Overview:

The idrive Client software enables you to backup and restore your data to a secure and offsite backup server. idrive provides an invisible mode of operation that silently backs up data at scheduled intervals. It offers both a free 2GB and $49.50/yr. “Pro” service with unlimited storage. Idrive provides advanced data encryption, mapped drive support, and archived file versions. Once you install IDrive, you get to work in a familiar interface. It’s just like other Windows interfaces.

Features:

Some of the Better Features of iDrive include:

• Remote Backup - No hard equipment needed. Your files will be backed up remotely to the iDrive servers. This helps you not only in cases of computer crashes, but also in incidents of disaster like fires, floods and other nightmares.
• Continuous Data Protection - The iDrive application will review your files about every 10 minutes. Any files that have been changed or altered will be updated on the remote iDrive server.
• Easy-to-Use Interface - Easy drag and drop restores using Windows Explorer like interface
• Lightening Fast Backups - Quick and efficient backup processes completed by compressing data during file transmission
• Drag and Drop Backup - Sets up like any other drive on your computer. Simply copy and paste or drag and drop files to the iDrive icon in Windows Explorer
• Enhanced Security - Peace of mind with 128-bit SSL encryption on transfers, 256-bit AES encryption on storage with a user defined key that is not stored anywhere on IDrive servers more
• Multiple User Access -IDrive Pro users can create and manage multiple user accounts from a single administrative login and a central console more

Disadvantages:

• It is online! Someone might get into your files. Backup service providers have no guarantee that stored data will be kept private.
• Depending on the available network bandwidth, the restoration of data can be slow. Because data is stored offsite, the data must be recovered either via the Internet or via tape or disk shipped from the online backup service provider.
• If encryption password is lost, no more data recovery will be possible.

Conclusion:

The user interfaces that comes with the major online backup services are already fairly slick and stocked with options. Free and by no means negligible amounts of storage space are readily available, and the price point for unlimited space is already fairly attractive and may become more so in future.

Source: Backup Software

SOHO Organizer is the official successor to Personal Organizer and Group Organizer and represents a 100% Cocoa rewrite of the former products. This means SOHO Organizer presents a first-class Mac OS X experience complete with all the features Mac OS X users expect: Aqua interface, Unicode compliance, built-in spell checking, Service support, etc.

For personal organization, Apple has focused on the basics with its Address Book and iCal programs, which are included with Mac OS X. These are fine light-duty programs, but they lack power for anything more than simple contact and calendar management. Chronos’s SOHO Organizer 7.0.2 suite provides a feature-rich alternative that will appeal to business and power users for whom Apple’s offerings are insufficiently powerful or versatile.

The $100, Leopard-only SOHO Organizer suite includes three programs. The core program is the contact, calendar, and task manager, also named SOHO Organizer.

NEW Features in 7.0.2:

• Added alarm, attendee, and recurrence symbols to all-day event banners in the Month view
• Added Show/Hide Tasks sidebar button
• Made improvements when getting events and tasks from a CalDAV server
• Fixed network transmission errors when publishing calendars
• Fixed problem that would cause certain events to not appear in the Month view
• Fixed problem that would cause the wrong days to appear in Week view if the system settings were set to UK
• Fixed problem that would cause dates to disappear temporarily in the event window when using the forward/backward controls
• Fixed problem that would cause calendars exported from SOHO Organizer to not import into iCal
• Includes OpenBase 10.0.10 which includes several key improvements

Source: MacUpdate

Apple on Monday released Mac OS X 10.5.4, another update to its “Leopard” operating system. According to Apple, some of the more general fixes include all recent security updates, a fixed issue with Adobe CS3 files on a remote server, and additional RAW image support. AirPort appears to have gotten a tweak that improves reliability on 5GHz networks (woo!), in addition to a fix for performance problems in Logic Studio and MainStage.

The update (59MB for 10.5.3 users) is considered an important precursor to Mac support for MobileMe, Apple’s imminent sync and hosting service.

