Winter technology meanderings - web and email system upgrades

Today I'm nearing the end of a full week off. It's been great sleeping in, snowboarding and working on some projects I've been putting off for a long time.

As you probably already know I have a web server I own that I maintain as a hobby. Recently a few friends who have accounts on the server started requesting new features and I figured it was probably time to bit the bullet and start the upgrades.

So in the past few weeks I did a lot of research and performed the following upgrades:

• Migrated 12 live websites to a newer web server
• Rolled out a secure webmail platform
• Deployed an IMAP server to synchronize mail and read/replied status across devices
• Added or improved secure mechanisms for hosting content and backing up file

Upon doing this I discovered another great thing I have recently accomplished:

• I am no longer dependent on the "Blackberry Internet Service" provided by Rogers in partnership with RIM. This service is horribly slow for personal email accounts and is better served by running an IMAP client like LogicMail, or to use another device altogether. Periodic or "on demand" message checking works better than the "push" message service on the Blackberry which really only checks your messages every 15 minutes.

Good luck planning lunch with that kind of delay.

I would highly recommend that small businesses skip the fanfare around the Blackberry and get themselves access to an IMAP server, it's much more accommodating than I had expected. Synchronization is a great tool to have at your disposal. Doing the same tasks over and over again is definitely not in most creative people's interest so I'm happy to be settling into the new configuration.

Oh yeah, and for those of you on the RSS feed, yes it's been awhile. Now you know why! Stay tuned for more fun in the comng weeks.