MatrixGroup is hiring

Are you a ~good~ great .NET software developer who'd like to work for a company providing solutions to the commodity handling industry (eg. grain and mineral ores)?

You might want to apply for this position with MatrixGroup, and have the pleasure of working with a bunch of enthusiastic, smart people… and yes I work there too 😀

Windows 8 Mail and Exchange using a self-signed certificate

The following steps allowed me to get the Windows 8 Mail app to talk to an Exchange server which uses a self-signed certificate:

1. Open up Internet Explorer in 'Administrator' mode
   1. Go to the Windows 8 desktop
   2. Right-click on the Internet Explorer icon
   3. Highlight 'Internet Explorer'
   4. press Shift-Ctrl-Enter to launch IE in 'Administrator' (elevated permission) mode
2. Browse to the Exchange server's Outlook Web Access page – eg. https://yourexchangeserver.com/owa (broken link)
3. Ignore any warning about certificates – click on 'Continue to this website'
4. Click on the red certificate warning in the address bar
5. Click on 'View certificates'
6. Click on 'Install certificate' button
7. The 'Certificate Import Wizard' appears
8. Leave 'Store Location' as current user
9. Select 'Place all certificates in the following store', and click on the 'Browse' button to select 'Trusted Root Certification Authorities'
10. Complete wizard
11. Click on 'Yes' to install certificate
12. Close IE and reopen (in non-admin mode) to confirm when browsing to the OWA URL that you no longer are warned about an invalid certificate

You should now be able to use the 'Add an account' to add your Exchange account.

My next Windows Phone(s)

It's been an interesting journey since I purchased my first Windows Phone. The Samsung Omnia 7 had a brilliant screen and was a joy to use. It would occasionally spontaneously restart, but I put that down to firmware/OS bugs that would be fixed in subsequent updates. Many updates later however, the problem actually got worse rather than better.

While it was away on the last of a number of visits to the service centre, I purchased a second hand (but excellent condition) HTC Mozart. A very capable phone, it was a good replacement.

Samsung finally agreed to a replacement (only after I filmed my handset rebooting – somehow they'd never managed to reproduce the problem themselves) – but by this time the Omnia 7 was no longer in stock, so I was given an Omnia W instead.

The Omnia W didn't seem quite as 'solid' as the 7 – probably the plastic case vs the 7's metal, but it worked well (and didn't spontaneously reboot like it's predecessor).

I would have stuck with the Omnia W but for the fact that I was one of the winners of a new Nokia Lumia 800 for entering my Asthma First Aid app in the Windows Phone Apps Download Challenge.

The Mozart and Omnia W have now found new homes with friends and family, and I'm enjoying my nice blue Lumia.