" Apple Thunderbolt Display. If you haven't heard of a Fusion Drive, it is a hybrid between a Solid State Drive (SSD) and a traditional Hard Disk Drive (HDD). SSDs are much like RAM in that they are very, very, fast; and very, very, expensive. HDDs are inexpensive, can store massive amounts of data, but are very slow by comparison. The main bottleneck in most computers now-a-days is the HDD. With the Fusion Drive Apple has done a clever bit of software magic behind the scenes — the drive dynamically keeps often-used data on the SSD, while permanently storing everything on the HDD. The result is the best of both worlds: the speed of SSD and the price of HDD.

Before I had a chance to form a first impression, I ran into trouble. However, the end result was a killer-fast new desktop computer with loads of RAM and storage, and a beautiful 27" display — a sight to behold.

The trouble started when I tried to migrate the user data. There was about 200Gb of data. As the process got started the Migration Utility reported that there was not enough space on the 1Tb Fusion Drive for the data. Whoa — shot-blocked before I got started. I poked around as best I could in the Migration Utility, but nothing I did would persuade it to take the data.

My first line of attack was to create a new user and explore the Mac mini. When I arrived at the Desktop, and checked the drive info, sure enough it reported 34Gb of total space with 14Gb available. However, Disk Utility reported the drive as a 1Tb drive. Huh… I called Apple.

The Apple rep had nothing in her notes that equipped her for this. She immediately started to talk to second tier support. While on hold I decided to boot in recovery mode (hold down command-r while rebooting) — which I should have done before calling. I ran Disk Utility from there and did a disk repair — it found stuff and repaired it. As I said, I should have done this first. After I got off hold, I sheepishly told the Apple rep what I did and that her services were no longer needed. After rebooting everything was fine. Except I didn't trust it.

Not trusting the data on the drive, I decided to boot back into recovery mode and do a complete reinstall. After starting this process I realized that the mini had come with pre-installed Apps. Ooops.

The install and subsequent migration went swimmingly. Everything that was supposed to be there was there, except the pre-installed Apps. I googled around for info about how to get them back and discovered that the smart folks at Apple had thought about just this situation. All I needed to to was log-in to the Mac App Store, click on Purchases and the new apps were all there — ready to be reinstalled (and associated with the login information). Whew.

An aside regarding the App Store: I had to create a new account for the user and this computer (corporate). I needed an account without a credit card, and the App Store did not offer this as an option. Google answered the question by informing me that iTunes does allow you to create a new account without a credit card (and of course, one Apple account works everywhere). Nice to know. A pro-tip for corporations is that you can setup user accounts this way, then GIFT credits to the account to buy apps.

After all that, I got a little play-time with the Mac mini. All I can say is… fast… wow! Such a tiny box driving such a huge display and it never blinked. The first thing the user did was crank up Lotus Notes (a pig of an app, and everyone in the group hates it). Even Notes was fast. Next she opened up Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator all at once — it took about 30 seconds total. Very nice. I want one.

Google Apps Calendar Sharing

2012-02-06T13:30:00.002-05:00

I love Google Calendars. In particular, I love the ability to share a calendar with someone else, even allowing them to add items and/or update your calendar. Google Apps Calendars has this ability as well. This is invaluable for me in my organization as well as at home.

My wife and I share our calendars, and now our 17-year-old son does as well. We also share a set of family calendars. This helps each of us to understand how our individual time is used, as well as how our time relates to one another. If one of us wants to set up an appointment, a social event or some other time commitment that involves the other, we need only to consult our calendar in order to be reasonably certain that the time is available. This is hugely useful with our family of 5.

By default Google Apps Calendar sharing is limited to within your Apps organization. To get around this requires the ability to administer your Google Apps domain. If you need this ability, and you are not the administrator of the domain, consult your administrator.

If you are a Google Apps domain administrator, here is what you need to do:

1) Log in to your Google Apps dashboard ( www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com ).

2) Click on Calendars.

3) Change the default sharing to allow sharing outside of your organization.

That's it. Except for one thing: the change is not instant. Plus, the setting for this change seems to get cached into your local user browser cache. So, the following steps may be necessary if you don't have the ability to setup sharing outside of your organization even after making this change:

1) Log out of your Google Apps account.

2) Clear your browser's cache.

3) Quit and reopen your browser, and log back in.

You should now be able to change your sharing settings.

This raises an issue about how aggressive Google is about caching data locally. Ordinarily this is a good thing in terms of sparing you from long downloads every time your access your Google account. But it seems to go as far as caching domain-level settings, and this can be frustrating when, as an administrator, you are trying to push out changes to lots of users.

Just remember that even in today's world of very stable browsers, emptying your browser cache can do wonders.

Notes Made with Siri Don't Sync

2012-02-03T09:25:00.000-05:00

If you are syncing your notes between your Mac and your iPhone 4S, you have probably run into this. New notes created by Siri do not sync. At least, they do not sync without your separately opening the Notes App and making some kind of change.

