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Administering FTP services on Mac OSX server has always left me wanting something better.   The built-in services work, but they have a few drawbacks:

1. I don’t like having to bounce around multiple places to administer things.  Over to the User section of the System Settings to add users.  Back over to the Server Admin to manage FTP Server settings, etc.  I always liked the all-in-one console approach with things like FileZilla on Windows servers.

2. I don’t like having to create real, actual user accounts in the system for FTP users.  I have multiple web hosting clients who need access, each to their own specific web site directories.  I don’t like creating “real” user accounts on the machine for them.  Partially a security concern, and partially just “…something bothers me about it.”  The Windows Server OS has FTP services built-in, but they are woefully inadquate and they too are all integrated and require actual user accounts.  For years I’ve used the open source FileZilla Server for Windows.

3. FTP access is SOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOW.

The very first thing I had done, when I first installed the Mac OSX Server, was to look for an OSX version of FileZilla.  Alas, they don’t make an OSX version of FileZilla.  I poked around didn’t find a suitable alternative.  So I stuck with the built-in services.

We hadn’t been using FTP all that much on the OSX Server, so we dealt with the slowness issue.  But more recently we’ve had the need to use it a bit more, and the time lags made us want to stab our eyes out.  So less we go blind, I started searching around for a cause and hopefully solution.  And to my great pleasure, I found TWO solutions!

First, it turns out that the slowness issue is very easily solved.  It’s merely a configuration setting that really ought to be part of the default installation, but isn’t.    Go here to find the full write-up from Apple.  But in a nutshell, I just needed to open the file   /Library/FTPServer/Configuration/ftpaccess    in a text editor, and then add the following line:

  passive ports Server_IP_Address 49152 65535

Then restart the server.

That’s it!  The slowdown was because when trying to go to passive mode, it was banging its head against the wall trying to find a valid port to use.

However, it gets even better…

In my travels, I also got clued into a FileZilla -like open source FTP Server!

pureFTPd is an active, open source FTP server project for the BSD unix / linux families including Mac OSX.  And there’s a GUI interface called pureFTPd Manager for OSX!    Just click the preceeding link, and you can download the GUI interface and ftp server all bundled up in one since installation package.

This software will allow you to setup multiple different username/password combinations, locking each into a specific set of “home folders”.  But these are all accounts setup within the software, and NOT actual system accounts.  Its much better security approach, and much “cleaner”.   And the software is FAST too, with better system monitors.

Enjoy!

Today NetFlix announced that their much-discussed and much-embattled price hikes were actually just the precursor to splitting out the DVD and Internet Streaming services as essentially two different companies with two different CEOs and separate respective teams running/focusing on each.   The original NetFlix business will be rebranded “Qwickster” and the Internet Streaming service will retain the NetFlix brand.

Within the coming weeks, the two services will further split physically.  Each brand will have its own dedicated web site and once and for all split apart the online features and functionality.  The two services will no longer interact and work as one.  You will no longer be able to log in and view your Instant Queue and your DVD Queue side by side.

Although Netflix is nowhere near the size of Coca Cola, for some reason this strikes me as a gaffe nearly on scale with Coca Cola’s changing of its formula in the 80′s.  However, Coca Cola was able to issue a mea culpa and merely re-introduce original Coke as “Coca Cola Classic” side by side with “New Coke” and keep trucking — it was merely a product offering change.  In this case, Netflix is changing it’s entire business operation and dealing a major blow to its brand.  I doubt recovery will be so easy if it turns out to be a misstep.

And in my eyes, this is a massive misstep, to say the least.  In one fell swoop they have just gutted the brand the brand that they’ve spent years and millions (billions?) to build. Not only that — they’ve done it at a time when that very brand is already battered and bruised from the massive upheaval caused by the pricing changes.  After nearly a decade entrenching NetFlix as the leading playing in DVD rentals, the company is now starting all over with $0 in brand equity in Qwickster.  Aside from the fact that it’s a stupid, meaningless, forgetful name, in my opinion.

Add in the fact that NetFlix lost its rights to Starz content  for the Internet streaming service as of February 2012, which is the source of the bulk of its most valuable new releases and top-line Hollywood titles.

In my opinion, Netflix has gone from an Internet darling to a slow motion train wreck in progress in a matter of months.  Can it be saved?  Is it too little too late?  Are there any more surprises forthcoming?

In my opinion, I think they have completely destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars in brand equity, and disenfranchised millions of customers.  I expect this latest announcement to be received about as well as the last one (the pricing changes) and I smell the death of the DVD business. I think it’s all over but the crying.

