AngryITGuy

We use FileBrowser with our iPads and it works a treat for staff. You can setup multiple network drives to it and it can be setup to ask for a username and password each time a drive is accessed or you can set it to just ask for the password and setup the username via the configuration of the app. It picks up the permissions based on the provided username so along as your NT permissions are ok you should be fine using the app. You can also lock down the admin panel so users cannot add additional network drives and you can also restrict the software so that a user can only read and add data to the remote folder but not delete anything from it.

GCHQ: solve the online code, become a real-life spy Any one fancy a career in espionage or fancy themselves as a codebreaker? I've already tried 'password' and that didn't work

Are they for staff or student use? A good place to start would be with the iPhone Configuration Utility as this allows you to lock down the devices as well as push out settings for Exchange, WiFi, proxy and device restrictions etc it what I used to config settings on our iPads.

I got the same vibe following our meeting seems like a really good company (although that could have just been good salesmanship from them!). Product looks solid enough and seems to do the same things as Securus with the added benefit of monitoring USB devices. The fact that it will cost less than Securus and all the monitoring of alerts and events is done by them offsite is a really positive. We are going along with a trial of it in the next couple of weeks so I should be able to get a good idea of how well it works and how good the company really are to work with. How long ago were you given that price? They must have price brackets for the number of students you have on site as our price was no where near as high as that!

I'm after some ideas on the best ways to stream video from an IP Camera to our school website. The camera is over looking the building work for our new school and we would like to show the ongoing progress on our website. Like I said the camera is IP based so I guess I could just connect directly to the stream or use VLC to stream to the site but not sure what difference this would make. The web server is running Ubuntu and the website is built using Drupal. Ideally I'd like the stream to only be available during certain times of the day but the onboard camera software doesn't support this functionality, anyone know how I could achieve this please? Thanks

Drop me a PM and i can see what I can do, I have been meaning to document how I have setup and configured the iPads in school.

Does that mean you know the cost of the system then? Couldn't find anything on the website regarding costs although I can't see anyone paying the list price if they are wanting to get a user base in local authorities throughout the UK. We have the internet pretty well locked down and managed for student access so I guess we are looking for something to compliment this as we open up more of the internet to students, we are also wanting something to track offline and email based events to crack down on any inappropriate behaviour and bullying that maybe occurring plus the fact that the solution also locks down USB devices is plus point as well as the fact that all the administration is down by them rather than school staff but I imagine it all comes at a c

The option does exist you might be better off creating the iTunes account via iTunes on a computer rather than the iPad.

Is anyone using, heard of or had a demo of the E-Safety Service provided by E-Safe Systems. The school is interested in some safe guarding software and we recently had a trial of Securus which was good but not without it's flaws but that's just my opinion. I've come across this and we have a demo scheduled next week and I'd very much appreciate any thoughts or experience anyone has from the service provided as it looks like it does something along the same lines as Securus tracking and monitoring for key word, phrases and threats but all the data is sent offsite to the guys at E Safe Systems who then go through the logs and report back the findings to the school on a daily basis. Sounds good in theory assuming all data is sent encrypted and that their servers are reliable but also sounds expensive!

Think there are plenty of apps available for jailbroken devices but nothing officially from the app store. All internet activity is logged via the proxy although we had to bypass user authentication for the iPads as some apps we are using wouldn't pass authentication details through to the proxy which caused all kinds of issues so activity is logged via device name and ip address as all the iPads have static addresses.

You're right it isn't that simple and I understand that there will be legitimate reasons for using certain apps and these reasons will usually outweigh the possibility of abuse of the app and it all comes down to staff management which is something I don't have any control over. The problem with the iPads is that they are notoriously difficult to monitor once locked down and setup you can't remote view them (or at least not to my knowledge), you only get to see the logs via the iPhone Configuration Utility and even that doesn't tell you much! We will be looking to setup a class set of the devices soon and I could really do with finding an app that password protects apps in folders.

It's all done using the iPhone Configuration Utility

This is how we were told to do it when we purchased the devices from an Apple Authorised Reseller, Apple are aware of this workaround and will no doubt plug it with their Volume Bulk Purchase Program which is only available in the US at the moment.

