Originally posted 2012-04-30 13:49:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

About Hybrid IT

Hybrid IT allows an organization to manage some of its resources in-house and others in the cloud. This approach lets businesses experiment with the cloud at their own pace so they can determine the best platforms and risk-mitigation methods to use. As a result, hybrid IT lets companies:

• Maintain control over data.
• Determine the cost-effectiveness of cloud computing platforms like storage-as-a-service or software-as-a-service.
• Quickly respond to business needs.
• Commoditize services.

IT consulting firms expect hybrid IT to challenge the technological practices of businesses, as well as the models IT vendors follow. Consequently, IT consulting services will find clients maintaining a primary set of cloud and non-cloud service providers that get complemented with the services of vendors that fulfill specific requirements.

Benefits of Hybrid IT

Best of both worlds. With hybrid IT, companies enjoy the features of both the public and private clouds. They get the scalability of the cloud and the confidence that comes with storing data and hardware onsite.

Money savings. A hybrid IT model allows businesses to save their capital and use the latest software and hardware applications at the same time. They can purchase licenses with per-user or monthly fees, which frees up funds and improves cash flow. This can allow companies to spread out the cost of hardware or software.

Latest technologies. Keeping up with the latest technologies and software updates is time-consuming and sometimes costly. With a hybrid cloud platform, a business continuously has access to the latest services without paying extra fees or taking the time to update their respective IT systems.

Security. One of the top concerns about the move to cloud computing is the security of sensitive data. Hybrid IT allows companies to take advantage of public cloud computing while using internal clouds to keep sensitive data safe.

IT support. When a company uses a hybrid IT service, it has the support of skilled IT consulting specialists. This is particularly helpful for businesses that don’t have the resources (or the need) to hire full- or part-time in-house employees. The professional service can manage the on-site solutions and server from a remote location.

Hybrid IT is also changing the role of IT consulting professionals, making them more multifaceted. As this platform evolves, IT professionals – internal and external – will do more to support the business capabilities of a company.

Hybrid IT is the intermediary step between in-house solutions and the cloud. It offers more control and symmetry between internal and external services in a way that’s changing the face of IT practices and business technologies.

This article is brought to you by Prosum Technology Services, one of the fasted growing IT consulting firms and IT staffing companies in Southern California.

Cutts suggests:
‘SEO WILL BE DEAD BY THE END OF THIS SUMMER!’
So what’s in store for us? Cutts suggested that Penguin 4 is going to be much harsher than the first waves and there is going to be some new types of link analysis which will detect more forms of manipulation. Google will effectively be aiming to clean all forms of manipulation out of the results by the end of this summer! This is surely one of the gravest warnings to the industry ever.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-seo-changes-16782.html

COLLATERAL DAMAGE
In last years ‘Updates’ (penguin, panda, EMD) many, many people experienced serious amounts of collateral damage to domains that they were ‘unaware’ any SEO manipulation had occurred. Effectively Google started a WAR last year when they made it clear they were no longer just targeting spammy sites but instead are now going after legitimate businesses with good quality domains if they suspect any form of manipulation has occurred. It is no longer the case that bad links are just forgotten and ignored, they now do serious damage!

NEGATIVE SEO
This change in the landscape effectively started a new industry where companies with low morals will actively target their competitors by hitting domains with ‘bad links’ and over optimized anchor texts which will see them tank in the results. In order to deal with the fall out from all this Google launched the DISAVOW tool late last year and now companies have an added task to ensure their domains are not being targeted in such a way.

LINK AUDITING
This change in landscape resulted in another new industry, that of LINK AUDITING in which a couple of new companies have jumped on board WITHOUT fully grasping the challenges at hand and the gravity of the task. To audit a domains links and detect the toxic ones which Google say you should make every effort to remove has in resulted in many people and companies hastily choosing the wrong types of methods to find HARMFUL links.

SUSPICIOUS LINKS
What are suspicious links? That’s a VERY good question and a science in itself. Making the mistake to remove or disavow the wrong links will obviously only make matters worse especially if a company is already suffering in the results because of algorithmic penalties. Opinion based metrics such as ‘this link is a PR/NA’ so it must be bad, or ‘this link has low Trust Flow’ or simply filtering out all the links with the same anchor text, are all flawed ‘metrics’ and simply recipes for complete destruction!

