Mobile telephony basics - Routing and Processing of data via Mobile phones

Location Based Services or popularly known as LBS is a current buzz in the Mobile telephony segment. Almost all major telecom players are providing LBS services to their mobile phone users. In this post I am going to discuss the LBS architecture  in brief and try to explain the working of Mobile Phone architecture.

The mobile phone handset operates on radio frequencies, that means the input and output data through a mobile phone is only in the form of radio waves when said on the most simplest terms. The data transfer standards are defined for bringing uniformity in data sending, receiving and to perform operation on the data generated by a user though the mobile phone. This standard or set of protocols is called as WAP. Wireless Application protocol. All phones send data using WAP. In internet the protocol is called HTTP - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.

When we send any data via our phones it goes to the nearest Mobile Phone tower. From that tower it is send to the service stations where the telecom operators servers are kept. These stations have web servers plus application servers. before the WAP data format is fed into Web servers it has to be converted to HTTP format for processing by the application servers. This conversion of WAP data to HTTP format data is done via WAP gateway. Once this is done the user's request send via mobile phone is fed into the application servers and corresponding information is searched and returned which the user has asked. Again, when the information returned by application server is in HTTP format, it gets converted to WAP data format and then finally receives the mobile phone after getting routed through the towers.
Each WAP data sent via mobile phones contains some header info. This header info contains the location of the mobile phone where it is currently located as the mobile phone owner may continuously keeps changing locations. The location information of the mobile phone is registered in the tower where the mobile lies. The packet header is then routed to the corresponding tower after matching the packet header and the mobile phone current address registered in the tower.

This completes the cycle of request sending and receiving via mobile phones.

How to install Sharepoint 2007 in Windows Server 2008

Hi Folks! I am putting down the simple steps as how you can install SharePoint 2007 in Windows Server 2008.
There is one trick in this install. This is called slipstream install which means that the install of Sharepoint 2007 will carry the latest updates required in WSS 3.0 and SharePoint 2007 sp1 in one go. i.e during the install itself the installation package looks for the latest patches of the above two in order to complete the successful install.

Here is how you go about it:

1. Copy the installation directory from the Sharepoint 2007 CD/DVD to hard disk of your computer.
2. You will find separate folders for each type of hardware either 64 bit or 32 bit (x86). Copy the respective
    directory in the HDD. example: I have a 32 bit machine so I copied the entire x86 folder in the HDD of
    my PC.
3. Download the service packs of each WSS 3.0 and SharePoint 2007 in your HDD.
4.  After the complete download type the following command in the command prompt.
      name_of_WSS3.0_ServivePack /extract:C:\install
      and
      name_of_SharePoint2007_ServivePack /extract:C:\install
      
    where install is the new folder you create to save the extracted zipped files of the respective service packs.

5. Now, you copy the contents of this "install" folder in the 'Updates' folder under the Sharepoint 2007 server installation files. In my case went to the x86 folder and browsed the Updates folder to copy the entire contents over there.
6. After that I when i clicked on the setup.exe the installation continued and asked for Producut Key!

After this step the installation is simple and as usual.

Hope you enjoy SharePoint 2007 successfully in Windows 2008 server.

SharePoint 2007 to 2010 Upgrade strategies

All you SharePoint enthusiasts and professionals a good news that many of you already might be aware is that Microsoft has released SharePoint 2010! Great, isn't it ?!! But how to upgrade yourself to SharePoint 2010 ??

Fine... not to worry... as there are two approaches for the same. This can be decided based on the the hardware capabilities of your server (in which the 2007 version is running). I will straightly point out to processors... ya '64 bit' processors!!

If you have got this already in your SharePoint 2007 box running Central Administrator in it then you should go for "In-Place" upgrade.

The In - Place upgrade is simple, as you don't need to do anything extra other than running your 2010 CD/DVD for install and upgrade. If a compatible hardware is found i.e. '64 bit' processor (along with other RAM and HDD requirement) the Setup automatically switches itself to the In- Place upgrade mode.

The advantage is your farm configurations and settings are restored and you don't have to do anything extra on it. A smooth upgrade. :-)

The other approach is 'Database attach' Upgrade. This upgrade process is for the machines which don't have 64 bit processors already. For these machines you will have move the concerned DB's to another machine with 64 bit processor on it and SharePoint 2010 already installed via it's CD. This is a mandatory step for above upgrade approach. You should also understand that SharePoint 2010 version supports only 64 bit machines.

Once the 'Sharepoint Configuration wizard run' is completed in the new machine, you attach your databases from your existing 2007 farm to this new Sharepoint 2010 machine.

