BT and SKY close the out-going email door for security reasons

Posted on December 2008 in Articles, News

BT have announced that, for security reasons, they are preventing BT Yahoo! Broadband users from sending emails from software such as Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird, when the “From” email address is not a BT Yahoo! email address or a “validated alternative email address”. Sky stopped the use of their SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) servers to send emails.

Both of these changes have meant that many Sky and BT Yahoo! broadband users have been unable to send email until they change their SMTP settings, or in the case of BT Yahoo! customers, go through a process of validating their email address.

Web design Devon company Four Degrees West Limited would like to remind customers that we can upgrade your mailboxes to enable ‘roaming’ SMTP, which will allow you to send emails from any Internet service provider, including BT and Sky.

Four Degrees West Roaming SMTP enables you to send email using your PC software, regardless of your broadband provider (so it’s great for laptop users!). If your broadband provider stops the use of their SMTP servers, you won’t be affected if you have a Advanced or Exchange mailbox using our SMTP settings.

New website for The Retreat, a new sector for us

Posted on August 2008 in Latest websites, News

In over six years of creating, developing and promoting websites Four Degrees West Limited had never been involved in the ‘Care sector’, we have covered almost every other business sector, so it was nice to work with Sunshine Care to develop a range of websites starting the Retreat residential care home in Plymouth Devon.

We have also developed a blog, so that new Sunshine care can post advice about caring for the elderly.

To visit the Sunshine Care Blog click here

Resources:

Respite Care Plymouth, Devon

Sunshine Care website

Sunshine Care Blog

Content Management For Dummies

Posted on July 2008 in News

Nope I’m not talking about those idiot’s guides telling you all you need to know about content management systems. I wanted to report that I’ve finished the first phase of our very own content management system, which will allow us to give our clients the ability to maintain their own website content.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regard our customers as dummies (that couldn’t be further from the truth), but neither are they html developers, well-versed in delving inside web-pages to update them without breaking anything.

With our CMS, we can use the “economies of scale” principle; develop one CMS and provide it to many clients at a reduced price, over time paying for the initial investment. What a great idea. I’m glad I thought of it.

I’m thinking this will be useful for customers who host with us that want to add news items to their site, but don’t want the expense or inconvenience of doing so in the normal way (by giving us the information so that we can update it).

It’s just about to go live on our latest site, for rockys grill, steak house Plymouth on the barbican in Plymouth, but more of that later…Dave.

Visit Rockys Grill, restaurant Plymouth

It’s A Kind Of Magic (Software That Is!)

Posted on June 2008 in News

I’ve used the software development tool Magic (produced by Magic Software Enterprises since the early 90s at least) since 1999 when my previous company brought it in due to the recommendation of three of the senior developers (of which I was one). It’s still very much in use there today with about 350 staff members using it every day. My previous company used COBOL at the time we acquired it and needed a fast development tool that would run on VMS. Very fast and effective it is too. Blisteringly fast for writing applications that run on Windows (and soon fantastic for the web too - see below). Light years ahead of COBOL. This is already making me sound old, so before I get into punched cards and winchester drives, let me move on.

Yesterday we met with Elena of Magic Software, who incidentally, are based in Israel and have a large office in Bracknell, which I’ve visited a few times. We went for a great lunch at Tanners and then discussed business opportunities…

Magic Software have a very powerful enterprise application integration (EAI) and business process management (BPM) tool called iBolt (remember the name). Effective use of iBolt can save a company thousands and implementation timescales can be very short. Please contact me at Four Degrees West if you want to know more.

Four Degrees West hope to forge a strong business relationship with Magic Software as a Magic Solution Provider (MSP) for the South West. They are just about to launch a new product which will provide very strong capabilities for building robust, secure and extensive business applications which will run over the internet.

“Magic Software’s new upcoming Software-as-as-Service (SaaS) platform, Advanced XML handling, Web & mobile, as well as many more technologies that Magic plans to launch in the near future”.

…I’ve put the next Magic User Group conference in my diary!

Dave.

2nd time around for Ecommerce sites

Posted on May 2008 in News

We are currently redeveloping the websites for three ecommerce customers in Devon and Cornwall. Although theses ecommerce websites were developed over 2 years ago they all feel it’s time to upgrade and refresh. Not that they look particularly bad or don’t function very well, the true is they are successful.

Our latest source code is developed by Zencart, a fantastic piece of code that has an amazing administration area, Zencart doesn’t look particularly great but combined with our website design skills the sites looks great and function brilliantly.

Zencart is also very friendly with Google, so pages are well listed. If you are interested in an ecommerce website don’t hesitate to contact us.

Andy