Since upgrading from Tiger to Leopard Server’s VPN on one end, and a Mac client on the other end, VPN continued to work, however it only showed gave access to the machine that hosts the VPN server. Since this was the same machine that also hosts the AFP file server, I did not mind too much. However: since upgrading the server from Tiger to Leopard, the entire network was NOT seen anymore through VPN, so I could not just use VPN to connect to my client machine on the other end of the line, behind the VPN server itself.

This was of course a bit annoying. It ment I could not access my printer in the office from somewhere on the road. Or in fact access my office computer for that matter.

Nothing I did worked. Connecting to VPN, ONLY the server showed up or could be pinged, but nothing on the remaining network on that side… Actually I found quite a lot of people on the Internet that had just the very same problem and could find absolutely no solution to it.

Until today. And here finally is the solution and it seems very likely that this is a work-around to a very probable BUG in Leopard Server.

Kudos go to Brian Harman who wrote the following quite inconspicuous post on the Apple Discussion Board:

I found a solution that worked for me. In my case, I have a mac pro acting as a VPN server, dhcp, nat, firewall, basically everything. One ethernet is for the external network. One is for the internal network.

The issue was I could not see or ping anything other than the vpn server.

All I did is on the server, go to system preferences and add a connection using the same ethernet that is on your local network. ie, ethernet 1 is wan, ethernet 2 is lan, I made a second ethernet 2 and called it Ehternet 2b. Then assign it an additional internal IP, ie, if ethernet 2 was 172.20.0.1, i made ethernet 2b 172.20.0.5 with a 255.255.255.0 subnet, and 172.20.0.1 router. apply, restart services. Now you can ping the whole network. No idea why, but it worked on 3 different server installs I have..

Hope that helps.

Yes Brian, that absolutely helped. Since the internal network card now has two instead of just one address, all the rest of the network shows up through VPN. Apple, you should do something. This clearly is an issue that could be solved!

I am really excited about this. It also marks a huge triumph for Fon over Apple’s highly expensive but complete rubbish Airport wifi system – biggest trash on this planet. The signal out on the street and especially behind the house still is a bit weak, but compared to the trashy Airport (1 base station and 3 Airport Express working as signal repeaters!!!) which couldn’t even cover the entire apartment – and no, I do not live in a castle – this ONE Fon router not only covers the entire apartment, it covers the entire house and parts around the house.

Enough apparently to get me my first paying hotspot user!

I now have plans to install a second (and maybe a third) Fon router, both with a Fontenna attached to them and directed to the recreational area just behind our house and the other one directed towards the street. I have even thought about using a powerline connection to the attic and put the router there and the Fontenna right on the roof! There is still an old TV antenna up there, entirely unused – we’re all on cable TV and analogue TV has also been completely substituted by DVB-T in the area. It would however make a nice supporting pole for the Fontenna – he he !

I have read that the Fontenna should have a directional cover range of up to 200 meters / 650 ft. If installed on the roof, I could even reach over to the nearby beer garden – LOL! Well, rather unlikely the signal would be strong enough over that distance.

Get a Fonera and Join the Community!

Take part in the fun, too, and make Fon the biggest public Internet access provider in the world with free Internet for everybody who contributes with an own hotspot. Plus, you will have the best WiFi router at the best price, ever. Trash your costly Apple or whatever equipment, I had learnt my lesson hard enough that money does NOT always equal quality (sorry, Apple, do something about those Airports…).

avhamazon error:http_request_failed - 403: Forbidden I have still 20 invitations from Fon to give out for a Fonera at a discount price, just drop me a line if you would like to receive an invitation, or click on the image on the left to be taken right to Amazon to get a Fonera from there. If you would like own the latest model or get a Fontenna, click here for the Fonera shop.

6 Reasons You Shouldn’t Brand Yourself as a Social Media Expert

Three tastes of Aloha now available in selected bars around Germany.

How I love it. First we’ve had Bionade that made Coca-Cola and the other big players REALLY nervous. Bionade was different then, fully natural, a completely new type of lemonade based upon technologies borrowed from beer brewing. However, and I am completely honest: I never liked it so much. Sure, I had a Bionade every now and then just not to drink the same old Coke again. I liked the taste but it never made me actually pick up some bottles in the supermarket…

So that’s different now with Aloha? Simple: I REALLY like it! Tastes fab!!!

You can find out more on aloha-lemonade.de – the stuff currently can only be found in Germany and usually not in the supermarket (yet – do let me know if you find it) but in selected bars and clubs.

