KEYBOARD GERMS
Keyboards are often home to more dangerous germs than door handles and toilet seats. A Which? computing magazine lab test found many keyboards housed well-known bugs such as E coli and even bacterial traces of faecal matter. Eating over keyboards and a lack a hand washing are the main causes of contamination.
CHIP REVOLUTION
Scientists at Hewlett-Packard have designed a new circuit element that could revolutionise computing and help develop machines capable of imitating the biological processes responsible for vision and speech comprehension. The element, called a 'memrister' (a resister with memory properties), was proposed in theory 40 years ago. Analysts expect that memristers will be included in mainstream electronics within a few years.
FACEBOOK THREAT
BBC's Click programme has discovered a security hole in the Facebook social networking system. The exploit depends on Facebook's applications, which are small add-ons for Facebook user profiles, designed by individuals and companies unaffiliated with the site. The flaw leaves some personal information, useful for identity theft, available to hackers.
FLASH AVAILABLE
Adobe Software has announced that it will be opening its dominant Flash online media format to developers. The software provides the framework on which many online games and video sites, such as YouTube, run. Adobe intends to encourage the development of Flash applications for mobile phones with the move, which will provide many of the previously secret technical specifications of Flash to content providers.
GTA BREAKS RECORD
The fourth instalment of the popular Grand Theft Auto series of games has broken UK sales records, selling 609,000 copies on release day. The series, developed by Rockstar North of Edinburgh, has come under media fire for its explicit portrayals of violence, lawlessness and sex. Despite the controversy, the critical reception to the game, below, has been overwhelmingly positive.
source=http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scitech/Technology-news.4049114.jp
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Monday, May 5, 2008
Technology news
Effective Web Content Has Personality
CMSWIRE: We’re all dressed up or down and off to go interneting. And by interneting, we mean we’re going content consuming.
You’re dressed up. I’m dressed up. So what we want to ask is: What’s your content wearing?
No, this isn’t your CMS trying to seduce you. It’s a valid question. As we’ve discussed many times here, there’s much more to content than management. You are what you wear or what you eat…or some such thing. And the same goes for your content. So let’s talk about its personality.
It’s all about letting your content express itself and show its true colors. Before a word is even written, ask yourself “who is my content?”, “what’s it look like?”, “what’s it’s attitude?”. Personifying your content is a good way to conceive of its voice. To develop a persona, determine the characteristics of your content.
Is it:
* Pretty?
* Traditional?
* Formal, casual, snarky?
* Chit-chatty or straight to the point?
Figuring out content characteristics in advance will help to set the tone for the site and for the customers.
Tailor Your Content’s Clothes
Users like to feel special, spoken to. Tailoring your content to fit their needs is essential if you want to sustaining a readership and achieve a rapport. The content of a parenting site should be different from the content of a science site. By making your content conversational and less formal it can convey a message of warmth and understanding, while more formal and sophisticated content reveals a focus on business and the bottom-line…or worse, perhaps a dated style of communication.
If your content is wearing jeans and talking to men in suits, the message will likely have less impact. Learn how to speak your reader’s language, literally and figuratively. Many sites provide dynamic content in both English and Spanish, among other relevant languages.
A Catalog of Style
Incorporating a style guide is also helpful. Not only will it help to establish branding details like fonts, colors and logos; it can be used to establish a consistent voice for your communications.
Often the scope of style guides goes beyond the web, offering templates for letters and emails. Update guides accordingly and in a timely manner. Seasons change and content can go out of style just as easily as tapered slacks.
Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile
Of course using the wardrobe metaphor can get a little old, but don’t let it stop you from learning more about how your existing content was developed and how to create new content.
Best of all, let your content express your company’s passion for what you do. Writing content that embraces your customers’ qualities and values will bring them back time and again to a place where they feel as comfortable as their favorite pair of jeans.
Source: cmswire.com
Saturday, May 3, 2008
CyberSource and PayEase Open Doors to eCommerce in China
Past challenges
eCommerce solutions for selling into China have long been problematic. Only 6% of Chinese citizens hold credit cards. The common electronic payment vehicles are Chinese debit cards(1), offered by over 20 different key banks in the country. Merchants seeking broad access to the market are required to integrate with each of these disparate institutions, in addition to satisfying regulatory requirements regarding licenses and domicile.
The PayEase/CyberSource solution
The collaboration between CyberSource and PayEase provides merchants with fast and cost-effective access to the majority of online payment vehicles in China. With the PayEase/CyberSource solution, merchants gain support for both Chinese credit cards as well as debit cards from over 20 key banks. PayEase can also help foreign companies navigate the various regulatory requirements associated with conducting eCommerce in China, such as licensing requirements for Internet Content Providers, by, for example, helping to identify professional advisers in China familiar with such regulatory requirements. PayEase also offers customer loyalty programs designed to help promote new foreign merchants to Chinese nationals that have previously purchased online.
Full Payment Management Support
The integration between CyberSource and PayEase reaches beyond payment acceptance to tap the full range of CyberSource and PayEase payment management solutions. Merchants can opt for real-time tax calculation for local Chinese value-added tax. CyberSource's industry-leading fraud management portal, Decision Manager, supports payments through PayEase, including the ability to recognize the Chinese language character set, and incorporates country- specific decisioning rules to automate the acceptance or rejection of orders. Financial transaction reports are available in English to ease reconciliation. For more information on accepting payments in China and internationally, please visit: http://www.cybersource.com/global/.
"We see this alliance with PayEase as an extraordinary opportunity for merchants who wish to expand into the Chinese eCommerce market," said Scott Cruickshank, CyberSource president and COO. "We believe that PayEase has unmatched credentials for managing eCommerce in China for domestic and foreign companies, drawing upon years of experience working with English-speaking and multinational corporations seeking entry into that arena. We believe our merchants will now have a unique opportunity to engage consumers in China as growth in that market accelerates."
Fred Sum, CEO of PayEase said, "Electronic payment in China is an underserved market with great potential. CyberSource is one of the world's most trusted and experienced payment management companies. We believe the combined capabilities of our two companies will offer significant help to U.S. and U.K. merchants that see China as a logical extension of their worldwide sales efforts."
The PayEase/CyberSource solution is available now. A merchant's ability to accept credit and debit cards through PayEase is subject to satisfaction of certain eligibility criteria and regulatory requirements.
PayEase's major shareholder, Capinfo Company Ltd., a public company in Hong Kong, is affiliated with the Beijing municipal government and was initially formed by various Chinese ministries and government entities to promote eCommerce in China.
About CyberSource
CyberSource Corporation is a leading provider of electronic payment and risk management solutions. CyberSource solutions enable electronic payment processing for Web, call center, and POS environments. CyberSource also offers industry leading risk management solutions for merchants accepting card-not-present transactions. CyberSource Professional Services designs, integrates, and optimizes commerce transaction processing systems. Approximately 228,000 businesses use CyberSource solutions, including half the companies comprising the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and has sales and service offices in Japan, the United Kingdom, and other locations in the United States including Bellevue, Washington and American Fork, Utah. For more information on CyberSource please visit http://www.cybersource.com or email info@cybersource.com. For more information on Authorize.Net small business solutions, please visit http://www.authorize.net or email sales@authorize.net.
About PayEase
PayEase is currently China's leading payment & loyalty marketing service provider. PayEase is the first payment service provider in China established in 1999. Through Chinese banking relationships (nationwide), PayEase facilitates payments among merchants and unifies functionality through a single interface. PayEase's secured platform provides a unified solution that includes various channels of payment such as Online, Mobile, POS, Call Centers, and E-wallet. In addition, PayEase supports over 65 different types of debit cards and four international credit cards. Additionally, PayEase offers tailor-made CLP (Consumer Loyalty Program) to our clients enhancing their strength in building loyal relationships with their customers.
