Image Mule » Computers And Technology

SugarCRM Customization

admin — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:58:35 +0000

In todays technology-driven times, CRM solutions help businesses streamline their customer management processes. CRM stands for customer relationship management being an integrated information system that is used to plan, schedule and control the presales and post sales activities in an organization. CRM embraces all aspects of dealing with prospects and customers, including the call center, sales force, marketing, technical support and field service. The primary goal of CRM is to improve long-term growth and profitability through a better understanding of customer behavior. CRM aims to provide more effective feedback and improved integration to better gauge the return on investment (ROI) in these areas.

However, choosing and deploying the right CRM solution for your needs is not an easy task. There are many proprietary and Open Source CRM solutions to choose from. SugarCRM is commercial open source Customer Relationship Management software that is designed to meet all the CRM requirements of organizations. It is developed using PHP and available in both free and commercial editions. It provides basic CRM functionality such as lead tracking, sales management, project management, issue tracking etc.

CRM helps businesses use technology and human resources to gain insight into the behavior of customers and the value of those customers. SugarCRM is one of the most significant and demanding commercial Open Source Customer Relation Management (CRM) software which suits to all sizes of companies. SugarCRM can be easily adapted to all types business environment through providing a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than any other proprietary applications.

SugarCRM is commercial Open Source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes, its rich functionality and intuitive user interface provides a gateway to all CRM applications thereby enabling corporate to migrate to SugarCRM to expand their customer base. SugarCRM takes your business to a new level by integrating the enterprise server software sales model with that of a software-as-a-service model. It is available in both free and commercial editions.

SugarCRM has easy to user browser based interfaces that can be easily customized to meet the requirements of individual organizations. Being an open source off-the-shelf-application, a wide variety of plug-ins and module are available, which can be integrated with the basic SugarCRM application to enhance its functionalities. The plug-ins is available through the SugarCRM support group, the Sugar Network. They can be can be easily integrated with the Sugar Open Source and Professional editions enabling them to be upgraded to the Sugar Enterprise edition.
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Why You Need to Upgrade Your WordPress Installation

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:07:07 +0000

WordPress comes out with upgrades quite frequently. Many times users are ignoring these updates as they feel they don’t really need since the blog is working fine. There are some good reasons that you need to upgrade your WordPress installation.

The biggest issue is security. There are people who target WordPress since it’s a very popular blogging platform. These people write scripts to find your site and attack the current version you are using. They will completely erase your site and tell you that you are hacked. If you keep up with the upgrades it will help prevent this.

At times WordPress has new features. With these new features your plugin developers will start moving on to the new version of WordPress. What this means is that you won’t be able to get new features for your plugins or WordPress itself unless you continue to upgrade.

When you do an upgrade, it’s generally under Tools > Upgrade and is just a matter of following the steps. If you have an extremely old version of WordPress prior to version 2.0, you may have to export the blog and import it into a newer version of the software since so much has been changed since then.

It’s important that you manually backup your database and WordPress files first. At times there are corruptions in the update that ruin your database. Without a backup you can’t reinstall the blog. Your theme files at times can be lost and that’s why it’s important to have a copy of everything before the upgrade.
About the Author: eco planning

Can Joomla Downloads Keep Up With Customer’s Requests?

admin — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:52:01 +0000

Can Joomla’s developer team ever sleep? Talk about dedicated, this group walks the walk and delivers when it comes to taking care of their customers. Nothing demonstrates this more strongly than their production of extensions.

My definition of extensions is add-ons or accessories that make the Joomla experience richer and more fun. Much like the accessories on your Wii box. You just can’t get enough.

Here’s the Top Ten list of Joomla extensions as compiled by Oscandy.com

1: Quick Preview Button

2: Custom Quick Icon

3: JRE Cache

4: Website Validator Tool

5: JOSreplace

6: JoomlaStats

7: Diagnostics

8: Joomla MindMap

9: Jombackup

10: JoomlaXplorer

No matter how you do the math Joomla software downloads are keeping the developers busy….and we thank them:) My stats indicate there are 2686 currently active extensions which include at least 129 or so new extensions produced by Joomla since December 2007. (This count does not include dozens of extensions produced by others who use the open source software supplied by Joomla)

Here’s a group of extension categories for those of you who are into lists.

