SoftCom Corporate Blog

We recently partnered up with DataViz to provide our customers with RoadSync, an easy-to-use application that provides wireless ‘direct push’ synchronization of mail2web.com’s exchange email, as well as calendar items, contacts, attachments and more, to a broad base of mobile devices. Direct push refers to the technology that delivers content to your mobile in real-time as it’s being received on the server and keeps all your data perfectly synchronized.

Similar to how the BlackBerry works or ActiveSync works with Pocket PCs and Smartphones, the RoadSync application provides the same functionality for Palm Treo owners (with the Palm OS), many popular Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Sony, HP and Nokia devices – to name a few – who can now get all their PIM data delivered in real-time to their mobile device.

Click here for a list of supported devices (click on the ‘devices’ tab for a complete list)

Unlike the BlackBerry service, there is only a one-time fee with no recurring subscription fees (cost varies depending on your device) and there is even a 30-day trial available.

Of course for this to work you must subscribe to an Exchange email plan first (the RoadSync technology is based on ActiveSync). All of our mail2web.com Exchange plans are compatible with this application and come with a free 30-day trial. You can also test this with our mail2web.com LIVE service which will provide you with a free Exchange account.

If you haven’t noticed yet, we love mobile devices at SoftCom and we are always looking for new technologies that extend our messaging platform to the mobile user. If you are a vendor with a mobile solution you think we could use, please leave a comment and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

If you have any mobile related questions, please leave a comment. We have a number of mobile experts on staff armed with almost every mobile device on the planet. Chances are, if you have an obscure question, we have the answer.

John Carthy
V.P. Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Daylight Saving Time gives us the opportunity to enjoy sunny summer evenings by moving our clocks an hour forward in the spring.

Yet the implementation of Daylight Saving Time has been fraught with controversy since Benjamin Franklin first conceived of the idea. Even today, regions and countries routinely change their approaches to Daylight Saving Time.

On August 8, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This Act changed the time change dates for Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the U.S. Beginning in 2007, DST will begin on the second Sunday in March and end the first Sunday in November. Canada has also decided to adopt these changes.

For the U.S. and its territories, Daylight Saving Time is NOT observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Arizona. The Navajo Nation participates in the Daylight Saving Time policy, even in Arizona, due to its large size and location in three states.

In the European Union, Summer Time begins and ends at 1:00 a.m. Universal Time (Greenwich Mean Time). It begins the last Sunday in March and ends the last Sunday in October. In the EU, all time zones change at the same moment.

Source: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/index.html

How this may affect our customers

Whether you live, work or do business with people in North America, these changes may affect your Outlook and Calendar data. We have been following this change for sometime and have made sure that all of our servers have been updated with the relevant patches. If you are a mail2web.com exchange email customer, particularly using a mobile device with your account, please refer to the information below:

According to Microsoft’s website:

If you use Windows Vista or have Automatic Updates turned on, you may not be affected by the change in daylight saving time. If you want to confirm, follow the steps in the Daylight Saving Time Update Guide on the Microsoft website.

For Windows Mobile-powered devices Users

Congress has changed the dates for Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the United States starting in 2007. Canada has adopted similar DST dates. These changes could cause clocks and Microsoft Outlook calendar appointments on Windows Mobile-powered devices to display incorrect times for March 11 – April 1, 2007 and October 28 – November 4, 2007 and again in subsequent years. You can find more information about the exact dates and potential impact in the Changes in DST section.

You can prevent these problems by installing three Microsoft files on your device and/or PC:

• Microsoft Windows Operating Systems Update
• Daylight Saving Time 2007 Update Tool
• Outlook Time Zone Update Tool

For all the details click here

For BlackBerry Users

The standard dates for North American Daylight Saving Time (DST) change in March 2007. The device clocks in your BlackBerry® device will NOT update automatically when the DST date changes. Click here to learn more and to update your device now.

Unless patches are applied for impacted BlackBerry software and third party software (eg: for Microsoft® Windows click here) BlackBerry device clocks will not update to the new time zones when DST dates change. As a result, your BlackBerry device may not display correct time zone information

• Between the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in April (for example, 11 March 2007 to 1 April 2007)
• Between the last Sunday in October and the first Sunday in November (for example, 28 October 2007 to 4 November 2007)

For Calendar Users

The events in your calendar may also need to be updated for this change.

