P. J. Connolly

I’m deeply unhappy that Apple is only offering Lion as a download. There’s something atavistically comforting about having tangible install media. It’s also rather efficient when one has multiple machines to upgrade; I can’t imagine why the company’s leaders think that downloading the same 4GB blob of data over and over again across a home […]

Not much that applies to enterprise IT came out of the keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco on Monday. The summary version: Lion will be released in July, available only as a download; iOS 5 will be available in the fall, along with iCloud. The tl;dr, along with a heaping pile of […]

Earlier today, users reported widespread problems while trying to access Apple’s cloud-based services, such as the iTunes Store and the Mac App Store. Although I didn’t run into any difficulties outside my normal experience – so far today, I’ve downloaded Xcode for one of the MacBook Pros in the lab, so that my boss-dude-person could […]

So, MacDefender. To hear some people go on about it, you’d think it was the end of the world. Not hardly; but it does raise some interesting questions. The first has to do with the way it seems to spread. Search poisoning isn’t exactly a new tactic, but it’s shaping up to be an effective […]

Today, I saw this headline at CNN: “Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk” and once again, I’m struck by how quickly people can make something out of what might as well be nothing. After all, you can replace the first three words with just about any other three words and it will still […]

Dashboard Slickness The vice president of sales in our sandbox needs to see at-a-glance what his team can be expected to deliver in the next few months, and this dashboard gives him the information he wants. Task-Oriented, but Watching the World Our sandboxs sales manager Will can keep one eye on his to-do list, another […]

Customer-relationship management software-thankfully referred to as CRM in casual conversation-is the sort of tool that you don’t know you need until you’ve tried to work without it. It barely existed a decade ago, although the category can trace its roots to the contact-management tools that proliferated throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, and before […]

The enterprise mobility gurus at iPass released a survey this week that indicates a significant number of people wake up in the middle of the night to check their e-mail. Although many of the respondents are likely to fall into the “always on call” category, the behavior patterns described in the survey are familiar enough, […]

I’m taking a look at a cloud-based enhancement to the Time Machine backup feature in Mac OS X. It’s called Dolly Drive, a nod to the sheep that made headlines fifteen years ago by being the first mammal cloned somatic cell nuclear transfer. [WP_IMAGE] Dolly Drive, from Cirrus Thinking, offers backup plans that provide up […]

(This is continued from yesterday.) Labeling patch cords is a must, even in a multicolored wiring scheme. In our old building, where we shared the patch closet with other organizations, we had a hot mess of gray cords and you couldn’t find your way from the panel to the switch if your life depended on […]