Web giants promote new IPv6 internet address system
“Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Bing and Facebook are among the companies switching-on IPv6 versions of their websites for the one day trial.
The technology is gradually being introduced because the world is running out of older IPv4 addresses as more devices come online”
Happy New Year!!
Happy new year readers! Have a great 2012 and hope it brings everything you wish for.
Chris wins Young Entrepreneur of the Year
We are delighted that Chris won Young Entrepreneur of the Year last week at WeDO Scotland’s Annual Awards dinner. This is a wonderful achievement and we are all very proud. You can check out the other award winners here: http://www.wedoscotland.co/awards/2011-awards
Google fun
Came across these, have fun!
Barrel Roll: Type “Do a Barrel Role” and watch the entire page flip upside down
Ninja! Go to Google Reader, then use your cursor keys and type: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. A ninja will appear on your screen and into your search box
ASCII: Searching for “ascii art” will be the nerdiest thing you did all day, but don’t worry, the payoff will blow your mind* *No it won’t
( love this one) Chuck Norris: Search for “Chuck Norris”, hit I’m Feeling Lucky, and watch your back
Askew: Search for the word “askew.” Now tilt your head
Flight Simulator: This feature began its life as an easter egg, and became so well-loved that Google incorporated it as a feature in Google Earth. Inside Google Earth, Click on Tools > Enter Flight Simulator, and you’re off!
Nessie Trick: First, you’ll need to set your iGoogle homepage to the beach theme. Wait until 3:14am (or cheat and move your clock forward).
Pacman: Click HERE (goodbye productivity!)
Google Gravity: Enter “Google Gravity” in the search bar. Hit “I’m feeling lucky” (if you have Google Instant enabled, it’s on the right hand side of the suggested searches). Try searching for anything and see if you can pick up the mess.
$8.5 Billion!
Microsoft tweeted” Hey @Skype: Should we do this thing?” confirming there purchase of the communcation company. At least we now know how much our conversations cost 
For our Microsoft phone users, expect some new features coming along
Yahoo! ‘sorry’ for deleting Flickr account containing 4000 images
The importance of backing up your data his highlighted the massive error from Flikr this week.
http://www.neowin.net/news/yahoo-sorry-for-deleting-flickr-account-containing-4000-images
Remember to ensure that your suppliers are backing up your data. Oh, and just a cheeky reminder, we back up daily and off site, every 15 minutes for premium customers! Now you can’t get much safer than that.
Major players moving over to SSL
Google and Facebook have announced a move to the secure system of using https for security…it’s about time!
“With Google search over SSL, you can have an end-to-end encrypted search solution between your computer and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. This provides you with a more secure and private search experience.”
http://www.neowin.net/news/google-begins-rolling-out-encrypted-searches
“Facebook currently uses HTTPS whenever your password is sent to us, but today we’re expanding its usage in order to help keep your data even more secure,” the company said Wednesday in a blog post. “Starting today we’ll provide you with the ability to experience Facebook entirely over HTTPS. You should consider enabling this option if you frequently use Facebook from public Internet access points found at coffee shops, airports, libraries or schools.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/26/facebook_https/
All of our web services (hosting, email, web apps, the IT range) are all over https from the outset because of this.
Apple iOS 4.3 Beta and 4.3 SDK now available to developers
iOS 4.3, the next iteration of Apple’s mobile operation system, is now in beta. Apple just posted both the new version of the OS and the new SDK in the iOS Dev Center. There’s also a beta software update for Apple TV, which will allow iOS 4.3 apps to stream media to your Apple TV via AirPlay.
Also, it looks like the battle over the side button on the iPad — whether it should be a mute button or a rotation lock — is finally over. There’s now an option in Preferences where users can choose either of the two. Engadget, has a screenshot.
