Information Technology Articles | Web Solutions Articles | AWD Melbourne

The governments of India and several other countries are demanding that Telecommunications Company and maker of the Blackberry mobile, Research In Motion, address security concerns. "If they don't follow our guidelines, we will have no option but to ask them to stop their operations in India," the Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted an unidentified government official as saying.

A few years ago, when people think of VoIP, they usually associated it with using a computer desktop application to make phone calls. These days VoIP technology is much more versatile in the residential market, a market that many Internet Service Providers are pushing pretty hard as they vie with each other to take a larger share from the incumbent telcos. But where the abilities of VoIP technology really become impressive is when it is integrated into business processes.

The last 10 years have seen a meteoric rise in consumer spending online. People are becoming more comfortable with using their credit cards online and are finding more of what they are looking for, thanks to many more businesses having a web presence than ever before. While cash is still not an option for online shoppers, the introduction of credit/debit cards by most banks in response to the growth of ecommerce has helped dampen fears of credit card fraud.

Cyber-Security threats are always evolving as hackers, spammers and other forms of online criminality adapt to the changing security environment of business networks. The exponentially growing and overlapping deluge of cyber-attacks on governments and companies being targeted by criminals and nation-states seeking economic or military advantage is becoming so large that those responsible for security are having trouble identifying which new threats should take priority in their threat management regimes.

Many people think of Skype or MSN Messenger or something similar when they think of making their voice calls over the Internet. These application-based, computer-centric manifestations of VoIP technology fall into the “Soft” category. VoIP technology has definitely come much further than “Soft phones” and reliance on desktop PC based applications to make cheaper or even free calls. The technology has matured to the point where the PC is no longer needed and any telephone handset can be used.

While the early adopters of eCommerce are seeing records sales using this sales medium, analysts estimate that nearly 20,000 entrepreneurs are opening online stores each week across the globe. The digital economy has reached a golden age, where entrepreneurs are realising the potential for massive sales at low overheads relative to physical ‘brick and mortar' businesses. The reach of the World Wide Web, affordable domains, web servers, website design and online advertising have made putting your business online much easier and cheaper than in the past.

Intranets are like websites that serve a business internally. An Intranet might be accessed on a local business web server, or linked from the publicly visible website hosted on a remote server. An Intranet’s purpose is to transition most of the paper based processes to a secure web-based environment. An intuitive Intranet solution can be an awesome time-saver and an office productivity multiplier in the sense that all of your business processes can be found and executed easily and uniformly.

Before Naked DSL, those looking for an Internet connection without the added cost of telephone line rental were restricted to either cable or wireless connections. The main drawbacks for wireless are that the speeds are generally nowhere near as fast as Naked DSL, wireless connections are not as stable (they drop out) and extra services like VoIP often struggle on a wireless internet connection.

If you are a business with website, are you completely dependent on your web developer to make even the simplest changes? Are you stuck paying your developer to create every new page to keep the content fresh for the search engines or just to keep your visitors interested? If this is the case, you need to become aware of CMS and consider having a CMS platform implemented as part of your online business strategy.

The Australian iPad launch on May 28 caused a frenzy of consumerism as Apple fans lined up to be the first to get their hands on the new gadget. While the US and UK has had the iPad available for a few weeks now, it would seem that no other tablet-style machines exist in the market. While iPad soaks up the media glory, Apple’s competitors are revving up to release some rival tablets that they hope will knock the iPad off its high horse.

VoIP started out as a techie buzz word for terminating phone calls using the Internet. The technology is no longer something that should be confined to the realm of nerdhood, VoIP is a viable technology for both businesses and residential users can take advantage of without needing advanced technical knowledge. To help non-technical people to embrace VoIP as an every-day technology, we list the top ten misconceptions that many providers come across when discussing VoIP.

If you didn’t already know, the Apple iPad will be released in Australia on May 28. Analysts predict that up to 50% of Australians are planning to buy one. That’s an incredible prediction, but while it appears that the media hype around the iPad knows no bounds, one has to ask themselves why the iPad is receiving so much attention and being touted as the “next big thing” when technically the device is rather underwhelming to say the least.

Before looking at why there is such a massive media circus surrounding the iPad phenomenon, let’s take a look at what the capabilities of the iPad are, or should we say what they are not...

When setting out to establish a business in the 21st century, most entrepreneurs are factoring in a website idea. In fact many new businesses base much of their new ideas on an innovative way to sell through websites. Others want to innovate on their existing website to cater to the changing expectations of their market; more customers want to use ecommerce, use price comparison sites, watch video demonstrations of your products or services etc. Website innovation is important and they can differentiate you from the competition, but the biggest differentiation is whether your customers are able to find you or not!

