MSN posted yesterday on "The 11 things we hate about iTunes". Link here: http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=9372475
Not to be out-done, MacWorld riposted this morning: http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=9372475
Pretty entertaining reading. Doesn't change my nsho that trying to use iTunes in the enterprise to push other stuff down is just plain silly.
IMO, the bestest thing to evah come out of Apple was the product code name "BHA". MS come out with some good ones (Yona et al being case in point), but they'd really have to go some to top that one. Link here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation#Libel_dispute_with_Carl_Sagan
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
MDM Troubleshooting
This should probably be a faq entry.
What I'm observing on the MDM Forum is a common thread of issues that folks are encountering. MS have done a tremendous job with this product in easing the installation and implementation process, plus hiding just how many complex tasks are being carried out behind the scenes, but because there are so many dependencies it's comparitively easy to get wrapped around the axle.
Jarrett Renshaw of MS (you go, Jarrett!) posted a great troubleshooting article on the MDM Team blog the other day. Very well worth checking out. There's an onwards link to it below.
Today I added a post to the MDM Forum that links this plus gives some other useful things to work through in parallel.
And you also get back to the bottom line of this particular product that you can't get away with downloading the executables and then fire up setup - well, you can, and many have tried but I'll guarantee nobody's had it come straight up for them when this approach is taken.
Most of us have had to fight against the (bad) habit of not referring to documentation until we absolutely have to. Stubborn pride, I guess, and yes I am equally guilty of doing this. With MDM all the information you need is there and must be referenced first. I can't stress enough the importance of taking the time to go through the Planning Guide in detail and leverage the heck out of the BPA.
Link here: http://forums.technet.microsoft.com/en-US/SCMDM/thread/557b52cc-0091-43f2-b4c1-bf49ae446c4f
What I'm observing on the MDM Forum is a common thread of issues that folks are encountering. MS have done a tremendous job with this product in easing the installation and implementation process, plus hiding just how many complex tasks are being carried out behind the scenes, but because there are so many dependencies it's comparitively easy to get wrapped around the axle.
Jarrett Renshaw of MS (you go, Jarrett!) posted a great troubleshooting article on the MDM Team blog the other day. Very well worth checking out. There's an onwards link to it below.
Today I added a post to the MDM Forum that links this plus gives some other useful things to work through in parallel.
And you also get back to the bottom line of this particular product that you can't get away with downloading the executables and then fire up setup - well, you can, and many have tried but I'll guarantee nobody's had it come straight up for them when this approach is taken.
Most of us have had to fight against the (bad) habit of not referring to documentation until we absolutely have to. Stubborn pride, I guess, and yes I am equally guilty of doing this. With MDM all the information you need is there and must be referenced first. I can't stress enough the importance of taking the time to go through the Planning Guide in detail and leverage the heck out of the BPA.
Link here: http://forums.technet.microsoft.com/en-US/SCMDM/thread/557b52cc-0091-43f2-b4c1-bf49ae446c4f
Jott for Outlook
Very cool. Now you can add calendar appointments and tasks direct to Outlook through Jott. Much, much prettier than the cludgy way I was doing this before by using Jott to create appointments in my Google Calendar and then having it two-way sync (see earlier post on texting and driving on how to do this).
BTW, now they've gone out of beta this is part of a number of pay-for options they're introducing. $15/mo seems a bit high for Pro, but the $3.95 deal may be worth it. The jury's out on that one. I use it a lot, but certainly not enough to justify almost $200 in recurring annual costs.
The free service is still there and well worth it, even if it is now ad-supported :-(.
The kicker to this remains that your Security people may have some heartburn over you making a corp resource accessible externally. Actually, no, I'll re-phrase that: they will have some major heartburn, so watch out that you're not contravening a corp policy.
Link here: http://jott.com/jott/jott-for-outlook.html
BTW, now they've gone out of beta this is part of a number of pay-for options they're introducing. $15/mo seems a bit high for Pro, but the $3.95 deal may be worth it. The jury's out on that one. I use it a lot, but certainly not enough to justify almost $200 in recurring annual costs.
The free service is still there and well worth it, even if it is now ad-supported :-(.
