CONTENTS *** NewsBytes *** Spam control goes online Will Cloud Computing bring sunny days? 10 top tips for emails How to keep your gold medal Roaming profile - Angela Walters Q&A: Keeping a copy of PDFs filled in online Clicks of the Trade - Sitting duck spreadsheets expose email addresses

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*** NewsBytes ***
Google on the tip of your tongue Trying to put together a search and can't quite put your finder on it? Google's 'new' auto-complete feature comes to the rescue! In development in Google's Labs since 2004, the feature (aka Google Suggest) has already made a debut on Toolbar, the latest Firefox search box and Google's Maps, and is claimed to reduce spelling errors the number of user keystrokes. Hopefully this will put an end to dredging up clangers like the in excess of 2 million spellings of "Olimpics" (sic), as long as you can come to terms with the feeling that Google seems to know what you're going to type next! More on Google Suggest FAQ. 10 sack-worthy emails Being sarky, indiscrete, hot-headed or inebriated while at the controls of your email is clearly a daft idea, but could be detrimental to your career. HP couldn't have summarised it better in their 10 e-mails that will get you fired - a sobering 10-pointer. Check out this month's 10 top tips for emails for a more positive approach. Greenwash washes off Two disappointing results may mark 2008 as a poor year for the 'greening of electronics'. Bell Micro's Passing the Green IT buck earlier in the year showed only around a fifth of organisations having a documented strategy for IT. This was followed more recently by the latest of Greenpeace's quarterly Guide to Greener Electronics with most companies slumping back to below the half-way mark leaving only Sony and Sony Ericsson with a score or more than 5/10, though it should be noted that expanded and tougher criteria on toxic chemicals, electronic waste and new criteria on climate change have raised the green bar. Advertising on the Tube Voluntary and third sector organisations in the UK can now have access to video-sharing on YouTube's Non-profit Programme, with increased uploading capacity and access to Promoted Videos areas to get their messages and missions across.	More recycling The Electrical Recycling section of recycle-more.co.uk has plenty of advice on how to re-use and recycle electronic goods like computers and monitors, and practical help such as its "bank locator" which employs Google maps to show your nearest recycling centre depending on which type waste you need to deal with and a list of organisations that handle waste electronics. Small portal NCVO has launched a portal for smaller organisations, bringing together their information on areas such as finance and funding, data protection, health and safety, HR and ICT. £20K prize fund for your info idea The Power of Information Taskforce is running a competition on the Government's behalf, to encourage enterprises to employ government data - such as Neighbourhood Statistics from the Office of National Statistics, Transport information from Transport Direct, Health care services and information from the NHS, Mapping from Ordnance Survey, and so on - in innovative projects. The showusabetterway web site has a £20,000 prize fund to develop the best ideas to the next level. IE8 goes private Last week Microsoft revealed privacy-protection features for its Internet Explorer 8 browser to minimise the threats of 'shoulder-surfing' for users at public terminals such as an Internet café. IE8's InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Blocking let users control their history, cookies and other private browsing information. Jubilant democracy campaigners would like the privacy features to be available by default, rather than having to turn them on each session, but dismayed advertisers are worried the moves will stymie their efforts with online ads and data tracking technology.
