4Afrika [03:28]

Surface: Ask Me Anything  [12:59]

Microsoft on privacy [08:03]

Xbox and Redbox  [18:19]

Diane Gallagher of Vorsite Corp talks to Greg Oliver, ISV Architect Evangelist, about how vorApps was built on Windows Azure and how Office 365 customers can use it with Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

vorApps captures knowledge so it can be searched within SharePoint. Workers can create ways to securesly share their inboxes. Whether team members are in the next room or on the next continent, the powerful combination of automation and storage drives business efficiencies and builds a more agile organization.

About Vorsite

Vorsite is at the forefront of a new generation of cloud-based technologies, offering customers a full spectrum of cost-effective cloud solutions and services.  Focusing on hosted email, collaboration, and cloud applications Vorsite is unique positioned to help businesses streamline processes and reduce IT costs.  At Vorsite we deliver the right solution that addresses each customer’s unique business needs. Paired with our strong commitment to customer satisfaction and our unique qualifications as a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Windows Intune Blackbelt, and Microsoft Online Services Accelerated Partner, we have the experience and the skillset to bring innovation and inspiration to every opportunity.

For more information: Vorsite Cloud Solutions. 

Other ISV Videos

For videos on developing for Windows Phone 7, see:

• Teenager Makes Money Writing Windows Phone 7 Apps with AdCenter
• Talking  with Karmak.com about business applications on Windows Phone 7
• BinaryDads talk about building applications for Windows Phone 7
• Game Design and Development in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7
• Windows Phone 7 Game Begins Life in WPF -- Now a Silverlight,  Ad Supported App
• XNA Game Development on Windows Phone 7 in One Sitting

For videos on Windows Azure Platform, see:

• Crowd-Sourcing Public Sector App for Windows Phone, Azure
• Food Buster Game Achieves Scalability with Windows Azure
• BI Solutions Join On-Premises To Windows Azure Using Star Analytics Command Center
• StorSimple Integrates On-Premises, Cloud Storage with Windows Azure
• NewsGator Moves 3 Million Blog Posts Per Day on Azure

For other videos about independent software vendors (ISVs):

• Quark Extends SharePoint for Dynamic Publishing
• ProModel Adds Simulation, Visualization to Microsoft Project
• Slingbox Maker Sling Media Describes Cross-Platform Commitment to Silverlight
• Thumb-Driven Workflow on Windows 7 Slates from Blue Dot Solutions

So are my printer and I best buddies? Well, we’re more acquaintances. It does its job, gives me know trouble, but you’ll agree with me, after losing it so many times in frustration, it’s tough to love your printer. You may drone on to friends and colleagues about your new phone, tablet or notebook, but you’re not likely to give them an impromptu demo of your printer any time soon.

That may well change with HP’s latest range of printers, and the HP PhotoSmart eStation in particular caught my eye.

Take a decent, All in One printer (with 802.11n Wi-Fi, scanner and fax) and whack a 7” detachable touchscreen tablet on the front, which serves as control panel and web browser, including news, weather, email , ebook reader and more. That in itself is cool convergence, but then add a dash of HP’s new ePrint feature, which lets you print Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, Images and web pages whilst on the road by email, and we’re starting to get into “bore your friends” territory. Add a library of web apps from social networks like Facebook and other providers and now we’re talking about a printer you can friend.

With all of these features, I’m not sure whether this printer is still a “printer”, or whether a new “More Than All In One” category needs to be invented – but I’m ready to forget the crimes of the past, and get to know this printer a little better.

But new Hotmail isn’t bad at all, at least according to most technology bloggers. For example,

LifeHacker said:

This may come as a surprise, but the new Microsoft Hotmail is actually pretty good…The new Hotmail focuses heavily on reducing your cluttered inbox and keeping your email organized. New one-click filters let you focus on senders in your Contact List, social updates (via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and more. You'll also find Quick Views useful when looking for certain types of emails, such as those that contain photos or documents or even shipping updates.

ArsTechnica said the new Hotmail offers less clutter, more efficiency:

The new Hotmail will also allow a monstrous 10GB of attachments per e-mail. E-mails of up to 200 attachments of 50MB each will also be possible. Fortunately, the entire 10GB will not be sent as an e-mail. Instead, the attachments will be uploaded to SkyDrive, and the e-mail itself will only contain links….Building an image gallery on SkyDrive and then distributing links to that is a neat solution to the problem. It makes the e-mails themselves small and manageable, without requiring anyone to adopt a new workflow; it will still look and work as if they were regular attachments.

