Glo Networks Technical Blog (Glo Blog)

Back in November last year when the first iPhone was released I paid £269 for the phone and even though it sounds expensive I think it was worth every penny, it was a great phone.

It contained an iPod touch, internet browser, email client and a lot more all rolled in to one but there were a couple of problems with it, one being the lack of 3G and the other is not having Microsoft Exchange support.

Well its July now and the iPhone 3G is here along with the release of the iPhone 2.0 software. First i want to list some of the hardware changes to the iPhone 3G over the original iPhone then I want to list and explain a bit about the changes and new features in the 2.0 software.

First lets take a look at the hardware changes -

Even though they have changed the back to plastic it is still the great build quality you would expect from Apple, it still feels solid and well balanced.

I remember reading a lot of articles and posts around the web when the first iPhone came out. A lot of people didnt like the fact they couldnt plug the normal headphones in the iPhone because the headphone socket was set in and not flush. Well, Apple have sorted this out with the iPhone 3G. The headphone socket now sits flush with the top of the phone, so you can use any headphones you like.

AGPS, the new GPS receiver in the iPhone works great, it finds your exact location very quickly and can be very useful when you are out and about. For example, I was down in plymouth a couple of weeks ago and as we were exploring on foot if we were not sure of our location, I could use the iPhone and find out exactly where we were and 3G meant that the maps loaded very quickly. The GPS is not just for maps and finding your way, it can also be used by other applications, even the camera can use it so you can mark your location when you take a picture.

3G is great! – when using it you cant really tell the difference between 3G and using the iPhone on wifi, it is really quick and completes the whole iPhone experience nicely along with Exchange support.

On to the software -

I want to start with Microsoft Exchange support, because to me and im sure a lot of other iPhone business users this is a great and important new feature.

By having Exchange support the iPhone uses push mail the same as what any windows mobile uses which means your email is on your phone just as quick as it is on your desktop.

If you have ever used mail on the iPhone before you will already know how to navigate it, with an exchange account on the iPhone its just the same but with some added benifits, you can now keep your email organized by being able to move and mass delete email.

The Exchange support does not just sync mail, it also does your calendar, contact and even the global address list.

Calendar requests are handled slightly differently on the iPhone, rather than you getting an email to accept or decline the calendar invite, there is a special button under calendar where you will find all of your appointment requests.

So how fast does the Exchange sync work? I entered a calendar appointment on my iPhone, by the time I could load outlook on my desktop the appointment was there, it is instant.

The App Store, when i first looked at the App store I was impressed with how much was already in there, but after browsing around it I couldnt really see much that I was interested in downloading apart from Apple Remote. Apple remote allows you to control your iTunes on your Mac or if you have one your Apple TV box, when you load Apple Remote it shows you all of your music including album art work you simply select the song you want and your Mac/Apple TV will play it, you can even control the volume. After a few weeks there does seem to be more interesting applications appearing on the App store, such as software to control your PC remotely.

Mobile Me – I dont actually use Mobile Me because I have an exchange server, but for those of you that dont have an exchange server, Mobile Me gives you Push email, contacts and calendar the same way that Exchange feature does. Mobile Me has had teething problems with a lot of members having problems and resulting in Apple giving members 2 months free because of the problems.

The Hardware:

• The back is now plastic instead of aluminium
• The headphones jack is now flush so you can use any headphones
• The buttons are now metal
• It now has what Apple call AGPS (Assisted GPS uses mobile phone towers, WiFi and built-in GPS receiver)
• Improved speaker
• Same 3.5″ multi-touch display
• and of course 3G

The software:

• App Store
• Support for Microsoft Exchange
• Apple’s new Mobile me service

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Posted by Dave in Mobile | No Comments »

For many of our customers we redirect a user’s My Documents to a directory of the same name, on a Windows share. For example, the user ‘JMcMuffin’ may have their My Docs redirected to “\\FILESERVER\Home\JMcMuffin\My Documents”, which are stored in a local path of D:\Data\Users\JMcMuffin, on FILESERVER. Obviously you can switch \\FILESERVER\Home for a DFS share, etc.

