Computer Software

Digimaker is a leading .NET based Content Management Platform in the Nordic region. Digimaker Content Management NetServer is a 100% .NET-based, C#-written, web-based Content Management platform meant for editors, authors, developers and .NET solution houses for building user-friendly websites, creating rules-driven editorial processes for aligning online publishing efforts with business objectives and building customized solutions.

Offered throughout Scandinavia by a selection of Microsoft Certified Partners we are proud to announce a growth rate of approximately 50 licenses per month. Currently, for the first phase of our launch sequence for the USA, UK and Middle East market, we are looking to engage with a selection of highly qualified Microsoft Certified Partners, for representing us in the market more aggressively.

Some of our leading clients include the following: Ftadviser UK, Daimler Chrysler Worldwide, Jeep, Dodge, Cheroke, Fuji Films, Ventelo, Bravida, Norske Skog, Monter, History Today, etc
Digimaker Software Developer’s Kit

Register and download your copy from Digimaker
The Developer Kit includes:
• Developer copy of Digimaker – The .NET Content Management Platform
• SiteBuilder – Digimaker SDK with full Visual Studio 2003 integration
• E-book – “Developing web applications with Digimaker SiteBuilder”
• One free license – deploy your first project without further costs
Digimaker at a glance:
• The .NET Content Management Platform for the future – used by enterprises like Mercedes Benz, National Oil well and The Financial Times.
• Built on award winning technology since 1997
• Downloadable and self installing
• Fully integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio for easy development of solutions.
• Growth rate of 50 licenses per month and rising.

One of the fun parts of owning a computer is, of course, access to the internet. The worldwide web is chock full of useful information, readily available at your fingertips! It is also home to potentially lethal viruses, many of which can wreak havoc on your system within moments. The following four programs can help you avoid trouble; best of all they are absolutely free.

Firefox – a web browser for the ages. Okay, a web browser that beats Internet Explorer by preventing pop ups and harmful scripts from being downloaded to your computer. Lots of nifty features too, including tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, and tons of add-on features.

Spybot Search and Destroy – gets rid of adware, spyware, and malware. Blocks the installation of spyware before it occurs; works in conjunction with anti-virus software, not as a replacement for one.

AVG Antvirus – offers basic antivirus protection including scanning email attachments for viruses and scanning of all hard drives, removable drives, and external drives on your computer. A paid version does some additional tasks and includes technical support.

Zone Alarm – if you don’t have a firewall installed on your computer, you are opening yourself up to potential catastrophic security breaches. With Stealth Mode enabled you can search the internet in private, away from the intruding eyes of those who might want to steal your important information.

As with many freeware programs, “pro” or professional versions of the software are sometimes available to give computer users a maximum amount of protection, for a price. Still, all four of these programs have something to offer and are worth exploring. Your computer safety and privacy is essential, insure it today by downloading the programs that are right for you.

The internet browser market has long been dominated by Internet Explorer, but a new kid on the block — Firefox — is making strong inroads against the Microsoft product’s dominance. To date, over 75 million copies of Firefox have been downloaded by users around the world. Here are some reasons why you should replace Explorer with Firefox.

1. No Pop Ups. Unlike Explorer, Firefox has a nifty pop up blocker in place. No more garbage to fill your screen as you search the internet with Firefox. Can’t say the same for Explorer, however.

2. Your Security. Spyware, trojan horses, and ActiveX controls are stopped in their tracks. Explorer limits through unreliable third party downloads.

3. Quick Downloading. Downloading files is a snap as they are done quickly and painlessly. Once Firefox completes the download you will be prompted to clean up [remove] unneeded files.

4. Tabbed Browsing. Surfing the internet is easier as users can open up one window and set tabs for quick access to multiple web pages. Specifically, all your browser windows actually work within one window, each marked by tabs that you can click in and out of with ease.

5. Tons of extensions, themes, and plug-ins. You can customize Firefox to work the way you want it to work. Download an ad blocker, a new toolbar, a special theme, or include plug-ins such as Adobe Reader, Windows Media Player, Shockwave, Flash Player, and more.

Firefox is not perfect, but it goes a long way further than Explorer in giving users an enjoyable internet experience. For this reason alone, it is worth being downloaded by you.

