More and more we are becoming people on-the-go. From business travel and meetings, to events, appointments and the many other things going on in our daily lives we are constantly on the move.On average we spend more than an hour a day traveling to and from work. And with the demands of our digital lifestyle with smart phones, email and instant messaging, we often need our files and computer programs ready and with us where ever we are.

Ensuring that our digital lives are as mobile as we are once meant transferring files back and forth between various computers; a process which often results in a disorganized mess of files across multiple systems. With the growth in netbooks popularity, that has quickly changed. With these micro computers operating on very little processing power and smaller hard drives cloud based services (web based programs) have been growing in popularity.  Cloud computing is allowing people to not only save space on their computers but also have their files and documents stored in one central location.

File Storage:

Working on multiple systems can be an easy way to become disorganized and even loose important data.  With cloud computing files can be stored in one central space online, ensuring that these files are safe and secure. This means no worrying about whether your system crashes and no searching through multiple computers to find the documents you need.

Two popular online storage services are Syncplicity and Dropbox. By downloading a single storage folder wherever you need your data, these services allow you to save your files online and syncs them with all of your devices. As an added feature both services provide up to the minute backup allowing you to go back in time to retrieve older copies of your files. Both of these services provide 2 gigabytes of free storage space in their basic accounts but for a monthly fee you can also upgrade your space by up to 50 gigabytes of storage. A few other online storage options include Mediafire, Yuntaa and Orbitfiles.

Productivity:

Having your essential office programs online means you can take your work with you where ever you go. A more widely known cloud based office suite is Google docs, which allows you to create and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations through your Google account. This can act as a great central storage hub for all of your documents. Similar to this service is Microsoft’s Office Live Workspace which allows you to store and share your Microsoft Office documents in a single workspace and may be a sign of things to come with Microsoft Office 10.

For email on the go mail2web Webmail and mail2web Personal Webmail are great options. Without having to use computer based email systems such as Microsoft Outlook, you can securely read your email. mail2web Personal webmail also provides you with your own personal email portal (such as http://mail2web.com/kevin) and contact manager which you can view on your laptop or mobile device and customize whichever way you want.

In addition to these services  there are some other great productivity tools to build your digital office such as presentation tools like Slide Rocket and Prezi , digital desktops such as G.ho.st and Evernote or online collaboration tools such as Adobe Acrobat, Zoho and Microsoft Sharepoint services.

Photo and Video Editing:

Once thought to be the most hardware intensive tasks for your computer you are now able to upload and edit your digital media on the go. Well known for their software based photo editing suite Adobe has released a simplified version of Photoshop for the web. Containing many of the basic photo editing tools it allows you to save and edit your photos on the go. A similar service to this is Picnik which allows you to grab the photos you have stored online from sites such as Facebook and Flickr and edit them with their online toolset.

For online video editing there are also a number of services to choose from such as Stash Space , Motion Box and JayCut. With easy upload and online storage space these sites let you edit your videos and share them with your family and friends as well as help convert them to storable files when you’re ready to produce it on physical media.

As more and more traditionally software based tools are transferred online, people are becoming less tied to their desks and are able to take their work with them on the go. By using cloud based services you don’t need to worry about where your files are stored as they’re now available to you anywhere you can find an internet connection. With services that store your files across computers, allow you to work and collaborate as well as edit your digital media on the go the internet is allowing people to do what they want wherever they are.

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3. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Update

Today, an increasing number of people are accessing the web and email via their cell or smart phones not only to maintain constant contact with their friends, family and colleagues, but also to minimize downtime and remain productive and efficient within the workplace, outside of the workplace and throughout their daily lives.

It is well known that email has quickly become the most commonly used form of communication for business and personal usage, leading to a search for new and effective ways to retrieve it. The continuous advances in cell and smart phone technology have helped us progress in the development of business and productivity. Naturally, with such advances, the way we access the information we need changes.

Most everyday users accessing their email via their cell or smart phone, will usually access their web-based email applications via a webpage such as Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo Mail. These email applications are known to utilize a standard known as Post Office Protocol (POP3) which retrieves the users email from a remote server. Bear in mind, however, that POP3 technology is not exclusive to the aforementioned web-based email applications as it can be used with tools such as Outlook Express.

