This is short article, written in question/answer/FAQ style to give IT Specialist/developer/programmer balanced top level information on Great Plains Accounting migration to Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains. If you have Great Plains Accounting as main accounting and ERP system you need to know some technical details on the migration to Great Plains and what is going on behind the scenes. As of right now it is reasonable to upgrade to Microsoft Great Plains 8.0
Is migration required? Not actually, but you have to consider these factors
* Great Plains Accounting is in phasing out -Great Plains Software began this process back in 1995, when it did introduce Great Plains Dynamics and then Great Plains Dynamics/CS+.
* Old Btrieve platform - Microsoft Business Solutions is pulling out all it's products from Btrive/Pervasive SQL.2000/Ctree.
* Following the Technology and Microsoft rules - Microsoft wants you to be on the newest platform and provides you the best support when you follow this rule
What is migration in the language of technology?
Migration reads Btrieve tables of Great Plains Accounting and moves the data to Microsoft Great Plains tables
Do I need consultant? As our experience indicates - you have to have a consultant to do GPA->Great Plains migration. There are two options to choose from
* You can call Microsoft Business Solutions - they can do migration for you - they will ask you to forward them your btrieve files and they'll send you back the backup of SQL database where your migrated data sits with instructions on how to install Great Plains and restore data from backup
* You can use Great Plains VAR/Partner - in this case your cost is usually lower - but you need to do due diligence - find the partner who has experience and has done at least couple of migrations
Good luck with migration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help, we've done 200 migrations! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com
Monday, June 30, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Rules for Achieving Online Success
The Internet brought a great deal of benefits to our life. Access to a lot of free and useful information is, probably, one of the most important out of them. However, this abandon of free information has also become a problem to some extent. You started to spend a little too much time on the Internet. For you emails, chat rooms, messenger services along with aimless web browsing dominate substantial portion of your workdays. As a result you feel that you are loosing control of your working hours, your productivity is decreasing and you are accomplishing far less in a day than you are capable of. This makes you frustrated, miserable and negative. What to do? How to get out of this mess?
According to Brian Tracey, a renowned self-help guru, Principle of control is one of the most important factors of life. This principle ascertains that you feel positive about yourself to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your life. The same way, you feel negative about yourself to the degree to which you feel that you are controlled by external forces.
The thing is if you don’t feel positive about yourself, it would be impossible for you to become successful. This means to become happy and successful you need to regain control of your life. The following suggestions will help you achieve this:
Set Goals
Goals are like road maps. If you are planning to visit a new place and don’t grab a road map of the place with you, most certainly, you will have difficulties in finding the place. A written goal will give you a clear idea of what exactly you would like to achieve. Goals also give you a sense of control over your directions.
Goal should be Specific: I would like to become a better online businessman is not a goal. It’s a mere statement! Goals should have clear, substantiated and detailed target!
Goal should be measurable: I would like to get 100 thousand new visitors to my site within six months is a specific and measurable goal.
Goal should be realistic: I want my site to become like Yahoo! within one year is probably a unrealistic and impossible goal. If your goal is too easy to achieve or an impossible one to reach, you will soon loose interest in it. Make sure that your goal is high but attainable.
Set a deadline: Each of your goals should have specific deadlines for their achievement.
Create a detail plan of action: List every action you have to take in order to achieve a certain goal.
List obstacles: Write down all the obstacles that you might encounter on your way to reach this goal. Each time you overcome an obstacle from your list, you will feel good about yourself. This will work as a motivation for you to continue.
Make Lists
While developing your plan of actions for your goals, make two basic lists, a comprehensive master list and a more specific daily to do list.
The master list is a single ongoing list of all things that you plan to do in order to achieve your goals. It does not matter whether it is a major goal achieving work with a year long continuation or a small urgent task you need to finish today. Whenever you have come up with a task that you have to do, you add it to your master list.
Each evening create a specific daily to do list for the next work day. Make sure that this list is not too long; and all tasks of this list can be finished within the next working day. If some of the tasks, however, remain untouched at the end of the day, just roll them over to the next day’s list.
To use this list effectively you have to distribute your tasks according to their priorities.
Remember Priorities
Since it is impossible to predict whether you will be able to finish all the tasks from your list in one day, and since some of the tasks are more important than others; you should prioritized the tasks according to their importance in achieving your goals.
To develop a priority-based to do list, write all the tasks you are planning to carry out the next day. Go through the list carefully and mark each of them according to their priority: A to be the most important and D to be the least important tasks of the list. Reconstruct the list according to the assigned priorities.
Start working form the task number one from you list and go down accordingly. This priority-based to do list will be able to guarantee the followings:
You will know which tasks should be carried out first You will always have a comprehensive to do list, allowing you to focus on the things that you need to. However, make sure that you don’t have more than three tasks with highest priority. As too many high priority tasks will keep you under stress and will constantly distract you from the job at hand.
Focus on One Thing
To be successful in any field you need to have many qualities. The ability to focus on the tasks of highest priority and continue working on them until you bring them to their logical end is one of the vital skills of success. Many people of mediocre abilities achieved great success thanks to just this one single quality.
Once you made your to do list and prioritized it, concentrate on one task at a time. No matter what we do, our mind can concentrate in one thing at a time only. If you try to do several things simultaneously, this will only distract you and slower your pace in accomplishing the task with highest priority.
These simple and well-known rules can really do miracles to your life! Try them, you won’t be disappointed!
According to Brian Tracey, a renowned self-help guru, Principle of control is one of the most important factors of life. This principle ascertains that you feel positive about yourself to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your life. The same way, you feel negative about yourself to the degree to which you feel that you are controlled by external forces.
The thing is if you don’t feel positive about yourself, it would be impossible for you to become successful. This means to become happy and successful you need to regain control of your life. The following suggestions will help you achieve this:
Set Goals
Goals are like road maps. If you are planning to visit a new place and don’t grab a road map of the place with you, most certainly, you will have difficulties in finding the place. A written goal will give you a clear idea of what exactly you would like to achieve. Goals also give you a sense of control over your directions.
Goal should be Specific: I would like to become a better online businessman is not a goal. It’s a mere statement! Goals should have clear, substantiated and detailed target!
Goal should be measurable: I would like to get 100 thousand new visitors to my site within six months is a specific and measurable goal.
Goal should be realistic: I want my site to become like Yahoo! within one year is probably a unrealistic and impossible goal. If your goal is too easy to achieve or an impossible one to reach, you will soon loose interest in it. Make sure that your goal is high but attainable.
Set a deadline: Each of your goals should have specific deadlines for their achievement.
Create a detail plan of action: List every action you have to take in order to achieve a certain goal.
List obstacles: Write down all the obstacles that you might encounter on your way to reach this goal. Each time you overcome an obstacle from your list, you will feel good about yourself. This will work as a motivation for you to continue.
Make Lists
While developing your plan of actions for your goals, make two basic lists, a comprehensive master list and a more specific daily to do list.
The master list is a single ongoing list of all things that you plan to do in order to achieve your goals. It does not matter whether it is a major goal achieving work with a year long continuation or a small urgent task you need to finish today. Whenever you have come up with a task that you have to do, you add it to your master list.
Each evening create a specific daily to do list for the next work day. Make sure that this list is not too long; and all tasks of this list can be finished within the next working day. If some of the tasks, however, remain untouched at the end of the day, just roll them over to the next day’s list.
To use this list effectively you have to distribute your tasks according to their priorities.
