The new TouchDown for Windows 8.1 has some awesome new features that you can utilize with a mouse or your touchscreen…here’s a quick demo:
What do you think?
The new TouchDown for Windows 8.1 has some awesome new features that you can utilize with a mouse or your touchscreen…here’s a quick demo:
What do you think?
We at NitroDesk are *SUPER* excited to be launching TouchDown for Windows 8.1 next Monday (November 4th, 2013). It has been an exciting year of launching TouchDown across several platforms, and Windows 8.1 promises to be exciting, useful and of course, features all of our usual security measures. TouchDown for Windows has a new facelift, with an elegantly clean UI that beautifully utilizes touch screens with the same great reliability our TouchDown users are accustomed to.
Here are a few new features to look forward to:
The upcoming version (by the end of Nov. ) will include additional features that will be supported only in Windows 8.1 such as:
More importantly, here is YOUR chance to tell us what additional features you want to see in this product – we love to include features that help our loyal users, so send us your ideas and we will try to incorporate them.
We are loving the praises that are coming in for TouchDown for Mac…here’s why you NEED to get it NOW:
“Finally an all in-one corporate email, calendar, contact and task management system for the Mac. The intuative interface has enhanced my workflow and increased producitivity whilst providing a clean and modern user experience. At last, TouchDown has removed the ‘compromise’ of using a Mac within the corporate world.”
– Ian Heathcock – Business Development Director Griffiths Waite UK – http://www.griffiths-waite.co.uk
“After many headaches trying to get Apple Mail to work with my work Exchange account, I had given up getting my work email on a native app. I have downloaded it, and synced up my work email in less than a minute. The interface is simple, intuitive and best of all, it just works. Thanks so much for the opportunity to try out this amazing application. I look forward to the final release!”
Jessica S
“Downloaded your client and have been using it for a couple of days. Here is my feedback about the app:
* Really Love the UI and the way fonts have been chosen. The option of themes is just awesome.
* One of the main critics of Mac mail has been that a new email is not so obvious to spot. But with TouchDown, with the bold and blue color, it takes just a blink of an eye to spot it.
* Integration with Contacts, Calendar and Notes into one single app is a HUGE one.
* The Calendar UI is also fascinating.
* Loved the option to associate an avatar to any contact in our contacts list.”
Deepak M
“Great app. I can finally now get my emails on my mac without having to VPN into my work.”
Eric S
“Kudos on the Touchdown beta. It is a FABULOUS first effort, and fulfils a long-held wish for me – a lightweight, Mac-centric Exchange client. Works great with our corporate Office 365 accounts.”
Susan K
“I bought my Mac in january and have been very frustrated that I couldn’t get my work email. I can’t tell you how excited I am to find your product. “
Cynthia Posey
“Great app, worked fantastic, try- love it”
Deepak C
“Touchdown team,
Thank you, thank you, thank you. It has been a long time since I’ve been able to have the same seamless experience with Exchange email on my Mac environment. Literally years. In 2009, I gave up using Entourage. When I gave up, I knew that I was giving up the messages, mail, notes, tasks, and calendar items that (almost) worked in Entourage.
Now, I’m loving that Touchdown brings back these missing real-life Exchange-hosted features on my Mac.
Keep up the good work,”
-Kent H
“Thanks for working on a Mac client. Touchdown is an amazing utility.”
Sirish K
“So far, the worst thing I can say is TouchDown keeps all my work email and calendars close at hand. <sigh> No more claiming that I didn’t bring my work computer home…”
Keith P
“Hi guys!
I have downloaded and tried TouchDown for Mac and I love it!
A clean and simple Active Sync who do work perfect with office 365!”
Robin J
“First and foremost a big Thank You! About time we got a decent mail client for the Mac platform. As an SMB IT Consultant for the past 20 or so years I hear from end users that they’re ‘OK’ with Mac’s mail client, from the admin side it’s pitiful. Just the fact that you’ve added encryption and security is huge! Now I have another awesome tool in my box to share with concerned clients.”
Jeff A
Thanks to all our amazing customers!
Black Hat 2013 happened in Las Vegas yesterday – for those of you who don’t speak geek, Black Hat is the annual conference where top computer security officials and hackers get together to chat. And this years conference even featured a certain general from the NSA. There was some definite discord in the crowd as he spoke. But I digress.
By now you all know how obsessed we are with your email security here at TouchDown and why we use encryption that is not vulnerable to the many exploits out there. What I always find most interesting at Black Hat is all the ways hackers (technological wizards who are pushing the envelope, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad) find out that a user’s information is not secure… Well, at this years Black Hat some interesting tidbits have already come to the surface (and luckily, their exploits does not apply to TouchDown !)
Some of the world’s leading computer security researchers weighed in on security issues and in somewhat eyebrow raising news, Ben Smyth and Alfredo Pironti of the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) explained how it is possible to utilize some loose ends in popular webbased email services. The TLS (Transport Layer Security) technology encrypts and secures website connections, and some of web-based email services have an inherent flaw in the TLS. When a user goes to log out, it is possible to block this action when the ‘log-out’ request is sent TO the server side – at which point an un-authorized user can inject an unencrypted TCP FIN message to close the connection. The server-side therefore never gets the request and is unaware of the abnormal termination, and your information is now vulnerable. YOU get a message saying that you are logged out (you aren’t) and walk away.