Mashable noted the list of upgrades was “impressive:”

Microsoft has announced a huge slew of upgrades to Hotmail to make it more competitive with Gmail, and we have to admit the list is impressive. With 343 million users, Hotmail is still the top e-mail service provider. Gmail is much smaller, with approximately 150 million users as of September 2009…Hotmail will most likely be a worthy competitor after the new version is launched this summer.

It’s fast, slick, and comes with a set of new features for managing large amounts of email that make it a much better rival to Gmail.

Now the question is, do you have the new Hotmail yet? The Hotmail team says it’s been rolled out to over 100 million users so far and over the next week, everyone else will get the upgrade. What do you think about the new service?

The Task Organizer lets you change the due date on tasks, manage and view all tasks, and when the sidebar is closed, it will pop up reminders when you have overdue items.

In the new sidebar, you can also view the status of your projects, pin the most important projects for quick access, edit and create new tasks right in the sidebar and filter tasks by date, category, priority or other options.

The sidebar features a “Project” tab as well which you can switch to in order to gain access to your project list and its associated tasks, files and contacts. Here, you can add free-form notes to projects, move and rename projects and quickly jump from this tab directly to the associated email folder for that particular projects.

As always, ClearContext still helps with filtering your barrage of incoming email with its automatic filing and organizational features, including the great option to automatically file entire email threads from the inbox. it also lets you quickly turn emails into appointments or tasks, automatically reminds you to follow up on sent email you need a reply on, offers Do Not Disturb and Autosign features and a lot more.

Registered v5 customers can download v5.1 here. New customers can purchase v5 here.  if you’re using the older version of ClearContext (Pro v4), you can purchase an upgrade to v5 here.

Via the Nubli toolbar, you’re provided with a handful of “quick action” buttons which let you take some sort of action with the email in question. You can adjust the email or contact priority, archive the email if nothing needs to be done with it, flag it for follow up, or set a reminder to deal with the email later. Of course, you can still reply or forward the email instead.

From the integrated Nubli dashboard, you can track all of the email processing you’ve done so far to see which items need follow up as well as a list of unread emails sorted by priority.

In addition, Nubli also uses an intelligent tagging system which automatically assigns tags or labels to new email conversations. Initially, you have to train the system by tagging items yourself but after some time, Nubli figures out what tags should be used and assigns them for you. This saves a lot of time for users who can then use the tags to search for both emails and attachments.

If you want to give Nubli a try, you can download the plugin for either Outlook 2003 or 2007 from the Nubli homepage.

When running the program, it will automatically detect your profiles and accounts, allowing you to check or uncheck the boxes of the items you want to backup. And should disaster strike, you can also use the application to restore the backups it creates.

MailBrowserBackup is free software licensed under the GNU GPL v2. You can download it for Windows XP SP2, Vista, and Windows 7 from here.

For users in the US, Canada, and Brazil, you can now import any POP-enabled email account – a list which happens to include Yahoo! Mail Plus, AOL Mail, and Gmail. (The feature was already available in the UK, France, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Germany).

To access this option, click on “Add an e-mail account” on the left side of you inbox. Type in the email address and password for the account you want to forward then click “Next.” Choose where you want the messages to go (for example, a separate folder instead of your inbox) and click “Save.”

In order for this to work, POP has to be turned on in the POP-enabled email service you’re adding. This is usually found in your webmail settings.

Once signed up, you can see an overall snapshot of your email activity, you can compare and contrast your stats with friends and colleagues, and you can evaluate how efficient you are at working that inbox of yours. The online service will even provide you with personalized tips on how you can improve your email effectiveness. 

If you’re a already a ClearContext for Outlook user, you can get started by clicking the “Compare your stats online” link in Outlook. If you want to try ClearContext for free, you can download it here.

How Vine Works

What Vine does is gather news from 20,000 local and national sources, including public safety announcements from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. It then displays those news items to you on a map of your area.

In addition, Vine displays the Facebook status updates of your friends and family, including their location if they permit that info to be shared. Twitter and other social networking sites will be added as well, but are not currently present at launch time.  Also planned for the future is traditional phone integration. Once added, people will be able to send and receive messages using automated voice technology.

