Category: Information Technology

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Digital Information Technology

Privacy Issues Surrounding Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is one of the latest trends in Information Technology. It is the process of using a network of remote servers to store, process and manage data and programs for use within the company. Previously all hosting of this information was done on local terminals or on local servers and accessed via a Local Area Network (LAN).

The advantages of the new data storage system are bountiful. This system allows one software license to cover many employees that otherwise would have needed many licenses. Cloud computer is also beneficial for companies that employ a hot-desk policy as the employee can access all their saved work from any terminal. Of course with every new technology there are issues.

The Disadvantages

One disadvantage companies should be aware of possible of outages. If the server hosting the data goes down, your entire workforce is left with no access to their work. In contrast; if local terminals store the data, one computer failing only results in one staff member having no access.

The big concern with cloud computing, which worries a lot of IT professionals, is the risk to data security. According to a survey of US Business Executives last year, 26% had experienced some data or trade secrets stolen and 40% of those who were surveyed thought that it was becoming easier for data theft to occur.

Data Protection Laws in the UK state that companies must keep data secure and be used only in specific business related activities. However storing data with a third party, who owns and maintains the server, raises the question of who is responsible for the management of the data security.

In addition these large banks of data are increasingly becoming a prime target for malicious computer based attacks. By taking down the server, dozens of companies can be rendered inert. And unlike with an internal storage system, in-house IT departments can do little to get the company back to work.

However companies should be more concerned for the security of the data. There are many organisations that would be eager to obtain valuable data from a company. It has not been unheard of companies stealing business leads to propose their own services or products.

One of the greatest fears is consumer information, including financial details, being stolen for internet scams and rogue purchases.

Combating Data Theft

Combating data theft has become one of the major focuses for internet security companies. The very basic precaution that companies can use is data encryption. Of course security experts would be keen to point out that simple encryption requires a lot of trust between you and your server provider.

To circumnavigate this you could obtain a split key encryption protocol where an IT security provider holds part of the encryption key and your company holds the other part. The encrypted data is held with the server host. This provides some security to the data; but other options should be explored depending on your business and its needs.

The Bottom Line

Despite there being a risk to data – cloud storage has a number of benefits which outweigh the risks to organisations. For instance information can be taken anywhere using cloud storage and accessed through most modern mobile devices. So holding meetings or delivering print proofs to your print supplier is easier and more secure as no physical copies are held.

Companies must remember that data stored on paper is just as vulnerable to criminals or competitors. And its more frequent that it is lapses in concentration or human error that has caused some of the biggest data leaks.

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Information Technology

Improving Business Efficiency & Productivity With WorkFlow

Whatever your business, be it in the public or private sector, the chances are your company produces a lot of information. In the early days storing this data on a computer hard-drive is sufficient, but as new documents and revisions to existing documents begin to mount up, keeping your business data secure, with the right version of each document to hand, and catalogued becomes an ever-increasing problem.

Similarly, if you send out a lot of information to your customers or workforce, printing the data, making sure it is sent to the right people, that the addresses are correct and that responses are tracked, also becomes a major issue and a major use of your time. Solutions, however, are out there and this article will touch on some of the most useful.

Understanding Workflow

As with any management and control system, documents have a linear life-cycle. Understanding and then describing this life-cycle is known as workflow. Tom Baeyens in his article “The State of Workflow” says:

“A [Workflow Management System] takes a description of a business process as input and manages the executions of the process instances. That makes it much more flexible then (sic) dedicated applications but you have to do the effort to create a formal description of the business process.”

The CIO (Chief Information Officer) Publication refers to Workflow as:

“… a term used to describe the tasks, procedural steps, organizations or people involved, required input and output information, and tools needed for each step in a business process.”

On their website, the Workflow Management Coalition says:

“Workflow management systems are being deployed in enterprises as a new kind of information infrastructure, helping to streamline and automate office work processes. A key feature of these systems is that they automate the workflow itself.”

