Microsoft: Scoop On BizTalk Server 2009

Microsoft's BizTalk Server 2009 is on track for availability during the first half of next year with a full public Community Technology Preview of the business process management server product slated for this year's fourth quarter, Microsoft said Friday. Microsoft also provided more details about new capabilities in the software, which until now Microsoft had called BizTalk Server 2006 R3.

As it has done with some of its other products, Microsoft is committing to a regular and more transparent development schedule for BizTalk Server, said Burley Kawasaki, product management director for Microsoft's Connected Systems Division. Microsoft wants to fall into a "rhythm of releases" for BizTalk Server, delivering a major upgrade every two years as it plans to do with Windows Server and other products. "We're trying to be more predictable for our enterprise customers," Kawasaki said.

Microsoft has begun planning for the product release that follows BizTalk Server 2009, code-named "BizTalk Server 7," Kawasaki said, and will start providing customers and channel partners with information about that release early next year. Priorities for that and future generations of the product include more tools for enterprise connectivity, support for the latest capabilities in the Windows platform such as messaging and workflow, and improved visibility throughout a business for such applications as business intelligence and asset tracking.

Enhancements and new capabilities offered in BizTalk Server 2009 generally revolve around improved enterprise connectivity, expanded platform support and improved developer productivity, Kawasaki said. "It's a pretty full release. It helps reinforce the focus on enterprise connectivity."

BizTalk Server 2009 will support Microsoft's new wave of platform systems including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5, as well as supporting Microsoft's new Hyper-V server virtualization software. Managing the life cycle of applications developed for BizTalk will be easier with a new release of ESB Guidance 2.0 patterns and practices.

The new software will offer improved connectivity both inside and outside the firewall through a new UDDI v3-compliant services registry; new and enhanced line-of-business adapters for SQL Server, Oracle (NSDQ:ORCL)'s E-Business Suite and other applications; enhanced integration with host systems such as IBM (NYSE:IBM) WebSphere MQSeries and CICS; and a new mobile RFID platform. The software will also provide enhanced business-to-business capabilities with updates to its EDI, AS2 and SWIFT protocols.

Source:- crn.com/

Zend Framework update focuses on AJAX integration

Zend has added integration with the Dojo JavaScript toolkit in the new version of its PHP programming platform.

Zend Framework 1.6, released yesterday, makes it easy to integrate AJAX and JavaScript with PHP applications, according to the company. There is a Dojo view helper for setting up the Dojo environment, along with form elements and decorators for integrating with Dojo’s Dijit library, which provides interface widgets. A new JSON-RPC server implementation and class can manipulate Dojo data envelopes in Zend.

Also new in Zend Framework 1.6 is interoperability with the SOAP Web services protocol, which Zend said makes connecting Web services to data across the Internet easier. New features around SOAP include client and server classes that can operate in both WSDL (Web Services Description Language) and non-WSDL modes, and auto-discovery. Unit testing features for controllers enable agile practices like unit testing and test-driven development, where a developer writes tests prior to writing code.

“Functional tests for your application will be much easier to write now that Zend Framework has built-in support for testing controllers,” said Wil Sinclair, Zend’s development manager.

Other new features and improvements are a component for displaying large data sets from multiple sources, a service providing text-based CAPTCHA images, and smaller XML documents that are easier to read, the company said.

Zend will tout version 1.6 at ZendCon 2008, taking place Sept. 15-18 in Santa Clara. The conference offers presentations and networking opportunities for PHP developers and business managers.


Source:- sdtimes.com/

Flash designs to bring your website to life

The internet is now a domain full of intense competition. An individual or an organization looking to establish their web presence needs to put in a lot of effort into various promotion techniques on the internet. But all these efforts will be in vain if you don’t have an attractive website in the first place. One way of making sure you attract the attention of the public on the internet is to incorporate flash design into your web pages.

Flash is a multimedia tool belonging to the Macromedia family. Web designers can make use of this software to develop interactive movies, innovative innovations and different kinds of artistic images. These clips are designed in such a manner that they can be embedded on to the web page along with the other content.

It is but obvious that flash design can be used to enhance the impact of your website which is the dire need of the hour. Flash Web Design is extremely useful because of its amazing features. This is the reason why people are finding it the only logical means of creating a website that captures the imagination and attention of the visitors.

Flash can be used in a variety of different ways on a web page. You can make a flash animation presentation to display your company profile or product ranges on your webpage in a 30 second series. Another good thing about flash movies is that they do not have a compatibility issue with different web browsers. So you do not run the risk of not having your video played on a different website. Hence working with flash doesn’t mean you will have to get tangled up in XHTMAL and other programming languages.

Flash can be used for a variety of other purposes on your website. You can use the program to create innovative ads that will be sure to capture the attention of your visitors. The program can also be used to create animated games that can be played on your website or downloaded.

The use of flash has now become a common practice amongst web designers due to the impact that it generates. The difference between websites that make use of flash techniques and those that don’t comes out quite obviously. The plain old and simple websites that do not make use of the innovative techniques of flash do not stand in any comparison with the websites that have been enhanced with the use of flash.

Creating flash animations, ads and presentations is however a technical job that requires highly trained individuals. Most of the good web design agencies now have a full time dedicated team of flash animators who provide invaluable services to clients looking for something out of the box when it comes to website design.

It is however advised to take a look at the flash animation portfolio and the previous work of the agency that you will be choosing for your website designing. A good idea is to read customer review in order to get an idea of the level of satisfaction they are able to deliver.

Sourc:- promotionworld.com/

Web Design For Small Business

Any type of web development project is going to be an important, necessary, and pricey job. This is especially true for small businesses, who are dependent upon new clients to keep their services up and running. One way to “sink and reel” new clients in is to have a great online website design, along with a functional web development application.

Companies that specialize in web development and design are offering an invaluable service to small businesses. Small business owners won’t be able to create their own designs due to time constraints, and certainly won’t be able to sacrifice many weeks of learning just to get a website up and running. In this sense, the fees of a web designer are very well justified.

Branding is an aspect of web design that usually costs more money, but is worth every single penny spent. A logo and certain set of colors is what sets one business entity apart from another. Knowing that a golden set of arches is a McDonald’s logo, for instance, is one example of how society takes kindly to a branded company. This helps on return traffic and potential profits in the future.

Web development is part of the web design process, whether or not the web design company agrees with this or not. A web design company should be able to provide consulting for applications that may be able to offer an easier experience for the webmaster or his or her clients- such as a contact form.

As the industry goes, most small businesses will pay a lot more in the physical world for a web design job than they would if they purchased online services. Real world businesses know that customers that visit them are probably not too keen on web design elements, so they can charge extra where possible. Internet web design companies also face more competition, so they have to likewise stay competitive in pricing.

Web design and development is a big money-maker for those who take part in it, but don’t expect to cut too many costs in the process. A cheap web design service will give you exactly what you pay for, while the “big dogs” will have a service that is on par with big business designs. In the end, one can easily spend hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on what is requested by the small business owner.

Final Thoughts

A good thing to take from this is to simply shop around, especially over the Internet. Some services are more expensive than others, so try to find a median between prices and contact the web design company for a portfolio. Once all is said and done, marketing can be done to bring all sorts of new clients in.

source:- 3x24.com/

Tips on Creating Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Friendly Web Pages

If you design a search engine friendly or a site with search engine optimization in mind you are likely to rank higher in search engine results and grab more valuable free visitors for yourself.

What point is there in having a website that nobody sees? The largest source of free web traffic for most websites on the Internet comes from search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN etcetera. Therefore, if you design a search engine friendly or a site with search engine optimization in mind you are likely to rank higher in search engine results and grab more valuable free visitors for yourself.