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	1. Spam control goes online First, spam filtering took away the pain from its reluctant, spammed recipients. Now it's doing the same for our mail servers.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	With spam comprising up to 90% of email traffic nowadays, filtering solutions have had to innovate at least as fast as spammers change their filtering-avoidance techniques. The latest paradigm shift has been to wage the anti-spam war online, instead inside your mail server. Shifting the load Inbox filtering products have changed enormously in the last few years and Cloudmark is arguably the best of this type. However the snag for heavy mail users has been that all that unwanted advertising for Rolexes, medications and worse still ends up on the mail server before being filtered. Couple this with users wanting to keep vast backlogs of messages and you end up with a Microsoft Exchange server filling up rapidly and slowing right down, at best. At worst, it could crash completely. The next logical step has been to fight the incessant flow of spam online, effectively outsourcing the process and renting someone else’s hardware and software to do the job. We looked at external spam filtering mechanisms to resolve this, and found a burgeoning sector of offerings such as MessageLabs, Postini, MailFoundry, F-Prot AVES and many others. Costs of online spam filtering for each user mailbox for a year range typically from $5 to $45, though it's worth noting that add-in services are now being bundled, such as anti-virus, archiving and rules-based policy management, so enterprises are getting a lot more for their money than just a junk filter. How filtering works Online spam control services work by re-routing the organisation’s domain mail to their mail filtering systems before passing the cleaned messages on to the organisation's own mail server, thereby relieving the mail server’s hardware and software of the processing burden. Likewise, one could say for their once beleaguered email users. MessageLabs have an excellent reputation and we have also deployed it for some of our clients. Anti-Spam Features Email Anti-Spam Benefits Industry-leading spam capture rates Spam prevention – spam free inboxes, happier end users Industry-leading email spam filter accuracy rates Confidence in the spam filter service to block and delete spam at the internet layer; no time wasted with quarantining and reviewing spam Multi-layered internet-level spam protection Spam filtering eliminates bandwidth, processing and storage costs; no need for hardware or software purchases Complete control on email filtering Full visibility and management of email filtering system World class spam filter reporting system Fully customisable management style and detailed reports at your finger-tips; certainty in the service’s effectiveness Internet layer, 24x7x365 managed email security Expert spam filtering management and support. Lets you focus on running your business productively The MessageLabs modular format allows customers to mix and match not only from email Anti-Spam and anti-virus, but also the following modules: Email Image Control - Composition Analysis to identify, control and block inappropriate images Email Content Filter - filters email content and attachments to identify confidential, malicious, inappropriate language, offensive jokes Boundary Encryption - email encryption, while still enabling malware scanning Policy Encryption - safeguard the confidentiality of sensitive data with automatic encryption Email Archiving – online mailbox management, email compliance and supervision, encrypted to maintain privacy Email Continuity - on-demand back-up system that kicks in seamlessly when an outage occurs No slow for spam According to the MessageLabs Intelligence report for July, spam accounted for 75.1% of all email traffic. More in Demon Fusion Benefits Users benefit directly in personal mail control too. The Email Archiving feature of MessageLabs is a further benefit, providing an online email archiving service. This means that not only is there an online copy of your mail for backup purposes, but that individual users can easily retrieve their mail from the MessageLabs site themselves, compared to finding an IT person to do a conventional restore. Moreover, they can easily search their archived email, including attachments, right from a search folder in Outlook. Out of office, out of mind Another major advantage is that out-of-office reply mechanisms are now behind the filter. This means that email addresses and user movements are not inadvertently 'advertised' on spam list returns, potentially exacerbating the original problem. For the benefit of IT and systems admins, Active Directory (AD) integration also allows users to sign on with their usual username and password, while policy definitions can refer to AD groups and distribution lists. Lastly and very importantly MessageLabs have altered their pricing structure to become much more affordable and within the range of third sector organisations. Contacts Do ask us for a quote if you are still plagued by heavy spam interference or would like to experience the benefits of online spam control. -IB- Acknowledgements: staff team

