Aug 30th, 2007 | cool ideas | No Comments
A recent press release from Cognex UK gives details of a machine that is set to “revolutionise” how flowers are sorted. The machine has been developed by French companies Sterkelec, Avi and Mecaflor with camera technology provided by Cognex UK. The machine is able to sort 40,000 stems per hour (that’s around 11 every second) into 7 categories ranging from extra fine to defective. The system works by using colour cameras and vision algorithms that are modified to improve performance of the machine.
The machine has been developed to match colours, sort and detect defective flowers, proving to be a massive hit with the initial users; lilies of the valley producers. Traditionally the sorting of the flowers has been a time intensive and expensive task, even more so when taking into account the fragile nature of the flowers. The reason the machine has been welcomed so quickly is due to the performance of the machine and the “almost immediate” ROI.
Jul 30th, 2007 | network security | No Comments
It appears that despite massive ongoing efforts and the deployment of a vast and complex range of measures many companies are still struggling to defend their Domain Name System servers from malware attacks. It seems the steady rise in phishing attacks (there was a 26% rise in the first part of 2005) allied to ever more sophisticated scams like pharming attacks continue to cause real problems for the world of network security and expose DNS insecurities.
According to a recent survey of IT and business professionals by Mazerov Research and Consulting more than half claimed to have suffered a malware attack of some sort, just less than half reported pharming or cache poisoning and a third had experienced a Denial of service attack. In fact amongst all the respondents a mere 16 % claimed never to have experienced a malware attack of some sort. Indeed, of the various types of DNS attack malware came out as the most prevalent with 68%, ahead of denial of service, 48%; cache poisoning, 36% and pharming with 23%.
For IT departments an attack on their companies Domain Name System servers must rank as one of the most alarming threats out there. Should a DNS server be compromised a hacker would have complete control and therefore the ability to mislead surfers into all variety of phishing and pharming attacks. Understandably, companies are finding it necessary to employ fairly convoluted measures in attempt to defend DNS – on average the typical number of overlapping methods used at the same time is 3.5 with the patching of operating systems emerging as the most popular option. Other means of protection might include dedicated Firewalls, DoS mitigation services, and various DNS appliances.
The study also proved quite illuminating in highlighting a disparity of opinion between IT personnel and C-level executives when it came to estimating the amount of time their company could withstand significant problems if DNS was taken out. The executive averaged 126 minutes whilst the IT people came up with a slightly less optimistic 105 minutes, although in some cases thought a mere 72 minutes would result in serious problems. The potentially damaging impact of a period of internet downtime to companies was made very clear - asked how their company would fare in the event of the internet connection being knocked out for a more significant period a rather shocking 12% thought it was extremely or somewhat likely they would completely go out of business.
Jul 27th, 2007 | VoIP | No Comments
Maybe you’ve heard something about the possibility of making phone calls using your new broadband connection, perhaps you’ve even heard that it could save you a bit of money on your phone bill. Well, for those not yet up to speed on the subject perhaps it’s time to find out a bit more about the brave new world of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).
Basically, VoIP is a burgeoning technology that allows your voice to be carried over an internet connection. It works by breaking your speech into blocks of digital data and carrying it over the internet (in much the same way as an e-mail) to be reassembled into speech at the other end. It’s a technology that has started to become more widespread now that more and more people have got access to a high-speed internet connection -whilst it’s possible to use VoIP with a dial up connection this obviously means that you wouldn’t be able to use it without losing the use of your normal phone line.
The proliferation of broadband connectivity opens up the possibility of increasing numbers of us running both VoIP and a traditional landline in parallel, an arrangement that should give you the best of both worlds. It isn’t necessarily advisable to ditch your regular home phone just yet.
So, how true is the claim that VoIP calls are free? It’s certainly the case that when making PC to PC calls there’s no reason why it should cost any more than sending an email (i.e. nothing). Should you want call anyone who’s only got a traditional landline however, a gateway will have be opened between the two separate networks, for which you’ll be charged. This probably means that you’ll have to pay a fixed monthly fee to your VoIP provider or (maybe a better option for infrequent users) on a Pay As You Go basis. Overall VoIP certainly has the potential to provide a considerably more cost-effective communication service.
It’s a relatively recent development that VoIP is beginning to be marketed as a genuine alternative to your conventional landline; this has meant that there are now plenty of providers trying to present it as more of a familiar, approachable product for those still attached to the idea of a regular phone. In many cases, if you sign up for a monthly deal, perhaps in conjunction with your broadband service, providers will supply you with a free adapter, meaning you can simply plug your regular phone handset straight into your modem. And if you don’t mind abandoning your handset then you’ll probably want to get hold of a headset, talking directly into your computers inbuilt microphone is likely to give diminished sound quality.
