What is Cortana?

For years, Microsoft has put the Windows name on phones because it’s a familiar brand, but with Windows 10, it’s also the name of the operating system you get on the phone. Most of the time it doesn’t look like Windows 10, because the interface that looks right on a notebook or large tablet is hard to see on a small screen.

But because Windows 10 for Phones is the same operating system core (Microsoft even calls it OneCore), you can plug in a keyboard or a mouse and even a screen to your phone – and when you do, the same Continuum experience that switches a notebook into tablet mode switches the phone into PC mode.

Here at ESP Projects, we are often asked about responsive web design; what it is, how it works, and why it’s something that we think is crucial to the success of a new website amongst its visitors.

Traditionally websites have been viewed on a PC (or Laptop) with the aid of a mouse for navigation. But nowadays more and more people are using a variety of devices such as smartphones and tablets, and using their fingers or perhaps a stylus to navigate instead. This change means that the way the website displays its content has to be thought about from a multi-device perspective. There are two approaches to displaying websites on ‘non-standard’ screens, having a mobile site or a responsive web design.

We have been looking to offer a fully-fledged Phone System to our clients for quite some time now, and after testing many of the different systems out there we’ve finally settled on one which we believe offers the best feature set and provides good value for money.

Based on the common “Asterisk” Phone System, “Kerio Operator” is very flexible; it can be used in conjunction with regular ISDN telephone lines, or can also facilitate calls over the internet (VOIP). An outline of some of the features of this phone system is included below: 

In an unexpected but welcome development, Microsoft has recently announced that they are allowing Charities of all sizes to benefit from their Premier Office 365 cloud offering for FREE! The additional features offered as part of this service include:

• Hosted Exchange – Allow Microsoft to host your emails, and take advantage of unlimited shared contacts, calendars and mailboxes
• Skydrive Pro – A central place to access and edit documents and business information from virtually anywhere
• Office Web Apps – Access Word, PowerPoint and Excel with an internet browser to allow you to work across multiple devices (including smartphones).
• Lync – Save travel costs by using Microsoft Lync Online to conduct online meetings, including audio, HD video, and web conferencing

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ESP Projects’ web development team has been really busy in recent months and I’m delighted to share with you some examples of recently launched sites.

Sheffield Cubed

Launch date: 1st October 2013

Sheffield Cubed is a third sector membership organisation designed to seek out and win contract and funding opportunities which enable our members to meet the needs of local people through the provision of high-quality effective client centred services. The live site can be seen here www.sheffieldcubed.co.uk

You may have heard the news this week regarding the uncertain future of the Digital Region network. Digital Region is a scheme to roll out superfast fibre broadband to homes and businesses across the South Yorkshire region, backed by the four councils. This is a project that began in 2010 and has been slowly working its way through the postcodes in the region, to enable businesses and consumers alike to benefit from Superfast Fibre Broadband. ESP Projects has referred several of our clients to this service, and indeed use Digital Region at our own office.

The last couple of months have seen a slew of new products on the market seeking to make use of the new Windows 8 operating system in some novel ways. Indeed, a whole new lexicon has been introduced to cover these computers! Terms like ‘Convertibles’, ‘Sliders’ and ‘Twisters’ try to describe the diverse ways the new devices can be transformed for different uses.

Website readers might be interested to know of a handy little tool that few have heard of but that has been around for over year now. The Microsoft Safety Scanner is a natty little utility designed to run a one-off scan for viruses. It can’t be installed permanently and offers no ‘ongoing’ protection, so it’s not a substitute for Antivirus software. However, it’s free for all and easy to use- all you do is download and run it, and it can do a ‘Quick Scan’ in a few minutes.

Our love affair with tablet computers shows no sign of abating, with 100m reportedly sold in 2012, compared with just 20m or so in 2010. According to some analysts, tablet sales may well exceed those of PCs before long and even last years’ sales are said to be more than trebling by 2015.  Such high sales figures just can’t relate to trendy ‘early adopter’ types sporting the latest sexy designs, so who is going to be buying all of these tablets?