Team Building Ananda Resource Library

Glad to help

2006-05-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

I am more than happy to answer questions regarding user interface and user experience design. I know a fair amount about what display code (XHTML, CSS, DHTML, javascript, Flash, etc.) can accomplish, but I am not a coder. My strong suit is in driving the process of developing the overall user strategy for a site, modeling workflow and task flow, and then wireframing screen designs to fit the strategy and support the workflow.

I may be a bit too focused for most projects :). But I am happy to offer advice and ideas where I have them.

Warm regards,
Puru

New DreamTeam Member!

2006-05-10T17:37:00.000-07:00

Puru Selbie President and CEO of Tristream
Tristream is a leader in web application design: Award winning thought leaders, they provide full services to create user centered, usability tested, applications.

Puru is:

A Tristream founder
Top-level strategist on key clients: Cisco, Sun, Wells Fargo Bank, AvantGo, QuantumShift, Cendant Mobility and KPMG.
Business strategist and infrastructure consultant for Burningpoint (Roxio)
Positioning, branding, and technical consultant for Trend Technologies and gigaflip
Primary architect of Lateral Works Systems intranet communications hub used by Tektronix, National Semiconductor, and LSI Logic
Business strategist and architect for Performance Learning Systems online presence

Munkunda Co-located

2006-05-10T12:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we were able to "co-locate" our new webserver called Mukunda. What does that mean and why?

For many years our websites were hosted, along with many hundreds of other websites, by a company using shared servers. This eventually posed problems with other websites interferring with our online ordering. Coupled with the need to offer audio and videos of music and talks we took the leap and rented a dedicated server.

Over the past year, the amount of traffic or bandwidth has increased significantly due to increased usage, listenership and viewership.

Webster defines bandwidth as: " the capacity for data transfer of an electronic communications system"

As a result we were paying significant monthly overcharges for bandwidth. Further research produced a local server farm (see above photo) in Sacramento just 10 minutes from the Rancho Cordova community where we could rent space and bandwidth for our own server. ROI analysis ("Return on Investment" which is a corporate type term) indicated that, if we purchased our own server and software, installed everything, and located it at this farm, monthly savings would pay for it in under 1 year.

Led by Nabha, we forged ahead with the purchase. Now he is fine tuning the installation. We have 240 GB of hard drive space and backup.

This server will:

Host the ananda.org, expandinglight.org and numerous other smaller websites. (not crystal clarity)
Function as our email server and ultimately the backup email server for our new Exchange server
Host the new Ananda Library
Store much more audio and video web content to continue to serve our growing worldwide.

A DSL Primer - Chapter Quattro

2006-05-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

In this chapter I will describe the Ananda Bell DSL setup. A picture is worth a thousand words, hence the following picture. If you find this not detailed enough, let me know and I will add some more comments.

Well, Peter didn't let me get away with just a picture, so I'll write a few words about our DSL setup at Ananda Bell.

Our internet access consists of 3 T1 links bundled together as a single point-to-point link to the Internet cloud. The Cisco 2600 router that hosts these 3T1 links uses Multi-Frame-Relay technology to provide one logical link to the Internet, SBC/PacBell (now AT&T) being our Internet Service Provider. These 3 T1 links also act as a backup to each other because if one fails, the others continue to function, thereby eliminating single point of failure on our link to the Internet. The Cisco 2600 acts as our gateway to the internet, our NAT (Network Address Translator) server, our DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server and our firewall. The Cisco 2600 is connected to a 100Mbps switch on its LAN side. Three Occam BLC 6208's connect to the same 100Mbps switch creating a large local area network comprised by [the majority of] village residents and offices. The BLCs (Broadband Loop Carrier) perform the interworking function between DSL and Ethernet. They aggregate DSL traffic from the subscribers and send them to the Cisco router over an Ethernet link. Since they act as "bridges" they logically extend an Ethernet wire from each home (or office) and connect it to the Cisco router. So, all our data traffic converge at the Cisco 2600.

Most village residents get a private IP address from the Cisco 2600 via the NAT functionality. This makes up the 192.168.146.x network. These addresses are valid inside the village, but not valid outside, because they are not routable IP addresses. When packets originating from this network leave the village their source IPs take the form of a routable (public) IP address, which is shared among many people. This allows [most of] us to appear as one IP address (one host) from outside the village. We also have several users and offices that each have their own unique public IP address for other reasons. Some people need to run servers or services that require them to have a private IP address (VPN - Virtual Private Networks, some video-conferencing applications, web servers hosted inside the village, etc). We have three different IP subnets we can pick IP addresses from so that we can assign them to people with such needs.

The Cisco router assigns IP addresses from the 192.168.146.x pool to people who do not require a public IP address. The firewall on the WAN (T1/FR) link of the Cisco 2600 provides ample protection for people using DHCP. The main function of the firewall is to prevent any TCP connection originating from outside to connect to a machine inside the village. TCP connections can only be initiated from inside the village. As for public IP users, they are required to have their own firewall and provide their own protection.

