Should My Broadband Really Be This Slow?

When my internet starts chugging along slowly I begin to wonder, “What’s wrong with it now?” I pay for a certain speed but am I getting what I pay for?  Does this sound like you, too?  Does video streaming get funky at certain times, but run smoothly at others? There are a lot of ways to find out what is going on under the hood and you do not have to have a technical degree to effect a change in your broadband speed.

8 Uses Of Medieval Technology In The Modern World

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Despite living in a technologically advanced and increasingly digitally integrated world, it's surprising just how many technologies that we still use today have been around since medieval times, or even earlier.

For example, the Chinese first created fireworks right back in the seventh century and we're still using their discovery today. So what other technologies have really stood the test of time and have a place in modern society, despite their ancient roots?

Artisan Technologies

Many of the ancient crafts and arts that are experiencing a resurgence today actually have their roots in far more ancient practices, many which date back hundreds of years.

These traditional crafts include willow weaving, thatching for roofs, glass blowing, brick making and blacksmithing. Many of these crafts were thought to be dying out in the eighties and nineties, as mass consumerism and a culture of 'buy and dispose' came into play, facilitated by a wave of cheap overseas imports.

However, today these ancient and traditional crafts and technologies are reaching new markets, with many people keen to pay extra and support these old skills. This is a superb example of how medieval technologies and arts are still in use today, providing a strong sense of British heritage.

 

Medical Implements

The ancient Greeks and Romans developed some of the medical implements that provided the origins of those in use today. They were further developed in medieval times, to include the tools and implements used by dentists as well.

These include surgeon's knives, suture tools and even pliers for removing bad teeth. The technology may have vastly improved as the years passed but the basic tools are still recognizable from their ancient predecessors.

 

Travel and Transport

Ancient man first discovered the wheel and by medieval times great ships were used by Britain to rule the waves and facilitate trade and war. As well as the vast naval fleet, people were using horses and carriages and taking advantage of the humble wheel when they traveled.

Again, this is a great example of how ancient and basic technologies are still used today, whether we're now driving a car or taking the ferry or a cruise ship.

 

Typesetting

In medieval times, books were reserved for the clergy and educated classes only. Printing presses were hugely expensive and setting was a complex and skilled job, usually reserved for religious and scientific books or political tomes.

Today, we may have moved more towards digital communication, but the art of typesetting has also seen a comeback, particularly in the arts and creative sectors. There are still occasions when the ancient methods of typesetting are also required for ceremonial or legal purposes and many people actively seek out old-fashioned type for its beauty and aesthetic qualities.

Furnaces

Medieval homes and industries were powered by furnaces and fire. And today we still use stoves and furnaces in both of these contexts, harnessing the power of fossil fuels to heat and power our homes and businesses.

Of course, we are also moving towards greener technologies and this is set to continue. We now need to develop these technologies further and greatly advance them.

However, interestingly, water power has been used since medieval times for powering grain mills, for example and this simple but effective technology is still also in use today.

Scales

This is another ancient and simple technology which works without fail. Scales are still with us today and many of them resemble the ancient models with the recognisable balanced weights and counters. These are used in a variety of situations, such as weighing bullion or scientific materials, as well as cooking ingredients.

 

Telescopes

We've come some way from believing the world to be flat, but telescopes have been around in some form since before medieval times (particularly in Arab and Asian countries). It's true that the capabilities of telescopes may have greatly advanced, but the basics still exist.

 

Ink Pens

Samuel Pepys was one of Britain's greatest diarists just after the medieval period and his ink-quilled papers still exist today. Ink-filled pens are also still available and used in a number of ways, such as calligraphy, the law, various ceremonial services and the creative arts. It's fascinating to imagine that a humble pen design is still as relevant today as it was hundreds of years ago.

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And, of course, these are just eight examples. The more you look around and dig deeper into the history of some of the appliances and tools that we take for granted, the more we find that earlier technologies preceded our modern 'discoveries'. Even the basic calculator is simply an electronic version of the ancient abacus and abacuses are still used across the world today as an easy way to count and keep track of basic transactional sums.

Along with technologies, many of our current medicines, health approaches and even fashions are still influenced by ancient customs and wisdom. And this knowledge gives a real sense of just how important historical continuity is to our world and its development.

Who knows where technology will take us next? Many historians believe that it's essential to look to the past in order to know which direction to take in the future. So it may well be that the technologies of the ancient world continue to inform and steer the people of the future.

Featured images:

•  License: Creative Commons image source 

This post was contributed by Conosco; London based suppliers of fixed-price IT support for 10 years.

Understanding Telepresence for Video Conferencing

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Video conferencing is fast becoming the typical way to conduct business meetings with members overseas; gone are the days of the conference call for most. While definitely more personal than a simple phone call, the disadvantages of video conferencing include not truly feeling like you’re in the same room as those on the other side of the web camera. While it isn’t necessarily a problem, the ideal is to feel as if there isn’t a barrier there and this is where the art of telepresence comes in. So what benefits on video conferencing does telepresence offer? Well it’s important to understand what we mean by telepresence first of all.