Admin Tools – include add-ons for backup, reporting, file management, statistics, etc. Banner Ads & Affiliates – include advertising banners and classified ads. Calendars – provide for your needs related to events (birthdays, event calendar etc.) and reservations (primarily useful for hotels or guest houses etc) Communication – provides for chat, comments, forums, polls, guestbook, newsletter, mailing list etc on your website. Content & News – this category of extension helps you include blog, clock, weather, quiz, news, RSS, e-cards, ratings and reviews, tips and notes etc in the website. Core Enhancements – group access, categories/sections, cache, credits, security etc. are the categories you may find here. Documentation/Document Management – this extension provides for FAQs, glossary and dictionary, bibliography, Wiki and downloads. e-Commerce – the extensions under these category are those pertaining to shopping cart, auction, payment systems, donation, electronic data interchange and Amazon. Extension Specific Plugin – These plugins can be used only when certain extensions are already installed as the plugins are for specific extensions. E.g. if you want to install BannersManager Plugins, then you need to install Banners Manager extension first. Other such plugins include AdsManager Plugins, Community Builder plugins, dcsFlashGames plugins, VirtueMart Plugins, DOCMan Plugins etc. Forms – this extension helps you create various kinds of forms (e.g. forms for surveys, guestbook, polls etc) Gallery & Multimedia – the extension category includes sub-categories like gallery, podcasting and streaming Media. These primarily help in adding pictures/images, audio and videos, providing radio and video streams etc. Intranet & Groupware – CRM, Contacts, LDAP, Project and task Management are the areas addressed by this extension category. It contains address book, blogs, calendar, organizers, etc. Languages – Languages extension is designed to help you with translation and also provides the option of multi-lingual content. Miscellaneous – help desk, religion, quotes, recipes, portfolio, sports/games, etc are the sub-categories included in this extension category. Search & Indexing – it comprises of Search, Site Map, Google and Directory. Vertical Markets – Vertical markets extension contains categories such as education, real estate, auto and vehicles, boat and yachting etc. WYSIWYG Editors – it helps manage editor profiles for the users, manage content, images, links, etc.

Joomla Strolls Down Memory Lane

From humble beginnings in August 2005, Joomla, an expanded evolution of Mambo, was developed. A team of developers formerly with Miro Corp created a product derived from the creative seed of thought that had been Mambo. By September 2005 Joomla was born!

Since that time Joomla has grown a vast number of add-ons, components, templates, modules, and a host of bots, bits and bites to become what could be the largest Internet industry since Microsoft.

What’s next?

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What Is Optical Disk?

admin — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 14:44:28 +0000

OPTICAL DISK

Optical disk is an electronic data storage medium from which data is read and written to by using a low-powered laser beam. It is flat, circular, plastic or glass disk on which data is stored in the form of light and dark pits. The laser beam reads the pits and the data can be accessed. There are three basic types of optical disks:

• Read-only optical disks: The optical disks, which are recorded at the time of manufacture and cannot be erased. CD, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, and DVD-Video are the read-only disks.

• WORM: WORM stands for write-once, read many. The optical disks that can be recorded by the user only once but cannot be erased. After they have been recorded once, they behave like a read-only optical disk CD-R, DVD-R, and WORM disks are write-once.

• Rewritable/Magneto-optic disks: The optical disks that can be erased and written to with the new information. CR-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and magneto-optic disks and Data play are rewritable. Rewritable disks use magneto-optic or phase change technology.

An optical disk offers many advantages over magnetic storage media.

• Highest storage capacity

• Low cost per Megabyte of storage

• Environmental condition tolerance

• High data stability

• Long media life

An optical disk has much more storage capacity on the order of gigabytes, than a magnetic disk. It can hold up to 6GB of data in comparison to 1.44 MB of a diskette. Optical disks are inexpensive to manufacture. Data stored on optical disks is resistant to power surges or magnetic disturbances, such as head crashes or corruption form stray magnetic fields. Hence, they provide high data stability. Optical disks are less vulnerable to extremes of hot and cold as
compared to the magnetic disks. Optical disks have long media life than magnetic disks.

