Gordidon

Disable Safari Guest Account - Lion OSX

2011-10-26T14:16:00.005-04:00

Lion Welcome Screen with Safari Guest Account

Lion and its new features have people almost jumping off a bridge. The good thing about it is that you can undo all the features you do not want. In this post I'm going to be talking a little about the Safari Guest Account. This account is mainly use for internet purposes, meaning that if you login to the account you only will be able to use Safari as the name of the account states. This is a great idea but they are people like me that don't want to have any type of guest account and to fix this we just disable the account.

Since the last update for Lion 10.7.2, we have started to use iCloud in all of our iDevices. This feature is great and one of the most cool feature of iCloud is the Find My Mac. Find My Mac is great because it would give you the power to find you computer whenever you want and also will let you Lock it as well as send a message to it. This is great but as soon as you enable this option in your Mac, the Safari Guest Account will also be enable.

Security & Privacy setting where Safari Guest Account is Active.
See the second option from bottom to top is uncheck.

In order to have the Find My Mac feature working and the Safari Guest Account disable, you must go to the Security and Privacy option on Preferences. While in there it should be an option that says Disable Restaring to Safari when screen is locked, this option should be check in order to disable the Safari Guest Account. Now you would have the best setting there is to have Find My Mac and Disable Safari Guest Account.

Now see again the second option from bottom to top.
The option is check and now the Safari Guest Account is Disable.

Note: Do not confuse the Safari Guest Account with the Guest Account that is under the User & Groups option in Preferences as shown in the image below.

Regular Guest Account is Disable but you may still see a Guest Account
in your Welcome screen because of the Safari Guest Account.

P.S: The video below also show you how to do this step by step.

AirPort Base Station

2011-08-27T13:40:00.009-04:00

Airport Base Station (2001)

Airport Base Station was first introduced on July of 1999 and was then discontinued by January of 2003 when the new Airport Extreme was introduced to the public. The Airport Base Station that I found and I'm going to be showing you is the one introduced on November of 2001.

This particular model was the firstAirport with the color white since the first Airport Base Station release by Apple was gray. Since the release of this one
every other Airport has been
release white.

This Airport Base Station works with Windows and Mac OS. It came with an installation cd, a power cable and mounting bracket (wall). It's frequency band is 2.4 Ghz Spread Spectrum. It's Wireless Data Rate is approximately 11 Mbps and it has a radius of 160 foot from where the Base Station is located.

It has RJ 11, two RJ45, and Power . Also a security slot.

The inside of the Base Station.

The Wall Mounter.

Mac OS X Lion Upgrade Program!!

2011-08-06T10:46:00.008-04:00

Like I said in one of my older post, Apple has an Upgrade Program for Lion OS X. This program consists in if you bought you computer on June 6, 2011 or after you may be eligible to get your Lion upgrade for free. Lions OS X cost $29 dollars if not eligible for the program. The program works as following; First you need to go to the upgrade program website which is: Upgrade Program. After you filled the form in which you have to put your name, when you bought your computer, where and if it was not bought in an Apple store you must take a picture of your receive and send it to them too. As soon as you send your information, they would send you an email in less then one hour stating that they received the form and they will review it.

The reviewing process may take from days to a couple of weeks. In my case it took 10 days to receive the approved email. After the 10 days I received an email saying that I was approved and it also had a pdf file password protected, then I received another email with the password needed to gain access to the pdf file. I put the password in the pdf and as expected it opened a pdf file that had a redeem code in it. This code was going to be use in the Mac App Store in the Redeem section which would let me download Lion for free.

Note: The codes and names in all the pictures has been removed for security purposes.