Workflow Solutions

So how does this affect your business? Time, money and effort are the key savings found when implementing a workflow management system. Receiving accurate results from surveys that you know are timely and tracked properly is another.

There are many solutions to document management and workflow in the market today, but finding the right solution depends on answering some key questions including:

  • How are your documents produced?
  • Do you need to track faxed information or data that has been scanned into your system?
  • Does scanned text need to be read and collated into a functioning catalogue?
  • Do you need to advise users of changes and new additions to the knoweldge-base?
  • Are responses and comments to your documents important and do these need to be tracked collated and presented in a clear and concise way?

When you have the answer to these questions, then you can look for the right solution for your Workflow system. Ideally you need to find a business partner who can describe your workflow process and then automate the steps of the process seamlessly. One such business partner is Document Options Ltd.

As a specialist in document management and digital printing, we are experts in managing, describing and automating workflow in a wide range of businesses from utilities like EDF and southern Water, through local authorities such as Southwark Council and Croydon Council to government departments like the Environment Agency and HM Revenue and Customs.

Our solutions range from simply notifying users when new documents become available or to dynamically generating and distributing new documents or emails and then tracking and collating the results.
Whatever your workflow scenario, Document Operations Ltd. has the right solution for you.

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Futurism Information Technology

How Do 3D Scanners Work?

3D technology has many practical uses. The technology has found a new audience in recent years, and its surge in popularity has introduced 3D displays into consumer products like monitors and TVs. The concept of 3D printing has finally become a reality and the first wave of models have recently been released to the consumer market. However, perhaps the most functional and widely used application of 3D technology is 3D scanning. The ability to capture three dimensional data is widely used in many different types of industrial, commercial and scientific sectors, and it too could be introduced for use in the home.

What is 3D Scanning?

3D scanners capture real-world objects and reproduce them digitally. Unlike conventional scanners, these digital captures are three dimensional as 3D scanners can collect the complete spatial properties of an object. The scanned 3D models can then be manipulated and handled digitally.

How Does the Technology Work?

There are several different technologies that are used for 3D scanning. Contact 3D scanners physically probe and touch objects to completely capture their size, surface details, depth and other details. Although this method is very precise, contact scanners can be slow to operate and the intrusive nature of contact scanning means they are impractical for scanning some objects, particularly delicate ones. For these reasons, non-contact 3D scanners are more widely used.

The most common form of 3D scanning uses lasers to digitally map objects. Time-of-flight scanners use pulses of light to measure objects. These scanners have built-in detectors which time how long it takes for the pulses of light to travel around an object, and they can measure thousands of different points each second. This information is then used to build a complete model of the scanned object. Another method of 3D scanning uses triangulation to bounce lasers off objects. Similar to time-of-flight scanners, triangulation measures the distance between the scanner and the object being scanned. Triangulation scanning has limited range but it can measure the minute, intrinsic details of an object with micrometre accuracy. Time-of-flight scanning is typically less accurate, but it is capable of measuring huge objects from long distances.

3D scanning can also capture and visualise internal properties by passing emissions through a scanned object. X-rays, ultrasounds and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans are examples of 3D scanning which use passive techniques to see inside scanned objects.

How is it Used?

3D scanning has many different applications. Short-range scanners capable of measuring intricate, detailed objects are used extensively in engineering fields to reproduce components and even reverse engineer technologies which do not have their original specifications or building instructions. Medical sciences use the technology to create internal images and diagnose the unseen complications of patients. The ability to create 3D models has also been used to share and disseminate information and data. For example, archaeologists can scan an ancient, delicate artefact and send the highly detailed 3D model to be investigated and inspected by colleagues around the world. Similarly, highly detailed specifications and plans of a mechanical component or piece of machinery can be recreated with a 3D scan of the object.

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Information Technology Marketing

Does Social Sharing Really Affect Rankings?