Calendar items are created in Outlook by using Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) format. UTC is an international standard 24-hour timekeeping system. Time zone information for Outlook is obtained from the Windows operating system in which the calendar items are created and is obtained at the time that the calendar items are created.

For example, an 8:00 A.M. appointment on March 1, 2007 in Redmond, Washington is stored in Outlook as UTC 4:00 P.M. In this case, DST has not yet started, and Redmond time is eight hours behind UTC.

When an update is applied to the Windows operating system to accommodate the new DST definitions, the computer’s local time is changed to the extended DST time. However, the UTC is not adjusted when the local time on the computer is adjusted. Therefore, calendar items that are added to Outlook during the extended DST period are off by one hour.

For Outlook users there is a Time Zone Update tool to assist you with correcting the time of your appointments. For more information about Outlook and the changes to DST click here.

How to manually update calendar items

The Time Zone Data Update Tool is intended to automate the update process. However, users do not have to run the tool in order to update their calendar items. You can manually correct the times on these items during the extended DST period. This may be a good strategy for users who meet these specific requirements:

• The users have recurring items that have exceptions before the extended DST period, and the past exceptions must be saved.
• The users have many items in the extended DST period that were created by using DST 2006 rules, and have other items that were created by using DST 2007 rules.
• The users want to maintain complete control over every item that must be changed in the extended DST period.
• The users have run the Time Zone Data Update Tool. However, the tool did not update a given item that the users now want to update manually.
• This also applies to users who only access there calendar from the OWA such as mail2web LIVE and Personal users.

To manually change your calendar, follow these steps:

1. Print a copy of your calendar during the extended DST period for reference.
2. Manually move meetings that you organized to the correct time.
3. Send an update for the meeting that you moved to all attendees so that the attendees’ calendar reflects the correct time.
4. Manually move all single-instance appointments.
5. Manually move all recurring appointments within the extended DST period. If you are prompted, move only the occurrence(s) that fall in the extended DST period. The instances that occur before and after the DST period should already reflect the correct time.

Thanks,

Stephen Nichols
Marketing Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Microsoft has released the next group of Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. The latest group are different from those released at the end of last month. The new templates offer additional functionality and can still be used to create a sub site. For more background on what templates are you can read my earlier post.

What makes this update more important is that we have added the option to select the template solution that is applied to the main site. Because the template needs to be applied as part of site creation it cannot be changed later. I think this will make our On Demand Business Solutions a more useful application for our customers. For example you can now create a site like blog.mydomain.com and choose the blog template for the main site. Or you can signup for a Project Tracking Workspace and with Outlook 2007 you can access the Calendar, Tasks and Documents offline. 

Here are the new templates that are now available for site creation:

Absence Request and Vacation Schedule Management
Budgeting and Tracking Multiple Projects
Bug Database
Call Center
Change Request Management
Compliance Process Support Site
Contacts Management
Document Library and Review
Event Planning
Expense Reimbursement and Approval
Help Desk
IT Team Workspace
Job Requisition and Interview Management
Knowledge Base
Physical Asset Tracking and Management
Project Tracking Workspace

The following built in templates are also available for site creation:

Team Work Site
Blank Site
Document Workspace Site
Wiki Site
Blog Site
Basic Meeting
Blank Meeting
Decision Meeting
Social Meeting
Multipage Meeting

Microsoft has said that they may introduce additional templates in the future. There is also some plans to offer mail2web.com custom templates.

MIPS Technologies Inc. president and CEO John Bourgoin summed it up perfectly: It’s not about the next killer app, he said, it’s about the next “killer experience.”

People want a killer experience on demand, any time, any place. That is what we aim to offer with our On Demand Business Solutions. Built on the latest Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services platform to provide a secure, integrated solution that can be deployed, managed and accessed directly and quickly. We add the service to the software with on demand account creation and 24/7 support.