The Big 3 search engines e.g. Google, Yahoo! and MSN use internet robots known as web crawlers or spiders to crawl and index websites which they then can list within their organic search result pages. Most spiders follow links to a page then read the text content of the page and make a record of it in their own database… this allows the search engines to pull up the listing at any time as people search for it.

In order to make it as easy as possible for the search engines to index and crawl and index your site, the use of frames on your website should be avoided. Frames can often confuse search engine robots and many spiders have difficulty indexing pages created with the use of frames. They could even leave your site without crawling it any further if it is not search engine friendly enough. In addition, frames can make it difficult for users to add a bookmark a particular page on your website without using certain long and complicated scripts.

Don’t put valuable text content inside flash movies or in images… remember search engine robots can only read the text on your website source code. Therefore if crucial text is presented in flash movies and or inside images rather than the readable textual form, your website’s search engine rankings could be affected dramatically.

Correct use of meta tags on each page is essential, especially correct use of titles and descriptions. This will allow search engine robots to understand straight away what your web pages are about and whether or not to index it. Correct use of meta tags helps to make the search engine robot's job easier so they may be encouraged to crawl your site more often.

Stop using old style HTML methods like tables and font tags to style your page. Instead use div tags and CSS or Cascading Style Sheets. This is because div tags and CSS are a more search engine friendly method and are also more efficient. With the use of div tags and CSS, you can eliminate old style HTML tags and your pages will be much lighter and faster to load.

Make sure that you always put the text you want to be found for on the body text of your page with your most important keywords near the top or beginning of your body text. For example, if your primary keyword is green widgets put the keyphrase green widgets in the first sentence of your body text and repeat the phrase a few more times throughout the page preferably also somewhere in bold or strong text. Always remember that if you don’t put your primary keywords on your body text and also in your titles and meta tags etc you make it much harder for your site to be found in search results.

source:- powerhomebiz.com/

Zend mixing PHP, AJAX for RIAs

Integration provided between the open-source framework and Dojo Toolkit

With an upgrade to its software development framework for PHP scheduled for release today, Zend Technologies is mixing in client-side AJAX capabilities with server-side PHP functionality.

Zend Framework 1.6, the company's open-source framework, integrates with the Dojo Toolkit for AJAX. Developers thus gain front-end rich Internet application capabilities via Dojo (version 1.1.1 of Dojo will ship with Zend's framework); integration between Zend and Dojo is accomplished via a piece of software called Zend_Dojo.

In this approach, developers would use Zend Framework to build JavaScript-enabled Web applications that Zend Framework renders, said Wil Sinclair, the Zend project lead for Zend Framework.

Although Zend worked with the Dojo Foundation on the Dojo integration, the Zend Framework still can be used with other AJAX technologies.

Also added in version 1.6 is full support for SOAP Web services. With that support, developers could build integration with an application based on Microsoft's .Net Framework. Jeffrey Hammond, a Forrester Research analyst, lauded the SOAP backing in version 1.6. "SOAP support is something many enterprise IT shops will find interesting. Many have made significant investments in SOAP-based SOA strategies but would still like to take advantage of lighter weight Web-based frameworks that use dynamic languages like PHP or Ruby. The updated version of Zend Framework should help them significantly," Hammond said.

Another capability highlighted in Model/View/Controller-enabled (MVC) Zend Framework 1.6 is unit testing for controllers on top of the existing object-level unit testing. This benefits agile and test-driven development, Zend's Sinclair said. Unit tests on controllers allow developers to test realistic user scenarios, such as log-ins or balance transfers, he said. The MVC support allows developers to separate applications into presentation and business logic, he added.

Version 1.6 features a preview implementation of the Zend_Tool project, for creating projects and project assets and managing them. This capability is important for rapid application development, Sinclair said. Zend Framework also features a "use at will" architecture, enabling developers to use separate components such as a forms creation component.

Source:- infoworld.com/

IT workers hit hardest by offshore outsourcing, survey finds

Jobs most at risk for offshore outsourcing are computer programming, development

As many as 8% of IT workers have been displaced by offshore outsourcing, either through job loss or an involuntary transfer to a new job by their employer, which is twice the rate of workers in other occupations, according to a study based on data collected from some 10,000 people, which may be the largest survey of its kind.

The survey, conducted by researchers at the New York University Stern School of Business and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, also backs up the long-standing view that IT employees in purely technical jobs -- computer programmers and software developers who have little customer interaction -- are at the most risk from offshore outsourcing.

The broad conclusions are unlikely to surprise many high-tech workers, but what may make this offshore outsourcing study unique is its breadth: some 6,700 workers across a variety of occupations and more than 3,000 hiring managers and human resources professionals were surveyed.

There has been a dearth of data about the impact of offshore outsourcing on U.S. workers, and its authors, Prasanna Tambe of the Stern School and Lorin Hitt of Wharton, said their work is the first to pin down offshore outsourcing's impact by occupation.

The job site Careerbuilder.com funded the research, which looked at a spectrum of occupations, including technology, and published initial data from the survey in April. But the 44-page paper, posted this week on the Social Science Research Network (registration required) analyzes what the data is saying about the fate of high-tech workers who have been directly affected by offshore outsourcing.

Tambe, an assistant professor of information, operations and management sciences at NYU, said the data isn't a forecast of how extensive offshore outsourcing will be, but instead tries to fill in the gaps of the theoretical work on offshore outsourcing and address the dearth of data on this topic.

But the impact of offshore outsourcing on IT jobs may just be a sign of how this trend will unfold across a broad range of occupations. "I think [IT] is definitely ahead of the curve, but I think that gap will probably close in the future," Tambe said.

The base rate of offshoring across all industries is just over 15%, but some 40% of all tech and telecommunications companies are doing some type of offshore work, according to the research.

By occupation, more than 30% of the survey respondents said they are offshoring computer programming and software development jobs, but only about half, or 15.5%, reported offshoring systems analysts, who typically interact more with others in a business.

Among employees, across all occupations, slightly more than 4% of workers were displaced because of offshore outsourcing, half the rate of IT workers. The survey's 8% figure for IT displacement represents the percentage of workers who have ever been affected by offshore outsourcing, a rate that implies an annual offshoring-related displacement of 1% to 2% per year for IT workers, according to the study.

Of those displaced by offshore outsourcing, 70% lost their jobs, with older workers more likely to be displaced.

The researchers don't predict what future displacement rates may be, but they say that as offshoring grows, tech workers without jobs that don't require interpersonal skills, are being replaced more rapidly.

IT workers concerned about displacement "can focus on further developing these interpersonal skills, or may find more robust long-term careers in IT professions that involve significant face-to-face interaction such as those involving cross-organizational process change or hands-on support functions," the report's authors wrote.

Since IT workers have been more severely affected than other types of workers, Tambe and Hitt argue that policy-makers could focus on tech workers to provide help, including job training and government compensation to offset wage losses. Educational institutions will have to react as well, with "increased emphasis on the development of interpersonal and management skills within the IT curriculum."

Source:- computerworld.com/

Web Designer, Meet Search Engine Optimizer

SEO specialists and designers should work together as one since they both have the same goal. Customer success.

The Creatives verses SEO war has been going on for years. One side says “make it pretty”, the other side says “make it wordy”. Funny enough, both sides are right. When marketing your web site online, you could possibly make something so ugly that you get a lot of traffic from a favorable Google ranking, but no clients or conversion.

Why is that? Because Cleanliness is next to Googleness. If you would like, take a few moments to search some highly competitive keyphrases in Google. The web sites that are ranked on the first page are normally, professional, well designed web sites. This is not a coincidence. Clean sites rank higher and convert better.

