December 2012

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jethro's picture

The End of Live Mesh

imagesIts been coming for a while with the (rather unsuccessful) merger of Windows Live Mesh and Microsoft Skydrive. In fact the recent round of Live Essential updates forced the uninstallation of Live Mesh.

 

Here is a portion of the official email I got from Microsoft the other day.

Dear Mesh customer,
Recently we released the latest version of SkyDrive, which you can use to:

  • Choose the files and folders on your SkyDrive that sync on each computer.
  • Access your SkyDrive using a brand new app for Android v2.3 or the updated apps for Windows Phone, iPhone, and iPad.
  • Collaborate online with the new Office Web apps, including Excel forms, co-authoring in PowerPoint and embeddable Word documents.

Currently 40% of Mesh customers are actively using SkyDrive and based on the positive response and our increasing focus on improving personal cloud storage, it makes sense to merge SkyDrive and Mesh into a single product for anytime and anywhere access for files. As a result, we will retire Mesh on February 13, 2013. After this date, some Mesh functions, such as remote desktop and peer to peer sync, will no longer be available and any data on the Mesh cloud, called Mesh synced storage or SkyDrive synced storage, will be removed. The folders you synced with Mesh will stop syncing, and you will not be able to connect to your PCs remotely using Mesh.
We encourage you to try out the new SkyDrive to see how it can meet your needs. During the transition period, we suggest that, in addition to using Mesh, you sync your Mesh files using SkyDrive. This way, you can try out SkyDrive without changing your existing Mesh setup. For tips on transitioning to SkyDrive, see SkyDrive for Mesh users on the Windows website. If you have questions, you can post them in the SkyDrive forums.
Mesh customers have been influential and your feedback has helped shape our strategy for Mesh and SkyDrive. We would not be here without your support and hope you continue to give us feedback as you use SkyDrive.

 

While Skydrive is a great tool and very useful cloud backup and synchronisation tool and I set it up for many of my customers as a way of keeping their data in synch between multiple machines and backed up as well, there are some significant gaps between it and Live Mesh and other cloud data services.

Use Skydrive when:

  • You have two (or more devices) you want to keep data synched between them
  • You have a windows Phone and want data backed up – eg phone camera photos can be uploaded to Skydrive automatically
  • You want secure web access from anywhere to your data – eg airport browser, friends house or shared PC.
  • You want to share web access only to files and images

 

Dont use Skydrive:

  • If you want to share folders to others to synch in their skydrive or on their PC or devices.
  • For me this was the big one that means we now use Dropbox for all our team and family file management.
jethro's picture

Poetry

In 1993 I wrote a bunch of poetry. I’m not entirely sure why that year was so prolific. It was the year I came out of a very dark time in my life, started being less introspective, was dry for 9 months (a big thing for a drug and alcohol dependant person) and did a lot of sport, raced national level mountain biking and local triathlons and endurance triathlons.

I have posted a bunch of poems up. Each is its own little island of thought.

I will continue to post all my poetry in time order over the next few weeks. Hopefully balanced with some other work!

My poetry is intensely emotional and comes from a place in my soul unbidden, unforced and often from a dream or in times of deep introspection.

Feel free to comment and share.

jethro's picture

Radio News

(What Price A Life)

(sschtzzzz)

...two car bombs have just gone off

the street is full of broken buildings and shattered glass

someone said they thought fifteen people died

this is mark howarth for xyz news

madrid...

(sschtzzzz)

... a bomb has just exploded in the art gallery

three priceless paintings have been destroyed

works of art gone forever

fifteen more have been damaged and rushed to intensive art care

it appears five people died in the blast

this is lynda james for arc news

paris...

(sschtzzzz)

(rrrrrhnnnnnn) chainsaws are buzzing all around

(creeeeak) (grooooaan) (Pause) (craaaaaassshhhh)

oh no another rimu is down

(sschtzzzz)

So What?