"Safe Harbor" statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995
Statements in this release that are not purely historical are forward- looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including, without limitation, statements regarding the company's expectations, objectives, anticipations, plans, hopes, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. Forward-looking statements in this release include, without limitation, statements regarding: (1) the growth of online consumers in China; (2) Chinese market being a key target for leading eCommerce brands around the world; (3) the CyberSource PayEase relationship being an extraordinary opportunity for merchants; (4) PayEase having unmatched credentials; (5) CyberSource merchants having a unique opportunity to engage consumers in China; (6) growth in the China market accelerating; (7) CyberSource being one of the world's most trusted and experienced payment management companies; (8) combined capabilities of CyberSource and PayEase offering significant help to U.S. and U.K. merchants. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward looking statements include risks and uncertainties such as changes in regulatory requirements, changes in customer needs, the risks of the economy, in general, and online economy, in particular, slowing down, new products and services offerings by the company and its competitors, any unforeseen event or any unforeseen system failures, and other risks indicated in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is important to note that actual outcomes could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Readers should also refer to the documents filed by CyberSource with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the annual report filed on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 11, 2008, and our quarterly reports filed on Form 10-Q from time to time, all of which identify important risk factors.
(C)2008 CyberSource Corporation. All rights reserved. CyberSource is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries. All other brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
(1) People's Bank of China, as quoted by Xinhua, official press agency of the government of the People's Republic of China, on March 30, 2008.
SOURCE CyberSource Corporation
SugarCRM Manages End-to-End SaaS Offering With Zenoss
Market Leading ISV Manages Networks, Servers and Applications With Open Source IT Management Solution
ANNAPOLIS, MD--(Marketwire - April 16, 2008) - Zenoss Inc., a leading provider of commercial open source network, systems and applications management software, today announced that SugarCRM, the world's leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, has deployed Zenoss for Service Providers to monitor and manage its end-to-end Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, including networks, servers and end-user application performance through synthetic transactions.
"We evaluated the leading IT management solutions in the market and concluded that Zenoss offered the best combination of functionality, price and flexibility," said Lila Tretikov, CIO of SugarCRM. "With Zenoss, we're able to monitor and manage our entire hosted service offering through a single solution. Because it is commercial open source, it's much more affordable than proprietary solutions and gives us the control to develop specific value-added capabilities for our customers."
SugarCRM delivers its CRM solutions to customers in several ways including SaaS, on-premise and appliance-based. Under its SaaS model, SugarCRM maintains instances of its application on networks and servers within enterprise-class data centers. Because its application is so important to the day-to-day operations of its customers, SugarCRM commits to high levels of application performance and uptime. In order to meet its service level agreements (SLAs) across a rapidly expanding customer base, SugarCRM selected Zenoss as its enterprise IT management solution.
Zenoss proactively alerts SugarCRM IT management personnel of potential issues based upon performance trends or outages and helps them to isolate root causes via a consolidated event console. SugarCRM personnel then remediate issues, typically before customers experience any service impact.
"We know first-hand the unique challenges service providers face," said Bill Karpovich, Zenoss CEO and Co-Founder. "Zenoss for Service Providers is a new alternative that provides the right combination of functionality, flexibility and economics."
Zenoss Inc. delivers open source IT management solutions to organizations across the globe. Flagship product Zenoss Core is a complete network monitoring and systems management platform that discovers networked IT resources, monitors them for performance and availability, and tracks changes through a configuration management database (CMDB). One of the ten most active projects on SourceForge.Net, Zenoss software was downloaded over 350,000 times in 2007. Recent product accolades include Network World's Clear Choice Award, Enterprise Open Source Magazine Readers' Choice Award, and a nomination for Best Technical Design in the SourceForge 2007 Community Choice Awards. Zenoss' customers include some of the world's largest corporations as well as Federal and State government agencies. Zenoss, Inc. is privately held and headquartered in Annapolis, MD. For more information,
source = www.marketwire.com
Drupal's Test Framework Means Better Releases
Drupal, recent winner of a Webware Top 100 place is at it again. The open source Web Content Management powerhouse has created a new addition to their framework. It’s going to mean either more frequent releases or (ideally) better releases.
Drupal, the open source CMS that is highly utilized by the music industry has created a testing framework and added it to the Drupal 7 core. This occurred recently at a code sprint held in Paris.
The addition of a test framework will help to shorten code freezes during the release process — which occurs frequently and is usually why release dates are pushed back. The framework allow for two things:
source = www.cmswire.com
Joomla! and the latest trends in the open source revolution
Australia's Andrew Eddie and Brad Baker, two of the core team members of Joomla!, the free open-source Internet content management system (CMS) that in three years has grown into a global development community with more than three million downloads in a year, will be guest speakers at a special event in Sydney on May 19, 2008.
Australia's Andrew Eddie and Brad Baker, two of the core team members of Joomla!, the free open-source Internet content management system (CMS) that in three years has grown into a global development community with more than three million downloads in a year, will be guest speakers at a special event in Sydney on May 19, 2008.
The content management system has grown into a global development community with more than three million downloads a year.
Eddie and Baker will talk about the latest trends in the open source revolution.
In a statement they said:"We will talk about the latest trends in the open-source revolution that has liberated online software from the proprietorial designs of companies like Microsoft and made feature-rich Web sites affordable for all businesses, not-for-profit groups and individuals."
Eddie and Baker are keynote speakers at the annual JoomlaDay Conference being held at the Sydney Conference and Exhbition Centre in Darling Harbour.
The Joomla! project has deep Australian roots.
It began in 2005 as an offshoot of the Sydney-based Mambo content management system, after members of the Mambo development team became concerned about protecting key open source principles they believed were being violated.
Andrew Eddy (aka "MasterChief") wrote an open letter that within a day had garnered the support of a thousand developers in the global free software community.
The name later chosen for the new open source project is derived from the Swahili "jumla," meaning "all together" or "as a whole."
Since then the community has grown exponentially.
As of February 2008, the official Joomla support forum, moderated by Brad Baker, has more than 260,000 threads and 1.2 million posts from more than 170,000 registered members in 40 languages.
Joomla! leverages much open source and Web 2.0 technology, and now offers more than 3,000 add-on features, from podcasts to calendars, wikis to social networking tools.
A live demonstration of the power of Joomla! will be held on May 20, 2008, with a team of developers building a fully functional Web site for a nominated charity in less than seven hours.
source = http://news.idg.no/
Redmond Among Contributors to Open Source PHP Framework
Zend Technologies releases updated open source framework with support from Microsoft, IBM, Google and others.by Kathleen Richards
April 2008 Zend Technologies Inc. is forming alliances with key Internet players to broaden the Version 1.5 of the open source Zend Framework (ZF), released last month, adds support for key Google APIs, LDAP authentication, OpenID and Windows CardSpace. Developers using the new version can now work with YouTube upload and write APIs. Other enhancements include better support for forms, AJAX and advanced search capabilities from within the framework with the Apache Lucene search engine, according to Zend.
"Not only are we seeing a very, very broad reach of the framework -- 1.5 is going to be distributed with Ubuntu Linux -- we're actually seeing some significant enterprise uptake," says Andi Gutmans, co-founder and chief technology officer at Zend. He reports more than 4 million downloads, 500,000 of which are unique, since Zend Framework version 1.0's general availability in June 2007. (For more on Zend and the PHP community, see the Q&A with Gutmans, "Glue and Mortar.")
