nptech.info

p pFor Google Apps administrators, the offerings in the a href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/" target="_blank"Google Apps Marketplace/a seems to be a lot of 3rd party tools that pull in gApps data (Docs, Calendar, etc.) to make it easier to work within the 3rd party tool's own environment. For example, when you add a href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=4626+18406874010889112579" target="_blank"Tungle/a to a domain, and then you want to schedule a meeting you do it in the Tungle interface. You don't need the Google Apps integration to use the service, it basically adds a layer of convenience. Same with Box.net, SurveyMonkey and many others. They may try and mimic the Google interface, but it's really a separate experience linked via an OpenID login./p p / divAnd then you find the Apps in the Marketplace like a href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=3021+5039071168532233802" target="_blank"Promevo gPanel/a that truly make a difference to those of us who have to manage and support multiple users (and multiple domains). I've only been using it for a short time, but at this point I can say that I never want to touch a Google Apps domain without it again./div p / divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/lydjZisesR6jUEwvr1P9FbkUcrF2BAj9LIgwKNbNwH36hReJ9mCFBaWN502b/logo.jpg" width="250" height="31"/ /div p / divThe regular Google Apps control panel gives some very basic administrator controls for managing email settings for individual users and globally. You can click on a user name and force reset their password, set nicknames (alternate usernames) and include them in the shared contacts directory (more on that later). That's about it./div p / diva href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/18OtlrmqzC0Hz5QUDkbJS8iuDUPKyc4iEBGYnBnkLThTYIaw9FarTOoCNAd4/cpanel-email.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/VJoHpiRu4zKhaSDWu7Gksb3lbXCUWKYbqRSuJetIr1OtoT2yo0eRunerPEa7/cpanel-email.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="362"//a /div p / divWhen you have a user who complains that they can't use their desktop email client or phone to get their email and you ask them "did you enable POP or IMAP?" they stare blankly. So you send them instructions, or you stand over their shoulder and talk them through how to configure the right setting and why. How about when the user creates a Google Doc and has no clue how to share it with everyone in the domain, or they've shared it and it's set to view-only and it should benbsp;editablenbsp;(or visa versa)? Google Apps can be incredibly intuitive and maddening at the same time.nbsp;/div p / divAs an administrator, we can of course do it for them without an extra tool. We just have to either ask them for their password or force a password reset and then log in as them and make the necessary changes. I hate doing that. I firmly believe that users should have private passwords and they should stay that way. Don't share with anyone, don't share with me. I don't want to know, and I don't want to read your email. I want to go in, change the setting that needs to be changed and get out./div p / divPromevo gPanel lets administrators configure user email settings without needing direct access to the account! Hurray!/div p / divFrankly, users don't care whether it's POP or IMAP or what it does, they just want to be able to get email on their phone. So set their POP access for them and call it a day:/div p / divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/1mQFw3ZJEG8DpPrORgCHwCR7RniiLXhBrcMvBMtBLdNbo1Z7BOxoa1edsO8E/popsettings.jpg" width="424" height="203"/ /div p / divNot sure who has ownership of which document and if it's shared properly if it's not shared directly with you? gPanel gives admins a bird's eye view of all Google Docs across the domain...ownership, sharing, type...only thing missing is file size (although that might be in another area of the control panel I haven't uncovered yet)./div p / diva href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/mkQPIuPYuuwnRVpAsql9D83BlZEWNmjhLYMX0w1oSeZJMy4nz19Ruvv222rs/docs.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/jQbjTWIsmXQRsNXqmfPvwKO5GDv46kp69JJJ1OU1rp32wQ4KKX066L1zpzzs/docs.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="296"//a /div p / divAdministrators can't open private documents from gPanel, which is just fine. When you open a document from here, it uses the accessnbsp;privilegesnbsp;on the document as the user set it. As it should be, unless there is a reason it should be otherwise. Like in email, I don't want to know nuthin'. But if there's a document that was mis-shared, I can easily fix that for the user without needing to access the document directly (and then concentrate on user training so they do it correctly for themselves next time). I can only see titles:/div p / diva href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/UubM3aFB8I8LbA8Uw0GhYdFFhv4aIAjPvcygGZm2znYM3089TIcA8KXHw0hN/editsettings-1.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/avfCiMQP6009bUXr2ierNomDU6SDOs3njzthm3JmvA4W9VqdZXsSPiGcFBTK/editsettings-1.