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Social networking and the next generation of handheld devices will improve business decision-making through efficient, unified communications and location awareness.

Business Anywhere, Anytime • By Paul Gillin

When interactivity is combined with unified communications and location awareness, next-generation social networks will have significant business value. Unified communications integrates the wide variety of voice, data, video and collaboration tools that business professionals use today into a single environment. This can dramatically improve the speed of decision-making by connecting collaborators quickly, regardless of their location. In nightclubs, railroad stations and city squares across Germany today, people are striking up conversations with total strangers based upon invitations received on their cell phones. The connections are made by aka-aki Networks, a new mobile social networking service. Users download a free application that alerts them when another aka-aki member is within range and interested in meeting. People can read one another’s profiles before deciding whether to strike up a conversation. Aka-aki is one of an emerging class of Internet applications that is extending online social networks to mobile devices. The market opportunity for these applications is enticing.

There are 3.3 billion mobile communications devices in use around the world today, yet only a tiny percentage of them are participating in the social networking craze that has swept the wired world. Social networks have caught on because they make it easy for people to stay connected to large numbers of friends and acquaintances. Social networks have been the talk of the Internet since early 2007, when Facebook began its rapid growth and specialized social networks began to blossom. There are now more than 2,500 social networks online, according to the Go2Web20.net directory. They serve everyone from dog lovers to doctors. Some are beginning to tap the underserved mobile market. For example, more than 1 million BlackBerry® smartphone users have downloaded the recently released Facebook client application to their BlackBerry® smartphones. Research firm eMarketer forecasts that the mobile social networking market will grow from 82 million users in 2007 to more than 800 million worldwide by 2012. Informa Telecoms recently reported that approximately 50 million people already use portable devices for social networking activities ranging from chatting to multimedia sharing. It expects that number to quintuple over the next five years.

The trend is especially pronounced in Europe and the Pacific Rim, where PC penetration is lower than in the U.S. For example, a quarter of all mobile phone subscribers in the UK use their portable device for social networking-related activities, according to Nielsen Mobile. The trend can be expected to spread into business applications of social networks, a market that Forrester Research expects will account for $4.6 billion in annual spending by 2012.

Technology Drivers

Portable devices have been getting smaller and more powerful for years, but technology breakthroughs are enabling new applications to emerge. Chief among these is location awareness, a feature that enables users to meet new people or find colleagues nearby. It is likely to spur a new generation of mobile services as the capability moves to the mass market. About 15% of smartphones today come equipped with support for the satellite-based global positioning system (GPS), according to Kevin Burden, director of mobile devices at ABI Research. However, GPS-enabled phones, like the camera phones that preceded them, will rapidly go mainstream. “Social networks will get to a new level once the network knows your location and the location of people you’re interacting with,” Burden says. “I can’t think of any feature more important to build into a mobile phone.” While all cell phones are required by law to support rudimentary location awareness, the GPS network offers far more precision than the cell-tower triangulation techniques used in standard cell phones. GPS makes it possible to pinpoint a device to within a few feet. Once users are able to label – or “geotag” – their messages and images with location information, interesting new applications emerge. For example, mashups built on platforms like Google Maps and Google Earth will make it possible for groups of devicetoting individuals to assemble a rich tapestry of images in near real-time. Business applications of location-aware devices include fleet logistics, field sales coordination, and knowledge management and mapping. Once businesses have a handle on the location of their assets and employees, social networking tools can be used to connect people in virtual teams for project management, brainstorming and on-location customer service. Some companies are already using internal social networks to create knowledge maps of their employee skill sets and are combining them with unified communications to enable rapid access. Using this model, employees can quickly tap into organizational expertise as needed. These internal social networks will have great value as businesses become more geographically distributed. Users will maintain rich profiles of their own skills on internal websites and make themselves available to share their expertise as needed. As a result, businesses will become more flexible and efficient. “The 20th century fully evolved the concept of the home office employee, but now we are envisioning the mobile worker where location anywhere, for that matter, is secondary to getting the job done,” says David Heit, director of enterprise product management, of Research In Motion. Vendors, recognizing that their tools need to work as well for the mobile professional as for the desk-bound, are designing and building their tools with, and for, mobility usage from the start. For example, when the BlackBerry® Client for IBM® Lotus® Connections was announced, it was deemed a core deliverable in the design of the Lotus Connections software release. Many vendors are opting for the benefits of a full client approach rather than a browser interface. A mobile client offers the advantages of offline access, tolerance for the intermittent connectivity that one is likely to encounter when relying on a browser-based interface, as well as full integration with other local applications. Wireless networks are also getting faster. As handheld devices increasingly become the preferred Web on-ramp for mobile users, people are seeking to duplicate their desktop experience as closely as possible. Screen size will always be a limitation of mobile devices, but technology solutions are emerging, such as devices that project screen images on a wall or sheet of paper.