Using the wrong ‘metrics’ to audit links can also result in far too many links being flagged up as ‘possibly suspicious’ and with high numbers of false-positives and false-negatives, rending the audit actually more harmful than worthless.

TO DISAVOW OR NOT TO DISAVOW
The Disavow tool was primarily offered to manage the effects of negative SEO and it remains the focus of the tool. Google have made it abundantly clear they want instead for people to work on getting manipulated links totally removed and continue to force people to undertake this painful process. In the instances where any harmful link owners do not reply or are unattainable it is suggested those links should be disavowed.

FUTURE PROOFING DOMAINS & NAVIGATING THE NEW TERRAIN
One technique often used in the past by ‘black hat’ SEOs is a technique many normal business will need to start adopting, this was derived from the ‘churn and burn’ school of thinking whereby you have more than one target domain, preferably 5 or more for any particular sector in case something bad happens to one of your main domains that is totally beyond your control.

TOTALLY BEYOND YOUR CONTROL? Many people complain that their business was ruined when the results changed against their favor and they blame Google for these changes, but given these changes have been evident for at least the last year and were just made CRYSTAL clear following Cutt’s warning, it cannot be argued that it was from a lack of warning, if you have bad links pointing to your site you need to ACT and get those links evaluated by proper metrics to discover exactly which of your links will be causing ranking drops going forward.

THE RIGHT TOOLS FOR THE JOB
Over the last 6 years I have been developing numerous types link auditing tools, each one of these was made as a direct result of someone having a penalty, coming to me for help, whereby I forensically examined their link profile, found the problems then built specific tools to find similar issues based upon the problem I found, I did this originally so I could look at other domains with greater insights.

I have now made these important tools OPEN ACCESS enabling you to run your own link audit without having to go to ‘SEO gurus’ (who were often responsible for causing the issues in the first place) and I have a suite of tools, including a fully dedicated content management system to help you manage these problem links as well as an automatic takedown notice tools enabling you to get these links elegantly removed. The tools allow you to carry out a comprehensive and forensic link audit with no hassle or false positives nor false negatives in the way and it mangoes the process for you all the way through to automatically locating all contact details for bad link owners and then automatically contacting these domain owners requesting the links are removed.

We have the most powerful link auditing tools in the world and the cost to run a full audit is cheaper than you think, tools start at 19 GBP and a complete audit will set you back about 300 GBP, a tiny price to pay for the value it creates, not to mention the ease of use.

Originally posted 2010-11-15 17:13:31. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Originally posted 2008-01-28 13:59:40. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Would you be comfortable being surrounded by robots?

A British manufacturing firm is trying to make robots that share more human characteristics, to make interaction with them more natural and intuitive than ever before.

Cornwall’s Engineered Arts is in the vanguard of this area of research, which aims to make robots’ facial expressions, body language and way of moving more recognisable to real people.

Founder Will Jackson gave a tour of his robot factory to the BBC, and explained how he and his team of a dozen people are looking to expand the frontiers of robot technology.

Source: BBC

The world’s first gun made with 3D printer technology has been successfully fired in the US.

The controversial group which created the firearm, Defense Distributed, plans to make the blueprints available online.

The group has spent a year trying to create the firearm, which was successfully tested on Saturday at a firing range south of Austin, Texas.

Anti-gun campaigners have criticised the project.

Europe’s law enforcement agency said it was monitoring developments.

Victoria Baines, from Europol’s cybercrime centre, said that at present criminals were more likely to pursue traditional routes to obtain firearms.

She added, however: “But as time goes on and as this technology becomes more user friendly and more cost effective, it is possible that some of these risks will emerge.”

Defense Distributed is headed by Cody Wilson, a 25-year-old law student at the University of Texas.

Mr Wilson said: “I think a lot of people weren’t expecting that this could be done.”

3D printing has been hailed as the future of manufacturing.

The technology works by building up layer upon layer of material – typically plastic – to build complex solid objects.

The idea is that as the printers become cheaper, instead of buying goods from shops, consumers will instead be able to download designs and print out the items at home.