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="162"//a /div p / divHere's just a short list of what I can do in gPanel that goes beyond anything easily available without it:/div div ul liAdd contacts outside the domain to the shared contacts directory and edit user profiles that are already in the directory (Google has the option to automatically add domain users to the shared directory, but it only includes name and email address)/li liSet labels and filters for a user/li liTurn IMAP on/off for a user/li liTurn those annoying WebClips off for users/li liSet a default signature for a user (doesn't yet work with the new multiple signature feature)/li liSet a vacation message for a user/li liSet forwarding for a user (the Google Apps email destination routing doesn't work well...this is helpful for users who will continue to use other email addresses but need access to docs amp; calendar in your domain)/li liTransfer document ownership from one user to another/li /ul /div divThe support from the folks at Promevo is top notch. Yesterday I got an error message while changing sharing settings on a document. I reported the issue and within 15 minutes, no lie, my phone was ringing. Aaron worked through the problem with me while I was on the phone with him, found it was a bug, and by that evening the problem was fixed. These guys are techies who know how to manage email and digital assets in large corporate environments, and they're a pleasure to talk to./div p / divAnd the price? Very reasonable. For a nonprofit/education environment the cost is just $2/user per year. Not per month. Per year! It goes up to $8/user for commercial clients and works with all editions, with a href="http://promevo.com/google/gpanel/gpanelfeatures.html"varying available features./a/div p / divAaron tells me that they're working on interface improvements (sorely needed in spots), better calendar management, undos and some backup solutions. I also wish they add something in for managing Google Chat settings and short links.nbsp;/div p / divIt's not perfect. The interface lags in spots and since it's such a new product, there are bugs. I found another one this morning which I reported and Aaron already responded that it should be fixed shortly./div p / divThere are a href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/search?categoryId=1amp;orderBy=rating" target="_blank"similar administrator tools in the Marketplace/a such as a href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=16+1119431115094661873" target="_blank"Power Panel/anbsp;but I think I prefer the Promevo approach which treats administrators like administrators and not just bigger end users who would be afraid of not seeing the same Google look amp; feel. It's a complex interface, but it makes sense and is very clear and clean...especially when configuring user email settings./div p / divDo you use an app to manage your Google Apps domain(s)? What do you think?/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.com/promevo-gpanel-google-apps-management-without"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.com/promevo-gpanel-google-apps-management-without#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=Cc1RrNIIgGo:vk7QSEm4bW8:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=Cc1RrNIIgGo:vk7QSEm4bW8:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=Cc1RrNIIgGo:vk7QSEm4bW8:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/Cc1RrNIIgGo" height="1" width="1"/

p Folks seem to be happy that Google is finally rolling out the ability to have a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/access-two-gmail-accounts-at-once-in.html" target="_blank"multiple Gmail accounts in the same browser/a. p /divAll well and good, but it does#39;t work for Google Apps or Google Docs, and it#39;s driving me batty./divp /divAt this time, I have one regular @a href="http://gmail.com" target="_blank"gmail.com/a account that I use for my personal email, as well as any Google service that isn#39;t in Google Apps (Reader, AdWords, Voice, Maps, etc.) I find it easier to have one account for most of these services than juggle between accounts unless necessary. Supposedly Google is working on a href="http://smarterware.org/6394/google-apps-vs-google-accounts-resolution-coming"a way to bring Account-only services to Apps/a, and when that happens maybe I#39;ll rethink my plan./div p /divI use 6 different Google Apps accounts. One for Colorectal Cancer Coalition where I spend most of my day, one account each for a href="http://momathome.com"momathome.com/a and a href="http://judisohn.com"judisohn.com/a (I don#39;t use those for personal email anymore but I do deploy addresses for family members), and the others are for local organizations that I have volunteered to help with tech./div p /divFor a while I used a single account to read/reply to all the email. But that doesn#39;t work well because 1. Google still sends email quot;on behalf ofquot; one account when you send from another. Too many of my contacts are using Outlook to ignore this issue. There#39;s a workaround if you combine POP email accounts, but not if you#39;re using Google#39;s own email which makes no sense. 2. I#39;d still have to load Docs, Calendar and Sites separately anyway so what was the point? and 3. it was harder to manage working this way on the iPhone./div p /divFor the most part, browsers have no problem maintaining separate email sessions for each Google Apps account. So I can be in my browser of choice and have a separate Gmail tab for each email address I check, each logged in and working fine. I don#39;t have a problem with Calendar because I tend to combine all my calendars in such a way that no matter which account I#39;m looking at, I#39;m seeing the same calendars./div p /divBut there is no way that I know of to have a single Google Docs view that shows the content of all accounts. In fact, there can only be bone/b session of Google Docs at a time when a document is open!