Download this E-Guide now to learn more:
http://go.techtarget.com/r/4167105/2039177

The setup and completion of a successful VoIP call do not necessarily have the reliability, stability or predictability of legacy telephony voice services. The performance of traditional telephony can be achieved in Voice over IP (VoIP)/IP telephony deployments only through adequate performance monitoring, measurement and management.
What to monitor, measure and manage are now the responsibility of both voice and data technicians. Download this E-Guide to learn more about:

** Bringing QoS to end-user standards
** VoIP management tools
** Checklist: Getting the management dollars for VoIP
** And more

Click here to download this E-Guide now:
http://go.techtarget.com/r/4167106/2039177

Share This

Answer:

a. Customer’s name
b. Customer’s partial home address
c. Hotel room number
d. Check-in date and out dates
e. Customer’s credit card number and expiration date!

When you turn them in to the front desk your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner. An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device, access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at y our expense.

Simply put, hotels do not erase the information on these cards until an employee re-issues the card to the next hotel guest. At that time, the new guest’s information is electronically ‘overwritten’ on the card and the previous guest’s information is erased in the overwriting process. But until the card is rewritten for the next guest, it usually is kept in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!

The bottom line is :

Keep the cards, take them home with you, or destroy them NEVER leave them behind in the room or room wastebasket, and NEVER turn them in to the front desk when you check out of a room. They will not charge you for the card (it’s illegal) and you’ll be sure you are not leaving a lot of valuable personal information on it that could be easily lifted off with a ny simple scanning device card reader

For the same reason, if you arrive at the airport and discover you still have the card key in your pocket, do not toss it in an airport trash basket. Take it home and destroy it by cutting it up, especially through the electronic information strip!

Information courtesy of: Pasadena Police Department

** If you have a small magnet…. pass it across the magnetic strip several times. Then try it in the door, it will not work. It erases everything on the card.

Share This

Share This

Blu-ray Disc (also known as Blu-ray or BD) is an optical disc storage media format. Its main uses are high-definition video and data storage. The disc has the same dimensions as a standard DVD or CD.

The name Blu-ray Disc is derived from the blue-violet laser used to read and write this type of disc. Because of its shorter wavelength (405 nm), substantially more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on the DVD format, which uses a red (650 nm) laser. A Blu-ray Disc can store 50 GB, almost six times the capacity of a dual layer DVD.

Blu-ray was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association, a group of companies representing consumer electronics, computer hardware, and motion picture production. The standard is covered by several patents belonging to different companies. As of March 2007, a joint licensing agreement for all the relevant patents had not yet been finalized.

As of February 19, 2008, more than 450 Blu-ray Disc titles have been released in the United States, and more than 250 in Japan.

Long locked in a format war with HD DVD, Blu-ray Disc emerged the winner on February 19, 2008 when Toshiba — the main driving force behind HD DVD — announced it would no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. Some analysts believe that Sony’s PlayStation 3 video game console played an important role in the format war, believing it acted as a catalyst for Blu-ray Disc, as the PS3 was mainly based on Blu-ray technology. They also credited Sony’s more thorough and influential marketing campaign. It must also be noted, that Blu-ray players can reproduce AVCHD content, recorded by modern high definition camcorders, while HD DVD could not.

History

In the mid 1990s, commercial HDTV sets were finally starting to enter a larger market. However, there was no good, cheap way to record or play back HD content. Indeed, there was no medium that could store that amount of data, except JVC’s Digital VHS and Sony’s HDCAM. However, it was well known that using lasers with shorter wavelengths would enable optical storage with higher density. When Shuji Nakamura invented practical blue laser diodes, it was a sensation, although a lengthy patent lawsuit delayed commercial introduction.

Origins

Sony started two projects applying the new diodes: UDO (Ultra Density Optical) and DVR Blue (together with Pioneer), a format of rewritable discs which would eventually become Blu-ray Disc (more specifically, BD-RE).The core technologies of the formats are essentially similar.

The first DVR Blue prototypes were unveiled at the CEATEC exhibition in October 2000. Because the Blu-ray Disc standard places the data recording layer close to the surface of the disc, early discs were susceptible to contamination and scratches and had to be enclosed in plastic cartridges for protection. In February 2002, the project was officially announced as Blu-ray, and the Blu-ray Disc Association was founded by the nine initial members.

The first consumer devices were in stores on April 10, 2003. This device was the Sony BDZ-S77; a BD-RE recorder that was only made available in Japan. The recommended price was US$3800.However, there was no standard for pre-recorded video (BD-ROM) and no movies were released for this player. The Blu-ray Disc standard was still years away, since a new and secure DRM system was needed before Hollywood studios would accept it, not wanting to repeat the failure of the Content Scramble System for DVDs.

Competition from HD DVD

Comparison of high definition optical disc formatsThe DVD Forum (which was chaired by Toshiba) was deeply split over whether to go with the more expensive blue lasers or not. Although today’s Blu-ray Discs appear virtually identical to a standard DVD, when the Blu-ray Discs were initially developed they required a protective caddy to avoid mis-handling by the consumer (early CD-Rs also featured a protective caddy for the same purpose). The Blu-ray prototype’s caddy was both expensive and physically different from DVD, posing several problems. In March 2002, the forum voted to approve a proposal endorsed by Warner Bros. and other motion picture studios that involved compressing HD content onto dual-layer DVD-9 discs. However, in spite of this decision, the DVD Forum’s Steering Committee announced in April that it was pursuing its own blue-laser high-definition solution.

