Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

  • Searching, iFilters, and attachments

    Ireland in October is definitely different to Florida in September. Although I didn’t see much of the outside weather during last week’s MEC in Orlando, heat and humidity has been replaced with Dublin’s ongoing mixture of rain and wind. Some say that the weather doesn’t really matter as long as…

  • Exchange community, UC architects, and engineers with a fashion sense

    Back in Ireland after a week away in Orlando to take in MEC, the “forgotten conference”, I’ve had time to digest some of what happened in Florida and reflect on some topics that I didn’t get to cover in previous posts from MEC. It was great to be at an…

  • MEC 2012 Wrap-up

    Day 3 of MEC delivered another set of sessions containing lots of interesting information about different Exchange topics, the most interesting of which was named “Ask an Exchange Dev (because program managers and marketing lie)”. This session was announced late on, possibly because of its totally politically incorrect title and…

  • MEC day 2: Geek Out could have been better, but much to applaud

    The second day at the revamped, relaunched, recherished Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC) commenced with quick wrap-up of day 1 from Michael Atalla (a man who books a theme park and then fills it to 5% capacity must be respected) followed by a Geek Talk with Perry Clarke, hosted by Ann…

  • MEC launches with insults, edgy humour, but lots of good technical content too

    MEC swung into action on Monday with two keynotes followed by a set of technical sessions covering different aspects of Exchange 2013. Overall, it was a highly productive day where a lot of interesting content was shared. It all started with a video… Nice and all as it is to…

  • Some color problems as MEC swings into action

    The first full day of the Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC) swings into play this morning with the normal menu of an opening non-technical keynote followed by a technical keynote. The difference of course is that the first is for marketing personnel, who will be forced to leave the room for…

  • Squeaky lobster’s at MEC: Is this the start of the excitement?

    This coming week is all about the relaunched, revamped, and hopefully not-a-warmed-over-copy-of-Teched Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC). I flew from Dublin to Orlando yesterday, enjoying a reasonable service from Aer Lingus on a flight that must have set a new record for the number of kiddie buggies that it carried. Speaking…

  • 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…

  • The consequences of Microsoft’s new cloud-centric security product strategy

    If you haven’t read the news about Microsoft’s new direction for its on-premises security products, you might not be aware that offerings such as Forefront Protection for Exchange (FPE) and Threat Management Gateway (TMG) will not be carried forward into the future. FPE is being replaced by its cloud-based anti-malware…

  • Tools to manage email and some PowerShell cheat sheets

    It was interesting to see the launch of “Inbox Pause”, an add-in for Gmail from Baydin Software, the same folks who develop Boomerang for Gmail (and indeed, Boomerang for Outlook). These add-ins are designed to help manage the constant flow of email that most people have to process daily. Inbox…