General

Lots of free stuff

Raju — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 23:05:00 GMT

http://www.winsite.com/free/

Value that makes a great difference

Raju — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:20:00 GMT

Value that makes a great difference

Its about IBM, In 1914 Thomas Watson Sr. the founder of Modern IBM, has set its values:

1) Respect for the individual.

2) The best customer service.

3) The pursuit of excellence.

It went for long run with these values, then IBM recognized that it’s image is decreasing with fast ever growing trend with Internet evolution, Information Exchange and with every corner competition, In Feb 2003 then CEO , Samuel J. Palmisano, raised the value of re-inventing the company’s value as a way to manage and reintegrate.

He took four concepts, three from Watson’s basic beliefs:

a) Respect

b) Customer

c) Excellence

d) Innovation

There were three proposed values using their internal assessment and IBM specialized tool valuesJam in July 2003.

a) Commitment to the customer.

b) Excellence through innovation.

c) Integrity that earns trust.

There were several comments when it got out for all employee comments released from hands of 300 core senior executives, special committee which formed a team worked hard differentiating and organizing the thousands of comments.

Palmisano’s came with IBM’s value considering committee outcome in Nov 2003:

a) Dedication to every client’s success.

b) Innovation that matters – for our company and for the world.

c) Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.

And finally as an action item Palmisano has put a special committee to see the current gap between these values and IBM culture.

Let us see how IBM makes changes with its new values.

Share Point services and Share Point Server - preview list

Raju — Wed, 12 May 2004 21:00:00 GMT

Huu great feature list for content management and knowledge management companies.

Here is the list I collected on Share Point services and Share Point Server:

1) share a document with team members ( Document workspace)

2) Tracking of document (roll back with versioning).

3) Integrated with office 2003.

4) Import and export share point site links.

5) Meeting workspace – documents, site references for the meeting could be created as site easily for tracking.

6) Self Service site creation, without having admin privileges, team members can create sites.

7) Easy navigation on Site Management like site deletion and site re-activating, even site auto deletion feature has been provided.

8) Auto moment of attached document on Exchange server to public folder.

9) Notification of document changes.

10) Single Sign-on with Share Point Server 2003.

11) Build in integration with BizTalk server 2003.

12) Topics: contain lists, discussion boards, document libraries

Feature	Windows SharePoint Services	SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Alerts	Yes	Yes
Browser-based customization	Yes	Yes
Discussion boards	Yes	Yes
Document libraries	Yes	Yes
Document Workspace	Yes	Yes
Meeting Workspace	Yes	Yes
Lists	Yes	Yes
BizTalk integration	No	Yes
Microsoft FrontPage integration	Yes	Yes
Microsoft InfoPath™ integration	Yes	Yes
Surveys	Yes	Yes
Templates	Yes	Yes
Web Part pages	Yes	Yes
Automatic categorization	No	Yes
Audiences	No	Yes
Topic areas	No	Yes
News	No	Yes
Personal sites	No	Yes
Shared services	No	Yes
Single sign-on	No	Yes
Site Directory	No	Yes
User profiles	No	Yes

http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/

ISA --> The Secure Server Features list

Raju — Tue, 11 May 2004 17:16:00 GMT

I was on a search for secure server features, I found very interesting on Microsoft ISA Server.

Latest version “ISA Server 2004” Provides “Application layer firewall, VPN and web cache”.

ISA --> Internet Security and Acceleration Server

1) Secure, Fast and Manageable Internet connectivity.

2) Multilayer enterprise firewall

3) High level web cache.

4) Server alters on malicious attack with firewall guard.

5) Publish multiple secure websites using single IP on external interfaces of firewall. (Wildcard Certificate).

6) Deals with Access control and bandwidth issues.

7) Web proxy controlling.

8) You can publish Outlook web access website thru ISA Server.

9) Solve your authentication problem with ISA Server.

10) You have more with Active Directory as a network directory.

