• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    WWDC Tickets On Sale

    Apple has put tickets on sale for the WorldWide Developer Conference, from June 11th to June 15th in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Last year, the conference sold out really quickly, so might want to jump on buying tickets if you want to go. One thing can be pretty easily assumed, there will be plenty of talk about Mountain Lion (and maybe a new beta/DP as well).

  • Home Automation

    Monster Delivers Z-Wave Win

    Who knew, Monster is getting in on the whole Z-wave thing. I can’t even find “Z-wave”  on their official website. But their Z-wave dimmers are available at a few different websites, including Smarthome: http://www.smarthome.com/8500SD/Monster-Wall-Dimmer-Switch-Z-Wave-Lighting-Control/p.aspx. I ordered one of these and my system automatically saw it (as a Leviton btw) and I was controlling yet another light in my basement within about 5 minutes. Total Z-wave win. While I don’t see the dimmers, what I do see on Monster’s website is a new Z-wave remote in their Revolution 200: http://www.monsterproducts.com/productdisplay.asp?pin=3369&id=9139.  It’s a little fancy for me (I prefer things that are beige and covered in DIP switches), but it’s cool to see…

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Apple Configurator 1.0.1 Released

    Apple has released version 1.0.1 of the Apple Configurator tool. To install the first update to Apple’s new tool, go to the App Store on a computer that has Apple Configurator installed, click on Updates and then click on the Update button for Apple Configurator. The update has a number of new features and fixes. The first is that Enterprise Apps can be installed. Previously, when you went to install internally developed applications, you would get an error that the installation could not proceed. Another great fix is that commas are now escaped when importing application codes from the VPP spreadsheets (a comma in a CSV/comma separated value would kill…

  • WordPress

    WordPress Lightbox Made Easy

    I wasn’t very happy with how images were handled on krypted.com. Which is why I added a new plugin, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-jquery-lightbox to provide more of a lightbox feel when you click on my images. Many of my images are pretty large, so I make them a little smaller on the site so they fit well on the page. Now, when you click on images on the site, it greys the rest of the page and zooms in on the image. I’ve tinkered with a lot of lightbox plugins, but this one makes me happy. You just install and activate and viola, you’re done. It doesn’t get a lot easier than this and…

  • Articles and Books,  Business

    Amazon Now Has Book Trade Ins

    When I was in college, at the end of each semester we’d go to the book store (you know, that place that fleeced us with $100 used books) and we’d sell back those books for about one tenth to one quarter what we bought them from. We’d then use that money to help fund one of our books for the next semester (or beer). Well, Amazon is doing something similar now. Although it has to do more with when new editions of the book are released. Each edition of a book allows you to trade the book in for new editions. Take Practical C++ Programming, from O’Reilly. Apparently I bought…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Moving Managed Preferences to Profiles

    If you’ve been following my postings for the past few weeks you may have noticed that I’m putting the pieces together for a strategy to transition existing managed preferences in environments to profiles, most notably those managed using Lion Server’s Profile Manager as more than just a mobile device management tool, but also as a computer management tool. To put the articles into a bit more order, let’s look at the order that you’d likely use them to actually do an integration: If needed, upgrade any existing Open Directory deployments to Lion: https://krypted.com//mac-os-x/upgrading-open-directory-from-snow-leopard-server-to-lion-server Start off with getting Profile Manager installed (Part 1): https://krypted.com//iphone/setting-up-profile-manager-in-lion-server Then integrate Profile Manager with your internal directory…

  • public speaking

    MacTech InDepth In New York

    I have been added as a speaker at MacTech InDepth in New York. If you haven’t signed up yet, and you work with Mac OS X Server then you should really check out the sessions that have been planned: The Elephant in the Room: The New Lion OS X is out, now what? There are a lot of differences to contend with between Lion and Snow Leopard. Now with the new Mountain Lion update, what changes can we expect to see? We discuss the differences in advanced services, GUI simplicity, and Apache management GUI’s. We help you understand the updates in the new OS and make the transition easier. We…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Automating Profile Manager Enrollment Through DeployStudio

    When planning to migrate from managed preferences to profiles, one of the important aspects to consider is automated enrollment. One of the more important aspects of automating a traditional managed preferences environment is to automate the binding to directory services. You do not bind to Profile Manager; however, you do enroll devices. Much like binding computers to Lion Server’s Open Directory (by default), certificates and host names are important aspects of the enrollment process. Much as with local managed preferences, management via profiles can be done through the command line and without any involvement from a centralized source. I had written an article awhile back on using profiles from the…

  • iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Integrating Mac OS X Lion Server's Profile Manager With Active Directory

    Over the years, the terms Magic, Golden, Triangle, Augments, Directory, Domains and Active have given the administrators of Mac OS X environments fits. So when you think about using Active Directory to manage iOS devices through the Profile Manager service, built into Lion Server, you may think that it’s a complicated thing to piece together. You may remember those days when you had to manually craft service principals because xgrid wouldn’t play nice with Acive Directory, or you might think of twisting augmented records to support CalDAV. But you’re gonna’ have to forget all that, ’cause getting Profile Manager to talk to Active Directory is one of the easiest things…