So why does the average search engine optimization company pay such little regard to professional design? Because search engine optimization specialists are analytics gurus and designers are artist. In short, it takes two to make it work.

When working with a designer, you should ask them what their strategy is for maximizing your search engine exposure. While designers do not have to speak fluent SEO, they do of course need to know what not to do to your web site so that an SEO can come in after them and help increase your search engine ranking.

When considering SEO friendly design, think clean. Web sites that have a direct point (call to action) at the top of the page will convert visitors to customers much better than the competition. If you searched for health insurance quotes on Google, you would see a list of natural results. Most of those allow you to start the health insurance quoting process right at the top of the home page.

If you work with a guaranteed search engine optimization company, (one that guarantees first page ranking) they may require you to update your design to decrease their risk. Yes, design makes that much of a difference. Search engine’s like what people like. Easy to navigate web sites, text that is clear and to the point, and simple vertical layouts.

So if high search engine rankings are at the top of your concerns, make sure your designer plays nice with search engine optimization specialists or even better, use a search engine optimization company with a talented on staff designer. This will greatly increase the success of your online presence.

Source:- promotionworld.com/

SugarCRM Announces Sugar 5.1 General Availability

The world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced the general availability of Sugar 5.1, which includes new reporting and wireless capabilities for SugarCRM. The new reporting and analytics engine provides SugarCRM users with improved insight into sales effectiveness and customer behavior. Revamped wireless capabilities deliver the feature-rich SugarCRM user experience on mobile phones, including support for the popular BlackBerry^® and iPhone™ smartphones.

Sugar Community Edition 5.1 is available at http://www.sugarforge.org/content/downloads/. To sign-up for a free trial of Sugar Professional 5.1, please visit: http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ondemand_eval.html.

Community Support

SugarCRM’s commercial open source model invites the download and inspection of source code by users, developers, customers and partners, producing a higher quality product than possible in proprietary development models. During the beta process, Sugar 5.1 was installed over 10,000 times and tested by over 25,000 users.

Sugar 5.1 builds on a product legacy that has made SugarCRM one of the most popular open source projects and CRM products in the world. Since its founding four years ago, Sugar Community Edition and its related components have been downloaded over 5 million times. Over 80,000 registered community members, including 14,000 developers, have created over 500 extensions and 75 language translations of SugarCRM at www.sugarforge.org, SugarCRM’s community web site. SugarCRM’s user base consists of over 400,000 users on 50,000 installations in 195 countries.

“Software is transitioning from lock-in based proprietary systems to an open, standards-based world,” said John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM. “As the mass adoption of SugarCRM proves, users want freedom and choice in their software, not artificial constraints and dictates from software providers.”

Sugar 5.1 Features

Sugar 5.1 offers new features and improvements across end-user and administrative functions, including:

• Advanced Reporting and Analytics provide support for complex reporting sets, matrix reports, run-time filters and integration with Microsoft Excel.

• New Wireless HTML Client delivers an improved user interface, new search capabilities, and support for BlackBerry^® and iPhone™ smartphones.
• Tracker Reports provide a snapshot into system usage in order to increase user adoption and visibility into CRM utilization.
• Data Import Enhancements have been strengthened, making it easier than ever to move data from applications such as Excel, Act!, Microsoft Outlook and Salesforce.com into SugarCRM.
• Module Builder Enhancements support new relationships and templates, auditing and support for creating end-user dashlets.

The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited.

The iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes. SugarCRM easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications. SugarCRM’s open source architecture allows companies to more easily customize and integrate customer-facing business processes in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships. SugarCRM offers several deployment options, including on-demand, on-premise and appliance-based solutions to suit customers’ security, integration and configuration needs.

source:- businesswire.com/

A Brief History of Search Engine Optimization

In the middle of the 1990s webmasters and search engine content providers started optimizing websites. At the time all the webmasters had to do was provide a URL to a search engine and a web crawler would be sent from the search engine. The web crawler would extract link from the webpage and use the information to index the page by down loading the page and then storing it on the search engines server. Once the page was stored on the search engines server a second program, called an indexer, extracted additional information from the webpage, and determines the weight of specific words. When this was complete the page was ranked.

It didn't take very long for people to understand the importance of being highly ranked.

In the beginning search engines used search algorithms that webmasters provided about the web pages. It didn't take webmasters very long to start abusing the system requiring search engines to develop a more sophisticated form of search upholstery cleaning new york optimization. The search engines developed a system that considered several factors; domain name, text within the title, URL directories, term frequency, HTML tags, on page key word proximity, Alt attributes for images, on page keyword adjacency, text within NOFRAMES tags, web content development, sitemaps, and on page keyword sequence.

Google developed a new concept of evaluating internet web pages called PageRank. PageRank weighs a web page's quantity and quality based on the pages incoming upholstery cleaning system This method of search engine optimization was so successful that Google quickly began to enjoy successful word of mouth and consistent praise.

To help discourage abuse by webmasters, several internet search engines, such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Ask.com, will not disclose the algorithms they use when ranking web pages.The signals used today in search memory foam mattress topper optimization typically are; keywords in the title, link popularity, keywords in links pointing to the page, PageRank (Google), Keywords that appear in the visible text, links from on page to the inner pages, and placing punch line at the top of the page.

For the most part registering a webpage/website on a search engine is a simple task. All Google requires is a link from a site already indexed and the web crawlers furniture cleaning chicago visit the site and begin to spider its contents. Normally a few days after registering on the search engine the main search engine spiders will begin to index the website.

Some search engines will guarantee spidering and indexing for a small fee. These search engines do not guarantee specific ranking. Webmaster's who don't want web crawlers to index certain upholstery cleaning methods and directories use a standard robots.txt file. This file is located in the root directory. Occasionally a web crawler will still crawl a page even if the webmaster has indicated he does not wish the page indexed.


Source:- corsavoo.com/

New Law to Group Web Portals With News Outlets

The government and ruling party will define web portals as news outlets to enhance their social responsibilities and obligations. In a recent working-level meeting, the ruling Grand National Party and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism agreed to revise the Newspaper Law to that effect.

The move comes after criticism of web portals for playing host to defamation and other violations while playing a similar role to the news media by gathering and editing news.

The government and the GNP also agreed to revise the Press Arbitration Law so victims of damaging articles on web portals can easily apply to the Press Arbitration Commission for remedies by telephone, the Internet or post. The government and ruling party are expected to have the revision bills passed by the National Assembly during the regular session in September.

Experts are in favor of the move. They say web portals have grown into giant news organizations every bit as powerful as newspapers and broadcasting networks, and must show responsibility for the articles they carry. In Korea, anonymous articles or messages posted on web sites have caused some serious damage.

"It's high time the web portals should take responsibility commensurate with their influence in society,” says Ahn Dong-keun, a professor of journalism and mass communication at Hanyang University. “Internet firms are under restriction because they have not voluntarily taken responsibility commensurate with their social status on their own."

Source:- english.chosun.com/

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

Microsoft has launched the latest generation of its business software in SA, saying that it signals a new chapter in enterprise resource planning (ERP) user productivity by providing an easy-to-use interface and information tailored to specific roles within a company.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 was released locally this week. Jumana Helal, who heads up the Dynamics business at Microsoft SA, says AX 2009 aims to help businesses thrive in a competitive global marketplace by controlling costs, managing risk and increasing employee productivity.

"Our vision of ERP is that it will actually start to prompt its users to take certain actions, instead of merely being a reactive tool that people use to pull weekly reports from," says Helal.

