falconmedia – Page 3

GITEX Technology Week in Dubai

In search for future technologies that can enable companies to achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness for business? Well, the 36th Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (Gitex) provided just that.

This 5 day event opened its doors from Sunday 16th October, 2016. It was the largest ICT exhibition in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, that took place at Dubai world trade centre. The event was inaugurated by Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Executive Council.

So, what was the Gitex technology exhibition all about? This event showed live demonstrations of future generation technology solutions from various government and international companies that can transform Middle East businesses. Key industry verticals of marketing, healthcare, finance, intelligent cities, retail, education and energy were discussed by industry leaders.

Over 200 investors and influential tech investment companies from Silicon Valley, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, including SoftBank Group International, 500 Startups, and many other venture partners arrived in Dubai to explore, evaluate and potentially fund start up businesses with talent. These ventures also included globally giant investors like Facebook, Dropbox and Spotify.

Key highlights included a large indoor VR activation powered by Samsung logo, Game-changing tech from 4,000 solution providers including AR, VR, AI, Wearables, Drones and more. GITEX Startup Movement examined the global startup movement featuring 350+ breakthrough startups from 52 countries. Customized networking programmes were also on offer for startups to discover how global contemporaries have been there, done that and created an impact.

In today’s era of technology, there is an ever increasing need for entrepreneurs to harness technologies that can enable companies to achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness. FTI has always believed that a strong culture of innovation, in all areas of the company, is an essential contributor to business success. FTI prioritize R&D and technology over cost, as we firmly believe that these functions are critical to ensure our products represent the best quality within the optical media industry.

In line with new innovation for business and services Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) showcased a smart streetlight system at GITEX 2016. According to Eng Maitha bin Adai, CEO of RTA’s traffic and roads agency, there are three systems showcased at Gitex this year and this combination of systems will help sustain green economy requirements by reducing carbon emissions. These systems include the Central Wireless Road Lighting Control System that sets multiple synchronized timetables for dimming streetlights. “A new feature in the smart lighting system is a tentative WiFi service installed in Dubai Water Canal at Sheikh Zayed Road.

RTA also displayed high-definition pedestrian detection camera systems with a twist. These new generation cameras produce pedestrian statistics in terms of number, sex, and age group.

Dubai Customs‘ Smart Virtual Agent initiative was also showcased at GITEX 2016. This venture represents a smart channel for communication with customers, which allows their queries about customs services, procedures and regulations to be answered more efficiently. Without the need for any physical employee the Smart Virtual Agent is an intelligent tool which operates 24/7. This cost effective measure helps efficiently redirect resources to other duties by reducing support cost. The self-improving platform utilizes Dubai Customs’ database and memory of similar cases to answer customer inquiries.

Many GITEX visitors had the opportunity to try out the Smart Inspection Glasses on display at the Dubai Customs stand. These tech heavy glasses facilitate containers’ field inspection, as customs inspectors can browse the customs declaration and x-ray images of the shipment simultaneously as well as its risk level. Inspectors can submit inspection reports using either the virtual keyboard or voice input feature.

Furthermore Dubai Customs showcased 8 happiness-led initiatives and innovations under the umbrella of Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation pavilion. Other innovations included the Authorized Economic Operator, Smart Inspection Lab, Smart Customs Route, Bags Smart Customs Inspection System and the Endangered Species Exhibition.

Five seminal trends have caught the eye at this Gitex event namely; Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), Biometrics, 3-D Printing, Mixed reality and drones. With artificial intelligence on the rise and the need for huge amounts of data to be stored, the progression and development of cloud storage is on the horizon. Cloud storage is a cloud computing model in which data is stored remotely on servers accessed from the World Wide Web, or “cloud.” Storage servers are built on virtualization techniques all maintained, managed, and backed-up online.

The technology world is increasingly realizing that Optical Digital Media is a safer way to store data compared to cloud technology solutions – this is evidenced by multiple data breaches where personal photographs and other information has been hacked and distributed to the public, and by the fact that Facebook has publicly stated that they have chosen to store their data with Optical Digital Media rather than cloud.

Falcon Technologies International (FTI) leads the way with regard to Optical Digital Media security and memory technology, and is conducting potentially ground-breaking research in this field with academic partners.

Powerful computing and storage implications

Technology has come a long way. We see constant development and growth in terms of computing hardware, software and storage. Although some technologists say, those gains are stalling, perhaps limited in by the physical boundary of raw materials that are used in central processing units.

Supercomputers are developing even faster than consumer-oriented computing technologies

Recently Microsoft thinks it may have found the solution namely field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). A FPGA is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – thus it is said to be “field-programmable”. To define the behavior of the FPGA, the user provides:

a hardware description language (HDL)
or a schematic design.

