Beginner's Guide to Enterprise Software

Advantages and Disadvantages of Digital Signatures

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:04:44 +0000

Just as with any technology, there will be plus and minuses. This is the way it is with anything, whether it is technology related or not. The advantages of using digital signatures include:

• Imposter prevention: By using digital signatures you are eliminating the possibility of committing fraud by an imposter signing the document. Since the digital signature cannot be altered, this makes forging the signature impossible.
• Message integrity: By having a digital signature you are in fact proving the document to be valid. You are assuring the recipient that the document is free from forgery or false information.
• Legal requirements: Using a digital signature satisfies some type of legal requirement for the document in question. A digital signature takes care of any formal legal aspect of executing the document.

The disadvantages of using digital signatures involve the primary avenue for any business: money. This is because the business may have to spend more money than usual to work with digital signatures including buying certificates from certification authorities and getting the verification software.

Digital Rights Management Overview

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:05:15 +0000

If you are involved in creating, producing, or trading any kind of digital media, you know how important it is to have your work protected. Your digital property has to be managed in such a way do you can have control over it. This way you don't lose out on the potential that your digital media can provide. If you created the work, you deserve to have it protected so you get the credit for having created and produced it. Obviously, you do not want your works to be exploited, or misused on some form or fashion without you getting full compensation for it. It is for this reason you need to have a way to deal with your digital media. You need digital rights management. By having digital rights management in place, you have the ability to control who has access to your digital media and who doesn't. This way you know who is using it at all times. This protects you. But the question is, and this is especially true of those who never used it before: what does digital rights management entail? Consider these factors to start with:

• Adopting DRM: You need to decide how you will deploy your digital media. You have to consider the nature of your media and the rights you want to establish for it. Such things to look into are its value, the way it will be distributed, and any costs associated with distribution.
• DRM for Creators: The biggest challenge for creators is keeping track of the work they do once they release it to the public. Once they have completed the work and turned it into a digital format, they need a way to keep track of what happens to the work and where it goes. This way you can be assured that the work is being used properly and you being paid justly for the work.
• DRM for Producers: If you are in the business of developing the content and selling it in digital form, you especially need a system to keep track of where the media goes, who gets it, who uses it, and how it is used. Plus, you must be concerned with getting paid for the media you produce. This is where digital rights management can help.
• DRM for Content Traders: If you work in the area where you are involved in trading one type of media for another, you are also concerned about the rights of the media and who has the legal right to use it. When trading digital media, you have the obligation to control the money that is collected from such trade, or the value thereof. DRM will help in this regard.

Just what is Digital Rights Management (DRM) and how is it Adopted?

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:07:37 +0000

If you work with digital media, you obviously know that there are certain rights associated with the media. These rights could be anything. This is where digital rights management can play a big part when working with digital media. To understand this concept of digital rights management (DRM), we must know what DRM is.

DRM is a collection of technologies that are used to enforce policies that control access to digital media, including software, music, movies, and hardware. DRM is involved in handling the description, layering, analysis, valuation, trading, monitoring, and enforcement of using media and any restriction thereof.

DRM is useful as a tool to help protect the people who create and use digital media, so they can not only exercise their rights to the media, but they can also prevent loss of money due to illegal use of such media. This means that no one can illegally duplicate the copyrighted work without the sole permission of the creator.

Depending on whom you are and your role in using digital media, you may be able to use DRM to keep tabs on the media you create, produce, distribute, or trade. Basically, you would use DRM to help you record, track, and monitor digital media and the rights associated with the media.

In order to adopt DRM, there are several things you must take into consideration. Such things include:

• Planning: Before you even touch any of the media, you must have a solid plan in place as to what you intend on doing with the media. You must identify what this plan is and record it for reference sake. You must list the owner(s) of the copyright, and what rights are provided with the media.
• Management plan: While you gather the information for your plan, you also must attach to the plan, a document of some type showing the information you gathered, including what rights users have to the media, and how they will access the media.
• Implementation: After you have gathered everything together and recorded all information for record keeping purposes, you now have to implement the plan. This DRM will provide users with what they know so they can know what rights they have to the media, and how they can use it. This system will also include payment methods and arrangements.

DRM for Creators

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:08:04 +0000

When it comes to creating any type of media, the creators, and this includes writers, illustrators, designers, and others, must have a way to keep track of what happens to their creation once it is turned into digital format and provided to the public. In this kind of situation, if they don't have some kind of DRM system in place, they have a big chance of losing money and losing track of who is using the media. The bottom line for you is you have to protect your property no matter what. By having a DRM in place, you can have your work commercially available in a safe and protected environment. You will know that your product is protected from thieves and you will get compensated appropriately.

