Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has sealed the deal with Skype to provide social networking site with video chat option. It will allow Facebook users to talk face to face. Zuckerberg unveiled new Facebook functionality just days after Google presented its social network to the world. Is this the beginning of the technology battle between the giants?

The video chat will not require Facebook’s users to download any specific feature from Skype. All they have to do is download a plug-in for the video chat tool but it shouldn’t take more than 20 seconds. Zuckerberg described the new function as the “best technology” within the “best social infrastructure”. Skype, which is being acquired by Microsoft  in a £5.2bn deal predicts 50% increase in video calling traffic. The internet telephony provider also believes that it can increase its number of users by up to five times from its current 150 million. The joint project also proves the strengthening alliance between Facebook and Microsoft against rival Google.

Just last week Google unveiled its social network Google+ which offers a collection of new Google products. One of the products, Hangouts, allows up to 10 people simultaneously engage in a chat. The video feed switches based on who is speaking at a given moment. That creates a huge advantage for Google as Facebook offers only one-on-one video chat, but Zuckerberg hinted that group video chat will be rolled out soon.

Facebook has more than 750 million users and it will be extremely hard for Google to compete and steal Zuckerberg’s brainchild’s crown. However, the competition between Google and Facebook will only bring benefits for the users- they will get better service and more innovative technology.

You may have the most appealing website and sell the most desirable products, it will serve for nothing unless your business venture stands out on search engines. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is vital to a business because it generates 90% of all the online traffic. There are more that 250m websites worldwide, even the smallest business needs to take on SEO to be noticed. The research shows that websites that appear in top three places  of the search engine’s results attract 98% of all the web traffic. People not very often look at the second results page or beyond.

Search Engine Optimisation is the method of analysing and constructing individual web pages and entire sites to get them discovered, analysed and indexed by various search engines. The main purpose of SEO is to make the content of the website more relevant, more easily read by search engines and their indexing software. How exactly search engines arrive at their list of most relevant sites is a secret, as the algorithms are constantly being tweaked in. However, the relevancy is mainly based on the content and on the number of sites that lead to your website.

“SEO is about reverse engineering to try to trick Google into thinking you are the most relevant site. Anybody can launch a website and the barriers to entry are low, so if your business relies on the web for customers you need to be proactive,” said Aneesh Varma, the co-founder of FabriQate, a creative digital agency in west London.

SEO can be very beneficial, especially for small and medium enterprises as the usually don’t have a big budget to advertise their products and services and on-line presence can lift their business at little cost. Here are a few tricks that can improve your search engine visibility:

1. Keywords in the URL- give your website (and your business) a name that describes what it does. That will encourage search engines to rate your web higher and will also make it easier for potential customers to find you. For example you are selling handmade earrings it would be better to name your website handmadearrings.co.uk than for example prettyjewellery.co.uk. Whenever you are creating a new sub-page, make sure it has a meaningful URL. Avoid the default URLs and use a structure containing links with keywords. For example www.managednetworks.co.uk/it-services/business-continuity URL indicates that the business is providing unique content.

2. Not only the name of your website is essential, its description matters too. Title containing keywords in itself always achieves a better rank, it should brief the service provided by your firm. Generally, use as many keywords as possible, include the words and phrases you wish to be known for into the content of your website. Take advantage of meta tags, which are information that you can write into the unseen instruction part of your website and are recognised by search engines as they trawl the internet looking for relevant sites.

3. Engage in social media- create a Facebook page and Twitter account and a blog for your business and link them to your website. Remember to try to generate original content and update social media platforms on the regular basis. You may also try to find some affiliates who will add a link to your website from their website in exchange for the same favour. Try to have links from site that matches the profile with your own services. It will boost your presence in the web and assist in establishing the authority of your domain.

Search Engine Optimisation can help your small medium business grow. All it takes is to be systematic and consequent in your on-line activity.

Apple, Google and Microsoft came under fire after allegations of tracking and storing the information about the users’ movement. Apple’s iPhone and iPad constantly track users’ locations and store the data in unencrypted files that can be read by anyone with physical access to the device, the latest research revealed. It was also reported that Apple, Google and Microsoft routinely capture their customers’ phones cell tower and GPS data without anyone knowing.

The security researchers, Pete Warden and Alasdair Alan discovered that iPhones and iPads keep the track of users’ physical location and store the data in unencrypted files. It appears that Apple has been recording information since deploying iOS 4.0 last June. The file is stored both, on the iOS device and any computers storing backup of its data.

The researchers wrote “The most immediate problem is that this data is stored in an easily-readable form on your machine (…). Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements”. However, Warden and Alan underline that there is no evidence that Apple or anyone else accessed the information.

