SOURCE: http://www.makeuseof.com
General
What To Do When The Internet Is Down?
Friday, May 11th, 2012
To infinity and beyond: The new generation ECM is here
Friday, May 11th, 2012
So what is ECM?
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM covers the management of information within the entire scope of an enterprise whether that information is in the form of a paper document, an electronic file, a database print stream, or even an email.
Ok, so what does this actually mean and how will it make my life easier? ECM will simplify your workday in the following ways:
– Less paper to file and organise. At last the paperless office!
– Keeping track of all you documents. Documents will be in one central place, not on pc’s of four different people.
– Better compliancy
– Accessible from anywhere – whether you’re on holiday in Margate or sitting in a boardroom in Cape Town.
– No more confusion when it comes to too many versions of critical documents. Gone are the days of last minute confusion before a meeting to find the latest version of your document.
– Easy to retrieve. No more heaps of paper to sort through or disorganised folders on your pc.
– Safety of documents not on site in case of fire.
The concept of ECM isn’t an entirely new one on campus. At the moment SharePoint Team sites are used to a lesser extent as a tool. However to make full use of the advantages of ECM, a whole new generation of SharePoint will be implemented shortly.
This implementation is the first step of a bigger project which will, at a later stage, also include Business Intelligence. On a more practical level this platform will also be used to host the websites on campus.
Through the whole process IT will be communicating the development of the project to campus and there will be ample opportunity for all those currently involved in team sites to attend training days. For other interested parties information sessions will be held to give a broader overview of the project.
Let the search begin!
Friday, May 4th, 2012Have you ever tried looking for something on a search engine only to get 1267 results totally unrelated to your initial query?
Internet search engines have the ability to search through a huge amount of web pages by means of titles, key words or text. But to find the correct results fast and effectively, you need to know how to use search engines to your advantage.
We’ve compiled a few basic hints to help you with your searches.
– Use more than one keyword
On average most people use 1.5 words per search – not enough for a successful search. The suggested amount of words are 6 to 8, preferably nouns. Articles and pronouns are mostly ignored by search engines. Avoid verbs and adjectives unless it helps to define the topic.
– Use phrases
A phrase is a combination of one or more words found in the exact order in the text you’re looking for. Make sure you use quotation marks, for example “get results fast”.
– Caps and punctuation
Most search engines are sensitive to case. However if you use small caps, most search engines will recognise both capital letters and small caps. To play it safe, rather use small caps.
– Boolean searches
The “Boolean” search was named after George Boole, a 19th century mathematician. A Boolean search is a handy took which gives the best results for a search. The three most used options are AND, OR and AND NOT.
AND means you’re looking for documents containing both/all words. For example if you serach for “search engines” AND “Google” AND “Boolean”, you will get results containing all three words.
OR means you’re looking for results containing one of the two words – it doesn’t matter which one. Preferably use synonyms for this option. For example “small caps” OR “lower case”.
AND NOT means you are looking for results containing one word, but not if the document also contains another word. The search for “Google” AND “search engines” AND NOT “Boolean” will give you all the documents with “Google en “search engines”, but they won’t have “Boolean”.
Most search engines support the AND NOT option, but they sometimes use the words BUT NOT or NOT instead. In these cases they are indicated by placing a minus in front of the word or phrase.
– Take note of your spelling and also consider the alternative spelling of words.
– Use specific words/phrases rather than generic categories. Rather search for “laptop” than “computer”.
– Only search one specific website or domain. To do this, type the subject you’re looking for, followed by “site:” and the webaddress. (For example inetkey site:www.sun.ac.za/infoteg)
– Use a specialist search engine, for example an image search engine to search for your images and photos. Many websites have their own subcategories which makes it easier to conduct a serach. Wikipedia has a very extensive list of specialist search engines.
Just remember there are between 200 and 800 million documents online! Refine your search as much as possible and you’ll be guaranteed better results.
Rumour has Amazon became the number one online shopping website before Google existed because Yahoo listed all the sites in their directory alphabetically! Luckily times have changed.
For more about the various search engines, how they work and tips, read more on Search Engine Watch.
Did you know?
Friday, May 4th, 2012You could fit the whole Internet on just 200 million Blu-Ray disks and the first webcam was used to monitor a coffee maker?
The technology behind the Internet began back in the 1960′s at MIT. The first message ever to be transmitted was LOG. Why? The user had attempted to type LOGIN, but the network crashed after the enormous load of data of the letter G. It was to be a while before Facebook would be developed…
The Internet began as a single page at the URL http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, which contained information about this new-fangled “WorldWideWeb” project, and how you too could make a hypertext page full of wonderful hyperlinks. Sadly, the original page was never saved, but you can view it after 2 years of revisions here.
Other interesting internet trivia:
- The first webcam was deployed at Cambridge University computer lab – its sole purpose to monitor a particular coffee maker and hence avoid wasted trips to an empty pot.
- Although the MP3 standard was invented in 1991, it wouldn’t be until 1998 that the first music file-sharing service Napster, would go live, and change the way the Internet was used forever.
- Ever since the birth of the Internet, file sharing was a problem for the authorities that managed it. In 1989, McGill University shut down their FTP indexing site after finding out that it was responsible for half of the Internet traffic from America into Canada. Fortunately, a number of similar file indexing sites had already been made.
- Sound familiar? Even today file sharing dominates Internet traffic with torrent files accounting for over 50% of upstream bandwidth. However, a larger proportion of download bandwidth is taken up by streaming media services such as Netflix.
- Google estimates that the Internet today contains about 5 million terabytes of data (1TB = 1,000GB), and claims it has only indexed a paltry 0.04% of it all! You could fit the whole Internet on just 200 million Blu-Ray disks.
- Twenty hours of video from around the world are uploaded to YouTube every minute. The first ever YouTube video was uploaded on April 23rd 2005,by Jawed Karim (one of the founders of the site) and was 18 seconds long, entitled “Me at the zoo”. It was quite boring, as is 99% of the content on YouTube today.
SOURCE: http://www.makeuseof.com
IT at your doorstep
Friday, April 20th, 2012One of these days you’ll have the opportunity to voice your opinions and complaints on IT issues once every two months in your own faculty.
As part of IT’s ongoing initiative to improve communication with the rest of campus, faculty representatives were recently allocated to each faculty. With this initiative all staff have the opportunity to give input, ideas and suggestions regarding IT matters. This will also enable IT to solve problems faster and establish where potential problems and bottle-necks may occur.
IT representatives will contact key staff members in each faculty shortly to arrange the first meeting:
| IT REPRESENTATIVES | FACULTY |
| Marita de Koker & André Elms | Theology |
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| Clayton Adonis & Quintus Roos | Science |
| Bradley van der Venter & Clive Layman | Law |
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| Regan Janari & Leanne Farao | Sport |
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| Neels Blom & Zanfrick Witbooi | AgriSciences |
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| Tian Petersen & Clint Adams | Education |
| Peter Grift & Ryan Leroux | Ecomonics |
| George Whitehead & Ronel Reynecke | Engineering |
| Paul de Kock & Basil Pietersen | |
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