Magento version release 1.1.7

In keeping with its proven history of coming up with effective enhancement time and again, Magento has released new version with number of fixes and improvements.
Magento, the proven high end open-source eCommerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility and control, the new release covers over 350 issue resolutions with new functionalities.
Google Website Optimizer Integration in Magento 1.1.7 is a major enhancement to the application. Website Optimizer is an easy-to-use tool for testing site content that delivers actionable results.

Here is the list of major highlights
• Google Website Optimizer integration
• Google Base integration
• Scheduled DB logs cleaning option

Offshore software Development India offers all the extensions for the new versions. All the Magento extensions developed at Offshore software Development India are compatible with the new version of the Magento.
Please find following services for the new version of the Magento by Offshore software Development India.

Magento Payment Gateway Solutions
1. iVeri
2. paymentec
3. safepay

Magento Custom Extensions
1. Magento Advance Search Extension.
2. Magento Non Product Search Extension.
3. Shopping Cart Extension.
4. Custom Shipping Charges Extension.
5. Custom Shipping Date Extension.
6. Image Rotation Extension.
7. Click and Popup Product Extension
8. Hide price Extension.
9. Custom Sitemap Extension.
10. Feature/ Clearance / Sales / New Arrivals Extension.

Magento Data/Site Migration Solutions
1. Migrate OSCommerce site to Magento.
2. Migrate any ecommerce site to Magento.
3. Migrating Data to Magento Site

Magento Theme Design Solutions
1. Magento custom design templates and themes.
2. Magento themes from PSD/JPEG/Any Site.
3. Migrating Data to Magento Site.

For more information please refer http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/php-mysql-pgsql-programming/magento-customization-solutions.html

SEO Helps Small Companies be the Big Fish

One of the benefits of working at Oneupweb is our location here in Traverse City, Michigan. Not familiar with northwest lower Michigan? Check out the Our Area page for a small photo sampling.

Oneupweb is located at the southeast corner of Leelanau County, which makes our office a great starting point for after-work and weekend excursions. One-stop-sign towns are scattered throughout Leelanau County, and are nestled in and around natural and man-made landmarks such as the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and the Grand Traverse Lighthouse.

Leelanau County is the kind of place that thrives on tourists and summer residents from May through September but turns peacefully silent the moment the last orange leaf blows off the maple tree.

Following the great exodus, the million dollar question many Leelanau County locals try to answer is how to make a good enough living to allow for the opportunity to live here year around. As a result, a handful of enterprising individuals have created businesses specializing in niche products with a Leelanau County flair.

For the most part, these companies rely on internet mail order, local and national word-of-mouth (tourists are great at word-of-mouth), catalog mailings, the holiday gift show circuit, holiday gift giving and pleading with those Oprah people in Chicago to get in on some list.

Some of these companies have done an amazing job with these marketing techniques and are distributing their products all over the world, while others are still trying to get off the ground. Locally these companies are big fish in a small pond, but nationally they are small fish in a big lake.

So how does search engine optimization (SEO) fit into this?

I ran a few of these local companies' product keywords through the old Google machine and with the exception of one company that is a giant in the cherry products industry, none of them placed very high on a search engine results page (SERP).

After poking around a few of their websites, it didn't take long to start finding substantial mistakes which hampered their ability to place strongly on a SERP. Not good for the little fish.

Now this is where SEO can turn that little Yellow Perch of a Leelanau County business into the proverbial King Salmon.

What gets me excited about SEO is that it can give a small mail order company with an incredible product the opportunity to have a large presence in its given market.

Marketing departments, in companies large and small, need to consider how SEO can help give them the exposure that they are working so hard for.

Don't be the little fish in the pond. Learn how SEO can give you the opportunity to be the big fish.

Source:- straightupsearch.com/

The quest for the perfect Content Management System

As the Web has grown, the problem of content management seems to have absorbed more time and energy than even the effort required to create actual content. As a consequence the quest for the perfect Content Management System (CMS) has become high on the list of many corporations.

One of the more highly regarded CMS solutions is Joomla, a free, open source, cross platform product that has developed a huge following and is now used by the likes of the United Nations, MTV, Harvard University, and Citibank.

Joomla requires PHP and MySQL along with Apache or Microsoft IIS and can manage any kind of content including text, photos, music, and video. What’s even more impressive is that Joomla is also a content management framework that can be augmented to support other content and process management goals.

These modifications are provided by extensions and the Joomla Extensions Directory currently lists a total of 3,996 extensions that cover everything from adding CAPTCHA support through to file managers and RSS syndication to CRM, help desk, shopping carts, and wiki integration.

One of the extensions that is currently receiving a lot of attention is Teamlog published by YOOtheme GmbH, a Joomla development company.

