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A computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century (around 1940 - 1945), although the computer concept and various machines similar to computers existed earlier.

Early electronic computers were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several hundred modern personal computers.

Until this time, parallelism was limited to pipelining and vector processing, or at most to a few processors sharing jobs. The fifth generation saw the introduction of machines with hundreds of processors that could all be working on different parts of a single program.

The scale of integration in semiconductors continued at an incredible pace - by 1990 it was possible to build chips with a million components - and semiconductor memories became standard on all computers.

One of the most dramatic changes in 1990s will be the explosive growth of wide area networking. Network bandwidth has expanded tremendously in the last few years and will continue to improve for the next several years.

T1 transmission rates are now standard for regional networks, and the national “backbone” that interconnects regional networks uses T3. Networking technology is becoming more widespread than its original strong base in universities and government laboratories as it is rapidly finding application in K-12 education, community networks and private industry.

A little over a decade after the warning voiced in the Lax report, the future of a strong computational science infrastructure is bright. The federal commitment to high performance computing has been further strengthened with the passage of two particularly significant pieces of legislation: the High Performance Computing Act of 1991, which established the High Performance Computing and Communication Program (HPCCP) and Sen.

Gore’s Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992, which addresses a broad spectrum of issues ranging from high performance computing to expanded network access and the necessity to make leading edge technologies available to educators from kindergarten through graduate school.

Modern computers are based on tiny integrated circuits and are millions to billions of times more capable while occupying a fraction of the space.

Today, simply computer may be made small enough to fit into a wristwatch and be powered from a watch battery. Personal computers, in various forms, are icons of the Information Age and are what most people think of as “a computer”; however, the most common form of computer in use today is the embedded computer.

Embedded computers are small, simple devices that are used to control other devices for example, they may be found in machines ranging from fighter aircraft to industrial robots, digital cameras, and children’s toys.

The ability to store and execute lists of instructions called programs makes computers extremely versatile and distinguishes them from calculators. The Church-Turing thesis is a mathematical statement of this versatility: any computer with a certain minimum capability is, in principle, capable of performing the same tasks that any other computer can perform.

Therefore, computers with capability and complexity ranging from that of a personal digital assistant to a supercomputer are all able to perform the same computational tasks given enough time and storage capacity.

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This article is aimed at people that wish to keep their Internet activities as private as possible. With all sorts of viruses and spyware, keeping your Internet activities private is no longer just desirable, but a necessity. So how is are your details in danger in the first place? Well, first of all, every time you visit a website is collects various pieces of information about you. The information that is collected varies but at the least what is collected is your IP address, geographical location, MAC address, time of visit, duration of visit. This is what websites will collect about you and they can then build up a profile of your browsing habits. Most of this is harmless, of course. However, there does exist websites with malicious intent that will try and use the data collected for immoral reasons. There are also websites built for the sole purpose of infecting your computer with whatever nasty bugs it has.

You can take some very simple steps to keep yourself safe from threats and snoops. First of all, make sure you have your Windows Firewall active. You can check this by going to the control panel and clicking the firewall icon. Make sure that it is always on for security reasons. Secondly, make sure you have a good antivirus package installed on your computer or network. These steps are common sense really but you would be surprised at how many people do not do this. Right, now you have the basics, you want to look at how you can protect your identity online from snoops. One way you can do this is to use something called a proxy. A proxy website is basically something that you can access on the Internet that acts as a middle man while you surf the Internet.

You simply access the proxy, type in the web address of your desired location and bingo! You are more private than you were a few minutes ago. Now when you surf the Internet all of the websites that you visit will pick up the proxys details, not yours personally. It will shield your IP address and keep other pieces of data about you secret. Using proxies can be particularly useful if you want to also get around network blocks on a school or college network, for example. If you have some spare cash you may want to think about taking things even further. Why not invest in a good product that provides you with encryption. This is the ultimate in online protection. All of the data you transmit and receive is now encrypted and if anyone were to intercept then all they would get is gibberish.

Never assume that you are safe while browsing the Internet because you are not. Never assume that the Internet is an anonymous place because it is not. These are common mistakes that people make that ultimately make them run into problems. If you start taking these steps that have been outlined then you will be safer and more secure guaranteed.

The author lives in England and has his own proxy offering a free website. Links to proxies and reviews on products are also available. You are can visit the site for free browsing and for more information. I hope you like the site.

Web Based CRM is Software as a Service (SaaS) providing Customer Relationship Management functionality on the internet. Instead of buying the software licenses and installing the application on the company infrastructure, customers acquire a subscription to a system which can be accessed via the World Wide Web. Once the subscription fee is paid, customers can directly log into the web based CRM solution.

The crucial benefit of this software delivery model is the fast deployment of the application without having to go go through a costly and lengthy installation process. The absence of company-owned hardware also leads to lower capital investments and reduced operational costs (no need to hire costly system engineers to maintain the hardware infrastructure).

