In The News

Metro International iPhone applications enable iPhone users in Holland, Sweden and Chile to access latest news. Users can also view news in pictures by browsing through the photo gallery. In addition, the applications let users share news articles on Facebook and Twitter straight from their iPhones.

Cricket is a religion in our country. There is nothing else that has captured the imagination of the Indian public like cricket has. Today, no other Sports command such an extreme level of attention, commerce and passion as Cricket. Cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag are given God-like status in our society. And, there is no bigger sporting event than the ICC Cricket World Cup in our country.

On the other hand, the way we communicate online has gone through a sea change over last few years. Social networking has become a rage in our country. Everyone from young children to adults are communicating with each other through social networking platforms on the web.

The list of activities one could do on these social networking platforms is endless. Mailing, instant messaging, uploading pictures and videos is all one part of the social networking experience. The other part of the experience includes playing games against each other, participating in competitions, etc.

This has led to the rise of social gaming, which commonly refers to playing games as a way of social interaction, as opposed to playing games in solitude.

Almost everyone who follows cricket religiously has at least once in his or her lifetime placed a friendly wager on what the result of a match was going to be.

Bet Bat Ball is an application developed by Stigasoft for HT media and is a social media application that has been designed to provide users with a platform to live this experience online. It has been designed to appeal to the pundit in every cricket fan around the world.

This is a custom made application and is a one stop package for every cricket lover, providing fixtures, results, live scores and related news from the Hindustan Times website.

Some of the features of the application are to allow users to perform the following actions:

• Predict results of matches.
• Compete with other cricket fans across the world.
• Challenge friends with custom Mini Leagues.
• View position on the Leader board.
• Answer currently relevant questions about ongoing or upcoming matches.

Stigasoft has acquired a high degree of expertise in providing software development and allied IT services – both for domestic and international partners. Our teams possess extensive professional experience in developing, deploying and maintaining Offshore Software, Web applications, mobile applications and social media applications around the world.

With the renewal, Stigasoft continues to be recognized by Microsoft as offering the highest level of competence and expertise with Microsoft Technologies, with a particular competency on SOA and Business Process, Custom Software Development and Database Development.

Stigasoft is committed and dedicated to enabling people and businesses to realize their potential with Microsoft software solutions by providing a high level of technological proficiency and skilled delivery of valued services to technology customers.

As a Gold Certified Partner, Stigasoft gains early access to new technology and the tools necessary to ensure comprehensive product development at Microsoft, including product betas for development and testing purposes, as well as prioritized referrals and advanced technical and marketing information, thereby giving Stigasoft a competitive advantage over its peers.

The current economic recession is many times more epidemic than the ones seen in the past – thanks to the widespread brouhaha created by 21st century fourth estate which takes no time to overplay whatever comes its way. In this dim and clamor it is but easy to miss the opportunities that the predicament has brought along. Paradoxical it may sound, but outsourcing IT jobs makes more sense during recession than it does during normal economic state. In case you choose to disagree, consider the following:

• Better bargain: Outsourcing can be effectively used by onshore IT companies as strategic measure to contain the cost of IT services due to the fact that offshore facility and development cost can be heavily negotiated to strike better bargains.
• Better competitive advantage: Offshore companies compete fiercely against each other to bag outsourced projects offering great cost benefits to the onshore IT companies. Moreover, project execution and delivery schedules can be easily negotiated in the clients’ favor.
• Reverse migration of skilled workers: Recession has compelled many onshore IT companies to lay off many of their skilled workers most of whom have opted to turn back to their respective countries of origin. Native offshore companies have greatly benefited from this attrition by absorbing the skilled workforce into their folds augmenting their business capacity.

Several onshore IT and ITeS companies have shown the courage and vision to look at the positive side of the economic turndown in formulating strategies favoring increased outsourcing to select destinations, as has been indicated in a recent Forrester Research survey according to which barely 21% of global enterprises have cut down their IT outsourcing budget whereas more than double (46%) have reduced their overall IT budgets.

The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium and since 1994 the W3C has provided the rules by which websites and web pages should be structured and created. The rules they outline are based on the best practices and while websites don’t have to comply to be viewed correctly in Internet Explorer and other popular browsers that cater to incorrect design practices, there are a number of compelling reasons to ensure that you or your designer ensure that the W3C guidelines are followed and that your site is brought into compliance.

Bringing websites In Compliance With W3C Standards?

