The advantages:

• I no longer have to worry about backing up my email server.
  
• I can access my email through a browser without any special setup, firewall configuration or security worries.
• I don't need to run an Exchange Server which was killing my server, adding a second server for two man company seemed a bit overkill.
• I can get an IMAP server (or POP3) so can still use Outlook if I want to.
  
• It's free! I have a Windows 2003 Small Business Server so that's not a big problem for me but it's definitely worth considering if you don't have the licenses.
• Search is quicker, through the web interface.

• I no longer have full control over my email, if google pack up shop do I get it all back.
• I have to trust Google to not read any sensitive information.
• I don't have as much potential storage, although 4GB of mail is a lot of mail!
• If I want shared calendars I have to use the web interface, which I don't like as much as Outlook.

I've just got a new Blackberry phone, to replace a handset I lost on my last holiday. Some of the guys I used to work with at E3 have been on about how it's the best mobile they've ever used.

So far it's been very impressive, particularly the blackberry email system. Emails just appear on your phone, no send and recieve or constant checking. They use a push system which is very smart. Anyway the only problem I've had so far is that the voice dialling didn't recognise any of my contacts. It seems like when it indexed the contacts the first time it didn't work and since then it only reindexes a contact when you edit them. The fix was on this page, basically wipe the contacts by syncing them with something other than your primary contact list, in my case I stopped syncing them with Outlook, instead syncing them with Outlook express, which has no contacts, doing a complete export replacing all the contacts on the handset. I then set it back to Outlook and did the same and then finally set it back to sync rather than export from outlook.

Next time I went to use voice dialling it reindexed my contacts and this time it all worked fine.

I've been using the Drupal Category Module for a website. Basically the site is structured so that the tree like navigation is built using containers, and when you are down to the actual content they are implemented as categories. The owner of the site want people to register for free on the site to view the content but to be able to still navigate through the site so you get an idea of what content is on the site first.

The simplest way to do this would be to restrict anonymous access to categories but still allow it for containers. Initially I've looked at cac_lite, but these are fairly complex, and do a lot more than I need, plus I couldn't get it to work correctly. So what I've done is modify the category module to include some more granular permissions.

First of all I added the new permissions to the category_perm function, modifying the existing function to look like this:

This adds the permissions to the access control section, next we have to actually restrict access to the containers or categories. The module uses a helper function to get the permissions for access control called _category_privileged. I added these cases into that function, one for container and one for category:

This will also allow users who can administer containers/categories access as well as users with our new permission.

Then the final step is to actually modify the category_access function to restrict access when viewing containers or categories. To do this I added a if statement to the end of the category_access function:

This simply checks the node type and then returns whether the user has been granted access to the relevant type. That should be it, you can then use the access control section to grant/deny permissions to view categories or containers.

Tags: Drupal

When creating a new Drupal module, I'd been trying to add a couple of links to a sidebar when viewing a user's details. I could of done this using a block but that would rely upon the block being setup to only appear on the user's page, and would also include all the markup that comes with a block. This is how I got around all that.

First thing I did was include the code that will add any code set to appear in the sidebars actually into the sidebar. This is done by the _phptemplate_variables function in template.php in your skin's directory. I already had a _phptemplate_variables function so I just added a new case for page's in my existing function so it looked something like this:

All this does is make sure the code that the code is only run for pages and then get any content set for the region and add it to the relevant template variables, it then returns the variables. This is the code that does the business:

If you wanted to include more regions that just the left and right you could add those into the array. Now in your module you can use the drupal_set_content function to put content into either the left or right region like this:

This link should now appear in the left sidebar whenever the function this is in is called. I included something similar in my hook_user for my module to include a link that will only appear on my user pages.

Tags: Drupal

I've been doing a lot of work with drupal recently. The documentation is somewhat unreliable on their site. I've found quite a few instances where there has been code that doesn't work or at least now in my version of drupal. If you're having issues with customising the search box as demonstrated in this article, try using this code instead in your theme (search-box.tpl.php):

We've just updated bumpto3 with the latest catalogue, spring/summer 2007. So there are lots of new products on the site. You can now use a postcode lookup whenever you are filling in an address on the site. It'll also remember you once you've logged in once, so you can place orders a lot quicker after you've registered.

On top of that theres some new functionality, you can recommend a friend where you can get a catalogue sent to your friends. When you do this you'll get a £1 discount for each friend you've recommended off your next order. You can also enter a prize draw through the site. Both these functions were included in the last catalogue, but you had to mail a slip into bumpto3, now they've both been moved online which will hopefully encourage more people to do it.

Ok, I've been running Vista for a few weeks now. I'd have to say it's come on massively since the betas and the release candidates I've tried. It looks amazing, I no longer have to hide my screen when sat next to Apple OSX users, and I know they've ripped a load of the OSX stuff off. But I don't care, it looks great.

It's been incredibly stable so far, has detected all my hardware, except for my usb wireless adaptor. I had to dig out the CD for that one. The security stuff is a lot better than the betas and release candidates. It can still get in the way on a few older games which don't run as administrator, but need to. I like IE 7, I've yet to feel the need to install firefox on my vista box. The gadgets are great and I can't wait for people with a better eye for design than me to come up with some novel uses.

It's not all great though, it won't run SQL Server 2000, and Visual Studio 2003 won't work fully on it. This is preventing me from installing it on my tablet as I use that for most of my development work, and I need to support .NET 1 on SQL 2000, and I'm not brave enough, or patient enough to run those in a virtual machine. I really wanted to see how the new tablet features work too!

So in conclusion, if you are sitting on the fence about whether to upgrade, I'd go for it. It'll make things more secure, and it just feels better to use.

A couple of emails I've received from Amazon I've received lately made me chuckle:

I've put together a basic portfolio to give an idea of the kind of work I've done over the last few years. If you're looking for a contract developer drop me a line!