We also have a few off-the-land users (not in diagram) who have a wireless radio link (about 3 to 5 miles) from their homes to the village. The radio pairs use the 802.11b technology and require line-of-sight. The users who approached us about the technology have spent their own time and money to buy and install the radio pairs. Ananda Bell simply brought a DSL modem and power to the line-of-sight location within the village.

The three BLCs at Ananda Bell have a total of 3 x 48 = 144 ports. About 110 of these ports are already in use. Some of these serve dedicated DSL lines, but most of them share the copper phone line with voice. In that case a splitter is needed to separate the voice and data frequencies. We have two Wilcom splitter chassis, each with two cards. Each card has 24 ports on it. Thich cables (telco cables with champ connectors) carry 24 phone lines each. This cable connects to one splitter card into the voice+DSL port. Two other telco cables leave out of two separate ports on each splitter card, one port bundling 24 data lines and the other one bundling 24 phone lines. The data cable goes to the BLC and the phone cable goes to the phone switch. The splitter cards do not require power to operate them (much like the low pass filters connected to your home phones).

All this critical equipment (Cisco router, BLCs, ethernet switch, phone switch) is connected to multiple UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) units so that they can have clean power and they can continue to operate in case of power failures. After a few seconds of power failure, a generator kicks in to provide power to the UPSs, because UPSs battery capacity only last for a few minutes.

The Occam BLCs have a lot more functionality than traditional DSLAMs that do only DSL to Ethernet interworking function. The BLCs provide filtering capabilities on each DSL port to prevent, for instance, Windows Netbios packets from entering the village network (so you can't see your neighbor's computer in your Network Neighborhood). The BLCs are capable of providing voice/video/data (called triple play) over the same DSL line. We are only using them for data service (VoIP services such as Skype would be considered derived voice). The video capability would require expensive head-end equipment and who wants 250 channels of video in a spiritual community? However, there are many other customers of Occam who heavily depend on the video capabilities (such as Surewest in Roseville) and who use that capability to compete with cable operators. The BLCs are also capable of doing DHCP and ARP snooping to reduce network chatter and to ensure that users only use the IP addresses they are assigned. This prevents many types of malicious attacks originating from subscribers. We are not using all of these features at Ananda Bell, but some are going to be implemented in the days to come.

Team Building Ananda Resource Library

2006-04-25T20:14:00.000-07:00

Menu Sample on the Web!

We have a web server up and running so people can see what we're up too (thanks Kent and Peter)! I posted part of the menu for the Yogananda portion (only 1800 entries!) of the bookshelf. Check it out at http://67.113.44.237/bookshelf/yogananda.aspx. This weekend I'll put up the administrative tool for the menu, the Bookshelf Manager, which allows adminstration to add, delete, and modify files and folders in the menu.

A DSL Primer – Chapter Tre

2006-04-21T17:10:00.000-07:00

If you are using DSL at home and if it is shared with your voice line, you must have installed additional small filters that attach to each of your phones between the phone and the wall jack. These are low-pass (LP) filters that block everything above 4Khz so that you don’t hear some hissing sounds (from DSL) during a voice call.

The DSL modem divides its frequency range into 4-Khz wide channels. For the 1.1Mhz ADSL2 standard, you get 247 channels. This is as if you have 247 phone lines with a modem attached to each. Each modem is capable of doing 64Kbps. As the distance to the DSLAM gets longer or if there are impairments on the line such as interference from high power lines, bridge taps (extensions to phone line that are not connected to anything but affect the signal quality on the line), some of those imaginary 247 phone lines cannot carry a quality signal for data transmission. The modems detect this while they are training and eliminate the channels that are not up to par. That’s why you can not always get the highest speed provided by a particular DSL standard.

The DSL modem at the subscriber end converts data from the digital signals (from your ethernet connection to a computer) into a voltage signal of a suitable frequency range which is then applied to a phone line. On the other end, at the central office of the phone company there is a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM), which terminates the DSL circuit and aggregates all the traffic coming from subscribers onto some flavor of network transport the phone company is using on their back-end (ATM, Ethernet, SONET, etc). In the case of Ananda Bell, the DSLAMs convert the DSL signals back on to Ethernet and hand it off to SBC over a Frame Relay circuit.

In the next and final chapter of these series, I will describe the network setup we have at Ananda Bell. Stay tuned.

Turning the Bookshelf into a Library

2006-04-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

The Premise: Changing Hundreds of Word Documents into Thousands of Webpages

One of the steps in turning the Ananda Bookshelf into a website is converting all the books, articles, etc. into a format suitable for online use. The "old-style" Bookshelf that Satyaki created uses Microsoft Word documents, which look like this:

"*+ ! ! ! $ #" is not foul language – those are the markers that tell the Bookshelf where a new chapter or section starts. They, and other markers, are used in every Bookshelf chapter, article, etc. For the web, though, we can't use them, so we have to clean them up.

We also have to split up the Word documents. Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi is 48 chapters long, and the old Bookshelf, behind the scenes, used just one Word file. For the Ananda Library we'll need at least 48 webpage files instead.