Trust Equation

While experts differ on whether users will ever trade in their PCs for mobile devices, there is ample evidence of demand for mobile social network features. One reason: people trust information from their peers. A recent study by the Society for New Communications Research found that nearly three in four consumers agreed with the statement, “I choose companies/brands based on others’ customer care experiences shared online.” A late 2007 Nielsen survey found that consumers listed “other consumers” as their most trusted source of information, far ahead of mainstream media. Peer reviews are seen as being more genuine than opinions delivered by businesses or even the mainstream media, particularly when a person already has a relationship with the reviewer. But even when a prior relationship doesn’t exist, peers are perceived to be more credible because they have little cause for bias. Social networks such as Yelp and ThisNext, which combine reviews from many sources, benefit from the “wisdom of crowds” effect. That wisdom can apply to enterprise decision-making as well. Corporations can tap into customer conversations on public or private, branded social networks to discern attitudes and buying intentions. By facilitating peer interaction and recommendations, businesses can also quickly build credibility and “buzz” faster than they would with expensive advertising campaigns. This helps with branding and marketing campaigns.

Emerging Applications

The mobile social networking market has been energized by Twitter, a service that enables members to exchange short messages among users and groups of their “followers.” Twitter’s immediacy and its effectiveness at eliciting rapid response has earned it a cult following. Users find that they can get answers to complex questions delivered to their cell phones in a matter of minutes. Other services have sprung up to build on Twitter’s foundation. Utterz, Bluepulse, Mocospace, Zingku, Jaiku and Pownce offer additional features like multimedia and group calendaring. Now a new breed of application is emerging that leverages location awareness for rich new functionality. For example, Loopt enables members to track their friends on a map and share text messages or plan meetings based upon proximity. Gypsii has similar features and also includes photo and video-sharing. Helio sells location-aware cell phones and related social network services. These services add value to the social network experience in the following ways:

Immediacy – Users can get answers to their questions or report on important events in minutes. In addition to tapping existing online reference sources over the mobile Web, members can leverage the wisdom of crowds to get answers when they really need them. Mobility also enables people to document their observations and thoughts immediately.

Relevance – Social networks deliver knowledge from trusted sources in a person’s circle of friends. Location awareness makes it possible to target queries and messages to people within a defined geographic area, enabling groups of people to share experiences virtually.

Brevity – In social networks, this is often a virtue. Brief messages delivered by a mobile device are easier for others to absorb and respond to. This enables a more interactive and vibrant conversation.

Retrieval – Facts and conversations can be archived and retrieved later by participants or others, creating a kind of real-time archive of a social interaction.

Business Value and ROI

When interactivity is combined with unified communications and location awareness, next-generation social networks will have significant business value. Business Value and ROI When interactivity is combined with unified communications and location awareness, next-generation social networks will have significant business value. Unified communications integrates the wide variety of voice, data, video and collaboration tools that business professionals use today into a single environment. This can dramatically improve the speed of decision-making by connecting collaborators quickly, regardless of their location. Social networking technology is so new that ROI models are only just emerging. While hard dollar numbers are scarce, early adopters are focusing on the following metrics and reporting positive early results:

Customer support savings – When customers solve problems or answer questions by consulting online databases or one another, they save on company support costs. Technology vendors learned long ago that by building databases of advice contributed by customers, they could slash support costs by up to half. Mobility promises to make this information easier to obtain and to disseminate to a wider variety of markets.

Logistical efficiency – By building a database of employee skills and matching it to location information, businesses can more quickly deploy the right resources to their customers on a timely basis. This leads to cost savings and revenue opportunities that would have previously been missed.

Reduced training expenses – With some 80 million Americans expected to reach retirement age over the next 15 years, knowledge preservation is becoming a critical issue. Social networks enable employees to populate their own profiles and make it easy for businesses to capture interactions between employees and customers into a kind of corporate memory.

Marketing benefits – Word-of-mouth marketing is the most credible and cost-efficient form of promotion. Businesses that make it easy for their customers to recommend products and services to their peers can reap great benefit from the resulting “buzz.”

Participants can also leverage the tools that are most appropriate to the task at hand to enable a decision. For example, a group may initiate a discussion by text message and then move quickly to a voice or video conference supplemented by a shared whiteboard. Unified communications also authenticates users for secure communications. “I can link my device directly to a PBX,” says RIM’s Heit. “Mobilizing corporate resources such as this needs to be, and can be, done in a trusted and secure manner.” This is an example of a social network in action. Many businesses are implementing unified communications today, but the added dimension of location can enrich the value of the application. For example, consider how a logistics management company could apply these technologies. A client manager might initiate a virtual meeting with field-level supervisors and delivery personnel over a conference bridge. If the client was shipping an unusually large or delicate product, specifications and images could be transmitted to participants in near real-time. If the client needed to make a sudden rush shipment, the appropriate field units could be identified based on proximity and dispatched to the client’s location armed with all the necessary details. Members of the team could even be tracked for billing purposes. Computerworld recently wrote about a logistics application involving J.B. Hunt Transport Services’ use of global positioning systems to deliver the latest installment in the Harry Potter book series for a successful, timed nationwide release. Technology Evolution Much of the technology needed to enable the kinds of applications described above already exists. Processors and memory have sufficient capacity to handle all but the most taxing tasks. “My current BlackBerry® smartphone is more powerful than my PC of just a few short years ago,” notes RIM’s Heit. Network bandwidth is evolving more slowly due to equipment incompatibilities and a lack of carrier standards in the U.S. However, progress is being made in those areas and the goal of universal, interchangeable network access looks increasingly achievable. Location awareness is already standard on high-end handsets and should quickly spread to the mainstream market as chip prices decline.