A Polycom VSX 7000 camera used for videoconferencing (top) with 2 video conferencing screens for simultaneous broadcast from 2 separate locations. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What is Telepresence

Telepresence is defined by the ability to share audio, data and video with a distinct party as though you and the party were truly in the same space; perhaps across a conference table. What makes telepresence different in relation to typical video conferencing systems is how the audio, video, document sharing, control systems and room environment are handled in that they strive to link up all of these aspects in such a way as to be seamless. The advantages of video conferencing while keeping telepresence in mind is the experience of doing congealed business with others without feeling miles apart. While HD systems promise the latest in video conferencing software telepresence, there are other aspects that need to be considered to capture true telepresence.

The Aspects of Telepresence

Audio quality is something that isn’t associated with HD or visual aspects at all, but it’s an important thing to get right for telepresence to take place. Video conferencing equipment can help greatly in this department, but what you want to avoid is excessive audio clipping or delay; the ability for example to record a whisper just as well as a boisterous laugh is important since asking if someone can repeat what they just said excessively destroys the experience. When it comes to video quality, capturing everyone in the room in an equal way is another aspect needed to ensure telepresence; it doesn’t help the experience at all when the camera needs to be moved to get a member of the meeting on screen to make a statement.

Teliris VirtuaLive Telepresence Modular System (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Another aspect that helps telepresence along is latency; while this aspect is near impossible to get right without a proper infrastructure in place that is out of the hands of companies and in the hands of telecommunication providers, there are options that are perhaps expensive. With strong latency, high definition visuals and good sound, it’s left only to the environment to get telepresence as good as it’s going to get; which allows video conferencing to become a wholly personal experience.

Eugene Calvini is a writer and tech enthusiast; particularly involved with video conferencing London and Bristol, he is experienced with Polycom conferencing and shares his experience with others.

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History of The Telephone Line

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The telephone was famously invented by Alexander Graham Bell in the US during the 19th century, with the first call made over just 100 feet (30.5 metres) on the 14th of February, 1876. In the subsequent years a global industry has developed around this type of technology, with the humble telephone line still going strong to this day despite competition from emerging wireless services.

Here is a quick overview of the history of the telephone line from its early establishment to its modern applications, which should hopefully indicate just why it was such an important technological advance and how it changed the world.

Within two years of the first telephone call being made, Bell's patents were used to set up a company in the UK, backed by the then not insubstantial investment of £100,000. 150 telephone lines were quickly rolled out in London, with each line able to support a maximum of eight users simultaneously.

Further telephone exchanges were developed in the UK until in 1879 there were 200 subscribers in London, with lines leading across the country to Sheffield, Manchester and even Edinburgh. A rival company founded on the patents registered by Thomas Edison was also established in this year, undercutting the price of Bell's service by a significant margin in order to win over British customers.

The technology powering telephone lines was continually developed over the years, but it was in 1922 that things really got going when electro-mechanical technology designed by Almon B Strowger of the US became widely adopted to help automate the process. For the next seven decades or so, the UK's exchanges used a variant of this hardware in order to route calls.

Example of residential network including VoIP (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By the mid-1980s, BT had become a private company and it began to look to digital technology to replace the analogue signals which had been carried by telephone lines for so many years. Investments of over £20 billion were made to update the UK's infrastructure. Despite this, it was not until 1995 that the final exchange working on Strowger's original design was closed, indicating the enduring nature of this set-up.

Using metallic cabling for telephone lines with analogue electrical signals transporting the audio information was not the only invention of Bell's which would go on to shape the world. As early as 1880, he was working with Sumner Tainter on something which they called the Photo-phone, which was essentially an early form of fiber-optic communication.

a fiber-optic splitter: 2x(input, 90% out, 10%out) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fibre optics would remain impractical and largely unpatented for the transmission of digital data until 1966. The lower attenuation rates in fiber-optic cables compared to metallic equivalents made them desirable for long-distance signal transmission and the UK was home to the first fiber-optic data line during the mid 1980s when a 140Mbps connection was set up between Luton and Milton Keynes. This would pave the way for the proliferation of optical technology which we see today being rapidly rolled out to replace the original metallic infrastructure as data rates are increased.

A TOSLINK fiber optic cable with a clear jacket that has a laser being shone onto one end of the cable. The laser is being shone into the left connector; the light coming out the right connector is from the same laser. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The emergence of widespread broadband connectivity after the turn of the millennium, delivered either via traditional landlines or fiber-optic connections, eventually allowed more and more businesses and subscribers to access digital voice services. VoIP providers began to emerge in the middle of the 2000s, with companies such as Skype helping to introduce average consumers to the idea of making long-distance, IP-based calls between PCs rather than fixed-line handsets.

Fiber optic distribution frame from Canovate Group (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today, a single fiber-optic connection or broadband-enabled telephone line can do the work of multiple older lines thanks to VoIP technology and the flexibility of the digital age. In spite of the growth of the mobile market, people still value telephone lines for their reliability and affordability.