Teamlog, which is currently in beta and free, adds an AJAX-driven time tracking interface to Joomla for project management. Designed to be very simple to use, Teamlog supports tracking of tasks and to-do items and is designed to be “foolproof” – essentially providing a working plan for multiple projects along with extensive reporting and statistics for teams of any size.

Teamlog is very impressive and I’ve heard from other users that it quickly becomes indispensable particularly in distributed environments.

If you are looking for a CMS, Joomla is worth considering; and if you need project-based time tracking, Teamlog is definitely worth considering.

Footnote: I have to note that on its Web site, materials promoting Teamlog YOOtheme includes some video tours of Teamlog. These are awful!

Here you have a terrific application and the voice over sounds like the speaker is disinterested and totally unenthused with what he’s presenting. Worse still the narrative is disorganized!

If your organization has any kind of presentation materials on line you must make sure that the effect of them is to sell and excite otherwise you are simply squandering opportunity.

Source:- networkworld.com/

SEO tips to get targeted traffic for your site

Unlike paid marketing, organic marketing or SEO is much more cost effective. The matter relies on how to do SEO effectively to get the most out of it, which means you can get massive targeted traffic within your time and money budget..

SEARCH ENGINE Optimisation (SEO) – is a process to optimise your website position in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), which means your website should appear at the first ranking for specific keywords on the first page of any search engines.

Why to do SEO? First, it maximises your web traffic because it’s the most visible in surfers’ search. The more visitors your website has, the better your conversion rates and ROI are and thus the higher your profit.

Next, unlike paid marketing, organic marketing or SEO is much more cost effective. You won’t have to pay for the traffic or the clicks themselves. More than that if you have time and knowledge, you can generate traffic yourself so your organic traffic can be completely free.

The matter relies on how to do SEO effectively to get the most out of it, which means you can get massive targeted traffic within your time and money budget. Some webmasters will opt to do everything themselves. However, they often get stuck half way being hopeless to wait for their website to get high rankings and the traffic to come.

The reasons can be simply either they are not aware of the latest Internet marketing techniques, which are being developed day by day by professional Internet marketers, or they just aren’t doing them the correct ways. Another reason can be they don’t have that much time to manage and complete the SEO process and leave it undone without having any results yet.

For those reasons, most of online business owners nowadays choose to outsource to reliable Search Engine Optimisers (SEOs). Among the leading SEOs in the current market, traffic assistants can be considered the best with their core competency in exclusive Internet marketing services provided by professional Internet marketers.


Source:- merinews.com/

Very Helpful Search Engine Marketing Strategies

Articles and press releases are two very helpful search engine marketing strategies that a lot of marketers still use today. But unlike in the past wherein the articles and press release can easily be found by the online community, the massive amount of articles and press releases today have made it more difficult for one to be singled out from the rest. It is now close to impossible that a press release about your new product or an article would be read by everyone.

Nevertheless, many companies still send out press releases and articles .Fact of the matter is there are some articles and some press releases that are read by customers. Despite the heavy competition, there is still a way to reach your customers through the articles and press releases .For more details visit to www.writing-fast-cash.com. The key is to create something that will capture their attention and will intrigue them enough to investigate and go to your website, user profile, or information center.

Here are some tips on how to make an article or press release that would stand among the thousands of other articles and press releases:

1. Get to Know Your Target Audience

Press releases and articles also have target audiences. We know that. We don‘t write and publish something just for ourselves; we do it for the benefit of others, too. When marketing, press release and articles are meant to be read by your target audience and you keep them in mind when creating that press release or article.

Knowing your target audience will enable you to write in a way as if you‘re “speaking in their language.” you would know ho to communicate to your target market and in the process capture their attention. You‘ll be able to include facts and information that you know would be beneficial for them and therefore will appeal to them. You will also be able to optimize your press release or article by defining the best keywords, knowing what keywords your target audience would be looking for.

2. Optimize Through Keywords

In knowing who your target audience is, you can research on what keywords to focus on to optimize your article or press release. Once you‘ve found the best keyword for the article or press release, make it as a basis when writing. Optimizing through the keywords will help with your rankings in the search engines as the crawlers can read the press releases and articles. If your article or press release is about a certain subject, and you‘ve honed on it very well, it can rank very high on the search engines.

3. Be Creative and Stand Out!

Stand out. You know there‘s a very fierce competition out there. Thousands of pres releases and articles are sent across the Web through the sites, emails, directories, and feeds. You need to do more than just write correctly... you need to write creatively! You need to think on how your article or press release can be of better help to the customers than the other articles or press releases. You need to give the audience a reason why they should pick your article or press release among the many thousand others.

4. Optimize On the Title

The title of the article or press release, not just the keywords, also counts in optimization. Each article or press release should have a title that revolves around the keywords you chose. This will help in the search engine rankings and for more visibility when the keywords are being searched. For more information logon to www.article-writing-secret.com.Of course, you should not forget to make the title interesting to hook the readers to read your article or press release. It will help to communicate easily with your customers and can drive traffic to your website.

