Ugly Code

With my recent project, I had to do some research for the bits that make up the msRTCSIP-OptionFlags field in Active Directory for OCS users. There were certain operations that are not 100% supported by HMC so often times you have to fill in the gaps. The definition of this field is as follows:

This attribute specifies the different options that are enabled for the user or contact object. This attribute is a bit-mask value of type integer. Each option is represented by a bit. This attribute is marked for Global Catalog replication.

First!

There are very few times that a company gets to claim that they are first to do something. But today, my project is launching and LightEdge Solutions gets to claim that we are the first service provider to provide this integration. Today we are announcing that we are rolling out our Hosted Office Communication Server 2007 service. The real kicker for this is that we have been able to successfully tie together the hosted OCS system with our hosted Broadsoft phone system. So now when you are on a call, it automatically updates your status so everyone in your company will know not to bother you at that time. This is taking the presence integration to that next level.

Outpost

I’m an avid follower of the 37signals blogs and they happened to be giving out some promo codes for a new iPhone app called Outpost. All I had to do was send a tweet to the develoers and I just happened to be one of the lucky ones to secure one of these promo codes. w00t!

I must say, as someone that is planning on releasing some software for the iPhone here in the near future, I’m pretty impressed with the promo codes. I think it is a great way to get people excited about your application and get it into the hands of the reviewers.

Fairness Doctrine

People like this really scare me:

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) told nationally syndicated talk host Bill Press this morning that the recent flips of liberal Talk stations in several markets were a “disservice to the public.”

Stabenow said that, in the day of the Fairness Doctrine, “you had to have balance,” and continued, “I think something that requires that in a market with owners that have multiple stations that they have got to have balance — there has to be some community interest — balance, you know, standard that says both sides have to be heard.”

The need for speed

As I’ve written before, the main engine that we are using to provision users on our Exchange system is Microsoft‘s Hosted Messaging and Collaboration (HMC) framework.

I’ve had a few issues with it and various hoops that I have had to jump through. Many of which I have not had a chance to document on this blog. Those will hopefully come out in the coming months.

Today, I was dealing with a speed issue that we have been having in our customer portal that hits HMC. The page is pretty basic, it gives a listing of all the users, the name, login address, what package they are assigned and then some actions that can be taken on the user such as edit, delete, disable. This is all in house code that shows this information with calls being made to HMC to get the data.