"Employees using traditional ERP systems have had to wade through inefficient, time-intensive steps - enter transactional data, run reports, analyse reports - before they can do their jobs effectively. Through Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009’s Role Centre, employees from the executive suite to the warehouse have access to role-relevant business intelligence to help them make decisions more efficiently."

Adcorp CIO, Kobus Pienaar, says the group has a clear road map for rolling out AX technology to all 15 of its subsidiaries. Adcorp has 1700 full-time employees, and administers 70 000 full and part-time staff for its clients at any given time, paying R2,2bn a year in salaries, and processing 70 000 timesheets and 60 000 payslips per week.

Source:- mybroadband.co.za/

Three Ways That Open Source Could Benefit

This post from Matt Asay on whether open source needs consolidation asks an interesting question, and some of the comments that came in on it were interesting. This comment caught my eye: "No. Open source does not need consolidation. Open source needs product managers." Product managers, of course, drive improvements in commercial and proprietary software products, and listen carefully to what businesses need. At the end of our recent interview with Sun Microsystems' Ken Drachnik, regarding Sun's GlassFish app server, he also called for business synergy to advance open source projects. Here are three ways that open source projects can benefit from a bit of Business 101.

Business Advisors. Open source software reseller and consultancy firm Sirius just announced that it is seeking to convert new customers with a free online advisory service focused on driving open source adoption. Its eyes are squarely on the sagging economy with this move.

Of course, there are VARs and consultants who do advise businesses on open source adoption, but centralized, well-known and respected organizations could win more respect for open source from businesses. Consider CDW, for example. It is sort of an uber-VAR, teeming with technology experts in many proprietary categories, and they go out and advise businesses of all sizes on technology to adopt. Open source could use its own CDW.

Does Open Source Need Product Managers? Much of my life has been spent meeting with product managers who drive improvements in proprietary software products. A single, good product manager can have an enormous impact on business users. In this post, I discussed Chris Peters, who was the product manager for Microsoft Excel before Microsoft Office existed, and before Windows succeeded.

Chris was largely a one-man band who wasn't going to stand Lotus' domination of the spreadsheet market. He listened carefully to what businesses wanted, and drove rapid-fire improvements in Excel. His success as product manager of that spreadsheet had a great deal to do with how Microsoft put Office in more than 90 percent of desktops. Open source could use some product managers like that.

A Community Fund. This idea comes from Joe Brockmeier's great post on what Linux needs. There, he said: "Lots of major players contribute a great deal of money to open source, usually in ways that are strategic to the companies themselves. This works out great for the Linux and FOSS community in general, but what's lacking is a general fund for development and nurturing of projects that don't fit under the wing of any vendors in the open source industry." It would be great to see some patrons emerge to back open source projects that don't have commercial companies to support them, and there are many other models for encouraging community funding.

Source:- ostatic.com/

Does open source need consolidation?

I was reading this OStatic interview with Ken Drachnik, marketing manager for open source software infrastructure products at Sun and a co-founder of GlassFish (Sun's open-source application server), and it made me wonder if it's time for some consolidation in the open-source stack. Yes, I'm the one who argues against consolidation in enterprise software, but another part of me wonders why we spend time reinventing wheels....

Yes, we have de facto winners in most software categories: SugarCRM in CRM, JBoss in application servers in enterprise adoption (with Tomcat winning out for unpaid deployments), MySQL in the database market, etc. Think of how much better these projects would be if we concentrated development on these, rather than creating a range of lightly developed and even more lightly used open-source alternatives.

I guess my underlying question is, "Do we need a myriad of open-source alternatives to the proprietary software stacks, or would we be better served with one or two rock-solid open-source alternatives?" I'm inclined toward the latter, as I think Linux, for example, is much better off for having three robust competitors (Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu), rather than dozens of also rans with no strong options.

Source:- news.cnet.com/

5 Important Rules in Website Design

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are five important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls should be made available.


Source:- northwestvoice.com/

Chris Broadhurst SEO Tips And Tricks The Lowdown

Search

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Search engine optimization is the way to pull massive amounts of free traffic. Search engine optimization as a part of your internet marketing campaign is only as effective as the quality and usefulness of the content of your site. Search Engine marketing is one of the most powerful tools available.

Google

Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals. Google algorithms prefer sites which have relevant content rich information related to the targeted keywords. Google PageRank™ Checker The Google PageRank Checker lets you know the PageRank of any domain or web page. Google is the most popular search engine and delivers upholstery cleaning charlotte to three times the traffic delivered by Yahoo. [8] The three leading search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Live Search, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Keyword

Keyword selection is imperative for SEO and can often decide how effective your website can be. Another class of techniques, known as "Black Hat" SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. Early search engines, such as Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Before being included in keyword-based search results, a web page needs to be indexed by the search engines. Choosing the right keywords and keyphrases to target in your pages is extremely important steam cleaners people find your website. PPC Campaigns have tremendous reach, however if required can be targeted not only by keyword, but also by country and even city of origin; providing you with targeted and relevant traffic to your site with little or no wastage and increased conversion. Search Engine Optimisation typically includes keyword research and development, meta tags optimisation, linking strategy and implementation, website submission and results reporting.


Source:- corsavoo.com/

Search Engine Marketing-How it Differs from Search Engine Optimization

Non-profit organizations, universities, political parties, and the government can all benefit from search engine marketing. Businesses that sell products and/or services online can use search engine marketing to help improve their sales figures.

Some of the goals of search engine marketing are to develop a brand, generate media coverage, and enhancing a reputation, and to drive business to a physical location.

If you do not feel confident enough to try your own search engine marketing there are several companies that will microfiber upholstery cleaning to help you out for a price. If you decide to go with a search engine marketing company take your time and shop around, find a company that really suits your own businesses search engine marketing needs.

Stay away from companies that promise top rankings. Most companies that promise tope ranking are more interested in your money then they are in keeping your business. Quite often this upholstery cleaner company of company will charge you top doller, spend a few days making sure your website has a few basic requirements and that is the last you hear from them. This type of search engine marketing company is not really interested in repeat customers.

Tread carefully around companies that promise first page rankings on the major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Make sure these sofa cleaner are talking about sponsored listings and not just natural listings. Companies that are only after natural listings traditionally charge a large monthly fee, using a small portion of the money on sponsored listings, and pocketing the remainder.

The false promise most commonly used by shady search engine marketing companies is the money back guarantee. Generally if you read the contract very carefully you will lean that these companies have a very strange idea of major short term memory loss wiki engine. Companies that have a money back guarantee typically don't deal with the search engine movers and shakers like Google and Yahoo, instead they use small obscure search engines that are hardly ever used.

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) was created in 2003 to offer the public educational resources about search engine marketing and to also promote search engine marketing. Currently SEMPO represents over 500 global search engine marketing companies. Sempo is happy to offer their resources to the public for free. SEMPO has offers upholstery cleaner company engine marketing training courses for any and all interested parties who would like to expand their knowledge of search engine marketing. SEMPO's objectives are to teach search engine marketing strategies, techniques, and successful practices, to increase the availability and quality f its professionals, and to offer training courses that will help to establish a benchmark for search engine marketing. The cost of a SEMPO training course can range anywhere from five hundred dollars for a fundamentals of search marketing class, to over two thousand dollars for an advanced search advertising course.


Source:- corsavoo.com/

Small Business Server 2008 Hits Metal

Microsoft released Windows Small Business Server 2008 (SBS 2008) to hardware manufacturers, with an eye toward achieving a full product launch on November 12. The release was slightly ahead of the September RTM date predicted at the July Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston.

