The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 78,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
This article will show you how to configure a user password to never expire on the Office 365 platform.
First you will need the PowerShell cmdlets installed onto your computer. To install them, please follow the instructions here:
http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/2b09b6a8-ad7e-446f-b7f0-273856beed70#BKMK_install
To connect Windows Powershell to Office 365, run the following cmdlet from the Powershell window (which you installed in the above step).
$cred=Get-Credential
After running that command, you will get a login window. Type in an “admin” level user for Office 365 (in the format of username@domain.com) and select “Ok”.
Next, run the following cmdlet:
connect-MSOLService -credential $cred
If it connects successfully, no messages will be should be shown, just a new line as shown in the above screenshot.
If the credentials you’ve provided are incorrect, you will get a screen like the one above. If this happens, check your credentials and re-run the cmdlets above.
To see whether a single user’s password is set to never expire, run the following cmdlet by using the user ID (in the format of username@domain.com) of the user you want to check:
Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName <user ID> | Select PasswordNeverExpires
The result of the cmdlet will show if this flag has been set or not for this user. An example of this can be seen in the above screenshot. For this particular user, it has not been set.
Optional — To see the “Password never expires” setting for all users, run the following cmdlet:
Get-MSOLUser | Select UserPrincipalName, PasswordNeverExpires
To set the password of one user to never expire, run the following cmdlet by using the user ID of the user (in the format of username@domain.com):
Set-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName <user ID> -PasswordNeverExpires $true
Optional — To set the passwords of all the users in an organization to never expire, run the following cmdlet:
Get-MSOLUser | Set-MsolUser -PasswordNeverExpires $true
To set the password of one user so that the password does expire, run the following cmdlet by using the user ID of the user:
Set-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName <user ID> -PasswordNeverExpires $false
To set the passwords of all users in the organization so that they do expire, use the following cmdlet:
Get-MSOLUser | Set-MsolUser -PasswordNeverExpires $false
I’m known at my job and with friends of being a Mac fan, which is true. It wasn’t always like that however. I’ve spent the majority of my IT career behind a keyboard of a PC (well, and a Linux machine when I was a Redhat Server Administrator) 😉 Customers and friends often ask why I use a Mac, and I thought that this experience of a blogger who works for a site called Tuaw summed it up nicely. Just like he mentions- Macs are not perfect- but even when things go wrong, the overall experience has been way less frustrating than experiences that I’ve had with a PC.
http://www.tuaw.com/2012/12/18/your-trusty-tuaw-blogger-tries-windows-8/
And people wonder why Mac’s are gaining marketshare, not only for the consumer, but in the enterprise as well.. 😉
Interesting graphic on Mac’s market share:
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apples-mac-gains-share-as-u.s.-pc-sales-drop
Apple’s KB article on how to setup the “root” user for OS X Mountain Lion. It’s very similar to “Lion”, but different 😉
When trying to use the “Download Windows Remote Desktop Shortcut File” option within vCloud Director, it might be grayed out (unavailable).
The resolution is to select the Virtual Machine from the vApp Diagram and the link should become available.
More information can be found on the VMware KB article, located here:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=2009629
A new patch release notification from VMware was received today, it’s copied below.
We are pleased to inform you that new VMware ESX/ESXi Patches are available as of May 3, 2012.
These patches address several critical security issues. Detailed information regarding resolved and known issues and enhancements can be found in these Knowledge Base articles:
3.5 EP2 Patch Release Notes:
ESX: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019535
ESXi: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019537
4.0 EP7 Patch Release Notes:
ESX: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019853
ESXi: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019855
4.1 EP2-1 Patch Release Notes:
ESX: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019859
ESXi: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019860
5.0 EP3 Patch Release Notes:
ESXi: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2019857
VMware ESX/ESXi Patches are available for download at http://www.vmware.com/patch/download/.
Regards,
VMware vSphere Product Release Team
Google Drive has been released over the last couple of days, so it has prompted many sites to do comparisons of the different online storage cloud providers. A very good comparison that I have found is over at theverge.com. It’s over at: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/24/2954960/google-drive-dropbox-skydrive-sugarsync-cloud-storage-competition
Note– if you are a Microsoft SkyDrive user, they are changing the “free” account from 25GB down to 7GB. However if you already have a SkyDrive account, you can “claim” your full 25GB by heading to your SkyDrive “Manage Storage” page (conveniently linked from the client’s menu bar icon). There is a link on that page to claim your full 25GB.
The article above basically mentions that they feel SugarSync is the overall best solution. I would agree with that, I used SugarSync for quite awhile, however one thing that I didn’t like about SugarSync, is some of the sharing capabilities of folders. To share a folder with someone, you choose the folder, click on “get share link” and you send the link out to the person you want to share it with. What you might not know/see, is the person you’ve shared the folder with cannot access your link until they sign-up for a SugarSync account themselves- something that I didn’t want the people I share links with to have to do.
Here’s an example of the above so you can see what I mean:
For the above, I made a test folder with a test file inside the folder. I then shared the folder with a link. When you click on that link however, you’ll see the above page- SugarSync wants them to signup for an account before they can get access to the files you’ve shared with them.
Personally I’ve switched over to Dropbox, as their sharing capabilities are quick, easy and I can share files or folders through links– and they don’t require the person I’m sharing the link with to signup for an account in order to access the files.
I’ve been pretty happy with Apple Mail, which I use on my Mac for a few personal email accounts (including an iCloud account and a Gmail account). However some things just annoy me with it. Compared to Gmail and other email providers, sometimes the flexibility is lacking or it just doesn’t work the way you think it should. It also might be my imagination, but it seems to be running slower with my large email amount than it has in the past. So I stumbled across another email program for the Mac called “Sparrow”. So far, it’s worked amazingly with both my iCloud account and my Gmail account. It’s very fast and responsive and has some things that seem easier to do in my opinion compared to Apple Mail. If Apple Mail is getting you a little irritated, I’d suggest taking a look at Sparrow.
http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/mac.php
They have a “free”, ad support version, or a paid version which costs $9.95.
One thing to note, they don’t support Microsoft Exchange accounts like Apple Mail does. So if you need Exchange support, you’ll need to stick with Apple Mail or Microsoft Office 2011.
Happy emailing!
According to The Register, Microsoft is slashing their prices for Office 365, which in my opinion was already very competitively priced. For full details, check out the article here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/15/microsoft_office_365_price_cut/
Here’s the table in the article outlining the old and new prices for each Office 365 package.
Lewan is a Microsoft Gold Partner and offers Office 365 to our clients at the same prices listed above. Feel free to talk with your account representative for additional details or for a demonstration.
Switched to Google Apps and now can’t get your Xerox printers to scan to email? It’s because Google’s servers require you to use SSL when sending email and the Xerox’s can’t send by SSL. To get it working, you’ve got two options (#2 is the far easier option):
1. You can use a program called Stunnel to accept the Xerox’s SMTP transfer and transmit it to Google via a secure connection. More info here.
2. Google actually accepts non-SSL SMTP connections on one of their servers, aspmx.l.google.com on port 25. Set the Xerox to send via that and set your username and password to a Google Apps account.
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