5. Add an Image to Go With the Article or Press Release

An article or press release with an image or picture is much more enjoyable o read and look at than a plain one. Many readers usually don‘t read much at their first glance at an article or press release. Adding an image could lead them to read your article when it captures their attention. It‘s another way for your article or press release to stand out!

6. Choosing the Distribution Channels

Submitting your press release or article on big PR distribution sites and article directories may NOT always be the best course to take. While the services will work just fine, you might want to take a course wherein you know you‘ll get more exposure and quality coverage in your own market.

Source:- promotionworld.com/

Business column: Boost your marketing with online search tools

Search-engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a Web site. When SEO is done properly, it will place you high on search-engine result pages for certain key phrases and terms (i.e. real estate, law firms, doctor, etc.).

In today's online-driven world, the names Google, Yahoo and MSN are rapidly becoming more of a household name than the Yellow Pages. Most of us now have access to the Internet via work, home and mobile phone. According to research by Jupiter Media way back in 2004, more than 64 percent of people who are looking for information online use search engines. The number is closer to 80 percent today.

Low risk, high impact

In these tough economic times, business owners are becoming increasingly challenged and conservative with their marketing budgets. Most of us are seeking low-risk, high-impact marketing options in a down economy. When it comes to meeting these needs, search engines like Google provide a viable and cost effective solution.

So where should your advertising dollars be spent in today's market?

Consider the traditional advertising option of the yellow pages. For a prominent ad, your costs could be thousands of dollars per month Also, Yellow Page ads have limited flexibility, and you are usually locked in to a one-year commitment.

Optimize your Web site

How many times have you used the paper Yellow Pages this month?

How many times have you searched for a business or service on Google or Yahoo this month?

Now consider your Web site. You can further your business leads by making sure that more people are viewing it. You can optimize your Web site to rank in the main listings without any media spending at all. You can test multiple ads and list under multiple words or phrases all at the same time and get instant tracking on which ads are working for you.

The major search engines also can determine where the search is coming from. This means you can target ads all the way down to a city, or ZIP code.

If you are not currently utilizing this marketing channel, I recommend you take half of your local marketing this year and invest in search optimization or paid search ads. Work with a search-analytics professional to track the new program for 90 days. You likely will be surprised to see who's been searching for you, and see an immediate impact for your business.

Source:- recordonline.com/

SugarCRM wants to be the Linux of the CRM world

SugarCRM seems to be doing quite well, at least well enough to rankle its larger competitor Salesforce. John Roberts, the CEO of SugarCRM says Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce wasn’t too pleased when he found out SugarCRM was hosting its user conference at the Marriott, just a few yards from the Salesforce Dreamforce conference at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco.

“When Marc Benioff found out we were at the Marriott he pressured the hotel to move us out. That’s how we ended up here at the St. Regis, and Marriott is paying for it.” The move might have backfired for Salesforce because the St. Regis is a lot nicer than the Marriott and just as close to the Moscone.

The reason SugarCRM might be irking Mr Benioff is that it’s growing very fast. “We now have more than four thousand customers, and more than half-a-million users, in 80 languages. That’s in just four years.”

While Mr Roberts credits Marc Benioff with educating the market about the benefits of software as a service, he says SugarCRM is winning business because there isn’t any customer lock-in as there is with Salesforce and its proprietary behavior. For example, application developers for the Salesforce Force.com platform have to use a programming language called Apex.

“What is the point of Apex? We built SugarCRM in PHP and we use Internet standard technologies. We are open source, our technologies are owned by the Internet. We view ourselves as the Linux of the CRM world.”

Much of the demand for SugarCRM comes from word of mouth, says Mr Roberts. “I don’t have to have a big sales force that needs to travel all over the place.” Daily downloads average 5,000 per day and recently exceeded 5 million total. Site licenses are $449 per user or customers can choose to the on-demand version for just $40 per month.

“The Internet has totally changed the software industry. We allow our customers to try before they buy.”

SugarCRM is home grown and developed in Cupertino from scratch. “We don’t off-shore development. I don’t believe that you can build innovative software that way,” Mr Roberts says.

The company has strong growth and money in the bank. “We raised $20m last year but we haven’t had to touch it. We were planning an IPO in 2008 and we needed to show we had $20m in cash.”

Mr Roberts says the company might have to wait until 2010 before it can IPO. SugarCRM was hoping that MySQL would be the first commercial open source company to have a successful IPO. But MySQL abandoned its IPO plans and agreed to be acquired by Sun Microsystems for $1bn at the beginning of this year. Now SugarCRM could become the first commercial open source public company.