According to hobbyist hacker Samy Kamkar, Android phones by Google collect nearby Wi-Fi access points and their geographic location every few seconds and transmit the information, along with the device’s unique id to the company several times per hour. By combining that information, it wouldn’t be hard for Google to figure out where you live and work. “They [Androids] are sending all your GPS coordinates. They know how fast you’re travelling. There is a unique identifier that’s always sent”, Kamkar added.

Just today, it emerged that Windows Phone 7 also silently transmits the precise physical location back to a central database. However, Windows Phones don’t store any of the locations on the device itself. By contrast, iPhone 4 can store the locations for months, if not years. Android indexes location of cellphone towers and Wi-Fi networks, but only up to 200 and 50 entries, respectively.

Both Apple and Google have admitted that their phones report their locations, but only when devices’ location services are on. Their defence claims that the information transmitted from their phones is anonymous and users have the ability to turn it off. Neither Apple nor Google has revealed that the locations are also stored on the handset. Apple, Google and Microsoft are still to public their official statement regarding the controversy. MacRumors reports that one of its users sent an email to Apple CEO Steve Jobs asking for explanations:

“Steve,
Could you please explain the necessity of the passive location-tracking tool embedded in my iPhone? It’s kind of unnerving knowing that my exact location is being recorded at all times. Maybe you could shed some light on this for me before I switch to a Droid. They don’t track me.”

Steve Jobs’ purported response was:

“Oh yes they do. We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false.”

A lawsuit has been filled against Apple following its alleged tracking of the whereabouts of the iPhone and iPad users. Vikram Ajjampur and William Devito, the plaintiffs who filled the lawsuit on Monday explained: “The accessibility of the unencrypted information collected by Apple places users at serious risk of privacy invasions, including stalking.”

Is our privacy the price we have to pay for using hi-tech devices?

Salaries for UK IT professionals have risen 5% over the past year, a latest research by IT recruitment firm CV Screen revealed.

A detailed study of 50 IT roles and over 7,000 advertised positions in the UK during the first quarter of 2011 showed that the average salary for a permanent IT position is now £38,946, up 5% on the same period last year.

Matthew Iveson, director at CV Screen, commented “The rise in IT salaries can partly be attributed to the recovery of the economy and jobs market over the past 12 months. Employers are gaining confidence and their recruitment budgets have increased over the last year. Rather than cutting back on staff, we are now seeing employers looking to grow the size of their workforce and are having to offer more competitive salaries to secure the best talent.”

CV Screen points out that the number of registered vacancies increased dramatically, by over 25% in the first quarter of 2011 compared with 2010, whilst the number of application per role has actually dropped by 20%. This means that the employers may struggle to fill vacancies. The employer-driven market is now shifting towards a candidate-driven market, which is driving salaries up.

There still exists a lack of good quality candidates within certain areas of IT jobs market, particularly for .NET, PHP and Java roles. Employers have been forced to offer higher salaries to attract the best calibre candidates.

The rise in IT industry salaries may continue, as Iveson stressed “Whilst it is difficult to make predictions for the next 12 months, we strongly believe that rising inflation and the increased cost of living will push IT wages up further and therefore the salary increase trend will continue well into 2012.”

Remote access computing, whether from multiple offices or geographically dispersed field worker locations, will often be accompanied by some form of basic protection and retention of generated electronic information. The issue of remotely stored data protection and recovery is number one on any SME or mid sized enterprise agenda as the percentage of processed total data in remote offices rapidly increases.

In many instances, the present systems of protection may be in serious need of review and upgrade to more adequately deal with a company’s ongoing, yet expanding data accessing, processing and network security storage. In today’s rapidly changing IT environment a proactive IT policy is now a critical service level constant which maintains deployment efficiency and security standards.

A “remote office” may be defined as a staffed location with one or more Microsoft Windows servers – a file and print server and, depending on the level of operations, may also include:

• A Microsoft Exchange Server for e-mail management.
• An application server running a database program like Microsoft SQL Server.
• Another application server to support business-specific, mission-critical applications.
• A backup server attached to a tape drive or autoloader.

There are many factors to consider when designing an overall solution to the remote data protection problem, including the types of applications to be protected, the potential risks, and specific data recovery objectives.

Applying the same level of protection to all the applications and services running in each office may seem simpler to implement, but it could be cost prohibitive. Each application and the data that it generates or manages needs to be evaluated and relative priorities set for individual protection.

For example, many remote offices probably have a shared file and print server. Losing data from this system probably won’t put the organisation in jeopardy, although it may be inconvenient trying to recover or recreate that data.

Most companies still rely on tape backups for data protection and recovery. However, in remote offices, the manual processes used in operating the tape backup system may not be as reliable as they are often performed by non-technical staff who may have little or no training in backup and recovery procedures. Data recovery in remote offices from tape backups can also be problematic and often require outsourcing IT expertise.