The kicker to this remains that your Security people may have some heartburn over you making a corp resource accessible externally. Actually, no, I'll re-phrase that: they will have some major heartburn, so watch out that you're not contravening a corp policy.
Link here: http://jott.com/jott/jott-for-outlook.html
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Planning on going to the Olympics?
From today's SANs Newsbites (http://www.sans.org/):
--Gordon Brown Aide's BlackBerry Stolen on China Trip (July 20, 2008) An aide to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown fell prey to a likely "honeytrap" scheme in January when his BlackBerry phone was stolen after he brought a woman he met at a disco in China back to his hotel room.
The aide was accompanying the PM on the trip; he reported the device missing the next morning. Officials suspect the incident was orchestrated by Chinese intelligence. It was not disclosed whether the device held top-secret information, but even so, it could potentially be used to gain access to the Downing Street server. Blackberrys used by Downing Street staff are password-protected but most are not encrypted. The aide has been informally reprimanded.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4364353.ece
[Editor's Note (Ullrich): A nice reminder to leave electronic devices at home when traveling abroad. And if you are geek enough to take them, being all for sudden popular with women is a dead giveaway for an intelligence operation.
(Northcutt): Classic! If you know anyone going to the Olympics, please share this story with them and suggest they leave their laptops and other electronics at home. This will be a field day for Chinese intelligence gathering. They have been targeting people and are quite
ready:
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article22984
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/24/asia/AS-GEN-China-Olympic-Intelligence.php
(Paller) Or take "travel-tops" and "travel-phones" that are throw-aways without sensitive data or access to sensitive systems.
I especially liked the comment "being all for sudden popular with women"! That one raised a chuckle.
Unless the chinese telco's block the IPsec ports then this probably couldn't happen with a WM6.1 device running under SCMDM and better yet you'd be able to wipe it remotely to eliminate the risk of compromise[1]. If the vpn comes up you're golden.
And as for the bit about Gubmit employees using phones that aren't encrypted, that's a bit of a shocker. WM6.1 would have taken care of that nicely, too.
Better would be using your phone with a Redfly (what the editor referred to as a "travel-top", although I hadn't heard it called that before). No need to take your laptop with you at all. Link here: http://www.celiocorp.com/
[1] Not the same kind of compromise as the article speaks to ;-)
--Gordon Brown Aide's BlackBerry Stolen on China Trip (July 20, 2008) An aide to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown fell prey to a likely "honeytrap" scheme in January when his BlackBerry phone was stolen after he brought a woman he met at a disco in China back to his hotel room.
The aide was accompanying the PM on the trip; he reported the device missing the next morning. Officials suspect the incident was orchestrated by Chinese intelligence. It was not disclosed whether the device held top-secret information, but even so, it could potentially be used to gain access to the Downing Street server. Blackberrys used by Downing Street staff are password-protected but most are not encrypted. The aide has been informally reprimanded.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4364353.ece
[Editor's Note (Ullrich): A nice reminder to leave electronic devices at home when traveling abroad. And if you are geek enough to take them, being all for sudden popular with women is a dead giveaway for an intelligence operation.
(Northcutt): Classic! If you know anyone going to the Olympics, please share this story with them and suggest they leave their laptops and other electronics at home. This will be a field day for Chinese intelligence gathering. They have been targeting people and are quite
ready:
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article22984
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/24/asia/AS-GEN-China-Olympic-Intelligence.php
(Paller) Or take "travel-tops" and "travel-phones" that are throw-aways without sensitive data or access to sensitive systems.
I especially liked the comment "being all for sudden popular with women"! That one raised a chuckle.
Unless the chinese telco's block the IPsec ports then this probably couldn't happen with a WM6.1 device running under SCMDM and better yet you'd be able to wipe it remotely to eliminate the risk of compromise[1]. If the vpn comes up you're golden.
And as for the bit about Gubmit employees using phones that aren't encrypted, that's a bit of a shocker. WM6.1 would have taken care of that nicely, too.
Better would be using your phone with a Redfly (what the editor referred to as a "travel-top", although I hadn't heard it called that before). No need to take your laptop with you at all. Link here: http://www.celiocorp.com/
[1] Not the same kind of compromise as the article speaks to ;-)
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Professional news and not quite so
The title of this post is very typical of me, actually.
