Tech

A couple of the recent Tech Tips from www.geeks.com have made mention of RAID, but the level of detail required in those tips didn’t shed much light on what RAID actually is. The number of e-mail responses and comments in the Readers Digress section was convincing enough that an introduction to the basics of RAID would be an appropriate Tech Tip, so here it is.

Introduction

The word RAID sounds like it might describe something Marines conduct in Fallujah, or a can of what all roaches fear, but it is simply an acronym that stands for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks. Depending on who you talk to, the letter "I" can stand for either independent or inexpensive, but in my opinion independent is more appropriate, and far less subjective.

RAID generally allows data to be written to multiple hard disk drives so that a failure of any one drive in the array does not result in the loss of any data, as well as increasing the system’s fault tolerance. I say RAID generally does this, as there are several RAID configurations that provide different approaches to redundancy, but some RAID configurations are not redundant at all. Fault tolerance refers to a system’s ability to continue operating when presented with a hardware (or software) failure, as should be experienced when a hard drive fails in one of the redundant configurations of RAID.

What is Mobile SMS/ Test Messaging?

Mobile text Messaging, or Short Message Service (SMS), as we all know it, is the ability to send and receive text messages to and from mobile telephones. The text can comprise words or numbers or an alphanumeric combination. SMS was created as part of the GSM Phase 1 standard. The first short message is believed to have been sent in December 1992 from a Personal Computer (PC) to a mobile phone on the Vodafone GSM network in the UK. Each short message can be up to 160 characters is length when Latin alphabets are used.

Customer Usage and Market Growth

There is no doubting the success of the Short Message Service - the market in India alone has reached over one billion messages despite little proactive marketing by network operators and phone manufacturers. Key market drivers over the next two years such as the access of cheaper mobile technology to the masses will continue this growth path.

Mobile Messaging: How can your business benefit?

Enterprise Messaging

Enterprise uptake of mobile applications is set for phenomenal growth. By 2005, Gartner anticipates that 65 percent of enterprises will be harnessing the power of wireless applications to efficiently automate the existing business processes and use wireless connectivity for one or more user groups.

Studies show that people remember merely 20% of what they hear, and only 30% of what they see, and an incredible 70% what they hear and see. * With this in mind, it’s no wonder why video is such a powerful communications tool.

So your company has decided they need a video. Where do you start? What questions do you ask? How can you make sure the final product is what you are expecting? This article will give you the tools you’ll need to have a professional video project you can be proud of.

First, let’s talk about money. As with most things, you get what you pay for. Especially with video production, if you make a decision to hire a production company solely by picking the lowest quoted bid, you will probably end up with a video that is much less than what you expected. Remember, this video represents your company. Do you want your video to look like a high school A/V project? On the other hand, there is no reason to go crazy and spend ungodly amounts of money. It’s important to find a company that gives a fair bid for the type of video you need and can produce your project in a professional manner.

Whenever disaster strikes the most critical asset that every company should have protected from sudden loss due to fire, flooding, or theft is their data. No matter what happens to your hardware you can be sure to be able to be up and running no matter how sudden or how severe your damage or loss is - if you use an online backup system.

Online data back up is the most cost effective way for you to protect your investment by securely storing your data with an offsite data backup provider. No matter when incidents of data loss occur you can be sure that you will have immediate and complete access to your critical documents as you need it. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year you will be able to access and restore countless hours of work and unlimited amounts of data and documents of any type.

You can choose to restore an entire backup of your account or just the documents you need to get going in the event of a system failure. Access is available to any machine connected to the Internet (with proper authorization to the system) at any time, so you can access your backups from any remote location you choose. Access to backup data can keep employees up and running so even while facilities may be shut down indefinitely, your team can continue to do business as usual with little to no downtime.

I have a p3 500MHz PC with 128MB RAM, 10.2 GB HDD Sony CD ROM 48x with window ME edition operating system. I have a problem- when I insert my audio cd, it shows the error message: "window cannot access the specified device path or file. You may not have appropriate permission the access the item." Please tell me the solution of this error how can we configure the Yahoo! Account in outlook express. What is the pop mail and SMTP address of the Yahoo! Mail?

Dr Birbals: do you get this problem only in the case of audio CDs only or is it an every time phenomenon. If this problem is specific to audio CDs, then you must first check your sound card drivers and the compatibility of the player you are using to play audio CDs. Regarding configuration of Yahoo! Account in the outlook express, the procedure is simple. If this is your first account in outlook express, then on starting outlook express it will automatically start configuring an e-mail account for you, which could be your Yahoo! account also. However, if you are using outlook express already and would like to set another account i.e. Yahoo! Then you should add identity and start configuring the account as normally you would do by the following simple steps. However, when you are asked to enter the POP address, then use pop.mail.yahoo.com. In case of SMTP address, please use the address smtp.mail.yahoo.com. Enter the user name, which would be the first part of your yahoo e-mail ID. Then complete the rest of the step and this will finish the configuration.