If you want to burn your Mac OS X Lion on a DVD or USB Drive go to the following website: How to Burn Lion OS X to a DVD or USB Drive

Google Plus One Button

2011-08-05T16:19:00.000-04:00

The fairly new google plus button has been scrutinized by many. People have call it stupid, non- sense and useless. In the beginning I just thought of it as when I was a kid and I did something good and my professor gave me a plus one towards my grade as well as a happy face sticker. This sounds weird but the button made sense to me even though for most people this was just ridiculous. The definition in Google’s website says: “The +1 button is shorthand for ‘this is pretty cool’ or ‘you should check this out.’, this definition also make sense to me. People are very familiar with the Like Button from Facebook which is pretty straight forward but the Google button is also well define. If something is “pretty cool” as you may say then you should give it a plus one to that article so people could “check it out”. This analogy is well develop in my opinion and people should not compare the Like button to the Plus One button. The Like button is something to share an article or something to others friends in FB so they can check it if they are lucky enough to have time to see it in there News feeds. Google Plus One on the other hand is going to organize your articles in a tab name +1 where your friends could check everything that you have plus in an organize fashion.

Since I’m a programmer in development and studying programming languages I found out a similar analogy as Google has while studying Objective C even though this happens in many programming languages not just Objective C.

In programming languages we have what we call Boolean variables, this particular variables just take values of 0 or 1’s (TRUE or FALSE). 0 means FALSE and obviously 1 means or translate to TRUE. So in programming if a statement is satisfied and you are using Boolean variables then is given the value of 1 and 0 otherwise. This analogy translate to Google Plus One button. if you are satisfied with the article you have read then you are going to give it a plus one. On the other hand if you are not satisfied you would leave the article with a zero, just in this case you don't do anything meaning you didn't like the article or didn't see anything important for your friends to check out.

Gordidon's Logo

2011-07-31T16:22:00.002-04:00

This is going to be the logo of my blog. This logo will represent my writing and the blog itself. Its all about technology!!!

The logo was made possible thanks to AshLeS. You may find here in

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/ashLes_iu,

Google+: https://plus.google.com/108032545070423312757

A Tiny Story and Lion OS X

2011-07-31T16:15:00.001-04:00

Apple is known for making people be anxious for their new products, from leaks of their own company or from rumors capturing the whole media world. The good news is that Apple knows how to make customers happy even though there are a lot of people complaining about their products, but hey you cannot make every body happy (what would happen to Samsung, HP or Microsoft to mention a few if everybody is happy with Apple). Everybody is waiting for the new product to come so they can put their hand on them and check the new features as well as their advantages and disadvantages. I’m one of those people that are always trying to be aware of a new product; I want to see what’s new and how the technology is evolving.

I have being anxiously waiting for Lion till it finally came out. I use to have a MacBook Pro 3.1 that could no take full advantage or full experience of the OS. I decided to sell my MacBook Pro and bought the new MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt just too take advantage of the whole Lion OS experience. I know you could do everything on my old MacBook Pro with the keyboard instead of the gestures or buy a Magic Track pad for that matter but it would not be the same. So far Lion has been great with all this new features such as Mission Control, Launchpad and opening the same page or windows that you where using before your last restart. Lion is the most advance Operating System today.

One thing I must say is that if you bought you computer on June 6 or after you may have a free upgrade of Lion OS. The only thing is that is going to take time for Apple to answer you back. I have been waiting for more than a week and still I have no received an answer yet. Thanks God I found other way around it and have Lion on my computer. The website for the upgrade program is the following:Apple Upgrade Program. Another thing that came to my attention is that if you bought your computer on June 6 or after and you have bought Lion OS from the Mac App Store then Apple would give you a refund for the same amount that you paid in a couple of days. I do recommend using the upgrade program even though it takes more time.

Lion has many new features that people are not liking and complaining about. One thing is that if you don’t like Lion and love Snow Leopard you can always go back. Also you can customize Lion so you could feel you are still using Snow Leopard. In my opinion I don’t see the point of that but if that makes you happy you have all the right to do it. That is one of the thing I love about Lion, many features with much more ways to customize it for your satisfaction.

People are making a wrong comparison on which OS will revolutionize computer. They are making the comparison between OS X Lion and the not yet release Windows 8 (if Microsoft is going to call it like that). This is an unfair comparison just because Lion is on the market already and the so call Windows 8 is not even close to be on the market. A lot can change on a year or two and this comparison are worth nothing. I really don’t see the point of making such claims about an OS that is not near release. Lion in the other hand is on the market and has been downloaded more than 1 million times and counting. Lion OS may not be the future of Operating system but is the present and the most powerful OS to this date.