Technology Evolution

Technology Evolution Much of the technology needed to enable the kinds of applications described above already exists. Processors and memory have sufficient capacity to handle all but the most taxing tasks. “My current BlackBerry® smartphone is more powerful than my PC of just a few short years ago,” notes RIM’s Heit. Network bandwidth is evolving more slowly due to equipment incompatibilities and a lack of carrier standards in the U.S. However, progress is being made in those areas and the goal of universal, interchangeable network access looks increasingly achievable. Location awareness is already standard on high-end handsets and should quickly spread to the mainstream market as chip prices decline. The challenges are in the areas of displays and input, where the handheld form factor presents some structural barriers. Displays have improved greatly in recent years, but a handheld device will never match the quality of a desktop monitor. “No matter how good you make a browser on a phone, it’s never going to deliver a PC experience,” says ABI’s Burden. “You can’t make the screen any larger, but you can make viewing space larger.”

Handheld input using hard and “soft” keypads has evolved to the point that some skilled users can achieve speeds of 20 words per minute. The best hope for improvement in data input is voice recognition. This feature has long been used in mobile devices for a limited instruction set, but with commercial PC-based voice recognition products approaching 99% accuracy after training, it’s likely that this technology will be viable in mobile devices before long. Devices will also offer more support for rich media.

Cameras, which were once a high-end luxury in cell phones, are a standard feature today. In fact, some new handheld devices are shipping with two cameras so that one can be trained on the speaker while another records a scene. Full-motion video will also be standard within a few years. This will enable individuals to become, in effect, video producers, with social networks supporting live video feeds.

Envisioning the Future

The one unchanging truth of information technology is that disruptive change manifests itself in unanticipated ways. It is likely that the changes that will result from the spread of mobile social networks aren’t even imaginable today.

Within a few years, billions of people worldwide will carry handheld devices that are capable of capturing full-motion video and transmitting those images in near real-time to friends and institutions. Our concept of event “coverage,” which has been shaped by decades of network television, will change. Sporting events, political rallies, business meetings, community festivities and every other kind of social gathering will be documented by participants and observers. The sounds and images that they capture will be collected and disseminated by media organizations that specialize in leveraging the power of loosely organized communities. Events that never would have been documented in the past – ranging from Little League games to presentations by corporate executives – will be captured as digital sounds and images, and saved to servers for others to share. Powerful software will enable organizations to stitch together images captured by multiple mobile devices into a kind of three-dimensional tapestry of unprecedented richness. The concept of an online map will evolve into a virtual world that is constantly updated by contributions from observers. These collages will be overlaid on an ongoing conversation among colleagues, vendors, temporary acquaintances and total strangers who come together to share their perspectives on their situation and their surroundings.

For businesses, the applications are exciting. An auto manufacturer, for example, could combine images uploaded by field service technicians to quickly identify possible defects and make production changes more quickly. A retailer could check on the quality of store promotions by viewing images or videos sent by on-site personnel.

Businesses will be the most enthusiastic adopters of mobile social networks. They will build knowledge maps on a foundation of expertise contributed by employees and business partners, and enriched by data captured from projects, experiences and observations of others. Workforces will grow more distributed as the network replaces the office as the lifeline of information. Logistics will become more efficient, and group interactions faster and more flexible. We will come to expect information to be at our fingertips – in the literal sense – more so than we already do.

Regardless of where information comes from, the mobile social networks of the future will give users nearly unlimited choice over how they choose to share and consume information. The ecosystem that develops around the next generation of handheld devices will make applications that once seemed fantastic a part of everyday life. <<

>> Paul Gillin is an author and consultant specializing in social media.

By Chris McCormack, Product Marketing Manager, Sophos

User education and awareness, preventive measures and a modern web security solution are all integral components of a comprehensive defense against today’s web threats.
This guide covers some essential preventive measures you should implement to reduce your risk and keep ahead of the threats as much as possible. In particular, it’s important to:

• Keep your systems patched and up to date
• Standardize your web software.
• Secure your browsers.
• Enforce a strong password policy.
• Use an effective web security solution.

Each measure is discussed in more detail in the sections that follow.

