Technology for your eyes

Its amazing how the world is shifting into technology, does it mean one time we will completely stop working? From watching over our health to the way we do things at some point there is an element of technology used. My take, in the years to come the world will be a gadget, am not sure whether life will be boring or interesting at some point, because we will have turned into technology slaves.

Recently I run into some cool stuff I think would be wise to share, a revolution to your eyes! The Rocket sun glasses species. This technology of eye engineering will not only protect your eyes from the sun rays but also computer display and office lights.

The Gunnar Optiks Rocket Amber, one of this tech glasses uses raw technology to squeeze the last bit of eyesight-preserving skill from its “indoor glasses.” its amber lenses filter out the high end of the visual spectrum, reducing eyestrain under harsh fluorescent lights.

For the riders’ goggles, Wiley XL-1s has an ultra foam rubber seal that forms a fitting layer between the frame and your eyes. This layer will keep out dust and insects while riding the motorcycle at high speeds. In addition, the Wiley XL-1 has light-adjustable lenses that provide crystal-clear clarity.

For those who want flexibility, the Oakley Split jacket is one of its kinds. With its switchlock technology, it’s easy to change the lens without breaking them. The frame has the easiest and reliable lens changing system. Though all these pairs come at an expensive price, just for yours eyes.

The Tablets pool

In November 2010 ViewSonic fished out their new gadget, the ViewPad 7 Android tablet from their pool, at first everybody turned their necks to catch a glance when the Apple Ipad was mentioned and it was indeed the in thing in the market especially when reference was made to the tablet family. Right now, tech companies have opened their flood gates in the tablet business. I don’t know maybe it’s the business mobility era that the world is into.

Well, I need a break from this because where do I take my ageing desktop PC let me not even mention the laptops we are clinch on. The technological improvement on gadgets innovation from various companies is so immense that am spoilt for choice. Each and every company in the electronic development space is coming up with a tablet, to ease the daily routine transactions and minor processes needed by an individual. To add on that, this tablets do not come with only basic functionality but a lot of high tech navigation power with different kinds of backlight for various applications use.

A glance to a few of these tablets, the gPad  which is a product of Rydeen, a company that engages itself with car technology, the Adam with a 1024 by 600 Pixel Qi display which is its selling point is from the Notion Ink a company from India.  Archos who initially baked portable media players also came up with the Archos Home 7 Tablet, among others. We can walk the talk about tablets the whole day but competition is at hand to kick others from winning the users hearts, for instance am not shouting and not biased too on Apple but word has it there is a powerful baby Ipad coming soon, so watch out.

The growth of the hard drives.

Computer hard disk drives can be compared to storage containers in our daily lives. Unlike a cabinet used to store paper records and files, Wikipedia defines a hard disk drive as a non – volatile random access device used to store changing digital data. In other words the hard disk gives a computer the ability to recall things when there is no power.

International Business Machines (IBM) introduced them in 1956 and over the years they have evolved in terms of their storage capacity, their speed to read and write data and they have been less vulnerable.

Hard disk drives are the physical storage areas for secondary data that is to be processed by a computer system via a volatile temporary memory (RAM) to the processor (CPU).

Enough of what it is and what a hard drive does, this storage device has over the years evolved since the 1960s. Punch cards were the core storage devices in the 20^th Century; they were fed into IBM 350, which was a commercial computer system. From 1979 to today: Six hard drives have reduced in size from 8-in. (inch) model, followed by 5.25-in., 3.5-in., 2.5-in., 1.8-in. (used by Apple IPod first in 2001) to 1-in.

Today, isoSafe have introduced an indestructible portable hard drive, not even a short gun could damage it. This was show cased in the ongoing International Consumer Electronic Show http://www.cesweb.org/default.asp, which is the world largest technology show.

The show, dubbed CES 2011 has been an ongoing event, takes place in the begging of each year in Las Vegas, kicked off on the 6^th of 2011 ends 9^th.  The hard drive is build not only to with stand physical impact but also with a HydroSafe water barrier technology that prevents damage to the data due to water leaks up to 72 hours in water.

The hard disk has not only developed in terms of physical strength, size and sleekness but also its capacity. isoSafe hard drive is 2 Terabyte huge, if I can compare this storage to a normal 8 GB flash drive, it means this hard drive can hold data of 250, 8 GB flash drives. In other words, 2 Terabytes can hold approximately1333 high definition (HD) movies.

This is a breakdown of computer storage capacities.