P.S: Now lets see if Apple bring us the iPhone 5 or so call iPhone 4S with the new iOS5 that we are all waiting for.

Google+ iPhone App

2011-07-19T20:12:00.000-04:00

Welcome Screen

Google+ is one of the most rapid growing Social Network of all times. Many have said that there are around 10 to 15 to 20 Millions of user already in Google+. This is nothing compare to the 750+ Millions users on Facebook but to do it on just a couple of weeks of release is amazing. Also when I said release I’m talking about Invite only release, not even a wide open release to everyone. The only thing Google+ was missing was an App for the iPhone lovers.

Finally the App for the most talk about Social Network of this year is on iTunes (Free). The Google+ App was released today July 19, 2011. After a lot of rumors about the App being cancelled, being delayed for a couple of more weeks, the App is finally here.

Every time that Google+ has been mention there is always something to say about Facebook. People talk about their differences, their similarities, their privacy's polities and everything you can thing of. So just like we compare the two Social Networks, we are also going to compare their apps.

Home Screen

Google+ app when you first start it, gives you some type of welcome screen where it describes a little about Circles, Stream and Huddle. As soon as you pass that welcome screen you are going to be send to the Sign In screen, where if you pay attention in the bottom of the page it still says: You need an invitation to use this services. Many people thought that as soon as the iPhone app was out, Google was going to open Google+ to everybody but this rumor also failed.

The Home Screen is very simple and clean. There is much less icons than Facebook but the design is very similar with the Notifications tab in the bottom of the screen. If you open the Notifications tab is basically the same a the Facebook app, you get all your notification in a list form and if you choose one it goes to that particular notification and you can go back to the list by pressing the notification button on the upper left corner of the screen.

One of the features Google+ change was the photos. Photos in Google+ App are way better than Facebook. They are better on the browser and now on the App. On the app when you click a picture, you get your picture and all the comments in the same page with a nice look very different from FB. In FB you need to click the pictures and if you want to see the comments then you have to click another icon to see the comments that are in another page. Much more convenient in G+ App. Tagging is much better too in Google+ App.

Circles is a plus in Google+. When you click on Circles in the app it give you two choices to see your Circles. The first one is very similar to FB which is a list form of all your friends. This approach is very annoying when you have a lot of friends even though there is a search bar to look faster. Talking about search bars, the search bar in FB is more handy than the G+ because you don't need to click anything to get the bar. In Google+ you need to click a button in order to get the search bar (this is a minus for me. I like things without to many clicks) The second option in Circler which I personally like is a display of your friends by their Circles, it gives you a nice look at all your Circles.

The App in general is pretty cool and people are giving more positives reviews than negatives. I would say that even though the app is great, Google fail to deliver an App for the iTouch and the most important gadget the iPad. This was disastrous for many iDevices users. Also many people that have the App in an iPhone are complaining because the app does not work properly in iOS 5 Beta 3 but I have not heard any complains for other iOS versions.

P.S: Thanks to Mr. Jay Baer for posting that in order to download Google+ on iTunes you must search for Google Huddle instead of Google+. I personally spend a couple of minutes trying to get the app but I just when to the link Mr. Chpwn posted in his twitter account: http://alturl.com/d7mmj.

Windows 7 Vs. Profiling: Windows Enabler!!

2011-07-13T19:35:00.001-04:00

Windows 7 has put a little wall between copying profile and systems administrators. In Windows XP we were able to make a copy of any profile that we wanted to another without any complication (I don’t mention Windows Vista because it’s not worthy). In XP there was no programs need it to do a simple copy of a profile. In Windows 7, which I personally like even though I’m more of a Mac guy, this is kind of a hassle. First if you are really desperate and call Microsoft to ask for help they are going tell you a bunch of procedure to follow to do this simple task that even if you know what you are doing you may get lost. Instead of doing whatever Microsoft tells you to do, is better to download a pretty nice program call Windows Enabler that is in version 1.1.

What is Windows Enabler 1.1?
Enabler is a program that let you use the grayed out options that you get when you try to do the profile in Windows 7 (as shown in picture 1.2). You may take a look at the picture of Windows XP (picture 1.1) where before we had no problem with the button copy being grayed out. Now we must installed Windows Enabler 1.1 and run it to have the option of copying a profile into another in Windows 7.

