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Artificial intelligence is perhaps the perfect example of an advanced technology that seems to be reserved exclusively for pop culture, but plays an exceptionally beneficial role for many more businesses and their operations than many of us likely consider. For instance, if you use the Google search engine with any regularity, you use a type of AI. One case study that extolls the potential benefits of the use of AI comes to us through one designed to help out in a bakery, but has actually shown its strengths in the accurate diagnosis of cancerous cells. No, we aren?t kidding. Why a Bakery Would Use AI in the First Place Here?s some background: The AI we are referring to originated as a relatively simple means for bakeries in Japan to expedite the checkout process in their open-cafeteria style layouts. Rather than having a human cashier count out the shopper?s selections at checkout, the cashier would simply instruct the customer to spread their purchases out on the counter. A display would show a bird?s eye view of the confections, each Danish and doughnut individually identified based on its size, shape, and color. At that point, the cashier just confirms the price that the system calculates, allowing each customer to be rang up in moments. Simplicity at this level was extremely beneficial to bakeries, which tend to offer a massive variety in Japan through different flavor combinations and pastry types. In this market, the higher the level of variety that a bakery offers, the better their sales did?and the same could be said of pastries that lacked any individual wrapping and scannable barcodes. Of course, this meant that checking out was far slower and very easy for the cashier to mess up. As a result, the eventual development and release of an automated means of expediting the process was of a clear benefit to bakeries. The AI that was ultimately developed by BRAIN Co. is known as BakeryScan, and (at about $20,000 a pop) now appears in 400 retail establishments throughout Japan after first appearing in 2013. Side note: if you?re worried about the prospect of unwrapped baked goods being sold in the past year or so, the technology has since improved to recognize pastries through protective wrapping just as accurately. Naturally, this kind of technology shows obvious promise as a means of streamlining modern retail outlets and such places as time goes on, but the potential to adopt the methods that were implemented into BakeryScan have since spread much farther. From Pastries to Pathology?and a Donut-Hole Lot More However, it wasn?t until a doctor from Kyoto?s Louis Pasteur Center for Medical Research saw a segment on TV that the connection was made. Apparently, when viewed under a microscope, cancer cells look a bit like bread loaves. Once contact was made between the researcher and BRAIN Co., it wasn?t much longer before BakeryScan was repurposed into a platform called AI-Scan. In addition to being able to spot differences in cancerous urinary cells with its Cyto-AiSCAN offshoot (with accuracy measuring over 99 percent), AI-Scan has also been adopted for many different uses. Hospitals can use it to distinguish types of pills, while another company now uses it to identify problematic bolts before they?re used in jet engines. In Hyogo, SACLA (the SPring-8 Angstrom Compact […]
Introducing a Document Management System What if a file cabinet could: Independently sort out and organize the files it contains Work with your other business solutions to put these files to their proper use, on a variety of devices Simplify collaborative processes Assist you in your business continuity preparations Pull the files you are looking for via a simple search interface Protect the files you have stored in it, while ensuring you remain compliant to industry-based regulations Enable secure access for your remote workers All that is possible by integrating a Document Management System into your business? IT infrastructure. Not only can you get all your documents from almost anywhere at any time, you can cut down the substantial costs associated with file storage and retrieval. A cloud-hosted DMS can cut document retrieval time and storage costs, dramatically. It?s also a massive benefit for those workers who need access to paper documents, but work outside of your business. Remote work is more prevalent today than ever before and giving your staff the ability to have anytime, anywhere access to any file they need can be very beneficial for your workers, your customers, and your bottom line. If you would like to learn more about how a comprehensive document management system can help your business cut costs and give you remote access to files that you could only access by going to your office before, call the IT experts at White Mountain IT Services today at (603) 889-0800.
What is Blue Light, Exactly? Time for a bit of a science lesson: light as we know it is much more complicated than you might expect. What we perceive as visible light is actually made up of various different rays that all combine to produce the light that we can see. We aren?t going into much detail at all here, but one type of these rays?blue light rays?offer the highest energy levels and the shortest wavelengths. While naturally occurring in sunlight, blue light can also be sourced from various man-made fixtures found indoors?LED and fluorescent lighting, televisions, and perhaps most prominently, the screens of our computers, tablets, and other mobile devices. Unlike some other forms of light?like ultraviolet light, for example?the human eye isn?t all that good at blocking blue light rays from reaching the cornea. This contributes to an odd dilemma, of sorts. While blue light has been linked to improved alertness, memory, and other cognitive functionality, as well as helping to regulate the body?s wakefulness and sleep?it can also contribute to significant complications, potentially leading to eye strain or even macular degeneration. What Our Devices Contribute Through Their Blue Light Let?s look at this historically for a moment: For the vast majority of human history, sunlight and other natural forms of visible light were the only source that people got?really, until incandescent light was created. As a result, the more screens and ?artificial? light sources that we are surrounded with each day, the more blue light we are exposed to, ultimately throwing off the balance that the natural sources we?ve received over the years have maintained for most of human history. What?s worse, the fluorescent and LED-lit bulbs that are so popular today throw off considerably more blue light than their incandescent ancestors. How impactful can this blue light really be? Well, a few experiments help to shed some light (so to speak) on the situation. A Harvard study once experimented with the impact of a set amount of blue light exposure to a corresponding amount of green light exposure. Six and one-half hours of blue light suppressed enough melatonin (the hormone that controls a person?s circadian rhythms) had double the impact as the green light did, leading to a three-hour shift in circadian rhythm as compared to one and one-half hours. The effects can be even more pronounced, decreasing the amount of sleep that people get and contributing to increased risk of depression, diabetes, and cardiovascular issues. What Can Be Done About Blue Light? Here?s the thing?there are a few ways that you can help reduce your exposure to blue light and help minimize its effect on your sleep, including: Avoiding brighter screens within three hours of bedtime Making sure you?re getting plenty of exposure to other kinds of light to help regulate your circadian rhythms Using red lights over blue lights for nighttime light, helping to avoid melatonin suppression Investing in blue-light filtering glasses or time-controlled filtering apps. You can also adjust these kinds of preventative measures in your device?s settings. On Windows, navigate to the Start menu and access your Settings. From there, go to System, Display, and finally, Night Light Settings. You can there adjust the Schedule, either by applying custom-scheduled times or simply to activate the Night Light to turn on and off […]