POP3 essentially supports users who have a temporary connection to the Internet. That is, they connect to retrieve their awaiting email and store them on their device as a new message, which in turn deletes them from the server and then disconnects them. The

Alongside POP3 technology, it is common to access email via Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP4). IMAP4 has the ability to support both online (connected) and offline (disconnected) operation, allowing the user to keep their emails synchronized on multiple clients until they purposely delete them. It is common for organizations who give employees remote access to their work email inboxes to utilize IMAP4 technology.

Both POP3 and IMAP4 are today’s widespread standard for email retrieval on the Internet and as such, modern email clients and mail servers are fully capable of supporting both of these protocols.

Webmail providers such as mail2web.com, offer POP3 and IMAP4 webmail services, enabling users to access their email from anywhere in the world whether it is Toronto, Beijing or London and allowing those who need to be in contact to remain so.

While both POP3 and IMAP4 protocols are effective and useful, the possibility of accessing your email and being alerted to new items requiring your attention, known as ‘Push Email’, is a reality that astute cell users are already using on their iPhones, Blackberries and other smart phones. Push Email can be achieved with a Microsoft Exchange based mailbox.

Essentially, an Exchange server aims to ensure that you remain in contact and in sync with others within your organization in a safe and secure environment, leaving you and your organization less vulnerable to malicious attacks from external sources.

Push Email allows your connection to be ‘always on’. As one great way businesses can improve in communication, the use of Microsoft Exchange through a Hosted Exchange provider offers the user a rich and efficient way access to your email, contacts, calendar and much more within the palm of your hand.

The real advantage of using Push Email through Exchange is that it can alert you, the user, immediately when a new email, task or calendar item arrives for you. The server will ‘push’ the item to you and in turn your cell or smartphone will notify you that you have a new item that requires an action.

Microsoft Exchange can turn your cell or smart phone into a virtual office, allowing you to access your data from anywhere in the world. Much like a POP3 or IMAP4 webmail service, yet it also makes email, document and contact management simpler and stress free. Its built-in collaboration functionality lets you share vital documents, tasks and calendar dates with your colleagues as well as with friends and family.

A Microsoft Exchange server puts you in control of your communications in a more direct and effective manner, literally putting communication in your hand. Push email, together with a Hosted Exchange mailbox allows you to stay in touch, be connected and productive in your downtime – whether it is riding the train to work or waiting for your flight at the airport or in line at the supermarket, Exchange enables you to access your email where you want it, when you want it.

In the long term, such increased efficiency and productivity leads to financial savings and greater return on investment. As such it can be tremendous for individuals and businesses of any size while personally allowing you more free time to be doing the things you would rather be doing.

Moreover, for businesses, another major advantage of implementing a Hosted Exchange solution is acquiring all of the functionality of the feature rich Microsoft Exchange environment without the uncertainties or problems commonly associated with having to maintaining your own servers and in-house infrastructure.

Web hosting organizations such as myhosting.com, can effectively help implement a Hosted Exchange email service to assist in increasing productivity and help provide the ability for organizations to maintain a focus on their core business.

By implementing a web hosting service like myhosting.com, it eliminates the stress associated with in-house set up, and helps to maintain costs within a set budget. As email continues to grow and develop into the most widespread form of communication, the demand for better usage, increased productivity and improved communication will continue by individuals and businesses alike.

By implementing such an effective tool today, you will leap to the forefront of being an effective, techno-savvy communicator all by simply having the world in your hand. How great is that?

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Exchange: the power behind Microsoft Outlook
2. Microsoft Exchange support arrives for T-Mobile G1
3. Microsoft Exchange & the Great Smartphone Boom

Xobni

Xobni is a free Outlook plug-in that makes searching and finding people and email faster and easier. It also let’s you organize your contacts automatically by company, title and more… The part I like the most about Xobni is that it gives you statistics about your contacts, like how many LinkedIn connections they have, how many emails you sent them, and so on. There’s also a full set of Xobni Analytics which gathers information about your email giving you lots of useful statistics. Give it a shot, you may like it.

Chilibase for Outlook

Chilibase is an assistant to manage your people in an extra Outlook panel. It’s ideal to monitor your conversations and people. You may see all the conversation history with a single click.

Missing Attachment

Have you ever forgotten to include an attachment to an important email? I often do.  This free application called Missing Attachment is designed avoid this needless embarrassment and helping you save time. All you have to do is adding alert words, such ‘attachment’ or ‘file’.

