Most people are aware of the importance of high speed communications and its impact on the growth of your business. Abica is now recognised as the fastest growing fibre network provider in Glasgow. We can provide fibre optic leased line Internet circuits direct to your business premises. We help businesses in Glasgow to connect at speeds of up to 1Gb/sec.
What is Fibre to the Cabinet?
FTTC or Fibre-to-the-Cabinet, delivers private access into the Abica private cloud via various different types of next generation copper access. FTTC is an access technology defined by the fibre termination point.
FTTC Benefits:
Because the fibre is closer to the termination point, higher bandwidths can be achieved
Areas previously prohibitive for bandwidth due to distance from exchange may now be eligible
FTTC provides a viable alternative to xDSL
As exchanges are enabled, FTTC is becoming more widely available
EFM – Ethernet First Mile
EFM is a low cost leased line service up to 20Mbit/sec. It is delivered over copper twisted pairs from the local telephone exchange. The service is symmetrical and uncontended.
EFM is the perfect replacement/upgrade for SDSL and is the most competitive high speed symmetrical leased line Internet service currently available.
Increasing productivity to your business.
Call one of our team if you would like to know more.
It is a reality that your connectivity can fail. We acknowledge it and all businesses should. Time to think of a Plan B.
Businesses rely on an Internet connection to run their business – Fact. Losing connection even if only for a brief period of time, can have a real impact on your business. Hoping for the best is not perhaps the answer. Abica now offer a back up solution that can act as a “Failover” for businesses so that loss of connection will not happen.
Hopefully, your broadband service is reliable most of the time. Even if you’ve never had a problem, having a back up router allows you peace of mind that your business will not be affected if the connection fails intermittently.
Our routers not only provide a vast array of security and connectivity features, but they also have secondary connections for an alternative (backup) Internet connection. In the event of your ADSL failing, our router will automatically switch over to one of the following:
A second ADSL line, using a separate ADSL modem and different ISP
3G Cellular Data using a USB 3G modem (e.g. T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone etc.)
Analogue dial-up using a USB modem (Feature ETA June 2009)
Analogue dial-up is much slower than ADSL, but usable if your Internet connection is essential.
A cable-modem service (e.g. VirginMedia)
ISDN dialup (single or dual channel) (‘S’ models only)
Any other Internet connection via an Ethernet cable
Once your primary (main) broadband service is restored, the router again automatically switches back to that. As well as failover mode, when both connections are available, the router can use both at the same time to provide more total Internet bandwidth to your network.
To find out more about these routers please give one of our team a call, or request a quote.
A graphic or icon used to represent a computer user, either online or in a video game.
IP address
An IP (Internet protocol) address is a number assigned to a device connected to the Internet. Websites use this to send the information that you’ve requested back to your computer, rather than a different computer down the road or halfway around the world.
Since these numbers are usually assigned in country-based blocks, an IP address can often be used to identify the country, county and city from which a computer is connecting to the Internet. Unlike your home address, though, most people’s IP addresses are dynamically assigned—they change regularly.
Genius Scan turns your iPhone into a pocket scanner. It enables you to quickly scan documents on the go and email the scans as JPEG or PDF. The Genius Scan scanner technology includes smart page detection, perspective correction, image post-processing. It allows you to build PDF documents with multiple scans.
But what makes it different from the camera?
Detects the page frame and corrects the perspective
Enhances the scan with colour or black-and-white post-processing
Emails the scans as JPG
Creates PDF documents with multiple scans
Emails the PDF documents
Exports documents to iBooks or any app able to read PDF files
Share scans to Twitter
With Genius Scan+: Exports the documents to Dropbox, Evernote and Google Docs
Shares document over Wifi for easy access from your computer
Documents are processed on the phone, not sent to a third-party server
What would you use it for?
to quickly scan a form you just scanned when you don’t have a scanner
At the university, to take a picture of a whiteboard
On the road, to archive receipts
To make a copy when you have no copier available
To archive handwritten notes or share them with colleagues
Save the perfect recipe after cooking
Save handwritten memos, or book pages for future reference
Share a good restaurant menu on Twitter Name: Google Docs
Price: Free
Devices: Android
Picture:
Description:
Create, edit, upload and share your documents with the Google Docs app.
