Most all of my clients have either a BlackBerry or an iPhone. 
And almost all of them use Microsoft Exchange.  This is not going
to be a compare and contrast of who is better: the BlackBerry or
the iPhone.  Of couse the iPhone has ActiveSync integrated into the
OS if you have the Enterprise Data Plan from your Wireless
Provider.  But now there is an equalizer, AstraSync enters the
picture.  AstraSync allows for you to synchronize your BlackBerry
with your Exchange server without having to Install BlackBerry
Enterprise Server or its free counterpart.  AstraSync is like
ActiveSync for the BlackBerry.  It allows you to get and recieve
Exchange Email, it updates your calendar and your contacts, you can
flag messages and add attatchments.  Pretty slick if you ask me. 
Also, what I hear is that you do not have to upgrade your phone to
the Enterprise Data Plan to be able to use it.  You can just get an
unlimited data plan with your provider and away you go.  The
software costs $49 per year and is well worth it when you look at
your savings from not having to have an Enterprise Data Plan.  They
also offer a free trial so that you can get your feet wet with to
see if you really want it.  Just use the link below to give it a
try.

http://www.astrasync.com/

Here’s the situation.  I have a corporate email account on
hosted exchange (Microsoft BPOS) and this is my work email,
calendar, and contacts.  I also have a Google apps domain for my
personal email, calendar and contacts.  I am a Google voice user
and share my Google apps calendar with my wife.  It is essential
that these calendars and contacts are the same.  I also have an
iPhone that uses the exchange active sync connection and have to
Goggle apps account setup for email only.

In the dark days of owning my blackberry, I tried to sync
everything using the Google app on the phone.  The results were
disastrous.  I had to undo the sync and restore from a backup.  I
also received errors all the time saying that the contacts and
calendar were being synched by another program (Enterprise
activated) and could not complete or a duplicate would be created.
 

This time around, I said that I need the application to reside
my desktop to handle the issue.  I searched and searched for
something free to do this but could not find it.  Add to the
complexity that I am running office 2010 x64 edition.  This only
further narrowed my options.

After searching for a while, I found Gsyncit. (http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/).
 I read all about it and decided it was going to do everything I
wanted it to.  The app is $14.99, but very much so worth every
penny.  It took about 10 minutes to setup, and then I had some
de-duplicating to do in contacts because the contacts between
Google Apps domain and Outlook were already out of sync from me
manually doing it when I remembered to.  The de-duplication process
to about 20 minutes.  I have almost 300 contacts so not to bad.

But here’s where I ended up after my $14.99 purchase and 30
minutes of work.  All contacts and calendars are synched between
the two accounts.  If I make a change on my phone while I am on the
road, it gets updated to corporate exchange.  Then when I get back
to the office, I load Outlook and all those changes are synched
back to the Google side.  I can also accept invitations from either
of my accounts in any method I want.  Then changes are synched
later when Outlook is loaded on my desktop.  Finally, since all my
contacts are in sync, Goggle voice calls are very rarely unknown
callers any more and I am no longer required to press 1 to accept
the call of an unknown caller.

To be a complete nerd for a little bit, I have been trying to
accomplish this for a very long time.   I have seen Gsyncit for a
while but really didn’t want to pay $14.99.  It has been a
frustrating uphill battle to get these all in sync but now that
they are, I feel major satisfaction.  

I WANT an e-book reader and I must have one!  I am tired of all
the books I buy and having to keep up with them.  I have broke down
my thoughts and would love any comments to help me finally
decide.

Kindle 

The kindle with its low price has me wanting to go that
direction more than any other.  I know what type of books I like to
read and amazon book store has most of the titles available for the
Kindle.  The e-ink and battery life of the new generation is very
attractive.  The big downside, I don’t get all the cool features of
the iPad.  Apps, web surfing and so on.

