Software switch advised for e-commerce success

A new report from Gartner has advised online retailers to make greater use of open source, commercial or off-the-shelf software to focus their budgets on the areas that matter.

The research company claims that too much money is spent on custom web development for functions that could be easily addressed by standard software.

It states that large e-commerce retailers could save up to 35 per cent of their ongoing maintenance and license costs by using software instead of custom development for functions such as shopping cart management.

For small retailers, this figure could be anything up to 25 per cent.

Gene Alvarez, research vice-president at Gartner, said web retailers should ask web specialists to concentrate on "developing rich internet shopping capabilities or [improving] site design for search engine optimisation so that the site can rank higher in a Google-based search".

E-commerce retailers could also save money by using Magento hosting for their websites. The software is open source, which means that it is free to use, although Magento has also recently announced the launch of a paid-for enterprise edition of its solution for those requiring more features.

Source : http://www.globalgold.co.uk/web-hosting-news/custom-web-hosting/software-switch-advised-for-ecommerce-success-19165017.html

NASA astronauts install new computer on Hubble telescope

During a 7-hour-and-20-minute spacewalk today, NASA astronauts gave the Hubble Space Telescope a new backup computer to replace the onboard system that had to be put into use after a technical failure last fall.

The computer, called the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling Unit, is designed to send commands to Hubble's science instruments and also format science data so it can be transmitted to the ground.

The Hubble telescope's main unit failed late last September, leaving the orbiter unable to send data to Earth. Michael Moore, a program executive for the Hubble Space Telescope, has said that the computer problem was the worst the Hubble has suffered since it went into orbit 19 years ago. NASA engineers remotely switched the telescope over to the backup system, and today's spacewalk added another system, which will now serve as Hubble's backup unit.

The space shuttle Atlantis' 11-day mission is focused on repairing and upgrading the telescope, which has not been serviced since 2002. The repairs and additions should make Hubble far more powerful than it's ever been. And that will put Hubble in the position to make more, and more important, discoveries in the next five years than it has in the past two decades, said Ed Ruitberg, deputy program manager for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Today, NASA Mission Specialists John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel performed the long, grueling spacewalk, which included removing the telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and replacing it with a new wide-field camera, which should enable Hubble to take large-scale, detailed photos.

The astronauts, who were aided by astronaut Megan McArthur operating the shuttle's robotic arm, also installed a soft capture mechanism, which will allow future vehicles to attach to the telescope. This is the last space shuttle mission to Hubble, but other space vehicles could someday make another maintenance trip or even go up to retrieve parts of it.

Friday's spacewalk is set up to install six new gyroscopes and three of the six new batteries that will go into the telescope during this mission.

Source : http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=43C02D11-1A64-6A71-CEC3E03F87EB7060

Oracle Originally Only Wanted Sun’s Software Assets (Update2)

May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Oracle Corp., which agreed to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. for $7.4 billion last month, made its offer only after failing to acquire the company’s software assets in March.

Oracle, the world’s second-largest software maker, proposed buying the assets on March 12, when Sun was in exclusive talks for a takeover by a rival, according to a filing today from Sun. Oracle’s offer wasn’t attractive enough to make Sun end its talks with the other suitor.

Oracle made its winning bid of $9.50 a share for the full business on April 18, also gaining Sun’s computer assets and pitting Oracle against International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. in the shrinking server market. The company may eventually seek to sell parts of the hardware unit, said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities Inc.

“That’s much less attractive than the core software business,” said Barnicle, who rates Oracle’s shares “outperform” and doesn’t own any. “It’s a much lower-margin business.”

Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said this month he plans to keep the computer business and boost its profit by making hardware and applications work better together. In a filing, he cited Apple Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. as companies with lucrative hardware products.

Sun’s server sales, which make up more than half of revenue, fell 26 percent last quarter as customers pared equipment spending in the recession. Servers run corporate networks and Web sites.

Other Bidders

IBM also bid for Sun, and Hewlett-Packard held talks about a combination with the company, people familiar with the matter have said. According to today’s filing, Sun permitted two other companies besides Oracle to conduct due diligence reviews, without naming them.

One of the other bidders, “Party A,” was prepared to pay $9.10 a share as late as April 19, while the other, “Party B,” said on April 17 it wouldn’t submit an offer, Sun said.

“Party B” was Hewlett-Packard, said a person aware of the discussions who asked not to be named because the talks were confidential. While Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz and Hewlett- Packard CEO Mark Hurd met to discuss a deal, Hewlett-Packard never made an official offer, the person said.

Talks Last Year

“Party B” had indicated interest in a deal late last year, though it had said that a transaction wouldn’t be optimal in the near term, Sun said. “Party B” restarted a due diligence review of Sun on April 9, only nine days before Oracle made its winning bid, Sun said.

Hewlett-Packard bought Electronic Data Systems Corp. last year for $13.2 billion and the company has said it is continuing to digest that takeover, Hurd’s largest transaction. Christina Schneider, a spokeswoman for Hewlett-Packard, declined to comment today.