Hadn't seen mention of it, so I'll do it here: the MDM Team Blog is now open for business. Link here: http://blogs.technet.com/scmdm/archive/2008/06/16/welcome-to-the-system-center-mobile-device-manager-product-team-blog.aspx
Dieter's team are just wonderful and he's a great guy. They're already participating en masse in the technet forum, and I have no doubt that you'll glean some useful gems from this link also.
On the not-quite-so-professional front, here's a pretty picture:
Hadn't seen mention of it, so I'll do it here: the MDM Team Blog is now open for business. Link here: http://blogs.technet.com/scmdm/archive/2008/06/16/welcome-to-the-system-center-mobile-device-manager-product-team-blog.aspx
Dieter's team are just wonderful and he's a great guy. They're already participating en masse in the technet forum, and I have no doubt that you'll glean some useful gems from this link also.
On the not-quite-so-professional front, here's a pretty picture:
The 17th, and signature, hole at Summerbrooke Golf Club in Tallahassee, FL. Right around the corner from where I live. Actually, it's not even 300 yds away from my front door, and I've driven by it on an almost daily basis for the past 5 yrs, but have only played the course a dozen or so times.
I aced it today.
The sweetest 7-iron you could ever hope to hit. One bounce, and it was in the hole.
I know that's the object of the exercise, but actually doing it (after a gazillion mis-starts) makes the actuality of it all come as quite a shock. A nice shock, but a shock all the same.
It's not a joke when I say it took 40 years for it to happen for me. I don't play anything like as often as I'd like to, and my dad introduced me to the game when I was about 4 yrs old.
And for the cheapskates out there, Weds at 3pm is a tremendous time to get a hole-in-one. There will be nobody in the bar.
If you want to share the joy, however, plan on coming back later (as I did
Sunday, June 8, 2008
More new docs
MOSS Integration and a Global Deployment guide.
Link here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc135653(TechNet.10).aspx
Link here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc135653(TechNet.10).aspx
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Free MDM tools from Enterprise Mobile
Kudos to my colleagues in Engineering (yes, even you, Mark ). Announced today are a pair of very cool tools. Did I mention 'free'?
from the message Tomas Vetrovsky sent internally today:
"The purpose of releasing the utilities at no cost to the users was to demonstrate the knowhow and extended knowledge Enterprise Mobile has in regard to the challenges in the mobile space to prospects, customer and the Windows Mobile community.
Both tools are available from the website: http://tools.enterprisemobile.com which is linked from our main web www.enterprisemobile.com and will be also submitted to various blogs, medias etc. You can point anybody who is interested in downloading the utilities to http://tools.enterprisemobile.com where they need to provide an email address and can optionally fill in additional information about their mobile environment.
So without further due let me introduce:
Windows Mobile IP Utility
This utility combines basic troubleshooting tools commonly available on the desktop and widely used by IT Staff and Administrators (ping, traceroute, ipconfig) with some more advance capabilities (ping sweep, speed test) into one package that is compatible with WM 5, WM6 and WM 6.1
Windows Mobile IP Utility enables easy troubleshooting of connectivity on Windows Mobile devices, enables and eases out troubleshooting of MS SC MDM VPN connections and even enables troubleshooting of PCs connected to the same network as the WM device i.e. WiFi network.
Windows Mobile IP Utility provides:
• IPCONFIG for all adapters on the Windows Mobile device
• PING to any host or destination
• PING SWEEP of multiple hosts within the specified range
• Traceroute to any host or destination
• Speed Test to check your connection speed and performance
• Is compatible with WM 5, WM6 and WM 6.1 devices
• Requires .NET CF 2.0 (additional install for WM 5 devices, in ROM for WM 6 and later)
GUI CAB Signer Utility
This utility provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for signing CAB files (files used for installing software on WM devices) in order to easily creates secure mobile deployment. MS SC MDM requires each software distribution to be digitally signed, which may be a challenge for the Mobile Administrator using existing process and procedures. The utility makes the signature step super easy and simple.
