UFO enthusiasts admit the truth may not be out there after all

Declining numbers of “flying saucer” sightings and failure to establish proof of alien existence has led UFO enthusiasts to admit they might not exist after all.

Dozens of groups interested in unidentified flying objects
have closed due to lack of interest Photo: ALAMY

For decades, they have been scanning the skies for signs of alien activity.

But having failed to establish any evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life, Britain’s UFO watchers are reaching the conclusion that the truth might not be out there after all.

Enthusiasts admit that a continued failure to provide proof and a decline in the number of “flying saucer” sightings suggests that aliens do not exist after all and could mean the end of “Ufology” – the study of UFOs – within the next decade.

Dozens of groups interested in the flying saucers and other unidentified craft have already closed because of lack of interest and next week one of the country’s foremost organisations involved in UFO research is holding a conference to discuss whether the subject has any future.

Dave Wood, chairman of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (Assap), said the meeting had been called to address the crisis in the subject and see if UFOs were a thing of the past.

“It is certainly a possibility that in ten years time, it will be a dead subject,” he added.

“We look at these things on the balance of probabilities and this area of study has been ongoing for many decades.

“The lack of compelling evidence beyond the pure anecdotal suggests that on the balance of probabilities that nothing is out there.

“I think that any UFO researcher would tell you that 98 per cent of sightings that happen are very easily explainable. One of the conclusions to draw from that is that perhaps there isn’t anything there. The days of compelling eyewitness sightings seem to be over.”

He said that far from leading to an increase in UFO sightings and research, the advent of the internet had coincided with a decline.

Assap’s UFO cases have dropped by 96 per cent since 1988, while the number of other groups involved in UFO research has fallen from well over 100 in the 1990s to around 30 now.

Among those to have closed are the British Flying Saucer Bureau, the Northern UFO Network, and the Northern Anomalies Research Organisation.

As well as a fall in sightings and lack of proof, Mr Wood said the lack of new developments meant that the main focus for the dwindling numbers of enthusiasts was supposed UFO encounters that took place several decades ago and conspiracy theories that surround them.

In particular, he cited the Roswell incident, in 1947 when an alien spaceship is said to have crashed in New Mexico, and the Rendlesham incident in 1980, often described as the British equivalent, when airmen from a US airbase in Suffolk reported a spaceship landing.

Mr Wood added: “When you go to UFO conferences it is mainly people going over these old cases, rather than bringing new ones to the fore.

“There is a trend where a large proportion of UFO studies are tending towards conspiracy theories, which I don’t think is particularly helpful.”

The issue is to be debated at a summit at the University of Worcester on November 17 and the conclusions reported in the next edition of the association’s journal, Anomaly.

The organisation, which describes itself as an education and research charity, was established in 1981. Its first president was Michael Bentine, the comedian and member of the Goons.

It contains both sceptics and believers in UFOs and has been involved in several notable sightings and theories over the years.

Its current president Lionel Fanthorpe has claimed in its journal that King Arthur was an alien who came to Earth to save humans from invading extraterrestrials.

The summit follows the emergence earlier this year of the news that the Ministry of Defence was no longer investigating UFO sightings after ruling there is “no evidence” they pose a threat to the UK.

David Clark, a Sheffield Hallam University academic and the UFO adviser to the National Archives, said: “The subject is dead in that no one is seeing anything

evidential.

“Look at all the people who now have personal cameras. If there was something flying around that was a structured object from somewhere else, you would have thought that someone would have come up with some convincing footage by now – but they haven’t.

“The reason why nothing is going on is because of the internet. If something happens now, the internet is there to help people get to the bottom of it and find an explanation.

“Before then, you had to send letters to people, who wouldn’t respond and you got this element of mystery and secrecy that means things were not explained.

“The classic cases like Roswell and Rendlesham are only classic cases because they were not investigated properly at the time.”

But Nick Pope, who ran the MoD’s UFO desk from 1991 to 1994 and now researches UFO sightings privately, said there was a future for the subject: “There’s a quantity versus quality issue here.

“So many UFO sightings these days are attributable to Chinese lanterns that more interesting sightings are sometimes overlooked.

