Wireless TV The Evolution of Wireless Technology

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Wireless TV is fast becoming an issue of debate. Many consider the technology as groundbreaking, many see it as a chance to get away from the monopoly of the cable networks while others simply see it as just another high-tech thing that is drowning the modern world. Imagine no need for wires and cables and anywhere in the house the TV can access basically any channel.

For those who cannot seem to understand the concept of wireless TV, liken it to the old style communication system. In the past, in order to get a phone call, you needed a landline which depends on the transmitters. When technology modernized communication, there was the cordless telephone which used an antenna to receive the signal. Then the mobile phone came into being no need for cables, but there were still antennae. Then the latest technology improved it, no visible antenna.

This is the same with wireless TV. The old style was the antenna outside the home, usually installed at the apex of the roof of the house, and then there were the cables. But then computer technology intervened and the internet came into being. In the past the PCs needed to be hooked up to the cable or Ethernet to receive the signals until eventually there was no need of the cables, WiFi was invented. The WiFi just needed a transmitter and a receiver (the modern antenna) and the internet was accessible from anywhere and everywhere by anyone.

The wireless TV also has its own WiFi the transmitters. Using WiFi technology, the modern flat TVs can now access the internet but are controlled by the PC hooked up to it. The Internet TV on the other hand did not depend on the PC any longer; the remote could put up the control menu so the internet can be accessed separately from the PC.

Unfortunately it is expensive to have. One would need a flat TV, but if none then one would need to get the router, which can be expensive. But the router would not work without the internet server. Also, the connection is slower and if the transmitter gets obstructed, the receiver will receive interrupted signal as well, so the viewing can be interrupted.

This is new technology so obviously its maturation would take some time. However, people are positive about its future and it wont be long before this would become a standard as well.

Wireless connections are much demanded these day, be it in television, phone or internet, wireless connection rocks! What are you waiting for? Just grab the opportunity to use digitenne recorder along with kpn digitenne.

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Exporting Technology To Africa To Save Lives

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A chance phone call from the Clinton Foundation in Mozambique has changed ours and their lives dramatically. It shows the power of creating appropriate and well constructed websites describing a companys services and products.

What was the problem and then the solution:
Delayed test results have often meant that HIV patients in Mozambique have failed to get timely treatment, particularly for preventing Mother to Child transfer (MTCT) of HIV on birth. However, having introduced and developed our new SMS printer technology with the Clinton Foundation and the Mozambique Ministry of Health the need to send tests to far away laboratories has reduced and has dramatically speeded up test results and HIV treatment for Mothers, Mothers-to-be and their newly born. After a successful 2009 pilot Mozambique has nationally rolled out our SMS printer technology and gateway, with Clinton Foundations help. This GSM network based printer and gateway technology transmits the results of mother and infant HIV tests electronically from two central reference laboratories in Maputo and the northern provincial capital, Nampula, to more than 275 health centres across the country. Previously, test samples and results took, on average, three weeks and up to several months to be transported to and from clinics via various means in remote parts of the country.

How did Sequoia and Clinton Foundation meet?
Because of this serious delay in test results the Clinton Foundation in Mozambique looked around for a technology based solution. They ended up contacting us in Reading having seen our website and enquired about using our SMS printer technology for sending health test data over the GSM network to speed up the time taken. After hearing what the program was about and the disastrous pass through rate from Mother to child for HIV we, at Sequoia, could only say yes to help with the program. Two years of concentrated work with the Clinton Foundation on the hardware and the required gateway software produced a successful pilot program. Subsequent research conducted by the Ministry of Health of Mozambique and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), after our SMS printer technology and gateway had been installed, showed that the time it took for clinics to receive test results from reference labs had dropped from an average of about three weeks to about three days after the printers were introduced. Research presented by the Ministry of Health and CHAI at the International AIDS Conference 2010 in Vienna, Austria, showed that this, in turn, reduced the time it took to start infants (and /or mothers to be) on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment by about 4 months. This is now part of the national prevention of mother-to-child (PMTCT) HIV transmission service within Mozambique. The number of infants starting treatment also increased by 60 percent.

