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	<title>Vishal Vasu&#039;s Tech Talk</title>
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	<link>http://www.vishalvasu.com</link>
	<description>Opening Doors to Windows Technology</description>
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		<title>How does Ethical SEO help Increase ROI of your Website?</title>
		<link>http://www.vishalvasu.com/ethical-seo-increase-roi/</link>
		<comments>http://www.vishalvasu.com/ethical-seo-increase-roi/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jun 2010 12:49:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vishal Vasu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Websites & Web Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine submission]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.vishalvasu.com/?p=323</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So you have a website and have made investments in getting it online on the Internet. But does it give you the results that you had thought of? Is your website adding up to your business or is it reaching out to your target customers?
After establishing a great website, however, you need to drive interested [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>So you have a website and have made investments in getting it online on the Internet. But does it give you the results that you had thought of? Is your website adding up to your business or is it reaching out to your target customers?</p>
<p>After establishing a great website, however, you need to drive interested consumers to your site in order for it to have an impact on your business bottom line. <a href="http://www.bytetechnosys.com/solutions/search-engine-optimization.aspx" target="_blank">Search Engine Optimization</a>, or SEO, can be useful in bringing more targeted customers to your business website and SEO can help improve the conversion rates as well. Conversions are interpreted differently by individual marketers, advertisers, and content creators. To online retailers or e-commerce websites, a successful conversion may mean the sale of a product to a consumer whose interest in the item was initially sparked by clicking a banner advertisement. To content creators, a successful conversion may refer to a membership registration, newsletter subscription, software download or other activity.</p>
<p>All commercial websites can increase their ROI by focusing on the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Increasing Relevant Traffic to the Website</li>
<li>Increasing Conversions</li>
</ul>
<p>A long term SEO plan to generate organic traffic from Search Engines is the most important because it is Google and the other major search engines that are the portals of choice when seeking specific information.</p>
<p><strong>What is ROI and how can it be Improved?</strong></p>
<p>Return On Investment (ROI) is a direct relationship between the total amount you spend and the total amount you earn from a certain internet marketing campaign.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, Return On Investment (ROI) is a performance measurement used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment and to compare the efficiency of one investment to the other or over a certain period of time.</p>
<p>The two most important factors to improve your Return On Investment (ROI) are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Professional Search Engine Optimization</li>
<li>Website Conversion Rate Optimization</li>
</ul>
<p>Let’s understand these in detail.</p>
<p>Professional Search Engine Optimization is probably one of the best internet marketing strategies to improve your Return On Investment. Basically, the idea here is to generate lot of organic traffic which will simply give much more exposure to the website for a long period of time. Once the initial cost of Search Engine Optimization services is paid, you do not need to pay much money to keep the achieved results.</p>
<p>A good Search Engine Optimization campaign can contain the following items or a carefully selected combination:</p>
<ul>
<li>Keyword research, analysis and selection</li>
<li>Copywriting the main website pages and the landing pages</li>
<li>Link building exercise to improve the link popularity</li>
<li>Social Media Marketing to create more brand loyalty</li>
</ul>
<p>On the other hand, Website Conversion Rate Optimization is a technique to increase your Conversion Rate, which leads to more targeted visitors and more sales from your targeted traffic.</p>
<p>A good Website Conversion Rate Optimization campaign can contain the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Find the Unique Selling Points (USP) and make them clear and obvious in the website and landing pages</li>
<li>Improve the website design to be more search engine friendly</li>
<li>Improve the website usability and accessibility to make navigation and finding information, products or services easier</li>
<li>Improve the content on the website to clearly present the benefits of products or services to be more convincing and compelling to your visitors</li>
<li>Improve landing pages to accurately match your advertising campaigns and the keywords used in them</li>
<li>Track the campaigns and analyze results to improve performance</li>
</ul>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Internet to fall short of IPv4 Addresses soon</title>
		<link>http://www.vishalvasu.com/internet-to-fall-short-of-ipv4-addresses/</link>
