Adam's Mindspace

Looks like i lied....

adam — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:16:00 GMT

When I said I wouldn't post here anymore.

The truth is that my men-talhealth website is still a good idea but I don't have enough material to post there consistently. Also, I like writing tech stuff - I now just have a different agenda to before.

That in mind, I'm going to launch a new blog where I can blog about anything and everything I like. I'll post the URL when it's ready

My Final Geekdojo Post

adam — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 17:11:00 GMT

As some of you may already know, I am no longer working at Content Master.

Lot's of things have happened to me in my personal life in the last year or two that have caused me to re-evaluate my life direction.

In light of this, I've made the decision to return to education and pursue a degree in Psychology and Sociology.

My e-mail details remain the same and you can still find me on LinkedIn and Facebook but I don't have any need for a Tech Blog anymore so this will be my last post here. I'll still be blogging at www.men-talhealth.org.uk so please feel free to drop by and say hello.

Thanks for reading over the last few years. If you still want to get your exchange and content master blogging fix, i'd recommend that you check out Anthony Steven

Palm Foleo - WTF?

adam — Thu, 31 May 2007 15:34:50 GMT

The Palm Foleo showed up last night at the All Things Digital Conference.

People have long slated Windows Mobile devices for feature overkill - why have all the rich desktop windows style functionality when you just need mobile e-mail access.

Apparently the solution is to carry a laptop sized device AS WELL as your smartphone :s

Why on earth would you want to do that?

Most people who use smartphones use them as a means to save pulling out their laptop, which they ususally have with them. Why would they want to carry a foleo as well?

Answers on a postcard please as this is making my head hurt.

On Macs and poor versions of Office

adam — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:02:00 GMT

I got a MacBook for my birthday and it's fantastic except for Office 2004. After using Office 2007 on Vista for 6 months i'm quite possibly slightly spoiled but compared to the PC version of office, it sucks!

Obviously being Office 2004, it has no idea what a docx file is. Lucky for me, Microsoft recently released a converter. Or not! The converter only converts to RTF files and didnt work on half of the files I tried it on. Granted it's a beta but that doesnt help when I want to open a file and can't.

Thanks to the magic of the interweb, I found Docx2Doc which converts the files into lovely rich Office 2003 doc files. This is also handy for PC users who don't yet have Office 2007.

If any 'softies fancy pointing me in the direction of an Office 2008 beta, it would be greatly appreciated :D

Blackberry Value Proposition?

adam — Fri, 18 May 2007 15:28:28 GMT

I know i've laboured this point several times before but I just don't get it.

I was just browsing the web when a pop-up ad appeared for BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express which is a free version of the middleware component used by BlackBerry devices to communicate with your mail server. At first glance this looks like a major about turn for RIM as one of the key arguments of the Windows Mobile platform over RIM is the need for expensive middleware. Scratch the surface and you see that its not so good:

What's Included?

One free BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express – Small Business Edition v4.1 for Microsoft® Exchange, IBM® Lotus® Domino® or Novell® GroupWise®
One user included, expandable to 15 users (at additional cost)
The ability to expand beyond 15 users to any size of deployment with the purchase of an unlock key
Installation assistance directly from Research In Motion (RIM) to help you get up and running

So on my enterprise server (albeit a small business edition), I get one user for free? That would have to be a very small business indeed!

Let's be honest here. With the Messaging and Security feature Pack, Microsoft pretty much added blackberry to Windows mobile. I can understand using RIM's solution for domino or groupwise (people still have those?) but if you have Exchange 2003 or 2007 already, it makes no sense at all.

I must confess, I have implemented blackberry in an Exchange org but, in my defence we were using Exchange 2000 :) So I know that the device user experience is equal or better on a WM device.

As for the server side, the more you scale out the more it costs you... :s

If anyone would care to enlighten me, i'm all ears.

MOM is Dead - long live SCOM!

adam — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 15:56:58 GMT

I'm currently working on some Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 training, which was launched at MMS this week.

It's a fabulous product with several improvements over MOM 2005.

If you're interested, there is a raft of webcasts available (and there will probably be more after MMS).

I'm on holiday for the next couple of weeks but if i get a chance i will post some bits on Exchange Server monitoring with SCOM

Shameless Freepay Plug

adam — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 17:19:00 GMT

If you click here, complete an offer and then get 10 of your friends to do the same, you can get a free Wii, Xbox 360 (with HDD), PSP or NDS.

Oh, and my kids will love you and you wouldn't want to upset my children would you? ;)

</shamelessplug>

Free Router Anyone?

adam — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 18:27:00 GMT

Fon, are giving away 10000 routers to celebrate their first birthday so be quick.

Whats the catch? Nothing really, so long as you don't mind sharing your Wi-Fi.