Designed for Android to save you time finding your docs
Edits to your documents appear to collaborators in seconds
Make quick changes to spread sheets
View your documents, PDFs, presentations and more
Upload and convert files to the Google Docs format
Take a photo of printed text and convert it to a Google document
Share docs with your device’s contacts
Optimized experience to take advantage of larger screens for tablet users, Honeycomb (Android 3.0+)
Details: Keynote is the most powerful presentation app ever designed for a mobile device. Built from the ground up for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, it makes creating a world-class presentation — complete with animated charts and transitions — as simple as touching and tapping. Use full-screen view to present right on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Or use video mirroring to present it on an HDTV, and preview your slides and notes on your device using the presenter display. Keynote works with iCloud, so your presentations stay up to date across all your iOS devices — automatically.
What would you use it for?
Share your work by exporting it as a Keynote ’09, Microsoft PowerPoint, or PDF file and sending it via Mail. Or publish your presentations to iWork.com public beta to share with anyone on a Mac or PC.
Microsoft office
The Word Web App gives you a healthy set of features and an unprecedented amount of storage. Anyone looking for an online word processing solution should consider the Word Web App. That’s particularly true if you already use Microsoft Office on the desktop.
The Office Web Apps include 25GB of storage. You can store all your documents for access anywhere.
The Word Web App offers a basic set of tools in a familiar package.
Documents can be uploaded or downloaded easily. They can even be opened in Office 2010 on the desktop with a few clicks.
The Word Web App finally brings Microsoft Office to the cloud. It’s a solid offering. And, if Microsoft addresses some of its shortcomings, the Office Web Apps could help Microsoft fend off its competitors.
Free Microsoft Word
Similar in look and feel to the desktop version of Office
Microsoft Office Web Apps offers 25GB of storage
Integrates with Office 2010
Sharing documents is easy
Documents to go full version key
Devices: iPhone, Android, iPad
Description: Documents To Go quickly proves its competence by delivering crisp, clear reproductions of your Word, PowerPoint, PDF, Excel, and iWork documents, including Microsoft Office 2007 files. Most core tools to create, edit, save, and send Microsoft Word, Excel documents, and PowerPoint presentations are tucked into expanding tool menus. Although much of the app’s navigation is intuitive, expect some trial and error. The newest tool, for editing and creating PowerPoint presentations, is the most limited in what it can do.
And a few useful apps for the following:
Money: Tip and Split – divides up your meal bill among a group of people and lets you calculate the tip.
Photos: Hipstamatic (£1.49)
The best vintage photo app on the scene. Sophisticated by providing virtual lenses – the process can be quite addictive and the results are always brilliant.
Videos: 8mm Vintage Camera (£1.49)
Amazing video camera app that does what Hipstamatic does for photography, for film. You can easily reproduce films that look like they were made in the 1920s. It’s very cool.
Beauty: Dos and Don’ts (Free) A good guide to fashion disasters – you become the fashion police. Take your pic of someone who is need of a fashion tip or two and send. If your pic is selected it will be shared with the world.
And one for the road……
Last Night Never Happened (£0.69) – The World’s First Ever Morning After App.
Ever regret having drunk typed. Ok we cannot erase a drunk dial, but they have invented an app to erase all posts, tweets and photos that you thought were hilarious in the heat of the moment!
Finding simple ways to increase productivity and improve on the efficiency of your business without investing more money can be really easy. Providing all my staff with Smartphones has proved resilient in improving the consistency of communications between my staff members and with my clients allowing them an easy work flow that is not hindered by locality. Just knowing that my staff can retrieve emails on the hop, access information at the click of a button, find locations for meetings quickly even allowing our engineers to use the technology available in this era to enhance our service offering – saves time and money. We have looked into how our customers can benefit from our great packages on some of the most user friendly Smartphones.
Why Smartphones for all?
As a business owner, my initial hesitancy towards allowing Smartphones for all my staff would be cost. With new cost effective Smartphones emerging in the market this is no longer an issue and no longer such an extravagance only useful to Managers.