		<comments>http://www.vishalvasu.com/internet-to-fall-short-of-ipv4-addresses/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 May 2010 10:35:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vishal Vasu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.vishalvasu.com/?p=318</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The word is out and it is official &#8211; Internet is going to fall short of IPv4 addresses in the next 500 days or odd. Computer experts and Industry leaders had expressed their warnings earlier but it seems they either fell on deaf ears or the IT Industry did not anticipate that the short fall [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The word is out and it is official &#8211; Internet is going to fall short of IPv4 addresses in the next 500 days or odd. Computer experts and Industry leaders had expressed their warnings earlier but it seems they either fell on deaf ears or the IT Industry did not anticipate that the short fall would happen so early. What does this have in store for the IT Industry? Well, it clearly means that each device &#8211; every server, mobile phones, router or for that matter, everything else that makes up the Internet or uses the Internet will need to be reconfigured or upgraded. The upgrade will include a switch to IP Version 6 (IPv6) instead of the prevailing IP Version 4 (IPv4) which is now more than 20 years old. Here is a small explanation of the technicality involved that may help to understand for those who are non-technical.</p>
<p><strong>What is an IP Address?</strong></p>
<p>The Internet works on a transport system, commonly known as TCP/IP protocol, to transfer and exchange data. TCP stands for Transfer Control Protocol and IP stands for Internet Protocol. Both together make the TCP/IP protocol stack. An IP Address is basically an identifier for a computer or a device on a TCP/IP network. When one computer or device transfers or exchanges data to another, it uses the IP address of the destination. The transmitting computer or device is called the Source while the receiving one is called the Destination.</p>
<p>The format of the IP address that we currently use is a 32-bit numeric address written as four (4) numbers seperated by periods. For example, 192.168.4.2 is an IP Address. Each device or a computer connected directly to the Internet has to have a unqiue IP address. No two devices can use the same IP address as this would cause a conflict and the Source would not know which Destination to send the data to. Similary a Destination would not be able to identify which Source to report back to that the data has been received if there is an IP address conflict. Currently, the IP address range, ie. IP Version 4 or IPv4, is being classified in to 3 main classes: Class A, Class B and Class C. There are other classes too, but they are restricted. The art of this classification is called Subnetting which is further enhanced by Supernetting. Since explaining this involves lot of technical understanding of the TCP/IP Protocol Stack, we shall skip it for now. For those interested to know further, there is always Google at your help.</p>
<p><strong>How does an IP work?</strong></p>
<p>There is no better way to understand this but with an example. Let&#8217;s take the example of my website <strong>www.vishalvasu.com</strong>. My website is associated with an IP address since it works on the TCP/IP protocol. The IP address of my website is:</p>
<p><strong>74.53.251.150</strong></p>
<p>The above format is called a dotted decimal format which makes it easier for humans to remember. But we all know by now that computers and related devices communicate in a binary format. The same IP address to a computer or a device on the Internet would mean something like this:</p>
<p><strong>01001010<span style="color: #ff0000;">.</span>00110101<span style="color: #ff0000;">.</span>11111011<span style="color: #ff0000;">.</span>10010110</strong></p>
<p>The four numbers in an IP address are called octets, because they each have eight positions when viewed in binary form. If you add all the positions together, you get 32, which is why IPv4 addresses are considered 32-bit numbers. Since each of the eight positions can have two different states (1 or 0) the total number of possible combinations per octet is 2^8 or 256. So each octet can contain any value between 0 and 255. Combine the four octets and you get 2^32 or a possible 4,294,967,296 unique values.</p>
<p>Out of the almost 4.3 billion possible combinations, certain values are restricted from use as typical IP addresses. For example, the IP address 0.0.0.0 is reserved for the default network and the address 255.255.255.255 is used for broadcasts.</p>
<p>Ok, comming back to the example, imagine if people had to remember the IP address of 74.53.251.150 to browse www.vishalvasu.com. Complicated? That&#8217;s just one site and imagine if one had to remember sites like hotmail.com, yahoo.com, google.com, microsoft.com, ebay.com, etc. in similar fashion. The thought itself is boring. To make things simpler, the TCP/IP protocol uses a system called DNS (Domain Name System). The basic role of a DNS is to map text names to an IP Address automatically. This way, one only needs to remember www.vishalvasu.com instead of 74.53.251.150. Even though it is totally invisible, DNS servers handle billions of requests every day and they are essential to the Internet&#8217;s smooth functioning.</p>
<p><strong>What Next?</strong></p>
<p>IPv4 offers approximately 4.3 billion possible combinations of IP addresses which can used on the TCP/IP network. This is a limit which is feared to get exhausted by 2012 or probably even before that. This fear also led to lot of discussions, research and debates among Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) since 1980&#8217;s. Finally, sometime in 1998, the announcement of IP Version 6 (IPv6) was made. IPv6 fixes a number of problems in IPv4, such as the limited number of available IPv4 addresses. It also adds many improvements to IPv4 in areas such as routing and network autoconfiguration.</p>
<p>IPv6 is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a number of years during a transition period. Basically, the address size was increased from 32 bit to 128 bit, which is deemed sufficient for the foreseeable future.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>Vanche Gujarat Abhiyan Initiated</title>
		<link>http://www.vishalvasu.com/vanche-gujarat-abhiyan/</link>
