The photos were taken with my Canon 50D, while walking to the ship wrecks from the main beach. As you might have noticed in the second photo, all of a sudden clouds came over and it started to rain slightly.

Tangalooma Sunset - Large tree and drift wood washed up along the beach.

Tangalooma Sunset - Cloud reflections along the beach with ship wreck in the background

Tangalooma Sunset - Crab holes on the beach

Yes, I know the report is delay (a fair few months) and it may be slightly out of date, but in the past 30 days there has been an increased interest in our review so I’ve decided to upload the report.

To view the report click the following link: Team NVPH – Stack Overflow Report

If there are any questions, comments or concerns feel free to let me know.

Now I’ve only just got it today and have only played around with it for 10 minutes or so (and taken less than 10 photos). So here are the results. I can see huge room for improvement, but trying to find ‘dark areas’ was a little difficult. For the most part I was just experimenting to see if the reason I bought the Quark RGB would work out.

Light Painting - TV

Light Painting - Car Side

I’ve also got to figure out how I can tell my Camera to keeping taking a photo, until I tell it to stop. (Similar to BULB mode, however I don’t want to be holding the button. I just want to press the button to start, and press to finish).

I’ll need to get out my tripod and try some outdoor shots as well.

Some other tweets posted by BPGlobalPR:

• I used to have to kick a sandcastle to ruin a child’s day. Now I just throw a match at it. That’s progress. ^Tony about 5 hours ago via web
• Man, we miss the days when an Easter weekend and Terry Schiavo distracted you from our deadly mistakes. http://ow.ly/1ZzL3 about 5 hours ago via web
• We will not honor any claims or complaints unless they are submitted as delicate, yet robust haikus. Go ahead, try. #bphaiku about 9 hours ago via TweetDeck
• In case you missed our latest magic show, we made a fire vortex on the water! Tada! http://ow.ly/1Zw6h #bpmagic about 10 hours ago via TweetDeck
• We’ve sent a free $200 whores gift basket to our workers on the beach in lieu of respirators. http://ow.ly/1ZupI #bpcares about 11 hours ago via web

Obviously this is a stunt as someone has created the account earlier today. I’m sure the account will be deleted soon, but if it raises awareness and gets reports of Justin Bieper of the radio then I’m all for it. In amongst all the tweets there are some interesting links to read from credible sources (although you might find main stream media not so credible due to reports that there is a ‘Mass Media Blackout’, either way check it out. I got a laugh out of it and became more informed at the same time).

So you can now visit my site and enjoy the theme yourself!

Enjoy my Vuvuzela Style Site Here!

Now if you have your own site or would like to visit other sites simply replace your site with mine – http://www.vuvuzela-time.co.uk/www.jason-v.com

Google – http://www.vuvuzela-time.co.uk/www.google.com

YouTube – http://www.vuvuzela-time.co.uk/www.youtube.com

Anyway, check out the questions and my answers below. If you do notice something is wrong let me know and I’ll try to fix it up. If you haven’t picked up on it yet, my answers are highlighted in the question already.

Lecture 1

1. The automatic connection between various Bluetooth devices creates a(n) piconet, also called a wireless personal area network (WPAN).
2. A WLAN is an extension of a wired LAN, connecting to it through a device called a(n) wireless access point.
3. Wireless Application Protocol version 2.0 (WAP2) provides a standard way to transmit, format, and display Internet data for small wireless devices such as cell phones.
4. Digital Convergence refers to the power of digital devices to combine voice, video, and text processing capabilities, as well as to be connected to business and home networks and the Internet.
5. A(n) Universal Handset is a 1.5-pound device that allows military personnel in the field to communicate through a variety of methods using wireless technologies.
6. Industrial control motes are remote sensors that can connect to a WLAN, then collect data and transmit it to a central location.
7. True or False: Bluetooth and WLAN 802.11b/g devices both operate in the same radio frequency, potentially resulting in interference between such devices.
8. True or False: Wireless devices emit high levels of RF while being used.

Lecture 2

1. The number of times a cycle occurs within one second equals the frequency of a wave.
2. A signal unit that represents two bits is known as a dibit.
3. The height of a carrier wave is known as the amplitude and can be measured in volts (electrical pressure).
4. Phase modulation (PM) changes the starting point of the cycle, while the amplitude and frequency of the carrier remain constant.
5. Phase shift keying (PSK) is a binary modulation technique, similar to phase modulation, in which the transmitter varies the starting point of the wave.
6. Spread spectrum is a technique that takes a narrow band signal and spreads it over a broader portion of the radio frequency band.
7. In FHSS, the sequence of changing frequencies is called the hopping code.
8. A(n) Barker code (or chipping code) is a particular sequence of 1s and 0s that has properties that make it ideal for modulating radio waves, as well as for being detected correctly by the receiver.

