Monthly Archives: July 2011

  • July 29, 2011

    New Signature Founder and CEO Christopher Hertz Recieves Pete Kuchli Urban Empowerment Award from YearUp National Capital Region

    By New Signature
    Awards

    New Signature Founder and CEO Christopher Hertz received the Pete Kuchli Urban Empowerment Award from YearUp’s National Capital Region Chapter.   This award honors leaders who share YearUp’s values and vision and who are making a strong and measurable impact on young adults.

    Year Up is truly one of those rare programs that has a direct, immediate and lasting impact on the community.  The entire community is enriched through YearUp’s empowerment of young adults.  The YearUp program provides them with the skills, experience, and support that helps them reach their true potential.  We have been honored to have the opportunity to assist YearUp in their efforts.  New Signature has worked closely with YearUp by sponsoring interns, and providing pro bono training to enhance the educational experience for students and pro bono IT services to improve the productivity of staff and faculty.

    Year Up is a one-year, intensive training program that provides urban young adults 18-24, with a unique combination of technical and professional skills, college credits, an educational stipend and corporate internship.  The program enables graduates to move on to full-time employment and higher education.  Year Up provides opportunities for urban young adults to demonstrate their true potential.  Watch the video below to learn more about the opportunity divide in America and the steps that YearUp is taking to close it.

    Interested in helping close the opportunity divide? Contact YearUp today to learn about what you or your organization can do to help!

  • Real-time Web Apps With SocketStream

    By Seamus Leahy
    Branding, Website and Database

    The New Signature team regularly discusses how to take user engagement to the next level with websites, social media, and mobile apps. One of the topics that keeps popping up is real-time communication, which has recently really started showing up on the web in how Facebook adds new comments as they are added or the collaborative editing of Google docs or Microsoft Live Office. This is why SocketStream framework is so exciting for the real-time web.

    SocketStream is a young fully stacked framework that embraces new browser and server technologies to achieve fast real-time web applications. It utilizes HTML5 websockets for real bi-directional full-duplex communication between browser and server instead of the faux AJAX way. It runs on top of Node.js a server-side Javascript environment that is event driven in nature, which drastically reduces the server load while increasing responsiveness.

    With SocketStream, it will be possible to make a news site that is updated in real-time in ways that rival the real-time news of TV news channels. Or for data-driven visualization and dashboard sites, researchers could collaborate together while being in remote locations. Or for online education, it could improve learning by creating interactive collaborative labs for students to learn together.

    If you want to take you website project to the next level with real-time communications, New Signature’s team of experts is ready to help! Call us today so we can learn more about your project!

  • New Signature Click2Call App a Part of the Powerful NY Gay Rights Campaign Run by FriendFactor

    By New Signature and Craig Zingerline
    Branding, Website and Database \ Products and Labs

    The fight for gay marriage legislation that passed in New York State a couple weeks back had a little bit of help from software that New Signature developed.   New Signature’s C2C Jalapeno client Friendfactor was instrumental in helping pass this legislation through a sophisticated and powerful strategy that utilized our powerful click to call Salsa application.  Using C2C Jalapeno, supporters connect to legislators via a one-click action on a web page. It’s a streamlined process that has been successful in pushing change through organized campaigns.

    C2C Jalapeno is a robust telephony application built on Salsa–a suite of online organizing tools that help you build awareness, mobilize your people, and keep them engaged.  C2C Jalapeno automates and guides visitors through the workflow of advocating the campaign target, including provision of a customized script.

    On the Friendfactor Web site, anyone from the general public can start a page on the site to solicit support for gay rights.  In the latest Friendfactor campaign, some big names such as U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Sarah Silverman and Chelsea Handler created pages on the site.  With these pages, the page creators then ask their friends and relatives for support to help pass gay rights legislation.

    The New York Times posted two articles (“On Gay Rights, Moving Real-Life Friends to Action” and “Friends in Revolution“) about this campaign and stated that this approach “… is something that could help make Facebook Revolutions real.”  This is pretty powerful given all of the talk in recent months of Social Revolution.

