Managing success in offshore software development

High-end functions like software development are rapidly gaining acceptance as off shore candidates. And as the pattern of off shoring migrates from low-end to high-end work, the challenges faced by the management have moved from dealing with political backlash to more operational issues like retaining managerial control and gaining operational efficiency. As application development becomes increasingly dispersed, those running these projects face a new twist to the age-old challenge of managing distributed software projects. Traditional team management techniques, like scorecards and site meetings, are ineffective and impossible to scale in a world where teams span vast physical, temporal, cultural, and organisational barriers. Managers are finding it increasingly hard to get the facts needed to build a reliable picture of projects and to make informed decisions. Building software in a flat world, characterises this loss of control as a major obstacle to working in a globally distributed environment. I suggest that this problem is experienced by 35 per cent of organisations engaged in off shoring today.

The Duke Booz Allen study agrees with this assessment, suggesting that loss of managerial control has trumped cultural and political issues as the primary challenge for offshore projects today. Absence of factual insight can lead to missed deadlines, budget creep, and a fundamental erosion of trust and goodwill in relationships. The result? Companies waste billions of dollars each year in project overruns, cancellations and missed business goals. This white paper outlines a way for organisations to build a modern framework for managing distributed teams that overcomes the structural challenges of working across far-flung locations, and ensures projects come in as expected—on time, on budget and on target with business goals. This framework reuses your existing development infrastructure to restore visibility and empowered decision making within your globally distributed software development projects.

A tale of two models

Recent hype has blurred the distinctions in offshore development models, making anything offshore nearly synonymous with outsourcing. While offshore outsourcing has garnered most of the attention, customers are also beginning to engage in a model Gartner Group calls ’offshore insourcing’, where companies own and operate the staff, infrastructure and processes by way of organic growth or through acquisitions in offshore locations. While both approaches have different costs and benefits, both are united by the same challenge in maintaining visibility, trust and control when traditional management techniques are applied. The challenges inherent in managing a global team have driven some customers to altogether rethink the notion of outsourcing to offshore third-party suppliers. The number of customers planning to use offshore suppliers is at its lowest in two years: 64 per cent compared to 85 per cent in 2004, according to the Diamond Cluster International 2006 global IT outsourcing study. Customers are breaking outsource contracts in record numbers because of discontent with suppliers’ performance and a feeling that outsourcing deals fail to live up to the anticipated benefits. In fact, 47 per cent were terminated prematurely during the last year, as compared to 21 per cent two years ago. But the reality is that adopting an offshore in sourcing model doesn’t necessarily resolve these challenges. The physical distribution of teams—in source or outsource—negatively impacts visibility and control, making it considerably harder to lead, manage and make informed decisions. "You can’t manage what you can’t measure" is the famous mantra of author of the book Metrics – Reclaiming Visibility and Control. This message is profound in its simplicity, and it has inspired many to adopt a metrics-based approach to management. However, many organisations were ultimately disappointed with their early metrics initiatives. It’s not uncommon to hear managers lament about metrics programs gone awry. Metrics are said to be artificial, inaccurate, costly to collect, and even unethical. And despite the tremendous importance of metrics, many organisations have resigned themselves to failure because of a negative experience with first-generation initiatives. Some of the key limitations of first-generation metrics programs include:

Manual – All data is hand-keyed by people, which is time-consuming and distracting.
Static – Provides a snapshot in time, but doesn’t reflect the dynamism of a project. Subjective – Data input is based on individual interpretations, assumptions and biases.
Coarse – Provides high-level information, but limited detail or context at the process level.
In comparable – Data collection approaches vary from project to project, which limits comparability.

Inaccurate, inconsistent or unempirical metrics can lead to poor project performance and damaged relationships. The key to making offshore projects work is process transparency; transparency brings more predictable outcomes and higher levels of trust. Without process transparency, those running distributed teams are effectively blind, Companies whose instincts have gone stale are like patients with local anesthesia let free to wander the world. They are rational, coherent and aware of their predicament, yet numb. They can no longer sense the world around them.

Company automatically and unobtrusively collects activity-based data from developer tools and delivers on-demand analytics to individuals and teams. These analytics deliver insight into the time spent on specific activities, and provides a basis for understanding team effort and overall project velocity.

Offshore challenges

The following challenges excerpted from Diamond Cluster’s 2006 global IT outsourcing study reflect five of the top challenges managers need to overcome to successfully manage offshore projects. For each of these challenges, there is a relatively simple metrics-based solution:

Limited visibility into day-to-day delivery status

Accurate project data enables you to see where development team members are spending their time, whether there’s a skills shortage, or whether best practices and processes are being followed. Outsourcers who share this sort of data with their clients witness higher levels of trust and lower attrition rates.

Slippage in project deadlines

Accurate and up-to-date visibility into the effort and investments being made provides powerful insight into the focus of individuals and teams and a basis for ensuring alignment with overall project goals

Inadequate work estimation capabilities

Too often, estimation is based on artificial units of measure such as elapsed time. But the reality is that elapsed time is a very inaccurate proxy for estimating the time it will take to build software. Elapsed time estimates typically over or under account for multi-tasking and environmental distractions. Organisations need an empirical basis for estimating the effort required to complete a work effort based on the actual ’active’ time it take to complete a work effort.

Ensuring use of best practices

Best practices ensure you can consistently replicate successful work patterns. But the reality is that measuring best-practice adherence is very difficult in a distributed environment. Activity-based metrics can help you achieve visibility into process alignment and work patterns.

This provides a basis for managing the blend, pace and sequence of work. Inadequate skill proficiency and experience, understanding the breadth, depth and location of specialised skills is easier said than done in large organisations. Use activity-based metrics to document individuals’ experience with tools, technologies and activities in the development life cycle.

Inadequate skill proficiency and experience

Understanding the breadth, depth and location of specialised skills is easier said than done in large organisations. Use activity-based metrics to document individuals’ experience with tools, technologies and activities in the development life cycle.

source:- merinews.com/

Beyond BPO and into knowledge process outsourcing

Organisations have been outsourcing and offshoring business processes for many years now, to take advantage of the lower cost of labour in developing countries such as India or China. Many of these Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) contracts have focused on large scale transaction processing, frequently in 'non-core' processes such as accounting or human resources, or in areas of perceived lower value or complexity.

Recently this trend has begun to change.

Low-value, 'lift and drop' contracts have run into some severe and well-publicised problems. In the UK, most of us have either had, or heard about, a bad experience with an offshore customer service agent usually suffering from inadequate language skills or a lack of knowledge. On the other side of the fence, the offshore call centre agents themselves often face daunting overnight shifts (to field daytime calls from the other side of the world) and a job offering limited professional challenges to skilled graduates. Under these circumstances it's not surprising that offshore staff attrition rates per year can routinely be over 50% and that serious questions around customer satisfaction and operational stability have become common.

As these problems have hindered the development of offshore call centres and even prompted some organisations like LloydsTSB to use their onshore call centres as a selling point, other factors have led BPO providers to offer more complex, knowledge-based services that sit far closer to the core business. These higher-value processes, while still offering reduced cost, also take advantage of the wider availability of qualified talent in developing countries, exploit the benefits of operating in different time zones and allow added flexibility for ad-hoc or short-term projects.

Moving up the value chain
The issue of global talent is key - onshore availability of skilled graduates, say in the UK, is small compared with a country such as India with an estimated 2.5 million new graduates and 500,000 postgraduates entering the job market every year. The price of this offshore talent is far lower than the UK too. In fact, the wage differential between near and offshore skilled professionals with significant experience is greater than that of the graduates with lower levels of skill and experience traditionally hired into the transaction processing operations like call centres. Bearing this in mind, the higher knowledge-based BPO presents a better business case than low-value deals, albeit on a smaller scale. Crucially, higher-value BPO arrangements give offshore workers a far greater degree of job satisfaction and potential for career progression - helping to address the high attrition rates and customer service issues associated with transactional and support processes. Tasks are typically analytical and require staff to be highly qualified, professional and mature.

With many organisations now operating on a global scale, using third-party talent sourced from worldwide locations also means that business can respond and serve customers regardless of the time zone they operate in. The flexibility of using a third-party BPO provider also allows organisations to easily and quickly scale operations up or down in line with seasonal or otherwise predictable peaks.

Challenging underlying business assumptions

The cost savings offered by high-value BPO deals are important, but arguably of greater significance are the strategic opportunities that were not available with the traditional onshore models. Most human capital-intensive business processes within corporations were designed and based on certain underlying assumptions: about the supply, the demand and the price for talent in the geography where the process was originally based. When this underlying constraint is relaxed through global sourcing, the results can be dramatically different.