Like a kid jumping into the pool feet first, the building industry has rapidly gone from lagging to leading in the use of computers. A mere 10 years agone, the world was fair acquiring secondhand to Windows 95. And although some progressive contractors were already using office automation, such as word processing and accounting, to gain a competitive advantage, many resisted, continuing to use their tried-and-true methods. Today computing device systems and the software system that drives them rich person gone from being individual tools applied to specific tasks to being an integrated part of how almost everything works.

And software package improvements, rather than something to be feared or resisted, now often make the same piece of equipment perform bettor. Contractors wealthy person jumped aboard with these improvements, and computers give birth become a vital cock in about every contractor’s arsenal. There exploited to be a clear distinction between the different types of electronic computer organisation components. Hardware was what you took out of the box and connected together with wires and cables. Software was the programming that came on floppy disks.

Each new piece of package was a collection of secret code words and phrases that, once mastered, allowed you to crunch numbers, move letters and characters, or render fancy graphics. Today, speed, capacity, and connectivity deliver dramatically improved in both hardware and . And as the engineering has advanced, the cost per unit of productivity has continued to drop. The result is that information processing system engineering science today offers contractors a powerful array of tools to do what needs to be done wagerer and faster, more efficiently and more effectively than just about of us even out dreamed of a decade .

The refined renderings based on this information Army for the Liberation of Rwanda easier to interpret than those from equitable a few years . Johnston says that today’s tin show contractors the “invisible reality” of what is embedded in the slab. This selective information is particularly useful in coring and drilling slabs and in other repair and retrofit work. Data Builder (World Wide Web.databuilderinc.com) offers products designed to electronically collect and organize totally the paperwork associated with a undertaking. What that means is the troupe’s programmers bear come up with a way to convert altogether the electronic and hard copy documents–in whole the various formats that they might originally exist–into electronic that is easily stored, managed, and retrieved.

Realizing that task required by the owner, at labor completion, as well as by the projection squad during structure, the ship’s company offers two separate products that tin can also work together. Using a propose Web site, the Electronic Project Control System enables those on the mental synthesis team up to file, manage, and retrieve externalize support as the externalise progresses. Unlike paper software documentation systems, this means the almost current version of each document is always available to who need it. Electronic Construction Closeout captures relevant entropy at closeout and compiles it into a compact and highly functional dick for facility management.

A music genre is a classification system that places different instructional materials into neat categories that help teachers choose what to use and when. Content area, developmental floor, and student interests often drive these decisions. Similarly, computing machine software system tin be placed within genres to aid teachers in selecting the best resource for a particular thought skill or process. Core cerebration skills, for example, used for surface-storey intellection, such as organizing a list of supplies and resources needed for a science undertaking.

Complex processing would be required to generate a display describing the task’s hypothesis, method of investigation, and summary of conclusions. Each story of processing is important for successfully completing a science labor. Once preparation computing device-amalgamated lessons associated with various levels of mentation, teachers should consider which software package is most appropriate. Core skills often matched with package genres that promote quick recollection of staple facts and that rich person great potential for automatizing certain skills (Sewell 1990).

Mental vigor used to rehearse the steps of a procedure or reminiscence the attributes of a simple concept drains the energies needed for higher-spirit level processes (Mayer 2002). students tin can complete a task automatically (e.g., steps in long division) and callback necessary facts efficiently (e.g., multiplication tables), the cognitive load is reduced, leading to increased mental vigour and capacity (Park and Hannafin 1993). Software categories within this writing style include drills, multimedia system tutorials, acquisition games, reading management programs (e.g., Accelerated Reader(TM)), and intermingled eruditeness systems. exploitation mixed erudition systems (e.g., SuccessMaker® Enterprise by Pearson; Academy of READING55 by AutoSkill®), the classroom might consider presenting the tutorial example victimization a digital projector or large-screen monitor for whole-class or small-group teaching. Most structured learnedness systems wealthy person options for altering or delaying the sequence of skills, which allows the to guide class discussion while progressing through the . Continued from page 1. Most teachers hard-pressed to successfully incorporate both trouble solving and BASIC skill mastery during the instructional minutes available during the school week.

