• Business

    The Return of Dallas: 25 Business Tips Learned From The Ewings

    JR Ewing (aka Larry Hagman) passed away this week. He was one of the stars of Dallas and the famed character from the “who shot JR” line. He also had a ton of great quotes over the years, such as “Say, why don’t you have that junior plastic surgeon you married design you a new face: one without a mouth!” and “”Revenge is the single most satisfying feeling in the world!” He also busted out with “A conscience is like a boat or a car. If you feel you need one, rent it.” and one that every NFL running back seems to bust out with in the last year of their contract “Contracts…

  • personal

    A Little Politics On Thanksgiving

    Growing up, there were two things to do on Thanksgiving: watch football and talk about politics. Football-wise, the zombie apocalypse is coming. So I don’t have a lot more to say about that today. Politics on the other hand, I do have a lot to say about. But I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to let him do it. Have fun, eat turkey and don’t punch anyone just ’cause they don’t agree with your politics. Unless they disagree AND have no clue what they’re talking about (doesn’t matter which party). Then you can punch them. But not too hard, ’cause they might work out and punch you back next…

  • iPhone

    SimpleMDM Now With Apps

    SimpleMDM has updated their Mobile Device Management solution (my original writeup is here) to now include the ability to manage apps. The apps functionality really comes in two flavors. The first is the ability to load up an app. This is handled handed by clicking on Settings in the right hand navigation bar and then at the Settings pop-over, clicking on Apps. Here, you can load up an internal, enterprise app or an App Store app. Once you’ve loaded an app you can deploy it to devices by clicking on a group and then using the contextual menu to “Assign Apps.” Simple, as the name implies. The second aspect of…

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

    Viewing Mac App Store Purchases From The Command Line

    As you may have noticed, we’ve been working on building some links between the App Store and patch management tools such as Casper, FileWave and Munki. We’ve been looking at policy-based management of apps as well. In this semi-new world of signing and stores and the such, there’s actually a good bit you can ascertain about an app both inside the app as well as inside metadata OS X keeps about the app. I’ve discussed signing (apps and packages) in the past, but let’s look at using some commands to help us out with some tasks. The first command is to determine some information about apps that are on the…

  • Football

    How Lane Kiffin Starts The Zombie Apocalypse

    As many of my readers will note, I am a big fan of the University of Georgia football team. Sure, we have really crappy graphic design, but it’s a great school and if it weren’t for Athens you wouldn’t have rock lobsters, widespread panics or any REM in your sleep. Athens is a great music town, but it’s an even better football town. Especially when there is buzz of a potential national title berth. I’m excited too, but I hate rooting against teams. I prefer to root for a team and just let the rest be what it is. It just feels guilty to be stoked over the poor kids…

  • personal,  public speaking,  Social Networking

    One Last MinneDemo For The Year In Minneapolis

    The vibrant technology community here in Minneapolis has at least one more event left in the waning days of 2012. And to wrap the year, 7 minute demos with no presentations at MinneDemo, a bar camp-esque event focused around demoing new tech. I love the cookouts these guys have, but it’ll probably be too cold and snowing to have dozens of people milling around a keg, so let’s go indoors and watch people demo tech that hopefully works. A little of what they have in store for us (to quote their site): As always, MinneDemo features home-grown tech without the BS. The rules are simple: 7 minutes, real working technology,…

  • certifications,  iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  public speaking

    Penn State MacAdmins Back for 2013

    Last year, I had a great time at the Penn State MacAdmins conference. There were tons of smart people to mingle with and everyone had plenty to discuss when it came to managing the Mac. There were a lot of people from education but also plenty from companies. The talks were well run and the conference location, the Penn Stater, was awesome. I love how it’s like a big winding maze. Having gone to school in a town like State College (Athens, GA), I’ve always had a warm spot for cute college towns. And State College is clearly a special place. I’d recommend a trip there to anyone that loves…

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

    Disable the Go To Folder Menu Item

    For many environments, securing OS X is basically trying to make the computer act more like an iOS device. Some of the easier tasks involve disabling access to certain apps, sandboxing and controlling access to certain features. One of the steps en route to building an iOS-esque environment in OS X is to disable that Go to Folder… option. To do so, set the ProhibitGoToFolder key as true in com.apple.finder: defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitGoToFolder -bool true Then reboot, or kill the Finder: killall Finder To undo, set the ProhibitGoToFolder as false: defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitGoToFolder -bool false