Office Communication Server 2007 is now endorsing people to communicate very rapidly with different persons from various areas, utilizing a range of sundry options for communications, such as voice, video and IM (instant messaging). Office Communication Server 2007 will buttress you to chat with others in real time and apart from this, the OCS 2007 will enable you to communicate directly through other programs you usually resort to and that seem to be more convenient for you to use.

Therefore, via the OCS 2007, you can now reach to different people both from the inside and outside of your company, utilize different ways of communication, ferret out people, ascertain whether their availability is what is stated, and of course create a connection with them afterwards, using a suitable connection for you.

Office Communication Server 2007 is considered to be an improved version of Microsoft Live Communication Server 2005. The new features of the OCS 2007 encompass a number of developments to Instant Messaging capacity. If you presently own a Live Communications Server 2005, you can very easily upgrade to the OCS 2007. All you are required to have is Office Communication Server 2007 infrastructure, that is supposed to be in parallel with the 2005 server and then you are allowed to migrate across the 2007 infrastructure. Aside from this, Office communication server 2007 does not necessarily need Exchange Server in order to function.

In order to run the Office Communication Server 2007 you will only need one server, provided your deployments are quite small. However, if the geographical distribution is vast and if you are requester as well a fault tolerance, you will need more servers. Overall, the most important difference between OCS 2007 and Live Communication server 2005 is focused on the chore of the most companies: communication. A major advantage of the OCS 2007 is that with the help of it the most important companies can now trim down all that is requested in the IT infrastructure.

Nowadays, people are more acquainted and resort to the following ways in order to communicate: e-mail, conference, IM, video etc. the question imposed at this point is why so many products should be used for sundry manufactures. Wouldn’t it be more effective if you could encompass all these facilities for a single client? Thus, one of the goals of Office Communication Server 2007 is to attain this significant idea.

The OCS 2007 also highlights presence, a benefit of all the united communications via Microsoft. With the help of presence you can instantly spot if a certain person is available and of course you can start to communicate whenever you want in a direct way. Office Communication Server 2007 is one of the most important advents nowadays and therefore more and more individuals and organizations resort to OCS 2007 in order to chat or simply for business reasons.

Article Source: http://www.christiannotepad.com

Be in touch with everything that is happening on the globe with the help of OCS 2007 do not loose the opportunity to bring thrive to your business by using and inquiring other users about different problems via Office Communication Server 2007.

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Original Software brings with it a number of advantages for you and your family.

An IDC study reveals that nearly 25% of the Websites offering pirated software attempted to install malicious or potentially unwanted software. 59% of the key generators from peer-to-peer networks contained malicious software.

Microsoft Original Software comes with the assurance that it is not inflicted with any viruses. Applications such as Windows Defender and the latest security features in Internet Explorer keep your PC protected at all times, and ensure that your family also doesn’t fall prey to any malicious tools.

Original Microsoft Windows Vista comes in-built with a number of features to protect your family such as:
• Parental Controls that allow you to control the Website and type of content that your children view
• Restricted Internet Access Filters that allow you to specify the time of day that Internet access is allowed
• Administrative controls allow you to disable rights to other family member to install new software, thereby preventing any accidental installation of spyware or malware.
Updates and security patches to the Windows Operating System and Microsoft Office are only available to customers who are using Original Microsoft Software. These updates ensure that your system is up-to-date thereby boosting performance and protecting from any viruses or spyware.
Some of the updates and downloads available to only Original Microsoft Software users are:
1. Windows Media Player 11
2. Windows Defender
3. Windows Vista Gadget Gallery
4. Over 150,000 free image and sounds for use with Microsoft Office
5. Thousands of free templates to use with Microsoft Office
6. Free Updates for Windows
7. Free Updates for Office

Microsoft Original Software purchased as Retail packs or Fully Packaged Products (FPP) come with a 90-day free support, via phone, starting from either the product activation or the first incident.
• 90 days support from product activation for Windows Vista
• 90 days support from first incident for the 2007 Microsoft Office system
You can call our toll-free numbers anytime to avail of this support. If you have purchased Microsoft Software preinstalled on a new PC, you can avail of personal support for a fee though it is best advisable to contact your supplier for support.

To avail of support, call:
• 1800 102 1100 New Toll Free number – Accessible from anywhere in India from Airtel land line and mobile phone
• +91 80 40103000: New Toll number – Accessible from anywhere in the world from any telecom service provider that provides access to India
• 1800 111100 Existing Toll Free number – Accessible from 36 cities in India from MTNL/BSNL landline

GT Kimberly is an ardent reader & follower of all computer related softwares. He is a user of Microsoft Original Software

Keywords: internet eraser, internet software, privacy software, data recovery

Software Article Source: http://www.eArticlesOnline.com

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Often, the hardest part of any search engine optimization or marketing campaign is getting changes made to the website. Figuring out what to do is often easier than convincing all the stakeholders—including marketers, IT departments, web developers—to take the necessary actions, and coaching them along the way as they apprehensively take baby steps forward. As search marketers, we also need to test web sites. We always want to tweak things and see if we do better, and if not, we go back and try something else. We also work in teams.