Until the IPO market reopens, Mr Roberts isn’t twiddling his thumbs. “There are five million businesses in the US, and only 10 per cent of them have CRM, the rest are using spreadsheets. That’s a huge opportunity for us.”

Source:- blogs.zdnet.com/

Microsoft "Not Against" Open Source

The division between proprietary software vendors and open-source providers is not as clear as some industry players perceive it to be. As more enterprises consider adopting open source technologies, even traditional software vendors such as Microsoft have taken steps in responding to such customer needs.

"Open source is not a product but an approach to software development," said Matthew Hardman, platform strategy manager at Microsoft Singapore. "Microsoft does not compete with open source, just as Nike does not compete with running."

Hardman said the software giant seeks to provide the best possible platform' for open source applications to run. "We believe that enterprises and vendors should have a choice of software development methodology, and open source is one such choice."

The platform strategy manager noted however, that Microsoft will compete with open source-based providers, just as it also competes with other proprietary vendors.
Open-source contributions

According to Hardman, Microsoft has contributed to technologies that are deemed open source. "PHP, a technology used to build web pages, ran into multiple issues around performance and scalability on Windows Server 2003," he said. "With the introduction of Windows Server 2008 and host technology such as Fast CGI, we are now able to run PHP up to 200 per cent faster than Linux."

Hardman said the company has contributed code to PHP libraries for database support, making it easier for PHP developers to connect to Microsoft databases.

"Linux is open source, but open source is not Linux," Hardman noted. "PHP was designed to make it easy for people to build web pages, not specifically to run only on Linux."

As part of its open-source strategy, the company hosts a website called CodePlex, where Microsoft employees and the developer community work on some 6,000 open-source projects. "Examples of such projects include the AJAX Control Toolkit, SugarCRM, .Net, and code that can interact with the 'World of Warcraft,'" Hardman said.

CodePlex includes more than just projects that Microsoft has released, according to Hardman. "It's a hosting platform where people can create and share projects, and we have also used it to share some of our technology to encourage further innovation."

Some five million developers worldwide have created various applications using Microsoft platform technologies such as Windows, .Net, Windows Server and Microsoft Xbox, according to the software giant.

Different business models
Unlike Red Hat, Microsoft does not have a subscription-based model for open-source solutions. "When we want to share source code, we will share it for free," Hardman said. "For example, if someone took the AJAX Control Toolkit, embedded it into a project and commercialised it, that's fine with us."

"It's not so much an issue of opening up the source code," Hardman said. "Rather, it's about how to make open-source technology work for the enterprise, without it having to change its existing platform or infrastructure."

In short, interoperability among solutions, whether open source or not, is very important, Hardman noted.

Other open-source issues
Enterprises need to consider several other issues when deciding whether to adopt open-source technologies, according to Hardman. Knowledge about the level of support provided by the service provider, such as ready availability of security patches, is crucial.

"It's not enough to only have technical expertise in building the open-source solution," Hardman said. "Business knowledge is also essential to ensure the solution works for the enterprise."

Additionally, the open-source provider must be confident that the contributing community can ensure adequate information security. "There must be no weak links in security features," Hardman said.

Open source and SaaS
According to Gartner's State of Open Source report for 2008, software-as-a-service (SaaS) will eclipse open source as the preferred enterprise IT cost-cutting method by 2012.

The report stated that both the open source and SaaS business models price by subscription, operate on low profit margins and can reduce enterprise IT costs. Gartner contends however, that SaaS reduces enterprise requirements for IT technical skills, while open source tends to increase such requirements.

Gery Messer, president of Red Hat Asia Pacific, disagreed: "Open source does not increase the requirement for IT technical skills within the enterprise."

Messer said Red Hat's subscription model provides enterprises with a predictable cost structure and allows them to outsource IT development and support requirements.

"Open source is an infrastructure platform on which many enterprise applications run," Messer said. "Its community-based accelerated innovation approach multiplies software development capacity many times over, providing enterprises better, more innovative solutions."

Messer agreed however, that like open-source software (OSS), SaaS can also help enterprises, especially small- and medium-sized businesses, cut IT costs.
Defining open source

"While I agree with Red Hat's general definition of SaaS, I wouldn't agree with their definition of open source," said Brian Prentice, Gartner's research vice president for emerging trends and technologies. "Open source is not just an infrastructure platform, it can be a lot more than that and is."

According to Prentice, Gartner's definition of open source is software governed under a licence agreement recognised by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). OSI is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting open-source software. "It is the licence agreement, and specifically the rights to modify and redistribute the code, which is the most important component of open source."

As a co-author of the Gartner Open Source report, Prentice explained that OSS tends to increase skills requirements because new technologies require new skills in an organisation.

"If, for example, my organisation uses Windows Server, the addition of Linux, regardless of distribution, would require new skills," Prentice said. "If I am currently using a mix of Oracle 11g and SQL Server, and then introduced MySQL, that needs a new set of skills."