1.  Keep your systems patched and up to date.
Keeping systems fully up to date—including the operating system, web browsers, browser plugins, media players, PDF readers and other applications—can be a tedious, annoying and time-consuming ongoing task. Unfortunately, hackers are counting on most people to fall far short of what’s needed to keep their systems up to date.
Most web malware utilizes commercially available exploit packs that contain dozens of different vulnerability testers, redirectors and actual exploit code that attempt to test for and exploit any vulnerabilities they can find. These kits are designed specifically to prey on users who aren’t diligent about keeping their software and operating system patches up to date.
The most common targets for these web-based exploit packs are not just web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera, but also common cross-browser plugins such as PDF readers, Flash players, QuickTime and Java Runtime Environment, as well as operating systems themselves.
The importance of applying system patches should be obvious. Although they are annoying and time consuming, they’re also critical to the security and efficient operation of your IT infrastructure. Therefore, it’s worth making an investment in system patches. One of the best ways to make patching easy is to keep auto-updating turned on for applications that support it and encourage users to apply all updates as soon as they are prompted to do so.

2.  Standardize your web software.
If you’ve just read point number 1, you’re probably still thinking that keeping systems fully patched and up to date is an onerous task. What makes this worse is if you don’t know what software is running on your network or you have a variety of individuals using different browsers, plugins and media players.
As mentioned, modern web attacks often leverage commercial exploit kits that attempt to exploit dozens of different security vulnerabilities. The more varied your platforms and software are, the more opportunities you present to the hackers to exploit, and the more likely they are to find a vulnerability in an unpatched application.

Make your life easier and dramatically reduce your threat surface area by limiting users to—or better yet, standardizing on—a core set of minimal applications for interacting with the web. Enforce a policy that all users must access the internet with a common set of tools that meets the minimum requirements:

• Browser:  Stick with a single mainstream browser. Popular browsers invite more exploits but also have more resources behind them to address vulnerabilities and provide patches more often.
• PDF reader:  Again, stick with a single mainstream PDF reader. Keep it patched, ensure the auto-update feature is enabled, and ensure users are advised to install patches as soon as they become available.
• Media player: Avoid unnecessary media player add-ons and codec packs. If possible, stick with what your operating system provides and keep your OS patched.
• Plug-ins, add-ons and toolbars: Avoid unnecessary browser plugins and toolbars. They only increase the potential surface area for attack.

In addition, configure your browsers to ensure they are not installing plugins, add-ons, ActiveX controls and toolbars without at least a prompt by using settings such as the one shown in Figure 1.
Simplify the task of minimizing security vulnerabilities and keeping your systems patched and up to date by reducing the variety of internet tools, applications and plugins used in your organization to the bare minimum, and standardizing and enforcing their use across your organization.

3.  Secure your browsers.
You must familiarize yourself with the plethora of security, privacy and content settings that all browsers have in order to understand the trade-offs. Some security settings will merely increase the level of prompting—annoying users without adding any tangible security—while others can be important to limiting exploits and threats.
Here are some common browser elements you can control through settings, and the trade-offs involved:
Cookies: Although cookies can be exploited in some malicious ways, they are an important component of internet usability. Therefore, turning them off altogether is not a viable option. However, controlling third-party cookie activity is important. Check that your browser is blocking third-party cookies if at all possible by using settings.

Autocomplete: Autocomplete or autofill is a feature in many browsers that stores information you recently typed, such as search terms, recently visited websites and your personal information (e.g., name, email, address, phone) in the interest of saving keystrokes. Although this data is obfuscated, some malware targets autocomplete data in order to steal passwords or other personally identifiable information. In addition, using autocomplete for login information can present a significant risk for lost or stolen laptops—allowing criminals to easily abuse account privileges. Ensure that you understand the trade-offs and risks involved and make the best decision for your particular organization with respect to usability versus security. Set up your browsers accordingly.

Add-ons: ActiveX controls, plugins, browser helper objects (BHOs) and toolbars are all examples of browser add-ons. As discussed in point number 2 above, it’s imperative to restrict add-ons to an absolute minimum in order to reduce your threat surface area for exploits. However, if your security vendor supplies add-ons for your browser, make sure you don’t disable them as they can be instrumental in bolstering the security of the browser—providing valuable pre-execution analysis of browser code. Make sure you understand how to view the active browser add-ons and force a prompt whenever a web page tries to install a new one.

Content filters: Although this is not a concern for users on a corporate network that implements a proper web security solution (see point number 5), users operating remotely, at home or at a Wi-Fi hotspot should ensure their browser content filters are enabled. Most popular browsers offer at least a basic phishing and/or malware site database that can help provide protection from the most ubiquitous threats (see Figure 3). Ensure that your users enable these filters on their browsers.

Popup blockers: Popups are not only annoying resource hogs, but they also can pose a security risk by either hosting embedded malware directly, or trying to lure users into clicking on something using a well known social engineering trick. For example, some popups can be ingeniously crafted to look like Windows dialog boxes, and the mere act of clicking the “X” to close the box can instigate a malware attack. Ensure that your selected browser has popup blocking enabled (see Figure 4) and make users aware of the dangers of interacting with any kind of popup.

4.  Enforce a strong password policy.
The purpose of a password policy should be obvious: If you don’t want everyone to have access to something, you set up passwords to permit access only to authorized users. The purpose of an effective password policy is to keep passwords from being easily guessed or cracked by hackers. Despite this enormous vulnerability in every system, many organizations fail to take this threat seriously.