You will have to setup the configurations manually as the config DB attach doesn't works. One thing you should note is that if you miss any of the configurations and any out-of-the-box implementations done in your existing server farm you will loose the same in the new server. So you need to take care of that yourself manually!

The Database attach upgrade process does not captures all these automatically as in case of In Place upgrade process. You will have to manually do it all once again.

My this post is focussed in only letting the users understand the two basic approaches for Sharepoint 2007 to 2010 upgrade and to know when to use each of these approaches. The details on 'step by step' guide for upgrade is already provided in the Microsoft group of sites based on version of SQL server you use.

Please find the link on how to upgrade here --> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263299.aspx

If you have a large server farm with mixed h/w configurations, then you should mix the above two Upgrade strategies and apply each of them on respective machine as required to make a mixed approach. The Microsoft people call Hybrid strategies.

More details on same below:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262483.aspx#section3

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262483.aspx#section4

Wishing you all smooth and successful upgrades!

Windows PowerShell 2.0 for SharePoint 2010

With the release of the Microsoft's latest range of 2010 products most from the Microsoft's Office suite like Office, Visio, Project and SharePoint also comes a powerful utility - PowerShell.

Power Shell packs the power of a 'good', if not great shell environment where an administrator can do a variety of tasks which can add more power and control to his tasks.

Power Shell combines the capabilities of cmd.exe and it's new features to make it a great tool for administrators. Also the SharePoint administrator's favorite utility stsadm.exe is replaced in the 2010 version with the same.

PoweShell 2.0 comes with WMI pack and includes the power of .Net framework which gives an admin the power to use those 'classes' to do a specific job. These classes can be accessed by an admin using 'cmdlets'. It combines & includes the 'if' conditioning statements, looping with 'for' and 'While'. It can be used to access any item from Windows registry for example, and perform operations over it, as required. All these gives me the sense of similarity that a Linux or Unix admin enjoys while working in their favorite shell environments.

Some Examples:

1. PS> Get-SPFarm | Select *

2. PS> Get-SPWebApplication

3. PS>Remove-SPSite http://SampleSite

Microsoft not only brings this tool to increase the efficiency of an Administrator but also adds powers to the people who are into this profession!

SEO comes inbuilt in IIS 7.0

Building a successful site is what any entrepreneur, site owner or a webmaster would like. Search Engine Optimization has grown over one such science which has a direct relation to the financial success of a website. This is now being identified by all the major big players in the www - Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM to name a few.

For the better performance of the websites on the search engines it is one of the best practice nowadays to do SEO. Microsoft who keeps innovating and keeps coming up with newer changes (improved) has now launched IIS 7.0 which comes with inbuilt SEO tools - Search Engine optimization Toolkit. That can help an administrator or a webmaster to do SEO fine tuning of the site.

For more details check out the embedded video in the below link:

http://www.iis.net/download/SEOToolkit

Tracking what the Community talks about you!!!

Organizations which are popular and have a good brand presence for say the products and or services they offer, also have a good presence online. Media companies or be it individuals they will definitely talk about the company for their offerings for the respective consumers. A positive image helps build the brand and negative does exactly the opposite.

It is therefore very important for the organizations to build a positive image and save it from being pulled down by the competitors . A similar example happened with a Electric Car company called REVA, the owners and senior management were too worried to know that some competitor has taken a crash test video and pulled to out of proportion to warn people not to drive this car as it is not safe!! Within no time after a YouTube video was released and comments were published people all across the forums, blogs, community spaces started getting to know about the same and it directly hit the sales figures of the car manufacturer.

'Better late than never' the REVA guys realized that it is best to directly confront their customers and public about the car. They came up published press releases, went back to community sites, forums , blogs chats and updated that the company is serious about this and is trying to work on making things better. Soon, the panic in the general public came to an end and the sales figures of the car company stabilized.

Lucky enough... Because many organization are not able to survive such attacks by the community and they loose the image brand name forever almost!

Had the REVA guys realized and tracked this negative vibe earlier they wouldn't have been in such a situation and would have also battled out the losses due to dropping sales figure and demand for the car in the market.

Imagine yourself, your product, your brand name or the business in this scenario!!

Do we have any such way though which we can track this and take necessary precautions and correct the image before it is ruined by someone else?

Yes of course! you can do that!! it is by using a tool which is like a search engine + analytics system that gives precise statistics of vibes created about your brand in the www. it searches all community spaces in the web for the most relavent search term provided by you that could be associated with the product your organization name. It lists all those places where you are mentioned and an analysis report how people talk about, rate related articles, express views and comments, how do other bloggers think about your product, what is opinion of users about your product in the community sites etc.

This tool is SocialMention.com

Use this to proactively stay steps ahead of the miscreants and save your brand image from getting tarnished by anyone else out there...