The HDL form is more optimal for large structures as you can specify them numerically rather than having to draw every piece by hand. However, schematic entry can allow for easier visualization of a design. FPGA allows you flexibility in your designs and is a way to change how parts of a system work without introducing a large amount of cost and risk of delays into the design schedule. Many designers have the false impression that building a system with a modern FPGA means you have to deal with millions of logic gates and a massive amounts of connections just to do something useful. But if that were the case, FPGA use wouldn’t be growing: Instead, there would only be about a half dozen FPGA users left. It turns out FPGA designers have done much of the heavy lifting of adding commonly needed components so all that you have to concentrate on is customizing those functions that are specific to your application. Examples of components produced by designers comprise: clock generators, dynamic random access memory (DRAM) controllers and even whole multicore microprocessors.

This type of computer chip that can be reprogrammed for specific tasks after they leave the factory floor, are adding firepower to Microsoft’s network of on-demand computing power.

What does this mean in real terms?

Using all of the power of Microsoft’s data centers worldwide, the company could translate all 5 million articles on the English language Wikipedia in less than a tenth of a second.

In the past 2 years Microsoft has quietly been installing FPGAs on the new servers; Microsoft added to its global fleet of data centers. They’re present usage includes ranking results in the Bing search engine and speed the performance of Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing network. Microsoft is alone among major cloud-computing players in widely deploying FPGA technology.

There are also implications for high performance computing and data storage such as solutions for Network Attached Storage (NAS), Storage Area Network (SAN), servers, and storage appliances.

Project Catapult is the technology behind Microsoft’s hyperscale acceleration fabric. The supercomputing substrate is built with the aim to accelerate the efforts in networking, security, cloud services and artificial intelligence.

Project Catapult combines an FPGA integrated into nearly every new Microsoft datacenter server. By exploiting the reconfigurable nature of FPGAs, at the server, the Catapult architecture delivers the efficiency and performance of custom hardware without the cost, complexity and risk of deploying fully customized ASICs into the datacenter. Moreover, the performance gain compared with CPUs is monumental and with less than 30% cost increase, and no more than 10% power increase.

Other FPGA Applications

Due to their programmable nature, FPGAs are an ideal for numerous markets. As the industry leader, Xilinx provides comprehensive solutions consisting of FPGA devices, advanced software, and configurable, ready-to-use IP cores for markets and applications such as:

Aerospace & Defense – Radiation-tolerant FPGAs along with intellectual property for image processing, waveform generation, and partial reconfiguration for SDRs.
Industrial – Xilinx FPGAs and targeted design platforms for Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) enable higher degrees of flexibility, faster time-to-market, and lower overall non-recurring engineering costs (NRE) for a wide range of applications such as industrial imaging and surveillance, industrial automation, and medical imaging equipment.
Medical – For diagnostic, monitoring, and therapy applications, the Virtex FPGA and Spartan® FPGA families can be used to meet a range of processing, display, and I/O interface requirements.
Security – Xilinx offers solutions that meet the evolving needs of security applications, from access control to surveillance and safety systems.
Wireless Communications – RF, base band, connectivity, transport and networking solutions for wireless equipment, addressing standards such as WCDMA, HSDPA, WiMAX and others.

The advancement in computing power and storage capability combined with substantial savings and efficiency introduced through FPGA technology mean the world of supercomputing is more accessible then ever.

At the same time, the advancement of supercomputing technologies automatically means more data storage requirements. Every year world produces more and more data and therefore more and more information needs to be stored. Some information needs to be stored for more extended periods of time like 10-20-30 or even 100 years. There is no better long-term data storage mediums than archival discs.

Falcon Technologies International LLC has developed Century Archival product line, which is a cutting-edge technology with built in Gold or Platinum layers to ensure maximum security, longevity and protection for stored data.

Century Archival products are designed to secure data for hundreds of years – FTI’s Century Archival DVD product has been demonstrated in testing to be capable of storing data for up to 200 years, whereas the Century Archival CD product has demonstrated a longevity in excess of 400 years, making the Century Archival line the most durable and secure archival digital media product available in the market today.

Internet of Things: The Next Stage of Social Development

Imagine that you suddenly woke up and it’s autumn of 1916. What type of world would you witness around you? Can you just close your eyes, take a moment and imagine?

Seems like a 100 years is not such a long time frame, but... in fact it is huge in terms of technical progress — Seems like a 100 years is not such a long time frame, but… in fact it is huge in terms of technical progress

Exactly a century ago, telecommunications were in their infancy and still regarded as something from the world of semi-science fiction. Most wide-spread transport means were via railroad and maritime vessels, accountants and bankers carefully kept their records exclusively on paper and the world as a whole still seemed to be immense in size. There were of course ways of transferring the information through relatively fast avenues like telegraph: a message from Europe could be delivered to North America for only 15 minutes with the means of Trans-Atlantic Cable, but this is something that only the selected few can afford.

