Number 58

Positive review

I am pleased to report that subscribers to this newsletter have been very positive about the changes made recently. One of the benefits that I only discovered once someone told me was how much better the newsletter works on mobile devices! All that feedback is great to hear and please keep it coming. Just drop an email to director@ciaops.com and let me know your thoughts. I read and respond to all emails I receive.

I appreciate you being a subscriber and taking the time to read this email.

Contents

1. Office 365 updates coming thick and fast
2. What is metadata?
3. I got my Windows Phone update

1. Office 365 updates coming thick and fast
It has been a very busy time for the Office 365 team with the roll out of a swag of updates and improvements including:

- Clutter. This is a option in your Outlook at uses the intelligent Officegraph technology to look at your inbound correspondence and move the low priority items away from your inbox. best way to think of it is like automated email rules. Don't worry, Clutter respects any manual rules you have already calculated. Read my blog post at http://blog.ciaops.com/2014/11/office-365-clutter-now-rolling-out.html for more details.

- Unlimited OneDrive space was recently announced for consumer OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. This now effectively means you can save as much as you want to the cloud for free. Doing so with OneDrive for Business provides greater control than the consumer version if you require that.

- Lync is to be renamed Skype for Business. The enterprise product name Lync is to be replaced by the more consumer friendly Skype brand. Under the covers should remain very much the same but hopefully it means the best of both products can be merged. Read my blog post on the topic - http://blog.ciaops.com/2014/11/office-365-lync-to-become-skype-for.html

- Shared mailboxes boosted to 50GB. Shared mailboxes with Office 365 are free and most now can grow to 50GB in size. More details at my blog - http://blog.ciaops.com/2014/11/office-365-shared-mailboxes-get-boosted.html.

And that is just a minor sampling of what's been happening since the last newsletter in the Office 365 world. The best place to keep up to date with all these changes is my blog at http://blog.ciaops.com. 

Remember, if you need any assistance with Office 365 please don't hesitate to contact me (director@ciaops.com).

2. What is metadata?

One of the recent pieces of legislation that the Australia government is considering involves the widespread collection and analysis of what is known as 'metadata'. But what exactly is 'metadata' and should we be worried about that fact?

If you think of the conversation you have on your mobile phone as the data, then the information that describes that same call is what is 'metadata'. Such information would include, who you called, when you called, how long you spoke for, how often you have spoken before and so on. Individually, each piece of 'metadata' seems innocuous, however when you combine all of the 'metadata' together it can provide some very interesting information.

If you now start combining and analysing 'metadata' amongst a network of people you can learn some really interesting things. In many respects 'metadata' is far more valuable than the actual content of the data. The large scale collection and analysis is now possible with today's technology that just about everyone has access to.

So, like all technology, 'metadata' is a real benefit when used appropriately, as it provides information and insight we may have not been able to garner otherwise. However, when used inappropriately, such as for surveillance, it can be very, very harmful. 

There is not much you can do to protect your 'metadata' because it is constantly being created and gathered. What you can do however, is ensure that it is used appropriately by letting governments and corporations know what is and isn't acceptable.

Send me an email (director@ciaops.com) with your thoughts. I read and respond to all emails.

3. Windows Phone update feedback

I got plenty of feedback from readers in regards to the Windows Phone 8.1 update. The vast majority was very positive, however there were a few niggly problems. Some examples of this include:

- Appears to randomly link and merge my contacts with unrelated people which is a bit annoying
- The Bluetooth connection with my car doesn’t work as well as it did with the 900 – reading SMS’s etc now is a problem
- The new swipe typing method is brilliant. I had contemplated going back to a blackberry for the ease of typing, this has solved that completely.

Plenty of good words also for Cortana which is the Microsoft digital assistant but at the moment this needs to be configured manually. Basically you need to set your phone region to US which requires some updates and rebooting but once completed works well. 

Although there have been massive improvements in Windows Phone Android powered devices continue to grow towards 80% market share. What are your thoughts on whether Microsoft should persist with Windows Phone? Should it abandon the platform and concentrate on its cloud services and providing apps fro these on dominate mobile platforms like Android? Or should they continue to provide an alternative and good integration with the Microsoft environment? Send me an email (director@ciaops.com) with your thoughts. I read and reply to all emails.