But like I said last time, don’t take my word for it check it out for yourself. Signup for a free 30 day trial account and find out what the buzz is about.

Thanks,

Stephen Nichols
Marketing Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

After nine years of development, Microsoft recently announced that it will be discontinuing FrontPage. I’ll explain what discontinuing means in a second but I want to make it absolutely clear that myhosting.com will continue to support sites developed and maintained with this application as long as possible.

All Microsoft is doing is stopping any new development of FrontPage and has apparently used the code base to develop two new products: SharePoint Designer and Expressions Web.

Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is quite unique in that you can use this tool to design Office SharePoint version 3 sites as well as develop some pretty sophisticated work flows. While you could use FrontPage to connect to a SharePoint version 2 site, you can not connect to a SharePoint version 3 site using FrontPage. For this you must use the inline design capabilities or use SharePoint Designer.

Expression Web boasts some pretty decent features including the ability to develop sites for today’s standards including XHTML, CSS and XML (important for producing consistent results in various browsers as well being more compliant for indexing by some search engines). There’s also support for ASP.NET 2.0 and it is compatible with Visual Studio (good for a designer working in conjunction with developers).

For most website owners, who aren’t developers and don’t manage any SharePoint sites, there’s no need to upgrade. As it is, FrontPage is one of the only web design tools that requires server side extensions to power a bunch features like the web search component. While these extensions are supported on current Windows web servers (2003), they will not work with the next server release from Microsoft – the elusive Longhorn.

And while there is no official release date for Longhorn, when it is eventually released, myhosting.com plans to maintain our current servers for customers who require this functionality, and continue to support FrontPage customers as long as there is support from Microsoft for the core operating system.

That should be good for several more years but eventually you might want to consider a new tool for designing and maintaining your site. Expressions Web is one choice but there are some great, mature tools in the market that can be used on any platform. Try out Dreamweaver or GoLive by Adobe. But we recommend avoiding Flash if being found in the popular search engines is a major consideration for you.

Good or bad, current web design standards are being driven by search engine optimization (SEO) considerations and Flash just isn’t SEO friendly.

John Carthy
V.P. Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Microsoft has released the first 20 templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. These are more than the name implies, a better name would be “solutions” or “online applications”. To better understand how these work and how they can be used first I need to explain a little of how SharePoint works.

The site you see is the User Interface for a group of lists and libraries stored in a secure data base. Each page within SharePoint contains web-parts that can display sorted and filtered information from the data base. These can be as simple as contacts, tasks or blog entries or as complex as a project dashboard for a new store opening.

So what about these templates? Each template is a set of lists, libraries and web-parts that work together to provide a functional and customizable solution. For example the Board of Directors application template provides a single location for an external group of members to store and locate common documents such as quarterly reviews, shareholder meeting notes and annual strategy documents. The Business Performance Reporting application template helps organization managers track the satisfaction of customers through a combination of surveys and discussions.

WSS 3.0 supports two types of these templates, one that must be installed on the server, and the other the site owner can upload to their site. The templates Microsoft released are the variety that need to be installed on each site. We have gone one step better and configured our installation so that all 20 are preinstalled for you. These are in addition to the 6 included with the core of SharePoint; Team Site, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Wiki Site, Blog and Meeting Workspaces.

Here is a list of the new solutions that you can access today for any WSS 3.0 site from mail2web.com:

Board of Directors

Business Performance Management

Competitive Analysis Site

Case Management

Competitive Analysis Subsite

Classroom Management

Clinical Trial Initiation

Dispute Invoice Management System

Discussion Database

Employee Activities Site

Employee Benefits

Equity Research

Integrated Marketing Campaign

Manufacturing Process Management

Marketing and Product Requirements

New Store Opening

Request for Proposal v3

Sports League

Team Room

Time Tracking

Employee Training Scheduling and Materials

Together this provides the site owner with the ability to create a portal to store, track, update and share information. To use these templates the site owner creates a new site or workspace selecting the template during the process.

Ultimately we will expand our offering for SharePoint 3.0 and enable users to create new sites with a choice templates. This is dependant on Microsoft’s release of the server admin templates, scheduled for later this month.

