Office 2003 Tablet PC Update: Improved Ink Recognition (Dec 16)
For the lucky ones who own a Tablet PC (whoohoo!)
With this update you will experience improved ink recogition when using Microsoft Office 2003 on your Tablet PC.
Download: Office 2003 Tablet PC Update: Improved Ink Recognition
Microsoft Introduces MSN Toolbar Suite Beta With Desktop Search (Dec 14)
Microsoft Corp. today introduced a beta version of its new MSN® Toolbar Suite, with breakthrough desktop search functionality that helps consumers quickly find virtually any type of document, media file or e-mail message on their Windows®-based personal computer. Now consumers don’t have to spend valuable time sifting through an enormous amount of information; instead, they can quickly find precisely what they need. The integrated suite of tools streamlines the process of finding and acting on information from PCs by combining the ease of a Web search with the richness and power of the PC environment.
The free suite of MSN search tools, available now in the United States at http://beta.toolbar.msn.com, is the latest development in a comprehensive MSN Search service that helps consumers more quickly find precisely what they are looking for and gives them more control over their search experience. The new MSN Toolbar Suite includes an updated version of the popular MSN Toolbar for Microsoft® Internet Explorer and new toolbars that are conveniently accessible through Windows and Microsoft Office Outlook®. The new toolbars include the MSN Deskbar for the Windows desktop, MSN Toolbar for Microsoft Office Outlook and MSN Toolbar for Microsoft Windows Explorer.
View: Microsoft Introduces MSN Toolbar Suite Beta With Desktop Search
Update for Exchange 2003 (KB 883522) (Dec 6)
This update resolves problems that were found in the SMTP of Exchange 2003 since Exchange 2003 SP1 was released. Click the More Information About This Download link in the Related Resources section for a list of the fixes that are included in this update.
Download: Update for Exchange 2003 (KB 883522)
Exchange Server 2003 Operations Checklists (Dec 6)
The Exchange Server 2003 Operations Checklists provide guidelines for IT professionals to do disaster recovery tasks, and to perform the daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance tasks required to keep your Exchange server performing optimally. Use these checklists as is, or adapt them to suit your company’s specific needs.
Download: Exchange Server 2003 Operations Checklists
Offline Address Book Best Practices Guide (Dec 6)
This guide provides recommendations and best practices for deploying and managing offline address books with Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003. Whether you are deploying a new Exchange Server 2003 messaging system or upgrading from a previous Exchange version, this guide gives you best practice recommendations, including recommendations on how to optimize offline address book usage in a variety of scenarios. In addition, this guide addresses the most common issues that you may encounter when using offline address books.
Download: Offline Address Book Best Practices Guide
Solution Accelerator for Exchange Consolidation and Migration (Dec 6)
The Solution Accelerator for Exchange Consolidation and Migration helps you accelerate the design, planning, and deployment of Exchange Server 2003 messaging systems deployed as upgrades to, or replacements for, your existing Exchange Server 5.5 or Exchange 2000 Server messaging systems. Business agility and efficiency depend on messaging systems deployed by organizational IT operations; to deliver the required functionality, IT operations themselves must be able to quickly adapt to changing business requirements, then implement secure, efficient solutions to meet these requirements. These solutions require not only great technologies, but also efficient and effective operations with all application and system services driven by mature processes and delivered to the business at an acceptable cost.
Download: Solution Accelerator for Exchange Consolidation and Migration
Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool (Dec 6)
The Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer programmatically collects settings and values from data repositories such as Active Directory, registry, metabase and performance monitor. Once collected, a set of comprehensive ‘best practice’ rules are applied to the topology.
Administrators running this tool will get a detailed report listing the recommendations that can be made to the environment to achieve greater performance, scalability and uptime.
Download: Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool
Office 2003 Add-in: Microsoft Outlook SMS Add-in (MOSA) (Dec 6)
This download will enable you to send SMS text messages through most GSM mobile phones connected to your PC using Outlook 2003.
