Name Days Calendar Apps Updated for 2013

The popular kalmstrom.com app iNameDays and its free counterpart NameDays have both been updated to include the name days for 2013.



Name days in the calendar you use
iNameDays is a cheap little app that adds the name days for the country of your choice to the default calendar of iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. We also offer week numbers, which is commonly used in Sweden. The name days and week numbers are added to the default iOS calendar, the one you normally use, so you don't have to enter a separate calendar to see them.

Free subscription options
If you prefer to have your name days in another calendar, kalmstrom.com Business Solutions have a free application also: NameDays. From the beginning it was created only for the Outlook calendar, but now we have a subscription system that may be used for other calendars as well, such the iCal, Yahoo! or Google Calendar. If you subscribe to NameDays the name days - or week numbers - will be placed in a separate calendar.

Outlook calendar options
Outlook users have two alternatives for NameDays. They may either subscribe to the name days and get them in a separate Outlook calendar, or they can import the name days/week numbers to any Outlook calendar. Both options are free of charge!

Automatic updates
When iNameDays and NameDays are updated the name days and week numbers for previous year are removed. The current year is kept, and instead of previous year the coming year is added. For iNameDays and for the NameDays subscription alternative this process is automatic and users do not have to do anything to get the new data. If you have imported the data to your Outlook calendar, you must repeat the import to get the new name days and/or week numbers.

14 countries
iNameDays and NameDays currently gives a choice of name days for fourteen countries: Bulgarian, Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Slovakian, Spanish and Swedish. There is a separate file for each country, so it is very easy to update them and to add name days from more countries to the list.

Do you want the name days or week numbers in your own calendar? Welcome to buy iNameDays for only one U.S. dollar at App Store, or download NameDays for no dollar at all from the kalmstrom.com website.

Windows XP And Office 2003 Support Stop

Last Friday Microsoft announced that the company will stop supporting Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 by April 8, 2014. Peter and Jayant, CEO and Lead Developer at kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, had a virtual meeting and decided to do the same.

Upgrade doubts because of Vista
Windows Vista, the operating system that was meant to replace XP, had a number of bad solutions and problems, and therefore many users decided to stay with XP, which worked fairly well. I think this situation also made people hesitant to upgrades in general, which affected the much better Windows 7 and made users avoid upgrading. Now it is soon time for Windows 8, and after it is released Microsoft obviously does not want to bother about XP anymore.

When it comes to Office, the introduction of the ribbon in Office 2007 and the more extended use of it in Office 2010 make the 2003 version feel very old. When Office 2013 has been released the difference to 2003 will be even more pronounced.

IDC White paper
Making organizations leave Windows XP will probably be more difficult than to get them to upgrade Office. Introducing a new operation system is a bigger step, and because of the Vista failure the resistance is bigger. Maybe it is therefore Microsoft has sponsored an analyze on the consequences of keeping XP made by IDC (International Data Corporation).

Not surprisingly the ICD report "Mitigating Risk: Why Sticking with Windows XP is a Bad Idea" can be used by Microsoft to persuade doubtful XP fans. IDC draws the conclusion that staying with XP means serious disadvantages and higher costs for support. “Organizations that continue to retain a Windows XP environment not only are leaving themselves exposed to security risks and support challenges but also are wasting budget dollars that would be better used in modernizing their IT investments.”

History of backward compatibility
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions software has always had a good backward compatibility. We are aware that all users do not upgrade when Microsoft releases a new version, and as most of our products are licenses with a subscription system it is important to not only sell new products but above all to keep the customers we already have. But when the giant Microsoft stops supporting its own products we see no reason to continue doing it.

Welcome decision
Today all our applications can be used with Windows XP, and Calendar Browser, our resource booking tool for Outlook, is the only one which does not support Office 2003. However, for the kalmstrom.com developers and QAs the decision to follow Microsoft and stop supporting both Windows XP and Office 2003 is welcome news. This means that they can concentrate more on making the kalmstrom.com applications compatible with new versions of the Microsoft products they build on.

Windows 8 is not a big issue for the kalmstrom.com products, and most of them are already compatible, but Office 2013 will require some rebuilding. Our developer team has already begun preparing for Office 2013, and then it is a relief not having to consider Outlook 2003.

Long transfer period
For the kalmstrom.com development the decision means that major new versions of our applications will not be tested with Windows XP or Office 2003, and when products are rebuilt we will no longer make sure they can be used with XP and 2003.

We appreciate that Microsoft made their decision public so far in advance of the actual stop date. This will give users plenty of time to upgrade. If you are using one of our products with Windows XP and/or Office 2003, you are welcome to contact us with any questions about compatibility and upgrades. We will do our very best to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Nobel Peace Price winner – The European Union

In Sweden this week has been a week of announcements, when the different committees in The Nobel Foundation have made public to whom they have selected to award the prestigious Nobel Prizes. Today it was time for the last one, the so called Peace Prize, and to my surprise and joy the winner was the European Union, EU.

Fortune on dynamite
The Nobel Prize was founded by the Swedish inventor and business man Alfred Nobel, who made himself a fortune on iron and steel products. He held many patents, and his most famous invention is the dynamite.

In his testament Nobel declared that he wanted his fortune to be turned into a foundation, that each year should be used to award distinguished men and women in different fields, without distinction of nationality. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, and today price winners can be found all over the world.

Peace price to make up for war material
Alfred Nobel owned the company Bofors and reshaped the former iron and steel producer into a modern cannon manufacturer. He probably suffered from bad conscience because his money came from arms, and that is why he decided to give a price to the person or organization who had contributed to harmony and peace in the world.

At the time of Nobel’s death Sweden and Norway were a union, and therefore the Peace Prize ceremony is held in Norway and a Norwegian committee decides to whom the price should be awarded.