“The same is true with photos and videos. There are so many fakes on YouTube and elsewhere, it would be easy to dismiss the whole subject out of hand.

“The danger is that we throw out the baby with the bathwater. And as I used to say at the MoD, the believers only have to be right once.”

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Bram Stoker books the subject of latest Google doodle

Bram Stoker's 165th birthday is being marked by a Google doodle.

Bram Stoker, born Abraham Stoker, was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 novel Dracula.

Stoker wrote his first novel, The Primrose Path, in 1875. It appeared in five issues of The Shamrock (Dublin) with the first instalment appearing on February 6, 1875 and the last on March 6, 1875. The novel was accompanied by five unsigned illustrations that depicted scenes from the story.

His second novel was The Snake's Pass, published in 1890. It centred on the troubled romance between an English tourist and a local Irish peasant. The Snake's Pass was set in his native Ireland - his only novel to do so. Bram Stoker wrote two more books (The Watter's Mou' and The Shoulder of Shasta) before writing the book he's best remembered for even today.

Before writing Dracula, Stoker spent considerable time researching European folklore and mythological stories of vampires. Dracula was an epistolary novel, written as a collection of realistic, but completely fictional, diary entries, telegrams, letters, ship's logs, and newspaper clippings, all of which added a level of detailed realism to the story, a skill Stoker developed as a newspaper writer.

The response to Dracula at the time was rather average - it wasn't until after Stoker's death that the novel became very popular.

Bram Stoker wrote seven other novels after Dracula, but none that became as popular.

Stoker died on 20 April 1912 at age 64 in London, England

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Cheapest Asus tablet with Jelly Bean coming in Jan

Asus had yesterday launched Vivo Tab RT & a notebook-tablet hybrid 'Taichi', running on Windows RT OS in India.

Asus will make its entry into the affordable tablet segment by launching a 7 inch tablet in India in next two months.

Alex Huang, managing director, system business group, Asus India said to The Mobile Indian, "Asus will launch a sub Rs 15,000 Android Jelly Bean based 7 inch tablet for India in January."

He further added, "Till now we didn't have a tablet catering to the entry level buyers in the country, which is quite a huge market, but with the launch of 7 inch tab in January, Asus will address this issue."

Asus had yesterday launched Vivo Tab RT and a notebook-tablet hybrid, called Taichi, running on Windows RT operating system in India.

Vivo Tab RT has been priced at Rs 61,999 while Taichi has a price tag of Rs 1,39,999. Both the devices will be available in the market from December onwards.

The Asus Vivo Tab RT features a 10.1 inch Super IPS+ panel with 178 degree viewing angle. Asus has packed a quad core Nvidia Tegra 3 mobile processor for ultra fast performance. This tablet also comes with an optional keyboard dock with a built-in battery to provide extended battery life to the tablet but its price is not yet known extra.

Besides, the tablet has 64 GB of storage space, 8 megapixel autofocus rear camera with LED flash, 2 megapixel front camera, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, and quad-speakers with SonicMaster audio technology.

On the other hand, Asus Taichi comes with Windows 8 operating system along with Intel i7 processor. It actually comes with two sided displays with a keyboard. When the lid is closed, it works like a tablet with its upper display and when opened, it acts like a notebook with its lower display and keyboard.

Both the displays are of 11.6 inch with 10 fingers touch support. This 1.25 kg weighing device has also WiFi, Bluetooth, HDMI port, 2 USB port, and one mini VGA port. This tablet of this hybrid device has also a 5 megapixel autofocus camera while the netbook part sports a HD camera.

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People love talking about the election on Facebook

Barack Obama posted this image on his Facebook page Tuesday night.

(CNN) -- Facebook, where people love to discuss politics and complain about other people discussing politics, saw a huge surge in Election Day chatter on Tuesday.

In a stunning nod to the power of social media in this election, Obama's first public acknowledgment of victory was a post shared on Twitter and Facebook. It read "Four more years" and included a photo of Barack and Michelle Obama hugging.

That single post was the most retweeted in the history of Twitter (more than 700,000 times), and on Facebook it raked in an astounding 3.5 million likes and almost 500,000 people shared it on their own Timelines.

Over the course of the day, there were more than 71.7 million election related posts and comments on Facebook in the United States and 88.7 million around the world.