You can enter your SMS text within a Outlook-type entry form and have it sent to your mobile phone for delivery through your mobile phone network service. There is no requirement to install third-party software or to subscribe to additional mobile network services if your mobile phone can be connected to your PC. This is typically via an infrared connection, Bluetooth technology, or a USB/serial cable.
The SMS messages can be saved as a draft, grouped, and forwarded like standard Outlook 2003 e-mail.
Download: Office 2003 Add-in: Microsoft Outlook SMS Add-in (MOSA)
New Poll! (Oct 31)
Alright, I have been away from my own site for a while for various reasons but I’m back now! To start with; a new poll and the announcement of a new sponsor (see post below). The results of the old poll can be found here. Thanks to all who voted!
The new poll is; What is your primary connection type in Outlook? If for instance your default account at home is a POP3 account and at work an Exchange account feel free to vote both at home and at work.
For the ones questioning why I keep these polls; 1) to find out what to focus on when writing for my website. 2) just for my own fun and for anyone else’s who has always wondered these things 
New Sponsor; Bells and Whistles for Outlook (Oct 31)
I’m proud to announce a new sponsor for my website; DSDevelopment. They offer a discount for their great add-in Bells and Whistles for Outlook. This add-in adds lots of options to Outlook like;
automatically add greeting and name of sender when replying
always reply in HTML (or a different format of your choice)
add date and/or time stamp
always BCC
auto mail merge each BCC
blank subject alert
Auto-confirm Outlook warning messages
and many more…
To get a discount when ordering simply type in “394D7208” as the discount code when asked to do so. Please note that the discount code gets changed every month but I’ll post the latest code always in my Add-ins section.
View: Bells and Whistles for Outlook
Spam volume keeps rising (Sept 2)
Spam has accounted for 38 percent of the 31 billion e-mails sent each day in North America in 2004, up from 24 percent in 2002, the market researcher said. Improved content filtering and antispam tools will help fight the problem, as will the growing use of alternative communications means, such as video conferencing and instant messaging software.
The ever-increasing intrusion by spam is forcing users and IT staff to spend extra time and energy to identify and delete such spurious e-mail, which can be entry points for viruses, worms and offensive content.
E-mail is still the most preferred form of communication–business or otherwise–over the Internet. According to IDC, the volume of e-mail sent annually worldwide exceeded 1 exabyte , or 1 billion gigabytes, for the first time last year.
View full article: Spam volume keeps rising
Email management is growing concern (Sept 2)
Inefficient email management poses a huge threat to organisational effectiveness, according to analysts at the Butler Group. Information stored in emails makes up an increasingly large proportion of a business’s ‘knowledge capital’ even though it is not available to support decision-making.
Courts increasingly require emails to be produced as evidence in litigation, which only increases the amount of data to be stored. It is vital that businesses develop effective email management systems, including archiving key messages and allowing them to be retrieved as required, says Butler Group’s report published this week.
‘Email management must not be treated as a technology problem,’ says the report.
View full article: Email management is growing concern
FrontPage 2003, 2002, and 2000 Add-in Version 2: bCentral Commerce Manager (Sept 2)
This add-in provides you with all the tools you need to create, update, and manage a fully-powered e-commerce Web site. After you install the add-in, all you need to do is sign up for a Microsoft bCentral™ Commerce Manager account, create a product catalog, run the E-commerce Wizard, and customize your Web site to suit your needs.
Download: FrontPage 2003, 2002, and 2000 Add-in Version 2: bCentral Commerce Manager
InfoPath 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK) (Sept 2)
The Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK) is designed for solution providers (SPs), value-added resellers (VARs), and other developers who are interested in developing solutions with InfoPath 2003 and InfoPath 2003 Service Pack 1.
The InfoPath SDK includes documentation and samples that demonstrate development techniques for customizing and implementing InfoPath features, including integration with Microsoft Office Access 2003, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft SQL Server, XML Web Services, Component Object Model (COM) components, and ActiveX Data Objects (ADO).
Download: InfoPath 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK)
Visio 2003 Sample: 20 Sample Diagrams (Sept 2)
This download includes 20 sample Visio 2003 diagrams related to support and sales demos.
Download: Visio 2003 Sample: 20 Sample Diagrams