Introducing Mamata (Pronounced "Mamta")

This is where Mamata comes in. Mamata, from Nepal via Washington D.C., is one of the newest members of IT Services. She's extremely sharp, and for months now has been working on generating financial reports for Ananda's fundraising department and retreat center. Mamata also played a big part in getting the new The Expanding Light meditation and yoga retreat website online.

Mamata uses a program called Word Cleaner to convert Word documents into webpages. It does a good job, but even after using it there's still hundreds of thousands of little bits of text to clean up.

So, How to Split and Clean Up Thousands of Webpages?

Automatically, using bit of computer esoterica called "Regular Expressions." With regular expressions you can say, for example, "Clean up a link or a title, but only if it has *+ ! ! ! $ # inside of it," or, "Remove all links that point to footnotes if the names of those footnotes are "_ftn00" through "_ftn99."

These are all things that are in the Word documents that we won't need in the webpages. (Real footnotes have different names.)

Regular expressions that clean up Bookshelf webpages look like this:

Mamata, already knowledgable about HTML, the language of webpages, is learning regular expressions. She'll use them not onto to clean the webpages but to split them up, with an "expression" that essentially says: "Make a new page every time you find a new chapter heading."

Final Steps, then It's Online

After that what happens is:

We put the webpage files of the books, articles, etc. into folders
We let Scott know
Scott diligently updates a few "sitemap" files

Then we can have a working, passworded, "beta" version of the bookshelf part of the site online for testing purposes.

Google Mini in the Here

2006-04-19T07:50:00.000-07:00

"Houston...We have a liftoff" Ananda's very own Google-mini is ready for business, having created its very first catalog just an hour after installation. (Skillman)

On the "rack" at Ananda Bell (above the DSL equipment)

Google has just released their second generation of the Mini along with a much more robust enterprise edition. see article. This new Mini is what we have ordered and has arrived!

It comes in a really cool big box and is larger than I imagined

Our intrepid programmer hard at work, setting up program prior to install on the "rack". This entails setting up basic configurations like internet address and names and all the secure settings associated with being connected to the World Wide Web. Future programming can be done using the web interface from our desktops.

New Teammate!

2006-04-16T21:15:00.000-07:00

Dharmaraj Iyer has joined the Ananda Resource Team! Currently, he is teaching 4th-6th grade class this year at Living Wisdom School, Nevada City. Dharmaraj has a Masters' Degree in Computer Science from MIT and spent summers working at AT&T Research and Xerox PARC. He received undergraduate degrees (in math and computer science) at the University of Pennsylvania.

No Barriers

2006-04-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

Since one of the goals of this project is sharing Ananda's spiritual resources to every sincere seeker worldwide, how can we do this when not everyone reads English? Fortunately, ASP.NET, offers our developers powerful tools to build a multilingual application. Ananda Resource Library will be built from the ground up to be "browser culture" (or language) aware. Each user establishes a default language when using a browser to view Internet based content. ASP.NET has built-in capabilities to sense what language a browser is set to before it delivers content. For in-depth research, refer to this MSDN article. For non-ISO languages, check out this article.

Does this mean that English text will "automagically" be translated on the fly. Unfortunately, this is not the case. At least not yet! However, one website framework (rather than many) can be used to support many languages. There are automated webtools to translate text from one language to another for free. However, their accuracy (and appropriateness) would be a topic for conversation and another post!

One of the team's first steps will be to decide what languages to build for, in addition to English. My guess is that Hindi, Italian, Spanish and German will definitely be mentioned with others to be added.

The title of this post is "No Barriers". Unfortunately, millions in this world still do not enjoy ready access to the Internet. Let us hope as Dwapara continues to unfold, the number of individuals who can reach the Ananda Resource Library website increases by a significant percentage each passing year. Are you just a little curious just how many individuals in the world do have internet access?

A DSL Primer – Chapter Duo

2006-04-15T16:07:00.000-07:00

DSL – Digital Subscriber Line

As you know a DSL modem is orders of magnitude faster than a dial-up modem. The fastest ADSL standard, known as ADSL2+, is capable of 24Mbit/s downstream speed. Compared with a 56K modem, this is more than 400 times faster. Don’t start drooling because we can’t offer that speed of internet access in the village, at least not yet. We are limited by Ananda Bell’s pipe to the internet which is currently a bonded pair of two T1 lines giving us an aggregate capacity of 3Mbit/s downstream and same upstream. This will soon be upgraded to a total of three T1 lines, which will provide an aggregate bandwidth of 4.5Mbit/s.