The very first Transatlantic cable was laid in 1854-58 and connected Newfoundland, Canada with Valentia Island, Ireland

Who would ever dare to imagine that a hundred years later we will be sending control commands to a robotic rover, that operates on the surface of another planet, taking us same 15 minutes to do it? 15 minutes to get the signal inside the masterpiece of human engineering and artificial intelligence over the distance of 55 million kilometers. It is hard to picture such distance even today in 21st century, but, nonetheless, it is actually happening.

NASA's Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars — NASA’s Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars

This small example of technical progress makes us think about the future and how it will look like. During last 100 years’ humanity managed to increase the speed of communication exponentially and it seems like this is directly linked to the overall pace of scientific growth.

Recently we started to hear the term “Internet of Things” more often. Some say that this is a phenomenon that will take humanity to the next level of development. At the same time, some have never even heard about it. And this is typical for the brand new concepts. Coming back to the “100 years ago” example, it would be fair to mention that a telephone wasn’t even taken seriously by many people at the very beginning. Some even were making jokes about “how it would look like if a gentlemen and a lady would keep entertaining themselves with wireless telephone boxes instead of enjoying company of each other while walking in the park”. Sounds hilarious, right?

Early 20th century caricature about "wireless telegraphy" — Early 20th century caricature about “wireless telegraphy”

So what is Internet of things? In 2013 the Global Standards Initiative on Internet of Things (IoT-GSI) defined the IoT as “the infrastructure of the information society.”

As you probably know, there are several distinguished stages of the societal world development: feudal society, which was dominant model in Middle Age, was replaced by the Industrial Society after the Industrial Revolution back in 18th century. Later on, in 20th century the the model got a significant push by overall technical progress, and eventually with the emergence on Informational and Communication Technologies we are now in transition period that is leading us into Post-Industrial Era – a stage of society that is very often called “Information Society”.

The infrastructure of this society will be created by the next generation technologies, that will be connected between each other by the means of Global Network of Internet. And this infrastructure will be there to change the ways of mass-production and global trade forever. Have a look at this short infographic video to understand how it already starts to work:

However, there are some challenges that are coming along this “Informational Revolution”, one of the biggest being data security and safety of communication. Nothing new under the sun, as they say: when the first commercial airlines were launched there was much concern on flight safety (which are still there, even though commercial aviation will soon celebrate 100 years anniversary).

Andrew and Ken Munro of Pen Test Partners (a UK-based IT security company) created a first virus targeted to hit one of the essential parts of any SMART-home technology: internal temperature control system. They later admitted that the malware was specially designed to demonstrate the weak points of the IoT concept. Results of their experiment were demonstrated in August during the Def Con IT conference.

For the experiment, they used one of the most popular models of the thermostat. Tierney and Munro discovered vulnerabilities on the device by means of which they have managed to remotely install malicious software. The hacked thermostat began to change the room temperature from minimum to maximum, and then display the request to transfer money to the account of intruders. Tierney and Munro said that they are planning to transfer all the information about the vulnerabilities they found to the manufacturer of the thermostat.

Internet of Things is shaping today and this process is irreversible. But it brings to the top of the list the data and connectivity security issues. Manufacturers should never underestimate these issues and pay maximum attention to the possible weak points of their products. It may be reached through careful and comprehensive QC/QA procedures.

Falcon Technologies International have never underestimated data security, and this is one of the basic values we put at the core of every single product we develop. Once the data is recorded on Century Archival disc, it is safe for centuries, and we give a 100% guarantee for that.

Data Archiving Architecture: Finding a Perfect Balance of Storage Mediums.

Data archiving has always been a challenge both for the enterprises and manufacturers of data storage solutions. The basic laws of thermodynamics tend to have the effect of deteriorating data storage capacity in the long run, so it is important to understand the needs of each individual data archiving project to be able to choose the right storage system based on the appropriate technology under the proper environmental conditions. That should be also combined with relevant migration and replication practices to improve the safety and accessibility for the extended periods of time.

The most common means of data archiving today are flash memory, hard disk drives, magnetic tape and optical discs. Data storage architects usually use one of these technologies, or their combinations, when designing their systems.

Let’s try and take a closer look at these technologies.

Flash memory got really popular in last 10 years.