The impact of social media on the internet landscape is undeniable and the affect that it has had on the ways that we communicate cannot be overstated. Thoughts can be shared, videos can go “viral” and in some cases, social sharing has even affected regional politics and uprisings; the famed “Arab Spring” being a perfect example of this growing trend. While the impact on communications is certainly appreciable, may wonder whether the power of social media is as potent in affecting a site’s rankings it it appears. So let us take a quick look at some of the main factors that allow social media to influence a site’s search engine position.

The Power of the Organic Search

After the new Penguin security update from Google, the importance of organic search rankings is much more relevant. For those who may not be aware, organic rankings are those that are generated by human interaction and linking as opposed to pay-per-click or their such automated sources. Social sharing is nearly purely organic in terms of search results, so Google will weigh a site with more social media outlets and sources higher than a standalone site with a few banner ads.

Search Engines Trust Sites That Employ Social Media

A site with links to social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+ will be more valued by a search engine. This is due to the fact that these social links help prove the validity, trustworthiness and value of the site’s content. This will additionally allow this site to be ranked higher than a competitor’s page that may contain nothing than static information that is rarely updated.

The Importance of Social Mentions in Relation to Rankings

It is important to also recognise that rankings are both organically based while being influenced spontaneously by visitors themselves. Let us imagine that an individual “likes” a certain page (or in the case of Google+, he or she adds a “+1” to the page). simply stated, the more “likes” or “+1s” that a page has, the higher it will rank. Notwithstanding this fact, word-of-mouth still plays an important and undeniable role in rankings. The more visitors a page gets, it is only natural for the overall rank of the page to be higher. The great aspect of this social sharing is the fact that it will be accomplished with little effort from the webmaster or page owner. Thus, valuable time can be freed up that could be devoted to other SEO and marketing techniques.

Social Media is not a Standalone Tool

While the previously mentioned factors are certainly important, there have been those that have questioned as to whether social media truly deserve the attention that it has gotten recently from SEO specialists. Some even believe that social media has been over-hyped and instead plays but a small role in a site’s success. This perception may have arisen from the fact that many individuals have looked at the effects of social media alone on a page’s rankings. This can be a critical flaw, for the success or failure of a social media campaign has much to do with the media’s integration with existing SEO techniques that have been proven to work. The synergy between social media and other SEO tools needs to be recognised to fully appreciate the powerful impact that social sharing can have on a site’s rankings.

So, it has become clear that social sharing is indeed a powerful tool to improve a site’s standing. However, this tool needs to be used in conjunction with existing SEO techniques for its value to be fully realised.

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Information Technology

What Does an SEO Consultant Do?

SEO, or ‘Search Engine Optimisation’, has become a much more widely known and used term in recent years. Owners of websites who are looking to gain a competitive edge in promoting their content often hear about SEO as a means to make their website more prominent. http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo gives a good run-down on SEO for beginners. The basic premise of SEO is to optimise the content of a website in such a way that it appears favourably on search engine rankings for relevant searches – for example a delivery company in the UK would want to rank highly in searches such as ‘delivery companies UK’ on Google.

Staying Competitive

Of course, just because more people have a basic knowledge of the term ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ does not mean that everyone is an expert. The competitive nature of SEO is such that it is only the sites with the best SEO that will reach the top rankings on Google and other engines. This is especially true in hard-fought areas such as picture sharing sites or shopping for popular items, where known and established brands will tend to dominate. To make matters more complicated, the standards of search engines are liable to change from time to time as engine companies decide to improve or change their search algorithms, which can render boot high ranking pages from the top overnight.

SEO Consultants

This is where getting extra help comes in. The basic task of the SEO consultant is to make a web page more effective at achieving high search rankings. To this end the consultant may have many jobs to do, depending on the current state of the website. The various stages of SEO consulting are detailed here: http://www.webpronews.com/what-does-an-seo-company-really-do-2005-05.

Understanding Search Engines

An important part of the SEO Consultant’s job is understanding the various intricacies of current search engines, most importantly Google. The vast majority of site traffic today is generated through clicks from Google searches. One of the reasons that Google has remained so popular for so long is that the company constantly seeks to improve the quality of its search results. This means that old SEO techniques such as creating pages densely packed with keywords and very little content will no longer work as they once did. A good consultant stays on top of the latest techniques to gain a high search ranking from Google. This includes knowing where relevant information (including keywords) should be placed on the site, so that maximum visibility to Google bots is achieved.

