The Electric Wand
Weekly tips from the "Tip o' the Week" email distribution inside of Microsoft.
Sizing Exchange 2007 environments
I've had a couple of conversations with customers lately, looking for advice in figuring how to plan...
Author: EwanD Date: 06/08/2007
iPhone gets a date
Well I'm sure it'll have plenty of people courting it when it comes out, but Apple have announced...
Author: EwanD Date: 06/04/2007
Live Writer beta 2 releases
I only really started blogging "properly" when Windows Live Writer (WLW) beta first shipped... it's...
Author: EwanD Date: 05/31/2007
Surface er, surfaces
The secret project codenamed Milan was announced today, as "Microsoft Surface": there have been a...
Author: EwanD Date: 05/30/2007
TripAdvisor - an example of the web
I've been on holiday for the last 2 weeks. Whilst away (and trying not to think about work), we took...
Author: EwanD Date: 05/27/2007
More Office Grooviness
Whilst mucking about with Word the other day with my buddy Steve, he was talking about the...
Author: EwanD Date: 05/11/2007
The power of SmartArt
Careful you say it, "SmartArt". It's a new capablity in Office 2007 which is designed to make...
Author: EwanD Date: 05/10/2007
Finally, a sidebar gadget worth having
Oooh, that's a bit flippant. The whole Vista sidebar thing has kind of passed me by, though it...
Author: EwanD Date: 05/07/2007
Chris Bangle - an inspiration
I was fortunate enough to listen to Chris Bangle, group chief of design at BMW, talk about design,...
Author: EwanD Date: 05/06/2007
How to really wipe a hard disk
In one of those weird coincidences, someone asked a question to an email DL in MS this morning,...
Author: EwanD Date: 05/02/2007
Communicator phones sneaking out
When Microsoft first announced the Unified Communications strategy & partnerships last year, one...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/27/2007
Thread Compressor for Outlook - do you want it?
Here's an appeal - nearly 8 years ago, I wrote* a little COM addin for the-then new Outlook 2000,...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/23/2007
Blackberry outage - worrying for mobile mail junkies
I just read news of an 11-hour outage in RIM's Blackberry infrastructure on ZDNet - ouch. Not only...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/18/2007
Outlook 2007 update - performance improvement on large PST/OST files
I've been beta-testing this update for a little while and it seems to make quite a difference to the...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/17/2007
The day I met Tony Blair, talked about online healthcare
I am feeling under the weather at the moment. Been off work for a couple of days with what seems to...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/12/2007
The Design of Everyday Things
In part 2 of my book post about design (part 1 was earlier this week), I'll revisit an old title...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/04/2007
Batch-convert Office files to 2007's Open XML format
A customer asked me the other day if Microsoft was ever going to build batch-conversion facilities...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/30/2007
Hosting of applications - the inevitable future?
I've been musing over some medium term IT trends lately and one idea that keeps coming back into...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/29/2007
ZDNet sings praises of Office Communications Server beta
Like probably millions of other people, I get the daily ZDNet Tech Update Today (since long before...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/27/2007
Windows Live Mail Desktop - replaces Outlook Express for Hotmail use
I've been running the "dogfood" version of Windows Live Mail Desktop (WLMD) for a while now, and...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/23/2007
Is your email compliant with the (UK) Companies Act?
A semi little-known fact... as of the 1st January 2007, the rules for UK companies regarding...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/22/2007
Calibri: a font like no other...
Someone asked me a semi-bizarre question today: the new fonts which are in Office 2007 and Windows...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/19/2007
Free domain name, web site + email address with Office Live Basics beta
I got given a card yesterday proclaiming an offer of free domain name, web site and email service,...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/15/2007
Shortcut to quickly set your voicemail greeting in Exchange 2007 UM
I love the Exchange UM system my voicemail is supplied by, though it can take a while to navigate...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/14/2007
Water, Water everywhere, nor any drop to drink
So it's been a quiet week on The Electric Wand, largely because of the fact that I woke up the other...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/09/2007
Is that a Zune in your pocket...?
(or are you just pleased to see me) OK, after talking about media players just over a month ago, I...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/01/2007
Mac vs Vista ads
I think Apple scored a home run with their "I'm a Mac"/"I'm a PC" ads, and in the UK have done a...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/23/2007
WSS Site Admin Templates now online
The second wave of releases for the Windows Sharepoint Services v3.0 templates (being referred to as...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/23/2007
Transporter Suite 2007 for Lotus Domino
Exciting news if you're looking to migrate from Lotus Domino to Exchange 2007: the development group...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/22/2007
Virtual PC 2007 now available
The Virtual PC team released the latest version to the web the other day, and it's available for...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/21/2007
Remote control of Windows Mobile
The other day when I posted about VIrtual Earth Mobile, I was using some really great software to do...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/19/2007
Thought provoking stuff...
I've no idea how accurate this information is, but in a short video on...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/15/2007
Virtual Earth Mobile - mapping on the move
Microsoft's Virtual Earth technology continues to take strides forward - not just in the inevitable...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/15/2007
Orange announces SPV E650 Smartphone
Now this looks interesting... as part of the slew of announcements surrounding Windows Mobile 6...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/13/2007
Windows Mobile 6 - aka Crossbow
I've been in Seattle all week at a technical conference and have been largely living on Windows...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/08/2007
Sharepoint Services v3.0 Application Templates
I noticed the other day that the first batch of templates have been published for Windows Sharepoint...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/06/2007
Can your phone system talk to Exchange 2007?
It's been online for a little while - I only really noticed recently, but there is a matrix of...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/04/2007
Do you want to talk to your Exchange Server?
You might have seen demos of Exchange 2007 and the Unified Messaging capabilities (which are...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/02/2007
Vista Aero Glass - performance hit (or not)
Just read an interesting analysis at...
Author: EwanD Date: 01/31/2007
Sansa e280 - I took the plunge
After my post last month about getting a new MP3 player, I went ahead and bought a Sansa e280 8Gb...
Author: EwanD Date: 01/30/2007
Travel's a curse
We all know that travelling on business can be a pain, and the glamour of travelling on holiday has...
Author: EwanD Date: 01/26/2007
Use NewSID on cloned virtualised machines
I came across a problem recently when a colleague was building a virtual Windows Server environment,...
Author: EwanD Date: 01/24/2007
iPhone over-the-air experience
Just read Jason O'Grady's blog over on ZDNet and it's quite eye-opening... one thing leapt out:...
Author: EwanD Date: 01/17/2007