Happy Easter With Images From Spanish Celebrations

This week the kalmstrom.com CEO, Peter, and Sales Manager, Siret, are in Spain for a short holiday in our second home country. Their stay coincides with the most important holiday of the year for most Spaniards – the Easter.

Semana Santa
In Latin America and Spain the Holy Week is celebrated with religious ceremonies and various types of processions. They are organized by hermandades, religious “brotherhoods” where also women may join nowadays. During the processions the members wear long robes and hoods, a way to demonstrate penance.

In every town sculptures of the Virgin Mary are taken out from the churches and carried around in the streets. Often these sculptures are old and artistic and of a great value to the locals. Many travel to cities like Seville and Malaga to see the processions, but even the smallest village has its own Easter celebrations.

El Paso
When Sigge and I lived in Spain we saw the Easter play of Riogordo, a beautiful small village in the mountains east of Malaga. Since more than 50 years several hundred people participate in El Paso, a presentation of the last days of Jesus. It is held outside, on a hill in the village, each Easter, and nearly all the inhabitants take part in the play. It was fascinating to see even small children and animals perform, and everything was very well organized.
With this glimpse from Spanish Easter traditions I wish all blog readers a Happy Easter!

A Prince For kalmstrom.com

Last month I wrote about the birth of a Swedish princess, and today I will introduce a prince to you: kalmstrom.com Lead Developer Jayant Rimza and his wife Sushma have have had their first child, a little boy. He is not a real royalty, but to us he is! Jayant took this photo when his son was only a couple of hours old.

E-mail updates to the team
We knew Sushma was expected to give birth soon, so when Jayant e-mailed us and said he would be a little late back from lunch because he had to take her to the hospital, we all understood why. One hour later – on the minute! – there came another e-mail sent from Jayant’s Windows Phone: “It’s a boy. Hurray, I am so happy!”

Celebrations
Of course Jayant never returned to the office that day. Instead some of his work mates took an extra-long tea break in the afternoon to visit him and Sushma at the hospital and see the little prince. One of them was his brother, kalmstrom.com Developer Rinku RImza, who has now become an uncle. The Swedish team members sent a huge bouquet of flowers and the sweets we learned are customary after a child is born in India.

From single to daddy in three years
When Jayant started working for kalmstrom.com in the beginning of 2009 he was single, but in November the same year I could tell you the happy news about his engagement to Sushma. They married one year after that, at a fantastic three day party. Our kalmstrom.com CEO Peter attended, and on the image below he and the newly wedded couple pose for the photographer.

  
Free to choose his future
India is a country in rapid development, and baby Rimza is born into a well-situated and educated family, so I hope he will have all opportunities in life and be able to choose his future freely. In that respect he is more fortunate than the Swedish royal baby, Estelle, who already has her life staked out for her.

I have come to know Jayant as an honorable and reliable man, an intelligent and imaginative developer and a very nice person to work with. I am sure these qualities will also make him a good father. The kalmstrom.com team once again congratulates the family on the new member, and we wish the little boy all the best for the future!

French Name Days Added To NameDays Calendar Files For 2012

Yesterday kalmstrom.com Business Solutions had the pleasure of releasing a new version of NameDays, the popular, free product that gives you name days in your calendar.

Name days for different calendars
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions markets Outlook add-ons for Office + Exchange/SharePoint, and also NameDays begun as an Outlook add-on. Nowadays we use ics files instead. That way NameDays will work on several kinds of  calendars, like the Google and Mac OS X calendars, and not only on with Outlook.

NameDays 2012 version with 14 languages
In the new version of NameDays the name days for 2012 are added, and on request we now also give the French name days. Year by year kalmstrom.com has added more countries to the list, so that we now can offer you 14 different name days files to choose from. For Swedish users we also have a file that gives Swedish week numbers in the calendar.