Identifying and implementing necessary data protection is an important cost investment, but beyond hardware and software costs, an overall remote offices solution needs to consider the impact of data protection decisions and the application of an integrated IT support.

Facing a toughening economic climate for the foreseeable future, companies and organisations of all sizes and business sectors must focus more efficiently on client/customer needs, and in today’s ‘onDemand’ information access environment, become more transparent and accountable to flexible resource availability.

By the effective virtual linking of data systems and processes and taking a multi-service solution approach, information barriers can be overcome. Accurate, quality data and its attendant applications and resources can be accessed / archived and processed in the drive to deliver higher standards of business efficiency across dispersed geographical locations.

It has been estimated that only around a half of present IT support systems are able to provide key information required to make well-informed business decisions. Barriers to obtaining and leveraging critical business data include disconnected systems and processes for management decision-making, staffing/productivity, reporting and analytics.

Enterprises tend to rely on information provided by multiple IT systems and solutions where each area solves different, but related, business issues. Typically, they are not coordinated, and consequently, not achieving the full benefit of service solution integration.

Implementing proactive IT principles can focus on key areas of IT services continuity of systems and processes, IT services development and the need for process change, working within budgetary constraints.

Cloud computing, with low cost entry, as with a DesktopLive thin-client application, enables SMEs and similar sized organisations, to immediately achieve high-quality, unified and integrated data access provisioning on a ‘needs basis’ expenditure. Tangible ROI is realisable by the minimising or eliminating of the ongoing costs of traditional on-premise applications, such as software maintenance and upgrades.

This means businesses can tap into ‘clouds’ of resource and computing power, without necessity of operating or the complexities of managing a physically located cloud. Consequently, small and midsize organisations gain better redundancy and continuity than they presently obtain for internally managed applications.

Cloud-based applications are scalable to changing trading conditions, accommodating both company growth and consolidation. Freed from lengthy implementation projects and moribund legacy applications, Cloud is reliant only on localised cloud provision, e.g. IT support London or IT support Manchester.

The widespread increase in remote working from multiple workplace and human resource locations is driving a fast pace, work-anywhere mentality underscored by collaborative instincts and intolerance of both data/ information and budgetary barriers.

It has been estimated that worldwide, there are currently over one billion computers and five billion mobile phones in active use. With 226 million new Internet users this year, 162 million of whom are from developing nations, it is predicted that the number of Internet users will exceed 2 billion before the end of 2010.

Given that the current world population is estimated to be 6.9 billion, this figure suggests that 30 per cent of planet Earth’s population will be online by New Years Day, 2011.

Looking ahead, it is further predicted that by 2020, a staggering total of 20 billion computing devices will be hooked up to the Internet. Cisco, however, forecast that fifty times the predicted figure – one trillion devices – will be connected by 2013, seven years earlier and only 25 months away!

Undoubtedly, the Internet has in just two decades, established itself as the dominant communication and information exchange system for how our economy and society operates. The predicted, uncontrollable explosion of growth will be the driving factor to accelerating the next evolutionary step – the inevitable move into the Cloud.

Already we are witnessing the unprecedented rise of mobile apps and the Smartphone, a mini computer ‘thin client’ in its own right, capable of sending and receiving multi media data from a central provider. The spectacular growth of closed platform, aggregation sites like Facebook alongside the likes of Google and Apple, are already positioned as the predominant, controlling global network and content provider to most of the world’s online population.

For SME and mid-sized company alike, the urgency for IT managers to forward plan to accommodate the expected rapid expansion of data transfer and storage requirement is now time critical. The recent Virgin Media announcement of their Superfast fibre-optic broadband rollout of 100Mbps capability to homes and businesses is bound to be followed by competitors. Trying to keep up with the explosion of data will be impossible, both technically and financially for all but the largest organisations.

The recognition that outsourcing IT services to an external storage provider, e.g. through regionally supplied IT support, is now very much on the horizon for the overwhelming majority of enterprises of whatever size, has to be confronted. The provision of a proactive IT cloud supplier to partner is essential to creating an integrated data strategy for individualised, business requirements.

In addition, the necessity of a flexible infrastructure providing needs-based cloud as a resource, will be vital when network data and application structures demand to be sustained at increasing levels of speed and capacity.

Recent news that HP and McCartney Productions Limited (MPL) had agreed to digitally convert and deliver the music library of ex-Beatle, Paul McCartney via a private cloud, may be seen as representing a very public statement, vindicating belief in and acceptance of the shift towards cloud technology as the future of comprehensive, universal data storage and access.

The McCartney library collection includes a wealth of images, artwork, paintings, film and videos, and in addition to changing how music fans and artists will interact, the digitization of McCartney’s library is intended to help preserve the iconic, musical history and its legacy for future generations.