DRM for Producers

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:08:27 +0000

If you job is to take what was created and produce and sell it, you know how important it is to know what rights and responsibilities you have to the creator of the work, and to your audience. You must know exactly what rights users will have to the work, and what they aren't allowed to do. You also must have a way to make sure all money is accounted for. Having a DRM in place, you can identify those who have rights to the media, clearing and paying for rights, negotiating terms and conditions of use, making sure the all media is used according to terms, managing user payment, monitoring and tracking use of material, and more.

By having a good DRM in place, you will know that the media you produce and publish to the marketplace will be protected and tracked accordingly. By having a good DRM in place will help reduce legal hassles and make working with the media and public easier.

DRM for Content Traders

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:08:53 +0000

If you are involved in managing and trading digital content for a company of some type, you must be sure that all rights and responsibilities to the work are enforced at all times. With a good DRM in place you can be assured that all possibilities will be in place.

You will be allowed to:

• Have and use technology to protect the works from unauthorized and unpaid users.
• Use the internet to sell and trade the media to consumers without violating any copyright laws.
• Set up a system where you can keep track of all monies that are made in the sell or trade of such media.
• Use payment systems in order to keep track of payments made, so you can disburse these payments to the appropriate parties at the correct time for it. These payments include royalties and other compensation.

DRM and the Internet

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:09:21 +0000

The Internet has basically opened the playing field globally for many companies to do business. This also means further means of protecting copyrighted material, including digital material has to be taken into consideration. Using DRM will lower the problems associated with digital media and how it is used, because creators of the media can better monitoring their work. They can even establish relationships with fans directly instead of going through a third-party. This way they can better monitor their work. So the Internet and DRM can work together for the betterment of all involved in digital works and the rights associated with the media.

File Compression Overview

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:09:43 +0000

If you your hobby or profession is working with audio or video in some form or capacity, you probably save your work on your computer for later retrieval. By having this file on your computer, you can later edit it and perhaps send it to your friends and family. They would enjoy listening to or watching what you do. There is only one problem. Audio and video files take up a lot of space on the hard drive. One short five minute recording can produce up to a 500MB file or larger. For those with dialup, this would be a download nightmare, waiting forever for that file to download. So what is the answer? It is file compression. This is something we take for granted until we actually have to send someone a file. Then we know about it when someone complains that the file you sent was too big. They may tell you to shrink your images, or edit your audio bytes to lower the size of the file. With file compression we don't need to worry about this since this technology reduces the size of our files for us without our even getting involved. Just what does file compression consist of? What does it do? File compression uses a formula called algorithms to reduce the file size. Here are the most commonly used compression algorithms used today:

• Run Length Encoding (RLE): This is a compression technique that PhotoShop uses when saving a file to TIFF format. It reduces the format of the image but does not lose any of the image's quality. Other formats like BMP and PCX use the same thing.
• Lempel-Zif-Welch (LZW): This is a compression technique that is used by programs that save files in TIFF, PDF, GIF, and PostScript language formats. The best type of images that can get reduced by this method would be single color images like screen shots or paint images.
• Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG): Many people are familiar with this file format. Any time they use PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro, or some other imaging, or picture editing software; they see this format as an option to save the file under. Other than these programs, Adobe also uses this scheme to convert large documents or images. The one good thing about this compression technique is the user has control as to the level of compression the file gets.
• ZIP Encoding: This compression technique is supported by Adobe programs, or any program that uses and supports PDF format. ZIP is like LZW in that it is good for single color images.
• Wavelet Compression: This technique takes the image and converts it into a mathematical model to save storage space. It does have a tendency to lose image quality somewhat, but it is very efficient in reducing files.
• Fractal Compression: This is exactly similar to wavelet compression except the file is compressed even more. When a file is compressed, the end result is known as the compression ratio. This is the difference between the original size and the resulted size after compression. JPEG images can have compression ratios of 10:1 to 40:1. Wavelet can have a compression ratio of 150:1. However, fractal compression ratios can go up to 250:1.

What is File Compression?

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:10:43 +0000

If you ever downloaded any kind or large file before you will notice the file ends in ZIP format. Why? This is because the file is too large to download as is, or may have more than one file together. Either way, the file was compressed to make it easier and faster to download. How does file compression work? Basically, it reduces the number of bits and bytes in a file so it can become smaller. To uncompress this file you would use a utility called WinZip or Stuffit.

