This Week's Reading - 20130812

Enable Secure LDAP on Server 2008/2012 DCs: Configuration - Petri

Turn a photo mistake into a great shot | TechHive

How to fill an uneditable PDF form in OS X | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

Setting up a networked printer | News | TechRadar

10 best practices for SMB Web sites - TechRepublic

Enable Disk Quotas in Windows Server 2012 - Petri

How to pipe command output to the clipboard in OS X | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

10 virtualization tips every administrator should consider - TechRepublic

Four excellent Dropbox alternatives for your small-business storage needs | PCWorld

How non-Dropbox users can send files to your Dropbox account | PCWorld

Plex Media Server Part 1 | Technology - Todd Olthoff Blog

Active Directory Integration with Office 365: Directory Sync - Petri

7 Reasons Office 365 Will Succeed - Petri

Sharing Calendars

We use MS Exchange at my office for mail.  It's not that we believe it to be the greatest necesarially however everyone is familiar with the features and functions and we it doesn't really cost us that much to run.

One of the perennial things about scheduling appointments, particularly with people outside our organization, is that it's challenging to coordinate unless you continue the volley of e-mails back and forth.

What I'm going to make one of my minor goals in the next few months is an elegant means of scheduling appointments.

Office 2007 - 2010 on Windows actually does a pretty decent job of publishing your calendar to Office Live.  I'm going to play with that a bit more.  I also wouldn't mind if I could publish my calendar to Google Apps (sync it really) and share it from there.  We'll see, the publishing part really isn't going to be that difficult, I think getting others to use my calendar or subscribe to it will be much more challenging.

This Week's Reading

Just now reading up on gist.com via Entrepreneur.

Trying to locate a couple of items based on their photos with TinEye.  Not great results yet but interesting idea...

If you want to test drive iOS apps directly from a browser, look at Pieceable.

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Spiceworks sent out a message with some tips last week.

CLI to Remotely Uninstall Software on Windows

Remote Windows Management Poll

Remotely Cleaning a Computer Securely

Activate vPro on recent Intel computers

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This one is pretty funny, TechRepublic's 10 Linux applications that should be easier to use.  Granted it's definitely techie/server admin, but we had a good laugh being able to relate to more than a couple of them.

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I'm working on an ERP implementation with a respectable vendor.  We're supposed to be collaborating on documents using Sharepoint/Groove.  Regrettably SP & Groove don't play nicely with Mac, Linux, Firefox, mobile OS, etc. and it's a cluster.  I really want SP to work the way it seems like it should but it doesn't.  On top of that, to get the Sharepoint Workspace, you have to run Office 2010 Pro Plus (or better).  A lot of work and expense to use something that's so restricted and doesn't do mobile well.  Interesting timing on this article in the *World magazines.  Also looking at SouthLabs SharePlus mobile client.

So to make this work, as intended, I have to use Microsoft's 'SharePoint Workspace' application (licensed).  Here's what I get after clicking through the setup which was easy enough, though there's not really any validation that it's working correctly....  So now I get to fire up my virtual machine to access this, and then this separate application, and then try to figure out what's going on.  Brilliant.  I'm not thinking that I'll be deploying this inside my organization anytime soon.

Might have to see if we can step back and use Dropbox...

 

 

Blog Update

While I'd love to claim that I was full of original ideas and had the time to document them in my blog, the reality is that I'm a media junkie and consume tons of news.  Seeing as how the focus of my blog is technology developments, tips, and fixes and most of this is sourced from other sites, I'm adjusting the way that I share the information.  Admittedly it is a big time saver for me too.....

With that said, there's now a link in the right-hand column of my blog page indicating the various pages and articles of interest to me that I'm sharing (see screen shot below).  If you follow you'll see frequent updates as there are usually a few articles each day I like to share.

I'll still re-post articles of particular interest or use because I still often refer to those myself, and a few people have mentioned that it's been useful.

