Deepak Chauhan's Blog http://www.vocso.net Any or everything that matters Sat, 09 Jul 2011 20:13:31 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 VOCSO Team – Fun at WOW (World’s Of Wonder, Noida) http://www.vocso.net/2011/07/vocso-team-fun-at-wow-worlds-of-wonder-noida/ http://www.vocso.net/2011/07/vocso-team-fun-at-wow-worlds-of-wonder-noida/#comments Sat, 09 Jul 2011 19:08:24 +0000 Deepak Chauhan http://www.vocso.net/?p=65 After the trip to Shimla earlier this year in Feb, it was time to have sum fun again. So we choosed a destination very close to our place – World's Of Wonder, TGIP, Noida. I dont wanna write much, guess I will let the pictures do the talking..


]]> http://www.vocso.net/2011/07/vocso-team-fun-at-wow-worlds-of-wonder-noida/feed/ 0 iPhone or Android ….or may be both? http://www.vocso.net/2010/10/iphone-or-android-or-may-be-both/ http://www.vocso.net/2010/10/iphone-or-android-or-may-be-both/#comments Tue, 19 Oct 2010 22:35:29 +0000 Deepak Chauhan http://www.vocso.com/blog/?p=46 Being specialized at one thing rather than learning a whole bunch of things you don't even need is a smart choice for success. This is what we've been doing here at VOCSO but at the same time we upgrade ourselves to make sure we can provide our clients with the best we can, utilizing our years of experience and the best blend of technologies.

This is the time when people are getting used to smaller devices called "Smartphones" to stay connected and maintain a balance between the personal and business life.  And hence more and more people are joining the "Internet Society". Apple's iPhone and Google's Android are one of the hottest things to talk about. Although iPhone is leading in many ways the latter is not a loser. People have their own reasons to chose between the iOS (iPhone Operating System) powered iPhones and Android based Smartphones.

Now that more and more people are upgrading themselves to these smartphones, businesses have a great opportunities to engage these users to provide them with a more easily accessible services and generate more prospects. There are many ways of engagement, if you're a travel booking company/agency you can offer an application that will allow quick availability search and booking, if you run an online shop, you may want to offer an app that allows customers to search your online shop database and order right from their phone, a company that has some online application/tools can offer a trimmed  down version of the same software on the smartphone. The possibilities are limitless. Another interesting idea could be to develop a game that increases awareness about your services or products.

The important question still remains unanswered "iPhone or Android?". In order to decide this consider a few things:

1) What demographic you're targeting? Whether they mostly have iPhone or Android bases phones?

2) Android based phones are relatively cheaper (specially in case of countries where mostly unlocked phones without any contract are offered). 

3) Android is an open mobile operating system platform by Google that allows any mobile hardware development company to build handsets/devices for this whereas iPhone is completely designed/built and offered by Apples.

4) There are several reasons like cost and open source nature of Android platform. This can be a big advatage when deciding to cover a large group of people with all kind of budgets. Whereas iPhone still remains a dream to most of the entry level users not willing to spend much. A good android based phone can be purchased in as low as 300 US$.

5) Not much of a constraint but this is an important aspect to be considered. iPhone developers need to be familiar with Mac Platform. They need to know how to work efficiently on the mac platform with COCOA programming language whereas the Android is mainly based on linux but developer's are free to use any platform, windows, linux or mac. The development platform uses java. This is logically bound to attract more and more developers.

6) Currently, Android is not as hot as iPhone because of the very simple reason, this is new opposed to iPhone and will gradually establish itself as the favorite choice and grow rapidly in numbers. Android has already started to replace other conventional platforms such as Nokia's Symbian amongst the others.

 

I'm not trying to attract interest to any particular choice. But it can be determined easily keeping the above facts in mind "iPhone or Android… or may be both!"

Atleast this what we've decided here at VOCSO. We're ready to start exploiting the power of smartphones, be it Android or iPhone/iOS.

 

PS: this article is mainly from the business point of view and consumers may not find it much useful.  However I'm already tempted  to write another post that will focus on consumers.

]]> http://www.vocso.net/2010/10/iphone-or-android-or-may-be-both/feed/ 0 When do you need a Web CMS? http://www.vocso.net/2010/10/when-do-you-need-a-web-cms/ http://www.vocso.net/2010/10/when-do-you-need-a-web-cms/#comments Sun, 17 Oct 2010 00:39:14 +0000 Deepak Chauhan http://www.vocso.com/blog/?p=22 I usually get clients asking me to do a website with a Web CMS which is a great thing in many ways. They know a lot about it's features already and that's the biggest reason why they feel like having it fir their website. CMS in short or the Web Content Management System is a great way to allow not-much-tech-savvy people to manipulate their web contents themselves, without needing a web designer's help.

This definitely is an advantage. Let us find out what are the advantages and when do you really need a Web Content Management System (or CMS).

1) You want to frequently update your website contents or post news & events

2) You want to save on the cost by doing it yourself

3) You want the the same consistency of layout to be carried throughout the website

4) Automatically/Easily update the website navigation when you add new pages

5) Want to be able to easily change the website design in future without having to reenter all the contents 

6) Open Source Content Management Systems for not so very customized requirements

7) Inbuilt Search Engine Optimization (On-page SEO) 

8 ) Integrate Dynamic Content & Functionality

9) Permission based access to internal staff on different areas of the website

10) Keep the high content quality with the centralized coordination

 

I'm sure after reading this you think your website should have the Content Management System. But before you jump to the conclusion let us take a look at a few things:

1) Can your requirement be well addressed by a packaged, open source or a custom Content Management System?