The chinks in the armor have been revealed, and it  won’t be long before Blockbuster (which has been purchased by DISH Network and is being reincarnated to once again go after the Netflix mailorder DVD business) and Internet streaming companies such as Hulu jump on the bandwagon and start capturing market share from the once invincible Netflix.

In my opinion, these moves are major brand gaffes.  Now Netflix is wounded.  And it’s self-inflicted.

What is Chatter?   It’s basically a private Facebook – a social network just for the folks within your organization.  They limit access by domain name, so that only the people within your company can login and access.

In this day and age, with remote and virtual workforces and distributed offices, and far-flung teams spanning multiple disciplines and departments, Chatter offers a way for everyone to interact, share ideas, answer questions, and more.  Like with any network, the value of the network increases exponentially as more users join.

If you use Facebook, then you “get” the concept behind Chatter.   Make a post, comment on posts, yada yada yada.

Unlike Facebook, however, it’s a closed ecosystem.  Only the people in your company (or to whom you dole out @yourdomain  email addresses) can participate.

Businesses are turning to Chatter to enable real-time interaction and collaboration, yet in a “safe” and private environment where company secrets and confidential information can be discussed without fear of leaks as you would have with a public system such as Facebook.

Salesforce.com recently dropped the fees and make it open to everyone and anyone.  I think it’s a pretty smart move – they get to expose their brand to more and more people, help smaller startups collaborate and hopefully reel them in as CRM customers down the line as their businesses grow.

For smaller entreprenuers and virtual organizations or companies with lots of remote offices, remote workers, sales teams out on the road, etc., free is a pretty great price.

The product is quite robust and they have an array of “native” apps for various platforms.  So while it is a web-browser based app to start, they have a terrific native iPhone app, and Mac & Windows desktop applet as well, which make it extremely easy to keep up with what’s going on without having to have a browser open or an actual computer in-hand (in the case of the mobile apps).

My core team (headcount under a dozen) has been using it  for a couple of weeks and so far so good.  It’s a nice way to keep people on the same page, and cross-pollinate the teams.  Now the engineering team can get a feel for the new projects coming down the pike, they can see what the Sales guys are working on, what the Designers are involved in, interact with the Marketing team, and vice-versa.

One of my initial concerns was yet-another-web-app.  In otherwords, overload.  We’re already checking Facebook, Twitter, Flow (project management), email, blogs, yada yada yada.  I was (and still am) concerned about maintaining yet another presence.  But I was willing to give it a try, and the concern is waning.   The service itself is extremely solid, well done, and…just works.

We’ve only been using it for a couple week, but so far, so good.  I’ll be happy to report back a bit later after we’ve had a bit more of a track record with the service.  At this point, I can recommend taking a look — it’s worth a try.  Especially if you have remote workers who feel isolated.  This is a great way to bring everyone into the fold.

Someone asked me this question recently.  My answer: “Not much.”

In case you didn’t know (and I wouldn’t be surprised — most consumers are NOT familiar with them), they’re the square little matrix barcodes you see in magazine ads these days, such as the example graphic accompanying this post (this hyperlink links back to this article online, in case you’re reading this in a news feed that doesn’t show the accompanying graphics).  Where as traditional barcodes (such as UPC codes you see on all of your grocery product packaging) are 1-dimensional (side to side), QR Codes are a 2D square matrix that packs more data into a smaller area.

I will be the first to admit that I’m a techie gadget lover.  And not just hardware gadgets, but I love software and web apps and all manner of cool techie toys.  I’m definitely an “early adopter” checking out the best and latest tools to use in my business as well as personally.  But I really don’t “get” QR Codes.   I think it’s a fad.  I could be wrong, and I’m not trumpeting this from the rooftops with any kind of missionary zeal.  Just saying…

It’s entirely possible that we’re just still in its infancy, on the leading edge of the new wave.  But somehow I don’t think so – I think it’s as mainstream as it’s going to get.  And that’s not very…   Sure, you see them in everything from People Magazine to coupon mailers, but taking a quick poll around my family friends, end consumers for the most part have no idea what they are.

The only people who love them and are using them are marketers.  I don’t know the last time I heard someone say “I saw this great ad and scanned the QR Code!”  In fact, there hasn’t been a first time either.

So *why* am I so pessimistic on QR Codes?

I can understand the benefits of a 2D code to pack more data and meaning into a “barcode”. More data density.  Sure.  I can see them useful in behind-the-scenes business applications, for inventory management or recording SKU details and more.  Similar to RFID tags and UPC symbols that are very useful for business applications.  UPC symbols (traditional 1 dimensional barcodes) are hugely helpful for inventory management at retail, but the average user doesn’t own a UPC scanner or really interact with them directly very much.  It’s more of an internal thing for retail stores to scan at the register for price lookups and recording sales & inventory transactions, or for scanning inventory asset tags, and so forth.  But end consumers don’t walk around with UPC scanners.