According to Facebook's internal Talk Meter, which measures how much buzz events get on the network, the election was the most talked about event in 2012. It was especially popular among 25- to 34-year-olds and in D.C., Mississippi and Virginia. It was also a huge topic internationally. Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia were the top countries posting about the election.

Obama was mentioned 10 million times on Facebook during Election Day. In just one hour, from 11 p.m. to 12 a.m., he was mentioned 4.1 million times on Facebook -- more than Romney's 4 million total for the entire day.

Not everyone appreciates having political posts fill their Facebook feed. Heightened emotions have let to angry fights in comment threads, interfamily drama and unfriendings. The negativity has even caused some to declare they are leaving the social network for a while.

Quitting Facebook isn't the only way to cut out the politics. You also can install tools that remove political posts automatically, such as the browser extensions Social Fixer or Noppl. Unpolitic.me will not only block the offending posts, it will replace them with the ultimate bipartisian animal, cats.

Top Election Day terms on Facebook:

1. Obama

2. Vote / Voted

3. Romney

4. Election

5. President

6. Country

7. Win / Wins

8. Line

9. Four More Years / 4 More Years

10. Ohio

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In Web Search, Be Efficient in the Terms You Use

By this point in the Internet era, everyone should know how to find information on the Web with a search engine like Google or Bing.

Easy, right? Just type what you are looking for in the little box.

There are even easier ways. Google and Bing have built right into their search boxes tools like calculators, currency converters and dictionaries. They developed a host of tricks you can use to slice through clutter to reach the information you need. In some cases the results appear right away; you don’t need to touch the enter key. Many of the shortcuts work with the Web browsers on smartphones and tablets.

“We really try to make Bing a place where you can go to get stuff done in the real world,” said Stefan Weitz, senior director of Bing, Microsoft’s search engine and chief rival to Google. “People expect search now to actually do a better job connecting them to the ultimate destination.” If you need any additional help, Google also offers online tutorials.

TRAVEL TOOLS A fast way to find driving directions with Google is to type your query directly in the search box, using the following format: from 1380 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA to 815 Boylston Street, Boston. The result is a map along with driving distance, trip time and a link to directions.

If you are planning air travel, you can track fares and be directed to sites for ticket purchases. In the Google search box, type airport codes in the following way: BOS to ABQ. An initial listing of flights appears, along with drop-down calendars to select departure and return dates.

If you click on the “Flights from Boston to Albuquerque” link, you arrive at a more extensive tool for finding flight information, including a lowest fares calculator, available by clicking the small graph-shaped button, or an interactive map, by clicking the balloon button, where you can choose among different departure or destination cities.

Bing’s tool for air travel can be found using the same format of entering airport codes in the search box, and when you drill down further you have choices of buying tickets through sources like Travelocity, Priceline and Expedia.

With either Bing or Google, you can quickly check flight status using the following format: Delta flight status 1512.

Also useful for travelers are language translation tools. In either Bing or Google, use the following format: translate coffee to Turkish. The result, kahve, appears, and if you click the first link you can find tools for translating words into dozens of languages.

Converting currencies is also available by using the following format in either search engine: 100 U.S. dollars in Indian rupees.

In both search engines, to book reservations at restaurants, the search results for a restaurant in a major city will often include a link to OpenTable, a provider of restaurant reservations. (You may need to add a ZIP code or a city name for common names.) The right-hand column might also have other information like reviews and maps.

SOCIAL NETWORKS Both Google and Microsoft have been trying to figure out how best to interact with the trove of information locked away in social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Microsoft has entered into partnerships with Facebook and others allowing Bing users to connect with people who may know something about their search query. You can log into a Facebook account from the Bing home page, and while you search in Bing, a sidebar appears along the right side of the results page that may display Facebook friends who have some relationship to your search.

If your query is “Mexican restaurants in San Antonio,” and you hover over the image of a friend, you may see a Facebook comment or photo of their favorite place for good mole.

Google has its own social networking service, Google Plus, which enables users to share their favorite search results with friends also on the service.

SPECIALIZED SEARCHES Much has changed since the early days of search engines, and given the vastness of data now available online, knowing a few simple yet powerful shortcuts can pinpoint information more relevant to your search.

