At noon yesterday (Friday), we suddenly had a power outage in the whole office. The fuse always jumped out when we turned on more then 3 PCs or servers. As the painters are still working on painting the rooms, we first suspected them to have done something wrong. But they didn’t. After 2 hours searching for the problem, the electrician arrived and started searching for the problem. All employees went home as there was no work without any power.
At that point you really get hit hard by reality again and that you can’t do anything in our job without internet and power.
After another 2 hours, the electrician found the problem: a new lamp that was just attached the day before in the corridor had some cabling issues that only came out now as the lamp was switched on the whole day and got warm. If we would have not had this lamp on for so long, this problem might have never occurred!
So the guy who attached this lamp will get fired immediately! I will check twice when attaching the next lamp so such a thing could not happen again.
Yes, redecorating the offices can be a fun thing… 
Written by Christoph on 17. October 2009 in category General News
A few weeks ago we have added a new module to Pamela for Skype and Pamela Call Recorder which will provide us better feedback when the application causes a crash. Unfortunately, despite all the testing, there are always situations where an application might become instable.
For this reason we decided to upgrade the reporter module. We added this to Pamela and PCR (Pamela Call Recorder) three weeks ago and have had some very good feedback. With this information we have released two new builds (versions) of Pamela and PCR and activated the auto update function too. So next time you start Pamela you should be notified that there is a new version available with the offer to download.
We have decided to push out a new release, based on feedback, every Friday. This of course only when there is enough feedback to justify this.
With this regular update cycle we want to further improve the stability of the applications to provide you with the best service possible.
On a side note, we will also release some changes to the video recording module to address some issues reported. Video remains high on the radar and we have been doing deep investigation into how to improve this function in Pamela further. Based on this research some changes will be implemented in this weeks update.
Written by Dick on 29. May 2009 in category Pamela for Skype
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
We just updated the FAQ system (= Frequently Asked Questions) on the PamFax website. It’s now much easier to find an answer to a question. My favourite feature is the immediate display of the matching answers while you type the keyword(s) you are looking for:
PamFax FAQ search
Another great new feature are the RSS feeds for the FAQ entries. So you can add the RSS feed to your RSS reader and never miss a new answer to a common problem.
Just try it out on your own: PamFax FAQ
Written by Christoph on 29. October 2008 in category PamFax
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.
Written by Dick on 17. October 2008 in category PamConsult
Two great news for today:
Jaast for Wii has just been released as public beta. Jaast enables you to browser on eBay, search for items and even bid and buy things just with your Nintendo Wii console. This cool new experience makes eBay even more fun. Just sitting on the couch waving with the Wii Nunchuck controller to buy stuff on eBay, just great 
.
This website has all the details, screenshots, a video and installation instruction for you: www.scendix.com/jaast
New software online shop on Scendix websites: The Scendix software websites (scendix.com and scendix.de) just got their new software online shop that makes it even more easy to buy our software. There are several advantages of the new shop: i.e. you will get the license key immediately after your purchase, you are able to download PDF invoices, rebates for multiple licenses are automatically calculated, ….
All old orders have been imported to the new shop. If you forgot your license key or want to upgrade your existing license, you can click on “forgot password” and then get your new login to the shop where you have access to your previous orders.
Written by Christoph on 13. June 2008 in category Jaast Digital Home Solutions, PamConsult
From today, everyone can easily access PamFax from his Skype client in the main menu under “Tools” -> “Do More”. No more searching, no more hassle. Just one click to install.
As there are only ~10 Skype addons in this menu, we are very proud to be the only company who has 2 Skype-addons in there.
The pink P is rolling …
Written by Christoph on 25. April 2008 in category PamFax
Do you have a Nintendo Wii? It’s a very cool and innovative game console for the living room. Nintendo has already sold nearly 22million nearly 24million units worldwide (see www.vgchartz.com).
As it’s usually connected to the internet, we thought it would be a good idea to be able to search and browse eBay’s auctions on it and even place bids and buy items with your Wii controller. The program also has very useful audio/visual notifications when something happens in your eBay auctions and gives you access to all items in your “My eBay”.
Here you can see a video of the current development status:
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
(click to play)
Anyone knows someone over at Nintendo? This is perfect to be added to the Wii main start screen, isn’t it?
Written by Christoph on 4. March 2008 in category Jaast Digital Home Solutions, PamConsult
So the guy who attached this lamp will get fired immediately! I will check twice when attaching the next lamp so such a thing could not happen again.
