Articles for category ‘General News’

Team grows again: welcome new employees

The PamConsult Team grows again: please welcome our latest two new employees with me. They will both extend our team in our development office in Ebstorf, Germany.

Matthias is a developer who worked in web development before. He will be part of the web development team and will work on projects from our customers as well as on PamFax, the websites, etc.

Tobias is a new apprentice who will learn software development in the next 3 years in our company. Through his existing knowledge, he will also help developing our products and projects.

So, welcome!

50 Awesome Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom

We were sent this link with an interesting article on how to use Skype in a classroom. It has links to various resources regarding this topic. As our products are also used in schools to record classroom sessions, I was obviously keen on reading this post.

Read the full story here.

PamFax update published

We’ve just pushed out the second server and first user application update out to the live systems. Since the launch on April 27, we’ve had a lot of good but also some critical feedback. We’re analyzed the feedback carefully and prepared the two updates. By the way, you can always see the server and local application version in the bottom left corner of the PamFax application window. The second digit from the right is the server version number and the furtest right is the local PamFax application number. The server number may change without an application update which means we released an update to the server.

The changes we made in server version 2.0.2.x were mainly focussed on fixing some key backend issues like login problems, stability and performance.

The changes made in todays release (2.0.3.x) are:

• Local PamFax application: Improved printer driver (Windows)
• Local PamFax application: Installer shows real filenames (Windows)
• Local PamFax application: No more installer timeouts (Windows)
• Server: Improved “forgot password” function on Portal login page
• Server: Fixed IE7 compatibility (send faxes + buy credit from portal)
• Server: Portal login issues resolved
• Server: Added about box in client
• Server: Fixed handling of large files (> 10mb)

Windows users will be prompted for an automatic update when you start PamFax.

With this update we have addressed the most mentioned issues. However as we continue to strive for perfectionism, please keep the feedback coming via our helpdesk system.

We are currently collecting the feedback and checking the servers intensively for further improvements. The main points of focus, besides bugfixing, will be:

• Further increase PamFax application performance (startup and responsiveness)
• Roll out improved fax conversion systems

On the conversion servers we already have achieved remarkable results which I will share with you soon. We are coming closer and closer to our objective to make a fax come out as if it is a printed document.

Share your Skype for Business stories for the chance to win prizes for your business

Skype have launched a competition with cool prizes.

Tens of thousands of businesses around the world use Skype to save time, save money and stay ahead – and yours is probably one of them. We’re celebrating the new look for Skype for Business by offering you the opportunity to share your story with the world and win prizes for your business.

For the best stories, we’ll be awarding first, second and third prizes in three regions – EMEA, the Americas and Asia-Pacific. The prizes are as follows:

• First: Wins a Skype for Business consultancy service with a Skype for Business employee offering a bespoke solution for their business. The package will include a Business Control Panel account and Skype products up to the value of €1000. Products on offer will include Skype Credit to purchase any pay as you go features, online numbers or subscriptions in addition to Skype Certified hardware products.
• Second: A Business Control Panel account with €200 of Skype Credit and up to €300 of Skype Certified hardware products.
• Third: A Business Control Panel account with €100 of Skype Credit and up to €100 of Skype Certified hardware products.

Sign up here: http://www.skypeforbusinesscompetition.com/go/enter

Discontinuing Google Checkout payment option

As of May 1st, Google Checkout will radically change their costing structure making it a very expensive service. We have decided to discontinue this payment option in all of our stores (Pamela, PamFax, Scendix) which is unfortunate as the service works really well.

We will replace this payment option with MoneyBookers.

PamFax 2.0 on track for release

Just want to post a quick update on where we are with the new PamFax 2.0 release. As mentioned earlier this is a major update with the following changes.

• Support (finally) for Macintosh
• Fax-In as part of the new Pro Plan covering 27 countries
• Complete redesigned PamFax application user interface for easier fax submission and managment
• New portal design
• Multi document sending
• Also works without Skype Extras Manager (Skype Credit then not supported)
• Country upgrades to cheaper zones
• Significant page price drop

We are on track for a tentative lauch on April 27.

For existing users it is important to know that we will allow existing PamFax Pro subscribers to upgrade to the new plan which includes a fax-in number from one of the 27 countries. As soon as we release PamFax 2.0 all 1.0 users will be upgraded automatically at next application start. Obviously the new page rates will apply to existing credit balances.

Attached two screenshots of what the new application looks like.

Pamela for Skype version 4.5 released

Since the initial release of Pamela in February 2005 and after the last main release in May 2008, we now released Pamela for Skype version 4.5.

4.5 has some new features and changes which I will describe in this post.

The new version has two new main functions: Call Scheduler and Auto Conference Call Manager

Call Scheduler: This function allows you to schedule Skype calls and Pamela will popup a reminder at the preset time before the call is supposed to happen. The call scheduler has several options like recurring calls (great for those weekly/monthly calls). When a call notification is shown you can easily click on an icon which initiates the call for you.

Conference Call Manager: With this tool you can remotely start conference calls, bookmark conference calls or join calls. The situation of use would be where you are to start a conference call but need to attend other business. In this case you can define that when a particular Skype user calls you that Pamela creates the conference call (and you can record it also). The same works for outbound calls, you call a collegue and Pamela will create the conference call for you. You can also click on a call button and Pamela will automatically create a conference call with all people you have defined in the group.