Picture 1.1

This is Windows XP. The option is available to the user. This is h

ow is going to be as soon as you use Windows Enabler 1.1 in
Windows 7.

Picture 1.2
Buttons are grayed out. This is Windows 7 Profiling

Windows Enabler 1.1 works on more options than just the profile. It works in any grayed button or option, or any tick boxes or menus in any Windows version starting in Windows 95 and on till Windows 7. So if you have any tick boxes or menus that are put out of action and you need to use it, you may want to use Enabler.

How Windows Enabler 1.1 works?
First you need to download the program, you may go to the following website: Windows Enabler 1.1
(You don’t need to download it from here you can Google it and find out another website you may feel comfortable with.). Then you need to have in the same folder “WindowsEnabler.exe” and “EnablerDLL.dll”. After you put the two files together if it does not come in the same package then you must run “WindowsEnabler.exe” as Administrator (It may not work if run without the Run As Administrator option). To runs as Administrator just right click the file and then you would see a menu and an option Run as Administrator. So as soon as you run the program it will put an icon in the system tray, similar to the icon in the left side of picture 1.3 when is normal mode and when is On it would just have the On word on top of the icon just like the icon on the right side of picture 1.3.

Picture 1.3

Windows Enabler Icons.

To activate the On option you just have to click the icon and it would give you the On option and to turn it off you click again and the program would go to normal mode. Now when the On option is activate then you can click on the grayed option or menu that you may want to use and it would give you the ability to use it. I recommend turning the Windows Enabler off as soon as you finished using it because you may click another option that was grayed out that may cause damage to your computer.

P.S: Also notice that the Themes (meaning Background) does not work when you copy the profile. You may get a black screen instead of the awesome background that you have.

Facebook Video Chat Vs. Google+ Hangout

2011-07-06T15:11:00.000-04:00

Facebook today release a Video Chat option power by Skype. They are releasing the Video Chat button or how they call it the "Call" button that will be next to your regular chat icon slowly to some users. Eventual in the coming weeks every single user will have the opportunity to have its own Video Chat icon. In the meantime you may want to try the following website to test: https://www.facebook.com/videocalling. This is a pretty nice add to Facebook even though it seems that this Video Chat is to get at Google+ Hangout which is pretty cool.

This is how the "Call" button will look like!!!

One thing that Facebook Video Chat does not do for now is Conference Video Chat. On the other hand Google+ Hangout have Conference Video Chat of its own. Another nice upgrade for Facebook is Group chats (not Video Groups chats), just regular Group chats.

CameraLock and Activator!!!

2011-07-05T20:17:00.000-04:00

I just found out that while CameraLock by Filippobiga is a great app for those who have their iPhone jail broken with 4.1 up to 4.3.3, it has a bug. This apps is very useful because when you need to take pictures or videos is really fast and easy having it (this apps is going to come integrated in iOS5). But for the meantime we need to fix this bug for those of us who use this awesome app almost everyday.

The problem is that if you take a call and then you hangup and you want to double press the home button so you could see the CameraLock icon and you could take a picture with it, the iPhone will reboot itself and go directly to Safe Mode every time you do this. This just happens when you have a call and hangup.

This is the link to the video so you could understand a little bit more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N75nkSR6sw

Also I would like to thanks Ryan Petrich for the new update of activator (1.5.5) which fixed ONE of the lockscreen problems. It fixed the emergency call problem that it use to have and that I talked in my blog: http://www.gordidonblog.com/2011/06/activator-causing-problems-in-iphone.html and in this post there is a video that I created showing this problem. But like I said this is fixed :)

I also talked about Activator having some problems with CameraLock in the following post: http://www.gordidonblog.com/2011/06/following-up-with-activator-and-lock.html you may check the video too. This particular problem is still happening after the Activator update. Hopefully it would be resolve soon :(

Here is a link to a new video about Activator and CameraLock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHeVSUPr1qg

Google+ Vs. The Social Networks

2011-07-04T21:30:00.000-04:00

Google+ is one of the most talk about new social network in a long time. Since Facebook took out MySpace from the social network spotlight there has not been any other social network with more hype than Google+ (My respect to Twitter on this). Google+ is basically a combination of Twitter and Facebook plus a couple of new innovations (I like to think that the Plus symbol in Google+ is basically this). Even though Google+ has its one flavor, it has to work harder on making things easier for users. Also hopefully Google+ have much more features than it already have.

