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Almost everything is run by computers today. They have become an integral part of our lives, handling everything from business to travel to entertainment and even most of our personal matters. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that it all started with just a handful of large and expensive mainframes, and the business of using those mainframes was called data processing. Collecting data and feeding it into those giant machines was a time-consuming procedure as the data was punched onto cards before it could be processed and analyzed.

Things have changed dramatically in computing over the past 50 years. Processing power is essentially free today, with the chips in notebook computers and even our smartphones infinitely quicker than those mainframes at the dawn of the information age. What hasn’t changed nearly as much is data entry. That largely remains an error-prone process that often requires manual labor and/or intervention. Think about all the ways we enter data and you quickly see that it’s the most critical point in the process, the point that consumes the most time and also the point where errors occur most likely.

A lot of the innovation in computerized systems today is not in building better and faster computers, but in perfecting data capture and data entry systems. There are scanners that read barcodes, systems that have radio frequency tags, machines that scan and convert forms, and numerous other ways to make the process of converting data into machine-readable form. All of this has made data entry faster, cheaper and more reliable, but it still remains perhaps the most critical bottleneck. Why?

Because a lot of data is generated by people, and people think and act differently from machines. When people fill out forms by hand, they may make errors, cross things out, and their handwriting may be nearly illegible. Even when they use an electronic form, they may use the wrong fields, or enter the data in a way that the computer cannot read. There are all sorts of efforts to automatically “clean” data, but even today, a lot of data must still be either entered by hand, or at least scanned and fixed by hand. And that can be enormously time consuming and therefore expensive.

There are other aspects of data entry that can burn up a lot of time. Data conversion is one of them. There are so many different data formats today that data conversion is a major issue. Even converting from one version of a format to another can totally throw the process and require extensive manual intervention. Something as seemingly simple as converting from one version of Microsoft Word to another can be hugely time-consuming, let alone conversions to and from formats such as XML, SGML, XLS or CSV. Add to that image conversion, data indexing, or data mining, and things can quickly go from time consuming to overwhelming.

This is where it pays to farm things out to an experienced professional data entry service. It’s also one of the areas where outsourcing makes most sense. Getting the raw data or data files to a reliable, inexpensive offshore data entry service for entry and cleaning, or even converting and processing in a number of ways, greatly reduces local costs. It also allows local staff to spend their time mot productively, by analyzing and using data to manage business and maximize productivity. It’s a win-win situation for all involved.

Chris Robertson is an author of Majon International, one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing companies on the web. Learn more about Professional data entry.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com

By Kelly Kilpatrick – Guest article
According to news reports, Computer Aid International has donated 2000 computers to the Ministry of Education.

Education Minister Professor Geoffrey Lungwangwa said the provision of quality education requires the application of information communication technology (ICT), especially computers.

The growth of ICT is helping facilitate educational opportunities that will promote economic development for the region and strengthen Zambia’s infrastructure. Programs such as these make it possible for Zambian students to experience a world outside their own and explore new horizons.

As part of the Fifth National Development Plan, the education ministry adopted the use of ICTs many levels to help facilitate education. The computers improve the quality of education for the students and increase equality and efficiency of the educational experience.

The computers were donated by British Charity Computer Aid International as part of their international efforts to bridge the digital divide. The group believes strongly that information technology skills are crucial to an individual’s success (and even survival) in the information age.

While this is another step in the right direction, we’ve still got a long way to go. According to the International Telecommunication Union, less than 1.5% of the population of Zambia owned a computer and just over 4% had Internet access. Compare that to Namibia or Zimbabwe where more than 10% of households have a computer and you see we still have much work to do.

It’s not just about having computers in the classroom. Our teachers still lack their own computer skills. Interestingly, it may be ICTs that help them strengthen their computer skills—through distance learning. ICTs can be used for teacher professional development without requiring they leave their classrooms.

And finally, we must continue to seek foreign investment for our ICT initiatives. Zambia currently still relies too heavily on public finding for its initiatives. Our government simply does not have the money to make the swift progress Zambia needs to increase its educational stamina.

By-line:
This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of high speed internet deals. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24@gmail.com

Writen by Elizabeth Morgan

The information age has been revolutionized not just by the power of computers to process data, but also by the power of communication amongst computers. This communication is responsible for the proliferation of computer networks. Sharing of information, sharing of resources (both software and hardware) and sharing of processing load are some of the major objectives of a computer network. One of the recent trends in the computer and communication industries is wireless communication. A wireless network does not use cables, but instead uses radio waves. Such networks enhance the functionality of computing devices by freeing them from the location constraints of a wired network. Although wireless networking is of great use to the laptop users who move from one location to the other throughout the day, there are benefits for fixed users as well. Many schools and businesses have an architecture that is unsuited for a wired network. Wired networking is very cost effective in such environments.

Wireless networks can be broadly classified as fixed wireless systems and mobile wireless systems. A fixed wireless system supports a little or no mobility of the equipment related to the wireless network. For example, a local area network can be set up using wireless network to get rid of the hassles of laying cables. The mobile wireless systems support mobility of the equipment, enabling the user to access information from anywhere and at any time. The equipments used in the mobile wireless systems include personal digital assistants (PDAs), smart phones and pager with Internet access.

Wireless networks communicate by modulating radio waves or pulsing infrared light. A wireless networking router is linked to the wired network infrastructure by stationary transceivers. Wireless communication technologies used in wireless networks include analog cellular, digital cellular, Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD), mobile radio networks, personal communication services (PCS), satellite, microwave systems and local multipoint distribution systems (LMDS). Although the data rates supported by analog cellular technology are low, it is the most popular methods for wireless data communications due to the wide availability of modems and analog cellular services. The commonly used wireless technologies include 2G and 3G technologies, wireless LANs, Wireless Local Loops (WLLs), radio-router technology, Multihop wireless network and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP).

Wireless Networks provides detailed information on Wireless Networks, Home Wireless Networks, Configuring Wireless Networks, Wireless Network Cards and more. Wireless Networks is affiliated with Wireless Internet Services.

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