You can dig through the Web for specific kinds of files, for example PowerPoint files related to the Affordable Care Act. In Google use the format filetype:ppt the affordable care act. (The ppt part of the query is the extension for PowerPoint files.) Other popular extensions are docx, xlsx and pdf, for Word, Excel and PDF files. Bing flips the search format — type the affordable care act filetype:ppt.

Another very useful way to dig for information is to use the prefix site: to search within a site. For example, type site:washingtonpost.com Mitt Romney to get links to articles, blog posts and other references to Mitt Romney that appeared in The Washington Post. Bing reverses the format — type Mitt Romney site:washingtonpost.com.

To save time, in some instances you can preview information in search results. To preview videos without having to click on them, in the results page of Bing hover over the image of a video and in many cases it will play. And in Google you can see previews of Web pages by moving the cursor to the right of a search result and hovering over a small image of double arrows.

FINDING FACTS If you need a calculator, both Google and Bing can calculate some pretty fancy math queries by entering them in the search box, but Google goes further. Type 4 * 24 in Google and the answer appears as you finish typing, and below that emerges an in-browser calculator with scientific functions. You can also turn Google’s search box into a trigonometric graphing calculator; type, for example, cos(x) + cos(y) and a rotating three-dimensional graph is displayed. From there you can size the graph or grab it to view it from different angles.

Converting measurements is easy using the following format in either search engine: pints in a gallon; centimeters in a foot.

Stock prices are available in either Google or Bing by entering a stock symbol — followed by “stock” if there is any ambiguity. For example aapl stock or sbux stock, pulls up prices of Apple or Starbucks. In Google, using a company name works: Whole Foods stock.

Dictionaries are available as well by using the following format: define perspicacity.

Weather forecasts are quickly at hand by entering a ZIP code or city name, in either Google or Bing, as in weather Denver.

Likewise, to find movies playing in your area, all you need is your ZIP code: movies 10018. (Type in an actor or director followed by the word movies to see what else he or she did.)

But, if you are looking for someone to take out to a movie and impress with all your newfound knowledge, there is no search algorithm just yet. For that, you are still on your own.

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Mayer Strikes First Deal at Yahoo With Acquisition of Stamped

Marissa Mayer, chief of Yahoo.

Marissa Mayer promised earlier this week that Yahoo‘s deal-making was likely to revolve around smaller add-on acquisitions. On Thursday, she proved that she meant what she said.

The Internet company announced that it had purchased Stamped, a start-up focused on mobile products, for an undisclosed amount. The deal amounts to an “acqui-hire,” Silicon Valley’s term for buying a start-up for its talent.

The Stamped deal fits into two major initiatives that Ms. Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive, mentioned on the company’s earnings call on Monday. One was a focus on smaller deals, none of which were likely to be blockbuster size.

“Many acquisitions and most acquisitions, a vast majority, are less than $100 million,” she told analysts on the call. “And so we’re looking for smaller-scale acquisitions that align well overall with our businesses.”

The other is a race to build up Yahoo’s mobile offerings, an area that she described as lacking at the company.

“While we’ve made progress, Yahoo hasn’t capitalized on the mobile opportunity,” she said. “We haven’t effectively optimized our Web sites, we’ve underinvested in our mobile front-end development and we’ve splintered our brands.”

Buying Stamped is intended to help address those issues. The company produced an app that centered on recommendations of restaurants, music and other entertainment by users. Its investors included Bain capital Ventures and Google Ventures, and its advisers included Mario Batali and the Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom.

“Their experience building fun, useful, personalized mobile products aligns well with Yahoo!’s vision to create the best everyday mobile experience for our users,” Adam Cahan, a Yahoo senior vice president of emerging products and technology, wrote ina blog post on Thursday. “They will be a great asset as we expand Yahoo’s mobile efforts and build a world-class mobile development organization.”

For its part, Stamped’s team — composed in large part of former employees ofGoogle, like Ms. Mayer — wrote in their own blog post: “As entrepreneurs, it’s never easy to walk away from something you built from the ground up, but the folks we met with at Yahoo! are simply top-notch and we’re thrilled to be joining them!”