The idea is that by applying new knowledge, skill-sets or business savvy that were not previously affordable or available, organisations can enable new services or capabilities that, in the past, could not have been considered feasible. For example, one customer of Cognizant in the healthcare insurance industry has been taking advantage of skilled Indian labour to improve the effectiveness and extent of its investigation of fraudulent claims. Previously, with onshore employees the company wouldn't investigate any cases below $1,000, as the costs involved would outweigh that of the potential fraud itself. Taking advantage of the lower cost of labour has allowed the threshold to be brought down to $500, allowing more leads to be chased and reducing margin leakage.

This 'knowledge process outsourcing' approach should also have benefits for providers - involvement in these areas of a client's business brings greater understanding of business issues and the opportunity to serve clients better. For those outsourcing vendors who also offer IT services, there are opportunities to bundle together different services and offer complete packages to their clients, taking increasing accountability for delivering business outcomes.

Cost remains a strong motivator in outsourcing decisions, but the ability to source global talent to deliver business processes brings new challenges and opportunities. Organisations have to change their decision process to make the most of this worldwide knowledge base. They need to ask themselves, not how much more cheaply and efficiently a particular process can be done, but why they are doing it in the first place and whether they could achieve a different customer 'experience' if they had access to skills, expertise and talent at price points which were not previously possible.

source:- financeweek.co.uk/

How Offshore Outsourcing Affects Customer Satisfaction

The outsourcing of customer service to offshore providers has gotten a lot of bad press in the U.S., with reports citing language problems and the exporting of jobs. But, despite the potential for such reports to alienate consumers, this offshoring continues to grow, driven mainly by the lower labor costs overseas.

Are companies that send customer service abroad making a mistake? It's hard to answer that question without knowing offshoring's actual impact on customer satisfaction.

Our research indicates the effect in most cases is significantly negative -- but similar to the effect of outsourcing customer service domestically. That suggests companies shouldn't necessarily forgo the savings they can reap from offshoring. But if they're going to do it, they'd better do it right.

Negative Numbers

We analyzed the offshoring and outsourcing activities of 150 North American companies and business units from 1998 to 2006. As a group, those that outsourced customer service saw a drop in their score on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, or ACSI, a measure created by the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan. The declines were roughly the same whether companies outsourced customer service domestically or overseas.

ACSI scores tend to move in the same direction as companies' share prices. Based on the historical data showing that connection, the average ACSI decline we found at companies outsourcing customer service is associated with a drop of roughly 1% to 5% in a company's market capitalization, depending on what industry the company is in.

That's a steep price to pay. But there are ways to make outsourced customer service more palatable to customers or to mitigate its negative effects, and in some respects that may be easier to do with offshoring. And there are offshoring alternatives that can save a company money without damaging its relationship with its customers.

An important step companies can take to improve the quality of outsourced customer service is to ensure that the provider has all the information necessary to help the customer and full authority to do so. Sometimes, because a company wants to protect information about its customers, the customer-service provider isn't given complete customer histories and profiles. Or the provider's authority to resolve complaints is limited; for instance, the provider may not be permitted to grant credits to customers. Companies need to weigh their concerns about information security and financial control against the damage that such arrangements can do to customer satisfaction.

Tapping Technology

Companies can also make customer service more effective by taking advantage of the technological innovations that some providers offer, and here there may sometimes be an advantage in offshoring. That's because some foreign outsourcing providers have offerings their domestic counterparts can't match in terms of technologies that help guide customer service by recognizing patterns in consumer behavior.

One way to mitigate the damage from outsourcing customer service is to invest the money the company saves to improve the quality of the company's products or services, or to cut prices, rather than simply pocket the savings as extra profit. Our findings suggest that this isn't happening in most cases. Among the companies we studied that had outsourced customer service, there was no increase in the perceived-value component of their overall customer-satisfaction score: Their customers didn't feel that they were getting any more for their money than they did before the company started outsourcing.

Here again there may be an advantage in offshoring. If a company can save more by sending customer service overseas, it will have more opportunity to devote at least some of that money to upgrading its business.

In addition to considering whether or not to offshore customer service, companies should consider whether back-office functions such as information technology may be suitable for offshoring. Our study found that back-office offshoring had no effect on overall customer satisfaction. So the savings a company garners this way aren't offset by dissatisfaction among customers.

source:- online.wsj.com/

Search Engine optimization to get top rankings in search engines

This is one of the most comprehensive websites where you can find all the SEO optimization services at the same time. Some websites offer you link building while other specializes in submissions but none of these have taken a step as bold as www.diligenceseo.com. This website offers you link building, article submission, directory submission, web promotion, search engine ranking and much more. In short, this is the website where you will find everything you can ever wish. This is one of the most comprehensive websites where you can find all the SEO optimization services at the same time. Some websites offer you link building while other specializes in submissions but none of these have taken a step as bold as www.diligenceseo.com. This website offers you link building, article submission, directory submission, web promotion, search engine ranking and much more. In short, this is the website where you will find everything you can ever wish. Over the last few years people have been wishing someone would take a bold step and provide them with all the SEO services at one place. This is a very difficult feat to manage but www.diligenceseo.com took the matter in its own hand and provided its customers with everything they have wished for. Providing even a few of these services is not easy but www.diligenceseo.com has succeeded in managing all of the SEO services in one place. www.diligenceseo.com has a deep understanding of this business. Although the company has just launched its website but it has been in this industry for more then 5 years offering its services to customers from around the world. During this time period www.diligenceseo.com took the liberty of doing a research on the needs and requirements of its customers. After concluding its research the company finally decided to expand its business by launching a website of its own. “We have been thinking about launching the website for a long time but we were waiting for the right time” said a close aide at the launch party of the website. The website has been beautifully designed with great color combination. The webmasters have used the latest software to develop the website. There are separate links available to each type of services that is offered by www.diligenceseo.com. When you click the link you will be taken to the respective page where you would be required to fill a form with information regarding the service you need. The biggest advantage is that the registration to the site is absolutely free whereas the services are available at nominal charges. www.diligenceseo.com understands that there is much more to the SEO services then just offering the article submission or directory submission. If you wish to get your website to the top ranking then you will need understanding of search engine ranking algorithms. This is an impossible task for computer based software and thus human editors are appointed the task to manually handle each and every request of the customer. This ensures that the customers are getting what they are paying for. These webmasters stay in constant contact with you and gives you a progress report as often as you want. In return it helps the customers to keep track of the development taking place and point out things they want changed or included at the right time. All experts and users realize that meta tags and alt tags are extremely important when it comes to internal optimization. These tags are the bloodline of optimization therefore only those who specialize in alt tags and meta tags are allowed to handle this area of optimization. www.diligenceseo.com is a unique website in its own right. No matter what kind of services you have in mind, the experienced staff at www.diligenceseo.com will provide you with it to the point you are not satisfied. A convener says “We train our staff in such a way that they go to every extent to ensure customer satisfaction”. Did you find this article useful? For more useful tips & hints, Points to ponder and keep in mind, techniques & insights pertaining to Google Adsense.


source:- pr-usa.net/

Expert urges SEO for press releases

Companies should aim to target the public as well as journalists by using search engine optimisation (SEO) in their press releases, one expert has claimed.

Writing on Search Engine Watch, Mark Jackson notes that few websites utilise SEO in their press releases.

He observes: "Even though many continue to issue press releases, few have made adjustments to their efforts to include press release optimisation for the digital community and to further their interactive marketing - and specifically SEO - efforts."

However, firms must ensure there is enough content in their press releases to get the most out of them in terms of SEO, according to Dawn Gibbins writing for Real Business.

She claimed earlier this month that each webpage should have around 200 words on it.

Ms Gibbins also suggests that one of the criteria for good SEO is updating websites with fresh content, which press releases will help to do.

What are the benefits of writing press releases to using a syndicated news service application?