		<comments>http://www.vishalvasu.com/vanche-gujarat-abhiyan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:54:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vishal Vasu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.vishalvasu.com/?p=312</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The day finally came and the website of Vanche Gujarat was launched successfully today by the Hon. Chief Minister of Gujarat, Shri Narendra Modi. In his speech after launching the website, Hon. CM cracked a joke that as such doing any event on the 1st day of April is risky business, but he somehow likes [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-313" title="vanche-gujarat-01" src="http://www.vishalvasu.com/uploaded_images//vanche-gujarat-01.jpg" alt="vanche-gujarat-01" width="314" height="235" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The day finally came and the website of <a href="http://www.vanchegujarat.in" target="_blank"><strong>Vanche Gujarat </strong></a>was launched successfully today by the Hon. Chief Minister of Gujarat, Shri Narendra Modi. In his speech after launching the website, Hon. CM cracked a joke that as such doing any event on the 1st day of April is risky business, but he somehow likes to take the risks head-on. Applause!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.vanchegujarat.in" target="_blank"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-314" title="vanche-gujarat-02" src="http://www.vishalvasu.com/uploaded_images//vanche-gujarat-02.jpg" alt="vanche-gujarat-02" width="400" height="287" /></a>Vanche Gujarat is one of the programs outlined as part of the Swarnim Gujarat celebrations which focuses on promoting and fostering the culture of general reading across the state of Gujarat. I think this initiative will allow Gujarat to give lot of intellects to the service of the nation in the near future.</p>
<p>For this, the government will actively rope in private and government libraries, students of schools and colleges and voluntary organisations. Around 15,000 granth yatras, 2,500 reading workshops and 1,000 interactive sessions &#8211; on the theme &#8221;the book they liked most&#8221; &#8211; would also be organised.</p>
<p>The website has been developed by us and I wish it shall pass on the message to fellow Indians and hopefully this initiative will not remain confined to the borders of Gujarat.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Launch of Vibrant Gujarat 2011 Web Portal</title>
		<link>http://www.vishalvasu.com/launch-of-vibrant-gujarat-2011-web-portal/</link>
		<comments>http://www.vishalvasu.com/launch-of-vibrant-gujarat-2011-web-portal/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:21:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vishal Vasu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.vishalvasu.com/?p=310</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Yesterday was a big day for me and my team as there was a scheduled launch of the new Vibrant Gujarat Web Portal aimed at the upcoming Vibrant Gujarat 2011 Summit. The web portal was successfully launched by Shri Saurabh Patel (Hon. Minister of State, Gujarat).
The fifth edition of biennial global investors’ summit slated for [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Yesterday was a big day for me and my team as there was a scheduled launch of the new <a href="http://www.vibrantgujarat.com" target="_blank"><strong>Vibrant Gujarat Web Portal </strong></a>aimed at the upcoming Vibrant Gujarat 2011 Summit. The web portal was successfully launched by Shri Saurabh Patel (Hon. Minister of State, Gujarat).</p>
<p>The fifth edition of biennial global investors’ summit slated for January 2011, which is being tagged as ‘Davos in Action’, will focus more on branding the state of Gujarat as a business hub where deals are done, rather than just an investment destination. In a gradual deviation from previous events, the upcoming summit has been renamed as ‘Vibrant Gujarat 2011: The Global Business Hub’ instead of ‘Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors’ Summit’.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Remote Infrastructure Management Services (RIMs) – More to Offer than Cost Savings</title>
		<link>http://www.vishalvasu.com/remote-infrastructure-management-services-rims/</link>
		<comments>http://www.vishalvasu.com/remote-infrastructure-management-services-rims/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:39:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vishal Vasu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[monitoring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[RIM]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.vishalvasu.com/?p=303</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) services will be the next growth engine for the offshore service industry as reported by leading consulting agencies and media. In fact, the global RIM industry has grown at more than 80 per cent CAGR from US$2 billion in 2006 to US$6 billion to US$7 billion in 2008 where India has [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.bytetechnosys.com/managed-services/rims/remote-infrastructure-management.aspx" target="_blank"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-306" title="RIMs" src="http://www.vishalvasu.com/uploaded_images//noc_bak.jpg" alt="RIMs" width="323" height="218" />Remote Infrastructure Management</a> (RIM) services will be the next growth engine for the offshore service industry as reported by leading consulting agencies and media. In fact, the global RIM industry has grown at more than 80 per cent CAGR from US$2 billion in 2006 to US$6 billion to US$7 billion in 2008 where India has been a significant beneficiary. A common question that would come to our mind is &#8211; with the industry hit by recession in 2009 and with the dark clouds of recession still looming on the horizon of 2010, what potential does the RIM service market hold in the future?</p>
<p>If studied closely, RIM makes more sense not in terms of a measure to cut costs during recessions but more as a business sense. How? Let&#8217;s see.</p>
<p>Today enterprises leverage the power of IT to streamline their key business processes and gain a competitive advantage. Even with the investments already made, the key issues relating to application performance, scalability, security, management and effective utilization are mostly unresolved. Apart from helping to reduce the overall IT Infrastructure Management costs, a well structured and managed RIM relationship can bring significant benefits.</p>
<p><strong>Flexibility of Service<br />
