Musings of an independent ICT Consultant http://www.estm.co.uk Sat, 19 May 2012 12:03:30 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/business/kashflow-reduces-trial-period.html Kashflow, the provider of online accounts software for small business, has just announced that it is reducing it's free trial period for sign ups through the Kashflow website from 60 days to just 14 days. The good news is that if you sign up using my affiliate code before 2nd April 2012 you can still take advantage of a free, no obligation, no credit card details needed, 60 days trial of Kashflow. If you are a small business wishing you could find a better way to manage your accounts Kashflow could be the answer, with features such as automated invoicing... Blog - Business Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:33:52 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/news/latest/artist-papers.html Calling all artists! This is a great product from Artist Papers! So what's this ad for Artist Materials doing here? Well we are currently constructing an affiliate marketing and user loyalty points sytem for one of our client's websites Artist Papers (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk). The small ad below is an example of a link that an affiliate would be able to embed into their own website, blog, email or on social networking sites. The link includes their affiliate id so that any purchases made as a result of a customer clicking on the link generate commision for the affiliate. Strathmore 200 Series... News - Latest Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:47:04 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/business/are-the-big-it-vendors-holding-us-back.html Its been reported by IT News of Australia that at a Gartner symposium recently analyst Dennis Gaughan said none of the big four IT vendors (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and SAP) are “re-imagining” IT, “You won’t find innovation in their product portfolio,” he said. “You might find it if you try and talk to the research parts of these organisations. I would argue that a lot of what they are trying to do is keep status quo and find ways to increase share of wallet. There isn’t an innovation agenda. They have to think about investors. If they get on the leading edge,... Blog - Business Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:04:00 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/software/kashflow-accountants-interface-online-accounts-software.html I have blogged a couple of times already about Kashflow, an online accounts software package aimed at small businesses. I've been using it for a couple of years now and it's been a big help in managing my least favourite task - keeping the paper work in order. The only criticism I had of Kashflow was that there was only one user account - only one login that gave full access to the system. This is ok if you do your own accounts but for bigger businesses where you might employ someone to manage aspects of the business it's a... Blog - Software Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:29:58 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/web-development/google-analytics-realtime.html Anybody involved in running websites should by now be familiar with Google Analytics, a remarkably useful tool as it is, but now Google have taken another leap forward with Google Analytics Real-Time. Google Analytics Real-Time (beta at the time of writing) can be found tucked away under the optional new style user interface in your Google analytics account. What it does is quite remarkable. As the name suggests you get a near real time display of activity on any website currently configured to use Google analytics. The display shows you the number of currently active visitors, whether they are new or... Blog - Web Development Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:13:37 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/it-management/windows-7-annoyance-3-repair-network.html Not had much time for keeping this blog updated lately but another thing thats getting on my nerves about Windows 7 is the way network connections are managed. If you wanted to "reset" your network connection (for example after a change in configuration) in XP you could right click the icon for your network adapter in the system tray and select "repair". This would do useful things like flush the DNS cache, re-aquire ip address if using DHCP .. etc. This useful feature now seems to be gone in Windows 7, instead you are offered a link to... Blog - IT Management Fri, 08 Jul 2011 09:28:06 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/it-management/windows-7-annoyance-2-configuring-wireless-access.html Changing the settings for an existing Wireless network under Windows 7 is obscure to say the least. If for example a wireless network has been wrongly configured, or the settings on the router have changed (the WEP key for example) there is no obvious way of changing the configuration on the laptop. The wireless network will be detected and the machine will try to connect and subsequently fail because the settings are incorrect. One would then expect to have the option to right click and change the properties of the connection. But no, all you get is a network repair wizard which... Blog - IT Management Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:45:48 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/infrastructure/windows-7-sp1-update-readiness.html Microsoft have begun rolling out Windows 7 Service Pack 1. While this appears to have been largely successful some failures have been reported, these have been attributed to some inconsistencies in the Windows update code. The quickest and easiest repair option is the Windows Update Troubleshooter. Open Control Panel, click in the search box, and type troubleshoot. Click the Troubleshooting link at the top of the search results, then click System and Security, and finally click Windows Update. Microsoft have also produced an update readiness kit to detect and fix these inconsistencies. If you have problems installing Windows 7 SP1 and... Blog - Infrastructure Sat, 26 Feb 2011 10:36:22 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/consumer/windows-7-annoyance-no-1-constant-disc-access.html Of late I have been driven to the point of insanity by incessant disc activity from my Windows 7 desktop. As this does actually sit on my desk the constant clattering of the hard drive for no apparent reason had become quite a distraction. At first I blamed my anti-virus software thinking it was scanning the drive even though I had configured it to not do that. I was also ready to blame sync centre which I use to replicate files between my server and desktops - the idea being that normally my files reside on the server but sync centre... Blog - Consumer Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:45:35 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/infrastructure/virtual-desktops-a-blind-alley.html There are probably three hot topics in IT at the moment, "the cloud", "mobile" and "virtualisation". There is overlap between these areas but it is virtualisation I want to address in this post. Virtualisation is technology which appears to make something out of nothing. Where you might have had five physical file servers, for example, you now only need one which can be split up using software into a number of virtual servers. These in logical terms appear to be physically separate (if you browse the network from a pc you'll still see apparently x different file servers). Virtualisation at... Blog - Infrastructure Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:08:57 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/news/latest/estm-helps-maverick-get-romantica.html estm has been assisting Maverick Theatre Company producer Nick Hennegan with a fundraising scheme to revive his "Romantica" radio show for Valentines day. The show, with music and dedications for those romantically