Sender’s Time Zone

If you are working and emailing contacts in multiple time zones, or different countries or continents, then you definitely need Sender’s Time Zone. If you open a message in Outlook, the plug-in shows the local time of the sender, difference from your time zone, as well as the time since the message was sent.

Advanced Folders Watch

Advaned Folders Watch is a powerful and flexible monitoring plug-in, which helps manage new emails and posts in Microsoft Outlook folders. This Outlook add-in watches the specified folder groups and informs you of new messages meeting certain criteria. It helps save your time by alerting you to only the emails you want to see, and improves he quality of work with clients.

Do you have any Outlook plug-ins that you find useful, or that you couldn’t live without? We’d love to hear about them!

And if you are interested in Outlook Add-ons and Plug-ins then stay tuned, we will have an interesting announcement for you coming up in the near future.

Related posts:

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2. Microsoft Exchange: the power behind Microsoft Outlook
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If you are a PC user, Entourage may sound foreign to you, but for Mac users it means a lot. You might think of Entourage as “Outlook for Macs”. Recently Microsoft announced the release of Service Pack 2. This update improves the stability and performance of Microsoft Office applications for Mac. It also includes new applications like Microsoft Document Connection which enables you to work with the files that are located on a SharePoint site or Microsoft Live Workspace.

This service pack has some critical updates for Entourage. It has an important file called Proxy auto-config (.pac), which supports proxy Network settings of automatically configured Mac OS X. The junk e-mail filtering definition file is also updated and improved. Finally this update adds support for automatically configuring POP access for new Windows Live Hotmail accounts in Entourage. For further information, you can check Microsoft’s Web site.

If you want to keep on top of your Microsoft Office updates more easily, you can use Microsoft AutoUpdate for Mac, which comes with Office. It keeps your Microsoft software up to date. If you set AutoUpdate to check automatically on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, it will automatically download critical updates and information directly to your computer.

Lastly, Microsoft is planning to release the “Entourage for Exchange Web Services” update. The Beta testing is already closed, but stay tuned for final release coming later this year. Entourage will finally use Exchange Web Services instead of WebDAV for better performance, reliability and compatibility. The update also improves email services and calendaring, synchronization for tasks, notes and categories. Some other features included in the update will be:

• Enhanced AutoDiscover service to keep user account settings up to date after the account setup.
• Synchronization between Exchange Server and Entourage 2008 Notes, Tasks, and Categories.
• Addition of an Enable Logging (troubleshooting) preference, to log all events that can be used as diagnostic information.
• Use of attachments in Entourage for Exchange calendar events.

You can read details from the Microsoft Web site or Officeformac.com.

We strongly suggest our myhosting.com Hosted Exchange Email and mail2web Mobile Email Pro users to download Service Pack 2 and enjoy the improvements.

Related posts:

1. Entourage 2008 Now Available for mail2web.com Business Exchange
2. Entourage 2008 EWS available and supported by mail2web.com
3. mail2web LIVE & Personal Exchange on Exchange 2007!

However as some of you may already know, Microsoft has recently made SharePoint Designer 2007 a free download. Now everyone is free to try SharePoint Designer with their SharePoint site and see what all the talk is about. If you you have a SharePoint 3.0 account with us, but haven’t yet tried SharePoint Designer, we recommend you give it a whirl. You can visit the SharePoint Designer site for more information, or proceed directly to the SharePoint Designer 2007 download page.

And even though we will no longer be mailing boxed software, we have decided to keep our SharePoint Designer promotion running. So if you haven’t tried SharePoint already, now is the perfect time to get started.

Thanks,

Tim Attwood
Product Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

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Commonly, this criticism traces back to the lack of proper Microsoft Exchange support on the device. Sure, you could always have your G1 log in and poll your Exchange mailbox using the standard IMAP4 e-mail protocol, but then you’ve sacrificed all the features that make consumers and corporations choose Exchange over simple e-mail: The integrated contacts list, the terrific calendar functionality, extra e-mail features, built-in security, and a first-class desktop application for when you are at your desk.

And who’s to say that criticism isn’t well warranted? With its full QWERTY keyboard rounding out the input options aside from the clickable trackball and touchscreen, the G1 was immediately considered to be a potential competitor to Research In Motion’s BlackBerry line of devices, which currently serve as the default mobile communicator for today’s workforce. A lack of Exchange support out of the gate soured many on the notion that their BlackBerries could finally be replaced with a new, more multimedia-capable, “fun” device. (Apple’s iPhone, while delivering “fun” in spades, never got more than a moment’s consideration due to its lack of a physical QWERTY keyboard.)