Prentice said SaaS tends to avoid this problem because it is "run on someone else's infrastructure".

"I concede there is some nuance in this area particularly as we start looking at platform-as-a-service capabilities like Force.com from salesforce.com," he noted.

Source:- cio.com/

Microsoft Pushes Interoperability at ApacheCon

Sam Ramji, Microsoft's open-source point man, promotes the company's efforts in the areas of interoperability and open-source software at the Apache Software Foundation's ApacheCon conference. In a keynote at the event, Ramji discusses various Microsoft interoperability efforts involving partnerships with WSO2, HBase, AMQP and the company's "Oslo" modeling technology.

In a keynote at the ApacheCon conference of open-source developers and users, Sam Ramji, senior director of platform strategy at Microsoft, outlined a series of new moves the software giant has made regarding interoperability as it continues to make nice with the open-source community.

At the Apache Software Foundation's conference in New Orleans on Nov. 7, Ramji spoke of Microsoft's "greater participation and growth with open-source communities, and our strategy of 'architecting for participation,'" Ramji said in a blog post following his keynote.

Microsoft's strategy focuses on four themes: community, contribution, partnerships and choice, Ramji said. “Microsoft believes that the next 10 years of software will be a time of growth and change where both open-source and Microsoft communities will grow together," he added.

Among the many moves Microsoft has made, Ramji noted that the company recently joined the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) Working Group as a participant, with the goal of contributing to the development of the specification and to enable greater customer choice in the marketplace.

And, "at the request of community members, we have now committed to participate in the Apache Qpid project, a widely adopted open-source implementation of the AMQP specification that addresses the customer need for choice and improved messaging interoperability," Ramji said.

"Our customers are telling us that they would like to see the Apache Qpid project extended to interoperate with Windows, so the next few months of participation will be focused on understanding the community's effort to build Windows-based AMQP software. Participation will give us the opportunity to learn from other project participants, so that we can be in a position to consider making a valuable contribution. But it is important to note that the Apache Qpid project is just one of many AMQP specification implementations, and we are open to supporting additional projects."

Alexis Richardson, co-founder of CohesiveFT, told eWEEK: "Microsoft joining means validation of the 'mission' of AMQP to open up, massively grow and fundamentally simplify the AMQP market. What is needed is something that combines the open standard plug-and-go cheap-to-use nature of TCP with the richer features of smarter messaging protocols. There is no standard way to connect systems together. Currently, customers have to choose between expensive lock-in via the IBM monopoly or similar and hand-made systems. Web services are too complicated and general purpose. AMQP business messaging is the way out of this mess. So AMQP is an open Internet protocol for solving this pain, like TCP. Now the biggest software vendor has bought in.”

Ramji also said Microsoft has been working with open-source SOA (service-oriented architecture) infrastructure software provider WSO2 to demonstrate interoperability using Microsoft's StockTrader reference application. "Today, the WSO2 announced they would build an open-source version of the sample application under 'Project Stonehenge,' which is a new Apache incubation project," he said.

Moreover, WSO2 will use the project to set up sample applications that demonstrate seamless interoperability across multiple underlying platform technologies, using currently defined W3C and OASIS standard protocols, Ramji said.

Ramji said his team has been working closely with that of Jean Paoli, the general manager of Interoperability Strategy at Microsoft, whose team is driving much of this interoperability work.

In addition, Ramji said Microsoft has moved the development of protocol parsers for Microsoft Network Monitor—a free protocol analyzer and network sniffer known as "Netmon"—to an open-source model. Microsoft will host the effort on its CodePlex community development site. On CodePlex, Microsoft will host the development of parsers for public protocols and for protocols described in the company's Open Protocol Specifications for Windows, he said. An updated parser package has been released and a source tree created on CodePlex, Ramji said.

"We want Netmon to be the best-of-breed tool for network monitoring at Microsoft, not just for Windows," he said.

Ramji also told the ApacheCon audience that the company's "Oslo" software modeling technology will be included under Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise. "This will ensure that the 'Oslo' declarative modeling language, code-named 'M,' is interoperable with prominent industry standards such as WS* specifications, X M L formats, industry protocols and security standards," he said.

Source:- eweek.com

Open source opens doors for small businesses

ActiveState and Bryght have helped Vancouver establish its reputation as an open-source software development centre.

Vancouver’s growing love affair with open source software (OSS) development is being manifested in a growing community of startups, scores of blogs and monthly events.

The city, which has played a prominent role in the OSS movement, is home to ActiveState and Bryght, the former being one of the first commercial OSS developers; the latter being the first company to use Drupal – a popular OSS – as its sole product development platform.

ActiveState was acquired for US$23 million in 2003 by U.K.-based Sophos, which then sold the company in 2006 for US$2.25 million to Vancouver’s Pender Financial Group Corp. (TSX-V: PDF).