Remember Priorities
Since it is impossible to predict whether you will be able to finish all the tasks from your list in one day, and since some of the tasks are more important than others; you should prioritized the tasks according to their importance in achieving your goals.
To develop a priority-based to do list, write all the tasks you are planning to carry out the next day. Go through the list carefully and mark each of them according to their priority: A to be the most important and D to be the least important tasks of the list. Reconstruct the list according to the assigned priorities.
Start working form the task number one from you list and go down accordingly. This priority-based to do list will be able to guarantee the followings:
You will know which tasks should be carried out first You will always have a comprehensive to do list, allowing you to focus on the things that you need to. However, make sure that you don’t have more than three tasks with highest priority. As too many high priority tasks will keep you under stress and will constantly distract you from the job at hand.
Focus on One Thing
To be successful in any field you need to have many qualities. The ability to focus on the tasks of highest priority and continue working on them until you bring them to their logical end is one of the vital skills of success. Many people of mediocre abilities achieved great success thanks to just this one single quality.
Once you made your to do list and prioritized it, concentrate on one task at a time. No matter what we do, our mind can concentrate in one thing at a time only. If you try to do several things simultaneously, this will only distract you and slower your pace in accomplishing the task with highest priority.
These simple and well-known rules can really do miracles to your life! Try them, you won’t be disappointed!
Friday, June 20, 2008
Troubleshoot Windows with Task Manager
Task Manager is a Windows system utility that displays the tasks or processes currently running on your computer. To open Task Manager, press Ctrl+Alt+Del. The Applcations tab lists the applications currently running on your computer. A single application may actually consist of several running processes, and many programs that run in the background are not listed (you can see icons for some of these programs in the System Tray).
Note: With Windows 98 and Windows Me, Ctrl+Alt+Del will open Program Manager, which allows you only to close aplications. However, you can download one of the many Task Manager utilities from the Web.
The Processes tab displays a comprehensive list of all the processes currently running on your computer. This can be very useful for monitoring your system. The process tab displays information about the processor useage and memory usage of each process. The problem is, how to identify a process. Below is a list of some processes you may see in Task Managers Processes list.
"System Idle Process"
"System" The Windows System Process
"SMSS.EXE" Session Manager Subsystem
"CSRSS.EXE" Client Server Runtime Subsystem
"WinLOGON.EXE" The Windows Logon process
"SERVICES.EXE" Services Control Manager
"LSASS.EXE" Local Security Authentication Server Service
"svchost.exe" Service Host
"spoolsv.exe" The print spooler service
"explorer.exe" Windows Explorer
"TASKMGR.EXE" The Task Manager
"regsvc.exe" Remote Registry Service
"System Idle Process" is basically another name for the time when Windows is doing nothing. There are hundreds of thousands of processes that run on a computer, so you will definitely find names of many other processess that are not listed above. For a list of well known processes, visit www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm. You can also learn about almost any task by using it's name as a search term in google.
Task Manager can also be used to tweak your system if it's running slow. The [Performance] tab displays running graphs of your computers CPU and memory usage. If the CPU usage seems to be running over 80 percent most of the time, or if the memory usage seems to be running higher than the total physical memory, you may want to shut down some applications or processes.
On the Process tab, you can identify processes that are consuming a lot of processor time. Click twice on the CPU column heading to sort the CPU column so the processes hogging the most CPU time on top. You can sort the "Mem Usage" column the same way.
On the Application tab, if you right click on the name of an application and, in the popup menu that appears, choose "Go To Process", Task Manager will open the Processes tab and highlight the process that runs the application. On the Processes tab, if you right-click on the name of a process, you can choose "SetPriority" and promote the priority of the process you need (or demote the priority of a different process to free up some resources).
If you go to the Application tab and shut down an application, you will shut down any processes related to that application. Or, you might choose to shut down a background process that you can identify. To shut down an application or process, click on it's name in the list to highlight it, then click on the [End Task] button.
On the Processes tab, if you right click on the name of a process, you can choose "End Process Tree" to kill the process and any sub-processes started by the process.
Task Manager can also be used for troubleshooting. If an application freezes up, you can open Task Manager and shut down the application. If the entire system freezes up, you can use Task Manager to shut down a process that is hogging all the CPU time or memory.
If you spend some time monitoring your computer with task Manager, eventually you will become familiar with the processes that commonly run. Then, when you see an unfamiliar process, you can do a little investigation to make sure it's not a virus. For example, if you see msblast.exe in the process list, your computer is infected with the Blaster virus. You might be able to detect and eliminate a new virus before an antivirus update is available.
Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included.
Note: With Windows 98 and Windows Me, Ctrl+Alt+Del will open Program Manager, which allows you only to close aplications. However, you can download one of the many Task Manager utilities from the Web.
The Processes tab displays a comprehensive list of all the processes currently running on your computer. This can be very useful for monitoring your system. The process tab displays information about the processor useage and memory usage of each process. The problem is, how to identify a process. Below is a list of some processes you may see in Task Managers Processes list.
"System Idle Process"
"System" The Windows System Process
"SMSS.EXE" Session Manager Subsystem
"CSRSS.EXE" Client Server Runtime Subsystem
"WinLOGON.EXE" The Windows Logon process
"SERVICES.EXE" Services Control Manager
"LSASS.EXE" Local Security Authentication Server Service
"svchost.exe" Service Host
"spoolsv.exe" The print spooler service
"explorer.exe" Windows Explorer
"TASKMGR.EXE" The Task Manager
"regsvc.exe" Remote Registry Service
"System Idle Process" is basically another name for the time when Windows is doing nothing. There are hundreds of thousands of processes that run on a computer, so you will definitely find names of many other processess that are not listed above. For a list of well known processes, visit www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm. You can also learn about almost any task by using it's name as a search term in google.
Task Manager can also be used to tweak your system if it's running slow. The [Performance] tab displays running graphs of your computers CPU and memory usage. If the CPU usage seems to be running over 80 percent most of the time, or if the memory usage seems to be running higher than the total physical memory, you may want to shut down some applications or processes.
On the Process tab, you can identify processes that are consuming a lot of processor time. Click twice on the CPU column heading to sort the CPU column so the processes hogging the most CPU time on top. You can sort the "Mem Usage" column the same way.
On the Application tab, if you right click on the name of an application and, in the popup menu that appears, choose "Go To Process", Task Manager will open the Processes tab and highlight the process that runs the application. On the Processes tab, if you right-click on the name of a process, you can choose "SetPriority" and promote the priority of the process you need (or demote the priority of a different process to free up some resources).
If you go to the Application tab and shut down an application, you will shut down any processes related to that application. Or, you might choose to shut down a background process that you can identify. To shut down an application or process, click on it's name in the list to highlight it, then click on the [End Task] button.
On the Processes tab, if you right click on the name of a process, you can choose "End Process Tree" to kill the process and any sub-processes started by the process.
Task Manager can also be used for troubleshooting. If an application freezes up, you can open Task Manager and shut down the application. If the entire system freezes up, you can use Task Manager to shut down a process that is hogging all the CPU time or memory.
If you spend some time monitoring your computer with task Manager, eventually you will become familiar with the processes that commonly run. Then, when you see an unfamiliar process, you can do a little investigation to make sure it's not a virus. For example, if you see msblast.exe in the process list, your computer is infected with the Blaster virus. You might be able to detect and eliminate a new virus before an antivirus update is available.
Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Open Source and Post-Capitalistic Society
Capitalism as the social structure was founded in order to support further evolution and development of human race, to support the innovation which was oppressed by the former system. It was brought up by the two industrial revolutions. The technology was obviously the main to blame for the outcoming capitalistic society. The new capitalism was more liberalistic promoting free trade and pushing globalization in order to support further development and growth of technology.
But, it seems like the technology has been pushed so far and so high that the now old capitalism formed to support it starts to act as it's oppressor. The world of software technology is the obvious example of it. The first signs of these events can be recognized far back into 70s and 80s when the software technology's started to emerge.
Now, the capitalism oppresses the further technology growth by oppressing the development of software. How? By making it proprietary, creating monopoly's. To capitalism, everything is property, including software. And that is where the problem is. The software cannot be considered as property, it is more like an information. It is simply too easy to copy it without ANY effort and that is what led to it becoming a commodity which is a reason more why it just cannot be proprietary. If it is considered proprietary and created and used in such manner, we are getting monopolies created, patents issued and other restrictions that do no good to the further development of software technology, but to oppress it.
Look at the capitalistic giant, Microsoft! Imagine that there were no free software movement and open source. Microsoft would be the ultimate monopolist, the whole world would be their empire. In such case, there would be no real progress and innovation because there is no force to drive it.
THAT is the very proof of capitalism being simply too old and incompetent to handle the new technology of today properly, in the information age run by computers and software.
The open source and free software movement are already taking steps further, outgrowing the limitations of the old and incompetent capitalistic system in order to create what may be called a post-capitalism, true liberalistic, society where the technology will be freely developed at the rates the open source software gets developed today.
More to this, open source and free software movement being the major sign is not the only sign of the sickness of capitalism and it's fall.
Simply look at the way things are going at this point in history regarding the major events. When there was a war in Iraq, masses of global and organized people, ordinary people like you and me, used internet to start the organized real time and worldwide demonstrations against the war in Iraq. The same happens with any other major event. There is a global network of people united in their fight for freedom and peace. It shows how the technology of today gives the power to the ordinary people instead of power being in hands of a few big shots. And those people, masses, globally networked masses, ask for one thing: FREEDOM!
Their (our) “enemies” are therefore everyone that anyhow try's to restrict the freedom and impose the control over them.
The entity's that fall into that category include:
* the greatest corporations such as Microsoft and oil companies (imposing monopolies and restrictions in order to control as much as possible)
* political entities such as USA and European Union (imposing wars such as the one in Iraq, pushing restrictions of freedoms to use and develop technology through software patents etc.)
And when we say “enemy”, we don't mean that the corporations, companies and governments as the organizations should be terminated in order for us to have the freedom we deserve nor we in any case mean to fight them with violence acting like terrorists. We should simply raise our voices using the internet and technology in order to change the way these entities function today so that they are no longer the oppressors of freedom, but it's supporters.
These global networked movements, such as open source and free software movement are actually forming a third industrial revolution which may crush capitalism as a social structure and finally bring the power to the majority and support the unrestricted growth of technology.
I am on the right side, are you?
But, it seems like the technology has been pushed so far and so high that the now old capitalism formed to support it starts to act as it's oppressor. The world of software technology is the obvious example of it. The first signs of these events can be recognized far back into 70s and 80s when the software technology's started to emerge.
Now, the capitalism oppresses the further technology growth by oppressing the development of software. How? By making it proprietary, creating monopoly's. To capitalism, everything is property, including software. And that is where the problem is. The software cannot be considered as property, it is more like an information. It is simply too easy to copy it without ANY effort and that is what led to it becoming a commodity which is a reason more why it just cannot be proprietary. If it is considered proprietary and created and used in such manner, we are getting monopolies created, patents issued and other restrictions that do no good to the further development of software technology, but to oppress it.
Look at the capitalistic giant, Microsoft! Imagine that there were no free software movement and open source. Microsoft would be the ultimate monopolist, the whole world would be their empire. In such case, there would be no real progress and innovation because there is no force to drive it.
THAT is the very proof of capitalism being simply too old and incompetent to handle the new technology of today properly, in the information age run by computers and software.
The open source and free software movement are already taking steps further, outgrowing the limitations of the old and incompetent capitalistic system in order to create what may be called a post-capitalism, true liberalistic, society where the technology will be freely developed at the rates the open source software gets developed today.
More to this, open source and free software movement being the major sign is not the only sign of the sickness of capitalism and it's fall.
Simply look at the way things are going at this point in history regarding the major events. When there was a war in Iraq, masses of global and organized people, ordinary people like you and me, used internet to start the organized real time and worldwide demonstrations against the war in Iraq. The same happens with any other major event. There is a global network of people united in their fight for freedom and peace. It shows how the technology of today gives the power to the ordinary people instead of power being in hands of a few big shots. And those people, masses, globally networked masses, ask for one thing: FREEDOM!
Their (our) “enemies” are therefore everyone that anyhow try's to restrict the freedom and impose the control over them.
The entity's that fall into that category include:
* the greatest corporations such as Microsoft and oil companies (imposing monopolies and restrictions in order to control as much as possible)
* political entities such as USA and European Union (imposing wars such as the one in Iraq, pushing restrictions of freedoms to use and develop technology through software patents etc.)
And when we say “enemy”, we don't mean that the corporations, companies and governments as the organizations should be terminated in order for us to have the freedom we deserve nor we in any case mean to fight them with violence acting like terrorists. We should simply raise our voices using the internet and technology in order to change the way these entities function today so that they are no longer the oppressors of freedom, but it's supporters.
These global networked movements, such as open source and free software movement are actually forming a third industrial revolution which may crush capitalism as a social structure and finally bring the power to the majority and support the unrestricted growth of technology.
I am on the right side, are you?
Friday, June 13, 2008
Cisco CCNA Certification: Five Things To Do DURING The Exam
There are plenty of articles out there about how to prepare for the CCNA exam. However, there are also things you can do to increase your chances of success on exam day during the most important part of the entire process -- the time that you're actually taking the test.
I've taken many a certification exam over the years, and helped many others prep for theirs. Here are the five things you must do on exam day to maximize your efforts.
1. Show up on time. Yeah, I know everyone says that. The testing center wants you there 30 minutes early. So why do so many candidates show up late, or in a rush? If you have a morning exam appointment, take the traffic into account. If it's a part of town you don't normally drive in during rush hour, you might be surprised at how much traffic you have to go through. Plan ahead.
2. Use paper, not the pad. Some testing centers have gotten into the habit of handing exam candidates a board that allegedly wipes clean, along with a marker that may or not be fine-pointed. You do NOT want to be writing out charts for binary math questions, or coming up with quick network diagrams, with a dull magic marker. It's also my experience that these boards do not wipe clean well at all, but they smear quite badly.
Ask the testing center employee to give you paper and a pen instead. I haven't had one refuse me yet. Remember, you're the customer. It's your $100 - $300, depending on the exam.
3. Use the headphones. Most candidates in the room with you understand that they should be quiet. Sadly, not all of them do. Smacking gum, mumbling to themselves (loud enough for you to hear, though), and other little noises can really get on your nerves in what is already a pressure situation. In one particular testing center I use, the door to the testing room has one setting: "Slam".
Luckily, that center also has a headset hanging at every testing station. Call ahead to see if yours does. Some centers have them but don't leave them at the testing stations. Wearing headphones during the exam is a great way to increase your powers of concentration. They allow you to block out all noise and annoyances, and do what you came to do -- pass the exam.
