Today I have been to geek heaven… and it’s full of stars!!

Where exactly is geek heaven? Here:

• Playing Pac Man
• In a Safari web browser
• Which is on the www.google.com home page
• Running on a Mac
• Which is a virtual machine
• Running on VMware
• Running inside Windows 7 64-bit

Folks, Geekdom does NOT get any better than this:

Today, I truly earned my “Uber-Geek” license plate.

The new book “Windows Home Server Unleashed (2nd Edition)” by author Paul McFedries is in stores now. This is the third book I’ve worked on for SAMS Publishing, this time as a Technical Editor instead of a co-author. 

The “Unleashed” series of books strives to provide unparalleled technical depth and accuracy, and this book is no exception. The second edition has been updated to include information about Power Pack 3, Windows 7, and other improvements. Paul is an author of over 60 books and has an excellent knowledge of networking, Office, Windows, Macs and the web. He’s even got a book on the iPad!

Title: Windows Home Server Unleashed (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams Publishing; 2 edition
Published: April 15, 2010
ISBN-10: 0672331063
Paperback: 792 pages
Language: English
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Buy.com | InformIT / Sams

If you’ve never installed WHS before, or even if you’ve been using it for quite a while, this book has something for everyone; from beginning setup instructions to advanced topics like connecting Linux, Macs, wireless photo frames, setting up SharePoint, and even scripting. I had an absolute blast editing it, and at one point I had 12 machines running at the same time testing out different scenarios and configurations. I really hope you enjoy this book!

More iTunes weirdness today:

Sure, I’ve got a lot of songs but, Wow! It stuck like that until I restarted iTunes.

An iTunes update this morning finished by prompting me to install the Safari (Mac web browser) 3.1.2 update on my Vista Ultimate laptop.

I scratched my head a bit because, A) I don’t have Safari installed on this machine, and B) the pop-up window had a glitch:

Apparently the Safari-on-Windows carpet bomb bug announced May 30 was fixed on Friday June 20 (this is for both Vista and XP):

Carpet Bomb Bug – The flaw enabled Safari to automatically launch executable files downloaded from a malicious website while in a trusted IE zone. Specifically, users were vulnerable to remote attack if they visited a website in IE 7 with an enabled “launching applications and unsafe files” setting, or if the visited website was in the IE 6 “Local Intranet” or “trusted sites” zone.

Since I’ve already got IE7 and Firefox on this rig, I’m going to pass on the Safari browser. I’ve got enough on my plate without opening another attack vector for some hacker using blended threats. Sketchy update screens don’t instill much confidence either (someone else can be the canary)

I wonder if the smug Apple advertisers will make a commercial out of that one?

(Insert Mac/PC shtick here)
MAC – “Hey PC, I’m bored. Let’s go browse the web”
PC – “OK, can we take your car? Mine’s installing WGA right now”
MAC – (laughs) “Sure. Um, where do I put my Pod and stuff?”
PC – “Just toss them on my desktop, I put stuff up there all the time”
MAC – “Great, thanks”
PC – “Oops, we’re dead”

Disclaimer: I own two Macs.

If you have Mac users who are using the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.0 (Beta 2), here’s a heads-up that it’s set to expire on March 31, 2008. 

This came as a bit of a shock to me since I don’t see any news about a replacement final version or Beta 3.  I checked with Eriq and he confirmed the absence of info. So Mac users may have an interesting April 1st this year.

UPDATE: For an alternate to Microsoft RDC for Mac, check out CoRD
http://cord.sourceforge.net/

I read a LOT of blogs. And by a lot, I confess that it sometimes creeps up to triple digits (in feeds, not just posts). So, since this is the first Saturday of the year, I’m doing the annual pruning the dead wood from the RSS reader.

Who gets the axe? The stale, the blog parrots, the rant-fests, (Scobble got nixed a long time ago). 

And this year, instead of just blowing away the stuff that isn’t applicable and moving on, I’d like to take a minute to share appreciation for a new blog I started reading last year that I’ve particularly enjoyed.

This blogger is a Microsoft Small Business Specialist (SBSC).
He’s located in St. Albert, Alberta Canada.
He blogs about Macs, PCs, and SBS.
And he’s the owner of MPECS, Inc.

If you read his blog, you already know who I’m talking about:

Philip Elder
http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/

If memory serves, I found Philip’s blog via an incoming link on FeedBurner. What a great find! (Both Philip and FeedBurner).

For those who haven’t read Philip yet, his blog is very ‘nuts & bolts’ oriented, with a nice amount of business & Mac mixed in. And the honesty and openness of the posts are refreshing.

So thanks to all the folks still on the blog roll who fight the good fight. And a special thanks to Philip Elder for writing My Favorite New Blog of 2007!

From the Help Desk file…

Reported issue: Client can’t open an email attachment.
Attachment name: MessedUp.xls (file name changed for jocularity)
Details: When you try to open the attachment, Excel pops up the error message:

"The file you are trying to open, ‘MessedUp.xls’, is in a different format than specified by the extension.  Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file.  Do you want to open the file now?"

If you click "Yes" the file opens in Microsoft Excel (or Word, depending on the file extension).

The results of blindly clicking "Yes" and just plowing forward are so confusing that even Beck couldn’t make sense out of these lyrics. 

In Excel, cell A1 says:

"(This file must be converted with BinHex 4.0)"

Microsoft Excel (That ain’t no spreadsheet, bro)

Microsoft Word (similar dreck)

Notepad (slight exaggeration)

What are we looking at? This is a compressed document, but in a format most folks (especially PC users) aren’t familiar with. If you Google BinHex or the error message "This file must be converted with BinHex 4.0" you’ll find everything from sites talking about TRS-80 computers to Macs.  Most of the links are dead-ends and offer no satisfaction regarding how to turn this file from garbage back into usable data.