Bryght was founded by Boris Mann, a leading OSS advocate who sold the company to Vancouver’s Raincity Studios last November.

OSS is free, and users don’t need to have programming savvy to develop websites, blogs or web applications.

As well, anyone can manipulate and change OSS and then distribute those changes without fear of licence infringement.

That freedom has allowed OSS users to develop software in step with the ever-changing Internet.

“Sharing those changes freely is what makes the whole thing grow,” said Mann who, after selling Bryght, co-founded Vancouver’s Bootup Labs, an incubator to help web startups develop and raise early stage financing.

According to Gartner Research, 90% of commercial software will, by 2012, contain significant amounts of open source code.

“[Drupal] started out as nothing more than a content management system, [and] evolved from there as more people started using it to become a really flexible system,” said Mann.

Mann started a wiki page to compile a list of Drupal-powered websites of B.C.-based organizations, governments, startups, consulting firms, independent consultants and schools.

At press time, the list had reached 50 websites, including citizen journalism site NowPublic.com, Vancity’s changeeverything.ca and the websites of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and the Georgia Straight.

Mann doesn’t use Microsoft Corp.’s SharePoint or EMC Corp.’s Documentum – two of the leading proprietary, pay-for-use content management platforms.

“With a lot of content management systems, people used to pay millions of dollars for [them],” said Mann, “and in some cases [people] still get suckered into paying that.”

Along with Drupal, the most widely used OSS platforms are Joomla and WordPress, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

According to OSS users, the three platforms combined have enough power to compete – if not outperform – proprietary platforms offered by Microsoft and the other big web developers.

“The reality is that if you have Drupal, Joomla and WordPress, you can solve most problems nowadays,” said Rastin Mehr, founder of Rastin Mehr Design Studio Inc. & Associates, a Yaletown-based web application development firm.

“An average small business can now afford to use more advanced technology than some corporations.”

His company was founded on the Joomla platform and is developing a custom OSS platform for content management and for building web-based social media.

“The Internet is becoming social,” said Mehr.

“Social anything goes hand in hand with open source.”

Mehr was an organizer of last June’s Vancouver Joomla! Day – one of many OSS user events that are held in Vancouver each year.

“For any healthy open-sourced project, you want to invest in growing the community around it,” said Mehr.

Mehr calls OOS events “unconferences,” because there’s no corporate involvement in organizing them.

“Open source is really the model of the village versus the pyramid – the pyramid being the corporation.”

Drupal and Joomla have developed the largest worldwide communities and, as a result, users debate which platform is superior.

Mehr said Drupal is ideal for publishers, webmasters and web designers with mid-level programming expertise, whereas Joomla serves inexperienced bloggers and software architects located at opposing ends of the expertise spectrum.

ActiveState released a report last July to debunk many of the “myths” surrounding OSS.

Source:- bivinteractive.com/

3 Great Apps to Help You Get Your Open Source Groove On

If the state of the economy has got you down and you're ready to stop throwing money at commercial software vendors, you might be overwhelmed at the amount of open source options that exist. Buck up, IT soldier, here are three applications that let you dip your toes in the pool without jumping in all the way.

Mindtouch - I've written before about this dead-simple way to implement a collaborative environment in the workplace. Sure, you can always fall back on sharing files via Google Docs or keep employes connected through an in-house blog, but I don't recommend putting together a piecemeal system and hoping everything works well together.

Mindtouch is the Swiss Army Knife of collaboration platforms: it neatly blends your email system, customer account databases, and other enterprise apps with Web services like search and social networking -- and it's all open source, which means it can be customized to your companies unique needs. If Mindtouch works for big businesses like e-commerce company Bill Me Later and Baxter Healthcare, it's worth finding out what it can do for you.

SugarCRM - There's no shortage of customer relationship management (CRM) software, but even the most robust proprietary vendor offering will have a hard time measuring up to the open source alternative from SugarCRM. It's amazingly customizable, and scales well for both small and large businesses. As DaniWeb's Edward Correia points out, there's even a plugin available to integrate SugarCRM with a Gmail account.

The Oregon Department of Human Services used to manage its community outreach and education communication with sticky notes. CIO Bill Crowell says once the decision was made to try SugarCRM, his tech team had it downloaded and deployed within 24 hours.

Hyperic HQ - All the open source software in the world won't help your company's bottom line if you're company is offline. Hyperic HQ is a great tool for managing and monitoring your infrastructure. Use it to track metrics for more than 65 technologies across Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Unix systems.

There are various versions of Hyperic HQ available, each with its own set of bells and whistles. If you're having trouble envisioning how the app would fit into your workflow, have a look at this terrific post by Redmonk analyst Michael Coté.