In the event of an emergency, a Vine user could send out an alert to a specific contact list (e.g. “Family,” “Friends,” etc.). Those receiving the alert would do so using whatever format they had chosen – an email or text message for example. Another option for sharing alerts involves linking Vine to Facebook to send the alerts as a Facebook status updates that everyone can see. There’s also a desktop software component that could be used – it currently works on Vista or XP computers, but future integrations are planned, including Mac and Silverlight platforms. Recipients can then reply to the alert using that same format, if desired.

Users can also post longer reports than the simple alerts described above. At launch time, there are four pre-designated report types available: check in safe and well, report upcoming plans, report a situation, or general information. These reports are posted to the dashboards of the contacts you shared with.

Although originally designed for sharing critical information in a crisis, Vine would not be limited to just that. It’s easy to imagine how it could be used for non-emergency types of information sharing, too. For example, a team coach could alert team members of the date and time of their next practice. A parent could alert other family members that they had to work late that day.

Vine is Not a New Form of Twitter

The new service isn’t being designed to compete with the social networks that are already in place – it’s designed to augment and embrace them by connecting them all together for communication purposes.

While in beta, Seattle area organizations including Citizen Corps, AmeriCorps, Neighborhood Watch groups and others will help test the system. Security departments at Boeing and Microsoft will be involved in the private beta, too.

Since the tool was originally built back in 1999, it may look a little…uhhh…retro by modern standards, but don’t let the appearance fool you – this may easily be the most useful Outlook plugin you’ve installed in a long time.

Of course, anyone choosing to use the tool must do so at their own risk because – be warned! – it does delete email. That’s its purpose. For that reason alone, the legal department at Microsoft was hesitant about it being released to the public.

Note that Microsoft does not support the tool nor can they be held responsible for what it does.

That said, you can get the Microsoft Outlook Thread Compressor for free from here: http://threadcompressor.co.uk/default.aspx. You’ll find installation instructions and more information on that site, too.

I’m not entirely convinced that this interface is really any more useful than when you create a rule to move mail to a folder or assign some other action to it (categorize it, flag it, etc.), but it definitely is creative. And I guess columns are the new hotness right now for organizing your information flow. If that appeals to you, OutlookDeck will be right up your alley.

If you want to use OutlookDeck, you’ll need to run the .NET Framework 3.5 and have Windows Search enabled. You can grab the download from here.

(via Techie Buzz)

The AOL Mail Beta is expected to launch as an optional replacement for their standard email service later this year.

The PIFEM system takes the best practices from GTD – that is, the 4 D’s of Email Management – and combined those with time management skills. Then, the system is integrated with the workflow options present in Outlook 2007 and Exchange Server. The end result is what they’re calling PIFEM.

PIFEM uses the Outlook 2007 features of flagging and categories to manage the emails that you don’t want to (or can’t) take action on immediately. Every day your emails in your “Not Flagged” folder are processed and categorized based on importance and urgency. Flags are used to designate when the emails must be dealt with (today, tomorrow, later). All incoming emails are “actioned” (processed) at least a couple of times per day.

Once processed, the majority of the day’s work is spent in the “Follow Up – Today” folder. Here are the items that have to be dealt with today – and they’re already in order of importance. When individual items are completed, they’re checked off in Outlook which makes them disappear from the current view.

There’s a lot more to it, of course, and you can get some additional details on Johann's blog. Or better yet, if you’re really intrigued, you need to check out the complete instructions. Ian documented the whole process and the online package is available in his SkyDrive in a OneNote document. (If you don't have OneNote you can download a free trial. OneNote was used for its multi-dimensional document format and was developed collaboratively within Microsoft.)

As to why it’s called “Pay it Forward,” that’s because if the system helps you out, they want you to pay it forward and tell 3 other people about it. If it’s actually useful, then the concept will spread thanks to your help.

Since Microsoft Outlook is still heavily used by corporate emailers, it’s in this program where forgotten attachments are probably the most common and burdensome for others. How nice it is that there’s now an option to check for forgotten attachments in Outlook. And setting it up is as easy as copying and pasting a little script.

This Outlook VB script was originally created by LifeHacker commenter Jack Stowage then was later modified by another reader, Troy (no last name provided). Thanks to both of you guys for making our lives easier. 

Want to install this script yourself? Here’s how.

