An Impressive List of Clients

My schedule has been pretty busy ever since I decided to purchase Soundcloud comments. The comments have gotten people interested in my work and they’ve hired me to make some songs for them. I’ve gotten requests from all kinds of people. One of my first clients was someone who wanted to make a short film for a film festival, and he needed me to make a song that would move the hearts of the audience during a sad moment of the film. I composed something really sad and he loved it. The audience loved it as well, and the film was voted as one of the top 5 films in the festival.

Another one of my clients was someone who was making a video game and needed me to make a few upbeat songs that would get the player hooked on the game. I thought about some of my favorite video game songs and used them as influence to make some catchy beats that would go along with the theme of the game. The client liked the songs and when he tested the game among a few people, they commented on how much they liked the songs as well. He finally released the game, and people who bought it said they liked the music as well.

My most famous clients was a singer who heard my songs and wanted me to help with her latest album. She had been looking for some hidden talent that would be a good fit for her album and thought my production skills would come in handy. I made some songs that went along with her vocals and she loved them. It was such a proud moment for me to see my name listed on the credits of a CD. The song was even nominated for many awards.

Top Storage Space Rentals in Singapore

I would like to rent a small storage unit at some point in the next couple of weeks. I am moving out of my dorm room, after my first year at the university. It was a good year, but I hope to get better marks next year. I am not going to be able to transport my belongings back home for the summer, and would instead, like to keep them at a local storage unit, until classes resume. I am trying to find storage space in Singapore at a reasonable rate, because as a student, I do not have a lot of money to spend on such things. My parents are unwilling to help me out with it either, because they are paying for my university education, and they think that is enough of an expense for them to take on.

I can understand their sentiment, but it kind of puts me in a bind. » Read more: Top Storage Space Rentals in Singapore

Wireless Home Network Security

In order to adequately protect your wireless home network you need to have an awareness of the threats that are out there and what can be done about them. The best ways to ensure your security are by using a legitimate antivirus/anti-spyware program, an effective firewall in your router and setting up wireless encryption on your wireless router.

A wireless network introduces a new level of vulnerability to your privacy through the airwaves. On a wired network a good firewall will stop most Internet hacker attempts and your antivirus program will handle most attempts by trojan viruses to hijack your machine. But now that you’ve gone wireless your network data is being broadcast through the walls of your house and out onto the street. How do you protect yourself against neighbors who want to surf the Internet on your dime and the geeky teenager with the packet sniffing program next door?

The answer is Wireless Encryption

Before we get into wireless encryption let’s make sure your networked computers at least have the basics in terms of protection. Any computer connected to the Internet needs to have:

Antivirus Software

There are tons of scripts, viruses and spyware that can find their way to your computer through emails and downloaded programs which can muck up your operating system and compromise your privacy. A good antivirus program with updated virus definitions will do the trick. This means you have to do more than just purchase and install it. You also have to keep it updated.

Firewall Program

If you have a firewall program such as installed and you take a peak at the logs you may be shocked at the amount of attempts to gain access to your computer from unknown sources. A good firewall program will follow a set of rules to block attempts to gain access or take control over your computer. Many home network routers have a built-in SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) firewall functionality which you will also want to take advantage of.

Anti Spyware

Spyware actually falls under a different category than viruses. While a virus is designed to do wreak havoc on your Operating System malware is more insidious and seeks to operate behind the scenes undetected. Many spyware programs exist just to collect data about you and your surfing habits and send that information back to who ever launched it as market research information. While your operating system may still function normally you will notice slowness and erratic behavior of some programs over time.

Windows Updates

Microsoft regularly publishes new vulnerabilities that have been discovered in their operating systems and patches needed to fix them. Turning your Microsoft updates to automatic will make the process of keeping your system updated almost unnoticeable except for the occasional forced reboot.

Wireless Encryption

So you’ve set up a home network using all the steps mentioned above to secure it. Right? Good. If you want to go wireless you also need to consider wireless encryption. If you don’t you might as well be installing network jacks into the curb on the street in front of your home to give passerby’s access to your network any time they want it.

The developers of the 802.11 standard were aware of this threat to consumer privacy early on so they designed a system of encrypting data that makes a wireless network just as secure as a wired network. They called it WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy. WEP worked fine for a while but the way it was designed combined with increasing computer speeds made it easier to decode and decipher the WEP Key. Once someone in a car out on the street has your WEP key they may as well be sitting in your living room or watching over your shoulder.

As a result of the need for a newer, stronger encryption method WPA or Wi-Fi Protected Access was developed. Not only is WPA more secure it’s more user-friendly. A plain text pass phrase is all that’s needed to secure your devices. The ugly hexadecimal keys of WEP are gone. The major improvement of WPA over WEP is the patterns of encryption it uses are much more random and the key actually changes according to a time frame you can specify! WPA has a new big brother called WPA2 which uses the advanced AES method of encryption. While WEP can be cracked in a few hours WPA2 and AES has yet to be cracked.

The safeguards mentioned here are all very common and easy to come by. Excellent Internet Security Suites are now available in most electronics stores. Virtually all routers come with built-in SPI firewalls and manufacturers of network devices have made great strides to make setting up wireless encryption on your wireless network as easy as possible. By following the guidelines in this article and technology that’s available you should have no trouble securing your wireless home network.

