Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with directory

Where can I find a business directory or point of interest database?

SemiSophos — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:42:21 -0800

Are there any reasonably-priced, reliable databases of US businesses that allow users to store, edit, and retransmit that data? I'm working on a small web application and I need to be able to create maps, annotate them with local businesses, parks, and other points of interest, and then pass those on to other folks.

A nationwide database of businesses would be awesome, but something specific to Oregon would work for now. I could get by with each business's name and address, though a geocoded and categorized dataset would be preferable.

Google's terms of service are a bit too restrictive, and I don't think buying data directly from each state's corporation division would scale terribly well.

Thanks!

Help me batch print text files on the Mac

grumblebee — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:19:03 -0800

OS X: I want to batch print all the files in a source-code library. They are actionscript files, which means they are text files that all end in a .as extension. The files are in a complex directory structure (one root folder but files in multiple subfolders), and there are non .as files that I don't want printed. When the files print, I need some kind of separator ( spaces, asterisks, new page...) between each file. I can't seem to find a FILTERABLE batch printing app for OSX -- one that can print all files (of a certain type or naming scheme) in all folders and subfolders starting at a certain root.

I thought about opening Terminal and doing this:

find . -name "*.as" | xargs cat > outfile.txt

And then printing outfile.txt. That would be perfect except that I won't easily be able to tell where one file begins and another ends. I need

*****************

or some other delimiter between files.

If it matters, this is for OS X Leopard.

LDAP ADAM Active Directory combining

fumbducker — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:05:13 -0800

how can i combine multiple AD domains into one directory for application authentication? can i use ADAM? we have some applications that need to authenticate users against our AD. we have 3 domains that are not child domains of any one master domain. the application can only use one directory at at time. can these 3 AD domains be combined into one directory, using ADAM or some other LDAP application?

WIN XP Directory Tree Software help?

dorgla — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:13:54 -0800

Need software which enables saving my Windows XP file directory tree and shows subfolders as a .gif, .jpg or .bmp. Google found some software which saves it as a text file, but I want the visuals of the actual folders in the tree structure.

Choose Details in OS X

reenum — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:43:43 -0800

Mac OSX Filter: How can I change the details displayed for files in a directory while in list view? This may be a really easy question, but Google has failed me thus far.

When I used XP and viewed directories as lists, I could go to View and then click on 'Choose Details' to pick which file info I wanted displayed.

I can't seem to figure out how to do this on Mac OSX.

The reason I want to do this is because I listen to a lot of podcasts, and the title in the file info is often more instructive than the filename.

Is there any way to 'Choose Details' on Mac OSX?

Student discount directory for the Arlington, TX area?

ShawnStruck — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:36:32 -0800

I'm starting my first day as a college frosh tomorrow. I want to take full advantage of everything the college experience has to offer-- like student discounts! But repeated Googling has failed me; I can't seem to find a directory of local business or events that offer student discounts! I live in Arlington, TX. Can the hive-mind point me towards any comprehensive directories for student discounts in the area?

Keepin the story straight

chickaboo — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:02:09 -0800

How can I host a member directory for a nonprofit, for free, online, that is password protected? Are there any sites that would protect basic contact information for our members, and also enable us to upload other basic organizational info that multiple people (at least 50) would be able to log in and view?

iPhone directory for Ontario, Canada?

bonobothegreat — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:18:01 -0800

I need to find a directory for the iphone in Ontario. I don't know much about cell phones (it's an iPhone he has, in case that narrows it down) and I need to reach my brother. Googling just leads to a confusing advertising no man's land that I don't have any time to sift through now. We've had a family emergency and no one has his cell number on them and he doesn't have a land line. We have to leave shortly and I was hoping someone here could point me to a directory.

Learning Management System with Active Directory Support

mrw — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:03:24 -0800

I am looking for a (preferably Opensource / free) Learning Management System that will link up with LDAP / Windows Active Directory The company I work for is looking to roll out web-based "exams" on subjects such as desktop security for a certification we are looking to hold. Ideally the software will limit a user's permissions to do many things until they pass the exam/test. I have heard of such software, but I cannot recall the name.

