MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT ONLINE

Microsoft SharePoint Online provides a highly secure, central location where employees can efficiently collaborate with team members, find organizational resources, manage content and workflow, and gain the business insight to make better-informed decisions. Based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, this Microsoft-hosted solution helps employees create and manage custom team and project-focused intranet sites for collaboration and document sharing. Users get the flexibility and customization they need to truly work efficiently across teams with tools like wikis, blogs, surveys, shared workspaces, and process workflows. And as a seamless extension of the Microsoft Office system, SharePoint Online is familiar and easy to use, and it enables collaboration within the applications your users already know.

Microsoft Online Services

Microsoft Online Services are available as both Standard and Dedicated offerings. The Standard offering is for customers who want rapid service adoption and a standardized administrative console. The Dedicated offering is for customers with more than 5,000 employees who are interested in having a dedicated architecture. Contact a service representative to ask about purchasing the Dedicated version of SharePoint Online. Both sets of services deliver the same world-class communication and collaboration experience.

With Microsoft Online Services, you can:

• Communicate and collaborate virtually anywhere in the way that works for you—including e-mail, document sharing, video, and intranet portal sites.

• Get comprehensive security features for data and communications, high availability service access, and reliable datacenters, with 99.9 percent scheduled uptime backed by service level agreement.

• Simplify your IT management and reduce IT operation costs with a service model that removes installation and maintenance hassles and allows you to focus on core business initiatives.

Additional Resources

• SharePoint Online datasheet (Standard)  (PDF)

• SharePoint Online datasheet (Dedicated)  (PDF)

• Energizer case study (Dedicated)  (video)

• Energizer case study (Dedicated)  (PDF)

MICROSOFT COMMUNICATIONS ONLINE

Microsoft Office Communications Online

Microsoft Office Communications Online allows you to take advantage of industry-leading collaboration capabilities without managing your own infrastructure, server hardware, facilities, or hiring support staff. Microsoft provides a more secure environment than public instant messaging tools for sharing intellectual property and working within teams that are increasingly dispersed around the world.

The Office Communications Online solution provides a unified communications capability that helps people be more productive by enabling them to communicate easily with others in different locations or time zones using a range of different communication options, including text based instant messaging, voice, and video. Integration with programs across the Microsoft Office system—including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Groove, and SharePoint Server—gives information workers many different ways to communicate with each other via a consistent and simple user experience.

Office Communications Online is available as a Dedicated offering, for customers with more than 5,000 employees who want a dedicated architecture. Contact a service representative to ask about purchasing the Dedicated version of Office Communications Online.

Features

Instant messaging with text based chat, file transfer, 1:1 or peer-to-peer audio and video communication among users in your organization using the Microsoft’s instant messaging and presence client on PCs and notebooks or Microsoft Windows Mobile devices.

Presence awareness, enabling users to detect another user’s availability on the network to determine when a user is available to communicate.

Dedicated servers and networks providing you with logical and physical security.

Benefits

• Access to instant messaging via your intranet and the Internet.

• Service Level Agreements at the service, not just server level.

• Service evolution that includes upgrades to new Office Communications Online release versions at no additional charge.

• Disaster recovery services that provide full instant messaging and presence capability in an alternate and geographically diverse data center within 72 hours.

Additional Resources

• Office Communications Online datasheet  (PDF)

MICROSOFT EXCHANGE ONLINE

Microsoft Exchange Online is a hosted enterprise messaging solution based on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 that helps give your business the protection it demands, the anywhere access employees want, and the operational efficiency your IT staff needs. Exchange Online extends rich capabilities to your users with a single sign-on, including e-mail, shared calendaring, and contacts. And it works with Active Directory to ensure that information is synchronized between your local and online directories, allowing your IT department to support a mix of hosted services and on-premise software. Additionally, Exchange Online supports business continuity and disaster recovery with cloud-based antivirus and spam filtering and high data center security standards.

Microsoft Online Services

Microsoft Online Services are available as both Standard and Dedicated offerings. The Standard offering is for customers who want rapid service adoption and a standardized administrative console. The Dedicated offering is for customers with more than 5,000 employees who are interested in having a dedicated architecture. Contact a service representative to ask about purchasing the Dedicated version of Exchange Online. Both sets of services deliver the same world-class communication and collaboration experience.

With Microsoft Online Services, you can:

• Communicate and collaborate virtually anywhere in the way that works for you—including e-mail, document sharing, video, and intranet portal sites.

• Get comprehensive security features for data and communications, high availability service access, and reliable datacenters, with 99.9 percent scheduled uptime backed by service level agreement.