4. Prepare for the "WHAT??" question. No matter how well-prepared you are, there's going to be one question on any Cisco exam that just stuns you. It might be off-topic, in your opinion; it may be a question that would take 20 of your remaining 25 questions to answer; it might be a question that you don't even know how to begin answering. I have talked with CCNA candidates who got to such a question and were obviously so thrown off that they didn't do well on any of the remaining questions, either.
There is only one thing to do in this situation: shrug it off. Compare yourself to a major-league pitcher. If he gives up a home run, he can't dwell on it; he's got to face another batter. Cornerbacks in football face the same problem; if they give up a long TD pass, they can't spend the next 20 minutes thinking about it. They have to shrug it off and be ready for the next play.
Don't worry about getting a perfect score on the exam. Your concern is passing. If you get a question that seems ridiculous, unsolvable, or out of place, forget about it. It's done. Move on to the next question and nail it.
5. Finish with a flourish. Ten questions from the end of your exam, take a 15-to-30 second break. You can't walk around the testing room, but you can stand and stretch. By this point in the exam, candidates tend to be a little mentally tired. Maybe you're still thinking about the "WHAT??" question. Don't worry about the questions you've already answered -- they're done. Take a deep breath, remember why you're there -- to pass this exam -- and sit back down and nail the last ten questions to the wall.
Before you know it, your passing score appears on the screen!
Now on to the CCNP ! Keep studying !
I've taken many a certification exam over the years, and helped many others prep for theirs. Here are the five things you must do on exam day to maximize your efforts.
1. Show up on time. Yeah, I know everyone says that. The testing center wants you there 30 minutes early. So why do so many candidates show up late, or in a rush? If you have a morning exam appointment, take the traffic into account. If it's a part of town you don't normally drive in during rush hour, you might be surprised at how much traffic you have to go through. Plan ahead.
2. Use paper, not the pad. Some testing centers have gotten into the habit of handing exam candidates a board that allegedly wipes clean, along with a marker that may or not be fine-pointed. You do NOT want to be writing out charts for binary math questions, or coming up with quick network diagrams, with a dull magic marker. It's also my experience that these boards do not wipe clean well at all, but they smear quite badly.
Ask the testing center employee to give you paper and a pen instead. I haven't had one refuse me yet. Remember, you're the customer. It's your $100 - $300, depending on the exam.
3. Use the headphones. Most candidates in the room with you understand that they should be quiet. Sadly, not all of them do. Smacking gum, mumbling to themselves (loud enough for you to hear, though), and other little noises can really get on your nerves in what is already a pressure situation. In one particular testing center I use, the door to the testing room has one setting: "Slam".
Luckily, that center also has a headset hanging at every testing station. Call ahead to see if yours does. Some centers have them but don't leave them at the testing stations. Wearing headphones during the exam is a great way to increase your powers of concentration. They allow you to block out all noise and annoyances, and do what you came to do -- pass the exam.
4. Prepare for the "WHAT??" question. No matter how well-prepared you are, there's going to be one question on any Cisco exam that just stuns you. It might be off-topic, in your opinion; it may be a question that would take 20 of your remaining 25 questions to answer; it might be a question that you don't even know how to begin answering. I have talked with CCNA candidates who got to such a question and were obviously so thrown off that they didn't do well on any of the remaining questions, either.
There is only one thing to do in this situation: shrug it off. Compare yourself to a major-league pitcher. If he gives up a home run, he can't dwell on it; he's got to face another batter. Cornerbacks in football face the same problem; if they give up a long TD pass, they can't spend the next 20 minutes thinking about it. They have to shrug it off and be ready for the next play.
Don't worry about getting a perfect score on the exam. Your concern is passing. If you get a question that seems ridiculous, unsolvable, or out of place, forget about it. It's done. Move on to the next question and nail it.
5. Finish with a flourish. Ten questions from the end of your exam, take a 15-to-30 second break. You can't walk around the testing room, but you can stand and stretch. By this point in the exam, candidates tend to be a little mentally tired. Maybe you're still thinking about the "WHAT??" question. Don't worry about the questions you've already answered -- they're done. Take a deep breath, remember why you're there -- to pass this exam -- and sit back down and nail the last ten questions to the wall.
Before you know it, your passing score appears on the screen!
Now on to the CCNP ! Keep studying !
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Microsoft Business Solutions VAR/Partner Selection – overview for IT Director/Manager/Controller
Microsoft Great Plains and Microsoft CRM become more and more popular, partly because of Microsoft muscles behind them. Now Great Plains is targeted to the whole spectrum of horizontal and vertical market clientele. Small companies use Small Business Manager (which is based on the same technology – Great Plains Dexterity dictionary and runtime), Great Plains Standard on MSDE is for small to midsize clients, and then Great Plains serves the rest of the market up to big corporations. Microsoft CRM is extremely scalable and fits to all the market niches.
It is always good idea to install everything on your own - however Great Plains requires combination of computer networking, some programming, good accounting/distribution/logistics/reporting background - so it is not a surprise that Microsoft Business Solutions requires their customers to have specially assigner Microsoft Great Plains Partner/VAR/Reseller to serve the account.
If you are IT Director/Controller who has the dilemma of proper partner selection – read this and you will have the clues on where to look further.
1. Local partners - if you are in the remote area - there is often seen the opinion that local partner is the best choice. Consider this however as a contra argument - local partners maybe tiny with one/few consultants and they may not serve you adequately when you have somewhat complex - such as Manufacturing, complex Project Accounting needs, integration with UNIX-based legacy system, etc.
2. Mid-Size partners in Major Business Metros – these companies were classical Great Plains VARS/Resellers with balanced application consulting and technical expertise. Please, consider these points, however: in recent recession most of such partners were bought or merged with big auditing companies and lost their flexibility, plus their consulting fee went up due to the fact of belonging to big conglomerates.
3. Nation-wide partners with local representative offices. This maybe a very good option, if you need kind of reliability and complete expertise - missing parts could be taken from different location with this specialization. However the hourly rates are probably the highest among the first three.
4. One-Project-Manager partner with Offshore consultants – Well - this is very new type of partners - and you potentially can save a lot of money if you are risk taker - hourly rate is usually lower, price of the failure maybe higher.
5. Nation-wide partner with tiny local representation, serving via remote support. We are in this category, so let me tell you couple of good points here. Companies like ours - have to specialize in order to do excellent job in what we claim is our specialization (technology challenging projects with heavy customization needs). Serving via remote support lets us keep reasonably low rates and often go for fixed bids.
Also couple of hints about how do you switch the partner. It is actually more easy than you may think - you just send the new proposed partner the letter in free format saying that you would like to switch to you as my Microsoft Business Solutions partner - and this is it.
It is always good idea to install everything on your own - however Great Plains requires combination of computer networking, some programming, good accounting/distribution/logistics/reporting background - so it is not a surprise that Microsoft Business Solutions requires their customers to have specially assigner Microsoft Great Plains Partner/VAR/Reseller to serve the account.
If you are IT Director/Controller who has the dilemma of proper partner selection – read this and you will have the clues on where to look further.
1. Local partners - if you are in the remote area - there is often seen the opinion that local partner is the best choice. Consider this however as a contra argument - local partners maybe tiny with one/few consultants and they may not serve you adequately when you have somewhat complex - such as Manufacturing, complex Project Accounting needs, integration with UNIX-based legacy system, etc.