2) Does your web host support the technologies  the CMS is built on? E.g. Most CMS these days are built with PHP-MySQL

3) If you're going with open source Content Management System – does your web host support it?

4) In case you've been recommended a customized content management system, you need to be sure you trust the capabilities of the company/developer and if they are available for you to take care of any bugs as soon as they are discovered during the live run of the website?

5) The CMS should simply your task of updating content. You should not need to unnecessarily waste your precious time having to understand a lot of new things when your goal is simple.

6) Your CMS system should be secure and should not allow any sort of SQL Injections or allow uploading of executable files/scripts. This can be a major threat.

7) Does the CMS have possibilities of expansion? As your business grows you may want to do a lot more with your website. Your content management system should be ready to accept the expansion needs.

8 ) Be sure to see a demonstration of the Content Management system you're going to use. This will help you develop a feel for it and whether you feel comfortableusing it and if it lives upto your extensions.

 

Checkout some of the CMS platforms I recommend:

 

With this information I'm sure you're ready to  select the best suited Web Content Management System for your Website. Post your comment if you have any further question or suggestions.

 

PS: If you need a consultation regarding any of these recommendation or need a custom solution feel free to write me.

]]> http://www.vocso.net/2010/10/when-do-you-need-a-web-cms/feed/ 0 To Blog or Not To Blog http://www.vocso.net/2010/10/to-blog-or-not-to-blog/ http://www.vocso.net/2010/10/to-blog-or-not-to-blog/#comments Sat, 16 Oct 2010 03:54:39 +0000 Deepak Chauhan http://www.vocso.com/blog/?p=16 This is the question that kept messing around my head for over a year "To Blog or Not To Blog?", when I finally decided to blog. You would be wondering why it was so hard for me to decide or if there is anything to decide. For people like me, who expect every single line of text to do some magic, this definitely is a tough decision. Crazy programmers invest their precious keystrokes into writing codes that speaks to computer that does some real job. Writing hundreds of words that just get dumped into database and then sit on a webpage seems like a wastage of precious keystrokes.

When I started thinking from another perspective its not really a wastage. This a way where you can share your achievements, feelings, ideas or just anything you want. Anything you expect other people to know and comment and appreciate. This brought me closer to the decision of start blogging which got further solidified with some of these factors:

1) Build Online Reputation
     When you're writing since quite some time and people like reading your articles the online reputation of your articles increases.

2) Develop Good Traffic
     You attract a lot of search engines such as google to crawl your articles which gradually starts sending you searchers for the topics your write on. This is the time you can use to promote your services or products to those searchers. Because the services are relevant to your blog articles this will develop their interest and they may end up becoming a good prospect.

3) Satisfy your innerself  
     You will feel satisfied when you write something interesting and useful and people send in good comments.

4) It pays to blog
     When you have good amount of people visiting your blog. You may have people interested in buying ad-space on your blog. You can also use google adsense or similar rewarding programs such buysellads, CJ network, adbrite etc.

5) Begin a conversation
     When you have an interesting topic, you can share it on your favorite social networks and strike a conversation. 

 

These are just a few reasons, you will discover many more reasons when you get started. 

Although I do not find much of time from my coding and management responsibilities but whenever I've time, I will write! Atleast I've an answer now "To Blog or Not To Blog"

]]> http://www.vocso.net/2010/10/to-blog-or-not-to-blog/feed/ 8 If I was not a programmer…? http://www.vocso.net/2010/10/if-i-was-not-a-programmeer/ http://www.vocso.net/2010/10/if-i-was-not-a-programmeer/#comments Thu, 14 Oct 2010 19:23:33 +0000 Deepak Chauhan http://www.vocso.com/blog/?p=1 Well sometimes i think what I would have been doing if I was not a programmer? Simple… isn't it? Most of my friends dreamed about becoming some traditional electronics engineer, because the sound of it was loved by everyone and it used to be one of the sought after career until the millennium era came into existence. I was no exception, as most had to chose out of engineers, doctors, teachers etc. I hated them all, but just for the sake of choosing one, I wanted to pursue electronics engineering.

Everything was fine before the day when I grew an interest into computers. When my friends used it to play games, I found it an unprecedented access to a wealth of information. It felt like this what I need. From the school days I loved the subjects that were logical specially mathematics, and computer is all 0's and 1's :) I loved the idea of writing the peace of code to instruct the computer perform activities.

Initially I developed interest in system programming and learnt C, C++, Core Java, Swing, RMI, et-all. I loved these programming languages as they had the power to manipulate the operating system and system softwares. That was the time when Java programming language used to be popular amongst budding programmers and enthusiasts. Later I learnt some Microsoft technologies starting with Visual Basic 6.0, Classic ASP, SQL Server to ASP.net. I got my first job as a Web Programmer where I used to code in ASP and occasionally did some desktop based applications using Visual Basic. And you know as they say… "The learning never stops if you have a desire to learn". Kept upgrading myself with upcoming technologies such as PHP, Coldfusion a bit of Flash Action Scripting (this is really interesting).

I've been programming and designing websites for more than 7 years now and I still love doing that. It never happened that I lost interest for a single day. I loved my journey so far. Here is the career graph:

1) Trainee Web Programmer
2) Web Programmer
3) Sr. Web Developer
4) Team Leader
5) Project Manager
6) Director & CTO & Human Resource Head
7) Founding Director & CEO

If I look back, there were so many ups and down ( LOL… you cant see that in my career graph), but regardless I'm happy with this and I can't even imagine an alternative career for me :)

PS: I'm not a professional blogger and this is my first ever blog (yes its true). I look forward to your comments!

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