Success in search marketing campaigns often depends on the nitty-gritty details of execution. That is why I have spent a lot time investigating different tools that help automate our work flow and promote teamwork. One of my favorites goes by the apt and clever name of Subversion.

Subversion, also known as SVN, is free open source software that provides revision control of source code, web pages and other documents. Revision control means that all current and past versions of each file are saved, with notes about who edited them and what they did. If a bold change goes terribly wrong, a few clicks restores a prior version of the site. Revision control also permits multiple editors to work on the same files without wrecking each others’ work. After updating their local files, everybody can be confident that they have the latest versions. Most edit conflicts are automatically resolved.

Revision control software is much more efficient than ad hoc arrangements such as emailing files back and forth, or using Dreamweaver’s FTP synchronization feature. A web server is for serving web pages, not for syncing files. Our Subversion server provides much faster data transfer, and Subversion tracks changes line by line, so it only transfers the lines that have changed, rather than whole files, saving even more time.

Here are a few situations where Subversion helps most:

Eliminating the IT bottleneck. When a website is hosted in-house, the IT department often does not provide web server FTP access for security or management reasons. They usually want to control all changes, rightly so, because they are responsible. However, IT staff are busy or may lack experience in search optimization. It normally takes three times longer to teach a client how to fix their own website than to just do it for them. IT departments like Subversion because it saves them time, and provides an audit trail, as well as a reliable backup copy of the website in case the server ever suffers a meltdown. When a client is on Subversion, even if I do not have FTP access, I can still grab the latest copy of their website, make the necessary edits and commit them to the repository. Then I ask the client to pull updated files from the repository, review the changes on a development server, and release them to the live site. Verifying and releasing a website update is faster, and requires fewer skills, than editing.

Replacing content management systems. One of the selling points for content management systems is that clients can edit their own website, especially when multiple people are involved. Content management systems usually introduce design rigidity, causing website improvements to take longer and cost more. When websites have a catalog with thousands of parts, or a shopping cart, a content management system is obviously necessary, but when a website is just brochure-ware, content management systems can be a poor investment and an impediment to search marketing. With Subversion, we allow clients to use Dreamweaver or Contribute to edit sites themselves. Everybody on the team uses Subversion to coordinate changes, and if somebody wrecks the site, we can roll back to the prior version. With Subversion as a safety net, the editing process goes faster, and more people can have access.

Delegating work.When managing staff, I need to see what they are doing, and be able to jump in on a moment’s notice when help is needed. Having direct, immediate access to the source code makes it easy to fix a bug in the middle of the night when a client complains. I do not need to tell everybody “sync your files” or risk having them erase my change. Subversion handles that automatically. If a client emails a request, any employee can help themselves to the latest code from the repository, and make edits. Without Subversion, having more than one person working on a site risks confusion.

Backups and using multiple computers.My nightmare scenario used to be losing my computer. What if it breaks? I’ve switched most of my business management tools to cloud computing, such as Basecamp and Freshbooks. But I still have a few important files on my machine, plus all the websites I am working on. Subversion provides secure cloud storage for all those critical files. Subversion makes both of my computers interchangeable. I can right click on any folder to quickly synchronize files from the repository.

Subversion has two components: a server that stores sets files (called modules), and a desktop client for accessing the server. The Subversion server can be installed locally, or on a remote machine. I prefer to use a hosted service such as CVSdude, where they handle all the details for a nominal monthly fee. Tortoise SVN is the most popular Subversion client for Windows. Tortoise asks for the URL of the repository, a userid and a password. All files in a module can be checked out, edited as needed, and then changes are committed. Tortoise integrates into Windows’ File Explorer. Folders show a green check mark if they are current, or a red X when they have been changed.

In 2007 Forrester Research called Subversion “the sole leader in standalone software configuration management (SCM)”. When something that good is free, you think most people would use it. However, most search marketing professionals I speak with have never heard of Subversion.

Jonathan Hochman has two computer science degrees from Yale. He runs an Internet marketing consultancy and a web development shop.

Article source - http://searchengineland.com/080408-084516.php

If the file format does not become a standard, some governments could shy away from using Open XML — and therefore, potentially, Microsoft Office.

By J. Nicholas Hoover InformationWeek March 31, 2008 05:25 PM

After years of wrangling, Microsoft’s Office Open XML file formats are set to gain or lose approval as international standards. The ballots are in and being counted, but the world won’t know the verdict of the International Standards Organization until Wednesday.

