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I personally use eFax for my inbound and outbound faxing, but I just came across a free inbound fax to email provider and I thought I should pass on the link.
The company is called FaxDigits.
Let me know if you like the service.
Filed under: tools, internet | No Comments »
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
Loading ...I don’t know about you, but I certainly find that trying to arrange meetings with a bunch of people at the same time (especially if it includes customers where you don’t have access to their calendar info) can be challenging.
You typically end up having 4 to 10 emails flying back and forth (not to mention phone calls) trying to find a day/time that will work for everyone.
Here are three free web services which can help you fix that problem.
TimeBridge
ScheduleOnce
Tungle
Filed under: internet | 2 Comments »
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...I just ran into a quirk with the “import-mailbox” Powershell cmdlet from Ex2007 SP1.
I found that if I was trying to import an existing PST created using Outlook 2003 to an Exchange 2007 mailbox, it claimed that everything worked just fine, but none of the content appeared in the mailbox.
The fix is to first do an “export-mailbox” of the Ex2007 mailbox over the top of the PST which you want to import.
Export-Mailbox –Identity fred –PSTFolderPath: c:\PSTs\fred.pst
This will merge the content (if any) of the existing Ex2007 mailbox into the PST, without overwriting the contents of the PST.
The nice thing about this step though is that it converts the format of the PST into a format which the import-mailbox command will understand.
You then run the “import-mailbox” command, and it will successfully import the contents the Outlook PST file.
Import-Mailbox –Identity fred –PSTFolderPath: c:\PSTs\fred.pst
Also, remember that in order to do an import or export, the admin account you are using will need full access permission to the mailboxes in question.
You do this with the command:
Add-MailboxPermission –Identity user@contoso.com -User “internaldomain.com\AdminAccount” -AccessRights FullAccess
Filed under: Exchange | 1 Comment »
(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5) Loading ...
It’s been an ongoing battle for quite some time: HD-DVD vs Blu-ray.
Toshiba and Microsoft were backing the HD-DVD format, and Sony was backing the Blu-ray format.
There were recent signs over the last few months that Blu-ray was going to win, such as Netflix and Walmart going exclusively over to Blue-ray, but the biggest issue was which standard the main Hollywood studios would choose. The studios that had chosen Blu-ray were: Sony Pictures (obviously), Walt Disney, and 20th Century Fox. Warner Brothers had previously decided to back the HD-DVD format, but last month decided to switch over to Blu-ray. That pretty much sealed the deal.
Toshiba have just announced that they are no longer going to produce HD-DVD players, meaning that Blu-ray is now the winner of this war.
So what does all of this mean to you and I?………Time to go shopping! 
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Microsoft Office Groove is a one of the programs from the Office suite that not many people know about.
Groove is a useful application that allows you to create a workspace for collaborating with other team members.
The thing that differentiates Groove from other online project management solutions (which I’ll blog about in the near future), is that instead of hosting the workspace on a web site, Groove stores the workspace content on your local workstation and then replicates that workspace content to the workstations of the other workspace team members. This is known as peer-to-peer technology.
You can download a free trial of Microsoft Office Groove and have a play with it, but if you decide that you want to use it, then you’ll have to whip out that credit card and say goodbye to $229 if you buy it from the Microsoft web site, or $189 if you buy it from Amazon.
I recently came across a freeware alternative which works with the same peer-to-peer replication model, allows you to create unlimited workspaces, create notes, discussions, links, tasks, and add attachments. It also allows you to do basic instant messaging between other workspace members who are currently online.
The product is called Callanos Workspace, and is worth taking a look at for the creation of simple collaboration workspaces.
Here’s a link to a visual tour of the product.
Filed under: tools | 1 Comment »
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ...
I’ve managed to find a freeware product that allows you to take an image backup of any partition (including the system partition) while the server is still live.
It’s capable of using a “volume lock” or “volume shadow copy services”. The latter will only interrupt server access for a matter of around 5 seconds or so.
I spent some time testing this, and the 2 tools work perfectly.
To create the live images, you’ll need a tool called DriveImage XML.
You can use DriveImage XML in order to create live images of any partition, and you can also restore any partition other than the system partition, right from within Windows as usual.
If you want to restore the system partition, then you need to boot from a CD and then run the restore operation.
Filed under: Windows Vista, Microsoft, tools, Windows Server 2003 | No Comments »
(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ...
Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip
In July 2008, Bill Gates is set to retire from full-time work at Microsoft and will devote himself to his Gates Foundation work, which is one of the biggest philanthropic organizations in the world. He will remain as chairman of Microsoft but will only be working for Microsoft part-time.
Bill Gates has made an amazing contribution to how we all live our lives.
