Connecting two Bluetooth devices at once to a Volkswagen Tiguan

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Tomorrow, the leased Volkswagen Tiguan (2012 model) that I’ve been driving for the last three years is being collected. Only last week, I worked out how to do what I’ve wanted to do for most of the time I’ve had the car – i.e. to have one phone connected over Bluetooth for calls (my work phone) at the same time as another is connected for playing music/podcasts (my private phone).

As long as both devices are paired to the car, it’s pretty simple and the steps are in the video below:

 

If you can’t see the video, then these are the steps:

  1. Connect the phone that you want to use as a phone to the car. In the video you can see “Mark Wilson’s Lumia” is connected.
  2. using the steering wheel controls, scroll down to Bluetooth and click OK.
  3. Scroll down to Media player and click OK.
  4. Select Paired devices and click OK.
  5. Select the second device (in the video it’s “Mark’s iPhone) and click OK.
  6. Click OK at the Connect prompt, and again at the “End current connection?” prompt.
  7. After a few seconds, the second device should connect and you can play media content from this, whilst still making/receiving calls on the first device.

Plantronics Voyager Legend not connecting with PC (but fine with phones) – re-pairing required

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a couple of Lync accessories I use every day – including my Plantronics Voyager Legend (BT300M). Since then, I’ve successfully paired the headset with both Windows and iOS phones (so presumably Android will work too) using their native stacks, although I use the supplied Bluetooth dongle on my company-supplied Windows 7 laptop.  I’m still impressed with the headset and the battery life is great too as it automatically goes into standby when I forget to turn it off (although it’s often sitting on its charging stand).

Unfortunately, I did find one day that my headset had “fallen out with” my laptop and whilst it would happily connect to the phones I couldn’t use it for Lync (VoIP) or CUCILync (VoIP breakout to our Cisco phone system and beyond to the PSTN). After some frustration of taking out and re-inserting the dongle in various USB ports, etc. I found an article on the Plantronics Sounding Board that gave the answer:

“Try pairing the headset to the dongle. Typically you would turn your phone(s) off to make sure they don’t  interfere in the process. Then press the call button on the headset until you go into pairing mode and insert the dongle in the PC, it should pair.”

Interestingly, the article also referred to a tool I’ve not come across before called DriveCleanup which can remove orphaned registry items related to non-present USB devices (forcing the dongle to set up the stack again on insertion). I didn’t need this but it could be a useful tool (there are several others on the page too).

Incidentally, at a Lync event at Microsoft last week, I tried out the Plantronics Backbeat PRO wireless noise cancelling headphones with microphone and they will be great for listening to music in a shared office but still being contactable for calls. Having upgraded my phone this week, I need to do some saving before I can buy more gadgets, but these could be on the list…

The relationship between Microsoft Office 365 and Azure

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

At a recent partner event, Microsoft Partner Technical Specialist, Robert-Jan Gerrits, answered a question that many people ask: does Office 365 run on Azure?

The short answer is “no” – the Office 365 infrastructure is dedicated – i.e. it’s not a bunch of VMs running on Azure; however there is a slightly longer answer.

Office 365 uses Azure for:

  • Office 365 video (media)
  • Azure blob storage (storage)
  • Azure AD for identity (identity)
  • Power BI app (cloud services)
  • Access services (storage)

Over time, we can expect to see more and more Office 365 components using Azure services but, for now, Office 365 is (almost) a standalone environment.

Short takes: directly embedding images from Dropbox; Pixlr (free online image editor)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Some snippets that were too small for a blog post of their own…

Directly embedding images from Dropbox

There’s little doubt in my mind that Dropbox is a useful service with an excellent sync client and I use it extensively (alongside the consumer version of Microsoft OneDrive, although I’ve given up on OneDrive for Business). Recently, I’ve found myself wanting to embed images held on Dropbox within forum posts.  Unfortunately, the link given out when sharing a file doesn’t work for embedding; however, as Canton Becker notes, if you replace ?dl=0 with ?raw=1 on the end of the URL, the link will work for an embedded image (more details on the Dropbox website).

Pixlr: a free online image editor

Whilst talking about images, I may have mentioned this before (or I might not have) but check out Pixlr – a free online image editor.

Excel formula for calculating a price, based on a known cost and margin percentage

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 10 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A couple of years ago, I blogged about the difference between margin and markup. Since then, there have been a number of occasions when I’ve wanted to know the formula to take two cells in Excel, one with a cost and the other with a margin percentage, and then calculate the price. I’m sure I’ve blogged that too, but I can’t find it now – so here it is (after I worked it out again this afternoon)…

Using the example above, the formula to calculate the price in cell C2, based on cost in A2 and margin in B2 is =A2/(1-B2).