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Provide the Equipment Needed for Remote Work While your team may very well have the equipment needed to successfully work remotely, it is often wise to provide them with mobile devices (like laptops) so that they can still do so, but with your company still maintaining a level of control over the devices they use. In addition to this, it may not be a bad idea to provide your team members with a stipend to help them create an area in their home that is conducive to remote work efforts. A bit of up-front investment can easily result in long-term productivity and employee satisfaction. Enable (and Encourage) Collaboration and Communication With your team members dispersed, there is an inherent obstacle that remote work puts in the way of communications and collaboration. Fortunately, this is easy enough to overcome through the implementation of various cloud-based tools and applications?something that has its benefits in the office as well. Cloud-based email, collaboration platforms, and even instant messaging applications all serve a valuable purpose in the modern business. Not only do they allow your team to continue working together on various tasks and projects, they can also be used for a reasonable amount of off-topic conversation. Why do we mention this? Simple: interaction amongst coworkers is an asset for your business, as it keeps them motivated and engaged with the rest of their team. In short, discussions about last night?s game or the latest must-watch series ultimately save time and energy, so don?t be afraid of your employees having them. Simplify and Optimize The more nimble your business processes are, the more effective they will be?remote or not. Turning to streamlined tools that can accomplish numerous objectives for your business?collaboration platforms, for instance, over several disparate applications?will help make your business? operations more portable and therefore make remote work more accessible. In addition to this, maintenance and management become far simpler to accomplish as well, also allowing more energy to be put into profitable business processes. Reach out to us to learn more about making the most of remote work. Call (603) 889-0800 today.
However, Disney Research Studios has created a new technology that allows actors to be more seamlessly re-aged, as the House of Mouse calls it, automatically, saving tons of time for the visual effects artists and preserving the profits for the studio. Let?s go over the basics of the technology, just to consider another application artificial intelligence has. Like We Said, the Uncanny Valley Has Been Present in Numerous Films Many modern films have demonstrated the use of computer-generated images to either depict human (or at least humanoid) characters, and each arguably has demonstrated the Uncanny Valley to some degree?particularly seen in the case of Sonic the Hedgehog in 2020, before the official trailer received enough outrage from fans to convince Paramount Pictures to bring the titular character back to the literal drawing board. Plus, these kinds of characters and images have historically taken forever to produce, as all edits needed to be made to each individual frame. Considering that there are 24 frames per second in a movie, and the average movie is about 131 minutes long, that?s a total of 188,640 frames that could potentially need editing. That?s a ton of work, necessitating a ton of time and effort to complete. So, in addition to the Uncanny Valley issue, there are real cost concerns associated with re-aging actors. These were the issues that Disney Research Studios set out to tackle?and little wonder, once you consider how many actors have needed to be re-aged for Disney?s various properties. Jeff Bridges was re-aged for 2010?s Tron: Legacy to reprise his role from the 1982 original film. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has seen Michael Douglas, Robert Downey Jr., Kurt Russell, Michelle Pfeiffer, Stan Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, and more all digitally de-aged for varying lengths of time?in Jackson?s case, the entirety of 2019?s Captain Marvel. Star Wars has used the technology to de-age Mark Hamill in another 2019 film, The Rise of Skywalker. Harrison Ford is set to be de-aged for the upcoming Indiana Jones film. So, with Disney clearly investing a lot of time and money into this process, it comes as no surprise that they would seek out a simpler means of completing it. Enter FRAN, Disney?s Face Re-Aging Network FRAN is the tool that helps to automate a lot of the digital fiddling that would otherwise take hours or days in post-production to accomplish. While FRAN works much like any other AI-powered tool would?leveraging a neural network that has been trained on thousands of fake human faces to accurately determine how a person?s face would look with years of growth and experience added or subtracted?Disney?s new tool is capable of applying these changes to video footage, all the while preserving expressions and lighting changes. Perhaps most importantly to Disney?s use case, FRAN also enables artists to tweak the results of the effect with hands-on tools. FRAN has a few limitations, however. Since hair going gray wasn?t included in the training data, the network doesn?t currently make these kinds of changes. Other issues are also present, but can largely be resolved by live artists going in and revising FRAN?s work. This human-software collaboration ultimately results in re-aging that is more convincing than ever. Harrison Ford said as much when he commented on the results of his own de-aging for the […]
Let?s go over how to access the same web page you were viewing on your workstation or mobile device on the other one. Chrome Offers a Few Options, in Terms of Pushing Web Pages Between Devices First, let?s assume that you?re on one device, and want to continue viewing a page on the other. Provided that you?re signed into the same Google account in both places, you can always just view your browsing history, as it tracks activity on all devices logged in. From the desktop, open Chrome and press Ctrl + H to access your History. If using your smartphone, open the Chrome app and access the three-dot menu, selecting Recent tabs. You?ll see your complete browsing history from everywhere you?re signed into that Chrome account, allowing you to retrieve the page you were browsing. If you?re presently reading something and want to proactively push it from one device to another, you can do that as well. From the desktop version of Chrome, you?ll see a small icon on the right side of the address bar that looks like an arrow coming out of a corner. Clicking this icon (or right-clicking the tab?s title) gives you the option to Send to your devices. You?ll be given a list of devices?computers and Android devices alike?where you?re signed in. From Android, tap into the three-dot menu and select Share. A panel will appear, where you can select Send to your devices. We?re big fans of anything that potentially makes work processes easier, so we like this feature quite a bit. Make sure you keep checking back for more ways to use your technology just a little better, or give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to find out what our managed services could do for you.