Similarly, QR Codes require a scanner, most commonly in the form of a smartphone app that uses a camera to capture the image for processing and interpretation.  Then the app launches a web browser to pull up the appropriate URL.

But  let’s break this down.  While cell phone penetration is high (over 90%), not everyone has a cell phone.  Of those that do, only about 1/3rd of the U.S. cell phone customers have a smartphone capable of handling QR Codes.  This is about 20% – 25% of the total target audience of, say, a magazine (i.e. including people who don’t even have a cell phone to begin with).  What percentage of those use apps and actually have a QR Code reader on their smart phone? I don’t have an actual statistic to back this up, but anecdotally I’d have to say it runs about 2%.

So why are we wasting valuable space, cluttering up an ad with a QR code that is only accessibly by 2% of the target audience, just to encode a URL?  Print the darned thing right there in the ad and you reach 100% of your target audience!   And “…because it can encode lengthy, complex URLs” is not an answer: that’s what friendly URLs (and URL re-writing) are for. Problem solved.

QR Codes in consumer marketing (B-To-C) seems like just a fad.  We do it because it’s cool and we look all modern and hip and stuff.   But in reality, it just creates more ‘friction’ in the marketing process in my opinion.

To encode more data into a driver’s license, or plane tickets and other such behind-the-scenes business uses? Sure.  But for consumer marketing purposes, I just don’t see the need.  At 401 Consulting, we *can* generate QR Codes (see the one attached to this article), and we will include them in the print media we design for our clients if it’s a requirement for the project.  But in my personal opinion, I just don’t see the value.

Quite honestly, the only people I see excited about (and using) QR Codes are marketers.

Since the prior blog post on troubleshooting Microsoft’s built-in FTP server in IIS, I’ve gone back to the tried and true FileZilla Server.  Yes, the community that brought you the free FTP client software also provides a free server version.  It’s great, robust and secure.  Oh, and super fast and easy to install and configure.  Very intuitive.  I’ve been using it for YEARS.  I had such a simple need that I was just trying to work with the built-in FTP in IIS on a new server install (hence the previous post).  But when a new requirement arose recently, I finally punted entirely, turned off FTP in IIS and installed my old friend – the FileZilla FTP Server.

Life is much better now.

It’s reinforced my prior thinking — even if the need is super simple, it’s just faster and easier to go with FileZilla right off the bat.   I recommend you check it out if you have FTP needs.

I like Skype.  A lot.  I’m depressed.

My initial thought was:  how long before Microsoft runs it into the ground?  Microsoft has been all over the road.  Ray Ozzie, their supposed visionary, has left the building.  They’re increasingly being seen as an dinosaur.  The large, nimble giant is now a lumbering, aimlessly wandering giant.  And Steve Ballmer’s answer?  Bury your head in the sand, and just keep pounding the same Windows beat…

I was pondering all of this after hearing the Skype news and had a revelation.

I used to be a big Microsoft fan.  I made my living for 25 years by developing Windows software.  I hated Macs and wished they would just go away already.  Today I work on OSX exclusively and wouldn’t use a Windows machine if it were GIVEN to me.   What changed?  What happened?   I think I know.  And it’s a huge, fundamental problem.  I have not seen anyone pick up on this yet — this is entirely my opinion, right or wrong.  Here goes:

They reached their goal, and have no clear vision anymore!

That’s it.  That’s the problem:  they’re done.

Allow me to explain.

Since the earliest days of Microsoft, when they were just a handful of guys teetering on the verge of bankruptcy in dusty New Mexico, they had a vision.  A vision driven by their Founder, Bill Gates:   A computer on every desktop, running Microsoft software.

That was their mantra.  And they worked towards global domination.

But a funny thing happened:  they achieved it!    Now what?  There’s no “new” vision.  Now all they’re doing is trying to hang on.  Maintain marketshare.  Maintain earnings.  Please Wall Street.

If you stop and look at the “movers and shakers”, they are all on a mission to accomplish something.   Facebook wants to connect everyone in the world and create the social web.  Google is out to make it easier for individuals to find stuff.  And so forth.

So Microsoft is out chasing Google.  What’s Google doing?  They’re trying to help people find stuff faster, easier.  Why did they buy YouTube?  Because it’s one of the largest search engines on the planet outside of Google.  People searching for videos.   Why did they launch Google Maps?  To help people find places.  Why are they getting into mobile?  To help people find stuff faster and easier on the go.  And so forth.