Here are some tips for creating an effective password:

• Use long passwords. The more characters they contain, the more secure they are.
• Include numbers, symbols, and upper- and lowercase characters.
• Do not use common dictionary terms. The first thing hackers will do is literally try every word in the dictionary to crack an account.
• Do not use personal information such as pet, romantic, family or other names, or birthdays.
• Change passwords frequently.
• Avoid passwords users can’t remember, or equip them with a centralized password management tool to make password management simple and secure (such as LastPass and 1Password). The worst kind of password is one written on a sticky note next to the computer.
• Users should abide by simple and effective password policies both at work and at home. This will go a long way toward securing this major vulnerability in all systems.

5.  Use an effective web security solution.
A proper web security solution is a vital component of an overall strategy for safeguarding your organization from modern web threats. It will reduce your threat exposure by limiting users’ surfing activity to website categories relevant to their work, or at least help them avoid the dirty dozen categories (adult, gambling, etc.) that are a breeding ground for malware. It will also protect you from trusted sites that you visit daily that may become hijacked at any time to silently spread malware to unsuspecting visitors. Finally, it will also help protect your internet resources from abuse as a result of the exchange of illegal content or bandwidth-sapping streaming media.

The key components of a web security and control solution are:

• Productivity and reputation filtering establishes acceptable user policy, limits threat exposure from notoriously malicious site categories and filters out sites with bad reputations regardless of category.
• Proxy filtering prevents users from bypassing web filtering and putting themselves and the organization at serious risk.
• Real-time malware filtering catches malware in real time, as it’s downloaded from hijacked trusted sites.
• HTTPS filtering secures this increasingly important vector that is completely blind to most web filtering solutions.
• Content-based filtering reduces the threat surface area from file types associated with malware and to control bandwidth consumption.

Review our Web Security and Control Buyers Guide for more insight into what constitutes an effective web security and control solution.

Summary
If you combine user awareness and education with suitable preventive measures as outlined here, along with an effective web security and control solution, you can rest assured you are doing everything possible to protect your organization from modern web threats that can infect your network, subvert systems into botnets or steal sensitive data. It’s a daunting task, but it’s very achievable—particularly if you have the right security partner by your side.

iPhone is phone sized or pad sized gadgets which allow you to browse net, play music, watch videos and take pictures anytime anywhere. Ringtones on iPhone gives personalized touch to enjoy this feature you need to buy ringtones of your choice, but it’s really pointless to pay for music when you already have them in your music library. IPhone ringtone converter is perfect solution for it converts any video and audio file to ringtones.

iPhone ringtone converter enables you to convert almost all mainstream audio video file to your favorite ringtone. It works as editor, maker and converter it can convert multiple files simultaneously and these converted ringtones automatically get uploaded to iphone. Iphone ringtone converter makes conversion very fast it supports almost all types of audio formats like MP3, AAC, WMA, M4A, OGG, RA, CDA, AIFF, FLAC, MP2, APE,CUE RA, AC3 etc, it also extract music from video files like MPEG, WMV, FLV, MOV, M4V, VOB, 3GP, AVI, QT, MP4, RM, MKV etc.

There are some specific system requirements for iphone ringtone converter, like OS needs to be windows XP, windows vista or windows 7 with 1 GHz intel/amd or above processor RAM requirement is 256MB but recommended is 512MB and above there needs to 50MB hard disk space for installation and super VGA (800 x 600) resolution 16 bit graphic card. For Mac user requirement are slightly different it should have Mac OS X v10.4-10.5 with PowerPC G4/G5 Intel processor Ram requirement is 512MB RAM with 50 MB hard disk space for installation and super VGA (800×600) resolution and 16 bit graphic card.

There are various important key functions of iPhone ringtone maker/ converter like it helps you to trim input file to get clip of your choice to convert, it has built in player to preview ringtones, it enables direct transfer converted MP4 ringtones to iPhone without using iTunes, you can edit and customize ringtone duration, it can create fade-in fade-out effects for ringtone, it can adjust ringtone volume and also rename it.

Possessing iPhone in itself is a great fun but everyone has a wish to personalize it by designing their own application, new product, called AppWizard, is available in market which cater all your need of designing your own iPhone App. App maker is streamlined system, one can include feed from any RSS enabled websites it has ability to integrate different types of feed into mix. creating own app with App maker is as easy as click of mouse so design your dream app and have a better experience of iPhone.

Internet literally is a huge source of knowledge and information. The information superhighway or cyberspace, as it is popularly known, provides us useful information and allows us to communicate for personal, official or business purposes. Internet has also become a major platform of economic or business activities. A growing trend of e-commerce and online trades is what we see in today’s ICT driven world. Internet features hundreds of benefits to our private and business lives. But, the cyberspace has its limitations and disadvantages too. The free world of Internet is also cluttered with scam websites, phishing pages and other frauds. In online business, security is a big concern and there are many tools to prevent fraudulent attempts.