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Apple Store down ahead of iPad Mini midnight preorders

Apple's online marketplace is offline, presumably as it retools to prep for consumers ordering the smaller version of its iPad tablet.

With three hours to go before the iPad Mini officially goes on sale, Apple's online store is down.

In what has become standard operating procedure for Apple before a new release, the online marketplace has gone offline, replaced with the familiar message that assures shoppers that the store will "be back" soon.

The message appears in anticipation of the iPad Mini -- 7.9-inch version of the 10-inch iPadtablet -- going on sale at midnight Pacific time. The device, which was unveiled yesterday at an event in San Jose, Calif., is expected to ship to consumers on November 2.

The iPad Mini comes in six pricing configurations. In addition to the 16GB tablet with Wi-Fi at $329, the 32GB tablet with Wi-Fi is $429, and the 64BG version is $529. For devices with Wi-Fi and 4G cellular connections, the 16GB tablet is $459, the 32GB is $559, and the 64GB is $659. These devices are shipping two weeks after their Wi-Fi-only counterparts.

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Microsoft launches Windows 8 in India; upgrade for Rs 1,999

New Delhi: Microsoft has announced the availability of its Windows 8 operating system for its customers in India and around the world. Starting Friday, October 26, consumers worldwide will have access to the latest Microsoft OS on a wide range of Windows 8 PCs, ultrabooks, tablets and hybrid devices.

Windows 8 PCs and tablets will be available in India from 14 manufacturers – Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HCL, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Lenovo, RP Infosystems, Sai Info System, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Wipro and Zenith Computers. In India, over 250 Windows 8 enabled devices, including 23 completely new SKUs of Windows 8 PCs will be available across 100 cities and more than 2500 retail stores.

Besides new Windows 8 devices, consumers can also upgrade their existing PCs to Windows 8. Those who have bought Windows 7 PCs running Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 since June 2, 2012 can buy Windows 8 Pro for Rs 699. The offer applies to Windows 7 PCs sold until January 31, and the upgrade must be claimed by February 28. To claim the offer, register the machine at https://windowsupgradeoffer.com . You'll get an email with a promo code, which you can use to get the Windows 8 upgrade online.

Microsoft released its latest operating system Windows 8 in what is the biggest ever overhaul of the operating system. Here's a trip into what Windows 8 looks like.

But, those consumers, who bought Windows PCs before June 2, are qualified to download Windows 8 Pro for an estimated retail price of Rs 1,999. Those who prefer buying a DVD to upgrade will have to pay Rs 3,499.

Windows 8 will be available in two versions at retail - Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro. And for business customers, Windows 8 Enterprise offers new features like Windows To Go, DirectAccess, and BranchCache, as well as enhanced end-to-end security with features including BitLocker and AppLocker.

Also, the company launched Windows RT for ARM based tablets, which will be available pre-installed on new devices. With the windows 8 launch, the Windows Store is now open for consumers to download apps. In India, a range of free and paid apps that can be downloaded include Bharat Matrimony, BigFlix, BookMyShow, Bookyourtable, Burrp, Dhingana, Fastrack Tees, Flyte MP3, Gaana, Goibibo, ICICI Bank iMobile, ICICIDirect, JustEat, MakeMyTrip Explore, MapmyIndia, my airtel, PVR Cinemas, Tarla Dalal, Yahoo Cricket and Zovi.

Windows 8 comes with a new start screen that shows live colorful tiles that update in real time. Windows 8 is natively cloud-connected so you can access your data on any other Windows 8 PC. Microsoft says Windows 8 to be seamlessly synced across multiple devices. Windows 8 also comes with a new browser - Internet Explorer 10.

Asked about the launch of Microsoft's Surface tablet in India, Amrish Goyal, director, Windows Business Group, said, "The Surface tablet will be initially launched in eight countries and India is one of them," adding "we will launch it soon." However, he refused to share any rollout plans.

The company has not yet announced the phone version i.e., Windows Phone 8. Microsoft has an event on it Monday and may announce more details then. Nokia, HTC and Samsung have already unveiled their Windows phone 8 handsets.

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Windows 8 hit the market today

NEW YORK — Microsoft will be releasing its own tablet computer for the first time when the new version of Windows comes out today, as the software company tries to challenge Apple Inc. and its dominant iPad.