Finally, the cost of the implementation project will also typically be lower. However, this statement must be taken with a grain of salt. In the majority of cases, the business requirements are the most important drivers of the IT project cost. Web Based CRM software allows for fast access to the standard solution provided by the vendor. In many cases (and depending on your business), the standard implementation will not be able to fulfill all business needs.

In this case, additional customization of the On Demand CRM will be required. The more customization, the higher the project budget. So, take this into account when writing the business case.

Web Based CRM software supports many functionalities. The most common ones are SFA, lead management, opportunity management, partner management, customer service and support, contact center management, performance management and e-commerce. Additional more niche functionalities are E-Learning, Quality management and self-service vendors.

The last trends indicate a growing interest in Analytics and extensive integration of internet marketing services. The increasing interest in analytics, by the way, is not limited to web based CRM. The rise of analytics is a general trend in business software where higher levels of transparency are demanded by management on every level: strategic, tactical and operational.

The integration of internet marketing services such as Google’s advertising service Adwords cannot be seen as a surprise. E-commerce and internet advertising are growing year by year. Google has become the number one place where customers go to find information to satisfy their needs and desires. This reality opens a lot of perspective for business. That is why the integration of internet sales and marketing services into web based CRM software is crucial.

The most important web CRM vendors are SalesForce, RightNow and NetSuite. These vendors have designed and implemented their online solutions with the internet in mind. Industry behemoths like Microsoft, SAP and Oracle (with Siebel) fairly recently added an On Demand offering to their portfolio, which in some cases is a web port of their traditional CRM suite.

Now, how to choose the right web based CRM software? The answer to this question depends on a number of criteria: what functionalities are required by your organization? How many users need access to the application? How mature is your IT organization? What is your back office system? How critical is the application? And many more …

Before selecting a customer relationship management solution I would definitely recommend to start with a free trial, which will allow you to try the service before signing-up.

Cedric Rinolda is IT Project Manager and Architect specialized in the implementation of business software. He writes opinions on the evolutions in the world of Software as a Service. Learn more about web based CRM software and choosing the right CRM vendor at his blog.

SAS 70 stands for Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70. It is an auditing standard that was adopted by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and is widely recognized in the auditing of service organizations. An auditor performs an audit on a service organization and that audit is conducted in a way that is compliant with SAS 70. It is that standard statement that says a service organization has been through an extensive audit

This extensive audit measures is that the organization has total control and has safeguards in place that does not compromise any data that they process for their customers. In other words, the job of the audit is to evaluate every aspect of the service organization that handles customer data or could result in a possible leak of customer data.

SAS 70 is necessary for the following reasons:

- It serves as a guide to service organizations when disclosing to their customers how it is they protect their information and how well they do it. The audit results are organized in a report that is easy to follow.

- It is not a checklist audit, but serves as a guide to independent auditors to form an opinion on how well the organization is utilizing their internal controls. There are certain standards that must be met during the audit.

- Provides a set of standards in which the auditor can perform a financial statement audit.

All of the information that is gathered is compiled into two types of reports. These reports are called Type I and Type II.

Type I report

A type I report takes the organizations description of their own controls at a certain point in time and describes those descriptions. The report includes the report by the independent auditor, which is simply the auditor’s opinion, and it includes the organization’s descriptions of their internal controls. There are parts of the report that are optional such as tests that are performed by the auditor and the auditor recording the results of those tests. Another optional area is the inclusion of any other information that the organization provides the auditor about its controls.

Type II report

The type II report is similar to the type I report in a lot of ways. The main difference is that it is mandatory for the auditor to perform tests and record the results of those tests. This is optional with type I. All of the other areas of evaluation remain the same and the inclusion of additional data by the organization is still optional.

How the organization benefits

The organization benefits from SAS 70 because it is receiving an unbiased opinion from the outside regarding the security and the effectiveness of its financial and customer-related controls. In turn, the organization can then work on any areas of weakness, which means that the customers can feel more secure about who they are doing business with. This builds a trust with customers when they know that their financial and/or personal information with the organization are secure. It lets them know who they can turn to when they need what the service organization has to offer.

Also, a service organization that has regular audits performed is an organization that has a long business life ahead of it. As stated before, customers will turn to a secure organization to do business. That means the organization is ensuring itself a long life as long as regular audits are performed to ensure the security of their internal controls. Keeping up with their controls can also save them money from having to eventually bring their controls up-to-date.

Managed Hosting Provider providing state-of-the-art data centre offices. We are SAS 70 and CICA 5970 and Certified, which is the highest available standards for measuring and improving data center operations and management.

You hear the word Ajax a lot these days, particularly in technology, so; what are people talking about? A Greek hero from the Odyssey - sure. A bathroom cleanser that gets your sink sparkly - indeed. But today, more often then not, Ajax refers to a specific type of web programming that has taken the internet by storm.

The term Ajax was coined as shorthand for - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML by a man named Jesse James Garrett who founded a technical consultancy called Adaptive Path. He would want me to make it clear that Ajax is not an acronym (so it isn’t spelled AJAX).