I had my first Aloha here, after a very relaxing Yoga class nearby at Jivamukti, on one of the first warm summer nights of this year. It was really funny because I was intrigued by the bottle display on the bar counter. They had a small Wiggle Lilo kind of doll on a wooden board holding the three bottles. Very sweet. Of course everybody tips the wiggle doll to see her do the Hula. So I was intrigued. They people I had been with however said: don’t drink it, tastes disgusting. Huh? Ok, that was the prompt for me to give it a try nonetheless. Not the first thing in life I loved after others had warned me about!

And I was right. I had the Mango-Lime version, very fresh in taste, just RIGHT for the tepid summer night with everybody standing in front and not in the bar. Just right in sweetness, fantastic fruit flavor, ever so slightly carbonated. Hmmm!

So when @Baytor over at Twitter had done wrong ordering an Orangina the other night, my answer was absolutely clear: Orangina. Honestly. How 90ies. Should have chosen Aloha to be happy! Because, finally the world is about to end anyway, and then you won’t be caught dead drinking some uncool ol’ soda, will you?! Cheers!

However, after my initial 2 months actively developing sites not only with Drupal but also with WordPress (and also with WordPress µ / BuddyPress, I can say much more now that both have their strength in their respective area but that both can actually learn quite a bit from the other and that it would be worth while for developers from both sides to take a walk on the respectively other wilde side.

First of all, we should however bring light into the myths that surround both applications/CMS:

The infamous 5-minute install

I’d call this nonsens. Drupal can be installed just as quick. In fact, having installed countless Drupal and quite some WordPress installations now, I’d say they are pretty even up. WordPress might LOOK a bit more sleak when it is installing, but I have also made the experience that the real problems start emerging later on, not during the install with WordPress while most problems that occur on a Drupal install will be gone forever once fixed while at it installing.

In both cases, when things DO go wrong, it always boils down to the same issues: insufficient server permissions, software requirements not met by the server and, again: wrong file and folder permissions.

Now WordPress itself should definitively learn form WordPress µ when it comes to installation and update. Everything works fully automatic in WordPress µ, it doesn’t quite in WordPress. Interesting really.

Dupal needs Modules for ANYthing…

Yep. And for a good reason. While WordPress is pretty defined in what it is ment for (namely blogging), Drupal is an open framework that can be turned into anything: from mimicking what WordPress does to huge online communities and even e-commerce systems. Yes, you can even built a custom tailored Customer Relationship Management system on Drupal.

Modules, oh those modules – erm plugins – erm… you know what I mean

Now we are at the core of the BIG difference between both systems from a technological point of view. Modules / plugins. Both systems have’em. BUT: where the developers from WordPress should DEFINITIVELY learn from Drupal is in standardization. In Drupal, everything – repeat EVERYTHING – is formalized. This is GOOD! Nearly nothing goes wrong due to that. You can mix and match whatever module you like and they will even talk to each other because everything is built around one common API language.

That is good. One thing many people complain about Drupal (and which is done elegantly in WordPress) is its apparent lack of a “Media Manager”. Well. Not quite. It only is more modular then in WordPress. There are different approaches to including media in your system, and it all comes down to what you intend to do with your site. Drupal respects that, because it was ment to be a system that can easily be bent in this or that way without to much bending.

But let’s not stick to functionalities. Let’s come to one major issue in WordPress:

If you install plugins, you ALWAYS have to read the manual. There is no common way. Sure everything belongs into /wp-content/plugins – however: shall the module.php file be put there directly or with its enclosing folder?! It depends on the plugin – while WordPress will still recognize the module, I have already seen many modules break because I have had them installed inside their enclosing folder. Why not standardize as Drupal does? Everything belonging to one module / plugin comes into a folder and is added up by an ini-file that explains to the system what it all is and does.

On the other hand, Drupal – due to its greater complexity - can become pretty awkward to find your way around in - particularly in the admin section. I won’t advocate for having separate back and front ends such as WordPress (and most other CMS do). Particularly when teaching how to use a certain CMS to my customers I have found that Drupal was the one that users got intuitively and instantly because of the missing divide between back and front. They were on the site some place, saw a typo and did not want to find that same content back in some administration interface, they simply click “edit” in Drupal, commit their changes and are back where they came from.

Now this certainly is design – WordPress has opted for the back and front end way and it does this pretty neatly (compared to e.g. the overloaded dinosaur of Typo3 (why are people using this thing???). Drupal has opted for a sleeker one interface way.

Return to read on…

Now this is just going to be the first of a series of articles I am going to write about the topic. For now let’s resume:

WordPress should definitively learn from Drupal in the respect of standardization and formalization - particularly in how plugins should be bundled and made available for installation by the user.

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“The Self-Made Social Media Guru”

This breed of people think they know absolutely everything about Twitter and social media platforms and have a strong urge to tell everybody, but really everybody, including those who just don’t wanna know.

