My tweets

• Thu, 13:20: RT @benlucier: Sorry, but I'm far less tolerant of smokers this week after my mom had 1/4 of a cancerous lung removed. She's been a non- ...
• Thu, 13:25: "Android market space... pretty much vindicated by the number of applications that are out there"; not for tablets IME http://t.co/8A64JyR5
• Thu, 13:27: I think Android marketplace definitely proved that phone apps can't just turn into tablet apps & make tablets successful
• Thu, 13:38: RT @SineadwithaFada: #ISupportMarieStopesBelfast because it's high time women in NI have access to the same human rights as the rest of ...
• Thu, 13:42: So #Nokia is selling Asha phones hand over fist, not Lumia; would be a shame if they went back to being featurephone company I can't cover!
• Thu, 13:53: belated, but really? Motorola still thinks anyone uses interlaced video in H264? Any transcoders even still produce IV? http://t.co/n82MgOG8
• Thu, 14:15: wait, now the White House says it *hasn't* investigate & cleared Huawei? murky & murkier http://t.co/OaOVbUdj
• Thu, 14:56: RT @BradChacos: @ChrisBulow @marypcbuk 'Tis never too early to use reasonable analysis and expert insight to feel out the future of a te ...
• Thu, 15:49: am *loving* the dynamic collage photo slideshow in new #windows8 Photos app; gorgeous auto-collage must be from MSR Cambridge; Andrew Blake?
• Thu, 18:24: So I could have Android ARM tablet w Chrome browser and local apps/storage, or an online only ARM Chromebrick. What advantage am I missing?

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Roundup: what's new with Exchange and EAS

The recent Microsoft Exchange Conference was an interesting mix of nostalgia and news. The latest version of Exchange was code complete before the conference so the presenters were showing off the final version of Outlook Web Access (with offline access that definitely does now work in Metro IE on Windows 8/RT) and talking about the new architecture, which is an interesting match for features in Server 2012 like continuous availability, Hyper-V 3 and storage pools.

Just as interesting was the discussion about forthcoming trends - cheaper storage means storage quotas for email are an even sillier idea (you deprive workers of the information they find the most useful because you can't be bothered to fit a bigger hard drive), SSDs are always going to be the same premium over hard drive for the same capacity so it's too pricey for all your storage and it takes so long to identify hot data it's better to just use them as general integrated cache - and a look back at the reasons for previous architectures. There was a lot of looking back by attendees; mentions of Exchange 5.5 got ripples of laughter and groans, old arguments about switching to Exchange were still being rehashed over meals.

In more detail:
Exchange 2013 advantages - in house and in the cloud
Exchange 2013 will repair itself, run on cheap disks, enables the death of email quotas, and stop users sending mail that breaks company rules
(This was the article where my editor had to footnote and explain tribbles!)


No EAS logo, no email?
Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) doesn't just get email and calendar appointments onto almost every smartphone from just about every mail service; you can also use it to apply security policies to tablets and smartphones.

EAS is the 'de facto' standard for email synchronistation

However while EAS is proving so popular – Microsoft's Exchange corporate Vice President Rajesh Jha calls it a "de facto standard" – there are some inconsistencies in the way it works and Microsoft is working to make the protocol it licences to so many other companies a bit more standard in use.