What is Video Encryption?

Video Encryption is an extremely useful method for the stopping unwanted interception and viewing of any transmitted video or other information, for example from a law enforcement video surveillance being relayed back to a central viewing centre.

The scrambling is the easy part. It is the un-encryption that’s hard, but there are several techniques that are available. However, the human eye is very good at, spotting distortions in pictures due to poor video decoding or poor choice of video scrambling hardware. Therefore, it is very important to choose the right hardware or else your video transmissions may be un-secure or your decoded video may not be watchable.

Some of the more popular techniques are detailed below:

Line Inversion:

Method: Whole or parts of the signal scan lines are inverted. Advantages: Simple, cheap video encryption. Disadvantages: Poor video decrypting quality, low obscurity, low security.

Sync Suppression:

Method: Hide/remove the horizontal/vertical line syncs.

Advantages: Provides a low cost solution to Encryption and provides good quality video decoding.

Disadvantages: This method is incompatible with some distribution equipment. Obscurity (i.e. how easy it is to visually decipher the image) is dependant on video content.

SMS for Enterprise Messaging ? Value added services

Short message service, usually called SMS, is a globally accepted wireless service for enterprise messaging (mobile value added services) that enables the transmission of alphanumeric messages between mobile subscribers and external systems such as electronic mail, paging, and voice-mail systems.

The text comprises letters or numbers or an alphanumeric combination. SMS was created as part of the GSM Phase 1 standard. Each short text message is up to 160 characters is length when Latin alphabets are used and 70 characters in length when non-Latin alphabets such as Arabic and Chinese are used.

SMS comprises two basic point-to-point services:

• Mobile-Terminated short message (MT)
• Mobile-Originated short message (MO)

SMS Mobile-Terminated (SMS MT)

SMS (MT) are transported from the SMSC to the handset and can be submitted to the SMSC by other mobile subscribers via MO-SM or by other sources such as voice-mail systems, paging networks, or operators

SMS MT Services allow the deployment of various applications such as:

• Information Services (loyalty card members, delivery confirmation etc.)
• Real-time notifications and alerts (banking, finance and stock alerts, travel, sporting results)
• Direct Marketing offerings (promotions, new product announcement, events and shows, m-coupons)
• Ring tones, Logo downloads
• Quiz, live games

SMS Mobile-Originated (SMS MO)

Winter?the official start of the cold and flu season. Though, technically speaking, things got started a little early. Close to a million computers, mostly home PC users, have been infected.

For many of us our computers are our business. We keep in contact with customers and clients via email, do extensive internet research, and transmit important files electronically.

We know what to do to protect our bodies from viruses. There are some simple strategies, and even free precautions we can take to protect our businesses by keeping our PCs virus free.

Adopting the following six checkpoints will help keep your computer healthy and your business uninterrupted.

Use a Firewall

At its most basic level a firewall is a software security system that acts as a barrier between your computer and the outside world (the internet) by monitoring all incoming network traffic. A more advanced firewall will also monitor outgoing traffic. How you use your computer will determine whether basic or advanced firewall protection is needed.

What a firewall does is make your computer invisible while on the Internet. If hackers can’t see you, they cannot attack you.

TiVo will change your life… for the better. Plain and simple: record shows by telling TiVo to record them (not when, what channel, how long, etc.), record all new episodes of X, record all movies w/ so-and-so in them, etc.

High Points:

Most people know the basics of the concept. Here’s the low-down on the things I’m asked most…

1. You can record one thing and watch something else already recorded.

2. You can get a dual tuner TiVo, but you’ll need two SEPARATE feeds to the TiVo (i.e., two lines from your satellite dish). Then you can record 2 things at once or watch one/record another. These are more expensive, but you can get a DirecTiVo w/ dual tuner cheaper and then the monthly TiVo fee is about half normal.

3. Pause live TV - if you don’t realize the value of this, I can’t explain it.

TiVo has many different versions which all some slight variations. If you want to go beyond ‘average guy’ level, check out this forum.

Comparison to ReplayTV:

As use of the Internet continues to grow geometrically, we see an increased demand for information to be provided by a variety of media. Viewing options can range from simple text to PDF documents to video clips. Unfortunately, each option requires more and more resources and technological know-how. As convergence moves inexorably forward, we have to ask ourselves if there is a practical way to combine the best of this technology and still provide the user with a satisfying Internet experience.

The answer, at this stage of Internet evolution, is audio.

Voice, by itself, provides the means to enhance a user’s enjoyment of the Internet. Voice conveys many of the intangibles underlying the written word. A voice can touch the human spirit and deliver a message on its’ own merits. Audio can build community and maintain relationships.

Audio is the most mature of the streaming technologies and doesn’t have the bandwidth requirements associated with video. Any Internet user connecting at 28.8k or better can enjoy FM quality sound without experiencing buffering and other annoyances that can affect video at lower bit rates.