Definition of a leader

..a person who motivates people,
to work collaboratively
to accomplish great things

-U.S. News and World Reports

Malcom Gladwell - Outliers

Clearly a different intellectual perspective on success and it's foundations. Gladwell has done a fine job yet again.




"...IQ is of little help if you are faced with a formful of clever boys"

"...hard work is a prison sentence, only if it doesn't have meaning"

"...success is not a random act, it arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities"


-ZuCom

The Book to have on the iPhoneSDK

The fundamental prerequisite for anyone looking to develop iPhone applications. Whether you are new to Cocoa or just the iPhone SDK this book will quickly get you up and running. From concept to working code the author's approach is both easy to read and quick to understand. The code samples get you up and running applications in very little time and the step by step approach makes the learning process effortless.

Hands down this is the best fundamental primer on iPhone Development on the market today.

August Dirty Job by Rank

Truths are found in many places..

"opportunity is most often missed, because it usually shows up dressed in overalls, looking like work"

-Mike Rowe - Television Show Host, Eagle Scout

Parallels Virtualizes OS X (Server)

ZuCom has been provided with an advance copy of Parallels Server 3.0 for Mac. (you too can get it now that it's public. at www.parallels.com). With a little over a month in use we can report that the engineering of this solution is clearly of a new caliber. This product targets enterprise shops who need to get serious about virtualizing the Mac platform.

While this product only allows the virtualization of OS X Server (Leopard Server 10.3), it does so with a no-nonsense design and offers most tools you'll need to manage a large infrastructure of VM's. With P2V tools, Management Consoles and even remote management from command line, the only thing missing from this package is a system monitoring tool (something that Parallels engineers say is something they've had a number of requests for).

With all this one has to ask where you could go wrong? Truthfully we cannot. With a starting price just north of $1200.00 (it's un-confrirmed but we think that's per host machine) it's a heck of a lot cheaper than competitors from an entry point but still a little high for the small shop who's trying to manage costs (but even that point is arguable in most circumstances).

I must make one thing clear, this is not a desktop VM solution so if that's what your looking for look at their other products. The integrated desktop features you've seen with other Parallels and VMWare aren't what this product is about. This product is clearly intended to reduce server rack space in your data center and provide you with the tools to manage that infrastructure. Simply put it does that VERY well at a competitive cost.

Overall ZuCom recommends the product and will offer support to enterprise and small business clients looking to leverage this new technology.

-Robert Zullo

ZuCom

3g + GPS + Better Battery Life

Apple announced the iPhone 2.0 today. LINK TO KEYNOTE To top that when it launches (July 11th) it's going to start at $199 for the 8 gig model and $299 for the 16gb model.  WHOA..

What next?

Oh GPS and 3G.

What next?

To be honest, there wasn't a "one more thing" during this Keynote but from the crowd of industry leaders it didn't appear that it was really needed.

ZuCom is happy to announce that it will follow the launch and add consulting support for development of applications and enterprise integration as it continues to grow.

Stay tuned for more..

-ZuCom Division of Mobile iPhone Consulting

Leopard Sharing Snafu

Apple has dramatically changed the file sharing preferences pane in Leopard.  Much of what has changed is just in the GUI but for many who only use this layer some features are very new.   At issue is the Users window inside the preference pane (see pict below).  This area gives you the ability to set user permissions on a shared folder.  By default the Everyone group shows up in this list with read only access to the public folder of the user who is currently logged on.  Pretty standard and not anything new for most.  Apple has disabled the ability to remove the Everyone group from this pane by greying out the '-' option in the field.  While the exact mapping of the "Everyone group" to a standard Unix group like Wheel is not clear it would appear that Everyone is very important and really is something integral to the system function (post if you are aware what group it maps to).  Now comes the area where it gets tricky.  If you select the Everyone group and hit the DELETE key on your keyboard, you can remove the Everyone group from the share entirely.  Logic would follow that this would action should simply remove the permissions from that folder as it would in any POSIX system but the results of doing this actually have a much bigger impact.  The result of this action is the actual removal of this "Everyone" group from the root of the drive thus rendering the system unable to boot.  While several have reported this as a bug, and it may be, the behavior seems to be something that was missed in user acceptance testing more than a bug (save the fact that the root of the drive is involved).  

Several posts claim to have a fix, that will save the system.  Our testing was able to reproduce the problem consistently but recovery efforts, while successful, were not as consistent. 