What makes it worse is that this attack attack does not rely on software being installed on your computer or some other sort of more obvious way of snooping. All that has to happens is that someone (the bad guy) gets between your computer and and the server, with something as simple as a controlled router or even a wireless hotspot – the “Man in the Middle” Attack. Its possible because the user receives feedback that the sign-out request has been successfully executed, where in actuality the server is unaware of the user’s request, so the attacker can now access email without the users knowledge.
The way the researchers explained it:
“In essence, we block encrypted messages that are sent over the network to de-synchronize authorisation: we force Gmail and Hotmail [Outlook.com] to display on your browser the page that announces that you have successfully signed-out, whilst ensuring that your browser maintains authorisation with Gmail and Hotmail [Outlook.com]. Given such an announcement, you should be assured that you are secure, in particular, a hacker should not be able to access your email, even if you [log out and] leave your computer unattended. However, we can violate this basic security premise and access your Gmail and Hotmail [Outlook.com] accounts just by reloading the web page.”
This of course caused quite the stir at Black Hat, because the services mentioned by the researchers such as Google and Microsoft are extremely popular. Smyth and Pironti went so far as to say that:
“…shared machines – even un-compromised computers – cannot guarantee secure access to systems operated by Helios (an electronic voting system), Microsoft (including Account, Hotmail, and MSN), nor Google (including Gmail, YouTube, and Search).”
Now this “Man in the middle” type of attack is not a new one by any means, but the ease of which this can happen wasn’t apparent to most, especially with services that are considered by the masses as secure and private. We’ll be reporting more from Black Hat later this week…and continuing to write emails using TouchDown.
Yesterday Microsoft released an iOS version of their Outlook Web App (OWA) …have you tried it? Probably not, unless you have a subscription to Office 365. Yes, its super cool that Microsoft offers these apps for free, but free with a price tag of Office 365 subscription just isn’t….free. But I digress.
I do love the fact that Microsoft is developing apps for iOS, Im a big supporter of across platform development. The UI is pretty good, and is different for the iPad versus the iPhone, as it should be. The UI utilizes touch gestures as well as voice commands, which is great when you are on the go or using it with one hand.
So, congrats to Microsoft for doing more iOS development – keep going, because the potential is there. Just be aware that OWA apps are an online client, meaning that they only work online…when your device goes online, it simply mirrors what is on the Office 365 (or any other service you use) server. When that connection is broken, you can not access your information. The security aspects of an online client versus an offline client also differ (more on this in tomorrows post). And in today’s world of online snooping, I still insist the best way to control the safety of your data is to utilize SMIME and AES encryption with policies such as requiring a PIN.
If you want more information on TouchDown’s secure Email, Calendar, Contacts, etc, read the latest blog post about Encrypted email. Come visit us at www.nitrodesk.com to see what the buzz about our Secure email that works with Exchange is all about.
TouchDown came about as a solution to a problem, that problem being; when Android phones first came to market there was no viable Exchange Sync client, native or otherwise. But sometimes solutions have problems, that’s part of the price of progress. So when you run into problems with TouchDown, you have a number of options to choose from, based on the type of issue you are facing or your preference for how to seek out a solution.
TouchDown E-Mail Technical Support – Support@NitroDesk.com No matter what version of TouchDown you are using or what device/OS you have it installed on, our crack squad of US-Based support engineers will get you squared away, often the same day.
TouchDown Knowledge Base – If you prefer to sniff out the answer to your questions by yourself, then this is the place to do it. If you don’t find the answer you are looking for, then you can submit a request from this site which is then handled by our support engineers.
TouchDown Google Group – Sometimes it’s nice to see that your problem isn’t so bad when compared to how others may be suffering, so why not cruise the Google Group to see how good you have it. Crowd sourcing is an excellent way to find solutions to your problems, or lend a hand to a fellow user who is having the same issue you may have found a solution for. Our CEO/Developer and I also like to keep an eye on things here to make sure as many people as possible get the help they need. This is a great place to give feedback too, so come on by and let us know what you think. Don’t forget to subscribe to the group so you can keep up to speed.
IdeaScale – Want to see a new feature added to TouchDown? This is the place to let us know what you want to see in upcoming versions of TouchDown and if we can conceivably do it within the constraints of the OS, we will. In fact, this is the core of our Mission Statement: “Our customers and their aspirations and needs are at the center of everything we do. We know we wouldn’t exist without them and their support and loyalty. The least we can do is build what they need and not what we think is cool.”
NitroDesk YouTube Channel – We host all of our video tutorials, demos and overviews on our YouTube page, so have a look around and stay tuned for new content. If you want to see something new, just let us know in the comments below.
-Ben
Here is the first in our series of videos on How to Maximize Touchdown for your device. This brief video gives a great overview of our newest product, the Personal Edition. Enjoy!
What kinds of videos would you like to see?
Don’t already have the fabulous Personal Edition of TouchDown? Purchase it at www.Nitrodesk.com