I’d like to say that the original reason I began to delve so deeply into this topic is that one of the key services we offer here at myhosting.com is Hosted Exchange Email, but that’s not true. The truth is, like most developers, I carry a device that allows me instant access to my work e-mail on the occasion that system issues arise that require a developer to resolve. For years a BlackBerry device served this decidedly unsexy purpose, but when on day one of the T-Mobile G1’s release we managed to snag one (despite our headquarters being located in Toronto, Canada), I was an immediate convert. I set my G1 to log in to my work e-mail every 30 minutes and attempted to wean myself off depending on my BlackBerry 8700g.

At first, I was only partially successful: The “pull” method of checking e-mail, coupled with the lack of access to my calendar and contacts, required me to hold on to both devices, even if the BlackBerry mostly resided on a desk at home. But as I began to explore the inroads on Exchange support for the Google Android OS via various web forums (Android Community being a standout), a solution emerged: NitroDesk’s TouchDown For Android and Exchange.

For starters, let me allow the people at NitroDesk to make their introduction in their own words:

TouchDown lets you access your corporate Email, Contacts and Calendar right from your Android-powered phone. Works with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003/2007 SP1 and with most online Exchange hosting providers.

With TouchDown, your office email, calendar and contacts are available right at your fingertips. You can choose how long to retain your email on your phone. You can choose to download ALL your Exchange contacts to TouchDown any time you want, but get all changes automatically every time you check your email.

You get quick access to your day’s agenda, optimized for viewing on your phone. You can choose to dismiss past events to simplify the view.

My first use of TouchDown left me with a conflicted view, as via it basic Exchange functionality did exist but was hugely limited. Today, however, a preview version TouchDown made available to paid customers (yes, TouchDown is not free, but we’ll get to that later) boasts the key feature that truly turns the T-Mobile G1 into a corporate-friendly device: Push e-mail via Microsoft ActiveSync. In layman’s terms, new e-mail is displayed on your G1 as soon as it’s received by your mail system. In my case, this meant that I no longer was made aware of important e-mail a half hour after its arrival in my mailbox.

My quibbles with the latest version of TouchDown are minimal: The user interface for the account configuration screens have a few buttons that are uncomfortably small to be pressed using the touchscreen. The lack of a “Select All” function on the e-mail view means I have to individually highlight each message I want to delete if I have a number of messages arrive at once. Lastly, the cost of the application, which I’ll discuss separately.

NitroDesk offers two flavours of TouchDown:

1. A free version, whose limitations are an Inbox-only view of e-mail with a history of one day, and read-only access to your contacts and calendar. You can download and install this version by searching for “touchdown” in the Android Market.
2. A paid version of the software, which costs $29.99 USD. This version gives you access to all of e-mail folders with a message history of as long as you’d like, full read/write access to your contacts and calendar items, and as of this writing, push e-mail via ActiveSync in the 2.0.000 preview copy of the software.

My customer support experience as a paying customer has, to date, been excellent, with even a mixup with billing on my end taken care of quickly (we mistakenly ordered two copies of the software while only needing one). NitroDesk’s developers also seem to be extremely open to input on bugs and features to be included in future releases.

As push e-mail functionality becomes official for TouchDown, I expect that more consumers and organizations that at first turned away from the T-Mobile G1 as an enterprise-ready mobile device to get on board – especially with the release of the G1 outside of the United States (1, 2) and more cell phone providers and developers get behind the platform.

To prove I’m putting my money where my mouth is, I’ll be saying goodbye to my BlackBerry for good as of today. I encourage other tech workers stuck with unsexy mobile devices to follow suit.

Sully Syed
Software Developer
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

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The concept of connecting people with similar interests in social networking sites allows friends to connect and interact together with various common web applications, such as photo albums, blogs and forums. The same concept can be extended to employees within a company or organization, allowing them to connect co-workers working on various projects or goals and interact with each other online. But the most popular social networks aren’t necessarily the most appropriate places to share confidential corporate information. Windows SharePoint Hosting has been around for years, and can offer a number of the features you’ll find in these social networking tools as well as offering a more appropriate location to store sensitive company information.