In the end the message here is "DON'T REMOVE THE EVERYONE GROUP" from your shares here in Leopard's preferences pane.  CHMOD is still a great way to control access to folders and files in your system and one that gives you the control over the details group assignments more detailed fashion.

-ZuCom

Free iPhone Web Simulator

Don't own an iPhone?

Still want to see what your website design looks like on an iPhone?

Enter iPhoney a simulator for pixel accurate simulation of your site.  This simulator runs on your Mac and allows you to browse sites through it's iPhone interface.  Support for rotation, zooming, and multiple user agents makes the 1.2 version one of the best simulators we've seen.

ZuCom highly recommends the tool.  

It's FREE, solid and just works.

-ZuCom

Future of OS Computing

It's official Gartner has predicted that Microsofts' dominance in the OS market may not be on solid ground anymore. Without a doubt this "end of days" prediction is not new and Microsoft is certainly not immune from those types of critiques (albeit this is something new for them in the OS arena).

What we've seen for years is a gradual movement away from standard computer platforms to more of a mobile and device driven market. This move inherently means that Microsoft will be at a disadvantage because they do not dominate those spaces quite like they do in the others. Where this movement ends, only time will tell but, signs point to it not being with you behind a keyboard. Be that as it may, approaches to technology in general will have to change. If we are no longer dealing with standard computer based solutions then approaches to engineering, networking, development, and even business processes (like SOA, and BPEL) will have to be redesigned.

iPhone 3G + Enterprise Support = International Reach

With the announcement from Walt Mossberg that the next iPhone will be 3G the potential impact of this unique crossover entity might just be moving towards a Corporate International audience.

Arguments can be made that iPhone is already a corporate entity in the international market but as most non-US readers know, the limitation of not having 3G is a real concern on the international scene.

Let's face it 768k is only called "broadband" in the US. Most international markets reserve the term broadband for much higher data transfer rates. While Walt refers to content and marketing angles as his main points, the rub with enterprise I.T. managers becomes what to do if this 3G option is now part of the iPhone platform. While dismissing the iPhone is a hard thing to do even today, 3G support would really make this naysayers look more like pundits.

Walt references a 60 day timeline so time will tell, but should Apple decide to take that angle with the iPhone, it's clearly added another threat to the existing Mobile market.

Valuable Lesson for iPhone Wifi

Today at a wifi hotspot we were given the a Key to allow us on the network.  Mind you this was not an ordinary network, it was a network based on the shop owners brand new Time Capsule.  Clearly a nice choice!  After about the third time trying to enter the Key, the shop owner noticed I was having a problem and mentioned that others too has indeed been having a problem and I should try all CAPS.  

Sure enough that was it.  WPA/WPA2 on the iPhone are normally a no brainer but for the record if you are having issues connecting to a WIFI spot try the old ALL CAPS trick and you might just have saved yourself 10 minutes. 

-ZuCom

iPhone SDK (Updated)

Apple has updated it's latest release of the iPhone SDK.  With the fury at which the last release was downloaded this one is sure to be a hit.  While the details of the upgrade are still sketchy and it would appear that Apple is dedicated to the market it has found for mobile development platforms.  

As mentioned in the a recent article over on the iPhone Development Blog the reach that this product will give Apple into the enterprise could be big.  I would argue that with regular updates and what is seemingly a caring / nurturing attitude from Apple this could be a revolution in the making for the industry yet again.  

Many corporate I.T. departments will find development in this area will be hard to categorize and even tougher to fit in to a standard CMMI, Agile, RUP methodology.  Over the next few months ZuCom will evaluate the impact this has had in the industry and look to develop strategies that partners and clients can use to help better cope with this next wave of innovation.  

-ZuCom

ZuCom Upgrades SwitchtoHeadphones to version 1.1 (FULL LEOPARD SUPPORT)

Today Zucom has announced it's release of "Switch to Headphones v1.1". This application is now fully supported under Apple's OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and further improves performance with it's OS integration.

Developed originally under OS 10.2 this simple tool has found it's home in the professional audio studio all over the world since it was first released. In recent years it has become popular with the VOIP community who often use it with products like iChat and Skype. By adding support for Apple's Leopard operating system ZuCom preserves this app for years to come, and ensures it's longevity as a native Mac utility.