While Apple’s iPhone and its proprietary iPhone operating system continues to lead in market share, Google’s approach is proving to gain them ground at breakneck speed with its open source Android OS, according to reports this month from AdMob and ComScore. The smartphone wars are heating up, raising interesting questions about the future of the industry.

As more businesses consider replacing their old PBX phone system with a more cost effective and functional VoIP system, the value of using a voice technology consulting firm to help choose the most appropriate VoIP vendor and configuration is becoming more apparent.

While there are significant long term savings to be had by replacing your traditional office phone system, there are many variables and options involved in the technology that can cause decision makers to get a little overwhelmed. The fact is that businesses are rather spoilt for choice when it comes to VoIP solutions and the potential capabilities. The initial investment in VoIP technology needs to be done right and a VoIP technology consultant can ensure that your new telephone system is the right one for your business.

It seems that there is a significant amount of opposition to the Australian federal government’s commitment to put a mandatory Internet filter in place in this country. Google and Yahoo, as well as civil libertarian groups have raised serious concerns for the heavy-handed approach to filtering Internet content that is set to be put into place by as early as next year. Experts have also raised the issue that a mandatory Internet filter will effectively slow Internet speeds and increase the costs of providing Internet access. So how will the filter affect Australian businesses? This article should help to clarify how the proposed filter may affect businesses that are reliant on Internet technology.

When most business owners and managers are asked how they would cope in the event of a disaster that would result in losing all of their data, the answer is overwhelmingly that they wouldn’t cope at all. The fact is that many businesses face either closing down their operations permanently if their data records are lost in a disaster. Total data loss can occur in many disaster scenarios, such as fire, flood, a combination of both from a fire sprinkler system, burglary and theft, equipment failure, tsunami; I think you get the idea... And that’s just data. There is also loss of connectivity to the Internet, computer hardware loss and internal network disruptions. It seems that the more a business is dependent on technology to run, the more vulnerable it becomes if the technology fails.

Have you been approached by slick Internet marketers who offer Google on a platter but leave you scratching your head about how they plan to accomplish what they promise?

Many of our clients have been approached by sales people offering all sorts of incredible sounding Internet marketing services. The problem is that many business owners do not understand what they are being offered, what is possible and what is not possible and what represents value for your marketing budget.

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, a technology that uses the Internet to make phone calls, has come a long way since its debut back around 1995. The quality and robustness of the technology has greatly improved over the past decade, especially in the area of hardware based VoIP. I remember back in the first half of the noughties, working for an Internet wholesale company, when VoIP became a real buzz-word among those in the Internet Service Provider industry. This was their chance to usurp Telstra’s domination of the voice market and take a piece of that lucrative pie. The impending ‘voice revolution’ was upon us and the imminent downfall of Telstra’s network monopoly was eagerly awaited by would-be competitors. The revolution was stalled by a market that failed to appreciate the significant savings and added value that VoIP could deliver. It was seen as too complicated, the technology not robust enough, and the incumbent telco still had line rental and call termination costs by the short and curlies. Although adoption of VoIP technology by Australian businesses is still only reached around the 17% penetration mark, there are some very good reasons to take a serious look at VoIP as an alternative to giving your money to those bad old telcos.

Almost every business these days recognises the importance of having a website. Websites are an indispensible sales tool, where more and more people are using the Internet to help them make purchasing decisions. As more and more businesses engage website design and development companies with a view to entering the online space, trusting your website to the cheapest web design agency can cost far more in sales and credibility to your business than you bargained for.

Most people think of Google as a very mysterious entity. To some extent it is, but while the online search giant does hold many cards tightly to its chest, they do also give website owners vital clues as to what they can do to improve their search results and what criteria is generally used to rank websites.

One of the major criteria that Google measures to judge a website’s worthiness of a first page Google result is link popularity. Link popularity is a part of Google’s search algorithm that measures the importance of your website from how many high quality and relevant websites link back to yours. While quality content and other factors remain important as well, Link Building is an important part of search engine optimisation to be included in any good SEO strategy and has so for a number of years.

The demand for faster broadband and the lack of private sector investment in the appropriate infrastructure has incited national public debate on how much of a “clever country” Australia really is. OECD reports show that communications services in Australia are among the most expensive and least value for money among developed countries.

The report shows search engines for the industry 'All Categories', ranked by Volume of Searches for the 4 weeks ending 23/01/2010 (source: HitWise)

Around 75% of enterprises have experienced cyber attacks over the past 12 months, according to new research data from Symantec collected from 2,100 respondents in 27 countries.

Subscribers to voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephone services worldwide has risen to over 100 million, according to UK-based market research firm Point Topic.