In August, Toshiba and NEC announced their competing standard Advanced Optical Disc. It was finally adopted by the DVD Forum and renamed HD DVD the next year, after being voted down twice by Blu-ray Disc Association members, prompting the U.S. Department of Justice to make preliminary investigations into the situation. Three new members had to be invited and the voting rules changed before the vote finally passed.

In the meantime, Sony spun off Professional Disc for DATA from the Blu-ray Disc project. It was essentially Blu-ray Disc with higher-quality media and components. The devices were too expensive for the consumer mass market. Instead, it was aimed at the professional data storage space market as a replacement for their line of 5.25″ MO drives. It was announced in October 2003, with the first devices shipping in December of the same year.

Blu-ray and HD DVD shared most of the same methods of encoding media onto disks with each other, using the same methods of encoding media onto disks as well as the default method of digital rights management, AACS. Blu-ray discs have a higher storage capacity than HD DVD discs had (50 GB vs. 30 GB) and Blu-ray discs also have higher bandwidth (48Mbit/sec vs. 30Mbit/sec), while including more DRM in the specification.

On 19 February 2008, Toshiba announced it was ending production of HD DVD devices, allowing Blu-ray Disc to become the industry standard.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc

Share This

Read this E-Guide to find out exactly what the eight areas of risk you need to protect it from are and how to protect your critical business information from being compromised.

As businesses become more reliant on mobile devices, the security risks and associated costs continue to rise, particularly because many employees don’t understand that a mobile device contains critical information. Read this E-Guide to discover eight areas of risk associated with mobile devices and learn how better mobile device management can save money and guard against threats to enterprise data security.

Download this E-Guide now to learn more:
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2779760/2039177

Share This

It’s never been easier - or faster - to download web pages. Now you can visit the most popular sites right from your BlackBerry smartphone, like Yahoo®, Google®, AOL®, Facebook™ or YouTube. You can shop, search, bid and network from your BlackBerry smartphone. Surf sites and zoom into specific areas with new functionality that makes sure you don’t miss a word or image.

Ready, Set, Download
The browser’s new compression technology makes web pages load faster than ever before. So while you’re navigating around a site, your browser is giving you the best visual experience possible.

“The browser on the BlackBerry smartphone is now very close to what you get on your PC,” says Sanjay Kalyanasundaram, Technical Product Manager. “It makes the mobile experience all that more useful and rewarding.”

Imagine the convenience of paying that bill from your secure online banking site, or increasing your eBay® bid, all while you’re waiting in the doctor’s office. Or, while you’re waiting in line for a movie, checking the latest reviews on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

It’s easy to get the latest forecast from the local weather site so you know what to wear for dinner out tonight. Then look up the number for the restaurant in the Yellow Pages™, and click directly from your BlackBerry smartphone to call and make a reservation.

More from  The BlackBerry Community

Share This

The FCC  auction of the 700-MHz spectrum for wireless broadband networks to be conducted in January is seen as the reason for Verizon’s move. All companies wishing to bid are required to file a license application for the auction which gives a chance for having open and accessible wireless broadband network in the US.

The advantage for Verizon is that developers and manufacturers of handsets, non phone wireless devices like Internet tablets, ultramobile PCs and gaming devices can now manufacture equipment to suit the Verizon network. These devises are usually 3G network capable and based on UMTS technology and not EV-DO system of Verizon.

The announcement by verizon enables mobile phone manufacturers like Sony Ericsson , Samsung and LG Electronics to make phones which would work on verizon’s CDMA network as Verizon’s technical specifications are now available.

With an open network available people especially business travelers can access the internet with their laptops, more features can be added in portable electronic devices and it enables the government and utility agencies to connect any device for example meter readers to the network.

Full Story

Share This

PowerPoint 2008, the presentation maker included in the bundle, can export creations as a series of pictures — but not video — to iPhoto ‘06 and later. Alternately, users can save the slides to the Mac’s Pictures folder.

“From there, sync pictures to your iPod or iPhone through iTunes as usual, then use the built-in photos or slide-show program on your iPod or iPhone to show your presentation,” said Blair Neumann, a program manager in Microsoft’s Mac development group, in a post to the team’s blog Tuesday. IPhones and iPods that boast video viewing — the iPod touch, the newest iPod nano and the iPod classic — can also connect to a larger screen television or a projector using Apple’s $49 component AV cable.

Apple Inc.’s own Keynote presentation maker, one of the three applications in the $99 iWorks ‘08 suite, can also export its slide shows to iTunes. From there, Keynote presentations can be synced to iPods or iPhones.

Microsoft will release Office 2008 for Mac on Jan. 15 at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco in several editions priced from $150 to $500

Share This

Microsoft has managed to streamline the initial setup experience for the Zune significantly. The multi-layered packaging draws more than a few elements from the So far, the attention-getting Zune Pad controller has also proven to work well; in a sense, Microsoft has managed to borrow the best elements of the iPod’s click wheel without sacrificing the ability to tap or click (you can do both) to navigate items one-by-one. The interface still isn’t quite as elegant as for the iPod, and we can see some users getting tired of having to reach for either of the side buttons, but it comes as a revelation compared to the confusing interfaces of most Creative ZEN jukeboxes.

Full Story

Share This