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The Burning Issue |
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Dear Reader,
October is upon us, "season
of mists and mellow fruitfulness" as Keats
would have it. I do hope this time of year is both
mellow and fruitful for you.
This month we'll "blow our own
trumpet" and tell you about our
Case Study of
OpenOffice Implementation, and take a look at some
free tools that Microsoft supply
to help reduce Spam.
As the owner of a distinctive
business name I was very interested in the
Yellow Pages Best Business name
competition, and bring you some of the great
business names they've found.
Don't forget that in the UK the
clocks go back an hour from British Summer
Time to GMT this Sunday at 1am GMT. Most PC's and
servers will do this automatically, but it's as
well to check. Whilst you're re-setting your house
clocks it's a good time to
check the smoke alarm too.
Remember too our
Archive of past
Burning Issues on our web-site. If you've only
just subscribed you can catch up on old issues
there. Of course if you like this little
newsletter, tell your friends, send them to the
website or get them to
subscribe here.
If you don't like it, tell me. You can unsubscribe with
[UNSUBSCRIBE], or send me
an
email and I'll make sure you don't receive
another copy.
Stuart Box -
Email me your feedback
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OpenOffice Case Study
Microsoft's Intelligent Message
Filter.
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As everyone knows, spam is the
scourge of the Internet. There are many solutions
to help filter out spam. Some work; others don't.
Microsoft recently came out with the Intelligent
Message Filter (IMF). This add-on for Exchange
Server 2003 is an integral part of their Small
Business Server 2003, and it appears to work fairly
well. It allows end-users some control, and the
price is right: It's FREE! You can download both
the
Intelligent Message Filter and the
deployment guide without charge.
It's good to see Microsoft doing
something to help relieve and reduce the amount of
Spam we all receive in our in-box. The IMF can be
set to Archive, Delete or Reject e-mail that it
judges to be spam. Another nice option is that IMF
can send suspected spam to a users junk e-mail
folder in Outlook so that users can review "false
positives" and retrieve email that is not spam.
It may not be perfect, no spam
filter is, but its better than nothing, and if your
mailbox is filling up with objectionable spam it
will certainly help, and of course, its FREE, so
you've really nothing to loose.
IMF installs on Microsoft
Exchange Server 2003, please
contact us
if you need help or would like us to install it for
you.
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Alison's tip of the month,
Lists of data in Excel.
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When in Excel,
in a cell that holds data, you probably know that
you can drag on the black “handle” at the bottom
right corner of the cell to copy the contents of
the cell.
However,
instead of dragging normally on the handle, right
click and drag. When you release the mouse
button, you will be presented with choices
depending on the data being copied.
Try it with a
weekday to only have working days copied or try it
simply with the number 1 to copy sequential
numbers. With a date, you can choose to fill with
weekdays, months or years.
If you'd like Alison to help unlock the
secrets of Word, Excel, or any other of the
products we train on, for you or your company,
feel free to
contact her, or look at the course
details on our
website.
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What's in a
name?.
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"O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;"
Many of you will know the
derivation of our name by now. This month I
was intrigued to find that the Yellow Pages held a
competition for the Best Business Name, and Royal
Mail has been researching Business Names.
The Royal Mail research shows that companies are
moving away from adopting the family name for the
firm, and turning to more factual, product driven
or humorous names.
Tim Rivett, head of Small Business at Royal Mail,
said: "The name of the
business plays an important role in creating the
very crucial first impression of the business.
Getting it right is therefore key."
The company's figures show that two-thirds of
family businesses believe their name was effective
because it clearly explained their product. It
compares with only 1% who say their family name,
or local name, help to market their businesses.
The Yellow Pages competition turned up some
marvellous company names. For example the
Greengrocers "Melon Cauli", the record shop
in Croydon "The Vinyl Resting Place" and
(my favourite) the musical instrument shop in Aire
Yorkshire appropriately named "Aire Guitars".
It was won by a one-woman ironing and laundry
business in Bristol called "Crease Lightning".
These almost make "Burningsuit" look normal
don't they?
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Do you need
some I.T. Help?.
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After a busy summer I am now able
to take on more projects and increase my client
portfolio, so if you, or anyone you know, need an
experienced IT man, please don't hesitate to get
in touch. I'll be happy to discuss any
opportunity, large or small, or just chat about IT
in general.
As an example of the sort of
thing I do, here are some of the projects I've
worked on in the past.
·
Migration of 200 PC users from Windows to Mandrake
Linux and OpenOffice.
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Appointed UK Online For Business Regional Champion
for the South East.
·
Installation, configuration and maintenance of
networks of PCs based around Linux, and Microsoft
Small Business Server 2003.
·
Specifying, selecting and installing a Customer
Relationship Management system for a large
Telecoms supplier
·
Installation of Wireless Networks and Wide Area
Networks using Virtual Private Networking and
Point-To-Point Tunnelling
·
Author of “The E-Business Know-How Guide”
Published by Wired Sussex
·
Project Management of a £100,000 project to
implement a new e-commerce web site for a business
support agency
·
Lecturing in E-Business at Brighton University
·
Running “Presentation skills”, and “Management
Development” courses for a wide range of clients
If you could use any of these
skills, or know someone else who does then please
contact me by email
mailto:stuart.box@burningsuit.co.uk or 'phone
01403 786740.
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Training:
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Cool Links:
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weird, send me your favourites.
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