/div p /divI get this screen constantly:/divp /divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/kuENPWPtERPrNEb4HOvR6QIAJysqInPyON7leY7xA6fAPbNV8zPnDxLHX0o4/error2.png" width="419" height="295"/ br //divdivProblem is, there#39;s a bug of some nature...no matter which account you select, the screen above typically just reloads. The only way I#39;ve found to get to Google Docs from here is to start signing out of the other accounts until the browser sees the quot;frontquot; account as the one you#39;re trying to reach./div p /divOr, sometimes it happens that you can load the main Google Docs page but when you click on a document you get this:/divp /diva href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/YOHL4ZudMADOehBKYFLlYWKQdDO9kEls68aZEN1o5I2SFOkq7QiRHwIcmQbb/error1.png'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/gCnum8UPGshMEPexbqy5QC4u2Pok5EwJ9MbWofIzgTlHCK5tpoJTB9sZ7eLu/error1.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="138"//a Even though you have an active session for the user you want, and you clicked the document from the main Google Docs view of the right account, Google is only recognizing the last account signed in to actually get to the document. You have to peel back the layers to get to the right account./div p /divLately I#39;ve also been occasionally hitting a Google help page which says that I have to clear all cookies and cache to get to Docs. Lovely./divp /divIt#39;s maddening. /divp /divThe temporary solution? Incognito mode (similar to private browsing in Firefox or Safari). You know, the one that everyone snickers at as the quot;porn modequot;? It#39;s noted for not leaving any trace in cookies or history...but it also doesn#39;t take any traces with it from already signed-in sessions./div diva href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/K2SL7Qhi8tkIFtjHIHvE9X9fElQ1UOOSHCTOsCrPz7lFV4WNT9C8ds0VcarS/incognito-1.png'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/aPZSwy4ylLn29wkvJ5hk87zyk7vQO6NUSv0NDqd0P2JsVShQshrW23DLoSf1/incognito-1.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="191"//a /divdivNow when I want to open something in Google Docs, I right-click on the link and open it in Incognito right from the menu:/div p /divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/u6Cfl0t6oVYeJy2EEaYVjhOeSdM5nZ5djKayKW56PERw7mEvRAVMbHzP5S6v/incognito.png" width="402" height="165"/ br //divp /divNeither Firefox or Safari have this right-click option to open a link in their private modes that I can find./div p /divWorks well. No matter which accounts are sign-in to the main window, I get no complaint when I open Docs Incognito. I just have to sign in to the right account in the new Incognito window./divp /divI could always use separate browsers for each account (Firefox for one, Safari for another, etc.) but I find quot;going Incognitoquot; a much better solution. I can even designate the extensions I need to work in Incognito windows (such as 1Password)./div p /divAnyone else doing the multiple account dance and have a better solution until Google fixes this once and for all?/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.com/multiple-google-docs-in-same-browser-incognit"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.com/multiple-google-docs-in-same-browser-incognit#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=b8INKs2RPck:ykCHEZScjkc:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=b8INKs2RPck:ykCHEZScjkc:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=b8INKs2RPck:ykCHEZScjkc:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/b8INKs2RPck" height="1" width="1"/

p This morning, Laini called me over that there#39;s something wrong with her iPad. Every time she launched the iTunes app (she has a $10/month allowance and today it refilled) it opened the App Store app instead. I had her bring it over to me, and sure enough, click quot;iTunesquot; and it flashes for a second and switches over to App Store, using the same animated motion as I see on my iOS 4 iPhone when you use fast app switching. p /divI shut down the iPad completely and restarted. No difference. Her iPad has parental restrictions turned on, but nothing in those settings would cause this behavior. In an effort to avoid restoring the device, I hit the internet. Nothing came up in Google searches, so I searched just the Apple forums and a href="http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11596984"found this thread which nailed the problem/a and the solution:/div p /blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote" style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;"divYou have launch iTunes and quickly press and hold the music button before it switches. If you catch it in time, iTunes will open normally from then on. No idea why it happens but that is what I did and been fine since. /div /blockquotep /divIt took me 2 tries to get my finger on the right spot in time, but sure enough it works. /divp /divSeems the issue a href="http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11847646"goes in the other direction as well./a And here#39;s a href="http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11565535"another thread on the problem/a which solves it with a reset/resync (not restore), I think the other way is easier. /div /p pa href="http://judisohn.com/ipad-strange-redirect-bugs"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.com/ipad-strange-redirect-bugs#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=-qi_92EO5m0:PEBDRVYm7sI:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=-qi_92EO5m0:PEBDRVYm7sI:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=-qi_92EO5m0:PEBDRVYm7sI:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/-qi_92EO5m0" height="1" width="1"/