</strong>Customers hiring service providers have an advantage here as they can align the business needs with the services provided by the Service Provider. Services can be flexed to meet peak times and loads, mission-critical and non-mission critical or a combination of both. This type of flexible pricing model and service delivery helps in apportioning the infrastructure management costs.</p>
<p><strong>Domain Expertise<br />
</strong>In this highly volatile IT industry it is hard to keep up with the latest technology trends and it is almost impossible to have on pay roll a staff that can match the ever demanding and changing face of IT technology across all segments. A RIM service provider can add value here as they have diverse IT staffs which are at a client&#8217;s disposal, working 24&#215;7. Moreover, these specialists are constantly updated with the latest technology trends via internal training programs, technical training programs from vendors, etc.</p>
<p>This basically helps companies to gain a competitive advantage as it helps to reduce the time to market. Companies can take the bold steps of adopting and switching to new technologies to gain a competitive advantage. Serious service providers in the RIM industry would normally have alliances in place with leading technology suppliers and as a result clients can also enjoy a single window of service from them with an assurance that the team working on their projects would be capable of handling the technology and related needs.</p>
<p><strong>Visibility and Control<br />
</strong>Companies retain full control of its strategic components such as physical IT assets, technology refresh, policy and architecture which provides visibility into the availability, performance and utilization of each component. Many of the established RIM suppliers have embraced the ITIL framework which lends itself to RIM very effectively. Putting the collected data in to this type of best practices framework provides lot of insight and visibility. This visibility further enables companies to take control of the situation, make informed decisions on future investments in IT and improve current service levels.</p>
<p><strong>Reduced Costs<br />
</strong>Remote Infrastructure Management not only assists in reducing the manpower cost of managing the infrastructure, but also brings down the costs related to future infrastructure investments. It has been reported and endorsed by agencies like McKinsey and NASSCOM that outsourcing the infrastructure management services can save dramatically reduce the labour related costs by 30% to 40%. On the other hand, companies can also reduce costs associated with future infrastructure investments using expertise of the service provider by way of infrastructure optimization, standardization using industry best practises and consolidation using <a href="http://www.bytetechnosys.com/managed-services/it-consulting/virtualization.aspx" target="_blank">virtualization technologies</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Proactive Services<br />
</strong>Most of the time RIM services engagements are driven and governed by SLA&#8217;s (Service Level Agreements). Service providers, in order to maintain the SLA, invest in to software and technology that enable them to gain an insight on failing components in the IT infrastructure, usage patterns, thresholds, etc. These tools enable a service provider to provide 24&#215;7 proactive monitoring and management via a <a href="http://www.bytetechnosys.com/managed-services/rims/remote-monitoring-and-noc.aspx" target="_blank">Remote NOC</a> (Network Operations Centre). This helps to resolve issues in a faster and structured manner.</p>
<p>So, in today&#8217;s fast paced and ever changing IT world, RIMs makes more business sense and CIOs have to step back and ask themselves what they&#8217;re trying to accomplish with infrastructure outsourcing. Cost savings, optimization, transformation or efficiency? CIO&#8217;s decisions on outsourcing infrastructure management are going to be driven by more than just cost savings and as a result it is also going to create a challenge for the service providers to tweak their service models to show more benefits and not only cost savings.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>Installing Application Templates for Windows SharePoint</title>
		<link>http://www.vishalvasu.com/installing-application-templates-for-windows-sharepoint/</link>
		<comments>http://www.vishalvasu.com/installing-application-templates-for-windows-sharepoint/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:36:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vishal Vasu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SharePoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.vishalvasu.com/?p=297</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Microsoft has developed forty Application Templates to provide out-of-the-box solutions to address the needs of specific business processes such as coordinating a Help Desk or tracking marketing campaigns. If you are reading this post, then I assume that you have downloaded all of the 40 Application Templates for SharePoint or at least one of them.
This [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Microsoft has developed forty Application Templates to provide out-of-the-box solutions to address the needs of specific business processes such as coordinating a Help Desk or tracking marketing campaigns. If you are reading this post, then I assume that you have downloaded all of the <a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb407286.aspx" target="_blank"><strong>40 Application Templates</strong></a> for SharePoint or at least one of them.</p>
<p>This Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are separated into two groups, “<strong>Site Admin Templates</strong>” and “<strong>Server Admin Templates</strong>”.</p>
<p><strong>Site Admin Templates</strong> are custom templates that have an *.stp extension and are easy for site administrators to install in a template gallery without requiring server administration access.</p>
<p><strong>Server Admin Templates</strong> have a *.wsp extension and are created as site definitions, providing tighter integration and enhanced functionality within the Windows SharePoint Services platform. They require a server administrator to install.</p>