2. Mid-Size partners in Major Business Metros – these companies were classical Great Plains VARS/Resellers with balanced application consulting and technical expertise. Please, consider these points, however: in recent recession most of such partners were bought or merged with big auditing companies and lost their flexibility, plus their consulting fee went up due to the fact of belonging to big conglomerates.
3. Nation-wide partners with local representative offices. This maybe a very good option, if you need kind of reliability and complete expertise - missing parts could be taken from different location with this specialization. However the hourly rates are probably the highest among the first three.
4. One-Project-Manager partner with Offshore consultants – Well - this is very new type of partners - and you potentially can save a lot of money if you are risk taker - hourly rate is usually lower, price of the failure maybe higher.
5. Nation-wide partner with tiny local representation, serving via remote support. We are in this category, so let me tell you couple of good points here. Companies like ours - have to specialize in order to do excellent job in what we claim is our specialization (technology challenging projects with heavy customization needs). Serving via remote support lets us keep reasonably low rates and often go for fixed bids.
Also couple of hints about how do you switch the partner. It is actually more easy than you may think - you just send the new proposed partner the letter in free format saying that you would like to switch to you as my Microsoft Business Solutions partner - and this is it.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Why Dedicated Hosting?
If you’re reading this article, you might be interested in getting a dedicated server, or simply learning more about dedicated hosting services.
First of all, please note, that a dedicated server is rather expensive service, and you shouldn’t waste your money if you don’t plan to use it in full measure.
But if you really have a serious website, and want to run a successful business - you cannot do it without a dedicated server.
Of course it’s just mere words, so let’s enumerate the facts!
Freedom and security
Dedicated server will give you a freedom. You will not need to share it with other websites. It will also give you additional 3rd party security for your site and emails. A dedicated server will allow you deep access to your server to configure and optimize your server anyway you need.
You’re able to choose the software to install.
Power and functionality
With a dedicated server you get on average 50-100 Gb of hard drive, plus about 1,000 Gb of data transfer. You may customize the configuration and choose any CPU, RAM, or whatever you need. A dedicated server reduces your dependency on the web host; and bypasses time delays and possible expenses incurred from these.
Respectability
You simply CAN NOT run a popular website on a shared hosting. It’s not serious.
Summary
If your website turned into a popular and reliable resource; if you have tons of daily visitors; if you work B2B; if you need additional security and functionality, power and freedom - go ahead and buy a dedicated server. Don’t be sorry about the money you spent! Think about the future!
First of all, please note, that a dedicated server is rather expensive service, and you shouldn’t waste your money if you don’t plan to use it in full measure.
But if you really have a serious website, and want to run a successful business - you cannot do it without a dedicated server.
Of course it’s just mere words, so let’s enumerate the facts!
Freedom and security
Dedicated server will give you a freedom. You will not need to share it with other websites. It will also give you additional 3rd party security for your site and emails. A dedicated server will allow you deep access to your server to configure and optimize your server anyway you need.
You’re able to choose the software to install.
Power and functionality
With a dedicated server you get on average 50-100 Gb of hard drive, plus about 1,000 Gb of data transfer. You may customize the configuration and choose any CPU, RAM, or whatever you need. A dedicated server reduces your dependency on the web host; and bypasses time delays and possible expenses incurred from these.
Respectability
You simply CAN NOT run a popular website on a shared hosting. It’s not serious.
Summary
If your website turned into a popular and reliable resource; if you have tons of daily visitors; if you work B2B; if you need additional security and functionality, power and freedom - go ahead and buy a dedicated server. Don’t be sorry about the money you spent! Think about the future!
Thursday, June 5, 2008
The Other Side Of The Search Gods’ Abracadabra!
Thousands of servers …billions of web pages…. the possibility of individually sifting through the WWW is null. The search engine gods cull the information you need from the Internet...from tracking down an elusive expert for communication to presenting the most unconventional views on the planet. Name it and click it. Beyond all the hype created about the web heavens they rule, let’s attempt to keep the argument balanced. From Google to Voice of the Shuttle (for humanities research) these ubiquitous gods that enrich the net, can be unfair …and do wear pitfalls. And considering the rate at which the Internet continues to grow, the problems of these gods are only exacerbated further.
Primarily, what you need to digest is the fact that search engines fall short of Mandrake’s magic mechanism! They simply don’t create URLs out of thin air but instead send their spiders crawling across those sites that have rendered prayers (and expensive offerings!) to them for consideration. Even when sites like Google claim to have a massive 3 billion web pages in its database, a large portion of the web nation is invisible to these spiders. To think they are simply ignorant of the Invisible Web. This invisible web holds that content, normal search engines can't index because the information on many web sites is in databases that are only searchable within that site. Sites like www.imdb.com - The Internet Movie Database , www.incywincy.com - IncyWincy, the invisible web search engine and www.completeplanet.com - The Complete Planet that cover this area are perhaps the only way you can access content from that portion of the Internet, invisible to the search gods. Here, you don’t perform a direct content search but search for the resources that may access the content. (Meaning - be sure to set aside considerable time for digging.)
None of the search engines indexes everything on the Web (I mean none). Tried research literature on popular search engines? AltaVista to Yahoo, will list thousands of sources on education, human resource development, etc. etc. but mostly from magazines, newspapers, and various organizations' own Web pages, rather than from research journals and dissertations- the main sources of research literature. That’s because most of the journals and dissertations are not yet available publicly on the Web. Thought they’ll get you all that’s hosted on the web? Think again.
The Web is huge and growing exponentially. Simple searches, using a single word or phrase, will often yield thousands of "hits", most of which will be irrelevant. A layman going in for a piece of info to the internet has to deal with a more severe issue - too much information! And if you don’t learn how to control the information overload from these websites, returned by a search result, roll out the red carpet for some frustration. A very common problem results from sites that have a lot of pages with similar content. For e.g., if a discussion thread (in a forum) goes on for a hundred posts there will be a hundred pages all with similar titles, each containing a wee bit of information. Now instead of just one link, all hundred of those darn pages will crop up your search result, crowding out other relevant site.
Regardless of all the sophistication technology has brought in, many well thought-out search phrases produce list after list of irrelevant web pages. The typical search still requires sifting through dirt to find the gold. If you are not specific enough, you may get too many irrelevant hits.
As said, these search engines do not actually search the web directly but their centralized server instead. And unless this database is updated continually to index modified, moved, deleted or renamed documents, you will land yourself amidst broken links and stale copies of web pages. So if they inadequately handle dynamic web pages whose content changes frequently, chances are for the information they reference to quickly go out-of-date. After they wage their never ending war with over-zealous promoters (spamdexers rather), where do they have time to keep their databases current and their search algorithms tuned? No surprise if a perfectly worthwhile site may go unlisted!
Similarly, many of the Web search engines are undergoing rapid development and are not well documented. You will have only an approximate idea of how they are working, and unknown shortcomings may cause them to miss desired information. Not to mention, amongst the first class information, the web also houses false, misleading, deceptive and dressed up information actually produced by charlatans. The Web itself is unstable and tomorrow they may not find you the site they found you today. Well if you could predict them, they would not be god!…would they?! The syntax (word order and punctuation) for various types of complex searches varies some from search engine to search engine, and small errors in the syntax can seriously compromise the search. For instance, try the same phrase search on different search engines and you’ll know what I mean. Novices… read this line - using search engines does involve a learning curve. Many beginning Internet users, because of these disadvantages, become discouraged and frustrated.