The pressure of preparing students for remember and application of knowledge toilet be reduced by provision educational activity around core and complex processes. Students need both levels to be successful job solvers and to master basal knowledge and skills (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory 1999). To effectively integrate computers into teaching, students’ skills must be a priority. The goal is to align processes appropriately with the ‘s function. By categorizing by literary genre and matching it to the desired skills, teachers lavatory plan deterrent example activities which discrete skills as well as complex processes that will prepare students for a lifetime of solving. The power of portfolios: What children con us about scholarship and assessment.

San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Cognitive theory and the designing of command: An example of the two-way street between cognition and statement.

XHTML, the standard, was first released back in 2000. Roughly five years later we begin to see major websites revised to use this standard. Even the favorite whipping boy of standards-compliance punditry, Microsoft, presents their primary homepages, msn.com and microsoft.com in XHTML. Standards compliant XHTML sites are still the minority. The reason is simple. When the W3C released the new standard, the rest of the web running on HTML did not cease to function. Nor will the rest of the web, written in various flavors of HTML, cease to function any time soon. Without any pressing need to conform to the new standard, designers continue to use old, familiar methods. These methods will perform in any modern browser, so why bother switching?

These sentiments are similar to ones I experienced. A kind of “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” mentality sets in. Whether HTML was “broken” or not is a different argument. To the casual Internet user, their standards are fairly direct. If a site displays without noticeable error and functions to their satisfaction, these standards are met. Whatever additional steps the browser took to make such display possible is irrelevant to most users. This kind of mentality is difficult to overcome in designers accustomed to their old methods.

Technical obstacles to adopting XHTML may be quite steep as well, especially as regards large, existing websites with complex scripting. Yet the time may eventually come where yesterday’s “tried and true” HTML is little more than an ancient language, unable to be interpreted by modern electronic devices. Whether one agrees with the direction the W3C takes in the development of HTML is irrelevant, you are just along for the ride. With some perseverance, getting the hang of XHTML is possible. In form, it is not as different from HTML as Japanese is from English. Knowing HTML grants a basic knowledge of the language, it simply becomes a matter of learning a particular dialect. Even an original nay-sayer such as myself managed to do it.

Benefits of XHTML
There are 2 primary benefits to using XHTML. First is the strict nature of valid XHTML documents. “Valid” documents contain no errors. Documents with no errors can be parsed more easily by a browser. Though the time saved is, admittedly, negligible from the human user’s point of view, there is a greater efficiency to the browser’s performance. Most modern browsers will function well in what’s usually referred to as “quirks” mode, where, in the absence of any on-page information about the kind of HTML they are reading, present a “best guess” rendering of a page. The quirks mode will also forgive many errors in the HTML. Modern browsers installed on your home computer have the luxury of size and power to deal with these errors. When browser technology makes the leap to other appliances it may not have the size and power to be so forgiving. This is where the strict, valid documents demanded by the XHTML standard become important.

The second benefit is in the code itself, which is cleaner and more compact than common, “table” based layout in HTML. Though XHTML retains table functionality, the standard makes clear tables are not to be used for page layout or anything other than displaying data in a tabular format. This is generally the primary obstacle most designers have with moving to XHTML. The manner in which many designers have come to rely on to layout and organize their pages is now taboo. Simple visual inspection of XHTML code reveals how light and efficient it is in comparison to a table based HTML layout. XTHML makes use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which, when called externally, remove virtually all styling information from the XHTML document itself. This creates a document focused solely on content.

XHTML makes use of “div” tags to define content areas. How these “divisions” are displayed is controlled by CSS. This is known as CSS-P, or CSS Positioning. Trading in “table” tags for “divs” can be tough. Learning a new way of accomplishing an already familiar task is generally difficult. Like learning to use a different design program or image editor, frustration can be constant. Looking at “divs” as a kind of table cell might be helpful, though they are not entirely equivalent. As required by the XHTML standard, always make sure there is a DOCTYPE definition at the top of the document. This is not only required by the standard, but it will force Internet Explorer 6, currently the most common browser, to enter its “standards compliance” mode. IE6 and Firefox, both operating in standards compliance mode will display XHTML in much the same way. Not identical, but far better than IE6 operating in quirks mode. Learning how to iron out the final differences between displays is the final obstacle and can require a bit of tweaking in the CSS.