Solution: You need StuffIt Expander to expand the file.

1. Download & install StuffIt Expander (16.7 MB)
   http://www.stuffit.com/win/expander/index.html
2. Save your attached ‘MessedUp.xls’ document to your hard drive
3. Rename it ‘MessedUp.bin’, and choose ‘Yes’ when asked if you’re sure you want to rename the file extension.
4. Double-click your ‘MessedUp.bin’ file, it should now open in StuffIt.
5. Click the "Expand" button (shown in the picture).

   

6. Select where you’d like your expanded file to be saved, and click OK.
7. You should now have a sufficiently un-rubbled .XLS spreadsheet or .DOC document.  You can delete the original ‘MessedUp.bin’ file.  Grab that cup of Joe and take a victory-sip!

Postmortem: Why does this happen? In this particular instance, the file attachment was sent by a Mac user to a Windows PC user.  It’s not entirely clear if the renaming of the file extension was intentional or an accident, but the end result is similar to the AOL MIME email attachments back before Y2K (those were heady days

Best Practice: If you’re sending an email attachment to someone on a different platform, you may avoid some headaches by just zipping the attachment instead of dragging it in the native format into your email client.

Yes, you’re on the right blog. Don’t freak.

Not too long ago, a customer with a shiny new iPhone called and wanted to get it hooked up to their Small Business Server 2003 server.  No biggie, right?  Well, POP3 is one thing, but little did I know then that IMAP on SBS with an iPhone was pretty much uncharted territory. 

It took a fair amount of research, lots of experimentation, plenty of help from
Eriq Neale [SBS-MVP], and an enormous amount of patience since the client with the phone was 500 miles away and we were doing this blind.  (Yikes!)

I’m happy to report that the iPhone does work with SBS using IMAP with SSL.
(Although Windows Mobile 5 or 6 with Small Business Server is still the preferred tool for mobile SBS Warriors).

Want to set this up for yourself?  No problemo – there are two phases:

Phase 1 – Setting up IMAP with SSL on the SBS box
(complete with screen shots).

"Configuring IMAP over SSL with SBS 2003 Standard"

Co-authors: Eriq Neale & Tim Barrett

http://www.smallbizserver.net/Default.aspx?tabid=266&articleType=ArticleView&articleId=231

As a reminder, make sure you open ports 143 (TCP) and 993 (TCP) in your firewall and forward it back to your SBS box.

These instructions are for SBS 2003 Standard.

UPDATE: Eriq has also completed the ISA version of the instructions for SBS 2003 Premium.

Phase 2 – Setting up your iPhone to work with SBS and IMAP
(complete with screen shots stolen from UW and modified).

Disclaimer: This document and what comes with it are provided as-is with blunt warning: Use at your own risk, buyer beware. You break your system; you own the resolution as well. We have no liability for what you do, or can’t do, or fail to do with this information. Your entire protection is to start over again with a protected backup, or from protected system. If you don’t want to accept this idea, please don’t use this document.

Create a New Account in iPhone Mail

1. Select Settings on the home screen

    

2. Select Mail to start iPhone Mail

    

3. Touch Add Account, select Other and then IMAP

        

   

4. Fill in your account information as follows:

     Account Information:
   
   

   Name:	Your Real Name
   Address:	username@domain.com
   Description:	SBS Email (Just a suggestion)

     Incoming Mail Server:
   
   

   Host Name:	server.domain.com
   User Name:	username (Not domain\username)
   Password:	yourSBSpassword

     Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP):
   
   

   Host Name:	server.domain.com (:587)
   User Name:	username (Not domain\username)
   Password:	yourSBSpassword

   This page should now look like this:

    

5. Touch Advanced to configure security options.

   

6. The following screen will appear.

    

   I used the following settings for SSL on the iPhone:

   Incoming Uses SSL – On
   Outgoing Uses SSL – On

UPDATE: Props to Levent for reminding me that you need to make sure that both ports 143 and 993 open and forwarded to the SBS box. The instructions are in the whitepaper, but I didn’t have inbound 993 turned open in my initial configuration, which is why I couldn’t get the iPhone to pull down email via IMAP with the ‘Incoming uses SSL’ turned on initially. Thanks for catching that Levent!

So there you have it.  Thanks to Eric Neale for his amazing patience and Mac & SBS know-how!  And thanks to Susan for the link.

If you have suggestions or comments, hit the feedback button below.  And before folks ask, my "Running FolderShare as a Windows Service on SBS" is coming next.

According to the latest Apple security update (2007-005), Macs need patches just like any other personal computer.  And these aren’t soft and fuzzy patches for iPods. 

This security update corrects 17 vulnerabilities affecting software packages that ship as part of OS X 10.3.9 and 10.4.9. Some of these vulnerabilities allow attackers to execute any code they choose on your OS X machines.

Three of the fixed vulnerabilities include remote code execution in CoreGraphics, local privilege elevation in PPP, & Denial of Service vulnerability in Bind.   

Here’s the complete list:

1. Alias Manager
2. BIND
3. CoreGraphics
4. crontabs
5. fetchmail
6. file
7. iChat
8. mDNSResponder
9. PPP
10. ruby
11. screen
12. texinfo
13. VPN

As my good friend Ron always says, “It’s easy to say you’re bullet-proof when nobody’s firing at you.”  I use both Macs and PCs, and somehow I don’t think they’ll make a Mac vs. PC ad out of this, do you?