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	2. Will Cloud Computing bring sunny days? The long-held dream of all our computing needs being supplied on the Internet is slowly coming true - potentially for free.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Building’s IT cloud promises silver lining A recent announcement that disparate charities will be able to share IT and save money sounds like IT Nirvana. Such a move is being put forward at CAN Mezzanine, the organisation behind the third sector office-share. A 'virtual cloud' of applications provided by Salesforce and Google forming a common system would give users the opportunity to share IT expertise and applications. Nothing new here one may conclude. Many charities and social enterprises have at least dabbled with so-called 'cloud computing' via Google Docs and its other pally applications which include its spreadsheets, Google Mail and the much acclaimed shareable Calendar, if only to get new or part-time workers up and running quickly without the pain and delay of licensing and installing PC desktop software. Our individual network rock pools are becoming an inevitable part of the Internet sea Best keep a lid on the euphoria - soon after comes the first rub. To quote Philip Tucker, Software Engineer at Google Docs: "As long as I have an Internet connection, every change I make is saved to the cloud”. Given the reliability of the network architecture in many organisations plus the vulnerability of what is often the only broadband router in the building, and add to those the state of UK's ever-changing broadband framework and speeds, and cloud computing can prove a very mixed experience depending on where you are – a bit like Britain's weather. Shiny, happy people bring the cloud with them However, in IT tomorrow is always a sunny day and accordingly Tucker announced in March that things were going up a gear – a Google Gear if you like. No longer will hapless laptop toters be entirely at the mercy of their bargain basement ADSL, or a hotel's swamped broadband pipe, or the dubious 3G coverage to which their mobile datacard is locked in. Following brilliantly in the footsteps of IBM's Lotus infrastructure, cloud computing is gradually acquiring off-line synchronisation. When the Internet connection disappears, access to documents is preserved with a locally-synchronised copy, thanks to the underlying technology Google Gears, though at the sacrifice of some features like access to presentations or spreadsheets. All this is achieved through any web browser, even when off-line. When the Internet connection returns or you come in range of a Wi-Fi spot, your documents seamlessly sync up again with the server. (Check out Philip Tucker's blog and demo video about Google Docs offline: Bringing the cloud with you) Add to this the fact that Google's offerings are now available as enterprise versions and that these collaboration tools can be presented under your own domain via Google Apps Partner Edition and we can feel the suite is really starting to mature. We are also beginning to witness tie-ups with big players in CRM (Salesforce) and security (Postini), extending the power of Google Apps. Is the umbrella big enough? The trend towards virtual and cloud-based applications is undeniably a fashionable attraction for thrifty finance directors, but one still has to weigh up whether it's appropriate for your particular enterprise. YouTube viewing behaviours - court exposure A recent court case (Viacom v. Google) threatened to expose the viewing habits or YouTube users despite Google's objections to privacy concerns. An agreement between the two companies involving 'anonymised data' may have mollified concerns in the meantime, but the possibility of a legal precedent in the future that exposes what many consider personal information might still arise. There may well be perceived mileage for occupants of the same building; the opportunities for spicing up social interaction through in-house forums and intranet-sparked activities could be a real boon to promoting 'building buzz'. But given that location is mattering less and less as the workplace becomes mobile, one has to discern whether potential savings actually translate into organisational benefits, perhaps through time saved for employees, or wider promotion of your message. On a practical level, an intranet publicising daily lunchtime discussions is a tangible networking opportunity for sizeable tenants, but of little worth to the one-person operation who rushes between appointments with funders, barely touching the office. And how about sharing printer toner costs? Should the one-man newsletter publisher pay a smaller contribution to printer rental than a ten-strong online graphics house? Joining up to save money can work well, but often only where organisations are already 'joined' to some degree or in some purpose, which is rare. The organisation-wide knowledge base You have to admit, we're all awash in a sea of data. Since the demise of the 90s file-and-print server developers have been struggling to present users with accessible ways of understanding the myriad files they generate day in, day out. Portals, shared drives, intranets, extranets, gateways and social networks are all jostling with each other to ease the interaction process between users. Without doubt, the old strategies of manual indexing, tagging, glossaries and referencing are giving way to Sophisticated Search. Unsurprising then, indeed almost logical, to discover that Google Search Appliances are already paving the way to the organisation-wide knowledge base. These high-speed search boxes provide "universal search across a variety of internal and external sources – including