Clean code has multiple benefits. It creates a smaller page size which, over time, can save costs associated with transfer usage. Though the size difference may appear small, for someone running a highly trafficked site, even saving a few kilobytes of size can make a big difference. Further, some believe search engines may look more kindly on standards complaint pages. This is only a theory, though. In a general sense, any page modification that makes the content easier to reach and higher in the code is considered wise. Search engines, so it is believed, prefer to reach content quickly, and give greater weight to the first content they encounter. Using XHTML and “div” layout allows designers to accomplish this task more easily.

Conclusions
XHTML is the current standard set by the W3C. The W3C continues development of XHTML, and XHTML 2.0 will replace the current standard in the future. Learning and using XHTML today will help designers prepare for tomorrow. Valid XTHML produces no errors that might slow down a browser, and the code produced is clean and efficient. This saves in file size and helps designers better accomplish their search engine optimization goals. Learning XHTML is primarily about learning a new way to lay out pages. Though frustrating at first, the long term benefits far outweigh any initial inconvenience.

Cabling of data and voice systems is often ignored by many companies until the last minute just before relocation or new building takes place. Many information systems professionals view it as a low priority or something that just takes away from their budget for real network components such as servers or software. However having a state of the art easy to manage cabling system is just as important as good reliable servers on a network. Cabling is the backbone of any computer network; it ties all the components of the network together therefore it should receive as much careful consideration as any other network component.

Mistake number one – Blindly choosing the lowest bidder

This is the most common mistake made when installing voice and data network cabling. Often the lowest bidder is the contractor who is the smallest, has the least experience or the one that made a mistake on their bid. Prior to making this decision you should know your contractor. Find out how long they have been in business, visit some of the large installations they have done and by all means go visit their offices and warehouse. A site visit to their office will tell you most of what you need to know about an organization. Make sure your contractor has completed jobs of similar scope and size.

Mistake number two – Choosing the manufactures product that will be installed

Many companies have tried to standardize on a particular manufacture of cabling system. Some of the larger manufactures are Belden, Comscope, Ortronics, AMP and Leviton. You can’t go wrong with any of these big names. However IT managers and corporate executives get hung up on trying to standardize because they believe it will make things easier for the IT staff. The reality of the situation is that if you choose any of the larger names the only components that might not be interchangeable are the faceplates. Of course there are performance criteria as well and they all claim to be the best. Do your own research and choose a manufacture that you feel has a strong company that will be there to stand behind their product should you even need to make a warranty claim

Mistake number three – Paying too much for the latest cabling technologies

The fact is that today’s network components and network components of the future cannot exceed the specifications of Cat 5E and Cat 6 cabling components. Combine this with the fact that the average company moves every 3 to 4 years. You will find it hard to benefit from future proofing a building you don’t occupy. Look at you current infrastructure, what equipment or applications do you plan to add or upgrade? Is Gigabit or 10 Gigabit Ethernet an option for you in the near future?

Mistake number four – Not using universal wiring

The EIA/TIA and BICSI both recommend a universal wiring platform for your Communications Infrastructure. In the old days the average install would consist of a single voice grade cable for the phone system and a single data grade cable (Cat 3, Cat5, Cat5E or Cat 6) for their computers. This of course dedicates the usability of these cables to one system type. This is further exacerbated by the termination method used. Voice cables were traditionally terminated on 66 style blocks (66m1-50), which are not user friendly and require a special tool and cross connect wire to make changes. Telephony companies have made a killing for years just performing MAC work (Moves, Adds and Changes) because a customer was unable or unwilling to brave the telephone closet and perform the MAC work themselves.

The practice of using a true universal wiring platform is now the standard for all reputable cabling contractors. A Universal Wiring Platform is made up of all data grade components that are downward compatible for all voice applications. A common installation would consist of 3 Category 5E or Category 6 cables all terminated on a 110 type Patch Panel. At the wall plate all cable would be terminated on the matching grade of 8 position modular jack (incorrectly know as an RJ-45). This design not only allows for maximum flexibility were the customer could have 3 computers or 3 phones or 2 computer and 1 phone or any configuration that works for their application. The point is that now the customer is in complete control of their cabling infrastructure and does not need to pay a contractor to come out every time they move an office. In the long run this will also save you money on the overall cabling system as it will shift and flex to meet your needs without having to bring in your cabling contractor. Remember, having the contractor in after construction has completed will involve them pulling out ceiling tiles and standing on desks while you are trying to do business. The elimination of the disruption alone makes it worth while.

