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Newsletter

2nd Edition
september 2007

This is the second edition of SpiderGroup's monthly newsletter, intended to keep you up to date with interesting things happening in the IT industry. We hope that you found the first edition fun as well as being informative and please feel free to provide feedback with an email to our News Team or via our website on www.stretchingtheweb.com. We hope you enjoy it and encourage you to pass this onto friends and colleagues so they can subscribe. Subscribe to our newsletter

Web Portals: Business or Pleasure?

There have been a number of terms thrown around in the last few years to describe web based technology solutions which help you revolutionise your business, words such as Portals, Gateways, Intranets and Extranets but what exactly do they mean and how will they help your business?

Although there are some technical fine points, what we are essentially talking about are places to publish and manage information, communicate and interact on the web. The aim of any portal is to present you with the information and tools you need to quickly and easily find out what you need to know and do what you need to do.

Ok so that all sounds great, teenagers are using facebook and myspace all the time and it seems to be all they can talk about but how does this apply to my business?... Read on

Dan Hancock, Operations Director

Web 2.0 Unveiled

There is a lot of press coverage and hype regarding Web 2.0 but any attempt to define Web 2.0 seems lacking in these articles. Essentially Web 2.0 is a buzz word to describe a new style of websites that have been brought about by a technological and cultural change.

The technological change is AJAX (which in techie speak is Asynchronous Javascript And XML) which basically means that the website can update a small part of the webpage rather than having to reload the whole page (you know, that little annoying bar at the bottom of your browser). The best example of this improvement is comparing the non AJAX Streetmap with the AJAX Google Maps, as you can see the AJAX experience is much more fluid. AJAX is an excellent technology but this in itself does not make an excellent user experience, the key is good UI (User Interface) design. Bad UI with AJAX is still an awful experience but good UI coupled with AJAX can make complex web applications a joy to use. Read on

Chris Falconer, Chief Software Architect

Buzz from the Board

There are some exciting developments happening here at Spider, we are finalising our Maximiser based products in our ICT division, the key one being integration with Microsoft Office Communication Server, something we're explaining in the article next door >>. Our spider office™ and SpiderEducation products are gaining momentum and we are also seeing a lot of interest around youtube style video’s on customers websites, if a picture says more than a thousand words then a video says more than ten thousand.

James Cook, CEO

What's the hype on OCS?

Ok, in the last edition we promised you an insight into OCS (Office Communications Server) and the hype surrounding this new three letter acronym from Microsoft, so here it is: OCS is a server side product from Microsoft which is said to enhance business performance by bringing unified communications to you desktop via your Microsoft Office suite. Right, so you didn’t catch a word of that, what on earth does unified communications mean, how can it be brought to your desktop and why have we stooped to using cliches like enhance business performance?... Continued

Dan Hancock, Operations Director

Tech Support: "Thank you for calling; can i have your area code and phone number please?" Silence...
Tech Support: "Can i have your area code and phone number please?" Customer: "I just have a question" Tech Support: "Ok, how can i help you?" Customer: "How do I find out my area code?"	;)

Coming in the Next Edition of SpiderGroup Newsletter...
Software as a Service?, Exploiting Bandwidth and Larry gets a Portal

Larry makes a friend

It was a lovely summer’s day and Larry was sitting in his favourite park throwing breadcrumbs to the ducks and chuckling contentedly to himself as they dove under water, waggling their little feet up in the air.

One particularly serious little duck waddled up to him, took a long hard look and beeped. That's a little weird, a quack would have been more customary, thought Larry throwing him a crumb.

The duck ignored the crumb and beeped louder at Larry, who, rather alarmed by the duck’s attitude, packed up and walked off, really not wishing to cause a scene.

No sooner had he reached the path than his little friend beeped again! Waddling along beside him the little duck began beeping incessantly, keeping pace no matter how fast Larry started to run.

Snapping awake in a cold sweat, Larry grabbed for his BlackBerry, beeping at him from his bedside table.

9:30 Sales Presentation: Solar Powered Torch
Due in 25 mins: dismiss snooze

Larry leapt out of bed, swore at his alarm clock, which guiltily flashed 00:00 and rushed out to his meeting.

Arriving, dapper and on time, Larry greeted the Japanese business men who quickly gathered round his little BlackBerry and whooped excitedly as it quacked 9:30: Meeting Started.

Stay on top like Larry, check out Spider office™

Quick Tips:

Switch Programs

Is your boss on the prowl? Need to switch away from the program you are 'working' on quickly? Hold [alt] and Hit [tab] to switch between open programs

Manage Unresponsive Programs

When your Microsoft program stops responding Hold [ctrl] + [shift] and Hit [esc] to bring up the task manager and end any unresponsive programs

Free Tools:

Picassa Photo Editor

Organise and enhance your photos with this free photo management tool from Google Download here

To any size...

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