What Mr. Garrett described back in 2005 was a stack of technologies (not a single technology) being used at the time by very cutting-edge web sites. This stack of technologies allowed web sites to be turned from a set of static documents connected by hypertext links into something that approximated a true application. This was the intellectual birth (or coming out party anyway) of the Rich Internet Application (RIA).

At the heart of Ajax is a software object built into all browsers called the XMLHttpRequest object. This mouthful is frequently shortened to XHR for those that want to talk about it in fewer syllables. This software object allows JavaScript code, executed in the browser, to go out and request data from a server without reloading a page.

This technology was not new in 2005, but Mr. Garrett put a catchy name to it, and people noticed. Around the same time, a number of web applications such as Gmail emerged and people wondered, “how the heck did they do that?”

Think of a typical web page as one where you have to click a link or submit a form then wait for a new page to be returned to see your result. It’s slow and doesn’t really act the way we expect software to act. Now look at web applications like Flickr, Gmail, or Youtube. You can click in a box and enter some data, and your updates happen without you leaving the page. The magic that’s happening in the background is Ajax (or and XRH call).

With Ajax, the idea is that you get a richer, faster user experience. Properly implemented, a web page can become a rich internet application (RIA). Most extremely popular web sites use Ajax to some degree. Amazon’s rating system, where you click on the number of stars you give a book or CD is one example.

Even though Ajax and XMLHttpRequest both refernce XML, the data that is used does not necessarily have to be formatted as XML. In fact, more and more other data formats, such as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), are being used. One restriction on XHR is called the single origin policy. This is a security policy, enforced by the browsers, that only allows JavaScript to request data from the server that originally served up a page. There is a technique using JSON that get around this restriction.

Since 2005 a number of toolkits have emerged that have allowed web developers to more easily implement Ajax in their applications. Some of these are Dojo, Prototype, jQuery, GWT, YUI… and many many others.

As a technology stack, Ajax is now quite mature and being used almost everywhere on the web. Ultimately, the most important thing to remember is to create the best posisble user experience.

John Moore is a Web 2.0 expert who creates Rich Internet Applications. He has created the web’s first RIA community at http://www.riaspot.com

If you have a high traffic website with dynamic features, then switching to a dedicated server is probably the best choice for you. The major advantages are faster load time, increased security, and total control over your website.

This dedicated server is a single web server, devoted solely to the use of one organization, unlike shared servers that host a number of other users and websites. Particularly suitable for larger corporations that process and store high quantities of secure data, dedicated servers often require a higher capital investment yet have a number of key advantages:

1. Higher speed and performance levels
By switching to a dedicated server, the entire host is devoted to running one organization’s software and website. With a shared server, the actions and usage of other websites can impact upon the response times of a website and can even cause a time-out, especially if one website has a promotion and experiences a sudden surge in traffic.

2. Increased capacity
Because a dedicated server is created for just one organization, capacity is only limited by the size of the server rather than the number of users present on that host. Dedicated servers provide a more reliable website which can run full-time with less server jamming. Websites can feature more complex functions and there are fewer limitations on the number of email accounts and attached databases.

3. Increased security
By sharing the server with other sites and users, there is a possibility that other customers may be able to view secure files and in some cases overwrite certain files. This can be extremely risky if a company stores and processes highly sensitive data. If any website on the host is attacked by a hacker or virus, this also makes the rest of the sites on the server vulnerable.

4. Increased site control
With complete server dedication, it is possible to have more control over data access and over what happens on that server, such as which scripts can be run and which online activities can occur.

5. Ability to customise hardware set-up
Dedicated hardware is provided for the server which can only be used by one customer. This allows the customer to have control over the hardware and make any alterations or upgrades.

6. Customised software
Many shared sites have limited features and software availability due to security and stability issues. For example, JSP support on shared servers is still rare. With a dedicated server, there is greater freedom of choice as to which programmes run, allowing a customer’s individual needs to be catered for.

7. Creation of more than one domain
Companies that have multiple divisions or chains benefit greatly from a dedicated server in that they can create several domains on one server. This is more cost effective and efficient than each outlet renting space on a different host and creates a uniform sales platform with a simplified administration and support system.

8. Increased reliability
It only requires one rogue website in a shared server to cause a search engine to ban the entire server, due to the shared IP address. With a dedicated server, reliability is no longer compromised by other customers’ poorly written scripts or security problems.

9. Effective large website maintenance
A dedicated server provides the ability to run a large website, which can be remotely controlled and operated, without the need to employ large numbers of staff. There is no requirement to purchase or maintain server equipment and server upgrades are more cost effective.

10. Technical support
Many dedicated server providers offer additional administrative, trouble-shooting and management support.

If your website does not have any of these qualities, then you know that it is time to move your site to a dedicated server. You’ve put a lot of work into your website, so you deserve to have the best service possible.

Premiere provider of managed IT services with data centre locations across Canada, provides managed services and managed hosting solutions for enterprises that require the highest levels of security and availability.