The strategy on the back of SharePoint Simple CMS (Part 2)

What we are learning is that the technological part matters mostly to us, I mean to B4Contact. Many of our customers doesn't really care on it.

Said that, we had to question ourselves who else cares about the technology. Of course the answer is obvious: the IT professional. Are they our target? well, yes. But no our principal target. Staying in touch with IT pros is very healthy for us and helps us to understand the industry trends. Some of them become our partners and participate on the development of Web sites based on SharePoint Simple CMS. That is good!

Now it is even more relevant because we are adding importance on the concept of developing with partners. We see much more innovation that way. B4Contact will generate ideas and concepts. Our partners will filter the ideas and transform some of them into usable functionality. That means that they aren't a main "sales target" but they are part of our long term strategy.

B4Contact is the organizer of the Slovenian SharePoint Conference and that helps us to get in touch with SharePoint MVPs and the Slovenian community of SharePoint administrators and developers. The past year was a success! and we plan to get more success this year. The event will take place sometime in November.

For concluding I can say that partnership is essential for SharePoint Simple CMS in the future. Currently we have 5 partners from US and EU. We will work hard during this year to get more!

The strategy on the back of SharePoint Simple CMS (Part 1)

When I'm talking about the SharePoint Simple CMS something that captures the attention is how we defined our product.

In this article I will also publish information about what we are finding out and what are we planning to do with our product.

1. Trying to modify the out of the Box Sharepoint is senseless. At least from the perspective of adopting new future versions of SharePoint. Any deep modification on the current SharePoint would be expensive when a migration to a new version would take place.
2. SharePoint by itself presents many limitations when thinking on Web design. Isn't it better to start with a blank canvas? Masterpages are synonym of freedom!
3. Many users doesn't care if they use SharePoint or whatever else... the important thing is that can be "used" and serves its purpose. That means that the interface is important.

Then we thought: "We need to make an easy to use CMS that limits advanced functionality to editors, that can look great and be compliant with standards, that doesn't touch any our of the box SharePoint page and of course that uses independent custom master pages". Therefore we made the SharePoint Simple CMS.

It is great because it lets users to have good looking public facing Web sites and edit them with ease. The SharePoint Simple CMS is delivered as a STP file and it is compatible with WSS and MOSS. Having a STP file out f a Web site is great! because you can create as many sites as you wish using that template.

After a year we havediscovered some things that need to be improved:

1. The code should be simplified and optimized.
2. We should include more code on the "server side" instead of the "Client side".
3. We need to include more capabilities to customize the layout of the pages.

So.. how are we thinking to cover the challenges? we are building a community of partners that can use SharePoint Simple CMS and build solutions on top of it.

Earth Day. Earth Day, Earth DAY!!!!

Dear Martians, today all the planet earth is celebrating something we call "the earth hour". It is a way we use to communicate from one side of the planet until the other without using electric energy. It is a way to unify our humanity and agree that we love the planet Earth. It is a way we use in our planetarian referendum to vote for a healthy planet Earth.

You, Martians, and all kind of intelligent life around us, take the chance to learn! We, in the planet Earth, care about our future. We care on the place where we live. We choose life and progress. We celebrate evolution.

You can visit http://www.earthhour.org/ to find out how we celebrate!

Martians... don't feel bad! some day your planet and martianity will arrive to the same point of evolution. It is just matter of time!

The kind of creativity I love!

I love when simple ideas are transformed in something that can change the way we think.

I'm in the World of ITC and I tend to think that all is around the Internet... that innovation should come out of the Internet..etc.

But the following video will show you a clear way of innovation: It is useful, doesn't spend energy to let it working, it amazes people, it is simple...

Internet Explorer 8 is available for download

To download IE 8 click here.

Why to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8?

There was a time when Microsoft Internet Explorer was almost the only browser. At that time, it was very Microsoft oriented and developed to work better with other Microsoft applications, like Office, and also not so respectful to Web standards.

Now the situation is different and the Web is coming to an adolescence where Microsoft is not the lonely important player in the "browser wars". That means that Internet Explorer 8 is the most standards oriented browser released by Microsoft at this time. That is the main reason to change your IE 6 or 7 to the new one.

IE8 Web site offers many details and videos about new features.
if interested on knowing what people says about IE8 in Twitter follow the link: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=IE8

Free AOL antivirus.. not anymore

I have been using the free Anti virus that AOL offered to all users of their services. Some weeks ago I have discovered that the anti virus was not working anymore. The reason? McAfee and AOL are no longer supporting the service.
So I switched to a very good free anti virus software AVG.
The great thing is that now I know why my notebook was sooo slow! McAfee was the reason. And some time I was advising to use McAfee instead of Norton because Norton was a machine killer! Let's hope AVG will continue being light and fast. Give a try!

SharePoint Hosting

I have been evaluating many different SharePoint hosting services and I got nothing new out of their service.
I think hosting can be a great thing for independent professionals trying to find an additional way to get some extra cash. Because of that B4Contact, where I work, will be creating very soon an affiliate network that will pay from 50 to 80 EUR per sold hosting agreement.
Our hosting service will be offering very special "value" that I will not talk about today... but I'm sure will make a difference.
If you have some ideas, questions or even you are interested to participate in the affiliate program feel free to let me know.

Another great Web service... it is called AddThis

That's right... if you want to "Add this" button (shown above) then you just need to visit their Web Site. But why is this service more interesting than other I know? because it offers you the chance to have statistics; it is free and very easy to setup on your Blog or Web site.

I'm trying to get in touch with them in order to coordinate some kind of Web part for SharePoint! I'm sure that would be a great thing!

DNS hosting?

B4Contact is basically a hosting company and because of that DNS is very important for us and specially for our customers.
In order to improve our DNS infrastructure and make some order and methodology I went online to find for alternatives. I found Nettica.
Now I'm one of their customers and I hope they will last for ever!
The online service is really good. We have started a transition of moving and optimizing our DNS records to their service and that will help our customers outside of Slovenia to get a faster answer when looking for Web sites hosted within our infrastructure.
Things I like from their service:

1. The service helps you to avoid mistakes.
2. The online store lets you pay for the service and in a few seconds you are ready to use it.
3. The service includes an API, so that would help if thinking to complement with further development... for example if you wish to add the domain registration to the hosting plan.
4. No problem if you have many many domains.
   

So far so good. Nettica is now part of out long term strategy.
If you would like to know more about our hosting services please feel free to contact me.

Good causes and Social Networking

I have created a couple of days ago a Facebook group that intends to place Slovenia, the country where I live, in the map of countries supporting the Earth Hour project.
Until now I have 19 members registered and I plan to make really something with it! I truly hope the social networking technology will allow me and the members of the group to capture some real attention. Increase awareness about the needs of our beloved planet.
I will keep you up to date with the results.