Microsoft really does not have a clear vision or raison d’etre anymore, and they can only hold on to marketshare for so long, fending off the wolves.  They have massive cash reserves (that are about $8 billion lighter now), so they can wait it out a while yet. And they do have some cash cows still.  But their heyday has long since passed.   Mark my words.  It’s all downhill from here.

However, I just had the dubious honor of installing FTP on a Windows 2008 Server for the first time.  Like all things Microsoft, it was a great study in how to over-complicate the simplest, most inane thing!  As such, I thought I’d draft a post to list some quick troubleshooting tips to help save someone else a few minutes/hours of frustration.  There’s no rocket science here, just a few helpful hints.

One of the big issues with configuring FTP is that there’s very little in the way of feedback (error messages, etc.) when it’s not configured properly.  It just simply doesn’t work, and there are a zillion possible reasons why…

Obviously, the first thing is to make sure your firewall is flowing through traffic on port 21 for the target IP address.

Next, you need to make sure that FTP services are actually installed!  In my case, my default server install did NOT have FTP services installed.  I had to setup the roles and such to get the WWW services (and IIS) installed, which includes FTP under its wing.  So make sure you do have FTP properly installed.

The next helpful hint:  you have to create a site!  I know this sounds dumb in hindsight, but in the past when you installed WWW and FTP services you got a basic default site.  I like to run FTP from a command-line to just see the welcome banner to know I’m talking end-to-end and reaching the server, to eliminate firewall issues and the like.  Even if you hadn’t configured user access yet, you could still at least hit it and see that you were “talking” to it (getting the welcome banner, etc.)   But in Windows 2008 Server R2 no such luck.  Even with the FTP services running, nothing happens…  it’s dead, and you don’t know why.   You have to create an FTP site inside of IIS first.  Then magically, you can now connect to FTP services and get the welcome banner!

At that point, I was able to get a login banner but not actually login.  To setup logins, you have to hit two different settings icons in IIS.  First, you need to hit the “FTP Authentication” icon to choose “anonymous” or “basic” access.  By default they’re both OFF so nobody can get access, which does make sense from a security standpoint.  Anonymous is self-explanatory, and not what I wanted — I wanted to require authentication to get in.  “Basic” is unclear in my opinion, but is what I wanted.  Essentially, “not anonymous”.  Genius.  So enable “Basic Authentication”.  But that just enables the authentication types you want to allow — still nothing happens yet.

Next, you have to go to the icon next to that one, called “FTP Authorization Rules”.  Because again, by default NOBODY has access.  This is where you choose which users have access.  The dialogs are a little bit cumbersome, in true Microsoft style, but relatively straight forward.  Enter a username or class of user (“Admins”, etc.) and the type of access you want to allot (read, write or both).

At that point, I was finally able to connect and authenticate.

As I mentioned before, in hindsight this all makes sense and I perfectly well understand how and why it’s setup the way it is.  It’s just not overly clear, and is a departure from past setup processes, so I thought I’d share the experience and hopefully save someone a few grey hairs… I’ve got plenty to go around already.

Today I booted up my iMac and my wireless Magic Trackpad was dead.  I had just replaced the batteries a couple days ago, and I could see the green light was on.  But nothing…

I had this happen once before, where the Bluetooth got snarked.  Like a true died-in-the-wool Geek, I grabbed my iPad and used LogMeIn Ingition to remotely access my iMac and control the mouse pointer like an over-sized trackpad, and toggled Bluetooth on and off.  It was being all wonky and not wanting to go off (took several attempts) then didn’t want to go back on…  So I did a restart on the whole OS.

When it came back, the Bluetooth logo on the menu bar had a squiggly line through it:  Bluetooth not available.

What?!

Ok, so here’s the solution:

Turn off the computer.  Turn it back on.

Yeah.  Duh.  Took me 30 wasted, frustrating minutes to figure that out…  The red-herring was that I *DID* do a restart.  But the problem was hardware, not software.  Power cycle.  Fixed.  *rolling eyes*

I’ve spent 20 years or so on DOS/Windows-centric PCs before Macs for the past couple years…  this is a typical computer hardware thing.  Sometimes things get inexplicably hosed up and a simple power cycle will “reset” it.  I was shaking my head at myself for not trying this sooner.

Hopefully this will help save someone some time and frustration in the future.  You’re welcome.

“Back in the day,” as they say, I used to own and operate Screensaver.com, which I started from ground zero and grew to be the #1 most popular screensaver download site in the world.  And back in 90′s and early 2000′s that was saying a lot, because screensavers were the single most popular category of download online after games.  We were serving 10 million page views monthly back when that was crazy huge traffic.  (It’s still not too shabby, but the total audience was orders of magnitude smaller back then).   And traffic stats were crucial to that success.