The voting ended over the weekend, and it’s not clear exactly what is delaying the results. A total of 87 national standards bodies are voting. In at least one case, Steve Pepper, chairman of Norway’s committee on the approval of Open XML is reported to have filed a formal protest with his country’s yes vote, citing “serious irregularities” with the vote.

The voting process has been marked by jostling and sometimes open hostility on both sides of Open XML’s standardization, with Microsoft competitors like IBM repeatedly coming down hard on Microsoft and with reports of Microsoft’s heavy-handed lobbying for its format, including promising “marketing contributions” in exchange for votes in Sweden — a move that Microsoft later said wasn’t company approved.

If the file format does not become a standard, some governments could shy away from using Open XML — and therefore, potentially, Microsoft Office — in favor of something like Open Document Format, (ODF) which has already become a standard. However, Tom Robertson, Microsoft’s general manager for interoperability said in an interview, “most governments will come down on the side of choice.” The state of Massachusetts along with the countries of Switzerland and Denmark are among those that have said they’ll use either format.

Either way, Microsoft is pushing forward to get its formats used in more places. With Microsoft’s large market share in productivity software, Open XML isn’t likely to decrease in importance anytime soon.

Last week, for example, Microsoft announced that it would contribute to an Apache project that would let Open XML be used in Java apps. The formats have already been employed or supported in Apple’s iWork productivity suite, a productivity suite for Symbian mobile devices and a range of IBM products despite IBM’s efforts with its own ODF.

As Open XML moves forward, a few vital missing pieces need to be put into place. For example, there are no standard interoperability test suites available for Open XML. “It’s a real need,” said Robertson, who pointed out that Microsoft recently launched a Document Interoperability Initiative aimed at creating test suites and templates for forms that would be optimized for interoperability between Open XML and ODF.

Currently, Microsoft’s Open XML is a standard of ECMA International, where Microsoft is chair of the technical committee leading the standard’s development. However, Microsoft anticipates significant changes in the future course of the standard’s development if passed. Control of the standard will shift to ISO, where groups representing larger constituencies than in ECMA will be represented.

Microsoft has not yet said whether it will continue to use the standard version of Open XML for future releases of Office, and Robertson wouldn’t confirm its use in the upcoming Office 14. “I don’t know that there’s a company on earth that would say, into the future, we’re going to do X, Y or Z,” he said.

Article source- http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207000830&subSection=All+Stories

Despite a new owner and the potential for more competition in the future, MySQL and Oracle will continue to work together.

By Charles Babcock InformationWeek  March 31, 2008 10:00 AM

When MySQL AB was bought by Sun Microsystems, some knowledgeable observers said the first thing Sun would do is make MySQL free of its dependence on Oracle.

MySQL incorporated the InnoDB transaction storage system as part of its database system, then Oracle acquired its Finnish parent company, Innobase Oy, in October 2005. “Look for Sun to do more and more to make MySQL free of any third parties,” said Raven Zachary, open source analyst with the 451 Group, in an interview at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.

But Zack Urlocker, the executive VP of products, who supervises both engineering and marketing at MySQL, says such independence is still viewed as unnecessary inside Sun. Urlocker appeared on a panel on the state of the open source database market. Seated nearby was Ken Jacobs, VP of product strategy at Oracle.

MySQL’s strength has been in its ability to serve Web pages, and many Web applications are built with MySQL as the database of choice in the background. Oracle aspires to be the database of future applications as well, including Web applications, and it’s conceivable the two eventually will come into more direct competition.

But Urlocker says that doesn’t mean MySQL can’t keep using InnoDB. “We’ve always had a very good relationship with Oracle,” he said after the panel concluded.

“It’s absolutely a fact. We’ve always had a very good relationship,” affirmed Jacobs, one of the original employees of Oracle, who helped establish Oracle with the federal government from its new Washington office in 1981.

MySQL isn’t ready to announce anything yet, but the way Urlocker and Jacobs exchanged meaningful glances, it was as if to say they’re ready to sign a multiyear continuation of their agreement.

Meanwhile, another third-party piece of software on which MySQL used to depend, the SolidDB for MySQL that was under the sponsorship of IBM, has been pushed off to SourceForge. Dhiren Patel, IBM’s community relations manager for the overall SolidDB project, announced that IBM had acquired SolidDB in December for its in-memory database, technology that will help it compete with Oracle TimesTen.

“This in-memory technology, and not Solid’s open source offering, was the key driver behind IBM’s acquisition. As a result, I regret to inform you that, effectively immediately, we will not be continuing further development on SolidDB for MySQL,” he wrote March 3, six days after Sun completed the MySQL deal.

The open source community around SolidDB for MySQL will be free to continue work on the project, and the developer forums and bug tracking have been migrated to SourceForge as well, Patel noted.

Urlocker said both Jacobs and Charles Phillips, Oracle’s president, have assured him of continued, unfettered access to InnoDB. MySQL, initially developed as a read-only database, gets its key transaction handling characteristics from InnoDB and SolidDB for MySQL.