Because the initial version of Surface will run Windows RT, a modified version of Windows 8, which was unveiled Thursday, Surface won't run standard Windows programs; it will run only apps designed for it and obtained through Microsoft's new online store.

The device will start at $499, the same as the most recent, full-size iPads. The display is 10.6 inches diagonally, slightly larger than the iPad's.

The Surface goes on sale today, though Microsoft was set to sell it at its store in New York's Times Square late Thursday.

In San Antonio, consumers can go to the pop-up Microsoft kiosk at North Star Mall. The earliest shipment for new online orders is now one to two weeks away.

A Surface with Windows 8 Pro and the ability to run regular Windows programs will come a few months later. Microsoft hasn't disclosed the price.

Panos Panay, general manager of the Surface team, demonstrated watching movies and listening to music on the Surface itself, as well as streamed to a nearby Xbox.

The Surface has a kickstand, and its back camera is angled so it shoots straight out, not toward the table, allowing users to take notes and record video at the same time.

Thursday's launch event also marked the debut of Windows 8, a radical redesign that introduces a touch-enabled interface that attempts to bridge the gap between personal computers and mobile devices.

“What you have seen and heard should leave no doubt that Windows 8 will shatter the perceptions about what a PC really is,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer crowed at a New York launching event.

Another version of Windows 8 will be released next week for smartphones, which overwhelmingly are dominated by Apple Inc. and Google Inc.'s Android software.

“This is the biggest gamble they've ever made,” said analyst Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group. “Does (Windows 8) do more things? Yes ... but it's not that easy to use.”

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Apple set to unwrap mini-iPad to take on Amazon, Google

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple Inc is expected to make its biggest product move on Tuesday since debuting the iPad two years ago, launching a smaller, cheaper tablet into a market staked out by Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc. 

Apple hopes to beat back their charge onto its home turf of consumer electronics hardware, while safeguarding its lead in the larger 10-inch tablet space that even deep-pocketed rivals like Samsung Electronics have found tough to penetrate. 

Amazon's Kindle and Google's Nexus 7 have grabbed a chunk of the lower end of the tablet market and proved demand for a pocket-sized slate exists, helping force Apple into a space it has avoided and at times derided, analysts say. 

Apple's invitation-only event, where it is expected to unveil the tablet, gets

underway at 10 am PT (1700 GMT) in San Jose.

Check out the Apple iPhone 5 page 

A smaller tablet would mark the first device to be added to Apple's compact portfolio under Chief Executive Tim Cook, who took over from co-founder Steve Jobs just before his death. 

"Apple sensed early that they had a real winner with the iPad and that has proven to be correct," said Lars Albright, co-founder of mobile advertising startup SessionM and a former Apple ad executive. "They have a large market share, and to protect that market share they have got to be innovative," he said.

Wall Street analysts have said for months that Apple was planning a less expensive version of the iPad to take on cheaper competing devices, a move they say might hurt its margins, but prevent its rivals from dominating an increasingly important segment. 

The chief rival is Amazon, which proved a 7-inch tablet at around $200 has consumer appeal. The Kindle Fire, released last year for $199, was one of the hottest-selling holiday gadgets. It pressured Amazon's margins but gave it potentially millions of new high-spending customers. 

Amazon sold more than a million Kindles a week during December, paving the way for others like Google with its Nexus 7 to try and beat Apple in a market the company created. The Internet retailer has now put its second-generation Kindle Fire HD in the market, which it says is the "best-selling product across all of Amazon worldwide", based on undisclosed USsales figures and international preorders. 

Google's Nexus 7 tablet, built by Asian manufacturer Asustek, quickly ran out of stock after its July launch. 

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SharePoint 2010: Brand your SharePoint sites

SharePoint 2010 comes with sufficient branding features to help you apply your corporate branding standards to any type of SharePoint site.

Steve Wright and Corey Erkes

Adapted from “Pro SharePoint 2010 Governance” (Apress, 2012)

Before starting a branding initiative with a new SharePoint environment, it’s important to understand the needs of the business and its requirements around branding. As with any other project, gathering and analyzing requirements is essential.