Say what you want about Vista and Microsoft bully tactics, but it’s hard to imagine how different our world would be had he not come along.
I can just hear the Unix crowd screaming: “yes, the world would be run by Unix, and would be a better place!”
Or perhaps Steve Jobs would have taken over the world with a Mac that costs as much as a house……but looks very sexy.
Bill Gates has written two books which have been highly reviewed: “The Road Ahead” and “Business at the Speed of Thought“.
Personally, I can’t say I’m a fan of Steve Balmer, so I hope that the company doesn’t start going downhill once he takes the helm.
Here’s a funny video with a whole pile of celebs, done as a farewell gag video.
Bill’s the traditional geek personified, and it’s great to see him be able to poke fun at himself.
Farewell Bill, and thank you for your contributions.
Filed under: Fun, Microsoft | No Comments »
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Last year the iPhone was launched at MacWorld 2007. That resulted in massive success for Apple.
Everyone was wondering what Steve Jobs had under his sleeve for this years launch.
So in case you were wondering what was new this year, here’s the summary:
1) a new Mac notebook called Macbook Air; it’s the thinnest notebook in the world….very sexy, although a bit pricey (starts at $1800). (I love TechCrunch’s quote saying “Air: The Only Thing Left In Your Wallet After You Buy Apple’s New Laptop”)
2) iTunes will have over 1000 movie rentals as of the end of Feb for either $3 (older release) or $4 (new release). After you download the movie, you have 30 days to watch it. After you start watching the movie, you have 24 hours to finish it off, before it spontaneously combusts. iTunes can now be used to sync with your: PC, iPod, iPhone, iMac, Macbook, and AppleTV (see below). Pretty damn good…
3) a new version of Apple TV; Apple obviously want to leverage the combination of now being able to easily leverage the new movie rental feature of iTunes via their Apple TV appliance. Smart. Mind you, they are up against some decent competition in the USA with the fact that Tivo can now hook in to movie rentals via Amazon Unbox.
4) a combo Airport and hard drive, called Time Capsule. It supports 802.11n and comes with either a 500GB or 1TB drive. With the success of Time Machine on Leopard, Apple saw that many people were rushing out to purchase large USB hard drives in order to be able to back up content via Time Machine. They were very smart to not miss out on getting their hands on this extra revenue which people were already purchasing, by releasing a combo device that has a large hard drive built in. Very smart move, Steve.
5) a bunch of new iPhone and iPod Touch features (apparently you should be able to download the new firmware already)
And if you want to see Steve Job’s keynote yourself, here’s the full keynote. Otherwise, if you don’t have the time, then watch the 60 second summary.
Filed under: apple | No Comments »
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...
I just came across a promotion for AVG antivirus Pro, which normally sells for around $40, being offered for free.
You’ll need to get this quickly though, because this download is only being offered until Jan 17th, 2008.
If the link above is dead, then you may want to try this direct download link:
ftp://avg75:av75@ftp.vnudownloads.org/avg7_503a1171_vnu.exe
Filed under: tools | 2 Comments »
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...
Well, seeing as I had been at my prior employer for 5.5 years, and also adding the fact that I now had my family living in California, I figured it was time to take the plunge and move over from Australia (where I’ve been living since I was 5 years old) over to the good old USA.
I’m now working as a messaging specialist for one of the largest IT companies in the world (I won’t disclose the actual company just yet), which is an interesting change, considering I’ve always worked for medium sized firms in the past. This company has over 63,000 employees which is vastly larger than I’m used to.
Since I’m now a messaging specialist, this blog will therefore perhaps slightly shift focus to provide more frequent updates on messaging technologies such as Exchange 2007 and other related technologies.
Aside from that, I can’t help being a geek at heart, so I will also be making posts on non-messaging related technologies (but not as frequent), useful/cool websites, etc.
America is an interesting place. Massive shopping complexes everywhere you look, amazing freeway systems, friendly people, heaps to see/do, and (compared to Australia) everything is very cheap. I’m now living in a city called Irvine in the state of California.
I also can’t say I’m sorry to no longer have to pay 48.5% income tax to the Australian government!
I have fun switching my accent from Australian when I talk with my family over to American when I’m out consulting. Funnily enough, Americans love the Australian accent, but I tend to keep my background hidden by talking like everyone else. So the next time I post some training videos you can expect to hear my poor excuse for a Yank accent.
I still can’t get used to seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger as the govenor of California. I keep expecting him to whip out a shotgun or something when he’s on TV giving a speech.
Sorry about not having made blog posts over the last 2-3 months. Moving countries and changing jobs has kept me extremely busy. But now I’ll hopefully return to posting at least one blog update per week.
I hope you all had a great Christmas and new year.
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
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