Email, EDI, Usernames, Spam, its getting too much.

During the normal office hours I look after the IT for an engineering company, not big but spread over 4 offices.

Around 35 email accounts all bringing in spam by the bucket load on a daily basis, when we try to block, ALWAYS there is an important email go missing, It seems to be getting to the stage where the viability of true business email is going down the pan.

We have customers that required invoices delivered electronically, (we have to pay for this privilege too), the main system of one big client constantly mucks up, invoices not received, receipts not sent back, usually result in submitting paper copies... on one occasion the clients own accounts people told us they had no access to the electronic invoices.

It would not be so bad if there was one system, but no, different clients use different systems and vendors for EDI, and all demand we use their system.

Coupled together with the vast amount of user names, passwords, security certificates it seems we are getting bogged down in the world of IT, but with little benefit.

The paperless office is getting full of reminder post it notes and checklists to cover the errors elsewhere in the system.

We have now managed to implment the filing of job packs electronically as PDF's after scanning the engineers worksheets and job paperwork... now what to do with the black sacks of shredded paper which seems to be more than before it was shredded.

My headaches this week, iIE6.0. and product feeds

This week has been a bit iffy to say the least with www.justsalou.co.uk.

First the increase in traffic for the new year surprised me a bit, not massive traffic, but a massive increase on what there was. A bit of tarting up around the website and a few menu changes, Opera o, Firefox ok, IE7.0 ok, I was soon told of IE6.0 and no content showing, Ahhhhhhhhhh, a day or so and this was fixed.

Next up I noticed a big increase on clicks on a couple of products, but no sales. Checking this out I notice a content with is showing one price but on click through the price rises from £39 to £50, checking anouther supplier and notice the same increase, but also notice the product completely removed from the feed. On the price issue surely the content windows should be updated the same? does not look good.

On correcting the price issues (removing them) two sales followed for that product within hours.

As a travel website, justsalou has the usual flights, hotels, car hire, transfers, it also has tickets for the local theme park. 90% of the traffic to justsalou is for either theme park tickets or transfers, the odd 1 or 2 hotel room is booked but thats it, no flights, no car hire. So its tinket time again to see if I can get traffic and clicks on the other items on the website.

Free wii jackets

Aching elbows and shoulders, but no more head bashes. Nintendo are now offering free silicone jackets for your wii remotes.

I received mine last friday and have to say they feel quite good on the remote, but the best thing about them is the slightly better noise they remotes make when kids drop them on laminate floors.

Something for nothing, that I find usefull and do the job. Get yours on the wii website