    For more information about C2C Jalapeno, please visit the C2C Jalapeno website.  Need help with an online campaign?  We can bring years of expertise making the world a more just and equitable through online work for organizations, causes, coalitions and candidates.  Call New Signature today to get started!

  • July 28, 2011

    SCSM Customizing Views / XML / View Logic

    By Kevin Wong
    IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    Here at New Signature we’ve been using System Center Service Manager (SCSM) for months, enabling us to more quickly automate common tasks and increase our adherence to ITIL best practices. We love the product and the way it helps us achieve our goals, but with any relatively new Microsoft release, there are some quirks to overcome.

    Currently the stock user interface of SCSM SP1 is fairly limited, and there are many things that you aren’t able to accomplish without cracking open a management pack (MP) and tinkering around with the XML inside.  With the latest version of SCSM 2012 scheduled to be released in 4-5 months, the situation will not improve anytime soon…which is why you should learn how to mod your own views.

    In this post, I will focus on customizing views in SCSM – the simple example I will use revolves around changing the view logic.

    EXPORTING YOUR MP
    To get to the XML that defines your MP (in which your view is stored), you have to first export it.  Whether you are trying to customize a view or attempting to change the UI of the input forms for a class, you’ll want to first figure out which MP is associated with the task you’re trying to accomplish.  For example, if we’re trying to modify an existing view:

     

    1.    Right-click the view –> Edit View –> General –> Management pack
    If you’re trying to make a custom view from scratch, you’ll already know what management pack you placed the view inside.

    2.    Administration –> Management Packs –> Search for your MP –> Export (more…)

  • New Signature and Glen Echo Group Launch Gig.U Website

    By New Signature
    Branding, Website and Database \ Site Launches \ WordPress

    New Signature teamed with the Glen Echo Group on the Gig.U website. New Signature designed the logo and website for Gig.U and built the website on the WordPress publishing platform.

    The University Community Next Generation Innovation Project, or Gig.U, is a broad-based group of almost 30 leading research universities from across the United States. Drawing on America’s rich history of community-led innovation in research and entrepreneurship, Gig.U seeks to accelerate the deployment of ultra high-speed networks to leading U.S. universities and their surrounding communities. Improvements to these networks drive economic growth and stimulate a new generation of innovations addressing critical needs, such as health care and education.

    New Signature built the Gig.U website with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.  The WordPress publishing platform provides the Gig.U team with the ability to manage content and provide members with a password protected Members Only section.

  • Forefront Online Protection for Exchange and the “Junk Folder” in a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Environment

    By Rohan Black
    IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    You might run into the scenario where your employer wants all SPAM directed to the junk folder in Outlook. If you’re using Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) and not an Microsoft Exchange Edge Transport Server, you will need to set up some extra settings in your admin console and your Microsoft Exchange Server to allow these pesky emails to go through.

    FOPE defaults to sending email to a quarantine mailbox that a user will have to log into. It does not tie into the users outlook profile. You will need to change the settings so that it will mark the spam, and pass it on to the exchange filters.  To start this process go to your domain, and under Service Settings – Spam Action: modify the subject to include something identifiable (such as [SPAM]), or Add the X-Header: X-EHS-MARKED-SPAM. This setting will take about 3-4 hours to propagate.

    On the Exchange side, Microsoft recommends using a the Edge transport role to have access to its content filtering tools.  Unfortunately, the Edge transport rule cannot be hosted on the same exchange server as the hub transport rule. This means another copy of Exchange and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 will be required.  You can get around this by using transport rules on the hub server in the following way.

    Open a command shell and enter the following commands:

    • Set-OrganizationConfig –SCLJunkThreshold 5
    • Set-ContentFilterConfig –SCLDeleteEnabled $False
    • Set-ContentFilterConfig –SCLRejectEnabled $False
    • Set-ContentFilterConfig –SCLQuarantineEnabled $False

    This turns off all the actions except forwarding spam to the junkmail folder. The SCLRejectEnabled defaults to True, so definitely make sure this is turned off.