• Simplify your IT management and reduce IT operation costs with a service model that removes installation and maintenance hassles and allows you to focus on core business initiatives.

Additional Resources

• Exchange Online datasheet (Standard)  (PDF)

• Exchange Online datasheet (Dedicated)  (PDF)

• Energizer case study (Dedicated)  (video)

• Energizer case study (Dedicated)  (PDF)

Microsoft Office Live Meeting Service

Connect with your colleagues and engage your customers through real-time meetings, training sessions, and events—using only a PC with an Internet connection and basic software. Hosted Web conferencing from the Microsoft Office Live Meeting service can help give you the power to collaborate from virtually anywhere—set up project meetings, brainstorm ideas, edit files, collaborate on whiteboards, and negotiate deals without the cost and hassle of travel! Free your IT staff to focus on other important projects, and rely on Live Meeting to consistently deliver a high level of security, quality, and availability backed by a decade of operating experience.

Features

Interact with groups of up to 1,250 users, share presentations, collaborate on documents, and encourage participation with interactive tools.

Keep attendees engaged through integrated audio, video, and rich media.

Reduce training and deployment costs with a familiar look and feel and convenient Web-based hosting.

Benefits

• Easily add unique interactive tools that work with existing systems and productivity applications.

• Improve remote collaboration and increase meeting effectiveness with a familiar, easy-to-use interface.

• Stay confident with proven 99.99% uptime availability and always-on encryption.

Microsoft is also offering customers a Go Live License, which permits them to deploy beta releases of Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS 7.0) into live production. So far, 28 companies worldwide have created and launched hosted offerings using this program, and hundreds more have downloaded the Windows Server 2008 beta and begun testing.

With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft is also embracing PHP hosting on Windows via the FastCGI module for IIS 7.0. PHP is a popular open-source scripting language used to build dynamic web applications. This allows IT Professionals to host PHP and ASP.net applications side by side. As a result, the PHP community will be able to take advantage of the increased reliability of PHP on Windows and simplified administration available on the Windows platform.

Customers: On Your Mark…

To help IT professionals evaluate the migration-readiness of their existing networks, Microsoft has created four automated assessment tools, or “Solution Accelerators:”

•	the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) tool, which helps evaluate installed applications on servers, performs hardware assessments and makes recommendations regarding server virtualization;
•	the Infrastructure Planning and Design guides, which describe the architectural considerations involved in implementing the upgrade to Windows Server 2008;
•	the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide, which provides best practices and automated tools to help strengthen the security of servers running Windows Server 2008; and
•	the Microsoft Deployment tool, which decreases the cost of client and server deployments by providing detailed guidance and job aids for every organizational role involved with large-scale deployment projects.

Enterprise customers planning to upgrade can follow a few basic steps to help prepare and plan for the move to Windows Server 2008:

1.	Use Microsoft’s free tools to assess their enterprise’s current servers and determine which can be upgraded and which servers will require a “clean install. “
2.	Engage with their application suppliers for prescriptive guidance.
3.	Test applications they’re planning to run for compatibility with Windows 2008.
4.	Research certified hardware and software solutions in the Windows Server Catalog.

Upgrade Options

Windows Server 2008 uses image-based deployment to make the installation process as efficient as possible. Installation images are the fastest way to deploy an operating system. Image-based setup also is less error-prone than a scripted installation process.

Customers upgrading from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 will follow one of two methods, depending upon their current environment. Servers that are running only software applications that came with Windows Server 2003, such as Active Directory, Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), are the best candidates for a simple upgrade.

Microsoft recommends other customers running a wider variety of applications follow IT community best practices and perform a “clean install” of Windows Server 2008. A clean install involves loading Windows Server 2008 on a partition that is not running an existing operating system. Microsoft advises those customers who want to pursue an upgrade to first contact the software manufacturer for prescriptive guidance. Customers running applications whose manufacturers do not provide support during the upgrade process, which did not ship with Windows Server 2003 or that weren’t delivered to Windows Server via Windows Update should remove those applications first, perform the upgrade to Windows Server 2008, verify the applications are supported on Windows Server 2008 and then reinstall the applications.

Windows Server 2008 also offers a barebones installation option called Server Core, in which only the services required to perform the Active Directory Domain Services, Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS), DHCP, DNS Server, File Services, Print Server, Streaming Media Services, Web Server (IIS), or Hyper-V (Virtualization), roles are installed. A Server Core installation offers base-level server functionality without any extra overhead, so it will typically require less maintenance and fewer updates than a full installation.

