Articles tagged with ‘CI’

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.

Updates for Pamela and Call Recorder released

We released new Pamela for Skype and Pamela Call Recorder updates.

In Pamela several things were fixed like a bug when recording conference calls which resulted in the recording stopping when you added a person to the conference. We also fixed the call transfer feature which was broken in 4.5.0.96. A potential crash situation after finishing a call recording was also implemented.

In addition we decided to auto upgrade the entire Pamela user base to the new version. So all users who are still using an older Pamela version  will receive an automatic update notification when they start Pamela.

In Pamela Call Recorder we also fixed the conference call bug and an issue related to settings not being saved as well as some minor things. The released version is 4.5.0.50 and is available from www.pamcorder.com. The new version has an improved installation routine which now will also allow starting the call recorder from the Skype Tools, Do More menu (requirement is that Skype Extras Manager is installed).

We activated the auto update for Pamela Call Recorder as well as we think the new version has several important fixes. People starting Pamela Call Recorder with an olderversion number then 4.5.0.49 will receive an automatic update notification.

Philips Net TV – Ebay on your sofa powered by Jaast

On February 19, 2009 Philips announced their new 2009 line of LCD TVs. The 8000, 9000 and Cinema 21:9 products will be shipped with a Net TV module built in. This provides easy, configuration and PC-free internet access with your remote control.

Internet with remote control on TV/Media Center/Wii are things we have been working on for years and thus we are proud to say that Ebay and Philips have selected us to provide an Ebay channel on the new sets.

Based on our mceAuction technology we have adapted the Ebay content to work seamlessly on the new Philips systems.We will provide the channel via our Jaast brand.

We will be providing the Ebay channel on all new Philips Net TV enabled devices!

Ebay navigation on the TV is very simple, the same intiutive way of browsing Ebay as with mceAuction on Microsoft Media Center and Jaast on Wii.

The 8000 series are connected via wire compared to the 9000 series/Cinema 21:9 which are connected via WiFi.

Picture of initial Net TV launch at IFA 2008 (note the Ebay logo is missing).

You can download the Philips Net TV – Feature Press Release.

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?

Best wishes for the holiday season

Dear customers, partners, affiliates and fans, we at PamConsult all wish you a great festive season, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

2008 has been a fanstastic year for us. Some of the highlights…

• Increased revenue by more then 100%
• Completed company consolidation, all software products are now sold via Scendix Software GmbH and all consulting is concentrated in PamConsult GmbH
• Expanded our staff
• Improved our IT infrastructure for future growth
• Major PamFax infrastructure update done in January 2008
• PamFax reached 130.000 users
• In Q2 2009 we plan to release PamFax 2.0 with fax-in and Macintosh support (yeah!)
• Our Pamela for Skype products have seen great user growth with a total of over 5 million downloads
• Pamela for Skype version 4.5 is almost ready to go with exciting new functions and improvements
• Implemented a new and professional shopping platform on PamFax, Pamela and Scendix websites
• mcePhone, the Skype integration tool for Media Center, made it to version 3.0 and will be out of beta soon
• In June we received the Ebay Innovation Award for our Jaast for Wii solution which provides you with Ebay access from your Wii
• With our annual charity BBQ we raised €400 which we double to €800 and give half/half to the “Tafel” in Ebstorf and Freising. These are voluntary projects which provide food supply for poor(er) people.

It has been a fun year. We want to thank you for your continued support and are looking forward to an exciting and successful 2009.

Dick Schiferli & Christoph Bünger

Talking to PamBot

We’ve done posts before about PamBot but yesterday I was talking to a future client and demo-ed PamBot. It was a cool experience seeing that PamBot, powered by the Alice AI engine and a funny AIML character, just chatted away with us. It was fun being in a Skype multichat and having the bot in it to ask questions and search the internet (I created a Skype multichat with PamBot). I also did a demo of searching Ebay, the results came back instantly. A very easy and quick way to fetch and share (live) data.

The project has been a bit dormant but this is mainly due to the fact that it is operating perfectly. The backed is extremely scalable and can handle literally millions of simultaneous chat sessions. Btw – the same platform we also use in PamFax for sending Skype chat status notifications.

So, if you’re up for some fun just lookup the Skype user “pam_bot” in your Skype and add her to your contact list. Open a chat window and type “help” (without the quotes). Then you can just type away and PamBot will answer based on what you type.

There is also a website with further details. The site is www.pambot.com.

Note that the download is not required when you just want to experience artificial intelligence in a Skype chat.

New store for Pamela

We recently upgraded our store on Pamela-Systems to a complete new system. The platform is the same as we have already been using with PamFax. Obviously we had to migrate a lot of legacy and this took us a bit longer then we had anticipated.

The new store is much simpler to navigate and find your way around. In addition it finally provides decent multi-currency support and can handle a large number of credit card processing systems. We still have PayPal but we replaced 2CheckOut with Worldpay. We added Google Checkout who are the only ones that offer Amex support and a really simple and easy payment process. In future we might look at adding systems for particular countries.

The store layout is much cleaner and we have been able to add more license packs, now also for Pamela Call Recorder. Each product can be viewed in detail, you can see exactly what a particular edition offers, what the requirements are and there is even a direct download option. In the past this was often confusing, having the download and purchase on separate pages – people occasionally purchased the wrong license. This should improve with the new store.