Nook

In my opinion, I feel like this is a very similar product to the
Kindle.  Barnes and Nobles saw the success of the Kindle, tweaked
and added some features and called in Nook.  To me, there just does
not seem to be enough originality to make me want to chose one over
the other.  Additionally, when I searched the BN site for books I
like to read, less were available for the nook than the Kindle.  I
welcome someone to prove me wrong on this one and bring up some
points I have missed.

iPad

Total awesomeness.  I want it!  But wait, reports I have read
say two things bad.  1. it’s not that great of a platform to read
books on.  2. because of the light it emits, the iPad is more like
watching TV than reading a book.  Meaning that my sure fire way of
getting sleepy, reading, now is going to keep me awake.  Apple’s
selection doesn’t seem to be that great right now (at least for the
books I like to read).  But it is Apple, that will change.  I can’t
remember that last time I bought music anywhere but iTunes.  We all
know Steve Jobs wish is for the same thing to happen with books and
media in general.  We are now saying, “what’s a CD?”, but Steve
Jobs wants us saying “What’s a book” or “What’s a Magazine”.    
 

Wrapping it up

What’s makes this the hardest for me to decide is that I am
cheap.  I want to be a cool kid and have an iPad.  But it’s the
most expensive option. My other issue in general is that a recent
report shows that people read much slower on the “ebooks” than real
paper.

Microsoft is trying to kill public folders and make everyone go to SharePoint.  As far as mobile access to SharePoint went, it was rather bad.  Text only or a really small screen of the SharePoint page. Today I needed a way to make SharePoint pretty on an iPhone.  Basically more elegant than the text only version.  After some research, I found Moshare.  http://moprise.com/

Right now the program is free to download and use via the App Store.  I downloaded, installed and configured in under 10 minutes.  

The drawback I see is that all information is read only.  Which, let us be honest, if you are using your iPhone to access the site, do you really want to do more than read the info?  

I had a client contact me recently about email encryption.  I new already that there were 3 ways to go about this:

1. You can use a service that manages the encryption.
2. Install an encryption gateway at your office.
3. Or install a desktop app that you have to manage public and private keys for.

This is a necessity for many that send sensitive email because once an email leaves your organization it is no longer encrypted. 

Example 1:  You have hotmail account and you email a yahoo account: the email is not encrypted once it leaves hotmail’s servers.  and visa versa.

Example 2: You have an Exchange Server in your organization and you email another company out there that has an Exchange server by default these messages are not encrypted either. **

While I was updating my pricing list for different services to recommend, I found a very compelling new service:  http://www.sendinc.com

The service does not store any of your data.  You go to the main page which has the email form on it.  After you type in your email address they require you to register.  You then create your message and choose who you want to send it to.  You can attach as much as 10 Megabytes of attachments.  The message is encrypted and then attached to an email that is emailed to the recipient.  So the message is no longer stored at Sendinc.  When the end user opens the website attachment the data is uploaded to the website and decrypted there.  All data transmissions are RSA SSL encrypted (1024 Bits).  Even if you forward your email to someone else they cannot read it.  It has to be opened from your email.

I give this web app two enthusiastic thumbs up!

**You can create a site to site encryption in Exchange server between different email domains but that is beyond the scope of this post and would be time consuming for managing the certificates between any domain and all the domains that you would want to encrypt your email between.

Do you think The Strickland Group has or is helping your business
by managing the Information Technology side of your business?  Do
you know other companies that could benefit from our services?  If
so, recommend us to your friends, colleagues, and business
partners.  The Strickland Group is offering $250 for each referred
new client that signs and enters into a new Managed Service Contract.

This money can be paid directly to an individual, credited to
your monthly bill, or it can be given to a non profit / charity of
your choice in your name.

Have your friend, colleagues and business partners call or
contact us.  Be sure they mention who referred them to The Strickland Group.

info@stricklandnetworks.com

(817) 224-2020

I have switched all my person email to a Google Apps account.  I
wanted the email control and the customized domain.  Only problem
was that I couldn’t use most of the other Google products.  In
particular: blogger, picasa, and voice.

I searched for some time trying to figure out how to do this.
 Nothing useful was coming across my screen.  I accidentally
discovered how to do what I so desperately wanted Google to do when
I was trying to setup adsense.  

Here’s how you do it:

Create a new Google account.  Here is the link. 

https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount.
 

Use your Google Apps domain email address and follow
instructions.  Once complete / confirmed, you can use most of the
Google products.