Ensuring Compatibility

To help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), independent hardware vendors (IHVs), independent software vendors (ISVs) and other developers build solutions that IT professionals can deploy immediately with confidence, Microsoft created the Windows Server 2008 Logo Program.

“We’ve been working with more than 1,000 software and hardware partners to help ensure that their products take full advantage of the capabilities and features of Windows Server 2008,” said Visse.

Windows Server 2008 software certification comprises approximately 100 test cases that independently confirm an application’s compliance with best practices for compatibility, security, reliability and availability on the server operating system. The certification identifies top-performing technologies that are ready to deploy in mission-critical environments.

The program features two designations – the “Works with Windows Server 2008” designation ensures that an application is in compliance with best practices for the most common Windows Server 2008 functions, while the “Certified for Windows Server 2008” logo supports rigorous standards for stability, security, reliability and overall performance.

Microsoft expects there to be at least 80 software applications certified for Windows Server 2008 by the end of February, and roughly 300 more that are considered ready for the new platform. A complete list of compatible hardware and software products is available at http://www.windowsservercatalog.com.

In addition to encouraging customers to look for the certification logo when they make purchasing decisions, Microsoft has done something new for Windows Server 2008. The company has made the same tools that ISVs used to test their products for compatibility available to IT professionals so that they can test both commercial applications and custom applications they’ve developed in-house. The tools are downloadable at http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/ready.

There is also a Windows Server 2008 Developer Center site that is a portal for both ISV developers and enterprise developers working on custom applications. The site provides how-to videos, interviews with Microsoft engineers and related documents. It also links to a moderated technical forum for application readiness and certification discussions and questions http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/default.aspx

Windows Microsoft Server 2008

With customer demands rising and prices falling, service excellence alone is no
longer enough to ensure future growth and profitability. That is why – according
to some of the industry’s top independent analysts – many leading professional
services companies that focus on IT are parlaying their customer relationships into
broader opportunities, with business models that extend to postproduction system
support and maintenance. At the same time – analysts report – more and more IT
services firms are following their own advice and streamlining internal processes.
To be sure, these business models require new strategies, new best practices, and
the right tools to implement them. With these elements in place, your rewards can
include more consistent cash flows, higher profit margins, and customer bonds
that are practically unbreakable. To help achieve these goals and set their direction,
many IT services firms seek insights and advice from thought leaders in their
industry.

Built for the Web Windows Server 2008 gives you the ability to deliver rich web-based experiences efficiently and effectively, with improved administration and diagnostics, development and application tools and lower infrastructure costs.

Virtualization Built In With its built-in server virtualization technology, Windows Server 2008 enables you to reduce costs, increase hardware utilization, optimize your infrastructure, and improve server availability.

High Security Windows Server 2008 is the most secure Windows Server ever. Its hardened operating system and security innovations, including Network Access Protection, Federated Rights Management, and Read-Only Domain Controller, provide unprecedented levels of protection for your network, your data, and your business.

Xfile

Human Software has introduced the second version of Xfile, a radical new image adjustment tool for OS X and Windows.

What’s interesting about this software is its use as a tool for image resizing that is capable of adapting elements of an overall image without changing the size of areas around the resized area.

In order to achieve this is uses a technology called ‘Seam Carving’, an operation which can be conducted within Photoshop.

With this technique image resizing of the whole image can be made while keeping the size of the most important elements of the picture. The features of the image remain untouched.XFile removes or adds areas to an image that would be least noticed.

The same very sophisticated technique lets you by simply brushing roughly a mask over an area of an image, remove an area and automatically rebuild the pixels missing

Here’s a video showing how this works.

JavaMail API

The JavaMail API is a messaging framework intended to build platform-independent applications that use e-mail messaging. It is included in the J2EE platform and is available as an optional package in J2SE. The API’s main purpose is not for transporting, delivering, and forwarding messages, but rather providing protocol-independent access to mail infrastructure for sending and receiving messages.

Overview

The JavaMail API is divided into two parts:

• The main part of the API is focused on sending and receiving messages (independent of the protocol).
• The second part implements protocol-specific languages, such as SMTP, POP, IMAP, and NNTP. With the JavaMail API, in order to communicate with a server, you need a provider for a protocol. (The creation of protocol-specific providers is not covered in this article, but Sun provides a sufficient set of providers for free—at least SMTP, POP, and IMAP, which is more than enough for sending and receiving standard e-mail messages over standard Internet infrastructure.)