Softpedia

LinuxLinks

-ZuCom

Ideas

If you're not allowed to implement new ideas, you stop having them

Article Quoted

Paul Graham

Paul is dead on.. Don't go moving to Africa or try to apply this thinking in a Military service situation but he's still dead on. To date I've not seen a college level course on how to manage I.T. resources like the ones he describes in his article. Undoubtedly these approaches exist, some may even work on a large number of I.T. types, but the ones he's describing are visionary. Those types are not lead, managed, or dictated to, the best you can hope to do is partner with them.

Client Side iPhone / iPod Touch Browser Redirect

If layer 7 redirection from hardware based solutions isn't quite available in your enterprise, or perhaps the entire CSS3 standard hasn't completely made it into your long term memory yet there is a very easy way to redirect iPhone & iPod Touch users.

While several of our clients have experience varying levels of success, small to mid-sized solutions may benefit from a simple inline javascript redirect.

Example:

<script language=javascript>

<!--

if((navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i)) || (navigator.userAgent.match(/iPod/i)))

{

location.replace("http://TYPE_YOUR_URL_HERE");

}

-->

</script>




Those who are better versed in conditional CSS, will find that the iPhone
and iPod Touch react very favorably to a CSS that is optimized to the
specifications referenced by Apple in the developer documentation on their
site (Apple Developer Connection Guides).


-Robert Zullo

iPhone - The triple threat

As many of you know last week saw the latest development release from Apple, in the iPhoneSDK. While we have been a stalwart supporter of the iPhone and it's capabilities, it wasn't till last week that we saw the development community come alive with enthusiasm.

Exceeding all expectations the initial reviews from ZuCom and the community have been overwhelmingly positive. With the unexpected announcement of enterprise level integration and support capabilities Apple added another threat to competitors which now clearly extends beyond the phone market. For the entrepreneurial developer who has struggled with getting offerings to market, Apple has also developed a sales and marketing strategy, with the App Store that truly make this announcement a triple threat.

It isn't often that we see such a complete offering, and given the let down from the WWDC07 announcement this is a welcome surprise.

We look forward to supporting our partners and development community in all their endeavors, helping mature the iPhone software market will undoubtedly be in all our plans from here on out.


-Robert Zullo
ZuCom Services

Even tough decisions have Choice

When it appears that a situation has left no choice, remember that choice in itself is...

...everybody has got a choice,
between right or wrong,
giving up or holding on...

-J. Mellencamp

What all successful projects have in common

The ability to:

..adapt, overcome, and improvise..

Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Highway

"...you can run me....you can starve me...., and you can kill me..., just don't bore me."

OS X Leopard Printer Sharing Tip

Out of the box requirements of an OS like Vista can present more confusing than helpful sharing options. While I would encourage all to explore those options, sometimes we just need a quick fix that works under almost all circumstances.

OS X users have always had the ability to use CUPS for printer sharing and Leopard has maintained that option. If you've upgraded to Leopard (or are on anything 10.3 or better) and you are behind a firewall why not just use CUPS.

How to share OS X printers through CUPS to Windows Clients.

On your MAC do the following

1) Enable Printer Sharing on your Mac
>System Preferences>Sharing
Check "Printer Sharing"
2) On the Firewall tab (still under Sharing)
Check "Printer Sharing" under the Allow window.
3) Browse to http://your mac ip:631/printers or http://127.0.0.1:631/printers
This will bring up the CUPS printer administration page
4) Scroll all the way down the page and choose ADD PRINTER
You may be asked to authenticate here
5)Setup a printer with no more than 8 characters (for older clients). Use RAW as the type of device and queue.

On your VISTA(PC) do the following

6) Open the Control Panel Printers & Add Printer
>Start>Control Panel>Printers
Click Add Printer
Click "Add a Network, Wireless or Bluetooth Printer
Click "The Printer I want isn't Listed"
Verify that the radio button "Select a Shared Printer by Name" is filled
In the "Select a Shared Printer by Name" field type the address of your shared printer, ex: http://your_mac_ip:631/printers/shared_printer_name.
Click Next & Finish (call it what you want etc).


I've used this sharing method for years, it's solid and supported by a very robust community, not only the MAC, but several other platforms.

-Z

Nobody

...your nobody till you've been downloaded ..... without permission

-???

History

History doesn't actually repeat itself, but it rhymes...

-Mark Twain

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

-Saint Augustine