Published Articles

Ignore Asset And Equipment Monitoring At Your Peril
by Daniel Stouffer

Every company tends to battle complexity as one of its major problems. In a period of rapid growth, a host of unforeseen issues arise in rapid succession. This leads to a process of prioritization, with the least visible issues being relegated down. It’s important to seek out and train the appropriate manpower, make sure that customer relations can cope and so on. The less visible systems fall by the wayside.

Asset and equipment management is a subject that is treated reactively and not proactively. Without comprehensive systems, management cannot turn to historical data to help guide them. If maintenance records are not maintained well, we are unable to see how efficient a machine actually is. We may know that it is approaching the end of its life, but we’re not sure whether we should keep it, upgrade it, replace it or consider a completely different piece of equipment.

In a competitive world, knowledge is power and the more you have, the better you will be able to micromanage your organization. It’s much better to have too much information than not enough if you are to be efficient at maintaining performance.

Capital budgets are very stretched and investors want to look twice at everything that management executives are contemplating. More often than not, asset and equipment longevity has to be extended. Asset lifecycles are now longer than they used to be, as executives realize that they have to retain rather than replace. Sometimes, this can be a false economy, but you need to have the intelligence in your hands before you can make such a decision. For example, you could look to see if excessive callouts or other issues have been part of an asset history. If your systems mean that such information is hidden in a mountain of paperwork, how can you make such important decisions?

Once asset or equipment management policies are in place, an organization can start to understand the true cost of equipment ownership and set the benchmarks for measurement. This position of enlightenment is important as decisions have to be made in a timely fashion.

Depreciation is a very important part of annual expenditure, associated with asset and equipment inventory. If we add this cost to the energy associated with each asset, performance becomes highly important. It’s no wonder that the business is so vulnerable without this type of data.

Spreadsheets may be okay for certain purposes, but they are hardly ideal to record vital information about asset and equipment performance. Their static nature does not allow us to project any “what if” scenarios very easily. Wouldn’t we be better turning to digital systems to help alert us to any issues?

Asset and equipment identification is the first step on the journey toward true business management. If the location, condition and usability of each asset is known on a real-time basis, security can be enhanced, productivity can be maintained or exceeded, liability can be reduced. Even further, reputations can be boosted as the organization’s clearer visibility allows it to claim a position of sustainability.

Daniel Stouffer has a lot of information about assets and equipment monitoring and how a visit to www.verisae.com will help you.

—-

Can You Define Hacking And Computer Security?
by Olga Gierowitz

If you line up a group of people on the street and ask them to tell you how they feel about a hacker, the chances are you won’t hear anything positive at all. These individuals are judged to be very negative, those who have malice in mind, disruption, destruction and financial harm. This is, after all, the typical media description of such an individual and we have been accustomed to hearing about their destructive antics from time to time.

It seems that hacking and computer security vulnerabilities go together hand in hand, but we shouldn’t look at the hacker as the bad guy necessarily in every case. Did you know that many large corporations actively look to employ the services of a hacker and such a person can have a very elevated position within these corporations today. Basically, the companies are looking for somebody who can in turn look at their computer security vulnerabilities in house and preempt the move of an assassin.

Those who consider themselves a hacker, in the more positive sense of the word, often refer to those who have malicious intent as “crackers.” Within the industry there is definite distinction, although the vast majority of the general public are not aware of this separation and paint all with the same, broad brush.

It is said that the original term “hacker” evolved in the 1960s, when college freshman were involved in the early days of discovery. Of course, back then systems and technology were very different to what they are today and we did not rely so heavily on our systems for our every need. Hacking and computer security were not the top priorities for all of us, from the largest corporations in the smallest user, as they are today.

You can expect to come across three different categories of hacker, or cracker depending on how you feel. These are often distinguished as “black,” “grey,” or “white hat” proponents. On the one end of the scale everything is malicious, while on the other end everything is above board. The black hat hacker looks for vulnerabilities with the simple intent of disruption, the gray hat hacker finds vulnerabilities, but will only fix the issue for a determined fee, while the white hat hacker is generally a good guy, all around.

Companies worry about hacking and computer security issues so much that they actively look for individuals, often within the underground, to tempt them into employment. If they can offer the “cracker” a lot of money, the chances are that they would be way more actively employed internally.

Technology being what it is, the number of ways that hacking and computer security breaches could cause damage to us has blossomed almost out of control. Do we blame ourselves for wanting to access our information as easily or as quickly as possible? Certainly those who are charged with the responsibility of writing the security codes are overworked. How do we know that they could not be tempted to jump over to the darker side at anytime?!

While the vast majority of individuals do not need to be worried about the programs that they purchase and use for their personal business use, it’s important to exercise great care nevertheless. Never select passwords which are easy to imagine, which may translate into a straightforward numeric or involve a recognizable term. Many of the simpler hacker and computer security violations are perpetrated by a simple script, which just looks for your password information by repeatedly trying to guess its combination!