Microsoft: IE 9 is the most important IE launch in company history
“Microsoft’s Internet Explorer platform is hurting; it is facing stiff competition from Google, Mozilla, and a host of other vendors who want their piece of the consumer pie. While Microsoft has been publicly pushing IE 9, internally, Microsoft knows that if this version of IE doesn’t make waves with the consumers, it will give up the title as the most used platform for browsing the web.”
http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-ie-9-is-the-most-important-launch-of-ie-in-company-history
The IPcalypse is only 100 days away
“We’ve all known it’s been coming for a long time now, there’s even a new, alternative IP addressing scheme that’s been developed and implemented — IPv6 — but adoption has been slow, and now, things are about to heat up, as the time remaining before the estimated 166,741,530 remaining addresses run out. It was getting low, but this makes it seem much, much more real.”
http://www.neowin.net/news/the-ipcalypse-is-only-100-days-away
Windows celebrates 25 years of computing
Microsoft Windows, the operating system that rose to dominance of the home and business PC market turns 25 years old today. Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985, and at first didn’t catch on as well as Microsoft had hoped. Two years later Microsoft would release Windows 2.0, and then Windows 3.1 which got the ball rolling.
If you would like to discuss upgrading your systems to Windows 7 and all the other latest Microsoft technologies, why not give the WEBIT team a call on 0131 302 0016.
November Patch Tuesday
November’s Patch Tuesday has been completed for all WEBIT and Anything Hosted Windows based servers without interruption to service.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the team.
88% of businesses moving to Windows 7, 94% satisfaction rate
“During the announcement, Steve Ballmer talked about how Windows 7 has surpassed Microsoft’s expectations and became the fastest selling operating system in history. One problem Microsoft has been facing is convincing businesses that Windows 7 is not Windows Vista and upgrading from the no-longer supported Windows XP (SP2 and lower)”
October Patch Tuesday
October’s Patch Tuesday has been completed for all WEBIT and Anything Hosted Windows based servers without interruption to service.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the team.
Office App Store due for Office 15
“App Stores seem to be all the rage at the minute and it looks like Microsoft plans to bring a store to its next version of Office. Windows 8 Beta has discovered that on the Microsoft careers site there is a position open for a marketing job with the Office 15 team which mentions an “Office App Store”.
The job description described how Office faces competition from OpenOffice.org and Google and says how to combat that Office is moving to the cloud. It goes on to say how the Office team are planning Office 15 and the candidate for the position described would need to work across Microsoft with many teams including Windows 8″
http://www.neowin.net/news/office-app-store-due-for-office-15
Microsoft announces Lync, new Office Communications Server
Known previously as Communications Server, Communications Online and Communicator, the new Lync branding brings together the products and now includes Lync Web App, and Lync Online. Lync 2010 unifies enterprise voice, instant messaging and web, audio and video conference – all within the same user experience and back-end infrastructure.
Anything Hosted will be deployed a Lync server for our Exchange customers to take advantage of (additional costs may apply).
September Patch Tuesday
September’s Patch Tuesday has been completed for all WEBIT and Anything Hosted Windows based servers without interruption to service.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the team.
August’s Patch Tuesday
August’s Patch Tuesday has been completed for all WEBIT and Anything Hosted Windows based servers without interruption to service.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the team.
Microsoft: 175 million Windows 7 licenses sold
“Microsoft reported a strong Q4 revenue thanks to Windows 7, and with that they announced they have sold 175 million licenses for Windows 7, the fastest selling operating system in history.
Windows 7 was released nine months ago, on October 22, 2009. The OS originally released to manufacturing one year ago. Microsoft announced that Windows 7 is the fastest selling operating system in history, selling over 175 million licenses to date. The company is projected to sell 300 million by the end of 2010.
Microsoft’s success with Windows 7 began before the product was even widely available. Released in October 2009, the operating system has received praise from consumers, businesses, and the media. In November 2009, Windows 7 managed to surpass Apple’s Snow Leopard market share in just two weeks. In early February, it was revealed that Windows 7 had reached 10% market share in just three months.”
http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-175-million-windows-7-licenses-sold
July Patch Tuesday
July’s Patch Tuesday has been completed for all WEBIT and Anything Hosted Windows based servers without interruption to service.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the team.
Race the Runway 2010
WEBIT took part in a charitable event with a difference yesterday. Over 30 cars descended onto the secondary runway of Edinburgh Airport to drag-race each other! WEBIT’s driver, Rob Davidson beat his opponent in the first round of qualifications however lost in the second round. All in all, an awesome day out! Not only that but the event raised around £20,000 for St Columba’s Hospice in Edinburgh and the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow.
