A few weeks ago I was out at a local retail park doing some shopping (mainly window!) when I saw a lady trying to get a promotional wall site working.

The site was a fairly simple large LCD screen with some form of media playing, yet the screen was showing a “no signal” type message therefore putting the site into a position where the desired message was not being delivered to potential customers.

As I was waiting for Mrs L I overheard the lady telling the store staff that she had been in the store since before 10am, and it was now nearly 3pm on a Sunday.  This means that during the shorter trading hours this site was not only non-operational but this poor lady had spent it trying to sort out this issue.

From a system point of view, this means that it is failing to do the job it was commissioned for.  The message it was supposed to be relaying to potential customers just wasn’t being displayed.

This kind of situation would have been perfect for our Signage Support Package.  Under this kind of package the sites technology is covered under a support contract allowing us to monitor key services and programmes using our SaaS software over the internet.

We would have been notified if the system had not checked into the network highlighting a possible issue, allowing us to contact the store initially to see if there was a problem.   If the system was still online, but not displaying properly we could have remotely connected the system to see if there was an issue we could resolve without a store visit.   From there we could have organised a site visit with spare kit in case we need it and we would have gone to site to make sure the system operates as it should.

We feel that if a client decides to make an investment in digital signage, then it’s our role to make sure the right kit is put in for the right impact, function and message.  As part of that the Signage Support Package can give peace of mind to make sure the message is reaching the customers it needs to

For more info on our Signage Support Packages click here

So a couple of months ago I got a new car.  I settled on a new Alfa Romeo Mito and spec’d it up accordingly.  The car came with Blue&Me, a system that allowed integration of your mobile phone to the car with enhanced media player functions.  It also came with all the other things becoming more common place on new cars nowadays.  Now, the purpose of this post is not to pummel you with info about the car!

Shortly after getting it, my daughter (now 7) tells me that when she learns to drive she is going to get a car like mine, and this got me thinking.  My first car (and many since!) was a 15 year old car that fell apart in the end, but it soon became apparent that if she follows suit then yes, the car I am driving round and all the tech in there will be in the car she will be driving!

So then what happens when my current youngest gets a car?  What kind of tech will that have?  I have just watched an advert by VW for their BlueMotion range and near the end it talks of concept cars, and they describe a VW doing several hundred miles to the gallon.  Cars now have an approach that doesn’t tend to concentrate on BHP or top speed, but rather miles per gallon, and what kind of technology it has to make your life easier.

“I see you like Rock, do you want me to find more radio stations from that genre?” or parallel parking for you, or automatically following the car in front, matching it when it speeds up or slows down.  Cameras surround cars making sure you have the best view possible and reduce blind spots.  Most of this tech will be or is already in cars now, so what will a driving lesson be like in 10 years?

But as my car that I am driving round in now is destined for future use a car to learn to drive in 10 years from now what kind of tech will be in general use for everyday life?

In our house, contrary to popular belief, there is not tech spilling out of every wall like the inside of a Bond villains cave.  iPod’s, iPhone’s, iPad’s PS3’s Laptops etc. are all in though and my kids are using them like second nature.

The generations younger than mine are already used to “always on Internet”, MP3 for music, entire collections carried around on pocket sized devices, TV on demand, Video Calls, touch screens etc etc etc.  And the generation before me probably thought the same of us, however the speed with which the technology has advanced between those generations will not continue at such a rapid pace.

You won’t find me talking of flying cars and floating skateboards and trainers that do themselves (all very cool that they are) but in the next 20 years I think that the developments of tech will be just as profound on our daily lives, but perhaps won’t seem as earth shattering as they have been until now.  That may be partly in our numbness to it all.  As we become accustomed to the tech we have, the next advancement tends to very quickly become the norm in our lives.

So what do you think?  In 10 years’ time are we going to see something like Back to the Future 2, or something altogether more familiar?

There’s been tons going on here keeping us busy and out of trouble!

One of our larger web projects is coming to a close, but the good news is all the features we have been building in to this particular project, we are trying to fold into our RocketCMS.  Of course this means all those features will be available to all our users!

As well as a few changes to the hardware infrastructure we have introduced a new package to support Digital Signage Networks.  There will be more information on our site soon, but for now to learn more give us a call or email us here.

There have been a few updates to the Remote Management system too with a new roadmap for Q3 and the full release of GFI Managed AV being fully realised in the management console.

We’re still adjusting to our new surroundings, but settling in well. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks we can post up some details of the projects we’ve been working on, but suffice to say there is loads!!

Well, I’ll sign off for now any how

Dom

So where have we been for the last few weeks?  It’s been a busy time here at Lime Towers Inc.  We have moved to a new office with better comms and infrastructure and we’ve been busy making a few changes to services that we offer.

