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.
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
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!
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.
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/
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.
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.
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/
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
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”.
Spotted
Walking home after jumping off the bus I spotted Chris and took a quick photo of him recycling all evidence of his late nights last week with pizza and diet coke.
Click the post to view the photo!
Read more…
Relaunch: 3…2…1…Go!
After a lot of hard work last week, the team have made our revamped sites live. You can visit the them below:
http://www.webit-tech.co.uk
http://www.theitrange.co.uk
http://www.anythinghosted.co.uk
New domain acquired
WEBIT and Anything Hosted have acquired www.microsoftexchangehosting.co.uk. This is going to be a great addition in building our Exchange 2010 arm of Anything Hosted.
Watch this space!
Move Over Harry Potter
Amazon has reported that pre-orders for the Windows 7 operating system has stormed ahead of the pre-orders made for ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’. Come on Windows 7! However it should be noted that this isn’t the case for The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. Speaking of which, can anyone tell me if it’s worth reading?
‘Race the Runway’ at Edinburgh Airport
Today some of the Webit Team enjoyed a day on the runway helping raise money for St. Columba’s Hospice in Edinburgh and the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow. We had drag races along the runway hitting speeds of 140 mph! (others hit over 200mph) We not only raced along the closed off runway at Edinburgh Airport, we also enjoyed ‘another’ tour of the Air Traffic Control Tower (see post dated June 9 for more info), drove a very large fire truck (airport style, not the ones we see on the roads) and finally took part in a fire drill exercise in a smoked filled shell of a plane. All in all a great day! But more importantly, all those that took part help raise over £16,000 for charity.
http://blogs.discoverychannel.co.uk/discovery-news/2009/09/supercars-race-on-edinburgh-runway.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8273690.stm
CITP Awarded
It is with great pleasure, we can announce that our Director, Chris Davidson has been successful in his application for Chartered IT Professional (CITP).
CITP is the benchmark of IT excellence, and is a rigorously assessed, employer led qualification, recently updated according to the needs of such international IT industry leaders as IBM, Microsoft and BP. Application criteria include 8-10 years of IT work experience, with least 3 of the past 5 years spent in an IT role with significant influence and responsibility.
You can view more information here on CITP.
Director’s Birthday
We celebrated Chris’ Birthday in style today. We were invited to Edinburgh Airport for a tour of the runway and the Air Traffic Control Tower. We learnt some interesting facts; did you know that ‘runways’ throughout the world are numbered according to their magnetic heading. Well I found it interesting. The tour on the runway was great as well, especially when the Bird Scaring Device (forgot what it was called) broke and we were frightening non-existent crows all the way back to our car park (we got some really strange looks by passer-by’s).
Happy Birthday Chris!
Major Contract Completion
After over two wonderful years working for Shell Downstream/Oil Products the project came to a close after a successful global implementation of their new Health, Safety and Environment application. We wish the team at Shell all the best for the future. The work that WEBIT carried out can be viewed on our website under case study 2.