Mistake number five – No CAD pre installation and post installation CAD drawings.

Most customers really have no idea what their cabling platform will look like when they sign the paperwork. They rely on their contractor to “just do the right thing”. Do not make this mistake, if you don’t understand how your infrastructure will work or what it should look like, don’t sign. Your contractor should have the ability to take your building blue print and overlay his cabling plan on top of your electrical plans. This will give you a visual representation of what you are paying for and allow you to ask questions. Likewise, after the job is complete you should receive what is called an “As Built Drawing” showing all of your communications outlets with a standards based numbering system. Some contractor will even provide a scale elevation plan showing were your patch panels are and how much room you have left in each rack for growth and or other equipment. This should be provided to you both hard copy and in AutoCAD format for your architect to incorporate into your final building As Builts.

Mistake number six – Not getting a design before the job starts.

This seems to be all over the board, some people have no design plan what so ever. Some will pay $10,000 for an engineering firm to write a specification were they charge by the pound for the spec. Don’t be fooled that a large spec is a good spec. Often a specification filed with time consuming exercises for the bidding contractor and unnecessary pricing breakouts will only prevent good contractors from bidding on your project. What you want is a spec that clearly defines your realistic requirements, requires basic qualification with references and does it as quickly and simply as possible. Do not try to write a spec that will cover every contingency, you will drive your contractor away and you will only confuse the process more. Once you have selected your contractor based on an apple s to apple comparison, you can always and should always sit down to discuss the project and other options that they recommend. One more thing, always, always have the contractor provide you with a parts list with quantities, not individual prices, just quantities. This will help you weed out the contractors that did their homework when you start to compare their list of parts.

Mistake number six – No cable management

All cabling systems will look organized before they are used, that’s easy. Show me that cabling system after 6 months and I will tell you if the proper wire management was used. “Used” being the key word here. Remember, you can have the best wiring management in the world, if you don’t strictly enforce its use with your IT Staff, you will have a mess. That said, your contractor must provide you with a good design. My recommendation is, listen to your contractor, they know more than you do about this. Then, go visit some of the sites that are done the way they recommend. See how they look after being used a few months. Ask the customer how easy it is to keep organized. Don’t underestimate the value of this step. If your patch panels are a mess and you can’t effect changes in a rapid and orderly fashion then you would have been better off paying your contractor to do the MAC work for you.

People often equate load testing with performance testing. Load testing is seen as a way of answering the question “How fast does the system respond?” This view then tends to mean that load testing is seen as an end of project activity. Only at the end of development will we have the final implementation for performance testing and so we can confirm only then that it performs quickly enough in the real world and smoothly transition into live service.

Wrong approach! This is extremely risky and misses out on the many benefits of starting load testing early and applying it throughout the project. With this approach does the system sail through load testing and transition smoothly into service? Occasionally yes. But more frequently the system starts to fail as load starts to be applied, even with small increases in volume.. For the first time there are concurrent demands on the system and arbitration over resources is required. Paths through code that have never been executed are triggered, situations arise that nobody really thought through. Transactions fail. Systems crash. After these problems are fixed and more load is applied in a test, we then encounter problems like resource exhaustion, buffer overflows, timeouts and inconsistent behaviour. The real work needed to turn a functional pre-production system into a robust solution has only just begun.

Examples abound of products that failed when load testing started and, after lots of effort, stress and expenditure, have been shelved. Worse still are the ones that missed load testing altogether and failed dramatically during live operation. An internet portal developer recently stopped development of a new service, one that had completed functional development, when load testing revealed fundamental structural problems and inefficient coding which led to a poorly performing and unstable system.

So what should you do to avoid these risks? We all know it is better to find faults early when they cost far less to fix yet load testing is still left until as late as possible. The types of faults it finds frequently need architectural changes and major rewrites which are by then are hugely expensive to implement. The answer is that you should start early. Different forms of load testing should be repeatedly applied throughout the project to identify problems early and to check that the system is not going off track.