Of course, there are loads more apps you can try, but these three make a great starting point if you don't have a lot of experience with open source software. What apps would you recommend to someone just starting to dabble in enterprise open source apps? Let me know in the comments.

Source:- daniweb.com/

Ecommerce Solutions For Online Businesses

Ecommerce solutions are designed to act as the interface between online businesses and the consumer. By providing a connection with the consumer, the ecommerce application within your website is a fundamental aspect of your online business, and it can really make or break your reputation. Finding the right ecommerce solution for your business is utterly essential, and it must be both easy to use and secure for customers to feel safe handing over their details. With identity theft and credit card fraud on the increase, it is crucial that your ecommerce solution is trustworthy and secure, which can make it quite difficult to find the right one that fits within your budget. Nevertheless, the emphasis should be placed more on the quality, usability and extent of features offered by any given package, and your decision should be based on finding the right application for your precise needs.

Ecommerce solutions are available in plentiful supply online, and it can often be a somewhat difficult task to figure which solution actually works best for you. In order to give yourself the best possible chance of selecting an appropriate application, it is important to weigh up and consider exactly what it is you require from your ecommerce application. If you are just starting out in business, or have very basic ecommerce needs, it might be a good idea to opt for an online payment processor. With these online programmes, you can implement code into your website and use free checkout services that could provide exactly what you’re looking for. On the downside, many of these services works as psuedo-banks and it can be quite difficult to resolve issues with them. Additionally, withdrawing money from your online merchant account can be both an expensive and lengthy process; hence the drawbacks of these free online programmes. If you require a basic solution, perhaps for accepting payments from one source for one type of product, one of these free-set up online solutions might be perfect for your needs. If, however, you’re requirements encompass an entire catalogue of products with variable shipping costs, and requiring a multitude of payment options, it is perhaps better to consider a more advanced solution for your website and your business.

Looking for an ecommerce solution for your business can be particularly difficult, given that most providers tend to offer subjective advice in favour of their own solutions. It is important to try to consider exactly what you require, and what you’re looking for, as well as to weigh up the options of each application you consider before committing yourself. Don’t let price guide you as to your selection, because in comparison to quality, price does not reflect what you get for your money. It is more important to find a solution that is fitted to your needs, regardless of price. So long as the ecommerce solution is within your price range, and provides the features that you require for your business, it is best to part with several hundred extra if it means finding the perfect solution for your business.

Source:- qifenglou.info/

BizTalk gets surprise reprieve

Microsoft has reversed course on the fate of BizTalk Server, re-naming the next version and setting a roadmap that calls for a major releases of the middleware every two years.
The decision to continue developing the middleware came as a surprise to some, as BizTalk was to be a launching pad for Microsoft's forthcoming "Oslo" technologies that include messaging (Windows Communications Foundation), workflow (Windows Workflow Foundation) and modeling tools.

Rob Helm, an analyst with independent analyst firm Directions on Microsoft, says: "It is pretty surprising and I have not seen this big a reversal from Microsoft in a while.

"They might be reluctant to yank what is now a fairly successful product for an unproven technology platform."

Microsoft says what was supposed to be BizTalk Server 2006 R3 will now be called BizTalk Server 2009. The full release is slated to ship in the first half of next year. In addition, the company says it will provide details on another new version, code-named BizTalk 7, in the early part of next year.

"We will continue to enhance and extend enterprise activity scenarios" in BizTalk, says Burley Kawasaki, director of product management in the connected systems division at Microsoft. "We will make it simpler, add new capabilities around [business-to-business], build in our new RFID work and expand it to more general purpose asset-tracking, like tracking laptops or servers in your company, and provide a complete end-to-end asset management view. There will also be enhancements around [business intelligence] and business activity monitoring."

Company officials say Oslo will be discussed further during Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October. "We will talk about linking composite applications you build with Oslo to the existing services you may have already built using BizTalk," Kawasaki says.

In essence, Microsoft plans for now not to isolate current BizTalk users, which would have been the case with a wholesale move to Oslo.

"Our commitment is you can use BizTalk today with R2 and 2009 with our Oslo modeling technology without needs to upgrade," Kawasaki says.

BizTalk 2009 will deliver support for platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Visual Studio 2008 SP1, SQL Server 2008 and the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1. Microsoft also has improved failover clustering so BizTalk can be deployed in multi-site clusters that eliminate the need for virtual LANs.

Source:- computerworld.co.nz/

Taking Open Source to the Limit: Geeks On The Way Case Study

The Company:
Geeks On The Way provides computer services and technical support to customers across western Canada, and it was named as one of the fastest growing companies in Canada by Profit magazine.

The Challenge:
Geeks On The Way handles hundreds of client calls per day. So, when the company looked to meet its growing demand for its services with a CRM system, not just any system would do. With such strong technology expertise, the company knew it wanted a system that it could customize to fit its unique business process as well as grow with the system.