The backend side has also improved, you can now login to your account and see your purchase history. The system also provides you with the ability to lookup your activation key and download an invoice for your purchase. For companies within EU we offer the ability to enter the EU-VAT number and purchase without VAT.

The upgrade process has also significantly improved. You login to the store, select a product from the upgrade category, enter your old activation key at checkout and the previous paid price is subtracted from the basket. You only pay the difference. Note though that the entered key is disabled afterwards.

So, with this upgrade we hope you will find it easier to find the right product, with the right currency which fits your need. As always, any comments are greatly appreciated.

Welcome new team members

Our company continues to grow: welcome to our two newest team members in our development office in Ebstorf, Germany:

Horst will do customer support for all products (Pamela, PamFax, Scendix Software) and will also be our “face” on fares and exhibitions. Some of you might already know him as he already worked from time to time for us at Cebit and other fares.

Michael is a PHP develeoper who will add his experience to various projects we are currently working on.

Major PamFax update released

After months of work and testing, we released a major PamFax update yesterday. We worked hard to upgrade the whole system to a new framework “under the hood”. This enables us to add new features better and a lot faster in the future.
But we also added some new features for you:

• PamFax Business Control Panel: With the PamFax Business Control Panel (also called “BCP”), you can group multiple PamFax users together and control the credits of these users from one account. This is perfect for companies, where only one user buys all the PamFax Credit and controls how many credit the employees get. You can manually send PamFax Credit to the users of your BCP and also set a minimum amount of PamFax Credit your BCP users need. So now, your employees never run out of PamFax Credit and do not need to hassle with payments on their own; all payments can be done through one administrator Pamfax account.
• PamFax Vista Sidebar Gadget: With this gadget, you can see the status of your last faxes, access the PamFax Portal very quick and even start sending a fax more easy:
  
  
• Send to more recipients at once: you can now send a fax to more then 1000 recipients at once. The “multiple recipients” input box now allows to add more numbers and PamFax processes these recipient numbers much, much faster. Sending ads or invitations to lots of recipients is now a breeze with PamFax!
• New installer: We heard your requests about a more flexible installation and improved the PamFax installer: you are now able to select if you want to add desktop icons, install the PamFax printer driver and/or add the Microsoft Office toolbar buttons while installing. The installer is now localized to the major languages as well. So you should feel more comfortable when installing PamFax.
• Use Amazon payments worldwide: You can now use your credit card or other payment data stored in your Amazon account to pay for your faxes in PamFax from all over the world. This feature was introduced in PamFax only to US-citizens some time ago and is now available to everyone. Amazon payments is a very nice payment option, as there is no minimal payment amount and as it’s very secure: you do not have to give us any credit card data if you don’t want to. The payment is handled by Amazon, the faxes are processed and sent by PamFax.

We also analyzed hundreds of logs, test reports and requests to improve PamFax in a lot of minor functions. PamFax should be more stable than ever now and work faster then before.

The website was also updated: all screenshots and texts are up-to-date and the rates-page now also shows all the possibilities from the webshop and lets you select your currency. The FAQ system is currently overworked as well: expect a very flexible modern system that allows you to find the answers to your questions very easy. This will be updated on the website shortly.

Just let us know if you have any issues or other feedback.

Happy faxing!

Holiday season but things are cooking

Due to the summer holiday season the blog has been a bit quiet, but don’t be fooled. We are working hard on major projects that will launch after the holiday season is over.

First of all we are currently finalizing a major PamFax overhaul. This is neccessary due to the many changes and new features added since lauch in August 2007. Those areas that were not yet using our latest platform architecture have been ported to that. The result is more flexibility for future enhancements and a slight increase in performance on the user side as well as improves server utilization.

Most importantly though we have sort of silently launched the new PamFax credit packs and the Pro Plan. These are available via the new store at www.pamfax.biz/shop. The packs provide you with a significant discount and the Pro Plan also makes faxing really attractive. The Pay As You Go  prices have been lowered as we were able to negotiate better rates due to the increased volume. Keep faxing and we’ll try to keep pushing the prices down!

With the mentioned platform update we will also make available a new function for business users called the PamFax Business Control Panel. Very similar to the BCP you have at Skype, our BCP allows you to create a group and add Skypenames to the group to provide them with PamFax credit. We also provide the owner of the group with a set of tools to control the account, auto top up users, add/remove users and a lot more. This is a great function for companies using Skype with PamFax. And the good news, using the PamFax BCP is totally free!

We are working on a new Pamela for Skype release (4.5) which has two main new functions. One is a call scheduler which allows you to schedule Skype calls and Pamela will remind you of them automatically. Never miss a call anymore! The other function is automatic conference call manager. Ever needed to join or initiate a conference call and either the time zone or other commitments did not allow you to be at the PC? Well, now Pamela will help you with that. So, stay tuned for more news as the release date comes closer (yes, I wrote a post few months ago saying the same but we want to make sure the new release is as solid as possible).

Our Pamela Call Recorder product already has an update made public. Version 4.5 can be downloaded for free from www.pamcorder.com. Pamela Call Recorder is available in Skype under the tools menu and then Do More (just like PamFax). We’re going to release a minor update shortly with an automatic version check module facilitate an auto-update function. This is important as we want to inform people when there are new releases.

We at PamConsult wish everyone a relaxing holiday season and you will hear from us again shortly.