A case, bag, or cover can protect your iPad from drops, bumps, and scratches. Here's our guide to the different types, along with recommendations for each.
IP Address | IP Address Tracer | IP-Adress.com
Tutorial: How to recover from a hacking attack
How to Open an Unknown File in Mac OS X — Mac Guru Lounge
Virtualization: Use the RD Gateway | TechNet Magazine
Toolbox: New Products for IT Professionals | TechNet Magazine
Smart tips for sharing holiday photos | Macworld
How to stay connected in unconnected places | Macworld
Troubleshoot a Mac OS X Mail.app that Won’t Open
Is Exchange Unified Messaging Right for You? - Petri
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Fix Lion's erroneous autocorrections, permanently | Macworld
Macworld buying guide: Color laser printers | Macworld
Where to Find and Download Hardware Drivers for Mac OS X
Why Spotify can never be profitable: The secret demands of record labels — Tech News and Analysis
Tutorial: How to convert video for your iPhone or iPod - TechRadar
HTML 5: what is it? | News | TechRadar
HTML5 Rocks - A resource for open web HTML5 developers
xPrintServer - Lantronix - Very cool wireless printing from iOS devices to your LAN
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10 ethical rules for IT consultants and contractors | TechRepublic
10 technologies that are just plain broken
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-technologies-that-are-just-plain-broken/2896
Takeaway: Certain systems, software, and technologies simply don't work very well. In fact, some are barely usable. See if your biggest annoyances made this list.
Let's face it. There are bits and pieces of the IT world that are simply broken, and we rarely want to come out and admit it. Well, some don't. I, on the other hand, am not in the slightest bit afraid to step forward and point the finger of shame at the creators of technology and say, "What you produce is broken!" I tend to get a lot of backlash for this (and an equal amount of praise), but I do continue on. And with that said, I want to bring to you 10 pieces of technology that are just plain broken.
If ever I have met a technology that I love and hate equally, it's QuickBooks. Here's the thing: When QuickBooks works, it's great. But when QuickBooks doesn't work, it's a nightmare. There are few pieces software out there so finicky about their network connection. The slightest hiccup can cause QuickBooks to give up the ghost; and when QuickBooks gives up the ghost, bad things can happen. When bad things happen in QuickBooks, valuable data can be lost. And we all know how bad clients are about backing up data. It's a sad, scary circle of suffering that can spiral into a hefty bill for a client. The biggest problem with QuickBooks is that when it breaks, sometimes the only resolution is to reinstall. But even in the reinstalling, things go wrong. Did you do a CLEAN uninstall?
Similar to QuickBooks, when Acronis works, it's great. When it doesn't work… it's a nightmare. And unlike QuickBooks, Acronis help is not so hot. The error codes rarely offer anything insightful. When it breaks, the logs tend to be too cryptic to help. And to make matters worse, ABR11 was a major step backward. Although Acronis tried to introduce new features, as well as roll in features from Echo into ABR10, the result had me uninstalling and going back to ABR10 on many clients.
This is a hot topic among the Linux crowd. Although the idea behind Unity was good, the execution of the idea fell flat. You can compare the release of GNOME 3 and Unity. Both were drastic changes to the desktop metaphor, but only one of those had any success: GNOME 3. The ideas were similar, but GNOME 3 enjoyed more stability and more flexibility (thanks to extensions). Ultimately, I believe Ubuntu needs to scrap Unity and either migrate fully to GNOME 3, give something else a go (such as Enlightenment),or make Kubuntu or Xubuntu the default.
Flash has always been a problem. It's been a security issue, a performance issue, a platform issue, and a headache in general. This really hit home when many of my clients began upgrading to Flash X. All of a sudden, crucial elements of their jobs no longer worked. In most instances, I had to roll those clients back to Flash 9. The issues with Flash go well beyond performance and features. For many, Flash is also an ideological nightmare. Be it performance, features, bloat, platform wars, monopolist grasp on Web content, or what have you, Flash has been, and will continue to be, a broken technology.
