far away mac » Organization

Moodle: A Quick Install for Educational Sites

Brian Stucki — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:12:05 +0000

We work with a lot of schools, universities, and academies. Moodle is a good fit for those those looking for a “free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites.”

Because Moodle uses the great MAMP package, it is as simple as dragging and dropping to get started with the site on a Mac server. And for those who use Leopard Server, there is a step-by-step guide for you too.

Moodle is free and can be downloaded for PPC or Intel Macs from the official site.

Digital Sentry: Monitor Your Server and React

Brian Stucki — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:32:19 +0000

If a server is setup correctly, you can hopefully walk away and it will run fine without interaction for a long time. Digital Sentry will help you get a little closer to that goal.

“Digital Sentry monitors your system for specific events, and then can perform a vast array of unique actions in response. Watch for such system events as waking from sleep, program launches, closes, or switches, file modifications, incorrect password attempts, mouse and keyboard input, and many more. Then, perform any number of tasks like sending an e-mail, shutting down the computer, starting a simulated self-destruct, pinging a web URL, taking a web cam shot, taking a screenshot, playing a multimedia file, speaking some text, executing a shell script… the list goes on!”

The interface is nice and easy to setup. The cost is $19.95 and comes with a free trial. Download it here.

Changes: Keeping Everything Up-To-Date

Brian Stucki — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:59:20 +0000

Quite a few of our customers use their Mac minis as central storage for a team of people in different locations. We hear from a lot of business owners who have been trying to run the server from their office, but just need more speed, reliability and security. They recognize that we can provide all three, but often they are concerned about having the machine out of the office where they can’t keep a close eye on the different versions of data. They want to make sure everyone is up to date.

This is where Changes will come in handy. Changes will keep multiple machines in sync with the latest versions of documents and projects. If you prefer something more manual, it also provides a quick way to text comparison using popular text editors.

This is also a great way to backup and update your website.

Changes is available for $39.95 and can be downloaded from the official site. (demo available)

ProjectPier: Easy Online Collaboration

Brian Stucki — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:12:27 +0000

ProjectPier is a Free, Open-Source, self-hosted PHP application for managing tasks, projects and teams through an intuitive web interface. ProjectPier will help your organization communicate, collaborate and get things done Its function is similar to commercial groupware/project management products, but allows the freedom and scalability of self-hosting. Even better, it will always be free.

For the project management of Macminicolo, we use Basecamp from 37Signals. It’s a wonderful application that has done well for our company.

But, if you are a “do-it-yourselfer” the ProjectPier may be an option for you.

Daylite: Project Management Application

Brian Stucki — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:22:47 +0000

Daylite is a very capable project management application. It helps you manage your projects, calendars, contacts, billing, mail, etc.

A couple years ago, a friend of mine asked me to design the network/software for his law firm. I decided to go with the Daylite database running on a Mac mini with all the iMacs in the office running the client to connect to it. Three years later, the employees and the clients have grown bigger and bigger but Daylite continues to meet the needs. The employees are able to collaborate on different clients and also able to sync data to their iPhones and PDA’s for access on the road.

Daylite is $149 for a single user. It can be downloaded and purchased from The MarketCircle website.

We’ve had a lot of customers use Mac minis in our data center to host their Daylite databases. Read our Top Ten Reason For Hosting Daylite With Macminicolo.net

Webjimbo: Work With Yojimbo From Afar

Brian Stucki — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:56:08 +0000

A few months ago, I started using Yojimbo to organize quotes on my Mac. The product works wonderful. My one complaint was that I’d really like to access my database from other computers. Enter Webjimbo.

Starting Webjimbo will run a small web server on your Mac. So, if you start this up on your Mac server, you’ll be able to access and manipulate your database via the internet. They’ve taken careful consideration to make sure that the data is secure and safe as it transmits. You log in with a password and also have the ability to set up a secure connection.They’ve promised a iPhone interface soon. That will be neat.

The program is $29.95 and can be downloaded at the Webjimbo site.