It’s important to involve stakeholders up front in the process, especially those who could potentially influence the project in the later stages. This will decrease the chance for those painful, costly changes late in the game that can cause larger issues.

Most companies have branding standards. These typically consist of guidelines on the colors, fonts and logos the company uses. Obtain these guidelines as early in the process as possible. Not following them from the start could require some rework down the road.

A common approach to determining branding needs is to create a wireframe of the homepage, and any supporting page within the environment that doesn’t follow a typical SharePoint layout page. The goal of these exercises is to determine what level of SharePoint branding is needed. Determining these needs up front might save lots of unneeded customizations to master pages or CSS files later on.

Multilingual support

In today’s global world, sites within your farm may have to support the local language at the farm’s location. SharePoint 2010 uses language packs for both SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010.

Every Web front end in your farm will need the appropriate language packs installed. Installing language packs lets you create new sites in a local language, as well as translate the existing site’s interface based on the language the user chooses as the default. After installing the language packs, the Multilingual User Interface appears with a language settings option in the site settings menu of each site.

If multilingual support is a requirement within the environment, it’s important to plan for it accordingly. Ask the following questions:

• What languages need to be supported?
• What variations will you need?
• What elements will require language pack support?

Supporting multiple languages in SharePoint 2010 isn’t complicated, but proper planning and determining the level of language pack integration are necessary for successful implementation.

Publishing and branding

When you’re considering your organization’s branding needs, it’s important to know which version of SharePoint with which you’re working. SharePoint Server 2010 includes the Publishing feature, which is helpful for branding projects for the following reasons:

• Publishing lets you create templates for page content known as page layouts. Content authors and designers can edit page layouts.
• Publishing gives you better control over the navigational structures, especially if you wish to change them from the SharePoint UI.
• Publishing lets you easily change the master page.
• Publishing give you more flexibility with themes, even letting you apply the theme to a site and all sub-sites at the same time.

Even if you don’t wish to use the Publishing feature throughout the entire site, it’s a good idea to create the top-level site collection using the publishing site template. This allows for easier manipulation of the master page and supporting CSS.

Publishing also lets you delegate work. For instance, if you have a SharePoint developer working on the master page while an interface developer works on the CSS, they can do this work independently and later have it pulled together and published through an approval workflow. The workflow could include key members from the marketing team and those necessary to ensure you’re meeting company brand standards.

Types of SharePoint sites

You typically deploy SharePoint in one of three types of Web sites: public-facing Internet sites, internal-facing intranet sites or a combination of the two (an extranet). The use of each site varies, and therefore the branding of each type of site will also differ.

• Internet sites: These sites are typically driven by marketing and often tightly controlled. Very few users are allowed to publish content. Because they’re public-facing, they display a strong company brand and follow strict publishing guidelines. Site administrators can’t control the type of browser or the screen resolution that will be used to visit the site.
• Intranet sites: These are typically geared toward internal employees to help them collaborate and work more efficiently. Intranet sites typically have less corporate branding but more content publishers. Because these sites are internal, the company controls the browser and sometimes the screen resolution of the users accessing the site.
• Extranet sites: These sites are hybrids of Internet and intranet sites. They typically have a separate area into which an external user will need to authenticate. Depending on the need, the extranet may be branded to cater to the company with which your company is doing business. However, these types of sites are typically used more for collaboration, so extensive branding might not be needed.

Types of browsers

Another important decision you’ll need to make is to determine which browsers will be hitting your SharePoint site. While this might be easy if you’re administering an intranet site, it’s obviously more difficult for an Internet or extranet site. The popularity of browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari changes monthly, so before undertaking a branding effort, we recommend that you visit asite that publishes browser statistics.

SharePoint 2010 doesn’t support older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6. If you’re supporting an internal SharePoint site and determine that users are still hitting your site with Internet Explorer 6, it might be helpful to display a message stating that their browser isn’t supported and it’s time to upgrade.

Work with your internal infrastructure team to ensure that browsers supporting SharePoint 2010 are standard, or will be available to those users that interact with SharePoint 2010. For a complete list of features supported within each version of Internet Explorer, visit the Microsoft article on planning browser support.

