Its not only really important not to forget the past but, also to learn from the past - to an extent!  Whilst on holiday over Easter 2010 I came across the obituary in the Times of Ed Roberts.

Trying to build a small business in this industry (hectic family life included) is quite hard and the effort to climb the SME ladder is quite incredibly at times.  Here, however, is man who did it - quite successfully by all accounts - during the pioneering days of computing, particularly desktop and mobile computing.  I had of course never heard of him before and to read that Bill Gates attended the hospital during his last few days is a testament to his contribution in what is now one of the worlds biggest industries.

I found the article really inspiring and reading that after virtually developing one of the first PC's running what may have been windows version 1 or whatever and subsequently having a number of business successes and failures he retired and re-trained himself as a medical doctor and opened a practice!!  What a talent.  You have to say that Ed Roberts was a true pioneer of the Personal Computer revolution and did not get the recognition he deserved.

RIP.

We are just about to launch a new service for high secure remote access for schools and other establishments.  The system comprises of a server c/w hardware encryption chips and all the SME server trimmings and a USB drive called a SPOK! (Secure Portable Office Key)

Inserting the SPOK into an Internet connected computer will automatically fire a secure connection to your office server.  The SPOK can be built to run a number of portable applications such as an email client or web browser.