I have been asked a few questions about the Services from Mimecast in relation to their file attachment and extension filtering.

I hope that these are adequate answers for the questions:

However I am sure that Mimecast have a more than suitable FAQ on their website.

Q: If I rename the file extension of a jpg to mdf or something will it still be blocked?

A: Yes, regardless of the file extension Mimecast will look at what is inside the file. We used to use Mailsweeper and it did exactly the same thing.

Q: If I put several jpg files into a zip file will it get through?

A: No, Mimecast will scan the zip file and if your policies do not allow jpg or image files then the files will be stripped from the attachment, even if you rename the jpg extension, they will still not get through.

I also received the latest Outlook Connector yesterday which addressed the problems that people were having in Vista with UAC enabled. The temp folder that was originally located in C:\Program Files\Mimecast\Connector is now located with in the users profile. This also adds an extra layer of security  if it is kept within the Profile.

I am still wondering if there is a way to configure the Outlook Connector through pulling the info through AD as having to configure for 270 will be a bit of a pain.

OK so I have been using the Mimecast Outlook Connector for some time now, however I had to re-install my laptop (well I chose to). so I installed Vista on there and then threw Office 2007 on there. after I had got everytihg else that I needed on there I then installed the Mimecast Outlook Connector.

The install was the same as before required the C++ Runtime libraries, nothing was different. I configured it to use my settings and then re-started outlook.

Once I had re-started outlook I went to my Mimecast Folder and opened up an email... ...it only showed part of the email and that was displayed as plain text.

After speaking with Mimecast and sending screen shots etc.... they then asked me if I had the User Access Control enabled.... the penny dropped, last time I installed the update on my old build on my laptop I had the UAC disabled as I needed to disable it to install PHP, and since then The Mimecast Outlook Connector could work the way it should.

It turns out that it is something to permission access to a cache folder that is located in "C:\Program Files\Mimecast\Connector\cache". I uninstalled the connector and then disabled UAC on my laptop and then installed the connector, configured and tested... it worked! so thought I would enable UAC...

Rebooted after enabeling UAC and logged into Outlook and tested it was back to plain text again.

My next thought was permissions so I set the users user group of the laptop to ful control to that specific folder in Program Files. closed Outlook, went back in and it worked. So it is safe to say it is a security conflict in Vista preventing the display of formatted emails using the Mimecast Outlook Connector.

After speaking with Mimecast some more they are looking at having that cached folder stored within the profile which will avoid these security issues.

But again so far I have nothing but praise for the guys at Mimecast still thinking it is a great product and the support is second to none.

I recently went through the process of restoring one of my Domain Controllers and one of my Exchange Servers.

Once I had restored the Exchange Server I had to run an ESEUTIL /P on all my Mailstores in order for them to mount. I started with the Dept Heads Mailstore.

I then noticed that I was getting a lot of MSExchnageSA Errors in the event log.

I then tried mounting the Mailbox Store in the First Storage Group, but was unable to as I had not run the ESEUTIL /P on that database. once run (which took very little time as all it houses is the system mailbox) I mounted that Store and the errors seemed to stop coming in.

So I guess that it was linked to the System Mailbox not being mounted (makes sense after all).

So I know in the future that that Mailbox is the first to be mounted.

Like my previous post, there was another nice utility that I used frequently in XP that enabled you to open a command prompt from what ever folder you were browsing in Windows Explorer. To my astonishment, this utility had actually been included in Windows Vista.

if you press the shift key and right click on the folder that you want to open up and command prompt from you have the option to Open Command Prompt Here:

It also works on mapped network drives too.

Windows XP had some neat little toys (called Power Toys) that you could download from Microsoft for free, one of which was the Image Resizer. This cool toy gave you the option to resize an image just by right clicking on it. I found I used it quite a lot, I then installed Vista on my PC's, which was all good until I needed to resize an image. I had to go through the process of installing something like Fireworks (trial edition) and then opening the image and resizing from with in there, again all good till my free trial expired.

I came across another free utility that did exactly what Image Resizer for XP did from VSO Software: VSO Image Resizer

Once installed you can right click on the image and click on VSO Image Resizer

And its that simple. It is free for personal use, however like a lot of things if you want to use it commercially then you will need to purchase it.

OK so I have had the previous skin up and running for a week, I had tweaked it to include my Google Adsence and other controls and then I got sent number 2 out of Si's three skins that are in development.

He sent me this one mid last week but I held off till today to use it. And yes I have to go through it all again to add my Adsence and AddThisPost.ascx control etc... but shouldn't take too long.

Any way I have now gone from this: (Leia in English)

To this: (CopyBlogger)

If you want more information about either of the skins then I would recommend you go to www.siphilp.co.uk and you can download both skins from there and also find out a bit more about them.

