Joseph Hinkle at MyITForum.com

For those of you who support Macs connecting to VPN, Tiger looks like a bad idea.

From the link:

Cisco confirmed Thursday that the new operating system, Mac OS X version 10.4, aka Tiger, won't come with support for Cisco's VPN client. The networking company has been working with Apple to provide VPN support for Tiger but was unable to get things completed by Tiger's 29 April release date, said Mojgan Khalili, a Cisco spokeswoman.

Cisco is advising users of its VPN client to delay upgrading to the new operating system until support is ready. Support should be available sometime in May, she added.

(via Tiger incompatible with Cisco VPNs - ZDNet UK News)

ArsTechnica posted a very in-depth review of Tiger.  One of the keys for me is that Internet Explorer is no longer included, so we’re working on alternatives because of our SharePoint servers.

From the link:

So convinced was I of the inevitability of the Mac OS X yearly release juggernaut that I never even considered the possibility that relief from the $129-per-year Mac OS X tax might come in the form of an extra six-month wait for version 10.4. "Let's do this again next year" were my exact words at the end of the Panther review.

(via ArsTechnica)

It should be interesting to see what other widgets come out, but this one looks pretty cool.  It would be great to have if you travel a lot.

From the link:

JiWire, the leading provider of information and services to help people connect to the Internet without wires, today announced that its worldwide hotspot directory is now available for Apple’s new Mac OS X version 10.4 “Tiger” as a Dashboard widget.

With a single click, JiWire’s WiFi Hotspot Finder allows Tiger users to search from more than 63,000 hotspots in 99 countries worldwide. In addition to finding locations closest to search parameters, users can seamlessly access JiWire’s website for more detailed venue information such as connection details, area maps, and location amenities, verified by JiWire’s global staff.

(via MacDailyNews - Apple and Mac News - Welcome Home)

In the Netherlands, the old guard recording industry has managed to persuade the government that they ought to tax any storage device that could ever possibly harbor a pirated work, which means levies of up to $4.30 per gigabyte on all MP3 players sold — imagine adding $240 to the price of an already expensive 60GB iPod.

And its also going to be on the Imax for those with one close by.

From the link:

Batman Begins will open a couple of days earlier than originally planned: Wednesday, June 15, instead of Friday, June 17, Variety reported.

(via Sci Fi Wire -- The News Service of the Sci Fi Channel)

For the MMS crowd, this is the hotel that was being built near the Venetian.  It looked great from the monorail.  Two other keys from the article: it isn’t a themed hotel and the casino is separate from everything else.  Too bad we’re in San Diego next year.  :P

From the link:

Wynn Las Vegas, a $2.7 billion resort built by casino magnate Steve Wynn, opened its doors early on Thursday to hordes of visitors eager for a glimpse of the lavish gambling, hotel and shopping complex.

(via Entertainment News Article | Reuters.com)

I hope these are good, not just movies turned out too fast.

From the link:

Paramount has signed a lucrative, exclusive distribution deal with Marvel for films based on the comic book publisher's remaining characters, reports Variety.

According to a Dow Jones report Wednesday night, Marvel has already amassed a half-billion-dollar war chest to make a slate of movies with budgets as high as $180 million, drawing on its remaining 5,000 comic-book characters.

Among the first of its superheroes headed for the silver screen: Captain America and Nick Fury.

(via Coming Soon! - Latest News)

This is an awesome article about the GINA, the dell that drives the winlogon process, and how it works.  The coding side is in-depth if you want to know, but there is a lot of good general info on how it works too.

From the link:

GINA is the pluggable part of WinLogon that third parties may replace in order to customize the functionality or the UI of the logon experience in Windows®. By replacing GINA, you can choose the authentication mechanism Windows will use for interactive users. This is often useful for smartcard or biometric logons.

(via Security Briefs: Customizing GINA, Part 1 -- MSDN Magazine, May 2005, http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/05/SecurityBriefs/default.aspx)

Infinity plans to convert San Francisco's 1550 KYCY, an AM station, to listener-submitted content. The station, previously devoted to a talk-radio format, will be renamed KYOURadio.

Infinity, one of the country's largest radio operators with more than 183 stations around the country, will invite do-it-yourselfers to upload digital audio files for broadcast consideration by way of the KYOURadio.com website.

So I got a little frustrated in my search for ‘Blog This’ functionality.  From what I can tell, w.bloggar doesn’t do it in IE and I couldn’t find a plug-in for it so it would be enabled.

I remembered Rod talking (here) about how great BlogJet is and decided to look at it.  Lo and behold, it supports ‘Blog this’!  The downside is the price though.  At $39.99, its awfully expensive.  I wouldn’t have blinked at $19.99.  I would have been flying through my credit card number to order.  I really have to pause at $39.99 though.  I guess I’ll give it a try and see how I like it.

Any alternatives that aren’t tied to an aggregator?  I use Bloglines and am very happy with it. 

I just noticed Wise Package Studio 5.6 in the support center. After trying to download it all day, I finally got it downloaded and installed. The great news is that it fixed the WiseScript compiler issues that caused a compiled executable to be named and placed incorrectly.

Rod Kruetzfeld wrote an article that explained the original problem in detail here.

Happy downloading!

Nothing like the first day back after a week away to make you realize why you don't take vacations.  I hope everyone had a great time at the conference! 

I'm working on putting together some info on the Vintela SMS plugin from the MacOS perspective.  I'm going to start testing soon, so hopefully I'll have some good info for everyone.

Am I the only one who wishes that we could attend multiple sessions at the same time?  I've had lots of scheduling overlaps this year.  Maybe, sometime in the future, a video stream could be included in the MMS/Commnet site.  I would love to be able to catch up on sessions I missed out on over lunch or break.  Two months is a long wait for the DVD edition... :)