One of the things that Google+ needs more work is shoowing the user if other users from their circles are connected. This is a very nice way to see with whom you may want to hangout or just chat a little bit. On Facebook this is a pretty good option offer to the user and Google+ needs to do something similar to this. I'm not saying that it needs to look like Facebook and I know you don't have this option on twitter and it works great but Google+ needs this option because the way it has been built and the many features it has that may take advantage of this particular feature.

The chat on the right side of the screen on Google+ should also add your friends from Google+ and not just the friends you have in your Gmail account. This is a great way to show which users are online even though they may be other ways to show people online that is not similar to the Facebook option.

The hangout feature is pretty cool for a social network like Google+ and Circles is on of my favorites because now you can post something and not everybody that you have in Google+ is going to see my post. Also I find that sharing a post with people that are not in Google+ is really awesome because if you wants to meet with friends but not all of them uses Google+ you can send a post to all your friends in Google+ and also to those that don’t have Google+.

One of my concern if is Google+ can pretty much start on the ride foot and then maintain it user from leaving to a more easier to use social network like Facebook or Twitter. I say easier because Google+ is in my opinion too broad for users that like simple things, I personally like Google+. Facebook is already biting Google+ back, they started creating a feature call Circle Hack (www.circlehack.com) that is the same idea as Google+ Circles even though Circle Hack is a 3rd Party App. Also there are some rumors that Facebook is bringing a feature similar to Hangouts with the help of Skype on of the most powerful Video Conference Programs on the market. Hopefully when Google+ is ready for everybody it will get people interested like today it got me interested.

Following up with Activator and the Lock Screen Problem!!!!

2011-06-30T14:55:00.000-04:00

Recently I downloaded the Cydia Application called CameraLock, which is a pretty cool app to have even though is coming to iOS 5 this fall. But for those who may not upgrade their phones this is a great app to have.

A couple of days ago I found out that Activator have problems with the lock screen. (You may check my other post in my blog to see what I’m talking about). The point is that while using CameraLock I encounter the same problem with Activator as with the Emergency Call screen.

What I mean is that if you open CameraLock and you have any app assigned to be activated with Activator on the Sleep Button with the Double press and you do double press the sleep button while in CameraLock, you are going to gain access to the iPhone without password which is a security problem explain in my last post.

Activator is a awesome app which I use everyday but I recommend that if you have it, do not assigned any app to the sleep button with the double press option as a security measure for now till they update the app.

The following is a video showing the problem:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SdBCBIL6Zc

P.S: You may want to go to my Youtube Channel; Gordidon to check my other videos.

Activator Causing Problems In iPhone With Lock Screen Bypass!!!!

2011-06-27T13:07:00.000-04:00

While I encounter a problem with the lock screen and bypassing it without password and being able to access all the apps and data of the phone by going to the emergency call and dialing any number while also pressing twice the sleep button.

I also found out that the problem is not the iOS 4.3.3, which is the one that I have, but the real problem is Activator that let you choose certain programs to be activated by pressing certain button or doing certain gestures.

I found that when you have assigned a program to be activated in Activator by pressing the sleep button twice and you pressed it in the emergency call screen while having dialed any random number, you are going to gain access to everything in your iPhone without any password including apps, notes, email, etc.

If you don’t have any program assigned to this particular button then this procedure does not work so that’s why my final thought is that Activator is the problem and NOT iOS as I thought at the beginning. This is a very serious security flaw for us the users.

If there is something wrong with my approach or something else please feel free to say something and correct me. Thanks and hopefully I don’t offend nobody in particular Ryan Petrich the creator of Activator. And this helps create a more secure Activator.

This is a link to a video where I show how this happens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvzPlk1qpnw