5 Benefits of Smartphones to your business.
What is a smartphone?
A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality.
The device has been designed mainly for professionals, small business owners and executives who are looking for a phone that’s easy enough for the average user to understand, but powerful enough to get a good amount of work done anywhere, any time. In 2012, we see the transcendence of Smartphones to all employees not exclusive to those in a more Managerial role.
The Benefits.
1. Pocket size power – Improve productivity with an Office in your pocket
A smartphone does not necessarily offer the full advantages of a personal computer, but it could save your staff the hassle of carrying their laptops and their accompanying equipment around with them everywhere. Bigger and more important workloads that will require their laptops are likely to be carried out in the office anyway. For those who are constantly out and about in the field, a Smartphone will substantially enhance their capabilities, being able to access all the benefits available with the device.
2. Organisation
The smartphone can function as personal organisers, with diaries, contact lists, and automatic reminders to improve efficiency and de-duplicating unnecessary admin tasks.Furthermore, the constant emergence of new business apps on the market is increasing its functionality on a daily basis.
When combined with work e-mail it can become a highly sophisticated, powerful business tool. It’s also an excellent way for all your staff to stay connected in a forever changing, fast-paced world.
3. Never out of reach – build better relationships with real time access
Smartphones, will not only allow you to check for email but can enable synchronisation between any email accounts like Outlook, Gmail, and Hotmail. They can also send notifications of any new messages. It enables the individual to continuously be accessible and productive.
4. Faster communication – reduce downtime
Access to the web can substantially help your staff’s knowledge – and knowledge is power.
5. Access to company data – improve on efficiency
Your smartphone can become a secure gateway with the company’s network. It allows the device to function as if your staff were sat at their desk with access to data they would only get if they were carrying a laptop.
Call one of our team to see how you can benefit from our amazing packages that will allow your staff access to the best technology in Smartphones.
Here are just some technology predictions for 2012
Cloud monitoring
Cloud monitoring will allow production to finally move to the cloud. As increasingly more organisations move to the cloud, there will be many new players in cloud monitoring and the management of space. Application to Application data flow is increasingly being looked at to ensure good response times to customers and this trend will increase in 2012.
Gamification
This will be big in 2012 as more start-ups use game theory to manipulate enterprise users into following procedure and complete repetitive tasks. Gamification is the integration of game mechanics and game-thinking in non-game environments to boost engagement, loyalty and fun. There will be a real trend towards using ‘compulsion loops’, a form of instant gratification with a move towards more ‘enterprise face’. Help desk staff will be the first ones to see and use this software.
Mobile retail
More than 170,000 UK shoppers spend more than £30 using eBay’s mobile app every week. On Cyber Monday, the peak day for online Christmas shopping in the US three times more people turned to eBay subsidiary PayPal’s mobile app this year than last. Shoppers on the internet auction site have bought homes and even a £70,000 Ferrari from their phones.
Christmas shoppers were predicted to spend 12% of their £13.4bn online pounds on mobiles in the UK this year, according to the Centre for Retail Research, which thinks that by 2015, a quarter of online purchases will be made on mobiles.
Mobile wallets
Mobile wallets are slowly entering the market as a trusted method of payment. Swiping phones at public transport ticket barriers instead of travel cards, or at shop tills instead of debit cards, redeeming electronic coupons in-store, scanning barcodes to compare prices … mobile phone networks have been talking about turning these ideas into reality for years and it is about to happen.
This summer Google Wallet opened to the general public in the US, and the company hopes to bring it to Europe next year, beginning with the UK.
PayPal has similar designs, as do the mobile phone networks. This Christmas, Amazon had enticed customers with a 5% discount for items scanned in physical shops using its price comparison barcode scanner, which runs on smartphones.
In the developing world, phones are being used not just as wallets but as a first bank account. Migrant workers are sending billions home using mobile phone money transfer services. Juniper Research says that $55bn will be sent in 2016, up from just under $12bn this year.