When we first installed DSL in the village, we were using the first generation DSL standard called ADSL Lite (or G.Lite), which provided 1.5Mbit/s downstream and 0.5Mbit/s upstream speeds. Note that, because all of our DSL connections in the village end up being funneled through a single T1 line (1.5Mbit/s upstream and 1.5Mbit/s downstream) we had to use some measures to prevent a single person taking up the entire bandwidth of the village. So, Ric and I implemented profiles of different speeds; bronze, silver, gold, platinum, etc. This created a tiered service offering at different monthly costs to appeal to many households, as well as prevented the bandwidth hogs. Later on we upgraded our DSLAMs to be capable of the more recent standard called ADSL2, which in theory could give each household 12Mbit/s downstream speed but again, we had to rate-limit each connection to provide fair-use of our much smaller pipe to the internet.

Apart from speed, another great feature of DSL is that it works on your existing phone line and even when you are on the phone. How does it do that?

Your telephone service (POTS – Plain Old Telephone Service) carries human voice in a frequency range of 0 to 3,400 Hertz (cycles per second). This results in a somewhat low quality sound as it does not include the full-range of human voice. You may have noticed that often times it is hard to distinguish between “s” and “f” sounds on the phone, that’s because the high frequencies that are needed to distinguish those sounds are filtered by your phone or by the phone switch. In comparison, most stereo speakers can cover 20 Hertz to 20,000 Hertz. You may have also noticed that when you make a Skype call from one computer to another, the sound quality is much better than a POTS call, because Skype software does not filter out human voice as aggressively as POTS.

Your phone wires are capable of transmitting much higher frequencies than even the audible range, several Mhz (megahertz) in fact. These higher frequencies do not interfere with the voice on your phone line and therefore provide a large playground for the DSL technology. ADSL2 uses up to 1.1Mhz, ADSL2+ uses 2.2Mhz and the VDSL2 standard uses as much as 12Mhz.

Fax machines also use the frequency range of POTS calls. That’s why you can hear the tones generated by the fax machine, but you cannot make a phone call on the same line shared by a fax machine if your fax machine is sending or receiving at that time. One could theoretically make a fax machine that uses higher frequencies and that can send and receive much faster, but then you need to have those two fax machines connected directly to each other, because if you go through the phone company’s switch, guess what, they will filter all the high frequencies again. The good old dial-up modems worked fine between you and your friend’s house because they only sent their signal over the POTS frequencies. You cannot do the same with a pair of DSL modems. That’s why the peer for your DSL modem is located at the phone company, where the voice frequencies and DSL frequencies are split. The voice frequencies go to the phone switch in the PSTN, the DSL frequencies go to the DSLAM.

To be continued ...

A DSL Primer - Chapter Uno

2006-04-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

(Peter Skillman skillfully insisted that I should write a few lines about DSL, how it works and how it is used in our community. So, here is the first chapter.)

The first picture you see is the diagram that shows the original DSL installation at Ananda Bell about four years ago. This is now classified as part of the Ananda Archives as a historical document (if not, it should be).

As you all know Ananda Village operates its own phone company, Ananda Bell. Many years ago - the veterans would know exactly which year - Ananda Village has purchased a phone switch, much like one that might be used by a large corporation for their office buildings. With the purchase of this switch, the phone lines (copper pairs) within the village boundary have also became the property of Ananda Village. (Someone with the knowledge of this transaction should add a comment to this blog entry). This has marked a milestone in Ananda’s broadband Internet history. Without the existence of this switch and the ownership of these landlines, it would not have been possible for us to have DSL service. SBC/PacBell brought in T1 lines to serve as trunks (24 phone lines each) for calls originating or terminating outside the village, while the Ananda Bell switch handled all the calls originating and terminating within the village. Having your own switch also meant you had access to all the nifty features such as 260, voice-mail, voice-mail distribution groups, digital phones with additional features, etc. The phone side of things is Ric’s turf and he knows much more about it, so I won’t venture into any more details about that. Going back to DSL technology…

DSL modems do not work if they are too far from the DSLAM (DSL Access Multiplexer. This page shows one of the Occam DSLAMs). This distance limit is around 18000 feet, ~3.4 miles. The DSLAMs are located at the CO (Central Office) or RT (Remote Terminal – those big gray boxes you see in street corners). This picture shows the DSL modem at a home and the DSL at the CO and how they are connected to each other. Even when you are within the reach of a DSLAM you are at the whim of the phone company whether they want to offer that service to you or not. Each DSLAM serves 24, 48, or perhaps 96 subscribers. If there are only two households in a neighborhood who might be interested in DSL, it does not make financial sense for the phone company to put a 24-port DSLAM into service and use only two ports out of it. Therefore when phone companies roll out DSL to their service areas they look at potential penetration for their DSL market. They look at their ROI (Return On Investment) to see how long it would take them to make up for the purchase of the DSLAM. If you live in a rural area, far away from the CO or RT and the density of homes is not enough, you are out of luck for getting DSL service.

I think Master must have influenced the minds of the decision makers in the village at the time to steer them toward the direction of purchasing this phone switch knowing that one day the DSL technology would become available and would enable us to provide DSL service through our ownership of the copper lines.

