Online-Advertising Pays
Recent studies have shown that retail sales in stores all across the US this holiday season are on the rise because of online information. People nowadays do research on the products they are interested in from online catalogs and make decisions whether the said products are the ones they really need and then go to stores to do their purchases manually. Manually because these online catalogs do offer online purchase options but it shows that people are still driven by their senses, they think using the net but still enjoy the hunt in the store itself, handling the product and making the purchase.
This attitude exhibited by us humans is compared the thrill of the hunt wherein we go out-kill-go home with catch. Well, we don’t kill anything in stores for much of the stuff are already dead we simply have the urge to go out and get the stuff we need and then reward ourselves as we bring it home to use and enjoy.
More on Voip
More on the Voice over Internet phenomenon, even telecommunications providers are offering them and for the first time they have been seen to take over the main revenue earners for phone companies. In 2008, phone line applications for internet use are projected to overtake phone only applications for the first time in the internet’s history. As more and more people want to use the internet, providers of phone services are having to improve on their capabilities for both infrastructure and support facilities to accommodate the growing number of internet users. This growth is expected as the internet continues to entice more and more to get hooked up as the internet becomes part of daily life more so with the growth of social networks. People are not only after internet connection but they want fast and reliable packages. The time of the dial-up internet connection are numbered and here comes cheap broadband internet which would expand further the reach of the internet for the future.
Microsoft Xbox Live???
There is growing disgust in how problems with Microsoft�s Xbox live is really performing as users grab Microsoft products and hook up to the internet failing to get access and even getting dropped. Some complain of getting only actually a fraction of game time even after several hours of connection to the site. The company is promising to release a free game to subscribers as they try to appease and silence the critics. This has been seen as a failure of back-end support to properly assess and determine how much improvement is needed for such applications. This is one common misnomer in IT that a high-tech infrastructure is capable of handling almost anything (which always ends up the opposite) ending up with a bogged down network and tons of irate customers on the helpline cursing you for something you didn�t even do or have control over.
An Internet that Understands You???
The technology is there, the only problem for today’s internet users? It isn’t FREE. The internet has remained the same since it was put up as a system to link computers and aid in America’s Nuclear Defense strategy. Today, it has become the biggest social networking system man has ever known. The internet is a simple place to get information that you need when you need it. Just do a search on any of the many search engines and you get what? Millions of results that would be insane to go through one by one which would take forever. But what if the answer or information you were looking for was in the last few hundreds? That is where the future of the web lies, semantics technology in the form of AI systems that allow searches that yield the best possible results. A search would give not only the exact same words you are searching for but it takes into account what you mean and how you used these words. That way, you get the highest probability of relevance in doing searches. Google has already launched it’s expanded search facility onto the global theater and others would surely be not far in doing the same.
Improving Netflix
It is quite sometime now since Netflix, one of the web’s largest movie rental businesses has posted a challenge worth $1 Million. To date, no one has taken the top prize was for a recommendation system that would improve products movement more than the one they already have. Many have been working on the said challenge with only one team who has managed to get the statistics up by a meager 8% which was done by taking all the most stable recommendation systems available, combining it into one humungous recommendation application using the NetFlix data. All that work for so little an increase, whew. The prize is still up for grabs and a better result from an application has yet to be delivered so what do you think? Can you do it?
Web Sites That Count
Many companies got so engrossed in the design and facilities of their web sites that they forgot to put their mouths behind their said web sites. Many of these so-called killer sites utilized the latest technology in their stunning graphics and visual presentations. Many even winning design awards based solely on the way their sites look and work..work? Now that’s where the trouble started, many of the sites which we choose not to mention have all the workings of a movie production with development costing the company millions. The only problem was that the visuals do not count in terms of the functionality and amount of information people were really after. They looked good and sound good but other than that did next to nothing. Many say it would have been better to pick-up the phone and call the company to get the information you needed as a faster method of getting what you want as you need it. This defeats the purpose of the web site which was supposed to provide most of the information they needed whenever they wanted.
Google Expansion
Google, one of the biggest web based searched engines has announced the launch of it’s expanded search capabilities to the global market. Google�s powerful custom search was previously available to the US market and with this announcement makes it the premier search engines of the world. The said Custom Search feature uses the latest technology which allows users to do semantic searches rather than word matching technology of most search engines. Semantics searching can be compared to artificial intelligence in a sense that a phrase that is searched is done so not only based on word matches but also taking into consideration the meaning, context and actual information that is required by the user. This allows less wasted time into searching millions of search results that simply have the searched phrase within them.
Data Encryption – How it Benefits you and me? (Part 3)
With common transactional data, 128 bit encryption is standard for it is estimated that it would take a couple of years for a computer that is fast enough to crack it. Take it a notch up, and you get a time frame goes up to a couple of decades or so till technology can get around to cracking the code easily. In 2002, the longest RC5 encrypted key to be ever broken took five years and that was only 64 bit RC5, imagine 128 and 256? 256 bits of information is roughly equal to the number of atoms in the whole universe which is why encryption at these levels conforms to use on sensitive government information. For you and me, 128 bit would be tough enough to secure our data for a couple of years for within that time frame a newer and better encryption standard may be in place to take up the cause.
Data Encryption – How it Benefits You and Me? (Part 2)
That all happens in a couple of minutes without you ever knowing that there was some very fascinating stuff happening in the background. For credit cards and other major bank transactions, they are now using PCI-DSS; an encryption standard that encrypts the transaction information as it travels thought the network. Anyone who taps into the network can get hold of the information but without the proper key, all you get is garbage, the result, you are protected from credit card fraud and your charges are reflected as they should be. Encryption is meant to protect information for a specified duration that the information stays relevant.
Data Encryption – How it Benefits You and Me? (Part 1)
As you surf the web as part of your job or for more trivial pursuits you send information through the internet at breakneck speeds that a web page that is based on a server in California takes only milliseconds to open. You go to the grocery and pick up the monthly goods using your credit card to pay for your bill, then you go to the clothing shop to buy a piece of clothing again using your credit card. Now pay attention to the credit card use process, the cashier would normally check for authentication markings on the card, one of the most obvious are holograms of the company logo and other marks. They then swipe the card at a data terminal that checks if your credit card number is assigned to the right name in the credit card office’s database for verification and then checks if you have enough credit to charge the current purchases.