Now you all may think how is SharePoint beneficial for a Utility sector, right? For any industry, communication is the key passage for information sharing, decision making, so on and so forth. SharePoint helps provide this benefit to all the industries across the spectrum. Same payback it will provide to the utility industry as well. Using SharePoint Server 2010, employees or workforce of the utility sector can collaborate, communicate and manage documentation and data ingeniously.

Using SharePoint server 2007, you can update, share, and discuss data such as customer communications; employee authored content, interactions with service providers and experts engaged on projects; and news related to the company, that too all under one roof. Taxing to and fro of emails can be dodged. In SharePoint Site, staff and management will be able to glance through or make changes in the company content right at one place. Less storage space is also required. News stories meant for the company’s intranet folio which essentially needs to be analyzed by the concerned superiors before getting posted can be done swiftly concurrently at the central space.

Using another such solution from Microsoft, i.e., Dedicated Exchange Server, employees and employers can enhance their email communication. The main advantage using Hosted Microsoft Exchange is that it can be integrated with SharePoint site. It also allows for wireless synchronization, archival of emails, download of heavy attachments even on the phone, access to contact list, so on and so forth. Cheap Exchange hosting services are available in the market. Also, application hosting and free hosting templates for project management, content management, document management, etc. are easily available these days.

The corporate world today has deemed SharePoint Site as the full-bodied web solution, however there is much more to find out about SharePoint and its usability features. So why do you think SharePoint is the finest tool for social computing?

Whilst you make a social network by means of SharePoint, users, private spaces, etc. are by default being developed for each user you adjoin. These individual spaces are known as My Sites, which operates similar to other existing social network sites, however with additional features and abilities. The My Site feature in SharePoint allows to see and administer data, links, calendar, associations, and other private data.

Originally speaking, in SharePoint Server 2010, each My Site has an integrated blog. Additionally, users can generate new SharePoint sites and fasten them to an on hand Team Site. This provides a blog to the team that adjoins additional content and value along with their document repositories, calendars and lists. SharePoint also allows for blog archiving which can also be indexed. Thus, it makes the blog a storehouse for combined facts and data.

People Search is an imperative SharePoint Server 2007 feature for big or emergent organizations. It helps search and find exact people much easier. Several kinds of search features are available to use, for instance the By Expertise search feature. Also, search results can be differentiated by tabs such as job title or by social distance.

Microsoft SharePoint Services also has integrated wikis for information sharing and information and group collaboration on content. SharePoint Wiki features include approval workflows and permissions, document check-in, and version history. There is also an option to use hyper-V hosting with a dedicated SharePoint server. SharePoint price is also not too expensive.

Free hosting templates, hosted blackberry, and Exchange host are also available through SharePoint hosting providers.

Amazon is making the deal sweeter this holiday season for its countless customers. Amazon Web Services has just tied up with Adobe Systems Incorporated to offer better services by adding the availability of Adobe Flash Media Server 4 software on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

For many customers, Adobe Flash Media Server is the perfect solution for applications such as streaming video and a host of other social media applications. With these being the “hot” things nowadays, the addition of the functionality is simply another way that Amazon Web Services is trying to attract more clients and retain the existing ones.

One of the biggest advantages that Amazon Web Services offer is their pay-as-you-go model, making it a very affordable alternative for any enterprise. With the market being as competitive as it is today, this model makes sense for a lot of businesses. Amazon Web Services has received its share of flak due to some down time, but it has made some adjustments to its offerings by adding more services and enhancing their servers hosted in its data service centers. For the pricing model and the features, Amazon certainly has an edge. As long as they are able to maintain the stability of their services – which is quite likely – this development is sure to save a lot of entrepreneurs on operating costs whilst equipping them with the means to provide high quality services.

This latest tie up will bring more advantages such as:

1. Multicast and live packaging with HTTP Dynamic Streaming for high quality playback experiences
2. RTMFP technology; this reduces bandwidth usage
3. Real-time interactive applications
4. Peer-assisted communication

What you see above is an example of animated text.

It is one of the effects that can be achieved by using DHTML scripts on a script. There are also other effects that DHTML can achieve. One is enabling online forms on websites that can instantly respond to data input by user and then process immediately afterwards. Another is it can hide content for a given time. This is used in forum posts and blogs. It can also embed a ticker so that it can automatically refresh contents and other data.

Brazil has enthralled vacationers with its white-sand beaches, creased with palm trees fronting the beautiful Atlantic sea. Brazil also lures travelers with its grandiose waterfalls, and see-through rivers. And when talking about Brazil how can we forget about its most famous attractions, viz., the Amazon and the Pantanal, which is abode to a variety of flora and fauna, natural surroundings, and all-embracing natural wealth. Yet, whether you are traveling to Brazil or live and work there, it is extremely important that you can access your business email, on Exchange 2010 hosting or on Microsoft Exchange Server with an MS Exchange provider. If you have BlackBerry, you can access your BlackBerry Exchange Server email on a phone or from a cyber cafe. (more…)

What is DHTML?