I don't know about you, but for me, hands free note taking is useless without syncing back to my computer. If I have to remember to review and edit my notes just to make them sync to my inbox, it fails to be helpful as a reminder system. Plus, it is pretty clear that syncing notes is only done on a note-by-note basis. Thus, editing one note won't make the other non-synced notes sync.

Here is a method that works for me every time:

1) Tell Siri to take a note (memo, etc.) and give it a subject, so say something like:

"Take a memo that says 'Notes from meeting with Bob'.

Alternatively, just say "take a memo" and wait for Siri to ask you what you would like it to say, then just give it a short subject.

Now is the tricky part, after Siri is done, and while the Siri version of the note is still showing on the screen:

2) Tap on the note to open the note in the Notes App.

3) Immediately tap the "Notes" button in the top left, which returns you to your list of notes.

4) Then tap on the new note in the notes list to go BACK to your note.

5) Once it opens, tap anywhere below the first line to bring up the keyboard.

6) Tap the microphone button — dictate to your hearts content. (By the way, if you say "new line" as the first thing, your new text will start on the next line.)

7) When done, tap the Notes button in the top left.

That's it, when you return to your computer and open Mail, your note will be there.

If I skip any of these steps, especially the first one of tapping the Notes button to go to the notes list, the note does not sync. My theory is that the note as created by Siri, but Siri isn't actually "talking" to the Notes app so much as simply sending it a memo, which appears to Notes as already synced (or not needing to be synced).

If that is all too much for you, then just bypass Siri altogether and do the following:

1) Open the Notes App.

2) Hit the + to create a new note.

3) Tap the Microphone.

4) Dictate.

5) Tap Done.

6) Tap the Notes button on the left to return to the list of notes.

Both methods require require much more direct screen interaction than should be necessary, especially for quick notes.

Should I Use Google+

2012-01-30T20:09:00.001-05:00

If you have heard of Google+ and have an idea of what it is, you are probably a bit ahead of the curve with respect to the internet and social media technology. If not, you are probably a normal person who doesn't get very excited about new social media technology — maybe you don't even call it social media, since now-a-days that means FaceBook to most people, and Twitter to a few others.

Google+ is another social network, but the twist is that it is integrated directly into Google. This means that the searches you do and the things you post to Google+ are used to tailor your search results. Better yet, searches your friends do and the things your friends post to Google+ are used too. In addition, Google uses the +1 feature to enhance its search results — a +1 from a friend would increase the relevance of a website in your search results. All told, Google is out to learn more about you in order to do search better.

As you can see, Google is trying to do a lot more than mimic Facebook. Google already sells ads and has tons of traffic — competing with FaceBook on that level makes no sense. However, FaceBook, and Twitter, have been capturing something that Google has not: signals.

Oh, Google already gets lots of signals from your online behavior — they know what you search for and click on. What they don't know is what the people who influence you search for and click on. If they could know, by relationship, the people who help shape your opinions and choices, your online experience would be far more like shopping at the local boutique your friend owns, than shopping at Wal-mart. The signals your friends generate are an order of magnitude more useful in tailoring your online experience that just your own.

This is where FaceBook has been kicking Google's butt. They know your friends, and your friends friends — what they do, what they "like" and so on. The problem FaceBook has is that they don't have all of the internet — whereas Google pretty much has all of it. If Google can get some of the same signals and relationship information that FaceBook has and use it to tailor your search results and ads, well, you would like Google a lot better. Your entire online experience would get better.

If all this creeps you out, please close your computer now, reach around and unplug your network connection (or turn off your wireless router) and back away. Welcome to the internet. The promise of an interconnected web of data, where information flows freely and is easy to find and use, includes information about you, your friends, and family. It always has, its just that now most of the important players are finally figuring out that you are the product as well as the customer (ok, to be fair, they knew that all along, its just that it is now becoming obvious to more common-folk). But, in then end this is a good thing.

Our online signals plus our friends signals can be used to produce search results (and ads) that suit our taste. They make more sense. In the absence of these signals, every search produces the same results — and what you may mean by a certain search phrase likely will not be what someone else means. So it makes sense for our online services to incorporate this knowledge of our lives.

That leads to the privacy argument: collection of all of this data is somehow an invasion of our privacy. I say to that "poppy-cock." The internet is a public place. Even if you are no more than a consumer of information, you are requesting that information from companies, services, and finally servers owned by someone else. The way the internet works those servers MUST know at least your internet address to deliver the information. As a result you have no expectation of privacy with regard to your online behavior. Oh sure, you could take steps to protect your identity — but to do so you have to have excellent hacking skills (and potentially misuse someone else's systems) or use one of those anonymizing services (do you want to trust THEM with your info?). Face it, you step into the public sphere when you go online.

If you have read this far, you probably know where I'm going. In my opinion, the more info you give Google and other services, the better they are for you. You may have concerns about the kind of data they collect, and who gets to see it, but the reality is that you are far more likely to be the target of a random identity theft attack by using your credit card in a restaurant than you are from a data breach at Google or the like. (For that matter, your bank is probably not as secure, and certainly more of a target.)

