My SpaceLeSs: January 2008

As I was working, I came across a headliner for every geek who has been geeky since the late 90s:

Netscape Is Dead

AOL has now officially announced that they will end the development and support of all Netscape browsers.

After February 1 2008, there will be no more development, support, or security patches for Navigator 9, or any previous Netscape Navigator browsers.

Users are advised to stop using the browser.

I remember back in my college days when I saw a computer technician with a shirt whose design was a tombstone with the engraving "C:\" and at least a portion of the shirt reads "DOS is dead". Change can be nostalgic or even painful. Some people might have been very angry with Bill Gates for releasing Windows 95.

Around that same time, a web browser called Netscape Navigator became popular. I remember that it was my favorite web browser when I was just learning to surf the web back in the late 90's. Netscape had a competitor called Microsoft Internet Explorer, and these two were at rivalry with each other. Netscape lost most of its share of usage to Internet Explorer during the first browser war. In 1999, Netscape Communications Corporation (the company) was acquired by AOL. During this time, Netscape started to distribute their product as open-source software under a new name: Mozilla. AOL played a significant role in the launch of the Netscape 6 browser, the first Mozilla-based, Netscape-branded browser that was released in 2000 and continued to solely fund the development and marketing efforts of Netscape-branded browsers.

With the dawn of Mozilla's Firefox browser, Netscape will be fading away to hand over the reins to Firefox. The Netscape Team fully stands behind the fine work being done by the Mozilla Foundation. It was recently announced by Tom Drapeau, director of AOL's Netscape Brand, that the company would stop supporting Netscape software products as of February 1st, 2008. They will continue to release security patches for the current version of the browser, Netscape Navigator until February 1, 2008. After February 1, there will be no more active product support for Navigator 9, or any previous Netscape Navigator browser. This includes Netscape v1-v4.x, Netscape v6, Netscape v7 Suite, Netscape Browser v8, and Netscape Navigator/Messenger 9.

For sentimental 90s geeks, you can make your Firefox look like Netscape by the add-on found in:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/56836

SeaMonkey, a Mozilla-related project, also looks a bit like Netscape.

Netscape has finished well. What a clean exit.

References:

Our business is online services. We hire skilled agents to clients that need them to perform business tasks that can be done over the Internet.

The main source of our income as an outsourcing company is that which comes from clients who avail of our services. Services are our main market, hence the need to have people who perform those services, called agents.
In an outsourcing relationship, the client and the company engage in a business relationship that puts the agent in a position to provide services over the Internet to the client. The client hires the agent who is employed by the company once the client believes that the agent has the necessary skills to perform the service for the client.

In Eversun Software, we provide services to the clients, and these services can be performed over an Internet connection. We are mainly focused on web development and web marketing, two areas of business that involve the use of the agents' skills and producing results that can easily be monitored by the client.

Web development includes the production of web sites and web pages, as well as their maintenance. In Eversun, we make use of PHP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript in the development of web pages.

Web marketing includes everything related to helping web sites generate traffic, page rank, and sales (if the site sells products). The tactics vary, but the goal is the same – to make the web site more visible to users in the Internet.

When agents are hired, they are hired by the company based on their skills as well as educational background. The agent works for the company first, and the client second. An agent may be given up by his client and yet still maintain his job, since he is an agent of the company and he can be given to other clients. When the agent first starts working for Eversun, he is posted on the site with his profile which can be viewed by potential clients. When the client requests an agent, the client must specify the skills he needs for the work that he wants the agent to perform. Agents who qualify for a certain client are given to that client. The client then pays the setup cost and hires the agent on contract with the company. The agent receives a monthly salary which is a portion of the monthly payment given by the client to the company. Should the client choose to terminate services from Eversun, the agent can be given to other clients. The agent's employment status depends on the company, not the client.

Supervising the agents are project managers, and they act as a mediator between the agents and the clients. Their responsibility is to maintain client relations and monitor the transactions that the clients make with the company.

For more information on Eversun Software, visit http://www.agentsofvalue.com/ .