Branding trends

While developing the brand and layout of a new site, it’s important to be aware of trends with other popular public-facing sites. While your brand might be unique, the layout and structure of the page should be familiar to users that visit other popular sites. These companies have spent time to understand branding trends and to research how the users view the different sections of a page when it first appears.

For instance, take Facebook.com or Bing.com. Notice how the user sign-in information is in the upper-right corner. Notice how the logo appears in the upper-left corner. These are common trends across public-facing Web sites, and your users will expect the same from internal sites as well.

Review the sites you visit often and see if this holds true for those sites as well. To get a better idea of how some trends are being utilized in SharePoint sites, check out these examples of SharePoint 2010 public-facing sites. You’ll notice that these Web sites follow the common layout patterns as described earlier.

Branding breakdown

Given the different elements involved in a SharePoint effort, it’s important to understand all the options for creating a branded SharePoint site. Typically, you can break down SharePoint branding into three major approaches, ranging from simple to complex. As the branding scope increases, so do the skill sets needed to complete the branding effort. Let’s take a look at a breakdown of the three branding approaches:

• Low effort: This approach uses out-of-the-box SharePoint master pages, CSS files and themes to create a simple SharePoint branded site. SharePoint 2010 provides 20 out-of-the-box themes and two master pages to provide limited branding. This approach won’t require any additional skill sets or resources outside of the SharePoint administrator to apply the theme or master page. This approach is typically used within intranet deployments where collaboration is the main focus and you don’t need to spend time enhancing the look and feel.
• Medium effort: This approach utilizes the out-of-the-box SharePoint master pages, but also custom or alternative CSS files to provide a more customized brand. This effort might also include custom theme development, which is much easier to create in SharePoint 2010 than it was in SharePoint 2007. This approach is common for intranet sites that require a more customized look and feel. For those larger deployments that focus on content publishing, this level of branding effort might be considered high. It will require a person with Web design experience, or at least experience with CSS files, to create the custom CSS files needed.
• High effort: This approach includes custom master pages, custom CSS files and potentially custom page layouts. This approach is common for public-facing sites or those internal sites that require a more polished and directed look and feel. This effort will require someone with traditional Web design skills or knowledge of how master pages work in ASP.NET.

Using themes

Now that we’ve talked about the different levels of effort depending on the branding need, we’ll discuss each of these topics in more detail to get a better feel for the needed branding approach. SharePoint themes are by far the easiest option for creating light branding on a SharePoint site. Themes let you apply 12 colors and two fonts to any SharePoint site. Microsoft completely revamped how themes work in SharePoint 2010, making theme creation much easier than it was in SharePoint 2007.

Unlike in SharePoint 2007, where theme-related CSS files would be added after the core CSS, SharePoint 2010 actually looks for a special type of CSS comment. Then it injects the CSS into the core CSS, so the browser only has to load one file. SharePoint 2010 themes don’t have the ability to define an image, in contrast with SharePoint 2007 themes.

SharePoint 2010 simplifies the theme-creation process by letting you create themes directly within SharePoint. You can use Word 2007, Word 2010, PowerPoint 2007 or PowerPoint 2010 to generate a Microsoft Office THMX file. These applications provide the 12 colors and two fonts as well, which are then packaged up in the THMX file, uploaded into SharePoint and applied to any site.

After you’ve created the theme, simply navigate to the Theme Gallery at the site-collection level and upload the newly created theme. After uploading and saving the theme, it will appear in the Site Theme menu as an available theme you can apply to any site.

SharePoint 2010 gives you a number of themes out of the box. While you might find one that exactly fits your needs, it’s more likely that one or more of these will come close without being an exact fit. It’s possible to take an existing theme and change any of the 12 colors or two predefined fonts.

Similar to how master pages work, if you create a site with a publishing template, you can apply the theme at the site level. You can also reset all sub-sites with this new theme as well. Themes within SharePoint 2010 are self-service, meaning someone with the appropriate permissions could apply a new theme or make changes to the current theme. While this may seem like a good idea, letting users modify themes can cause a branding disconnect between sites and raise issues in terms of not following corporate standards.

Themes are clearly an effective and straightforward way to apply branding to your SharePoint sites. Determine the corporate standards and work within those standards, and the SharePoint branding features can help you give your sites a clean and consistent brand.

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