Currently our network setup is on a windows domain, using windows server 2008 active directory to manage user groups. I can set up a box for whatever operating system / webserver / databasing required as i have a few spares here at the moment.

In addition to the above, the software needs to generate some kind of file indicating which users have completed the test and which have yet to do so.

If you have a better idea on how to roll out such a thing, well... any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated

Account Creation Script (not spam)

BrodieShadeTree — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:45:22 -0800

Simple need for autofilling a web page with a different set of variables each time. Assuming I have a CSV of the user accounts I need to create, how can I create or find a script that will let me create new accounts by entering the CSV info into set fields (name, email, password), submitting and then automaticaly proceeding onto the next user account? This is for Active Directory account creation on a website through a Citrix Client, totally legitimate, not spamming.

How to investigate a slow startup process on Windows XP computers on a medium business domain

joshrholloway — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:11:52 -0800

Is there software or some automated method to audit the entire startup process of a Windows XP computer to find why startup is slow? We run a Windows domain here at work with around 300 computers. Recently the startup process on basically every computer has slowed down significantly. We have enabled verbose messages and we see that "Applying computer settings" and "Running startup scripts" are taking a particularly long time.

I know there is software that can audit the startup process after a user logs in, but we are looking for something that can automatically audit the entire startup process from the time that Windows begins booting so we can see exactly what is happening that is causing the slowdown or what is taking so long to finish running. Is there anything out there that can do this effectively? If not, what is the best way to diagnose this issue manually? Just turning off policies and startup scripts one-by-one through trial-and-error?

Thanks!

Kerb-what?

liquado — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:14:25 -0800

Please hope an OS X/Open Directory/Kerberos n00b -- I can't reset the directory administrator's password in OS X Server 10.4. I'm helping a local school with some connectivity issues between their 10.4.11 server, and their swanky new 24" iMacs with 10.5.6; all kinds of permissions issues that are, according to Apple, related to an unconfigured DNS/Open Directory situation.

I know basic OSX Server configuration, but I am very unfamiliar with OD. I'm following these instructions from Apple successfully so far, but I'm hitting a brick wall were either:

a) someone has set the username/password for the diradmin user prior to my attempt to do so, or

b) the password has never been set, but the server is not allowing me to set said password.

Assuming the former, I found these instructions on resetting the diradmin password, but...I'm stuck at, "Open Workgroup Manager using your administrator username and password and navigate to the Open Directory Master node." I see no node. There's no node, dammit!

If it's the latter, any ideas why it will not allow me to set the password from the server admin OD panel? It asks for it to be set up each time, but doesn't appear to set it.

Any advice SUPERLY appreciated.

What is the ideal CMS for a user-controlled directory?

carnival of animals — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 23:28:12 -0800

What is the ideal CMS for a user-controlled directory? I want to create a directory of companies and their products. I would like for companies to be able to edit only their own entry through a minimal customized back-end. They would be editing their address, URL, phone number, etc.; and adding products to their entry as discrete items which can be called up separately in search results, perhaps also uploading the occasional PDF. The lighter the CMS the better, and it would ideally have some flexible queries built in so that I don't have to spend too much time wrestling with PHP, at which I'm a beginner (certainly don't know anything about how to get PHP to talk to databases). I'm not expecting much traffic, at least not for the first year of its operation.

I've used and customized WordPress to act as a small CMS before, but I doubt it's the best candidate in this case. The front-end is no problem, but WP's back-end is clunky and even if customized, I wouldn't know how to give users permission to edit their entry only. And I don't like the feeling of hacking things together which I get whenever I use WP for anything other than what it was meant to be, a blog.

I looked at Joomla, but it seems overblown for what I need and more difficult to customize. (I guess it might just be necessary for me to learn PHP?)

Textpattern is my leading candidate at the moment. It's light and using its js queries seems simple. But again, I'm not sure how easy it would be to customize the back-end and permissions. Is there any reason I shouldn't use Textpattern to handle thousands of entries?

