A little adjustment in the server setup here at technoDAVE. The blog has been moved to blog.technodave.com, so the main site could be converted to Drupal.
And we’re back!
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Centronics / USB printer cable
These things actually work.
Even though they advertise “plug ‘n pray”, there’s one shortcoming: PNP creates a new USB printer port, but doesn’t recognize the printer (obviously, because it’s not a USB device!)
All you need to do is manually install the printer on that port. Which port is that? Check your “Printer Properties > Ports” for the USB port with no printer assigned.
Microsoft ActiveSynch and the iPhone
I finally got my iPhone synch’ing with our small Exchange Server using Microsoft Active Sync. In the final analysis it was much simpler than I thought.
Even though I tried a lot of configurations, reality is that much of the configuration was ready-to-go by default. This may have been the result of doing a very vanilla Small Business Server 2003 installation. For example:
- Outlook Mobile Access was enabled by default for all users: Active Directory Users and Computers > Users > Administrator > Properties > Exchange Features.
The most important thing I did was change the IP filter  for Microsoft-Server-Active-Sync website:
Internet Information Services (IIS) Manger > SERVER2003 > Web Sites > Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync > Properties > Directory Security > IP address and domain name restrictions > Edit “By default, all computers will be:”
Change this to “Granted access”. It probably was some form of “Denied access” with “Except the following:” access granted to the server and localhost IP addresses.
Obviously, the ActiveSync IIS website has to accept external traffic!
Another thing I did, which I think was worthwhile, but (probably) not required was to force the Default Web Site to require secure communications (SSL):
IIS > SERVER2003 > Web Sites > Default Web Site > Default Web Site Properties > Directory Security > Secure communications >Edit “Require secure channel (SSL)”
Check this box to enforce SSL communication.
The iPhone configuration was straightforward, nothing unusual.
The 800 pound gorilla…
is not Microsoft, but Google.
Any business invested in the internet in any form needs to play nice with Google.
The rewards are better search results. The penalties, at some point, could be dire.
The more “Google-friendly” your site is, i.e., maps, commerce, adwords, etc. the better your internet return.
Or am I paranoid?
As for me, I’m going to sign up as a reseller, if they’ll have me.
My new motto: “Play nice around the 800 pound gorilla”.
Gmail for business
I’ve been thinking lately that Gmail would be a great backup for most small business email users. With 8GB of free storage, wouldn’t it be easy to forward email to the “deep freeze” at Gmail? Multiple users could share an account if desired. 8GB should last a long time, and Google’s servers should be as reliable as any.
Well, my conscience bothered me a little, although I’m willing to assume that Google supports the service through advertising. But, now I see “Google Apps for Business” offering Gmail for business with 25GB! of storage per user for $50/yr, including filtering. Actually, that $50 includes the all the Google apps, which will eventually compete with M$oft.
Might be worth a look. Is Postini the email service the USPS should have become?
Online backup
Something I’m just getting my feet wet with.
My first experience with the local phone company is OK, especially considering the limited technology at this particular telco.
Prices range from ? to $2/GB, I guess.
Links:
IDrive Pro for Business – 50GB for $9.95/mo. A personal plan should back up single workstation, though.
Data Deposit Box – unlimited users, computers for $2/GB/mo. For larger accounts with multiple users / computers.
Big question: Who will emerge as the leader?
HP? – not at those prices
Windows Home Server
OK, this might be the first second (Robocopy is the only, so far) M$oft product that I can find a use for.
If you’ve ever looked at Windows SBS Server for your small business, you probably came to the conclusion that it’s too complicated and expensive. Windows Home Server, on the other hand, is only $99. It’s also simple to install and provides the basic filesharing and backup that most small businesses need.
I installed it on my old SC440 and it runs great. I think that a cheap server from Dell and a decent hard drive setup would be a lot better than sharing folders around the network. Promise has a RAID card for under $70. Western Digital has 1TB drives for $110.
Apple TV upgrade
OK, not exactly a small business topic, but I’m a Mac kinda guy, and I bought a 40GB Apple TV a while back. It was OK, but I really resented the limited storage capacity. Well, after I found this article at engadget, I was ready to realize my dream for the Apple TV.
Now I have a 320GB Apple TV with room for all my music and movies that I can take anywhere with a decent TV (especially nice with an HDMI connection – lots of hotels seem to be upgrading). 320 GB seems to be the limit for 2.5 IDE drives AFAIK; I went with Western Digital and had no problems
The whole procedure went pretty well, except for the T8 Torx driver (make sure you have one before you start; I ended up with a T8 bit in my 1/4″ nut driver).
The engadget procedure has a VERY handy tip regarding the disk copy procedure that would have saved me a ton of time and makes it almost easy to do this procedure even with an old PowerBook:
dd if=/dev/disk2 count=1335 of=/dev/disk3 bs=1024k
“count=1335″ says “only copy 1335 (1024k) blocks (about 1.4GB)” instead of the whole disk, which is appropriate if you’re doing a disk to disk copy. I don’t think the number is exact, so I think it works in all cases. You could probably delete the last partition before copying (you have to delete it eventually), and ignore the block count, but that’s a little scary for most people.
Another possible frustration saver is the partition recovery step which I stumbled on before I got to engadget. There is a second partition table at the end of the disk which might not get recreated with a partial copy, so partition recovery is a good idea.
Engadget also helps you delete the Spotlight hidden files with some simple sudo commands (type carefully).
Nicely done, engadget.
GoDaddy.com – Hosted Exchange
$9.99 / mo for a single user? Seems unbeatable for someone who really wants mobile access to Outlook without administration overhead. $56.00 for 5 users is less exciting.
What’s the catch? Do they deliver? I can’t say. Caveat Emptor.
Snap server master browser service
Place holder.
I’m using it and all seems well on a mixed PC / Mac environment for a printing company. Seems like it works.
Ref: Description of the Microsoft Computer Browser Service. If there’s no DNS and I don’t want to bother maintaining LMHOSTSÂ files, how to I manage name resolution?
LMHOSTS file information and predefined keywords from Microsoft