I hope to have this one updated in the next few days, as I did promise Si that I would hold "hacking" it for a wee while. At the moment as much as I did like the Leia in English I do prefer the CopyBlogger.

Smartphones are becoming more and more popular in businesses today along with the blackberries. If you have an Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Environment then you can take advantage of the Exchange Mobility feature, which enables your users with smartphones to sync their email, contacts and calendars. If you have an Exchange 2003 Enterprise Server Environment with Exchange Service Pack 2 then you can take advantage of not just syncing Email, Contacts and Calendars but SP2 Enables the following:

• Direct push is a new Exchange technology that maintains an open connection between the mobile device and the server. When new items arrive, they are automatically "pushed down" to the device.
• Remote wipe is a new feature that enables administrators to delete sensitive data from a lost or stolen mobile device. The administrator receives an acknowledgement that the device has been wiped after the task has been completed.
• Global address list (GAL) lookup enables users to receive contact information for users in the global address list from a mobile device. This feature helps users search for a person quickly, based on name, company, and so on.
• Policy provisioning allows administrators to make supported policies, such as device passwords, more secure by enforcing them in one of two modes:
• Allowing only devices that have policies to synchronize (Windows Mobile 5.0 and Microsoft Feature Pack)
• Allowing all devices, including older devices, to synchronize
• Support for certificate-based authentication
• Use of S/MIME to sign and encrypt mail
• Server-based synchronization of Tasks

If you have a Mobile Device that supports email and you want to sync your personal email or in fact your work email and you do not have Exchange Mobility or any other push/pull option in place, then www.emaoze.com is your answer.

I put a post up on my blog, before I had all the problems with my database and wiped it about emoze, however since then there have been some changes in it. Before the version I was using would only alow me to sync one of two ways:

1. Install the emoze client on the phone and on my desktop and leave outlook open, as an email comes in it is also delivered to my mobile phone. (which was the option I was using as I was using it for my kemponline email.
2. Install the emoze client on your phone and sync it with your Outlook Web Access (OWA).

The version now also has support for Lotus Notes and also GMail which is a winner for me as I recently migrated my kemponline MX Record to Google Apps so my email is not hosted by GoogleMail.

I installed the client on my phone and set it all up and it connected to my GoogleMail no bother. I sent my self a test email from my work account and with in 15 seconds I had received it on my phone. The best thing was, when I replied to it the email I sent was sitting in my sent items on GoogleMail.

I have to say I was very impressed with it all and how it works. I am just intrigued on how it actually works as it is not really a push solution is it??? as the client is polling the server continuously. It will be interesting to see how the battery life on the phone copes with the phone constantly connected to the GPRS network.

OK so Si Philp asked me to try out the latest skin he was working on yesterday, so I uploaded it to my site and set it up as my skin. Today he sent me the latest version that he was working on which included the search facility and also had some minor things ironed out in it.

It was easier to update the entire skin folder rather than just copy the controls he had modified. So I copied the files up and then edited the ones I had changed yesterday. So here is the 2nd revision of Leia in English Skin.

I am working on a few other bits and pieces in the skin, like getting the comment preview to work etc... but other than that it is mainly cosmetic stuff, like where to place the adds etc....

So again if there is anything that you think might make the skin better please comment and I'll forward it on.

As mentioned in my previous post I quite liked my old skins as I incorporated random header images. This was done by a simple aspx file called RandonHeader.apsx funnily enough!

What this file does is it looks in a folder that I specify for jpg images and will set one of those images as your header image on a page load.

The script is shown below. I originally had it running as a php page (if you want a copy of that please let me know.

The only real issue with this is that it needs to be a physical directory that the images are called up from. I tried to use http://www.kemponline.co.uk/images/headers but it did not work. I am guessing if you enable directory browsing to the specified folder it might work, but I only have the option to enable directory browsing at the top level.

<%@ Page Language="C#"%>
<script runat="server">
    
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        System.IO.DirectoryInfo di = 
	new System.IO.DirectoryInfo(@"D:\wwwroot\images\headers\");
        
      
        System.IO.FileInfo[] rgFiles = di.GetFiles("*.jpg");      

       int iCount = rgFiles.Length;

        Random random = new Random();
        int iRan = random.Next(0, iCount);
        //Response.Write(di.GetFiles(iRan).ToString());
        Response.ContentType = "image/jpeg";
        Response.WriteFile(@"D:\wwwroot\images\headers\" + 
	rgFiles.GetValue(iRan).ToString());
                 
    }  
</script>

So any way if you copy and paste this into an aspx file and then change the path to that of your images path on your hosting you should have an up and running random header image on page reloads/refresh.

OK so my themes have been pretty boring I guess never really ventured out to something exciting, Well Si Philp has been developing some new themes see his post: 3 Subtext Themes in the works.