For more details on the event and the charities involved visit:
http://www.stcolumbashospicefundraising.org.uk/news/supercars-race-along-edinburgh-airports-runway-for-hospices-race-the-runway-2010-4-176.aspx
Forgotten Attachment Detector
Ever written an email, referred to an attachment and then sent the email without the document? Well this handy application might just be for you. It’s a great addition to Outlook and should ensure none of those embarrassing second emails “oops, attached now”
http://www.officelabs.com/projects/forgottenattachmentdetector/Pages/default.aspx
Internet Explorer 9 platform preview 3
Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9 platform preview 3 today, marking the third and possibly final release prior to the beta phase.
Looking forward to doing some testing with this early next week. Hopefully when the beta and final is released we can alter our development to include Internet Explorer in the early stages as it becomes more standards compliant.
WordPress Updated
In keeping with best practice, we’ve updated our WordPress to their new major version “3.0″. Still looking into the new features to see how we can make use of them for our own blog, but for our customers as well.
For the rest of the year, we will be offering free WordPress blog hosting for all our existing and future customers if they host their main website or application with us. Call us now for details!
PHP 5.3.2 Deployed
PHP 5.3.2 MySQL 5.1.47 fully deployed and tested on our new High Availability FreeBSD 8 servers. Migration of current websites will commence throughout July with no downtime.
If you want view the info page, you can do so here: http://black.anythinghosted.co.uk/info.php.
BLACK and LIME mark the set of servers running on our XEN environment for Anything Hosted. We plan to deploy ORANGE and GREEN during August in our other data centre and finally upgrading RED and PINK in September. GREY, which currently handles most of our outgoing mail for our Exchange environment will be decommissioned towards the end of the year as the other servers take over its role.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the team.
June Patch Tuesday
June’s Patch Tuesday has been completed for all WEBIT and Anything Hosted Windows based servers without interruption to service.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the team.
More Shell Work
Back in February/March this year, Chris was asked to come on board once again working for Shell Downstream/Oil Products to help with an interface between an existing system and their new Enterprise Data Warehouse. This week marked a milestone for his work on the project but will come back later in the year to oversee some data profiling and testing. The project is scheduled to go live in October this year.
Next week, however, will mark the beginning of a new project at Shell for Chris, which he is very excited about. Watch this space for more information.
All the best from the staff at WEBIT for the long weekend!
May Patch Tuesday
May’s Patch Tuesday has been completed for all WEBIT and Anything Hosted Windows based servers without interruption to service.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the team.
New Sharepoint 2010 “Teamspace”
Over the past couple weeks we have been testing a new SharePoint Enterprise 2010 installation for use both internally and externally with our customers.
Internally we will now be able to manage and collaborate documents with our staff more efficiently, whereever they are working around the globe. With integrated Office Web Apps 2010 and Project Server 2010, we see a full integration with the desktop applications and our Exchange Server, but also allow our staff to view and edit update documents without even downloading them (useful if they are onsite and have to use external/customer equipment).
For our customers, it means we can have a central location where all documents are held, securely. Exchange customers will have a seamless integration to this new service. We will be rolling this out to our customers over the course of May 2010.
It will be mandatory from June 2010 for all new projects for WEBIT and Anything Hosted to use our new Teamspace.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Office 2010 RTM Released
Office 2010 RTM has been released on MSDN and Technet for selected Microsoft Partners. We have already been using Office 2010 Beta and RC at WEBIT for many months and plan to deploy the RTM version across all our desktops and laptops over the coming days.
Outlook 2010 will be available to all our Exchange customers from April 30th. Volume Licence keys will be available from May 4th and download links will be sent to all our customers shortly.
April Patch Tuesday Complete
April’s Patch Tuesday has been completed for all WEBIT and Anything Hosted Windows based servers without interruption to service.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the team.
New Business Venture: The Final Frontier
Today, WEBIT would like to annouch the launch of its new business venture; The Final Frontier project. We’re all very excited about this 50 year piece of work. Check out http://www.spacethefinalfrontier.co.uk/
March Patch Tuesday Complete
March patch Tuesday was completed for all WEBIT and Anything Hosted infrastructure without interruption to service.
You can view full details here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/ms10-mar.mspx
New Media Breakfast
Just back from the New Media Breakfast at The Roxburghe Hotel, which I found very informative. Saw some crazy statistics and how the customer interaction has changed over the past few years. It seems we’re doing some things right, but we could do more on the social media front. We’re already putting a plan of action together, so watch this space. I may even start tweeting
The bacon and egg roles were also a great start to what looks like a great day in Edinburgh.
