First Test cliffhanger

Posted on June 23, 2013 by Tony Redmond

George North almost scores a second try at the Northern end of Suncorp stadium

George North almost scores a second try at the Northern end of Suncorp stadium

We returned from Suncorp Stadium Brisbane late on Saturday night. The one-hour coach ride allowed pulses to settle to normal levels after the last-minute drama surrounding the scrum that led to a penalty that Beale couldn’t convert. The 21-23 win for the Lions was a close call, especially after the Australians lost three players to injury during the game.

We enjoyed the stadium, the build-up to the game (including excellent pre-match drinks organized by Trevor Brennan Rugby Tours), the banter between the different sets of supporters, the noise and buzz in the ground, and most of the match. Our seats were in the “Silver” section of the Northern stand, close to the right-hand corner defended by the Wallabies in the first half. Our position gave us a good view of all of the tries, especially the one scored by George North and the later disallowed attempt. I wasn’t quite sure why the TMO ruled out this try as it looked good in actual time and in the replays on the stadium screens. However, close review on high-definition screens in the media truck often result in different outcomes and the TV replay showed that North’s elbow hit the touchline just before he went over the goal line.

I’m not so sure that I enjoyed the refereeing performance. It’s difficult to get things absolutely right at this level, which is the reason why referees are instructed to concentrate on penalizing “clear and obvious” offences. Some of the penalties, especially those in contact, seemed to come as a mystery to the players and it’s never a good sign when player acceptance of decisions dips as it appeared to, especially in the second half.

On the way into Suncorp Stadium, I was stopped at a bag check because my “camera lens was too big”. The security staff didn’t like the Nikkor 28-300mm zoom attached to my D800. Apparently the stadium is concerned that unaccredited photographers take shots from fans’ seats and later sell the photos. A man was dispatched to contact a supervisor to discuss whether the lens was a problem and we waited to the side. Just then Amy Huberman turned up with Sadie O’Driscoll and distracted the attention of the screeners, who had to examine the 4-month-old’s bottles with care. We took advantage to slip away into the crowd and made our way into the stadium.

Opposite numbers collide in the first Australia vs. British Lions test

Opposite numbers collide in the first Australia vs. British Lions test

It’s true that a 300mm lens can cover a lot of territory in a stadium but really – the digital zooms that are now available in “amateur” cameras or even high-end smartphones are capable of taking good photographs under the floodlit conditions at major sporting events. Perhaps Suncorp Stadium has it in mind to remove every iPhone and Samsung Galaxy that they find on fans for future events.

In any case, we have another day to enjoy in what is now a sunny Surfer’s Paradise (like most resorts, this one looks very different in bright sunshine to the gloomy and depressing place it seemed in the rain) before moving on to Melbourne for the Rebels game next Tuesday and the second test the following Saturday. More later!

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PS. We solved the problem with crappy hotel Wi-Fi performance by buying a $119 Telstra USB 4G modem. So far it works very well. Let’s hope that it continues to deliver its impressive performance in the other locations on our trip.

Posted in Rugby | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Lions Tour – before the first test

Posted on June 21, 2013 by Tony Redmond

The noble readers of this blog might have noticed that I have been quiet recently, mostly because my wife and I have departed on a three-week tour of Australia to follow the British and Irish Lions as they play three test matches against the Aussies. The lack of activity is partially due to travel (Dublin – Abu Dhabi for a quick two-day stop – Brisbane – and now Surfer’s Paradise) while part of it is down to struggling with various poor Wi-Fi connections in hotels. Things got so bad that I resorted to using the “reach” version of Outlook Web App running on a version of embedded Linux on a Samsung in-room TV with an odd wireless keyboard to keep in contact with the world… (technology geeks will understand what kind of combination that is).

It amazes me that hotels can’t get what is now an expected facility right. Connecting with my Surface Pro has been easy enough, if slow. On the other hand, connecting my wife’s MacBook Air has been a perfect nightmare, as has the purported “service” provided by the folks (like MovieLink) who set up and maintain Wi-Fi networks for the hotels. Failure to call back is a cardinal sin for any customer service industry. I’m now thinking of buying a 4G pay-as-you-go modem from a local Telco provider for use during the rest of the trip to serve as a way of maintaining connectivity. It’s got to be less expensive and probably faster than hotel Wi-Fi.