EU – a peace union
The European Union was founded after Europe had experienced two terrible wars that spread over big parts of the world, the First and Second World War. Many felt that this should never be allowed to happen again, and this was the main reason for creating the union.

The European Union has had many problems on the way, and I think that is to be expected when so many countries try to co-operate, but the union has succeeded in the most important respect – we have had no war among the EU countries.

The motivation for the award is “The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.”

European citizens
The Kalmström family has always been in favor of EU. Spain is our second home country and the latest family Member, Siret, is from Estonia, so we feel like Europeans more than anything else. We hope that the Nobel Price will remind people about the reason for the creation of EU, and we congratulate everyone who is striving to make Europe a great place to live in.

FAQ Articles For Outlook, SharePoint, Excel And Web With One Tool

With KBase you can stop asking "who remembers how
that issue was solved?". This knowledge base application from kalmstrom.com Business Solutions can be used for FAQ or for any other kind of documentation and sharing of information. Now it will soon come in a new version, KBase V3.

Goodbye to public folders and shared mailboxes
For many years KBase has been running totally inside Outlook, and you have had to use a public folder or shared mailbox to share the articles within the workgroup. Now Microsoft is planning to cut down on support for public folders, and shared mailboxes also have their disadvantages.

Therefore the kalmstrom.com developers are doing a rebuild of KBase, and version 3 will instead have a local installation that loads data from both Outlook and a source outside Outlook. This source can be an Access database, an SQL Server database or a SharePoint site. The change will make it possible to support Office 365 and both the 32- and the 64-bit versions of Outlook 2010 and 2013, and it also gives very good future development possibilities.

Knowledge base in Outlook
In KBase V3 the knowledge base articles will be saved in Outlook in the same way as e-mails and appointments. An article is an Outlook post item that has been given two hierarchic dropdowns, one for Category and one for Type. Many Types can be associated to each Category, and when a category is selected the Type dropdown will be populated with the associated types. The default view for the KBase Outlook folder shows the articles, or FAQ, grouped first by Category and then by Type.

Text can be written or pasted into the articles, and images, links and attachments may be added. As the articles are Outlook post items all the Outlook tools, like format text and spell check can be used.

Several options for reading KBase articles
The KBase knowledge base articles cannot only be watched in Outlook. Several more options are given. Each team can choose the option(s) that suits the team members best. For a geographically distributed team the SharePoint or website options will probably be best, but it is also possible to show the knowledge base articles in Outlook Web Access. Other teams may prefer having the knowledge base in Outlook or Excel.

Export to Excel
To export KBase articles from Outlook to Excel you just have to click on a button in the Outlook ribbon, and you are asked if you want to export all articles or only some of them, if you wish to include attachments and if you wish to show the articles in HTML in the Excel datasheet. KBase will remember your choices and show them as default the next time.

Export to webpages
With a click of a button all or selected articles can be exported to the website of your choice. A table of content may be generated automatically, and the articles can be grouped by Category and Type. Below you can see how the default user interfaces will look for content page and article page.


For a broader use of KBase articles, outside a workgroup, the website option is the obvious choice. Create for example FAQ pages with KBase in Outlook and then export them to the website.

Create new articles in SharePoint
If you prefer to use SharePoint, the knowledge articles may be embedded in a SharePoint site. In a future version we will create a nicer user interface for embedded KBase articles, but it works fine even with the current version.

If the SharePoint option is used for sharing and storage also, version 3 of KBase will give a possibility to create knowledge base articles directly from SharePoint. You can use formatting and add attachments to the articles, just like when you create them in Outlook. Therefore the SharePoint alternative is a good option for FAQ articles on a company intranet.

KBase is used as a complement to Folder HelpDesk and HelpDesk OSP by many Community Members, but we also sell KBase as a stand alone product. Iam sure all these users will be happy about the new version.

Outlook 2013 Support Interesting In September Blog Posts

On the last day of September the much awaited update of Kanban Task Manager was released, so it is only natural that the articles I wrote about this new application for project management with Outlook tasks had many readers during the month.

Product news
As there are so many earlier blog posts about Kanban Task Manager I will not talk much about it here. Please read earlier articles or visit the Kanban Task Manager Revisions page for details. Here I will just mention that the add-on is now fully compatible with both the 32- and the 64-bit versions of Office 2013.

Now it is time to update more products to support the 64-bit versions of Outlook 2010 and 2013, and the kalmstom.com developers have already started working on the kalmstrom.com application for booking resources, Calendar Browser for Outlook. The blog post about Calendar Browser V8 will surely be followed by more, and I hope to soon be able to describe the new Excel reports on past resource usage.

JavaScript Tips still most popular
Among all the blog posts about kalmstrom.com Tips the one about JavaScript in SharePoint was the single most popular in September too, just like in several earlier months. Our CEO, Peter Kalmstrom, is a SharePoint expert who has a lot of knowledge to share, and he will gradually create more tutorials on how to use JavaScript with SharePoint.

Appeal
Among the more personal articles the appeal against software wrapping was the most popular. I can understand it, because most of us have experienced that we got unwanted software when we downloaded something we needed. Now we have hopefully learned to look out and read the installer text carefully!

kalmstrom.com People
In September I also wrote some articles about members of the kalmstrom.com team. Peter and Siret travelled to live in the family's apartment in Spain for the winter and the yearly Ganesha festival for friendship and harmony was celebrated with a ceremony at the Indore office. I also paid attention to kalmstrom.com QA Engineer Neha, when she had been with us for one year.

I hope my blog readers like the mix I am creating, but you are very welcome to suggest subjects you would like to read about. If I know them, I promise I will try to write something interesting!