Article source - http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207000559

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Rumors of a new music service appear to be just that, but with iPod sales slowing and competition growing, now may be the time to pursue such a plan

by Arik Hesseldahl

Apple’s iTunes Store sells individual songs for download for 99¢ apiece, but a new unlimited-music service is rumored to be in the works.

Reports that Apple is discussing an “all-you-can-eat” subscription music service with major record labels are overblown, say people in a position to know. But giving customers access to the entire iTunes catalog in exchange for a premium on iPod music players isn’t a bad idea—and it’s one Apple may need to consider.

According to a story in the Financial Times, Apple (AAPL) would charge enough for iPod and iPhone devices to cover the cost of licensing entire music collections. It would use that premium to create a pool of revenue, a portion of which would be divided among the major music labels, the newspaper said.

Trouble is, no such talks are under way, according to people familiar with Apple’s plans. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment. Insiders at major music labels were similarly dismissive. One person familiar with the matter said the idea of subscription plan has been “kicked around” for about a year, but said there have been “no meaningful discussions” on the subject.

Consumer Appeal

That doesn’t mean the music industry wouldn’t welcome the chance to distribute songs and albums through a subscription plan. The reason is simple. Unlike the existing 99¢-a-song iTunes model, subscriptions provide a reliable revenue stream. Customers who pay $10 a month for access to a music library contribute a predictable cash flow. At present an iTunes customer can buy 12 songs one month and no more for months on end. The music industry has long railed against Apple’s adherence to an à la carte model and its refusal to consider variable pricing, such as charging a higher price for songs deemed more valuable.

Consumers would probably welcome the chance to choose whether to keep buying songs one track at a time or pay a monthly fee for an unlimited number of songs. “There may be millions of people who would never buy into the iPod-iTunes ecosystem who’d be willing to pay $7 to $10 a month for all the music they can get,” says analyst Michael Gartenberg with JupiterResearch. “If anyone can explain the benefits of a plan like this, it’s Apple.”

So why won’t it? For starters, Jobs doesn’t have a lot of reason to change tack. The iTunes Store is wildly successful. It has become the second largest music retailer in the U.S. behind Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). It boasts some 50 million customers and has sold some 4 billion songs since its inception in 2003.

More important for Apple, the online music store is a catalyst for sales of the highly profitable iPod and iPhone. So iTunes would be a success even if it operated at a loss, which it doesn’t. Apple has sold nearly 142 million iPods since the product family launched in late 2001, most of them since 2005, plus 4 million iPhones. Total them all up and you find that the average iPod or iPhone owner buys fewer than 30 songs and tends to fill the iPod with music from an existing CD collection or other means.

Keen Competition

Besides, some subscription services have struggled to gain wide acceptance. Jobs considers subscriptions more akin to rentals, because customers never permanently own the music they listen to. Purchasing a song on iTunes is more like purchasing a CD that enables the buyer to play it at will, the argument runs.

Here’s the rub: Growth in sales of the iPod is slowing. Despite having sold a record 22.1 million units in the quarter ended Dec. 29, the year-on-year growth rate was 5%, compared with 50% a year earlier. A new iTunes business model might appeal to a new batch of customers who have passed on the iPod-iTunes combo as currently offered.

New competition gives Apple additional reason to consider alternative sales methods. Social networking giants, including Facebook and News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace have their own music-store plans in the works. MySpace is said to be working on its own ad-supported service that would let users stream music for free, and pay to download MP3 music files à la carte, similar to a service introduced by Amazon.com (AMZN) late last year.

A strong competitive threat from MySpace, the labels hope, might spur Apple to reconsider its aversion to subscriptions. As an executive with an independent music label familiar with the thinking of counterparts at larger labels puts it: “They are fixated on not getting shafted by Jobs again.”

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SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- The iPhone Dev Team, a group of independent software developers, say they are close to unleashing a new product that undoes the tight control Apple Inc. (AAPL) plans to have over the flow of the software to its iPhone.

The developer team is working on a feature it’s calling Pwnage, which lets iPhones download and run other software programs that haven’t gone through any official, Apple-controlled software distribution channels.

“You can do things like installing custom-made files, straight from (Apple’s) iTunes,” according to comments attributed to one of the iPhone Dev Team’s developers, who goes by the name MuscleNerd, posted on the team’s Web site, iphone-dev.org. “The tools are undergoing intensive developing and soon will be ready for public consumption.”

Pwnage is the latest example of how disruptive software developers have been to Apple’s best-laid plans for its iPhone, a key product for Apple. Once distributed, the Pwnage feature means Apple may no longer be able to count on taking a 30% share of every iPhone software program sold, as it said it would.

