After installing BES Express last night, I went to activate my first user and could not get it working.  I tried a “wired” activation using the user web console as well as an “OTA” activation.  The ETA.DAT Blackberry activation e-mail would just sit there in the user’s box and not get picked up.  Also, the OTA activation would just hang at “Activating”.  The wired activation would return a “contact your administrator” text in red when you try to activate that way.

After researching a bit, I ran IEMSTest.exe from the \RIM\BB\Utility\ folder.

It failed with:

BESAdmin: No Send As permission for the {DOMAIN\besadmin} account operator.

Also I received this error in my BBAS-AS Logfile in RIM\BB\Logs after trying to activate a user:

com.rim.bes.bas.besutilityaccess.DeviceActivationJNIException: JBeginActivation::ProvisionUser Provision user failed [sourcefile = c:\ec_build\besxp_5.0.1\6280\bx_adminservice\source\enterprise\bas \server\nativeutil\src\core\main\cpp\basbesutil\src\jbeginactivation.cpp line=286]

I fixed the IEMSTest issue by doing the following:

1. Implement the Microsoft KB 907434 by applying this script (click to download) to your BES server. Replace YOURDOMAIN with your AD domain (don’t forget to change the extension if you are .net, .local) and replace BESAdminAccountNameHere with your BESAdmin account.  You may need to remove the domain\ from the last line if you are not using a domain account for your BES server as I am.  You have to perform this step as Windows server will reset the permissions you are setting in the following steps automatically without this fix.
2. Open Active Directory Users & Computers
3. Enable Advanced Features in AD (View, Advanced Features)
4. Double-click (open) your BESAdmin user
5. Security tab
6. Add the BESAdmin user to the Security tab giving Send As, Receive As – this is in addition to the defaults that were in there.

My IEMSTest.exe works now and I was able to get my users activated over the air.

My environment: Exchange 2003 Standard running on Windows 2003 Server Domain Controller

Recently I upgraded my iPhone firmware to 3.1.3.  Immediately after the update, text messaging was SUPER SLOW and the phone was just plain laggy.  Opening apps would sometimes result in a white blank screen for seconds and all button presses lagged by 2-3 seconds.  I tried your standard soft-reboot (hold down SLEEP and slide to turn off), but that certainly didn’t fix it.

After posting a quick question on the Apple forums, the fix was easy:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2330402&tstart=0

Perform a HARD RESET by pressing HOME + SLEEP until you see the Apple logo.  Apparently this actually reloads OS X on the phone and it fixed my issue!

I don’t know why GoDaddy doesn’t publicize it’s hidden web beacon, they talk about it in the help section but you won’t find it anywhere.  I had to contact support twice to get the link below.  The web beacon or site seal is required for the EV green bar to appear in Internet Explorer 7.  The difference is the site seal is visible (and somewhat tacky IMHO) while the web beacon is NOT visible.

Here’s the link:

http://seal.godaddy.com/js/gdwebbeacon.js

or download it at my site here: GoDaddy Web Beacon

Usage is such:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://seal.godaddy.com/js/gdwebbeacon.js“></script>

NOTE: I’d recommend downloading the script and placing it local to your website to keep it segregated from GoDaddy’s website.  So your link would look like:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.mysite.com/myscripts/gdwebbeacon.js”></script>

While I was waiting for GoDaddy to respond, I figured out a hack to download the site seal and hide it… which I will share just for kicks:

<div id=”hiddenseal” style=”display:none”><script type=”text/javascript” src=”https://seal.godaddy.com/getSeal?sealID=1234″></script></div>

I had a problem where when I’d be browsing in FireFox with iTunes playing in the background on my MSI Wind u100 Hackintosh. When I was viewing a page with many Flash objects, or moving quickly throughout a page in FireFox iTunes would start stuttering on playback.

Note that I’m using the MSIWindosx86.iso image with no OS X system updates (still on 10.5.4) but all program updates applied. Also I am currently overclocked by 8% with 1 GB of RAM.  I tend to think the stutter may be caused by excessive disk swapping so I’m curious if my RAM upgrade will completely eliminate the issue.

I eliminated most the stutter by simply unchecking the “Sound Enhancer” in the Playback section of iTunes Preferences.  This setting is on by default.  Oddly I still get random stutter, but it’s much less now.

Of course you can go the route of updating your Wind and dealing with broken devices, etc. But I’m happy with my 10.5.4 Wind with all the various pieces of hardware functional.

DJ Steve Porter brilliantly remixes Vince Offer’s Slap Chop infomercial. Here’s a ringtone I did as a tribute.

30 seconds, features two sections of the original: “Hi it’s Vince with Slap Chop, you’re gonna be eating great food all day, cause your slapping your troubles away with the Slap Chop” and of course “Watch this, you’re gonna love my nuts!…”

Slap Chop Remix

All bummed out because your Geovision iPhone app’s Live View feature just tells you “Connection Failed” or actually “Conneciton Failed” when you try to connect?  I’ll bet you probably have RPB working, but just can’t figure out why Live View refuses to work!

You’ve come to the right place my friend.  Here’s your fix (good luck finding this elsewhere!):

1. Forward the following ports from your firewall to your Geovision Server: 80/TCP (not pictured below), 4550/TCP, 5550/TCP, 5511/TCP, 8866/TCP.
    

   
   The manuals fail to mention that without the control ports forwarded 4550/5550 the Live View will NOT WORK!!!!

2. Make sure in your Geovision Web Server Setup the following screens look identical to mine pictured below.
   

   General Tab

   

   Server Tab

   

   3GPP Tab

   

   Mobile Tab

    

   

   JPG Tab

3. Now on the iPhone app itself enter your info IDENTICALLY to what’s below (except of course your IP, username and password.  Note the username IS NOT case-sensitive.

   

4. Lastly to improve the video quality (this will make no sense and is totally counterintuitive), click on “image setting” and set Image “Normal Quality” to “Off”.  It should read “Low-bandwidth Image Quality” or something that makes sense.

Hooray, it works!!  But I already knew that

UPDATE

Per nick’s comment, if you are receiving an “invalid IP/password” try completely rebooting your Geovision system before troubleshooting further.  Thanks nick!