How the SMS printer technology and gateway works:
Clinics across the country collect dried blood spot samples from infants and / or mothers to be and transport them to the nearest reference lab, where lab technicians conduct the HIV tests. Results are entered into the SMS printer database at the reference lab and then uploaded onto the Sequoia Technology online server (in Reading UK). The Sequoia gateway then uses the local MCEL GSM phone network to transmit results back to the appropriate clinic. Each clinic has a small thermal paper, GPRS enabled printer that receives the patient test data and prints out the HIV test results alongside a patient identification number. With interruptions in electricity and wireless network signal, the system has been designed to ensure 100 of the data is received by the appropriate printer completely intact – if printers are offline, results are safeguarded in an online gateway queue until the printer is available. The Sequoia Technology gateway shows the status of every printer whether on or not and the number of messages sent or in a queue waiting to be printed. The printer’s small size also makes storage easy in space-constrained clinics, which must also ensure that the printer is kept in a secure room to guarantee patient confidentiality.

Greater efficiency The introduction of SMS printers to clinics has not only meant that babies who test HIV-positive can be started on ARVs sooner – a potentially life-saving intervention – but has also reduced the numbers of new mothers who disappear from the clinics PMTCT program during the, previously, long wait times or after having spent time and money on multiple clinic visits to check for results. According to Mozambiques 2010 report to the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS (UNGASS), about 30 percent of babies born to HIV-positive mothers contract the virus, but only about 14 percent of these babies are tested for HIV before the age of 18 months. Without treatment one-third of HIV-positive babies will die in their first year of life, and almost half by the age of two. With our SMS printer technology in place now the clinics are being able to get to and test mothers-to-be ?for HIV and be able to prescribe AVR drugs in enough time to reduce the likelihood of mother to child transfer of HIV. Additionally further testing after childbirth can check the mothers viral load to ensure the right drugs are given when the mother is breastfeeding an additional way of MTCT of HIV. With our technology in place now, throughout Mozambique, the 30-40 or less if the pre and post birth testing and drug application takes place.

Our SMS printer technology and gateway is then a fast and accurate way of transmitting confidential health data to any remote location but crucially can be used for any disease Malaria, TB, HIV in fact anything that needs to be diagnosed in a lab. This technology forms a low cost and serious platform for countries to transmit diagnostic information quickly and accurately. Additionally, the gateway consolidates all information and therefore gives statistical data about disease spread and location and the quality of the health care across a complete country. Sequoia engineers took 2 years to perfect the gateway software with CHAI and MCEL to produce 100 full data quality and with printer / server buffering and handshaking to ensure the quality of data. Extensive testing took place in pilot phase of this project. Any authorized person can log on to the SMS2printer.co.uk website and retrieve the full data and visual map of where each printer is and the stats of how many messages have been sent / received / pending at each location.

Partnership – We continue to develop more capable GPRS enabled printers and are now working with CHAI in Kenya for potentially deploying a similar system in other African countries for the same health diagnostic transmission platform. Our association with the Clinton team in Mozambique continues and has become more of a partnership and further roll outs are planned as a result of the success so far.

Impact of photography on advertising industry

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It is really hard to imagine a technology that had more impact on 20th century life than photography. It is truly the most pervasive. Photography changed the way we remember things. It offers spontaneity and has the ability to capture actual events, a slice of reality. Roland Barthes, a preeminent theorist of photography, said that photograph is the “sovereign contingency,” meaning it is dependent on something else happening.
To imagine a social world before photography, we would have to think of a world without picture IDs; without portraits of ordinary people; one without pictures as souvenirs of travel; one without celebrity pictures; one without advertising photographs; one without X-rays or views of outer space; a world without views of foreign and exotic peoples; one without pictures of sports, wars, and disasters; and one in which the great masses of people had no way to visually record the important events of their lives.
Such a world is unbelievable to us now, and we have photography to thank for all these things: visual souvenirs, portraits of common folk as well as the famous, advertising pictures that have created desire in the public and educated them about all the products the new consumer culture has on offer, medical diagnostic tools, incredible views of exotic places and even of outer space, pictures of the worlds news, and most important, pictures of the events and intimate moments of ones own life.

The technology of photography is part chemical, part optical, and dates from 1839. Soon after its simultaneous invention by William Henry Fox Talbot in England and Louis Jacques Mand Daguerre in France, photography was used to document foreign places of interest such as India, the Holy Land, and the American West. It was also used for portraits with photographs taken of kings, statesman, and theater or literary personalities.