Part of that success may be due to the growing community behind ZF, described as a use-at-will architecture for rapid Web app and services development. According to Zend, more than 400 contributors worked on the upgraded framework, including Microsoft, Nirvanix Inc. and Fox Interactive Media. IBM Corp., Google Inc. and StrikeIron Inc. have been contributors since version 1.0. The Zend Framework is licensed under the new BSD free software license, and code contributors must agree to the Apache Software Foundation's Contributor License Agreement.
Microsoft's Open Identity"PHP works on the LAMP stack, which is essentially implemented on the Zend Framework, and that's why we made the agreement with Zend," says Vijay Rajagopalan, principal architect of platform and interoperability strategy at Microsoft. "They have a huge developer base for the PHP customers. We felt that it would be very strategic and we could reach out to the grassroots developers if we were to enable InfoCard support with the Zend Framework as well as a standalone module."
Zend and Microsoft started to work together last summer, with the Zend engineers doing the development. "Our contribution is to provide architectural items, and to make sure that the identity metasystem works on a consistent basis," explains Rajagopalan.
In September 2006, Microsoft announced that some InfoCard specifications (WS-*) were going to be made available under its new Open Specification Promise. Soon after the company took steps to ensure cross-platform implementation. "In May 2007," recalls Rajagopalan, "Microsoft sponsored open source projects to enable InfoCard support on PHP for the LAMP stack, Java for Java servers and the Ruby on Rails framework, and a cross-platform C language implementation that will enable information-card support for many Web servers, including IIS and Apache."
Microsoft has also partnered with Zend to ensure that PHP runs smoothly on Windows servers.
Varied SupportZF supports PHP 5.0. The release of PHP 5.3, which will include some features originally pegged for PHP 6.0, is expected this quarter, according to Gutmans.As of January, PHP 4.0 is no longer supported. "As far as security fixes are concerned, we're going to continue doing those until August of this year," he says.
source = http://reddevnews.com/news/devnews/article.aspx?editorialsid=1029
Friday, May 2, 2008
Thoughts on SharePoint and FAST Search
SharePoint Report 2008 we discuss SharePoint's shortcomings and strengths in the search space. While SharePoint 2007's search capabilities have been improved over the 2003 product, it's still not "enterprise class" for a variety of different reasons.
Clearly Microsoft saw this same shortcoming (both in SharePoint and it's overall search offerings) and announced that they were going to acquire enterprise search vendor FAST Search and Transfer (more information on FAST can be found in our Enterprise Search Report 2008).
For SharePoint users, this brings up a few opportunities and issues. In a previous blog post about the SharePoint conference, I highlighted the presentation that FAST employees gave. This presentation showed nifty new Silverlight-enabled search Web Parts. These Web Parts demonstrated several capabilities that FAST brings to the SharePoint world, like: content spotlighting, multimedia search, and taxonomy management.
The last capability is one that I believe would be particularly interesting for SharePoint users, since taxonomy management represents a challenging area for most SharePoint implementations -- SharePoint taxonomies are very rigidly based on physical structure of the SharePoint sites and leave little flexibility for a more logical taxonomic structure (Redmond folks would argue that the content query Web Part might help, but it's not a solution). That said, what Microsoft hasn't really provided is good guidance on what users can expect to see and any migration path between SharePoint search and FAST. Unfortunately, that really hasn't changed: Microsoft hasn't released any roadmap for FAST's integration, though you could argue it's still early.
That aside, what could the FAST acquisition mean to SharePoint customers? Here are a few of my thoughts:
- The FAST acquisition was officially completed today. This is a good thing, since Microsoft can now get down to the business of integrating the company's technology with the rest of Microsoft's products. However, it's not clear what, if any, impact this acquisition will have in the very short term. Judging by the Groove acquisition, which preceded the SharePoint 2007 release by some months, an acquisition after the release will not yield any updates in the core product until SharePoint vNext (probably around 2010 or so) and beyond. However, I'd be willing to bet that some elements of the demo given at the SharePoint conference make their way to sites like Codeplex or as free downloads on Microsoft's site.
- The former CEO of FAST will assume the role of VP of Enterprise Search. His responsibility will include all search products: SharePoint search, Search Server Express and FAST ESP. So I guess the "Enterprise Search" moniker might need to be removed or rewritten on the SharePoint search page; FAST is, by far, the new "enterprise" search product at Microsoft. What's interesting here is that Microsoft has historically brought Office-related technologies under one roof; just look at what happened to SharePoint specifically -- that product was once its own product group. As they integrate FAST, it would appear that this announcement suggests Microsoft might break out search into its own dedicated team and make SharePoint a "customer." This opens up the possibility of decoupling SharePoint from any particular search technology -- perhaps a pipe dream, but we can always hope.
- In a blog entry on the Enterprise Search blog, Microsoft stated that the FAST offering will continue its Linux and Unix support. The blog entry was quick to reinforce the message that Microsoft does not want to support or wish to invest in Linux or Unix solutions. While they would like to "delight a core part of FAST's customer base," they are openly hoping those customers will convert to Windows and .NET. This does call into question whether this Linux/Unix support will be long for the world. In the short term, however, Microsoft can boast a better product from which to launch a play to be a real contender in the enterprise search space; see our related blog entries and article on FAST here. In the long term, Microsoft will have to come to grips with the fact that enterprises will continue to leverage non-Windows technology and if Microsoft wants to benefit from that revenue, they should consider continuing FAST's support for those technologies (their recent earnings announcement, and the subdued guidance for the year, may reinforce that message).
- Microsoft won't support SharePoint on Linux
In general, the FAST acquisition, for SharePoint, will likely have little impact short term. Over the longer term, it's clear that the Office 14 version of SharePoint will be substantially improved in the search area (depending on the SharePoint product team's willingness to implement the new technology). I would personally like to see some add-ons in the near term, since that would improve search within organizations that may have both tools.
Stay tuned for more on this topic as the integration progresses.
Source:
http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1219-Thoughts-on-SharePoint-and-Fast-Search
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Open Source CMS’s Make the List
With the competition so high for this award, it came as a big surprise to see that the only two self-hosted open source CMS applications to make the list were WordPress and Drupal.
Drupal, is an open source CMS that has become widely used by the music industry. It is similar in operation to others such as Joomla and Mambo. It is designed for more in depth and larger sites with potentially large amounts of users accessing and updating it.
WordPress is of course the premier open source blogging CMS. It is by far the most used blogging platform out there with more plugins developed daily than any other CMS out there.
Over 1.9 million votes were cast for the 300 finalists this year. These finalists were selected (by Webware editors) from a pool of over 5000 qualifying nominees. But the 100 winners were selected by popular vote. These winning 100 products represent the best of the Web, according the people who use it.
Based on these numbers, we here at CMSWire are proud to congratulate both these two on overcoming massive competition in one of the most highly competitive web app fields out there. When competing against other well established platforms such as Joomla, phpNuke, Pligg and Moveable Type, it is a high honor to be the only two to make the list.
Source: cmswire.com
Learn To Joomla at JoomlaForBeginners.com!
This is the home of free Joomla! Video Tutorials.
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Our Joomla! Video Tutorials are High Quality, Crsytal Clear and recorded in Real font sizes that are easy to read... They are narrated by a Joomla! professional so you can also Hear the instructor. We offer more COMPLETELY FREE Joomla! Video Training Tutorials than anyone.
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DOWNLOAD our free Joomla! Video Tutorials to your hard drive or portable media device and watch them any time you wish, even without an internet connection.