Whilst SMEs have been quicker to see the accelerated capability for data and resource applications to be easily obtained independently of location, say via DesktopLive, for many traditional businesses, Cloud computing – where services are no longer tied to dedicated hardware – is still viewed as a major departure from the understood IT service delivery model and indigenous network security.

Servers, network devices, and storage can be considered ‘virtualised’ resources. By abstracting from the hardware, they move freely about an infrastructure, delivering services when and where they are needed. Implementation of cloud computing does not mean a complete reinvention of a company’s entire IT arrangements. IT support for industries underpins essential IT services continuity.

For proactive IT cloud providers, the imperatives of delivering structural IT support are intrinsic to assured, service delivery. The key planks being the achievement of extreme agility in responding to tailored business demands, the driving down of service delivery costs, and the minimisation of risk.

Inevitably, understandable concerns over security of releasing sensitive/highly confidential information from behind their own secured firewall is more likely to lead to companies adopting the private cloud. This means that the physical hardware remains within a company’s own premises, for daily system operation, maintenance, and security to be run in house.

However, more confident enterprises have embraced cloud computing by augmenting the private cloud with the possibilities offered from public cloud providers. The hybrid cloud approach consists of a private and public cloud which however, remains separate but work together to provide infinite data and application portability.

The hybrid cloud approach also has a stringent service management requirement to achieve the necessary performance, security, and compliance. Consequently, it’s important to choose a reliable IT supplier of public cloud, that can extend service management capabilities to an organisation.

The future predicted by many proactive IT professionals has to be Cloud shaped. The entire Web will be completely transformed into one endless storage cloud where data is constantly uploaded and downloaded and thus, the concept of data ownership will become meaningless in a virtual world where everyone will have access to everything.

Data storage and remote access are becoming ever more urgent issues as emergent technology platforms and channels for instant, interactive message and media exchange accelerate demand for capacity. From SMEs to Corporates, the challenge for information storage space is unending. Simplistic solutions like stockpiles of DVDs, data sticks, larger hard drives or wholesale deletion of old files are now no longer tenable.

Cloud storage, or the saving of data to an off-site storage system maintained by a third party, or cloud provider, is now the only realistic way forward in the 21st century. Essentially, this means no longer storing information on a computer’s own hard drive or another local storage device, but instead saves to a remote database and the Internet provides the connection between the two. A cloud storage system simply needs just one data server connected to the Internet.

Data can then be accessed from any location with Internet access without the need of a physical storage device or using the same computer to save and retrieve information. In addition, cloud storage is a supremely efficient method to create data backups for a company’s own computer system. Customising the right storage system, for example, with a DesktopLive system, allows for multiple, remote access for collaborative work.

The transformation of traditional business environments into virtual, interactive hubs across geographically dispersed locations is constantly attended by 24/7 monitoring with national IT support at regional level, e.g. IT support London or IT support Manchester.

Although Cloud storage systems generally rely on hundreds of data servers to store the same information on multiple machines using different power supplies, there are still mostly unwarranted concerns over reliability, security and ability to access information. The resistance against the relinquishing of onsite company data, applications and servers is a further area of contention, which the urgent necessities of growing storage requirement will ultimately resolve.

The predominating issue of accelerated climate change due to human activity drives today’s urgent necessity to reduce carbon emissions, coupled with the rising costs of energy. Both are rapidly shaping our attitude to the active development of green technology.

Addressing energy consumption is a central concern influencing the emerging concept of the ‘green cloud’ data centre. As a result, proactive IT takes responsibility to focus decision making and the planning of infrastructure around energy cost reduction and dynamic, resource allocation strategies. The provision of eco aware economics underpinning IT support is equally important to energy efficient usage within SME or larger organisations.

The focus by public cloud providers on supplying a critical, innovative response to delivering efficient resource usage extends well beyond electricity usage to also include key issues of water recycling and disposal in equipment recycling.

As a result, the importance of location for cloud provider data centres will crucially, factor in bandwidth, cheap energy, an abundant water cooling supply, and closest proximity to user markets.

By purchasing super energy efficient server/equipment technology, means national cloud providers offer an immediate practical benefit to the end user, at local level, by reducing their non-computing energy overheads and maximising their utilisation rates through the dynamic allocation of computing resources.

The intrinsic, uniform benefit is most readily seen at a localised, regional level, hence an IT support London application is comparable to an IT support Manchester or IT support Midlands service.

In other words, cloud suppliers can successfully provide computing services far more efficiently with a much smaller energy and carbon footprint. Large scale cloud providers can be better placed to obtain efficiency rates and server utilisation rates that are unachievable in even large corporate data centre operations.

The imperatives of the environment and climate change debate are driving radical change and cloud computing plays an increasingly important role. By not only providing attractive and essential business cost savings to SMEs and other companies struggling in today’s current uncertain economy, cloud can also contribute considerably to the ‘big society’ objectives of energy efficiency, environmental protection and sustainable development.