Mass installation?

Whoop — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:59:34 -0800

What's the best way to mass install over an Active Directory network? Currently I'm running an network of around 60 computers, most of these are XP although there's some Windows 2003 and 2007 also.
The problem is all these computers remain logged in 24/7 and are locked when not in use, never logged out. I'm a novice Windows network admin and any ideas on how to push software to these computers?
I understand that you can set group policies to run .msi installers, however these are only run upon login and due to these computers rarley actually logging in...as they don't logout this isn't much use.

Any suggestions would be extremely appreciated. Thanks.

There's only so much clicking I want to do in order to see 100+ pictures.

elfgirl — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:49:18 -0800

I've been browsing through a website whose pages are set up to be viewed as indexes/directories with no HTML. Many of the files listed are image files, and I'd like to be able to see them without having to click on each one individually. Is there some kind of add-on or plugin that will automatically show thumbnails of all the images on the page or am I stuck clicking on each one?

Add leaves and fruit, but don't cut the branches

bartleby — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:27:56 -0800

On a Windows share with a complex file tree, is there any way to lock down the tree so that folders can be added by all, but the directory structure itself can't be changed? People keep dragging folders or whole sections of a directory tree on a network file server and leaving them inside another location on the tree; so the HR folder and its subfolders suddenly end up inside the Accounting section. (No one admits to moving them, of course.)

Users need to be able to create their own subfolders, and add documents and move them around throughout the tree; but I'm trying to find a way to allow this while also blocking the ability to move folders from one location in the tree to another, or otherwise make change the directory structure.

I'm not coming up with anything; is there something obvious I've missed?

directory listing flash mp3 player

Infernarl — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 05:38:20 -0800

Is there a free flash mp3 player that I can place in a directory on a web server and have it automatically make a playlist of the contents of that directory and play them? I basically want something that emulates a standard directory listing on IE or safari but allows you to play the flies that are mp3s via flash.

wishlist:
-support for subdirectories would be nice
-ability to download files
-it would also be nice if it wasn't ugly
-wav support

How can I see a website's file tree?

demagogue — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:10:21 -0800

How can I browse a website like how it would be if there weren't a "index.html" or similar file? That is, see a directory-type listing of the files in that directory? You know, that type of listing where there are directories, a link to move up one folder, the files in that directory, etc.

Directory of IT Security Managers in Energy/Oil/Electric Industry?

Kellyu — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:43:06 -0800

Is there a directory or directories of C-Level contacts, e.g., the Director of IT, Director of Security or and other high level managers with security for major companies within Electric Utilities, Gas Utilities, Oil & Gas Pipelines, Oil and Gas Refining, and Oil and Gas Drilling and Exploration? Would prefer something free, but would be willing to consider proprietary sources.

Looking for an Aussie Ad Rag

LongDrive — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 01:13:59 -0800

Which Australian Advertising/Media Magazine (and its associated directories) should I subscribe to? I used to read a variety of ad rags to keep me up to date on the creative side of Aussie ad and media agencies but found that keeping up across multiple titles which all had overlap of information and news was getting time-consuming, and expensive (as an individual). Right now I am trying to decide which of main guys (Adnews, B&T, not so much Campaign Brief) to pick up with. Does anyone have any preference at all? An important component is the directory component and how accurate it is. Thanks Hive!

Returning Department from Active Directory Users

deadcowdan — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:28:21 -0800

Active Directory filter: I need to get a list of Department entries for each user in an AD database. This should be ridiculously simple, yet I have been banging my head against the wall on this all afternoon. Where in the schema does AD store the user Department, Company, Office info?

htaccess and description column

maxwelton — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:10:04 -0800

I would like to use .htaccess to pull out a specific part of a filename and display it in the "Description" column of a file directory on an apache web server. All files in this directory are formatted like this:

aaaaaaaa-bbbb-c~c-d~d.ext

There is always a hypen between each block, and blocks "a" and "b" are always the same length. "c" and "d" are variable lengths, symbolized by the ~, but they always consist of alphanumeric characters.