In any case, as I type I’m looking out over a damp and dreary Surfer’s Paradise with low grey clouds and rain falling. Truthfully this isn’t our kind of place as it’s a summer resort location that’s built to deal with crowds of tourists that probably looks quite nice in full sunshine but definitely is not so good in the Australian winter.

We’re travelling with Trevor Brennan Rugby Tours and met up with the rest of the tour party last night. Lots of people seem to have on the road since the Lions played their first game in Hong Kong on June 1 and many reports of flagging livers and not enough sleep have been heard. In any case, it seems like a nice group of people and I’m sure that we will have fun with them.

Tonight we head up to Brisbane to see the Classic Anzacs team take on an equivalent bunch from Britain and Ireland in a charity match. Trevor Brennan makes an appearance as No7 while Alan Quinlan, who’s also on this tour, will come off the bench at some point during the game. Should be interesting, especially as the game is at Ballymore, the old international ground and the location for the famous 1979 match-winning performance by Ollie Campbell, who kicked Ireland to a win over Australia.

Tomorrow we’ll be back to Brisbane for the first test match. The team looks like a good combination. Let’s hope that they do better than the awful performance in Canberra last Tuesday when the Brumbies rightly won against a very poor Lions second-rate team.

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Exchange Unwashed Digest May 2013

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Tony Redmond

May 2013 produced some thoughts about site mailboxes, CU1 improvements, planning tools, and even a Windows Phone application in the Exchange Unwashed Blog. Here’s what happened in detail.

Using an Office 365 free trial domain to test software (May 30): Sometimes it is just difficult to get all the parts aligned to allow new features and functionality to be tested. I certainly struggled with SharePoint 2013 when I wanted to play with site mailboxes. And then I twigged that an Office 365 trial domain was an excellent workaround because Microsoft does all the boring work of making sure that parts fit together correctly. Try it for 30 days free of charge. Nice!

The demise of the infamous FSW warning (May 26): Among the High Availability enhancements made in Exchange 2013 CU1 is the eradication of a bug that’s been lingering for quite a while. The bug occurs when you place the witness server for a DAG on a server that doesn’t have Exchange installed on it, in which case complaints are issued – sometimes unfairly.

UC Architects make a splash with their new Windows Phone App (May 23): Apparently the number of Windows Phone users is growing quite rapidly, albeit from a low base. Those who use Windows Phone (like me) can use the new UC Architects app to access the regular broadcasts from this eclectic group of Lync and Exchange consultants.

The rather splendid Exchange 2013 server calculator (May 21): After waiting so long for deployment planning tools to arrive, the provision of the Exchange 2013 mailbox server requirements calculator came as a blessed relief for those who wondered just what kind of hardware they would need in production. The answer is “more than you might imagine”. But hey, hardware is cheap, memory is plentiful, and storage is positively bursting in capacity, so it’s not really a problem.

Migration challenges await in City of Boston’s transition to Gmail (May 16): The fine folks at the City of Boston have selected Gmail and Google Apps instead of moving from Exchange on-premises to Office 365. I’m sure that careful technical and business consideration was given to this decision but I have some doubts as to how much the users will enjoy the migration. Time will tell.

New email features from Microsoft and Google prove the worth of competition (May 14): Competition drives innovation, a factor that is becoming more apparent as Gmail and Exchange Online swap announcements about new features. Gmail is certainly improving, but Exchange Online remains king of the feature heap – as long as you pair it with Outlook 2013.

Configuring site mailboxes: a candidate for automation (May 9). Site mailboxes mark an important point along the road to better co-operation between Exchange and SharePoint. Unfortunately the process of configuring all the bits and pieces that are necessary to make the two products talk together nicely is not straightforward. I regard this as a great automation opportunity for Microsoft. We shall see whether they agree.

The curious lack of Exchange 2013 hardware planning tools (May 7): A week before the server calculator (see above) appeared, I commented on the curious lack of planning tools made available by Microsoft to help on-premises administrators figure out the mysteries of hardware configurations. It just seemed strange to have no little knowledge available six months after product release. That’s all I’m saying…

Exchange Connections – Calling all speakers (May 2): We’re having what I hope will be the best independent conference covering all aspects of Exchange (on-premises, hybrid, cloud, and connectivity with other products) in Las Vegas (Oct 1-3) and needed some speakers. So we asked the Interweb to see who’d like to present and got over 80 submissions. The 20 selected sessions have now been announced and I am more than pleased with the set.