file shares, intranets, databases, applications, hosted services and content management systems". They do this by crawling your content, creating a master index of documents ready for instant retrieval, responding to customer or employee search queries. Whether your response to such capabilities is a wild "Woo-hoo!", or whether it gives you the willies is becoming as much a reflection of your cup-half-full versus cup-half-empty convictions as it is a personal dilemma over the use of information technology. Your data, but whose cloud? Potential cloud-hoppers are increasingly starting to scrutinise corporate data policies and national court rulings, especially where their devices span the intranet/Internet divide at network level. It is one thing to have Google Desktop Search running on one PC with the worry of search strings being publicly exposed at some future point in time; at least a local admin can still block web access from a PC by enforcing general policies. It's quite another to have a search appliance doing this on a network-wide basis. For comparison, you have probably experienced Amazon sending promo email-shots on the simply basis of what you have browsed, let alone purchased. Imagine this kind of browsing behaviour straying outside an organisation’s perimeter ... ("Hi, As a recent viewer of your company's personnel and salary data, we thought you might be interested in the new Google HR and TimeSheet module 'G-Bod' ...") In fact, regardless of past scandals such as Chinese censorship of search engines, Google has fought to retain user privacy when faced with orders to turn over its data and logs, to some extent no doubt protecting its commercial concerns at the same time. Nevertheless, there is undeniably an increasing disquiet over the geographical location of stored user data and therefore which country laws its protection is subject to, certainly within European borders. Amazon's online S3 storage - a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web - has begun to address concerns about where customer data is held by providing European-based repositories as well as just US-based ones. Clouds ride the big wave Whether we love, hate, suspect or boggle at Internet cloud computing, it is something of an unstoppable tide coming in and one that we have to face up to. Small scale shared IT initiatives may afford arguable savings, but the big scale ones leave no doubt, allowing some the IT giants to offer applications free, at least for now. Our individual network rock pools become an inevitable part of the Internet sea; - any time, any place is the prize, but propounding this IT utopia creates enormous challenges in keeping data both secure and private. After all, it’s hard enough protecting discrete local networks. Ultimately we’ll probably all be using web-based software and thin clients. The question is how long will it take to make that change: perhaps ten years? In the end, technology seldom forces the change - it is the ability and willingness of users to accept it. Contacts Google Enterprise Productivity Solutions Google Apps Premier Edition Google Apps Partner Edition Salesforce.com - Add sales, marketing and customer service capabilities to Google Apps Add Security and Compliance services to your existing email systems and compare security packages by Postini -IB- Acknowledgements: Phil Anthony

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	3. 10 top tips for emails Bob Hallewell at Expert Messaging has probably changed more email cultures in organisations than anyone else. Here are his ten top tips for great emails.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	We've been taught how to speak, taught how to write, taught how to use the phone – but has anyone taught you how to write effective emails? Pick a couple of emails you have sent, run them through the ten questions below and think (honestly) if your emails could benefit. See if you can score ten out of ten. Question Top tip Next time... 1. Do you think your recipient was pleased to receive your email - or found it useful? At work, only send an email to someone if it is going to help them. It should either contain useful information or actions they need to perform. Make sure they will need the email. Will they say, "Thank you?" 2. Was it obvious what you wanted from them? Stop and think what you want to make happen as a result of sending this email. Is it for action or information? What do you want the recipient to do? It may have been obvious to you, but was it to them? Have a clear goal and state it in the email. 3. How clear was your subject line? Would the other person know what your email was about - just from reading the subject line? Summarise what you want in the subject line e.g. "Please return this survey by 10 May [action]" or "Sales figures for 2nd quarter [info]" Put your goal in the subject line. 4. How far down would someone have to read before they knew what you wanted? With your goal up front, the reader will see it in their preview window (if they have it turned on). In any case you avoid the possibility of "Oh, I didn’t read to the bottom of the email" syndrome. Restate your goal in the first three lines. 5. Did you start with a salutation? Did you say, "Please?" People like "please" and "thank you." Even if it’s not important to you, remember a lot of people like emails to start with a salutation. Start with a greeting and match the style and tone of their reply. Remember good manners. 