Ideally, I'd like for the "c" block to be pulled out and displayed in the "description" column when users browse this directory. Also OK would be to display both "c" and "d" in the description, but just "c" would be perfect.

My poor regex-fu combined with my lack of comprehensive understanding of htaccess goodness is keeping me from doing this successfully, assuming it can be done at all.

Just like the neighbor's cat in your kids' sandbox...

bonobo — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:06:04 -0800

What am I doing to my links pointing to images in a private directory that prevents me from seeing the pics in Dreamweaver CS3 Design mode? Searching Adobe's Knowlegebase and Google yields a flood of others' issues with setting up passworded sites or Dreamweaver forgetting FTP login info and I can't narrow the results to the problem I'm having.

I just started building a web site and I'm rusty in HTML and am learning CSS. After I edit the code, I do like to check it out in Design view. Currently, I'm uploading things to a private directory (passworded .htaccess on a Zeus server not managed by me) so my business partner can see pages before the site goes "live." Viewing the site through a browser, one is prompted to enter the name and password to see this directory's content. No problems there. I have no troubles with file management in DW's FTP prog or in FileZilla, either.

Suppose the page I'm working on is located at http://www.[mydumbsite].com/public_html/sandbox/mydumbpage.htm . "Sandbox" is the passworded directory. My stylesheet for CSS is located in the same directory and the page refers directly to mydumbstylesheet.css . The pics reside below "sandbox" in folders "dumbimages" and "dumbimages/dumbthumbs." The stylesheet's effects on my .html pages show up in Design mode. The images do not. When it's all said and done, the images ARE there on the site and appear in the final product. I would just like to know what I'm doing or not doing that keeps me from being able to preview.

How do I refer to the image locations the short way (vs. "http://www.[mydumbsite].com/public_html/sandbox/images/dumbpic.jpg") so DW is not blocked access? Or Is there a way to tell DW to prompt me to get into pw'd dirs in preview mode?

Any other methods/advice (other than "OMG don't use THAT program, I write code with Sith blood on tree bark") are welcome.

Thanks!

How do I get rid of a directory when it "refers to a location that is unavailable?"

suimin — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:30:17 -0800

On my external hard drive there's this empty file folder that I can't delete. Every time I try to delete the folder, I get a message saying that it doesn't exist. I'm not very tech-savvy. What do I do? So I tried to extract a compressed file--I can't remember if it was a .zip or a .rar. Nor do I remember the program I used to extract it--it wasn't WinZip, it was something I found for free on download.com. (Don't look at me like that.)

The upshot is that the zipped file was messed up somehow, but the extractor went ahead and created a directory for the potentially unzipped file. But the extraction didn't work, so it left this ugly directory just lying there, indestructible and pointless.

I did all this on my external hard drive, so when I couldn't delete the directory with the hard drive attached to a computer running Windows XP, I tried it on a computer running Vista. I keep getting the same response, about how it "refers to a location that is unavailable."

I don't know a whole lot about the inner workings of Windows operating systems. The mature thing would be to just ignore the stupid superfluous directory, but it drives me crazy. Is there something I can do? (It's a FAT32 file system, whatever that means.) Some kind of clean-up--other than the disk cleanup/defragment options in the system tools? And could I maybe get very simple, step-by-step instructions, so that I don't ruin anything? (Just a heads-up: any mention of "algorithms" and I'm lost.)

Member directory that members can maintain themselves?

davcoo — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:16:45 -0800

We need a member-maintained name/address/phone/photo directory for our group's Unix-based Web site. Our group has a Web site on which is a PDF file containing members' names, addresses, phone numbers, photos, etc. One member is now responsible for keeping the document up-to-date, and we'd like to move to an on-site directory that members could update themselves online. Is anyone aware of such software for our Unix-based site? We do have access to MySQL, and we'd prefer hosting our own software, although we'd consider a Web-based directory.