11) Handle your FTP connection with ISA.

12) Splitting of DNS, do it in ISA.

Evolution:

Proxy Server 1.0 (NT Enterprise 4.0 ) : Integrates with Windows NT, Supports limited few basic functionalities.

Proxy Server 2.0: This is windows NT account database, Simplified user management, Caching Services, Packet Filtering.

ISA Server: Array (Domain Array, Independent Array), Rule, Array Policy, Enterprise policy.

ISA Components:

a) Firewall

b) Policy based Administration.

c) Virtual Private Network (VPN).

d) Dynamic IP filtering.

e) IDS (Intrusion Detection System), MS purchased this from Internet Security Systems,

this will check WinNuke, Ping of Death, Land, UDP bombs, POP Buffer Overflow, Scan Attack etc.

f) Web Cache.

g) Reports.

h) GateKeeper H.323: This will manage H.323-based VoIP applications eg: NetMeeting.

Points to remember:

# You can install ISA Server a Domain Controller, Although its generally a bad idea from a security standpoint to install ISA Server on a DC, some times it becomes requirement for small companies in terms of investments.

Single Sign-on

Raju — Mon, 10 May 2004 18:56:00 GMT

This is one of the cool features for integrating different application in an organization; It gives flexibility to sign on one time and use with different application.

I could say Single sign-on is an independent session management entity for cross application Identity, to validate and access provider.

Pros I found:

a) No need to sign to different application.

b) Easy to move from one application to another application.

c) Develop once and use many times, Increases productivity.

Cons of this:

Huu I could see major bottleneck, loose your password for one application and you are giving access to all other applications which are associated with it.

There are separate application for single sign-on management,

eTrust single sign on (http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=166) is one of the famous.

dotNet has given easy solution for passport integration with different application, so you can even use this, more concern is you have to put the data on Microsoft server for this, which is never accepted for most of the companies.

The simplest way to develop this is to have a “Web Service” .

We need to put more code for “Expiring, Auto Redirecting, re-validating “ etc etc.

If we want to have some think like enterprise level, then there are little more scope of

“Digital certificates / secured encryption “ …

Is this enough to beat eTrust..? J

Looks it has more dynamic attribute assignment, Flexible session management.

Let me ask my first prospect customer (Microsoft) to evaluate this pre-development scope…J

New Programming Language - XEN

Raju — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 21:58:00 GMT

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1489438,00.asp

Xen, a new programming language coming out of Microsoft Research and developed in conjunction with the University of Cambridge, promises to bring together three disparate but integral components of programming, wrapping them together in .Net. Xen's creators use a geometric metaphor to illustrate this conjoining, calling the language a means to program with "circles, triangles, and rectangles."

Source: http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/slog/archive/2004/01/21/5866.aspx

Good quote on theory and practice

Raju — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 18:19:00 GMT

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."

—Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

This is in the book “SQL performance tuning” Peter Gulutzan and Trudy Pelzer.

Quote on Failure

Raju — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 21:36:00 GMT

` I don`t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process. `
--Oprah Winfrey, media entrepreneur.
Courtesy: http://www.libraryonlineinc.com

Retrieve E-Mail from a POP3 Server

Raju — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 14:33:00 GMT

http://www.quiksoft.com/newsletter/issue003/

Good article with code snippets on retreiving e-mail from pop3 server

Future of Printer?

Raju — Mon, 29 Mar 2004 16:07:00 GMT

I was looking at Xerox evolution in technology and it’s move towards the latest trend. On photocopying machine they have done lot of research and they incorporated many things like in-build processors to look after each function. The latest development of photocopy image could be transferred to Computer System by which you could take as many copies as you can, and there are certain monitoring processes which intimate future failure condition to the service center, by which they could replace the one which is at bad condition and may failure.

I wonder on the future of printer, if I could get the features of Photocopying and Printing in one machine then why I will go for printer separately?, I am sure, Xerox will have this in its kitty.