OPTICAL STORAGE DEVICES

CD-ROM

CD-ROM: is an abbreviation of Compact Disc Read-Only Memory. A CD-ROM is a CD that contains computer data, which cannot be read or rewritten. In
computers, CDROM is the most commonly used optical storage technology. CD-ROM is a compact disc that contains information, which is accessible by a computer. It is composed of polycarbonate plastic, thin reflective metal layers, made of aluminium and a lacquer coating. Data is stored on the disc as a series of light and dark pits; the light portion refers to the spaces between the pits. A laser beam reads the pits and the data can be accessed.

CD-ROM is an adaptation/EXTENSION of the compact disc that is designed for music storage and playback. The format of CD-ROM is very similar to an audio CD; the only difference being the standards used to store data. A standard 120 mm CD-ROM holds up to 700 MB of data, or about 70 minutes of audio. This may mean that One CD can contain over one thousand novels; an average novel being composed of 60, 000 words. Once the data is written to a standard CD-ROM disc, it cannot be altered or rewritten.

A CD-ROM can be read using a CD-ROM drive, which is almost common on the personal computers. A CD-ROM drive may be connected to the computer in several different ways depending on the type of interface, such as:

• IDE (ATA)

• SCSI

• SATA

• Firewire

• USB

Almost all modern CD-ROM drives can play audio as well as video CDs.

CD-ROM STANDARDS

CD-ROM format provides an outstanding solution to the problem of storing large digital files. Several formats are used for data stored on CD-ROMs. These include Red book standards for audio-CD, White Book and Yellow Book for CD-ROM. An ISO 9960, which defines the standard file system of a CD-ROM is due to be replaced by ISO 13490.

CD-ROM FORMAT

One CD-ROM sector contains 2352 bytes, which is further divided into 98 24-byte frames. A CD-ROM contains a third layer of Reed-Solomon error correction in order to achieve improved error correction and detection.

Mode-1 CD-ROM: It has full three layers of error correction data, which contains 2048 bytes of the available 2352 per sector.
Mode-2 CD-ROM: It is mostly used for video files, which contains 2336 user-available bytes per sector.

CD-ROM SPEEDS AND USES

+ Early CD-ROM drives were known as single-speed and could read the data at the speed of 150 KBps.

+ CD-ROM drives can transfer data up to the speed of 7800 KBps

+ CD-ROM can store audio, video, text and program instructions. It is used to store software programs.

DVD-ROM

DVD-ROM: is an abbreviation of Digital Versatile Disc- read only memory. DVD-ROM is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, which includes movies with high video and sound quality. DVD-ROM is a non-volatile optical storage medium similar to CD-ROM, which contains computer data that cannot be erased or rewritten. These DVDs are read-only disks that have storage capacity for 133 minutes of high quality video, in format, and audio full- length feature film. The discs are pressed in a similar fashion as the CDs. The reflective surface is gold or silver colored.

DVD-ROM can be accessed using a DVD-ROM drive attached to the personal computer. DVD-ROM drives are backward compatible, i.e. they are also capable of reading CD-ROMs and audio CDs as well. The DVD-ROM supports disks with capacities of 4.7 GB to 17 GB and access rates of 600 KBps to 1.3 MBps. A standard DVD disc store up to 9.4 GB of data. DVD-ROMs are of same size as a compact disc, but holds data about 7 times more. DVD can store that much of data because both the sides of a disc are used, with sophisticated data compression technologies.

DVD-ROM is a variation of CD-ROM that is being used in place of CD-ROMs in many personal computers. All DVD-ROMs contain a file system, UDF, which is an extension of the ISO 9660 Standard used for data CDs.

