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Welcome Back Old Friend

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It’s been a long ten years, and oh how you have grown…

A few days ago, I welcomed back into my life the Mac. It was time for a laptop upgrade (what does it say when you have worn half the lettering off your keyboard?) and I was ready for a change. Like most, I wasn’t that excited about a laptop with Vista on it. And my existing laptop–an IBM ThinkPad which I absolutely admire–was starting to show it’s processor age as well as strange OS level behavior (like at times it wouldn’t be able to resolve DNS names which essentially made it useless online…after hours of trying to fix that, I finally just gave up and rebooted it when it occurred!). It was time to make a change for the better…for the betterment of my productivity. I bought a new PowerBook Pro.

Since I had it customized (maxed out the memory and added the larger/faster hard drive), I had to wait a few weeks for the computer to arrive. That wouldn’t have been so hard if it wasn’t for the fact that the software I ordered with the Mac (Parallels and MS Office) kept arriving at my door in separate boxes. Finally, I got an email saying that my new laptop had left the factory. Like a kid waiting for Christmas Eve, I kept checking back to the FedEx tracking website to keep tabs on my Mac. There is something perverse about watching the delivery progress of something built half way around the world:


Then, the same day I’m to leave for a business trip, I see that my Mac has been loaded on the truck. Oh, the pressure! I don’t have to leave for the airport until Noon, if the laptop arrives at 10am, do I have time to get it functional so I can take it on my trip? I sure was going to try!

So after about an hour and half (I had a half hour interuption to deal with a work issue), I had the Mac booted up for the first time, configured, installed my needed software, and connected to my mail account to start syncing my mail. I don’t think I would have been able to do that with a PC. In the end, I wanted time to get re-aquanted with my old friend (my first laptop was a PowerBook 510 which I bought 12 years ago and replaced 10 years ago). And what better time than on a 4 hour plane ride? So I ended up packing up both laptops and headed off to the airport. So, seven hours after it left FedEx’s Oakland facility, the MacBook Pro was back within sight of it’s arrival point.

I brought the ThinkPad along as a backup and to transfer over my work documents. That night at my hotel, I set up a peer to peer wireless network between the two machines, connected the Mac to my shared documents folder on the ThinkPad, and copied over all my files in an hour. I have tried many times to get a peer to peer wireless network to work between two Windows laptops and was never successful. Worked first time with the Mac.

I plan on documenting my experiences transition from the PC back to the Mac over the course of the next few weeks. And I’ll start off by stating a few of my first impressions:

  • Apple definitely has the entire user experience down! From unpacking the laptop from it’s briefcase like box, to the bare essentials presented to you when you remove the styrofoam. The laptop itself even came in a nice protective sleeve. It is quite an experience.
  • The small usability things that Apple focuses on do make a huge difference. Something as simple as a well designed power supply seems so trivial, until you have one. I was expecting to have to buy a second power supply–I have 5 for my ThinkPad and they are strategically placed around my entire house–but the design with the unfolding prongs which can be replaced with a longer power cable is ideal. I leave the power cable plugged in at my desk at home, and just take the brick and the unfolding prongs on the road.
  • The lack of the Intel Inside sticker was something that I completely overlook until I saw this article today.
  • The fact that the machine comes out of sleep mode in under 5 seconds is amazing. I was getting jealous stares from other windows users on the plane tonight as I opened the laptop and started typing within 5 seconds! It’s shocking how much time you loose waiting for the windows machines to come back to life. I does take longer for the Mac to go to sleep, about 20 seconds. I think that is due to the 4 Gigs of RAM in my machine that have to be written to disk (I used a 2 Gig model that did go to sleep faster). Regardless, this is still about half the time or less that it took my Windows XP machine to go to sleep…and about 20-30x faster than waking an XP machine up!
  • So far, I have not encountered any issues with any of my documents from the PC. Since I have office installed (needed that so I could connect to my companies exchange server for email), all the docs that I have needed opened right up. I’ll be watching this closely over the next few days.
  • It has taken a few extra moments here and there to figure out how to do something that was second nature to me on a PC…like right clicking on a mis-spelled word to fix it! But, after a few seconds of experimenting with the FN, CTRL, and OPTION keys on the keyboard, I figured out the right combination to replace the right click action on the PC. There are a few things that I already think will take me time to get used to, like the lack of a dedicated page up, page down, and backspace key.

All in all, I’m glad I spent the extra money and moved back to a Mac. Cool factor aside, I can tell already that I am able to be more productive with this machine. The learning curve isn’t that great. And I doubt my previous experience has much to do with that since a lot has changed in the past 10 years. I’ll continue documenting my experiences here on the blog over the next few weeks.

I used to roll my eyes back a bit when I heard other people say it, but it’s true.. the Mac OS just works. What a novel thought!