GUI CAB Signer Utility provides:
• Graphical User Interface for CAB signing for easier and simpler process
• Enables faster deployment through visual verification of certificate
• Can be installed on any PC running Windows XP or Vista
I would like to extend HUGE thanks to the Architecture team, specifically to Steve Catron for the CAB Signer, Koush Dutta for the IP Util, to Dave Field for writing the specs, to Chris for working on the website (over the weekend!), to Mark Riley for his suggestions and testing as well as for demonstrating the capabilities to the ATT crowd and providing very good feedback!!! The Services team was also very helpful with comments during the testing period and had great suggestions for future version!
I am really happy to work with such a great team and now you and your customer can enjoy the same benefits by using the Utilities located at http://tools.enterprisemobile.com
Don’t forget to tell all that if they make their job easier, just imagine what happens if they hire Enterprise Mobile to help with the rest of the mobile deployment…"
I share Tomas' sentiments; Enterprise Mobile is a purty darn cool place to be in the midst of!
Oh, and make sure your Security Team know before you EVER try a ping sweep. Probably the safest way to use this is against the VPN Pool address ranges, and nowhere else - this is what it's actually intended for, so you can check for responses from connected managed devices. A wonderful capability, but one that's sure to trigger all the alarms on your HIDS and NIDS, so play it safe and get permission first.
from the message Tomas Vetrovsky sent internally today:
"The purpose of releasing the utilities at no cost to the users was to demonstrate the knowhow and extended knowledge Enterprise Mobile has in regard to the challenges in the mobile space to prospects, customer and the Windows Mobile community.
Both tools are available from the website: http://tools.enterprisemobile.com which is linked from our main web www.enterprisemobile.com and will be also submitted to various blogs, medias etc. You can point anybody who is interested in downloading the utilities to http://tools.enterprisemobile.com where they need to provide an email address and can optionally fill in additional information about their mobile environment.
So without further due let me introduce:
Windows Mobile IP Utility
This utility combines basic troubleshooting tools commonly available on the desktop and widely used by IT Staff and Administrators (ping, traceroute, ipconfig) with some more advance capabilities (ping sweep, speed test) into one package that is compatible with WM 5, WM6 and WM 6.1
Windows Mobile IP Utility enables easy troubleshooting of connectivity on Windows Mobile devices, enables and eases out troubleshooting of MS SC MDM VPN connections and even enables troubleshooting of PCs connected to the same network as the WM device i.e. WiFi network.
Windows Mobile IP Utility provides:
• IPCONFIG for all adapters on the Windows Mobile device
• PING to any host or destination
• PING SWEEP of multiple hosts within the specified range
• Traceroute to any host or destination
• Speed Test to check your connection speed and performance
• Is compatible with WM 5, WM6 and WM 6.1 devices
• Requires .NET CF 2.0 (additional install for WM 5 devices, in ROM for WM 6 and later)
GUI CAB Signer Utility
This utility provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for signing CAB files (files used for installing software on WM devices) in order to easily creates secure mobile deployment. MS SC MDM requires each software distribution to be digitally signed, which may be a challenge for the Mobile Administrator using existing process and procedures. The utility makes the signature step super easy and simple.
GUI CAB Signer Utility provides:
• Graphical User Interface for CAB signing for easier and simpler process
• Enables faster deployment through visual verification of certificate
• Can be installed on any PC running Windows XP or Vista
I would like to extend HUGE thanks to the Architecture team, specifically to Steve Catron for the CAB Signer, Koush Dutta for the IP Util, to Dave Field for writing the specs, to Chris for working on the website (over the weekend!), to Mark Riley for his suggestions and testing as well as for demonstrating the capabilities to the ATT crowd and providing very good feedback!!! The Services team was also very helpful with comments during the testing period and had great suggestions for future version!
I am really happy to work with such a great team and now you and your customer can enjoy the same benefits by using the Utilities located at http://tools.enterprisemobile.com
Don’t forget to tell all that if they make their job easier, just imagine what happens if they hire Enterprise Mobile to help with the rest of the mobile deployment…"
I share Tomas' sentiments; Enterprise Mobile is a purty darn cool place to be in the midst of!
Oh, and make sure your Security Team know before you EVER try a ping sweep. Probably the safest way to use this is against the VPN Pool address ranges, and nowhere else - this is what it's actually intended for, so you can check for responses from connected managed devices. A wonderful capability, but one that's sure to trigger all the alarms on your HIDS and NIDS, so play it safe and get permission first.
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