    NOTE: if these settings aren’t working for you, you will need to install the antispam agents. There is a useful guide, “Install Anti-spam Agents on the Hub Transport server“, on how to do that.

    Create a transport rule that will do the following:

    • Apply the rule to messages
    • When the Subject field contains SPAM
    • Set the spam confidence level to 9

    9 is the highest spam confidence, which would usually mean it will be deleted, since you’ve got everything turned off except the junk mail, it’ll go straight there.

    Start your testing! Make sure you’re sending email from an external domain, internal emails are set to a default SCL of -1 which bypasses the local spam filters.

    Give New Signature a call today if you are looking for a team that has a deep bench of Microsoft Exchange experts to help plan, build, manage or maintain your Microsoft Exchange messaging environment.

  • July 27, 2011

    How to Start Building a Custom Twitter Widget

    By Seamus Leahy
    Branding, Website and Database

    Twitter provides a widget to display tweets that you can embed on your website.  It is easy to create with many options such as checking for new tweets and custom colors. If you are like me, you imagine fancier widgets than is achievable with the standard widget.  It is not hard to get started with create a custom widget using jQuery, jQuery templates, and Twitter’s robust API.

    The first task is to get the data from the Twitter API. You can see what URL and parameters to use by looking around the Twitter API console which allows you to try it out in the browser. For your simple widget, you will need the ‘statues/user_timeline’ (under Timeline in the console) to get an array of tweets for a given screen_name.

    Now you know the API URL to call, you just need to call it. Luckily jQuery and Twitter support JSONP that allows you to get the data cross-domain. All you have to do is set the type to ‘jsonp’ in the AJAX request within jQuery.

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    [RAW]var url = 'http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json';
    
var params = {'screen_name': 'newsignature'};
    
var callback = function(data, textStatus) { };
    
$.get(url, params, callback, 'jsonp');[/RAW]

    The above gets back a list of tweets just like what is displayed in the console. Now you need to display the tweets. You could build all the elements one at a time or by building a long string, but you have an easier way – jQuery templates. A newish official jQuery plugin is the template plugin that Microsoft is sponsoring. It lets you create templates with special template tags to output values and do common actions such as looping over an array. Create a template and place it in a script element with and ID to reference and set the type to ‘text/x-jquery-tmpl’.

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    [RAW]<script id="twitter-template" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl"><script type="text/x-jquery-tmpl" id="twitter-template">
    
  <ul>
    
  {{each(i, tweet) tweets}}
    
    <li>
    
      <span class="text"><a href="http://twitter.com/${tweet.user.screen_name}/status/${tweet.id_str}">${tweet.text}</a></span>
    
      <span class="who"><img src="${tweet.user.profile_image_url}" alt="{profile image}" /> <a href="http://twitter.com/${tweet.user.screen_name}">${tweet.user.name} </a></span>
    
</li>
    
  {{/each}}
    
  </ul>
    
&lt;/script&gt;</script>[/RAW]

    You created your template, now you need to use it. You call the jQuery method tmpl() and pass in the data for it to use.

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    [RAW]var callback = function(data, textStatus) {
    
  $('#twitter-template').tmpl( {'tweets': data} ).appendTo(element);
    
};[/RAW]

    Try out the demo of the resulting custom widget. Certainly this widget is very basic, but now you can add on your own customizations and features to make your very own custom Twitter widget.

    Need help with Twitter or a website development project?  New Signature’s team of experts is ready to help!  Call us today so we can learn more about your project!

  • July 26, 2011

    Windows Phone Mango Coming to a Phone Near You!

    By Christopher Hertz
    IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    Microsoft just announced that Windows Phone Mango has been released to manufacture.  This means that the the latest version of the Windows Phone operating system is being sent to handset manufacturers and mobile operators and will soon be in the hands of customers.

    We have been using the Windows Phone operating system for some time now and have been incredibly impressed by its features, ease of use and versatility (not to mention from an enterprise perspective its ease of management).  At Microsoft WPC 2011 we got a sneak peak at Mango and were impressed by many of the new features (there are more than 500 improvements in Mango).  Early reviews on Mango have been extremely positive and have praised the attention to detail in the new operating system. Steve Clayton says he loves, “The little things like groups in contacts, faster access to apps with intelligent searching and history of all my actions with people (or groups).”

