http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2008/05/mac-os-x-1053-sync-google-contacts.html

Very nice addition. Now I can actually keep my iPhone and Google contacts in sync.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/05/27/microsoft-demonstrates-multi-touch.aspx

Oh good, Microsoft is really blowing us away here. First they showed off Surface last year, multi-touch on something table-sized. Now they’ve incorporated it into a laptop-size across all of Windows. Keep in mind this is something without a release date, and yet Apple’s been doing this pretty seamlessly on the iPhone, roughly 10% the size of a laptop screen for almost a year now. So by the time this even hits the consumer market it will be a 2-3 year old technology. And this is supposed to impress us? Oy.

Link: And that’s without having to install the stupid SaveAsPDF add-on. Yay.

Recently a few of the folks I work with that use Macs noticed Entourage 2008 was having trouble using Exchange 2007 Web Services properly (as it advertised it would). I tried it out from home and verified the same thing, that the Out of Office Assistant and Free/Busy lookups didn’t go so well. I’ve been meaning to get around to building an OS X 10.5 virtual machine so I could hook it into my VM environment and do a packet trace to see what was going on, but it seems like I won’t need to anymore. Just update your friggin’ client to SP1 and EWS works properly. They’ve also added support for Autodiscover. I haven’t had a chance to play yet, but I wonder what kind of lookups and certificate restrictions Entourage has compared to Outlook.

So, moral of the post – problems with Entourage 2008 for Mac and you’ve got an Exchange 2007 environment? Upgrade your clients to SP1.

The mixed reports that I’ve read up to this point didn’t really nail down whether or not SSTP as a VPN protocol was going to be included in SP3. Last night I updated one of my machines to SP3 and confirmed it is not present. That’s a bummer. That’s an incredibly useful protocol and would have been extremely handy to backport to XP, but instead it’s still only supported for Vista or Server 2008 clients. Lame. I’m sure Microsoft didn’t want to give anyone more reason not to upgrade to Vista.

For the most part, installing certificates on Windows is no easy task for an end-user. A combination of mmc and trying to put the cert in the right store is a much, much longer process than is needed. This post should show you how to export a certificate from the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store as a .reg file that you can distribute to end-users. You could also use it as part of a batch file or VBScript to silently import the certificate.

Click Start | Run and enter mmc. Press OK.

Click File | Add/Remove Snap-In and press the Add button.

Choose Certificates and press Add.

Choose Computer Account and press Next.

Leave Local Computer selected and press Finish.

Press Close and OK.

Expand the Certificates\Trusted Root Certification Authorities folder and look for the [CA Name] certificate. It may be listed twice. Double-click to open the properties.

Click the Details tab. Scroll to the bottom and examine the Thumbprint. Take note of the first few characters.

Click Start | Run and enter regedit. Press OK.

Expand HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SystemCertificates\ROOT\Certificates. Look for a key name starting with the same characters as the thumbprint. The certificate data is stored in the blob value.

Right-click the key name and choose Export.

Save the .reg file some place safe.

You can also use this method for some of the other certificate stores. The other useful store I use frequently is the Personal store. Just replace the ROOT in that registry path with MY to find the certificates there.

Granted, this has probably been going on for awhile now, but since I tend to use my Apple products on the Mac at home it’s the first time I’m seeing it. The software update I was offered this morning includes Safari being checked by default even though I have never had Safari on my PC. I’m usually a fan of Apple stuff, but this just sucks. If I want the freakin’ browser I’ll download it myself, thanks. I expect an update to be for the products I currently have, not some other product I’ve never installed. I know it’s the Microsoft way, but does Apple have to fall into this crap too?! Very disappointing.