SEO Value for Money

Gaining an edge in search rankings is undoubtedly beneficial for the popularity of any type of website. However, it makes sense to decide what level and type of SEO consulting is affordable. It is entirely possible to come up with a great, effective and SEO optimised website by yourself, assuming that you are willing to invest the amount of time required to research and perfect your content. This is probably a good idea for someone who is making their first website and needs to learn the basics – some experience in doing it yourself will even make it easier to pick a good SEO consultant if and when the time comes.

Quality Content

Current Google algorithms tends to value so-called quality content over keyword density methods – check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=El3IZFGERbM for details. Today’s SEO consultants must be savvy with re-writing or even creating totally new content for your website. A good consultant will work closely with you to decide on the particulars of this re-worked content, so that it fits the tone of the page.

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Information Technology Marketing

What Is Pingback And Trackback Spam?

Link building and linkbacks are an important part of good SEO practice and an excellent way to boost network traffic and attract new visitors. Recent changes to Google’s algorithms have factored in the importance of links and now it’s not just the content of a website which determines its page rank on search engine results pages. The amount of links to and from a website can determine its popularity and ‘worthiness’, and link building can be an effective way of building visibility and presence on the web. However, the importance of link building has made it a target for black hat SEO practices. Trackbacks and pingbacks can easily be enabled on blogs, but owners should be careful when using these forms of linkbacks as they are particularly prone to spam.

What’s the difference between a Pingback and Trackback?

Originating in the comments section of blogs, pingbacks and trackbacks are relatively new concepts in the world of SEO. Pingbacks and trackbacks basically serve as notifications between two different websites. A trackback occurs when one blog owner sees an article or content on another blog which they want to share or comment on. The blog owner is able to post on their own website about the article or content they are interested in, and they can then send a trackback to the original blog owner to notify them about what they have written. Receiving the trackback, the original author can then display an excerpt from the other blog in the form of a comment on the original article. Pingbacks are very similar but they typically just generate a link to the related content on the other blog. Some people prefer using pingbacks because trackbacks recipients can edit whatever excerpt they have received before posting it, but with a pingback it is just a link being shared. Regardless, both methods act as a way for blogs to connect with each other. They are a quick way for blog owners to show if they have been referenced on other blogs so readers can easily find further discussions on the content.

What Is Pingback and Trackback Spam?

Pingbacks and trackbacks are automated so blog owners are notified when their content is being commented on or shared elsewhere. Blog owners have to approve these notifications before they appear on the original content. When trackbacks or pingbacks are approved, a link or excerpt is generated that directs to another blog or website referencing the original content. This creates a mutually beneficial relationship between two websites as they are linking to one another and potentially creating new opportunity for traffic. However, Google uses outgoing and incoming links to determine the page rank of a website. Some blog owners are tempted to approve pingbacks and trackbacks which lead to spam blogs (often referred to as splogs) devoid of real content because it shows that their content is active and being commented on. This can be a very bad idea because if these links are from spam or ‘content-mill’ style blogs, it will be detrimental to the blog owner’s page ranking.

What Can Website Owners do about it?

Website and blog owners simply need to be careful about the trackbacks and pingbacks they verify. A shocking 83 per cent of all blog comments are spam, so it can sometimes feel like an uphill battle. However, many spam pingbacks and trackbacks are easily identifiable. A generic comment, phrases in broken English or content which is completely off-topic to the original subject is usually a strong indicator of spam. If website owners are still unsure, they can simply visit the originating website to see if it is a spam website to avoid.

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Information Technology Marketing

Is Co-citation The New Anchor Text For SEO?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a key factor for so many modern businesses that it could be said to be a necessary part of operating in the modern economy. Consumers have so many options available to them that bringing your business to their attention as quickly as possible when they are looking for relevant goods or services is vital if you want to take and hold a reasonable market share in your sector.

