Hey all,

We have updated our Control Panel page and now both Outlook 2007 and Entourage 2008 are available for free download for our Exchange customers. If you are one of our users and want to give one of these programs a shot, go to cp.myhostedexchange.com and login with your e-mail address and password. At the bottom of the screen you will see links for Outlook 2007 and for Entourage 2008. If you are an administrator for your organization, you will have an extra step. Click on "List Users" on the left hand side after you login, then from the user list, put the dot next to your name and click the Auto Login button. This will take you to the User Action screen and you will be able to download from there! Give it a shot and learn to love it! It's the future and it's now!

Another iPhone post! We had a user having issues setting up his iPhone where he had everything running great and then, all of the sudden, it stopped synching. Not only did it stop synching, but all of is folders showed up and they were completely empty! Crazy, right? Well, for all of you Exchangers out there, you know that your mailbox can often times have a size limit. When this limit is reached, it apparently conflicts with Activesync on the iPhone and will not allow proper synchronization. All you need to do to get up and running again is clear out some of your extraneous data and you are ready to go. For information on archiving your data go to the following link: http://www.lanlogic.net/support/docs/article.aspx?id=10031

Hey guys! Great article here from Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/16/apple-apologizes-for-its-mobileme-mess-admits-bungle-on-push/). Apparently there have been issues on top issues with Mobile Me because Apple feels they may have released it too soon. While this is a messy thing, there are two nice things here: 1. Apple fessed up right away and shouldered the blame. 2. Because they had the smarts to do that, anyone trying out Mobile Me can try it for 30 extra days. It may be bad form releasing something so buggy, but I do think its good form to not waste anytime, admit yoru mistakes, and keep your customers happy. So remember, Mobile Me'ers, Exchange is still the way to go, but if you want to keep playing with Mobile Me, Apple is trying their best to keep you happy, so take advantage of it while you can!

Hey all, I caught this artice from TUAW (http://www.tuaw.com/2008/07/14/did-apple-set-developers-up-for-failure/) and thought all you new iPhoners out there may be interested. Looks like Apple maye have jumped the gun just a touch on their App store. Looks like many applications are causing the programs to crash or the phone to hang altogether causing a reset (see http://blogs.lanlogic.net/blogs/kevin/archive/2008/07/09/doing-a-soft-reset-on-an-iphone.aspx for info on how to do a soft reset). If anyone out there finds a fix for this, by all means post it or a link to it so we can let the world know the way around this issue!

Every now and then, any piece of hardware needs a good swift kick in the rear. Things get a little weird and just dont act right. If you are a PC user, you know what I am talking about. If you are a Mac user, you are better at lying to yourself about it, but you know it happens! Those of us with cell phones (pretty much everyone on the planet at this point. Do elementary school kids really need these?) have had issues at some point and needed to do a soft reset. The iPhone is no different, so here is what you do:

1. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and Home button simultaneously until the screen goes black. Ignore the usual "Slide to power off".
2. Turn the iPhone back on with the Sleep/Wake button
3. Once you see the Apple logo, the iPhone is booting back up and its just a matter of time until you are ready to go again

While the iPhone is a fairly stable device, there are always times when a reset to factory defaults is required. Maybe you hacked a little too far. Maybe you are selling it and need your personal information removed to keep yourself safe. Or maybe, heaven forbid, your Apple device is just acting buggy. No matter what the case, at some point, you may need to reset your iPhone back to its factory state. Of course this means losing any and all data you have put on there, so make sure you back up anything you can. A hard reset should be a last resort when troubleshooting, so try doing a soft reset first when possible. That said, here are the instructions for a hard reset:

1. You will want to start from a powered off state, so if you are using your phone, shut it off.
2. Press the Home button and hold for about 10 seconds, until the "Please Connect to iTunes" screen appears
3. Plug your iPhone into a Mac or PC running iTunes
4. Open iTunes
5. iTunes will promt you with a screen that says "iTunes has detected an iPhone in Recovery mode." Click OK
6. When the iPhone pane comes up, click Restore
7. Once the full restoration process is complete, you should be up and running again and ready to go!

If you are having e-mail, contact, or calendar issues with Entourage in the shared exchange environment, it could be a bad cache file. It used to be that the only thing to do was to remove the entire profile and recreate it, but thanks to Microsofts incredible wisdom, they somewhere along the way added the "Empty Cache"  option to Entourage 2004. Now, if you are seeing glitches somewhere, i.e. hung up email messages, messages not getting through but in your webmail or blackberry, or calendar items not syncing, this could be your cure all. It is quicker and more efficient than resetting cache in Outlook, which requires multiple steps and a good chunk of time. To clear your cache in Entourage, simply highlight the parent folder of your exchange mailbox (it will work in any folder, but i am unsure as to whether this clears just that folder or everything, so I am suggesting doing a blanket clear here) then click the Edit menu from Entourage and then click "Clear Cache." This will pop up a window that says "Emptying the cache will remove and re-download all items within this account. Unsynched changes, links, projects, categories, and action indicators for messages will be lost. Are you sure you want to do this?" This means that anything on the machine that is not on the server will be lost. If you can back any of this up, now is the time to do that, otherwise be prepared to re-do it. Once you are sure you are safe, click "Empty Cache" and you should see things re-syncing with the server without all the effort of removing your profile and re-creating it!

 7/23/2008:

Ok, so I have come to discover that my machine is one of only a few with this "miracle cure" on it. But, fear not, Entourage-heads, I have a solution! If you do not have the "Empty Cache" option in your Entourage, here is a fix for 2004 AND 2008. NICE! If you go to your main folder (the one you gave some cool name to, like "My Account" or "Work Mail") and ctrl+click on it, you will see an option for "Folder Properties". Under "General Tab" you should se a sections that says... wait for it... "Empty Cache". Just hit the "Empty" button and you are ready to go!

Hi all,

This is basically my test blog to see if I even know what I am doing. The plan here is that, assuming that I do, in fact, know what I am doing, that I can post blogs on things people may actually care about.  I know, it seems like a stretch, but lets keep our fingers crossed that I can do this and that you may even care one day!

Kevin