With the help of their API we were able to develop a complete PHP library to interact with any of their SOAP methods in order to build an easy to use portal where our clients can access information on the work we have completed, view their invoices, pay their invoices online and so much more.

In an effort to promote the development of new features and plug-ins for this online software, we have created a public repository of our PHP library on github.

You can access this library here: https://github.com/AvenirIT/PHP-WorkETC-library

This blog has a bunch of neat little features that are quite ingenious! For example, the header includes a couple of welcoming sentences, but if we take a closer look, we find that it’s automagically fetching the current season, day of the week, weather conditions (from Environment Canada), and Jacinta’s Twitter feed!

We really loved working with Jacinta on her new project and look forward to getting the opportunity to do it again one day!

You can find her blog at www.juneyjunebug.com

We hear about these bad experiences a little too often – and while purchasing a new system from us will ensure that you get the best system at the best price – shopping around in today’s economy is never a bad idea. In order to help you with this task, we present you with our first buyer’s guide to help you understand and purchase a machine that won’t break down on day 366 or become sluggish in no time.

1. Do not get a processor lower than an Intel i3. Stay away from Celeron, Core 2 duo, etc as they are older and slower technologies (no matter what the sales rep tells you). Look for i3, i5 or even an i7 processor.
2. Do not get a computer with less than 3GB of RAM. For the simple reason of lowering costs, some manufacturers are selling computers with as little as 2GB of RAM. While this happens to be the minimum requirement for Windows 7, your computer will seem sluggish in no time.
3. Don’t be fooled by large hard drives. Hard drives are a cheap upgrade. In most cases, a 320GB hard drive is more than enough for the average user. You could easily store over 50,000 songs or pictures using an 8MP camera.
4. Watch out for the low end computers. (Home entry level grade). While their stats may look deceivingly good, they are built with low end parts and encasing. While at first this won’t seem to be a big deal, with time, little things will start to go such as the hinges on your laptop’s screen getting loose, causing your screen to “flop” around.

To express our gratitude and encourage personal referrals, we are rewarding you with a $25 credit for every residential referral and $85 credit for every business referral*. This credit can be applied to anything that we sell, including labour, new laptops, desktops, cameras, and so much more.

Here’s how it works: have your referral mention your name when they call us, or let us know ahead of time when your referral will be contacting us. Upon a successful sale, we will automatically credit your account – and send you a nice thank you note.

We look forward of growing our business and better serving you.

*As you can imagine, we can only reward successful referrals that lead to a sale. Credit must be used within 180 days.

Why are we so passionate about men’s health?
* On average men live 4-5 years less than women
* 1 in 7 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime
* 25,500 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year in Canada

We invite you to support us by donating to us at http://mobro.co/avenirit.

Thank you in advance for supporting our efforts to change the face of men’s health. All donations are tax deductible.

1. Upgrade their current phone system
2. Save money

The final results amazed them – and us.

The first phase of our project involved meeting different telecom companies and hearing their sales pitch – the end results were always the same:  great technologies, not so great savings.

A decision was then made to go with an in house product using their internet connection and open source software. While this article is not to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, we can say that in the past year, they have had excellent results and savings.

Louis Allain, director general of CDEM had the following to say: “The VOIP system installed by Avenir IT is effective and has allowed us to save money.  Avenir IT’s services have allowed us to save $9,000 in the first year of operation. We expect to save no less than $14,000 per year in the years to come.”

This type of attachment is usually caused by the sender using Microsoft Outlook in Rich Text Format (RTF). Rich Text Format is used to help conserve the senders text formatting – such as their font, font-size, alignment, etc. The problem is, not all email clients support this particular version of RTF, meaning that you end up with an attachment ending in .dat (often called winmail.dat).

There are a couple things you can do when you receive such attachments. If you know what the attachment is supposed to be, you can try renaming the file (not forgetting the extension) to whatever it was. If you were right, then the file will open with no issues. Otherwise, you can ask the sender to resend the email with their Outlook’s message formatting set to plain text. Here are instructions on how to do so in Outlook 2010:

1. Click on File -> Options
2. On the left, select “Mail”
3. On the right, scroll down to the “Message format” section
4. Change the “When sending messages in Rich Text format to Internet recipients:” to “Convert to Plain Text format”.

We saw the potential in this little device, and purchased one to demo to our clients. I’ve now had the opportunity to play with it for 3 days, and here are my thoughts so far:

First Impressions
The device is slick, and feels very sturdy. It definitely packs a wow when converting it from a tablet to a netbook. Now, some of you may say that there is nothing new here, tablets have been around for ever. The difference is the maneuvering of the screen, and the multitouch screen capacity. Older tablets (before the days of the iPhone and iPad) required a pen – while this one is a finger multitouch.

Using the device
A concern for netbooks is often the awkward size of the keyboard. While the keyboard is not a full size keyboard, it is however large enough to type comfortably. I am currently writing this article on this little laptop and have yet to accidentally hit the wrong key with one of my fat fingers.

A picture of "daddy" painted by my 3 year old daughter.

The tablet comes preloaded with Dell Stage – a screen of shortcuts of sorts to ease your application selection when in tablet mode. Dell Stage automatically loads when you convert the netbook to tablet mode. The pre configured shortcuts including: Internet, Bookstage, games, Musicstage, Photostage, Videostage, and Paint. While the lack of configuration options for the Stage is a disappointment (I would rather use Firefox than Internet Explorer, or Kobo instead of Bookstage), I can see it being useful for the typical user. You can always remove the option of automatically loading up Dell Stage and simply select your programs using the touch screen from the start menu or desktop shortcuts.

One of the applications available through Dell Stage is a Paint program. The Paint program is a neat kid’s program where you can paint and color using your finger – so I got my 3 year old daughter to test it out. What was supposed to be 10 minutes of “have fun and tell daddy if you like it”, quickly became “I’ll give you a sucker if you give me back my laptop”.

Screen and Touch interface
The tablet screen at 10” is a prefect size for watching the latest episodes of the Office – and hold comfortably when laying down on the couch or in bed. It felt comfortable to hold, and much less awkward then laying a heavy 15” laptop on your lap.

The touch screen is surprisingly accurate, addictive and useful. Even in the netbook position, I often find myself tapping the screen instead of using the touchpad to click a button. The touch screen seems to have it’s place for tiny netbooks.

Tech Specs
Currently the Dell Inspiron Duo is not customizable (with the exception of casing color, and warranty). It comes with the following factory defaults:

• Intel Atom Dual Core N550 (1.5Ghz)
• Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit
• 2GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Integrated Intel video card
• 10.1” display (1366×768)
• 320GB SATA hard drive
• 1.3 megapixel camera
• wireless network
• 4 cell battery that can last up to 4 hours

As with other netbooks, it has no DVD drive, however has the following ports:

• Microphone
• Headphone
• SIM card slot
• USB 2.0 (x2)

The device weighs in at 3.39 lbs.

Nous avons dû faire une décision difficile durant le développement de notre nouveau site web. Un site web dynamique, avec des articles, opinions, produits et plus – un site qui évidement prendra beaucoup de temps à maintenir. Et cette décision était de ne pas traduire chaque section / articles du site web. Vous trouverez ici et la certaines articles francophones – mais la majorité seront en anglais. Ce qui pourra être lu par tous nos clients bilingue ou anglophone.

Vous pouvez vous assurer que tous nos communications avec vous resterons en français, et que notre priorité reste toujours la même : Offrir un service informatique exceptionnel dans la lange de votre choix.

Merci!