Tile was the first crowd funding campaign that I supported. My money would actually result in the finished physical product being shipped to my door and this seemed like a gadget I would use. I had to be patient though ? still being in the design stage, it would be over 12 months before I?d hold a Tile in my hand.

A salesperson has guided you through the purchase of a new PC (desktop or laptop) and it?s now sitting in a box in your home. Assuming you can see the little symbols showing where to plug in the keyboard and mouse (which in reality are usually all just USB these days anyway), you should be good to just plug everything in and go, right?

Ah, well, almost.

Chances are that most PCs you?ll drag home from a retail store?have a manufacturers release of Windows 8 installed on them. Unfortunately, there are usually a ton of updates that have been released by Microsoft since that PC has its software installed ? the most important being the immensely helpful upgrade to Windows 8.1

It�s not news that IT is an ever-changing industry. The skills that I learnt when I first started are now mostly irrelevant. I say �mostly� because some of the fundamentals of disks, files, networks etc still hold true (once we�d migrated off token ring anyway). And I still use the command prompt to search for files. But when I started, there was no Cloud, no social media, no phishing, no virtualization, no sector based backups and no ADSL. File storage was done on a Novell Netware server or three, with a bank of dial-in modems for remote access.

Monday in Queensland is a public holiday to observe�labour day, which is quite apt because yes, I�m working. Now before you�pity me that I don�t�get three whole days off (in a row!), I�m not that concerned actually.

Long weekends are the perfect structure for me. I�ve had time to spend with friends and family, time to catch up on housework and time to work while clients are away and I can�control their computers whenever suits, without interrupting them. It�s also the last weekend before school recommences for the kids so add in polishing shoes & gathering all required school items prior to the first morning back.

WARNING: Do not continue?if you have?no interest in Disney?s Frozen whatsoever.

Having two daughters under 10, our house & car has been filled with Frozen songs, so naturally that was the chosen theme for Miss 4?s 5th birthday. I?wasn?t interested in it being the best decorated Frozen party ever. I just wanted it to be achievable & for her to have a good time. So, here is a tutorial on how to have a Frozen party when you?re on a budget & leave things until the last minute.

At short notice, I�ve taken a leap of faith and purchased a conference ticket. It was left until the last minute because I�ve been umming and ahhing about whether or not I can justify spending the money to be a delegate for 2.5 days, plus accommodation. Everyone who has attended this industry conference raves about it and I�ve made some great connections with people over the last 12 months who will be there. Never underestimate the power of meeting the face behind the emails, I would advise other people, as I was so wisely taught when I stepped into the broader industry. You�ll be amazed what happens at �the meeting after the meeting� or months in the future because you took the time to start building a relationship. Yes, all the justification in the world for taking a large sum of money out of my bank account.

Time Magazine�has just told me that the way to end the gender gap in tech is to run girl�s summer coding camps.�Sure.

And then what do you do when those girls try to enter the industry? How are you going to ensure that their potential employer gives them and equal chance � and an equal�salary? How will you ensure that her peers will cheer her on,�value her�opinion and accept her recommendations? And what happens if, heavens forbid, those girls don�t actually like to code and�write off the industry because of it?

I�ve seen a few discussions amongst the Australian IT community recently from people who are very anti-Cloud. Aside from privacy concerns (NSA access to data centres not located in Australia) and Internet infrastructure concerns (yes, many businesses still have pitiful Internet speeds), the next favourite objection involves every time a Cloud service has ever has an outage.

Microsoft�s Office 365 service didn�t help my cause today with a 3hr�degradation in service, where emails couldn�t be sent or received for a number of customers. When the service was restored though, all the emails caught up.

I started?doing the school holidays thing?of letting the girls have some?unstructured play time?(aka amusing themselves while I work). My aim is to wrangle my unread emails & attend to anything time critical, then spend some time with them. They love to bake. Well, they love to start baking then leave me to it and return in time to eat the results.

So in a moment of Aldi clearance madness, I bought a cake pop kit. I have no room in my kitchen for single-use appliances so I was never going to buy a cake pop machine (the ones that look like toasted sandwich makers). But Aldi had this cute little box with the silicone moulds and a recipe book & sticks.?A bargain, guaranteed to give us some?quality time together.

An IT technician migrated a customer over to Office 365, including using the hosted Microsoft Exchange service for email. He followed the right steps, verified their own domain name, adjusted the MX record and added the right SPF entry.

However, some people sending to this email domain were receiving a delivery failure report error (though some people could send to them successfully):
SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO::
host recipientdomain.com [223.99.99.99]: 550-Please turn on SMTP Authentication in your mail client.
550-delivery5.spamserver.com [116.99.99.99]:54447 is not permitted to relay
550 through this server without authentication.