The ideal solution is to have your site designed in compliance to begin with. If you already have a website you have one of two options:

1. Appoint a designer familiar with W3C standards and have your site redone, or
2. Prepare yourself for a big learning curve and a bit of aggravation.

Resources

Assuming that you’ve decided to do the work yourself there are a number of great resources out there. By far the best that I’ve found in my travels is the Web Developer extension for Firefox. You’ll have to install the Firefox browser first and then install the extension. Among other great tools for SEO this extension provides a one-click check for compliance and provides a list of where your errors are, what’s causing them and links to solutions right from the W3C. The extension provides testing for HTML, XHTML, CSS and Accessibility compliance.

Other resources you’ll definitely want to check into are:

• CSS Zen Garden
• A List Apart
• Holy CSS ZeldMan!

How to Get Started?

• The first place to start would be to download Firefox and install the Web Developer extension. This will give you easy access to testing tools.
• The next step is to bookmark the resources above.
• Once you’ve done these you’d do well to run the tests on your own site while at the same time keeping up an example site that already complies so you can look at their code if need be.
• To give you a less annoying starts beginning with your CSS validation. Usually CSS validation is easier and faster than the other forms.
• Once finished with CSS move on to HTML or XHTML validation. Once CSS and HTML/XHTML are validated it’s time to comply with Accessibility standards. In this clean up a ton of your code and moving a lot into CSS, which means you’ll be further adding to your style sheet. If you’re not comfortable with CSS you’ll want to revisit the resources above. CSS is not a big mystery though it can be taxing in the beginning. As a pleasing by-product you are sure to find a number of interesting effects and formats that are possible with CSS that you didn’t even know were so easily added to your site.

But What Do I Get From All This?

Once you’re done you’ll be left with a compliant site that not only will be available on a much larger number of browsers (increasingly important as browsers such as Firefox gain more and users) but you’ll have a site with far less code that will rank higher on the search engines because of it.

To be sure, W3C validation is not the “magic bullet” to top rankings. In the current SEO world there is no one thing that is. However as more and more website are born and the competition for top positioning gets more fierce it’s important to take every advantage you can to not only get to the first page but to hold your position against those who want to take it from you as you took it from someone else.

Stigasoft has taken yet another leap by entering the Red Hat ecosystem as a Ready ISV partner. Red Hat is the leader in open source technology and as a partner we are expected to work together to provide customers with complete-solutions optimized for best performance on several architectures.

Recently, open source development has been steadily on the rise. Stigasoft’s offerings in open source development services have expanded to include Red Hat platforms and technologies instead being restricted to proprietary architectures and platforms. In becoming a Red Hat Ready ISV Partner Stigasoft has acquired the added capabilities of producing software products to work with Red Hat infrastructure and JBoss middleware products. As a Red Hat Ready ISV Partner, Stigasoft will receive free access to Red Hat Developer Subscription, early release software, Partner Helpdesk and Global Learning Services. Stigasoft will also be able to use Partner Program logo on the relevant products and services to reflect the brand strength and quality assurance. The plethora of benefits thrown open to Stigasoft and eventually to our clients in partnering with Red Hat is summarized below.

1. Developer Subscription: Stigasoft will enjoy free access to demonstration subscriptions to Red Hat and JBoss products. However, these subscriptions will not be available for reselling; instead they can be used for development, training, and testing purposes only.
2. Partner Helpdesk: Stigasoft will be able to contact the Red Hat Partner Helpdesk for various types of assistance and support.
3. Access to early release software: Stigasoft will have access to community projects published on certain websites for early preview releases of upcoming versions and tools.
4. Attendance at Red Hat conferences: Stigasoft can attend selected developer or user conferences hosted by Red Hat at discounted rates.
5. Access to Global Learning Services: Stigasoft technical team members are eligible for enrollment to training classes at discounted rates.
6. Access to the ISV Resource Center: Stigasoft will be eligible to access the Red Hat’s online content repository and partnership management tool, aka Partner Center.
7. Partner profile in ISV Solutions Catalog: Stigasoft will be able to enhance its visibility through Solutions Catalogue, which is an online directory of all Red Hat and JBoss ISV Partner solutions, applications and products.
8. Red Hat Ready Application Logo Usage: Stigasoft will be entitled to use the logo to position the Red Hat Ready Application in the market in compliance with Red Hat policy available at Partner Center.

Stigasoft has reached another milestone in trust and capacity building by joining IBM PartnerWorld as a qualified Member. IBM confers this status to companies and ISVs that pass several ‘capacity and quality’ criteria specified in their membership charters. Qualifying criteria include factors such as level of skills, revenue, infrastructure, achieved level of customer satisfaction, etc. It is a matter of great pride for all of us at Stigasoft to have earned it.