And so on to June…

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PRISM, Internet Data, Email, and Auntie Mary’s messages

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Tony Redmond

In 1948, it seems like George Orwell was quite prescient when he wrote “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment” in his novel “1984”. Apple used the vision painted by Orwell to help launch the Macintosh in 1984. Much to the pleasure of those who believe that big brother is indeed watching us, the tweetosphere (if such a place exists) lit up last week when reports emerged about a US government called PRISM that apparently seeks to capture information about the various Internet activities of foreigners (such as myself). President Obama moved to reassure us that these were “modest encroachments on privacy” and that “you can’t have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy, and zero inconvenience.” Quite.

Microsoft, among other major Internet companies, has been forced to issue a statement to let people know of its stance on the matter, saying “We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis.”

Quite a few people contacted me to ask whether Office 365 was included in the PRISM program (as if I would know). My response is that I doubt very much if any government agency would be able to deal with the sheer volume of electronic communications that exist today without placing very sophisticated filters on the data feed to identify and isolate items that might be of interest and that it’s unlikely that such filters exist within Microsoft’s datacenters. If anything, interception is far more likely as data travels from company networks across the Internet to reach an Office 365 datacenter.

Even though Office 365 datacenters are located around the globe, the problem is that IP packets containing email, attachments, and other data don’t necessarily follow the most direct path across the Internet to reach Office 365 (a fact emphasized by the leaked PRISM PowerPoint, roundly condemned for its poor use of PowerPoint in this Forbes article). Therefore, whilst your mailbox might safely repose in Singapore or Dublin, the traffic to the mailbox might well go via the U.S. and be subject to all manner of interception, examination, and contemplation by three-letter agencies.

I imagine that the fuss and bother about what the NSA has been up to will cause some companies who were considering moving to Office 365 to pause for thought, if only until they are quite sure that they can protect their information en route to and from Microsoft.

But this has been the case ever since Internet-enabled email has been used. In the old days, when company email travelled across company-controlled networks and never saw the light of day outside those networks (except perhaps in printed form), email was relatively secure insofar it was hard(er) for outsiders to access its contents. Of course, company networks were not as secure as they are today and email was not well secured on servers. In many cases, messages were stored in plain text format and were therefore easily readable if a hacker managed to penetrate the network.

Over the last 25 years we have become increasingly dependent on the Internet as a means of communication. To withdraw from using the Internet is unthinkable to many, even if it would mean a little more privacy. (This article draws a picture of what it would mean to stop using the services offered by the companies mentioned in the PRISM hoo-hah.)

Email security experts have advised for a very long time, “never put anything into an email that you wouldn’t put on the back of a postcard”. Of course this will never happen because the sheer ease of communication makes people forget the risk. The Faustian pact of using all of the facilities of the Internet in full knowledge that packets can be intercepted between transmission and reception is unlikely to be terminated.

Whether using Office 365, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or anything else that sends messages across the Internet, if you want to preserve your privacy in email you need to invest in some form of encryption. Although it might be possible for your chosen encryption to be broken by the supercomputing power now dedicated to observation and capture, at least you’ll have the small satisfaction of costing the snoops some extra resources to interpret details of the birthday present you plan to send to Auntie Mary next week – or whatever else you put into email.

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A stop in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Tony Redmond

On the 69th anniversary of D-Day, I guess it’s appropriate to post about an enjoyable interlude we had this week en route to Cherbourg to catch the Irish Ferries boat back to Ireland.

As usual, we had some time to kill and decided that a walk on a beach followed by lunch would do the trick. Utah Beach is a nice place to visit and boasts a fine flat sandy beach, which probably contributed to its selection for D-Day, so we headed there. About 5km from Utah Beach, we passed through the small village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, which was captured by the U.S. 101st parachute division on D-Day and found that the whole village seemed to have been taken over by people dressed in 1944-style uniforms together with a huge selection of vintage military vehicles. The collection included a German Kubelwagen, something that you don’t see that often in comparison to the frequent sightings of World War II U.S. equipment such as Willys Jeeps.

Our original intention was to return from Utah Beach to Cherbourg via Sainte-Mère-Église, another of the famous D-Day locations and home of the Auberge de John Steele (named after the paratrooper who was caught on the steeple of the village church and heavily featured in the film “The Longest Day”), where experience tells that an excellent lunch is served. However, curiosity took us back to Sainte-Marie-du-Mont where we stopped to find out what was going on.

