Connecting to Exchange Server from Linux

This has been one of the problems facing me every time I tried to fully switch to Linux. I can't properly connect to the corporate email, which uses MS-Exchange Server.

Currently there are two solutions available, that can provide some functionality to that area. The first, is Gnome's built-in Online Accounts (GOA); which does, theoretically provide means to access email, contacts and calendar, and make them available for the GOA-compatible applications; and the exQuilla, which is a Thunderbird addon, to connect to exchange mail servers.

I've tried the GOA, but it seems to be working randomly. It worked with some one of my accounts, but refused to work with the other, without any apparent reason. On another distro, it works with both of them, but on occasions needed to restart once or twice to connect, and gets disconnected on next boot.

On the other hand, exQuilla provides a better way to connect to exchange server for email access.

Setting up and exchange account using exQuilla is a straight forward process using its own menu item. A good help is presented to the used following installing the addon.

Although exQuilla provides a good way to connect to exchange mail servers, it lacks the calendar and contacts integration. Also, the use of Thunderbird doesn't give you a direct way to send Outlook-compatible meeting invitations or replies to meetings.

UPDATE: looks like exQuilla is "transitioning to a be a payed service". Which takes it out of my spotted services, as I'm deeply into FOSS. The hope now is for Gnome Online Accounts to get fixed, and overcome all the bugs.

Basic4android .. Clever!

I can't deny it. I'm addicted to BASIC.

Although through the years I've used several programming and scripting languages, the BASIC programming language, being my first love, is the nearest and closest to my heart. I've done complete working applications with MSX BASIC, MS-Basic, GW-Basic, QBasic, Visual Basic, RealBASIC and even ones like Gambas.

Few days ago, I found something called "Basic4android", and immediately downloaded the free trial version from their website, and currently playing with it a little. So far, it seems good enough.

One thing that actually got my attention was that they use the emulator, or an actual phone, as a visual GUI designer. Clever, isn't it? Instead of coding their own visual designer, which is the reason some similar projects have ended badly, they're just using the actual device.

The only drawback I see so far is that it is only released for Windows.

From what I can see, so far, the produced apps are small in size and performs really nice. I haven't done any benchmarking, not yet anyway, but they seem quit equivalent to those written in Eclipse/ADK.

Nokia's new Windows Phones

October 2011 was when Microsoft announced they're working with Nokia to develop a series of Windows mobile based smart phones. These days it's all over the tech scene news, with leaked news, specs, photos, etc., which promises the phone is about to hit the market.

The question I'm asking now is: will Microsoft-Nokia's phone survive the smart phone war and have a piece o of the Plus pie?

I'll look the Arabic/ middle east market. Here, people who but Nokia phones can be divided into two main categories: the ones buying cheap feature phones, and those who are buying Nokia because they feel they're more familiar with the phone's GUI. Despite the fact that most modern phones have GUI's that don't resemble the old ones.

Both of these categories don't actually care about the "smartness" of the phone, they want to either buy cheap phones that does voice calls, or buy modern phones, despite the price, that would have a familiar interface to what they're used to. I have personally had many discussions with Nokia phones owners about switching to iPhone or android-based and their answer was that they don't need all the features nor do they ready to try new things.

Hence, Nokia shall face a great challenge in marketing their Windows phones. They're not cheap low end phones, nor have the same "familiar" software. If Nokia fails promoting for their new devices, they will be in a bad situation that might bring down three whole company!

On the other hand, back in the days before iPhones and android phones, Windows phones were not so popular. Blackberry's were the mark for smart phones. Windows phones were something that geeks would buy just to check out or experiment with. Something like showing off to your friends today by having an 8.5" diskette. This doesn't contribute well to marketing the phone.

Recovering the ExpressCache on Windows

OK. I did the thing that I'm best at. Formatted my new Samsung Series 5 14" notebook (or ultrabook, though I'm totally convinced). I'm not talking about a normal system partition format, I'm actually talking about a full hard drive and solid disk drive format. To be frank, I thought I was covered, having the Recovery DVD at hand. It turned out that the Recovery DVD is merely a copy of Windows 7 Home Edition, and it didn't even recognize my network card driver!

Unfortunately, I destroyed the Recovery Partition in the process, and hence the recovery option [F4 on booting] wouldn't work, anymore.

Well, it was surprising to me that the Recovery DVD didn't have the drivers embedded, or slip-streamed, into the Windows installation, and I found myself in a very disappointing situation: no drivers and no way to connect to the internet. I tried plugging in my USB modem, but it was like dead. I looked around, and knew that the drivers for the USB 3 ports were also missing. (Later, I realized that the port on the right side of the device is a USB 2).

But to tell the truth, the Samsung web site had all the drivers and utilities needed, although in very large file sizes, which enabled me to download them and install them one by one. As tedious as it was, and feeling those bad feeling of someone working with Windows after being on Linux for quit sometime, I could revive the system to a state very similar to that it was on.