Strategic advantages

Our association with IBM shall enable us to utilize IBM PartnerWorld’s tools and resources to make quicker market-entry, faster products and solutions launch, and to realize increased business profit through reduced sales-cycle.

Teaming up with the industry giant like IBM is expected to help us enormously in honing our skills through in-depth training directly by IBM experts enabling us not only to match but to surpass the service-expectations of our clients. The increased serving capacity would eventually help us expand into new markets hitherto unexplored.

Since, IBM experts are going to be backing us up throughout a project life-cycle – “from the first encounter with the customer to post-sales support” – we are extremely confidant to serve our clients with the best the industry has there to offer as far as IBM technology and solutions are concerned.

Our clients can rely on us for providing best of the IBM products and services.

Our competence, strict adherence to high standards for service-delivery as well as customer- satisfaction, and ability to serve our clients in Microsoft technologies have reached yet another important milestone. Microsoft confers upon us the elite status of ‘Gold Certified Partner’ in recognition of our sincere and dedicated endeavor in implementing Microsoft technologies to create business solutions.

As a ‘Gold Certified Partner’ we are now entitled to various valuable supports direct from Microsoft which will surely go a long way to provide even better services to our clients. We now have first-hand access to emerging technologies, tools and beta versions of products being developed at Microsoft. We shall be working conjointly with Microsoft labs in development and validation of newer and powerful technologies, in turn, bringing immense benefits to our clients.

Microsoft expresses trust in partner’s technical capabilities through the concept of modular competency. Microsoft Competencies have been designed to foster high level of professional trust in customers towards the certified partners with respect to specific Microsoft technology. As of now, Microsoft defines 16 core competencies each having a unique set of requirements and benefits. Attaining at least one of the core competencies is a prerequisite to attaining Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status.

Stigasoft has been able to pitch its claim to “Microsoft Gold Certified” partnership through earning the following competencies:

• Service-Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management

  This certification is awarded to partners who possess proven expertise in application of SOA and BPM approaches to complex business solutions.

  As more and more business processes are shifting to server platforms like Microsoft BizTalk, Microsoft Host Integration Server on Windows Server 2003, a great deal of technological competency is required to plan, develop and deploy effective and reliable solutions.

  Stigasoft, has earned well-deserved competency in implementing Microsoft SOA and Business Process to help clients integrate information, people and processes through interoperable, modularized, extensible and secure e-business solutions.

  Stigasoft is now in a much better position to help its clients with Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), B2B application integration, Business Process Management (BPM) Solutions, and Adapter Development.

• Data Management Solutions

  Partners having proven competency in implementing SQL Server solutions including data warehousing, OLAP, data mining and DSS, alone are qualified to obtain this certification.

• Custom Development Solutions

  Partners with proficiency in providing custom-developed solutions to customers on Microsoft development platforms like Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio Tools for Office, Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Server 2008, Microsoft BizTalk Server, Windows XP, Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system in the areas of Application Infrastructure Development, Smart Client Development and Web Development, are entitled to this certification.

Stigasoft has joined Drupal Association and is proud to put on the Drupal membership badge. Drupal is an open-source license-free software package having powerful features to facilitate publishing, managing and organizing contents of many types over websites. Drupal scores one over other competing content management technologies due to its flexibility and extensibility. It can be configured in variety of ways to administer a website and publish contents such as blogs and forums without having much knowledge of programming.

Now with a two hundred thousand strong community backing and supporting the development project, Drupal is fast transforming into the preferred technology for community website development.

Drupal can be effectively employed to build following types of websites:

1. Community Sites
2. Polling Websites
3. News Publishing Websites
4. Corporate Websites
5. Resource Directories
6. Educational Websites
7. Multimedia Websites

Drupal offers a number of compelling benefits to web development projects including the following:

1. Standards Adherence: Drupal complies with industry standards such as XHTML and CSS.
2. Better Load-Balancing: Drupal is equipped with in-built mechanisms like throttling and caching for better load-balancing achieving better performance.
3. Open Source: Drupal is freely available under the terms of the GNU General Public License 2 which can be extended and customized to suit individual needs.

Drupal Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to the sole cause of supporting and enriching the Drupal platform and infrastructure. Stigasoft would like to appeal to everyone to contribute generously and to strengthen Drupal Association by subscribing membership to the Association.