Get NameDays!
Welcome to subscribe to or import the NameDays file ‒ or files! ‒ of your choice. The procedure vary a bit for different kinds of calendars, but they are all easy. On the kalmstrom.com website you can find video demonstrations that show exactly how to do it. NameDays is a gift from the kalmstrom.com team to all our website visitors. Please enjoy ‒ and tell your friends about it!

Congratulations To kalmstrom.com Matriarch With New iNameDays

The beautiful old woman in the photo is my mother, Ingalill. Today is her name day, and as we consider Ingalill the kalmstrom.com Matriarch we are happy to give her a special gift for the iPad she uses every day: the 2012 version of iNameDays, which was approved for release a few hours ago ‒ right on time!

iNameDays is an app you may all share with Ingalill. It adds name days to the default iOS calendar, which is the calendar you normally use in your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. You don't have to create a separate calendar to see the name days of your choice. This year we have added the French name days, so now you have 14 name days (+ Swedish week numbers) to select from.

I have earlier mentioned Ingalill's great interest for new technologies in the blog post post "... 93 years old and loves her iPad". Another interest is picking mushrooms, and in the photo she is preparing mushrooms she has herself picked in the woods. As you understand this spirited Matriarch is a great source of inspiration to the younger members of the kalmstrom.com clan! Our warm congratulations!

kalmstrom.com Developers Celebrate Festival Of Light

Today is the first day of the important Hindu festival, Diwali or Deepawali. The Indian employees of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions will be off Wednesday and Thursday, but as usual we can always reach our dedicated lead developer Jayant. This is good to know, in case someone gets an urgent problem with one of the kalmstrom.com Outlook add-ons that Sigge cannot manage in the first line support.

Here kalmstrom.com developer Kanak Joshi will tell us more about the interesting rituals of the celebrations:

Diwali is a festival of colors and lights, and my family celebrates it with great enthusiasm. It is a five day festival, where each day has its own significance. I will share with you how we celebrate each day of Diwali and what rituals are performed in my family.

Dhanteras
On this day, at sunset, my father worships dhan (wealth in form of gold /silver/cash etc.). Dhanteras is traditionally a day for purchase of precious metals.

Narak Chaturdasi
This day is also called “Choti (small) Diwali”. Everyone in my family massages the body with oil to relieve it of tiredness and bathe before sunrise. It is believed that if one bathes before sunrise, one will not go to “Narak" (hell).

Lakshmi Puja
On this third day everyone cleanse themselves and wear new clothes. We worship the Goddess Lakshmi to achieve the blessings of wealth and prosperity. In the morning we make “Rangoli“, a decorative floor design with different colors, and in the evening we light clay lamps and burn crackers.

Padwa / Govardhan Puja
Some people also regard this day as the Hindu new year, so we visit our relative’s houses and wish everyone a happy and prosperous new year. We also worship the cow, who is considered as a mother in Hindu religion

Bhai Duj
The last day of Diwali is special for brothers and sisters. Therefore all my brothers come to my house, and we exchange gifts.

kalmstrom.com On Site For Sweden's Biggest Harvest Festival

Today is the most important day of the year on the island where kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has its head office. It is "Ölands Skördefest", Sweden's biggest harvest festival. People and organizations from the whole island are engaged in the preparations, and we receive visitors not only from the rest of Sweden but also from Denmark, Germany and other countries close by. There is a lot of art, handicraft, food and music, and then best is that everything is high quality. No knick-knacks!

Sigge and I are of course participating, so we will not work much this Friday. The rest of the kalmstrom.com team will be online as usual though, so I don't think work will be suffering. And Monday we will be back again, ready to assist you and answer whatever questions you might have!

Midsummer - Celebration Of Light

Today the Swedish members of the kalmstrom.com team celebrate Midsummer. Sweden has long and dark winters, and maybe that is the reason why the Swedes have honored the lightest day of the year since long before Sweden was a country. Midsummer is one of the most important holidays of the year, and even if the summer solstice is celebrated in other parts of Europe also, many Swedes feel that Midsummer is something typically Swedish. Probably this feeling comes from the many traditions surrounding Midsummer's Eve, the day of the main celebrations.

