We blog about We blog on label printing, security labelling, variable barcode labelling and open source software in small business.
Archive for July 2009
This script from Dan at Zomgee is excellent, and allows you to compile your own XPI firefox addon in under 2 minutes (using nothing more than a basic text editor and your mailserver domain name) that makes all mailto: links open up in Zimbra, not evolution of similar. Its easy and works for me using Zimbra client on an ubuntu 9.04 linux machine with Firefox 3.0.12. Nice work Dan.
The concept of taking older and redundant windows PCs, triageing them, clean installing linux and passing the machines onto good homes is an excellent one, and cuts out an awful lot of legal problems. Its being done in the USA and I wonder when it will happen in the uk?
If anyone knows if and when this is going to happen, please let me know and we have a bunch of old machnes we can contribute from our factory in Cannock. Come to think of it, if anyone local to Cannock wants a PC with Linux installed, let me know your circumstances and reasons and I’ll see what we can do.
PRESS RELEASE
28 July 2009
Cannock, Staffordshire, UK
Adrian Steele, MD of Mercian Labels is one of only 700 directors to achieve the IoD’s chartered director status from a membership of 45,000.
Dr Adrian Steele, Managing Director of Cannock based Mercian Labels is the latest director to join the elite group of individuals who have achieved the Institute of Director’s Chartered Director status.
Adrian is now one of only 700 directors to become a Chartered Director in the UK out of the Institutes membership of over 45,000.
He achieved Chartered Director status after completing the IoD’s certificate and diploma in company direction in 2007 and successfully completing the rigorous professional review interviews.
Adrian said: “Running a business in today’s fast changing climate is extremely challenging. I need to ensure that I fully understood the legal and financial responsibilities that come with being a director. For me it’s about becoming a business professional.”
“The certificate and diploma in company direction provided the expert knowledge and guidance needed to run a company efficiently and profitably. Perhaps the most useful element for me was understanding how to prepare a robust strategy and techniques to understand the market place.”
“I have no doubt that the IoD’s training has contributed considerably to the ongoing success of Mercian Labels.”
Jean Pousson, Programme Director for the IoD in the West Midlands said:
“As a Chartered Director Adrian will be able to demonstrate to shareholders, stakeholders, clients and customers that his organisation is professional and successful.”
“Directors who complete the IoD’s qualifications in company direction are extremely well placed to appreciate all aspects of effective business leadership and sound corporate governance.”
Mercian Labels is the UK’s leading manufacturer of short run customised labels and produces the world’s best known security labelling brand, Label Lock.
Adrian has also been invited to become a Fellow of the Institute of Directors.
As a founder member of the British Short Run Labelling Association, we have been been supporting the new UK labelling event through our network in the past year since I first came to hear of it late last year. The Label Event 2010 is not competition to Label Expo, the definative labelling show held every 2 years, but a commercially driven seminar day with an exciting agenda for all those involved in the UK labelling industry. I hope that plenty of suppliers will support the event, as in this climate there are very, very few occasions for the instustry to come together, and this is an excellent concept for a new event. I for one will make sure I will be there.
Some years ago I travelled around countries in southern Africa, and was struck by the unrealised potential of the local economies as they didnt have any decent web access to compete with the Indian sub continent and China. Well yesterday a major milestone was acheived with the commisioning of the Seacom undersea cable. Its a small but important step to empowering the local economies of east africa, and I hope that some good new businesses can startup and flourish with this new infrastructure.
At Mercian Labels we have benefited hugely from open source software, but unfortunately it is rare that we actually get a chance to help out anyone from the community back. However, this week it has been a pleasure to host Josh Holland, who has been here hacking us with a new VPN connection on our ubuntu server and the technical stuff needed to integrate Zimbra email into our own CRM. Josh found us online whilst looking for an open source sys admin role for a weeks work experience.
This is Josh’s write up of his experiences this week.
“I am a 16 year old 6th Former taking A levels in Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry, and have been doing work experience on the Mercian Labels computer system for the past week.
I have set up a VPN to allow access to the network when offsite, and written (most of) an extension to the bespoke CMS that extracts all the emails to and from a certain address from the Zimbra groupware server and displays them. I have learnt the syntax of iptables, got to know my way around Zimbra and found out a lot about networking.
Would I have been able to do this without open source and the community around it? I doubt it, because the freedom to download, use and redistribute it allows people like me to try things out without having to spend a fortune on something. For example, I can run my own server on £80 per year with no setup costs because all the software is free. If I didn’t have a server, I would not have got the skills I used this week and would use in a real job, becuase Windows Server (say) costs a fortune and keeps people like me from being able to teach themselves.