Meanwhile, the Pwnage software also weakens the steps Apple is taking to rein in a developer community regarding iPhone software sales, which are expected to blossom into hundreds of millions of dollars, if not $1 billion a year, in annual sales.

As outlined by Apple about 10 days ago, starting sometime in June Apple plans to begin distributing iPhone software made by outside developers. But it first will inspect iPhone software programs from third parties, then distribute them either through Apple’s iTunes Web store, or directly to the phone via an Apple- controlled “Apps Store.”

Meanwhile, Pwnage may also weigh on Apple’s plans to sell more iPhones to businesses, steps it announced two weeks ago when it said every iPhone will soon be able to access Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Outlook email. But Apple also plans to make business software providers like SAP AG (SAP) or Oracle Corp. (ORCL) distribute their iPhone software through official Apple channels, a move that rankled an industry not used to having to deal with an intermediary. It remains to be seen, though, if enterprises would see the new Pwnage software as a decent workaround to the issue.

An Apple spokeswoman did not comment for this story, citing company policy not to talk about products in development at other companies. A representative for iPhone Dev Team, which rarely grants interviews, did not return several emails seeking comment.

The iPhone, a combination phone and digital media player with a touch-screen interface, was introduced last June, and has since become Apple’s fastest selling device. As of two weeks ago, Apple was the No. 2 seller of smart phones, with a 28% share, behind No. 1-ranked Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), the maker of the BlackBerry wireless email device and cell phone.

Shortly after the iPhone was released, Apple promised to open the iPhone so developers could create and distribute software programs for the device. From the start, Apple has allowed developers to create Web-based features for the iPhone to use.

But lots of developers didn’t wait for official channels. Within a few days of the iPhone’s release, they came up with their first substantial, market-changing development: software to unlock the iPhone so it will work on any GSM-based cellphone network, rather than just AT&T Inc.’s (T), which at the time was the only iPhone service provider.

Even though Apple wiped out those programs with an iPhone software update of its own, unlocking software still exists and its sales have thrived. Nearly 25% of all the iPhones sold, according to various estimates, are now unlocked, thus depriving Apple and its carrier partners the fees they would normally have collected from phone service revenue.

The popularity of the unlocking software is also putting more pressure on Apple to do away with its strategy of picking a single carrier per country to exclusively sell the device.

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Author: Jack

Offshore software development is a kind of outsourcing in which the jobs of software development are transferred to offshore countries. Mainly companies in USA transfer software development job to India or other south Asian countries. In India there are many offshore development companies.

Outsourcing a term having different connotations but on the other hand having significant potential to improve an organization-s bottom lines. It makes the business enterprize more competetive in today-s market-place by makimg it more responsive to changes in technology, improve quality of offerings, import new and desired skill-sets into the organization and generally However, if done with little preparation and without a clear business case, can often be a sure recipe for disaster.

Offshore software development is a kind of outsourcing in which the jobs of software development are transferred to offshore countries. Mainly companies in USA transfer software development job to India or other south Asian countries. In India there are many offshore development companies. In India offshore software development have some advantages and also some disadvantages.

Advantages of offshore software development in India

India is a densely populated country so the labor cost in India is too cheap. Along with the cheap labor Indian software professionals are so skilled and high mental level persons. This is the main reason that the US and Europe companies transfer their jobs in India. By offshoring their jobs the companies will save a lot of money. According to a market research normally US and Europe companies save around 70% of their software development cost through offshore software development. In US the average salary of software developer is $9000 per year.

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Adrian Bridgwater ZDNet.co.uk

Microsoft is giving its core developer tools away for free to university and higher-education students in the UK, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, China, Canada and the US.

In a speech to be delivered later today at Stanford University, chairman Bill Gates will give details on the DreamSpark programme’s free downloads, which include full professional versions of Visual Studio 2008, the Expression Studio design tools, XNA Game Studio 2.0 for developing Xbox 360 software, SQL Server Developer Edition and Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.

“The Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance has set up over 600 licensed labs with free software in computing-specific faculties around the UK over the last five years. DreamSpark will now extend this and make our tools available to students of any academic subject, from history to music to ancient languages,” said Dr Andrew Sithers, academic manager at Microsoft.

“Our scaled-down Express versions are still available free of charge to hobbyists and students, and I hope these may still serve as a valuable entry point for those interested in getting their hands on a more powerful set of products through DreamSpark,” added Sithers.

Microsoft said it recognises that a new set of training and reference materials will be needed for the younger breed of newcomers to software development. There is currently a “gulf” between the ease of downloading the products and students actually being able to use them properly, the company claimed. To address this need, the company is planning to develop a new set of tuition materials as soon as possible.

To bring the DreamSpark programme online in the UK, Microsoft is working with service providers, academic institutions, the government and student associations, such as the UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research and not-for-profit IT services group Eduserv, to ensure the necessary student identity-verification technology infrastructure exists. Microsoft says that the programme will be expanded as fast as this community-based effort with government and organisations can be connected.

