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.

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…)

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.

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…)

What is Word Automation Services in SharePoint Server 2010?
Ever tried to transfer .docx files into PDF? Most of us try to perform server side conversions of Open XML files (.docx) into fixed formats (PDF and XPS) using the Word desktop application. Now this conversion can be done hassle-free with Word Automation Services.

As an element of SharePoint Server 2010, Word Automation Services allows you to perform file operations on the server that previously required automating desktop Word:
* Converting between documents formats (e.g. DOC to DOCX)
* Converting to fixed formats (e.g. PDF or XPS)
* Updating fields
* Importing “alternate format chunks”
Features of Word Automation Services

Features of Word Automation Services include the following:
o Reliability – Word Automation Service was built from the ground up to work in a server environment, which means that you no longer have to worry about issues like dialog boxes that bring the process to a halt, expecting a user to provide input; creating interactive user accounts under which to run the application to avoid running into permissions issues, etc.
o Speed – The service is optimized to perform server-side file operations, and in doing so provides performance significantly better than existing solutions.
o Scalability – The service can take advantage of the processing power available on typical server hardware (multiple processors, additional memory). For example, although a single instance of WINWORD.EXE can only utilize a single core of processing power, with Word Automation Services, you can specify the number of simultaneous conversions (and the # of processing cores) to use based on the available hardware.

What Word Automation Service doesn’t do in the SharePoint Server?
One of the most important things to understand about Word Automation service is what it doesn’t do. Word Automation Service is not intended to be a 1:1 replacement for the existing desktop object model. Instead, the server is one half of a replacement for the existing object model – the other half being the Open XML SDK.
o The SDK is designed to handle tasks that don’t require application logic, such as inserting or deleting content (paragraphs, tables, pictures), inserting data from other data sources, sanitizing content (removing content, accepting tracked changes), etc.
o The service is designed to handle those few tasks that do need application logic: reading the entire document formats that Word supports, converting to the entire output format that Word supports, recalculating dynamic fields, etc.

Word Automation Service is not featured in SharePoint Foundation 2010. Nevertheless, there is still life left in SharePoint family of products including Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 and WSS 3.0 that has free SharePoint templates for business use.

Build it and they will come! But it is very important that you know who are the visitors to the SharePoint site and where do they spend most time. To make this task easier many known software companies have come up with web analytics tools to help users find which content is popular and which is not. Likewise, SharePoint 2010 too has integrated a Web Analytics feature, which helps you collect, report, and analyze the usage and effectiveness of your SharePoint 2010 deployment. To put it in simple words, Web Analytics reveals which content is most popular and which is not.

Take advantage of SharePoint Web Analytics tool and other useful features of SharePoint 2010 hosting, SharePoint Foundation hosting or SharePoint Server 2010 – with shared or dedicated hosting by a SharePoint 2010 hosting provider.

Web Analytics Reports
In SharePoint 2010, the Web Analytics reports that are available out-of-the-box provide insights into the behavior of users of your SharePoint sites. There are three categories of reports that are produced which are as follows:

* Inventory Web Analytics reports: Inventory Web analytics reports provide key metrics of the inventory of your sites:
1. What is the total disk drive space user (Storage Usage);
2. How many sites exist (Number of Sites);
3. Top Site Product Versions, Top Site Languages, etc;

* Traffic Web Analytics reports: Traffic Web Analytics reports provide metrics such as:
1. How much traffic your site gets (Number of Page Views);
2. Who visits your sites (Top Visitors);
3. How visitors arrive at your site (Top Referrers);
4. Daily Unique Visitors, Top Destinations, Top Browsers, etc;

* Search Web Analytics reports: Search Web Analytics reports give you insight into what users are searching for. For instance:
1. How many times users searched (Number of Queries);
2. What were the most used search terms (Top Queries);
3. What queries have high failure rates (Failed Queries);
4. Best Bet Usage, Search keywords, etc;

Custom Web Analytics Reports

It is possible to create your own custom web analytics reports by using the Customize Report button under the Analyze tab in the Ribbon. Clicking this button will export the data contained in this report to Excel. Excel is a power analytics tools and makes it easy for non technical users to add your own charts, set specific filters, and combine data from multiple reports. In addition, the data within Excel is refreshable, which means that, once you customize the report, it will always be up-to-date with the latest data.

Features of Web Analytics Tool

Best Bets Suggestions: Best Bets allow search administrators to determine what the most relevant search result is for a given keyword. Now administrators can simply look through each of the Best Bet suggestions and easily accept or reject them. To access the Best Bet Suggestions, go to Site Actions, click on Site Collection Web Analytics Reports, and the click on Best Bets Suggestions on the left navigation.

Web Analytics Web Part: The Web Analytics Web Part is mainly created for Site Managers. This new Web Analytics Web Part is an end-user facing Web Part that can be easily inserted into any page on your site. It can be configured to display the ‘most viewed content’ or the ‘most frequent search queries’ in the site. The data in the Web Part is continuously refreshed as new content or new search queries become more popular.

All in all, Web Analytics in SharePoint 2010 will help you better understand what users want from your site, what are the popular content on your site, etc. Web analytics tool will help you customize your SharePoint farm to best meet their needs.

Both the Middle East and India has gone Internet silent, not because of some political restrictions nor any kind of terrorist activity. The reason is they’re no longer connected to the internet. They’re having a small problem: they have been disconnected because of two damaged undersea cables in the Mediterranean.

There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, and India suffered up to 60% disruption.
UK firms such as British Airways have told the BBC that call centers have been affected by the outage.
Industry experts said it could take up to one week to repair the damaged cables and resume full service.
International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.

Not to worry though as the repair team are on their way to make the internet service available to the affected parties. Soon you’ll be able to get through them again.

C++ is an object oriented programming language focused on systems programming. Regarded as a middle-level language, it comprises a combination of high-level and low-level language features. It is free-form, statistically types, multi-paradigm in a usually compiled language supporting procedural programming, object-oriented programming, data abstraction and generic programming.

It was developed in 1979 by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs as an enhancement to the C programming language. It was named back then as “C with Classes”. During the year 1983, the name was changed to C++. As of the moment, a new version of the standard is in the works.