Welcome to the quarterly JPY newsletter. For more information on any news item, click on the appropriate link, call us on 0208-390-8487 (overseas callers replace initial 0 with 0044) or visit our main website for other contact details.
In this issue...
• Archiware announces major PresSTORE update
• HELIOS UB+iPhone
• On a mission to save email from itself
• Do our survey - Win an iPod touch
• Cumulus speeds web previews
• Help required with Electronic Visiting Cards
• Well I never thought of that...
• All that Jazz
Archiware announces major PresSTORE update
Archiware exhibited at the Digital Management Solutions Expo in Cologne in September. Josef Doods, MD of Archiware, gave people a sneak peek at PresSTORE 3.0, the next generation of the data management software.
The new version will incorporate CDP (continuous data protection) which monitors target drives looking for modified data. When a change is detected, PresSTORE immediately synchronises that data with a target drive - so there is almost no time when the data isn't fully secure.
The new version will beef up security with regards unauthorised access, so that sensitive data is protected. It does this by encoding the data at source, and storing it in its encrypted form. This way, data is secure even if you use off-site backup and archiving and transmit data across the Internet.
If you are already running a PresSTORE system, you'll be pleased to hear that the update, when it arrives later this year, will automatically update the client software. So the upgrade to version 3.0 should be both seamless and painless.
If you would like to find out more about PresSTORE, why not visit Rapid plc at Storage Expo. This year's storage event takes place at the National Hall, Olympia, London 17-18 October. Click here to register.
HELIOS UB+iPhone
Many people across Europe are getting excited about the November 9th launch of the iPhone. HELIOS UB users have even more reason to be excited as UB+ will support secure remote access previews, layout documents, PDFs and print jobs from the iPhone.
This is likely to mean late nights in the design studio or print shop are drastically reduced as users will be able to access and view jobs from anywhere - like the pub for example. Seriously though, fully rendered Quark and InDesign files, even with transparencies, will be rendered accurately on the iPhone - which will be a comfort for anybody that needs to be absolutely sure print jobs are going to plan. If you have WiFi access to the internet, the iPod touch will also work the same way as it uses the same web browser.
If you don't think you'll be able to push an iPhone past your boss as a business necessity, then don't worry. Just take part in our survey this month and you might win an iPod Touch - and you can pretend you have an iPhone!
On a mission to save email from itself
JPY MD John Yardley has been hard at work this summer promoting Mail Robot X (MRX™), the email management system he designed. As MRX™ takes such a radically different approach to business email, John has been evangelising his view of business email management.
His first piece outlines the problems faced by people using email at work, and makes some suggestions on how to fix them. The piece appeared in Bios Magazine as "Learning To Love E-Mail AGAIN".
In MAD.co.uk, the popular media and marketing website, John alerted readers to that fact that people very often resort to using work-arounds to get email to do what they want. In this piece, John outlines his approach, which uses a more open and collaborative way of using email. You can see the piece here, although it does require free registration.
The interviews with John were requested as a result of the survey we conducted last issue. You can read some of the interesting statistics in the coverage on IT Showcase..
Finally, residents of Surrey, at least Directors of companies in Surrey might have seen John's piece in the Surrey Director magazine. Again John could be seen spreading the word on MRX™, and how it can make email a useful business tool, rather than a burden.
Do our survey - Win an iPod touch
JPY is continuing its research into how people work with each other and collaborate with colleagues. We're also looking at people's understanding of privacy in the work place. Perhaps you would be kind enough to participate in our survey?
It'll take no more than five minutes, and you can win Apple's new iPod touch. The ' touch boasts a three and a half inch screen, WiFi browsing and a multi-touch interface. You could even use it for proofing if you have a HELIOS UB+ server (see above). Click here to start.
Cumulus speeds web previews
Canto has updated Cumulus to version 7.5.1, which now has some small but important tweaks. It involves some enhancements to the server technology to make and store preview images, which is much faster than generating on-demand previews. So when clients log on to see previews, they are ready to download immediately.
The other enhancements enable Cumulus to generate preview images from a broader range of files. Now PowerPoint, InDesign and Quark files can be viewed even when the applications aren't available on the client machines.
Both these technologies ease the stress on the server. Canto CEO Ulrich Knocke explained that generating live previews is unnecessary in most cases, especially with archives, which don't change. However the ability to uses live previews is still there for those that need it.
Help required with Electronic Visiting Cards
We have been working very hard on the next release of our email management/archiving product, MRX™. A major new piece of functionality is support for importing Electronic Business cards, so-called vCards. Most email servers and some Customer Relation Management systems support the export of vCards, so we feel it is a perfect way of synchronising the MRX™ Business Directory with existing databases.
Rather than using special-purpose synchronisation software, MRX™ can be kept fully up-to-date simply by mailing it vCards of new and changed contacts.
Although, in principle, this is a straightforward task, there are endless ways in which vCards can be generated. Furthermore, many contacts use generic mail domains (e.g. gmail.com) and the process of allocating or creating a meaningful record involves some very scientific processing. After months of testing with thousands of vCards from many different applications, we believe we are nearly there. However, we would like to test our algorithms on data from other sources .
We would therefore like to hear from anyone that can provide us with files of vCards from known sources - even just one card will do. Of course, the cards will only be used for testing and we undertake to delete all cards when testing is complete. As such, the cards can contain any type of contact information, even if it is ficticious.
If you think you can help, please contact development@jpy.com. Anyone helping us with this will be welcome to participate in the MRX™ beta testing program.
Well I never thought of that...
Here's our regular feature for using JPY products you have already bought - in ways you hadn't already thought!
Journaling your data will save you time later!
If you're a Cumulus user and you've not already done so, you should really consider upgrading to version 7.5 - the current version. It includes one potentially life-saving feature called 'journaling'. This feature is common to many high-end database products, and protects your data against corruption.
Cumulus is, in essence, a specialised database which is fine-tuned to handle 'assets' - media files of all types. As with other database applications, Cumulus stores all of it's data in a large database file. Hundreds of thousands of assets on a file-server can be managed, referenced and previewed via a single 'Cumulus Catalog' database. Indeed these catalogs can grow to be several gigabytes in size.
The problem with such a file is that, if the server hosting the Cumulus Server application should crash for some reason, there's a chance that Cumulus might have been modifying the catalog file at the time - and as a result the catalog might become damaged and need to be repaired. Such repairs can take some time to complete if the catalog is large. This is where journaling comes in handy. Cumulus 7.5 lets you enable journaling on each of your catalog, and it records all changes made to a catalog before the changes are actually made. These changes are recorded into a separate file so a little extra disk space is required. Corrupted catalogs should now become a thing of the past, since Cumulus is able to refer to it's journal and rewind the catalog back to a point in time before the crash occurred.
It may be that you're support contract entitles you to run 7.5 and take advantage of this feature - plus many others introduced in the latest version. Give us a call to find out more.
All that Jazz
If you are interested in attending the 2008 Dordogne Jazz Summer School then visit their website.
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