April 2007 - Posts

Communicator phones sneaking out
27 April 07 01:20 PM | Ewan | 0 Comments   

When Microsoft first announced the Unified Communications strategy & partnerships last year, one of the pictures that was shown off was of a prototype "Communicator phone" - a networked device which could be used to make phone calls through the Office Read More...

Filed under: Unified Comms, OCS

Thread Compressor for Outlook - do you want it?
23 April 07 11:35 PM | Ewan | 8 Comments   

Here's an appeal - nearly 8 years ago, I wrote* a little COM addin for the-then new Outlook 2000, which "compressed threads". The idea was that it could take an email thread (eg a discussion over a period of time and a number of responses, from any number Read More...

Filed under: Exchange, Outlook, Office

Blackberry outage - worrying for mobile mail junkies
18 April 07 04:17 PM | Ewan | 1 Comments   

I just read news of an 11-hour outage in RIM's Blackberry infrastructure on ZDNet - ouch. Not only did email stop flowing to the devices during the outage, but the backlog of mail which built up is taking time to clear. Without wishing to gloat (really), Read More...

Filed under: Exchange, Mobile

Outlook 2007 update - performance improvement on large PST/OST files
17 April 07 08:16 AM | Ewan | 3 Comments   

I've been beta-testing this update for a little while and it seems to make quite a difference to the performance of Outlook 2007 (especially at startup) when you have large PST files, or a large offline cache of a mailbox. The Outlook team released it Read More...

Filed under: Exchange, Outlook

The day I met Tony Blair, talked about online healthcare
12 April 07 02:58 PM | Ewan | 2 Comments   

I am feeling under the weather at the moment. Been off work for a couple of days with what seems to be some kind of chest infection. I finally decided to stop waiting for it to go away on its own, and went to see the doctor - starting by looking at the Read More...

Filed under: Mobile, Random Stuff

The Design of Everyday Things
04 April 07 05:09 PM | Ewan | 1 Comments   

In part 2 of my book post about design (part 1 was earlier this week ), I'll revisit an old title which is still great reading for anyone interested in cognitive theory or design. It was written by Donald Norman , and first published nearly 20 years ago Read More...

Filed under: Random Stuff, Books

When interaction design goes bad
02 April 07 03:47 PM | Ewan | 1 Comments   

For various reasons, I've been testing & driving several different cars lately, a process I quite enjoy - getting to know the foibles of the car's cockpit, playing with the various toys and gadgets, as well as actually learning how to drive each one Read More...

Filed under: Exchange, Random Stuff, Books