According to a Microsoft-commissioned IDC study of the economic impact of IT across 82 countries, technological innovation is a “critical economic growth engine” and is predicted to generate 7.1 million jobs worldwide over the next four years.

“The UK’s productivity and future competitiveness depend on making the most of technology. Microsoft is an active supporter of e-skills UK’s campaign to make the UK world-class in technology skills and helping the workforce of the future to develop valuable IT skills,” said Karen Price, chief executive of e-skills UK.

During 2008, Microsoft intends to extend the DreamSpark programme to school-level students in Australia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Japan, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia and elsewhere.

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Apple has called a special event at its Cupertino headquarters next Thursday, 6th March, to discuss the current state of the iPhone and its future.

It’s widely believed that Apple will use this time to launch — or at least provide a decent information update — on the Software Development Kit (SDK). Steve Jobs had originally said that this software, which will allow third-party applications to natively (and officially) run on the iPhone, would be available this month. However, that date slipped.

Many believe that the iPhone should have been an open system from the start. It’s one of the main reasons (along with trying to break away from the exclusive network carriers) why so many iPhones have been hacked.

Whether that practice will stop when the SDK is released will probably depend upon how restrictive it is. If it’s only made available to selective developers, or it closes away too much of the internal workings of the iPhone, then the hacking may well continue.

Next week’s event may also be used to introduce more business-oriented applications for the iPhone, which could make it more attractive to business users, particularly with new tariffs introduced in the US, and similar ones expected in the UK this year.

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This is the most important acquisition in Sun’s history,” said CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

By Charles Babcock
InformationWeek
February 26, 2008 05:20 PM

Sun Microsystems (NSDQ: JAVA) has completed its acquisition of MySQL six weeks after announcing its intent to do so. As of today, Marten Mickos, MySQL’s former CEO, is now senior VP of a new software database group, reporting to Rich Green, executive VP for software. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said Mickos also will report directly to him as part of Sun’s senior management team.

The $1 billion cost of acquiring MySQL was worth the price, said Schwartz. MySQL “was the crown jewel of the open source marketplace,” with 11 million customers and “the strategic value of opening new markets to Sun,” he said in a teleconference announcing the closure of the deal on Tuesday.

MySQL is the speedy, open source, Web-page-serving database that’s used by Facebook, Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Slashdot, and other giants of the Web. With Sun’s help, MySQL can now overcome what Schwartz termed “the chief liability of open source companies,” supplying 24/7 global technical support.

The acquisition “marks the end of a remarkable era for MySQL and the beginning of another remarkable one,” Mickos said at the teleconference. “As part of Sun, we will grow to serve more customers with bigger deployments and bigger scalability.”

The announcement was filled with superlatives. “This is the most important acquisition in Sun’s history,” said Schwartz, even though Sun’s $4.1 billion acquisition of Storage Technologies in June 2005 was much larger. Reminded of StorageTek, Schwartz said, “We don’t have any second thoughts about history. MySQL as a database is as much about storage as StorageTek. We’re gathering together the most compelling open source storage platform in the industry.”

Sun is counting on MySQL’s continued growth in the $15 billion-a-year database industry to fuel additional software sales out of the Sun portfolio, although analysts put MySQL’s share of that at somewhere less than $100 million a year in revenue. Both Mickos and Schwartz took pains to say that Linux, not Sun’s Solaris, will remain MySQL’s primary operating system. In fact, MySQL runs on Linux as its most popular platform, with Windows second, and Solaris coming in a distant third. Nevertheless, MySQL was developed on Solaris, said Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun.

At a media summit Feb. 13, Schwartz raised some eyebrows when he said the popular LAMP stack, which includes Linux and MySQL, doesn’t have to be taken literally. Sun will encourage developers to use Solaris, instead of Linux, with the stack.

Regardless of operating system choice, Schwartz asserted that with MySQL, Sun has a set of software that more directly competes withMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s Windows Server and SQL Server database. “I couldn’t agree more strongly,” he told a questioner, when asked if the acquisition brings Sun closer to head-to-head competition. But Sun will compete on building out the next generation of Web applications for the Internet, not dominance of the desktop.

Sun’s Green said it wasn’t the right time to talk about future possibilities stemming from the acquisition, but it wasn’t unreasonable to expect Sun to more closely integrate MySQL with Sun middleware, such as its GlassFish application server project.

As developers build out Web applications that interact with individual site visitors, answer questions with fresh product information and data, and conduct transactions, Sun wants to be the supplier to the enterprise for the network’s next phase. Sun plans to buy additional open source companies, but it clearly views MySQL as the cornerstone of its campaign. It gives Sun an open door to the builders of the next generation of applications.

That acquisition wasn’t only big for Sun, said Schwartz. “It was the most important acquisition in the industry,” he said during the teleconference.

