Evolution of the Inbox
by Ruairi Fullam on Aug.31, 2010, under Business News, Technical
Two interesting announcements continue to further the way we look at our e-mail in-boxes. Firstly, Microsoft’s free e-mail service Hotmail will be offering free Exchange ActiveSync to mobile devices and Google Mail will be rolling out a new feature called Priority Inbox.
So what are these features?
Exchange ActiveSync is a technology that allows e-mail, tasks, contacts and calendars to be consistent between all devices you own, where as previously you may have just used an expensive Exchange solution, or a lesser integrated way to synchronise. By keeping it all in one location, it simplifies things significantly.
Priority Inbox is Google’s way of determining how worthy an item is to be in your Inbox. We all receive Spam, but some of us also opt-in to mailing lists which are useful but often clutter up your Inbox view. The Priority Inbox aims to make it clearly distinct what mailings are high priority based upon your communication patterns in the past.
Both are interesting progressions of the way we e-mail. Personally I think the Priority Inbox will be something inherited by other clients before long…
ProTip: Group Policy Problems
by Kris Sum on Aug.27, 2010, under Technical
I’ve been scratching my head over why a particular group policy wasn’t being applied, and wasn’t even being seen by a group of computers in their gpresults. I finally found that a policy had the Loopback Policy Processing Mode set to ‘replace’ and not ‘merge’, this was on a policy which was of higher importance / more specific OU than the other policies.
Replace means that User policies that can be applied to the machine are not applied, as it will only obey computer policies based on the OU where that computer is, overriding any user policies, something i’d not come across until today!
This stopped my SBS 2008 folder redirections from working, but now they’re back up and running, hooray!
Hands on with Windows Aurora
by Kris Sum on Aug.25, 2010, under Technical
Aurora is Microsoft’s new server system aimed at startup/small businesses, a cross between Windows Home Server and a full Small Business Server setup.
We look at the installation process, key features, and take a look under the hood (continue reading…)
What have we been up to recently…
by Kris Sum on Aug.21, 2010, under Business News, Our News, Technical
Well the summer appears to have been and gone, but in that time we’ve been very busy!
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We welcome our newest staff member Hannah, who joins us for her year-in-industry placement to provide additional tech support and to help us with our refurbishment project.
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We completed a medium sized SBS 2008 installation at a local Exeter school, providing web filtering, group policy work and remote access.
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Our software development work with Exeter University continues, with the university wide release of an improved system for managing their staff recruitment process.
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We’ve taken in some more end-of-life kit from an Exeter school, which we will be refurbishing and releasing to charity
We’ll be changing the format of the blog shortly, and do a general revamp of all our websites, so watch this space!
In other news
The Small Business Server ‘Aurora’ beta has been released, which we’re evaluating right now. It incorporates features from Windows Home Server (such as drive extending, client workstation backups etc), whilst maintaining the SBS featureset. It’s also the first product to include cloud technology features, though those remain to be detailed (but likely to be some sort of remote file storage system)
Preparing for Sundown 2010
by Kris Sum on Aug.20, 2010, under Things we like
Sundown is a UK Demoparty held in Budleigh Salterton, Devon. Ruairi’s the main man behind it, so we’ve been preparing ourselves for this year’s setup.
Every year, we transform the hall with projectors, lighting, sound, wireless and wired networking with internet access and power facilities for the attendants.
Powershell snippet – creating new user mailboxes
by Kris Sum on Aug.20, 2010, under Technical
Want to know the powershell commands for creating and mailbox-enabling a user?
(continue reading…)Welcome to the new blog!
by Kris Sum on Aug.20, 2010, under Our News
Pete Molyneux demos Milo, using Xbox 360 Kinect
by Kris Sum on Aug.10, 2010, under Things we like
The latest public showing of Milo, the virtual boy and environment where you interact via Kinect. Less impressive than the previous ‘Clare’ demo, but at least this appears to be based on actual code…
Microsoft “Office Live” goes .. erm… live!
by Kris Sum on Jun.09, 2010, under Technical
Microsoft’s answer to the rival “Google Documents” service has launched today, making it possible to create and edit Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Onenote documents entirely online (and for free!).
You can check it out at http://office.live.com.
Well done to Microsoft for their snazzy cross-browser implementation!
Bing Maps – augmented reality
by Kris Sum on Feb.15, 2010, under Technical, Things we like