In order to physically get on to the consoles of my Servers I have a 15" 1U Rack Mounted Dell Monitor with Keyboard and Mouse, plugged into an HP IP KVM. So when I put in the Dell Open Manage Server Assistant 5.2 CD into my Dell Server you would think that it is all go from there? Well no, in fact its a case of Monitor says "no". For some reason once it has loaded the Linux Kernel and then goes into the graphical user interface the Dell Monitor displays Out Of Sync. Not very handy really. when I an on the console of one of my HP Servers and want to install it and use the smart start it seems to be quite happy and displays all the graphical user interface. So I thought I'd take the HP IP KVM out of the equation, but no it still did not want to display the graphical setup screens.

My next test was another monitor, plugged directly into the server, it worked so I thought how about if that monitor is plugged into the HP IP KVM? and.... yes it worked. So the problem boiled down to something with in the Server Assist CD and resolution settings and frequencies.

Today I downloaded the latest Version 5.3 and Dell seemed to have rectified the issue I can now stand at the console on the server and Install it, however I could just do what I did before and sit at my desk and use the HP Console Viewer software to manage the HP IP KVM.

The actual config of the server using 5.3 is still very similar to 5.2, it looks slightly different but other than that I guess the updates are in the back of the Install for things like Drivers etc....

The one thing that Dell have not yet done and what HP have been doing on their Smart Start since 7.4 I think is included an option to obtain the Windows Source Files from a network share. I found that added option with HP really useful as I could point it to our server with a folder shared out for Windows Server, rather than finding a Windows CD or having to burn another CD.

I recently put a post up regarding the Mobility side of things with Mimecast and setting up outlook express/windows live mail to access your work email on the Mimecast Towers.

So after seeing this work on the PC I thought I'd give it a go on one of our smartphones. so I configured it to use my work email address and AD Password and set the smtp and pop3 servers to one of the service towers we use. Hit the send and receive and it worked like a charm. This actually could have proved very usefull the other week as we had a power cut, some unfortunate person cut through a mains cable on the building site across the road from our office and cut power to all buildings in the area and our UPS's only give us about 30 minutes of power to the servers so we had to shut them all down, which meant although the smartphones could connect to our front end Exchange Server which is located in Harrogate it then could not talk to the Back End Exchange Server which was in Edinburgh. So with this neat feature of Mimecast our mobility users could have still stayed up to date with their email.

The next thing that we are looking at with Mimecast is the Marketing Advantage and the possibility of branding our out going emails.

I have been using an Orange SPV C500 Smartphone for a couple of years now, I like the functions of the phone and it isn't too big or bulky and it syncs up with my computer fine. The phone I got was one of the spares that we had at work and I unlocked it so I could use my O2 SIM in it. However 3 or 4 years on now my phone was beginning to look a bit scratch and knocked about so about time to replace it. However the Other C500 I had was not unlocked.

I found the site I used before to unlock my phone, however it required you to be able to to connect to the Internet on the phone with orange prior to unlocking as there are some registry changes you need to make on the phone so you can run an unassigned installer.

So my predicament is I have a Smartphone that is locked to orange but do not have an active Orange SIM.

I found this blog which meant I did not need to get on to the Internet with Orange prior to unlocking the phone: http://spod.cx/blog/unlocking_orange_spv_c500.shtml

So here is what you need to do unlock your SPV C500:

Perquisites

• An Orange SPV C500
• USB Sync Cable
• A Windows XP PC (I could not get it to work on Vista :( )
• Active Sync installed and working
• An Orange SIM (just so you can turn the phone on).