The way I see it, the more people embrace the fact that they are leading public lives, and go with it, the better the internet will be for everyone. So, jump into Google+ with both feet.

eCommerce at a Phone Near You

2011-03-23T08:03:00.003-05:00

A while back I wrote about dropping our credit card processor. The fees and rules had gotten the best of me, and I decided to forgo the convenience. Online credit card handling has gotten much more expensive over the past couple of years.

Then along came Square. If you haven't heard of Square, it is a free App for your iPhone or iPad (and other smartphones) that allows you to accept credit cards anywhere you have an internet connection, including 3G or Edge. It even comes with a tiny, free, card swiper that plugs into the headset jack on your device. No more elaborate equipment required, just your phone and a 1" square reader.

Square requires that you sign up for an account, and pass a credit check. They are a real merchant account provider, and credit card processor all wrapped up in one, free App and service. They charge a very competitive 2.75% + $0.15 per transaction. Your money is deposited in 2-3 days.

To use Square, you open the App, fill in a description and amount, and swipe the customer's card. The customer can sign your screen using a finger. Receipts are emailed to you and your customer. The receipt includes a map with the GPS coordinates of where the transaction took place. You receive a follow-up email showing the exact amount that will be deposited to your account.

The coolest part? Not only can your business get this, but you can get a personal account too. So you can "Square Up" with your friends by credit card — no more excuses about not having cash.

Simultaneous to finding Square, I discovered AcceptPay, by American Express (AKA PaySimple.com). I am a huge fan of Amex, both as a customer and a vendor. If you accept credit cards online, Amex is often less expensive than Visa/Mastercard — ironic, I know, since the mainstream impression of Amex is that they charge more. Not true. Nominally, their rate is higher, but in reality, Visa/MC advertises the "Qualified" rate (as opposed to unqualified). The definition of unqualified, it turns out, is any card that has any kind of rewards or points plan — pretty much every card out there. In the case of unqualified, add as much as 1% to the rate.

AcceptPay allows you to accept payment online, against any invoice. It also allows you to create and send invoices via email. It costs $20/month if you are an Amex card holder (or $35/month for PaySimple, if not). They charge a little more than Square, but do not require that the card be present (swiped), so you can take payments over the phone. No more paper.

AcceptPay now offers an iPhone App, so you can use it at any time, and any place you have access to the internet. Two great ways to get paid, with little to no cost up-front, and reasonable rates long-term. We use both at Computer Consultants Group.

iCal Invites and Google Apps Accounts

2011-03-11T10:51:00.003-05:00

When iCal and Google Apps finally began to support multi-calendar syncing/access, I was excited. Finally I could sync my calendars over the air with my computer, iPhone and iPad. Also, I could share/sync with my staff, and more importantly, my wife. But the bloom quickly came off the rose the first time I tried to setup a meeting and invite another user.

Confusion set in when I was not able to send invites right from iCal. I discovered that this only worked when someone was in my same domain — which seemed mostly useless, since coordinating with my staff is already far easier than with clients. More confusion set in when I realized that my staff never got an email, but the appointment just showed up in their calendar. I don't know about you, but, for me, if something just shows up in my calendar, and I didn't put it there, I will probably miss it.

There is a quick and easy work-around. Simply setup your appointment as usual, but do NOT fill-out the attendees field. When you have completed the appointment, open a new email and drag the appointment from your iCal to your email. This will attach the appointment as an ics file. Then, go back to iCal, highlight the appointment and Copy it (Edit—>Copy), go back to Mail and Paste it into the body of the email. This will paste all of the relevant info into the body of the email, so the recipient will see what it is about, without having first to add the appointment to his calendar. Next address the email and send it. The recipient will receive an email with the appointment info, and be able to click on the attachment to add it to his iCal (or other calendar, such as Outlook).

You will not get notices back regarding the status of the attendees. For me, this is not a problem. Most people don't respond to these correctly anyway, so for me the whole attendee status is useless.

As an aside, good calendar etiquette is hard to come by. If you send a calendar invitation, please do not use the recipient's name or company, as the name of the appointment. If you are arranging an appointment with Joe Smith, don't make an appointment named "Joe Smith" and then send it to him. He will end up with an appointment in his calendar titled with his own name. If I see an appointment in my calendar that is my name or my company, I'm not really sure where I'm supposed to go — since I am automatically in attendance with me at all times.

Make the name of the appointment more descriptive. So, rather than "Joe Smith," make it "Website Planning, Joe Smith and Bill Read." It is longer, but there is no ambiguity as to whom is to be in attendance. Also, you will avoid the embarrassment of the other person forgetting your name. Additionally, include contact info in the "Notes" area — BOTH your and his phone numbers, at a minimum. I usually include an address in the notes area (or the location area). Use complete addresses, including zip code — this way, if one of you has his calendar on his cellphone, the address can be used as a map-link to give directions to the location.