Bonus tip:

If you want to transfer your Google voice account from your
Gmail.com account to your Google Apps domain, click this link.
 

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cjlWRDFTWERkZEIxUzVjSmNsN0ExU1E6MA.
 

You must complete the Google account setup first though.

Disclaimer: not every bank has this setup yet,
my bank just happens to be leading the pack.  

I got my iPhone 4 about three weeks after it had been released.
  I am finally one of the cool kids and I do not have a blackberry
or windows phone anymore.  I installed my banking app and
remembered someone telling me that their app allowed depositing of
checks via the app by taking pictures.  Honestly, I thought this
was the most useful thing to do with the camera and the iPhone in
general.  

I get expense checks from time to time that are not direct
deposited and my bank has no local branches.  Previous to the
iPhone app, I had another bank locally, and I had authorized wire
transfers between the two.  But this still required me driving a
ways, depositing the check and then transfer the funds.  iPhone app
comes along and this is not a problem any more.  I choose mobile
deposit and take a picture of the front and back (which is signed
with and labeled for deposit only into my account).  Funds are
available immediately.  

To me, this is a game changer and should send banks into
examining why they have so many branches when a smart phone could
do a bulk of deposits for individuals.  Commercial deposits, well,
not every solution is a good fit to every problem.   

My definition of CLOUD:  The most over used buzz word of recent
times.  Putting that aside, some IT solutions just fit better with
someone else hosting and maintaining that part of your business.
 Today, I am focusing on email.  

Money: Yes, money talks.  You can host email
offsite for as little as $4.17 / month / user and a maximum of $10
/ month / user.  This isn’t with some fly by night company either.
 We are talking about Microsoft and Google.  Let’s case study a
company with 30 employees needing to upgrade their email server and
say that the company replaces equipment precisely every 4 years.
 Option 1: Purchase new server and replace.  Cost: Approximately
$7500.  (Server + Software + Licensing) .  Option 2: Google apps
domain: Yearly cost $1500 and total cost over 4 years is $6000 plus
initial setup (man hours). Option 3: Microsoft hosted exchange:
Yearly cost of $1800 and total cost over 4 years $7200 plus initial
setup (man hours).  Option 4: Microsoft BPOS: Yearly cost of $3600
and total cost over 4 years $14400 plus initial setup (man
hours).

With the last 3 options, the best news is that after the first
four years, your company is purchasing new equipment.  You continue
to pay your monthly fee and upgrades and improvements are added to
your hosting solution in the cloud with out any intervention from
your IT staff.

Maintenance:  I am in no way saying the cloud
is maintenance free, but I am saying that your IT staff will spend
much less time maintaining the email hosted in the cloud once the
initial setup is done.  Think of this, the burden of backups,
uptime, equipment and so on is now rolled up into a nominal fee you
are paying.  

Reliability: Service Level Agreement!  What
would it cost your company to place a redundant email system to a
data center that offered very high speed internet and redundancy.
 I have recently priced this and $20k – $30k for hardware alone.
 Add on a $500 – $1500 monthly fee for the data center and
internet.  All this exercise was to get your SLA up to 99.9%.  Or,
when you buy a hosted solution, it comes with that SLA bundled in
you low recurring fee. 

Eat our own Dog Food: Not only do we recommend
these solutions, but we use them too. Our corporate email is hosted
with Microsoft BPOS.  Personally, I have a Google apps domain for
my family.  I like both products and they both are reliable and
quality products.  

Ready to buy yet?   If this peaked you’re
interest and you are ready to switch, give Strickland Networks a
call.  Not only can well help you chose the right solution, we can
help you implement it as well.

The other night I was up late (imagine that), and I was
tinkering with my phone and some possible cool apps.  I came across
one of my all time favorite apps, QIK for my Blackberry.  QIK is
really a website, www.qik.com,
that allows you to stream live video from your video camera enabled
cell phone.  I live streemed this video from my Phone and then it
was automatically Published to the site.  You can also mark videos
as Private, share them with specific people, or publish to several
social networking websites. Your Live Streams are also
archived.

If you are also interested in finding out more about the
RoomAlert, check my blog or subscribe to the RSS feed.  I Should be
posting about it soon.

Very Cool!