Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

Category: Technology

  • Bricked Nokia forces reconsideration of available options

    Infuriatingly, my Nokia Lumia 800 decided to turn itself into an expensive brick this afternoon whilst playing a podcast. No number of curses, sacred chants, or combination of button pressing could persuade the Lumia to come back to life, so it’s gone off to be fixed by Nokia, thanks to…

  • Family IT help desk calls over the holidays

    Like most IT pros, I suspect that I am the de facto CIO-and-support desk for others in the house. And so it proved over Christmas, with a variety of calls for assistance to resolve various IT issues. First up was to get my son’s Windows RT Surface up and running.…

  • Google and Microsoft spat over ActiveSync: Hardly a war, more like a skirmish

    January 30 Update: Just on the deadline, it seems like Google has acceded to a request from Microsoft to extend its support for ActiveSync connections to Gmail until July 31, 2013. The step simply makes sense as it reduces the number of users who would otherwise be mad at Google. …

  • VAX Notes remembered

    I was surprised and delighted to come across a White Paper called “The Camelot of Collaboration” that documents the use of a now-forgotten technology called VAX Notes within the late-lamented Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Collaboration comes naturally to many today given information presented on blogs, social networking sites such as Facebook, the…

  • Is Dell about to cut TEC?

    Word is reaching me that Dell might have decided to cancel future TEC (The Experts Conference) events. If this is true, the last TEC was in Barcelona in October and it marked a series of events that was fun and full of good information, one that I only came to…

  • HP’s BYOD dilemma, Google’s weak keys, and Apple’s PR mastery

    A number of recent events have attracted my attention. Maybe they will interest you too. First, an HP executive made an interesting comment in an interview about BYOD when he said that HP wouldn’t introduce a bring-your-own-device to work anytime soon. The real meat was when he said “Why? It…

  • Protecting Exchange mailbox databases against rogue administrators

    Jürgen Hasslauer gave an interesting talk at The Experts Conference (TEC) in Barcelona covering the features included in Exchange 2013 to monitor and control access to sensitive data. The talk was based on his experience of assessing Exchange against the requirements of a German government customer that is migrating from…

  • No Surface pre-order for Irish buyers

    Being a geek at heart (and having the t-shirt to prove the fact), the reports that Microsoft Surface devices were now available for pre-order moved me to investigate the situation, especially when Henrik Walther (of msexchange.org fame, now holding a blue badge as a Microsoft employee) reported that he had preordered a…

  • Is the PC still personal, six years after HP bought Voodoo?

    You might recall the “PC is Personal Again” campaign launched by HP in 2006 to reinvigorate the PC market and announce its intention to bring new standards of design to PCs. Part of the campaign involved moving R&D funding away from tower-style PCs as it was felt that not much…

  • HP: Once more into the smartphone breach?

    Meg Whitman’s interview with Fox Business News where the CEO of HP revealed “My view is we have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world, that is your first computing device” is a little surprising (at least, to me). Not so much that HP would…