Olga Gierowitz is an expert in the field of laptop computers. Olga has a lot more material about hacking and computer security here.

—-

Why Overlook Common Sense When It Comes To Hurricane Preparedness?
by Angie Meza

Hurricane Katrina and her other sister and brother storms may be five years or so into our past, but that does not mean that we should selectively forget them when it comes to their capacity for damage. Why is it that we think that our homes are basically indestructible, a place where we can be totally secure and safe from the outside world? It won’t take long if one of those cyclones arrives in our area for us to see just how fragile we really are. Is hurricane preparedness simply common sense? You wouldn’t think so if you look at the majority of people.

Take time for a moment to think of some of the most devastating weather events that you have heard about in the most recent few weeks or months. You can imagine that nobody is really immune from some kind of catastrophe, but we often think that this is someone else’s problem. We should know very well that water is one of the most devastating causes of damage, associated with weather.

When a tropical cyclone hits, wind driven rain is the primary threat. Hurricane preparedness should center around a way to keep intrusive water out. Sometimes these cyclones move at a very slow pace and unless you have made specific and special arrangements, the chances are that water will infiltrate your home and ruin some of your valuable possessions.

It can be extremely difficult to replace a carpet if it has been damaged by flood water and this can be not only stressful, but very costly as well. If you don’t handle this situation immediately, mold will grow straight away and become almost impossible to get rid of without a major industrial clean. Lines of communication may well be compromised after a storm and you might not be able to get in touch with experts to help you.

Many people skimp on hurricane preparedness and only pay some cursory attention to this important work. They tend to feel that the storm will not really affect them, which is a false security, no matter if you live well inland from the ocean. Storms such as Hurricane Wilma in South Florida proved how damaging they can be even if you are far away from the landfall point. The cities of Miami and Fort Lauderdale were badly damaged by a storm which came onshore on the opposite coast of Florida.

All the windows and doors around your home must be the focus of your hurricane preparedness. The best products to help you are hurricane socks, which are purpose made for this job. This is a product that can be manipulated to fit any particular orifice that you want to protect, especially those that are facing the direction of the storm. You can even use them on your garage door as well.

Hurricane socks are made of super absorbent polypropylene and are designed to be hard wearing. Each one can absorb a great deal of water at any time and can then be simply squeezed over a drain or a sink before being pressed back into service to save the day.

You are essentially on your own if a major storm hits in your area. You won’t have time to run to the store to find supplies that you have overlooked. Not only do you need bottled water, canned food and flashlights, but you need a stock of hurricane socks to keep the worst of the weather at bay.

Find detailed data about hurricane preparedness. Be sure to sign up for our free newsletter at http://www.cleanupstuff.com and get our free report. A toll free resource is available on our site to answer any questions.

—-

Video Article Marketing Is Very Trendy
by Nigel Evans

We all know that article marketing is one of the top online initiatives if you want to create valuable back links to your site and direct traffic consisting of focused visitors. While it may not be as “instant” as certain other tactics including pay per click, this form of online marketing is nevertheless very well-respected and has a great track record.

Well-written content is essential for your page and this is the reason why visitors seek you out. Typically, someone will skim the page looking for an item of interest and for the information required. As the presence of images and especially moving pictures has been shown to be advantageous, the concept of video article marketing has really taken off. This solution combines the power of distribution with the draw of video.

Video article marketing is a clever way to combine the power of audio and video, centered around your primary keywords. The production does not have to be grand, but can be based on a series of slides and a commentary. Either way, this is seen as a hot new trend.

It appears that the major search engines put particular emphasis on videos when it comes to the dissemination of information. Due to this, video article marketing has really taken off. You’ll often see videos included in a prominent position within search engine result pages (SERPs).

In Internet marketing terms, video article marketing is a very hot potato. Shrewd webmasters are coming to the realization that by creating videos and by telling a story through both audio and video they can achieve even further penetration. When these files are distributed to YouTube.com and many other locations, they have the chance of going viral and creating great interest.

As with conventional article marketing, when you produce videos to attract people to your site, they must be well-designed and must be informative, educational or entertaining. If you are able to achieve all of these objectives you can expect considerable traffic to your website and good backalinks as well.

Keyword selection is essential when conducting a video article marketing campaign. Also, you must make sure that the videos are optimized correctly and that the key words are contained within the title, subject and filename. As sites such as YouTube are basically giant search engines, your production will only be found according to the relevance of its keyword.

There was a time when the search engines were not able to analyze the content of videos to determine whether they were indeed appropriate to the keyword associated with them. It was quite easy to look at conventional articles and recognize primary and secondary terms. However, Google is beginning to master this technology as well and will soon be able to analyze the spoken word. As such, pay particular emphasis to your productions when undertaking video article marketing.

Author Nigel Evans can point you to article marketing experts at www.professionalwritingservice.org. Learn about video article marketing, and see how you should seriously consider the concept for your marketing program.