The DSL modems have many similarities to dial-up modems (the ones that made buzzing sounds when they were training). You essentially have a pair of these modems on each end of a copper phone line to pass data between two computers (or a computer and a server). Customers only see the modem at their end. The modem on the other end of the line is integrated into a PCB (printed circuit board) along with many other modems so that they don’t waste valuable real-estate at the CO. In the early days of the dial-up modems, you would see “modem-banks” at the CO which were like army of modems stacked one after the other. Later on these became much more compact so that you can fit 24, 48 or 96 of them in a 1RU space. (RU is rack-unit, which is 1.75 inches of vertical space. It’s a standard unit used for defining space requirements at a CO. The racks are usually 19 inches or 23 inches wide depending on the equipment.) Another similarity between dial-up modems and DSL modems is that they both “train” to establish a connection. The two modems on each end of the link go through a handshake protocol before they are “connected”. On dial-up modems this used to take tens of seconds (while they made the buzzing sounds). On DSL modems, this reduced to the order of a few seconds (and there is no buzzing sound).

In Chapter 2, I will talk about many advantages of DSL. Chapter 3 will go into more detail about the technology itself and finally Chapter 4 will talk about Ananda Village’s DSL network. To be continued …

DreamTeam

2006-04-11T17:49:00.000-07:00

The other night I looked over the names to your right of all Contributors (which is an incomplete list) and marvelled over the collective talents that have been assembled to put together this website. I thought it would be fun to list each contributor and his/her contribution to the project with a little corporate style writeup included. We do indeed have a "DreamTeam"! (All the below comes from my own notes, which may need correction.)

DreamTeam Roster

Starting at the Executive Director position is Jyotish. He is the one who approves expenditures and over-sees the overall direction of the Ananda Resource Library. Jyotish's expansive vision led to the increased scope of the project to be much more than a web-based replacement for the Minister's Bookshelf. Author, entrepreneur, minister, spiritual leader and painter, Jyotish brings a host of talents to the table. He was educated at the University of Minnesota.

Project Manager is Kent Williams, head of ACSR IT. Kent sets the project timeline, deliverables and keeps everyone on task. He reports directly to Jyotish. Kent, in addition to having a degree in Chemistry, serves our greater community as board chairman of our local health clinic.

Project Founder is Satyaki. He keeps an eye on us from his minister's perch in Portland, ensuring the spirit and intent of the original Minister's Bookshelf, which Satyaki devotedly assembled, remain intact. While Satyaki was an employee at Microsoft, he authored a landmark paper on Object Linking and Embedding.

Webmaster is Maria Warner. Maria is creating the design, via Photoshop, of the Ananda Resource Library, in addition to her duties overseeing all the Web activities at Ananda. A native of Russia, Maria, like Kent, has a university degree in Chemistry.

Design Consultant is Nirmala. She is assisting our design efforts, particularly in the area of color, to reflect the astral beauty of a rainbow. Nirmala has many years of experience in book cover and typsetting design and book production. She also is a "crackerjack" with Quark xPress and Photoshop. In her spare time, she helps her husband oversee Ananda's outreach in the subcontinent of India.

Nabha, our Content Production Manager, is directing the conversion of the Minister's Bookshelf .doc formatted content to HTML. He manages the websites of the Expanding Light and Crystal Clarity.

Ably assisting Nabha in the conversion project is Mamata who comes to us via Nepal and Experience Ananda. In addition, Mamata crafted the SQL Select statement that provides the data underpining for the website authentication. Mamata has a Master's in Public Health.

.Net Developer is Scott Roberts. Scott is coding the tool that will enable just about anyone to post content to the site. Scott's day job is educating the young men of our High School. In addition to completing course studies for a Phd in Physics, Scott is certified by Microsoft as a .Net Developer.

Web Developer is Dharmaraj Iyer. Currently, he is teaching 4th-6th grade class this year at Living Wisdom School, Nevada City. Dharmaraj has a Masters' Degree in Computer Science from MIT and spent summers working at AT&T Research and Xerox PARC. He received undergraduate degrees (in math and computer science) at the University of Pennsylvania.

Network Engineer is Bob Stolzman. Bob set up our SQL Server while overseeing the Network at Rajarsi Park. Cisco certified, Bob came to Ananda via Autodesk. Bob has a university degree in Geology.

Data Center and Internet Engineer is Koral Ilgun. Koral was instrumental in establishing high-speed Internet access at Ananda. Koral comes to Ananda via Turkey and has a Master's degree in Computer Science from UC Santa Barbara.

Project Consultant is Peter Skillman. From his "day job" experience as a Web Developer and Webmaster for a small Sacramento software company, Peter has seen the magic of the "frictionless advantage" -- The Internet -- level the playing field between small companies and multinational corporations. Peter was educated at Amherst where he earned a BA in American Studies.

Chairman Emeritis and Inspiration for the Ananda Resource Library is Swami Kriyananda. Through Swamiji's peerless discipleship to Master and his tireless and extraordinarily generous sharing of Yogananda's teaching to every sincere seeker worldwide, this project was born. Everyone of the DreamTeam draws on Swami's lifelong example of selfless offering in service to the Light through his Guru.