p pI don't know exactly what they're called, but I hate those new Facebook auto-bot-stupid generated pages. No one creates them, they're just generated by Facebook around a term or idea and it auto--bot-stupid aggregates content around the topic or idea and it auto-bot-stupid suggests to folks (who are neither bots nor stupid) to like the page. /p p / divLong ago I submitted the official page for the auto-bot-stupid page created for a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/C3/110961325596020?ref=ts"C3/a. But has it changed? No. And there are 5 people who like it who I'm not sure if they've found their way to our a href="http://facebook.com/colorectalcancer"actual page/a. /div p / divThis shows just how auto-bot-stupid it is. /div p / divI logged into Facebook and this is what's "Recommended" to me:/div p / divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/B6S3oy6dShV8DOSQQS9Vaxb0yyBmgxlbdjlMwo6Pbs2QabKsxiV6zrBRgaHV/Facebook.png" width="276" height="276"/ /div p / divHmmm... Judging by the images, there are 2 different pages on the same word. Curious, I click through to the first one (names intentionally blanked out). Which appears to be intentionally created by someone./div p / diva href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/3DO8Ifgn3d7k1OaLWUUN6HPvuOnJXIHNMGIybKjDQINyWKOqqQdQrjACFDIP/Facebook_Knitting.-1.png'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/HIHvWQIHSBNA3ppmhE9T3xD3YXYpjdIB6LsQ31Rb8aD4ji8nb4te3qL4R987/Facebook_Knitting.-1.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="515"//a /div p / p / p / divAnd then the second:/div p / diva href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/KcGx5CEtrRtinzntL5ZyJY4aOD4Vk74lSOdiO45gIC7SFhF84BxE2LijholB/Facebook_Knitting.png.scaled.1000.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/47R8Pr5NtX1T4tRil1IpYVHHktLJ79bRN81bdLpBeqldInGolQPw7eFyGEVj/Facebook_Knitting.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="576"//a /div p / divSo a page is created for strongKnitting./strong and a separate auto-bot-stupid one for strongKnitting/strong (notice no punctuation)? Great, tomorrow will Facebook suggest me to like strongKnitting?/strong How about strongKnitting!/strong /div p / divI love when I get a recommendation to a real page based on what I've already liked. Great idea. But these auto-bot-stupid things have got to go./div /p pa href="http://judisohn.com/facebook-recommended-pages-are-brain-dead"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.com/facebook-recommended-pages-are-brain-dead#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=j9b1przurfU:sj_2yxUhySw:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=j9b1przurfU:sj_2yxUhySw:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=j9b1przurfU:sj_2yxUhySw:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/j9b1przurfU" height="1" width="1"/

p pAfter my old self-hosted WordPress blog hosted by MediaTemple a href="http://judisohn.com/malware-link-makes-a-decision-easier"was compromised/a over the weekend (a href="http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/2010/07/21/am-i-hacked-security-explanations-from-mt/"one of many/a)*, I exported the content (and removed the malicious injected link that started all the trouble) and redirected all traffic to a href="http://judisohn.com"judisohn.com/a and a href="http://momathome.com"momathome.com/a to come here to my Posterous blog. It was a hasty decision that I don't regret, but I had some debris to clean up that I didn't get around to doing until today./p p / divI tried to import all the old posts here. Just didn't work. With nearly 2,000 posts and over 5,000 comments the standard importer would not have worked. After 5 days of waiting for the uploaded file to import, I gave up and imported the file to a href="http://judisohn.wordpress.com"a WordPress.com site/a instead. Took a grand total of maybe 15 minutes. Apples to apples makes things easier, I guess. I search my own blog from time to time to spark my memory or remember a tip I shared. Nice to have it all back./div p / div a href="http://judisohn.wordpress.com"All the posts and comments are there./a Unfortunately, I didn't make sure that I had absolute paths to images and so any image hosted on old blog is now broken, and some much older posts that relied on text fomatting plug-ins I experimented with look funky now. I can live with that, at least for the time being. There's also a few miscellaneous pages I have to find a new home. My hosting account with MediaTemple isn't gone for good until the end of the year./div p / div* MediaTemple makes it sound like folks who had their sites attacked hadn't updated WordPress in years. In fact, I was running whatever was the previous version released in December 2009. Would I have been more secure with 3.0? Probably, but that had only been released a month earlier. A month! If you can't wait even a month to decide whether you want to go to the latest and greatest then something is seriously wrong somewhere. That's what I like about Posterous and even WordPress.com now...keeping my site free of malware and vulnerabilities is their problem which they seem to take seriously, not mine./div p / div strongUpdate/strong: I chose wisely. After 5 days, I tried a 2nd upload using the same file that went to WordPress.com. I just got an email that my blog finished importing. Great news! the email shown below told me. But when I went to the page to see if it the import was better than what I already put in WordPress.com...not so