Enjoy our new "Joomla! Recipes" feature, where we take an exsisting Website and reveal it's recipe and how to build it.
Just for fun we also offer other items like the free and exclusive JoomlaForBeginners.com Windows screensaver with Joomla! RSS News updated around the clock, and the free and exclusive JoomlaForBeginners.com Sony-Ericcson w580i mobile telephone/walkman theme.
What can we say? We love Joomla!
Friday, April 25, 2008
Google Internet Share March 2008
Google Inc. (GOOG) received 67% of all U.S. Internet searches during the four weeks ended March 29, according to information service Hitwise.
Google received 64% of all U.S. Internet searches in the same period a year earlier.
Yahoo Inc.'s (YHOO) search engine received 20% of U.S. Web searches in the more recent period, while Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) MSN Search drew 7% and Ask.com 4%.
The remaining 46 search engines in Hitwise's search engine analysis tool accounted for about 2% of searches in the U.S.
Source : CNN Money
Web design India: IT on a new high
In business world, growing competition and brisk changes have made the outsourcing one of the most popular and growing area. Offshore outsourcing in web development, web designing and SEO services is now multi billion industry. Most of the European companies are outsourcing functions from logistics to Human resources to Information technology to Payroll processingto India.
This outsourcing boom has transformed India from a developing country to an emerging economy and a superpower in the making. Dipstick survey shows that India is the first choice as a destination for outsourcing services based on techno-environment, hard working and skilled manpower, effectively managing and mitigating risks involved and helping maintain profound relationships with the customers.
India enjoys a boon in offshore outsourcing services. Indias government manifested its support to IT education by heavily positioning its investments on infrastructure improvements related to telecommunications. Also, generous tax incentive - schemes never fail to attract more companies to outsource its services to India.
Demand of web designing service in India is continuously picking up. The reason for that is, India is a rich source of programmers coupled with academic excellence. India has an extensive pool of programming talent, at high levels of expertise, who are English proficient, and work virtually around the clock. At a fraction of the cost paid to programmers in the US, UK and Japan, India can provide a host of programming experts. Furthermore, web designing companies in India not only consider graphic design and logo design but also give great importance to the content and SEO services. Because a relevant quality content with continuous latest useful information with its visual effect at first look is always important for any business. So that potential customers who once visit your site love to visit it next time for more information, this flow will serve your business purpose - changing visitors to customers, who take interest in your services and products.
The other thing is that web designing company India also boast of their dedicated, genuine, experienced professionals who are adept in adopting latest technologies. And they organize quality and productivity solutions from the initial step of web development which makes them to deliver results faster at reduced time.
Thus, by seeing the present edge dynamic softwares and cutting edge technologies, obviously India is the best site for Offshore Outsourcing Company Website Development because of its easily available rich resources from every perspective. To end with it can be said that India is the most preferred destination for web design and other IT work because of its ability to offer quality services at competitive cost.
Source: Fibre2fashion
Different Between HTML 4 and HTML 5?
It's not as a big of change as it may seem. Keep in mind that "backwards compatibility" is of the utmost concern when releasing a new level of HTML/XHTML. For those of you who may be interested in the forthcoming changes, the W3 have a working draft of a document that details the differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5.
- HTML 5 differences from HTML 4
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/
We will be paying very close attention to the progress of HTML 5. We'll be running a series of articles in layman's terms to help you understand the benefits of semantic document structure and using proper markup. We suggest that you take an hour or two each week and review the HTML 5 Working Draft and prepare yourselves for the future.
SEO Benefits
Online ad agencies struggle with this issue everyday. How do you generate the same profit from organic search engine optimization when it requires a lot more effort, expertise, and expense to produce high rankings and organic traffic? How do you sell the possible disruption on a web site to clients, in order to make it rank well? It's a lot easier to throw up a brochure site with a few catch phrases and graphics and bid on some AdWords advertising.
Part of the problem can be solved by valuating search engine optimization services more highly. SEO is grossly underpriced. In my situation, clients are paying 4 times as much for PPC clickthroughs as for organic clickthroughs. Studies show that people click on organic listings in the results pages, even though the space given to text ads is almost pushing them off the screen. Text ads still aren't precisely targeted either. Why should they be? If they're poorly targeted, it creates more clicks and more revenue for the search engines.
Organic rankings don't suffer that problem. If the person isn't interested, you're not out much.
Another solution is to create new web sites to cover specific facets of a product or service. This ensures funds will be invested in SEO, thus creating an opportunity for SEO to generate sales leads and revenue. Many companies stick to one web site when they should have 4 or 5. A single site is under tremendous pressure to perform. Putting all your eggs in one basket is not good risk management strategy since competitors will find it easier to beat your one site, and Google could alter its algorithm overnight resulting in a loss of half of your traffic. Not a likely scenario, but it does happen.
Source: seoconsultants.com/articles
Five Simple Ways To Keep Your Reader’s Attention
In today’s world of evolving blogs and on-line newsletters, readers are swamped with so much information that they become more sensitive to the quality of articles that they are reading. I highly recommend that you follow these five steps to keeping your reader’s attention while at your site, blog, or article:
1. Be Clear. It is always refreshing to use clear language and understandable terms that keep the reader “in the know”.
2. Be Brief. I know it is great to write articles like “100 Ways To” but these articles can tire the reader. Brevity is a real blessing sometimes.
3. Humor is always nice. As much as you might be saying something serious, still, an appropriate use of humor is always refreshing.
4. Be Honest. When the reader can see into your sincerity and candor, that is a real great trick to keeping the reader at your article.
5. Be Unique. This is why websites and articles really make it - uniqueness. This one I will let you interpret for yourself. This is a surefire method to get readers to return to your articles, website, and/or blog with frequency.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Add social bookmarking to wordpress
In this tutorial I am going to show you how to create a quick and simple social bookmarking option to your blog similar to what you see on this site. This is for wordpress themes only although with a bit of tweaking it may be able to work on other blogs.
This will be the final outcome:
- First, download these images, these are the icons for the image you see above and put them in the images folder of the theme file: socialbookmarkingicons.zip
- Now open up style.css in your theme and add this code:
.socialbookmarking {
margin-right:5px;
text-align:center;
clear:left;
float:right;
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:8pt;
color:#333333;
border-left:1px #FFFFFF solid;
border-right:1px #FFFFFF solid;
}.socialbookmarking_digg a {
width:27px;
height:28px;
float:left;
display:block;
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/digg.png);
}.socialbookmarking_digg a:hover {
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/digg1.png);
}.socialbookmarking_delicious a {
width:26px;
height:28px;
float:left;
display:block;
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/delicious.png);
}.socialbookmarking_delicious a:hover {
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/delicious1.png);
}.socialbookmarking_reddit a {
width:30px;
height:28px;
float:left;
display:block;
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/reddit.png);
}.socialbookmarking_reddit a:hover {
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/reddit1.png);
}.socialbookmarking_furl a {
width:28px;
height:28px;
float:left;
display:block;
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/furl.png);
}.socialbookmarking_furl a:hover {
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/furl1.png);
}.socialbookmarking_google a {
width:29px;
height:28px;
float:left;
display:block;
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/google.png);
}.socialbookmarking_google a:hover {
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/google1.png);
}.socialbookmarking_stumbleupon a {
width:26px;
height:28px;
float:left;
display:block;
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/stumbleupon.png);
}.socialbookmarking_stumbleupon a:hover {
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/stumbleupon1.png);
}.socialbookmarking_live a {
width:29px;
height:28px;
float:left;
display:block;
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/live.png);
}.socialbookmarking_live a:hover {
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/live1.png);
}.socialbookmarking_technorati a {
width:25px;
height:28px;
float:left;
display:block;
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/technorati.png);
}.socialbookmarking_technorati a:hover {
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/technorati1.png);
}.socialbookmarking_yahoo a {
width:25px;
height:28px;
float:left;
display:block;
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/yahoo.png);
}.socialbookmarking_yahoo a:hover {
background-image:url(images/socialbookmarkingicons/yahoo1.png);
} - Now add the following to the single.php page underneath the content of the post (normally something like
And that’s it, you should now have an area of social bookmarking icons that is similar to the ones you see here on Help Developer.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Meta Keywords Advice
Do not use the meta keywords tag. Many people still think of this as a quick fix for SEO. It's not. Google no longer uses it. Yahoo is perhaps the only search engine that still uses the meta keywords tag but places very little weight on it. By placing this tag on a web page, the primary beneficiary is your competition. How so? The meta keywords tag gives your competitors a nicely formatted list of your important keywords. Don't believe me? Try the free keyword research tool at the end of this article.