In order to ensure a provider/client’s authenticity, tools like IP database and information query programs are extremely useful. An IP database and information query software helps you identifying the IP address of a person or a website and find out necessary associated information like domain, geographical information, host, security certificate etc. For an example, if you find a website is promoting products and services in the USA with an IP address location of India, you have all the reasons to be worried. On the other hand, you might run a online business where you want a customer base of a particular geographical and not any other area. In both the above examples, an IP database and query program will do the trick for you.

IP database and information query is extremely useful for government law enforcing agencies. Wherever available, the cyber crime monitoring and investigation branch of the law enforcing agencies can make best use of these software to identify thefts, hacking, money laundering and other crimes with traces of online presence.

IP database and query programs works using WHOIS as their basic protocol and Transmission Control Protocol or TCP. WHOIS protocol is especially useful for system administrators or domain name administrators. Primarily a command line web service, the WHOIS protocol is now used in many IP database and query software for varying needs.

One such software I came across is Miscosoftware’s Cruiser Geo2IP. This lightweight software allows searching for geographical information by querying the worldwide database. The query arithmetic is optimized for efficient information search. It’s easy to use for a very simple yet powerful query interface. Customizable search specifying a city, country, continent etc is also a great feature of Geo2IP. It is available as a shareware. For advanced IP query, Geo2IP is a good choice for small entrepreneurs and administrative agencies. Other similar software are Lapshins Whois 2010 Pro and SoftFuse Whois 2.5. I suggest trying all of them before buying one.

To any music lover, watching a DJ click on the buttons if his machine, swipe the CDs to change songs, and alter the pacing and beats of a song would certainly put you in awe. Watching the DJ would be so much better than going out there to dance. Appreciation of the music being made by the DJ gets you caught up, not bothering to look at what is happening to the rest of the room. For sure, you would also like to try out what he is doing, especially since the DJ got you open-mouthed with his music. There may be times that you yourself would like to mix also the music, and see the results if it will be good to hear or not. However, no DJ or no record company would let you touch their machines, for these are precious ones, expensive, so to speak. These are things to be taken care of, only touched by those who know what they are doing. You then, are left with no choice but to sit in the corner, admiring from afar since you cannot do it yourself.

Those agonizing days are now over, for there’s a software that you can get, to make you feel like a real DJ. MixVibes CROSS is a software that is specially designed to mix in the most complete and efficient way just like a DJ. This allows you up to 4 turntables and CD turntables at the same time. It also provides a 16 pattern sampler and full management of the VST effects, Direct effects, MIDI, and other controllers that are available. Included in the package for this awesome product are timecoded vinyls, MixVibes’ latest white vinyls and black vinyls. These products will allow you to have real time control over the music. It will not be very complicated, it would just feel like your normal CD that is playing.

With this product, you can have real scratch control over the vinyl and other parts of the component. It has a high sound quality and low latency time which can be as low as 1ms which is very hard to differentiate. Video scratching is possible for three monitors at the same time, therefore making you look like a real DJ. It is also a sixth generation professional audio engine with modern sound cards management such as Multi channel sound cards, ASIO and Fire Wire. You can have up to sixteen virtual players. Moreover, it has automatic BPm adjustment and song synchronization. You can select the reproduction speed separately and you may also choose the time and pitch. The crossfader function allows you to mix between songs. The sounds are adjustable for it has a bass, mean and a treble.

These features of this DJ mixing software are really a wonder. You can now do your thing, and hit it like a pro, exactly like a DJ. You’re not the person at the corner anymore, but you are the person with his own DJ mixing software, one who can act like a real DJ even without spending a second in that job

With the blessing of the incessant developments in the information and communications technology, most dramatic changes are observed in cellular phone industry. Every now and then, newer cell phones are being introduced in the consumer market packed with useful and functional features. Smart phones are such phones with a host of features and functionality much more than a standard cell phone.

Amongst many of the smart phone brands and models, Palm Inc.’s Palm Pre smart phone stands out unique with some amazing features. It is not just a phone but a versatile communications and entertainment tool all by itself. The elegant design with full QWERTY keyboard and touchscreen gives it an edge over other high quality smart phone brands. Palm Pre smart phone features an efficient multitasking environment which allows you to alternate amongst a number of active screens of schedules, notifications, business e-mail, social networking, maps etc. Signing up with MS Exchange with Microsoft or POP/IMAP access with Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL etc allows you to have up to date E-mail notifications and send replies instantly. The efficient contact and calendar management together with various compatible 3^rd-party web applications make your daily tasks a lot easier. You can have your Gmail, Facebook, MS Exchange contacts and calendars arranged in one plain view with automatic update function. Palm Pre works on CDMA2000 (Dual Band) and EVDO (3G) networks.

In-built GPS allows you to use Palm Pre as an effective navigation device. A 3-megapixel camera, accelerometer, ambient light and proximity sensor allows you to have excellent pictures, play 3D games etc. Palm Pre supports almost all popular video and audio file formats which let you use it as an excellent entertainment and media device too. High memory capacity of 8 GB and connectivity to 802.11b/g wireless networks with high end security systems are what make Palm Pre a better choice amongst a number of comparable devices.