Lecture 3

1. A(n) amplifier essentially increases the amplitude of an RF sign.
2. Half-duplex transmission sends data in both directions, but only one way at a time.
3. True or False: Telephone systems use a type of switching known as packet switching.
4. Packet switching requires that the data transmission be broken into small units called packets.
5. A(n) directional antenna radiates the electromagnetic waves in one direction only, and can help reduce or eliminate the effect of multipath distortion if there is a clear line of sight between the two antennas.
6. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) serves as the primary regulatory agency for telecommunications.
7. The radio frequency spectrum is the entire range of all radio frequencies that exist.
8. Adaptive array processing replaces a traditional antenna with an array of antenna elements.

Lecture 4

1. A(n) isotropic radiator is a theoretical perfect sphere that radiates power equally in all directions.
2. Directional antennas are used when you need to transmit a signal in one direction only.
3. In free space loss, RF waves tend to spread away from the source of the signal (the antenna).
4. The length of a single RF sine wave, or the wavelength, is what determines the size of an antenna.
5. Smart antennas “know” where the mobile receiver is, and can track it and focus the RF energy in that particular direction to avoid wasting energy and to prevent interference with other antennas.
6. In most wireless communications applications, one transmitter communicates with several mobile clients. This is called a(n) point-to-multipoint wireless link.
7. The space between two antennas would be more accurately represented by something similar to an ellipse. This elliptical region is called the Fresnel zone.
8. A(n) Spectrum analyzer displays the signal amplitude and frequency, and can also detect interference in a particular frequency or channel.

Lecture 5

1. FIR uses a modulation scheme called  4-pulse position modulation (4-PPM), in which information is conveyed by the position of a pulse within a time slot.
2. At the heart of the Bluetooth RF layer is a single radio transmitter/receiver (transceiver). This single tiny chip is called a Bluetooth radio module.
3. A group of piconets in which connections exist between different piconets is called a(n) scatternet.
4. In sniff mode, a slave device listens to the piconet master at a reduced rate so that it uses less power.
5. The upper ZigBee layers include mechanisms used by the devices to join a network, which is called association.
6. The superframe is a mechanism for managing transmission time in a piconet.
7. Encryption is the process of encoding communications, and ensures that the transmissions cannot be easily intercepted and decoded.
8. Sequential freshness is a security service used by the receiving device that ensures that the same frames will not be transmitted more than once.

Lecture 6

1. The WiMedia Alliance was formed to support the development of any necessary higher-layer protocols and software specifications for 802.15.3 and to perform various other administrative functions.
2. Quality-of-service (QOS) capabilities allow devices to request more channel access time in order to prioritize high-volume, time-sensitive traffic, such as voice stream.
3. The piconet coordinator (PNC) is the device that provides all of the basic communications timing in a piconet.
4. The frame check sequence (FCS) is a 32-bit cyclic redundancy check (CRC) field, a common technique for detecting data transmission errors.
5. Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks flood a Bluetooth device with so many frames that it is unable to communicate.
6. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a symmetric key encryption mechanism introduced by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States.
7. Hand-off is the ability of a device to move from one master or PNC to another without getting disconnected from the network in a network that extends beyond the communications range of each device that controls the communications.
8. Spectrum conflict is the potential for technologies using the same frequency bands to interfere with each other to the extent that they sometimes perform poorly when used within close range of each other.

Lecture 7

1. A(n) Mini PCI is a small card that is functionally equivalent to a standard PCI expansion card.
2. The AP will automatically select the highest possible data rate for transmission, depending on the strength and quality of the signal. This process is called dynamic rate selection.
3. The 802.11 standard defines a local area network that provides cable-free data access for clients that are either mobile or in a fixed location at a rate of either 1 or 2 Mbps, using either diffused infrared or RF transmission.
4. Even though it contains data, a 802.11 frame’s size is not measured in bits but in time slots.
5. One type of channel access method is polling. With this method, each computer is sequentially polled, or asked if it wants to transmit.
6. 802.11b standard power management allows the mobile client’s NIC to be off as much as possible to conserve battery life but still not miss out on data transmissions.
7. In the 802.11b standard, management frames are used to set up the initial communications between a client and the AP.
8. The Distributed coordination function interframe space (DIFS) is a standard time interval during which all clients must wait between transmissions of data frames.