The company has released Security Update 2008-004 for Mac OS X Tiger client (Intel, PowerPC) and Tiger Server (Intel, PowerPC) that bring security fixes built into Mac OS X 10.5.4 to the earlier operating systems, including protection against vulnerabilities in significant components such as CoreTypes, the Dock, SMB File Server, Ruby and Webkit.

Additionally,  Safari 3.1.2 update for Mac OS X Tiger, fixes a specific flaw in WebKit (addressed for Leopard in 10.5.4) that would allow malicious JavaScript to either crash Safari or else allow running hostile code through the browser.

The update also brings many iCal fixes, including better overall iCal reliability for meeting requests, cancellation notices, delegation, and syncing with iPhone. It also fixes an issue in which events in all calendars affect availability by adding a checkbox that now enables information-only calendars to be transparent from free/busy lookups. Apple also said the latest update resolves a UI issue preventing delegated calendars from showing up as a separate window.

Source: Macnn

The year 2007 witnessed rapid market growth of RDBMS (Relational Database Management System), with significant improvement on the part of the top five vendors in this space. The RDBMS market is estimated to have grown by 12.6 percent from $16.7 billion in 2006 to $18.8 billion in 2007.

The top five vendors for the worldwide RDBMS market are Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Teradata and Sybase. All have put an increased emphasis on performance and manageability, as well as greater flexibility and utility of such features as standby databases. Oracle once again led the RDBMS market and increased its market share in 2007.

“Although the top 5 RDBMS vendors represent over 90 percent of the worldwide market, there is plenty of dynamism and growth potential in the remaining 10 percent, where differentiators that include low-cost, extraordinarily high throughput, embedability, and unusual architectures are aimed at niche data management requirements,” said Carl Olofson, research vice president of Information Management and Data Integration Software research at IDC. “These vendors certainly bear watching as time goes by.

The key findings are:

• Large RDBMS vendors are continuing to seek to broaden their range of addressable opportunities by acquiring smaller niche DBMS technology vendors.
• Technology enhancements in areas such as compression, security, and unstructured data support are forming new battlegrounds for the RDBMS vendors.
• Data warehousing and strategic data management initiatives such as master data management (MDM) continue to help drive RDBMS sales.

Source: Cyber India On Line

Microsoft has announced the RTM (release to manufacturing) and an available download for its new hypervisor-based server virtualization platform. Hyper-V allows a single physical server to be divided into as many as 64 virtual machines, each running its own server operating system, according to the company.

Virtualization is becoming a key way companies are driving costs out of the data center by running OSes in virtual containers rather than physically on servers. Microsoft aims to catch up to virtualization leader VMware in providing this technology for hardware systems not only running on Windows, but also Linux and other OSes.

Outlining the benefits of virtualization, Microsoft’s general manager of Windows Server marketing, Bill Hilf, said: “Customers who buy Windows Server 2008 are not only getting the scalability benefits, the high performance, reliability and all the great things that Windows Server is known for, but, as of today, they’re also able to get the benefits of integrated virtualization.”

Hyper-V runs on 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008, and requires either AMD64 or Intel IA-32e/EM64T (x64) processors with hardware-assisted virtualization support; it does not support Itanium (IA-64) processors, says Microsoft. Possible guest server OSes can be either 64-bit or 32-bit.

VMWare may retain an edge on features and virtual machine performance, but Microsoft will use the fact that Hyper-V will be available free and integrated into its Windows Server 2008 operating system as its primary sales hook. This is backed by links to its System Centre management suite which the company says will make virtual machines easier to monitor and control.

Source: WindowsForDevices.com

Today, as Gates prepares to step down from day-to-day management of the company, another fact is clear: The modern Microsoft remains a company in search of a second act. True, it remains one of the world’s most profitable enterprises, making more profit in its 2007 fiscal year than Apple, Google, Yahoo, Oracle, and Adobe combined. But the cracks in the Microsoft hegemony aren’t just showing, they’re growing.

Gates’ responsibilities is going to be handed over to two executives: Craig Mundie, who takes charge of advanced strategy and policy; and Ray Ozzie, who gets Gates’ old title of chief software architect. Gates remains company chairman.