First consider flash memory in archiving. At the 2013 Flash Memory Summit Jason Taylor from Facebook, in a keynote speech, presented the idea of using really low endurance flash memory for a cold storage archive. According to Marty Czekalski of Seagate at the MSST conference, flash writing is best done at elevated temperatures while data retention and data disturb favor storage at lower temperatures. The JEDEC JESD218A endurance specification states that if flash power-off temperature is at 25 degrees C then retention is 101 weeks—that isn’t quite 2 years. So it appears conventional flash memory may not have good media archive life and should only be used for storing transitory data.

HDD-based storage systems are good for so-called "hot" archives, where data needs to be easily accessible. — HDD-based storage systems are good for so-called “hot” archives, where data needs to be easily accessible.

Hard disk drives are often used in active archives because the various hard disk drive arrays can be continually connected to the storage network, allowing relatively rapid access to content. Hard disk drive active archives can also be combined with flash memory to provide better overall system performance. However hard disk drives do not last forever – they can wear out with continued use and even if the power is turned off the data in the hard disk drive will eventually decay due to thermal erasure (again we run into the enemy of data retention, thermodynamics).

In practice, hard disk drive arrays have built in redundancy and data scrubbing to help retain data for a long period. It is probably good advice to assume that HDDs in an active archive will last only 3-5 years and will need to be replaced over time.

Less active archives where data is stored for longer periods of time will be interested in storage media that can retain the information stored on them for an extended period of time. There are two common digital storage media that are used for long term cold storage applications – magnetic tape and optical discs.

Let’s look at these two storage technologies and compare them for long term cold storage applications.

Magnetic tape cartridge developed by IBM

Magnetic tapes used for archiving come in half-inch tape cartridges. The popular formats used to day are the LTO format supported by the Ultrium LTO Program, the T10000 series tapes from Oracle/ StorageTek and the TS series enterprise tapes from IBM. Modern magnetic tapes have a storage life under low temperature/humidity storage conditions and low usage of several decades and currently native storage capacities per cartridges as high as 8.5 TB.

When not actively being written or read, magnetic tape cartridges can sit in a library system consuming no power. Digital magnetic tape is thus a good candidate for long-term data retention and has a long history of use in many industries for this application.

Gold layer on Archival CDs/DVDs allows to store media for centuries

Optical storage has also been used for long-term data retention and environmental stress tests indicate that the latest generation of optical media should have an expected life-time of at least several decades. FalconMedia Century Archival discs are actually able to store data for hundreds of years, thanks to special gold and platinum reflective layers, that are used in their construction. At the Open Compute Project Summit in January 2014 Facebook, presented a 1 PB optical disc storage system prototype with 10,000 discs. When Facebook started the actual exploitation of the system it actually reduced company’s storage costs by 50% and the energy consumption by 80% compared to their previous HDD-based cold storage system.

Ken Wood from Hitachi Data Systems at the MSST Conference presented research results that proved hypothesis that the migration/remastering costs for 5 PB of content over 75 years is much less for an optical system with the media replaced every 50 years rather than more frequent tape and HDD replacement.

A lot of digital data has persistent value and so long term retention of that data is very important. In an Oracle talk at MSST they estimated that storage for archiving and retention is currently a $3B market, growing to over $7B by 2017. Several storage technologies can play a role in an archive system depending upon the level of activity expected in the archive. Flash memory can provide caching of frequently used or anticipated content to speed retrieval times while HDDs are often used for data that is relatively frequently accessed.

Magnetic tape and optical disks provide low cost, long-term inactive storage with additional latency for data access vs. HDDs due to the time to mount the media in a drive. Thus depending upon the access requirements for an archive it may be most effective to combine two or even three technologies to get the right balance of performance and storage costs. As the total content that we keep increases, these considerations will become more important to drive new generations of storage technologies geared toward protecting valuable content and bringing it to the future.

The Importance of Quality Control: Observations from Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Case

One of the world’s leading smartphone manufacturers recently got themselves in a tricky situation that is very hard to manage at the moment, both logistically and PR-wise.

Two weeks ago, Samsung had no other choice but to create one of the biggest global handset recalls in the world. This was caused by 35 registered cases of exploding phones, or phones catching fire during charging. Galaxy Note 7 was launched on August 19th, and as of today, nearly 2.5 million phones are to be returned to the manufacturer – a major drawback for the Korean technological giant, that severely undermines its effort to push its phone up the value chain.

35 cases of battery self-explosion - definitely unexpected and unpleasant surprise for Korean giant — 35 cases of battery self-explosion – definitely unexpected and unpleasant surprise for Korean giant

It wouldn’t be such a big deal, but we all know about the so-called “dominoes effect”.