Advertising Photography
Even as Kodak was using advertising to create a market for its cameras, films, and papers, the advertising industry itself turned increasingly to photography during the 20th century. Newspapers as well as the great number of popular magazines (especially in the pre-TV era) were the carriers of most of this print advertising.
The purpose of using high resolution images for advertising was and is to create a desire for the new consumer products available to the public, and then, of course, to sell the products. Although drawings and painted illustrations were featured predominantly in ads during the early part of the century, gradually photography took over, and by the end of the 20th century virtually all visual advertising was photographic. Today, in the 21st century, digital photography has introduced the kinds of fantastic effects impossible in straight photography, further enriching the possibilities of advertising photography and especially Indian pictures.

While half-tone reproductions of photographs had been possible since the 1880s, and magazines and newspapers constantly used them in their editorial pages, before World War I advertisers seldom did. The great shift happened in the 1920s and 1930s. By the mid-1930s photographs at least equaled hand-drawn illustrations in print advertising, and have only gained greater dominance since then.
Photography has a great impact on advertising and marketing materials and can make or break your first impression with a potential customer. You know the old saying, A picture says 1000 words? Well that has never been truer than it is today. We are all tech-heads, and we want everything this secondif we have to wait, we become irritated and move on.
Using great photography and high resolution images is a great way to get your message across quickly and say your 1000 words without actually saying any words. It immediately fascinates your audience, and a fascinated audience is more likely to read more of your message.
A concrete impact of photography has been the number of people employed in the industry, particularly after the introduction of 35mm film in the 1920s by the Kodak Company. Photography also meant new employment opportunities as photo reporters and editors, and in photographic agencies and libraries.

The Threat to Privacy by GSM Technology

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The technology used in mobile phones is increasingly finding its way into eavesdropping devices. The use of bugs based on mobile phone technology (GSM) allows spies to monitor private conversations from anywhere in the world.

What is GSM?

GSM (Global System for Mobile) communications is an open, digital cellular technology used for transmitting mobile voice and data services. In very simple terms, GSM technology works by searching GSM networks to find nearby mobile phone masts to transfer voice, data and SMS between mobile phones.

GSM technology was originally created in 1982 by the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT), who designed the Groupe Spcial Mobile (GSM) with the aim of creating a pan-European mobile phone technology.

Thanks to GSM’s international roaming capabilities, it is now the most widely used mobile phone technology. According to the GSMA (the GSM Association), terrestrial GSM networks now cover more than 80% of the world’s population. That’s more than 6 billion people across more than 218 countries.

The GSM bugging threat

With the advantages brought by the wide coverage GSM technology offers, comes a growing threat to privacy. The same GSM technology used to service mobile phones is also used in the world of covert surveillance and spying to eavesdrop on private conversations from anywhere in the world.

This is possible through using GSM audio bugging devices that use specially adapted mobile phone technology to listen in and transmit conversations taking place in one location to another. These devices work in the same way as mobile phones and can be used anywhere you can use a mobile phone.

Once hidden in the target location, the GSM bug waits silently in standby mode until the eavesdropper calls the SIM card number being used in the device. At this time the call is silently answered and the microphone activated, allowing the caller to listen in to conversations taking place in the nearby vicinity. When the conversation has ended the bug is then switched back to standby (passive) mode. Other more advanced devices have the facility for sound, vibration and motion activation whilst others can be manually or remotely set by SMS commands.

These bugging devices are small and discreet and are normally concealed within innocent looking items that are frequently found around the home or office. Because they use GSM technology they can even pick up audio whilst on the move, just like mobile phones, so are not limited to static locations. This makes them ideal for picking up conversations in cars, or they can even be slipped inside a pocket or handbag to ensure a target is constantly monitored wherever they are.

How to spot GSM bugging devices?

Not only are GSM devices getting smaller and more sophisticated, making them hard to detect, but their signals are often lost amongst legitimate GSM and mobile phone communications. This is a particular problem when being operated in urban areas, which where most eavesdropping targets tend to be located.

It is for this reason that using professional counter surveillance services is the only practical option for effectively detecting and dealing with these bugs. Counter surveillance specialists have the training, experience and equipment needed to detect, locate and deal with the presence of GSM bugs. In particular, these experts are able to find both active and passive GSM bugs in order to provide a 100% secure environment.