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By Eric Lai

Vendor says it’s now more responsive to user feedback; proof could be in big product launch

Microsoft Corp. may be the world’s largest software vendor, but it would also top most outside counts of the number of crimes committed against good coding practices.

Whether it’s for shipping software too late (Windows Vista, SQL Server 2005) or too early (Windows ME), releasing products that are too insecure (Outlook Express 5.5 and 6.0, Internet Explorer 5.5) or too locked-down (Vista again), making too few changes (Visual Studio 2003) or too radical of an alteration (Office 2007’s ribbon interface), or writing code that is too bloated and complicated (Vista one more time) or too dumbed-down (Bob), Microsoft rarely catches a break from its critics.

Obviously, it’s not that Microsoft lacks for talent among its 31,000 developers. But the sheer size of the company’s programming workforce, and the number, heft and widespread popularity of its products, conspire to create an environment that can be inconducive to efficient coding.

If you believe executives within Microsoft’s server and tools division, though, the software vendor has become a much more agile developer over the past few years.

Led by that unit, which is still known internally by its old acronym STB (for the server and tools business), Microsoft has embraced new development tactics to help its programmers get products to market faster while also writing better code and being more responsive to feedback from users.

What sort of tactics? Things such as gathering feedback from users before embarking on the writing of any code; replacing or augmenting the conventional model of alpha and beta releases with its Community Technology Preview (CTP) program, which uses a “release early, release often” approach to testing software in the field; and creating independent “feature crews” that can quickly build specific features and communicate directly with users about them.

“I don’t know that there was an ‘Aha!’ moment,” Soma Somasegar, senior vice president in charge of Microsoft’s development tools, said in an interview this month. “We just realized that we’re building products for customers, not just for technology’s sake. So the sooner we could engage with our customers, the better we could make it from an architecture, feature, quality and scalability perspective — all of the things that customers care about.”

That transformation, which began four years ago, will culminate on Wednesday, when Microsoft formally launches the 2008 versions of Windows Server, SQL Server and Visual Studio — each of which was developed using some or all of the new techniques listed above — at an event in Los Angeles.

Skeptics still abound. For one thing, they point out that despite Microsoft’s newfound commitment to user feedback and development flexibility, actually releasing the three new products simultaneously didn’t turn out to be possible.

Visual Studio 2008 has been available since November, while Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing earlier this month. Meanwhile, RTM on SQL Server 2008 was recently delayed until this year’s third quarter, one quarter later than previously planned — although Microsoft did issue what it described as a “feature-complete” CTP release of the database last Wednesday.

“Aligning the launch date was a PR exercise,” said Greg DeMichillie, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft in Kirkland, Wash. DeMichillie, who worked as a developer within the STB for a decade, also remains unconvinced that Microsoft is now a paragon of agile development.

“Clearly, CTPs and the other changes deliver a benefit,” he said. “Users get earlier glimpses of products, and Microsoft gets feedback earlier. But the jury is still out on whether Microsoft is going to ship software more quickly and reliably as a result.”

John Andrews, CEO of Evans Data Corp., a market research firm that focuses on development tools, said via e-mail that Web-centric vendors such as Google Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc. are both much more nimble when it comes to software development, and that even IBM tops Microsoft in agility.

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By Esteban Panzera on the 05-02-2008

If you are looking to become a pro social media marketer or you are already one wanting to know more about it, I have compiled a list of 23 blogs that talk about social media marketing and are great places to learn. Of course mine is a must read too! (:P)

1.       ViperChill

2.       CopyBlogger

3.       Techipedia

4.       Social Media Optimization

5.       NowSourcing

6.       Soshable

7.       10e20

8.       SocialDesire

9.       Collective Thoughts

10.   ToprankBlog

11.   WignutSEO

12.   97thFloor

13.   SearchEnginePeople

14.   BlogStorm

15.   DoshDosh

16.   IgniteSocialMedia

17.   SearchEngineLand

18.   CornwallSEO

19.   SocialMediaTrader

20.   SocialNewsWatch

21.   SearchEngineGuide

22.   Muhammad Saleem

23.   ProNetAdvertising

This blog post was inspired by the “25 websites every seo should know” post by SEO Unique

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Many people jump into social media marketing because they feel they “should be doing it”. Many times companies don’t take the time to identify their goals and why they want to engage in a campaign. Identifying and measuring social media metrics can be easy and inexpensive. Here are some simple things to keep in mind and free ways to track them. This list is based on a viral marketing / linkbait campaign where you are tracking one URL.

Traffic. Is your goal to get more traffic? Are you looking for more brand recognition? Do you have CPM based advertising on your website? Measuring traffic generated by a viral campaign is one of the simplest benchmarks. Simply measure the traffic generated to the specific URL through your web analytics package. Check out Tamar’s great breakdown of 6 Free (or nearly free) analytics packages here.

