One of the things that has been bugging me since I got my 3G iPhone was that I had duplicate contacts listed. Normally this would have been a minor irritation but given that the contacts take an age to load I was keen to keep the list as small as possible. A search on Google returned lots of others who had a similar problem but none of the solutions (many of which seemed to be clutching at straws) worked.

One idea that did come up regularly was that of having multiple contact folders in Exchange but I was pretty certain … Read the rest

A friend of mine runs a small media production company, Magic Bullet, producing high-quality corporate videos. It was the Magic Bullet team that was responsible for the iPhone video produced for AppSwing.

It can be very difficult for small business to make themselves heard but occasionally you can manage to get your head above the parapet. Magic Bullet have been producing a series of videos for the University of Reading and the latest seems to have caught the imagination of the national media featuring on both the BBC and Telegraph websites.

It’s great coverage and interesting too. Check … Read the rest

There’s an interesting post over at Web Worker Daily that asks the question “How do you give something back to those providing information on the web?” It’s a good question. Whenever I need information the web is the first place I turn whether it is for the parameters for an obscure function to who was in that movie and it very rarely lets me down. So how do I give back? I guess it is by adding to that pool of information either through this blog or, perhaps, more specific information on a topic such as the Williams F1 team… Read the rest

I was sent this today and thought that it deserved a wider audience as it is all so true…

1. It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by impregnating nine women.
2. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it.
3. You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it.
4. At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.
5. The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the situatee.
6. A problem shared is

Here’s a neat tip to allow mailto links to open in Gmail (or any other application) rather than the usual default, which in most cases on Windows will be Outlook/Express.

Set Gmail as Your Default.… Read the rest

The above screenshot is from Firefox 3 and is displayed when you go to the about:config configuration page. I like to see a bit of humour in development. This one has different messages too so you can enjoy time and time again and never get tired!… Read the rest

Under normal circumstances I feel pretty well equipped to sort out most problems with a PC whether they are hardware or software related, however, this latest one has got me stumped. For the last couple of days the machine has started turning itself off without any warning whatsoever – no error message, no blue screen, just no power.  It is this sort of problem that is hardest to resolve – where do you start to look?

I have uninstalled anything I added recently but that doesn’t seem to be it.

I have checked the event logs but there is nothing … Read the rest

It seems that in Windows XP SP 3 the command MSTSC /CONSOLE, that allowed you to connect to the console session, has been removed and replaced with MSTSC /ADMIN. The same also applies to Vista SP1 and Windows 2008.

The reasons for this are outlined in the article below from the Microsoft Terminal Services team blog. I am repeating the details here to save you having to spend hours working out why you aren’t seeing what you might expect.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ts/archive/2007/12/17/changes-to-remote-administration-in-windows-server-2008.aspx

Thanks to Andy at Plus Development for the tip.… Read the rest

What must be one of THE most annoying features of Windows is that, post Windows Update, the constant reminders to reboot your PC. What is worse is that if you don’t do it then Windows will do it for you after five minutes. So if you have, say, popped off to make a cup of tea when you come back you will find your machine rebooted and that whatever you are in the middle of, such as burning a DVD, aborted.

This can all be incredibly frustrating as I found this morning. Fortunately there is a solution in the form … Read the rest