Well, I’m one of the nerds who had iTunes open and kept clicking the Check for Update. FINALLY, at 10:06 am PDT, it said that 3.0 was available.
Of course I chose download and update, and of course after 45 minutes of updating the frickin’ phone was stuck on the update bar. So, I unplugged the phone (impatient!) and iTunes complained about abject failure. Anyway, long story short I did a restore and update and now it’s working fine.
1 quirk - the E doesn’t change to a Wifi icon when I am connected to WiFi (I have an original iPhone (not 3G).
Anyway, some new features, the biggest of which is system wide cut-and-paste.
I’ve created a little page that contains some awesome IT services that just happen to be free for non-profits. They are also great for small businesses – cheap, powerful, reliable.
Google today announced a handy little sync app that allows you to connect Outlook to your Google Apps account and have them sync seamlessly in the background. It offers 95% of the functionality of Exchange without all of the cost and complexity AND you get to keep using Outlook (admit it, you’re addicted).
This little program removed one huge barrier that Google Apps has faced with businesses – that people couldn’t stand to give up Outlook. That’s no longer a deal-breaker.
Read this today about Google fighting agains the perception that it’s a power-waster. They’ve come up with how many searches compare to some typical food items. Problem is, the carbon footprint or power-use for any given item isn’t that simple of a calculation – in fact it’s dizzyingly complex.
And for those scholarly types we have the Postmodernism Generator – a meaningless essay that reads like those French philosophers from the 20th century:
There is an article in the Apple Insider this morning about new features in the forthcoming Snow Leopard Server that allow secure remote access to messaging etc. from the iPhone. They go on to do a cost comparison to show that for 100 users, you can buy Apple’s server product and spend less than $4000, and buy Windows and spend almost $30,000. Well, If Leopard server was any indication, you should also factor in 12 months of instability, critical missing features, huge bugs, users and management screaming at you, and an Apple Enterprise department that ignores its users cries for help.
I’ve deployed a number of Apple Servers, and for Leopard (10.5) it took them until 10.5.5 to work out some bugs that would kill file sharing and require a reboot EVERY DAY. The Apple discussion forums were filled with posts about this – Apple never even posted a “We are working on this”. To this day, iCal server just plain sucks. It’s missing critical features that allow people to share events outside the organization, it requires end users to periodically remove their account from iCal and re-add it in order to start functioning again, and you can’t even edit calendar events on your iPhone. This is ridiculuous.
Anyway, I agree that a M$ solution can be expensive and isn’t for everyone. But let’s face it, Exchange is a mature, fully supported system that works seamlessly with the iPhone. I have never had a single problem with this combination with any of my clients. It works like its supposed to. The real competition is between Exchange and Google Apps as far as I’m concerned. Apple is not even a player in this space, and until they prove that they care about their enterprise users, I won’t deploy even one more Apple server.
This was sent to my by a good friend from the Southeast United States. For those of you not from there, it clears up a number of misconceptions about that region’s most famous culinary export…
Ok, not really weaponized, but the DOD has them in widespread deployment around the world. Is it so soldiers can rock out at a moment’s notice? NO! These babies are loaded with applications that allow soldiers to communicate in ways that were impossible 5 years ago, and required 6 different custom built-military grade (read: exhorbitantly priced) electronic devices only 2 years ago.
Anyway, I wonder if Apple considers itself a defense contractor? Read on:
Well, this one’s for all the Mac folks out there who think that they are immune to the kind of virus infections that routinely plague the PC world.
It turns out that some pirated versions of Mac software available for download on the internet contained a trojan that joins your happy little mac to a global botnet dedicated to sending spam and attacking web servers.
Don’t make too much of it just yet – it’s limited to shady folks doing shady things. It won’t be long, however, until you will be installing antivirus software on your Mac. What a bummer.
Having spent many years doing IT for non-profits (and small businesses) I have my finger on the pulse of cheap IT - what's the most powerful and cost-effective use of technology for cash-strapped organizations? That is the question I am constantly trying to answer.
I created this site as a place to post the various geeky tidbits and strange happenings that I come across in my daily traversing of the web, with a focus on (b)leeding-edge IT for non-profits and small businesses.
My hope is that you, the reader, will find some humor, entertainment, usefulness or irritation at what you find here. If so, you are my intended audience.