You can create password protected sites with accounts for each employee. The employees can then customize their personal profile, organize themselves into groups, departments, work groups, or project teams and then begin sharing. They can share and contribute using document libraries, blogs, forums, calendars, contact lists and even photo libraries. You can create sub-sites for specialized departments or teams with private versions of each application, customized for that group. There are even applications that allow you to create wikis, surveys and tasks. User and Group level permissions allow you to prevent access on various levels, ensuring that confidential information in one area is visible only to those who “need-to-know”.

And what about extending it further to customizable applications? There are some templates that have been pre-written, such as bug database, event planning, knowledge base, employee activities, new store opening, request for proposal, and even sports league. These are just a few examples, and this can be customized even further by the savvy administrator by creating a custom templates designed for a specific purpose,or even even custom web-parts and workflow elements within the template. You can also use SharePoint Designer to ever greater advantage of this powerful platform.

All of this can be especially useful if you have remote workers who you still want to contribute to or access to any of this information. And with a free 30 trial, why not try it out? All you need to get started are users that are ready to contribute.

Tim Attwood
Product Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

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Besides being a slightly useless thing to say, it occurred to me that email never was a killer app. A text message is a message. Rather it’s the tools used to manage messaging in combination with the protocol that makes for the better experience.

Truth is a lot of people I speak to don’t understand the difference between POP3 email, IMAP4 email and MAPI services. As a result, they don’t understand why Microsoft Exchange is so expensive (Microsoft Exchange email is based on MAPI) and so useful.

Let’s start with POP3. That’s the basic email that comes with most website hosting plans or is provided by your ISP or cable company. The most important thing to understand about POP3 is that your messages are stored on the email server until you access them through a common POP3 client like Outlook, Outlook Express or Eudora.

When you connect to your POP3 email account through one of these clients, all your unread email messages are downloaded to your local machine for you to read. They are removed from the server.

The one exception is checking your POP3 accounts through the mail2web.com email retrieval application (mail2web.com). This webmail application allows you to preview your messages, on almost any remote mail server , before they’ve been downloaded.

We get a lot of complaints from mail2web.com users who think we’ve deleted their emails. What actually happened was someone opened Outlook on their desktop and downloaded all their messages off a POP3 server.  Now those messages reside in someone’s office / home PC and can’t be easily accessed.

IMAP4 is different in that email is stored on the server. There is an added bonus of being able to create folders to manage your messages. When you connect to an IMAP4 account, the messages are not downloaded to your local computer but instead are previewed for you, recording what has been read and what hasn’t and allowing you to move messages to folders you created.

This is important as IMAP4 accounts give you the ability to access your email from multiple locations and computers and maintain a synchronized copy.

All the email accounts provided with hosting plans on myhosting.com are both POP3 and IMAP4 compatible. Apple’s iPhone uses the IMAP4 protocol for email syncronization which you can use with our Exchange hosting plans or our myhosting.com email acccounts.

But the killer app is Microsoft Exchange based on the MAPI protocol.  Okay,  I hate the term “killer app”… but it’s the best messaging platform on the market.  MAPI is an “aware” protocol and by that I mean it is constantly listening for changes on the server and then communicates those changes to you, however you are connected (browser, desktop, mobile device). If you are running Outlook with a full Exchange account (our Professional account) you don’t have to constantly click send and receive to see if you have new messages. Changes are pushed as they are recorded on the server.

Like IMAP4, all messages are stored on the server but Exchange also stores your calendar, contact, journal, tasks and much more. All this data is “aware” of changes and communicates those changes immediately. You can also share real-time data with others in your organization and collaborate in a way you could never do with POP3 or IMAP.

Of course all this enhanced functionality requires extensive hardware to support. While diskspace costs have gone down considerable in the past 5 years, even the best SCSI drives have a maximum rate at which they can read or write data.

Exchange hits this maximum quickly with very few active users. And that’s just one of the reasons why Microsoft Exchange is so much more expensive than POP3. Microsoft’s monthly license fees – charged directly to Exchange hosters – also adds to our costs.

But it’s still much less than what your business pays for phone service and in my opinion, just as important and effective for running an efficient business.

John Carthy
V.P. of Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Related posts:

1. Push email for POP3 and IMAP4 accounts
2. Microsoft Exchange: not all offerings are created equal
3. Microsoft Exchange: the power behind Microsoft Outlook

You can check them out here.

If you want to download our gadgets they can also be found here Vista Sidebar and the Google homepage.

Enjoy!

Stephen Nichols
Marketing Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

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