Lecture 8

1. IEEE 802.11a uses the Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) band.
2. With an 802.11a WLAN, each AP can use one of 8 available channels.
3. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) primary function is to split a high-speed digital signal into several slower signals running in parallel.
4. True or False: The IEEE 802.11g standard specifies that it operates in the same frequency band as 802.11b
5. Wireless bridges are designed to connect two wired networks or to extend the range of a WLAN.
6. Authentication is a process that verifies that the client device has permission to access the network.
7. WPA2 is the version of WPA that has been certified by the IEEE to be compatible with IEEE 802.11i.
8. Virtual private networks (VPNs) use an encrypted connection to create a virtual tunnel between two points across a public or corporate network.

Lecture 9

1. A(n) broadband transmission sends multiple signals at different frequencies.
2. Scintillation is defined as the temporal and spatial variations in light intensity caused by atmospheric turbulence.
3. Local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) is a fixed broadband technology that can provide a wide variety of wireless services.
4. True or False: Multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS) is a fixed broadband wireless technology that has many similarities to LMDS.
5. A data transmission to or from a single device is called a(n) burst in the 802.16 standard.
6. Latency is the amount of time delay that it takes a packet to travel from source to destination device.
7. Jitter is the maximum delay variation between two consecutive packets over a period of time.
8. RSA is an algorithm developed in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman.

Lecture 10

1. Short Message Services (SMS) allows for the delivery of short, text-based messages between wireless devices, such as cellular telephones and pagers.
2. The mobile telecommunications switching office (MTSO) is the link between the cellular network and the wired telephone world, and controls all transmitters and base stations in the cellular network.
3. 1G technology is based on the Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS).
4. True or False: W-CDMA adds a packet-switched data channel to a circuit-switched voice channel.
5. A WML document is called a deck that contains one or more blocks, known as cards.
6. The Java programming language was developed by Sun Microsystems as an object-oriented language used for general-purpose business programming, as well as interactive Web sites.
7. The single largest factor limiting the development of 3G is spectrum.
8. Low earth orbit (LEO) satellites circle the Earth at an altitude of 200 to 900 miles (321 to 1,448 kilometers).

Lecture 11

1. One class of active tags is called beacons because they transmit on a periodic basis, without receiving an interrogation from a reader.
2. The mobile telecommunications switching office (MTSO) is the link between the cellular network and the wired telephone world and controls all transmitters and base stations in the cellular network.
3. Sensory tags, as their name indicates, can be equipped with thermal, gas, smoke, pressure, and a variety of other kinds of sensors to monitor and record environmental conditions, liquid volume levels, or attempts to tamper with a product.
4. With EPCs, companies will be able to acquire the manufacturer’s name over the Internet using a service from EPCglobal Inc. called Object Name Service (ONS).
5. HF RFID transmission uses a protocol called slotted terminating adaptive protocol (STAC), in which the tags reply within randomly selected positions or time intervals, referred to as slots.
6. After the destroy password is transmitted by the reader, the tag is permanently disabled and can never be read or written to again.
7. True or False: In hospitals, RFID tags in a patient’s identification bracelet can provide vital information that cannot be easily misplaced.
8. A(n) blocker tag is a device that can be used to simulate the presence of a virtually infinite number of tags.

Lecture 12

1. True or False: Industry experts agree that access to corporate data from almost anywhere is the greatest advantage of wireless technology.
2. Wireless VoIP phones, the telephone handsets that connect to a WLAN’s access point (AP), enable you to use the WLAN for regular telephone calls.
3. Wireless VoIP SOHO routers can be connected to a DSL or cable modem and provide both a WLAN and telephone services through the user’s Internet connection.
4. True or False: The human factor in implementing wireless technology is sometimes a significant obstacle.
5. Upfront costs are costs that are necessary to start a project.
6. A(n) Upfront is a detailed planning document that is sent to potential vendors with precise specifications for the products and services that the organization intends to buy.
7. A(n) wireless application service provider (WASP) can design and create a wireless application to run on a specific range of devices.
8. A(n) help desk is a central point of contact for users who need assistance using technology.