<p>Where they differ is how each type is structured and deployed on a SharePoint site. Site definitions consist of multiple files on a front-end Web server that are located within folders under the template directory. Custom templates are created through the user interface or through the object model and are stored in the database, providing a means for reusing customized lists and sites.</p>
<p><em><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">Note:</span></strong> Templates with the STP extensions can be uploaded directly in SharePoint’s ‘Site Templates’ page in Site Settings. Templates with WSP extensions must be added to the server side via stsadm command.</em></p>
<p>Here is how you should go about installing them on your SharePoint Site. For the rest of this post, we shall assume that you have already downloaded the necessary template files and you are the Administrator for the SharePoint Site and/or the server on which the site is running.</p>
<p><strong>Installing STP Templates</strong></p>
<p>This is very easy compared to the installation of WSP Templates. To install a *.stp template, perform the following steps:</p>
<ul>
<li>Login to your SharePoint Site after downloading the template package</li>
<li>Select <strong>Site Settings</strong> from <strong>Site Actions</strong></li>
<li>Click <strong>Site Templates</strong> from <strong>Galleries</strong></li>
</ul>
<p><img class="alignnone" src="http://www.vishalvasu.com/uploaded_images/sharepoint-template-01.gif" alt="" width="234" height="184" /></p>
<ul>
<li>Click <strong>Upload</strong> and browse for the template file which was downloaded</li>
</ul>
<p><img class="alignnone" src="http://www.vishalvasu.com/uploaded_images/sharepoint-template-02.gif" alt="" width="493" height="130" /></p>
<ul>
<li>Click <strong>OK</strong> once done</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Installing WSP Templates</strong></p>
<p>This is a bit complicated when compared to adding *.stp templates. Moreover, adding *.wsp templates also requires you to be the administrator of the SharePoint Site as well as the Administrator for the server.</p>
<ul>
<li>Login to the SharePoint server using Remote Desktop (RDP) or the console. Depends on how you are working &#8211; in front of the server or remotely</li>
<li>Download the template package to the server</li>
<li>To make things easier and to avoid typing the full path of the directory, I prefer to move the templates to <strong>C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/12/Bin</strong> folder including the ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp</li>
<li>From the<strong> Start</strong> menu, select <strong>Run</strong> and open the Command Prompt by typing <strong>CMD</strong> or<strong> Command</strong> in the dialog box</li>
<li>Go to the <strong>C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/12/Bin</strong><br />
Run the following command:</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>stsadm –o addsolution –filename ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp</strong></p>
<p><img class="alignnone" src="http://www.vishalvasu.com/uploaded_images/sharepoint-template-03.gif" alt="" width="668" height="113" /></p>
<ul>
<li>This will add the Application Template Core to the solutions management where it will need to be deployed. Since we had already moved the files to the BIN folder earlier, we can skip giving the full path to the ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp. If you ignored that, you can provide the full path by enclosing it in quotes.</li>
<li>To deploy the Application Template Core, run the following command:</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>stsadm-o deploysolution –name ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp –allowgacdeployment –immediate</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>After successfully deploying the Application Template Core, it is time to add the solution files. Type the following command:</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>stsadm -o addsolution -filename &lt;template_name&gt;.wsp</strong></p>
<p><img class="alignnone" src="http://www.vishalvasu.com/uploaded_images/sharepoint-template-04.gif" alt="" width="667" height="112" /></p>
<p><em><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">Note:</span></strong> replace the template_name.wsp with the actual template name.</em></p>
<ul>
<li>Next type the following command to deploy the solution:</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>stsadm -o deploysolution -name &lt;template_name&gt;.wsp –allowgacdeployment</strong></p>
<p><em><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">Note:</span></strong> additional commands may need to be given, for example, <strong>- local</strong> if on a standalone machine and <strong>– immediate</strong> if installation being carried out in a SharePoint Farm</em></p>
<ul>
<li>To check deployment status by, click the <strong>Operations</strong> tab in the <strong>SharePoint Central Administration Site</strong> and then click <strong>Solution Management</strong> under <strong>Global Configuration</strong></li>
<li>After the solution is marked <strong>Globally</strong> deployed you may need to reset IIS. To do that quickly, open command prompt and type<strong> iisreset /noforce</strong></li>
</ul>
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		<title>WSS and MOSS &#8211; What&#8217;s the Difference?</title>
		<link>http://www.vishalvasu.com/wss-and-moss-difference/</link>
		<comments>http://www.vishalvasu.com/wss-and-moss-difference/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:21:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vishal Vasu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SharePoint]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.vishalvasu.com/?p=287</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This year, I’m starting a new section on my blog on Microsoft SharePoint and to start with I’m posting about the two main flavours that Microsoft offers &#8211; SharePoint Portal Server and SharePoint Services.
