Let's talk business

Google outage raises concern over hosted services

Yesterday's GMail outage marks the sixth downtime in eight months as reported by PCWorld. For businesses that rely on e-mail, a two and a half hour outage is clearly unacceptable. For some companies it's almost as bad as a power cut for two and a half hours. It's one reason that many companies are continuing to host their own mail rather than entrust it to a third party. I'm interested to hear from other businesses on this. How would your business be affected by a two and a half hour outage?

AutoCue - Improving presentation delivery

AutoCue, the most recent application from Softalk's iPhone app division is generating some good media interest. With such a crowded and competitive market, it's not often that an iPhone app comes along that is different from all the others, yet still offers a great benefit to its users.

AutoCue lets iPhone users focus on the delivery of their speeches or presentations, rather than worry about fumbling their words. Matthew Thompson provides one of the first "user" reviews in his blog.

Offline access to public and shared folders

We've had a lot of requests for the ability to access public folders and shared folders while working offline in Outlook when using Softalk Share Server.

Look out for the next version of Softalk Share Server (v1.3.2), coming soon, which will allow you to do exactly that, regardless of whether Outlook is configured with a default Softalk Share Server store, or a public folders only store.

Thes means, for instance, you can access a colleague's mail folder while offline, something that you can't do in Exchange.

If you've not yet discovered Softalk Share Server and you want to share Outlook folders, take a look at the Softalk Share Server product page. It gives you full native sharing of personal and public Outlook folders, without the cost and complexity of an Exchange Server.

Long-dead ORDB starts producing false positives

If you are still using ORDB as an anti-spam service you need to take action now. As of noon on March 25^th 2008, the long dead ORDB anti-spam service started returning false positives as a way to get sleeping users to remove the ORDB query from their spam filters. For more information, see http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/25/2124224&from=rss.

Old friends re-united by Softalk Mail Server

As a company we enjoy helping our customers to achieve solutions to their technical problems through our software products, but recently we managed to help someone in a completely unexpected way.

We received a phone call from a lady who had received an email from a long lost childhood friend that she met in an orphanage when she was a young girl. She had read the email but had accidentally deleted it, thereby losing the email address of her old friend.

What she did remember was that the message contained a disclaimer saying that it had been sent by Softalk Mail Server. She looked us up, and contacted us. We confirmed that her old friend was one of our customers and sent her message to him on her behalf. They are now back in touch.

Softalk Organizer in beta

Softalk Organizer 2.0 is now in beta and can be downloaded from here. Alternatively, why not try out Softalk Organizer online at http://www.softalkltd.com/organizer. Just enter the username guest with no password.

When we release the final version 2.0 of Softalk Organizer, it will work seamlessly with Softalk Share Server. This means that you will have access to your live Outlook data from within Softalk Organizer.

For example, if you send an email or add an appointment or change a contact from within Softalk Organizer, the change will instantly show up in Outlook, and vice versa. This includes any changes you make to colleagues folders or public folders that you have access to.

Softalk Share Server reviewed in Personal Computer World

Softalk Share Server has been recommended by the editors at Personal Computer World. It received an overall 4/5. For more details, see www.pcw.co.uk/personal-computer-world/software/2202379/softalk-share-server-3443671.

New Softalk Organizer imminent

We've been working hard on a new version of Softalk Organizer and are currently testing what is looking to be a nice version update. We've included come of the features you've been asking for, such as:

• Drag & drop
• Updated user interface based on AJAX
• Option to avoid popup windows

See below for a few screenshots of the new version. We anticipate this will be available within a couple of weeks.

Great Outlook add-ins

OK you're now using Softalk Share Server to share your Outlook folders across the team, but what other Outlook add-ins and utilities do you find useful? I've just come across a great, free one via Lifehacker. Outlook on the Desktop pins your Outlook calendar on your desktop as a semi-transparent layer. It's not just the calendar as you can also set it to display tasks, contacts, inbox or notes.

Technorati tags: Microsoft Outlook, calendaring, Softalk Share Server, Lifehacker

Office managers are the real VIPs

Some interesting research by Staples in the US confirms what many of us already knew - that in small businesses many office managers are very important people indeed. Far from being simply responsible for stationery and clerical work, many play a decisive role in areas such as human resources and information technology.

Office managers are definitely important in choosing small business software for collaboration and email, such as OfficeTalk and WorkgroupShare. They can also be some of the biggest beneficiaries as they are relieved of the burden of managing team diaries and multiple contact lists.

via Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends.

Technorati tags: small business, SME, SMB, office manager, Staples, IT, information technology, collaboration, diaries, calendars, email, contacts