Migrating Old Data

2011-02-10T16:24:00.003-05:00

Or, why we tech-geeks keep a bunch of old crap around even though our wives plead with us to dump it.

Ah, old hardware. <sarcasm>Fun Stuff</sarcasm>. You know that thing you threw away two months ago, the one you suddenly found you needed? I have a room full of stuff that would be like that — only I don't throw it away. 300 BAUD modem: got that; Newton battery charger: check; old SCSI enclosures: you bet; Mac OS 9 computers: yep. I even have an original floppy for Mac OS 1.0 — no joke, 1.0 was shipped for about 15 minutes before Finder 1.1 came out.

As an aside, if you want to be brought to tears, find an old Mac 128k (the original) and boot it up off of floppy: 10 seconds, I kid you not. Steve Jobs was said to scream at an engineer that he HAD to shave off 5 seconds from the boot time because lives were at stake. Because, with millions of reboots by millions of people per day, 5 seconds literally adds up to entire lifetimes. Oh, if only Apple cared that much about lifetimes now-a-days. Ok, I guess you could argue this to make a case that every Mac should have a solid state drive. But I digress. Back to (Ok, on to) migrating old data.

A client I hadn't heard from in OVER a decade called me the other day. He has a Mac G3, Beige, running Mac OS 8.1. He has upgraded to a new iMac with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and needs to migrate his data. Thinking I would be dealing with an old SCSI drive, I got out one of my PowerMac G4s, with SCSI, IDE and USB. I was actually getting excited about firing up an old SCSI drive and jury-rigging a way to migrate the data to 10.6.

Turns out that the Beige G3 had and IDE drive in it — a 4Gb one. So, I didn't need anything but an external case. Only, for whatever reason, the drive did NOT want to function in either one of two cases. So, we popped the drive into the G4 anyway, into one of the open IDE spots. Because the old G4 had only USB 1.1, we realized that it would take forever to migrate all of the data to an new drive via USB. Instead of using USB, we pushed the data over the network over to the new drive connected to another computer which had USB 2. Done in 14 minutes.

As my client put it, that's a year a minute (14 years worth of his data).

iPhone/iPad Text Editing Tip

2011-02-10T16:14:00.002-05:00

If you have had an iPhone/iPad for a while, this may be obvious to you. But since I have had both since each first came out, and only recently discovered this time-saving tip, it may help someone else out there.

When you are editing text, and you would like to move the insertion point to the beginning or end of a word, tap the word (not the space between words). No need to use the magnifying glass, just tap. Tap the beginning of a word if you want to move the insertion point in front of the word. Tap the end of a word if you want to move the insertion point to the end of the word. iOS will NOT put your insertion point within the word; rather, it will put it before or after the word based on where you tap the word.

If you want to put the insertion point within the word, you must tap and hold until the magnifying glass appears, then move your insertion point where you wish.

Old-School Troubleshooting

2011-02-10T16:03:00.005-05:00

If you have ever had to call a tech-support person, such as one of us, then you have been told to reboot your computer:

Macs: Apple Menu—>Restart
Windows: Start Menu—>Shutdown

This may seem like you are being told to click your heels, or jump though a hoop. But, trust me, the next time you need to call for help, save yourself some time and reboot your computer first. I can tell you, from more than 25 years of experience, this fixes almost half of the problems I am asked about.

In this day of very robust computer systems, rebooting seems optional. But if you are leaving your computer on most of the time (for backups, etc.), reboot it once a week. And if you are having a problem, whether it is trouble accessing the internet, not printing, or system slowness, reboot before calling for help. You might just find out that all of those little problems, that you try to ignore, go away with regular rebootings.

More Drobo Feedback

2011-02-10T15:09:00.005-05:00

http://www.drobo.com/

Believe it or not, this is actually going to be a POSITIVE post about Drobo. Bear with me. After my last Drobo post, if you read to the end, you will know that I think this technology is incredible, and I am really mainly disappointed in their lack of attention to customer details. I hold that same opinion, for the most part. However, I think the Drobo product is outstanding.

I have three complaints:

1) See this post regarding formatting Drobo on older Macs. Sadly, as of this date, this has not been fixed. I realize that Drobo can't go back and support every Mac -- but the 32/64 bit issue is one that should be addressed.

2) Drobo's warranty and return policy is lacking. I had a client's Drobo Pro die from a power supply failure at roughly 5 months of age. Because we had not purchased Drobo Care, our only return option was to ship the drive back, then wait for the return. The basic 1-year warranty only covers the hardware, and not shipping, etc. You get 90 days of shipping returns and premium support, but not for the remaining 9 months of warranty.

It's not that you need to buy Drobo Care to extend your warranty after the first year. I would be fine if that were the case. It is that you have to buy Drobo Care to get the SAME service during the first full year — this I object to. It changes after 90 days. Come on — give us the first year. Or, make the warranty only 90 days — I would find that more acceptable than having my warranty tarnish after 90 days.