Most Swedes try to get out from the towns to celebrate Midsummer in the countryside, so on the island where Sigge and I live and kalmstrom.com has its head quarters, we count on having guests for this holiday. In the morning of Midsummer's Eve, people go out to pick flowers and dress the maypole. "Allemansrätten", the law that gives us the freedom to roam in the countryside, also gives us the right to pick flowers that are not protected.

After a lunch on pickled herring, chives, sour cream and the first potatoes of the season, it is time to raise the maypole on a meadow or lawn. After that follows dancing around the pole. All join hands and create huge rings, and then we sing traditional songs while wandering around the pole. Often special movements has to be performed with each song, and this is a great joy for the children.

 Unfortunately I do not have a good photo of our CEO Peter making these silly movements while dancing around the maypole with his kids, but I can assure you that he loves it! Instead I chose a photo of dancing people in folks costumes that I took during last year's celebration. In the evening follows a long dinner with friends and family and more dancing and singing.

In ancient times people believed that magic was strong during Midsummer's Eve, so it was a good night for rituals to look into the future. Unmarried young girls picked a bouquets of seven different flowers and put it under the pillow to dream about their future husband. Herbs picked at Midsummer were considered to be highly potent, and the spring water could bring you good health.

Greenery was placed over houses and barns to bring good fortune, and we still decorate our houses with greens even though we today do it just to create the Midsummer spirit.

I hope my readers feel some of that spirit reading this post. Even if you don't celebrate the light in the way the Swedes do it, I know many of you honor it in other ways. Therefore I wish you all a Happy Midsummer!

By Kate Kalmström
Marketing and Documentation
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Special PamFax Offer In kalmstrom.com Newsletter

I normally never announce Peter's monthly newsletters in my blog, because the blog gives you the same info - but earlier, when it is fresh. However, today I want to push for the newsletter, since it contains a special offer. To celebrate the new partnership between kalmstrom.com and the company behind PamFax, we offer 10 free fax pages to a zone 1 country for the first 500 who clicks the link in the newsletter and register at PamFax. I would not want my blog readers to miss that opportunity! You can find the voucher code in the newsletter.

With PamFax you may send fax messages at low costs online. PamFax is secure and easy to use. If you have not tried it yet, this is a great opportunity to do it. Just go to the newsletter page on the kalmstrom.com website, find the section about PamFax in today's newsletter and copy the voucher code. Then click one of the two PamFax links in Peter's newsletter, and you will come to the PamFax homepage. There you can learn more about this great tool, and I am sure you want to register when you have seen all the benefits. Do that and redeem the voucher. Happy faxing!

iNameDays Adds Name Days To Your Default iPhone Calendar

The second name days product from kalmstrom.com Business Solution will hopefully soon be released. We have had a working product for a while, but no good design. Now everything is falling into place, and I can show you how the first screen will look in an iPhone. There might still be some minor changes, but we expect to see iNameDays at App Store in the near future.

There are already several apps on the market that add name days to a separate calendar, but iNameDays will add them to the default iOS calendar instead. We know many of you are waiting for this possibility for your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, so please have patience for a while more. In the meantime you are of course welcome to use our free NameDays for your other calendars.

Name Days For Yahoo! Calendar

My first blog post for 2011 happens to be about our most popular product, NameDays, which adds name days to different kinds of calendars and which is totally free. When we released NameDays V4 we had tested it on several different calendars, but not the Yahoo! Calendar.

When asked about it I had to try of course, and YES! it worked also. The Yahoo! Calendar asks for an e-mail or iCal address, but the address to the kalmstrom.com ICS file works just as fine. Therefore we have today a new demonstration on how to subscribe to NameDays if you use the Yahoo! Calendar.