This is a natural extension of the practice of test led development. Test led development, where automated tests are written first and code must pass these tests as it is developed, offers major benefits. However, in its current form, the focus of this testing is on functionality. As it evolves the functional status of the software is always known and hence manageable, functional faults are nipped in the bud avoiding high cost fixes, the functional risk is greatly reduced. Not so other risks. If a project performs early and continuous load testing it gets much wider and comprehensive risk reduction. To make this effective:

1. Study the system and perform a risk analysis to help to order the threats to the system, this will help you to prioritise load testing activities.
2. Collect data to allow comparison of the efficiency of different builds. This permits monitoring of the long term trend, “Is the system using more and more processor time to do the same work?” This data can be used to predict resource requirements at different levels of demand and so support scalability predictions.
3. Execute tests that aim to assess the behaviour of the system and to trigger faults under load. Use workloads that simulate expected patterns of demand to observe the aggregate behaviour of the system. Use specially targeted extreme workloads to probe the vulnerabilities of the system.
4. Include the full spectrum of load tests into the test suite. This means performance testing with typical and busy period work loads; stress testing to check both atypical demand spikes and resource exhaustion impacts; endurance testing that uses both operational period and cumulative operation tests; reliability testing that runs lots of transactions and then checks whether occasional transactions fail; concurrency testing of two users working on the same account at the same time.
5. Design measurement activities as scientists would design an experiment, design them to provide data that can be analysed. Sample the system under different steady state workloads to provide multiple data sets to support interpolation. Chose the workloads to permit estimation of the resource costs for each transaction type.
6. Target the middleware first with generic activities and evolve the suite as functionality is developed. Start early and then test each incremental release of the system, firstly with the previous suite and then with a modified suite that addresses new functionality.
7. Invest the time and resources to work at a representative scale. Maybe the test bed can’t be full scale but it should not be two orders of magnitude smaller than the intended system. Be smart and innovative to use resources effectively to provide an appropriate scale test bed. The costs that will be incurred if this is not done will far exceed the cost of providing the test bed.
8. Don’t delay; test an increment as soon as possible. Don’t skip one or you’ll end up skipping them all. Compare the measurements and behaviour with the previous one, is it better or worse?
9. Provide a background load for functional testing. Features that work offload may fail when the system has other things to think about.
10. Consider occasional events such as server failures and reconfiguration of the system. Do these need to be tested under load?

In conclusion, you need to incorporate load testing throughout the development process. Leaving load testing until the final run in to live service is a recipe for disaster. If this became common practice then a lot more applications and systems that work would be delivered on time and to budget.

One of the first questions for multinational company/corporation to move to new market is ERP implementation, customization, report tuning, integration for newly established subsidiary. The specific of South American and in particularly Brazilian market is manufacturing or production outsourcing to Brazil. We will try to provide the first level comparison or readiness of the major worldwide ERP brands: Microsoft Business Solutions, Oracle (we will not touch PeopleSoft & JDEdwards, just Oracle E-Business Suite) and SAP (where we will give you update on reasonable solution for mid-size companies – SAP Business One). Also we will be concentrating on manufacturing-type of subsidiary, the franchisees network deserves special publication.

• Localization Challenge. Each large country: Brazil, India, Russia has unique taxation system and special rules in the accounting practice itself. This is why we see locally developed ERP/MRP applications flourishing on the corporate ERP market. At the same time – these specifics create some barriers and challenges for worldwide ERP brands to penetrate on the market. In the case of Brazil, we would like to mention such regional ERP as Microsiga. Please note that Multilanguage is usually easily resolvable issue, comparing to tax code.

• SAP Business One. This ERP solution, coming from SAP deserves very high scores, it is pretty much ready with tax code, Multilanguage feature (Brazilian Portuguese). SAP Business One has MRP as well as Production modules plus integration to high end SAP is also available for transaction consolidation to the headquarters in Europe or in the USA. SAP Business One has about 8 thousand installations Worldwide and it is very advanced and popular in Latin America, where tax code is rather standard one: Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Chili, etc. SAP Business One launch in Brazil is the fall of 2005.