Business Feet deliver targeted results through search engine optimisation.

source:- businessfeet.com/

Indian Web Design Company Forays into United States Web Design Market

Visuals India is a leading India based company providing services in Web Design, Graphics Design, Multimedia, Branding, Internet Marketing SEO/SEM, Print Design and other services.
	Visuals India is a Chennai, India based world class integrated Web design and Offshore outsourcing company. Visuals India specializes in web designing, graphics designing, brand building, Internet Marketing, SEO / SEM services and Multimedia services. Visuals India offers turnkey services in Website Design, Multimedia Presentations, Advertising Design, SEO Services and Software Development Services, including Software and Application Development. Visuals India's strengths lie in delivering high quality creative communication designs that meet client requirements and surpass customer expectations, time and again. For a closer look at our creative works, feel free to browse though the Portfolio section of Visuals India website. For any company vying to get on the fast track of growth, Visuals India offers a whole gamut of branding and marketing services – both in the traditional and new-age mediums. Visuals India's main focus is in the below areas: • Website Design; • Web Portal Development; • Multimedia Production; • Graphics design services; • GUI design services; • Advertising Services; • Software Development; • SEO services; • Internet Marketing services; All of Visuals India's services adhere to the highest standards in quality and creativity.

source:- newswiretoday.com/

Top Five Strategies To Improve Google Search Engine Marketing

In the face of a struggling economy, it is essential for companies to increase marketing dollars in areas that offer the most potential sales. Achieving first page exposure on Google or other major search engines is one of the most effective ways to reach the most potential customers and produce immediate sales results. Heather Lutze, a nationally recognized Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Expert, Speaker, Author and CEO of Lutze Consulting, offers the Top Five Strategies To Improve Google Search Engine Marketing Results Using The FindAbility Formula(TM) at her upcoming workshops and speaking sessions. Lutze, who has a proven track record of helping thousands of online businesses increase their bottom line results, targets these strategies to business executives across all sectors who want to learn SEM. To learn the Top Five Strategies To Improve Google Search Engine Marketing Results, please go to http://www.lutzeconsulting.com/topic.asp?P=topfive.

Meeting Managers and Conference Organizers are eager to bring to their clients one of the most notable Internet Marketing expert trainers. Lutze offers non-technical training sessions on how to create and manage successful search marketing campaigns. As organizations are searching for ways to cut costs and limit travel, Lutze brings search engine marketing education to businesses around the country during a high-energy and informative presentation designed for business promoters responsible for gaining more customers and driving sales.

Lutze frequently delivers search marketing success strategies at national conferences/events and speaks competently on all SEM elements from implementing campaigns to increasing market share on Google, MSN, Yahoo! and more. Since 1991, she has been an expert trainer and speaker at leading workshops including, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Pay Per Click (PPC) Summit. She will present at the PPC Summit in Los Angeles, Sept. 25-26, 2008.

Lutze will also speak at the National Speakers Association (NSA) Conference in the session, "Become the Easiest Speaker To Find Online - Learn How to Achieve First Page Search Engine Presence Using FindAbility Formula," on Aug. 4 at 10:00 a.m. at the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square. Lutze will also preview her new book, "FindAbility Formula, The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing," which outlines strategies for optimal online marketing exposure.

Raving early manuscript reviews include:

"The FindAbility Formula book is literally worth its weight in gold! After following Heather's advice, traffic on our site is up and our sales have increased dramatically," according to The Guerilla Group's Senior Partner and Co-Author of Guerrilla Selling Orvel Ray Wilson. "Heather has definitely 'cracked the code' and de-mystified search marketing for the rest of us!"

Most recently, Lutze appeared on Speaker Magazine's May cover and was featured as an up-and-coming new speaker in 2008. She is also a contributing writer for Search Engine Marketing Journal. Lutze is committed to educating online businesses and helping them understand all aspects of Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click and more. To download a free report on the Top Five Strategies To Improve Google SEM, go to http://www.lutzeconsulting.com/topic.asp?P=topfive. Lutze tackles Internet marketing issues and has successfully trained 2000+ online business promoters.


source:- eworldwire.com/

Tzunami Announces a New Version of Tzunami Deployer for Sharepoint 2003 Migration

The Latest Version Offers Enhanced Features for Migrating Content From SharePoint 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS)

Tzunami Inc., the pioneers and one of the leading providers of content migration technologies announced today the release of the latest version of its Tzunami Deployer for SharePoint 2003 Migration. Version 2.3 provides enhanced features for migrating content from SharePoint 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) at a lower, fixed-price than alternative systems. Added benefits include full support for Site Templates and lists, maintaining list views, an improved Rule Engine to automate the migration process and overall user interaction.

"Our latest version of Tzunami Deployer for SharePoint 2003 Migration has been developed in response to the current demands in the marketplace for an economically viable solution that meets all content migration needs," said Nimrod Berger VP Global Sales and Marketing of Tzunami. "With our vast industry experience, Tzunami has created a solution that is not only technologically sophisticated, offering a rich-user experience, but which provides a strong return on SharePoint technology investment."

Tzunami Deployer for SharePoint 2003 Migration is a stand-alone application enabling rapid content migration to advanced SharePoint 2007 structures. Key features include property and value mapping which allows users to manage the migration of metadata while retaining vital enterprise information. Furthermore, the solution fully supports and preserves security settings and handles all types of items, documents and site collections. Whether it is required to maintain the current structure during migration or completely remodel, the solution enables users to model, customize or redefine the structure of the migrated content.

Tzunami Deployer for SharePoint 2003 is part of the Tzunami Deployer Family of Products. A simple, multi-source tool, Tzunami Deployer seamlessly transfers data from all major legacy Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems as well as customized solutions. Features such as a powerful graphic user interface with easy-to-use drag and drop features, streamline business-critical processes simply and efficiently. Furthermore, Tzunami Deployer automates the entire process of migrating unstructured content and provides remote access to sites, including those behind firewalls. Tzunami Deployer saves time and easily transfers content from multiple sources including: File\Network Shares; SharePoint Portal Server 2001; SharePoint 2003/WSS 2.0; MOSS/WSS 3.0; Exchange Public Folders; LiveLink; DocuShare; EMC Documentum; EMC eRoom; Hummingbird DM; Hyperwave; Plumtree/AquaLogic; Lotus Notes; custom repositories and others.

Source:- marketwatch.com/

Neues Buch und erster Rückblick auf Symfony 1.1

Das Symfony-Framework gilt mit als einer der Shootingstars unter den PHP-Frameworks. Passend zum erst vor wenigen Wochen erschienenen Release 1.1 wurde jetzt auch das erste Buch zum Framework veröffentlicht, das sich ganz der aktuellen Version 1.1 widmet.

Der Autor Timo Haberkern, Softwarearchitekt und PHP-Experte, geht hier auf die Grundlagen des Frameworks ein, wirft aber auch einen detaillierten Blick "unter die Haube" des Frameworks; hat sich hier mit dem Update auf die Version 1.1 doch einiges geändert.

So wurde zum Beispiel die Plattform der Version 1.1 im Vergleich zur Vorgängerversion einem kompletten Refactoring unterzogen, das Form Handling übernimmt ein eigenes Form-Framework und das Plug-in-System unterstützt vollständig das PEAR-API, wie auch Stefan Koopmanschap, Symfony-Befürworter, in seinem aktuellen Rückblick auf Symfony 1.1 zu berichten weiß.

Um den Management-Prozess vor dem Hintergrund der steigenden Popularität des PHP-Frameworks transparenter gestalten zu können, haben die Developer die weitere Entwicklung auf einen termingetriebenen Release-Zyklus umgestellt. Symfony 1.2 steht bereits in den Startlöchern und wird für Oktober 2008 anvisiert.

source:- derentwickler.de/

Web Portals Must Improve Privacy Protection

Even an insensitive person does not dare to read all comments on the Internet because of indiscriminate posts espousing vicious attacks. False rumors such as suspected plastic surgery or a fake story can kill the career of a celebrity. One celebrity who suffered from a scandal has proposed the designation of attempted online murder as a crime. Justice Minister Kim Gyeong-han said yesterday that he will consider designating as a crime cyber humiliation. Vicious comments that damaged the government while candlelight protests rocked the country and negative comments linger on the Internet.

The government yesterday announced comprehensive measures for personal information protection on the Internet to reduce the negative influence of the Web. Cyberspace is now filled with libelous statements. Even after a victim asked that the vicious comments be erased, the portals kept and made money from the comments while showing them to their users. They benefited from the lack of punishment and exploited loopholes. A step in the right direction was the revision to a law that includes making it mandatory for Web portals such as Daum to monitor comments, take temporary measures upon request by victims, and punish those who posted the comments.

Korean social security numbers sold on Chinese Web sites can be used in crime, giving the Korean people cause for worry. Early this year, the Internet shopping mall Auction lost the personal information of 10 million clients, and the number of voice phishing has since increased. If no laws protect online privacy, an organization should not collect personal information and if it does, it should strictly protect it. In a similar story, the National Health Insurance Corp. and the National Pension Service should be held responsible for their employees looking at subscribers’ personal information for non-work purposes. A society where privacy is not protected cannot advance.

Major Web portals are largely to blame for prompting the new government measures. For an Internet venture, the new rules can be a burden. This could also hamper the growth of the Internet industry. Major portals that made big money from vicious comments must help venture companies with facility investment and technology development for privacy protection. The portals have a large responsibility to Web users unlike other countries, and another heavy role in maintaining industrial ecology and society. Law plays only a minimal part.

source:- english.donga.com/

E-Commerce Solutions and E-Commerce Business Solutions

If you want to build an e-business or take your existing business online, the TECHNO BIZ solution can provide your business website with the tools and web hosting it needs. If you want to build an e-business or take your existing business online, the TECHNO BIZ solution can provide your business website with the tools and web hosting it needs. This complete, easy-to-use ecommerce solution, offers all the ecommerce functionality you need, including entry-level catalogue, shopping cart and real-time transaction processing, custom shipping tables, support for instant payment gateway solutions, and much more.