He has got a beta version of Leia English by Kapikua up and running and asked if I would like to try it out. So I thought why not! lets give it a go. The basic skin was pretty good, however the one thing I did like about my previous skins was my rotating header image, so I thought why not modify this skin to include that (after all it is only a change in the styles.css). so that was the first change I did.

The images I used in my rotating header image this time were images from the Header Pack http://www.kapikua.com/theme-leia-en/ the reason being was my images were not the right width or length for this skin.

I have also added in a few other controls to this skin such as the AddThisPost.aspx and my AdvertLinks.aspx. I also have tried to get my LightBox working on it too, so  far I have managed to get the LightBox to work partially (the background does not go dark) so I am currently looking into this. I hope to have it up and running soon.

So anyway watch this space to see any more updates. If you think of anything else that you think maybe worth putting into this then please comment on either mine or Si Philp's Blog.

I have promised Si that I will not brake it but, this is me so there is no promising that, I have however made a backup of it now, so I can revert back to it. Hope to have some more exciting stuff added to it soon.

So in response to my previous post I changed my MX records and things went a lot more smoothly than they did before. I was running with my email from Google in next to no time. They say give your MX records time to change but in all honestly DNS changes and the like these days is pretty quick.

So I configured my iPod touch to connect to a Google Mail account, connected to a wireless network and there we go! Email on my iPod.

Obviously the iPhone would be better as it could connect over 3G or what ever the data transfer is these days, but for me this is more than enough.

So the next thing on my agenda is to see what else Google Apps has to offer.

That is the question????

when I first started playing around with my blog engine and really started using my kemponline.co.uk domain I looked at Google Apps. One of the reasons I looked at it was the fact that you get 6GB allocated to you for email. In order to take advantage of the email you will need to register your domain name with Google Apps and then add the email services to your list of used Services. Then once you have done that and the Google servers have updated you will need to re-point your MX records to Google. This is where I went wrong last year!

Once the Google Apps service has updated you will be given the details that you need to pint your MX Records to. My mistake last year was I was modifying  my MX Records on www.123-reg.co.uk as that is who my domain was registered with. However my Domain is Hosted on helm. I did have a look on helm but I could not see anything in my control panel for DNS management, but it is there now.

So basically my kemponline email wasn't working for 2 days last year. note really an issue but still none the less was with out email. I eventually got it up and running and had my kemponline email running from Google Mail.

So I have decided to take the plunge again. I am going to see if I can get my email running from Google Mail again. Partly because the 6GB of space allocated is handy, but also so I Can sync my iPod touch with my email when connected to a wireless network. I tried setting up to connect with my default smtp and pop3 settings but it didn't like it. as there was an option on the iPod for gmail I thoguht I would jsut try it.

So here goes set up my user account on Google Apps all I need to do now is change my MX Records.....

I got an email yesterday from the beta team at Mimecast letting me know that there was an update for the Outlook connector. The upgrade is very straight forward, install it over the top of your existing installation. So I installed it and then opened outlook and went in to my Mimecast account.

The first thing I noticed was that where before I was seeing the emails as plain text, now I was actually seeing the emails as a formatted email.

There have been a few other tweaks on the connector such as an option to send through Mimecast even when exchange is online.

I have to say I am very impressed with Mimecast on the whole, this Outlook Connector is the icing on top.

One thing I am not too sure yet and will ask Mimecast is when rolling out is there a way to configure the Mimecast account on the users profile automatically? we are a pretty small sized company of just 270 users but having to configure 270 Mimecast accounts will prove to be a bit tedious and time consuming. I'm guessing that there must me a registry key you can import/export? and then the users just input their password? If there is anyone who has any ideas on this or wondering the same thing please leave me a comment.

I started to play around with Exchange 2007 on my windows 2003/2008 domain. As my Windows Server 2003 DC had Exchange 2003 installed I thought I would try installing Exchange 2007 on the Windows Server 2008 DC.

I Managed to get the install under way with little problem.

I started to write a How To guide for the migration process but I found a very good guide on the web on www.msexchange.org.

This guide I found very useful although I can fumble my way round the exchange system it was handy to have some sort of guide line to follow. IT also mentions about public folders and how to set up the replica's and so on.

Here are the links to the 3 part guide on transition from Exchange 2000/2003 to Exchange 2007.

• http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Transitioning-Exchange-2000-2003-Exchange-Server-2007-Part1.html
• http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Transitioning-Exchange-2000-2003-Exchange-Server-2007-Part2.html
• http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Transitioning-Exchange-2000-2003-Exchange-Server-2007-Part3.html

Once I completed part 3 I was left with a Windows Server 2003 DC that I no longer need. SO the next thing in my testing is to Transfer/Seize the FSMO roles onto my Windows Server 2008 DC and then demoting the Windows Server 2003 DC.