The Good news is.. we are BACK.. and we are still there.. Surviving the changes both technology and resources wise, and making slow but steady progress. We have been busy with too many things including planning for the year 2010.. apart from working on projects/clients, structuring the workforce and adding key people to the organisation.. and thats been keeping us busy.. but we promise you to update of whats up with us from now.. at regular intervals.

SMART AIMS has been adding technology expertise and we are now working more and more with Open Source applications/tools like Joomla, Wordpress, Zencart apart from the still going strong PHP. Open source development is the mantra for us in 2010.. and we will be adding technologies and expertise and ofcourse resources as and when we grow! You have a requirement that needs a dedicated and sincere team.. wait no further and get in touch with us right away. Our clients vouch for our excellent support and deliverables.. feel free to ask for references!

Mobile application development is another avenue that we at SMART AIMS have been exploring, Windows Mobile was always there, but we are now moving towards Symbian and Android development, both of which are expected to nose us ahead of competition.

Our web designs have always been a class apart and have been openly accepted by our clients… but thats not where we stop.. we are now moving ahead to make our client websites more sale able.. adding Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation expertise.. that will allow us to serve our client better and be a One Stop Web Solution company. We look to constantly innovate and upgrade ourselves to give our clients the best in class solutions!

Product development is another avenue that we have forayed and it adds an important dimension to our portfolio.. We intend to develop secured and easy to deploy products.. more on it in times to come!

Being an organisation that has grown from the society, we decide to do our bit for the society.. and in this endevor of ours we are being supported by none other than the mighty Microsoft..  after being Microsoft BizSpark members, we are now trying to contribute and work with Microsoft on the S2B  (Students to business Initiative), and contribute in whatever extent we can to the community.

Keep checking our blog for the latest happenings in SMART AIMS and the progress we have made!

1. Recession is a correction process and will happen for sure.. be prepared for it or else you would be ruing for a real long time.

2. From Service (in 2008 and mid 2009 as a Business Development and Project Manager) to Business (as owner of SMART AIMS), one thing which did not change was “Entrepreneurship”…. if your an entrepreneur in service.. you are more likely to be a notch better than others when you step into business..  “Responsibility and Calmness” are the other attributes that Business demands.. I think I have lost my cool more often than not in service.. but Business teaches you to be calm and collective.. 

3) What makes a difference in the way we do it and what we do it is ‘ATTITUDE”, a positive attitude helps in winning more than half the battle and the rest is luck and hardwork.. carry your most positive attitude to work and things are bound to fall in place more often than not.

4) Business and Company is not  a “One man game” and thats the reason we at SMART AIMS are looking for people who can join our family and take an entrepreneur’s role to the “Tee”.

2009 was good in ways more than one to us personally.. finally SMART AIMS came ahead as a full fledged company.. rather than being a consultancy organisation and  a business generating website who would help source business to the people I did service for ..  

Friends and partners were obvious for the growth of SMART AIMS.. its the rough times that prove once and always that those who are friends will be with you.. whereas the selfish would just turn away just as the way they entered your life..  there were some who did it.. not that we cared for them .. but just reiterated the point that we need to separate the food from the roughage!

Competition always helps.. friends may or may not!

2010 will be a new beginning for SMART AIMS and we are committed to growth and excellence in the field.. our learning from 2009 will be with us forever but what 2010 holds for SMART AIMS.. is a surprise that will unfold for us.. and a lot of others who are watching us..

Please do keep us in mind.. and we assure you honesty and dedication in whatever we do.. 

Our journey to another SMART AIM begins on Jan 1, 2010.. we aim to conquer more frontiers in 2010 and would appreciate your valuable support and co-operation always.

The hard disk of my laptop just stopped responding and it was a crash.. all my data had not been backed up and all efforts to restore it just failed.. after spending one and half days on it.. decided to get professional help.. and thankfully.. all was safe.. it was a huge sigh of relief.. but the most important thing was the fact that I had learnt an important lesson.. something which we all know.. but more often than not tend to ignore.. our idea of “All being Perfect” always wins.. until we are cornered to a situation which demands us to think otherwise..

My sincere advise to all professionals and people using computers,laptops: Design and devise a backup plan for your data right now.. lest its too late.. and follow it religiously (better..schedule it to run automatically)

Some of the backup tools that I am currently using are:

Autover:

AutoVer is a configurable automatic or real time backup and personal versioning system. It can be used as a simple real time backup or as a more complex, but transparent version control system.