3) Hard drives in the drive bays of a Drobo unseat too easily. I have a few clients who use pairs of Drobos as network backup. One is kept off-site, while the other is in use, and they are swapped weekly. When you pick up and move a Drobo, the drives can unseat quite easily — while seemingly still in place (ie: they all appear to be seated correctly on close inspection). This can happen even when the drive is handled with kid-glove care. I think the weight of the drives is too much for the design of the latches that hold them in place.

If this happens, when you next plug-in the Drobo, it will report one or more of the drives as missing. Firmly pushing the drive(s) back in corrects the problem — but the Drobo then needs to rebuild for many hours (as many as 40+). This is a vexing problem for one of my clients. So much so that now part of their routine is to re-seat each drive every time they have to change them out.

Now, on balance, I still love the Drobo product. There is room for improvement, but the technology is impressive. For example, despite having drives unseat, my clients have never lost data, nor had to erase and start over with a Drobo.

Now, on to my positive testimonial. For you tech people, this will be a little scary.

One of the cool things about the Drobo is that you can pop-out any drive at any time (assuming the system is working correctly, meaning that your drive status lights are all green). The Drobo will quietly go about rebuilding your data protection and you can go on using it as if nothing happened. I related this fact to client when making the recommendation to him for his backup.

My client purchased a Drobo S and five 2Tb hard drives. The Drobo and three drives arrived almost right away, while two of the drives were delayed a week. We decided to go ahead and deploy, because we had over-speced the storage needs by more than triple in order to provide room to grow. A week later, when the drives arrived, I advised my client that he could simply pop-in the new drives in the empty bays. As it turned out, the top bay of the Drobo wasn't working. Without going into detail, we carefully swaped the two new drives around to demonstrate that it was the Drobo bay, and not the drives, that was the problem. Data Robotics agreed to send out a new Drobo. It got interesting when the new Drobo arrive.

My client, taking me at my word (that you can pop-out any drive at any time), took it upon himself to pull out all four working drives from the old Drobo — without first shutting it down. HE then disconnect the old Drobo, connected the new one, put in the four drives and powered it up. It started blinking Red after it came online, but it came online and all of the data was intact. The red lights worried him, so he called me. I almost had a heart-attack when he told me what he had done. But before I completely panicked, he told me that it mounted and came up just fine. I advised him to wait a few hours to see if it would rebuild and the lights turn green. They did, so he inserted the last drive, it rebuilt itself again, and now his Drobo is fully populated and running like a well-oiled clock.

So, there you have it. This one Drobo recovered from a seemingly impossible event — losing EVERY drive. Granted, there was no data being moved to/from the drive at the time this was happening; plus, I seriously doubt that repeating this "experiment" would result in success; but, my confidence in their technology is high. Any other RAID system I know of, upon losing more than the requisite "safe" number of drives would be a total loss — or, at best, a nightmare to recover.

Life with iPad

2010-08-19T14:04:00.010-05:00

I have been living with an iPad (WiFi only, 32Gb) since April. My thoughts and feelings about it have gone through 3 stages:

Slight disappointment
I have a laptop?
Old friend

Disappointment

When the iPad first arrived, after the initial un-boxing and first-use rush was over, a twinge of disappointment set in. It took me a while to figure it out. This thing is just a big iPhone, right? So, I already knew how to use it. There was no sense of discovery of a new thing. (Non iPhone users would have a far more exciting first few days.)

With that realization, I was relieved. After all, if you have an iPhone, who doesn't want a bigger screen? The glory of the things I could do with a larger screen seeped back in. I actively re-compared it to the iPhone, and confirmed to myself that, yes, wow, this thing is great. I could see, and READ, all of a web page at once; I could use a full-screen remote access client and control client servers on it; I could type on a big keyboard; I could see screens FULL of info. Yes, it is wonderful.

I have a Laptop?

After a few weeks I realized that I was leaving my laptop on my upstairs desk for days at a time. What used to be a fixture on my downstairs desk over the weekends, was now leaving a dust-free print on my office desk. I began to have thoughts of leaving the laptop behind when I visited client's offices. Initially I didn't have quite enough confidence in the iPad to leave behind the laptop. But, after many client visits, where the laptop never got pulled out, I began leaving it behind for quick visits.

Wow, talk about traveling light! There is a huge difference between carrying a 1.5Lb iPad in one hand, and lugging a 7Lb laptop — in a bag, plus power cord, and other misc. junk.

Old Friend

Four months out, the love affair is over, and I have settled into a comfortable and rewarding pattern with the iPad. My laptop gets to come downstairs for photos and other editing/creation efforts. Email is still better on the real keyboard, and ALL of my email and file organization is still on the laptop. The iPad (and iPhone) serves as a convenient at-hand tool for quickly clearing my email deck. I check mail on both the iPad and iPhone far more often than on the laptop. However, I allow things to build up for later processing on the laptop.