DHTML or Dynamic HTML is a set or a collection of innovative features and technologies that is utilized together to create animated and ineteractive web sites. With DHTML, authors are able to change content and rendering of a Web page as users interact with them. Said features were first introduced in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0. Good as it may sound, DHTML has some sort of falling-out in the web publishing community as DHTML scripts are a little browser sensitive. Some even do not work on other browsers.

SEO is not just about the improvement of a website. If used well, your site’s search engine optimisation can be a time of general improvement for your online strategy. In a world where customers are increasingly feeling distanced from the businesses they deal with, an online business needs to actively pursue a closer relationship with its target internet users. SEO can help you to do this.

Your site’s optimisation should be used to promote the health of your business. It only takes a few small touches to create a community around your site. This community can be used in turn to support your SEO.

How to get closer to your site users

There are a few ways to boost your relationship with your customers. The first thing you should do on your site is open up a comments function. (more…)

Reminders, alerts, pop-ups, etc. are very important in this busy running world. Multi-tasking is what all of us do and so chances of overlooking certain alerts is likely. But what if we overlook something which is really significant? Not done, right? Yes! As a result, to avoid this confusion, desktop screen pop-up was introduced. Desktop pop-up application delivers integrated web searches with GoogleMaps and GoogleSearch to locate, dial and save new contacts.

Desktop popup application combines the power of the Microsoft, the power of Google, and the power of your Asterisk PBX based phone to speed up and simplify all your phone communications. Desktop applications use Asterisk AMI link to control any phone connected to a hosted Asterisk server, or control any phone connected to a Broad Soft server.

Possible instant messaging and other Asterisk call notification tools you could utilize: include the following:
1. smbclient (SAMBA)
2. YAC (windows & TiVo listener)
3. YAACID (open source in .NET/C#): Yet Another Asterisk Caller ID
4. Jabber (various methods), ICQ, MSN, …
5. Covide (CRM software)
6. FOP (Flash Operator Panel)
7. HooDaHek (collection of CallerID scripts and tools for Asterisk VOIP PBX)
8. App_notify network caller notification. Mac OSX client available (3rd party tool)
9. app_broadcast: Works with YAC etc. (3rd party tool)
10. asteroid (Open source, JAVA)
11. iBCallMan (Windows Desktop Call Manager)
12. PL Call Notify
13. MythTV OSD
14. NetCID (talking callerid)
15. Emerald Caller-ID Search
16. ADM – Asterisk Desktop Manager
17. U-Rang II (Screen Pop Utility for Windows)
18. Asterisk Dial & Announce Tool (ADAT). Free call-notifier (Outlook/CRM integration, event handling, click-to-dial, BLF panel and more).
19. Pbx Screen Popper (Opens a web page on incoming calls based on specific matching criteria)
20. StarJunction Free Edition Caller ID pop. Integration with Salesforce and SugarCRM
21. OutCall (Pop-Up as well as Outlook integration, free and open source)
22. Email
23. CallerIDpop Perl Script
24. DialApplet, Windows, Mac & Linux
25. AsteriskCallNotification Mac
26. Asterisk+Twitter
27. VoIP Operator Free Windows call notification and dialer for Asterisk. Very easy to use and install.
28. InGenius Connector Search-and Dial PC Application, Caller ID pop, integration with MS Outlook, Active Directory and Google. Optional Softphone.
29. Thirdlane Dialer Free dialer and screen-pop application for Asterisk based PBXs. Integrated with Thirdlane PBX and Thirdlane PBX MTE, MS Outlook, any web based CRM, dual-mode – floating or Outlook toolbar, supports call to URLs.

To add to all this, Apps4Rent offers you the best application hosting solutions, such as, hosted VOIP PBX, Exchange, SharePoint, etc. These software hosting solutions has become the preferred way for companies to implement business software.

Remember that Watchfire was acquired by IBM early this year? Well, they sure aren�t wasting time as they will now officially release IBM Rational AppScan 7.7. This new improved Web application security tool is based on Watchfire’s AppScan. This product basically identifies, validates and reports on gaps in Web applications. However, the latest version has new features (i.e. Scan Expert and State Inducer) designed to make the product more user-friendly for those who have not much background in application testing. It also includes recorded Web-based training (now that one is useful to me) to instruct users on application security and industry standard compliance.

Source: Eweek

In SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010, there is an interesting feature called Client Object Model (Client OM) which is a unified model that uses the same or similar programming concepts as the Server Object Model (Server OM). The Client Object Model can be accessed via web services, via a client (JavaScript) API, and via REST.

Why Client Object Model?

You must be thinking now why should I have Client Object Model when millions of sites are running smoothly without the Client Object Model. So here is the answer to your question – Client object Model is the result of SharePoint customers’ request to Microsoft to introduce more and more web services to get data out of SharePoint Server. (more…)