CD-RW

CD-RW is an abbreviation of compact disc-rewritable. It is a recordable CD format that can be erased and rerecorded multiple times, just like a floppy disk or a hard disk. It is a rewritable version of CD-ROM. CD-RW disc is round plastic, about 5 inches in diameter. CD-RW disks can be played or recorded in the CD-RW drive only. These disks behave unusable when put in a regular CD-drive or a CD-R drive cannot be played. A CD-RW drive can read everything except a DVD.

A CD-RW can hold 650 Megabytes of data (unlimited number of times) written by a CD-RW drive. CD-RW cannot be selectively overwritten but can be extended. CD-RWs must be closed before they can be read in a normal CD-ROM drive. CD-RW disks cannot be read using a CD-ROM drive built before 1997. CD-RWs can be randomly read and written because of the variation of UDF format. CD-RW disks and drives are more expensive than a regular CD-ROM drive or media. A CD-RW disc can be read optically by laser light.

DVD-RW

DVD-RW: stands for Digital Versatile Disk-Rewritable. It is a re-recordable optical disc, which can record up to 4.7 GB per side in a similar fashion to a CD-RW. DVD-RW supports sequential read/write access i.e. the device may need to wait for the correct location in a constantly revolving medium. The information stored on DVD-RW can be erased and rerecorded over multiple times without damaging the medium.

DVD-RW is a phase-change erasable format based on DVD-R, using similar mark length, track pitch and rotation control. The format is supported by the DVD Forum. DVD-RW is also called “DVD Dash RW” and “DVD Minus RW”.

DVD-RW can be played in many DVD drives and players. Depending on quality, recording time varies from 1 hour to 6 hours.

If these optical disk gets damaged then the stored data becomes in accessible, these lost or damaged data can be recovered by usinig Stellar Phoenix CD Data Recovery Software
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Microphones Used in Recording Studios

admin — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:22:31 +0000

A microphone is an example of a transducer, a device that changes sound from one form to another. Sound exists as patterns of air pressure; the microphone changes this into patterns of electric current.

Microphones vary greatly in quality. A top end recording studio microphone may cost thousands and in many cases they are needed for the very best recordings. A variety of mechanical techniques can be used in building microphones. The two most commonly found in recording studios are the magneto-dynamic and the variable condenser designs.

All microphones convert sound energy into electrical energy, but there are many different ways of doing the job, using electrostatics, electromagnetism, piezo-electric effects, or even through a change in resistance of carbon granules. When it comes to microphones used in recording studios, the vast majority of microphones used are either capacitors, electrostatic, or dynamic.

Both types employ a moving diaphragm to capture the sound, but make use of a different electrical principle for converting mechanical energy into an electrical signal. The efficiency of this conversion is very important, because the amounts of acoustic energy produced by voices and musical instruments are so small.

Different types of microphones used in recording studios

In live sound, nearly all the microphones used are dynamics. In the studio, instruments such as drums, electric guitars, and basses are recorded using dynamic microphones. Dynamic microphones have the advantages of being relatively inexpensive and durable, and they don’t need a power supply or battery to make them operate.

Dynamic microphones are most effective when working with relatively loud sound sources that do not contain a lot of very high-frequency detail. They are also tough instruments which make them good for recording studios. Another type of dynamic microphone is the ribbon microphone, but this is only used in fairly esoteric recording applications by engineers who appreciate the subtleties of the ribbon sound.

These microphones are comprised of a thin metal ribbon suspended in a magnetic field, and when sound energy is encountered, the electrical signal generated is induced in the ribbon itself rather than in a voice coil. The main advantage of ribbon microphones is their smooth, detailed sound which makes them perfect for studio environment.

Capacitor microphones are more expensive than their dynamic counterparts, and they are also much more sensitive, and can capture high-frequency detail much more accurately. Even though they are relatively efficient like dynamic microphones, capacitor microphones produce such a small electrical signal that they require a special type of built-in preamplifier to bring the signal up to usable levels. Thus they are not fit to be used in live concerts or open air concerts. Capacitors are used mostly in recording studios where there is less noise.

Conclusion

The microphone is a ubiquitous piece of equipment. Found in everything from telephones and computers to recording studios, microphones are part of our daily life. A professional studio will accumulate a varied collection of microphones. The top studios use microphones such as Shure SM58s and 57s, AKG D112s, or Sennheiser 421s.