By analyzing where traffic was coming from and what keywords were being used, we could work on increasing our traffic by better targetting our keywords and focusing efforts on the best sources of traffic.  And by reviewing the most (and least) popular pages, paths through the site, and more, we were able to optimize content and make adjustments to maximize visitor experience, and more.  Sort of like…  the things we still do today.  (I suppose it’s nice to know that some things don’t change!)

Without web analytics we’re all just guessing and flailing in the dark.  But put metrics to the traffic, and magic happens!

Back in the early days of the web, this was achieved by installing software that would parse through web server log files and keep track of and tally a bazillion different variables, numbers, counters, IP addresses, users and statical points, in order to derive meaning from the seemingly endless reams of data.   Personally, I used the “Grandaddy” of reporting tools:  Web Trends.

But said Grandaddy came at a premium.   Over time other competitors emerged that were every bit as capable, but less costly, and I’ve tried most of them at one time or another.

I remember some entirely web-based reporting systems trying to gain traction as far back as 1996.  But they were fraught with many problems and issues.  And mainly, I didn’t trust them.   Even Web Trends jumped into the scene with “Web Trends Live”.  Sure, it was cool in theory, but I refused to put their advertising badges on my web site (I’m running a professional site, not a stock car racer with various sponor logos splashed everywhere).  And right off the bat there were latency problems — nothing like waiting and waiting for pages to finish loading, just to realize it’s the reporting software slowing it down!  Speed and connectivity issues also contributed to missed reporting, and what good is reporting metrics if they’re wrong?!   So went the concept of real-time reporting.  Neat in concept, but not robust enough.  A concept before its time.

Now mind you, Google Analytics has been out for a while.  This isn’t “news.”  I gave it a quick look at first, but it was pretty basic and I was still dubious from earlier experiences.

About two years ago I gave another hard look to Google Analytics and decided to dip my toe into the water and give it a test.  It went well.  I gravitated towards using it more and more.   Today, I no longer run reporting software on any of my web servers — all of my reporting is driven by Google Analytics.

Over time, Google has managed to solve the major issues that bothered me.  Due to their sheer volume and wealth, they’ve been able to plow hundreds of millions of dollars per year into their software and hardware infrastructure.   They spend tens of millions of dollars per year just focused on improving speed and reducing latency, building scale and deploying physical redundancy among its servers, data centers and networking infrastructure.   Just retrieving search results from the entire web universe instantly when you hit <ENTER> wasn’t good enough — now they predict what you want and pull results in real time as you are still typing it!

This level of speed, efficiency and connectedness has been brought to bear with Google Analytics.   Oh, and like its namesake search engine, it’s free.

Signup at www.google.com/analytics and you’re off and running in minutes.  You can enter as many different web sites as you want to track, all under your one login, and you can even invite other people to have access to your stats on a site by site (i.e. case by case) basis, such as bringing in other members of your team, or your web master, etc.  Reporting is real-time, with nothing to install or maintain.  And it’s a piece of cake to get up and running.   In about 60 seconds you can create an account, setup a site to track and get the code swatch you need to paste into your web site pages (or to send to your webmaster to do it for you).  And BAM!  You’re off and running.

The toolset has really matured over the years.  Google continues to integrate new features and enhance and expand the existing ones.  It’s incredibly feature rich! When I casually mentioned it to one of my customers recently, he looked at me like I had two heads.  He had never heard of it.  So I thought it was time to share some details here.

When you login (after everything is all set up), you start off at a Dashboard that gives you the broad strokes.  This is great for top-level Executive Management and to just quickly put a finger on the pulse.  But then you can start drilling down deeper, and deeper, and deeper, as you wish.  And if you are involved in buying AdWords, you can integrate your AdWords campaigns and track the entire process from end to end. You can view the entire process from its origins at Google search to click-through to your site and through to purchase and checkout! Google Analytics will generate reports on ROI metrics and more.   It’s quite impressive.    And of course, it’s 100% web-based so you can log in and review reports from anywhere on the Internet, at any time.

Did I mention it’s 100% free?

I wish WebTrends luck.  I think they’re going to need it.

In the meantime, do yourself a favor and check out Google Analytics if you haven’t already.  You’ll be glad that you did.

NOTE From the Editor: This was just a general opinion piece on Google Analytics.  I’m currently drafting a detailed article about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which will delve deeper into these disciplines, and be a lot more “educational”.  Stay tuned!