Whether you simply want real-time credit card processing or need high-end inventory management and sophisticated supply chain communication, the TECHNO BIZ solutions will meet your needs. Simply put, with TECHNOs BIZ solutions unique package of ecommerce software and business web hosting, it's easier to make money online than ever before. E-commerce business solutions are developing quickly to keep pace with the demand of e-commerce businesses. Ecommerce development is an endeavor that proves to be complex if the business does not have all of the tools they will need to make their business successful readily available. The e-commerce business solutions on today’s market aim at providing businesses with a convenient way to establish an online store or business and to sell products online. So much goes into establishing an eCommerce site that many of today’s e-commerce business solutions make the task far easier than it was ever before.

E-Commerce Solutions offers complete front and back end technology to do business on the web. Specializing in Shopping carts systems and customized programming to distinguish your e-business from the rest. Ecommerce is the conduct of business – mainly, but not exclusively, selling and buying of products and services– over electronic systems such as the internet and other computer networks. A wide variety of commerce at Techno Consultancy is conducted this way – entry-level catalogue, shopping cart and real-time transaction processing, custom shipping tables, support for instant payment gateway solutions, and much more.

E-commerce business solutions are developing quickly to keep pace with the demand of e-commerce businesses. Ecommerce development is an endeavor that proves to be complex if the business does not have all of the tools they will need to make their business successful readily available. The e-commerce business solutions on today’s market aim at providing businesses with a convenient way to establish an online store or business and to sell products online. So much goes into establishing an eCommerce site that many of today’s e-commerce business solutions make the task far easier than it was ever before.

Ecommerce is the conduct of business – mainly, but not exclusively, selling and buying of products and services– over electronic systems such as the internet and other computer networks. A wide variety of commerce at Techno Consultancy is conducted this way – entry-level catalogue, shopping cart and real-time transaction processing, custom shipping tables, support for instant payment gateway solutions, and much more. If you want to build an e-business or take your existing business online, the TECHNO BIZ solution can provide your business website with the tools and web hosting it needs. This complete, easy-to-use ecommerce solution, offers all the ecommerce functionality you need, including entry-level catalogue, shopping cart and real-time transaction processing, custom shipping tables, support for instant payment gateway solutions, and much more.

source:- pr-usa.net/

New data shows open source software often doesn't employ best practices for securing code

Fortify Software has released its Open Source Security Study which reveals that the most widely-used open source software packages for the enterprise are exposing users to significant and unnecessary business risk.

The study validates that Open Source Software (OSS) development communities have yet to adopt a secure development process and often leave dangerous vulnerabilities unaddressed.

Additionally, the study found that nearly all OSS communities fail to provide users access to security expertise to help remediate these vulnerabilities and security risks.

“Open source software is an Achilles Heel in today’s corporate enterprises, and should be a significant concern for CIOs who depend on open source software to run their business,” said Howard Schmidt, former cyber security advisor to the White House and (ISC)2 Board Member. “This is an endemic issue that starts in the open source community, and while open source software faces the same vulnerabilities as commercial or in-house developed software, the mechanisms aren’t as prevalent in open source communities to influence a secure development process.”

The survey, sponsored by Fortify Software and completed by leading application security consultant Larry Suto, examined 11 of the most common Java open source packages. In order to evaluate the security expertise offered to users and to measure the secure development processes in place in OSS communities, Fortify interacted with open source maintainers and examined documented open source security practices. Additionally, multiple versions of each package were downloaded and scanned for vulnerabilities using Fortify SCA (the static analyzer found in Fortify’s security suite, Fortify 360). Manual scanning was also executed on security-sensitive areas of code.

Increased enterprise adoption of open source is evidenced by reports from a number of leading analyst firms, including Gartner, which recently reported that by 2011, 80% of commercial software will include elements of open source technology (Gartner, The State of Open Source 2008,” April 2008). Additionally, an April 2008 survey from CIO reported that more than half of its respondents are using open source applications in their organizations today . A recent report from Forrester Research noted that for over 88% of respondents, security of open source software was an important concern (Source: Forrester Research: Enterprise and SMB Software Survey, 2007)

Although enterprise adoption of OSS has steadily increased, little has been done within the OSS community to implement enterprise-worthy application security measures. As a result of the survey, Fortify recommends that enterprises should follow the example of financial services companies in applying risk and coding analysis techniques to their open source software.

In addition, enterprises should:

­ Raise security awareness within open source development communities and emphasize the importance of preventing vulnerabilities upstream. Enterprise security teams should articulate their security requirements to open source maintainers to accelerate the adoption of secure development lifecycles.
­ Perform assessments to understand where their open source deployments and components stand from a security standpoint.
­ Remediate vulnerabilities internally or leverage Fortify’s Java Open Review which provides audited versions of several open source packages.

"Most open source communities do not follow enterprise-level change control standards," says Jennifer Bayuk, independent security consultant and former CISO of Bear Stearns. "There is a hidden cost for the enterprise in using open source because they have to test and patch for security bugs they don't anticipate."

“Today’s enterprises are built and operated by software that comes from a variety of sources,” commented Roger Thornton, founder and CTO of Fortify Software. “The software could be developed in-house, purchased off-the-shelf, outsourced, or as we’re seeing more often, based on open source. In order to mitigate the business risk created by insecure applications, it is imperative that companies adopt a process that allows them to assess, remediate and prevent security vulnerabilities in all of their business software, whatever the source.”

source:- publictechnology.net/

3d Design, Illustration, Pixel Art and More Now Available from Volatyle Flash Web Design

After years of working in the web design and graphics industry, Volatyle Flash Web Design have built up close working relationships with several tried and tested professionals, allowing us to offer our clients an extensive range of services including 3d Design and Animation, Illustration, Pixel Art and Digital Photography to take our website designs to an exceptional level.

After years of working in the web design and graphics industry, Volatyle Flash Web Design have built up close working relationships with several tried and tested professionals, allowing us to offer our clients an extensive range of services including 3d Design and Animation, Illustration, Pixel Art and Digital Photography to take our website designs to an exceptional level.
By providing all of these world class services under one roof, we can provide you with professional quality work for very affordable prices.

Character Design & Animation

We work closely with a dedicated team of versatile artists to produce original character designs and animations. The team have exceptional imagination and skill and can create designs in either 2d or 3d that will take your website to the next level.

Illustration

Providing visuals for our websites and print work, our Illustrators are experts in Photoshop and vector based illustration. If you require truly stunning artwork for your website, we can provide artistic services to fit your budget.

3D Design & Animation

Our 3D graphical artists and animators work with several high profile clients, and can produce truly breathtaking graphics for surprisingly affordable prices. Let your imagination run wild with ideas for your website's 3D content, the possibilities are endless.

Pixel Art

Pixel Art is an increasingly popular throwback form of digital artwork, based on the style of old, low resolution computer games and graphics. Creating highly imaginative artwork with incredible attention to detail, our Pixel Artists can give your website or print work an exciting and original look.

Digital Photography

Due to the popularity of our dynamic Flash websites with photographers, impressed with the ability to have full control over their image content, we have built up several close working relationships which now enable us to offer our clients an excellent range of digital photographic services. Contact us if you require high quality photos to include in your new or existing websites.

Please visit http://www.volatyle.co.uk for more information

source:- prweb.com/

Search Engine Optimization Journal Adds Website Analytics Section to Blog

Having a web design firm build an e-commerce website is easy these days. Interview a few firms, find one that fits a specific budget and have them start building. There are details that many start up online entrepreneurs forget about, analytics (http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/category/analytics/).

Search Engine Optimization Journal has added a new analytics section to their already established industry blog. Search Engine Optimization Journal knows there is a tremendous need for knowledge on this important aspect of building a website that they have added an entirely new section dedicated towards this information. When launching a website it is just as important to know where all visitors are coming from as it is just driving visitors to a site. How can a website visitor make informed decisions on marketing their website when they don't even know their visitors patterns on the site? It is very important to know when a visitor sits on a page for five minutes or fifteen seconds so that a website owner knows where to make adjustments on a website. Knowing your websites visitors patterns will allow you to have an advantage. When it comes time to make adjustments to a website they can be made according to well gathered data instead of guesses. When a business owner has just dumped their life's savings into a business the livelihood of that business will depend on how website visitors use every square inch of that particular website.