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How to SEO WordPress

admin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 03:22:43 +0000

It’s no secret that WordPress is a powerful blogging platform that can also build professional websites. Best of all, it has a ton of features to help you get as much traffic as possible. However, to take full advantage of the platform you need to learn how to SEO WordPress.

In other words, you need to know how to optimize your WordPress settings so that you can get the best possible results with the search engines. Why? Because search engines can drive highly targeted traffic your blog or website and you do not have to pay a dime for it!

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have your permalinks configured correctly. If you are unfamiliar with these, they are basically the URL’s that WordPress creates for your posts and pages. By default, WordPress uses post ID numbers instead of titles. This is not a good way of doing it since you miss out on the keyword benefits.

To optimize your permalinks, just click on the permalinks link which can be found under the setting tab within WordPress. You will then want to set them to be something such as month and name. Just make sure to select one that utilizes the post name instead of the ID.

The second step in learning how to SEO WordPress is to find a high quality theme. Themes can make a big different when it comes to search engine optimization. Some themes, such as Headway, even have built-in SEO features. These features allow you to configure things like meta keywords, titles, and descriptions. It is best advices to find a professionally developed theme since they tend to perform better in terms of SEO.

As you can see, there are only two steps to get the best results. However, learning how to SEO WordPress is a huge step because you can then apply these same steps to every website you build. That way you can start getting the type of traffic you deserve.
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Sony DLT IV Backup Data Tape Storage Medium

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:22:58 +0000

The Sony DLT-IV backup tapes are highly reliable and have high storage capacity. They are the top most preference of the enterprises over the world. They deliver the best results in the workstation data & server network. The financial institutes and the public sectors as well are mostly using the DLT-IV data backup tape format. The most important feature of the DLT-IV tape is that it powerful & fast and has new technology of “Half Inch Metal Particle”. The recording capacity is also very high up to 80GB (compressed rate). The data transfer speed is fast and the file access is also very quick. The performance of the DLT IV tape is high because of the “Metal Particle technology”. This new technology saves the space in the tape cartridge with single reel, therefore, the compressed recording capacity reaches to 80 Gigabytes. With the help of the”DLT8000 drive” flagship, the data transfer rate can is increased and the compressed rate reaches up to 12 Megabytes per second.

The DLT-IV tape has been added new and advanced feature of “Sony Binder”. This feature enhances the tape performance and reduces the tape reel’s wear with in contact with the head. The passes in the DLT-IV tapes reach up to 1 million. The DLT-IV tape has long durable life and is considered as one of the most reliable and stable data backup storage medium. The body of the Sony DLT-IV has been carefully engineered and manufactured. The tape to head interface is optimized through the “defect detection”.

In the automated systems the Sony’s DLT IV backup data media tape makes it easy to identify the media and the files can also be accessed more quickly. The precious data is protected and made safer, secured because the Sony DLT-IV cartridge has “labeling service”. This service saves the time and therefore, the performance along with the efficiency of the tape enhances. The migration to the system of higher storage capacity is easy because the DLT technology based systems are backward read compatible. In this way the cost can is also reduced when the system is upgraded. The DLT-IV makes the data safe and secure. It has the new, advanced “correction & error detection” technology along with the “multi track redundancy”.

The tape reel’s wear & tear during the contact with the tape head is also reduced due to the “adaptive mechanism”. In order to keep the performance of the tape consistent, the tape drive heads should be kept clean. So, the Sony has developed the cleaning tape “DL3-CL”. This Sony cleaning tape is compatible with all the Digital linear tape (DLT) drives and provides the best results. The cleaning tape gives up to twenty cleanings. The cleaning should be done regularly. The cleaning should be done when the tape drive’s “cleaning lamp” illuminates.

Sony has developed and introduced many popular, reliable data storage mediums like the ? half inch tape, AIT (Advanced Intelligent Tape) tape, Super AIT tape, Digital Linear Tape (DLT), Linear Tape Open (LTO) format. These data storage mediums are considered as the storage standards. Sony has also developed reliable, efficient, robust and popular Optical Disks (Magneto Optical MO, Compact Disk CD, Digital Versatile Disc DVD).