much.a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-07-23/yHnbIxzCdsHAoxyHtyrvkGkgFxjlHgrChmqFlIwchklnhDJvDdcyHEhcgvit/posterous2.png.scaled1000.png'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-07-23/yHnbIxzCdsHAoxyHtyrvkGkgFxjlHgrChmqFlIwchklnhDJvDdcyHEhcgvit/posterous2.png.scaled500.png" width="500" height="142"//a a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-07-23/thqwIbacefrgDGscrtxrkIvnAsEeAqBotpsvFAvJnIhpnFABCrxEGdCHintv/posterous1.png.scaled1000.png'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-07-23/thqwIbacefrgDGscrtxrkIvnAsEeAqBotpsvFAvJnIhpnFABCrxEGdCHintv/posterous1.png.scaled500.png" width="500" height="188"//a diva href='http://judisohn.com/looking-for-older-momathomecom-posts'See the full gallery on posterous/a/div/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.com/looking-for-older-momathomecom-posts"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.com/looking-for-older-momathomecom-posts#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=dKOXQJ779To:C7a34fh8zn0:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=dKOXQJ779To:C7a34fh8zn0:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=dKOXQJ779To:C7a34fh8zn0:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/dKOXQJ779To" height="1" width="1"/

p img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/IILXieGc3poDI43p7u7V47VsYS0fcl5ijwS9vXoNZJy9TGTVegdzBRMc3vGq/weather.png" width="308" height="419"/ pWeather widget in Chrome chuckle. Unfortunately, the numbers at the bottom are more accurate. Ugh.br //p /p pa href="http://judisohn.com/wishful-weather-thinking"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.com/wishful-weather-thinking#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=iHo5EUIQyHU:S5qmhZaz3S0:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=iHo5EUIQyHU:S5qmhZaz3S0:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=iHo5EUIQyHU:S5qmhZaz3S0:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/iHo5EUIQyHU" height="1" width="1"/

p div style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: #ffffff; margin: 8px;" pSo I've been going back and forth about what I want to do with my personal domains. I have two, a href="http://judisohn.com" target="_blank"judisohn.com/a and a href="http://momathome.com" target="_blank"momathome.com/a Momathome.com is legacy. It doesn't make a lot of sense now, given what I do for a living, but it was my first identity on the web and I know there's a lot of history out there tied to it. I primarily use it now for the kids' email and it redirects to judisohn.com./p pI started transitioning the web side of things to a href="http://judisohn.com" target="_blank"judisohn.com/a but my heart wasn't in it. It came down to the fact that all the hassles of maintaining a domain just aren't worth it to me anymore. I'm no longer concerned with who can find me through a random Google search. I only care about the people in my network and extended network... nonprofit geeks, knitters, friends, family, techies etc. If anything, I can't stand when some stranger not connected to any community I care about emails me about an ancient post. I'm a totally different person now, with different perspective and goals. /p pPosterous is a good fit for me, and I love that I only focus on content and they do the rest. Posting by email means I have a backup. It's by no means perfect, but good enough./p pThis morning I went to log in to my old WordPress blog for some reason I can't remember right now and saw this:/p pimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/OwybFGDemyNZujl3xdy8Vi6zM5NPyhoonGyAMW2bClpECrlTO9xX4uLUIUat/malware.png" width="425" height="190"/ /p pOh that's just grand./p pI logged into Webmaster tools, found what the offending code was and managed to remove it, no easy feat since my browsers weren't thrilled with even letting me in to the WP admin page. It was a line of script on the most recent post pointing to some malware site I obviously won't say here. a href="http://wordpress.org/support/topic/412097"I found the exact issue on the WordPress support site if anyone is interested./a a href="https://forums.mediatemple.net/viewtopic.php?id=5088"Looks like an issue with a MediaTemple (gs) database, although they'd probably deny it./a/p pThat was the final straw. I'm done with personal website hosting and I'll save $125 a year to boot. /p pI've requested through the Webmasters tool that Google re-review my site so browsers won't complain, and then I'm redirecting a href="http://judisohn.com"judisohn.com/a and a href="http://momathome.com"momathome.com/a here once and for all. I have no idea how long it will take for Google to clear the domain. /p pI have an up-to-date export of all the old blog's content which I've been trying to get imported. If the import doesn't work, maybe I'll set it up on a WordPress.com site to have as an archive. Then I can ask Google (once again through the Webmasters tool) to re-index the domain and call it a day./p pApologies in advance for all those old URLs that will break. It's going to happen, can't lose sleep over it. Time for a fresh start./p pAnd I'm sorry if anyone gets malware from me./p pstrongUpdate:/strong I've found more information about what got into my site. a href="http://domainshane.com/mediatemple-kinda-admits-wordpress-sites-they-host-may-have-been-hacked-by-johnnya/"I found this post/a, and sure enough there were multiple "JohnnyA" administrators in my site. I've deleted them all, and hopefully my site will be re-cleared by Google and redirected to Posterous before whatever happened happens again. Seems like MediaTemple has a problem on their hands, soon enough it won't be my problem too./p /div /p pa href="http://judisohn.com/malware-link-makes-a-decision-easier"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.com/malware-link-makes-a-decision-easier#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=8c2V_oSlQEI:fNG-CIKB92I:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=8c2V_oSlQEI:fNG-CIKB92I:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=8c2V_oSlQEI:fNG-CIKB92I:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/8c2V_oSlQEI" height="1" width="1"/