Before diving into any marketing and search engine optimization (http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com) for a freshly built website the website owner should allow the privilege of having some sort of analytics information to not only present to their team but also for themselves to analyze. No successful online business makes in today's industry without being able to analyze all analytics data. If the plan is to have an in-house team of marketers for a particular website they will base many of their marketing decisions on this analytics information. With analytics information the team will be able to see what countries visitors are coming from and how long they are spending on a specific page. They can also see exactly which links are working to help grow a business. If a marketing department has been performing social media marketing for 6 months and the website analytics tells the team that nobody has used that link to make it to the site than they know that shifting gears in a different direction will be beneficial. Without have analytics information they would never see if a referring link was actually working or if it was just sitting there quiet. In today's ever changing industry it is important to have as much ammo as possible otherwise a businesses marketing efforts could be wasted and that is something that is just not acceptable these days. Well gathered analytics information will allow any business to allocate their marketing dollars in the direction most beneficial to the success of that specific business.

source:- pr-usa.net/

MultiFactor SecureAuth(R) for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

MultiFactor Corporation, an innovator in 2-factor authentication, Microsoft web application security and VPN Authentication solutions, today announced the availability of SecureAuth 4.5 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, a secure access solution for enterprise portals.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 is Microsoft's industry-leading platform for document management, enterprise content search and data aggregation. Office SharePoint Server 2007 is increasingly utilized as the offering of choice for scalable portals to both internal users, extranet partners and customers. The ability of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to expose content, previously only available to intranet users, is unparalleled in portal products.

MultiFactor's SecureAuth, a Microsoft Certified solution is specifically designed for integration into the ASP.NET application framework. SecureAuth offers a deployable, non-phishable, authentication solution that requires no extra servers or infrastructure.

"Office SharePoint Server is a robust platform designed to meet the business needs and resource constraints faced by the enterprise today," said Deb Bannon, SharePoint Senior Product Manager. "The integration of Office SharePoint Server with products like MultiFactor SecureAuth enables the enterprise to further secure content shared across the intranet and with extranet partners."

"SecureAuth utilizes native ASP.NET authentication and data integration features to seamlessly integrate into an Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment. SecureAuth takes advantage of the new forms based authentication features in SharePoint Server 2007 to redirect the user to the SecureAuth solution and then conduct a secure, non-phishable validation," said Garret Grajek, COO of MultiFactor Corporation. "Upon authentication the user is redirected back to SharePoint Server 2007 to obtain the roles and permissions set up by the SharePoint Server 2007 administrative console."

In conjunction with the Office SharePoint Server platform, SecureAuth is able to deliver a secure credential, mapped directly to the individual user. SecureAuth utilizes the existing data store shared by the Office SharePoint Server 2007 platform, thus eliminating the need to create or replicate an additional data store.

About MultiFactor Corporation

MultiFactor Corporation delivers proven two factor authentication, web application security, and VPN security methodologies. SecureAuth is a tokenless authentication solution generates and validates client and server side certificates without PKI. MultiFactor Corporation's real-world security solutions draws from a diversified team of cryptographers, network and Web application specialists and certified security engineers to provide inexpensive and easily deployed security solutions.

source:- marketwatch.com/

New SugarCRM Solution Pack from SnapLogic

In a bid to make it easier for enterprises to integrate data on both sides of the enterprise firewall and create mash-ups and rich Internet applications, integration company SnapLogic has announced the release of aSugarCRM ( News - Alert) Solutions Pack.

The new offering is an extension of the SnapLogic open source data integration framework and will be available for download starting August 4th.

“SnapLogic uniquely provides enterprises the ability to seamlessly integrate data on both sides of the enterprise firewall and the flexibility to run their integrations and data transformations behind the firewall or in the cloud,” said Chris Marino, chief executive officer, SnapLogic in a statement to the press.

“The SugarCRM Solution Pack provides SugarCRM and SugarCRM On Demand customers all the building blocks they need to easily, securely, and rapidly harness, transform, mash up, and deliver their enterprise data.”

With the SugarCRM Solution Pack, users receive a complete set of SnapLogic Resources for reading, writing, and updating every SugarCRM module, including Accounts, Opportunities, Contacts, and Campaigns. The solution is perfect for situations like migrating customer records from an internal CRM system to SugarCRM on Demand or for creating custom data feeds so authorized users can import SugarCRM data into applications like Excel, as well as a host of other uses.

"SnapLogic allows users to interact and access SugarCRM data without ever having to understand complex APIs. This means small and medium size businesses can access the data using simple Web technologies and don’t have to know anything about the complicated tool chain usually used by big enterprise application development teams," Marino told TMCnet.

Back in April, SnapLogic introduced their "Really Simple Integration" approach aimed at proving business IT groups with agile data integration solutions" so they can quickly and easily make data from databases,SaaS ( News - Alert) applications, SOA Web services and other data sources available for use.

"With Really Simple Integration were really trying to achieve just that. People know how to use Web-based apps, were taking some of that success and applying it to the problem of data integration by providing a simple solution," Marino said.

SnapLogic also announced that it joined SugarCRM’s SugarExchange program.

After receiving a lot of interest from people needing to integrate their CRM applications, Marino explained that SugarCRM was a perfect fit.

"It was a natural choice for us to join SugarExchange and we are anxious to do joint marketing and other promotions to help customers solve their integration problems."


source:- www.tmcnet.com

8 Aug: Drupal Camp India

Drupal Camp India is being organised at DA-IICT, an educational institution situated in Gandhinagar, India, between 8 August and 10 August 2008 to promote an open source CMS 'Drupal' and simultaneously bring its community of IT professionals, Drupal evangelists and students and businesses together.

Drupal is an open source free software package (content management framework) that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organise a wide variety of content i.e. text, image, videos etc. directly on a website. It is registered under GPL (General Public Licence). Drupal has been making inroads into many organisations such as NASA, IBM, SUN, CISCO etc.

Drupal Camp '08 would provide a platform for all Drupal enthusiasts, companies providing Drupal services and IT professionals to come together and exchange their views about Drupal and help promote Drupal in Indian markets. One key goal is to help spreading Drupal awareness amongst students and IT professionals by providing a medium to have a healthy interaction with active Drupalers.

Different events have been lined up for audiences: Drupal Track - for core Drupal programmers; Student Track - for students - Neophytes; Marketing Track - for corporates, governmental agencies; Job Fair - where local and international companies can recruit prospective employees; and Code Sprint - a short development project on Drupal.

Gloscon Solutions, Inc., a Canada-based Drupal services company, is tying up with different software companies and industry associations towards the organising of this event. GLOSCON is one of the largest Drupal-focussed companies in India. Apart from contributing many modules back to the Drupal community, GLOSCON has contributed the 'Gujarati' release of Drupal - first amongst all Indian languages.

source:- efytimes.com/

Blind spot - the trouble with optical drives

Optical drives should be popular. They hold lots of gigabytes, can be intrinsically WORM and hold data for a guaranteed 30 years or more without the periodic refreshes needed by tape. But they are simply not used as a general data archiving product by business, having become niche products in areas such as medical image recording.

Why might this be?

They are slow. This should not be a problem, as tape is slow. Both are slow compared to disk and whoever wanted fast access from an archive medium anyway?

They are small. Again, this is compared to tape cartridges. But why on earth should this be a factor?

They hold less than tape. LTO-4 holds 800GB of raw data. UDO-2 holds 60GB. That means you need 13 UDO-2 disks for every LTO-4 tape cartridge.

They don't come in cartridges, or, at least, CDs and DVDs don't, coming in insubstantial jewel cases instead. This means that they are totally unsuited to automation devices as the robotics could damage the disks when picking them up and moving through the innards of the automation device, typically known as a juke box.

There is no multi-supplier standard for a cartridge-enclosed optical disk. Plasmon's UDO format is the premier, indeed pretty much the only, enterprise-grade optical disk but it is a single source technology. The previous generation magneto-optical (MO) disks and drives were made by several suppliers but have faded away from the market.

It is possible that, as the multi-sourced and therefore open LTO tape format has displaced all other competing tape formats in its market, there needs to be an open enterprise optical standard before optical storage becomes popular.

Plasmon found it hard going establishing its UDO technology with tough and onerous captial -raising and company re-organisations necessary before it found a way to sell it by presenting as just one media part of an overall archive product including software and multiple media types.

The technology is reliable and has a good capacity roadmap but that has not been enough on its own.

This suggests that other proprietary optical technologies will fail unless they offer overwhelming technology advantages, such as a combination of high capacity, fast I/O, 30-year plus reliability, cartridge encasement, and affordability. It is unlikely that any one supplier has the capability of providing all five of these requirements plus a sales channel capability.