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All versions of the JavaMail API require the JavaBeans Activation Framework, which adds support for typing arbitrary blocks of data and handling it accordingly. JavaMail uses Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) implementation from that framework. The MIME implementation defines the content of what is transferred in an e-mail: the format of messages, attachments, and so on. In order to use JavaMail, an application must include classpathmail.jar and activation.jar to operate properly. If you use J2EE, there is nothing special you have to do to use the basic JavaMail API—it comes with J2EE classes.

In 2006, JavaMail became open source, and the source code for the JavaMail API Reference Implementation is now available under the open source license as part of the project called GlassFish.

Classes

Here is an overview of some of the most important classes used in JavaMail applications:

• javax.mail.Session: This class is used to control access to the implementations of the other mail classes that represent the services offered by the mail system, for instance javax.mail.Store. (Be careful not to confuse this class with javax.servlet.http.HttpSession.)
• javax.mail.Transport: This class is used for sending mail messages via a specific protocol such as SMTP, as implemented by the service provider.
• javax.mail.Store: This class is implemented by the service provider. It aims to allow access to read, write, monitor, and search activities for a particular mail protocol such as POP3 or IMAP4. A reference to the javax.mail.Folder class is obtained via this class.
• javax.mail.Folder: This class gives a hierarchical view of javax.mail.Message objects and provides access to specific messages for read, delete, and reply actions.
• javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage: This class models the actual mail message. It holds very little information and data about the message when it is first instantiated; as successive methods retrieve more data about the message, this class is used to store that data.
• javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress: This class models a RFC822 (Internet standard) e-mail address, i.e., an address of the form peter@mikhalenko.ru. If an incorrect address format is encountered, an error occurs and an AddressException is thrown within the Java method processing the e-mail address.

Usage example

Listing A contains sample code that sends a test message. In this example, you should replace the placeholder e-mail addresses with real addresses and replace smtp.address.com with the address of a real SMTP server that is used by your Internet provider or company.

A Session object is created representing our e-mail session. The Session object’s constructor requires a java.util.Properties object representing the session’s key information. For this example, you only need to set the “mail.smtp.host” property to an appropriate SMTP host. After that, you create the actual MimeMessage object and customize it for the e-mail. Two InternetAddress objects are needed representing the “from” and “to” addresses respectively. In your code, these should be valid e-mail addresses that you can access. Once the addresses are set for the e-mail, a subject and a simple message is set.

Finally, the message is ready to be sent. In JavaMail, the Transport object handles sending messages. Since we only have one, the static send method is used. This method uses the SMTP server specified as the “mail.smtp.host” address.

Going beyond the basics

The JavaMail API has many advanced capabilities. As an example, you can add any mail headers to the message, set up multiple recipients, create blind copies of a message (what BCC is intended for), recode the message text into different charset encodings, and so on. For example, Listing B shows how to add multiple recipients.

If you send a message with a non-ASCII character (an accentuated character), the recipient may have problems reading it. To make the message easier to read, try adding the following lines to give a hint about the encoding:

MimeMessagemimeMsg = new MimeMessage(session);
mimeMsg.setHeader("Content-Transfert-Encoding", "8Bit");
mimeMsg.setText(frenchMsg, "iso-8859-1");
Transport.send((Message)frenchMsg);

This is fine for the body, but in order to correctly display accentuated characters in a title, you need to encode it using the ‘quoted-printable’ or ‘base64′ encodings. Hopefully, you can also use the javax.mail.internet.MimeUtility class. The encodeText() method will make sure that a passed string is “mail safe.” Listing C shows how you will send an e-mail with an attachment.

Conclusion

The ways in which you can use the JavaMail API are beyond the scope of this article. For a full description, refer to JSR 919, which is the latest JavaMail 1.4 specification. The Sun JavaMail API is the full reference implementation of this specification, so just install it and then take the rich features out for a test drive.

Peter V. Mikhalenko is a Sun certified professional who works for Deutsche Bank as a business consultant.

Second life grid

InfiniteCanvas

InfiniteCanvas is a freeware/open source application for arranging and displaying infinite canvas comics. If you want to learn more about infinite canvas comics read the Infinite Canvas Wikipedia article or have a look at the comics that were arranged with the InfiniteCanvas application.

InfiniteCanvas consists of an easy to use nativ Mac OS X Editor application and viewer based on Adobe Flash.

Features

• Allows arranging, scaling and rotating of panels on an infinite canvas.
• Trails can be created directly on the canvas.
• To aid the end user, artists can create a multi-path navigation layer on top of the comic.

Screenshots