Other Samsung products, such as recently released Galaxy S7 Edge, and soon to be presented Galaxy Tab S3, are facing problems as well. Since all of them are assembled on the same factories as Note 7, consumers will no longer associate them with terms “trendy” or “reliable” (most likely, these terms will be substituted with “exploding batteries” and “poor quality” deep inside the consumers’ minds).

The US Federal Aviation Administration has already started discussions on the topic of whether to prohibit the in-flight usage of mobile devices. Samsung gets questioned every single day on whether the Note 8 model will be safe, there is always the chance that the Note 7 case will push FAA to prohibit the usage of mobile devices during flights.

A good lesson to learn: one should never ever underestimate QC and QC

It is truly regrettable what happened to Samsung; in the long run this failure can result in a major brand image decline with a further global sales drop, a mistake that will cost Korean giant a lot. This case brings us back to the production stage, one of the purposes of which is to avoid such negative outcomes via quality control and quality assurance.

Quality control emphasizes testing of products to uncover defects and reporting to management who make the decision to allow or deny a product release, whereas quality assurance attempts to improve and stabilize production (and associated processes) to avoid, or at least minimize, issues which may potentially lead to the defects in future.

FTI factory worker visually inspects randomly selected disc

Falcon Technologies International emphasizes the quality of its products and therefore allocates a large portion of its resources in quality control and quality assurance. For over a decade the company strives to deliver reliable and long lasting optical media to the market and so far the quality of its products is beyond doubt.

When it comes to data storage, it is important to keep in mind that a data carrier’s reliability is crucial for its integrity and longevity and this is why FTI ensures that every single disc produced by the factory is a storage device tailored to protect and store data with a 100% error-free rate.

Samsung’s battery failure is a good lesson to learn for everyone in the technology and consumer electronics market – it always better to spend more time and focus on quality control, rather then lose the track of things driven by the blind efforts to catch up with your competitors.

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DISCLAIMER: The above article is about Samsung case study which is used as an example of the importance of QC/QA procedures. It was published to stress out the importance of these processes. One of the core values of FTI is Quality and Reliability and we have used the Samsung Case to emphasize once again that FTI learns lessons from the other’s mistakes and it is one more argument in favour of proper QC and QA procedures which should be always on the top of any production company’s priority list.

Headphone Jack: Reliable Technology or a “Wired” Alien in the World of Wireless Technology?

People who are used to hooking headphones up to their smartphones could soon find themselves searching for a non-existent connector. Rumour had it for more than 6 months now, and finally it was confirmed to be true: Apple presented an all-new iPhone 7 last week, and guess what? Engineers from Apple’s home in Cupertino said “Fare thee well!” to the 3.5 mm audio jack connector.

"We believe in wireless future" - Apple says — “We believe in wireless future” – Apple says

Now, since Apple is undoubtedly the world’s leading smartphone manufacturer, all the other market players will follow this example and soon the era of wired headphones may be over (just like recent end of VHS tapes era).

However, the sad thing is, the headphone jack – is a very good connector. It’s a universal interface that can be still plugged into your smartphone, your tablet and computer, your TV, hi-fi, radio, Game Boy or console. And it has been used widely for decades, more or less replacing the larger 1/4-inch jacks (which dated from the 1870s, originally used for manual telephone exchange) since the 1960s for all but specialist applications, such as electric guitars and some more powerful amps.

Originally jack was developed for manual telephone exchange systems back in 1870s

As smartphones have become the primary music device for a whole generation and more, most headphones spend the majority of their time plugged into these pocket computers. But now the jack’s dominance is being contested.

Several smartphone manufacturers have started shipping handsets without 3.5 mm sockets even before Apple’s move with iPhone 7 last Wednesday. For example, Lenovo’s new modular Moto Z shrinks the headphone socket for a dongle that’s plugged into the relatively new USB-type C socket in the bottom. China’s LeEco also dumped the socket, while chip giant Intel is actively encouraging others to kill off the analogue 3.5mm socket in favour of USB-type C.

Most of the smartphone manufacturers are likely to follow Apple's move — Most of the smartphone manufacturers are likely to follow Apple’s move

According to Android Authority Blog, moving from analogue to digital connector may be both positive and negative in certain aspects. Moreover, the article published on the news portal states that it is expected that both options will sit side by side in the market for the foreseeable future and it is still too early to say that 3.5 mm jack will be fully dumped as a technology.

Why would Apple and other smartphone manufacturers dump the handy, helpful, user-friendly headphone jack? There are several reasons. The Lightning port in the bottom of an iPhone is already capable of outputting audio, and is needed for power, so if one of the two has to go to save a little bit of space, the 3.5mm jack gets the boot.