1. Copy and Paste the following text (don’t worry, you don’t need to understand it):

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
Dim m As Variant
Dim strBody As String
Dim intIn As Long
Dim intAttachCount As Integer, intStandardAttachCount As Integer

On Error GoTo handleError

'Edit the following line if you have a signature on your email that includes images or other files. Make intStandardAttachCount equal the number of files in your signature.
intStandardAttachCount = 0

strBody = LCase(Item.Body)

intIn = InStr(1, strBody, "original message")

If intIn = 0 Then intIn = Len(strBody)

intIn = InStr(1, Left(strBody, intIn), "attach")

intAttachCount = Item.Attachments.Count

If intIn > 0 And intAttachCount <= intStandardAttachCount Then
    m = MsgBox("It appears that you mean to send an attachment," & vbCrLf & "but there is no attachment to this message." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "Do you still want to send?", vbQuestion + vbYesNo + vbMsgBoxSetForeground)

    If m = vbNo Then Cancel = True
End If

handleError:

If Err.Number <> 0 Then
    MsgBox "Outlook Attachment Reminder Error: " & Err.Description, vbExclamation, "Outlook Attachment Reminder Error"
End If

End Sub

2. In Outlook, go to Tools –> Macro –> Visual Basic Editor in the menu options. (You may need to expand the project by clicking the plus (+) sign under Project1 until you see ThisOutlookSession.)

3. Expand ThisOutlookSession by double-clicking it.

4. Paste the code into the big white empty space like so:

5. Click “Save”

The online service YouSendIt is a favorite for sending large files over the internet. The service offers three versions: a free personal account that allows sending of files up to 2 GB, plus Business and Corporate accounts that offer additional file security, tracking, and deployment tools.

Today, YouSendIt offers a variety of plugins that integrate with the applications you use everyday, including Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office. With these plugins installed, you can seamlessly send files from within the program itself, without having to go online and browse to the yousendit.com web site.

The Outlook plugin has been around for awhile now, having made its debut back in March 2008. Since then, the plugin has been downloaded 261,209 times. IT admins love the plugin because it deploys easily, reduces strain on email servers, and users tend to adopt it right away with little training required.

The Outlook plugin offers a resumable upload feature that handles network interruptions – so even if you’re on a flaky Wi-Fi connection, a timeout won’t mean you have to start all over – your upload will just continue where it left off.

The YouSendIt Microsoft Office plugin is new. This plugin also handles network interruptions while offering 25% faster uploads than the web application. It even lets you add additional files and folders to one upload batch to save you time when you need to send multiple files. The plugin includes all standard YouSendIt features like password protection, certified delivery, and file expiration control, too.

YouSendIt AddIn In Office 2007

Once installed, the plugin provides a new option from the “Send” menu of Microsoft Office - “Send by YouSendIt.”

Registered YouSendIt users can download this plugin for free from here.

What AwayFind offers instead is the ability to step away from your email without missing the really important items – the “emailed emergencies,” so to speak. The service works via an auto-responder which simply states something like:

Messaging me about something I need to know today (like a canceled meeting)?  Please click here to get my attention:

 http://awayfind.com/username

You can, of course, edit this message to include other details like when you plan on checking email, whether you’re on vacation, or the phone number to someone else who’s available to help.

If the email was indeed very urgent, the sender will (hopefully) click the link to get in touch with you. This takes them to a web page where they fill in their contact info and the message (which they will likely copy-and-paste from the original email).

The form is not too cumbersome to fill out, but has just enough fields that people will consider whether or not it’s worth their effort. This should help address the slew of email senders who tend to think that their emergencies are your emergencies. If anything, they’ll just go find someone else to get them through their current crisis.

The AwayFind service comes in two variations: a basic, free service and a professional version for $5/month. Most people will need the professional version, as the free service only offers 5 text messages per month. Of course, even the Professional version is somewhat lacking in that department, too, as it only provides 30 texts per month. Then again, hopefully, you don’t have 30 emergencies every month – that’s one emergency per day! Still, it would be nice not to be limited considering that you’re paying for the service.

You can also have email notifications sent to you when someone fills out a form. Ideally, these would be sent to an alternate address (like your personal address), so you’re not tempted to read your other work emails when you receive these alerts. The service actually supports as many different email addresses as you would like.

Whether you’re on vacation, on the road, really busy, or simply overloaded with email, AwayFind can help the most important messages reach you. To try the service for yourself, you can sign up here.

With Attent, each employee is given a set amount of “Serios” per week, which are basically like virtual dollars. For each email you send, you can attach a certain number of Serios to it, depending on importance. More important emails are sent using more Serios. The system works as an Outlook plugin, and, since it only works with other people who also use Attent, the company would have to roll this out to everyone to make it an effective tool.

