Dan Kessler is the owner of MacMaven Consulting.
There are several password manager products available for the Mac and iOS. In this post, I’ll focus on iCloud Keychain (free) and 1Password 5 ($49.99 for the Mac app). There are other popular options, such as LastPass and Dashlane, which store your passwords in the cloud. While it’s theoretically safe to store your data encrypted in the cloud,…
I started using Little Snitch (version 3.5.1) a couple of weeks ago. It’s software firewall for the Mac, with a primary focus on outbound connections. This is also known as a reverse firewall. There are many thorough reviews of Little Snitch available on the web, so I’ll just add my impressions: This is not a…
Yosemite introduced a bug that impacts a relatively small group of Mac users, including myself. I use a Mac Pro with a Logitech USB webcam. Mac Pros don’t have a built-in microphone, so I use the webcam for sound input. This configuration generally works fine throughout Yosemite, except for FaceTime. There is a microphone input setting on the…
Back in 2012, I discussed Time Warner Cable’s newly instituted modem rental fee. Back then the fee was $3.95 per month. I just opened my January 2015 Time Warner bill, and it has an extra page discussing a variety of price increases. Most of the increases revolve around television programming. As the good folks at Time Warner…
Ever since Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail) has offered IMAP, it has had an annoying bug when used with the Mac Mail application. Two copies of each message are stored in the Sent folder. The Outlook.com program manager acknowledged that this was due to Outlook.com’s SMTP server saving a copy of a message. He wrote that he’s…
MacMaven Consulting offers PingFederate architecture, installation, and support services. In the first part of our SSO series, I explained what SSO is, and the special flavor of SSO called federation. In this post, I’ll give a brief introduction to PingFederate. PingFederate, a product of Ping Identity, is one of the most popular enterprise solutions for…
MacMaven Consulting offers SiteMinder architecture, installation, integration, development, and support services in the New York City area. Introduction to SSO Many large corporations have turned to off-the-shelf software for handling their SSO (single sign-on) needs. You have experienced SSO on web sites, even if you haven’t noticed it. SSO is used to jump from one…
Here’s another example of horrendous customer service from a cable company, in this case Verizon. I helped my father (who happens to be an attorney) order FiOS service today. On verizon.com, he had entered his new service address and was given a promotional price of $39.99 per month. The screen capture of this offer is…
My workhorse printer is a Brother MFC-7820N. I’ve had it since 2007. Over the past month, I’ve had constant paper jams. I tried cleaning the pickup roller that feeds the paper from the paper tray. That didn’t do squat. I figured it was time to buy a new printer, so I researched the current Brother models. For…
This post has nothing to do with MacMaven Consulting. However, this is an example of how important customer service is, whether you are hiring a computer consultant, or merely choosing a company to ship your product. (And of course execution is important too!) Today I was supposed to receive an electric toothbrush from Wal-Mart.…