The new server offering is part of the Microsoft Windows Essential Business Server 2008 product line. It's an integrated server offering that encompasses a number of Microsoft technologies, including Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007 and SharePoint Services 3.0. It also includes security and online apps.

SBS 2008 will be sold in two editions, Standard and Premium. The Premium Edition adds a second Windows Server 2008 to the mix, plus a copy of SQL Server 2008.

Microsoft produced the Premium Edition to meet the line-of-business demands of customers and partners, explained Joel Sider, senior product manager of Microsoft's Windows Essential Server Solutions, in a July interview.

SBS 2008 is designed for businesses with up to 75 users and perhaps little to no internal IT support. Microsoft's large community of partners will play a big role in providing support for the product.

SBS 2008, formerly code-named "Cougar," is essentially new technology. It was "rebuilt from the ground up," according to Microsoft's official blog. Microsoft's earlier product, SBS 2003 R2, is about six years old and based on 32-bit technology.

When released in the fall, SBS 2008 will be available only as 64-bit technology. Microsoft is claiming a number of improvements in the product, including easier setup and administration, faster backups, improved remote access, and more flexible licensing. Each edition of SBS will include five Client Access Licenses (CALs). Customers can buy additional CALs, as needed, when they add users or device connections to SBS 2008.

Source:- redmondmag.com/

Microsoft Details SharePoint-SQL 2008 Integration

Microsoft really wants SharePoint users to upgrade to SQL Server 2008, which was released to manufacturing on August 6. Yesterday, the company's SharePoint hosting and development blog pointed out that IT admins don't have to wait for the documentation to do so.

IT administrators typically look for Microsoft's "supportability statement" document before performing system upgrades. The document for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 is currently available, and it includes information about upgrading to SQL Server 2008 that was published on July 31.

The document describes MOSS 2007 hardware and software dependencies, along with precautions on upgrading from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008. For instance, you need to have the latest SharePoint service packs in place before installing SQL Server 2008.

"Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports SQL Server 2008," the document says. "However, you must install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 or later and Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 or later before you install SQL Server 2008."

IT admins have to download and run the setup program, as well as "the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard," to perform the MOSS 2007 SP1 install.

The SharePoint Hosting and Development blog provides some upgrade tips and suggests that the "upgrade from [SQL Server] 2005 to 2008 is a pretty simple process." IT admins will have to install ".NET 3.5 SP1 and hotfix KB942288-v4" first in order to move to SQL Server 2008.

Microsoft's blog provides a list of features describing why IT admins should upgrade, but most of the benefits seem to apply just to improvements in SQL Server 2008. One potential benefit is data compression, which can be automated by default. Compression can reduce your backup size, although SharePoint stores data in the binary large object (blob) form, which doesn't compress as well as other data types.

"That said, you can probably see up to 30% [size reduction] on your blob-laden content databases and perhaps 90-95% on your other databases," the blog estimates.

Other improvements include a Resource Governor for SQL Server maintenance and administration, although the blog cautions that it "should not be used to control SharePoint's usage of SQL."

Source:- rcpmag.com/

Tips for using Microsoft Excel Services with SharePoint Server

One of the most interesting developments in the Excel 2007 release was the Excel Services module that made it possible to load spreadsheets and run calculations on a central server. This feature theoretically makes it possible to impose much better controls on who accesses and alters important data.

But practical applications are still a little thin on the ground. To help users along, boffins at the Microsoft Office Developer Center have published a raft of technical guides about Excel Services and how it can work in tandem with Microsoft's SharePoint Server web portal system.

The company's Microsoft Excel blog recently highlighted a new guide, Tips for Using SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services that deal with common pitfalls experienced by Excel users. The advice covers:

• Making an Excel workbook compatible with Excel Services


• Configuring external data connections


• Configuring Excel Services to work with Kerberos


• Saving an Excel workbook to a SharePoint document library programmatically


• Avoiding exceptions in a UDF when accessing the caller's identity


• Handling dimension issues for UDFs that return arrays


• Calling 32-bit native DLLs from UDFs on 64-Bit operating systems


• Quick tips for common Excel Services issues.

The article explains that some features and functions within will not work within Excel Services - including VBA and shared workbooks. In some of these cases, a workbook will fail to load in Excel Services. There are also complications surrounding connections to external data sources, which can be avoided by using the Excel Data Connection Wizard to configure links when the workbook is opened on the server.


Source:- accountingweb.co.uk/

Independents Seize On Success Of Microsoft's SharePoint

SharePoint is finding a growing role in offices and departments as a collaboration tool for small business units.

Swiss software supplier Day Software announced Wednesday that it is opening SharePoint to the larger world of Java applications in the enterprise. It has produced CQ Connector for SharePoint, which is based on the Content Repository standard for Java. The connector can tie SharePoint into an enterprise portal, swap information from the portal to SharePoint, or vice versa.

With Day's connector, SharePoint becomes "much more enterprise ready than it tends to be on its own," said Santi Pierini, senior VP of marketing.

Day is a little-known implementer of Java standards and offers the Communique suite of enterprise portal and Web content management applications. It has a large library of connectors to enterprise software, including one toSAP (NYSE: SAP)'s NetWeaver API for connecting to SAP applications. Its CTO is Roy Fielding, a co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation and one of the originators of the Apache Web Server. Day has headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, and Newport Beach, Calif., where Fielding works.

Its CQ Connector for SharePoint, built following the Java community's JSR 170 repository standard, can exchange information between Communique's repository used to store Web site content and a departmental SharePoint repository.

The connector can search the content of a SharePoint repository, using either SQL query language or Xpath, which allows relevant data to be extracted without necessarily retrieving the whole document. It can observe changes in SharePoint content, restrict access to a SharePoint repository by imposing certain views, and impose an Access Control List to enforce enterprise security restrictions.

"We're seeing high demand to make SharePoint more effective for global, enterprise-scale companies," Pierini said.

Day also makes connectors to Vignette, OpenText LiveLink, Interwoven, EMC (NYSE: EMC) Documentum, FileNet P8, and IBM (NYSE: IBM) Lotus Notes Domino.

A second product, from Alfresco Software, implements Microsoft's SharePoint protocol to produce a compatible collaboration server, but one that it also says functions on more of an enterprise scale.

Alfresco already offers an open source content management system and it's making Alfresco Labs 3, its SharePoint-compatible collaboration server, available as open source code as well. Labs 3 was announced July 31. The Labs 3 repository can extract information from SharePoint and Office applications and manage content on a more enterprise level, said John Newton, chairman and CTO, in an interview.

"Microsoft was forced to release the protocols under European Union agreement," he said, referring to the March 2004 European Commission ruling. Newton said Alfresco is the first independent vendor to implement both the SharePoint and Office application protocols, as allowed under the ruling.

In the Alfresco Labs 3 implementation, however, customers can use the SharePoint protocol with non-Microsoft databases, operating systems, and portal products, he noted.

source:- informationweek.com/

SugarCRM Named Best Open Source Technology by CRM Magazine

SugarCRM Recognized for Providing a Sophisticated Alternative to Proprietary Software

SugarCRM, the world's leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, announced today that the company was named the winner of CRM magazine's 2008 Market Awards in the open source category. SugarCRM was also named a "leader" in the small business suite category. Heralded for its flexibility and multiple deployment options, these awards highlight the innovative features of SugarCRM's technology and its ability to service organizations of all sizes.

SugarCRM offers a robust, Web-based human interaction management platform, well suited for companies of all sizes in any industry. SugarCRM's suite consists of: Sugar Community Edition, Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise. Sugar Community Edition is available under the GPL v3 at SugarForge www.sugarforge.org, SugarCRM's community development Web site. Both Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise can be deployed on-site, or delivered over the Web via the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. SugarCRM also allows businesses to design and build custom applications in support of business processes outside the realm of CRM, such as HR and PR functions.