How To Use The WordPress Timestamp Feature

admin — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:04:57 +0000

One of the frustrating parts about blogging is sometimes finding inspiration on topics to write about. One of the more frustrating parts of blogging is matching your moments of inspiration with spreading out your blog posts to allow for a relatively even amount of postings. A lot of blogs that I read make it seem like all the writer does all day long is sit around behind the screen, banging away on the keyboard.

This is where the WordPress Timestamp feature can pay huge dividends to your blogging efforts.

The WordPress Timestamp feature can save you a lot of time when it comes to creating and publishing your posts. Lets say that you have a day where you are really feeling inspired about several topics, your writing is really flowing and you have some great ideas for posts. You have written 3 or 4 posts, but you would like to spread them out because you are getting ready to go on vacation, or have that looming deadline for a project at work that you must complete.

Using the Timestamp feature will help you to spread your posts out over a few days and publish them for you.

Here’s how it works.

Take a post that you have written and are ready to publish, including proper tagging, images, etc. Go to the “Post Timestamp” on your post page and expand it. Select the “Edit timestamp” by clicking on it, there should now be a checkmark in the box. Edit and select the date and time that you want your post published.

Now there is one important step left in editing your post for future publication.

You now need to click on the “Publish” button. If you don’t do this and just click on “Save”, it will save your post as a draft and not publish it when you have specified.

This feature has saved me quite a bit of time and frustration of trying to write posts when I have lots of other things going on. I hope this helps you in your moments of inspiration and blogging!
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Custom PHP Programming For Shopping Cart Development

admin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:31:40 +0000

Suppose a woman entered an ecommerce site. The site is for clothes sale. She starts her shopping tour from the dress purchase page where she purchases a decent dress by clicking on it. The dress is added in her x-cart. Now she moves to dress accessories page and select a scarf. She clicks on the link embedded with the image of scarf. This item automatically gets added to her x-cart. Similarly she does the same with pages for shoes and handbags. The selected items are then added in to her x-cart.

Now she opts for the order page where she finds all the items she selected in the list, which shows the final calculated price for all. This is the concept of a shopping cart. Many people have a misconception that Shopping Cart means payment and other related things, but it is not true. When items are listed in the shopping cart the process of payment is done through payment gateways and it is altogether a different process. In short, Shopping Cart is a series of scripts that keep track of items a visitor picks to buy from your site until they proceed to the “checkout”.

Success of the shopping cart depends on its integration with various payment gateways. PHP is a language that can do this job beautifully. Perfect integration means complete channels for requests and transfers with the relevant financial network including Internet merchant account with your bank. Thus x-cart with PHP eases this part of integration to a great extent.

Creation of x-cart in PHP is an easy job. All the details of stocks are stored in the database. When user adds product then the IDs of that product is added in shopping cart. You can delete it by deleting the IDs of the products you want to remove from the cart. PHP shopping cart has an inherent ability to call for an external PHP file.

The biggest advantage of PHP is serialization. Serialization is not needed for all types of databases with PHP. It was a problem in the earlier versions that when you wish to pass a value without mentioning its type, it gets dumb. This problem has been solved properly in the latest version of PHP.

Use of PHP in your x-cart development makes it user friendly, this means that it allows an easy search of a product and rapid and hassle free execution means easy shopping experience. It facilitates easy calculation of taxes, refunds and other incentives. Above all, its secure and you always will have secure transactions of money and your data with PHP. Thus you will have a secure ecommerce experience with PHP.

With PHP your x-cart would have fully integrated E-commerce data marts for customer profiling, relationship management, and to facilitate marketing decision processes. It is a common scenario that you will change your prices frequently and your stocks will also change in both quantity and types. With PHP you can do the necessary update easily with just some clicks of mouse.

Last but not the least is that you will get enough support from the developer community whenever you have any problem. PHP is a young language, it is growing and expanding its horizon so you can walk with time and get every thing you need for your advancement.