ScanWorks Software, capture technology specialist, has announced a partnership with Scendix Software. This partnership allows using PamFax service and send faxes directly from the browser based CloudScan scan application.
CloudScan is a free web application that allows scanning documents from any Twain compatible scanner. It provides familiar Microsoft Office style ribbon interface and very simple way to get digital copies of documents or pictures. CloudScan can be successfully used on a single workstation as a full featured scan application. CloudScan solution can be used in home and office networks and allows doing remote scan operations without driver or application installations on all workstations. This way CloudScan allows sharing a single scanner across organization or household.
PamFax is well known for its simple usage and broad support. PamFax is available via any internet browser and additionally as download for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, webOS, iPhone and Android. The PamFax application provides worldwide coverage and is very easy to use. No messing with emails, attachments etc. but a nice and simple web based interface.
“By using CloudScan with PamFax service all users will be able to send faxes in familiar environment without hardware or IT costs. Any regular mainstream web browser is the only requirement and secure and flexible fax service is available for everyone in your organization or at home”, continues Andrew Lekenko, Senior Consultant at ScanWorks Software
“PamFax is a globally established fax solution with a business focused customer base. Therefore Scanworks decision to fit together an effortless scanner solution with our professional fax solution makes us proud. We are looking forward to providing the Cloudscan users with a high satisfaction fax service.” comments Dick Schiferli, CEO Scendix Software.
Scendix Software states that ScanWorks CloudScan will be an excellent addition to its integration portfolio that will allow faxing hardcopy documents in addition to current input methods for electronic documents.
Links:
Product page link: http://www.scanworkssoftware.com/cloudscan.aspx
PamFax website: http://www.pamfax.biz
Written by Michaela on 12. December 2011 in category PamFax
The entire team at PamConsult wishes everyone a healthy, peaceful and successful new year. We enjoyed 2009 a lot, thank you for your trust in our services and are looking forward to 2010 with a lot of new things.
Written by Dick on 31. December 2009 in category General News
We have just updated mceWeather today to version 3.3. The changes we made:
- no more Ads when exiting the program
- added a new style “scendix” which is a very nice new skin from our designers optimized for display on TV
- improved performance: the whole program now behaves pretty much faster then before
This is a screenshot of the new style (go to “Settings” to change your mceWeather to this new look):
You do not need to download anything to get this new version. Just restart mceWeather on your Media Center and you will see the new version.
Written by Christoph on 22. December 2009 in category Jaast Digital Home Solutions
Due to a problem in Microsoft’s Media Center Gallery database, mceWeather disappeared from the Media Center’s “Gallery” menu in some european countries.
Now it’s back and you can start it again easily from your Media Center “Gallery” menu even without installing:
If you like this plugin, try to convince Microsoft to add it to the Media Center Gallery in the USA. We never were able to convince them (like back in 2006 when Chris Lanier tried as well)…
Written by Christoph on 20. October 2009 in category Jaast Digital Home Solutions,PamConsult
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,Pamela for Skype,PamFax
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.
Written by Dick on 17. April 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
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
Written by Dick on 25. December 2008 in category General News
Beta 2 of the new mcePhone 3.0 got improved a lot in the last days. We tuned the video calling functions, the installation process and lot more. Just give it a try and post any feedback via our contact form.
Download now
Written by Christoph on 22. December 2008 in category PamConsult
Be one of the first to test the new mcePhone for Skype Beta 1! This complete overhauled version 3 brings Skype chats and video calls to your TV using Microsoft Media Center (2005 or Vista). We have spent large efforts on improving the user interface and usability of mcePhone. Just download and try out the new version here:
You can get a quick impression of the new user interface in the YouTube video of mcePhone for Skype 3.0.
Be aware that there are still edges and problems in this beta version. Just let us know what you think or if you experience any problem. Our contact form is the best way to submit any feedback about mcePhone.
Written by Christoph on 13. November 2008 in category PamConsult