Therefore, compression can be defined as the act of reducing an image in size for processing, storage, and transmission. It saves transmission time considerably. Decompression on the other hand is the act of reversing compression by reassembling the compressed data so it resembles the original.

How Does File Compression Work?

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:11:24 +0000

The question that is always asked by people who hear about compression for the first time is how can you reduce a file like that and put those bits or bytes back in later? If you were to examine a file under close scrutiny, you would find that many computer files are coded in such a way as to leave space between coded segments. They also have the same redundant information that is repeated throughout the program. When you compress this file, you are simply removing that redundancy. The file compression program removes the repeated information but places a reference back to the information in the program when it is required. For example, take a look at this sentence:

"Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."

You probably recognize this as a sentence John F. Kennedy delivered in his famous 1961 inaugural address. Let's take a good look at this sentence. If you count the words there are 17. These words are made up of 61 letters, 16 spaces, one dash, and one period. Now, look at this from a logical point of view. Each letter, space, or punctuation mark represents one byte of memory. Being this is the case we have a sentence that takes up 79 bytes of memory. Not much from today's standards. But what if we needed to shrink that amount down? Let's look at the sentence again and see what we can get rid of to lower the file size.

If you look carefully, you will find the word "ask" appears twice. The word "what" appears two times, along with "your". Also "country" appears twice. Going further we find that "can" is found twice, "do" is found twice, "for" is also found twice, and "you" is found twice as well. If you look closely, you will see that nearly half the phrase is repetitive. There are nine words (ask, not, what, your, country, can, do, for, you) can basically tell us what we need to know. The rest of the sentence does not need to be counted. To make sure the entire sentence is recognized, when we need to construct the second half of the sentence, we just reference the first half and include space and punctuation. Most compression programs use an algorithm to transform the file so as to compress it. Most use a catalog method where each word is given a number. If we look at those nine words again we come up with this: 1. ask, 2. what, 3. your, 4. country, 5. can, 6. do, 7. for, and 8. you. If we apply these numbers to the sentence we had before it would look like this: "1 not 2345678 - 12856734". Since compression utility programs know this algorithm, it can easily translate it into the right words.

Obtaining the File Compression Programs

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:11:51 +0000

Knowing how compression works will make choosing a program easier for you. It is simply a matter of deciding which program you want to use. There are many file compression programs in use that will work with practically any computer. There are those for PCs, and those for the Apple computers. You have to decide what you want based on the computer you have and how reputable the company you decide to purchase from, and how good the program is. Here are a few programs that are well-known and used daily:

• WinZip: Everyone knows WinZip. This is the most famous of all file compression utility programs on the market. You name it, everyone has it. Now there is a newer version of WinZip called WinZip 10. It is supposed to be even better than the other versions. You have to try it to know. They even have a trial version you can use. To find out more about this incredible program go to http://www.winzip.com/ and get your copy today.
• Stuffit Deluxe 10.0 Macintosh: The name says it all. Stuffit is the number one file compression program for the Apple and Macintosh computers. This program has been around nearly as long as Apple has. You can buy it as a download or as a CD. Go to http://www.allume.com/win/index.html and get your copy today.
• PKWARE: PKWARE is no doubt one of the top file compression utility programs besides WinZip. Many people, including businesses use PKWARE for their file compression needs. You can download a free trial immediately or buy from their online store. To check them out go to http://www.pkware.com/ata and either download or order your copy today.
• ExtractorPC: If you don't have the money to spend but need file compression, you can get ExtractorPC. This is a free product you can download to your computer. To get your copy just go to http://www.cyclos.com/extractorpc.htm.

Image Compression Overview

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:12:41 +0000

Are you are photographer by trade or hobby? Do you take pictures with a digital camera? Do you often find those images are way too big to be transported over the Internet? After all, there are those who still have dial-up, and a big file would tie up their phone line for a long time. Neither could you copy the file to your floppy drive to carry with you, unless you have a CD burner and can burn the image on a CD. Otherwise, the next alternative is image compression. By compressing the image, you are shrinking the image so as to make it smaller in file size. There are several methods to consider when dealing with image compression. These methods include:

• Lossless Image compression: When working with image compression there are two methods of using image compression: lossless and lossy. The lossless consists of the following:
o Run-length encoding - This is a form of data compression where sequences of the same data value that occurs in many consecutive data elements are stored as a single data value and counted as one. These are called runs.
o Entropy coding - This is a coding scheme that has a responsibility to assign codes to symbols so this way code lengths can be matched with the probabilities of the symbols.
o LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) - This is a universal data compression algorithm that was created in 1984 by Abraham Lempel, Jacob Ziv, and Terry Welch. This data compression technique provides fast implementation.
• Lossy compression: Lossy compression is the second method used for image compression. Here are the four methods it uses:
o Color space reduction - This is done by reducing the most common colors that the image uses. The header of the image contains the information about the selected colors of the color palate. Each pixel only references the index of a color in the color palate.
o Chroma subsampling - This is where lower resolution is used for the color information in an image instead of the brightness information. This is usually primarily because the eye sees brightness more sharply than color.
o Transforming coding - This method is the most used out of all of them. This is where a certain coding is applied following that with Quantization and entropy coding.
o Fractal compression - This method is a method that uses fractals. This is good for photographs of natural scenes like trees, mountains, streams, and more. This technique is guided by the idea that certain parts of the image resemble other parts of the same image.

What is Image Compression?

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:14:00 +0000

When you work with images, you know how big they can get, especially if you take in a lot of color or video portions. However, you can't do much with a large file. You can't send it to anyone, unless of course they have broadband. So the next based thing is to compress the image. Image compression is where data is compressed on digital images. Image compression takes away the redundancy found in image data and stores it in a format that can be handled more efficiently.

If you study imaging and image compression, you will note that image compression can be either lossy or lossless.

• Lossy: Lossy is when image compression occurs but with a little loss in quality of the image. However, that loss is not too significant. Images that are going to be placed on the Internet by way of Web pages would use this type of compression.
• Lossless: This type of compression allows the file to be compressed without any loss of quality. Compression utility programs that use this type of compression would be the ZIP format. On Windows platforms you would find it as PKZIP or WinZip. On Macintosh platforms you would find it as Stuffit and ZipIt. And if you are so inclined and you are using UNIX, the file format used here would be gzip.

How Image Compression Works?

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:14:29 +0000

Image compression takes about five steps to implement. Each one in turn adds to the results of another. In other words, each stage contributes to the overall result of reducing the image. These stages are described below:

• Bit availability: The first thing the compression software program does is count how many bits are in the file and how much distortion may be in the image. All this information is usually found in the header of the image.
• Class Splits: The next step is to split the image data into classes, depending on what the content may be.
• Split the bits: The next step would be to split up the bits within each class so that distortion is minimized. This is known as bit allocation.
• Quantize class: After the bits are split, each class would be quantized using the bit allocation information derived from step 3 above. Quantization, in case you were wondering, is a process where the continuous set of values in the image data are compared to a finite set of values and approximated.
• Encode each class: Finally each class is encoded separately using an entropy coder. After the entropy coder has finished its job, everything is written to the file. This process means the information that is in the data is given a specific set of symbols that contains the minimum number of bits to represent the symbols.

This describes the overall procedure for image compression. However, this is not the end all of it. There are other types that are used. This is just one example. If you are looking to learn more about other image compression methods, you could find a book on the subject on Amazon or at your local bookstore.

Obtaining the Image Compression Programs

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:14:54 +0000

If you are looking for image compression programs for your computer so you can reduce your images, you will have to decide which program you want to use. When you start shopping for an image compression utility program, you will find that there are many file compression programs in use that will work with practically any computer. There are those for PCs, and those for the Apple computers. You just have to know what computer you have and pick the program that works with it and is compatible to it. Plus, you will need to look at the company to determine if it is reputable, and if the program is good. Read reviews to find out how others view the program unless you know specifically which program you want. Here are some companies that offer products and/or services for those interested in image compression:

• Spinwave: Spinwave image optimization tools work well for your PC. You can optimize many JPEGs at once and up to 90% faster than other programs. JPEG Cruncher Pro 2.0 does it all for you and more. You can even get a free trial download to see if you will like it. To check it out just go to http://www.digfrontiers.com/.
• Snowbound Software: Snowboard makes the best image compression software. It doesn't matter the format of the file, their imaging compression utility program can compress them all. To learn more about this compression software program go to http://www.snowbound.com/solutions/image_compression.html.
• XAT.COM: XAT.COM offers one of the best image optimizers around. Image Optimizer is designed to prepare the best JPEG, GIF, and PNG images for the Web. By using this software you can expect reductions of as much as 50%. To check them out just go to http://www.xat.com/io/index.html.
• Lizardtech: Lizardtech has a complete line of image management tools that can help you manage your images. It doesn't matter what format your image is in, the software can handle it. You can even download a free trial to use. To find out about these image management tools go to http://www.lizardtech.com/.