SharePoint is being pushed by Microsoft and also with the announcement that SharePoint would be replacing the Public Folders that were available [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This year, I’m starting a new section on my blog on Microsoft SharePoint and to start with I’m posting about the two main flavours that Microsoft offers &#8211; SharePoint Portal Server and SharePoint Services.</p>
<p>SharePoint is being pushed by Microsoft and also with the announcement that SharePoint would be replacing the Public Folders that were available in Exchange, it certainly requires some understanding. I’ve heard people talk at length about SharePoint, met IT Managers who wish to implement SharePoint in their organization, planned SharePoint with some small and medium business segment owners and had a common observation after the meetings. Most of them do not know what are the basic differences between the two flavours. And trust me, if you do not know the basic difference, the end results would not be the same that you expected. I’ll start with explaining the two flavours so that we can get a basic understanding of the differences.</p>
<p><strong>Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)</strong></p>
<p>Windows SharePoint Services are a part of Microsoft Windows Server feature pack and come absolutely FREE. It can be downloaded from the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D51730B5-48FC-4CA2-B454-8DC2CAF93951&amp;displaylang=en" target="_blank">Microsoft website</a> and has a no-fuss installation.</p>
<p>Windows SharePoint Services or WSS is primarily focused on workgroup level collaboration. No, this does not mean that it cannot be made operational in an Active Directory environment. It can be easily integrated with your current AD environment and can be quickly setup to support basic collaborative items like team sites, document workspaces, blogs, wiki and meeting workspaces. These are some of the frameworks that come out-of-the-box with WSS and more such Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services can be downloaded from the <a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb407286.aspx" target="_blank">Microsoft Web Site</a>. Moreover, once you have gathered enough understanding on how WSS works and how it stores and retrieves data, you can scale it up further to connect with MS Access, MS Excel, MS Word, MS PowerPoint and even your Exchange Server. Document version control, RSS feeds, Task Notifications, Basic Workflows and Email Alerts – all come along with WSS.</p>
<p>The main focus area when thinking about SharePoint implementation in your organization would surely be the cost factor. Yes, SharePoint Portal Server does have high costs and that’s why you should always start playing around with WSS to being with. This will help you to decide what you need next in terms of what WSS cannot offer. Also, once you put WSS to use in the company, it would also become easier for you to convince the management in moving up to SharePoint Portal Server.</p>
<p>In short, WSS should be the starting place for you if you are looking at using SharePoint for your organization.</p>
<p><strong>Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)</strong></p>
<p>The first portal product introduced by Microsoft was termed Digital Dashboard which introduced the concept of WebParts. However, this technology never picked up and did not even manage to get out of the Beta release stage. On the other hand, the MS Office group team at Microsoft came out with another product towards collaboration by the name of SharePoint Team Services (STS). This is what lead to the birth of SharePoint Portal Server somewhere in the year 2001. Today, SharePoint Portal Server (MOSS) has been upgraded to work on the .NET Framework with least amount of development oriented architecture.</p>
<p>The major benefit of using MOSS is the way it provides the feature of using Business Intelligence (BI). MOSS offers simple ways to provide key performance data using the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) WebParts and build BI reports to be published on dashboards. BI and KPI can assemble and display business information using Excel Spreadsheets, MS SQL or any other 3<sup>rd</sup> party line of business application.</p>
<p>MOSS also offers “My Sites” which are individual mini-sites meant for employees. Each employee can create his or her personal site thorough a self-service request. The site can be classified to show Private as well as Public content, skill sets, contact information and more. It can even be integrated with Active Directory to pull information from AD like the manager, colleague, contact information, etc. And can be scheduled through the Central Administration to update the SharePoint data as and when changes are made in Active Directory.</p>
<p>The buck does not stop here. MOSS has more or better functionalities/options like Single-Sign On, Portal Sites, Enhanced Search (not only text and documents but also people). The Enterprise version of MOSS provides Excel Services, Business Intelligence Dashboards, Internet Publishing and Content Management, Web based InfoPath Forms and more.</p>
<p><strong>Summary</strong></p>
<p>As you can see, there are lot of similarities between the two products. Mainly where the functionality differs is that MOSS allows more aggressive and targeted indexing for search, offers BI and KPI and Web Based Services for Excel and InfoPath. I’m sure to start with, these would not have much importance in the company which mainly requires a collaboration platform for their employees so that they cut down on the transfer of collaborative files and documents via email, can keep a track of the documents and maintain versions. Go ahead and start polishing your understanding on Windows SharePoint Services. The more you use it, the better it will become and then you can think of scaling it further by switching to Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server.</p>
<p>For those who would like a detailed comparison, Microsoft has published this in an Excel sheet and can be downloaded from <a href="http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101978031033.aspx" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
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		<title>Microsoft hits back at Sophos for false claims on Windows 7</title>
		<link>http://www.vishalvasu.com/microsoft-hits-back-at-sophos-for-false-claims-on-windows-7/</link>
		<comments>http://www.vishalvasu.com/microsoft-hits-back-at-sophos-for-false-claims-on-windows-7/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:33:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vishal Vasu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[patch management]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.vishalvasu.com/?p=285</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last month, i.e. on October 22nd 2009, a test was conducted at Sophos Labs on Microsoft’s new operating system – Windows 7. The test was carried out to check if Windows 7 really matched its claims about the OS being more secured for virus, spyware and malware. Sophos claimed that the User Account Control (UAC) [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Last month, i.e. on October 22nd 2009, a test was conducted at Sophos Labs on Microsoft’s new operating system – Windows 7. The test was carried out to check if Windows 7 really matched its claims about the OS being more secured for virus, spyware and malware. Sophos claimed that the User Account Control (UAC) feature of Windows 7 bypassed 8 viruses out of the 10 that were tested. Further, it claimed that Windows 7 UAC’s default configuration is not effective at protecting a PC from modern malwares. You still need to run an anti-virus on Windows 7.</p>
<p>I was just waiting for something to happen from Microsoft end and after a long wait, yes it did happen. In a blog posting recently, Paul Cooke, Director of Windows Enterprise Client Security at Microsoft stated that the Sophos claim was deceptive and bogus. Further he adds that, “This test shows that most people don’t knowingly have and run known malware on their system. Malware typically makes it onto a system through other avenues like the browser or email program. So while I absolutely agree that anti-virus software is essential to protecting your PC, there are other defenses as well.” “I do agree that you still need to run anti-virus software on Windows 7,” Cooke noted, “but it is equally important to keep all of your software up-to-date through automatic updates, such as through Windows Update service.”</p>
<p>Now to the main point &#8211; I absolutely agree with what Paul Cooke has to say in terms of securing your PC. Being in the IT industry since 20 years now and moreover having given consultancy in Infrastructure Security to number of organizations, I’ve only seen that 40% to 50% of the problems faced by an organization are due to un-patched system, pirated software and out-of-date anti-virus signatures. In fact, when we install Windows Vista or Windows 7 on a PC, the operating system keeps on alerting via its Windows Security system if Automatic Updates are not configured or if the PC is missing an anti-virus solution. If that is the case, the question is – when and where did Microsoft claim that the new version of their Operating System Windows 7 does not require an anti-virus? If you know the answer to this, I would like to hear back from you.</p>
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		<title>Gartner Highlights Five Key Issues for Windows 7</title>
		<link>http://www.vishalvasu.com/gartner-windows-7/</link>
		<comments>http://www.vishalvasu.com/gartner-windows-7/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:46:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vishal Vasu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.vishalvasu.com/?p=283</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Alright! The word is out.