• Microsoft Business Solutions. MBS has two ERP applications for Brazilian market – Microsoft Navision and Microsoft Axapta. Navision has several dozens of implementations, while Axapta will be available soon (in 2006). We see several blends of Navision localizations for Brazil. Axapta localization is currently on the way to be released. Talking about Navision – MBS promotes Navision on the emerging markets, such as Russia, East Europe, plus it is traditionally strong in the Europe. Also take into consideration very good Navision positioning in manufacturing industry. We do not want at the same time to deemphasize Axapta – it has very high potential. In East Europe and especially Russia – Microsoft indicates that number of Axapta installations is close to Navision implementations and Axapta was designed relatively recently, so please compare these two: Navision & Axapta before making final decision. Just to mention, that Great Plains is not popular in Brazil, however it was partially localized and if you have corporate standard to use Microsoft Dynamics GP worldwide – it should be available for you. Microsoft Project Green will lead to “merge” of its ERPs: Microsoft Dynamics will be the final merged ERP product, it will harmonically integrate the pieces of Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision), Microsoft Dynamics AX (Axapta), etc.

• Oracle E-Business Suite. Also known as Oracle Financials and Oracle Applications – Oracle has traditionally strong positions in Latin America and Brazil. Oracle has conception of standard functionality (which could be used worldwide) and local or regional (language, special forms, tax engine, etc.). If your company has Oracle Financials/Applications implemented in the headquarters – you should check on the status of Oracle Financial localization for Brazilian or Latin American regional market. Oracle E-Business Suite also usually has extensive customization and integration components to custom Oracle databases.

You can always appeal to our help and expertise – in our Sao Paulo office we have all these systems expertise, plus Microsoft CRM, MS Great Plains, Lotus Notes Domino. Please give as a call São Paulo 55-11-3826-3449, USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com

Microsoft Windows Vista, the next version of Windows, is scheduled to arrive in H2 2006. Vista is loaded with new technologies, the most visible being an enhanced graphical user interface. Vista’s user interface improves rendering of text, allows smooth, eye-pleasing window transition effects, and utilizes high-resolution icons.

Icon in Windows Vista Explorer

Windows Vista Explorer makes use of high-resolution 256×256 icons. While 256×256 pixels seem to be too much for current displays, Vista is able to dynamically downscale images to any size. By using large icons, Vista Explorer is already prepared for future displays with higher resolution [DPI].

The image size is controlled by a slider control in Windows Explorer. This slider replaces the discrete view modes in Windows XP. Vista makes it possible to assign different view mode and different icons sizes to each folder.

Support for high resolution icon is not limited to system icons. Our test showed that a custom icon with a large image is accepted and used by Windows Explorer without problems. Vista icon screeshots and examples.

PNG Compressed Vista Icons

A typical Vista icon contains 12 images:
* 16×16 pixels in 16 colors, 256 colors, and truecolor+alpha
* 32×32 pixels in 16 colors, 256 colors, and truecolor+alpha
* 48×48 pixels in 16 colors, 256 colors, and truecolor+alpha
* 256×256 pixels in 16 colors, 256 colors, and truecolor+alpha

The ability to put 256×256 pixels image inside an icon is not new. This feature was available in Windows XP and in previous systems. The problem is that an icon with all 12 formats requires more than 400kB. This is considerably more than a typical Windows XP icon needs (approx. 25kB). Microsoft solved this problem by extending the icon format.

Vista icons store the images in icons using PNG compression. With PNG compression, the size of an icon is reduced. Because PNG is loss-less and supports 8bit alpha channel, the quality of icon is maintained.

Current Vista icons use compression for the large 256×256 formats only. This makes the icons backwards compatible with previous systems. Windows XP will ignore the high resolution images and load the standard 48×48 pixels images.

It is possible to compress all images in an icon. Such icons will occupy even less space and they will work without problems in Vista. They will of course fail under Windows XP.

Creating and Converting Compressed Icons

Vista compatible icon editor is needed to work with Vista icons. Icon editor authors are adopting the Vista enhancements to the icon format and some of them have already managed to release an updated version of their software. A Vista icon is created by simply adding high resolution images and by selecting the Vista format when saving an icon.

Some editors also allow extracting Vista icons from executable files and converting them to XP icons (e.g. saving them without compression).

Conclusion

Microsoft improved the visuals of Windows delivered a future-proof solution compatible with high-end system as well as with lower definition screens. The 256×256 icon images allow icon authors to add more details and make the icons more appealing under wide range of conditions.

The information in this article is relevant for Windows Vista Beta 1. Vista icons specifications are preliminary and subject to change.