Claritech Solutions Corp.

We have recently had the opportunity to install arena schedule digital signage at the Don Hartman Northeast Sportsplex and Cardel Place in Calgary.  For both installations, we chose PADS 3.1 Standalone from Net Display Systems of the Netherlands.  The reason for our choice was the flexibility, ease of deployment and professional looking results of PADS.

One of the key features of the arena display solution is the integration with CLASS booking software.  Custom front-end databases were developed to read the CLASS information and allow display-specific customizations, such as dressing room assignments and home/visitor team names. This custom data is then accessed by the PADS software and presented on the display screens.  Other information, such as sports RSS feeds, custom messages, advertising and a TV tuner box are all incorporated on the high definition display.

The possibilities for custom public display systems are endless and the prices are continually dropping.  Contact us for more information about creating your own public area display system.

I’ve been testing Google Apps Premier Edition for the last month and this note details my likes and dislikes about the service offering.   Overall, while I think Google Apps holds promise, its smartphone support is lacking and might not be the best choice for all companies.

Likes

1. Multiple calendars – while at first I thought the lack of category capability was a bit of a pain, I’ve started to warm up to the concept of multiple calendars for tracking different types of appointments/events. The best part about the multiple calendars is that you can view them all on the same calendar view.  Different calendars are represented by different colours on the same view.
2. Interesting calendars (sports teams, holidays, etc) – as part of my experimentation with multiple calendars, I noticed that there are numerous public interesting calendars available that can be easily integrated into Google Calendars.  Once you’ve subscribed to them, adding them to your calendar view is as easy as clicking a checkbox.
3. Easy to setup – the Google Apps Setup Guide is detailed and easy to follow.
4. Integration of your domain name – you can set it up with webmail.yourdomain.com, docs.yourdomain.com, calendar.yourdomain.com, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

As you may already know, I am a huge believer in two-factor authentication.  You should keep in mind that two-factor authentication is not the absolute answer to Internet security problems.  It is critical that you keep your computer patched with current antivirus software and that you browse and use email with care.

I won’t get too much into the technology other than to say it involves using two of the three factors:  a) something you know,  b) something you have, and c) something you are. The majority of Internet two-factor authentication implementations use the first two factors, since determining something you are (such as a fingerprint or retinal image) involves considerably more logistics than is reasonable for a remote service.  The something you know portion of the system is trivial and widely accepted as username/password combinations.  Of course, password complexity is extremely important and will be the topic of a future post. That leaves us with something you have as the simplest and most common second factor.

It is worth noting that a second username/password combination can never be considered a second factor.  Theoretically, an infinite number of passwords is still part of something you know.  The primary reason that this is important is malware, particularly key-logging software.  This is the reason I am disappointed in PayPal’s two-factor implementation, as described in my previous post on the subject.  If you do implement two-factor authentication with PayPal, you should make sure you never bypass it or you risk exposing your account.

Read the rest of this entry »