Menu Progress

2006-04-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

I've had two days of vacation to research and start the menu program for the site using some new tools in Visual Studio (the program editor with which we are creating the website).

Here's a little overview:
The program will allow certain users to logon to it through the website and post articles (the extent of where on the website depends on the users security role) on the website through a friendly user interface. The program than places the uploaded file automatically in the website menu at a junction which the user chooses . The user can also choose to add new categories to the menu.

Peter Skillman hinted at the fact this might not be the tool to use for all the pre-existent minister's bookshelf which is currently getting converted to html, as it would detail having to individually upload each file (lots of files). I agree. It is possible when the bookshelf conversion is complete to upload it all to the website in one swoop. I would than have to manually write a xml sitemap (hieararchial data file) that the menu reads to determine its content.

This could be done in a few hours. Add to that an afternoon with me sitting down with the web designers to format the looks of the menu, and the bookshelf could be up. After that people could use the upload control I'm creating to place content on the website.

"It is hard to pin down a rainbow" - Nirmala

2006-04-06T21:58:00.000-07:00

Love the blogger! I tried to post a comment, though, just now, and it didn’t go through. Would you like to post it for me?? Aum, n.

Click here to see what Nirmala is referring to

welllll.....the blue and the lavender/purple look like something Swami would like, but he wouldn't go for that red or that green! (As Milarapa's guru said, "I must have been drunk!" Or else my computer was drunk the day i came up with those!

I personally like that red; it's an Egyptian red that Swami would probably like to see on the right person. Maybe that could be said for the green, too... Are you confused yet?)

here's a few more thoughts that i hope are not confusing: Swami doesn't usually care for blacks, browns, tans, greys, or any muddy color: (muddy greens, muddy purples, mud in general!)

That's not to say black or tan or grey can't ever be used as backgrounds, fillers, etc. But the focus should always be on PURE colors.

He also likes gold and silver in the right context, as well as being very fond of rainbows.

if you envision the astral world, with clear, vivid, pure colors with lots of light and vibrancy, then you are close to finding something Swamiji would like.

just as it is hard to pin down a rainbow (!), it's hard to pin down what Swamiji likes: he likes it to be beautiful!

hope this helps! aum, n .

Thursday Meeting (4/6) notes by Kent

2006-04-06T13:33:00.000-07:00

Meeting notes from this morning
Present: Jyotish, Peter Sk, Kent, Maria, Nabha

1) Website design
a) Keep fonts same for header as on ananda.org
b) Keep curve also
c) Make bottom left lighter color and blend in
d) *! Maria volunteered her considerable skills with the design. Kent is relieved and sending files to her.
e) Make working title" Ananda Resource Library"
f) See below for notes on major sections of library

2) Authentication
a) Most areas of site will require authentication which will be tied to information in Sales Logix database such as whether person is kriyaban, minister, sevaka member, Sanghi, etc. Each will eventually offer access to various sections of library.
b) in exchange for minimal "privileges" on the site (for newbies) we want at some minimum of information: e.g.
-email which will be validated by sending to that email address
-geographic information, e.g. country, state. Yes they can lie but that only gets them inacurate information back from us. We will then offer them ability to sign up for various existing email lists like e-notes, sangha notes, etc. Called "permissive based emailing" . We will need to add more fields to the database on Priyanath (used for authentication) that gets updated from SLX.

c) (Question of how to manage this when email is bad. Do we remove privileges?)
d) also will have ways of defeating email bots (not discussed at meeting due to technical nature)
e) Peter Skillman will flesch out the concepts here in detail prior to next meeting

3) Google Mini- Jyotish authorized purchase of Google Mini. Kent to get quote and purchase. This will be the "small one" capable of handling 50,000 pages (Nabha calculate after meeting that we have approx 5k-6k pages potential at present). This unit can be upgraded to 300,000 pages if/when needed. We will work to get installed at Ananda Bell on the "rack" and connected to WAN within next few weeks and do first test with EL.org site. Skillman will assist in configuration. Ric at Ananda Bell (and Koral) have already given the magic blessing.

4) Document Conversion of Ananda Bookshelf- Nabha reported we are about 10 % complete with hte conversion process. Mamata has been gone for past 4 weeks and will resume work on this process next week. He will help her get up to speed with using "expressions" to aid and automate further, the conversion process of the word documents to html. Hopefully this will speed things up.
Scott will be working on the navigation system soon.

5) Target for Beta Launch - We have targeted the Sevaka Retreat to launch a beta version of the Site as the first major component is the Ananda Bookshelf which will be available for all Sevaka order members. Jyotish will begin communication with Sevaka order members in May about all of this.

6) Major sections of website- we put up some potential sections of the website (not in cement yet) and they are listed below with subsections. This is for discussion and review. Please comment on additions/deletions/changes. The long term implication is to have these "updated" by someone. For now, we are focusing on the Sevaka Bookshelf section to get things functioning and up and running. Access to various sections, as noted previously, will be by authentication.
A) Community
--Colonies
-- Meditation Groups
-- History of Ananda
-- Forums
B) Library (more public in nature than Sevaka bookshelf)
-- Books
--Article
--Transcripts
C) Images (for download purposes to be used by worldwide Anandans)
--Public Photos of PY
--Public photos of SK
--Other useful common images such as logo, etc
D) Sevaka Order
--Bookshelf
--Minister's on the Road

Great Scott!!!

