The Mac OS X App Store was released earlier this month as a part of the Mac OS X 10.6.6 update. The App Store, with over 1,000 applications (including a couple of server tools), allowing people to download and install applications on Mac OS X computers without needing to understand how to click through the screens of a standard package installer, drag applications from disk images into the /Applications folder or basically how to do practically anything except for click and provide a valid credit card number. As with the App Store that debuted with the iPhone, the App Store for Mac OS X is clearly aimed at residential customers,…
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iPad + Box.net = Win
Box.net is a cloud-based file sharing service that I used extensively in my last book. Similar to dropbox.com, Box.net allowed my publishers and I to automate our workflow with regard to the publishing process, but more importantly, I was actually able to do much of the review and exchange of files from the iPad, which was really nice given that the book was on iOS. I’ve been working with a few companies over the past few weeks on coming up with various strategies for cloud interoperability, and Box.net has come up a few times in this regard. Looks like I’m not the only one!
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Managing Active Directory from iPhone
AD HelpDesk is a tool that can be used to manage certain aspects of Active Directory user accounts. Using AD HelpDesk, you can configure an iOS based device to connect to Active Directory using an administrative account (or an account that has been delegated administrative access). Using the tool, you can then find a user. Using the user pane, you can unlock accounts, reset their passwords, force the resetting of the password on the next authentication event and optionally send a user their new password via SMS (a really cool little feature, IMO). There are a lot of useful ways to fit this tool into your service desk or network…
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The Cisco ASA 5500
I’ve been a fan of the Cisco ASA since it was introduced but always seemed to have a problem figuring out all the different models. Cisco now has a snappy little model comparison that can be found here. A little less helpful, but nice nonetheless is the comparison page for the 1000 Series Aggregation Service Routers. But then there’s the PIX and the Cisco IOS devices. It’s still a lot of different stuff to keep track of and while it’s a lengthy read this page may help with that as it goes through each one…