p divimg title="dale_chihuly_google-highres.jpg" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZYqYi4xigk/TBB6H0HrhbI/AAAAAAAAGRA/y0F3_rTdKKI/dale_chihuly_google-highres.jpg" height="241" alt="dale_chihuly_google-highres.jpg" width="420" /br / /divp /divIt probably seemed like such a good idea at the time. Google added the ability to make the Google home page more Bing-like with background images, a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/art-of-homepage.html"and showed it off by adding their own images to everyone#39;s home page for a day/a. Big deal. /div p /divApparently it was. They stopped the promotion a bit early and now Google is plain vanilla white again (reason why in the blog post linked above). I barely noticed since I quot;Googlequot; using Chrome#39;s address bar. I rarely go to Google#39;s home page directly./div p /divYesterday, Eric and I went out for lunch. I happened to overhear two women at the next table talk about the change and how unsettling it was. quot;Can you believe it about Google this morning?quot; was the quip that initially got my attention. I thought I missed something really important so my ears perked up. Then they went on about it. How they couldn#39;t figure out how to turn it off. How finally a colleague showed them ihow to upload a big blank white image to get the old Google back./i This wasn#39;t a fleeting moment. This stopped productivity in some business while employees dealt with the crisis. I know it was rude of me to listen to their conversation. I#39;m sorry. Couldn#39;t help myself. /div p /diva href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20007287-71.html"Maybe it was too soon after Pac-Man./a/divp /divSometimes those of us in the if-it#39;s-five-minutes-ago-it#39;s-old tech cocoon forget just how jarring change like this can be to normal people.p /divAs my friend Peter Campbell of a href="http://www.techcafeteria.com"Techcafeteria/a so wisely said at NTC earlier this year, ipeople don#39;t hate change...they hate disruption./i/div/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.com/sun-rises-in-the-east-sets-in-the-westand-goo"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.com/sun-rises-in-the-east-sets-in-the-westand-goo#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=7VIANMgwIJs:1YCiFxX4alM:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=7VIANMgwIJs:1YCiFxX4alM:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=7VIANMgwIJs:1YCiFxX4alM:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/7VIANMgwIJs" height="1" width="1"/

p divimg title="dale_chihuly_google-highres.jpg" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZYqYi4xigk/TBB6H0HrhbI/AAAAAAAAGRA/y0F3_rTdKKI/dale_chihuly_google-highres.jpg" height="241" alt="dale_chihuly_google-highres.jpg" width="420" /br / /divp /divIt probably seemed like such a good idea at the time. Google added the ability to make the Google home page more Bing-like with background images, a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/art-of-homepage.html"and showed it off by adding their own images to everyone#39;s home page for a day/a. Big deal. /div p /divApparently it was. They stopped the promotion a bit early and now Google is plain vanilla white again (reason why in the blog post linked above). I barely noticed since I quot;Googlequot; using Chrome#39;s address bar. I rarely go to Google#39;s home page directly./div p /divYesterday, Eric and I went out for lunch. I happened to overhear two women at the next table talk about the change and how unsettling it was. quot;Can you believe it about Google this morning?quot; was the quip that initially got my attention. I thought I missed something really important so my ears perked up. Then they went on about it. How they couldn#39;t figure out how to turn it off. How finally a colleague showed them ihow to upload a big blank white image to get the old Google back./i This wasn#39;t a fleeting moment. This stopped productivity in some business while employees dealt with the crisis. I know it was rude of me to listen to their conversation. I#39;m sorry. Couldn#39;t help myself. /div p /diva href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20007287-71.html"Maybe it was too soon after Pac-Man./a/divp /divSometimes those of us in the if-it#39;s-five-minutes-ago-it#39;s-old tech cocoon forget just how jarring change like this can be to normal people.p /divAs my friend Peter Campbell of a href="http://www.techcafeteria.com"Techcafeteria/a so wisely said at NTC earlier this year, ipeople don#39;t hate change...they hate disruption./i/div/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/sun-rises-in-the-east-sets-in-the-westand-goo"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/sun-rises-in-the-east-sets-in-the-westand-goo#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=A-3ckLh-JuI:suk7kUXVYHw:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=A-3ckLh-JuI:suk7kUXVYHw:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=A-3ckLh-JuI:suk7kUXVYHw:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/A-3ckLh-JuI" height="1" width="1"/