Additionally, the CRM system would need to fully automate its existing business process from end-to-end.
"We had already outgrown two previous customer management systems," says Geeks On The Way CEO John Leishman. "So, we needed a flexible system that could grow with our business and really scale."

The Solution:
Geeks On The Way was attracted to SugarCRM for various reasons. Since the company had already built out a telephony system on top of an open source phone system, called Asterisk, Geeks On The Way figured that it should look toward open source CRM for its client management needs. "SugarCRM simply had the largest following, the most downloads and provided the most security from a longevity of product development standpoint," Leishman notes, adding that his company felt that the standards-based design and open architecture of SugarCRM would complement the Asterisk implementation well.

The first task for Geeks On The Way after deploying SugarCRM was to integrate it with its Asterisk system, the popular open source telephony package.

Geeks On The Way also integrated Sugar with some back end databases to create efficiencies inside its service delivery model and customized the Meetings module to integrate a system that analyzes the service calls slated for the day.

The Results:
SugarCRM allowed Geeks On The Way to perform deep integrations at the data and application level, according to Leishman. With the integrated system, callers are recognized by their phone number or other identifiers. If a new client is calling, a "new contact screen" pops up to the agent and a tight integration with an external database of address and postal information populates most of the new contact record. This allows agents to process existing customers quickly, and also spend less time adding new customers in to the system. And since customers are well tracked using unique identification numbers, there is less duplication of customer records.

A deep integration to the accounting system also provided strong returns for Geeks On The Way. Since so much activity and data is tracked and captured in Sugar, Geeks On The Way can simply run that data into its accounting system and more efficiently compensate its employees, which range from phone agents to contractors to field technicians. "Accounting used to take us a full 24 hours every pay period," Leishman notes, "But now it takes five minutes with our Sugar integration to our accounting system."

Since it deployed Sugar, the company says it has seen lower marketing costs and improved customer support times. "With SugarCRM, we have reduced call handling times from two to three minutes down to as little as 20 seconds," says Leishman. And the company says simply knowing who an agent is talking to through its integrated system fosters closer relationships with customers and increases satisfaction levels.

Source:- salesandmarketing.com/

SEO long term strategy and lead generation mix

Is search engine optimization in your long term strategy and lead generation mix?

Any business has two important channels: Production and Marketing, where marketing plays an important role; since many businesses have been cutting off on Production in-house. The business centers all on Marketing.

I know of a boy who used to write on communities and photocopy his articles and distribute them to the people residing near by. Then he wrote more and his write-ups took a form of monthly magazine which people started subscribing. And today it is a well-known magazine in different sectors with millions of readers online. When asked for the success, that boy (and the editor today) said: “Strategic Marketing”.

Today Businesses have Marketing Executives, Marketing Consultants and even big Marketing Departments with 100s of employees working specifically for building up the Company Brand. And today, as we know the Digital is transforming all Media! Websites have become an important tool for Marketing one’s Products and Services. Businesses today – small or big are sure to have a website (or a small online-presence –at least). These websites may vary from 3 to 1000s of pages.

But does your Online Business (or your website) really help you marketing your Company? Does your online presence get you leads enough to survive your business? These are some very important questions and your marketing strategies revolve around answering such questions.

Search engines play a dominant role in getting you more business. Search engine research takes place at least one to two months before the buying/final decision made by your customer and a research says “Organic SEO gets over 70 percent of the clicks”. In Search Engines, position is a factor: with over 60 percent clicking on the top 3 listings and moreover, most users decide which listing to click on in just seconds upon scanning the page.

Hence, it is very important to get your website a prime visibility in the Top SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). The most economic and best tool to help your website rise in the organic searches is Search Engine Optimization. Many Businesses go with many strategies and plans like On-Page Optimization of website, Off-page Optimization of website, Link Building, Search Engine Marketing Services, using Social Media to Market Services, etc.

The most important point that lies at the base is Strategy- Strategy of Keywords/phrases, Strategy of the campaigns to be executed - in what substance at what time, Strategy on how to market the services in Social Media, etc.

I have seen Search Engine Optimization working so well with the businesses getting over 1000% increase in their website traffic. I have noted our clients getting rise of over 50% in leads and revenue generation through Search Engine Marketing Services. But this has to be in a very very strategic way as we at Semaphore-software do.

We at Semaphore offer Strategic SEO (Website Optimization) accompanied with Strategic Link-building because where Optimized Content is the King in the SEO Market, Link Building is the queen. A Strategic SEO plan definitely helps a business to rise up in the Search Engines; hence getting more traction, more leads and more business.

Now-days businesses have started understanding the importance of Search Engine Optimization and have SEO as one of the important strategies in their Long Term Marketing Plan. But now arises a million dollar question for you: “Is search engine optimization in your long term strategy and lead generation mix?”

Source:- semaphore-software.com/