Hotmail in your Outlook

Found this on the Microsoft download site

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector

If your using Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 then you can connect to your Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) account via Outlook.

This was something i used to do years ago with Outlook Express but the functionality was disabled after account misuse. If you had a paid for account you could still do it but i didn’t think it was worth the cash

According to the download page you can do the following

Outlook Connector Beta enables you to use your Live Hotmail accounts within Outlook:

• Read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages.
• Manage your Live Mail Contacts.
• Use advanced options for blocking junk e-mail messages.
• Manage multiple e-mail accounts in one place.

With a paid subscription, Outlook Connector Beta enables these additional features:

• Manage, share, and synchronize your Windows Live Calendar in Outlook.
• Access your Tasks and Notes.

I’ve just installed it and adds your live mail as another mailbox in Outlook. It then does a send/receive and it just looks like normal Outlook email. This is going to be a big time saver for me. I love having web accounts i can access anywhere but i hate having to go check my hotmail. For my gmail acccount i have a Vista sidebar gadget that tells me when i have new mail and my exchange/pop3 accounts are setup in Outlook so Hotmail was the missing piece.

Go check it out!

Moving office

Filling the van
Originally uploaded by Andy Parkes

The office move went well over the weekend.
It was very hard work but we managed to get it all done so we were up and running on Monday morning

Only strange part was the BT engineer who was supposed to be moving our phone lines and ADSL

After lots of messing around on the Friday where he appeared to not be doing an awful lot he arrived on the Saturday morning and around lunchtime declared that our fax line was ok but he wouldn’t be able to get the main line (which is also the broadband line) working until Monday morning and promptly disappeared (after much grumbling by ourselves!)

After we got our servers up and running i noticed the status light on our router was a healthly green
I booted my PC and sure enough our ADSL was working fine. I checked the phones and all our lines were good for inbound and outbound

We just presumed he’d sorted it after he left

Around 10.30 we realised the phones had been pretty quiet and it was then we found out the main line had been cut off. A quick phone call discovered that the engineer was at the telephone exchange.
We explained what was happening and he said

“I don’t know why that is then”

We told him to put it back as it was and ten minutes later everything started working again.

Does this sound like a familar telephone engineer story or was i just really unlucky?

I’ve added a picture of one our many van loads which shows off everything i need to work at the moment….tea, a chair and my PC!

Windows Mobile 2003 Not Syncing Correctly?

I posted a while back about how i was having problems making changes to my email folder selections since making the upgrade to Vista.

Nothing helpful other than

“There is a problem with your connection. Please disconnect and reconnect
your device and try again” 

I noticed in several places last week that the Mobile Device Center had a new release so thought i’d check it out

New features are:

• Windows Mobile 6 feature support

  • Information Rights Management activation – Automatically configure the Windows Mobile 6 device to open IRM-protected documents and files

  • HTML mail – Set up your Windows Mobile 6 device to sync HTML-formatted mail

  • Certificate Enrollment – Acquire certificates through the PC the Windows Mobile 6 device is currently connected to

  • Allow data connections on the Windows Mobile 6 device when connected to the PC

  • File synchronization for smartphones – Synchronize files with your Windows Mobile 6 devices, including both touch screen and non-touch screen devices

• Automatic device authentication – Connect the Windows Mobile device to the PC without the need to enter the device-lock PIN every time upon connect
• Product Registration – Register your Windows Mobile device and get connected to information and offers available for your device

I’m pleased to report installing the latest version solved my problem!

I was able to select the email folders i wanted to sync and it saved without any fuss. The bonus for this is if i leave my Outlook 2007 open i can now get my rss feeds while i’m on the go!

I’m still not sure why it was doing this but i’m glad it’s resolved now

Download it from here 

There Goes The Weekend

We’re moving to bigger premises and we get started tomorrow morning and keep going till we’re done.

Guess what i have planned for my weekend     

I’m actually really excited as it’s a milestone for all the hard work we have put in over the last two years and we’re seeing the payback in the company growing. We also have an offer in to someone for a techie position and hoping he’ll say yes…i don’t fancy having to find someone else!

I also booked my 70-282 exam for next Wednesday so hopefully we’ll be all official on the Small Business Specialist front by the end of next week

What Is Popfly?

Just following on from my previous popfly posts (here and here)

If you dont “get” what Popfly is i found a really good explaination on Sriram Krishnan’s blog.

Sriram has recently joined the Popfly team so i’ll be keeping an eye on his blog..check it out yourself