Chief marketing officer of Jaybird (wireless headphones manufacturer), Rene Oehlerking is sure that the days of the analog headphone jack are over. He believes that this technology has always been like a ghost from the analogue past in the world of digital technology and it is exactly the same interface that used to be plugged into with famous Walkman players, that were first introduced back in 1979.

Walkman changed the way we listen music long before iPod took the stage.

Even though there are different, sometimes even opposite opinions on the future of 3.5 mm audio jack interface, it is obvious that this technology will eventually reduce its presence on the mass market over the next 5 years. But there is absolutely no doubt, that it’s authority will stay untouched in music-recording and movie-production industries, where quality of sound monitoring and mastering is essential.

Very similar situation is with optical media. Realistically speaking, CDs and DVDs are gradually moving from mass-market to niche-industries, such as data archiving, sound and video production, etc. These industries still preserve commonly-considered “outdated” formats, since their reliability is under no question.

FalconMedia Premium line - reliable storage solution for music and video production studios — FalconMedia Premium line – reliable storage solution for music and video production studios

For example, video-production and music recording studios still tend to use high-end optical media, such as FalconMedia Premium Line, to store big volumes of sound and video materials. It is cheaper and safe, since optical media does not require any constant electricity supply and has a way more extended lifespan.

As a conclusion, it is not necessary to run after latest inventions and get the new technologies implemented immediately after their introduction. Sometimes old, but tried-and-true things happen to be way more reliable and safe.

Do’s and Don’ts in Optical Media Data Archiving.

We all have some data or information that we want to preserve for as long a period of time as possible: whether it is family home videos or photo albums, precious memories of the past, or something that has the magical ability to recreate the best moments of our lives. As we wrote in one of our previous blog articles, many of us still have our old video archives stored on VHS tapes. When it comes to the photographs, it is very often the same story: how many of you still remembers Grandma’s old photo-albums with black and white photographs in them?

Old family photographs tend to fade out with time. Might be a good idea to store their digital copies.

In this article we will discuss a little more about the preservation of digital data using CDs and DVDs. We gathered some valuable guidelines from a number of sources including NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), other DVD and CD manufacturers and data archiving specialists.

The consensus of opinions, based on accelerated lifetime testing conducted by specialists worldwide, is that a high quality archival grade CDs and DVDs, if properly handled and stored, should preserve data for at least 100 years. Some professional grade optical media like FalconMedia Century Archival with gold and platinum layers even suggest a lifetime as long as 300-500 years before the data becomes unreadable.

Comparative lifespan of various data storage devices.

Of course, whether the hardware required to read a current CD or DVD will be around in 75 or 200 years is another matter. Most system today don’t have even the hardware to read 5.25″ floppy disks (which were common and popular 25 years ago). But in any case, the lifespan of optical media as a data storage medium is expected to be at least 4 times longer than that.

The key points here are that long life depends on using HIGH QUALITY archival DVDs and CDs and handling and storing them properly. The less you handle them the better, so for real archival use it is strongly recommended to make at least two copies. Put one away in storage under the conditions outlined below (vertical storage in a case under low temperature and low humidity conditions) and use one as your “working” copy.

THINGS TO DO:

Handle discs by the outer edge or the center hole.
Use a non solvent-based felt-tip permanent marker to mark the label side of the disc.
Keep dirt or other foreign matter from the disc.
Store discs upright (book style) in plastic cases specified for CDs and DVDs.
Return discs to storage cases immediately after use.
Leave discs in their packaging (or cases) to minimize the effects of environmental changes.
Open a recordable disc package only when you are ready to record data on that disc.
Store in a cool, dry, dark environment in which the air is clean.
Remove dirt, foreign material, fingerprints, smudges, and liquids by wiping with a clean cotton fabric in a straight line from the center of the disc toward the outer edge.
Use CD/DVD cleaning detergent, isopropyl alcohol or methanol to remove stubborn dirt or material.
Check the disc surface before recording.

Store discs in vertical position to ensure longer lifespan and data readability.

A standard jewel case is adequate for storage. In jewel cases, the disc is suspended by the center hole and isolates the written area from contacting any surface, it also offers some protection against rapid temperature changes

THINGS NOT TO DO:

Bend the disc.
Use adhesive labels.
Store discs horizontally for a long time (years).
Open a recordable optical disc package if you are not ready to record.
Expose discs to extreme heat or high humidity.
Expose discs to extreme rapid temperature or humidity changes.
Expose recordable discs to prolonged sunlight or other sources of UV light.
Write or mark in the data area of the disc (area where the laser “reads”).
Clean in a circular direction around the disc.
Scratch the label side of a CD.
Use a pen, pencil, or fine tip marker to write on the disc.
Write on the disc with markers that contain solvents.
Try to peel off or re-position a label.