    It is a shame that many salespeople at mobile phone stores are steering customers to the iOS and Android devices and away from trying out the Windows Phone experience.  I recently was in a local Verizon Wireless store and went to look at the HTC Trophy, only to be approach by a salesman who tried to push the iPhone 4 on me.  Worst of all he didn’t seem to know anything about the device that he was telling me not to consider.

    If you have the time, I highly recommend checking out the Windows Phones currently being sold by the likes of Verizon and AT&T.  Even if you aren’t in the market for a new phone you might be pleasantly surprised by the intuitive and fresh approach to the user interface.  If you are interested in making a change at a corporate level give New Signature a call.  Windows Phones are a great way to upgrade an aging fleet of Blackberries (not to mention RIM just laid off 2,000) to a device that has more features, better performance and is easier to manage.

  • Six Months of Drupal 7

    By Ben Byrne
    Branding, Website and Database \ Drupal

    Drupal 7, the latest version of one the leading open-source Content Management Systems, was released on January 5, which means the six-month anniversary for the release was earlier this month. New Signature has worked with Drupal 7 extensively since its release, building interactive websites, writing modules, and extending Drupal. Those experiences have led us to realize that this latest major release comes with both advantages and disadvantages. Below is a quick summary of a few of the lessons learned.

    Strengths

    Entities: Drupal 7 introduces the concept of “entities,” which wrap around all the different content structures — nodes, users, taxonomy terms, etc — present in Drupal. This new entity approach allows us to do things that wouldn’t have been possible (or easy) in previous versions of Drupal, and we think it’s a significant step forward.

    Improved Theming: Drupal 7 handles a lot of things about theming differently than Drupal 6 did, such as render elements (they’re not just for forms any more!), an HTML template file, and more. This gives more power and much-needed flexibility to themers implementing great designs, and we have already gotten so used to theming Drupal 7 that working in Drupal 6 feels archaic.

    Usability: We’re finding that our clients (and ourselves) generally find the Drupal 7 administrative interface to me more usable than its predecessors, thanks to user interface changes such as vertical tabs, the admin overlays, shortcuts, and so on. (more…)

  • Don’t Forget Antivirus for Mac OS X at Work (or at Home)

    By Peter Day
    IT Consulting and Support \ Microsoft

    Many Apple users believe that OS X does not suffer from security vulnerabilities.  However, as the MACDefender malware attach demonstrated this is simply not true.  As the Mac OS X install base grows larger, and more businesses adopt Mac OS X workstations and laptops, the volume, velocity and danger of OS X targeted malware will increase.  New Signature recommends that all of our clients protect their business computers running OS X with enterprise grade anti-virus/anti-malware software.  At present, we recommend the Sophos endpoint security product suite as the best option to protect against the latest threats for OS X computers.  For Microsoft Windows PCs and laptops we recommend either the cloud-based Windows Intune or on-premises Microsoft Forefront.

    We also try to educate our client’s staff to install anti-virus/anti-malware on their home computers as well.  This is especially true for Mac OS X users, many of whom don’t realize that they could be at risk.  The great news is that Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition is completely free for home use.

    Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition is easy to install and places a shield icon on the menu bar.  By default it will then start protecting your Mac by monitoring files as they are used in real time.  You get high quality anti-virus protection with daily updates for a price that’s hard to beat (free)!  You can also define a custom manual scan to do a full scan of specific folders, however the default option to scan all local drives should suffice for most situations.

    Users who like to keep current will be pleased that Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition is already compatible with Apple’s newest realease, OS X 10.7 Lion.

    For folks who use Windows at home and are looking for robust anti-virus/anti-malware protection we recommend using the Microsoft Security Essentials.  Microsoft Security Essentials is a free download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and is automatically updated to protect your PC with the latest technology. It provides real-time protection for your home PC against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.