The only thing that was missing now was the instant on feature, or as I knew later, the ExpressCache. I know that this relates to the SSD installed, but I couldn't get it to work. I installed all the drivers, including the intel ExpressCache driver, and the intel ExpressCache application, among the Easy Settings and the Easy Software Manager, but nothing changed. I still don't have that feature.

The feature I'm talking about is the ability to "SLEEP" Windows, with the device going almost on no power. The normal Sleep will keep the power led blinking slowly, but with the express cache thing, it was like an instant hibernate. With setting it to turn on with the lid opening, I also had an instant-on, sort of thing.

I googled around a little, and found this article on NoteBook Review, which pointed to something I found very weird, to say the least. It turned out that for the Intel ExpressCache to work, the SSD must be in Mac Disk format!

I did just that and had the ExpressCache back on.

My next thing to do is try to simulate the same behavior on Ubuntu!

Windows Azure -- Thoughts

Reading about Microsoft creating a Linux client for its web platform Windows Azure produced mixed feelings inside my brain. For once, Microsoft is actually writing software for Linux, which is a confession of the existence and popularity of such marvelous operating system. On the other hand, though, I wondered if this is an attempt from Microsoft to invade the Linux community? You see, when Gates published his book "The Road Ahead", back in the mid-90's, he had this vision that in "the future" all well have on our desks is a terminal, a minimal computing unit that is capable of only connecting to the internet, where all our files are stored and where we can rent times on the software applications we use.

Windows Azure is actually, IMHO, the realization of this idea or vision. Thinking in Microsoft's shoes, I would say that the best strategy for controlling the emerging market of the cloud would simply be by providing access to such service from all possible terminals. This will bring customers from allover, and in the same time turn all computers around, including those running rival operating systems into merely access points for my services.

I might be over-thinking this, but knowing the history of Microsoft, I can't stop myself thinking this way.

On a third hand, I recalled Linus Torvalds' famous words: If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux, it means I've won.

Windows RT Closed for Third Party Browsers

Microsoft, announcing the new Windows RT, or Windows on ARM, as it was known during the development phase, is repeating the 90's browser mistake once again.

The new Windows RT, reportedly is not going to allow any third party browsers, other than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer. Will it be history repeating itself?

Mozilla, the makers of the open source browser FireFox, have expressed their concerns regarding this issue, highlighting their vision of the ARM processors as the future.

It is worth mentioning here that Microsoft is a very minor player in the market of the ARM-driven devices, such as smart mobile phones and tablets, but as the market share of these devices is increasing, their seeking a bigger share.

Personally, I know I wouldn't by a tablet with Windows on it, not with all the Android and potentially other linux-based OS's, like Ubuntu making their way into that market.

MDI - Microsoft Document Imaging Format

If you have used the Microsoft Document Imaging Format (MDI), like me, when it was introduced in Office 2003, then you must have been looking around for solutions to enable you to open the .mdi files today.

I have more than few documents on my hard drive that I produced in MDI format, which was promoted to be the new PDF format from Microsoft. It was portable, and it was in that time when you needed third party software to produce PDF's from Microsoft Office documents, which gave it all the importance. The ability to produce PDF-like documents with ease and directly from within the Microsoft Office was neat.

But .. Just as everything that is Microsoft, they take decisions for you, and put them to execution, leaving you struggling behind, trying to solve issues you have no hand in, except for adopting the Microsoft way, off-course. 

I'm not going to be talking about opening .mdi files in other operating systems than Microsoft's, neither about opening them without an installation of Microsoft Office, on the contrary, I will assume a loyal Microsoft customer, who upgrades his Office suite regularly, and now has Microsoft Office 2010 installed on his W7-machine.

According to Microsoft's support website, mdi format is now obsolete. This does not only mean you can't produce mdi files anymore, but also you can't open them! Although, the format was originally Microsoft's way for PDF-like documents, Microsoft doesn't provide a stand-alone reader for the format, nor a converter to other formats. Those of us who have .mdi documents laying around, have to follow one of two solutions, according to this post by Microsoft. Either download and install a free version of the SharedPoint Designer 2007, which is a 300MB download, for it has an mdi viewer, or use the Office 2007 installation medium (I don't remember where mine is now, but probably wrecked and thrown away) to install the optional Microsoft Office Document Imaging component.

This is B.S., if you ask me. Any decent programmer working in a garage, let alone a huge company such as Microsoft, knows well that in such situation, the least one can do is to provide a stand-alone reader/conversion tool to your obsolete formats.

Anyway, I stumbled upon this product, MDI2PDF, which is supposed to be able to convert MDI files to the more solid and usable PDF format. In its free edition, the only thing I could do, besides viewing the mdi files and answering annoying messages, is to convert the first page of each mdi to a bmp or jpeg file. If your mdi's are more-than-one-page, then you have to go with the Microsoft Solution.