We’ve all got a box sitting around somewhere, full of cables and devices that used to blink away at us until we snuffed the life out of it all by replacing it. Some of us have 10 of those, full of tangled cables that maybe went to that one camera that we lost in 2009. Many of us remember the exact price we paid for each device in those boxes, such as that $699.99 firewall. It can be challenging to replace that device with one that costs 10% of that price, even though it’s more than ample to meet our needs. And we have a hard time imagining that after…
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Profile Payload Best Practices
Apple has defined some best practices to be taken when using Profiles. Obviously these don’t cover every situation, but they cover all but edge cases and lay out a pretty good description of why you should do the things we’ve mostly figured out to do by trial and error thus far. Great job to the OS X Server documentation team! https://help.apple.com/profilemanager/mac/5.1.5/#/apdE3493-C50A-4E9E-A1B6-CBCBC8C73507
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Control A Wink From Alexa
One of my favorite options in the latest round of home automationry is the ability to voice control all the things. The Wink has a pretty substantial list of supported home automation devices. The Alexa can control the Wink. Therefore, the Alexa can do all the things, even though integrations with Alexa were not built for most of those devices by Amazon. The beauty here lies in the ubiquity of APIs these days. Alexa has a recipe-style option called a Skill (further humanizing her). Basically, you add the Wink skill, then scan for devices that are connected through the Wink, then viola, tell Alexa to do something to them. To get…
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10 Things To Consider When Switching Between MDM Solutions on The JAMF Software Blog
I’ve worked with a lot of organizations switching between Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions in my career. And I’ve seen the migration projects go both really, really well, and really, really poorly. In most cases, the migration is somewhat painful no matter what you do. But in this (my first) article on the JAMF blog, I try and organize my thoughts around a few things to look out for when migrating between MDMs/MAMs, and some context/experience around those. https://www.jamfsoftware.com/blog/10-things-to-consider-when-switching-between-mobile-device-management-solutions/
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MacAdmins Podcast Episode 7
The seventh episode of the MacAdmins podcast is now available! This is my first time sitting out an episode, which might explain why it’s the best episode so far!
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Article on Accounting Concepts For Small Business On The Bushel Blog
Been awhile since I contributed any content to the wonderful Bushel team, so provided an article on accounting concepts that every small business owner should know. A sample: To be a successful small business owner, you don’t need to be an accounting expert; you can outsource that. But you do need a solid grasp of basic accounting concepts. As a small business owner, you need more than an intuitive feel for the performance of your business. Understanding a few basic Accounting 101 concepts goes a long way towards keeping the goals for your company in alignment with your performance. Here are 5 accounting concepts to get you started: Read More…
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Episode 6 of the MacAdmins Podcast Available
I’m a bit late in posting this, but better late than never! In this episode, we interview the venerable Arek Dreyer about his upcoming book, and learn a little of his origin story! More on that in issues to come I’m sure!
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Article on Hiring IT for Small Businesses
Wrote an article awhile back that got edited by and is now posted at http://www.smallbizdaily.com/hiring-the-best-it-support-for-your-smb-to-make-the-most-of-your-investment/. If it’s your kinda’ thing, hope you enjoy!
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Episode 5 of the MacAdmins Podcast
Episode 5: SSO & Puppies, Two Tales of Adoption with Tom Bridge, Pepijn Bruienne, Marcus Ransom, and I is now available at http://podcast.macadmins.org or using the embed below. Hope you enjoy! And a special thanks to Andrew Seago, Miles Leacy, and Mikey Paul for joining us!
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MacDeployment Early Bird Signups Ending on Monday!
Hey Devops peeps! Got this, so just quoting and posting: Just a reminder that the Early Bird rate for the MacDeployment Conference ends on Monday (May 16) at 23:59 MT. This applies both to the Conference day (June 16, CAD $75) as well as the Conference + Workshop days package (June 16 + 17, CAD $275). While the conference is meant to serve (and further build) the Mac Admins community in Alberta (Canada), it is open to all. Speakers include Tom Bridge, Luis Giraldo, Tim Sutton, and Teri Grossheim. For further information, visit macdeployment.ca. You should go.