All in all then, it appears VoIP could well represent the future of telecommunications and it‘s quite possible to envisage it rapidly becoming a thoroughly attractive option for anyone who already has a broadband connection.
Jul 27th, 2007 | WiFi | No Comments
We are increasingly living in a wireless world. WiFi hotspots continue to proliferate in coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and are now, with ambitious plans afoot for blanket coverage, even beginning to spread over entire cities. With more and more of the country kitted out with WiFi enabled laptops and a burgeoning new generation of WiFi phones and gaming equipment it seems we’re entering a brave new world of universal connectivity. It isn’t inconceivable to imagine a not too distant future in which you’ll be able to access the internet virtually anywhere at anytime.
The latest Wireless network venture in London will see a 22km stretch along the River Thames converted into a giant WiFi hotspot. Running from Millbank to Greenwich the network will be free to those who don’t mind limited download speeds of 256kbps and for those who want a bit more speed, £2.95 an hour or £9.95 a month will buy you 500kbps.
According to MeshHopper the company behind the venture which is being branded as “online-4-free”, the one condition for those using the free service is that they’ll be required to view 15 to 30 second ads every 15 minutes, those paying for the faster service won’t have to.
The project marks a significant development in the introduction of city-wide WiFi networks, not only for its massive scale but because unlike similar networks such as the City of London backed venture run by mobile operator The Cloud it’s available for free. It follows on the back of a city-wide service launched in Norwich last year and anticipates a free network due to be launched in Manchester in August.
According to Dan Toomey, chief executive of Free-hotspot who joined forces with MeshHopper in the project “This really marks the arrival of free WiFi in Greater London. Millions of Londoners, as well as commuters, visitors and tourists can now expect to find free Wi-Fi as they work or play along the Thames.” Of course, whilst free to those willing to tolerate less than blistering speeds and the occasional interruption of ads, this is a undeniably a commercial venture. In this respect it will be competing with The Cloud’s offering which will cost £11.99 a month after an initial free month but may well give surfers faster speeds.
When Norwich launched its pioneering council run city-wide wireless network last year there was a degree of controversy with Broadband providers regarding it potentially damaging competition; for this reason speeds had to be capped at 256kbps and sessions limited to an hour only.
Jun 13th, 2007 | Podcast | No Comments
Bulgarian Dreams, the UK’s premier agent of Bulgarian real estate, has launched a series of informative audio guides that will provide users with a wealth of information about Bulgaria, including history, culture, entertainment, area profiles and interviews with local people. A groundbreaking step in the property industry, the audio guides will be available for anyone to download and are designed to maximise access to information about Bulgaria and help potential purchasers to choose which region would best suit their investment.
By texting ‘podcast’ to 68010, subscribers will receive back an MMS with the embedded audio file. They will then be able to listen immediately to the guide on their multimedia phone. In addition these podcasts can be downloaded or emailed so that subscribers can listen on their computer or MP3 player at their leisure. The podcasts, presented by BBC radio presenter Kati Whitakker, will each last for around 6-7 minutes and are designed to give an overview of Bulgaria and a focus on the three main regions of investment – the Black Sea Coast, the mountains and the cities.
With the Bulgarian property market proving to be increasingly popular for investors seeking investment property, Robert Jenkin, Managing Director of Bulgarian Dreams, is confident the podcasts will prove extremely useful to potential purchasers:
“Many people consider purchasing overseas property but for various reasons do not have the opportunity to really investigate the country. By subscribing to these podcasts users will receive a series of informative guides about Bulgaria, so they will now be able to do access all the information they need on the move and at their convenience. We received over 3,000 downloads of our first episode alone.”
Subscribers will receive a series of podcasts, which will run over several months and will range over a number of topics. The first podcast will provide an informative outline of Bulgarian geography, history and culture and this will be followed by a series of guides including ‘how and why to buy in Bulgaria’ and a number of area profiles focusing on the mountains in the summer and winter, the cities and the Black Sea coastal region.
With an in-depth view of each region, the podcasts are expected to be of interest to a wide range of people. Robert continued:
“The podcasts are not designed to be completely sales orientated. While a part of each will highlight current new developments available through Bulgarian Dreams in a particular area, over 80% of the content will give useful information on a specific topic or area of Bulgaria, including leisure activities, what to see and do and information about the climate and so forth. We hope the podcasts will therefore be used by a variety of people, not just purchasers, to access information about the country.”