In addition we have done major redesign of the birthday section which now shows a list of all past, current and future birthdays of your contacts. Those that do not have a date set in the Skype profile do not show obviously. New is also the option to customize the standard birthday chat greeting message before sending it.

We’ve had requests from people who installed Pamela on another computer, to be able to import older recordings. This function has been added to 4.5 and you can now easily import recordings into Pamela.

The video recording component, although not yet there where we want it to be, has been improved. Many had issues with Pamela unable to locate the Skype video, this has been fixed. Stay tuned for more development here.

The sound options in Pamela have been simplified as the configuration in 4.0 was very technical and many could not figure out how that worked.

The audio engine in Pamela has been updated and performs better. We have also achieved considerable performance improvements when starting Pamela.

Furthermore icons have been updated for better clearity. Menus have been resorted so they are more logical. Some settings regarding default setting of various options changed based on user feedback.

If you are a current Pamela user (not Call Recorder!), you can upgrade for free by downloading the latest version. To do that open Pamela and click on the Help menu and then “Check for update”. Download the new 4.5 version and run the installer. There is no need to uninstall Pamela for the upgrade.

We hope you enjoy the features of Pamela.

Expansion of the team – welcome Kay

We proudly announce our first new permanent employee hired in 2009.

Kay will strengthen our developer team in the German office. His main focus will be developing web-applications like the upcoming PamFax 2.0.

Welcome him in our team and be gentle to him, he’s “the new one”

As we have loads of work in the queue, he will for sure not be the last new employee this year…

Testing Windows Home Server

On our search for a good file server and centralized backup solution, I stumbled across Windows Home Server. The description sounds very good and seemed to be the perfect solution for our office: this server system automatically backs up Windows clients over night and has a unique data-storage system, which makes it possible to add and remove different harddrives to the storage, making it larger without the hassle of moving files from one drive to the other. It’s a kind of software raid (stripe).

It also comes with a handy administration console, which can be accessed from every client machine. This console can be extended easily with addins by third party software developers. As some TapiRex customers already asked about a Windows Home Server console addin for TapiRex, it was a good point to get started trying this new Windows Server operating system.

So I tried to find it in the MSDN Subscriber downloads, as we have several subscriptions to MSDN Universal, which theoretically includes all Microsoft operating systems and all other software. As I was unable to find a download there, I googled the web and found out that Microsoft decided not to make Windows Home Server available in MSDN Subscriber downloads. Urgh. So we pay lots of money to not be able to get access to a Windows operating system to develop new addons for it. What a decision…

So I just ordered a Windows Home Server license from eBay, which was delivered quickly and did only cost around 90 Euros.

Installation

When installing the Windows Home Server incl. Power Pack 1 (which is based on Windows 2003 Server) on one of our servers in our server rack, it stumbled upon our 3Ware RAID controller, which is installed with 2 x 160GB harddrives as system drives in a mirrored array to speed up the operating system. I was able to load additional drivers for that controller from an USB stick, but when the system rebooted after the first installation step, it has forgotten about the driver.
Googling for this issue, I had to find out that this is a bug in the Windows Home Server installation . As the text-based setup does not have access to a USB stick to reload the drivers, I had to go out to buy an external 3.5″ USB disk drive, as the setup only accepts additional drivers from the A: drive. Do you remember 3.5″ disks? It was not that easy to find a disk to store the driver to get past this installation step. These disks have gone so rare here in the office . Previous installations of Windows 2003 did not have this problem…

But after that, setup was pretty easy. I was able to install all hardware components and to setup the Drive Extender. After setup, you have to install a small client connector software on every client machine that should backup to that Windows Home Server, which was pretty easy as well.

In-day-usage

The good thing is that the backups worked pretty well. Also, some of the available plugins from third-party developers are very useful.

But there also were some problems:

Delays in accessing shared folders: we experienced some delays in accessing shared folders on the server. Every employee in the office has some drives mapped to shared folders on the file server. This includes a personal folder and some general folders for everyone. While browsing in these subfolders on these drives, there was sometimes a lag of several seconds that makes it impossible to work with it fluently. For example, we store our downloads company-wide in a folder on the file-server. But the “save file” dialog in the webbrowser sometimes hung up for up to 20 seconds before it was able to show the folder and save the file. Once the data transfer starts, it’s fast and reliable.

Bug in drive’s size-calculation: When you map shared folders on the Windows Home Server as local drives, Windows XP and Vista are unable to show the correct drive size. After searching the web and asking some experts in Windows Home Server forums, I found out that this a known bug in Windows Home Server and that you can’t do anything about it:

Popups on all client machines: when you have the client connector software installed, all warnings from the Windows Home Server or one of it’s clients is shown on every client machine. So every user gets popup messages like “Computer X does not have virus protection installed”, “Backup on machine Y was not sucessful”, and many more. I was not able to find a way to customize these popups so that there are not shown to our apprentices for example.

So, after nearly 2 weeks in production, I am currently installing Windows 2008 Datacenter on that server machine, as the problems shown above disturbed our daily workflow that much that it was not worth it. We will install Windows Home Server as a VMWare virtual machine instead to do some software development on it. A PamFax addon is also an idea for it. What do you think?

I will report back how this all worked with Windows 2008. Does anyone have a different suggestion for a solid and fast file server operating system + client backup possibilities?

New domain name for Pamela

We’re proud to announce that we have found a new domain name for our Pamela product range. The new home of Pamela is www.pamela.biz and already live. We’ve migrated over from the old domain, but obvously the older links/bookmarks will just keep working.