Palm Pre operates on it own Palm WebOS operating system platform. Navigation through multi-touch gestures and highly sensitive touchscreen is fast and convenient. Zooming, opening or closing application screens are as easy as tapping on the screen with usual human gestures. Live notifications (e-mails, alarms, reminders etc) flash on the screen as they appear and are stored at the bottom of the screen. You can never miss an important event. The WebOS universal search feature allows you to search for files, folders, media, text or phrases primarily from the phone and then from the web from resources like Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook or Google Search/Maps. The WebOS also integrates a host of 3^rd-party compatible Palm OS web applications to make your smart phone even more powerful.

Got a new Pre but want to run some old school Palm OS apps? No problem, MotionApps offers a emulator software to get classic apps on Palm Pre which runs side by side with other webOS applications.

For all these quality features of the phone together with those of its operating system, Palm Pre is an excellent choice for smart people.

DVDs are great media for entertainment. They are especially significant for their reliability and large storage capacity. In today’s advanced entertainment and media platforms, DVDs still stand out popular for their universality. Not all households possess a Blue-ray or a HD media player. But most of us have a DVD player in some form – standalone or as a peripheral. As such, DVDs remain as the most common media for enjoying movies, songs, home videos or accessing data storage.

At home, if you want to create DVDs (movies, music or data), you need a DVD creator or authoring software. Depending on the data type you can choose from simple (and free) DVD authoring software or high-end industrial software. Free versions can be downloaded from the Internet and are good for very basic DVD creation i.e. creating a music DVD or data DVD. But professional style DVD creation (like those available from movie industries) would need a much better software.

One of the most common uses of the DVD authoring software is to compile and convert home videos into playable DVDs. You may have piles of video tapes, DV or VHS cassettes in your home. These software allow you to transfer all your home videos into fewer DVD discs, thereby helping you in getting rid of the cluttering piles of cassettes or mini discs or CDs.

With DVD authoring software, you can create movie discs with advanced features like interactive menu, capture facilities and easy navigational tools. Some allow you to add subtitles from text transcriptions. Before choosing the right DVD authoring software, you must identify your DVD creation needs. It may so happen that a completely free downloadable version may satisfy your simple needs. If you however, need advanced functionalities you may need to buy one.

There is no single best DVD creator software. They differ in features and functions. It is completely useless to buy an expensive DVD authoring software when you are likely to use only a small part of its features. Before buying a software, look for following features in professional DVD authoring software:

- Menu creation ability, chapter splitting, and ease of navigation with menu buttons.

- Built-in DVD burning software/feature.

- Capture capabilities i.e. whether the software allows capturing videos from VCRs, Camcorders, digital cameras, TVs etc.

- If you need to edit your video after capturing and before burning on DVDs, look for a bundled movie editor

- Ease of installation in terms of system requirements and installation procedures.

- Availability of both online and offline help/support, manuals, tutorials etc.

- Availability of trial versions.

For basic DVD authoring, look for best DVD creator software from hundreds of free titles available for download. Shorten your list based on reviews and rankings and then try two or three free software to see if they are enough for you. If you still need better options, some suggested products are, DVD MovieFactory Pro, Sony DVD Architect Studio, ImTOO DVD Creator and a cheaper version called Leawo DVD Creator. Don’t forget to run trials of their demo/trial versions before you finalize your purchase.

You now have your brand new iPod, the one you’ve wanted to have for quite some time now. It’s right there in your hands, shimmering with its new case, waiting for you to use it. When you’re already used to having one, then it’s no big deal for you. If, on the other hand, this is your first iPod, it can be a bit baffling. When you look at the instructions, it would probably tell you to download your files such as songs and videos from a website called iTunes.

iTunes is the standard music application developed by Apple used for managing your iPod. This is where you import the music files, transfer photographs, videos, and other files. It allows you to synchronize and transfer available songs and videos from your computer to your iPod. With iTunes, you can be able to organize these files into playlists. However, iTunes can be complicated. You have to install the software, and there is a lot of stuff that has to be done. Sure, there are instructions. But for a person who is not very familiar with computer operating systems, it would be very tough. You will also experience some restraints in some areas while you are installing your iTunes software. Your computer should be compatible with Linux Operating System. If it’s not, then you will not be able to utilize what you have just downloaded. Apple, the company producer of iPods, still uses its own standards for building Windows specific software. If it’s not compatible with yours, then it would be of no use.

When faced with these problems, using your iPod would not be that appealing anymore. But worry no more, for there are a lot of alternatives for iTunes. iPod.appcraft.org offers you softwares that you can use for your iPod. This website allows you to choose from different softwares of your preference. With these softwares, iPod transfer to computer would be very easy and of course, without iTunes installed. These can assist you to easily share music, videos, and other files with your family and friends. Moreover, the iPod manager supports different types of iPod such as iPod classic, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod touch and iPhone. There is also a smart iPod rip tool that allows you to manage, create, rename, and delete playlists. These softwares support all Windows including Windows 97, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 2000.