Pulse Audio is yet another broken Linux technology. Even on latest distribution releases, Pulse Audio is still problematic. On one machine I use I can either listen to music with Banshee or play Flash (see above) on the Web. Problem is, if I do one, I have to jump through hoops to get the other to work. The complaints regarding Pluse Audio are many and widespread. Do a search for "pulse audio sucks" and see what you come up with.
In general, Web browsers are horrible. One does one thing right, one does another thing right, and one is a security nightmare. But many Web developers seem to want to design for just one of these browsers! The Web browser is a critical piece of business software — of that there can be no doubt. With so many Web-based tools, we must use browsers constantly. But when Web browsers are broken by design, it makes the simple act of working a real hassle. The problem with Web browsers today is that the developers are so busy trying to attract users with new features, they forget to fix the features that are broken. It's the same ol' song that has been playing since the 90s and it seems it will never change.
Outlook is the standard by which the majority of corporations and companies judge their email. But truth be told, it's a standard full of broken. I should actually preface this by saying, "When used with Exchange." Although there are Exchange Ninjas who can certainly set up that magical box and have it running like a champ, they are few and far between. And when Exchange is set up poorly, Outlook has serious problems. On any given day, I am met with client after client whose Outlook can't connect to their Exchange server (set up by their internal IT).
I don't care what mobile platform you are using, predictive typing is horrible and tends to cause mistakes than it prevents. There is even a site dedicated to funny predictive typing errors. Until this smart phone feature is fixed, I'll keep it disabled. Tanks yule verily mulch.
Some business-class antivirus tools actually work (Symantec Endpoint Protection being one). Outside of that, it's pretty much a crap shoot. AVG? No thanks. McAfee? Are you kidding me? It seems no matter which antivirus solution you have on a machine, something is going to get through. Most consumer-grade antivirus does more harm than good. One of the few exceptions I have found to that rule is Microsoft Security Essentials. Other than that, your best bet is to either use OS X or Linux or unplug that PC from a network.
Multi-touch screen technology is fairly new. It works so-so on tablets, but when you try to move that technology to the desktop, it doesn't work. Why? Because of the human body. We are accustomed to (and have the technology for) standard monitors, which use a mouse and keyboard. Although this is not ideal for the human wrist, shoulders, and back, it's far better than reaching out to a monitor to use multi-touch. What we need is a desk with a built-in multi-touch display on a horizontal surface. This position would be far more natural and ergonomic than any other and would really help make multi-touch feasible and desirable. But for now, multi-touch on the desktop is nothing more than a gimmick.
None of the above broken technologies is going to bring the world to a halt (at least we hope). But each one can cause headaches, derail productivity, and stop work altogether. Are there other current technologies you think are broken and in need of serious (or even just moderate) repair? If so, share your thoughts.
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Jack Wallen is an award-winning writer for TechRepublic and Linux.com. As an avid promoter/user of the Linux OS, Jack tries to convert as many users to open source as possible. His current favorite flavor of Linux is Bodhi Linux (a melding of Ubuntu and Enlightenment).
When Jack isn't writing about Linux he is hard at work on his other writing career — writing about zombies, various killers, super heroes, and just about everything else he can manipulate between the folds of reality. You can find Jack's books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.
Outnumbered in his house one male to two females and three humans to six felines, Jack maintains his sanity by riding his mountain bike and working on his next books. For more news about Jack Wallen, visit his website Get Jack'd.
(via Instapaper)
Just came across 'Fluid' application. This is one really cool little application for the Mac. With it you can turn just about any web based application or page into an application. I tried it with Instapaper (I'm a huge advocate of that as well). Fluid is crazy simple to use, I can't recommend it highly enough.
I really don't like how the Mac Lion Terminal app tries to pickup where you left off before. I resolved that by making this minor change on my profile (from the terminal, of course):
defaults write com.apple.terminal NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows-bool false
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VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) | Data Link Layer | Asked and Answered
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Remove User Account From Windows 7 Logon Screen
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How to build your own app for free | Mobile - CNET News
Research projects - Crysys.Hu - Hungarian CrySyS Duqu Detector Toolkit
Is the Gutmann method the best method? | Darik's Boot And Nuke
Five SEO tools to help boost Web site traffic | TechRepublic
10 basic search engine optimization tips | TechRepublic
Six tips for mastering Siri | Macworld
How to create a strong password (and remember it)
NetSpot 1.1.284 Networking Utility Review | Macworld - I may have mentioned this one before, but it's worth mentioning again!
