23/05/2008 by Jon.

Hi. I haven’t posted much recently as I’ve been working on a site refresh. Having only recently started on this blog I’ve now realised the limitations of the Wordpress tool (which is what I use for this site). Wordpress is great for simple blogging but I kept running into issues, such as placing Google Ads and alike. As a result I’m moving the site to the Drupal content management system which provides far richer facilities. Setting this up completely is taking a little while!

You can see the new site at http:\\www.conceptech.co.uk. There is a blog there but I haven’t yet set up the RSS feeds. As soon as I do then I will publish the new address here.

Thanks for bearing with me.

Jon

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09/05/2008 by Jon.

Like many people I am fascinated with the idea of hosting applications in the "cloud". The concept is great and sounds reminiscent of a William Gibson novel, which is probably what makes it attractive. However, as with many other IT professionals, I am far from convinced about using it to host business applications. It will certainly be interesting to see how the market develops.

In the meantime I have managed to get a Google Apps account and have got the same application up and running. You can see it at http://cth00001.appspot.com. Full details of the application can be found on the Google help pages at http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/gettingstarted/.

Please feel free to sign the guest book!

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02/05/2008 by Jon.

This post is a little off topic but given that I spent several fruitless hours trying to sort this out, only to find the simplest of solutions, prompted me to share the details.

I use Outlook 2007 for my e-mail, calendar and to-do list. The task feature is vital in letting me keep track of my work. I also use a Windows Mobile powered phone onto which I sync my Outlook information. This is also very valuable in keeping me informed and up to date.

However I noticed that  several of my Outlook tasks were not being replicated onto my phone. I tried Googling, searching Microsoft Support all to no avail. I upgraded Active Sync, re-established Bluetooth connectivity (you can tell I was getting frustrated at this point) again without success.

So I went back to the tasks in question to see if I could spot any differences. Lo and behold there was! Those tasks which had a start date which had not yet arrived were not replicated. Obvious really, only those tasks that I should be working on were put on to the phone. As a developer I can see the sense in this, what annoys me is that it took me this long to work it out.

The annoying this is that depending on how you create the task in Outlook you sometimes get a start date and sometimes don’t. But at least I know what I need to do now!

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26/02/2008 by Jon.

Welcome to the Conceptech blog. Here we will try to provide advice and insight on the world of IT Architecture, especially for architects working at the front line of business projects.

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