Like a journalist put it, “Not showing favoritism to its business clients is certainly a rare virtue in these times.” Search engines have increasingly turned to two significant revenue streams. Paid placement: In addition to the main editorial-driven search results, the search engines display a second — and sometimes third — listing that's usually commercial in nature. The more you pay, the higher you'll appear in the search results. Paid inclusion: An advertiser or content partner pays the search engine to crawl its site and include the results in the main editorial listing. So?…more likely to be in the hit list but then again - no guarantees. Of course those refusing to favor certain devotees are industry leaders like Google that publishes paid listings, but clearly marks them as 'Sponsored Links.'
The possibility of these ‘for-profit’ search gods (which haven't yet made much profit) for taking fees to skew their searches, can’t be ruled out. But as a searcher, the hit list you are provided with by the engine should obviously rank in the order of relevancy and interest. Search command languages can often be complex and confusing and the ranking algorithm is unique to each god based on the number of occurrences of the search phrase in a page, if it appears in the page title, or in a heading, or the URL itself, or the meta tag etc. or on a weighted average of a number of these relevance scores. E.g. Google (www.google.com) uses its patented PageRank TM and ranks the importance of search results by examining the links that lead to a specific site. The more links that lead to a site, the higher the site is ranked. Pop on popularity!
Alta Vista, HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek and MSN Search use keyword indexes – fast access to millions of documents. The lack of an index structure and poor accuracy of the size of the WWW, will not make searching any easier. Large number of sites indexed. Keyword searching can be difficult to get right.
In reality, however, the prevalence of a certain keyword is not always in proportion to the relevance of a page. Take this example. A search on sari - the national costume of India –in a popular search engine, returned among it’s top sites, the following links:
* www.scri.sari.ac.uk/ - of the Scottish Crop research Institute
* www.ubudsari.com/ - a health resort in Indonesia
* www.sari-energy.org/ - The South Asia Regional Initiative for Energy Cooperation and Development
Pretty useful sites for someone very much interested in knowing how to drape or the tradition of the sari?! (Well, no prayer goes unanswered…whether you like the answer or not!) By using keywords to determine how each page will be ranked in search results and not simply counting the number of instances of a word on a page, search engines are attempting to make the rankings better by assigning more weight to things like titles, subheadings, and so on.
Now, unless you have a clear idea of what you're looking for, it may be difficult or impossible to use a keyword search, especially if the vocabulary of the subject is unfamiliar. Similarly, the concept based search of Excite (instead of individual words, the words that you enter into a search are grouped and attempted to determine the meaning) is a difficult task and yields inconsistent results.
Besides who reviews or evaluates these sites for quality or authority? They are simply compiled by a computer program. These active search engines rely on computerized retrieval mechanisms called "spiders", "crawlers", or "robots", to visit Web sites, on a regular basis and retrieve relevant keywords to index and store in a searchable database. And from this huge database yields often unmanageable and comprehensive results….results whose relevance is determined by their computers. The irrelevant sites (high percentage of noise, as it’s called), questionable ranking mechanisms and poor quality control may be the result of less human involvement to weed out junk. Thought human intervention would solve all probes….read on.
>From the very first search engine – Yahoo to about.com, Snap.com, Magellan, NetGuide, Go Network, LookSmart, NBCi and Starting Point, all subject directories index and review documents under categories – making them more manageable. Unlike active search engines, these passive or human-selected search engines like don’t roam the web directly and are human controlled, relying on individual submissions. Perhaps the easiest to use in town, but the indexing structure these search engines cover only a small portion of the actual number of WWW sites and thus is certainly not your bet if you intend specific, narrow or complex topics.
Subject designations may be arbitrary, confusing or wrong. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted. Never contains full text of the web they link to - you can only search what you see titles, descriptions, subject categories, etc. Human-labor intensive process limits database currency, size, rate of growth and timeliness. You may have to branch through the categories repeatedly before arriving at the right page. They may be several months behind the times because of the need for human organization. Try looking for some obscure topic….chances for the people that maintain the directory to have excluded those pages. Obviously, machines can blindly count keywords but they can't make common-sense judgement as humans can. But then why does human-edited directories respond with all this junk?!
And here’s about those meta search engines. A comprehensive search on the entire WWW using The Big Hub, Dogpile, Highway61, Internet Sleuth or Savvysearch , covering as many documents as possible may sound as good an idea as a one stop shopping. Meta search engines do not create their own databases. They rely on existing active and passive search engine indexes to retrieve search results. And the very fact that they access multiple keyword indexes reduces their response time. It sure does save your time by searching several search engines at once but at the expense of redundant, unwanted and overwhelming results….much more – important misses. The default search mode differs from search site to search site, so the same search is not always appropriate in different search engine software. The quality and size of the databases vary widely.
Weighted Search Engines like Ask Jeeves and RagingSearch allows the user to type queries in plain English without advanced searching knowledge, again at the expense of inaccurate and undetailed searching. Review or Ranking Sources like Argus Clearinghouse (www.clearinghouse.net), eBlast (eblast.com) and Librarian's Index to the Internet (lii.org). They evaluate website quality from sources they find or accept submissions from but cover a minimal number of sites.
As a webmaster, your site registration with the biggest billboards in Times Square can get you closer to bingo! for the searcher. Those who didn’t even know you existed before are in your living room in New York time!
Your URL registration is a no-brainer, considering the generation of flocking traffic to your site. Certainly a quick and inexpensive method, yet is only a component of the overall marketing strategy that in itself offers no guarantees, no instant results and demands continued effort for the webmaster. Commerce rules the web. Like how a notable Internet caveman put it, “Web publishers also find dealing with search engines to be a frustrating pursuit. Everybody wants their pages to be easy for the world to find, but getting your site listed can be tough. Search sites may take a long time to list your site, may never list it at all, and may drop it after a few months for no reason. If you resubmit often, as it is very tempting to do, you may even be branded a spamdexer and barred from a search site. And as for trying to get a good ranking, forget it! You have to keep up with all the arcane and ever-changing rules of a dozen different search engines, and adjust the keywords on your pages just so...all the while fighting against the very plausible theory that in fact none of this stuff matters, and the search sites assign rankings at random or by whim. “
To make the best use of Web search engines--to find what you need and avoid an avalanche of irrelevant hits-- pick search engines that are well suited to your needs. And lest you’d want to cry “Ye immortal gods! where in the world are we?”, spend a few hours becoming moderately proficient with each. Each works somewhat differently, most importantly in respect to how you broaden or narrow a search.
Finding the appropriate search engine for your particular information need, can be frustrating. To effectively use these search engines, it is important to understand what they are, how they work, and how they differ. For e.g. while using a meta search engine, remember that each engine has its own methods of displaying and ranking results. Remember, search strategies affect the results. If the user is unaware of basic search strategies, results may be spotty.
Quoting Charlie Morris (the former editor of The Web developer’s journal) - “Search engines and directories survive, and indeed flourish, because they're all we've got. If you want to use the wealth of information that is the Web, you've got to be able to find what you want, and search engines and directories are the only way to do that. Getting good search results is a matter of chance. Depending on what you're searching for, you may get a meaty list of good resources, or you may get page after page of irrelevant drivel. By laboriously refining your search, and using several different search engines and directories (and especially by using appropriate specialty directories), you can usually find what you need in the end.”
Search engines are very useful, no doubt. Right from getting a quick view of a topic to finding expert contact info…verily certain issues lie in their lap. Now the very reason we bother about these search engines so much is because they’re all we’ve got! Though there sure is a lot of room for improvement, the hour’s need is to not get caught in the middle of the road. By simply understanding what, how and where to seek, you’d spare yourself the fate of chanting that old Jewish proverb “If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.”