There is also this great feature of these iTunes alternative. There are times when you would like to copy your iPod media files back to your computer. With iTunes, you cannot do that, you can only copy files from your computer to your iPod. Bigasoft iPod Transfer, one of the iTunes alternatives, is a computer tool which allows you to transfer your music files, video files, playlists, and all other files from your iPod to your computer. You can easily retrieve your iPod media files also. Furthermore, you can share your files with your friends and family with this, you just connect two iPods into your computer, open them both, and simply drag and drop your selected files. You don’t need to worry about your files getting deleted for if you use this software, you can use your iPod in any computer.

These iPod transfer tools have all the features that you need – they are ready for your latest operating system, easy to use, available in multiple languages, and of course, you can use them without iTunes. Install one and using your iPod will not only be easier, but it would also be fun.

Advancements in technology have literally changed the way we live our lives today. Besides the numerous functional (and remarkable) changes to our business or profession, these advancements have especially enhanced the world of entertainment. Invention of High Definition (HD) media (audio and video) is one of the greatest leaps in the history of entertainment technology. HD video format is by far the best format available today in the movie industry. The trendy HD movies are becoming more popular and available to the consumers all around the world.

Recording or making your own HD movie could be a troublesome affair unless you have proper hardware and software support. While there are good number of HD recording devices available in the consumer market, unfortunately the number of software that allows you to make your own HD movie are comparatively less.

As a home user, you would probably prefer recording your own movie in the popular Blue-ray HD format. You may also wish to make your movies in a multi-format environment for sharing them with more people. Whatever format you decide, you need a HD movie maker software. Finding the suitable  movie maker software which will satisfy all your requirements could be tricky. The software must be easy to use and should deliver good quality HD video output. It should also support maximum popular video formats like Blue-ray, DVCPRO HD, HDCAM, HDV, HDCAM-SR, XDCAM HD, D5 HD, and AVCHD. Another desirable feature should be the ability to convert videos in other Standard Definition (SD) video formats. You should also look for other additional features that the software promises.

Two such popular and highly functional software products you may consider are Sothink HD Movie Maker from SourceTec Software and PowerDirector 8 Deluxe from CyberLink Corp. Both the software are rich in features and yields high quality HD video in making a home movie.

Sothink HD Movie Maker supports almost all HD and SD formats. Included HD camera support (*.m2ts, *.m2t and *.mts) makes it ideal for recording movies direct from HD cameras/camcorders. Video resolutions supported are 1280×720p, 1440×1080p and 1920×1080p. You can also make your movies in PAL or NTSC system. Recording can be made with 5.1 surround sound. The software supports multi-core and multiple CPUs.

PowerDirector 8 Deluxe is also a HD movie maker that supports almost all video input/output formats. Its standard and advanced editing features together with a number of special effects tools make it a perfect choice for HD movie authoring at home. As capture sources, the tool supports HDV, DV, DSLR cameras, Digital and Analog TV. Although costlier than Sothink HD Movie Maker,  PowerDirector 8 Deluxe has many features that make it worth choosing between the two.

Face recognition software is a computer application used to verify person from digital image present in data. Face recognition software technology allow developers to create biometric authentication systems which enables touch less login by just looking into camera. Biometric authentication is most convenient, secure and fastest method for computer users. This method of identification is purely based on images of human face it allows instant identification.

Face recognition software functions are based on accuracy to identify and measure various features of face. Facial recognition software recognizes faces by distinguishable feature, different peaks and valley which form features. This software analyzes position, shape and size of various features. On general basis every human face has 80 nodal points like depth of eyes, distance between eyes, shape of cheekbones, length of jaw line, width of nose etc. These nodal points are measured creating a numerical code called face print by face recognition software, and are then compared with preciously stored digital images or data for authentication .

Recognition algorithm is basically divided into two methods photometric and geometric. Geometric method targets on distinguished landmarks where as photometric method is a statistical approach which analyze image into value and then compares value with templates to remove variances. Mostly all recognition software include elastic bunch graph matching, linear discriminate analysis, principal component, hidden markov model and dynamic link matching.

While enrolling in facial recognition programs various snap shots are taken from different angles to avoid any confusion. Some security measures are also followed to prevent use of picture or mask. User is asked to smile, blink or nod head number of times. Feature called thermography is also used to record heat in face. Another new technique of facial recognition targets on skin texture, it analysis lines, patterns, spots etc. These advanced technique and norms are generally used for high security areas.

Earlier facial recognition software use to rely on 2d images only but now three- dimensional facial recognition is also available in market its uses sensors to capture information regarding face.

There are various uses of face recognition software like it is used for surveillance purpose for searching missing persons. Face recognition software is most widely and popularly used in personal computer these days it has become one of the future trends. Face recognition technology helps you to make your face as your password; it gives touch less and fast login to your PC. Face recognition software takes away the hassle of memorizing password