Do you prefer another calendar, one that is not mentioned on our website? Please contact us, or try for yourself. Maybe our ICS files work for you also?

Merry Christmas!

Maybe you remember that Peter came home from warm India to a Swedish snowstorm? It has continued, even if there have been beautiful days like in the photo in between.

This year the snow begun falling early in Sweden, and today the whole country is covered by a white, soft quilt. This is not something we are used to in the southern part of the country, and it is also colder than normal in December ‒ between 10 and 20 degrees centigrade below zero.

Sigge and I have left Spain to spend Christmas with Peter and the family. Here most people celebrate on Christmas Eve, when we gather in the afternoon to eat traditional food and give Christmas presents. This means that when many of you celebrate Christmas Day, we usually spend that day resting or taking long walks to get rid of the calories we consumed yesterday!

The kalmstrom.com support will work as usual tomorrow morning, but in the afternoon Sigge will be away. Jayant and Alena can take care of urgent matters via the online chat for a bit longer, though. We have had many calls and visitors to the website this week, just as usual, but I guess Christmas Eve will be a bit quiter.

The kalmstrom.com team wishes you all a great Christmas holiday ‒ or weekend, if you don't celebrate Christmas!

NameDays For 2010 + 2011 Released

The kalmstrom.com team is happy to announce that the earlier problems with updating the iPhone calendar with new name days is solved. Today we have therefore released new NameDays files, which give you name days in your calendar for both 2010 and 2011. Note that the ics paths have changed, so if you already have subscribed you need to do so again.

Use NameDays with an Outlook or Mac OSX calendar or with iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. You may also add NameDays to the Google Calendar for use in your Android enabled device.

By the end of 2011 we will change the NameDays files so that they contain name days for 2011 and 2012 instead. NameDays is a free product, and we don't request anything from you for using it. But you are of course most welcome to try our other products as well ‒ and to spread the word about them!

Happy Deepawali!

The Indian members of the kalmstrom.com team has taught us to wish "Happy Deepawali" this weekend. Deepawali, or Diwali, is an important Hindu celebration of the victory of good over evil. It is celebrated by Hindus all over the world, and as it is characterized by displays of candles, lamps and fireworks it is also called the Festival of Lights.

Most families celebrate Deepawali in their home, where they light special clay lamps with a cotton wick dipped in ghee or vegetable oil, as symbols for knowledge and enlightenment. The festival lasts for five days, each dedicated to prayers to a different deity. We thank our former QA Engineer Saurab Verma for the image of the altar with the lamps and offerings in the home of his parents.

New NameDays For Many Different Calendars

Yesterday kalmstrom.com took a first step to broaden the portfolio and not only offer add-ons for Microsoft products. For many years our free NameDays application has been an excellent way of marketing our brand. NameDays adds name days to the Outlook calendar, and since it has been very popular it has drawn a lot of traffic to our website.

Now we have released a new version of NameDays, a NameDays that is actually not an application at all. By adding the name days to ICS files, we can let users either import or subscribe to NameDays, and
the files may be used for more platforms than the Outlook calendar. Do you use iPhone, MacOSX and iCal, or the Google Calendar and an Android device? The new NameDays will work just fine! As the files for the different countries ‒ currently 15 ‒ are downloaded from our website separately, it is very easy for us to update them and to add name days from more countries to the list.

Welcome to use NameDays you also! On our website there are video demonstrations on how to import or subscribe to NameDays. The iPhone demo is still missing, but it will soon be finished. NameDays is a new and modern product that takes advantage of new technologies, so it works best on fairly new platforms and applications. For Outlook that means versions 2007 and 2010, but if you have Outlook 2003 you may still import the name days to your default calendar.

Surprise and delight friends and colleagues by always remembering their name days. And if you have international contacts, like so many of us have nowadays, you can use one calendar for each country!