Daisy Group plc who specialize in providing communication solutions to UK businesses. Daisy has been providing telephone lines for over a decade and are experts in Voip Technology, and bringing business in to the 21st century

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Cloud Computing - Not Just for The Big Boys

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Cloud computing is becoming a vital asset of many established businesses, but this might lead those at small and medium-sized enterprises or start-ups to assume that the cloud is something that can only be used by larger companies and is not suitable for them.

In reality, this is far from the truth, since cloud-based services have plenty to offer businesses of all sizes. In fact, it could be much easier for smaller companies to get a foothold in a competitive marketplace if they are harnessing cloud computing rather than ignoring its potential and trailing behind more technically ambitious rivals as a result.

Any business which is in the early stages of its development will need to invest in some kind of IT infrastructure that includes network connectivity and telephony solutions.

However, unless you are mainly operating in a sector related to this type of technology, finding expertise in this area in-house will be difficult.

This means that the services of cloud providers can become even more important if you are not by nature an IT start-up. By sourcing a variety of services, from business email to the running of software applications, via a third-party provider you will take away the burden of initial installation, ongoing maintenance and future upgrades.

Cloud providers can offer uncomplicated hosting packages that will allow you to provide business email accounts to staff, which you can then use to communicate with potential clients and partners so that your start-up is instantly recognizable and eminently professional right from day one.

The power of the cloud can be used to run entire hosted desktops so that managing multiple users is uncomplicated, requires little in-house expertise and can be performed remotely.

This leads to the availability of home working for SMEs which invest in the cloud early on, allowing for a greater degree of flexibility when it comes to working hours and locations.

The cloud will also help when it comes to ensuring the continuity of your fledgling business, because downtime or other disasters which take your normal place of work out of operation can be a terminal problem for start-ups.

The flexibility of the cloud goes hand in hand with its scalability. Any small business will be thinking about growth, but IT can become a bottleneck if you are having to manage, maintain and upgrade everything on-site using only your own resources.

With cloud computing services you have the option to add new users, increase your storage, implement more complicated telephony arrangements and much more without the financial burden or the strain on internal resources.

It is impossible to talk about cloud computing without also mentioning the cost savings which can be made when larger businesses migrate a variety of services to a third-party platform. However, this factor is perhaps even more important for start-ups, which may not have the financial elasticity to rely on an in-house system to do the job which it is supposed to do.

When every penny counts, putting your money into hosting, storage and software as a service through a cloud provider will give you both a short-term cut in the amount you need to invest and a longer-term reduction in costs that will leave your balance sheet looking healthier as your company expands.

Start-ups and small businesses can embrace cloud computing just as fully as bigger companies, with benefits that will be more acutely experienced at the lower end of the market.

The cloud computing market is not one dominated by absolutes, so it is important to remember that adoption can range from minimal to total, with a hybridized approach favored by many companies regardless of size.

This article was written by Daisy Group plc, who have over 12 years experience in data and hosting solutions including cloud hosting services, colocation, data centre and cloud computing services for corporate, public sector and enterprise companies across the UK.   With  4 Teir III Data Centres in Manchester, London, Jersey and Southampton providing 24/7 support 365 Daisy are the natural choice for business hosting solutions.

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Is Cyber Shopping Taking over Your Life?

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What is online shopping addiction and how can you minimize it?

While research into compulsive shopping is still ongoing and it is often treated as something of a joke or not accepted as a “real” addiction in the way that say, alcohol, is, there is plenty of evidence of people getting into real trouble because of a need to spend.

The most recent research into shopping addiction has uncovered the role that online shopping plays in the compulsion. Cyber shopping has many attractive qualities for addicts; it is quickly accessible so can satisfy a craving quickly; shoppers often don’t even need to enter any details if they’ve used a site before so it won’t even feel like spending money; it is anonymous and avoids social interactions; addicts can compare products and easily be given recommendations and suggestions for other purchases.

So it is easy to see how cyber shopping can become a compulsion in itself, even to people not addicted to retail shopping. It is easy to overspend, particularly as sites encourage you to make just one more little purchase by recommending products and emailing you with suggestions.

If you feel that cyber shopping is taking over your life it can be difficult to know how to cut down. The internet is such a big part of our lives, and product ads follow us around the internet, tempting us at every click of the mouse.

Steps to minimize your online shopping addiction:

First step is to delete accounts to online stores like Amazon, in particular the ones that save your bank details or credit card details. You can even block sites; if you use Internet Explorer go into Tools, Internet Options and then the Privacy tab. Select sites and you can enter addresses that you want to block. Other browsers vary but if you Google “block sites” and your browser name you will find instructions.

Stick a note on your computer saying “Don’t shop”. Set up a spreadsheet, and every time you want to buy something put how much it costs onto the spreadsheet. Keep a running total and this will show you how much you’re not spending, and remind you how much you would have wasted.

If there are some things that you have to buy online, set up a card or system with a strict spending limit, so you won’t be able to overspend.

If you feel that your addiction is unmanageable, you should seek professional help. Online support groups are a good place to start, as is your doctor.

Biography

Ukash lets you use your cash to pay online by exchanging your notes and coins for a voucher for safe, anonymous and controlled online shopping. Visit http://www.ukash.com/uk/en/home.aspx for more information on how to obtain the vouchers and where to spend Ukash vouchers.