2006-04-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

Scott passed his Microsoft Certification Test!
Way to go Scott!!!

test web page

2006-04-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

I have uploaded a test page for review and discussion. Please let me know your thoughts--Kent

http://www.anandasupport.org/anandaresourcetest.htm

Authentication, Security and the Google Device

2006-04-01T21:38:00.000-08:00

A question has arisen concerning security. This is natural, given the almost daily headlines that appear on computer theft, "hacking" and other ill-deeds. Since allowing "members-only" access to the website is a requirement, how will non-members be kept from viewing pages they shouldn't-- particularly pages indexed by the Google Device?

ASP.NET gives the developer total control over content access. By following simple configuration steps, a website and the pages therein, can be created to allow only authenticated access. Simply put, this means an individual can only gain access once their identity is known. This is accomplished by the familiar username/password challenge routine.

The Ananda Resource site will take authentication a further step: Once a user is authenticated, he or she will only see pages that they have priviledges for. An example is that only Kriyabans will see material that is meant for initiates. Non-Kriyabans will be denied access to the Kriya-only portion of the website.

The Google Device will be allowed access to the site so content can be spidered, indexed and cataloged. This can be done because the Ananda Google Device will have unique identifiers: The IP address that is assigned to the device and the user-agent name. No other search engine or individual will have these particular attributes.

The Ananda Resource site will consider the Ananda Google Device one of us - in fact, the Ananda Google device will be considered a highly advanced disciple with access to all parts of the website!

Navigation for a site with thousands of potential links

2006-03-29T10:58:00.000-08:00

Navigation on traditional old-school "static" websites is done "by hand". Each time a new page is created, navigation for that page is coded manually. Since one of the core missions of the Ananda Resource Site is to automate as many processes as possible, "hand coding" of navigation is to be avoided, particularly when one contemplates the sheer scope of managing thousands of documents. Our goal is when a document is added to the "catalog" or site, links to that document are created "automagically". This is because we want just about anyone to be able to post documents to the site, not just "Web Goobers".

Scott Roberts, a 12 year resident of Ananda Village and a teacher at the Living Wisdom school has volunteered to help build this dynamic navigation module for the site. Scott, seen here helping paint a community center roof on a March 2006 school trip service project in Costa Rica, is fast closing in on getting the coveted and hard to achieve Microsoft Certification as a .Net Developer.

Here is one example of a "dynamic XML" driven menu structure.

This shot shows a page from an extranet. The large white space in the "body" is to emulate a "clean desktop" uncluttered and ready for work. The viewer is not "overwhelmed" with a multiplicity of links and choices. Hopefully, calmness and not panic, is what this design communicates!

When the user is ready for work, they (metaphorically speaking) open up a drawer and click on a menu choice. With "flyover layers" complex, drill down navigation paths can be displayed and easily understood.

See in the image to the left, a flyover menu appears, allowing the user to "drill-down" through content. ASP.NET 2.0 provides several controls to make creating this easier for the developer: the SiteMapPath Server control, TreeView Control, Menu Server Control and the SiteMap Data Provider.

Here is the XML Code that generated this menu flyover:

'<'SiteMap'>'
'<'item Text="IT" LookId="TopItemLook"'>'
'<'item Text="Assets" Look-RightIconUrl="arrow_menu.gif" Look-RightIconWidth="15"'>'
'<'item Text="Hardware Entry" NavigateUrl="Assets.aspx"/'>'
'<'item Text="Browse, edit Hardware Assets" NavigateUrl="AssetsList.aspx"/'>'
'<'item Text="Software Entry" NavigateUrl="SoftwareAssets.aspx"/'>'
'<'item Text="Browse, edit Software Assets" NavigateUrl="SoftwareAssetsList.aspx"/'>'
'<'item Text="Service Support Contract Entry" /'>'
'<'item Text="Browse, edit Service Support Contracts Assets" /'>'
'<'/item'>'
'<'item Text="HelpDesk Tickets" NavigateUrl="SLXWebTicketLookUp.aspx"'>''<'/item'>'
'<'item Text="SQL DTS" Look-RightIconUrl="arrow_menu.gif" Look-RightIconWidth="15"'>'
'<'item Text="SQL DTS Entry" NavigateUrl="DTS_Edit.aspx"/'>'
'<'item Text="Browse, edit SQL DTS" NavigateUrl="DTS.aspx"/'>'
'<'/item'>'
'<'/item'>'
'<'/SiteMap'>'

Scott's task is to architect and develop a solution where individual pages can be added to the site and the navigation that will lead the user to that new page will be "automagically" created. It will be exciting to see just how he figures out to do this. (I am confident he will!).