It is strongly recommended to use special CD-PEN to label CDs and DVDs

Here are some more general recommendations on storing the archival optical media:

For archiving recordable (R) discs, discs that have a gold metal reflective layer are recommended. It’s said that with current disks, which are better sealed than they used to be, the use of gold as a reflecting layer is less important than it was, however it certainly doesn’t hurt!
For general storage, a temperature between 4°C (39°F) and 20°C (68°F) is recommended with a relative humidity of 20% to 50%
For long term storage, 18°C and 40% RH are recommended.
For extended term archival storage even lower temperature and humidity are recommended.
Storage in the dark, while not absolutely required, can’t hurt.

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FalconMedia products are amongst the highest quality CDs and DVD in the world today, with benchmark testing against other optical media products from the main players in the market showing improved durability, longevity and disc-to-disc consistency. They have also demonstrated lower error rates and jitters, and the printable layers of their discs show excellent ink-drying results and high resistance to water. The combination of these factors makes FalconMedia products the more secure archival media solution available in the market today.

End of the VHS-era: How Home Video Shaped The Media Industry.

Rewind your memories and just take a moment to realize that the entire era has just ended this summer; the last-known company that was still producing video cassette recorders (also known as VCRs) has officially announced that it has finalized production of the last unit.

That’s right, on July 21 The New York Times pointed to a short announcement published earlier in the Japanese newspaper Nikkei which was essentially a press release by the Funai Corporation, stating that the company took a decision to cease the production of VCRs due to the “difficulty of acquiring parts”.

Funai Corporation said that there is a "difficulty in acquiring parts" for VCRs — Funai Corporation said that there is a “difficulty in acquiring parts” for VCRs

The New York Times also referenced a statement in which the company said, “We are the last manufacturer (of VCRs) in all of the world.” Further to this, it was stated that only 750,000 VCRs were sold in 2015 worldwide, significantly down from the millions sod every year decades earlier.

It is hard to imagine anyone from generations growing up with streaming technology which brings all the latest movies and television shows straight to TV’s, tablets and smartphones screens, to get a feeling of nostalgia from this news. However, virtually everyone from those in their late-20s and older will almost certainly remember the sight of VHS tapes scattered around the floor adjacent to their televisions, and boxes full of old VHS tapes dumped somewhere in the closet or the basement of their homes. These tapes were extremely popular in 80s and 90s, when VHS was one of the most popular kinds of home entertainment.

Piles of old VHS tapes - nostalgia of 90s and 80s — Piles of old VHS tapes – nostalgia of 90s and 80s

People used to record their favorite TV shows and popular movies from premium cable channels so that they could view them again later, which was sometimes a complicated procedure requiring the setting of a timer on the VCR in order to program unit to record at a certain time period. For the first time, people started having the magic feeling of freedom from the TV schedule: you didn’t have to be at home at a certain time to watch something anymore.

Programming the timer on a VCR to get the right TV shows recorded was sometimes tricky

In some parts of the world, like mid-80s USSR, very often smuggled VHS tapes carried the valuable information about “Western culture” and “the capitalist way of life” to the younger generations who were planning to rise in rebellion against the isolation imposed by the old Soviet Union.

Many of us have important memories stored in a form of home video footages on VHS tapes: a wedding video, the birth of a child, vacations, proms and other important events. These footages are really important for us – they are like time capsules that conserve the best moments that can be always pulled out and re-lived at any moment.

Important memories stored on VHS and other tapes.

VHS tapes have now been officially consigned to history – making it a good idea to transfer all the footage stored on them to some more reliable media storage, such as DVDs. Magnetic tape is more sensitive to environmental factors, and therefore the tape (and footage!) may deteriorate and result in data loss. DVDs are more long lasting, so you might consider to use them to make a backup of your precious memories.

FalconMedia Value Line - a product that is suitable for your important memories storage. — FalconMedia Value Line – a product that is suitable for your important memories storage.

Falcon Technologies International LLC has developed a product line specially designed for consumer market. Value Line is designed to meet the needs of cost-conscious consumer and represents a perfect balance between quality and price. The good product is complimented by entry-level price range and no failure guarantee, making Value Line a highly competitive product on the market.

Media Duplication: How to Determine Your Needs

Thousands of business organisations and enterprises both from the public and private sectors use CDs and DVDs as the primary means to distribute important content, and with good reason: CDs and DVDs are inexpensive to produce and user-friendly for even the least tech-savvy viewers and listeners — whether they’re at home, in the car or at the office.

The most common uses for media duplication include: music, movies, software, video games, reports, sales presentations.