In some instances you might have a significant number and for whatever reason the permissions may have been altered, and the Group Policy defaults don’t quite suit your requirements. Or maybe you’re transfering these files to a new server, in a different domain. I can’t image you want to do the whole thing by hand.

In days of old we’d sort this with a batch script and it would be ok, but might take a while to run. Powershell has changed things though. The script we’ve popped together (below) runs lightning quick in comparison, and we thought someone else might also find it useful.

Just save it in a ps1 file, and invoke it from powershell, providing your directory path that you want to “fix”.

To use our example from above, you’d call the script on FILESERVER, from powershell:

PS C:\Users\Karl> C:\path\to\scripts\fix-perms.ps1 “D:\Data\Users”

The script would then go over each directory and try and add that user to the ACL with Modify rights – i.e. the JcMcMuffin user to the D:\Data\Users\JMcMuffin directory.

In our scenario we required ourselves, another group, SYSTEM and each user to have access only – So we pushed the common permissions from the parent, and then ran the script to add the individual users.

# Fix-Perms
# Iterates over all child directories, and adds the user, with the same name as the directory, to the ACL with modify rights
# Usage:
# Fix-Perms “C:\Path\To\Directory”
# Or, for the current directory
# Fix-Perms “.”

# our parameters, throw a warning if we get none
param (
[string] $dirpath = $(throw “Please specify the full path to the directory!”)
)

# get list of all child directories, in the current directory
$directories = dir $dirpath | where {$_.PsIsContainer}

# iterate over the directories
foreach ($dir in $directories)
{
# echo out what the full directory is that we’re working on now
write-host Working on $dir.fullname using $dir.name

# setup the inheritance and propagation as we want it
$inheritance = [system.security.accesscontrol.InheritanceFlags]“ContainerInherit, ObjectInherit”
$propagation = [system.security.accesscontrol.PropagationFlags]“None”

# get the existing ACLs for the directory
$acl = get-acl $dir.fullname

# add our user (with the same name as the directory) to have modify perms
$aclrule = new-object System.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemAccessRule($dir.name, “Modify”, $inheritance, $propagation, “Allow”)

# check if given user is Valid, this will barf if not
$sid = $aclrule.IdentityReference.Translate([System.Security.Principal.securityidentifier])

# add the ACL to the ACL rules
$acl.AddAccessRule($aclrule)

# set the acls
set-acl -aclobject $acl -path $dir.fullname
}

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Posted by Karl in Applications, Desktops and Laptops, General, Operating Systems, Servers, Software | 3 Comments »

During our day to day work we sometimes come across a messy PC full of Malware (or whatever you might want to call it). We recently had to deal just such a poorly PC and a new found tool came to the resuce – Anti-Malware by Malwarebytes.

Exceptionally simple interface, quick download and most importantly dealt with the issue in one simple swoop. During this particular clean up we tried a few usual tried and tested methods which after a reboot served as a waste of time. But this Anti-Malware program sorted it out completed on its first run.

I know what we’ll be using again in the future, easily the best anti-malware / anti-spyware / adware software out there. Thanks for the great software guys.

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Posted by Chris in Desktops and Laptops, Software | No Comments »

In the last few days the following (relevent to us and our customers) software has been released -

Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2
This is just like the RDC program that’s build into Windows. It allows users to connect to a server for administration or terminal services. We and most of our customers have been using this in it’s beta state for some time now and have had no problems. So we’d suggest a update to the final release as soon as possible, get it from here.

ISA 2006 SP1
Service Pack 1 for ISA 2006 The contents of the service pack should be avalible in KB943462. Get the service pack from here.

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Posted by Chris in Applications, Desktops and Laptops, Servers, Software | No Comments »