Category: Apple

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Protecting Your Online Accounts

In the past months, every online web service appears to be a target for hacking or just plain old fashion social engineering.  LinkedIn passwords were hacked in June.  Yahoo leaked online account information in July.  Dropbox dropped the ball (again) in August.  An Amazon & iCloud social hack devastated an online blogger after a hacker took control, reset his iPhone, wiped his iPad, formatted his MacBook, and locked him out of his Gmail and Twitter accounts!
What we have learned is three fold:

  1. Never use the same password twice!
  2. Use “disposable” Credit Card numbers; or at the least, do not use the same credit card for Amazon as Apple.
  3. Always use Two Factor Authentication when available! Continue reading “Protecting Your Online Accounts”
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Stop SOPA

takeaction
https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
“SOPA and PIPA wouldn’t stop piracy
To make matters worse, SOPA and PIPA won’t even work. The censorship regulations written into these bills won’t shut down pirate sites. These sites will just change their addresses and continue their criminal activities, while law-abiding companies will suffer high penalties for breaches they can’t possibly control.”
Keep the Internet in technocratic hands.

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Using Your iPad as an Extended Monitor

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Looking to use your iPad as a dual monitor / extended laptop screen? There are currently three apps that claim to do the following &  I put each through its paces and make a recommendation.

  • Use your iPad as a second monitor / dual display
  • Supports both landscape and portrait mode
  • Allows you to set your screen resolution
  • Works on either Macs or PCs

Each of these apps basically work in the same way. All three claim to extend your display when both your laptop and iPad are on the same WiFi network.  However, the difference between these apps becomes apparent  in execution.
Air Display vs iDisplay vs MaxiVista  using  Win7 64bit SP1 and first gen iPad w/ IOS 4.2.1
Continue reading “Using Your iPad as an Extended Monitor”

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Cleaning Up a MacBook Air OS 10.5.8

lippupalloA customer came to me with their MacBook Air (first Gen) with a 75GB SDD.  It only had 1GB free space on the internal HD and would not run Apple Software Updates.  Software Update would claim that there was not enough free space and 2.9GB was needed.
Monolingual removed all language files (other than English), keyboard layouts, and processor architecture.    Supposedly it not only saves HDD space but also speeds up OSX through optimization.
When running Monolingual, it is important to choose Remove on each tab (Languages, Input Menu, Architecture) individually.  When I hit Remove after choosing all languanges, but was on the Input Menu, it told me I saved 60Mb.  Wow, not great…  But then I realized if I hit remove on the Language tab, it removed about 3 GB of data from the Macintosh HD and the Monolingual app took much longer to run.  Removing architectures (all but Intel and Intel 64bit) resulted in recovering 786M of space.
Continue reading “Cleaning Up a MacBook Air OS 10.5.8”

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Only on the iPad + Win7 + XP

What you are looking at here is the culmination of technology in the modern age. iPad connected via 2xClient to Windows7 connected via RDP to WinXP!
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2XClient – Best Free Remote Desktop for iPad (iOS 3.1.3+)

While everyone seems to be using and loving LogMeIn or Go To My PC with their iPad, I wanted to find the definitive FREE (as in beer) solution to using my iPad as a laptop replacement. I downloaded every free RDP and VNC connection client for iPad in the App store and my finding is that 2xClient beats them all hands down for one simple reason. The on screen mouse pointer.

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On screen mouse allows for “mouse over” and dead simple Right Click

Continue reading “2XClient – Best Free Remote Desktop for iPad (iOS 3.1.3+)”

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Mac OS10 VPN

Open System Preferences and Network
Click the lock if not unlocked and click the + to add new
Change:
Interface to VPN
VPN Type to PPTP
Service Name: MCGB
Enter Server Address: mail.mcgb.com
Account Name: yourusername
Check “Show VPN status menu bar”
Click Authentication Settings
Enter office password
Click OK and Apply
Click VPN in status bar and “Connect MCGB VPN”
Download and install Remote Desktop Connection for MAC
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/remote-desktop-client

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Access OWA using Safari & Mac OS10

Open Safari and click “Safari > Preferences”
Choose the “Autofill” tab and CHECK “User names and passwords”
Navigate to https://mail.mcgb.com/exchange
Install Trusted Root Certificate
a. Click “Show Certificate”
b. Check “Always trust “server.domain.local” when connecting to “mail.server.tld”
c. Expand “Trust” section and choose drop down for “Always Trust” for everything.
d. Enter system password when challenged.
Login to OWA using mcgbusername and office password.
Choose “YES” to prompt “Would you like to save this password?”
Drag and drop address bar to desktop to create shortcut.