In the past, CD or DVD duplication and printing was a long, tedious process. Each disc required special attention to burn, print and apply sticky labels, one at a time. Now, this process can be automated – CD and DVD publishers take the stress out of the duplication process, allowing you to start the job and continue going about your daily business while the machine does the work for you.

Professional disc duplicators may fully automate the process

So, now that you know the basics and your company is ready to automate its media duplication process, here are a few things to consider while narrowing down your options.

The first thing you must know is the quantity of discs you will need to produce at one time. There are duplicators that are great for larger quantities, where multiple discs are duplicated simultaneously. Some fully automated CD and DVD publishing devices hold 20 to 100 discs at a time. These tools not only duplicate the content, but also print onto the discs. Because disc publishers come in various models and capacities, it is vital to understand your quantity needs in order to determine what type of machine will best fit your requirements.

Another important factor that should be taken into consideration is speed. It is essential to identify the timeframes of the duplication project. The target quantity of duplicated discs will definitely influence the deadlines of the particular project, but there are always ways to achieve fast duplication within limited timeframes – it all depends on duplication tools production capacities.

Disc printable surface - its quality is essential and should be taken into account. — Disc printable surface – its quality is essential and should be taken into account.

The next thing that should be taken into account is disc itself, especially its printable surface. This is something that’s something really important when it comes to professional media duplication: at the end of the day, printable surfaces are the ones that ultimately sell the end product. Optical media devices such as blank CDs and DVDs may have excellent technical benchmark testing results, but if the printable surface is of poor quality, they become literally useless pieces of pressed polycarbonate that are completely unsuitable for professional media duplication industry.

Dr. Sean Farnan, Head of FTI’s Research and Development Department commented: ‘The challenges of today’s B2B digitised data industry, demands speeds, reliability and data longevity. Duplication and Replication equipment is costly. It has to run with high yield and minimum supervision to give the best return of investment to the business, while delivering the best value for money, for the business customer. The role and the choice of optical media is crucial in delivering these business objectives. Using a cheap, sub-standard optical media product is clearly a false economy and the decision to use such products to increase margin can seriously undermine the reputation of a data processing business. The optical media MUST deliver quality to the end-user.”

FalconMEDIA Dupli Line - perfect solution for any media duplication needs — FalconMEDIA Dupli Line – perfect solution for any media duplication needs

FalconMEDIA Dupli Line has been specially designed to suit professional media duplication needs. It was tested by ALL the major drive makers to ensure full compatibility across the range of duplication and replication systems.This product line has three essential features that makes it a perfect choice for your media duplication projects:

Excellent benchmark test results and 100% reliable media (proven by number of in-house and independent tests
Low cost, yet high quality grade
Wide range of premium printable surfaces

For over a decade, Falcon Technologies International LLC prioritised its Research and Development efforts on printable surfaces and managed to implement high-tech solutions into its production process. FTI’s wide range of printable layers are designed to meet any professional media duplication industry requirements according to highest standards.

Healthcare Information Technology Market is Expected to Grow

A recent industry report’s findings confirmed the projected growth of the global Radiology Information System (RIS) market and estimated it to reach a value of $980.2 million by 2024. A large segment of major scientific findings and technological advancements go hand-in-hand with the continuously growing demand for Healthcare InformationTechnology (HIT), which makes it one of the key driving forces of the market growth.

IT became an essential part of modern day healthcare industry.

The in-depth research report on Global RIS (Radiology Information System) Market with detailed charts and figures is available HERE.

Healthcare Information Technology is based on several major pillars, one of them being Electronic Medical Records (EMR). It is considered to be one of the most important HIT’s subsystems, that stores, processes and analyses medical data of patients. With the emergence of Radiology Information System (RIS) and Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) the entire Healthcare industry has been taken to the next level. Text-based patient records are now backed up by radiology images, that may be stored safely for decades without any risk of being damaged or lost.

Modern technologies take healthcare to the next level

Next generation Healthcare Informational Systems that are being implemented globally to ensure higher business security and patient confidentiality. RIS and PACS are recognised as most efficient systems of electronic imaging management and are gaining popularity in developing economies such as China and India, where the populations are so big that healthcare sector has no other choice but to implement them.

Falcon Technologies International LLC focuses its Research and Development efforts on niche segments of optical media such as HIT and has developed a special product line that meets the sector’s requirements.

FalconMEDIA MEDILINE - specially designed to meet the HIT needs. — FalconMEDIA MEDILINE – specially designed to meet the HIT needs.

FalconMEDIA MEDILINE is an ideal solution for providing the patients with imaging reports, radiology and treatment history. With its use, distribution of medical reports to the patients becomes more cost-efficient and easy task.

All FalconMEDIA MEDILINE products are fully compatible with Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) and Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standards.