The move was a busy time with several large projects coming to their conclusion and several large tenders to submit, as well as yours truly going on holiday!

Well the good news it all done, and we are all settled in to our new office on a nice farm just outside Lutterworth.

We have made a couple of changes to our Business Support Package by introducing a new backup assessment method, and a new version of our ProjectsCMS to make editing and adding projects easier.  We are also in the process of introducing a CRM into the package for small to medium businesses to help them track customer interaction more effectively.

Also we have introduced a new package for supporting digital signage in retail.  There will be more on this shortly as we are currently working on the press releases and web pages, but it has already generated interest among our signage customers looking to make the most from their signage installations

Anyway, now we are settled in, blog posts should go back to their normal regularity, but for now I’m signing off

Today at WDC in California the latest details on iOS5 were revealed.  In a nutshell the new features are as below:

A new Notification Center aggregates all your notifications into one screen and is accessible by swiping down a menu from the top of the screen.

Twitter integration is also being integrated into iOS 5.  It will allow a single sign-in allowing apps to make use of your Twitter credentials. That includes the Camera and Photos programs allowing you to tweet images out directly from your galleries.

Safari Reader is a new browser feature that will strip out distractions and present the text of a webpage with no other excess content.

There will now a camera button right on your lockscreen. The volume-up button is also doubling up as a physical shutter release key when you’re in the camera app. Some new in-device editing options have also been added, including cropping, rotation, red-eye reduction, and a one-click enhance option.

A new split keyboard has also been shown off in iOS 5.

Cable free syncing is now here. Setting up and activating a new iOS device can be done right on the device itself, and syncing will be wireless too.

Over-the-air updates are also part of the new deal, and in better news still, they’ll contain only the data that’s changed, meaning you won’t have to re-download the entire OS every time Apple opts to make a minor tweak.

Another new feature is iMessage. It’s a messaging service exclusively for iOS users. You’ll be able to send messages, photos, videos, and contacts. Group messaging will also be available. It works over either WiFi or 3G and looks to be making good use of Apple’s new push notifications.

We’re all looking forward to the new release and getting to grips with the new features.  As soon as we have it, we’ll let you know our thoughts!

So how well does VIPRE fair against the competition?  Well, as it turns out, really well.

In a recent test held by German organisation, AV-Test GmbH, it came out with a 95% repair rate compared to the industry average of 86%.

For the full article head over here

By signing up to one of our Business Support Packages you can take full advantage of not only a managed anti-virus service, but full server monitoring, workstation monitoring and hosted anti-spam.

Friday 13th saw the release of the latest RC for testing managed anti-virus in the remote management console.  So what does this mean to you?

Well, in the near future Lime can bring you extremely effective anti-virus software that is integrated directly into the management console so you get not only another great service from us, but an extremely cost effective one

Just like Patch Management and Take Control the Vipre Anti-Virus module is flexible and through our managed solution we can roll out to workstation and servers and run scheduled scans and reports directly from the management console.

Once we have done some more testing we’ll post up some more info about how this service works

Hi.  Today we are looking at how we can join text together from separate cells to make one cell of text.  The function for this is called concatenate.

So lets start with entering some sample data:

Once we have this, we are going to make the cells in column C a merge of the data in columns A and B.

Select cell C1 and type “=”

After this type concatenate(A1,” “,B1)

The reason we have inserted an ” ” in between the cell references is because if we don’t Excel will show the two words without a space.

Once you have typed the above press Enter

You should see the following:

Thanks for reading

Dom

Ok so after seeing my son watch the new Volkswagen Passat advert for about the 43rd time I thought I’d better write a little bit about it!

I’m kinda surprised an advert like this hasn’t been done like this before as it’s simplicity is it’s brilliance.  There is virtually nothing in there about the car, yet it’ll be talked about for a long time.

For those of you who haven’t seen the video here is it.  Those interested further here are the outtakes

I also reckon there will be a few sales of that Darth outfit!

So a client rings telling me they are experiencing a really weird problem in Word 2003.  Whenever they open it in their session on the Terminal Server the cursor start flickering really badly and the system becomes pretty much unresponsive.  I dialed in a checked the system and sure enough the CPU usage for Word was really large on her processes and the whole system was sluggish.

At first I noticed her Word was repaginating like crazy and looked at trying to run Word in Normal view as Print view does not allow the removal of Background Pagination, but to no avail.

Eventually I came across this post here at Experts Exchange (which is a fantastic service by the way!).  At the bottom a user suggests stopping the spoolsv.exe process to see if that helps, and hey presto Word returns to normal.  Once a new driver is installed on the server normal operation resumed.  So thanks to that user at Experts Exchange I have a happy server again, and more importantly a happy customer!