Musings of an independent ICT Consultant http://www.estm.co.uk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:03:21 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 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 built for Capital Radio in London was finally switched off for good.The picture shows Global Radio engineer Hirjii Patel doing the deed. Hirjii had the honour as he helped install the switcher and supported it during it's life. 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... 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 http://www.estm.co.uk/news/latest/new-segments-to-standard.html Ian Edwards, managing director of Shropshire based estm, is pleased to be working with AccreditUK to assist in the development of the final three segments to the Accredit UK certification for ICT companies. Ian says "the Accredit UK standard is divided into six segments representing different areas of ICT services. Within those segments are a number of specialisms. This means purchasers of ICT products and services can easily find companies with the specialist skills they require who have demonstrated their capabilities to independent assessors". Ian will be working with 8 candidate companies who are piloting and contributing to the devlopment... News - Latest Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:50:39 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/software/microsoft-windows-7-faq.html Microsoft are circulating a Frequently Asked Questions document which addresses some common user questions when migrating to Windows 7. The guide may be downloaded direct from Microsoft here (http://click.email.microsoftemail.com/?qs=a6d32ba4fd3c04ae05620f7d3b611b9659e5953b95b993ff56d365bab08a07be276ac572e5e09b73) If you haven't yet taken the plunge frequently asked questions for those considering Windows 7 are answered here. (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/faq.aspx) Should you upgrade to Windows 7? In my view Windows 7 is everything Windows Vista should have been. It looks similar to Vista but is much more consistent in the way the user interface works - with Vista I found myself going round in circles for example with network configuration where you would follow... Blog - Software Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:33:25 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/software/small-business-accounts-software.html One of the biggest headaches for a small business, or a business start-up, is keeping control of your finances. Often what happens is that initially you keep records manually or on a spreadsheet but as the number of transactions increase (all being well) this gets more difficult to manage so your thoughts turn to accounts software packages. Most of the small businesses I encounter using purpose built small business accounts packages have either Sage or Quickbooks. Up until recently Microsoft offered their own small business accounts software (the starter version of which was conveniently free) but they have recently announced they... Blog - Software Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:17:15 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/web-development/web-hosting-service-level-agreements.html I wonder how many small businesses with websites actually understand what is meant by an SLA (Service Level agreement) and of those how many actually know what the SLA is with their webhosting provider? Very few I would imagine, and that's not a criticism of the users, its a criticism of the hosting providers who very rarely give meaningfull information in their SLA's - assuming they provide such a thing. One might expect this at the low end of the market where you are paying a few pounds a month for hosting but when a company approaches you offering a dedicated server at upwards of £250... Blog - Web Development Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:21:41 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/business/why-office-suites-are-bad-for-business.html Now I appreciate there might not be many who go with me on this, but I have formed the opinion over many years that packaged Office suites, and I am not referring to any particular brand but the concept as a whole, have on balance been very bad for business. I have two arguments for this view. One is that Office suites treat business information as documents when the concept of a document is a limitation of the original medium - paper. This has led to a whole raft of increasingly complex technology to try and manage this outdated... Blog - Business Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:22:44 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/networks/tiscali-broadband-static-ip-changes.html This has happened to me a few times recently. I have a business broadband service from Tiscali that is supposed to have a static ip address. My router is rebooted every day (actually I switch everything off at night - don't blame me if the planet goes up in smoke) and every now and then I find that my assigned static ip is not what it should be. Usually I discover this at the most inconvenient time, i.e. when I want to use a service or application that depends on the static ip. A few minutes of attempted diagnoses follows... Blog - Networks Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:31:17 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/consumer/do-kids-tweet.html A straw pole of teenagers in my vicinity (and that's not very many it has to be said) revealed an interesting fact. They all do Facebook, MySpace and MSM - but none of them use twitter. They text (or should that be txt) each other incessantly, holding more extensive remote conversations with each other than they do with the people they are face to face with, but no tweets to be heard. We are led to believe that young people are the pioneers in adopting new technology but Twitter seems to have bucked that trend. Twitter, with advocates like Stephen... Blog - Consumer Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:31:45 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/software/google-chrome-not-a-threat-to-windows.html So Google have announced they are to release an operating system (called Chrome) for the pc. The majority of commentators see this as a direct challenge to Microsoft Windows but from what I understand Chrome is a very different concept. I have been arguing for years that all we will need from the operating system of the future is the ability to boot up and run a web browser and this is just what Google have announced. The Chrome O/S is aimed at netbooks, a rapidly growing but still niche corner of the pc market. Netbooks are intended for people... Blog - Software Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:17:49 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/software/export-openoffice-writer-bibliography-to-zotero.html Zotero, the bibliography add on for Firefox, is now on version 2.0.5b and this wonderful software is saving me a lot of time at the moment, but I hit a snag. A paper I am currently working on started off in Writer using the OpenOffice biblio database. Now that I am working in Zotero I wanted a quick and simple way of getting all my references across from the original document into Zotero so that I had everything in one system. I've just spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to do this. Some of the "solutions"... Blog - Software Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:42:35 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/software/zotero-bibliography-management-for-firefox-openoffice-and-word.html I am currently trying to get my head back into academia mode and a real pain for a practical nuts and bolts type like me is managing the biblographic referencing required in an academic paper (there can't be anybody that enjoys this part of academic research). I am an OpenOffice user and previously have used the built in biblography function in Writer. Much better than nothing but still tedious to capture the information and then output correctly formatted, and I was finding that at least half my time was spent just managing the bibliography with much of the remainder trying... Blog - Software Sat, 09 May 2009 12:57:35 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/news/latest/estm-business-link-approved-supplier.html As further recognition of our professionalism, estm has been selected as an approved supplier by Business Link West Midlands.This brings with it the possibility of funding for certain types of project. For more information and to find out if you might be eligible please contact us. News - Latest Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:43:00 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/infrastructure/marketing-and-capacity-planning.html It can happen to the best of us, an otherwise effective marketing campaign that fails to deliver because the infrastructure behind it runs out of steam. If you are a regular listener to talk radio ( I am thinking Radio 4 here ) you may have heard interviewees slipping in a plug for their website, and later in the conversation the presenter comments listeners have been complaining the website is "down". You haven't noticed? Just me then, I suppose you have to be tuned into these things. Anyway, that's excusable if it's a community venture with limited resources, but if... Blog - Infrastructure Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:58:27 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/news/latest/ian-edwards-awarded-citp.html estm's Managing Director Ian Edwards has been awarded Charted IT Professional status by the British Computer Society, the Chartered Insititue for IT. CITP is the hallmark of a true IT professional and takes into account practical experience and career achievements as well as formal qualifications. According to the BCS "...Achieving CITP status demonstrates that you practise IT to the highest professional standards." News - Latest Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:58:29 +0100 http://www.estm.co.uk/blog/infrastructure/should-the-open-source-community-be-worried-about-oracle-buying-sun.html Two of the world's biggest IT companies have announced this week their intention to combine as Sun Microsystems agrees to be bought by Oracle. (for the full story see here (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39642652,00.htm)). This represents a pretty major shift in the industry's tectonic plates. It positions the acquisitive Oracle, generally known as an enterprise database vendor, as a head to head rival to IBM across the enterprise software, hardware and services stack. Sun Microsystems has been a significant supporter of Open Source software. As well as open sourcing Solaris, Sun's own Unix operating system, It originated the Open Office project in 2000 and... Blog - Infrastructure Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:48:48 +0100