Most people agree that this tag is useless (read Danny Sullivan's 2002 Death of a Meta Tag article). I'll take it a step further and argue that it's hazardous. I know many people won't agree with me, but here's my argument:
Search engines used to rely heavily on the meta keywords tag to guess which keywords were relevant on a web page. Now search engines are sophisticated enough to examine the actual keywords in the body of a web page. Major search engines place little, if any, value in the meta keywords tag. There is more risk than reward in using the meta keywords tag because your competitors can view the meta keywords tag and can steal your keywords.
What do I mean by "steal" your keywords? By placing the meta keywords tag on a page, you are, in effect, giving your competitors a list of your important keywords. They can then use these keywords and buy PPC ads or optimize their own site for your important keywords. Why give them this sort of business intelligence? Having invested time and money on exhaustive keyword research to identify the important keyword phrases to use for your own SEO and PPC efforts, why on earth would you make a list of your high value keywords public?
Perhaps a concrete example will help illustrate the point. I was playing with the keyword tool, entering domains of other search engine marketing firms to see if they were using the meta keywords tag, and, if so, what keywords they included. Plugging one site into the tool, I noticed the keyword phrase "targeted traffic" in the meta keywords tag. Looking at the site's home page and even viewing the source, that phrase is only in the meta keywords. Nowhere else. This is what people do - they just stick their important keywords into the tags. You don't have to study the title tag, study the meta description tag, see what alt text is "behind" the images, examine the content of the page, look at the links, etc. In other words, you don't have to take the time to think like a search engine or reverse engineer a competing site. Your competitors give you all of their important keywords in their meta keywords tag. I've never thought of "targeted traffic" as a keyword to optimize for or to buy with PPC ads. Perhaps I'll run some PPC ads and see if it's a valuable phrase for SEO. Point is, I'd never have thought of it if it wasn't in a competitor's meta keywords tag.
Here is our meta keywords advice: do not use the meta keywords tag. Instead, make sure the title of your web page has your important keywords and that those keywords are repeated in the body of your web page. If you want to, create a meta description tag. The search engines do use that meta tag, but it's not essential for SEO.
Creating good content is essential. Each page should have useful content and include your important keywords. Don't try to stuff all of your important keywords onto a single page. Create pages around a theme, a small collection of keyword phrases. For instance, target 1-3 keyword phrases per page. Write a title that incorporates those keyword phrases. If the title seems awkward from the point of view of your audience (site visitors not the search engines), scale back the number of phrases and try again. If you choose to write a meta description tag, it should reinforce the keywords already in the title tag. The body of the page should then include those important keyword phrases. Again, though, the content of the page should be written for your site visitors and not seem awkward.
Since many web sites do still use the meta keywords tag, we have developed a free keyword research tool that will analyze the meta keywords of your competition. Use the tool to see what keywords your competitors are embedding in their meta keywords tags and then research these keywords using other freely available tools. When I begin work for a new client, I ask them for a list of their competitors' web sites. I plug those into the tool and it gives me an instant list of keywords. That's only the beginning, a starting point for further keyword research. These companies have spent hours upon hours performing keyword research. I can take 30 seconds, scrape their meta keywords tags and have solid keyword ideas for PPC ads to create or SEO work to perform for a client. That, coupled with the fact that Google doesn't use the meta keywords tag, convinces me that it's downright silly to use them.
As time goes on, I expect online businesses to become a bit more savvy regarding meta tags and this tool will no longer provide a quick start. In the meantime, use the free keyword tool and crush your competition!
Source: searchengineguide
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
9 things a web designer can’t do without
As a web designer there are certain things that any web designer would need to succeed in developing his or her skills. Below is a list of 10 key things I personally feel a web designer needs. If you know any more then please leave them as comments.
So here goes:
- Well obviously a graphics design application. Personally I favour Gimp because its fast, reliable, updated regularly, free and easy to use and doesn’t compromise on features when it comes to web design. The worthy alternative to this is the slow, expensive Photoshop (oh did I say worthy, I meant unworthy, yeah I don’t like it, although a lot of other designers do.)
- Inspiration, no web designer can produce good sites without getting ideas from other peoples sites (that doesn’t mean copy people sites, just get some ideas). There are plenty of sites that you can get inspiration from, personally I use templatemonster.com, csspick.com, cssdrive.com, cssmania.com, wpthemesfree.com and other general browsing, if I see a site design that I like, I bookmark it and come back to it later. Inspiration from other peoples work is how you can improve your skills over time as you start to wonder how they did something on there site and eventually find the answer.
- Coding knowledge is something that quite a few designers dont take up, however learning how to code can seriously increase the amount of money you can make, people who want sites designed are more likely to go for someone who can do everything for them, not get a design and then have to find someone else to code it.
- Templates. As you produce sites you will start to become more efficient, you will realise that the site you are creating has a similar structure to a site you have designed before, therefore it is good practise to get that template you did previously and edit it rather than start the new site from scratch. Personally I have created over 100 templates over the past year (website and wordpress), and I am in a position to code websites a lot faster because the template is already made.
- The Web Developer Toolbar. (download here) A must have tool is the web developer toolbar, it works with Firefox and gives you all the information you could ever need when coding websites and is also handy for seeing how other people have coded their websites. This makes it a lot easier to code and is definitely an important tool to have. Unfortunately, it isn’t available for IE which is what you would use it for, all of those IE problems.
- Validate as you go along, the worst part for most web coders is that they will create a great looking site that works perfect in Firefox, heck it may even look nice in IE (very unlikely, but one can only hope). Then comes the dreaded part, validating it to W3c standards. This can take up a lot of your time, so make sure you are validating as you go along, this will cut off that annoying period at the end of development when you can’t see what is wrong with a line of code that seems to be correct but W3c says otherwise.
- XAMMP, If you are creating PHP/MySQL driven sites or designing skins for online tools like Wordpress then installing xammp is a must. It will enable you to create your site or template offline which speeds up development by a massive amount because you don’t need to keep uploading each revision of each file to the internet, it also keeps that project your working on secure during development.
- Tutorials. Everybody learns how to design or code through tutorials, its just the way that it is done, when you ask a question on a forum and you get an answer, in essence you are reading and using a tutorial. There are thousands of tutorials out there, take a look around this blog and you will find some.
- And finally enjoy what you do, if you don’t enjoy what you are doing then you are wasting your time. Don’t become a web designer because you heard it pays well because it doesn’t, it is overcrowded with kids trying to make a quick buck by undercutting the proper designers, it gets very frustrating. Life is about enjoyment, if you don’t enjoy something then it will show in the quality of the outcome.
