With great pride we announce the new PamFax Developer Program.
Based on the PamFax3 technology we now have an API available so you can integrate all the PamFax features into your solution. Our own solutions also use the same API.
Usage of the API and the development environment is completely free of charge.
Applying for API access is very simple and is done on the developer page linked below. Once your application has been received, we give you access credentials to the sandbox environment. You have access to the documentation, can look at sample code and start the PamFax integration.
We have created a nice logo which you can use in your solution and marketing programs.
Further (technical and commercial) information and how to apply is written on the developer page at http://developer.pamfax.com.
Written by Dick on 11. August 2010 in category PamFax
Skype has just announced today that the Skype Extras System will not continue. This means no more third-party applications for Skype will be certified and no new extras will be added to the “Tools” -> “Extras” menu in the Skype client. All existing entries will not be removed until the certification period expires. This does not include the Skype Public API which allows third party software to connect to Skype and control some functions and do things like call recording etc. Skype says this API will be maintained in future.
But this shut-down also includes the Skype Credit payment, which will be switched off shortly. No third-party software will then be able to accept Skype Credit payments.
So how does this affect Scendix/PamConsult products? The simple answer is: not very much.
Read more..
Written by Christoph on 11. September 2009 in category General News,PamFax,Pamela for Skype
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!
Written by Christoph on 19. August 2009 in category General News,PamConsult
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…
Written by Christoph on 24. January 2009 in category General News
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?
Written by Christoph on 15. January 2009 in category General News
- The PamFax Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget was just published to the Windows Live gallery (see PamFax Gadget details page). Give it a try and experience a complete new feeling and comfort of sending faxes.
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In the next three days, Dick and myself will be in Athens, Greece at the Skype Developer Days 2008. This is a great yearly event and always a great opportunity to meet the Skype staff and a lot of interesting people working with Skype. After Prague, Czech Republic back in 2007 and Tallin, Estland in 2006, we are really looking forward to visit Athens this year for this event.
- TapiRex updated: We finally managed to update TapiRex to version 1.7.2. This update fixes some problems like the error message after wakeup, reverse lookup in Canada, …
Just download and install the newest version from the downloadpage.
We also started an experiment with Open Source: the next version of mceTapiRex has been published as Open Source. We have uploaded the complete source code of the current development version of mceTapiRex V2 to CodePlex: Open mceTapiRexV2 on CodePlex. We hope that many developers join us to develop this very nice TapiRex plugin to the next stage. If this works well, we can start thinking of making other components of the TapiRex system open source…
Written by Christoph on 15. September 2008 in category General News,PamFax
We just received the eBay Star Developer Award for Innovative Application 2008! I am currently in Chicago at the eBay Developer Conference, where we were given this award for our newest software Jaast for Wii, which brings eBay to your TV using Nintendo’s Wii console.
We already received this award back in 2006 for our software mceAuction. So we feel very proud of getting this award again this year. I don’t know if there was ever any company who received this award twice.
Here are some photos from us getting the award (click to enlarge):
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A slide showing that we received the award on stage |
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Me and Max Mancini (Senior Director of Disruptive Innovation of eBay) on stage after receiving the award |
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Max Mancini and John Donahoe (CEO of eBay) giving the award to me |
Big thanks to eBay for giving this award to us. Let’s see what we can do for next year 
Written by Christoph on 19. June 2008 in category Jaast Digital Home Solutions,PamConsult
Great news has come. The next releases of the Skype Firefox and IE toolbars (which are included with every Skype installation) will have added support for PamFax.
It works pretty slick and allows you to click and send a fax. Very easy!
Example:
The toolbars are already available as beta release at the Skype Toolbar website here. So, check this out and let us know what you think.
Written by Dick on 28. May 2008 in category PamFax
The new build (.49) addresses not only some minor issues but more interestingly has a new recommend to a friend option. This is a function where, after you sent your fax, you can easily have PamFax send a Skype chat to your friends and once five people start using PamFax we will add a cash bonus to your account automatically. For every five new users you will get a bonus! So, the more you recommend the more bonus (cash) is added to your account.
Note that only people that do no yet have PamFax show on the recommendation contact list. Also people you already have recommended do not show again . To prevent overuse, the maximum contacts you can recommend to (per fax job) is ten.
Another great feature is the support of PamFax in the upcoming Skype toolbars. Take a look here. Pretty cool stuff, so download the beta toolbar and give it a go.
No client update is required, so just keep faxing away.
Written by Dick on 21. May 2008 in category PamFax
As in the past two years, i will be speaking at the eBay Developer Conference this year in Chicago June 16-18. This event is mainly for developers and partners around the developer programs of eBay, Skype and PayPal. As the last events in Las Vegas 2006 and Boston 2007 have been very interesting and lot of fun, I am really looking forward to this event.
I will speak in two sessions presenting our new eBay buyer tool for the Nintendo Wii and PamFax. As a special highlight, we are giving a Nintendo Wii to one of the attendees of the Wii-Session. It’s called “The View from the Couch of the Future in Digital Living Room” and will be on June 17th at 11am. Come in and grab the Wii.
If anyone wants to meet there in Chicago, just contact me.
Written by Christoph on 3. May 2008 in category General News,Jaast Digital Home Solutions,PamConsult,PamFax