The church at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont surrounded by 1944 militaria

The church at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont surrounded by 1944 militaria

The first thing to say about the village is that it boasts an extraordinary church that is well worth visiting in its own right. Dating back to 1060, this church has seen many historical events, including those of D-Day where the Germans used its steeple as an observation post until they were dissuaded to leave by some well-aimed artillery (the steeple was repaired in 1946). But in this case the action lay all around the church where tents had been set up to emulate what might have been the scene on or soon after D-Day. A first-aid post was available together with a military police tent and many other “pup” tents as used by individual soldiers. I was interested to find that the majority of the people who were acting as U.S. soldiers (paratroopers, rangers, and plain old infantry) were French, Belgian, or Dutch.

The smell of barbecue seems to complement the Glen Miller and other hits that were being played over loudspeakers. Normally I stay well clear of barbecue pits as their output can play merry hell with my stomach. But hunger is a great motivator and we purchased some sausages (made locally, or so the sign said) in baguettes. The sausages were thick and long and might not have been cooked to the degree preferred by the food safety people (the vendor had some trouble with his charcoal) and the accompanying frites were greasy, not to put too fine a point on it. But eating in the open air surrounded by militaria and people obviously happy to be engaged in a historical re-enactment made the food disappear fast. Our stomachs have only just recovered!

Coffee beckoned before leaving, so we went to the Creperie Montoise, facing the church, and had some excellent crepes. It would have been nice to have had more time available to learn more about why Sainte-Marie-du-Mont had been taken over, but tide and ferries don’t wait.

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Enjoying a vineyard visit in Blaye

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Tony Redmond

Sometimes serendipity takes hold and brings you to enjoyable experiences. So it was last week in Blaye, close to Bordeaux and center of one of the wine-growing regions that cluster around that city. After enjoying a rather good bottle of the local wine, we were introduced to its maker, Alain Lancereau, a wine grower based in Plassac, close to Blaye. Alain used to be a partner at Accenture before he gave up the corporate world ten years ago and purchased a small chateau. Alain invited us to visit him at the chateau, which seemed like an excellent idea, which brought us to Chateau Bellevue Gazin the next day.

I have visited many vineyards over the years in France, California, Australia, and New Zealand and expected that we would follow the normal routine of some polite conversation before tasting several wines and then (if the wines were any good), a small purchase. What I didn’t expect was to have a two-and-a-half-hour masterclass in wine making.

Enjoying a master class in wine appreciation at the Chateau Bellevue Gazin

Enjoying a master class in wine appreciation at the Chateau Bellevue Gazin

Alain clearly applied his years working as a business consultant to the business of wine making. After buying the chateau, he interviewed many of his fellow wine growers in an attempt to master the detail of planting and harvesting, grape type and soil, vine age and location, the different grades of cork used and why screw-top closures will not be used by many vignerons, why some wine is aged in concrete vats whereas other is better held in stainless steel, the use of wood barrels and burnt oak, and so on. I’m sure that the locals thought that someone coming down from Paris to buy a vineyard and large house (they run a bed and breakfast too) was quite mad, especially when he asked so many questions. Their opinion was likely revised when Alain won gold medals at major wine shows in his second year of production!

Alain’s passion for his new career was clearly communicated as we sat and tasted his wines. No detail was too small to delve into or could not be explained clearly. The merits of Merlot versus Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec were discussed as was the difference between the Medoc and the other Bordeaux regions, including Blaye. Time went by fast and we enjoyed ourselves very much. And even better, the wine was good too and obviously a purchase was in order. We liked the 2005 “Grand Vin” more than its 2004 counterpart, but both were worth buying as was the “Claret”.

Then the real fun started. Producing some 60,000 bottles annually, the chateau is a small operation on the global scale. Some of the wine that we wanted to buy was bottled, but the bottles had no labels or tax stamps. We therefore had to adjourn to the “shed” to apply labels and stamps before we could take the wine. More conversation, advice, and opinions were shared as the bottles were prepared and we loaded the car.

I doubt that you will find the Chateau Bellevue Gazin in many wine shops. That is a pity but it’s not the point. What I think is important is the chance to have met someone who is so knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their work; not often encountered but always a delight when it happens.