IBM, the world’s largest computer-services provider, was in talks with Sun prior to the announcement of the Oracle acquisition and was intending to pay between $9 and $10 a share, according to people familiar with the matter. Ian Colley, an IBM spokesman, declined to comment today.

Oracle, based in Redwood City, California, fell 18 cents to $18.38 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading at 4 p.m. New York time. Sun, based in Santa Clara, California, rose 9 cents to $9.

source:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aq_XvujIIrl8&refer=news

Magento 1.1.6 Released

As each ecommerce application Magento benefits from different updates. So a recent release of Magento 1.1.6 has been warmly accepted by Magento community. No doubt all bugs noticed since the last Magento release have been taken into consideration and fixed. Having explored Magento 1.1.6 you’ll find out the next improvements:

• Google Checkout table rates work perfectly;
• While upgrading existing databases you won’t experience SQL error any more;
• Refreshing products count in categories management page won’t make you any troubles;
• From now on order status after creating an invoice will be shown in a right way;
• Translations and locale settings used in PDF print-outs have been fixed as well;
• Managing product categories has been also made more effective.

Note we’ve listed just several improvements which have been made. Of course there aren’t perfect things but there are great things and Magento belongs to the last ones. In fact Magento has launched a blank theme for building online shops. This theme has a very simple design but it can be useful for those who can’t afford custom made design or purchasing professionally designed Magento themes.

source:http://www.design4magento.com/category/magento-news/page/3/

Why Magento?

Open Source. Open Source means your store and the platform its built on are fully yours. You have the freedom to customize Magento, tailor it to your business model and expand on it for years to come. No strings attached.
Integration Friendly. Your eCommerce platform should not dictate what third-party solution you use. Magento gives you the freedom to work with the third-party solutions you want.
Feature-Rich. Magento comes out-of-the-box with features like one-page checkout, product comparisons, multi-address Shipping and many more features that will set your store apart.
Support Network. Magento is fully supported by Varien and the international Magento community ensuring that where ever you are, you’re never on your own.

source:http://www.varien.com/products/

Magento launches Enterprise Edition demos

Open source e-commerce platform Magento has released demonstrations of some of the capabilities of its new Enterprise Edition.

Magento hosting users can now access a demonstration Storefront and a demonstration Administrator Panel for the product on the company's demo site, which requires log-in details provided by Magento.

Writing on the Magento blog, designer Minu Oh said that the demonstrations display how the Enterprise Edition "provides increased return on investment for Magento installations and allows retailers and manufacturers on Magento to create multi-faceted, strategic marketing efforts and target them to different audience types".

Magento first unveiled the Enterprise Edition version of its platform in mid-April. The premium product is aimed at larger organisations requiring greater functionality than that provided by the free Magento solution.

The free product has been downloaded more than 750,000 times to date and boasts more than 85,000 community members, according to the most recent figures from Magento.

source:http://www.globalgold.co.uk/web-hosting-news/custom-web-hosting/magento-launches-enterprise-edition-demos-19150303.html

New update for Magento

E-commerce platform Magento has been updated with several new fixes and integration with Amazon payment systems.

Magento hosting users who download version 1.3.1 of the software can now benefit from integration and support for Amazon Flexible Payment and Checkout by Amazon payment options.

Further information about these services will be provided over the next few days, said Yoav Kutner of Magento.

The newest release also includes an improved flat catalogue module for better performance and fixes for a number of bugs.

Mr Kutner said that as Magento 1.3.1 includes an update to the Magento Connect Manager, those using the Magento Connect Manager should back up their index.php and .htaccess files under their Magento root folder before upgrading and restore them after the process is complete.

An Enterprise Edition of the platform was launched last week. The new product is aimed at large companies looking for more advanced features than those offered by the free open source version of the software.

source:http://www.globalgold.co.uk/web-hosting-news/custom-web-hosting/new-update-for-magento-19128187.html

Magento - The radical Ecommerce open source

Magento is the new improved e-commerce platform that gives a superior force to web traders to get rid of obstacles in the way of business process implementations. With downloads surpassing the magical figure of 600,000, Magento is easily the fastest growing commercially available tool for online business solutions.

Don’t be misled by the free and open source background of Magento—it excels the best commercial tools with its theme based structure and support for a panoply of digital products.

We at Maven Infosoft have solid expertise in working with all leading e-commerce and portal-building platforms and have managed and implemented heavy-duty enterprise-level content management systems. We can safely assert that Magento has outshone all of them.

There remain a few uncertainties, as with any growing and emergent platform, in the design and development capabilities that Magento has to offer. The high competence level required means that it is not for all and sundry. Having said that, Magento is by far the most adaptable and compliant e-commerce program to hit the online trading market.

In many ways, Magento is not a typical open source solution. It is free to download and use. It does give you the ability to create customize themes and module extensions. It has all the potential for swell in usage and gain in popularity. However, it has a dedicated company supporting its growth. Magento is the product of Varien, an e-commerce design house that seems to benefit from Magento by offering traditional web agency services.

