Change of blog platform and address!!

I have changed blog platform to presstopia, which is a free and Open Source .NET blog platform. I have been looking for a .NET blog platform for some time. The majority of them seem to cost money, which is not a bad thing, but presstopia offers control and the choise of Atom and RSS feeds.

My blog address is still http://www.yellowpark.net/cdalby, but the feed addresses have changed, so you'll need to update you blog alligators:

RSS: http://www.yellowpark.net/cdalby/feeds/rss.xml
Atom: http://www.yellowpark.net/cdalby/feeds/atom.xml

Its been a good but hard week

This week has been a hard but good week. We have been very busy. But that is good. That's why we set-up in buisness - we felt we could do a good job, offer value for money and go the extra mile.

Tune in to our webcast – setting up Outlook for Hosted Exchange with Yellow Park.

Microsoft Exchange provides integrated messaging and grants remote access to public folders for group discussions, group scheduling, shared calendars and document sharing. It offers you and your employees mobile, remote, and desktop e-mail access with state-of-the-art security and privacy. Allowing you to access your email using a wide range of options – from PC, laptop, mobile device or internet café.

Simply log on and receive access to your contacts, calendars and email completely synchronised between devices. To demonstrate the configuration settings needed, we are running a webcast on Friday 10th March at 3pm GMT. Simply email chris@yellowpark.net to register to attend this webcast. The webcast will be presented using Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2005.

Email is the new snail mail.

Email is definately the new snailmail. I sent an email to someone the other day and appologised for the snail mail, as opposed to commenting on their blog, which is instant of course.

One day, all of us will be passively ego surfing. I don't just mean google alerts.

Email access using RPC Http

I have spent quite a few days over the last week configuring RPC over Http. This allows users of Outlook 2003 to connect to Exchange Server 2003 simply using a HTTPs connection in order to get access to your company email, calendar, contacts etc while working away from the office. This means you longer need a VPN to access your corporate email using hosted exchange.

There are various ways to access your email. The majority of users will undoubtedly use a POP3 mailbox. This is not only the least secure method, but also means that you are missing out on loads of great functions. Hosted exchange means that you have access to a host of features like your address book, calendar, shared company address books etc. Plus, whether you check your email from your laptop, pda or office PC, you will aways have access to exactly the same content, ensuring all devices are synchronised.

Implementing RPC Http was quite a feat, and is not for the feint hearted. I'll be blogging how I did this in the next few days, as there were many steps needed to get this working and even more to troubleshoot.

Les Gites Condorcet

Jerome has just put together a great logo for a website we are working on. Les Gites Condorcet, is a project underway by Tim Boldry. Located near Perpignan in the South of France, Les Gites Condorcet will be available for rent towards the end of 2006. Tim is currently probably up to his eyeballs in sand and cement working on completing the work. He is following the Gites de France standards which demands excellent accommodation and service.

I am really happy with this logo. To me it shouts holiday and I love the Catalan colours.

Live Meeting Quirks

There are a few quirks that I have started noticing about Live Meeting. Predictably, firefox compatability issues. I can only hope that it was not a concious decision to build these in by design. In firefox, the meet now options seem to disappear.

There is a workaround for this. Install the IE Tab extension for firefox. Visit the firefox website to download.

Also, I can't seem to find a way of setting the administration website to work in UK date mode. Please tell me I have missed the setting, because this should be in the hands of the admin site owner.

A couple of smile raisers for Monday

Here's a couple of links to 2 brilliant ideas. Both are video clips, wich are simple to achieve but made brilliant by the original genis idea:

Clip 1

And Brokeback to The Future:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfODSPIYwpQ

MSN Spaces is really ........................................... er.... slow.

Come on Microsoft, MSN spaces is really slow. I kinda gave up my msn spaces last year because it was so slow. Having gone back to update it, because I am trying out Messeng 8.0 Beta, it has taken literlly hours to do a few clicks worth of work.

Can you really expect people to adopt both msn spaces and the complete integration that you are hoping for with Messenger8.0, spaces etc?