Happy searching!
Primarily, what you need to digest is the fact that search engines fall short of Mandrake’s magic mechanism! They simply don’t create URLs out of thin air but instead send their spiders crawling across those sites that have rendered prayers (and expensive offerings!) to them for consideration. Even when sites like Google claim to have a massive 3 billion web pages in its database, a large portion of the web nation is invisible to these spiders. To think they are simply ignorant of the Invisible Web. This invisible web holds that content, normal search engines can't index because the information on many web sites is in databases that are only searchable within that site. Sites like www.imdb.com - The Internet Movie Database , www.incywincy.com - IncyWincy, the invisible web search engine and www.completeplanet.com - The Complete Planet that cover this area are perhaps the only way you can access content from that portion of the Internet, invisible to the search gods. Here, you don’t perform a direct content search but search for the resources that may access the content. (Meaning - be sure to set aside considerable time for digging.)
None of the search engines indexes everything on the Web (I mean none). Tried research literature on popular search engines? AltaVista to Yahoo, will list thousands of sources on education, human resource development, etc. etc. but mostly from magazines, newspapers, and various organizations' own Web pages, rather than from research journals and dissertations- the main sources of research literature. That’s because most of the journals and dissertations are not yet available publicly on the Web. Thought they’ll get you all that’s hosted on the web? Think again.
The Web is huge and growing exponentially. Simple searches, using a single word or phrase, will often yield thousands of "hits", most of which will be irrelevant. A layman going in for a piece of info to the internet has to deal with a more severe issue - too much information! And if you don’t learn how to control the information overload from these websites, returned by a search result, roll out the red carpet for some frustration. A very common problem results from sites that have a lot of pages with similar content. For e.g., if a discussion thread (in a forum) goes on for a hundred posts there will be a hundred pages all with similar titles, each containing a wee bit of information. Now instead of just one link, all hundred of those darn pages will crop up your search result, crowding out other relevant site.
Regardless of all the sophistication technology has brought in, many well thought-out search phrases produce list after list of irrelevant web pages. The typical search still requires sifting through dirt to find the gold. If you are not specific enough, you may get too many irrelevant hits.
As said, these search engines do not actually search the web directly but their centralized server instead. And unless this database is updated continually to index modified, moved, deleted or renamed documents, you will land yourself amidst broken links and stale copies of web pages. So if they inadequately handle dynamic web pages whose content changes frequently, chances are for the information they reference to quickly go out-of-date. After they wage their never ending war with over-zealous promoters (spamdexers rather), where do they have time to keep their databases current and their search algorithms tuned? No surprise if a perfectly worthwhile site may go unlisted!
Similarly, many of the Web search engines are undergoing rapid development and are not well documented. You will have only an approximate idea of how they are working, and unknown shortcomings may cause them to miss desired information. Not to mention, amongst the first class information, the web also houses false, misleading, deceptive and dressed up information actually produced by charlatans. The Web itself is unstable and tomorrow they may not find you the site they found you today. Well if you could predict them, they would not be god!…would they?! The syntax (word order and punctuation) for various types of complex searches varies some from search engine to search engine, and small errors in the syntax can seriously compromise the search. For instance, try the same phrase search on different search engines and you’ll know what I mean. Novices… read this line - using search engines does involve a learning curve. Many beginning Internet users, because of these disadvantages, become discouraged and frustrated.
Like a journalist put it, “Not showing favoritism to its business clients is certainly a rare virtue in these times.” Search engines have increasingly turned to two significant revenue streams. Paid placement: In addition to the main editorial-driven search results, the search engines display a second — and sometimes third — listing that's usually commercial in nature. The more you pay, the higher you'll appear in the search results. Paid inclusion: An advertiser or content partner pays the search engine to crawl its site and include the results in the main editorial listing. So?…more likely to be in the hit list but then again - no guarantees. Of course those refusing to favor certain devotees are industry leaders like Google that publishes paid listings, but clearly marks them as 'Sponsored Links.'
The possibility of these ‘for-profit’ search gods (which haven't yet made much profit) for taking fees to skew their searches, can’t be ruled out. But as a searcher, the hit list you are provided with by the engine should obviously rank in the order of relevancy and interest. Search command languages can often be complex and confusing and the ranking algorithm is unique to each god based on the number of occurrences of the search phrase in a page, if it appears in the page title, or in a heading, or the URL itself, or the meta tag etc. or on a weighted average of a number of these relevance scores. E.g. Google (www.google.com) uses its patented PageRank TM and ranks the importance of search results by examining the links that lead to a specific site. The more links that lead to a site, the higher the site is ranked. Pop on popularity!
Alta Vista, HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek and MSN Search use keyword indexes – fast access to millions of documents. The lack of an index structure and poor accuracy of the size of the WWW, will not make searching any easier. Large number of sites indexed. Keyword searching can be difficult to get right.
In reality, however, the prevalence of a certain keyword is not always in proportion to the relevance of a page. Take this example. A search on sari - the national costume of India –in a popular search engine, returned among it’s top sites, the following links:
* www.scri.sari.ac.uk/ - of the Scottish Crop research Institute
* www.ubudsari.com/ - a health resort in Indonesia
* www.sari-energy.org/ - The South Asia Regional Initiative for Energy Cooperation and Development
Pretty useful sites for someone very much interested in knowing how to drape or the tradition of the sari?! (Well, no prayer goes unanswered…whether you like the answer or not!) By using keywords to determine how each page will be ranked in search results and not simply counting the number of instances of a word on a page, search engines are attempting to make the rankings better by assigning more weight to things like titles, subheadings, and so on.
Now, unless you have a clear idea of what you're looking for, it may be difficult or impossible to use a keyword search, especially if the vocabulary of the subject is unfamiliar. Similarly, the concept based search of Excite (instead of individual words, the words that you enter into a search are grouped and attempted to determine the meaning) is a difficult task and yields inconsistent results.
Besides who reviews or evaluates these sites for quality or authority? They are simply compiled by a computer program. These active search engines rely on computerized retrieval mechanisms called "spiders", "crawlers", or "robots", to visit Web sites, on a regular basis and retrieve relevant keywords to index and store in a searchable database. And from this huge database yields often unmanageable and comprehensive results….results whose relevance is determined by their computers. The irrelevant sites (high percentage of noise, as it’s called), questionable ranking mechanisms and poor quality control may be the result of less human involvement to weed out junk. Thought human intervention would solve all probes….read on.
>From the very first search engine – Yahoo to about.com, Snap.com, Magellan, NetGuide, Go Network, LookSmart, NBCi and Starting Point, all subject directories index and review documents under categories – making them more manageable. Unlike active search engines, these passive or human-selected search engines like don’t roam the web directly and are human controlled, relying on individual submissions. Perhaps the easiest to use in town, but the indexing structure these search engines cover only a small portion of the actual number of WWW sites and thus is certainly not your bet if you intend specific, narrow or complex topics.
Subject designations may be arbitrary, confusing or wrong. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted. Never contains full text of the web they link to - you can only search what you see titles, descriptions, subject categories, etc. Human-labor intensive process limits database currency, size, rate of growth and timeliness. You may have to branch through the categories repeatedly before arriving at the right page. They may be several months behind the times because of the need for human organization. Try looking for some obscure topic….chances for the people that maintain the directory to have excluded those pages. Obviously, machines can blindly count keywords but they can't make common-sense judgement as humans can. But then why does human-edited directories respond with all this junk?!