"SugarCRM outpaced all other contenders in every criterion to win this award," said Joshua Weinberger, managing editor for CRM magazine. "The company's ongoing success was a major factor in our decision to introduce this category this year, and while others have followed in its footsteps, SugarCRM is likely to lead the way as open source CRM continues its explosive growth."

"Our goal at SugarCRM is to provide a higher quality alternative to the predatory lock-in of proprietary CRM vendors," said John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM. "SugarCRM is proud to be named CRM magazine's open source leader and will continue to deliver customizable, scalable CRM solutions for organizations of all sizes."

The 2008 Market Awards are included in the September issue of CRM magazine and available at http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0908/index.php#/0.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world's leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes. SugarCRM easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications. SugarCRM's open source architecture allows companies to more easily customize and integrate customer-facing business processes in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships. SugarCRM offers several deployment options, including on-demand, on-premise and appliance-based solutions to suit customers' security, integration and configuration needs.

For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1 877 SUGARCRM tollfree in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com.

About CRM Magazine

CRM magazine is the publication of record covering the field of customer relationship management. It offers executives a unique blend of strategic business information, case studies, and in-depth analysis. It is written, edited, and produced by our award winning staff of journalists and designers. Our editorial and circulation strategy targets three main categories of readers: Executive management; sales, marketing, and customer service management; and, IT management -- all important at different stages of a CRM program's life cycle.


Source:- marketwatch.com/

Startup Hacks: 5 Tips for Offshore Outsourcing

Outsourcing product development offshore sounds like a good idea at the time. After all, you can augment your dev group quickly and on the cheap. But it only seems to work under certain conditions; mileage does vary depending on the company. Longer-term enterprise development projects tend to be better suited for outsourcing than shorter-term consumer Internet projects for example (I learned this the hard way). It has to do with development cycles, level of skill required for tasks, time to market, and the ability to iterate.

Arguably, you shouldn’t ever completely outsource your product development. Some things are just too strategic to lose control over. If you do decide to outsource some parts, here are some tips.

1. Hire one of them

Hire someone locally who was originally from the country you’re outsourcing to. Oftentimes different languages or dialects exist in other countries, so be sure your guy speaks the lingo. Also be tuned into other cultural nuances (for example, make sure there aren’t centuries-old bad blood between your guy and the people at the firm you use).

2. Nurture them

You’ll want to take the time and make the investment in having an occasional call or even a visit to the offshore location. Offering a face and voice from the top helps gain buy-in, support and motivation for the project. Obviously if you have to do too much of this, it’s not worth it.

3. Package the tasks

Be mindful not to overwhelm them with a complex project with multiple touch points and dependencies. Have a baked, signed off spec completed and committed to and assign straightforward pieces of it. When you assign something, ask for a time/cost estimate which you can measure back to later. Once the work has been verified and tested you’ll be able to establish a baseline level of quality and performance; from there you’ll be able to give them more rope.

4. Top grade

Offshore dev shops tend to assign you a mixed team of some good folks, some ok folks, and some green folks. These proportions are simply part of their business model. Just don’t let it get the best of your development cycle and product quality. Ask for resumes and interviews of the people they’re assigning to your team.

5. Communicate with one voic

Use the guy from #1 to funnel all communications between your team and theirs. Besides language and time zone issues, there are project management and accountability requirements. The more chiefs you have, the more fingers you have pointing. You can’t afford the he said/she said.

Source:- mashable.com/

NetSuite - A Leading Silicon Valley ERP, CRM and Ecommerce Software Company

A leading vendor of on-demand, integrated business management software suites for mid-market enterprises and divisions of large companies, today announced the details of its expansion in the Denver, Colorado metro area, including the opening of a new sales and services facility in the city of Centennial. The announcement came at a NetSuite-sponsored event held at the Denver Ritz Carlton and hosted by NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson for NetSuite customers, prospects, local government officials and members of the media.

"Our Denver presence is a strategic investment that we believe will accelerate our growth," said Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. "The information technology sector is growing rapidly in the Greater Denver and Centennial areas, due in no small part to the region's highly qualified and educated work force. We hope to leverage this expertise and regional location to service our growing customer base in the central region with world-class sales and professional services teams."

NetSuite's new office is located at 8000 S. Chester Street, Suite 100, in Centennial, Colorado. The office will augment NetSuite's sales and consulting teams located at its headquarters in San Mateo, California. Marc Huffman, formerly General Manager of Canadian operations for NetSuite, has been appointed General Manager for NetSuite's Denver office and will oversee all Denver area operations. NetSuite expects to have over 65 employees in the Denver office by year end, with continued expansion through 2009.

"I am so pleased to have NetSuite, a leading Silicon Valley software company, join our strong and dynamic business community in Centennial like other top employers such as Ceridian, Pitney-Bowes and TEKsystems," said Centennial Mayor Randy Pye. "Centennial and the metro Denver area are known for their highly-qualified, educated work forces and are recognized centers for expertise and growth in the information technology sector. We expect that NetSuite will be extremely successful by taking advantage of our attractive business environment."

NetSuite has a growing list of customers in Colorado from a wide range of industries, including online retail, distribution, professional services and non-profits. At NetSuite's Denver launch event today, three Denver-area based companies described how they benefit from using NetSuite to run their businesses. These customers include:

-- Imagine! -- a non-profit business with approximately 650 employees serving and supporting individuals with developmental disabilities and their families throughout the greater Denver area. Imagine! uses NetSuite to manage its business -- from tracking and supporting the over 2,000 consumers of its services to coordinating the 250 providers that are part of its network to

giving families self-service capabilities for managing key insurance information and service authorizations.

-- RLE Technologies -- a manufacturer and distributor of monitoring systems for data centers has been in business for over 23 years in the Denver area. RLE Technologies uses NetSuite for tracking its work orders through the sales process with its ever growing network of distributors, to integration with its Materials Resource Planning system, to managing its billing and financials.

-- Accuvant -- offers Internet security products such as anti-virus and managed solutions to its customers, in addition to maintaining a healthy security services consulting business. Headquartered in Denver, Accuvant has over 150 employees in offices throughout the West and Central regions and uses NetSuite to manage sales, marketing and finance operations. Particularly, consulting personnel enter time and expenses that are billed to clients and the sales teams track orders for both product and services. Accuvant finds the ability to have visibility into its commissions as soon as an order is submitted particularly helpful.

Source:- foxbusiness.com/

Ecommerce solutions advice

Online retailers have been offered advice for ecommerce solutions in a new report.

The study by Retail Systems Research found that innovations in web design, like featuring comprehensive reviews and video, should be embraced.

"Ecommerce winners will be the ones to invent something new, not track what customers tell them they want," the report says.

As more and more shoppers are going online, retailers can not afford to be lazy.

"Today, retailers can no longer assume that their sites are able to easily handle increased holiday volume or that customers will stick around to wait for a web page to load," the report adds.

"Delivering quality web experiences while using advanced web technologies is now a competitive necessity."

The report clearly thinks that innovation - and proper testing of that innovation - is the way forward in ecommerce solutions.

But isn't it better to have a simple website that lets users easily interact with a company, or will such a site look amateurish and affect sales?

Business Feet deliver targeted results through internet marketing and SEO web design

Source:- businessfeet.com/

Easier Content Management Deployment With Pharos Mediator 4

The Pharos Mediator 4 platform now enables content management to be rolled-out in easy stages. A new range of Mediator 4 Task Packs cover specific roles in each area of operations from ingest to playout.