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Exchange Unwashed digest: April 2013

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Tony Redmond

April 2013 saw the appearance of Exchange 2013 CU1 to release the restrictions that had previously stopped anyone running a “legacy” version of Exchange from installing Exchange 2013 into an existing organization. More stuff happened during April too, and some was even discussed in my “Exchange Unwashed” blog, as explained below.

Exchange 2013 CU1: The software that RTM could have been (April 2): Yippee! Fireworks exploded when Microsoft released CU1 some six months after announcing the original release-to-manufacturing (RTM) version. Many bug were eradicated, some new ones introduced, and some functionality reappeared. On balance, a very good thing. But perhaps this is the software that should have been shipped as Exchange 2013 so that those who say that you should always wait for the first service pack (or cumulative update) before installing any Microsoft application weren’t proven right yet again.

Installing Exchange 2013 CU1 on DAG member servers – some care and maintenance mode required (April 4): Exchange 2013 includes a feature called Managed Availability that keeps engineers from having disturbed nights by automatically managing some problems that occur on servers. But it’s a strange beast and we have not fully learned how to cope with Managed Availability yet. One thing is for sure – you should put DAG member servers into maintenance mode before applying software updates (like CU1). It keeps Managed Availability happy. And happy software means happy administrators, or so the theory goes.

Managing groups with groups in Exchange 2013 CU1 (April 9): OK, not everyone will get excited by the reappearance of some functionality that was dropped in Exchange 2010. But I think it’s quite nice to be able to manage groups with groups. Feel free to disagree.

Microsoft announces MEC 2014 will be in Austin (April 9): Microsoft has been conducting a teaser campaign about the location for the next Exchange Conference. It turns out that they are returning to the location last used for MEC in September 1996, when Exchange 4.0 was all the rage and live was much simpler. Getting to Austin is a real pain for those who come from overseas and air fares are scandalously high, even now. I wonder whether the Microsoft people who made the choice of location consider travel costs and availability. Maybe not.

Individual fix for Exchange soft delete problem proves worth of support contracts (April 11): Exchange 2010 SP2 RU6 and Exchange 2010 SP3 both have problems with Outlook users working in online mode because some items won’t delete. A fix is available and it will come in an official release soon, but in the meantime those who have support contacts can get an individual fix, which proves the value of having such a contract. At least, it seems to…

Blocking OWA access for a user is a problem for Exchange 2013 CU1 (April 16): Another day, another bug. This time it’s Exchange 2013 CU1 and its inability to perform a trick that legacy versions all have down to a fine art. You can’t block a user from accessing Outlook Web App by running Set-CASMailbox. Oh dear!

Microsoft and Google War Over First Ajax Webmail (April 18): A hissy fit between Microsoft and Google is always interesting. In this case, Google claimed that Gmail was the first Ajax-powered browser email client. Not so, said Microsoft, who pointed out that Outlook Web Access (for that’s what it was called in those days) running with Exchange 2003 predated Gmail. Both sides think they are right. But does it matter now?

First tests of Exchange 2013 on Azure point to the future? (April 23): I liked the ingenuity involved in deploying some test Exchange 2013 servers on the Azure platform as I think that this kind of thing will become increasingly common as cloud platforms develop. It’s a logical progression to allow application servers to run in the cloud under your control instead of inside the Office 365 juggernaut. The only question is how long it will take for production-quality deployments to be possible.

MRMAPI, the Little Brother of MFCMAPI (April 25): I am very fond of MFCMAPI, as I think it reveals an awful lot about how Exchange works (and sometimes does not) internally. MRMAPI is less well known, but still interesting. Don’t take my word for it.

Why Exchange 2013 asks you to restart the Information Store after creating a new database (April 30): Exchange 2013 has a new memory model for the Information Store, a side-effect of the transition to the “Managed Store” away from the previous monolithic model. The current way of allocating cache to mounted databases is a tad inflexible. Hence the need to restart the Store. Fortunately, this should not be a daily occurrence. At least, not on most servers.

The blog rolls on in May 2013 and much more is discussed on WindowsITPro.com. See you there!

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Posted in Cloud, Email, Exchange, Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013, Office 365 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sending cash via Gmail: an invitation to scammers?