Gartner says that it is almost inevitable for any Enterprise to move to windows 7 and also added that the release of Windows 7 will generate renewed interest in hardware upgrades in consumers and small business segments &#8211; though the corporate demand is not expected to gain momentum until the end [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Alright! The word is out.</p>
<p>Gartner says that it is almost inevitable for any Enterprise to move to windows 7 and also added that the release of Windows 7 will generate renewed interest in hardware upgrades in consumers and small business segments &#8211; though the corporate demand is not expected to gain momentum until the end of 2010.</p>
<p>Gartner, Inc. has highlighted five key issues enterprises should examine as Windows 7 hits the market:</p>
<p><strong>1. Plan to be Off Windows XP by Year-End 2012</strong> — Microsoft will support Windows XP with security fixes into April of 2014, but past experience has shown that independent software vendors (ISVs) will stop testing much earlier. “New releases of critical business software will require Windows 7 long before Microsoft support for Windows XP ends,” said Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner. “Organizations that get all of their users off Windows XP by the end of 2012 will avoid significant potential problems.”</p>
<p><strong>2. Start Working on Migration Projects Now —</strong> The typical organization requires 12 to 18 months waiting, testing, and planning before it can start deploying a new client OS. There is a lot of work to be done in preparation, and delays in getting started will only result in added costs later.</p>
<p><strong>3. Don’t Wait for Windows 7 SP1 to Begin Testing and Deployment —</strong> Many organizations say they plan to wait until SP1 ships to begin testing and deploying a new client OS. Gartner analysts suggest starting work now (especially if companies have skipped Windows Vista), but are planning to switch to SP1 before their actual rollout.</p>
<p><strong>4. Don’t Skip Windows 7 —</strong> Gartner categorizes Windows 7 as a “polishing” release on top of the architectural change that the Windows Vista “plumbing” release delivered. Gartner analysts said polishing releases should never be skipped. “While organizations that skipped Windows 2000 and waited for XP had some problems spanning the gap, organizations that adopted Windows 2000 and tried to skip Windows XP, waiting for Vista, had a much harder time,” said Michael Silver, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.</p>
<p><strong>5. Budget Carefully —</strong> Migration Costs to Vary Significantly Gartner’s model shows that migration costs could be $1,035 to $1,930 per user to move from Windows XP to Windows 7, and $339 to $510 per user to move from Windows Vista to Windows 7 depending on an organization’s approach.</p>
<p>Inputs taken from <a href="http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1207813" target="_blank">Gartner</a>.</p>
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		<title>Xobni – Search and Relationship Toolbar for Outlook</title>
		<link>http://www.vishalvasu.com/xobni/</link>
		<comments>http://www.vishalvasu.com/xobni/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:45:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Vishal Vasu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Outlook]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.vishalvasu.com/?p=277</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is the best Outlook add-in so far from a company called Xobni located in San Francisco. “Xobni” is basically “Inbox” spelled backwards. The main idea behind the development of this plug-in was to give users an organized Inbox without them spending time on searching for conversations/emails, attachments and other relevant information. It creates profiles [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft" title="Xobni Logo" src="http://www.vishalvasu.com/uploaded_images/xobni-01.gif" alt="" width="200" height="64" />This is the best Outlook add-in so far from a company called Xobni located in San Francisco. “Xobni” is basically “Inbox” spelled backwards. The main idea behind the development of this plug-in was to give users an organized Inbox without them spending time on searching for conversations/emails, attachments and other relevant information. It creates profiles for each person that emails you and these profiles contain information like statistics of how many emails are being sent to and fro to that contact, what times are the most emails sent and received for that contact, social connections of the contact, conversations that are done with a particular contact in a nice threaded view and the attachments shared.</p>
<p>The system requirements to optimally run Xobni are a Windows XP (SP2 or greater) or Vista machine, Outlook 2003 or 2007, Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 or above, a minimum of 1 GB RAM (most of the desktops have more than that today), a 2GHz of higher processor speed and a monitor with a resolution of 1024&#215;768 (recommend a higher resolution if possible as the Xobni tool bar eats up some screen area of Outlook after installation).</p>