This brings us to look the situation of InPhase's holographic disk which offers 300GB capacity, more than the current UDO-2, but has been held back by development problems. It also has a quite expensive drive with $12,000 being mentioned. Not surprisingly it is being marketed as a movie storage mechanism for prefessional movie archive needs.

Call/Recall is developing a 1TB optical disk that would be compatible with Blu-ray. Blu-ray compatibility would hopefully provide an extended market. There is no good information about productisation schedules and pricing.

Pioneer has just announced a 400GB optical technology that could have Blu-ray compatibility. There is no information on productisation schedules and pricing either.

Enterprise optical disk use is held back by, in my estimation, six factors:

1. Lack of multi-vendor standards
2. Lack of compelling capacity
3. Lack of I/O speed
4. Lack of reliability
5. Lack of compelling durability advantages
6. Lack of affordability, given that DVDs or Blu-ray are simply not enterprise-class

Until a vendor builds an enterprise-class optical drive and disk technology that ticks most or all of these boxes there is little probability that a substantial enterprise optical disk market will develop, however many layers there are in a gee-whiz technology coup.

source:- channelregister.co.uk/

PHP and the Zend Framework

In a previous series of articles in IT Jungle, I introduced you to the enablement of the PHP language, via Zend Core, on i5/OS and the capabilities that PHP provides for the development and deployment of Web applications integrated with i5/OS objects and DB2 data. (See Related Stories below.) The customer interest in PHP has been high and I receive numerous questions at customer events on its usage of PHP on IBM i. Many people also ask about Zend Framework. What is Zend Framework? Can I use it on i5/OS? How can I integrate the advanced functionality that Zend Framework provides?

Let's begin with a general description. Zend Framework is a collection of pre-canned objects (classes and function calls) that facilitate the building of modern applications and Web services by integrating advanced functionality into existing Web applications. Zend Framework includes several components:

• Zend_Acl: Provides Access Control List (ACL) functionality and privileges management
• Zend_Config: Simplifies the use of configuration data for Web applications
• Zend_Controller and Zend_View: Provides the infrastructure for Model-View_Controller (MVC) Websites
• Zend_Feed: Provides a simple way to work with live syndicated feeds
• Zend_Filter and Zend_Validate: Facilitates the development of secure Websites by providing basic tools necessary for filtering and validation
• Zend_Gdata: Google data APIs that provide read/write access to services hosted at google.com such as Spreadsheets, Calendar, Blogger, and CodeSearch
• Zend_Mail and Zend_Mime: Create and send email messages
• Zend_PDF: Creates, reads, and modifies PDF documents from PHP applications

The Zend Framework library should be located in a directory that is in the include_path for Zend Core. Typically this would be:

/usr/local/zend/core/include/zend/include

Zend Framework is included and installed as part of Zend Core as of Version 2.5. It can also be downloaded from http://framework.zend.com.

The programmer's reference for Zend Framework can be found at http://framework.zend.com/manual/en. I recommend you refer to it often as you are looking to integrate advanced functionality into your Web/PHP applications.

Let's take a look at one of the Zend Framework capabilities, Zend_Pdf, which facilitates working with PDF documents from your PHP application. A full example of Zend_Pdf can be found at http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.pdf.usage.html. To create and load PDF documents from your PHP application you would first create a PDF class through a statement such as:

$pdf = new Zend_Pdf();

The above statement creates a new instance of the Zend_Pdf object and that instance is referenced through the $pdf variable. Once the instance has been created a document can be loaded from a file through the following call:

$pdf = Zend_PDF::load($filename);

Changes to the PDF document can be saved by calling the 'save' method of the PDF object as follows:

$pdf->save($filename, true);

Note: Prior to usage of the Zend_Pdf class and related function calls you need to include the Zend.pdf framework by including the following line in your PHP code:

require_once 'Zend/Pdf.php'

Do you have questions on PHP and/or MySQL on IBM i? I would love to hear them and have a chance to feature them in future columns in IT Jungle. Send your questions for me to Ted Holt via the IT Jungle Contact page.

Erwin Earley is an advisory software engineer in the IBM lab located in Rochester, Minnesota, and heads up the Open Source Technologies Center of Competency for System i within the System i Technology Center. At that center, he provides education and enablement services for open source related technologies on System i including Linux, MySQL, and Zend's PHP. Earley currently holds certifications from Red Hat as well as the Linux Professional Institute and is a candidate for certification with Zend's PHP.

source:- itjungle.com/

ActiveState Debunks Open Source Myths

There's two major classes of open source myth: the "Open source is evil and strange" myth, and "Open source makes everything perfect forever" myth. It's easy to see how notions so far off-center are far from being universally true, but I'm heartened whenever someone debunks myths on both sides by taking a more moderate stance. Such is the case, intriguingly enough, with a paper entitled "Ten Myths About Running Open Source Software In Your Business," courtesy of ActiveState.

I've learned to be automatically wary of papers like this, if only because their publishers usually have a vested interest in the specific angle being taken. ActiveState's no exception, given that it sells and distributes interpreters for a number of languages on top of which open source solutions are built -- namely, Perl, Python, and Tcl. But they did the smart thing and approached the subject from as close to the center as possible, and the only sales pitches in the paper itself are fairly diffuse and easily separated from the bulk of their claims.

An example: Myth 6 -- Open Source Software Equals Open Standards. "Open source software is simply a licensing model; it does not equal best practices, like incorporating open standards." I'd argue that it's a development model more than it is a licensing model -- but I do agree that openness of code is no guarantee of anything else. It doesn't guarantee interoperability or security, although it sure makes them easier to implement. Another example, from the other side: Myth 5: Licensing Is Always A Nightmare (typically only if you're reusing code in a publicly deployed project), or Myth 1: You Have To Choose Between Open Source And Proprietary Software (the two can interoperate nicely).

What I wonder is, how many of the myths in question are strawmen by now? It would've been interesting to poll a bunch of CIOs and see how much they agree or disagree with said myths -- and maybe in the process find out what myths about open source, positive or negative, are circulating in the wild that don't make it to the pages of whitepapers like these. If they did glean their list of 10 through such a methodology, it isn't clear.

Still, it's useful to have documents like this on hand as a starting point from which to build a good defense of open source in an organization -- should you need to make one.

source:- informationweek.com/

Ultimates Vol. 3 #4 Review

One thing to keep in mind is we're providing you with multiple reviews and multiple scores. To keep things simple (for you and for us), we're limiting this to one Additional Take. The Additional Take reviewer will have his or her score listed directly after their opinion. The Final Score is not affected by this and is directly determined by the Main Reviewer (who is listed in the article's byline).

Any time you feel like commenting on our reviews, you may. Our weekly review index, which is published late Wednesday night, has a comment section. Every review we publish does as well (look below). You can also find our message boards by clicking the link on the left-hand side. Enjoy!

I'm tempted to cut and paste my original review of Ultimates 3 #2 from back in January because issue #4 is almost the exact same thing. By now you know the drill with this book, it's heinous and doesn't stop being heinous even if you try to turn your brain off. Some might've taken last issue's sudden obsession with convoluted backstory as a signal that the dumb action portion of this monstrosity was through, but rest assured, #4 is back to the same nonsense that sunk the first half of this abortive project.

If you've read up through issue #3, you're already familiar with the plot of this one because the storyline is moved incrementally at best. Considering we're now 80% of the way through and we're still more or less where the first issue of it left us, that's not really a great sign. The Ultimates continue to fight the Brotherhood gratuitously, and say stock lines like "Come with me if you want to live" while doing so.

Joe Mad's artwork is kind of nice if you like that sort of thing, but I find that most of the time it approaches absurdity too often for comfort (made exponentially worse with the likes of Shanna now running around in addition to Valkyrie and, really, anyone with breasts). But by now none of this can come as a shock to anyone. It's business as usual for Ultimates 3, and I doubt anyone expected the book to up its game this far along. In fact, I wouldn't even bat an eyelash if it weren't for the tiny little nugget of development that Loeb unleashes towards the end of this issue.

In short, this issue reveals a "secret" conspiracy element that basically has the potential to explain why this book has sucked so bad for four issues straight. Doing a basic truth reversal like this one works if orchestrated the right way (see: Xorn into Magneto, for instance), but Ultimates 3 demonstrates how to do it wrong and piss people off at the same time. Not only can a case be made for a thinly-veiled Secret Invasion rip but, in essence, we've waded through four issues of the worst book Marvel puts on the stands because of a trumped-up conspiracy that only rears its head in the home stretch. That's evident of terrible plotting, complete lack of forethought, and total abandonment of skill. This scripting inanity, coupled with the earlier (and still present) offenses of juvenile frat house comedy, the utter misunderstanding of the fundamentals of these characters, and how basic superhero fight dialogue is meant to operate, and Ultimates 3 is about as amateur an affair as you're likely to find from the Big Two.