PHP Cookies
A cookie is used to store data on a users computer. Creating and retrieving cookies and their values is an easy process in PHP and in this short guide I am going to show you how to use cookies.
Creating a cookie
The Code
setcookie(”cookieName”, “cookieValue”, cookieExpirationTime);
an example:
setcookie(”visitor”, “seenPage”, time()+3600);
this creates a cookie called visitor with the value seenPage and it will expire in 3600 seconds (or an hour)
Finding a cookies value
The Code
echo $_COOKIE[”cookieName”];
an example:
echo $_COOKIE[”visitor”];
this will show to screen the value that is stored in the cookie with the name visitor, so the result would be “seenPage” if we use the previous example
Deleting a cookie
The Code
setcookie(”cookieName”, “”, timeExpirationTime);
an example:
setcookie(”visitor”, “”, time()-3600);
you can see that the time()-3600 is similar to when you create a cookie, this is because if you replace the + with a - then it cancels out the cookie.
So there you have it a very simple quick guide to PHP cookies, I hope this helped
Monday, April 21, 2008
Microsoft releases 14,000 pages of Office suite protocols
Microsoft has taken a serious step towards fulfilling its interoperability and openness promises for developers, partners, customers and competitors, by releasing significant protocol data. .
The organisation posted more than 14,000 pages on MSDN covering preliminary versions of technical documentation for its protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.
Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft, points out that this brings the total to more than 44,000 pages of protocol documentation now released and freely available – even to ISVs (independent software vendors), open source developers and developers in user IT departments.
Says Robertson: “We believe that providing open, consistent access to these protocols will further unleash the creativity of all developers to work on real-world interoperability solutions. The implementation of Microsoft’s interoperability principles is an important component of our overall efforts to promote interoperability in the marketplace.”
He gives the example of developers working with SharePoint protocols, who now have resources to develop products that work with Office client applications and SharePoint Server products.
source: mcsolutions.co.uk
Friday, April 18, 2008
Microsoft upgrades robotics development tools
Microsoft’s efforts in developing tools for robotics took another step forward recently when the company released a preview of the next version of its programming platform.
Robotics Developer Studio 2008 builds on the original release, Robotics Studio 2006, according to Microsoft robotics group general manager Tandy Trower, and is due for release later this year. The company made a community technology preview of Robotics Developer Studio available for download on April 9. The name change lines up with existing product lines and better reflects its role as a development tool, the announcement noted.
The updated developer tools now allow the use of distributed LINQ queries to reduce network utilization and simplify service authoring. Runtime performance has also seen a boost, according to Trower, with the company estimating interservice throughput gains of 150% to 300%, between nodes as well as within a node. According to the company, services now load twice as fast as they had before.
The tools themselves have seen other work as well. The Visual Programming Language tool now allows users to visually define computational domains for managing distributed program execution. Meanwhile, the simulation environment tool now can record and play back simulations, and its floorplan editor simplifies the definition of complex interiors and building structures.
Since the launch of Robotics Studio 2006, more than 200,000 copies of the software have been downloaded, according to Microsoft. The software is free for noncommercial applications and must be licensed for commercial use.
The company also announced a virtual robotics competition, called RoboChamps, which was expected to launch April 21; details are available at www.robochamps.com.
Check Out the Latest Version of Google Earth
Today we're introducing a new version of the Google Earth desktop client. The new release, Google Earth version 4.3, greatly advances our vision of offering a realistic, 3D model of the world in Google Earth by giving users a higher quality, more immersive experience. Google Earth 4.3 also adds more realistic, real-world data so users have more ways to discover and explore all the interesting features the world has to offer.
Here are the highlights:
New navigation -- We've created a new navigational experience so users can better take advantage of the 3D environment in Google Earth. The navigation takes the traditional pan-and-zoom approach associated with mapping programs and incorporates a first-person, ground-level perspective commonly used in video games.
More, faster 3D buildings -- Version 4.3 also includes dozens of photo-textured cities and towns, as well as thousands of user-contributed buildings around the world. We've significantly enhanced our approach to rendering 3D data to greatly improve performance and realism of 3D data.
Street View -- The well-known Google Maps feature gets added to Google Earth with version 4.3. Street View is a popular, engaging feature that allows people to easily find, discover, and plan activities relevant to a location.
Sunlight feature -- This new addition is a playful way to control the sun's location relative to the Earth. When zoomed out to a view of the Earth, you can control a time-lapse view of sunlight moving across the Earth. While zoomed into a given city, you can watch the sunrise and sunset.
Image acquisition date -- One of our most requested features, 4.3 now includes an image acquisition date, which shows you on what date a given area of imagery was taken.
New languages -- Version 4.3 includes twelve new languages, including Danish, English (UK), Spanish (Latin American), Finnish, Hebrew, Indonesian, Norwegian, Portuguese (PT), Romanian, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.
Keep an eye on the Google LatLong (http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/) blog for more details on Google Earth version 4.3 over the course of the week.
A whole new world to explore
On the Google Earth team, we're big fans of Earth Day, so much so that we couldn't hold out until it arrives next week to release our latest labor of love: Google Earth 4.3. With this version, we have completely rethought how you might interact with the 3D world. We've redesigned the navigation to make it much easier to fly from the heavens down to the streets of your town. And with all of the great user-created buildings in the 3D Warehouse, we wanted to make it easy for you to get right up close to see the rich detail.
Here's a sample of what you'll find in this release:
Design Your Site with WordPress Magazine Themes
As with any website, design can be key to your overall performance. Many already know that WordPress offers some great features for blogs and sites alike. But did you know that you can get great magazine style themes to ensure maximum design efficiency online?
That’s right. WordPress magazine themes are outstanding design frameworks that include a wonderful, easy to manage homepage instead of the traditional blog homepage. Now, you can set any html page as your homepage when using WordPress, but this method requires little know how and even less technical ability. And at least one of them is free.
WordPress is the most used open source CMS out there right now and it takes little work to build and SEO powerhouse. Google loves it and indexes all pages easily if you have everything working properly.
But when visitors come to your blog, they frequently see a standard blog home page, with snippets of posts in a list and some sidebars containing various items of interest.
Magazine themes eliminate that aspect of this. They give a well structured, easy to follow foundation for the rest of your site and aid in directing traffic from your home page to various key areas of your site.
Three Great WordPress Magazine Themes
Mimbo 2.2
The first magazine theme called Mimbo 2.2. Mimbo creates a wonderful area for featured articles, sub-categories and less important categories individually. This is done with ease and a little code manipulation. You can get assistance with the code from the creator Darren Hoyt. It uses category key numbers to determine what content to place where and then uses WordPress’s custom fields to place the pictures.
The best thing about Mimbo is it’s free! Below is a screenshot of a Mimbo 2.2 theme in use right now.
Mimbo is the only free magazine theme found that merits any recognition; but there are also two for purchase that are just as outstanding, if not more so.
Revolution
Revolution is a top notch, for purchase magazine theme. It is a widget-ready, customizable theme that is an ideal solution for online magazines, online newspapers and other websites that wish to use WordPress as a content management system. It offers a little more flexibility and a different homepage layout than Mimbo.
Revolution also has other magazine style themes specific to news, business and more. A set can be purchased for around $80.00 for single use.
WP-Magazine
Also of note is WP-Magazine Theme. It has a great scrolling image on the home page with a larger area to work with and less white space. The basic option here sells for around $80.00.