But don’t take my word for it; check it out for yourself. Signup for a free 30 day trial account and find out what the buzz is about.

Thanks,

Stephen Nichols
Marketing Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Welcome to part 3 of my series on Anti-Spam and Whitelisting. My last post referred to a method which makes it easier for email senders and recipients to request and complete the whitelisting process. I just wanted to take a moment to elaborate on that procedure now that its available for our customers.

Normally when an email is bounced back to the sender, the error message can often be a little cryptic and difficult to understand for those of us who are a little less technical. This is also the case when your email is bounced due to an RBL blacklist. We’ve attempted to alleviate this by sending a more user-friendly error message which explains the reason why the email wasn’t delivered. This error message will also contain a URL, which when followed will lead to a web page where the sender can request that they be whitelisted.

After following the link, the individual will then be asked to provide their email address and the email address they were attempting to contact. Once the request is submitted, an email is sent to the web hosting account owner or the hosted exchange account owner. The email will also contain a link which will lead directly to the Whitelist administration page, where they can quickly approve the request.

Once approved, the sender will be able to send email to the original recipient - bypassing the RBL blacklist completely. Although this procedure isn’t fully automated, the steps take only seconds to complete and are completely painless. Neither party needs to spend any time figuring out which IP Address needs to be whitelisted, and only minor input is required.

We hope that all of our customers will enjoy this new feature.

Regards,

Tim Attwood
Product Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Subscribers of our mail2web.com Exchange Professional plan can now download their copy of Outlook 2007. This free upgrade from Outlook 2003 is currently available in 8 different languages and we’ll be adding more languages as Microsoft makes them available. 

Of course, customers can still continue to use Outlook 2003 - the choice is yours. We will continue to support and make both versions available through your mail2web.com control panel. Keep in mind the system requirements are higher for this version.

But there are many good reasons to upgrade - the faster search is definitely something I needed but it is some of the simple features that I appreciated most. Being able to drag a task into my calendar not only keeps me more organized by also gives me an archive of what I’ve accomplished.

Being able to view attachments in the preview pane, even .TIF files, with the new Attachment Previewer, is small but useful.

I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to incorporate the calendar overlay feature, which allows me to lay one user’s calendar over another. But I know it’s cool.

There are tons of other great features so I encourage any mail2web.com Exchange Professional customer to log into the mail2web.com control panel and download their copy to see the improvements for themselves.

This is an upgrade, so you don’t need to un-install your previous version of Outlook 2003 (if you were a mail2web.com subscriber prior to this post). Depending on your setup you may need to remove any 3rd-party add-ons prior to doing the upgrade and please reference Microsoft.com for additional information such as critical security updates like Outlook Service Pack 2.

You will need to use the new license key, which you’ll find located at the bottom of the Outlook download page (note: there are two license keys in on this page - one for Outlook 2003, the other for Outlook 2007 - make sure you use enter the correct key).

If you encounter any problems, be sure to contact support@mail2web.com. And stay posted as we announce dates around other Exchange upgrades during the calendar year. We are following Microsoft’s guidance in terms of making the Exchange 2007 platform upgrade, which is expected in Q2 , but we will be doing our own diligence to make sure any upgrade is as bug free as possible and overall ensure that we continue to provide a solid, reliable solution.

John Carthy
V.P. Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

January 2007 marks the tenth anniversary of SoftCom.

The world has changed a great deal since we started. The Dot-com bubble saw the founding (and in many cases, dramatic failure) of numerous new Internet-based companies. The political and economic situation has been marked by increased globalization and the aftermath of the events of September 11th 2001.

Looking back to 1997 according to wikipedia.org:

• Bill Clinton was starting his second term as US President.
• The Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl XXXI defeating the New England Patriots, 35-21.
• Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ending 18 years of conservative rule.
• The first book in the award winning Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling is published.
• On January 12, the computer HAL 9000 comes online (in 2001: A Space Odyssey)
• Microsoft buys a $150 million shares of financially troubled Apple Computer.
• The domain Google.com was registered

SoftCom has also seen some changes over the years.