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Tony Redmond

Am I the only one to have a small nagging doubt about Google’s announcement that they now allow Gmail users to send money to each other? Given the commentary that I have read so far, it seems like I am. Perhaps it’s my grumpy frame of mind but maybe it’s because I am wary of anything that might open the floodgates of spam by introducing a new attack vector for spammers to prey upon the unwary.

The first thing to say is that sending money via email is not new. After all, companies have been using a form of email-enabled communication called EDI since 1996 or thereabouts. Of course, EDI is not based on messages exchanged between individuals. Instead, it is a mechanism that uses highly structured messages between companies. However, EDI documents are addressed and can be sent by email, so a comparison is, I think, valid. And wire transfers between individuals could also be considered in the same vein as they are also highly structured documents that are routed to beneficiaries based on addresses (bank account and routing numbers).

The big difference in this announcement lies in the sheer size of the Gmail installed based and the integration with Google Wallet. Even if you strip out all the “disposable” Gmail accounts used for different purposes (including spam), the number of people who use Gmail regularly is in the hundreds of millions. After Google rolls out the new feature worldwide (it is only available to U.S. residents initially and only if they are 18 years or older), that’s a lot of people who could send money to each other. And there’s goodness there as being able to send a family member or close acquaintance some money along with an email seems like a very nice feature.

The integration with Google Wallet is both an example of how Google is leveraging the different parts of their portfolio to gain synergy and a protection to users. Before you can send money from your Google Wallet, you need to provide Google with a credit card that presumably acts as some form of barrier to those who would seek to use Google Wallet for nefarious purposes. I originally added a credit card to my Google Wallet when I lived in the U.S. and can’t recall having to provide too much information in terms of proving my identity except the credit card data and an address. Perhaps Google performs some form of identity checking behind the scenes to validate the information but I certainly was unaware of this. It will be interesting to see how Google copes with European money laundering legislation here as it does not take much imagination to see how criminals might use cash transfer via email to move funds around, even if they will be restricted to transferring $50,000 per five-day period.

But you don’t need Google Wallet to send or receive money via Gmail as Google will allow you to send money via a credit or debit card (extracting a 2.9% fee per transaction). Not much detail is yet available as to how a recipient who does not have Gmail can access funds. Perhaps they will have to provide some bank details or, in some under-banked parts of the world, be directed to a traditional funds transfer agency such as a Western Union office.

The ability to send money to someone who is unknown (except as an email address) is where I see problems lurking. There are already plenty of examples where email is used to coax the unwary (or the stupid, depending on your perspective) to send money, the most famous being the “Nigerian 419 scam”. Today, it takes time and effort for the scammer to hook their victim, reel them in, and convince the victim to send funds via a traditional method. Will this new feature make it easier for a scammer to score? It just might…

The people who work at Google are very smart indeed. I am sure that they will do their very utmost to incorporate some intelligence to prevent their work delivering a bonanza to scammers. At least, I hope that they do!

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Low book prices don’t reflect the work involved

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Tony Redmond

I wonder whether I should feel offended that Amazon.com has priced Paul Robichaux’s book, “Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Inside Out: Connectivity, Clients, and UM” at $30.21 whereas my book “Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Inside Out: Mailbox and High Availability” is cheaper at $27.26. I pointed out to Paul that his book is shorter (600 pages), so people are paying roughly 5 cents/page (what a bargain) while my 800-pager is priced at a miserly 3.4 cents/page (clearly an even better bargain). The list price for both books is $49.99 so clearly Amazon is being pretty aggressive at its pricing. Perhaps things will change before the books are actually released in October but right now the prices are very keen.

A real bargain!

A real bargain!

I don’t pretend to understand how the publishing business works or how these prices are derived, but when you think about it, 3.4 cents/page is cheap. A fairer comparison might be to strip out the “overhead” from the page count by removing the index, table of contents, preface, and so on to arrive at the content-rich pages. In my case, I reckon this to be about 760 pages, or 3.6 cents/page. No much change there!

Given the amount of effort required to research, write, edit, review, index, and lay out a technical book and the relatively short selling window that exists due to the pace of change in technology, you’d wonder how the publishing business exists at all. What I can say is that writing technical books is not a fast course to riches, or even a slow course. It’s not a labour of love either, especially when yet another demand arrives from a copy editor to clarify text, write a better caption, finish a thought or any of the other ways that editors keep writers on the straight and narrow. In fact, writing might be considered masochistic at times.