<p>It is also recommended that if the Outlook profile is connected with a Microsoft Exchange Server, then the profile be configured in a &#8220;Cached Exchange Mode&#8221;. This makes sense since this would create an OST file in the desktop and thus would help Xobni or even a normal Outlook user to gain access to emails in case of the non-availability of the Exchange Server.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" title="Xobni Ranking" src="http://www.vishalvasu.com/uploaded_images/xobni-02.gif" alt="" width="232" height="141" />Once installed, Xobni takes some time to scan and index the emails in your Outlook and starts ranking your contacts by the number of emails that are shared. It takes about a minute or two for the initial indexing. Much of the indexing is then later done by the plug-in in the background.</p>
<p>The statistics area displays useful information about the selected contact such as the number of emails sent and received, a bar graph showing what time of day most emails are exchanged and the rank which is determined by the number of emails exchanged between you and that contact.</p>
<p>The best part is the Actions area which helps to perform common interactions with the selected contact. For example, assume that there is no phone number stored in the contact information of a particular person. The request phone number action automatically creates a new email for that contact asking for the phone number. When a response is received from that person, Xobni automatically extracts the phone number and adds it to the profile.</p>
<p>Again in the Actions area are two great features – LinkedIn and Facebook tabs. Upon selecting a email from a contact, click on the LinkedIn or Facebook tabs and Xobni will pull out relevant information of that contact from LinkedIn or Facebook. Click on “view profile” and it directly opens up the selected contacts Facebook or LinkedIn profile. Again, the best part is that you can see the wall posts directly from Facebook in to this area.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" title="Xobni Threaded Conversations" src="http://www.vishalvasu.com/uploaded_images/xobni-04.gif" alt="" width="244" height="379" />Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The way Xobni displays the conversations using a threaded style similar to Google’s Gmail is amazing. All emails upon indexing are grouped in to conversations based on the subject, people in To and CC header fields, etc.</p>
<p>Each entry in the conversations panel will show the subject line of the email thread, a count of the emails the thread contains, as well as an approximate time that the last email in the conversation was sent. If the conversation contains an attached file, a small paper clip icon appears to the right of the subject line.</p>
<p>The title bar also totals the number of unique conversations. Clicking on the conversations bar expands the viewable area of conversations and gives you the option to filter the results. Clicking on any conversation entry consisting of more than one email will bring up a new sidebar frame showing the conversation thread.</p>
<p>The entry information will be shown at the top of the sidebar and the emails in the conversation are displayed just below that. If the email thread is longer than the sidebar can contain, there&#8217;s a detail slider, which can change the visible size of each email entry.</p>
<p>This way you can quickly find the right email that you&#8217;re looking for. If the conversation thread includes multiple people, they&#8217;re listed below in a panel called &#8220;People in Conversation&#8221;. Likewise, if there were any email attachments in that thread, these will be shown at the bottom of the sidebar in the &#8220;Files Exchanged&#8221; panel.</p>
<p>Each email entry in this view can be clicked on to further reveal the entire message. From here, you&#8217;re given the option to do standard email actions such as &#8220;Reply&#8221; and &#8220;Forward&#8221;. The &#8220;Open&#8221; button will open the original email from Outlook folders and the &#8220;View Conversation&#8221; button will take you back to the previous view of the entire conversation. Aside from the standard email header info, we can also see exactly where in the folder structure the email resides.</p>
<p>Xobni Analytics is another cool feature. This can be accessed from the menu bar of Outlook. Whether it’s the total volume of emails today, last week, entire year or the total volume of emails from your friend, analytics is the place to check all this out.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" title="Xobni Analytics" src="http://www.vishalvasu.com/uploaded_images/xobni-05.gif" alt="" width="546" height="338" /></p>
<p>The data that&#8217;s displayed for the persons In and Out mail count, Rank, and Emails received graph are all powered behind the scenes by Analytics. One of the most widely used features within the Analytics window is the ability to determine own network rankings.</p>
<p>In short, Xobni is a Microsoft Outlook add-in that:</p>
<p>- Shows up previously hidden information about email interactions with people<br />
- Allows to explore emails by contacts and conversations<br />
- Performs lightning-fast searches<br />
- Gives immediate access to files exchanged with contacts<br />
- Allows to link Outlook and online social networks and data services such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Hoover&#8217;s<br />
- Indexes personal Yahoo! mail for integrated searching<br />
- Provides an in-depth analysis of the overall flow of email traffic via Analytics</p>
<p>Go ahead and try out Xobni today. You won’t regret the decision. Xobni can be downloaded from <a href="http://www.xobni.com/"><strong>http://www.xobni.com</strong></a>. If you manage to download and install it, do share your views here so that other visitors reading this post can read more about the user experiences from you.</p>
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