• In May 1997 mail2web.com was launched.
• In June of the same year we offered Microsoft Windows web hosting services.
• In 2001 we added support for 16 international languages to mail2web.com.
• 2002 saw myhosting.com become the world’s largest Microsoft exclusive hosting company.
• Later that same year mail2web.com got involved in car racing sponsorship with the Porsche Team at the Le Mans 24 and as the title sponsor of the Mosport – mail2web.com Grand Prix.
• In 2003 we took two large steps forward by upgrading to Microsoft Server 2003 and moving to a telco-grade Data Center.
• The following Year we introduced a unique web hosting package; a blended Windows and Linux offering.
• 2005 was the year of communication and collaboration, seeing the launch of both Exchange email and SharePoint hosted services under mail2web.com.
• Early in 2006 we took web based email to the next level when we launched mail2web.com LIVE. A free email service based on Microsoft Exchange.

Today SoftCom provides valuable, efficient and cost-effective Internet based services to more than 16 million customers with support of 26 languages in 220 countries worldwide.

I can’t wait to see where we will take things in the next ten years!

Thanks,

Stephen Nichols
Marketing Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

On the opening day at CES I went to see the keynote address from Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasuvuo. He’s a very professional, conservative looking gentleman who delivered a presentation that was anything but conservative. In between slides there were video interludes of hip teenagers who never stopped moving - even when communicating - to the backdrop of a pulsing club mix.  Funny contrast but Nokia did deliver some cool products.

The N93i is a huge improvement on the N90, and now boasts a 3.2 megapixel camera, ‘DVD-like video quality’ (yeah, that’s hard to qualify) and a much slimmer, more shiny design. I left my prints on a demo unit. 

You can do some basic video editing directly on the device. They’ve also addressed some usability issues that plagued earlier versions like making it very easy to switch from video or still photography mode.

They continue to push their e-Series devices, particularly the E61 which they put in the market to compete with the likes of Treo or Blackberry. The E61 and E70 have full QWERTY keyboards and with a little help from mail2web.com, provide an affordable alternative to other push-email services.

If you have one, or are thinking about getting one, check out this article from e-series.org that describes how easy it is get push email (email delivered to your phone as it arrives on the server) using Mail for Exchange and mail2web.com’s LIVE service.

Nokia also did a live demonstration of their new built-in GPS service being offered on some devices, that provides 3D perspectives on road maps and alternate views to help a lost traveller get perspective. It showed well, but unfortunately I couldn’t get a release date or estimate of the cost from any of the Nokia representatives.

John Carthy
V.P. Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Blogging is certainly a publishing revolution. Anyone with a PC and an opinion can now make their views and photos available to the world. And get feedback . . .

And yes, some blogs and opinions are downright boring. I’m sure I’ll get feedback to that effect. But some are great, niche sites that offer the highly focused information you can’t get anywhere else.

Further to my last post, I love gadgets. Check out gadgetmaniac.mail2web.com (based on WordPress) and you’ll find a massive collection of product reviews and articles about some products and developments I didn’t know existed, I will probably never buy but I find incredibly interesting just the same.

Some blogs can actually generate money through advertising. Don’t quit your day job, I’m not talking about ‘get rich, working from home’ schemes but rather the ability to generate enough money to cover your hosting costs and maybe a little left over for the odd gadget purchase.

Free sites have all sorts of limitations - file sizes, forgettable domain names, bad reporting and ultimately little control when it comes to integrating things like Google Adsense - the easiest way to run ads and make money.

But for less than $5.00 a month you can get a WordPress account with myhosting.com. WordPress is the leading application for blogging, can be set up in minutes (we have an auto-install script), and you can use the domain name of your choice (could be an extra fee if it’s a new domain name, but you can transfer an existing domain name for free).

Part of the setup includes an automatic installation of the Adsense plugin, so once you get an Adsense account it’s easy to place ads around your content. Write a few articles a week - check your traffic through Google Analytics (also included as an auto install provided you have an account) - and provided what you write is interesting and somewhat targeted, your opinion will be heard and you might even make some money.

That’s revolutionary.

John Carthy
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.
V.P. of Sales and Marketing