Determine which base station you're connected to on a bridged network | Macworld
10 must-have tools for cloud power users - Computerworld
One of the most important services that run on an organization's network is the DHCP server. Without a correctly configured DHCP server to supply the address and server information to be used on each of the client devices, users are left without a usable network computer. If this happens the administrator only has a few options: get the server back up and running correctly or statically configure each of the client devices; the latter not being preferred. This article takes a look at a number of the common DHCP problems and their symptoms from the perspective of the network administrator and the DHCP server (being run on a Cisco device).
Awards for Network Performance Monitor (NPM):
There are a couple common configuration problems that can make the life of a network administrator quite challenging, these include:
There are a couple of reasons that a server (In this case the Cisco device) will not give out addresses. The most obvious of these is that the server is not configured. On a Cisco DHCP device, this can be verified by viewing the current DHCP pool configuration using the show ip dhcp pool command; this is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 - No DHCP Pool Configured
The second reason is that the DHCP pool configured does not match any of the interfaces that are currently configured on the Cisco device. An example of this is shown in Figure 2. In this example, R1 only has a single interface (f0/0) that is configured with an IP address of 10.10.10.1/24 and a single DHCP pool that is configured to give out the addresses from the 20.20.20.0/24 network.
Figure 2 - No Matching Interface
A common mistake that happens when configuring a Cisco device as a DHCP server is the failure to reserve addresses that are already in use (including the device itself). By default, when configuring a DHCP pool the whole range of addresses are eligible for lease. Figure 3 shows an example of this misconfiguration. In this example, the address 10.10.10.2/24 has already been statically configured on a local server.
Figure 3 - DHCP Excluded Address Misconfiguration
Keep in mind, however, that by default the Cisco DHCP server will attempt to ping the next IP address in the pool to ensure the IP address is not currently being used. The example shown in Figure 3 is only possible if the local server was not on when the address was requested or did not respond to the ping request from the DHCP Server.
Another common mistake happens when a DHCP server has been configured but clients are unable to reach networks outside the local subnet. When setting up a configuration for client devices that will need to reach clients external to the local subnets (almost all modern clients), a default gateway must be set up inside the DHCP configuration. On a Cisco device, the configuration of the default gateway inside a DHCP pool is done with the default-router command. The example in Figure 4 shows a DHCP pool configuration with a default gateway.
Figure 4 - IP DHCP Server Default Gateway Configuration
Typically, incorrect configuration of either the default gateway or the inability to use the Internet using Domain Names are grouped into the same problem category. For users to be able to use the Internet using domain names, a Domain Name Server (DNS) server (or servers) must be configured on their local machines. It is possible to configure these separately from the IP addressing, but in most typical configurations the DNS server (or servers) is configured as part of the DHCP pool. On a Cisco device, the configuration of a DNS server (or servers) is done with the dns-server command. The example in Figure 5 shows a DHCP pool configuration with DNS servers configured.
Figure 5 – IP DHCP Server DNS Configuration
An often overlooked function of a DHCP server is that is can also give out a domain name suffix. If the organizational network relies on both DHCP and DNS, users can become accustom to using single name domain names for local servers; for example marketing (for marketing.sample.com). Without a correctly configured domain name suffix, the users would need to type out the complete domain name (including sample.com); depending on the temperament of the users inside the organization this can become a problem. On a Cisco device, the configuration of a domain name suffix is done with the domain-name command. The example in Figure 6 shows a configuration for a domain name suffix.
Figure 6 - IP DHCP Server Domain Name Suffix Configuration
There are certainly a number of advantages of using DHCP inside an organization; for the most part once DHCP is up and running within an organization it is rock solid and performs very well. However, if the configuration is not quite correct many different DHCP problems can occur as a result. Proper configuration is a must to avoid these DHCP problems, but the real focus of this article is for those situations when the configuration has already been completed and issues are being troubleshooted. Hopefully, the information contained with this article will be able to be practically used to help fix these common misconfigurations.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/secret-software-logging-video/
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