In any case, things are going pretty well in terms of completing the books. We’re deep into the review and refinement process at present where text is verified for accuracy and tested to make sure that it’s complete and adds value. The editors want the authors to keep to agreed page counts while the authors want to stuff more content into the books, so an entertaining debate ensues. This is a serious business because costs expand in line with page counts and as discussed above selling prices are not high, so extra pages trim whatever profit is to be extracted from the exercise.

For the remainder of the summer we shall continue to drive towards completion while keeping a wary eye on what the Exchange developers are doing as they push out cumulative update 2 (CU2), expected in early July if they make their goal to release an update every three months. Updates include many bug fixes and functionality changes. Bug fixes don’t usually cause too many issues for writers but functionality updates definitely do. An example is the change made in CU1 where EAC and EMS now advise that the Information Store service has to be restarted on a mailbox server if a database is added (no warning is given when you remove a database). Clearly this is an issue that needs to be covered in any discussion about the new Managed Store, so that’s a change that affects book content.

There’s no way that we will catch every change that occurs in a huge product like Exchange as CU2 and maybe even CU3 evolve. Paul has the extra complication of having to track updates to clients and interfaces like Outlook 2013, ActiveSync, EWS, and Outlook Web App. OWA has already changed quite a lot since RTM so that’s a challenge for content.

None of this should be construed as real cause for complaint. After all, we took on the project in the full knowledge of the work involved to put books together. But a little groan from time to time relieves the pressure and lightens the load, so that’s my groan dune for now. I’m sure that something else will occur to cause me to grumble, but that’s in the future…

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Exchange Unwashed blog digest March 2013

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Tony Redmond

I have been remiss in updating this site with information about posts to my “Exchange Unwashed” blog on WindowsITPro.com. All I can say is that WindowsITPro.com has been through the trauma of a content management system (CMS) upgrade. Like all technology migrations, people (like me) have been affected by user interface changes, functionality that works in different ways, and other quirks of the new system. In any case, things are settling down now and I have some time to go back and cover things that I would have done before.

Here’s the set of posts that appeared in March 2013. Some of these are now in the category of historical records, some will still be of interest if you haven’t seen the material before.

The Exchange Reports Codeplex Project (March 7): I’ve long said that Exchange is pathetic when it comes to generating reports that are of use to administrators. Microsoft’s attitude seems to be that this is an area best left to third parties. The Codeplex project is worth supporting because it provides a set of basic reports that are of use to pretty well every deployment.

EDA, PinPoint DNS, and a chat about Exchange 2013 (March 12). EDA is the Exchange Deployment Assistant, which was upgraded to cope with Exchange 2013. Still not perfect, but evolving over time to include support for different circumstances. PinPoint DNS is a useful technique to consider because of some upcoming changes in how certificates used to secure communications work. The chat refers to a session that I taped with Richard Campbell and RunAs radio. It was fun!

Why Exchange Online hates journal mailboxes (March 14). The cloud has limitless storage – right? So it must be a great platform for the accumulation of data that has to be retained for discovery searches. Or so you’d think… but Exchange Online disagrees and won’t let you use its mailboxes as the destination for journal messages.

Exchange 2010 Discovery Searches: What about users who leave? (March 19). You might be quite glad to see the back of some users and move swiftly to eradicate all trace of their presence within the organization, including their mailboxes. But what if those people had access to information that needs to be retained for regulatory or legal reasons? Well, then you’d need a process to retain their mailboxes for some time. Just what that process would be and how long you’d keep the data depends on your company.

101 Exchange Web Services code examples (March 21). Exchange Web Services (EWS) is the way that third party developers (and those who build the Microsoft Outlook 2011 for Mac client) gain access to the Store. Having a well-developed API is all very good, but some examples help to get the creative juices flowing. Here’s how to find some…

Preserving mailboxes when employees leave (March 26). Returning to the topic of how best to preserve mailboxes of users who leave the organization, we cover some practical steps that you can take to keep these mailboxes around to allow them to be accessible to discovery searches but not involved in day-to-day email.

Microsoft replaces OCAT with OffCAT (Office Configuration Analysis Tool) (March 28). Microsoft took a good tool (The Outlook Configuration Analysis Tool) and made it better by expanding its capabilities to deal with the other Office products. As it turns out, Outlook’s configuration is more complex than that of PowerPoint, but that’s no reason not to check what’s going on under the covers.

More soon about the April 2013 posts…

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