Backup to FTP server:  A real time backup solution that backs up your files/data to a pre designated FTP location, available as full backup or incremental backup mode.

Well.. if this article is a bit late.. and you have a problem.. would like to salvage your data on an old pc etc.. contact us at sales@smartaims.com with your problem and we will try and help you recover that.

Its about presentation and laying out data that makes the difference in most cases. Data is information if presented to make sense.. and thats what our services  aim to do.. Its another SMART AIM.. whether we get to it or not though.. only time will say.

The next very important question/comment could be.. are you talking of Data Intelligence/Mining or something.. well not exactly.. but it could well be used for Business Intelligence.. thats what Information stands for most of the times.. provided the figures speak to us and profile the story behind it.

We at SMART AIMS a constantly looking to innovate and work around to survive.. please feel free to suggest anything that we could work on together.. and we assure you we will not let you down on it..

After all.. its never late to be a SMART AIMS – Friend.

Social Networking is the buzz and people are using more and more of it to reap the benefits of their networks and promote business.

This trend though more visible today.. but most companies had been using it knowingly/unknowingly for a long time..recession and downturn has just emphasised it further and made it more visible.

SMART AIMS has always nurtured relationships and to take this further we are now working on a model of “Join as a Friend”.

A simple business model whereby any business/lead that you generate and provide us with i.e. it results in work/revenue for us.. we share  with you a fixed percentage of the project cost as business consultancy fee payable to you.

Not only that, if the same client/prospect gives us future business which you may or may not be aware of.. we track it for you and send you notifications and your affiliate rewards as a token of our appreciation.. just to say “Thank you from being a SMART AIMS Friend”.

Feel free to review our website (www.smartaims.com) and let us know if you have a prospect/lead that could result in business for us. .we will follow it up and on succesful business closure, the consultancy charges are for your taking.

We look forward to connecting with more “SMART AIMS Friends”.

For any queries/information on our services and solutions offerings, please email us at info@smartaims.com

You might design a web site that looks fantastic but few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load.

Designs should be optimized for the web and should not take more than 15 seconds to load. Remember, you might have a great design but very few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load.

Ten tips to fast-loading web pages.
1. Minimize the use of images
2. Optimize images for the web
3. Use Tables creatively
4. Cut down the use of animated gifs
5. Design simple icons
6. Use background images instead of big images whenever possible
7. Try out CSS Styles
8. Use Flash sparingly
9. Design most of your site in HTML
10. Keep checking your load time

# Clear Navigation –
Once a visitor has come to your site you need to make them go through your site. To do this you need to have clear navigation. Make sure all your important links are at prominent places. Preferably right on top – that’s usually where a visitor first looks.

Make use of menus on the right and the left. Try to link to as many pages of your site. Let your information be accessible from all parts of the site. You never know what a visitor may be interested in. Try to also use the footer for your important links.

#Navigation tips.
1. Organized Links
2. Clear and Prominent
3. Consistent
4. Easy to understand
5. DHTML Menus

# All Resolutions –
Today, there are computers with all kinds of resolution. They range from 640 x 480 to 1024 x 768 and go even higher. Your job is to design your site for all these resolutions. The best way to do this is to design your site in terms of percentage and not pixels.

# Browser Compatibility –
Make sure your site is browser compatible. Your web site should look good in Netscape as well as in Internet Explorer. Don’t stop designing your site as soon as you find that it looks great on IE.
Usually Netscape gives some problems, especially when you try doing complicated HTML designs. But don’t give up too soon, usually with patience these problems can be easily fixed.

# Readable and professional looking fonts –
Don’t use Comic Sans and other fancy fonts that may not be available on most computers. If the font you use is not available in a visitors computer the web site will use the default font of your computer which is much worse. So try to keep to common and professional
web fonts. The fonts that we could always stick to are Arial, Tahoma and Verdana.

# Minimize the use of images –
I believe that sometimes simple designs are the most effective for the web. Keep your site simple but neat. Don’t clutter your page with big, bulky images that take ages to load. Instead use tables creatively and design eye – catching icons that will draw a visitor’s attention to a particular section of your site.

SMART AIMS feels – Visitors are usually more interested in content
than in design.