The iPad has become my de-facto tool for reading, browsing and consuming on-line content. It is perfect for Google Reader, FaceBook, YouTube and Twitter — where I spend 90% of my non-working on-line time. Ok, 90% of my on-line time — hey, I work for myself, so I can't get fired for using Facebook during working hours.

Around the house, especially the kitchen and den, the iPad has made Google an integral and helpful part of my family's routine. During a typical day I carry the iPad from room to room. The larger screen and keyboard make it the perfect tool for looking up anything. From TV schedules to recipes, wikipedia to YouTube, we have instant and useful access to information. It has become such a normal item to have around, I can hardly imagine what things were like before having it.

As for WiFi vs. WiFi+3G, I regretted not getting 3G for the first week. After that, I have not run into a situation where truly the iPhone on 3G (and now the iPhone 4) didn't easily fill the gap. This is much to the disappointment of my wife, who was to get my first iPad as soon as I upgraded. That's on hold until the next generation iPad is out. I can't imagine the joy of an iPad with a retina display!

Backup to School

2010-08-19T13:24:00.008-05:00

So you sent your child off to college at the Citadel, College-of-Charleston, Charleston Southern, etc., with a brand-new computer. You did send them with an external hard drive for backup, right? Probably not. I know because I'm the one who gets their panicked calls after it's too late.

Do yourself and your child favor and get them a backup drive right now. Here's a great Western Digital external hard drive that can backup any laptop, and it's not too expensive. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Now that you have taken care of that, make sure they use it.

For Windows users, that drive has built-in software that will automate their backup. They just need to read the directions and make sure they plug it in — often.

For Mac users, of Macs within the past three years, they just need to plug-in the drive. The computer will automatically ask them if they wish to use the drive for backup. Confirm that, and they're good to go.

I recommend plugging-in the backup drive every time they have it at their desk in their room. I also recommend leaving it plugged in overnight — all that music and video can take its time backing-up.

Lastly, I recommend that they set their system sleep settings to leave their computer on when it is plugged in to power. This is so the computer won't go to sleep while backing up. But they should set it to turn off the display after a period of disuse, say 15 minutes. Windows users will find this setting under Control Panel Items > Power Options; Mac users find this under System Preferences > Energy Saver.

And, if the worst should happen, and their computer won't boot up, or they lose data, please call me, Bill Read at (843)722-7607, ext. 2. I may not be able to fix the computer or recover the drive, but I can assess the severity of the problem, fix it if possible, or direct them to a suitable data recovery company. The last thing they should do at this point is trust their data recovery to someone who might do more harm than good.

Macintosh Computer Technical Support and Repair, Charleston, SC

2010-03-25T13:18:00.004-05:00

I write about a lot of things on this blog that are Macintosh related. In case you didn't know it, Macintosh support is what I and my company have done since 1995. What you need to know is that my company, Computer Consultants Group, Inc. offers support for all kinds of Macintosh (and Windows) issues, including help with new purchases, setup and installation, and troubleshooting. We support individuals, small business and even larger companies that have their own IT departments.

What are your other options in Charleston? Here you go:

The Apple Store — well, not much to say here.

L2 Technologies — these guys are an Apple Authorized repair center, plus they can fix iPods. They do all kinds of hardware repairs, and they do sales of Macs too. If you have an in-warranty repair, they are a great choice. They are in Mt. Pleasant, but have offices in Beaufort and Columbia too.

Tech Plus — a small local firm in West Ashley (Outback Steak House Shopping Center), these guys are GREAT for OUT of warranty repair. Don't get me wrong, they are also Apple Authorized for in-warranty repair, but they have always been willing to go out of their way for my clients who have out of warranty equipment.

There you have it. If you want someone to come by and help you out, we are your guys. If you want to take your stuff in, try these other guys. Our phone is (843)722-7607, email@ccgnet.com

Oh, Drobo, How You Disappoint Me

2010-03-25T07:56:00.011-05:00

http://www.drobo.com/

I have been hearing about Drobos for over a year now. Many pundits I trust simply rave about them. The technology sure does seem appealing: a box that can hold multiple hard drives of different capacities, and wrap them all up in a better than RAID data protection scheme.

I have two clients who had Drobo-like storage needs at about the same time. I ordered two Drobo S models for one, and a Drobo S and a Drobo Pro for the other. I loaded all of them up with the maximum number of 2Tb (terabyte) hard drives. For those who don't know, that is 5 x 2Tb = 10Tb for each Drobo S, and 8 x 2Tb = 16Tb for the Drobo Pro. Because of the way Drobos use the drives to protect your data, that means that roughly 7.5Tb of data storage is available on the Drobo S models, and 14Tb is available on the Drobo Pro.

The S/Pro pair arrived first. I immediately ran into trouble formatting the drives. I followed the Drobo instructions exactly, but upon first attempted format, the Drobo software basically told me "try again." I had three consecutive failures, and almost gave up. But, instead I rebooted the computer (can't hurt, might help, but not something that the Drobo instructions suggested), and that worked for the first drive. So, on to the second.