p In a few weeks, my oldest daughter will be graduating from middle school. High school begins in the fall. I#39;m starting to get a picture of who my baby may be as an adult. Scary, but in a good way because she#39;s an amazing young lady. She#39;s intelligent, sweet, compassionate, has a wicked sense of humor and has thankfully has spared us from most of the average 14 year-old angst. She also has high-functioning autism. Looking at her now you#39;d never know I was once told that she might never speak in full sentences. p /divLike many kids with autism, she needs a lot of structure in her life. She always has to know what#39;s happening next or she gets very stressed out. She also has fine motor issues. She can write, but it#39;s barely legible. She#39;s very comfortable on the computer. She never had much interest in email, but does communicate with classmates from time to time on gaming social networks that are kid-appropriate. I just turned off her cell phone account because she was never using it. Only recently has she mastered answering and using the telephone at home. She also has an internal filter that#39;s better than any parental control software. She refused to see a PG-13 movie until she was actually 13. She doesn#39;t like to hear bad words. If she stumbles across something she shouldn#39;t see on YouTube, she#39;ll switch it off faster than I could react. She loves to read and write, but needs help making sure her stories have a beginning, middle and end./div p /divWe#39;ve decided to get her an iPad this summer. This isn#39;t a toy or entertainment device, although we certainly expect her to use it for that when appropriate./divp /divspan style="color: rgb(66, 64, 55); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21px;"/span/div p /divI rely on technology to keep my life organized. I don#39;t keep anything in my head I don#39;t have to. I have work and personal Google calendars that tell me what I have to do and when. Everything is nicely synced between my desktop computer, laptop and iPhone. I would be a steaming pile of mess without it all. And I don#39;t have autism. How unfair is it that my child with autism is expected to keep a paper planner and write everything down when I can#39;t do that?/div p /divThe iPad will be perfect for her. A notebook computer will be heavier and require more maintenance. An iPhone or iPod Touch is too small for her to get much use out of the keyboard with her fine motor challenges. She loves to read and it will be great for her to be able to keep so many books with her. She can write with Pages. And I know there has to be some great apps out there specifically designed to help young adults like her organize and communicate./div p /divWe will turn parental controls on. Not so much for content, as I explained, but to make sure that she#39;s not using it in school to play games or watch videos when she#39;s bored. I#39;ve already spoken to some folks at the school and they think it#39;s a great idea (she goes to a small special needs private school). The school doesn#39;t have public wifi, so that will help. When she#39;s home or on the weekends, I have no problem with her using it for entertainment. In fact, the more she enjoys it the better chance she#39;ll make sure she always has it with her. /div p /divI found this screen shot of the iPad parental controls...is there more to it than this?/divp /divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/xRr0tnF96ZZnsuWhmeHBccBmrgFsqfoxQ2rV5A14Y3s98itoDSqDYxF0TY2a/ipad-restrictions-2.jpeg" width="179" height="281"/ br / /divp /divLooks like while we can easily turn YouTube on and off, we#39;ll have to manually toggle her school-day access to games and other distraction apps./divp /divbWishlist for Apple: How about iPad parental controls with time-of-day restrictions on apps?/b/div p /divFor calendar and email, we#39;ll likely set her up with a Google Account instead of MobileMe./divp /divThe advantage of Google is that it#39;s what the rest of the family is already using. Her account calendar can be shared with her father and me and we can put on it all the details of weekend plans that she#39;s constantly asking us about. I know how comforting it is to be able to look at a calendar and see everything that has to happen in nice, neat little boxes. It will be a little bit of heaven to her. It can sync to the iPad via Exchange when she#39;s on the home wifi. Easy. It#39;s also free./div p /divbWishlist for Google: parental controls. Period./b I#39;d love to be able to set up an account for my young teenagers and link it to mine. It should give me the option to disable YouTube uploading, filter videos, make me approve any buddies on Google Talk, auto bcc#39;s me on outgoing messages, etc. a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=enamp;answer=69797"This article in Gmail help/a is seriously lame, Google. You can do better than that. /div p /diviAny other suggestions for giving a young teen an iPad? Any suggestions on Asperger#39;s/HFA-friendly apps (a casual search mostly found apps for very young or verbally-impaired kids)?/i/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.com/thinking-tech-for-a-14-year-old-with-autism"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.com/thinking-tech-for-a-14-year-old-with-autism#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=msjHnOZklk4:_TcsfZQYvGk:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=msjHnOZklk4:_TcsfZQYvGk:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=msjHnOZklk4:_TcsfZQYvGk:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/msjHnOZklk4" height="1" width="1"/