Now you have the resources to build a powerhouse publication website with a great design, ease of use and fun right at your fingertips. Why are you still reading? Read more about WordPress and the great things you can do with it now… More Info: cmswire.com
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Drupal 5, clean URLs, and Fedora
Monkeying around with Drupal 5 on Fedora 8, trying to get up to speed in this strange new world of structureless node soup. I thought an easy warmup task would be to get clean URLs working, but that turned out to be quite a tussle.
I had Drupal installed in a "/drupal" subdirectory of an existing site, which worked fine as long as the Apache config had Alias /drupal /usr/share/drupal, which was installed by default. That made everything work, but putting in the default "clean URLs" rewrite rules and trying to access the "admin/settings/clean-urls" URL (instead of "?q=admin/settings/clean-urls") gave this error in the Apache config:
The requested URL /usr/share/drupal/index.php was not found on this server.
Assuming that's the googleable phrase that will land folks here, here was my solution: first, realize that the Alias of /usr/share/drupal was preventing the rewrite rules from ever being accessed - remove the rewrite rules and you'll see you get the same error. I ended up removing the Alias altogether, and instead making a symlink inside my web root to /usr/share/drupal. Then just add your rewrite rules and an option to follow symlinks in a Directory config for your web root, like so:
Options FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /drupal
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
And don't forget to remove the Alias /drupal /usr/share/drupal line from your config. Do that, and it should work. Works for me, at least.
Source: frobnosticate.com
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
First Magento Training Class - Sold Out, New Dates Announced
Magento’s first developer focused training class, Developing with Magento, is now completely sold out. The next class will take place on May 6 and run until May 29. These classes are timed to start at 6PM Eastern Daylight Time, perfect for after-work attendance in North America and daytime attendance in the Asia-Pacific region.
To learn more about Magento’s training program, visit our training page.
OpenX: A Case Study and Joomla! Friend
| | |
 Joomla! core member Peter Russell has been on a sabbatical of sorts and during this time he's been looking at a range of open source projects. Today, Pete talks with OpenX founder and CTO, Scott Switzer. Scott, 38, drives the product vision and is the OpenX community leader. Scott works at OpenX's London office or out of a suitcase—he travels a lot. University trained (Vermont), he has been a software architect for large software systems such as for GEHealthcare. He was formerly the co-founder/CTO for other media companies, like M3 and article 27. Pete Q. Scott,please explain the journey that has seen you involved in Open Source? Q. How do you reconcile Open Source and the commercial path OpenX is taking? Q. How many developers do you have on board and where are they based? Q. What does OpenX do for publishers and why would they want to use it opposed to just AdSense? | |
| Read more... |
Monday, April 14, 2008
Database Programming in Java Using JDBC
An application that does not persist its data in a database is a rarity. Programming languages reflect this trend. That's why all languages provide a robust and flexible library for database access. Java is no exception.
Java provides the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API to access different databases. In this discussion, I will be focusing on the basics of JDBC. I will start with the whys and wherefores of JDBC. The next section will focus on the steps to use JDBC to access a database. In the final section, I will develop an application that will access MySQL database server using the steps described in the previous section. That's the outline for this discussion.
JDBC: What is it?
JDBC, which is short for Java Database Connectivity, can be defined as "An API for the Java programming language that defines how a client may access a database." In other words, JDBC specifies the ways and methods that are needed to access a database, more specifically a relational database such as Oracle, MySQL, and others. The main aspect of JDBC is that it is a specification and not a product. So different vendors (here RDBMS vendors) provide their own implementation for the specification.
For example, the JDBC implementation for Oracle database is provided by Oracle itself and the same is the case for all others. The implementations provided by the vendors are known as JDBC Drivers. The most important point to be kept in mind is that JDBC Drivers are installed at client-side and not at server-side.
JDBC has been with the Java Standard Edition (JSE) from version 1.1. The latest version is 4 and is being shipped with JSE 6. Regardless of the version, JDBC supports four types of implementations or drivers. They are:
1. Type I or JDBC-ODBC Bridge
2. Type II or Partly Java Partly Native
3. Type III or Network Protocol Driver
4. Type IV or Pure Java Driver
The types are defined by how the driver provides communication between the application and the database server. Here are the details.
A Type I Driver is also called a JDBC-ODBC Bridge. The reason is that in this case JDBC internally makes calls to the ODBC. It is the ODBC that communicates with the database server. The job of JDBC is to provide the queries to the ODBC in a form understandable by ODBC and to deliver the result provided by ODBC to the application in a form that is understandable by the application. This Driver works mainly with the Windows platform. This is the only type of Driver that is shipped with a Java installation.
A Type II Driver uses the native API of the target database server to communicate with the server. Hence it is known as a Native Protocol Driver as well as a Partly Java Partly Native Driver. This Driver doesn't contain pure Java code as it uses the client-side API provided by the target database server. To call the client-side API of the database, it uses JNI. However, since it doesn't have the overhead of calling ODBC, a Type II Driver is faster than a Type I. Also, by using a Type II Driver, one can access functionalities that are specific to the database server which is being used.
A Type III Driver is also known as Network Protocol Driver. Type III Drivers target the middleware. The middleware then communicates with the database server. In essence, Type III Drivers are like Type I with the exception that Type III Drivers are completely written in Java and use the network protocol of the middleware instead of ODBC API. Type III Drivers are more secure since middleware is in the picture. In a nutshell, in Type III Drivers the conversion logic is at the middleware level and not at the client-side.
The Type IV Driver is known as a Pure Java Driver. It is comparable to Type II as it directly interacts with the database server. Unlike Type II, Type IV doesn't use native API calls. Instead the API has been written in Java by the vendor. Apart from being a pure Java implementation of database client API, a Type IV Driver delegates the processing to the database server. That means at client side no processing related to the database or SQL translation occurs. The only job the client does is connecting to the server, passing the queries and input to the database server and getting the result back through the same connection. Due to the delegation of all the processes to the server, the Type IV Driver is also known as the Thin Client Driver.
The choice of which driver to use depends on the type of application that is being developed. For example, if the application is web-based, the best option is Type IV as it releases the application server from being a part of database transactions. In this case the application server would only have to provide services to look up the name of the connection pool and maintain the pool. All other data-related operations would be delegated to the database server. Next we will discuss the steps involved in using JDBC.
PHP and OOP
PHP is mainly a procedural programming language. Procedural programming is so called because the program code gives a set of instructions (i.e. an algorithm) for processing a particular task or set of tasks.
When programming in a procedural manner, the programmer usually breaks down the task/tasks in a top-down manner; this means the program will end up being made of a number of function calls, which can in turn call further functions or tasks.
In procedural programming data is of secondary importance and is normally placed into structures (data structures). As we would expect this data is global to the whole program, allowing us to see and access every function or procedure in the program, each of which will be able to change that data.
This is a very important concept; it means that whenever we change the format of any data structure in our program, all the other procedures and functions that operate on that data will also have to be changed. This can lead us to have to make numerous changes, something we really wouldn't like to happen when developing software of any type.
For around forty years, the idea of thinking about software in terms of objects surrounds us everyday, and indeed we make use of them almost everyday. For example clicking a button in your text editor to change the font color, wakes up the button object, which in turn tells other objects in the program that it had been clicked and that the font color must be changed. Also when we navigate the channels in our digital boxes to check when a tv programme had started, we may use objects, or better an object-oriented programming software, without knowing it.
The idea of having objects communicating with each other to get, give, and process data is the core concept behind programming in object-oriented manner.