# Use of white space –
Try not to clutter up your page with too many images, backgrounds and colorful fonts. Again use the “Keep It Simple” principle by minimizing the use of graphics and using a lot of white space.
White space gives a sense of spaciousness and overall neatness to a site. We practice this.. check out our website.

# Check for broken links –
Always check for broken links within a site before uploading it to your web server. In Dreamweaver you can check for broken links by right clicking on any file in the Site Files Window and then clicking on Check links – Entire Site. If you don’t have this facility you need to upload your site and then check it using online tools like Net Mechanic.

We will keep adding to the list and would love to have your feedback.

Joomla! initially suffered  at the managing compartment, but with Joomla! 1.5, it made a huge step forward in solving this problem.

In order to understand the usability perspective for both systems, let’s try to simply post an image in an article.

Step 1:

We will have to choose a template to work with. Both platforms look the same and are very simple with host of options and themes.

For Joomla
1. Select “Add New Article” from “Control Panel”.
2. Now you must click on image icon bellow the text field and here you have the option to upload images or to browse existing images. Here you can align this image.
3. Type a Title, choose the Section and the Category.
4. Write the content, choose Published and Save the Article.

WordPress
1. Select QuickPress from the Dashboard.
2. Upload image with image icon button.
3. Type a Title and the Content.Here you can add some tags.
4. Now you can Publish your post.

When we have to create a website with more than 10 pages with different information, we can do this with both platforms. So when we start to put all the information on the site template, we’ll see the difference between platforms. It’s simple to accomplish these tasks With WordPress, as we only have to install some plugins, but with Joomla! we have to spend a little more time to re-organise the different module and then the menus from template. After this we have to link all menu items.

Joomla! is a big step forward regarding eCommerce. After we install VirtueMart on Joomla! it’s really simple to customize eCommerce, as multiple options are available to configure it. While WordPress offers a simple plugin with less options.

As far as the security level of both systems is concerned, Joomla! is placed on the top of the list because it offers multiple levels of permissions, thus becoming more flexible, while WordPress comes with just three levels of permissions.

Our conclusion, WordPress is well managed and is really easy to work with, while Joomla! comes with powerful options and detailed parameters for each compartment, giving us the possibility to manipulate and organize what you want and how you want.

The views projected here are our interpretation of things, and your experience could be varied, share it with us and we will be happy to learn together.

• Optimize your HTML code
• Maximize content area
• Minimize use of graphics
• Optimize all heavy image files
• Stick to simple designs
• Spread out your content neatly (should be readable)
• Use Text Links instead of graphic buttons
• Use Server Side Include (SSI) files
• Use Div tags instead of Tables (Web 2.0 look and css based)
• Minimize the use of Flash and external scripts
• Maximize use of CSS (no inline styles please!)
• Confirm to W3C validations of HTML and XHTML.

I am sure there would be many more, so please feel free to add on and lets learn together.

We were apprehensive to start with, not sure if we would do it, whether we would be succesful or a case of failure to adhere to the deadlines…but it was a client of ours.. a SMART AIMS friend, that just confided in our abilities.. and the result was a sharepoint portal on Health and Medical Care..

Its such a pleasently surprising tool, makes life so much easy.. and once you are thorough with the tutorials.. it works just as easy as any open source CMS.. though one has to be aware of concepts like master page etc, but knowledge of .net should help you take this step anytime now.

Sharepoint Designer.. the tool that works just like frontpage helps you edit and create new styles, change the look and feel of your sharepoint portal with such ease.. that you rather work with it to believe it.

We are learning to use sharepoint to provide optimum solutions..and will keep you posted of our learnings on this.. but if there is anything that our friends, readers and browsers can suggest us with.. we are truly game for it.

a) In this time of recession and depression.. Open source development has come up as an affordable alternative to the costlier resources in MS and Java technologies.. and moreover.. its as reliable and efficient as its more illustrious partners..

b) The cycle of development and execution time is much lesser compared to the other technologies.. and with the advent of CMS like Joomla, Worpress, Drupal etc.. its just getting easier day-by-day.. The reasons for the movement thus being obvious…

c) Resource cost and availability is in abundance.. and the training cycle too isn’t as big as the more illustrious big brothers like .Net and Java..

From Web Development technologies.. to more  important system resources.. Open Source is the mantra today.. and you may contest it to whatever extent. but none can ignore it..

Please feel free to write in your messages and comments and we would love to learn from and with you…