p In a few weeks, my oldest daughter will be graduating from middle school. High school begins in the fall. I#39;m starting to get a picture of who my baby may be as an adult. Scary, but in a good way because she#39;s an amazing young lady. She#39;s intelligent, sweet, compassionate, has a wicked sense of humor and has thankfully has spared us from most of the average 14 year-old angst. She also has high-functioning autism. Looking at her now you#39;d never know I was once told that she might never speak in full sentences. p /divLike many kids with autism, she needs a lot of structure in her life. She always has to know what#39;s happening next or she gets very stressed out. She also has fine motor issues. She can write, but it#39;s barely legible. She#39;s very comfortable on the computer. She never had much interest in email, but does communicate with classmates from time to time on gaming social networks that are kid-appropriate. I just turned off her cell phone account because she was never using it. Only recently has she mastered answering and using the telephone at home. She also has an internal filter that#39;s better than any parental control software. She refused to see a PG-13 movie until she was actually 13. She doesn#39;t like to hear bad words. If she stumbles across something she shouldn#39;t see on YouTube, she#39;ll switch it off faster than I could react. She loves to read and write, but needs help making sure her stories have a beginning, middle and end./div p /divWe#39;ve decided to get her an iPad this summer. This isn#39;t a toy or entertainment device, although we certainly expect her to use it for that when appropriate./divp /divspan style="color: rgb(66, 64, 55); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21px;"/span/div p /divI rely on technology to keep my life organized. I don#39;t keep anything in my head I don#39;t have to. I have work and personal Google calendars that tell me what I have to do and when. Everything is nicely synced between my desktop computer, laptop and iPhone. I would be a steaming pile of mess without it all. And I don#39;t have autism. How unfair is it that my child with autism is expected to keep a paper planner and write everything down when I can#39;t do that?/div p /divThe iPad will be perfect for her. A notebook computer will be heavier and require more maintenance. An iPhone or iPod Touch is too small for her to get much use out of the keyboard with her fine motor challenges. She loves to read and it will be great for her to be able to keep so many books with her. She can write with Pages. And I know there has to be some great apps out there specifically designed to help young adults like her organize and communicate./div p /divWe will turn parental controls on. Not so much for content, as I explained, but to make sure that she#39;s not using it in school to play games or watch videos when she#39;s bored. I#39;ve already spoken to some folks at the school and they think it#39;s a great idea (she goes to a small special needs private school). The school doesn#39;t have public wifi, so that will help. When she#39;s home or on the weekends, I have no problem with her using it for entertainment. In fact, the more she enjoys it the better chance she#39;ll make sure she always has it with her. /div p /divI found this screen shot of the iPad parental controls...is there more to it than this?/divp /divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/xRr0tnF96ZZnsuWhmeHBccBmrgFsqfoxQ2rV5A14Y3s98itoDSqDYxF0TY2a/ipad-restrictions-2.jpeg" width="179" height="281"/ br / /divp /divLooks like while we can easily turn YouTube on and off, we#39;ll have to manually toggle her school-day access to games and other distraction apps./divp /divbWishlist for Apple: How about iPad parental controls with time-of-day restrictions on apps?/b/div p /divFor calendar and email, we#39;ll likely set her up with a Google Account instead of MobileMe./divp /divThe advantage of Google is that it#39;s what the rest of the family is already using. Her account calendar can be shared with her father and me and we can put on it all the details of weekend plans that she#39;s constantly asking us about. I know how comforting it is to be able to look at a calendar and see everything that has to happen in nice, neat little boxes. It will be a little bit of heaven to her. It can sync to the iPad via Exchange when she#39;s on the home wifi. Easy. It#39;s also free./div p /divbWishlist for Google: parental controls. Period./b I#39;d love to be able to set up an account for my young teenagers and link it to mine. It should give me the option to disable YouTube uploading, filter videos, make me approve any buddies on Google Talk, auto bcc#39;s me on outgoing messages, etc. a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=enamp;answer=69797"This article in Gmail help/a is seriously lame, Google. You can do better than that. /div p /diviAny other suggestions for giving a young teen an iPad? Any suggestions on Asperger#39;s/HFA-friendly apps (a casual search mostly found apps for very young or verbally-impaired kids)?/i/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/thinking-tech-for-a-14-year-old-with-autism"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/thinking-tech-for-a-14-year-old-with-autism#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=89fiA7QWZTI:-edxNlk8f6s:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=89fiA7QWZTI:-edxNlk8f6s:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=89fiA7QWZTI:-edxNlk8f6s:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/89fiA7QWZTI" height="1" width="1"/