6. Did you send lots of big attachments? Some people have to download over a slow link: sending big attachments will take them a long time. Perhaps they have a hand-held computer - and cannot access the attachment. Do you need to send an attachment? Could you send a link instead or include the useful information in the body of an email? 7. How were your spelling and punctuation? Nobody reacts badly to correct spelling, but some people do react very negatively to mistakes. This interferes with them taking in your message. Use your spell-check and read the message again before you send. Check the spelling, punctuation and grammar. 8. Was it easy to read? Choose a legible font and colour: black Arial 10 point (11 is better) is recommended. Keep sentences short and paragraphs to about four lines maximum. Leave a blank line between paragraphs. Write legibly. 9. Did they need everything you wrote? Was the whole message relevant to them? If it was a reply, did it have a lengthy history, most of which they didn’t need? Use bullet points or numbered lists. 10. Do they know everything you know? Have you made any assumptions about the information the recipient has? Double-check they have all the information they need to understand your message. Read it through from the recipient's point of view. Expert Messaging was created to promote the work of award-winning international facilitator Bob Hallewell. Courses are run in the form of a core email training module with optional add-ons that cover Outlook, Instant Messaging and the law. Contacts To find out more, please visit www.expert-messaging.com -IB-

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	4. How to keep your gold medal Winning the Microsoft Gold badge is one thing. Keeping it is another.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Unlike Olympians, those of us who have achieved Gold status with Microsoft Partnership can't expect to rest on their laurels, or even keep that status for as long as four years. Every year we have to prove we are up to scratch by earning a set of Microsoft competences. For Co-Operative Systems, this meant demonstrating to Microsoft that we are still competent in at least three areas comprising several specialisations – for instance: Advanced Infrastructure - such as Active Directory or Windows Desktop Deployment Licensing Solutions – such as Licence Delivery or Software Asset Management Information Workers Solutions – such as Office Systems Deployment or Portals and Collaboration Proving all these competences involved trawling through the case history work of half a dozen clients over a period of a couple of days and assembling all the information into a coherent essay. We hope to bring you more details on the individual cases, but along the way we remembered client projects such as: A new network server running the functions of network file, print and email resources, operating in a full 2003 environment Upgrade of complete network including new servers and Terminal Server solution Upgrade of Windows 2000 Servers to Windows 2003 plus SQL 2005 (database engine) and Exchange 2007 mail server Multiple server installation including database server and a VPN (virtual private network) Migration of individual systems to new organisation-wide infrastructure Synchronisation of data between Brussels and London to provide a single 'virtual office' File-and-print and email clustered servers, SQL clustered servers, plus a SAN (Storage Area Network) solution attached via a Fibre Channel network Two new servers for email, a Domain Controller, a database and file-and-print plus a back up solution via a multi-tape autoloader and network storage Once projects were added to the list, we had to wait for Microsoft to approve them; following approval we assigned them to appropriate competencies. We earned our badge in specialisations from Storage Solutions to Messaging and Instant Messaging/Presence, and then picked up another just in time to qualify – that of Networking Infrastructure Solutions. Fortunately, once our essay was 'marked', we came through again with flying colours for another year! Contacts What Microsoft Partner means About Co-Operative Systems -IB- Acknowledgements: Bhavnash Patel

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	5. Roaming profile - Angela Walters An occasional dip into the hearts and minds of the people that make Co-Operative Systems tick.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Angela Walters - Hepldesk support engineer Which applications do you use daily? Windows Terminal server, VNC(remote connectivity), Microsoft Office, Spybot (anti-spyware), smitRem (stand-alone tool designed for removing widely spread parasites) What hardware are you most impressed by? X20e Watchguard firewall - the web-based interface and its features. Favourite web sites? Facebook.com – to socialise with friends. www.asos.com – I love to buy clothes! Most rewarding part of your job? When clients praise me for the work I’ve done. Best bit of software in your current kit? 3ds Max. What you can create with this software is amazing! Check out 3d max karate girl reactor biped by 3DMediArt. What engages your interest when you're not clicking a mouse all day long? Retail therapy. Most awkward/daft/embarrassing support moment? Client could not connect to the VPN. Reason being they have not had internet access for a year. Insider tips for running IT smoothly? Be thorough. What single non-IT thing fascinates you? Reading books. I'm old fashioned! Meet the staff team ...