Does that mean you trust the staff in your school completely? Yes the same can be said for an internet connection which is why most schools have a web filter in place, and your right it does come down to the professionalism and management of staff but what you have to realise is each school is different and will choose manage staff in their own way. Just cos we don't allow SkyGo and Angry Birds on our school iPads doesn't mean other schools should do the same, we chose to manage it this way initially to keep the focus on the iPads for teaching purposes, more than likely in the future we will become more lenient with regards to the apps.

Unfortunately you can't push out individual apps to specify iPads, thought the iCloud based service would do that but it's either all the apps or none of them! At the moment we manage it manually, downloading the app then syncing the required devices. As far as I am aware there isn't any way of purchasing multiple copies of an App, if you try and purchase on you have already bought you just get the option to download it, meaning at the moment we buy the app once and install it on how ever many devices require it.

We don't even allow iPlayer at the moment, but that might be changing soon. With regards to the likes of SkyGo it highly likely that access to such an app would only end up being abused.

We have about 50 iPads in school mostly used by staff. They are all linked to the same iTunes account and are updated from a computer in my office, when creating the iTunes account you do get the option not to add any payment details we have done this and fund the account using gift vouchers. I'm the only one with access to the iTunes account staff use the 'Tell A Friend" link in the app store to let me know of any apps they want downloading, I download them and sync the device either via the computer or over wifi. The iTunes account is linked to the bursars email address so she gets copies of the iTunes receipts so there is a paper trail for all the money we spend. All the devices are locked down using the iPhone Configuration Utility and out policy states that members of staff are not permitted to syncing the device to a personal iTunes account and that only educational apps are installed and for what it's worth they are all tracked via Find My iPhone tool. It works well here, staff did complain about not having SkyGo, Angry Birds amongst other things on the devices but soon got use to the fact that they are a teaching tool and not a toy for them.

20% off at Asda Direct Just used the code to grab myself a couple of bargains, but it looks like any pre orders aren't delivered on release day

One for all iPad 2 owners with Apple Smart Covers iPad 2 Smart Cover Security Flaw Just tried out the flaw and it managed to bypass the lock code on my device!

Thats right it Computer based scripts we are having issues with all of which run at Startup. I'm pretty sure we have loopback processing enabled as this is the same setup we had last year and everything was working fine. I've just done some more checking and it seems that the computer based scripts can be ran locally on the machine once logged on they just don't seem to want to run on startup even though the gpresult output says they have been applied. What's even more strange is that it seems to be only affecting staff machines too!!! All our curriculum machines run their computer based scripts on startup without any issues all the machines were imaged the same way and pretty much have the same software installed on them too.

Morning all We seem to be experiencing some issues with the processing on logon scripts for our domain and it's got me scratching my head as I can figure out what's causing it. We have a 2003 domain with XP SP3 clients, all clients were imaged with FOG over the summer holidays and added to the domain. Once added to the domain all workstations get the AV Software via group policy which worked fine. We have user based group policies to lock down IE, hide mapped drives and configure document redirection all these work fine. Computer based policies that set the logon dialog box, WSUS and to deny student logon all work too. However the computer scripts configured to run startup scripts aren't running at all even though it says the policy has been applied when I run gpresult on client. We have one which updates the local start menu and the other makes staff administrators of their machines non of these scripts are working and there is nothing reported in the Event Viewer of the client. Anyone got any ideas what could be causing the issue? I'm about to create a test OU and see if any of the policies are conflicting with each other but I doubt that will be the case as I haven't modified any of the policies this year. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Planned for this summer is a migration of our staff mail server from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. I've found the following article which looks like it covers all aspects of the migration process Exchange 2003 to 2010 Transition "Swing Migration" I was just wondering if anyone who has already gone through this process has some advice or pointers for me about any potential pitfalls. Cheers

This is how we also do it although we have an iPad backup for each department and setup new devices from that and then apply our lockdown policy. We have never needed to sync the apps as they are part of the device backup.

PayPal UK Twitter account hacked, apparently by angry customer | Technology | guardian.co.uk PayPalUK Twitter Feed Account seems to have stopped tweeting now, hacker was having a right old rant a couple of hours ago!

Have just come across this is my local Co-Op iTunes Promotion and thought I'd spread the message Got myself a couple of vouchers this morning that I'll be using towards a copy of OS X Lion.