Operations covered include Library, Ingest, QC, Promotions, Compliance, Approvals, Playout and New Media (VOD, IPTV and Mobile). Each Task Pack presents a sequential set of tasks empowering operators to manage their workload as efficiently as possible. Every Task Pack is an enterprise license for a specific area of operations and can be used concurrently by any number of Mediator users.

"Content management systems need to work across the enterprise, unifying operations and making content searchable, accessible and usable by everyone," comments Russell Grute at Pharos. "Every user from the library to playout is affected during installation or migration. Rolling out a content management solution is often considered to be a big problem and all too often seen as an impractical project. Mediator 4 offers a step by step approach to rolling content management and workflow across the enterprise. With a powerful core architecture and Task Packs for each area of operations, our projects teams are deploying Mediator systems in weeks and not months"

Mediator 4's secure and efficient workflow aligns users, roles and tasks in all areas of operations. Every Mediator user has desktop Browse and Search Tools where required. Mediator 4 also provides an audit trail of actions and workflow states whilst managing all underlying file transfers and third-party infrastructure such as routing, storage and transcode sub-systems.

New Task Packs for IBC include New Media Workflow and Subtitling Workflow.
Mediator can manage content for VOD, Mobile and Internet based delivery can be managed side by side with linear distribution. This option deals with all the necessary file transfers and transcoding. It can generate and recover additional platform specific content such as stills for an EPG or metadata such as a VOD synopsis.

Mediator 4 directly integrates the management of subtitles and voice-overs for international distribution at the optimal stage in the workflow.


Source:- broadcastbuyer.tv/

BreakingPoint Publishes Deep Packet Inspection Testing Methodology

Videos and Documentation Detail Techniques for Testing Deep Packet Inspection Functionality Using Stateful Application and Malicious Traffic

BreakingPoint Systems, Inc., today released a detailed test methodology and video series that enables network engineers to test the deep packet inspection (DPI) features of content-aware network devices.

BreakingPoint's testing methodologies, videos and documentation can be found at www.breakingpointsystems.com/resources/testmethodologies.

DPI functionality allows network devices such as content-aware switches and routers, next generation firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and application delivery controllers to inspect and take action based on the contents and context of packets as they travel across the network. DPI is heavily leveraged in helping to prevent buffer overflow attacks, denial of service (DoS) attacks and intrusions. Effective testing of DPI functionality requires an authentic blend of application traffic, combined with live security strikes, at speeds of 10 gigabits per second.

Dennis Cox, BreakingPoint CTO, commented:

"Deep packet inspection receives a lot of attention, primarily due to the controversy over privacy concerns and P2P bandwidth shaping. Often, these debates overshadow the important role of DPI in providing value for increased security, tiered services and data loss prevention. Testing DPI functionality is critical for network equipment manufacturers producing these devices and service providers offering these services. The BreakingPoint DPI Test Methodology and video guide was our chance to demonstrate the steps for testing DPI functionality."

BreakingPoint Test Methodologies were developed by the team at BreakingPoint Labs based on their experience developing and testing a variety of high-performance content-aware network equipment. BreakingPoint's testing platform enables network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) to realize a 50% reduction in time-to-test and ultimately accelerate the development of next generation network devices.

About BreakingPoint

BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry's most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing solutions, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

Source:- marketwatch.com/

Search Engine Optimization Tips: Going Beyond Keywords

Search engine optimization plays a key role in keeping any online store running successfully, and it's a task that has many critical components that Web shop owners have to continually address. This is due to both the sheer amount of time it takes to keep the basics in order and to the ever-changing search landscape.

Still, with a checklist in hand, you can figure out what type of SEO service makes sense for your business. Or, you can use it to prioritize these jobs and with a bit of time set aside each week, do it yourself and keep your site optimized for the best search results.

To help, we spoke with Julian Chu, director of client success at Demandware, who provided his list of "Top 10 SEO Must Dos."

1. Create relevant, keyword-rich product and category names, titles and descriptions.
Often e-tailers wonder if it's best to use manufacturer descriptions, or write their own. Chu's advice: "It's always better to have content that is directly relevant to what people are searching for, so if your own product descriptions and attributes are better, you'll get better results." But you have to decide where you want to spend your time. If you have hundreds of products, you should focus on the top sellers, what's driving people to the site in the first place."

2. Add relevant, keyword-rich content to the site.
Chu said there is a fine line between stuffing your copy with popular keywords and making copy flow. "I think you need to start with writing the best copy you can for your target audience, then step back and look at it from an SEO perspective, not just a marketing perspective," he said. "Any place where you can modify the language and add wording for keyword phrase, is an opportunity, because sometimes in the context of the copy, you might not add it because it would already be understood."
He added that at the same time, you don't want to keep repeating the product name, for instance, too many times, because then the copy is awkward and unreadable. Still, he said, there are synonyms and phrases you can use in place of the product name that can give your site more chances of showing up in searches.

3. Populate SEO-relevant attribute fields in your product catalog.
Often, busy Web shop owners fail to fill out attributes in their catalogs, and Chu said this can be a costly move. He advises that you include both short and long descriptors and landing page URLs. By devoting a bit of time, e-tailers can boost their optimization by making sure the catalogs are complete.

4. Ensure proper redirects from legacy URLs.
Chu said e-commerce sites typically have lots of external links back to the site, whether from affiliates or other related pages, and making sure these are updated is paramount to SEO. "If you change a platform, or where a product is located, and people can't find it, that's obviously bad for business," he said. "You need to set redirects from the old URL to the new. Unfortunately, this is one of those tasks that can take an inordinate amount of time if you do it one by one manually, so if you have an SEO platform, be sure to set rules based on the data to have this done automatically and you'll save a lot of time."

5. Configure 404 error pages.
Nothing turns off a prospective buyer more than getting hit with a "404 Error" page, and yet Chu said it is bound to happen from time to time. "You can't manage all the external links to your site perfectly, so the best thing is to be prepared for when some other site generates a broken link to your site. The backup plan is to capitalize on the opportunity by customizing and merchandising the error page. Don't just show the dreaded generic error page."
He said you can configure the page with your own brand elements, so it looks like an integral part of your site, and you should include a search box, links to product categories and even a humorous line about the glitch. "At a minimum, you should show some products there, and humor always helps, anything to draw the customer back in once they've found you through a search link."

6. Submit Sitemaps to search engines and directories.
Many e-tailers aren't even aware that there are two types of sitemaps. One is the kind commonly found at a site that helps visitors find what they're looking for by outlining how site content is arranged and organized. The other form, usually with a captial "S" and in XML format, is what Chu basically calls a "blueprint" of your site that is used to show search engines, namely Google of course, exactly how your site is set up.
"This is another thing can have a huge impact on your search ranking, but something that takes a lot of time to do right, so if you have an SEO platform, you want one that can automatically generate a Google Sitemap," he said. "It's like submitting a roadmap to the Google crawler of what the key pages are in your site, what the structure is, so it can crawl your site effectively. You can also tell Google how often your pages change, so the robots know how often to come back. Essentially it ensures Google always has updated information on your site set up."

7. Analyze site for broken links.
Chu said checking your site frequently for broken links is just "good site hygiene," and again, something that can be automated in an SEO platform if you're not finding the time to do it as often as you should.

8. Fix landing pages.
In addition to keeping standard pages updated, Chu said it's wise to give your landing pages some extra special care and nurturing. "Follow similar practices as you do for standard pages, but be sure to keep landing pages up-to-date, for instance, if you sell seasonal products. Think of specific topics for landing pages that will cause them to show up high in search results. You can even make them dynamic, meaning that the content that shows up depends on the search words used, tailored to that more specific search."