inclined, attracted millions of listeners to Birmingham's BRMB in the 1980's from muli million pound studios in Aston. But now in the 21st century the show's revival will be broadcast via the internet, from Nick's laptop, on a shoe string! estm's Ian Edwards says ".. it's been great fun helping Nick set this up, and it's no less a challenge given that he is in London and I am... News - Latest Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:23:10 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/news/latest/ian-edwards-awarded-prince2-practitioner.html After many years of managing projects of varying shapes, sizes and complexity Ian Edwards, estm's owner and MD, has gone back to school and passed the PRINCE2 Practitioner's exam. PRINCE2 is a structured project management method developed by the Office of Government Comerce (OGC). This strengthens the project management offering from estm and broadens the range of services on offer. News - Latest Tue, 25 Jan 2011 09:56:04 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/software/kashflow-small-business-accounts-gets-a-new-look.html Kashflow, the UK based hosted accounts software for small business, has recently rolled out a new look. The new interface has a cleaner design, is sized for wider screens and allows greater customisation of screen colours (although I quite like the pink and blue default scheme!). Existing users need to go to "settings" on the Kashflow menu to select the new look. New users get it by default, but can select the old look if they prefer. This is just one of very many updates to Kashflow that have been rolled out (for free) since my earlier article on the product.... Blog - Software Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:23:12 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/web-development/google-instant.html Google have begun the roll out of an enhancement to the Google search engine they call Google Instant. Google Instant takes the predictive capabilities of Google search a step further by streaming results as you type. Without Google Instant you start to type your search term and a list of possible search phrases appears allowing you to pick the most relevant looking one, only once you have clicked on your preferred suggestion, or hit "Enter" or clicked "Search", does Google present a results page. Google Instant takes this further by listing results as you type, and modifying those results as... Blog - Web Development Thu, 09 Sep 2010 19:14:47 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/software/google-wave-s-goodbye.html I was a bit surprised to see that Google have halted development on Google "Wave" (for the announcement go here (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html)). Wave was only launched a year or so ago and offered a radically new way of communicating and interacting via the web. Probably too radical as it turns out as despite some very clever technology Wave never really caught the attention of users. This will not only be disappointing for the Wave development team but the growing number of third parties that were building apps and gadgets for the platform. In particular it could come as a setback for Novell... Blog - Software Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:13:01 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/business/weathering-solar-storms-are-you-ready.html An interesting talk from Dr. Jim Wild of Lancaster University's Space Plasma Environment and Radio Science Group recently highlighted the ever present threat from the Sun. I'm not talking about the risk of sunburn, it will take a little more than factor 15 to mitigate this risk. Our planet is constantly bombarded by charged particles emitted from the sun. It is these particles which interact with the ionosphere to cause the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). Every now and then the Sun will discharge a massive burst of these particles into space associated with Solar flares, and sometimes these flares are directed towards... Blog - Business Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:05:38 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/infrastructure/made-in-birmingham-built-to-last.html An era came to an end for me recently when, after 14 years of continuous operation, the audio routing matrix I designed and made in Birmingham for Capital Radio in London was finally switched off for good. The picture shows Global Radio engineer Hirjii doing the deed. A radio station usually consists of a number of studios which take feeds from several outside sources (outside broadcasts, other studios in the building, phone lines etc) mixes them together with local audio (playout systems, microphones) and outputs the result to one or more transmitters. In the early days of commercial radio this... Blog - Infrastructure Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:46:51 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/news/latest/new-website-launch.html We've recently launched a new website for artists - artistpapers.co.uk (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk) specialising in the supply of Strathmore® Artist Papers (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk/Fine-Art-Papers). The site enables artists to purchase specialist Watercolour Paper (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk/Fine-Art-Papers/Watercolour-Paper) , Drawing Paper (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk/Fine-Art-Papers/Drawing-Paper) , Bristol Boards (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk/Fine-Art-Papers/Bristol-Boards) , Illustration Boards (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk/Fine-Art-Papers/Illustration-Boards), paper for charcoal, pastel (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk/Fine-Art-Papers/Charcoal-and-Pastel) and marker pen (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk/Fine-Art-Papers/Sequential-Art-Surfaces). Other papers include no-reproducible blue lined paper (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk/Fine-Art-Papers/Sequential-Art-Surfaces/Strathmore-200-Series-Bristol) for cartoonist and graphic artists, tracing paper (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk/Fine-Art-Papers/Speciality-Arts-and-Crafts) and bound sketch and drawing book (https://www.artistpapers.co.uk/Fine-Art-Papers/Hardcover-Books)s. News - Latest Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:39:35 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/networks/-tired-of-waiting-yes-i-am-bt-s-next-gen-data-network.html BT are rolling out their next gen broadband network and are marketing this under the banner "Tired of waiting?" - the idea being that if you find your current broadband provision slow then this is the answer. I can't argue with that, but what I do take exception to is being subjected to this marketing message when 20meg braodband is not available in my area, nor is it likely to be in the foreseeable future. In fact I am tired of waiting for 2meg broadband let alone 20. I just happen to be midway between two semi rural exchanges and... Blog - Networks Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:30:30 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/software/product-lifecycle-management-aras-open-source.html It is still not uncommon for businesses to mismanage data, or even fail to manage it at all. Left to their own devices your staff / colleagues will devise their own methods for keeping track of the information that is necessary for them to do their jobs. Techniques used might range from a card file for contacts to an access database or excel spreadsheet containing customer or product information. Alternatively contacts could be stored in an organiser application such as Outlook and files possibly in shared directories on a file server somewhere. If these file shares have been setup properly then users will only have access to documents that... Blog - Software Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:54:12 +0100