There are two kinds of bad comics: the kind that must've sounded like a good idea when it was pitched but somehow faltered, and then the kind that is, was, and always will be so fundamentally flawed at its core that whoever green-lighted it had to have been kidding. Four-fifths of the way through, I'm reasonably certain I know which camp Ultimates 3 falls into.

sorce:- http://comics.ign.com

Reliable Sites Expands Design/Programming Team

Reliable Sites, the St. Paul-based web services company, has added Perry Govier to the design and programming department. Govier, currently a student at UW-Stout, brings a background in digital imaging and videography to the design and programming team.

Working in design and programming, Govier will be creating, planning and implementing new and current websites. Govier is skilled in Flash design and his knowledge of web design technology makes him a perfect fit with the experienced design and programming staff at Reliable Sites.

Splitting his time, Govier returns to UW-Stout in the fall to complete a degree in Multimedia Design. He will be lending his talents to Reliable Sites on a part-time basis, merging the latest techniques learned in class with Reliable Sites’ commitment to efficiently designed websites.

Prior to joining the Reliable Sites team, Govier designed sites for Johnston and Kody Productions and worked for Northern Lights Productions as a video director. He went to UW-Milwaukee for Digital Imaging, Video, Animation and Sound.

Reliable Sites, LLC is a web services company located in downtown St. Paul. Catering to small and medium-sized businesses, Reliable Sites creates eye-catching, search-engine friendly websites. Through Reliable Sites’ subscription-based “bucket time,” companies are able to have professional, updated websites without fluctuating design costs. They are also home to Reliable Lifesaver, an off-site backup system for business and computer systems.

source:- www.pr.com/

Business Column: Make your logo unique, adaptable

A logo is more than just a little design or your company name written in a fancy font. Logo design is a special skill, and there's no one definitive method that is better than the others. All good logos, however, have a few things in common. When you're designing your logo, aim for something that:

Isn't trendy and doesn't need to be redesigned each season.

Will look good even in black and white and reduced to fit on a business card.

Is adaptable enough to fit on different products or marketing pieces.

Is integrated into your overall marketing strategy.

You'll probably want to use a combination of your company name and emblem. That's the best, safest bet for most small businesses. Done correctly, your logo can become an important part of your intellectual property and can offer real value to your business.

If you want your logo to communicate effectively who you are and what you do, you've got to know precisely who you are and what you do. That sounds obvious, right? But far too many businesses can't articulate what makes them unique. In 10 words or less, what is your business? You need to discover the essence of your industry and what people want to find there.

Now it's time to go out and get your very own logo. There are several options for doing this.

Create your own logo. Designing your own logo is the cheapest option available. And you don't have to spend time trying to communicate the details. However, you might find that it's difficult to translate your vision into a logo if you're not a professional designer. Worse, you might find that you get what you pay for — and when you pay nothing, that bargain price might be reflected in your new logo.

Hire a freelance designer. Working with a freelance designer requires more investment; however, it also has its advantages. Freelance designers create logos for a living and have a lot of knowledge and research to support their creations.

Hire an ad agency. If you can't find a freelance designer you like, or if you're just wary of doing business with an individual, you might want to look into an advertising agency. In many cases, several designers will likely collaborate on your logo. That's good and bad. Good, because more creative visions mean more ideas. Bad, because sometimes too many cooks can spoil the soup.

Use an online logo design service. A relatively new development in the design world is the advent of online design services. These companies provide fast-turnaround logo design at low prices — to the tune of a professionally designed logo in three days for under $300.

source:- recordonline.com/

MultiFactor SecureAuth(R) for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Delivers Efficient, Inexpensive Solution for Secure Portals

MultiFactor Corporation, an innovator in 2-factor authentication, Microsoft web application security and VPN Authentication solutions, today announced the availability of SecureAuth 4.5 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, a secure access solution for enterprise portals.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 is Microsoft's industry-leading platform for document management, enterprise content search and data aggregation. Office SharePoint Server 2007 is increasingly utilized as the offering of choice for scalable portals to both internal users, extranet partners and customers. The ability of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to expose content, previously only available to intranet users, is unparalleled in portal products.

MultiFactor's SecureAuth, a Microsoft Certified solution is specifically designed for integration into the ASP.NET application framework. SecureAuth offers a deployable, non-phishable, authentication solution that requires no extra servers or infrastructure.

"Office SharePoint Server is a robust platform designed to meet the business needs and resource constraints faced by the enterprise today," said Deb Bannon, SharePoint Senior Product Manager. "The integration of Office SharePoint Server with products like MultiFactor SecureAuth enables the enterprise to further secure content shared across the intranet and with extranet partners."

"SecureAuth utilizes native ASP.NET authentication and data integration features to seamlessly integrate into an Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment. SecureAuth takes advantage of the new forms based authentication features in SharePoint Server 2007 to redirect the user to the SecureAuth solution and then conduct a secure, non-phishable validation," said Garret Grajek, COO of MultiFactor Corporation. "Upon authentication the user is redirected back to SharePoint Server 2007 to obtain the roles and permissions set up by the SharePoint Server 2007 administrative console."

In conjunction with the Office SharePoint Server platform, SecureAuth is able to deliver a secure credential, mapped directly to the individual user. SecureAuth utilizes the existing data store shared by the Office SharePoint Server 2007 platform, thus eliminating the need to create or replicate an additional data store.

About MultiFactor Corporation

MultiFactor Corporation delivers proven two factor authentication, web application security, and VPN security methodologies. SecureAuth is a tokenless authentication solution generates and validates client and server side certificates without PKI. MultiFactor Corporation's real-world security solutions draws from a diversified team of cryptographers, network and Web application specialists and certified security engineers to provide inexpensive and easily deployed security solutions.

source:- marketwatch.com/

Drupal Addresses Security In 6.3, Usability in 7

Earlier this week, Drupal 6.3 and 5.8 were released to fix multiple bugs and patch some recently discovered security issues in the popular open-source content management system. These fixes, which are detailed in the release notes, don't add any new functionality, because all enhancements are being saved for the release of Drupal 7.

Although no specific timeline or final list of features has been publicly announced for Drupal 7, we do know that addressing a number of the ongoing usability concerns that have dogged the system are high on the list.

Dries Buytaert, the creator and project lead for Drupal, mentioned two recent Drupal usability studies last week on his personal blog - one conducted at the University of Minnesota and another in the Interaction Design and Information Architecture program at the University of Baltimore. Both studies came to similar conclusions - although strong in many areas, certain aspects of Drupal's administration interface can be confusing and intimidating, particularly to new users.

The University of Baltimore study is available both as a PDF download and a video, which clocks in at just under 10 minutes.

Major Drupal releases have typically been 12 or more months apart, and with Drupal 6 debuting earlier this year, it's likely to be a while before 7 sees the light of day. Fortunately, it appears that the Drupal development team has heard what the user community is asking for, and is working hard to deliver it.

source:- informationweek.com/

Web Design- the invisible hand to the success of your business

Business and website go hand in hand. Website is the focal point of your business, interacting with your customers and clients round the clock. People judge you by your covers and this is where a good looking website design steps in. A professional website layout puts your business where it matters the most- in front of your customers and set you apart from the noise and clatter of your competition. How many times have you walked in a store which appears shabby? I bet you avoid stepping in, leave alone doing business with them. The same rule applies to your website- it is your virtual storefront and by designing an eye catching website, you are bound to turn a few heads and keep visitors coming back.

Picture this- your website acts as your storefront, your web layout and design the first impression your customers get, your content acts as brochure and catalogs for your customers to browse through, would you be willing to take a chance with any of the pointers that directly affect your business? A professional looking website layout portrays that your website means business. A website should be designed like a car with the purpose it needs to serve in mind. What´s the use of creating a vehicle without passengers? Getting a good looking website does not necessarily cost you a fortune. A well thought out website design would not only add value to your website but open up host of revenue avenues for your website besides creating value to your business. Making your website easily accessible and providing relevant content with your business niche creates a winning combination.

Before you start creating a website, there is an important factor to be borne in mind- your target audience. Your target audience should dictate your website theme and design. For instance if your business niche is real estate, your target audience is in the age group of 25-55 years and your website theme, layout and concept should be governed by your target audience and by over looking this key component you would end up turning your website-"internet real estate" into an "internet wasteland" . Your website should speak the language of your customers. Hiring a professional web designer to turn your vision into reality might come in handy but remember no one knows your business better than you, so your involvement would always create a personalized professional website leaving your footprint on the website, helping you to communicate efficiently with your customers. Make sure the website serves the purpose for which it has been created.