If you know me at all, you know I love technology. I usually like to check out the newest, latest gadgets. At the same time, I?m also very skeptical about overcomplicating my life, and adding unneeded security risks to the equation. It?s like two polar opposites are at war in my head at all times?I want to play with shiny new technology but not risk my overall cybersecurity. Plus, I don?t want to move forward at the expense of losing something I once had. Here?s a perfect example: Back in the Windows 7 days, I had this really great set of apps that let you customize my Start Menu. It made it really easy to get the apps and documents I needed, and it made sense to me based on how my mind works. These applications were no longer supported for Windows 10, so when we upgraded, I lost those features and had to get used to living without them. Being used to the traditional desktop with multiple monitors and plenty of screen real estate, the idea of switching to a laptop or tablet sounds like a downgrade to many, but we?ve been at the point where laptops and even tablets are about as capable as their desktop equivalents. Modern laptops are powerhouses that can compete with most modern desktops until you really need the most powerful hardware for high-end gaming and video editing. Even then, a high-end laptop will suffice, but the cost goes up, as does the overall weight of the device. That said, mid-range portable devices like ultrabooks tend to be able to handle everything most people would throw at them. A Real-World Example of a Laptop that Replaced a Desktop An acquaintance of mine is a digital artist/graphic designer. I remember seeing her setup a handful of years ago?she had a big desktop computer, two big monitors, and an enormous Wacom Cintiq. The Wacom Cintiq is an artist?s drawing tablet. Hers was a big 24-inch screen that she could draw on using a special pen. The work she was doing required a pretty beefy desktop. It was definitely more powerful than the typical office workstation. She could have used a laptop instead of the desktop, but she?d still be chained to the desk in order to use the drawing tablet, and back then, the price tag for a laptop with that kind of power was substantially higher than the desktop. A few years ago, she showed me her new setup. She had switched over to a high-end laptop that had the Wacom technology built into the screen. She could set it up at her desk and give herself an extra monitor, but while traveling she could manage with just the laptop. I remember asking her ?does it still run all of your programs?? She had told me it honestly ran them better than her aging desktop. This wasn?t a big bulky laptop either – it was a 12-inch Thinkpad, and she had mentioned she was torn between that and a Surface Pro at the time. She went with the Thinkpad because she liked the keyboard better. Why This Story Matters Technology has been changing fast over the years, and it?s important to realize that every few years, the way we do things could potentially change for […]
While there are assorted backup strategies available to businesses, the most important consideration to make is which of them will best fit your purposes. After all, different businesses create and collect different types of data, and losing that data therefore has different consequences for one than it would for another. Let?s take a moment to examine the prospect of shaping a backup strategy to the way your business operates. Focusing on Operability Take a moment and consider something: of all the data you have, what could you simply not continue to function without? What data could land your business in major trouble if it were to be lost? As your data powers your daily operations, you probably have a pretty good idea of what is most essential to your business? continued survival. Unfortunately, you can?t be sure that your data is safe. After all, if it were saved on a single server in a reinforced, completely secure room, that data could still be lost. The server could malfunction, or catch fire, and your data would be gone. Data loss doesn?t always mean data theft. No, there is no guarantee that your data will be safe, so you need to address this risk through preventative action. This is why an operational backup strategy is so useful. By incorporating insights into which data is used most often and how that data is put to use, an operational backup combines the benefits of incremental and differential backup strategies. In short, when the chips are down, you?ll know you can restore your necessary data as the need arises. Why Does Operational Recovery Matter? From here, we will proceed under the assumption that you have hired human beings to work in your business. Guess what is directly responsible for the majority of a given company?s data loss? Your workers are the right answer. Some are negligent, some are vindictive, and others just don?t grasp the importance of your information systems? care. Therefore, a data backup is a smart investment. That?s without even mentioning that a lot of data loss can happen without the ?help? of your employees. Consider your central hardware. If that fails for any reason, or is somehow damaged, your business? IT could be suddenly left unmanaged and unconfigured. Access control systems and email platforms could be lost, along with all the important information they contain, and you would then need to spend days and weeks rebuilding them from the ground up. Alternatively, a backup could help you avoid this stress and expense. Operational Recovery The data recovery process?especially in those times when you are fully migrating data from one server to another?is notoriously slow. The trouble is that if you are trying to recover data, it is problematic when the recovery process takes a long time. The longer you are without data, the more downtime you face. Downtime is wasted money. With the BDR, however, the restore times are much faster, especially since you can choose to restore from either the BDR itself or the data center it is backed up to. The BDR is one of the most useful products you can purchase for your business. It is an insurance policy against a multitude of potential problems. Call White Mountain IT Services at (603) 889-0800 to talk to one of our consultants about the BDR […]
