September 1, 2010
DETAILS ABOUT MICROSOFT ONLINE SERVICES
Previously:
Fear of Exchange
Moving Mail Online With Microsoft Online Services
Small businesses should strongly consider having their Outlook mailboxes hosted on Exchange Servers run by Microsoft for a small monthly fee. I’m going to recommend this to a number of my clients and I encourage anyone interested to contact me to talk it through. I’d like anyone in a business with 2-20 employees to read this carefully!
For businesses currently running Exchange in an onsite server (usually as part of Small Business Server), the move to hosted services does not significantly change the experience of using […] continued
August 26, 2010
MOVING MAIL ONLINE WITH MICROSOFT ONLINE SERVICES
It feels as if the smartphone revolution has happened overnight. I am simply astonished at the number of business people and lawyers getting iPhones from AT&T and Android phones from Verizon. I rarely saw them in businesses a year ago – they were still perceived as gadgets, not serious business tools. Now it’s starting to seem unusual not to see them in everyone’s pocket.
The phones are capable of many wonderful tricks but almost everyone tries first to set up over-the-air sync of mail, contacts and calendar. It doesn’t always go well!
- Individuals who have fully
[…] continued
July 13, 2010
WINDOWS LIVE SYNC AND MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
Microsoft is finalizing a new version of Windows Live Sync, its free software for syncing files among different computers. The new version replaces the two overlapping programs available from Microsoft for the last few years, Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh, combining features from both of them.
This should be good news. Microsoft has declared that the entire resources of the company are being devoted to moving us to the cloud. The file syncing program could have been an important part of that transition to a new way of working with our files that is less tied to […] continued
May 17, 2010
MORE MOBILE LOCATION TRICKS
While we’re talking about smartphones, I should mention another way that your phone can use its knowledge of your location to do something interesting.
Google added an unassuming link named “Near Me Now” on the Google search page on iPhones and Android phones. Click it and you’ll get a short list of categories – Restaurants, ATMS and banks, Shopping, Lodging, and more. Clicking on one will bring up a list of results based on where you are standing at that moment. I just pulled up a list of all the restaurants near my house in two clicks, with addresses, […] continued
May 13, 2010
VISUAL SEARCH WITH GOOGLE GOGGLES
As I said last month, each of you might find one or two apps for a smartphone that get you all excited – the apps that you show people to demonstrate how cool your new phone is.
I found mine. Google Goggles amazes me. If you’ve got an Android phone, you’ve got to check this out. It’s a free download from the Android Marketplace. (There have been vague hints that it will eventually be ported to iPhones and other platforms but don’t hold your breath for that.)
Google Goggles lets you use pictures taken with […] continued
May 7, 2010
DROPBOX FOR IPAD, ANDROID
Dropbox has become an indispensable part of my toolbox. It’s the free service that syncs files between different computers, so that files in the “My Dropbox” folder appear on all the computers running the software linked to your account. Edit a file on your home computer, save it in My Dropbox, and the edited version will be on your office computer in the morning. It saves different versions of files, allows you to share files with others in various ways, and gives you online access to them when you’re away from your computers. Here’s my recent writeup […] continued
April 29, 2010
SMARTPHONES AND MONEY
HP is buying Palm. Synergy! Patents! Engineers! Vision! Innovation! New smartphones computers tablets slates operating systems! Whee!
I was idly reading stories about the deal when a sentence jumped out at me from the New York Times this morning. If this is true, it explains everything you need to know about what is happening around you and where the world is going.
“Analysts have forecast that sales of smartphones, currently about equal to the annual sales of laptops, will surpass total PC sales by 2012.”
Got that? Let me repeat it, in boldface:
- Sales of
[…] continued
April 15, 2010
VERIZON – HTC DROID INCREDIBLE CONFIRMED
Click here to go to the official Verizon page for the newly-renamed “Droid Incredible.” Click the phone images above for a high-resolution look at the phone. Click here for the background about why this looks like the best alternative to the iPhone for the foreseeable future.
The specs are way ahead of any other phone on the market – the newest version of Android, an updated Sense UI, an 8 megapixel camera, fast processor, 3.7 inch 800×480 screen, 8Gb of built-in storage, 802.11b/g/n wireless, and more. This thing is […] continued
April 9, 2010
TEMPTED BY SMARTPHONES
Here are a few sentences that stuck in my head about how the iPhone’s App Store helps convince some people that they want a smartphone.
“[Y]ou might think 1,000 apps should be plenty to fit everyone’s needs, but then you misunderstand how the iPhone’s App Store contributes to Apple’s success. In short, 100,000 apps is a really, really long tail, and in that tail everyone can find one or two goofy, niche apps that they really like. And when they find those apps—my dad loves the bubble wrap and the Bible translations, my wife loves the
[…] continued
April 8, 2010
SMARTPHONE UPDATE
These are the first looks at screens from the HTC Incredible, a Verizon phone that will go on sale at Verizon stores and Best Buy on April 29. Verizon has not acknowledged the existence of the phone or made any official announcement about its release but the most active forum thread about the new phone has people reporting every conversation with a loose-lipped Verizon employee, every blurry photo of an inventory sheet, every mockup of an advertisement – more than 25,000 forum messages in the last few weeks. It culminated today with a leak […] continued