• Articles and Books,  personal

    Distributed Computing for the Good of Man

    July 3, 2007

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Most screen savers just waste power. Might as well just put your computer to sleep. But if you want to use a screen saver and you want to do something good for humanity then check out one of these: fightaidsathome.scripps.edu – Join more than 300,000 other computing nodes and dedicate your computing power to finding new AIDS treatments climateprediction.net – Improve climate prediction models with the University of Oxford mersenne.org – Help George Woltman be the first to find a 10 million-digit prime einstein.phys.uwm.edu – Test Einstein’s theory of gravitational waves

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  • Articles and Books,  Business,  Consulting,  Kerio,  Mac OS X,  Microsoft Exchange Server

    318 Kerio Article

    June 16, 2007

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Article about 318 on Apple.com, focusing on a project we did integrating Kerio to replace Microsoft Exchange, giving our client the ability to centralize all of their server assets into an Open Directory environment while still using MAPI to provide groupware components to their user base, have handheld devices that sync with their Calendar/Mail/Contacts and of course, use the standard Exchange features of mail, etc. Good stuff: http://consultants.apple.com/at_a_glance/318inc/

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  • Articles and Books,  Business,  Consulting

    IT Surveys: Quantification vs. Qualification

    March 9, 2007

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Information Technology (IT) is, by definition, a technical business. Professionals in the industry often use technology assets and their status as a basis for referencing the performance of an IT Department. Management and end-users judge the IT Department differently. This judgment is typically less quantifiable because it is based primarily on the perception of individuals not involved directly with IT. IT Departments are often doing better than their users think from a technical point of view. Determining the success level of an IT organization depends on identifying the positive and negative factors used to build users’ perceptions about an IT Department. A survey can…

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  • Articles and Books,  Business,  Consulting,  Kerio,  Mac Security,  Microsoft Exchange Server

    Email Privacy

    July 2, 2006

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Ever get an email from yourself that you didn’t send? Ever get spam from someone that you can’t reply to? Using the settings of an email program, it is possible to pretend to be anyone that you would like. If you want to send email from bill.gates@microsoft.com then that is entirely possible. Finding the address of who actually sent email is easy, but ensuring the identity of the sender is not part of standard email. This is where the protocols for PGP, Pretty Good Privacy, and GPG, or GNU Privacy Guard, come into play. GPG and PGP are Open Source suites of applications allowing…

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  • Articles and Books,  Mac OS X Server

    Review of my Mac OS X Server Little Black Book

    June 19, 2006

    Title: Mac Tiger Server Little Black Book, Author: Charles Edge Publisher: Paraglyph Press, distributed by O’Reilly Published: 2006 Price: $34.99 URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1933097140/ Roger Smith, SVMUG, June 18, 2006. Audience: Users and system administrators trying to get the most out of Mac networking with Tiger Server. Content: The book is divided into 18 chapters, each focused on some aspect of server functionality. My opinion: Very much task-oriented, this would get a lot of use next to the console of a Tiger server. It is setting next to my server and will stay there. There is an embarrassment of riches these days when it comes to OS X Server books. Until 10.2…

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