How to unlock the phone

• Connect the phone to your PC using the sync cable
• Download regeditSTG.zip and copy to the phone. You need to copy the file as a zip as the EXE will not work on its own, the phone can read the zip archive.
• Using the File Manager browse to the Folder you placed the Zip file. Open the zip file and run regedit.exe.
• To "application unlock" the phone change the following registry values:
• in HKLM/Security/Policies/Policies
• Change 00001001 from its current value to 1
• Change 00001005 from its current value to 40
• Turn the phone off and back on.
• Download spv-services.zip to your PC and unzip.
• Copy the cert.cab file to your phone, find it again using file manager and run it. This will install an app signing certificate that the next step relies on.
• Run the SPVServices.exe on your PC, it will communicate with your phone using Active Sync. You need an Internet connection on your PC as the file will connect to a remote server to do the unlocking calculations.
• Finally put in your non orange SIM and turn the phone on.

I have been looking a bit more in to some of the other things that Mimecast can do, one of which is the Mimecast Mobile Continuity.

I have Exchange Mobility setup just now and I have just installed SP2 on my Exchange Servers and it all seems to be syncing up as and when emails arrive (ok there is a slight delay but 15 seconds is acceptable.... or isn't it???). Any how one thing I noticed in the Service information was that you could in fact access your email through a mobile device on the Mimecast Towers:

January 2008: Mimecast Release - 2008.1

1. Mimecast Mobile Continuity

This release has introduced a new “mobile continuity” feature across the Mimecast platform.  The new feature maintains a rolling 5 day “mobile continuity mailbox” for all users across the Mimecast service (including internal emails absorbed through journaling for customers who have purchased the Mimecast Multi product).  This mailbox is maintained separately so deleting messages from the “mobile continuity mailbox” will not affect other downstream servers (e.g. Exchange, Novell) nor will it affect messages within your Mimecast account.
Access to the service is controlled by Mimecast local access settings.  These local permissions can be configured under “Profiles > Domains > Internal Domains > domain.com > user email address” and by checking the “Allow Logon” and “Allow POP access” boxes.

So I thought to myself if you allow POP access does that mean that you can use a client such as Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail? So I thought why not test it.

I set up Windows Live mail with a new POP3 Account and set all the details to my Works email address and then in the pop3 server I put in my Mimecast Service Address. for the authentication I had to put my full Email Address and domain password.

I set the same server for my Outgoing server and checked the option My Outgoing Server Requires Authentication, and left if as using the same credentials as my Incoming server. However when I hit send it could not send.... that might have something to do with me not checking enable submission on the Profile for my Mimecast account, so I enabled that and it all work great :).

I think that I will have to test this using a Smartphone and see what happens.

When ever I install a PC I usually end up putting on the Google pack as well, excluding things like Google Desktop and the Norton Security etc... but I like the features like the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer and the Screen Saver.

I use two monitors at work and the Google Screen Saver is great if you use more than one monitor as it displays a different picture on each monitor.

The photo's that you get with the Screen Saver are all very good and nice too look at but it does get a bit repetitive after a while. It wasn't till recently I actually had a look in the settings and played around with them and realised that you can add folders etc.... but one thing I did notice when I uploaded my latest lot of pictures to Flickr was that the RSS Feed that you get for your Photo Stream on Flickr can be added as an RSS Feed fir your Google Screen Saver.

Any how not a lot to this post just thought I'd put something up about that. Also what you can do is where is says Subscribe to this feed on Flickr Right click on the link and select the option to Add to Google Screen Saver.

OK so this is the 3rd skin in about 4 weeks I think! Si Philp has been developing these skins and agreed to be his test site for them.

The First Skin was the Leia in English, which was nice I had that up for about a wee before I decided to hack it (Sorry Si but you know me I had to). Then there was the CopyBlogger Skin again I had that up for a week or so before I then hacked that one, and finally there is this Skin FSpring, before putting it up I have to admit I did change the header image... Sorry Si!

But I do like this one, I have not put in the other controls I had on my previous skins but they will get added soon!

Once I get some time to edit it I will put some of the things into this Skin but not all of them.

Any how I have gone from:

This:

to:

to:

I would be interested to hear any feed back that you may have and comments on any one of the Skins