And here’s about those meta search engines. A comprehensive search on the entire WWW using The Big Hub, Dogpile, Highway61, Internet Sleuth or Savvysearch , covering as many documents as possible may sound as good an idea as a one stop shopping. Meta search engines do not create their own databases. They rely on existing active and passive search engine indexes to retrieve search results. And the very fact that they access multiple keyword indexes reduces their response time. It sure does save your time by searching several search engines at once but at the expense of redundant, unwanted and overwhelming results….much more – important misses. The default search mode differs from search site to search site, so the same search is not always appropriate in different search engine software. The quality and size of the databases vary widely.
Weighted Search Engines like Ask Jeeves and RagingSearch allows the user to type queries in plain English without advanced searching knowledge, again at the expense of inaccurate and undetailed searching. Review or Ranking Sources like Argus Clearinghouse (www.clearinghouse.net), eBlast (eblast.com) and Librarian's Index to the Internet (lii.org). They evaluate website quality from sources they find or accept submissions from but cover a minimal number of sites.
As a webmaster, your site registration with the biggest billboards in Times Square can get you closer to bingo! for the searcher. Those who didn’t even know you existed before are in your living room in New York time!
Your URL registration is a no-brainer, considering the generation of flocking traffic to your site. Certainly a quick and inexpensive method, yet is only a component of the overall marketing strategy that in itself offers no guarantees, no instant results and demands continued effort for the webmaster. Commerce rules the web. Like how a notable Internet caveman put it, “Web publishers also find dealing with search engines to be a frustrating pursuit. Everybody wants their pages to be easy for the world to find, but getting your site listed can be tough. Search sites may take a long time to list your site, may never list it at all, and may drop it after a few months for no reason. If you resubmit often, as it is very tempting to do, you may even be branded a spamdexer and barred from a search site. And as for trying to get a good ranking, forget it! You have to keep up with all the arcane and ever-changing rules of a dozen different search engines, and adjust the keywords on your pages just so...all the while fighting against the very plausible theory that in fact none of this stuff matters, and the search sites assign rankings at random or by whim. “
To make the best use of Web search engines--to find what you need and avoid an avalanche of irrelevant hits-- pick search engines that are well suited to your needs. And lest you’d want to cry “Ye immortal gods! where in the world are we?”, spend a few hours becoming moderately proficient with each. Each works somewhat differently, most importantly in respect to how you broaden or narrow a search.
Finding the appropriate search engine for your particular information need, can be frustrating. To effectively use these search engines, it is important to understand what they are, how they work, and how they differ. For e.g. while using a meta search engine, remember that each engine has its own methods of displaying and ranking results. Remember, search strategies affect the results. If the user is unaware of basic search strategies, results may be spotty.
Quoting Charlie Morris (the former editor of The Web developer’s journal) - “Search engines and directories survive, and indeed flourish, because they're all we've got. If you want to use the wealth of information that is the Web, you've got to be able to find what you want, and search engines and directories are the only way to do that. Getting good search results is a matter of chance. Depending on what you're searching for, you may get a meaty list of good resources, or you may get page after page of irrelevant drivel. By laboriously refining your search, and using several different search engines and directories (and especially by using appropriate specialty directories), you can usually find what you need in the end.”
Search engines are very useful, no doubt. Right from getting a quick view of a topic to finding expert contact info…verily certain issues lie in their lap. Now the very reason we bother about these search engines so much is because they’re all we’ve got! Though there sure is a lot of room for improvement, the hour’s need is to not get caught in the middle of the road. By simply understanding what, how and where to seek, you’d spare yourself the fate of chanting that old Jewish proverb “If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.”
Happy searching!
Monday, June 2, 2008
Liberalization of in-domains?
Communications and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran has -as Hindustan Times reports-some advice for Indian patriots: use in-domains for Websites and e-mail IDs to popularise Indian identity in the world.
With India emerging as a global "labor" for IT, Indian companies should change the domain names of their Websites and e-mail IDs to in-domains, just like other countries.
"In every part of the world, the practice has been to use the short form of the respective countries at the end of the domain names by companies and individuals," the minister said during his first speech as IT Minister.
"During my trips abroad, I have always noticed that people have their e-mail IDs with the initials of their country in the end. For instance, in Britain, the Websites or e-mail IDs have at the end .co.uk, in Singapore it is .co.sg, in Japan it is .jp, in Hong Kong it is .hk and even in Pakistan they have .co.pk. But in India, we are still reluctant to use .co.in or .in. Why this hesitation?", Dayanidhi Maran has asked in an interview.
Therefore the minister has been urging upon Indian captains of industry, heads of organisations and individuals to switch over to use in-domains in order to indicate that their website or e-mail ID originates from India.
"I have made this appeal to representatives of the IT industry here, which is considered the IT capital of India. Once the tech industry migrates to this new identity, it will set a trend for the rest to follow in letter and spirit. They need to change the domain names of their companies or organisations by registering their Websites or mail IDs only once for identifying themselves with their motherland," Maran says.
"Though we are not making it mandatory, we are coming out with a number of schemes for Indian companies or organisations to make this transition soon. The ministry will shortly come out with an action plan to enable a smooth migration to either .co.in or .in," the IT minister explains.
The Indian IT-minister seems to be aware, that it is very bureaucratic in the moment to register in-domains. Indian companies need a lot of paperwork in order to get a domain at co.in , .in itself is reserved for Indian providers, not open to all Indian companies. "Foreign companies", explains Hans-Peter Oswald, the CEO of ICANN Registrar Secura (https://www.domainregistry.de/in-domain.html), ,,can only register the own name at .gen.in."
With India emerging as a global "labor" for IT, Indian companies should change the domain names of their Websites and e-mail IDs to in-domains, just like other countries.
"In every part of the world, the practice has been to use the short form of the respective countries at the end of the domain names by companies and individuals," the minister said during his first speech as IT Minister.
"During my trips abroad, I have always noticed that people have their e-mail IDs with the initials of their country in the end. For instance, in Britain, the Websites or e-mail IDs have at the end .co.uk, in Singapore it is .co.sg, in Japan it is .jp, in Hong Kong it is .hk and even in Pakistan they have .co.pk. But in India, we are still reluctant to use .co.in or .in. Why this hesitation?", Dayanidhi Maran has asked in an interview.
Therefore the minister has been urging upon Indian captains of industry, heads of organisations and individuals to switch over to use in-domains in order to indicate that their website or e-mail ID originates from India.
"I have made this appeal to representatives of the IT industry here, which is considered the IT capital of India. Once the tech industry migrates to this new identity, it will set a trend for the rest to follow in letter and spirit. They need to change the domain names of their companies or organisations by registering their Websites or mail IDs only once for identifying themselves with their motherland," Maran says.
"Though we are not making it mandatory, we are coming out with a number of schemes for Indian companies or organisations to make this transition soon. The ministry will shortly come out with an action plan to enable a smooth migration to either .co.in or .in," the IT minister explains.
The Indian IT-minister seems to be aware, that it is very bureaucratic in the moment to register in-domains. Indian companies need a lot of paperwork in order to get a domain at co.in , .in itself is reserved for Indian providers, not open to all Indian companies. "Foreign companies", explains Hans-Peter Oswald, the CEO of ICANN Registrar Secura (https://www.domainregistry.de/in-domain.html), ,,can only register the own name at .gen.in."
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