Shifting Sands

However, the changing requirements, weightings and heuristics of the many search engines that customers can use place large demands on most businesses’ content generation. Many sites had been using keyword stuffing, irrelevant and circular anchor links, and other non-customer-focused techniques to generate pages that were weighted more towards search engine rankings than customer needs. Because of this, several large-scale search engine providers, in particular Google, with its Penguin update, have implemented new systems to remove the emphasis on keywords and try to encourage more new and original content. This means that even more legitimate techniques such as linking highly focused anchor text in blogs, reviews and other related areas to your main website are now less useful and receive a lower weighting in searches.

New Approaches

This had lead to many businesses becoming concerned about their search engine rankings. Without the easy fix of keyword anchor links from a set of subsidiary sites, it can be hard for newer or small businesses to build up the necessary number of links and associations to rank highly on search engines without paying for promoted advertising. This has lead to some creative solutions being sought by SEO experts.

Co-Citation – Win/Win Approaches

Because companies’ efforts to promote their own sites are now being downgraded in terms of search engine rankings, the corollary is that links from non-affiliated sites are suddenly more valuable. In particular, if a site is frequently cited in conjunction with another site, modern search engine algorithms will recognise a relationship between the sites, giving them peer legitimacy.

Co-citations are harder for businesses to directly affect, and rely on third parties appreciating content enough to share it in a formal way. This, for most search engines, is a more legitimate way to judge a site’s impact and/or importance on both a global and local level, and, taken in conjunction with the simultaneous push towards locally weighted results, it is designed to help target searchers’ needs more accurately. This means that more relevant original content needs to be generated, and this in turn means that the customers are more likely to get useful results from initial searches.

Working with the New Paradigm

Rather than trying to focus on keywords and the associated anchor text links within their own sites or subsidiaries, it is more important for businesses that wish to perform well in search engine rankings to concentrate on creating relevant, original – perhaps even controversial – material that individuals and other businesses will take an interest in and that may affect online debate. By doing this, the sort of anchor text links that still count may well be created by third-parties, and these are of direct relevance in your quest for a higher search engine ranking.

Maintaining clear keywords for your industry is still vital in order for your site to be correctly classified in searches. The relative ranking of your site, however, is more likely to come down to how much of an effect your business has on its customers, shown by the number of linked independent reviews and commentaries, and your business sector, often indicated by links from industry and academic articles.

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Information Technology

Practical Applications for 4D Scanning

Practical Applications for 4D Scanning

About 4D Scanning

The birth of 3D ultrasound scanning occurred in 1987 and was initially developed by Olaf von Ramm and Stephen Smith at Duke University in Durham, United States. This type of scanning generally uses the emission of sound waves to build 2D and 3D images. Contrary to 2D scanning, 3D scanning sends sound waves at the target at multiple angles to build and produce a three-dimensional image that is then relayed back to a computer screen. This works by sending sound waves that travel through objects and reflect back at the emitter, at different times, to produce a black and white image of an object that otherwise cannot be seen. Different to 3D scanning, four-dimensional scanning provides an extra dimension to the conventional method by relaying images back to a computer screen at a faster rate, rather than producing still images. This gives the effect of viewing the object in real-time rather than having to build images together manually, which is the case with 3D scanning. Though this is the case, the speed of sound is noticeably slower than many other waves, which means that the images produced will have a slight lag and will not technically be ‘real time’. For more information on how exactly ultrasound scanning works, visit http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~jharlow/teaching/phy138_0708/lec04/ultrasoundx.htm.