February Patch Tuesday Complete
February patch Tuesday was completed for all WEBIT and Anything Hosted infrastructure without interruption to service.
You can view full details here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/ms10-feb.mspx
Visual Studio 2010 RC
Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate has been released to MSDN subscribers. There are some clear improvements over the Beta, namely on the performance side, which is great news.
We use Visual Studio to build our offline/Windows based applications that interact with our web based applications, for example, allowing you to continue working even without an Internet connection. We’re hoping the new version will lead to less effort and time spent on coding/building our apps, lowering costs for our customers.
Edinburgh Charity Fashion Show
Last year, WEBIT helped build and put together the ticket sales area of the site, enabling charity givers to book their Student and/or VIP tickets to the ECFS event online, securely. Ticket sales for this year have just started and we would encourage anyone that is able to go on March 20th, to book tickets! It’s a great event and the money will go to a great cause.
For more information and to book your tickets, visit:
New Microsite for Anvil Hall
We’ve been working hard with team at the Gretna Wedding Bureau on their new dedicated micro site for Anvil Hall, the premier wedding venue for Gretna Green weddings. You can view the new site at:
Maintenance Periods
When a new customer approaches us for a new system or an update to their website we often get asked “So how long are we going to be down?”. The simple answer is that it won’t be noticeable. Too often we see websites that are undergoing “maintenance periods”. Why? Unless you have hundreds of thousands of hits and a large database to update there is no reason.
With the methodologies used by WEBIT and Anything Hosted, interruption to service is kept to a minimum. In reality, when we say minimum, we’re talking under 10 seconds…and that doesn’t include our High Availability service, which has zero interruption.
If you would like to learn more on how we work, methodologies used and why we consider ourselves to be in the top percentile of software development, give us a call.
Internet Explorer patch released – KB978207
Microsoft has issued security hot-fixes to patch a security vulnerability in Internet Explorer which saw Google fall victim to some targeted and sophisticated attacks recently. The vulnerability was unveiled when Google went public that they were targeted in a sophisticated cyber-attack. The breach, involving Internet Explorer 6, resulted in the theft of intellectual property. The hot fix is out of band from the normal “Patch Tuesday”, and WEBIT would urge all to update via Windows Update as soon as possible.
A restart of your computer will be needed.
All of our Microsoft based servers were patched earlier today without interruption to service.
Project Completion
A complete revamp of Scotland and Gretna’s premier wedding photographers and planners has just gone live.
You can check out their site here: http://www.gretnaweddings.co.uk/
January Patch Tuesday Complete
January’s Patch Tuesday has been completed for all our Windows based servers. With our improved infrastructure, there was no interruption to any of our services.
A fitting quote
Came across this quote, which reminded me of what WEBIT and I are trying to do with our software:
“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
— Albert Einstein
Windows 7 -Godmode
For those Power Users among us, you can enable a one stop shop for all settings in Windows 7.
Create a new folder (can be anywhere, such as your desktop) and choose the name “GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}” (without the quotes). From here, you can now change/view nearly all of your computer settings in one place.
Happy New Year – 2010
All the staff at WEBIT and Anything Hosted would like to wish our customers, friends and family a Happy New Year and all the best for 2010.We have lots of exciting new things happening this year, so stay tuned!
Merry Christmas
WEBIT and Anything Hosted would like wish all our customers and friends a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2010.
CEng Awarded
Further to our previous post in July (CITP), Chris has yet again shown excellence in IT, by being awarded Chartered Engineer from the Engineering Council UK.
According to Engineering Council UK, Chartered Engineers “are characterised by their ability to develop appropriate solutions to engineering problems, using new or existing technologies, through innovation, creativity and change. They might develop and apply new technologies, promote advanced designs and design methods, introduce new and more efficient production techniques, marketing and construction concepts, pioneer new engineering services and management methods. Chartered Engineers are variously engaged in technical and commercial leadership and possess interpersonal skills.”
We would like to congratulate Chris on this prestigious accomplishment.
Project Completion
Over the past 3-4 months WEBIT has been working hard with our longest customer, R G Carter Construction on an exciting new project.
At the beginning of this month we went live, marking the the transition from our “deploy and stabilise” phase to “support and maintenance”.