· 1 Bit = Binary Digit (A Bit is the smallest unit of data that a computer uses. It can be used to represent two states of information, such as Yes or No.)
·  8 Bits = 1 Byte
· 1000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte 
· 1000 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte 
· 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte

· 1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte (a Terabyte could hold about 3.6 million 300 Kilobyte images or maybe about 300 hours of good quality video.)

· 1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte

There is nothing constant as change; everything is evolving to the betterment of life. Since we are on hard drives as storage device, let’s watch the future and see what technologies like the “cloud computing” have for us in terms of data storage & what happens to the physical hard drives that exist. 

Kenya Internet Exchange Point

Kenya hosts a physical infrastructure that interconnects local networks directly and enables these networks to exchange traffic via a local exchange point, rather than doing this through expensive and distance offshore networks. The internet exchange point has enabled the local service providers (ISPs) to exchange traffic between their networks on a communal agreement ground.

The elimination of third party networks comes with a lot more merits to the local internet connection because it means cost will be cut down due to reduced bandwidth to the remote exchange servers. This is as a result of direct interconnections which cut down parts of the traffic which must be delivered through the upstream transit providers and hence reduce the average per – bit delivery cost of their service.

 Another advantage that is experienced is the constant high connection speed especially in areas which have poor long distance connections, eliminating the need to route local traffic over expensive international links only to return to the country which they originate from. To add on, the availability of local routing network connection through the internet exchange point improves the efficiency in routing and eases troubleshooting and makes the connections fault tolerant.  

With the upcoming technology of cloud computing, most Kenyan ISPs will benefit from the pool of resources and infrastructure pulled together to handle the internet exchange points without fully investing on initial capital needed to set up the infrastructure. Though at the moment any costs incurred by the IXP is shared among all its participants.

ICT as a resource in SMEs

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector faces a great challenge especially in the small and medium sized enterprises where the top management level perceive Information Technology as a cost center rather than a tool or ability which strengthens the employee output and boosts the business level in this globally competitive environment. In as much as there is a lot of obsolescence in regard to ICT infrastructure with the ever changing technology after a period of time, managers should appreciate how a company’s operations are integrated and the achieved goals and targets that has been perpetuated by their Information technology infrastructure.

The managers should understand that having a technological move towards ICT will champion their business operations and how they will gain a competitive advantage for corporate objectives. For a company to do well and achieve efficiency, examples of systems like the Customer Relations Management and Business Process Outsourcing  should be employed depending on the nature of these entities no matter what costs required for resources and infrastructure needed to support these systems if they are going to streamline the operations.

Despite the period needed as deployment time for ICT related projects, returns will take quite some time and these is where lack of patience and tension towards these systems from the managers is felt especially with the amount of investment done to acquire and establish the systems. Same to these is the user adoption period but when the users become familiar with the systems then technological growth is experienced though all the benefits will not be realized at the same time.

All in all, in as much as we are insisting on these ICT systems and the values they add to our organizations, there are risks involved. For instance in the markets, changing customer demands and competitors pressure delay such projects due to a lot of research that should be done by the adopting company. Furthermore, technology implementation is affected by early obsolescence and incompatibly. For the success of any ICT project, a timed road map should be drawn with specific ICT goals and objectives and it should include key issues that depend on it in the organization.

Websites Voodoo to businesses

In today’s world no business can well survive without carrying out advertisement and branding, marketing of their goods and services and also maintaining customer/client relationship networks. This is not an era of traditional ways in which business was conducted, nowadays businesses have employed the use of websites as their core marketing tool to generate leads and also process clients/customer data, accommodate all kinds of different platforms. The website as it relies mostly on feedback it enables a business entity to know how its performance curve is by capturing records of how many clicks the site experiences at a defined time scale. This shows the number of hits and how prominent the business is in the internet globally increasing the client base because of its presence in the internet.

 A business will achieve best by having a good website that is capable of operating as a central key that harmonizes data from enormous sources and manage the flow of information in and out on behalf of the business. It will provide useful information on product or service, pricing information, available support features and specifications to the customers. Ideally this can be available in both online and downloadable forms for further review by the clients at their own time.

 The website gives business owners a chance to validate their products/services objectively and provide an opportunity for customers to compare and contrast then give feedback for future improvements in this case. Trust is gained by a potential buyer of product when several customers have posted their satisfaction comments and opinions; websites provides this interaction tool which also has downloadable content of previous successes of the business operations.