Risks Associated with 4D Scanning on Humans

Ultrasound scanning of this kind is extremely practical in medicine at the moment because there is currently no evidence to suggest that it can be harmful to humans or the developing foetus. The technology simply uses sound waves that travel through and bounce off objects without causing any damage to tissue. Though this is the current understanding of the process, there is still significant controversy surrounding the issue by those who feel that ultrasound scanning should only be used in medical situations with the understanding that there may be some risk involved. For those who would like to learn more regarding the risks involved with ultrasound scanning of this type, the following article by Dr. Ben Kim is very interesting, http://drbenkim.com/articles-ultrasound-pregnancy.html. According to Dr. Ben Kim, there is evidence to suggest that ultrasound scanning can often do more harm than good.

Clinical Applications of 4D Scanning

In a clinical sense, scanning of this type is often used to detect foetal anomalies, although it proves popular in helping to build foetal-maternal bonding. This is because 4D imaging allows the mother, or anyone else, to determine the sex of their baby, distinguish features, see the baby close up and see it moving in real time. The invention of 4D scanning gives the viewer a unique opportunity to see something that perhaps shouldn’t be possible at all. However, as aforementioned, many scientists argue that ultrasound scanning can cause more harm than good. For instance it is often argued that ultrasound scanning to detect serious problems before the birth of the child does not actually better the situation because it cannot change anything. In fact, it can have quite the opposite effect by damaging the healthy foetal-maternal relationship.

Other Applications for 4D Scanning

Ultrasound scans, especially 4D scans, also have many uses in Urology. For instance, they can be used to determine; the rate of blood flow through the kidneys, whether the patient has kidney stones and can also often detect whether the patient has prostate cancer. Additionally, there is an increasing use for ultrasound scanning in emergency rooms as a rapid imaging tool in order to give a quick diagnosis and even save lives. To find out more about this subject, visit http://www.howstuffworks.com/ultrasound4.htm.

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Information Technology

Print Resolution Basics for Beginners – DPI, PPI & Resolution

It is not necessary for people to be technically minded in order to understand the basics of DPI, PPI & Resolution. These terms can look confusing at first glance, but they actually refer to something that is relatively easy to understand. The benefits of learning a bit about resolution is that it means that the individual will be better able to make decisions when dealing with all types of graphic image.

Resolution Explained

The easiest way to explain resolution would be to say that it refers to the number of small squares of colour in a picture. These squares are generally referred to as pixels, and they are combined in such a way as to create the desired image. When people say that an image has a high resolution, they are really saying that is has a high number of pixels. By increasing the number of pixels used to create an image, it causes this image to appear smoother and more realistic – generally speaking.

Pixels or Dots

Pixels will sometimes be referred to as dots, but this can be confusing because it gives people the impression that pixels are round with empty spaces between them because of this shape. Pixels are always square, and there are no spaces between them in an image.

DPI

Dots per Inch (DPI) is a term used to describe the number of printer dots that appear on paper when printing off an image. It is actually referring to the number of droplets of ink that will be laid down on the paper. DPI indicates the number of dots that will be in the span of one inch. The higher the DPI, the more ink droplets will be used print off the image. A high DPI does not necessarily mean a clearer image because too much ink can impair shadow detail and lead to a less than ideal print.

PPI

Pixels per Inch (PPI) refer to the number of pixels in the span of one inch. A pixel (picture element) can be described as the smallest possible area of illumination on a computer screen. Each pixel is made up of three colour dots – red, blue, and green – and it is possible to change the brightness of each dot to create millions of possible colours. If the PPI is low, it leads to images that look jagged. Professional photographers will usually want to save images that are at least 300 PPI.

Importance of PPI

The reason for why it can be so important to know the PPI is because this will determine the maximum size of the image that can be created without a noticeable decline in quality. This is because the amount of information available in the pixel cannot be increased afterwards, and if the image is too big the individual pixels will be larger thus reducing the overall crispness and quality.

Difference between DPI and PPI

DPI and PPI are different ways of measuring resolution – one is a measurement of dots on paper, and the other is a measure of pixels on a screen. It is easy for people to get mixed up between dots and pixels, but they are not the same thing. DPI is used to help people determine the resolution of their printer and PPI is the resolution of their image on their screen. Even the experts will tend to get these to measurements confused, but it can be important to understand the difference between the two.