What Percentage of IT Projects Fail? Failure, in the terms of IT projects, is a subjective notion. For our purposes, we are going to define failure as an IT project that doesn?t meet its stated objectives. Typically when an IT project fails it?s because one of the underlying processes had a critical fault. Each project has a planning stage, a production stage, and a testing stage. Throughout this whole process, a lot can go wrong. In fact, 50 percent of projects fall on their head. That?s right, half of all IT projects will fail in some way. Whether the project goes over budget, the timeline is interrupted somehow, or it turns out that the planning stages of the project weren?t completed properly, about half of IT projects fail. No matter how you view it, it?s a substantial amount of projects that leave a business in a lurch. It?s a lot of wasted time, effort, and capital. It can have a long term effect on your business? ability to operate efficiently. What You Can Do Let?s take a look at a couple of things you can do to improve project success: You?ll Want to be SMART – The SMART acronym has helped project managers deploy technology well. It stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. If you can confidently manage these variables of your new project, your projects will find much more success. Lean on?well, Technology – Funny enough, some of the better tools to help projects find successful conclusions are technological ones. Project management tools, collaboration tools, and other top-down management tools can keep teams on track and get your projects implemented correctly the first time. Planning is Important – Once you are done planning out your project, do yourself a favor and don?t change it. Sure, if the project needs to be altered somehow to work around unforeseen variables, that has to happen, but reevaluating and changing your core strategies can just lead to inefficiency and cost problems. Project Management Help At White Mountain IT Services, we can help your business get the tools needed to manage your own projects or we can run point on technology projects to ensure that you have the best chances of successfully implementing your new tech. Give us a call today to find out more.
Let?s examine what Google said in their announcement, and what it means your business should be doing. Google is Going After Scammers Trying to Charge Businesses for Business Profiles First of all, a Google Business Profile is completely free for business owners to claim and use to share information about their organization. That?s just a fact. Therefore, if someone calls you and claims to be Google, offering to assist you with your Business Profile for a fee, they are attempting to scam you. This problem has gotten bad enough that Google is actively stepping in as a part of its ongoing efforts against scams. Their theory is that, by publicizing these scams and taking legal action against them, they are both deterring would-be scammers and raising awareness with the public about these threats. According to Google?s blog post about these kinds of scams, they were able to stop 12 million scammers from creating fake Business Profiles, and another 8 million attempts to fraudulently claim Business Profiles. Let?s be clear?Google charges you absolutely nothing to create a business profile on their search platform. Why would they? Creating one is mutually beneficial for you and them. On your end, you make it easier for clients to find and learn more about your business, and on Google?s end, their search engine becomes that much more useful for searchers. That?s a win-win! So, if ?Google? ever reaches out to you and attempts to sell you a Business Profile, it?s pretty clearly a phishing scam?a scam where an attacker pretends to be someone else. How to Spot Phishing Scams Make no mistake: phishing scams can appear to come from anyone?Google, your mother-in-law, one of your vendors, the government. Fortunately, there are a few core best practices that you can follow that help you to catch these attempts. Watch for Urgency: Keep an eye out for emotional language, particularly when it supposedly comes from a business entity. Urgency is a basic tool that a scammer will use to put you in an emotional, irrational state. Don?t let them fool you. Check the Details: So, ?Google? reaches out to tell you that you should pay for their assistance in setting up your Business Profile. Don?t hesitate to look up the Google Business Profile page (which, incidentally, clearly states that the Business Profile is free) to confirm (or, in this case, deny) the claims you?re being pitched. Don?t Give Them the Satisfaction: If you?ve confirmed that a message or a call is a scam, just end the conversation. If it was legitimate, the person will probably understand that you were just doing your due diligence for cybersecurity. We?re Here to Help Your Business Securely Reach Maximum Productivity Reach out to White Mountain IT Services at (603) 889-0800 to find out what we can do to help your business accomplish more.