The offer is good for the US, UK and Canada.

UPDATE: Mine arrived this afternoon and is up and running

UKESP is no more :(

adam — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 17:26:43 GMT

Just a brief post to say that i've decided to call it a day on UKESP.

It started with the greatest of intentions but I just didn't have the available time or resources to make it a success.

The good news for Exchange users is that there is another group you can go to

The Microsoft Messaging & Mobility User Group run by Nathan Winters.

I wish Nathan all the best and if there is any way I can help, let me know.

Sussex Geek Dinners

adam — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 18:52:00 GMT

A while back, I mooted doing something about a local geek dinner after I enjoyed the one I went to in Seattle. Things being things, I never got a chance to do anything about it.

Lucky for me that Simon Harryiot already did it.

The next one is on 28th February in Brighton.

Rights Management Add-on in IE7 (on Vista)

adam — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 21:25:21 GMT

Someone at work just sent me a restricted permission attachment. I'm logged in via OWA so I installed the rights-management add-on for IE

This didn't work so I did a bit of googling and found the release notes for IE7. Lo and behold - the first line says:

You must install the Rights Management Add-on from the RMA Download Page before you install Internet Explorer 7. The add-on cannot be installed after Internet Explorer 7.

Now this is all well and good for someone on WinXP but what about us Vista early adopters?

Troubleshooting iTunes Installation on Windows Vista

adam — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:08:00 GMT

So...

I have Vista Ultimate RTM installed on both my home and work laptops and decided that I want to install iTunes. iTunes has been my media player of choice for some time now.

I remembered trying to install it on RC1 and RC2 and it failing to install Quicktime.A check on the Apple forums found some similar issues. When downloading iTunes to my RC1 machine, there was a link to a survey on the download page where they asked you about your experiences with installing iTunes and QT on Vista.

I had exactly the same problem on RTM. Talking to other people, those who upgraded XP to Vista have iTunes working OK. The problem seems to be with the install of QuickTime (possibly something to do with its interaction with User Account Control). On a hunch, I went to www.oldversions.com and downloaded iTunes 4.2 (the latest is 7.0.2) which installed (and worked) perfectly although it wouldnt let me sign in or access the UK iTunes Music Store (iTMS).

As soon as I opened iTunes 4.2, it alerted me to the fact that a newer version was available.

I then reinstalled the newer version on top of 4.2. This time I had a different issue. When I had my issue installing iTunes on RC1 of Vista, I found an article by Dan Warne on how to install iTunes on RC1. It was no help to me that time but on this occasion I had the exact same error. There are a few minor UI differences but Dan's solution worked and i'm now on the latest version of iTunes and can even purchase from iTMS.

Exchange 2003 OWA Issues with Vista IE7 (and possibly XP SP2 IE7)

adam — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:59:00 GMT

I just wiped my work laptop and reinstalled it with a shiny new Vista Ultimate OS.

When I'm working out of the office, I prefer to use OWA to full-blown Outlook.

I fired up OWA, read a couple of messages (all good so far), hit reply and the message body has an X (as if there is a missing image).

There is a hotfix available here that you can apply to the Exchange server to fix the problem. The only problem is that it requires a reboot, which needs to be scheduled on a live server.

The first workaround I tried was to install the S/MIME control from OWA options. This enabled me to see the message contents when clicking reply. However, clicking send on my reply caused IE7 to crash :(

Currently, I'm using OWA in basic mode and it works OK - it just looks a little bit last decade :)

Coping with distractions when writing

adam — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 22:06:00 GMT

I've just realised that in all the time that i've had this blog, while I may have blogged a lot about the technology side of my work, I don't think i've ever blogged about writing.

The key differentiator between Content Master and other technical content creation companies is that our writers and subject matter experts are usually the same person. The benefit of this approach is that you can write to all the required styles and standards but also write knowledgeably and authoritatively about the subject at hand. Using two or more writers has the inherent risk of the writer misunderstanding the aim of the SME's content and misrepresenting it in the final product.

If anyone's interested, i'll be doing some more posts on technical writing over the course of the year.

Anyway, back to the title of this post. One of the bigest issues when writing (not just technical writing) is dealing with distractions. The biggest of these problems comes from the very computer on which you're doing the writing.

All of the things that you have to make your life easier, quicker, more entertaining etc are all running and all interrupt your writing when you just need a little peace. I've found a solution to this problem:

Enter - Dark Room

Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text.

Dark Room is a clone of Write Room on the Mac, which just had a 2.0 release.

I've been using Write Room for a while on my MacBook Pro and chanced upon this PC version, so I thought i'd share it.

I'm back

adam — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 21:54:00 GMT

I'm back and working (and blogging) again.

Thanks for all the messages of support while I was away - they were much appreciated.

We now return to our regular schedule