Business is what Business does- making contacts with the right people at the right time at the right place. But how can we do it all the time? This is where a website steps in. In simple terms it puts your business on auto pilot. Every Business needs a website-PERIOD.

source:- americanchronicle.com/

Use PNG Images Format in Your Web Designing

The PNG image file format is not new to the web. It originally developed in the mid-90s as a solution to the shortcomings of the traditional GIF image file format. However, because early browser applications offered only spotty support for the PNG's advanced features, web designers, developers were limited in its use. The PNG image file format is not new to the web. It originally developed in the mid-90s as a solution to the shortcomings of the traditional GIF image file format. However, because early browser applications offered only spotty support for the PNG's advanced features, web designers, developers were limited in its use.

One large hurdle in particular faced by PNG's was Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). Far and away the most popular browser, IE offered particularly poor support for the file format. However, with the release of IE 7 as well as several JavaScript hacks, this has all changed, and PNGs are more popular than ever.

But who cares!? And besides being one letter short of my favorite 1972 video game, what makes a PNG so great? Below, are three reasons why PNGs are the best image format since the Polaroid.

They’re See-Through! (Alpha Transparency):
As compared to the GIF, PNG offers a far less basic form of transparency. With GIFs, a particular color (or colors) is able to be saved as transparent, leaving colors either entirely opaque or transparent. There is no in-between.

PNGs have a distinct advantage in this area. The PNG file format supports "semi-transparent pixels," meaning a PNG can be saved with a soft drop shadow and floated over any background. It can be used as a watermark on a textured or gradiented background. It can even be smoothly faded from fully opaque to transparent, revealing the web page contents beneath.

Summerour.net features a logo which demonstrates this function. The homepage layout called for a logo with a soft drop shadow over a textured background of architectural sketches that regularly change. Using a GIF or JPG would be highly impractical, because every time the image changed, the logo is background would need to be edited. A PNG, however, is floated over the image with a faded drop shadow, making the task quick, simple and dynamic. PNGs make the look and feel of your page flexible.

They Look Great! (Lossless Compression ):
Every time a JPEG is saved and compressed, it loses some of the original file's information and the image quality degrades. The GIF file format offers lossless compression (so the file can be saved and resaved without losing image quality), but it only supports a limited 256 color palette, making it useless for full-color photography and other such complex images.

PNG offers the best of both worlds. It displays full color photographic images, like the JPEG, but it also supports a managed color palette, like the GIF format. While the PNG will typically have a larger file size than the JPEG for photographic images, it does have a distinct advantage: its compression is lossless, meaning images never degrade in quality or suffer from "compression artifacting" which affects many JPEG images.

The results are crisper, brighter images that will on your pages unlike ever before.

They âre Self Optimizing! (Gamma Correction ):
Adjusting the brightness and contrast of images to look correct on a wide variety of monitors and operating systems is a common problem facing web designers. This problem is primarily related to different monitor Gamma settings.

Gamma is a method monitors use to distribute their luminance evenly across the display. Unfortunately, different operating systems (in particular the Mac and Windows) use different Gamma settings. So an image that is color-corrected for the Macintosh operating system may look too dark on the Windows operating system and vice-versa.

sourcee:- www.pr-usa.net/

Joomla! Downloads Exceed 5,000,000 and community.joomla.org Launched

Joomla!, the award winning open source content management system, has been downloaded over 5,000,000 times since March 2007 when the project began using the JoomlaCode.org repository. Recently, the 300,000th thread was created in the Joomla! forum where the community will soon welcome the 200,000th member. In the feature article of the first online Joomla! Community Magazine, Louis Landry, Joomla! Core Team member and Communications Team lead, cited these facts as "very encouraging signs that Joomla! is useful to people all around the world." He asked the community to get involved with project to help make Joomla! better, providing a list of easy ways to get started as a contributor. Joomla! 1.5 was released January 22, 2008, after over two years of development effort to refactor the code base into a modern application architecture utilizing MVC, object-oriented, event-driven approaches. In the article, Landry, also a lead developer for Joomla! 1.5, focused community attention on improvements in the area of localization support.

"Joomla! 1.5 was created with our international community in mind. Localization support is built into the core code to make translations easier," Landry stated, "Already, community translators have made Joomla! 1.5 available in many languages so that those who speak those languages can more easily build and administer Joomla! Web sites." Landry further encouraged the community to translate Joomla! into their own language, if not available, and to take advantage of the ability to easily add localization support to third party extensions offered at extensions.joomla.org.

These announcements were made in the feature article of the first monthly Joomla! Community Magazine which includes information on Joomla! 1.5 GPL-compliant extensions and Joomla! 1.5 Web sites. Community events, involvement opportunities, and articles about local communities, along with learning material for introductory learners, professional Web site integrators, and talented developers are provided to the community. The magazine also highlights release information, working group spotlights, and other important project headlines.

The July 1 launch of the Joomla! Community Portal at community.joomla.org, is part of a larger strategy by the Joomla! Core Team to enhance support for community working group activities and to encourage others to participate. In addition to the magazine, the portal includes a section for the Joomla! Core Team and each working group to share information and to blog, and an Events center with a community calendar, articles on Joomla! Days, lists of Joomla! User Groups, and announcements of other community meetings.

About Joomla!

Joomla! is an award winning open source content management system used to build Web sites for a wide variety of purposes. It is an easy to use, standards-based, extensible, GPL'ed application architecture available for download at no charge at joomla.org.

source:- freepressreleases.co.uk/

Borland Seeks To Unify Software Development Information, Management

"We want to transform software delivery, which doesn't have the best track record, into a managed business process. ... This is aFedEx (NYSE: FDX) tracking system for IT projects," said Rick Jackson, senior VP of corporate strategy from what is now Borland's Austin, Texas, headquarters. In other words, Borland claims it can make the heretofore inscrutable software development process measureable and able to be monitored. Borland is launching a framework for placing management tools on top of the software development process. The idea is to provide visibility for the business stakeholders, developers, project managers, and software executives into the development process.

The announcement of Borland Management Solutions raises the stakes for the former Santa Cruz, Calif., development tools company. It's left its Delphi and Turbo Pascal days behind; it's not yet clear how well its development expertise translates into a new management layer over the sometimes-cantankerous code construction process.

Its framework will sit atop a development team's preferred tools and over Borland's own existing application life-cycle management products, such as its Caliber requirements management tool or Together visual modeling tools. It also will add the following:

-- TeamDemand, the business stakeholders view into how work is progressing on the application sought by his business unit.

-- TeamFocus, a high-level project management system that support different development methodologies, including modern Agile methods, traditional waterfall development, or a rapid, iterative development approach.

-- TeamAnalysis, a business intelligence tool sitting atop development tools and application lifecycle management products to glean an overall picture from interrelated teams, discover trend lines, and project finish dates.

All three are scheduled to become available in the fall with pricing to be determined.

The management tools have already been deployed at several large customer sites and internally in Borland's own development process. Chuck Maples, Borland's VP of application development, said he used to assess projects for top management by interrupting the work of each team and demanding a set of statistics from them indicating their progress. It would take him two weeks to collect the information. By the time he presented his summary to top management, the data was out of date.

"This system replaces two weeks of work, where I would do a mini-operations review to get ready for the operations review," he said in an interview. Most of his interactions with his project managers and team leaders were to get a fix on where the process stood, not whether the goals were the right ones or the team's understanding of the business was correct.

The framework will be able to leverage data collected by Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Project, Borland Caliber, Borland StarTeam change and configuration management system, Borland Silk Central Test Manager and HP (NYSE: HPQ) Quality Center and assemble it in a single repository as it emerges this fall. TeamDemand, TeamFocus, and TeamAnalysis will all share the information in the repository.

Jackson said Borland plans to expand the tools covered by the framework beyond the initial set "to major market tools," such as IBM (NYSE: IBM) Rational RequisitePro requirements manager, IBM Rational ClearCase change management, Telelogic's Doors (a requirements management tool now owned by IBM), and other standard bearers in the marketplace. The scope may be sweeping, but the Borland executives could not at this point put a timeframe on when other elements of the extensive Rational toolset or products in Microsoft's Visual Studio toolset might get included.

"We are working with several third parties who will produce connectors" between tools that Borland can't get to itself, or build connectors to the custom tools used in-house that enterprise managers will want to tie into a management platform, Jackson said.

The management interface to the three new management tools produces dashboards and project summaries with many graphical elements.

Maples illustrated a Agile development method chart that tells him how many user stories (software use cases in more traditional development lingo) are associated with a sprint, or a three- to four-week period of a project. The chart showed use cases completed versus those still to go. Another chart showed how much of the code had been tested, what the defect rate was, and how many defects remained to be resolved. Such data takes some of the guesswork out of projecting how a development process is progressing and when it might be completed.

source:- informationweek.com/