The second drive did the same thing. Being a bit wiser, this time I just quit the Drobo Dashboard software, and tried again. That worked. Huh. "Oh well," I thought, "picky software, but stable hardware." The rest of the install went peachy, and I gave it no more thought.

The second pair of Drobo S models arrived a few days later. This time I was prepared for the formatting failure. However, no matter what I did, I could not get either drive to format. It was infuriating. I was using the client's server this time (an Xserve G5), and repeated reboots weren't going to be cool. So, I resorted to my laptop and was able successfully to format both drives, only after a couple of failures similar to above.

Then, after I reconnected the Drobos to the server, very strange things began to happen. At first they wouldn't show up, then they would disappear. I went through so many iterations of connecting them up to this or that port — changing cables, changing the order in which they connected, changing the configuration of the other drives connected to the server — so many that I finally gave up and told the office that the server was going to be down for the rest of the day.

Then I got on the phone with Drobo support and proceeded to spend a few hours doing the same thing with them. The server had gotten to the point that it would kernel panic with one of the drives. The upshot was I was told to upgrade my server software. Crud. The upside was that it did give me an excuse to do an upgrade that I wanted, but couldn't otherwise have justified — so I was Ok with that.

After installing Mac OS X 10.5 Server, and applying all the updates, the problems with the Drobos remained. By now the office was tired of no server, so I had to stop testing on the server, and resorted to testing exclusively on my MacBook Pro. I got back on the support site with Drobo, and eventually had a call with one of the techs. I had an idea that maybe my MacBook Pro, a Core Duo (NOT a Core 2 Duo) and my server (a G5) were too old for Drobos. The tech considered that for a moment, but assured me that this was not the case. He agreed to ship out a new unit to test. Upon arrival, it failed in similar ways.

At that point I began to cast around for other solutions. First, I rebooted my MacBook in Safe Mode. To my amazement, the Drobo worked without a hitch. So, something installed on the server and my computer was at fault. The only commonality between the two was the Drobo Software itself. Nah, couldn't be, right? I mean, if that were it, surely the Drobo tech would know about it, right?

I googled "uninstall drobo software" and the top article was from a site I read every day: MacOSXHints.com. Here: Fix a Drobo issue on non-64bit-capable Intel Macs. First, I literally slapped myself in the head for not going to google right away; second I kicked myself for not thinking of this site — it is one of my go-to sites, and I know I had scanned this specific article.

I found the uninstaller in /Library/Application Support/Data Robotics/Drobo Dashboard/. I used the uninstaller, instead of mucking around with deleting specific files. Bingo — everything worked flawlessly. So, my question remains: Surely the Drobo tech should know about it, right? Apparently not.

Moral of the story: don't think that just because your support tech is sharp and seems very knowledgeable, that he knows everything. Also, be suspicious of a tech who doesn't pursue a logical course of elimination when it involves his product.

I titled this "Oh Drobo, how you disappoint me" because I am disappointed that such a potentially cool company has totally missed what seems to me to be an obvious bug. Even cursory testing on some older hardware would demonstrate this issue. I have to assume that they have had tech calls on it as well. Note the date of the article above: November 2009.

Lastly, I sure do hope Drobo acts on this knowledge and fixes the software. I hate to say it, but I doubt it — it has apparently existed since November or before. After informing the tech of what happened, I never got a response. I did close the ticket, and left a note offering to help them troubleshoot if needed. So far, crickets...

I Ordered an iPad

2010-03-25T07:45:00.002-05:00

The outcome of my predictions about the Apple Tablet, which we now know as the iPad, were disappointing. No new method of data entry — just an onscreen keyboard. The novel way of viewing video was partially addressed by the incorporation of a stand into the standard iPad case — better than nothing, and I think probably smart in that there are no extras to carry around. The big surprise for me is that there is no HDTV output. There is VGA, which covers a lot of ground, but clearly this device is not being targeted at the living room entertainment market as a primary device.

All this leads me to believe that Apple has something new up their sleeve for the AppleTV. I'm thinking a beefed up version of it. Perhaps, and even better IMO, a Mac Mini Media edition. If they can ship a Mac Mini Server, why can't they ship a media edition? It would be a killer idea.

I have been learning how to write iPhone Apps, and have developed one and am working on another. The first one will probably never be put into the store, but it was a good exercise in learning. The second will follow the same fate, but only because the app I am stealing ideas from is improving at a rapid rate.

So, I ordered an iPad in order to be able to develop for that platform — or maybe I am learning to develop in order to have an iPad. No matter, mine arrives on April 3rd, right before spring break. So much for seeing the light of day. I ordered the 32Gb WiFi only model, plus the Apple case. I'll report back later.

On the Apple Tablet

2010-01-03T09:58:00.002-05:00

I have two thoughts about the rumored Apple tablet, both predictions of a sort, but neither based on anything but my own speculation.