The Google Apps Security Hole

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Lately, I have been using Google Apps for some of my work. Started off with mail, moved to calendar, and then to docs. The hardest part of this before today was getting used to the limited capabilities within Google Docs. Today, I realized the that Google Apps has a huge security hole it it that scares the hell out of me.

There is no configuration option (that I or others have found) to force all interactions with Google Apps to be secure!

Sure, Google Apps will encrypt your password as you login in. But if you are passing sensitive information via GMail, or storing sensitive information in Google Docs, all that information will be passed over the internet in the clear! Google Apps lacks a configuration option to “encrypt all access to Google Apps”. (I’m letting the security aspect of encrypting the data on the Google servers to slide for now…one thing at a time.)

Sure, you can manually change every Google App’s URL to be encrypted (to use https), but expecting users to do this is a fallacy, users are the weakest link of the security network…they will forget and information will be passed unsecured. And some people will say that “encrypting everything is too much over head”, but that is the smallest price to pay for security. Most people don’t think of security until it is too late. If Google wants Apps to be taken as a serious service, then this is a needed price to pay.

If you are a corporate user of Google Apps, send Google a message that this hole needs to be filled! Even if you’re not a corporate user, but are a user that takes their security seriously…send the message!

In the mean time, make sure you install one of the following plug-ins in your web browser:

I now use the Firefox add-on on every computer I use. When configured properly, it will automatically change all the URLs going to Google Apps to encrypt them (to use https). I disabled all the other features of the plug-in (which I didn’t see value in).

These add-ons are not a solution to this problem. Again, they require action by the user and can also be disabled by the user (remember: weakest link in the security chain!). Google needs to add the previously described feature to Google Apps ASAP in order to provide adequate security to the users of Google Apps.

First 8 Things to Do with LinkedIn

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While helping a colleague out with LinkedIn today and I created this short list of immediate things to do with LinkedIn to start getting the most from it right away.

  • Clean Up old profiles: You should only have one profile on LI, If you have more than one, invite people from your old profiles to re-link on your new profile. Then Contact LinkedIn support to delete your old profiles. In the future, as you change jobs, emails, etc., just update your profile, don’t create a new profile.
  • Flush out your profile with quick info about past positions. This helps you connect with others who you might have worked with there who are on linked in and helps them find you. How far back you want to go is your choice. Just be honest! This is the backbone of networking. If you totally lie about a position, someone will find it and it will hurt you.
  • Add all your current active emails addresses Under Account & Settings > Email Addresses. This allows others to send you linkedin requests and for LinkedIn to find you in the network based on any of your email address. Choose one as your primary address, this is where LI will send all notifications to (like when someone wants to connect)
  • Set Your Privacy Settings (IMPORTANT)
    • Account & Settings > Advertising: I set this to no, there is enough blind info about me being passed around already. No reason to make the advertising companies jobs easier (Kuddo’s to LI for giving you this option!)
    • Account & Settings > Connection Browsing: Set to no. Your network is your asset, no need to share it openly with everyone. People can still search and find people in your network through you, but they can’t go to your profile and see a list of everyone you know.
    • Account & Settings > Profile Views: this controls a new feature of LI that shows you who has looked at your profile. This setting controls how LI shows you when you look at someone’s profile. I choose “anonymous profile characteristics”. (Another Kuddo for the LI team!)
  • Install the LI Toolbar on all systems you use (both work and personal). Most importantly, this will put an icon in the upper right hand corner of all your emails telling you if the sender (or others on the email list) are members of LI and are in your network. Secondarily, it will scan your mail to create a list of people you might want to send LI invites to based on your email correspondence.
  • Start sending out invites to those you want to link with
    • Decide how you will use LI. There is one school of thought to link with anyone and everyone to build as big a network as possible. Another is to link with those who you have actually worked with and know you in some fashion. I choose the later, as I feel it’s important when requests to make introductions come along that I actually know one of the two parties involved. Otherwise I feel it starts to erode your networking value…
    • Always personalize the LI Invite text to increase the likely hood of a link (and it’s just polite)
  • Under My Contacts check out “Colleagues” and “Classmates”, to have LI search for other LI member who you may know through companies you were at or where you went to school. Even if you don’t know there email addresses, you can send a LI invite to them and re-establish some old connections.
  • Consider upgrading to a Paid account. This will give you more access to the LI network for searching as well as more ways to reach people (introductions and InMails), as well as greater reference search capabilities. (I upgraded to a Business account back when hiring for a position so I could do more searches based on companies and key words and could then contact them directly. This is essentially what most of the no-value add recruiters today do…and the business account costs were much less. (Disclosure: I’m not affiliated with LI in any way other than being a happy and enthusiastic user!)

Hope this helps others as well!