9. Add tags to images and video.
Another way e-tailers can sharpen their SEO is by adding tags to video and images. Chu said you should consider pictures in the same way as text. "These objects have keywords like any other page, so if you put in tags, they'll be more likely to be found."

10. Keep abreast of major changes in the search engine market landscape.
The search engine sector is constantly undergoing change. For instance, the addition of video and images in Google's main search results, could impact your rankings. Or, Changes in search patterns, such as shoppers often entering sites on product pages instead of home pages, can also influence decisions you make about your site, but if you're not aware of these trends, you can't capitalize on them.



source:- ecommerce-guide.com/

Top 10 Resources for Search Engine Optimizers

Having been in the search-marketing field for quite some time, I typically write about topics that assume readers are familiar with SEO (define). Lately, I've had requests for some information on SEO basics to get Web sites to rank better in search engine results. That got me thinking that in any field, there are always newbies looking for access to good information and resources.

If you're relatively new to SEO or just about to undertake SEO on your Web site for the first time, you're likely looking for some key resources. For the benefit of SEO newbies, here's a short list of some top online resources for SEO -- in no particular order.

* Google Webmaster Guidelines. Right from the horse's mouth, these are the guidelines Google suggests you follow to help your site rank in its listings.

* Yahoo Search Content Quality Guidelines. Same concept as with Google, but for Yahoo.

* MSN Guidelines for Successful Indexing. See above.

* Google Keyword Tool. This is the best and cheapest (free) tool around to help you identify potential keywords to optimize your site for. Supplement the information on volume with the advertiser competition estimates to get a sense for how much competition you might face for those terms in the organic listings. Although the competition estimates are for paid search advertisers, typically a term with a high amount of paid search competition will also have steep organic ranking competition.

* SEOmoz Tools. An ever-growing list of handy tools for search marketers, SEOmoz helps you to do just about anything when it comes to SEO, including measure the SEO strength of your site (Trifecta tool), find out how well your site is targeted to your keywords (Term Target tool), and evaluate the feasibility of achieving ranking those keywords (Keyword Difficulty tool), as well as check site inclusion, back links, PageRank, and much more with the SEO ToolBox. The only downer is that for access to the advanced features of the tools, you have to pay a subscription fee.

* SEO Book.com tools. Downloading these free tools to your computer can reduce the labor required to evaluate and track your SEO efforts. SEO for Firefox automatically displays the relevant SEO info for each site (e.g. PR, inbound links, etc.) alongside your search engine results, the Rank Checker automates the pesky tacking of positioning, and the Keyword Tool (while not the greatest) gives you a long list of links to keyword tools to get suggestions for your search term.

* Bruce Clay Search Engine Relationship Chart. Learn how the search engines are connected to each other. Knowing who the big engines are can help you focus your SEO efforts and avoid wasting time on improving your rankings in an engine that is really fed results from another.

* SEO Chat Forums. This is a key forum for exclusively SEO-related topics and discussions with information for rookies and veterans alike. SEO Chat also has an abundance of useful tools and articles. Newbies should check out a recent posting: An SEO's Experience: 21 Rules for Performing SEO.

* SEMPO Learning Center. The Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization is dedicated to providing education in the area of search marketing. Although it's supposed to be for pros, the information in its learning center is directed more at those starting out in the field. The SEMPO Institute offers online training in all aspects of search marketing, including both beginner and advanced courses in search engine optimizations.

* Intro to Search Engine Optimization. A great Search 101 primer on Search Engine Watch (ClickZ's sister site) by one of the most recognizable names in search, Danny Sullivan, formerly of SEW. Read this to get a good overall sense for what SEO is, how it works, what are the key factors used to rank sites, and more.


source:- clickz.com/

New Streamlined SEO Service Announces Domination Of Google

The service, geared towards intellects who know basic information on how search engines work, will allow beginners and intermediate users to quickly gain ranks in search engines. Since most of the world uses Google as a means of finding content, this has proven to be a profitable venture.

A premium service has also been added to the mix, in which customers can take advantage of to push their rankings even further. The target demographic for this service is primarily the entrepreneur types, but applies to anyone wanting to outrank their competition.

The system uses a currency of "credits" that are used to buy some types of services. The primary way to get credits is to obtain them through payment via PayPal or credit card. Those who have friends can simply tell their friends of the service and get a considerable amount of free credits in exchange.

So far the public reception has been vast- it seems the service not only works, it is cost effective as compared to professional search engine optimization companies. As technology grows bigger each day, we only hope services such as http://www.PositionPusher.com continue to spring up where their presence is due.


source:- prlog.org/

Digital Surgeons Now Providing Magento Commerce Development for Powerhouse Ecommerce Websites

Web development firm Digital Surgeons takes on the East Coast ecommerce industry with the announcement of their Magento Commerce development services. Already with a healthy menu of website design, programming, branding, and search engine marketing services at their finger tips, this dynamic group is now mastering the Ecommerce art form known as Magento.

Magento Commerce is a PHP ecommerce platform with all the versatility of open source code, as well as unprecedented control over online store features and functions. Magento popularity is growing at a rapid rate for reasons that make a great deal of sense. The store keeper gets all kinds of say about how the store looks and functions. The administrative section is logical, clear, and very easy to use. The store layout is built to be all about the customer in every detail.

This ecommerce platform delivers much more than your average shopping cart software. Magento includes a content management system for building new website content pages and managing newsletters; a micro-site builder for high focus marketing of multiple locations and store divisions; an impressive array of marketing tools and options; and a scaleable php site structure that is more than ready for company growth.

The professional service and support that goes with Magento is a very welcome benefit, one previously unheard of with other open source ecommerce platforms. Help with all kinds of questions, integration, start up, and custom website development is available from a lively forum community of users; the Magento development team; and from quality Magento Partners that have learned the software inside out.

Digital Surgeons is a full service Connecticut marketing agency with deep experience in the world of ecommerce websites, search engine marketing, and conversion enhancement. Magento Commerce fits perfectly with the firm’s talents, with a suitcase full of the best search engine optimization tools available and an SEO friendly structure that is highly uncommon with most ‘out of the box’ shopping carts. This platform is built from the ground up with Conversion to Sale as the main focus. Proven marketing elements, based on exhaustive research, are woven into the Magento storefront, incorporating everything that makes a consumer friendly experience.

The php ecommerce team at Digital Surgeons crafts custom ecommerce websites for their clients geared toward each unique consumer audience and industry. Magento Commerce is seamlessly woven into this website tapestry for a powerful online store that sells, and sells well.

Custom development to integrate with other essential software systems, or to further expand on Magento’s capabilities, is a Digital Surgeons specialty. The company also arranges professional ecommerce hosting services and provides in-depth training on the administration of the website for their clients.


source:- webwire.com/

Microsoft SharePoint update released

Companies using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 could be interested to discover an update to improve the application has been launched, it has been reported.

Microsoft has released an update to bolster the search functionality of SharePoint, fixing a long-term bugbear with the program, according to CMS Wire.

Noting the search features in Microsoft SharePoint have been know to frustrate users, the news provider reveals the recent update provides a federated search function and performance improvements to querying and indexing capabilities.

Furthermore, the infrastructure update for Microsoft Office Server delivers a unified administration dashboard to SharePoint.

"Some additional improvements include a greater granularity for crawl source history and list that shows all running crawls and durations," the publication explains.

The update also includes content deployment and infrastructure fixes for Windows SharePoint Services, MS Project and MS Servers.

A new study from Forrester Research suggests large companies are adopting Microsoft Office SharePoint Server at an increasing rate.


source:- onestopclick.com/