The self-made social media guru him- or herself is quite easy to spot – he or she almost always calls him- or herself “Social Media Guru” in their profile text. Yaaaawwwwwnnnn…

Why does this remind me of those lame profile text on pre-Twitter chat-room systems when particularly boring people who wanted to sound particularly witty featured a notoriously boring “Carpe Diem” in their profiles. Yeah. Sure. You enjoy your day, too. Very inventive and tells so much about the person – doesn’t it?

So why do these people make me so mad? Simple. They have NO idea whatsoever about social media and their social media behaviour is about the most UNSOCIAL you could imagen. Here is why.

These people do the following:

• They instantly follow you
• Repetitively post the same boring shit
• Links and things they post about usually are nothing new and easy to find items, just “read the fucking manual”…
• Or, they post daily from Random House Dictionary of America’s Popular Proverbs and Sayings – OMG. If I was interested in a daily affirmation I would turn to my guru or buy that stupid book (see the link – no affiliate link included)
• At worst, they proclaim that you could get super rich on Twitter. Oh really? So why is Twitter themselves still trying to figure out how to make money, smart-ass?
• At very worst, they tell you about Multi Level Marketing Programs. Hey wake up, this is not the 16th century any longer. People know that these systems don’t work and they are even illegal thanks god in some countries – like Germany

But the worst thing these people do is:

• They NEVER EVER post ANYTHING about themselves
• They NEVER answer back messages you send to them

Now. What is Twitter? Do I really have to explain? Obviously I have. Sigh. Isn’t it in the name already? Twitter? The bird that tweets? It’s like a big room full of people who – like birds tweeting in the trees – simply say what’s on their mind. Their followers, or sometimes even the entire world listens into this babbling and checks out if somebody tweets something he or she is interested in and joins this total stranger into a conversation.

It’s like a huge, global cocktail party. But it only works right if people in it are sociable human beings, with kind manners, good in small-talk or longer conversations, interested in the other while sharing about oneself.

I guess I should repeat that: interested in the other while sharing about oneself.

Twitter is not a next generation PR network.

So can anyone of you social media gurus explain to me why you are never sharing about YOURSELF and hardly ever talk back when talked to? Quite rude, don’t you think so?

I guess the “Social Media Guru” type mostly is quite in love with himself, usually just talks and talks and talks quite boring shit on parties and back garden barbecue parties while the rest stand around and listen. Just listen. Ok, can be amusing for a while but at the end, the filibuster will go home alone. Or leave with that strange blond nobody invited who is always laughing hysterically at anything you say to her.

So what should be done about them? Difficult as initially you won’t see if he or she really knows her ways in social media or if they are just the boring fakers.

Once you identify them however, you should immediately unfollow and block them, post a tweet asking others to #unfollow and #block @username

Harsh. Sure. This blog entry will also most likely get me unfollowed by some people. But fair enough, because:

If you don’t WANT to communicate, what the hell are you doing on Twitter or any other social media platform then, anyway? And don’t tell me you are making money with it – ROFL – very good joke. You should work for Twitter, darling!

The Web Design That Changed the World | Design Reach | Fast Company is a fantastic article I just read. It focuses on the MyBO website and its design as well as functionalities.

I think there is a GREAT deal people in Marketing and particularly in Social Media and Internet Marketing can learn from this site.

It is all about giving people tools that enable them to pursue your goals. Only this morning I wrote an email to this great company here who sells high quality earplug sound systems. They are doing a great job: they have products that really are worth the money and go far beyond just being another headset or in-ear music system. However, they lack one big thing:

On their web site it says for at least 2 months now that certain products would be “coming soon”. Ok. You wait. You wait even more. But at a certain stage, you think: ok, nothing’s gonna come up, I’ll be off then. Good bye. Chance missed, potential customer lost.

But why is it that the product is still not out? My first advice to them would be to set up a corporate blog. Tell people what is going on INSIDE your company. Give them a feeling that you are actually busy engineering the next cool tool and it will take just a little more tweaking until it is ready to hit high-street shops! Give people a chance to participate and be in the loop and you won’t loose them.

And then give them a tool which is there for all the owners of your cool and really great product where they can exchange their experience.

It’s like with my fabulous Sony α 700 camera system. I am still so thrilled about this DSLR camera that I constantly am on the look out for any photo community or other online tool that would allow me getting in contact with other Sony α system owners just to exchange experience.

Ultimately such a tool would not only benefit the owners of a certain product but also any potential new customer:

With the vastness of products and services out there, it is just human to search for guidance in others who already bought a certain item. Amazon has done that for years now!

So give your users and customers the tools they need to communicate about your products. There is nothing to fear. Even IF someone comes and complains (you can never make it right for anybody, that is an essential business lesson everybody has to understand) you at least are first to know and are able to react on it!