Also, the community is a fantastic asset. When I hit a snag in setting up of OpenVPN, I was able to turn to the openvpn-users mailing list and get it working like a charm. Almost every major open source project has support mailing lists populated by volunteers, ready to help anyone who has a problem.
Getting all this for free is fantastic, and something that is very hard to find anywhere else. Open source systems have opened the world of IT for me; they have allowed me to teach myself the skills to work in a whole new sector of employment.”
Thanks to Josh for his hard work this week. We have really benefited from his expertise, and hope that he does well in whatever career path he takes. It has been a pleasure Josh!
Only a couple of months ago the Royal Mail issued what it claimed to be a ‘tamper proof’ stamp to cut down on the illegal reuse of stamps in the UK. Yesterday a houseguest showed me how these stamps can be removed with ease, using absolutely no equipment at all.
It is that easy, and the stamp labels are hardly ‘tamper proof’. Contrast that with our own Dual Layer Label Lock product, that really is a security label in a class of its own. The label separates into 2 dry peel labels if you try to remove it and cannt be reapplied.
We spend a lot of time attacking our own security labels using a variety of complex techniques, and there are very, very few that are undefeatable. Royal Mail’s ‘tamper proof’ stamp using outdated security cut technology is not one of them.
The blogosphere has been awash today with the news that Google are launching their own operating system. Of course its easy to say I told you so, but I can confess to putting Chris DeBona, Google’s Open Source Manager on the spot at Lugradio live 2007 Q&As as to when Google would release its own Linux Distro, as strategically it didnt seem sensible for them not to do so. I didnt believe his reply then that they had no plans to! Anyway, its based on the Linux Kernel, open source, and hopefully using Debian in some way – the Universe is excellent.
I really like my Dell netbook running ubuntu netbook remix, and it will take a lot to get me to move to Chrome OS. I dont use Google’s Chrome browser as I am suspicious of the data privacy, and qute frankly unless Chrome OS is much, much, better than Ubuntu, then my reply is simply no thank you. Google is a fantastic business and dare I say it, a free service to the planet’s online community, but if its working towards running my OS, browser, search experience, email and office files, then thats a monopoly I would rather do without.
Every 2 years the global label industry descend on Brussells for the biggest labelling show in the Calendar, Label Expo. It is a “must visit” show for anyone seriously involved in labelling, and I will be there on Friday 25th September and Saturday 26th September this year.
Please contact me if you are also going and fancy meeting up to discuss anything; I’d be happy to meet clients, suppliers or anyone who just fancies a chat over a Belgian beer!
We are recruiting a new member to our team and they have asked for a blackberry as their email device of choice, something we have never used before in house. Having looked into this, it seems like a real can of worms.
What I would expect is that there is an easy way of connecting a zimbra server to a blackberry device using a protocol similar to IMAP or the nokia exchange server that I use on my E90 (works with Zimbra fine), but no, you have to have a separate windows box running a piece of blackberry middleware software that only connects to MSSQL type software, to which a special zimbra add on connects to .
What a faff, and I’m not doing this. Blackberry have just lost a sale becasue the dont support Zimbra. If you agree, consider signing this petition to ask RIM to natively support Zimbra.
In the meantime, I’m going to get a smartphone that does support zimbra like the HTC or nokia E90 we current use.
We have been longstanding customers of Nildram broadband, and recently upgraded one of our lines to the latest generation of high upload speed line offering upto 16mb down / 2.5mb up using annex m. Anyone considering this service may be interested in these results:
EXISTING NETGEAR DG834 v4 ROUTER (allegedly not annex m compatible but still works fine with 5.01.09 firmware):
connection speed 14.64 mb down / 1.17mb up
3 x speedtest.net results:
1) 10.61 / 0.62
2) 10.80 / 0.65
3) 11.24 / 0.73
NEW THOMSON ROUTER FROM NILDRAM:
connection speed 14.34 down / 1.14 up
3 x speedtest.net results:
1) 9.85 / 0.7
2) 8.59 / 0.55
3) 10.45 / 0.72
As you can see the new router Nildram claim that we need is slightly slower, but in any case is nowhere near the 16.00 / 2.5 claimed for the new service. I wish I did the same test before they “upgraded” the line, but from memory it was about 8mb down / 0.5 up – certainly not a lot different.
Conclusion: – dont buy a new modem if you want this service, as its not worth it.