But as with all new technologies, there are risks as well as benefits.

Source: BBC

Also see our other post on the ELM327, a wireless data bridge that connects to your phone and interfaces with various apps that can help you determine mileage and cost of gas.  Learn about ELM327

Here’s another free way to calculate your gas mileage.

Originally posted 2007-12-11 03:07:48. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The sixth annual Google I/O conference for software developers opened Wednesday in San Francisco, where the web giant showcase the latest Chrome-powered laptops, new software for Android phones, a new music service – and oh yeah, some stuff for software developers.

Expectations and rumors of “leaked features” ran high in the days leading up to the event, and Google was quick to announce some fun new software. First out of the gate: “Google Play Music, All Access,” which combines a user’s music library with a wide array of songs the company has licensed, explained Chris Yerga, engineering director at Google.

“It allows you to explore millions of songs across devices, effortlessly. Radio without rules,” he told the crowd. The service costs $9.99 per month and launches today in the U.S., he said.

‘It’s Google’s take on Android, and it feels really awesome on the Galaxy S4.’
- Hugo Barra, vice president for product management at Android
The company also announced a customized version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 that will be available from Google’s store on June 26, for $649. It will run not Samsung’s version of the Android operating system but the latest version, direct from Google, sans the many apps that reviewers have criticized Samsung for larding its gadgets with.

“It’s Google’s take on Android, and it feels really awesome on the Galaxy S4,” said Hugo Barra, vice president for product management at Android.

Much of the event’s focus was on tools for the audience of about 6,000 engineers and entrepreneurs who develop applications and other features that can make smartphones and tablets more appealing. But many announcements were clearly aimed at the reporters from around the world who were also on hand, giving Google a chance to generate more hoopla about its latest innovations.

Google Play for Education was aimed at both. Organized by subject matter and grade level, the custom version of the company’s app store will have not just apps but also books and YouTube education videos, all of which can be easily pushed to a student’s tablet, explained Chris Yerga, engineering director at Google.

“It’s built from the ground up to meet the unique needs of educators,” he told the crowd. The software will launch in the fall, he said, but information is available online at developer.android.com/edu.

Next on the product map: maps. Google announced a new version of “the next major release” of Google Maps for Android and iOS phones, which includes an entirely new look and feel for the software, as well as the ability for companies like Starbucks to “offer” a new product or deal to searchers.

“A map built for you,” explained Google mapper Bernard Seefeld. The next version of the software will be easier to use, more customized, and more immersive, he said. Seefeld didn’t say when that would be released, but a brand new app for tablets will be available later today.

There were also updates announced to Google+, the company’s answer to Facebook. Google’s social network has struggled to gain a toehold among users, despite tens or even hundreds of millions of users.

“Today we’re introducing 41 new features across Google+,” explained Vic Gundotra, senior vice president, engineering for Google.

A redesigned version of Google+ adds a multicolumn design that changes based on screen size, unlike the current single column design. The new site, which will go live later today, also features more dynamic tiles that flip over to reveal information.

Google said it would use hashtags on posts to automatically search “the entire universe of Google content”; when a card flips over, it reveals related content to allow someone to explore a topic.

“It’s very easy to see a long list of things shared with you, like a never-ending newspaper. But it’s nearly impossible to go deeper on a topic or interest you have. We think we can fix that,” Gundotra said. He also announced a new standalone “Hangouts” app to enable online conversations.

Google unveiled several new tools for sharing photos on Google+. One feature will pick out the best shots from a wide assortment of photos: Just upload a bunch, and Google’s machines will reject ones that are blurry or don’t have people smiling.
If the photos don’t look quite right, Google is promising to enhance them, taking over a job that typically requires people to use special photo-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. Computer-controlled editing tools will automatically soften skin tones and sharpen colors, for instance.

Google calls the software “Awesome.”

Speaking around damaged vocal chords, Google head Larry Page stepped out on stage at the end of the event to herald the rapid pace of change not just at Google but in the world in general.

“Think about a really smart assistant doing all that stuff for you so you don’t have to think about it. And we’re just getting started,” Page said. Technology frees people to do more, he said.

“Technology should do the hard work so that people can get on with doing the things they like in life.”
Source: Fox

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