Read about Bulgarias First Carbon Neutral Development at Over Unity, the Alterntive Energy Site
Jun 1st, 2007 | online games | No Comments
As some of you might know already, I’m what you might call a bingo fanatic, mentioning it at any given opportunity and trying to get all my friends involved in playing the game too. Most people don’t think there’s much skill required to be a great bingo player, but that’s not true. Yes, bingo is probably one of the easiest gambling games to play, but it requires a keen ear, a keen eye and quick reaction. This is what makes bingo the popular games it is today. What follows is a quick overview of how to play online bingo!
Most bingo games online are very similar and are very easy to play. The objective of bingo is very simple. All you have to do is match the numbers in a predetermined pattern on your bingo card. There are literally hundreds of different cards online, all designed to make the game more interesting. Some cards will simply require you to match the number horizontally or diagonally across the card whilst others can have quite elaborate patters that you are required to complete.
When playing online bingo, random numbers are displayed or “called out” one at a time. You keep matching the numbers on your card and if you get the pattern, you have bingo! You want to indicate that you have bingo before any other player by clicking on the “BINGO!” button as fast as you can.
Now what makes bingo online even easier is the automatic or “Auto Daub” feature that most bingo rooms support. You can let your computer play for you. This is an amazing feature, as you can sometimes play many games at the same time, and often as many games as you like.
Some online bingo rooms offer progressive jackpot bingo games. Needless to say there are enormously popular with bingo players. A progressive jackpot rolls over from game to game until it is won. Many bingo rooms also add all sorts of prizes including merchandise and cash to their games.
Bingo chat games are becoming very popular. Some online bingo rooms have formed huge communities of people who meet up, chat and play bingo frequently. The activity in some of these chat game rooms can be quite frenzied and takes a bit to get used to but are a lot of fun once you get into the swing of things.
Bingo is very popular all over the world, and online bingo is probably the fastest growing game online. I’ve been playing online bingo for years and my favourite site is the Mecca Bingo site. They’re currently giving away £50 sign-up bonuses so I suggest you visit the Mecca site today and play bingo online and see what all the fuss is about.
May 15th, 2007 | all things apple | No Comments
Apple today announced 3 new additions to its portable family. The new MacBooks all come with the new upgraded Intel Core Duo 2 and all sport ultra hi glossy 13.3″ screens. The first configuration comes with a 2ghz processor, an 80 gb hard drive and an Intel Graphics 950. The second comes with a little more power in the form of a 2.16ghz processor, a 120gb hard drive and an Intel Graphics 950. The final configuration is the return of the sleek looking black MacBook again coming with a 2.16ghz processor, a wopping 160gb hard drive and an Intel graphics 950. All the new MacBooks come with Apples award winning iLife ‘06 software, iSight camera, bluetooth and all new built-in 802.11n the successor to built-in 802.11g boasting twice the range. Some speculation has been ensued that Apple will now release an update to the rest of the MacBook family the might Pro. The new MacBooks range from $1,099 - $1,499.
May 15th, 2007 | design | No Comments
Some time has passed now, so we can have a real discussion about the Intel based Macs and the Power PC Macs. When Steve Jobs announced the switch to Intel everyone was thinking that this is the pivatal point when Macs
a) become cheaper in comparison to PC’s
b) become upgradeable
and
c) become faster than the almighty G5.
How badly it has all gone. With software giants Adobe not supporting the Intel chip until the release of Creative Suite 3, most of us who rushed to buy the new Macs felt cheated by the lack of power and the need to upgrade your Ram to the point that you could get the same performance from the machine you replaced. Rosetta was and still is for some people more of a disguise than a blessing, yes we can run programs built for the PPC but we cant run them well. Most of the time they just stop and crash. Who wants that? Another thing the Intel chip has brought is the ability to boot up Windows on your Mac…who would want to? The whole point of having a mac is that you don’t rely on Microsoft and that pathetic excuse of an OS. Those that have booted up Windows on there Mac have soon scrapped the idea because of it’s instability. All these things are what makes the PPC superior to the new Intel chips in the every day workings of your creative/un creative jobs. From a design stand point the Intel Macs are far inferior, granted they’re quieter and eat less electricity but my god have they lost there balls. Personally I would have held out for 2 more years for a G5 laptop because at the end of the day it was raw power.
On paper the Intel Macs are great but unfortunately in the fundamental reality called the real world they just don’t stand up to praise they recieved. I would gladly trade my MacBook Pro for my old PowerBook.
Hopefully the release of OS X 10.5 will give us what we where all sold in to…
May 15th, 2007 | design | No Comments
You’ve dedicated your best years to learning your trade and worked with some big corporate clients, you’re in debt, tired and in serious need of a good holiday. What Next? This is what you do, you learn to organise your work around your life, not the other way round, find time for the things you want to do re-Mortgage the house, max out the credit cards, fly to Spain on a whim, buy a big flashy car with the all benefits included car insurance do it, the work is always going to be there when you get back, no one’s going to die. Personally I think designers think to much about the work and not enough about what they want from there life. Yeah agreed it is competitive and they’re always obstacles in the way, like the client that wants it all now but take care of yourself. Besides your job’s probably crap, have no artistic license and are working around people who whine all day about there financial situation and the babysitter.