Thought one: a tablet will have to be designed to be held by one hand and used with the other. This means a new way of keyboarding. I don't know what that would be, but standard keyboards are out, and two-thumb typing is out.

Thought two: along the same lines, a novel way of setting the tablet up for viewing video will be necessary. It can't lay flat, and a built-in picture-frame type stand wouldn't be flexible enough.

Other than that, I hope I want one.

Bye Bye eCommerce

2009-09-08T15:39:00.003-05:00

CCG has accepted credit cards for 10 years or more. Today we no longer accept them. The death blow came in two punches.

The first punch came months ago when our merchant account provider began to charge us an annual fee for Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) compliance. We had to prove to our merchant provider that we handled our client data securely. The only problem is that we can't do that. The reason we can't do that is that we simply don't collect client credit card data in the first place.

Our system has always consisted of a login to access your invoices. If you chose to pay an invoice online, we redirected you to Authorize.net, who collected your credit card info securely, then returned a success or failure code and an email. Our system never handled any of the required data, and only received a pass/fail notice in order to update the status of the paid invoice.

Now, in order to show compliance, in essence, we would have to begin collecting all of this data. Then we would have to store it securely and demonstrate that our security is robust. On the face of it this is ridiculous. Isn't it more secure never to collect and store the data than to do so in the first place? Still, that is not an option on the checklist. The upshot is that our provider began to hit us with an annual compliance fee and a monthly non-compliance penalty. Talk about your catch-22.

We interviewed other providers and were told that, while we would get hit with a one-time fee to prove (or disprove) compliance, we would never be hit every year and certainly wouldn't be fined monthly. Great, sign us up! Things went back to normal shortly after we switched merchant account providers, and our other fees went down too.

The second punch came this week. We got a compliance letter from the new provider. They are now charging us annually so they can check our compliance. And they will fine us monthly until we can prove we comply. How can you prove a negative? How are we supposed to prove we protect data we don't collect or store?

Oh well, so long credit card companies. I do truly appreciate your efforts to protect our privacy, really I do. But until you go about it in a sane manner, I can't be your customer any longer. Sniff... oh well, I don't need to pay you to get paid any more anyway.

Gmail IMAP Password Error Web Login Required

2009-09-08T15:25:00.004-05:00

I have migrated approximately 500 accounts and 40 domains over to Google Apps for your Domain. Most of my clients use the IMAP protocol to access their email accounts. One of the issues that I have come across is an error on password that occurs after a few days, weeks or even months of use.

The user begins to get a password error on login. If the user reads the complete error, it will say something along the lines of "Error on Password; web login required." The cure is simple, log in to the gmail webmail site for your account. Once the user logs in, the problem goes away.

Most users have no idea how to do this, so we always setup their domain to have a simple webmail login using http://webmail.CLIENTDOMAIN.com, where CLIENTDOMAIN.com is their actual domain. But others have to use the standard Google login, which is http://www.google.com/a/CLIENTDOMAIN.com.

The other day I ran across this issue, but logging into the webmail didn't cure it. In fact, the problem persisted through logging-out, rebooting, logging in from another computer, and everything else we could think of to try. Finally I just reset the password on the account to a new password. That worked right away. It wasn't that we had the wrong password -- we couldn't have reset the password otherwise. Somehow Google just didn't like the old password.

Finding Missing Desktop Items

2009-07-09T12:36:00.004-05:00

For a few weeks my dad had been complaining about odd things happening on his computer. Some things were missing, downloads weren't findable, and he was getting a few odd error messages. He was also having problems opening some Quicken files, which is what prompted me to take action. He uses Mac OS X 10.4.x.

In the case of the Quicken file, when you tried to open it, it would prompt for the password, which we absolutely knew we had correct, then give an error about not having permission to view the file. It was NOT rejecting the password, just refusing to let us in. This was puzzling. Before I went off to restore from backup, I started poking around. A behavior that tipped me off to the problem was his not being able to download/read PDF files. I tried this, and after downloading a PDF, which should have gone onto the desktop, I still couldn't find it. I figured that maybe his download folder had gotten set to some other folder, but upon checking that, it was definitely pointed at the desktop.

Thinking disk corruption, I decided to take a quick look at the directory from the terminal before rebooting and running Disk Repair. I su'd to root (bad habit, I admit, but things would have gotten stranger had I not in this case) cd'd into the Desktop folder ( cd ~/Desktop ); it was a good thing that I use ls -la by habit (list files, long attributes, show hidden). I noticed that the permissions on the Desktop folder were d-wxr-xr--. Woah, how did his account, the owner, not have read access to his own Desktop folder, yet still had write access? I quickly changed permissions ( chmod 755 . ) and in an instant dozens of lost files appeared on his desktop.

Wrapping up, I rebooted from the OS X CD and ran Disk Utility, doing first a Disk Repair, then a Repair Permissions. No other trouble seemed to crop up, but it's good to do this after weirdness, just in case.