By the way, if you'd like to subscribe to my shared items as an Atom/XML feed, please visit this page.

Thanks,

Aron

 

Edit This Page: Use a Wiki in the Workplace

Not a very in-depth article but some good basic guidelines and starting points...

Edit This Page: Use a Wiki in the Workplace: "These simple web-based collaboration tools are great for keeping team members organized and informed. Follow our primer to learn to make a wiki work for you."

(Via Wired: Top Stories.)

Brand 'Me', Part II

So in Part I there was an example of bad branding and I mentioned that I'm somewhat apprehensive about marketing in general. So in this segment, what's MY brand?

I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now and it really just came to me a little while ago. My thing is that I'm really good at figuring out how things go together, what the various parts are, and how to improve the bits and provide service to the customer. In my two previous positions I was hired into one job and within a few months, promoted into a much higher level position. I attribute it to my ability to quickly get the lay of the land and being able to make improvements in bite-sized chunks and after enough chunks, you can have a pretty big meal. That's what I do.

When I left my previous position at the University I got some really flattering farewell messages from a lot of people but also several from people with parallel responsibilities operating outside my department and division. I hadn't actively thought about it but I was able to facilitate service because I knew what the various parts were and was able to involve the right teams to solve problems. I think this comes back to my personal adage: It's not what you know but it's about being able to find what you need to know. When a couple of research departments were thinking about building a collaborative project that required technology support they didn't go to the individual responsible for the infrastructure, they came to me. Naturally, I involved the infrastructure team and even though the departments knew who was responsible for that portion of the University's technology, they wanted me involved. I took this as a huge compliment and after a while with meeting with the responsible parties and the researches together I was able to hand it off but I really like this reputation. This is part of my brand.

The other thing that I heard from people was that I was pleasant to work with. This bugs me; not that people find me nice to deal with, but that it seems to be so uncommon with technology people. There is a certain arrogance and lack of communications competency that seems so prevalent within technology that it's really quite embarrassing to me. More than once I heard about this from people after they met with some of our most talented individuals. It makes me shudder and as a manager we can try to coach people on these things but the reality is that they need to make a decision to be civil and professional. We as managers CAN NOT continue to give these people high marks based on their technical skills alone. Re-write the job description if you need to but let's not give people a reason to want to outsource their technology needs!

Brand 'Me', Part I

There has been a lot of discussion on branding oneself on the web lately. CIO magazine has discussed it and there are books about how to do it. There is a part of me that has long been suspect of marketing--someone else's or my own. On a conscious, logical level I know that there is value and importance to it--many of my favorite products have brilliant marketing but then again, most of them are not as overt as the marketing that makes me shudder.

Most modern technology managers are also aware that their IT departments could use some good PR. IT people tend to be a little bit reclusive, often don't follow-up as well as they could, and treat projects as a problem that needs to be fixed. As a result, many IT departments and individuals are not seen as being part of the rest of the organization and may not be included on as many business and organization high-level projects as they could be. Like most things in life, a certain level of balance is necessary to be successful. It's not realistic to expect your strongest programmer to be an extrovert and actively meeting with the departments to find new opportunities but if they stay holed up with the lights out and complain about the operation then they're never going to make it very far.

Not long ago my department included some very diverse, creative, and intelligent IT personnel. One in particular was capable of a lot more than he was immediately tasked with but he seldom looked to work outside his immediate group though he would throw barbs at other areas of the technology staff and the organization as a whole. It's completely normal for people to whine about their employer and others but that's all it seemed like he ever did. I encouraged his manager to work with him on the notion that anyone can criticize, the successful people are those who can provide solutions. In his case he would provide solutions for other people's problems but not to them, to their supervisors instead. As a result, it was interpreted as him complaining about others instead of actually providing solutions. It's a reputation that was earned quickly and will take a long time to improve, even if he chose to actively work on it. I guess that's an example of branding, though not well.