I’m not saying be a rebel, I’m saying save some time for yourself and not think too much about what you have to do think about what you want to do. With the way the industry is going and with more and more grads coming out of university each year there’s going to be plenty of time to stress out.
May 11th, 2007 | Uncategorized | No Comments
The cost of setting up a web site is dirt cheap nowadays. You can register a domain for less than $2.00 as I write this (for .info domains). Hosting is also very cheap, and getting cheaper all the time.
So why are so many web sites springing up? Obviously somebody’s making money besides the hosting companies, so here’s some idea starters for you:
1. Sell your own products or services. They should be related to your target audience. You want to be able to take credit cards (at least with PayPal if not otherwise) on your site and deliver your product to your customers as fast as possible.
2. Sell another company’s products. There is no shortage of companies willing to drop ship items for you, all you have to do is make the sale and place the order with your fulfillment company, they do all the work, and you profit on the difference between their price and yours. There are ways to avoid the hassles some attribute to drop shippers.
3. If you have enough activity to your site, you can sell advertising space, such as banner, classified, or text ads. Of course you need to have enough traffic coming to your site first, so that people have an incentive to want to gain exposure to your visitors. You might not make a lot from displaying small text or banner ads, but it can easily pay for your hosting fees, and enough more to invest in some software scripts that will make your site that much better.
4. Sign up with Google AdSense or another contextual advertising company, and let them place their ads on your pages. When someone clicks on an ad, you earn money. Some webmasters are making many thousands of dollars a month with Google AdSense.
5. If you have enough web space, you could rent other people web pages. You could also give them away for free and make money by including your Google AdSense ads on their web pages.
6. Charge people a fee (monthly or annual subscription, or a one time fee) to access your web site. People will pay you money for your content if it’s valuable to them. This can be ebooks, reports, interviews, software, etc.
If you find a niche market, you can spend some time researching your topic and put all sorts of articles and resources to that niche on your site. Then those who have a similar interest might be likely to want to take advantage of all the time you’ve already spent by coming straight to the site (yours) that has all the answers for them already. If you have enough articles on your topic, you might want to get a site search engine (there are free scripts available) to make it easier to find the information your visitors want.
7. Make money selling other people’s products through affiliate programs. They’ll give you a link to track your sales. If you haven’t heard of affiliate programs, you’re in for a treat, many thousands of people are making a full time income just by driving traffic from their site to merchant sites, never touching or shipping a product, letting the merchant do all the work and make the entire investment in inventory.
A good way to start with affiliate programs is to sign up with ClickBank. There are well over 10,000 different eBooks that you are then automatically an affiliate for. It’s likely that there are some that tie in with the theme of your site. Write up some reviews and recommendations and send traffic to the ClickBank merchant, and if the eBook sells, you get commissions sometimes as high as 75%.
Another benefit is that if you make a page for each of your eBook reviews, you will eventually start drawing traffic from search engines because some of your pages will get ranked well for the keywords used to describe the eBook you’re reviewing.
8. Publish an e-zine from your web site. Ask your visitors to subscribe to the e-zine right from your web site through a sign up box. You might want to find something to entice them to give you their email address, like a free report, eCourse, or eBook. Once you have enough subscribers to your e-zine, you could sell classified or sponsor advertising inside your e-zine, or you could periodically review and recommend products that you’re an affiliate for to your subscribers.
9. If you have your own business already (real estate agent, hairdresser, contractor, restaurant, etc.), put up a web page to draw in prospects. All you need is a picture, contact information, a description of what you do, and you have a cheap advertisement that will pull in customers.
10. Set up a local directory of small businesses. Give each business their own page, fix it up for them so that it’s optimized for the search engines, and charge them annually for the service. They won’t have to pay hosting fees and you do everything for them. Suggest that they put the web site address on their business card, and you’ll have virtually locked them in for annual renewals for the life of their business.
These are just some thought-starters for you. There are over a billion web sites on the Internet, there are obviously more than ten ways to earn money with them. Come up with a unique method of cashing in from all those surfers, or use one of our methods, and one day you’ll be writing your own advice articles.
About The Author
Dennis Becker has been a computer “nut” since the late 70’s, specializing in helping non-techies make better use of computers. Find out how to maximize your profits and minimize your expenses by visiting: http://www.a1-cheap-web-site-hosting.com