While this is an interesting idea, the reasoning behind this idea is that you can force people to email less by forcing them to calculate how much they can “afford” to email, and that seems to me a pretty much a knee-jerk reaction to dealing with info overload.

For one thing, Attent can’t stop people outside the company from emailing, so it only forces internal employees to turn to phone calls and face-to-face requests which may be even more disruptive than emails.

From personal experience, I found that a lot of people chose to email simply because email was the absolute fastest way to send out a request for help, a question, or to share a message with a large number of people. When this became a burden, such as it was at one of my I.T. jobs, the real cause that should have been addressed was why were people turning to email instead of using the tools to them at hand? Why were people sending emails instead of logging help desk tickets? Why were people sending emails instead of referring to online documentation? Why were people sending emails instead of doing the job themselves – which they had the ability and permissions to do, but not the know-how?

The problem that must be addressed in every company are the underlying causes that lead some people to use email far more than necessary – and use it first, without thinking things through. This tool, Attent, aims to do that, but without  deeper understanding about what’s wrong in the particular company.

For example, in my situation, implementing a I.T. support email address that directly posted items to the helpdesk instead of arriving in my inbox would have been a big help. Training people where to find the answers they need and how to use the tools we had in house would also have cut down on the emails. (Unfortunately, I didn’t have the authority to implement changes, because believe me, I would have!)

At another job of mine, where I did have authority to make changes, I spent a good part of a day out of the new hires’ week of training teaching the new employees about our in-house web resources – one of which was a SharePoint site. Even for those who had never been exposed to SharePoint, the majority were able to understand pretty quickly how they could use it and it definitely helped cut down on requests in the future as people weren’t emailing in basic questions like where to find a certain file or bit of information. They already knew where it was online.

Often businesses tend to overlook the value of training, but then they end up working harder due to the lack of training of their new employees. The value of real, instructor-led training is something every business needs to understand because, once in the thick of things, employees will never find the time to study user manuals or do research – everything becomes “I need an answer now.” The best time to reach employees and set out what the expectations are for them is at the very beginning of employment before they become reliant on using their preferred tools and processes that result in increased efficiency for them, but that decrease the overall efficiency of the company as a whole since they put the burden on other people who have mastered the use of the company’s informational systems.

Of course, training isn’t a panacea for the entirety of the information overload problem, but it’s certainly a better use of a company’s money that setting up a virtual economy where emails have a price tag associated with them, in my opinion.

For dealing with the remainder of the email, tools that add efficiency to the process of sorting through your inbox - like my business email add-on of choice, ClearContext - are really the way to go. Heavy use of filters, rules, and informational auto-responders can also help cut down on the flood. However, real solutions to today’s information overload problem are going to much more in-depth and complex than an Outlook plugin. Maybe IORG will come up with some answers for us.

(Image courtesy of Seriosity)

You may remember some of our earlier coverage of ClearContext (click here for 7 Outlook Tips). Now the company is rebranding their product naming conventions a bit along with the launch of several new features. The previous professional (paid) version of the software was called ClearContext IMS v4. Now, it's a much more understandable "ClearContext Professional." Registered users of IMS can upgrade and get access to the new features for free.

For everyone else, ClearContext Personal edition is offering some great tools which include the ability to see attachments and contacts from emails in each folder, the ability to save, sort, and forward those attachments, the ability to create distribution lists, meeting requests, etc. from those contacts, and more.

Back when I was a regular ClearContext user at my I.T. job, one of my favorite features were the buttons that let me instantly file either individual emails or entire conversations with one click. Once I had everything set up properly, email came in already categorized, so I wouldn't even need to tell it what folder it belonged in. Of course, for the times I did need to categorize the email, it was only a matter of typing the first letter of the folder's name and hitting "Enter" to assign the category. (Love keyboard shortcuts!)

However, it looks like the next version of ClearContext Personal is offering a feature that can even trump that - the ability to explore and preview your attachments within Outlook just like you were browsing a folder on your desktop. (You have to see the screenshot). That looks extremely useful.

Other ClearContext Personal features include threaded conversations, highlighting of the most important messages in your inbox, and "Notifications Managers" that automatically move what we fondly refer to as "bacn" out of your inbox. (What's bacn? click here to find out. Short answer is "email you want, but not right now").

The new features should certainly help heavy Outlook users get a better reign on their inboxes if they can take a break from their email long enough to install and configure the add-in!