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	6. Q&A: Keeping a copy of PDFs filled in online Question Mark Hi Mark, At a recent meeting there was discussion about buying Adobe Acrobat Professional, as it is the only way we know to save forms that have to be filled in on line. Obviously we would like to keep records of what we entered in the forms, but to get a licence for lots of people to use would probably be too expensive for us, since it is just for this purpose - we don't need to design documents and stuff. Do you know of any arrangements at a more reasonable cost?
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	There are several disadvantages to filling in forms online (of any format), the most annoying of which is to reach the final box, click Submit and find that a temporary Internet disconnection sends all your hard work into the ether! Cue much tearing out of hair, etc. Suffice to say, most people are pretty loathe to repeat the experience. One fairly simple answer is to download Foxit Reader, a small, fast and free alternative to Adobe Reader (which is also free), but which allows you to fill in forms and save the filled results to your local hard drive. The procedure would be to find your online form using your normal web browser and use its File | Save As menu to save a blank PDF copy on your computer. Then open your blank copy with Foxit Reader (which helpfully highlights 'fillable' boxes in yellow), fill in the boxes and save your edited version on your local drive or network drive. Clearly you must now find a way to email or upload the results to the recipient by attaching the file, which can be the tricky bit, since many online forms only allow you to fill them in while actually online. However, you can usually find a "Contact Us" section on the web site and deduce a suitable email address that will receive your completed submission as an attachment, safe in the knowledge that you now have your own copy, and a record of when it was sent (in your Sent Items) to boot. Get Foxit Reader from: www.foxitsoftware.com Foxit is also available as a 'travelling' version for use on U3 memory sticks. Learn more about PDF forms. Discover answers in more Q&A topics -IB-

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	Clicks of the Trade - Sitting duck spreadsheets expose email addresses --- Quick tips for happier clicks! ---
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Most of our tips are a "Do", but this one is definitely a "Don't". Spreadsheets like Excel and OpenOffice Calc are meant for numbers, but many people keep contact lists in them, perhaps because spreadsheets are easy to use, perhaps because the users work largely in a financial background. Whatever the reason, it's common occurrence. So far, so good - even where these spreadsheeted contact lists are kept on the local network. Where it all goes horribly wrong is that many people (not necessarily the authors) publish those spreadsheets on the web for all to see - names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses - just waiting for spammers to leech them up. It's so prevalent in fact, that email marketers even include such spreadsheet scanning in their hot tips on how to get new sales contacts. You can prove it yourself: Pull up Google Advanced Search (www.google.co.uk/advanced_search?hl=en) In the field all these words, type "email name address" and add the company name, or type of company, or location to search for, eg "London" In the file type field, select Microsoft Excel (.xls) Click the Advanced Search button Google even makes the results easy to see with a "View at HTML" link, but of course the real issue is that spammers will scoop up these addresses small robot programs rather doing it manually. Is it any wonder that spam is so prolific with sitting ducks like these public spreadsheets? Sadly, many government and university departments are among the culprits. If their own organisational addresses were the only ones on show, the situation would be less depressing, but often there are many private addresses up there too. So watch out for 'webbed' spreadsheets, especially if your address is one one of them. ** try it now ** More Clicks of the Trade -IB-

^ Back to contents ^ Overview of InfoBulletin InfoBulletin is written and published by Co-Operative Systems and contains Information Technology tips that we come across during everyday research and support activities and which may be useful in improving your IT operations, either internally or on the Internet. Opinions expressed within InfoBulletin do not necessarily represent the views of Co-Operative Systems. E&OE Viewing IB This bulletin is presented as a Web page (in HTML) that can be read in any standard browser and most email clients. It is written in a compact format for fast viewing, short download time and ease of use for mobile computers. Printing IB If you prefer to read IB on paper (hopefully recycled!), think about pulling down the File | Print Preview menu in your browser and just printing the sheets you want. Implementation InfoBulletin topics can be implemented by Co-Operative Systems on a chargeable basis or via Facilities Management (FM) for those with rolling work programmes.

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