Free phone calls and messages
We are soon to enjoy free communication channels through voice and text. Already billions of users have Skype and Viber for free calling all available as apps on your Smartphones. With the growing number of people using these channels and accessibility for these channels, not many people will see the value in paying for text messages and voice calls.
Voice over Internet Protocol is emerging as the most popular means for businesses to communicate, allowing businesses to communicate freely.
Apple TV
Apparently nobody exactly understands fully how the Apple TV will look, but it is due to emerge in the market next year. It has been reported that a factory in Japan will be producing it. Expect a screen, expect voice and hand gesture recognition!
…and one final gadget to look out for! Scientists are developing roll up, flat screen TVs
Scientists are creating flat screen TVs that can be rolled up and safely tucked away in your pockets, thanks to QD or quantum dot technology.
Developed by a team of British scientists, QD can be used to make ultra-thin TVs. Samsung is already working on bendable OLED screens but QD screens will be thinner and more flexible.
The flexible screens are expected to hit the markets by the next year end. Sony, Sharp, Samsung and LG are believed to be working on QD technology, the Daily Mail reports.
The technology, based on light emitting particles 100,000 times thinner than a human hair, will be imprinted on flexible plastic that can be rolled up or even printed onto large paper sheets to create giant screens.
Scientists at Nanoco, Manchester, are now working with major Asian electronic companies and the first televisions using the new technology are expected to hit the shelves by the end of next year.
The chief executive of Nanoco, a company set up Manchester University scientists, said: “The real advantage provided by quantum dots, however, is that they can be printed on to a plastic sheet that can be rolled up.”
BT has announced its biggest-ever “superfast” optic fibre broadband project in Scotland.
It revealed plans to invest £2.5bn in upgrading 34 exchange areas.
The company said 277,000 homes and businesses would be covered by the project.
The best of the new connections will allow internet download speeds of up to 300Mbps. The regulator Ofcom calculated this year that the average connection speed in the UK is 6.8Mbps.
The exchanges receiving the new investment include parts of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as a number of smaller towns.
BT Scotland Director Brendan Dick said: “It marks a major investment in infrastructure, which will give the country a tremendous boost.
“Next-generation broadband is essential for our nation’s economic growth, so it’s brilliant to be ending 2011 on such a high note.”
BT said the number of homes and businesses able to access the superfast network will reach 685,000.
The investment has been welcomed by the Scottish government.
Infrastructure and Capital Investment Secretary Alex Neil said: “We have set out our ambition for all of Scotland to have access to next-generation broadband by 2020, with significant progress to be made by 2015.
“It is an important part of the Scottish government’s economic strategy.”
How toddlers enjoy techno joy whilst some of us adults suffer techno fear!
A firm that makes antivirus computer software, conducted a survey of mothers of children aged between two and five with internet access at home. They found that more of the children knew how to play a computer game than swim or ride a bike, and that more pre-schoolers knew how to use a smartphone than tie their shoelaces.
iPads are often used as the family entertainment, much to the dismay of some fathers who have bought them for their own professional use. The grubby paws belonging to the inquisitive toddlers creating havoc in the household. Whether Apple had such young users in mind when they created the iPad however, it is not surprising that it appeals to the kids with its easy to use interface. With the multitude of apps designed to entertain kids, you don’t need to be an expert to enjoy the experience.
Making sure your tablet is protected with protective holders is key! Interestingly adults are inherently more baffled by technology as children seem to just take it for granted.
Cyber policing is necessary as has always been the case with the Internet’s accessibility for young children. Technology’s ability to educate and entertain goes without saying but does it hinder a child’s ability to use their own imagination and does it thwart their independence in developing or does it further it? 72% of children under five spend on average half an hour a day online. Unsurprisingly, boiled down to the message that it’s never too early to protect your children from the dangers lurking on the internet.
Cyber Monday is a marketing term for the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, created by companies to persuade people to shop online. The term made its debut on November 28, 2005 in a Shop.org press release entitled “‘Cyber Monday’ Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year.
Black Friday, coined as the busiest day in the Hospitality industry – the Friday before Christmas, is also used in shopping terms online. Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. On this day, most major retailers open extremely early, often at 4 a.m., or earlier, and offer promotional sales to kick off the shopping season