(sschtzzzz)

© Timothy Miller 1993

jethro's picture

To Rape or not to Rape

We vote for our politicians

installing them in an unbalanced system of power

that corrupts as it tries to do good

or does it

To rape or not to rape

that is not the question

we know best

and we want to be back in the next election

© Timothy Miller 1993

jethro's picture

Ao-Te-Zeal

Apartheid

of choice or force

maori and pakeha (how I hate that word)

what about the chinese, the samoans, the indians, the dutch?

where is their treaty?

Who is a New Zealander anyhow?

© Timothy Miller 1993

jethro's picture

Moods

Moods

(Women And Waves)

Today you are sullen - sultry - passive yet hungry

demanding attention,

sucking endlessly in oily repetition on slick sand

I am like flotsam trapped in greasy foam

tossed back and forth

neither here or there

but forever condemned to react to your tides

 

2012-06-30 Gold Coast Beach 020Today you are angry - aggressive - violent

carving your name

forcing yourself unwanted and unasked

seeking to make your way without heed of those in the way

I am like a still rockpool suddenly disturbed

anenomes ruthlessly uprooted

raped and pillaged by your desire and ambition

 

Today you are loving - playful - joyful

chuckling wavelets caressing sparkling sands

delicate fingers running through seaweed

titillating - pleasuring

I am like iridescent foam

laughing - tinkling

enjoying the moment as if it will last forever

but the tide will turn

 

Poem written © Timothy Miller 1993

Photo taken 2012 at the Gold Coast

jethro's picture

The SpyJournal Weekly and Tim Miller Daily

Paper.li allow you create personalised newspapers – summarising your tweets, and community news in various areas.

I have been running two for some time now – the Tim Miller Daily and the SpyJournal Weekly.

Check them out and subscribe if you want an easy grab of my twitter feed in one bite

image

jethro's picture

I got my invite to Alto Mail

Alto Mail is a web based (browser) new (?) way of managing mail from services like Gmail, yMail, Aol and iCloud.ITs main benefit is the ability to group and sort in stacks mail from any sender or group of senders.

It also exposes very simply pictures and other attachments in a nice easy to see view.

I'm trying it on my Gmail account – which seeing as its chiefly used for service sign up and notifications doesn't contain much of value. However I can already see how this would be of benefit to anybody who uses Gmail for example which has a difficult to use interface. This makes Gmail far more friendly in a browser!

image

Sign up for your beta invitation and get ahead of the rest!

jethro's picture

How to remove #N/A errors in Excel

Today I had an email request:

I wasn't sure how to post, or join so I'm sending my question to you this way. I cannot figure out how to remove the #N/A error in LOOKUP. If the cells are blank it returns the #N/A error - I'd like to return either a blank or 0 instead. How do I do that? Her is my formula. (I'm sure you can tell by my formula I'm a rookie at this.) Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

=SUM((LOOKUP(B6,{1,2,3,4,5},{40,30,20,10,0}))+(LOOKUP(C6,{1,2,3,4,5},{40,30,20,10,0})+(LOOKUP(D6,{1,2,3,4,5},{40,30,20,10,0})+(LOOKUP(E6,{1,2,3,4,5},{40,30,20,10,0})+(LOOKUP(F6,{1,2,3,4,5},{40,30,20,10,0}))))))

Excel-2013I have written a post on this before when I explained the ISNA function.

In this case I will break down the first component of the formula and show you how to insert it.

First of all understand that because this formula is summing components that are lookups, if any one of them returns an error than the overall sum will be an error even if the rest is not an error.

So to fix =LOOKUP(B6,{1,2,3,4,5},{40,30,20,10,0}) when it displays #N/A (eg if B6 is less than 1) we would use this function:

=IF(ISNA(LOOKUP(B6,{1,2,3,4,5},{40,30,20,10,0}))=TRUE,0,LOOKUP(B6,{1,2,3,4,5},{40,30,20,10,0}))

The same concept could be used for each lookup component. In this case the formula would become very involved so there might be easier ways to do it. Sometimes breaking the individual components our into individual cells and then summing them is a way to give more visible results – and easily see which component is causing the error.

So Lois – i hope that helps – and thanks for liking us on Facebook!