Web Services Guide

Get the best communication tool for your Utility firm!

Larry — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:52:09 +0000

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.

SharePoint is Great for Social Networking!

Larry — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:54:34 +0000

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 Web Services Tie Up with Adobe Systems Incorporated

Larry — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:54:10 +0000

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:

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

More on DHTML II

Ben — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 04:26:26 +0000

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.

Access your mails amidst the wildness of Amazon in Brazil

Larry — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:13:12 +0000

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.

The facility to contact hosted Exchange service on a mobile phone is largely based on the kind of mobile device that you are carrying. The phone that you carry should have compatibility with the local wireless providers.

Brazil is a country with a population of 185,712,713 and the main spoken languages of the country includes Portuguese. The fine aspect of Exchange Hosting is that it is accessible in many tongues letting populace of Brazil to have the benefit of hosted Exchange 2010 in their personal tongue.

Vivo Participacoes, TIM Participacoes, Claro Brazil, and Oi are the leading wireless providers in Brazil. Thus, before synchronization your phone with Microsoft Exchange Server, you should check these providers’ websites to make out the range of data plans they have on their platter. If you are travelling from another country, you should check with your home country’s wireless provider as well if they have data roaming arrangements with Brazilian carriers.

More on DHTML I

Ben — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 03:34:49 +0000

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.

Reach out to your customers

Larry — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:55:55 +0000

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. Allowing site users to comment gives them a closer connection to the site. Other methods include opening up a forum, holding regular competitions, sending out newsletters or going to industry forums and developing a presence there.

In every interaction with your target users, it’s important to interact. When users comment on your site, leave a reply. This allows the user to see that you care about their comment, and also shows anyone else roaming across your site that you want to engage your site users. This in turn tends to encourage further comments, making it one of the more engaging search engine optimization tools out there.

The circular effect: how this benefits SEO

A couple of the side benefits of pursuing a better relationship with your site’s users are related to your search engine optimization campaign. If you decide to open up your comments sections, this will provide fresh content to your pages on a constant basis. This will attract the search engines back to your site more frequently.

Your answers to your site users’ comments will also provide a way to seed further keyword-rich content onto your site. Talk to our consultants at www.seoconsult.co.uk about how to get into the habit of sewing keywords into your text.

Another benefit of closer customer relationships comes from the things you do off-site. When you participate in online forums in your industry, or comment on industry blogs, you usually have the opportunity to leave a link back to your site. Over time, these will build up your link profile.

Why bother engaging the masses?

Engaging your target user groups on a closer level can boost you to the top of your industry. Any marketer will tell you that being a household name is a sure-fire way to get to the top in any industry. Becoming close to your target users can help you to spread word about your business.

People are creatures of habit. They tend to go to the businesses they are familiar with. If you have built up a firm relationship with your target internet users, they are more likely to come to you whenever they require something from your industry. A relationship creates trust. Basically, it’s about doing the ground work over time, in order to reap continued rewards.

Use Desktop Pop-up Application with Asterisk PBX

Larry — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 17:39:04 +0000

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.

Watchfire to Provide App Security

Ben — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 07:00:18 +0000

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

Client Object Model – Yet another interesting SharePoint 2010 feature!

Larry — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:49:11 +0000

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. But introducing web services will not fix the issues, as Microsoft found, because then the request for more functionality in the web services will continue. Even if Microsoft provides a good number of web services with SharePoint, customization in web services will be required for different clients, and this will make the out-of-the-box web services unusable. Also introducing a large number of web services will be a waste as not all companies will use all the web services functionalities. Thus, in order to add more web services from users, Microsoft has taken a different approach called Client Object Model (OM). This SharePoint Client Object Model will allow getting data out of SharePoint from PCs that are not hosting SharePoint. Also Client Object Model provides complete API to interact with SharePoint Server which is more intuitive, and useful and very much similar to SharePoint Object Model.
SharePoint 2010 has launched three new client APIs which can be used to interact with SharePoint sites.

The three APIs are targeted for three different types of clients:

• For .net Managed applications (for example, console applications, window applications, web applications etc, which are not running inside SharePoint Context).
• For Silverlight applications.
• For using with JavaScript (called ECMAScript). This API is only available for applications hosted inside SharePoint (for example, web part deployed in SharePoint site can use this JavaScript API for accessing SharePoint from browser using JavaScript).
• Conclusion: The new Client Object models provide an object-oriented system for interoperating with SharePoint data from a remote computer, and they are in many respects easier to use than the already existing SharePoint Foundation Web services. You start by retrieving a client context object that represents the current request context, and through this context, you can obtain access to client objects at site-collection level or lower in the SharePoint Foundation hierarchy. Client objects inherit from the ClientObject class (ECMAScript: ClientObject), and you can use them to retrieve properties for a specific SharePoint object, to retrieve child objects and their properties, or to retrieve child items from a collection.

The Client Object Model and other useful features in SharePoint Server 2010 encourage an upgrade from MOSS 2007. Also useful are the free SharePoint templates and web parts that are included with SharePoint products.