Ingensys

THE ultimate iphone App

Google mobile search was launched for iphone a while back and provided a nice interface to access google and google apps for your domain from an iPhone - however, as per some Youtube videos, a new voice search has been released on the Apple App store. This is absolutely amazing, you switch on the voice search in the applicaition and then simply put the iphone to your ear and wait for the bleep, you then say what you want to search on and that is then transcoded and sent to google and your search results displayed. Check out this video - this is an amazing application and is FREE

http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2008/11/just-say-it-searching-by-voice-with-new.html

Exchange and Apple Mail and Calendar entries

One of our On Demand cloud services 'Intercom' - is a hosted Exchange 2007 system. It is one of the first hosted Exchange 2007 solutions available and is being well received by customers.

I have one client we have worked with who use Macs :-) . . . they have No Microsoft software on the desktop but wanted to have Exchange on the back end for 'corporate' standard mail, and then to also have full Push features for iPhone 2.0.

With OS X Leopard 10.5.3 we have the Apple Address book syncing with Exchange we have the Apple Mail Client set up as an Exchange Account. On the whole the mail experience is pretty good and seems to work well.

In conjunction with Outlook Web Access, the mail and contacts are all in sync . . . Calendars however are another matter, but with iPhone 2.0 this will sync Over the Air with Exchange and then a cradle sync back to iCal (not ideal but it will work). Of course looking forward to Snow Leopard, Mail, Address book and iCal with ALL sync with Exchange 2007.

One issue however is this message that appears:

"Retrieval failed using IMAP4 protocol for message: 45484"

Exchange 2007 IMAP4 server failed to retrieve the following message:

You get this message, because you are trying to retrieve a message - on investigation, this is a calendar event from the Exchange 2007 server.

After some surfing around and of course ignoring the standard support answer of 'Yes, we dont support Apple Mail, either use Outlook or Enrourage' - I stumbled across this explanation on the Apple Support discussions:

" The Exchange 2007 server, does not store it in the Calendar folder anymore; that was the case in exchange 2003. Exchange 2003 creates MimeMessages with icalendar in Calendar folder. This is pretty standards conform. I noticed this during the development of a java client which retrieves the Calendar events from an exchange server over IMAP4.

I am afraid, only microsoft can help you by supporting it again or Apple should port MAPI to OS X or Mail should use Exhange 2007 Web Service interface. I have been searching for a java implementation of MAPI for a long time but I have already loosen the hope.

Exchange server uses two databases:

1. database is used for retrieving content - such as email from outside - and store it in the standards format.

2. one is used for MAPI clients such as Outlook. Whenever a MAPI client requests a content from the exchange server, it retrieves it from the first database, converts the content into own format saves it in this 2. database. This occures only one time. The next MAPI client requests on this content gets this already converted one.

I suggest, exchange server serves the IMAP4 requests from the 1. database. If you create an event with a MAPI client such as Outlook against an exchange 2007, the content will not be saved in the 1. database."

So bottom line - tough its broke and I suppose getting someone to step up and fix it would be low on a vendors maintenance fix - which is a shame. However, Apple and MS are obviously working together with Activesync for iPhone and Snow Leopard, surely something could be done to fix this - its only a calendar entry - nasty looking error though and calendar is pretty important to a business desktop . . . . . . .

Apple

I want that one on O2 . . see what you can do

I got my first iPhone last September from the US and ran it quite happily with a normal contract O2 SIM card and an O2 bolt on for unlimited data.
Once O2 tweaked the official iPhone tariffs, I got a 'pukka' O2 iphone, it worked out the same price per month for more minutes, more texts and free wifi with the cloud. And now look at this . . . . I can have a brand new 8 gig iphone 3g for free, OK I need to sign for another 18 months, but thats not a problem as O2 are really pretty good, especially compared to the competition. So have I registered my interest . . . what do you think!

Apple

Mobile Me

I have a dot mac account, I have had one since the service launched and I keep it running. The service is pretty good and I get the warm feeling of giving a .mac email address in the Apple Store too.

It looks like today .mac is reborn, providing 'exchange for the rest of us' - is this a good thing ;-)

So its a full over the air sync of calendars, contacts and push mail for dot mac accounts, but on Mac iPhone AND PC . . .

Uses Outlook on the PC and iCal and Address book on Mac - Web 2.0 powered

Photos are synced over the air too . . . .

Access to your idisk . . . . . but its going to become 20Gb

It is the replacement to Dot Mac and costs $99 per year available July . . . . . So its all a month away then

Oh excellent I get upgraded for free . . . . . .

Apple

iphone Firmware 2.0

Available early July . . . . . . . . So where does that leave a new 3G iphone ?

Apple

Typepad Native iphone Client

In addition to a new ebay application, typepad have just demoed a new native client for the iPhone - it looks similar in feature to the excellent Blackberry client - I think its also going to be Free.

Apple

OS X 'Snow Leopard'

So the next release of OS X is going to be previewed in around 4 hours time at the Apple WWDC, codename Snow Leopard this will be the first time the next release will have been talked about or shown

Apple

Lotus Symphony is Released

IBM Lotus is playing a new tune . . . . Lotus Symphony Release 1 is available today and is FREE.

Lotus Symphony

Those of us that have been around long enough will remember the Symphony product name being used many moons ago when Lotus 1-2-3 was king of the spreadsheets and Lotus Notes was making a splash.

The new product is based on Openoffice, and is also available within the Lotus Notes 8 standard client as the Personal Productivity tools. Lotus Symphony is the stand alone version of the tools without Notes. The product is however, powered by the Eclipse Framework and runs as a plug-in sharing the new interface of Notes 8, being based on Eclipse we should see the product on Windows, Mac and Linux.

If you do go and download this, be prepared to only get a Windows version. Due to a pre-requisite of OS X Leopard for the Eclipse stuff to work on the Mac properly, there is a delay in the Mac version . . . . but it is coming, really, honestly :-)

Now this is product demand

I saw this and it made me laugh. Here in the UK we love to queue or stand in line, I dont know why we do it but its inbuilt we just do!

So, see this . . . a line starting outside the Apple Store in New York, rumour has it for the 3g iphone (not even announced) - but also according to people on the scene, some people didnt know why they were standing in line! Now that is the sign of a sexy brand and public demand for product.

Apple

Very Cool Application

In my work and also my personal life, I use a mac and many different applications, our company likes to think about IT differently (guess who came up with that tagline!). We are always looking for new pertinent solutions which are truly cross platform.

As many people who know me will tell you, I love all things Apple, I just cant help it. The attention to design, the technology, the 'sexy' factor is so carefully woven into everything the company does, even down to the packaging! Now before I go any further at this point, one thing I want to say, I am not one of these 'new' Apple fan boys, I have been actively using a Mac for work since 2000 - and yes it was possible to live in a Windows world with a Mac even with a PowerPC processor Mac.

Its not often, that I come across something that's truly different in the software world - the first time I did it was many years ago with Lotus Notes, which ran across multiple platforms and indeed still does today. Notes was something completely different that still ticks so many boxes relevant today . . . .

However, I am getting off the point for this post - I have been playing around with a new product called Evernote, its VERY cool, it runs on anything and best of all its FREE.

Essentially, this software allows you to capture snippets of information, text, web page, sound, video, pictures and then store these random pieces of information in a web service in the sky which is accessible through a fat client on Windows or Mac, a browser, or even a mobile device like a phone - it looks cool on the iPhone! Check out the demo introduction video and see some of the stuff it can do. I have been totally impressed with it.