Magento is based on a theme based framework with individual layouts, templates and skins, which in turn has greater look and feel customize capability. Once you get the hang of it, creating stores in Magento turns into a piece of cake. Unlike shopping carts and content management systems devoid of themes, this framework elevates Magento to a different level

The comprehensive features available reflect long years of e-commerce experience. Features such as advanced pricing rules, product image zoom, side-by-side comparison and inventory management indicate the strong relevance to marketing functions and requirements. Other features that we approve of are:

• Ready to go iPhone theme
  
• Single page checkout
  
• Availability of real time rates from UPS, FedEx and the US Postal Service
  
• Great analytics and reporting
  
• One administration panel and product catalog to manage  multiple websites/stores
  
• Customer reviews
  
• Flexible coupon rules for flexibility of campaigns
  
• Layered and faceted navigation for filtering
  
• Google Website Optimizer integration
  
• URL rewrites
  
• Newsletter management
  
• Easy integration of third party tools using Web API
  
• Choice of more than 50 payment gateways
  
• Option to up sell during checkout
  
• Self-generating site maps
  
• Full support for digital and downloadable products
  
• RSS feeds for customers and administrators alike
  

Though Magento does have simple usage rules including easy handling of the administration interface, it does require developers to have fundamental skills in PHP, MySQL, SOAP, XML, XHTML, Apache and CSS. This is indeed the case for most shopping carts or platforms, but Magento is much more application oriented. Even a standard implementation will have you accessing files and programming code that other simpler platforms do not ask for.

All said and done, Magento is an outstanding tool for online commerce and web marketing. It is no less than a boon for leading Internet retailers.

If you are looking to design and develop Magento ecommerce store for your business, Maven Infosoft is a one stop helping point for all your requirements. 

Maven Infosoft is one of the initial starters who work on Magento since its first version. The expertise of Magento developers at Maven Infosoft, serves Magento customers to meet their Enterprise requirements.

Maven Infosoft provides services for enterprise Magento theme development, enterprise Magento template design, Magento extensions like Vendor module, Purchase module, accounting module and Magento payment extensions like iVeri, Paymentec, Safepay, Secpay, Secpay 3D secure, DIBS DirectPay, Cardinal Direct, Cardinal 3D secure

As Magento is free open source application, Maven Infosoft also provides free Magento theme, free Magento templates, and free Magento extensions to help Magento grow in terms of ecommerce application.

Like Magento, Maven Infosoft is helping internet business to grow further to reach new heights.

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

Or drop us an email at info@offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com

Author Name: - Anand Pandya

Resource: - http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/blog/

Zend Framework new preview release 1.8

The all new Zend Framework preview release 1.8 is here! It brings us
* Tools for dependable bootstrapping
* A command line client for creating and maintaining projects
* Devices for menus, sitemaps, breadcrumbs, and whatnot
* Full support for Amazon EC2 and S3
* A simple and reliable framework
* New additions and bug fixes

Check out Mathew’s blog for more detailed description.

Zend Framework 1.7.0 is now available

New Zend Framework released with many new components and features.

Zend Framework 1.7.0 is now available from the Zend Framework download site:

http://framework.zend.com/download/latest

This release introduces many new components and features, including:

• Zend_Amf with support for AMF0 and AMF3 protocols
• Dojo Toolkit 1.2.1
• Support for dijit editor available in the Dojo Toolkit
• Zend_Service_Twitter
• ZendX_JQuery in extras library
• Metadata API in Zend_Cache
• Google book search API in Zend_Gdata
• Preliminary support for GData Protocol v2 in Zend_Gdata
• Support for skip data processing in Zend_Search_Lucene
• Support for Open Office XML documents in Zend_Search_Lucene indexer
• Performance enhancements in Zend_Loader, Zend_Controller, and server components
• Zend_Mail_Storage_Writable_Maildir enhancements for mail delivery
• Zend_Tool in incubator
• Zend_Text_Table for formatting table using characters
• Zend_ProgressBar
• Zend_Config_Writer
• ZendX_Console_Unix_Process in the extras library
• Zend_Db_Table_Select support for Zend_Paginator
• Global parameters for routes
• Using Chain-Routes for Hostname-Routes via Zend_Config
• I18N improvements
o Application wide locale for all classes
o Data retrieving methods are now static
o Additional cache handling methods in all I18N classes
o Zend_Translate API simplified
• File transfer enhancements
o Support for file elements in subforms
o Support for multifile elements
o Support for MAX_FILES_SIZE in form
o Support for breaking validation chain
o Support for translation of failure ,messages
o New IsCompressed, IsImage, ExcludeMimeType, ExcludeExtension validators
o Support for FileInfo extension in MimeType validator
• Zend_Db_Table_Select adapater for Zend_Paginator
• Support for custom adapters in Zend_Paginator
• More flexible handling of complex types in Zend_Soap


The Zend Framework team would like to thank everyone who made this release possible. As always, our generous ZF community has provided countless new features, bug fixes, documentation translations, etc. We'd also like to thank Adobe Systems and Wade Arnold for contributing the new Zend_Amf component. A big thanks to PHP Belgium and everyone who participated in bug hunt day and/or the Zend Framework bug hunt week.


Source:- prlog.org/