Links. Are you looking to naturally build links to help with your search engine optimization efforts? Linkbaiting can be extremely effective for this but you should track where the links are coming from and whether or not they are helping you. I recommend checking links at the 1 and 7 day marks using either Technorati or Google Blog Search. Then at the 30 day mark using Yahoo! Site Explorer or Google Webmaster Tools (use this FireFox plugin from Joost de Valk for extra info). Simply put the full URL (yourdomain.com/viral-piece.htm for example) into any of those engines and see who is linking back to you.

Buzz. Are people talking about you or your company due to the social media work you are doing? You need to know who’s saying what and most normal search engines won’t track this. You can use free services such as Serph to help track what’s being said in places like forums and social networks. You can use Serph to search for things like your company name, the title of your linkbait piece or tool, etc.

Bookmarks. Bookmarks will tell you how many people felt your content was important enough to want to revisit at a later time or share with their own network. There are tons of online bookmarking sites out there but I like to use del.icio.us to gauge the overall interest level. Simply go to the del.icio.us URL page and input your full URL (as explained above) - it will then tell you how many people have bookmarked your site and the different tags they used (which is important to see if people are tagging it with what you had intended).

Conversions. At the end of the day everything should come down to this and many people want to discount direct sales via social media marketing but that should never be the case. I firmly believe that you should craft your viral pieces in a way that will help to generate conversions and track them closely for such. Sometimes this might have to come after you have launched you have promoted your piece via the major social networks but other times it might be the whole goal. Define what conversions you want to have happen and then track each. Do you want more people to sign up for your newsletter? Subscribe to your RSS feed? BUY YOUR PRODUCTS? You can do this simply and for free using Google Analytics.

With these different metrics, its important to put a realistic expectation for each in place before you launch your campaign. Think about what you want to accomplish and define your goals as specifically as you can get. Tracking your results and measuring them against your goals is the most effective way to tell if your efforts were successful and had a positive return on your investment (whether that investment be through time or money).

Chris Winfield is the President and Co-Founder of 10e20, an Internet marketing company that specializes in social media & search marketing services and is based in New York & Florida. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land. By Chris Winfield

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Are you still measuring your SEO success by the rankings you obtain? If so, you need to stop—right now!

Here’s why:

1. Rankings are constantly fluctuating. You might check rankings one minute, then check again a few minutes later and see different results.

2. Search results are sometimes geotargeted. The search engines know where you’re located by your IP address, and if they want they can (and I believe they do) sometimes point you to pages that are closer to where you are searching from, as they assume those results might be more beneficial to you.

3. Personalized search. If you’re logged into your Google or Yahoo account, you may very well be getting search results that are specifically targeted to your own preferences. It’s called personalized search, and it is a reality these days. As people use Gmail, Google Analtyics, Google AdWords, or any other free Google toy, Google learns more about you and may make specific recommendations based on this knowledge. Think about how Amazon is always making personalized recommendations for you. It wouldn’t surprise me if Google and Yahoo become more Amazon-like with their recommendations in the near future. The end result is that no two people will see the same rankings, making them an even more worthless measurement than they already are.

4. Rankings don’t equal targeted traffic. Heck, rankings don’t always even equal un-targeted traffic! If you or your SEO company optimizes your pages for keyword phrases that nobody’s searching for, your optimization efforts will all be wasted. And if you’re measuring success by how you rank for those useless keywords, you may be thinking you’re successful when you’re really not. This is actually one of the oldest tricks in the book for unscrupulous (or incompetent) SEO companies to use. They fulfill their end of the bargain—get you rankings—and you’re left scratching your head wondering why your website is still a ghost town.

5. Rankings don’t equal conversions or sales. Along the same lines of #4, all the high rankings in the world won’t matter if they don’t increase your bottom line somehow. If you receive lots of untargeted traffic, or no traffic at all, your sales will remain static.

What should you be measuring instead?

The things that matter, of course—the targeted traffic, but even more important than that—the conversions and sales. Yeah, it was nice in the old days when we could say we did our job by running ranking reports each month and pointing out all the increases to our clients. But that’s simply not going to fly these days. Today, you have to be able to show your clients a positive return on their SEO investment, or you’re just not doing your job properly.

Get with the program and start measuring the things that matter.

Educate your clients or your CEO as much as possible. It can certainly be a difficult concept for some of them to grasp, as rankings are often a vanity thing for them. But once you convince them of the lack of merit in measuring rankings, you’ll be free to throw your rank checking software out the window once and for all and be on your way to true search engine success!

Jill Whalen, CEO and founder of High Rankings, a search marketing firm outside of Boston, and co-founder of SEMNE, a New England search marketing networking organization, has been performing SEO since 1995. Jill is the host of the High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter. The 100% Organic column appears Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

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