Gates leaves behind a world of technology and a reputation that will likely grow in stature over time. The company he and Paul Allen founded and that Gates really relentlessly drove for over three decades created an unrivaled universe of extraordinarily popular and successful products, not the least of which is Windows.

There’s an assumption that marketing is a seedy side of business (often because it’s lumped together with PR). Truth is, a good product could go nowhere without smart marketing (and PR). Bill always got that.

With Gates now leaving the building to go off to run the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Mundie and Ozzie have been left with that small job on their hands.

Source: PC Magazine

Adobe on Wednesday released a revamped version of its Acrobat document creation software ver 9 that includes built-in support for Flash and multimedia content.

The full Acrobat 9 software is available immediately in a Standard edition for $299 with a $99 upgrade price; a Pro edition at $449 adds the ability to validate PDF files to certain standards, convert files from AutoCAD and other formats to PDF, and embed either Flash or H.264 video clips. It can be purchased as an upgrade for $159.

The most significant new features are the ability to create Portfolios, or compound documents, to incorporate Flash content, including videos in PDF documents, and the ability for collaborators to co-navigate documents. Portfolios can contain a variety of document types, including web pages with multimedia, Microsoft Office documents, images, and more. Adobe executives claim that Portfolios can solve the problem of business communication in the form of emails with multiple attachments. Portfolios can have a welcome page, also include a flip-view, similar to that found in Apple’s iTunes. They’re also compressed for faster transmission and all incorporated content is search-able.

The unveiling of Acrobat 9 also brings the launch of Creative Suite 3.3, an upgraded version of the audiovisual editing package that now includes Acrobat 9 by default.

The new version tries once again to create a kind of packaging feature that wraps PDF components into one unit, this time called “Portfolio.” With more extensive testing of this feature this time around, we can hope this new incarnation works better than Adobe’s previous tries.

Source: PC Magazine

Overview:

Opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM is an integrated Java enterprise application that offers accounting, ecommerce, Point Of Sales, warehouse, inventory, manufacturing, and supply chain management. It is ideal for retail, distribution, and manufacturing companies looking to streamline and bring together all aspects of their operations. It can be used “out of box” or modified to fit the exact needs of the company.

Opentaps is built on Java J2EE with a Service Oriented Architecture and Model-View-Controller framework and compatible with all major databases, including MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server and can be deployed on Windows, Linux, and Unix servers. Opentaps is free software and can be downloaded and modified without charge by users.

Installing Opentaps was relatively simple. Java runtime was the only major requirement to get it going on Windows. Users do have to figure out some paths on the command line because they are missing from the documentation, but the steps are simple.

It charges $150 per user per year with a minimum of 10 users for professional support. The support only covers standard tech support incidents. A commercial license starts at a minimum of $5,000 per year for five users.

General Features:

• Fully integrate sales and marketing with customer service, warehouse, supply chain, online and physical stores, and accounting
• Support unlimited stores, catalogs, categories, and products
• Cross-sells and upsells for products
• Support physical products, digital and downloadable products, variant products, configurable products, and customer gift cards
• Price rules for customer or group-specific pricing
• Online store promotion engine
• Integration with major payment gateway providers
• Fully integrated online and Point of Sales (POS) stores out-of-the-box

CRM Features

• Automate sales process from lead gathering to conversion
• Manage sales opportunities
• Create sales visibility with forecasts
• Share calendar and tasks with the entire team
• Share and manage documents
• Browser-based email with integration to email server
• Customer services and case management
• Quotes, order entry, and order prioritization
• Manage marketing campaigns, including outbound emails and call management
• Tracking code reporting and management
• Address lookup and correction via USPS
• Voice Over IP (VOIP) Integration

Warehouse and Manufacturing Features

• Track non-serialized, serialized, and lot-based inventory
• Host third-party or “virtual” inventory
• Manage entire manufacturing process with Bill of Materials (BOM), production tasks, and work orders
• Automate production and purchasing calendar with Material Resources Planning (MRP)
• Fulfill orders efficiently with picking lists, web-based packing station, and shipment scheduling
• Integration with UPS, FedEx, and DHL