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Sensing Inside a Greenhouse Through Wireless Sensor Networks – An Emerging Technology

What is a Wireless Sensor Network?

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of several distributed wireless sensor nodes that sense vibration, noise, and temperature. Each node has its own memory, battery, a processor and a sensor and is autonomous. These nodes are reliable, heterogeneous, scalable, fault tolerant and they require less power consumption.

In today’s world WSN are used everywhere say in traffic controlling systems, in forests to detect fire, in green houses to monitor plants, in military to monitor spy activities, in houses to monitor water and waste water, in smart houses and in many more places. WSN has become an essential technology to live with.

WSN in Greenhouse monitoring:

A greenhouse is a place where plants are grown. To set up WSN in a greenhouse the nodes are placed on leaves and crops. The base node is responsible for collecting data from all nodes and communicating with the main server or computer.

For whom?

WSN for greenhouse monitoring is required for the greenhouse owner who wants maximum cultivation of crops in any environmental conditions.

The WSN nodes sense following:

  • Temperature
  • Level of Carbon Dioxide
  • Light
  • Humidity
  • Radiation

Monitoring these environmental factors continuously helps to gather information about the crops and plants in the greenhouse. Information collected is further manipulated to manage productivity of crops. Whenever there is a change rather than expected, i.e. temperature increase or decreases suddenly, the manager is notified about the condition of affected area using text message, or call or e-mail or any other thing like buzzer by the data communication system. Manager then takes action accordingly.

WSN nodes communicate with each other and share important data that will be useful for network. Network topology used for such networks depends on total area of the greenhouse, cost and other factors.

Data stored using sensor nodes on the computer is then manipulated and meaningful interpretation is obtained using data mining, knowledge management methods.

It provides faster deployment, installment flexibility for sensors, and better sturdiness than wired networks.

Conclusion:

A Wireless Sensor Network is a measurement tool. WSN applied in greenhouse evaluates and maintains growth of crops. It saves cost and energy of wiring and connecting all nodes. It only costs to set up and maintain the network. It is very convenient to handle greenhouse in real-time more efficiently. It is better to use such technology rather than wasting money in poor estimations and labor that is typical faced during crop cultivation.

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Building a Wireless ISP Network… The Opportunity

In the US, most of the people have one or more broadband access services to choose from – variations of DSL from multiple vendors and cable. That is if you’re in a metropolitan area. For more rural locations your choices are limited…..if you have any at all. Therein lies an opportunity for those willing to pursue it.

In the rural areas of the country, the selection is limited. Satellite is available to anyone (at high cost), but between dial up and T1 there are no options for many residents. Satellite suffers from latency, making it unsuitable for VoIP and some other real time Internet services. Some applications that should not be sensitive to latency (email, Web forms) will perform poorly or fail due to the increased packet time.

The traditional carriers (RBOC) and resellers face a cost issue in bringing broadband service to outlying areas. Without a concentration of users the per user cost at published rates causes either a poor or negative margin. The way cost accounting is done in larger corporations makes the business case worse for a large carrier. Cost allocations between departments for such things as floor space, personnel, and backend support end up as added costs rather than leverage opportunities. Traditional wired service will not reach outlying residents unless mandated by law, and the trend is against this happening in the near future.

So the opportunity is open for a business offering Internet broadband access service to outlying residents.

Therein lies a tremendous opportunity.

Now….just how do you go about taking advantage of this opportunity, filling a need, and building a wireless ISP network?

To assist you with working through the planning and execution of this effort here are some insights and resources you should consider:

* Business Continuity Planning – This isn’t the technical side of the business, the backup systems, redundant pathing, fail-over and restore, or alternate location stuff. Here you’re looking at subjects such as Legal Structure, Personnel Insurance, Asset Insurance, and Process and Procedure.

* Revenue and Profit – Covers where and how to create your income including installation, basic monthly service, custom access service, volume or corporate pricing, other services, business partnerships, usage based service, civic service, and tower leasing (or you could build and provide your own).

* Security Issues – There’s much to consider in this arena. Don’t overlook it.

* Bandwidth issues – The access line to your tower(s) is likely the critical factor to success. Whether it’s a T1 or a DS3 line. First off, it probably represents your single largest operational cost. Next, it determines the maximum quality of service you can provide.

Quotes you receive for bandwidth will probably be very different in terms of cost and performance guarantees, and should cover Performance Standards, Service Availability, Mean Time to Respond, Mean Time to Repair, Latency, Packet Loss, and Jitter. To help you search for the best match provider for your bandwidth requirements….I recommend utilizing the services of an unbiased independent broker by submitting a RFQ request to DS3-Bandwidth.com.

Here are some additional resources that may be of benefit to those developing a WISP….or thinking of it.

StartAWisp.com

WISP Centric

There’s also an excellent forum for discussion of ideas and issues between WISP owners and potential developers at DSLReports.

Final advice…..think strategically taking care to consider the business areas highlighted above. Do make use of an independent unbiased broker for the bandwidth decision. Also, apply the resources shared here as well as any others discovered from your own research.

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