Genesis of the Ananda Resource Web project

2006-03-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

At the annual Ananda Minister's Retreat, in January 2006 , at the Ananda Meditation Retreat in California, the Minister's Bookshelf (MB) offering was brought up and discussed. A successor and/or assistant to the original and esteemed author of the MB, Satyaki, was sought. Comments from the audience included Macintosh users who felt "left out" and others wondering where they could get the CD. In addition, many praised the MB as being an integral part of their ministerial efforts.

ACSR IT services, led by Kent Williams, stepped in to head up the effort to come up with the next version of the MB. Skillman offered to assist with some technical issues. A small group met with Jyotish on 1/31/06 and it was decided that the next full step is to redo the bookshelf as a web-based application that which will:

1) eliminate the dependence on an "expert" that is a person who would need to compile,etc

2) Offer total cross platform capabilities

3) eliminate the physical distribution system

In other words reduce the "friction" by enabling sevaka members world-wide access this vital spiritual tool via a web interface.

Ananda Sangha is about to launch its own Windows Webserver 2003 co-located in Sacramento area that will host the Ananda Resource Web Application . In addition, a "Google-Mini" (http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/index.html) will be acquired. The "Google-Mini" will be located at Ananda Bell with public IP and provide the engine for indexing what will be thousands of files and objects .

This "state of the art" architecture will enable Ananda to:

a) Have Savitri (and/or others) be the person who puts up new material after it is edited (simple as saving an attachment to a folder which is then automatically FTP'd to the webserver (aka "Mukunda"). Then the Google engine, once per day, will spider these specific folders and update its catalog.

b) A development team is forming to create an ASP.NET 2.0 authentication front end which will tie to a SQL database which will be updated daily from our Sales Logix Database with information on Sevaka order members, etc. We will set up userID's and passwords which will periodically be changed and use SSL for access to the Google search engine by authenticated users.

c) Then Sevaka order members and other interested Ananda "family" members with Internet access anywhere in the world can have up to date information at their fingertips in a safe and secure website. All they need is Internet access!

Expanded Vision
Since that initial meeting held in late January, the vision of providing a web based version of the MB has expanded greatly to include an authenticated "Portal" for Ananda devotees worldwide that provides easy access to a variety of resources including photos, Minister teaching resources, meditiation group support, the History of Ananda, threaded discussion forums moderated by a team of ministers ,the MB and much, much more!

Jyotish becomes a Web Goober/Designer
Jyotish has expressed enthusiasm for this expanded vision and is actively guiding the development of what is now being called the "Ananda Resource" website as well as acting as the lead designer! (His painting skills and knowledge of color and composition are being "digitized"!)

project overview

2006-03-26T13:06:00.000-08:00

hey peter, i need a project overview. From what i understand we're putting the minister's bookshelf online, accessible through a login. Is putting the bookshelf online as simple as putting everything in pdf format and adding a google search engine for the site? What's the plan? Also if you have any pages to code, delegate some to me. I'd love to pop them out. I

If Swami designed a website

2006-03-26T10:12:00.000-08:00

During the recent Mahasamadhi celebration, Swami mentioned in one of his talks that he "knew nothing of the Internet." Well, we are not taking this as the last word! In any case, a useful exercise would be to imagine, "If Swami designed a website..." or "If Master designed a website.." What would be the result?

The first step was to find out what Swami likes in colors. Nirmala, who has worked closely with Swami in design issues for many years, answered our inquiry with the following: "Swami likes clear, un-muddy colors. Here’s a blue for you: 16 – 10 – 241.I think you will do great with any clear, pure shade. Keep out the blacks, browns, etc. Here is a quick sampling, but by no means definitive. This is just to give you an idea of what I mean by pure shades. There are lots of other ones that will do fine. red 204 – 43 – 0, orange 243 – 126 – 0, yellow 244 – 239 – 97, green 122 – 216 – 4, blue 38 – 71 - 235, indigo 38 – 42 – 199, violet 143 – 46 - 204 as far as fonts go, he like serif fonts."

Jyotish, Kent, Nabha and I have been meeting to discuss and plan this project and have addressed,particularly, the "UI" or user interface. The current Ananda Web "Brand" with logo and look will provide a base point.

Priyanath Online!

2006-03-25T20:05:00.000-08:00

Priyanath, our SQL Server backend, successfully passed the data connection test. In otherwords, the web application that is running locally on my laptop, connects over the internet to Priyanath.

There is something magical about entering data on a webform and seeing it stored in a database located on a different computer via the internet.

In the past, I created "from scratch" login, authentication and personalization logic (LA&P). Because i am so impressed with asp.net 2.0 built-in LA&P services, I am going to leverage them as much as I can. This will also help as others jump into the project as "owners" - ie developers - such as Nabha, Kent and, perhaps, Scott. Above is a screen shot.

All this is quite exciting because the foundation is being laid that will provide very sophisticated LA&P "high-end" features with very little coding or "hand-work".

Next step: adapting default tables for our specific needs.