At the end, if you think about it, this is what happens exactly in the real world. Although we cannot say we are objects, we surely can say that we do communicate with each other in order to gain information or give information, and sometimes we use the functions provided by a object to carry out one or more task.
Think for example when we make a phone call. We use the phone object to reach someone who is far away from us.
In OOP happens exactly the same and we may say that software objects simulates the part of real world that concerns an application. This is often called application domain or problem domain.
Most recent versions of PHP have increased their support for object-oriented programming, giving the tools to create objects' definitions and have them communicate with each other to run tasks for an application.
PHP, being a web scripting language and born as a procedural programming language, doesn't have all the features of pure object oriented programming languages such as Java and SmallTalk but, still, the possibility to create objects in PHP can bring huge benefits in the form of code design and organization and for the creation of more complex web applications. One of the biggest advantages of OOP versus procedural programming is the ability to promote re-use of code (to improve productivity), as well as being able to adapt methodologies like UML (Unified Modelling Language) and documentors (for PHP is phpdocumentor) to provide API documentation for libraries of classes.
(Article Source: weberdev.com)
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Announcing Google Weblogs (beta)
Today we’d like to offer you a sneak peek at an exciting new product we’ve been working on: Google Weblogs.
Since Google bought Pyra Labs in 2002, we’ve been dreaming, planning, and implementing the next revolution in personal publishing: Google Weblogs.
Google Weblogs, or “GWeblogs,” or “Gblogs,” which will launch later this year in a public beta, is the next revolution in personal publishing. Here’s what you can expect:
- Don’t limit yourself to “reverse chronological” publishing. Our advanced Google algorithms put your best content at the top of your blog. Even if your later work goes downhill your previous posts will still shine.
- No more template languages to mess with or sidebars to get right. Our advanced Google algorithms automatically populate your blog’s sidebar with the most relevant possible content.
- Stop worrying about your PageRank or your search engine optimization. Post directly into Google search results for maximum visibility.
- Save your readers time and effort. We’ll automatically extract the most relevant sentence from your post for the index page, along with any necessary ellipsis. We'll also put some words in bold!
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Friday, April 11, 2008
Zend Framework Documantation
Component Goals & Benefits
Succinct descriptions of the major components of Zend Framework, their goals, and benefits. Each developer in the Zend Framework community who worked on a component has explained their thinking behind its design. This includes:
- High level goals for each component
- Design intent of the component
- Benefit gained from using this component
- A link to the Programmer's Reference Guide for that component
Programmer's Reference Guide
Written in a book format, it contains the information a developer needs to actually understand and use each Zend Framework component. Such as:
- Description & goals for a particular component
- Details on the various capabilities of the components
- Code snippets on how to use the component to accomplish real world examples
API Guide
The API Guide is low level phpdoc information for the Zend Framework components. It is useful for developers needing detailed reference information. It contains information such as:
- Interface information
- Details on how program elements interact, which elements use others
- Where in the source code an action or series of actions occurs
- How to extend the code to add new functionality
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Microsoft Posts 14,000 Pages of Office, SharePoint, and Exchange Protocols
Microsoft yesterday announced it has posted 14,000 pages of technical documentation describing how to use the protocols for its Office, SharePoint, and Exchange products. The company says the move brings the total number of pages of technical documentation it has posted to 44,000, and takes another step toward fulfilling the commitment to openness it made in February.
With this move, anybody with an MSDN account can freely access the "preliminary versions" of 14,000 pages of technical documentation for the protocols Microsoft used with Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Exchange Server 2007. Following a review of the preliminary versions, Microsoft expects to release the final versions of the technical documentation by June, at which point it will have decided upon a suitable way to license the information.
The new documentation released yesterday describes the use of protocols for "connection points" between several products, including: Outlook and Exchange Server 2007; Office client applications and SharePoint Server 2007; SharePoint Server 2007 and other Microsoft server products; and Office client applications and other Microsoft server products.
The move follows through on the commitment Microsoft made in February to be less secretive and more open with its customers, business partners, competitors, and open source advocates. As part of that announcement, Microsoft also pledged not to sue open-source programmers for developing software that uses the interfaces.
Microsoft made several other pledges in February that it is in the process of fulfilling. One of these includes the creation of the Open Source Interoperability Initiative, which the company said in February would foster openness between Microsoft and the open source community, including organizing and conducting special events. However, there doesn't appear to be much to this initiative yet except this Microsoft Web page.
Other promises made by Microsoft as part of its Four Principles announcement include enhancing data portability through the creation of new import and export functions in its products (such as Office); enhancing support for open formats (such as ODF) in its products; and adding the capability to change the default file format in its Office applications. A Microsoft spokesperson says the company will announce additional documentation and disclosure schedules in the next several months.
In any event, Microsoft is celebrating the release of the 14,000 pages of preliminary versions of technical documentation. "We believe that providing open, consistent access to these protocols will further unleash the creativity of all developers to work on real-world interoperability solutions," said Tom Robertson, general manager of interoperability and standards at Microsoft.
(Source: itjungle.com)
How to Debug a Web Part for SharePoint 2007
- Open the solution with the web part(s).
- Now goto Project ---> Properties --> Click on Debug ---> Set Start browser with URL to your share point site url e.g. http://sharepoint:80
- Now Build the project. So it creates .dll and .pdb files in bin directory.
- Now copy those both files into C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\ ( Your website)\bin directory.
- Now deploy your web part project. Import the web part into the web part gallery so it is visbile, create a smaple page and add the web part to the page in design view and publish the page.
- Now place a break point on the code of interest in Visual Studio.
- Under the Debug Menu, select Attach to Process
- Find the w3wp.exe process. If none exists, begin browsing to the site that has the web part you are debugging. (I usually conduct an IIS reset so that all of the w3wp.exe processes go away and the sole one that you are interested in is easier to find)
- Watch as the page processes and as soon as your web part is hit, Visual Studio will load symbols and begin the debugging process
- Enjoy....
Magento 1.0 has arrived!!!
My previous post was published before the launch of Magento - Preview Version and was introducing the features those were going to be implemented (and now have been implemented). The preview version was released on 31st August, 2007. So it has been very long time since my last post but busy schedule of life was'nt giving me a single moment for blogging.
And yesterday, on 31st March, 2008, long awaited Production version of Magento Commerce has been released.
Since the release of first preview version, the updates was being released frequently. With every release, Magento was shining more and more. The progress is incredible in very less time. Magento provides lot of exciting features like Multiple Stores and Websites, Google Checkout support, Single Page Checkout, Shipping to multiple addresses in one order and many more.
Varien - Magento Company has already announced parnership and collaboration with Parallels and Media Temple to deliver Magento 1.0 through a one-click installation wizard.
As a developer, the most impressive thing I found in magento is its flexibility for customization. As I have already mentioned in my previous post, magento is developed on Zend Framework and uses MVC architecture, which makes magento easier to maintain. Apart from that, magento also provides out of the box solution for customization. That means, magento can be customized as you need without modifying a single line of code in existing core modules. Instead, you can develop your own modules with specific configuration which overwrite the behavior of existing core modules. I love this way because it provides flexibility for upgrading magento to newer version.
So, on this occasion it really worths if they say:
Open Source eCommerce has officially evolved.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
An Online Reputation Monitoring Tool - Trackur.com
Trackur.com.
What does that mean? It means that Trackur is open for business and fully functional. We want to make sure the servers can handle the load and so will monitor things over the next week, before announcing the official launch.
What happens to Trackur Tracking?
This blog is now hosted in a separate server and new sub-domain: blog.trackur.com. We did this so that should you not be able to reach Trackur for any reason, you should be able to reach this blog for updates and support requests.
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