• FIFA 2010 – Team Work – Flash Video
• FIFA 2010 – Team Work (different angle) – Flash Video

This site is not endorsed by or affiliated with Electronic Arts, or its licensors. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Game content and materials copyright Electronic Arts Inc. and its licensors. All Rights Reserved.

Direct YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peYSjTxnzK0
Direct Vimeo Link: http://www.vimeo.com/12230792

Cost-Effective Scalability, Oh-my!

Lightweight Models & Cost-Effective Scalability, Oh-my!

Lightweight Models & Cost-Effective Scalability, Oh-my!

It might seem like a quest to have the best of everything but Lightweight Models & Cost-Effective Scalability isn’t that mythical. You don’t have to battle the the wicked witches, but that doesn’t say it is a simple path to take either.

So lets talk about an example that exists out there already:

Wikipedia – www.wikipedia.org

We all know what Wikipedia is but in case you missed it (perhaps your just starting to use a computer?), Wikipedia is a free-content encyclopedia that is based on an openly=editable model. It allows users to add articles/pages and also edit existing ones in a self organising way.

So lets take a look at some stats and see how large Wikipedia is, bear in mind this is only the English side of Wikipedia and doesn’t count for other languages.

I’ve also put together a more visual representation taken from the wiki stats page, Click to enlarge the view!

So there is no doubt that Wikipedia is large, and they have use an Open Source, Scalable solution across multiple servers, multiple countries, etc. All with less than 30 staff members dedicated staff members. Of course you don’t have to be as large as wikipedia to use the software and there are in fact many smaller sites that use the same software. You might not have the large economies of scale either, and that doesn’t matter because there are effective solutions out there.

Enter LAMP, a solution stack of open source software that is ready to take on your needs. LAMP is actually an acronym (not a light stand) that represents the key open source software packages.

Linux – An operating system
Apache – A HTTP web server
MySQL – Database software
PHP – A language in which you can code web pages

LAMP allows you set up and host your own site with ease, it is scalable and as for the cost effect side – it is Open Source. I’ve heard lots of rumours but I haven’t been able to find any ‘hard facts’, but major sites like Facebook and Flicr are based on LAMP, or at least were at some stage. I could say my site is based on a LAMP distro to also make a point (but it isn’t), however there is nothing stopping you from starting your own site and doing so.

The next biggest craze though is cloud-computing and business creating their sites of API’s, and renting CPU power from Google, while hosting data on Amazon S3, etc. The reason I avoided this is because it is very much on the hype cycle and I don’t feel comfortable not having that much control. This might be changing (and it looks so), but it is hard to recommend outsourcing a solution when you can get started yourself easily with LAMP!

The long tail describes a wider range of products that are more specific getting sold less often, rather than the ‘head’ being more common/generic products being sold more often. A great image create by leftclick can be seen below:

Effectively the dinosaur represents a curve on the graph, where there more generic or common a product, the increase of the results. On the other end the more specific the term, the less results occur. Following the example by leftclick, how would you leverage the long tail in web 2.0?

If you were in the hotel business and you had a resort you could describe yourself as a ‘hotel’ or perhaps even the location your hotel was. This would be a very generic term, and really ‘the head’. If you were more specific, you could use key works such as ‘accommodation’, ‘Queenstown’, ‘backpacker’, ‘wheelchair access’, ‘pets allowed’ and the results would be fairly narrow. Putting this keywords into Google may give you the results of a few million (the head), to a few hundred or less (the tail).

The more specific your key words, the more specific your audience – leveraging the long tail can yield lower costs in advertising while also increasing your conversion rate.

By doing the following you can target advertisements on the long tail in the example above. This also means you will have lower costs (because there is less competition) and have higher conversion rates (because the target audience is looking for services similar to what you offer).

Another great tip is from leftclick is focused pages, targeted at these specialised search terms. What this basically means is, don’t rely on your advertisements bringing in visitors, create pages or content so the search engines results will list the page (in in turn bring them to your site). In the above example creating an online guest book, or encouraging user reviews (even better if they blog about it and link to your site) are a few good ways to create content.

So what if your a site like Amazon? Similar approach works but there is a few more tips which you can use. If you have a large product range, once the visitor is on your site you might want to direct them towards more generic items you have for sale. The products are more popular and as a first time vistior you might be more interested.

Perhaps you’ve become a member of a site like Amazon and bought a few items. Soon you wont to direct your members towards a little more ‘specific’ material. This will have the opposite effect in that existing members who have seen the common/generic stuff can get pushed towards the more specific terms. By doing this you are encouraging existing users to branch out more.