So after you connect to your work VPN I expect you’ll need to get access to files, in this case we’ll assume it’s a Windows file server and you’ve been given a path to connect to that looks something like this:
\\file-server\mydepartment
Now, since Windows works a little differently to Mac OSX (and Linux / Unix) you’ll need to change that a little so before we start the next steps get your file server path ready and looking like this:
//file-server/mydepartment
Then follow these steps:
1. Open the Finder from the Dock (usually at the bottom of the screen), if you can’t find this cmd-tab to it.
2. From the Finder’s “Go” menu choose Connect to Server (or just press cmd-K)
3. Type “smb://” followed by your reformatted file path as follows, then hit the “+” key…
4. Click on the newly added Favourite Server and then click Connect.
5. Enter your credentials when prompted then click Connect…
Setting up a Cisco IPSec VPN on Mountain Lion is pretty straight-forward however I always forget the steps when I need to run through it with someone else so I thought I’d document the steps. These all assume you have an admin username/password on the Mac in question and that you have all of your VPN details provided by your IT team…
1. Go to System Preferences on the Apple menu (top-left of screen)
2. Choose the Network settings pane (you may need to back out of a previous pane first)
3. If you need to ‘unlock’ the pane, click the padlock and do so then/otherwise click the + icon
4. Choose Interface = VPN, Type = Cisco IPSec then choose a suitable name for Service Name. Click Create.
5. Fill in the IP address and user name fields, then click Authentication Settings
6. Fill in your Shared Secret and Group Name, click OK. Click, Apply and close System Preferences.
7. On the title bar, click the VPN icon (doesn’t really resemble anything relevant), then choose your new VPN service.
8. Fill in your username/password (special considerations may apply for RSA Tokens, etc.) and click OK. You may receive a message at this point regarding security, read and click OK as appropriate.
9. Counter appears on title bar whilst VPN is connected.
10. To disconnect open the menu from the VPN icon once more.
I had a situation recently where scheduled Business Objects reports began to fail with the error message: “Object failed to run due to insufficient security privileges. “. Having spent some time googling the error there seem to be many potential causes if permissions have been changed but in this case it turned out that a user had been deleted. In Business Objects (XI R3.1 at least), when a user is deleted their scheduler instances will be allocated to the Administrator who, despite having scheduler privileges, appears not to be able to execute scheduled reports.
The only solution I could find was to manually reschedule all reports previously owned by the deleted user, if anyone has any better solutions or knows of a method to make a bulk change rather than individually I would love to hear it!
Despite the fact that the last event seems like only a few months ago it’s nearly time again for Mobile World Congress, as usual there are a raft of competitions around offering tickets to lucky entrants so I thought I’d collate the ones I’ve come across here.
For anyone unfamiliar with MWC, it’s an annual coming together of the entire mobile industry from network operators (MNOs), manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, Nokia, HTC, software and services companies like Google, and a whole host of companies making apps, accessories, etc. Having been once (see my MWC Impressions post), it’s quite an experience and well worth going if you can make it.
Anyway, on to the list – if you spot any I’ve missed please leave a comment and I’ll bump it up into the post.
It’s not always obvious when the open/closed dates are so I apologise if any of the above are no longer valid, please leave a comment if you find that to be the case and I’ll remove the link.
Categories:
Communication, Development, Events, Mobile Apps, Mobile Web Tags:
apps, GSMA, MNO, Mobile, mobile world congress, MWC, mwc13, mwc2013
Today Ofcom released a report covering mobile phone usage in the UK, the report is largely aimed at determining how Quality of Service relates to consumer behaviour and how poor coverage affects the customer experience. The report covers voice, SMS, email, internet and video calling but I’m most interested in the mobile web and apps, so I’ll focus primarily on the Internet results. The survey was conducted in November 2012 and sampled 2,136 adults aged 16 and over from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The report shows that only 44% of consumers use the internet via their mobile phone and of those, this seems quite low based on personal experience but that could be down to bias from working in the technology sector. Of those people that use the Internet on their phone 50% do so more than five times per day (with 33% reporting 10+ times per day). The implication being that there is a demographic relying on their mobile for everyday tasks, especially when coupled with the result that 71% of people saying that it is important for them to use the internet whilst outside.
Naturally there is a skew towards the younger end of the market with 86% of respondents between 16 and 34 that use the internet doing so on a daily basis. Additionally whilst 7% of all users rated the ability to use the internet as the most important factor whilst thinking about their mobile operator this rose to 14% for the 16-35 age group and drops to 2% for the 55+ group.
Reliability is a problem for internet users with 47% being satisfied with their operator, this is poor compared to voice and SMS usage which received a 74% satisfaction rate. Furthermore 34% of consumers reported having experienced no signal/reception (10% frequently) and an additional 15% reported an inability to use the mobile internet.
In terms of non-Internet usage there weren’t too many unexpected results, the only surprising outcome of the survey to me was that 12% of respondents have used video calling and 25% do so on a daily basis – making 3% of all people using video calling on a daily basis. The full report (33 pages) can be found here: source.
During a project there always comes time to determine what the minimum version of iOS to support is for a given project, last night I stumbled across a handy infographic for checking which devices support which OS versions as well as some other handy feature related info.
The iOS Support Matrix 2012 was created by Empirical Magic and Pencil Studio…