Financial Management and Accounting Features

• Industry standard double entry general ledger
• Supports multiple organizations with unlimited hierarchy of accounts
• Manage accounts receivables (AR) and accounts payables (AP), including invoices, payments, statements, aging
• Produce financial and tax statements
• Fully integrated with orders, inventory, purchasing, manufacturing out-of-the-box

Disadvantages:

ChannelWeb reports the following disadvantages for opentaps:

Opentaps does provide a macro-based model to simplify the OFBiz Java code. The Opentaps API provides form widgets, tables and Ajax-based page refreshes. But technical documentation is poor at best. The reference material, code samples and module testing are better suited for quality assurance testers. Opentaps mixes OFBiz developer-centric documents with its application API. Reviewers analyzed some of the JavaDocs application APIs and found almost no information on class and method usage.

Conclusion:

By bringing together ERP and CRM with mobility integration and business intelligence, opentaps is now a unique and powerful platform for solving business problems

You can use opentaps as an alternative to expensive and inflexible commercial ERP solutions, as a replacement for in-house solutions that are difficult to maintain or extend, or as a starting point to build your unique business model and processes.

The release of opentaps 1.4 is a significant milestone to create free and openly available business applications, but it is also the beginning of a new journey to create a whole new kind of application.

Source: Wikipedia

At its Pulse 2008 conference, IBM announced new software and services to help businesses thrive in the new era of industrialized IT operations.
In his keynote address to more than 4,000 IBM clients, business partners and employees, IBM Tivoli Software General Manager Al Zollar detailed how, much like the assembly line and automation transformed the automobile and telecommunications industries over the past century, IT operations are ripe for industrialization.

“While IT organizations have automated some functions, the industrialization of IT operations is still in its early stages,” said Al Zollar, general manager, IBM Tivoli Software. “IBM is in a unique position to provide the software, hardware and services to help clients move beyond siloed management to industrialized operations.”

Perhaps the most interesting part of the event was that IBM is finally attempting to package its very complete, though discrete, Tivoli management offerings into more understandable and less acronym-centric solution sets, leveraging robust integration, improved price points, deployment models, best practices, and global services capabilities, all that target more holistic IT automation. Acknowledging that such automation, or industrialization, remains as the key enabler for enterprise deployments of SOA, Web 2.0, dynamic component based infrastructures and applications, and cloud computing initiatives, reaffirms the company’s direction to tighten IT’s link with its business constituents. The stated target is to better automate and respond to dynamic business needs with expanded automation and management capabilities.
IBM introduces an action plan and new software to help businesses reap the benefits of technology that delivers increased efficiency while being friendly to the environment. IBM “Software for a Greener World” includes new products that track energy consumption in the data center and enable IT managers to adjust power usage to reduce costs and control carbon emissions. The new offerings are Tivoli Monitoring, IBM Maximo Facility Management and IBM Compliance Warehouse for Legal Control. IBM Active Energy Manager, introduced last year, has also been enhanced.

Source: designtaxi.com

Hewlett Packard on Monday said it is making its Tru64 Unix Advanced File System available under the open-source General Public License, version 2. The AdvFS file system, which was originally developed for Digital Equipment Corp. Alpha Unix machines, can be adopted to Linux, the company said.

The AdvFS source code includes capabilities that increase uptime, enhance security and help ensure maximum performance of Linux file systems.  The license will make it compatible with the Linux kernel and improve performance and uptime of those systems, reports News.com.

Developed by HP, AdvFS has been deployed for more than 16 years by enterprises throughout the world. It simplifies file and storage management, enables online system backups and increases data availability. The integration of key AdvFS file system features also accelerates the roadmap of future solutions designed to strengthen Linux for enterprise customers.

HP’s file system could offer capabilities beyond the ext4 file system project for Linux, said Bdale Garbee, chief technologist for HP’s open source and Linux organization. These could include improvements in file system simplification and storage management, Garbee said. “File systems tend to take time to mature to a level of robustness and proven capability that would cause a customer to be willing to bet their mission-critical data on a particular file system,” Garbee said.

Source: Businesswire