Technology How To’s

How To: Synchronize Blackberry and Zimbra on OS X

Posted by Rick on in Apple, Technology How To's 0 Comment

How To: Synchronize Blackberry and Zimbra on OS X

At first looks there is no obvious way to synchronize RIM’s Blackberry devices with the Zimbra mail client. Blackberry already has a huge following in the business world while Zimbra is starting to become extremely popular as an Exchange replacement.

But, out of the box neither will talk to each other directly on OS X.

This can be resolved, but it’s actually a two step process so it will take a little bit of extra work to be sure that data does not get out of date.

Zimbra provides Apple iSync Connector which is currently bundled in the Network Edition Professional Server download, available in the trial version (signup required) or from the Admin Console in an already existing Zimbra install.

Install the iSync Connector with the directions here.

Once the connector is installed it’s a good idea to go ahead and do the initial synchronization. This will sync Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and the Address Book to the corresponding OS X Application. Email will of course not sync since the Blackberry can be setup as an email client and can receive the emails directly.

After the initial synchronization between Zimbra and the desktop, it’s now possible to sync the desktop with the Blackberry.

This is done with the PocketMac Application which is a free download for those who already have a Blackberry. It is not free for any other phone or PDA, although it does work with a wide variety of other systems.

Install PocketMac, plug in the Blackberry, hit the sync button on the dock and watch it all happen like magic.

Using this scenario it’s possible to get out of sync very easily though. I highly suggest getting in the habit of only making changes to one device ever, or doing this two step sync process immediately after adding or making changes.

How To: Disable Dashboard in OS X

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How To: Disable Dashboard in OS X

Dashboard in Leopard is a love it or hate it application. There are several useful applications that can make life easier. On the other hand, it’s easy to hit the activation buttons on Mighty Mouse by accident. Other people may begrudge Dashboard’s use of memory. It’s not much, but on low end machines every bit counts.

This is how to disable Dashboard:

Open Terminal (as an admin user)

type: defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

Hit Enter

type: killall Finder

When Finder restarts, Dashboard should be gone. To turn it back on follow the same instructions, but replace YES with NO.

The first command is the powerful one. There are a lot of default behaviors that can be changed in OS X if the write command is known.

The second command, killall Finder simply does the same as force quitting Finder from the GUI. It forces the Finder to quit, relaunch and reload everything, including the Dock. In this case it does not relaunch Dashboard though.

Please let me know if you find this helpful. Also suggestions for other terminal commands would be appreciated.

How To: Edit MAC Address on Linux

Posted by Rick on in Linux, Technology How To's 0 Comment

How To: Edit MAC Address on Linux

Your network card in your linux box just got replaced. Or the onboard one on the mother board went bad and now you need to get it up. But Linux is not automatically recognizing the new card correctly.

Get to a terminal prompt. Type ifconfig to get the current mac address. Keep in mind that you may need to watch the boot up process to find out what your network card’s device name really is. It’s usually eth0, but em0 or even en0 are common. Also it may not be the first or ‘0’ device, so eth1 is entirely valid. Out put will look something like this:

eth0: flags=8863 mtu 1500
inet6 fe80::21f:5bff:fee8:b40d%en0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4
inet 127.1.1.1 netmask 0xfffffc00 broadcast 127.1.1.255
ether 00:1f:5b:72:b4:aa
media: autoselect (1000baseT ) status: active
supported media: autoselect 10baseT/UTP 10baseT/UTP 10baseT/UTP 10baseT/UTP 100baseTX 100baseTX 100baseTX 100baseTX 1000baseT 1000baseT 1000baseT none

The MAC address is the 6 hexadecimal numbers on the line that says “ether” so 00:1f:5b:72:b4:aa is the MAC address. This number is also written on a sticker on almost every device with a network device these days. It’s even included on the outside box of many new computers as it’s a very distinctive number.

Next is to edit the file this info is kept in. Go to:

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-

Edit (or totally remove if you’re using DHCP boot) the MAC address line. Save the file and reboot!

How To: Create a Chart in Neo Office

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How To: Create a Chart in Neo Office

NeoOffice is one of my most favorite free applications. Unluckily, like other Office programs it is starting to suffer from feature bloat. Apparently there are a million other things people want from a full fledged office program other then basic writing of documents.

One of these is apparently charts. Pie Charts, graphs, bar charts, etc. Anything to make a presentation look good and soften the blow of impending bankruptcy.

Step one is to create (or simply open) a spread sheet of the data to be displayed in Chart format.

Then click on the rows or columns that need to present in the chart.

At the top of the screen, choose insert then go down to Chart (near the bottom)

Double Check that the desired fields are listed in the range section. If either the Row or Columns is a label field, be sure to check the boxes on the left. Also put the chart on a different sheet (which is probably most desired,) by changing the “Chart Results in Worksheet” field. This will allow copy and pasting of the chart into another document, or even being linked to from a different document.

Hit Next the choose the chart design. Make sure Row or Columns is checked as the primary data source, then hit next again. It may be desirable to choose an off set pie chart for instance, this can be done on this screen.

Otherwise click on “create” and NeoOffice will work it’s magic. In a few second a brand new chart will be inserted on the worksheet specified. The edges of the chart can be grabbed with the mouse to expand the size of the chart. And it can be copy and pasted into a document, or even exported to a .gif file for posting on a web page.

How to: Use the web to check copyright

Posted by Rick on in DRM, Internet, Technology How To's 0 Comment

How to: Use the web to check copyright

With the size of the Internet a lot a files, thoughts, musings, writings, paintings, pictures, etc, get “accidently” made available for those who have not paid for them. Students copy and paste whole sections of documents for their own papers, and less scrupulous individuals copy for their own reasons. A lot of companies have gotten around this by instigating DRM protection schemes, despite protests by consumers. The worst part though is that for those of us who provide content on the web, it’s actually pretty hard to keep that information secure.

Plagiarized text files are one of the easiest to find. Tools like Google are actually very useful here, but have the potential to come up with way too many hits. There are a lot of pay-per-use or subscription tools available on the market that will search for plagiarism, but Reprint Writers has put a great tool online that searches better then Google does. Unfortunately it only searches Yahoo so it may miss some hits.

On the other hand there are times when one does need to publish materials online and may not be the original author, or the original author may not be readily apparent or available. The Library Copyright Digital Slider tool could be very useful. Geared towards Librarians, it is extremely useful in identifying works that may have become public domain.

If the publication in question is a book it should be copyrighted via the Library of Congress. Some of that information is online via this link . Unfortunately, a good portion of this information is still offline, but it is being added slowly but surely. The provided link also has information about how to contribute to this project.

More recently web photography has really taken off. A lot of people with cheap digital cameras are posting pictures left and right, and just as quickly those pictures are being pulled from services such as Flickr and used by others.

Idee, Inc has a new tool that is in beta called Tineye. It actually goes out on the web and searches for pictures. Pictures that it’s seen before (and it’s constantly searching,) are given a unique identifier based on pixels in the graphic. Tineye scours the web for any picture that comes close, including those that were photoshopped or other wise altered.

In this day age copyright is an important concern for everyone involved. Using the above tools will make it easier to identify such cases and take appropriate action. Doing so will also help keep the unintentional infringements from happening.