ITGS News

"A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave is fighting to have her benefits reinstated after her employer's insurance company cut them, she says, because of photos posted on Facebook. "

"Research conducted by London-based Global Web Index, a collaboration between online market research agency Lightspeed Research and Trendstream, suggests that streaming might in fact be the right antidote against content piracy. "

RFID, radio frequency identification, is changing the ways companies and organizations operate. For the first time, they can create value in their products. In simpler terms, RFID is enabling companies to do so many different things they could not do before. It's important to know that RFID is used to identify people and objects. Each RFID tag has a tiny microchip within its body that can be recognized by a reader antenna. Even though this is bringing more business to companies because they have made it possible to shop much easier, it also is bringing them many issues because these antennas are permanently integrated into the tag, which can be tracked from anywhere. Given that the shopper purchased the item, the item can also be traced back to the shopper at any given time. Things like this can be dangerous in the real world because people's privacy becomes at stake. Either way, shopping is so much easier now thanks to RFIDs. The truth is, it's only a matter of time before they become a real problem.

In this article Walt Augustinowicz has shown and proved many people in the public how they can be pick pocketed with out a single finger being laid upon them. They can have their credit cards, debit cards, and passports information stolen quite easily with a simply passing by of the scanner. With this advanced technology that makes paying for things easier, also makes it easier for others to pay for their things using the same card. The card number, the expiration date, the type of card, and even the person's name can be found out. This can show how the social/ethical issue involved is thus privacy - security is another possible issue. The IT system is the RFID tags/microchips. The stakeholders are the people whose information is getting stolen and the people who are stealing the information - people who make the RFID tags/microchips are also possible stakeholders. The area of impact is politics and government - but also can be business and employment. People's private information is at stake and electronic pickpockets can easily steal the information and order products.

This article talks about the security concerns related to RFID technology. RFID technology is susceptible to theft because it broadcasts radio frequencies about the information embedded in the card. This makes it very easy for thieves in possession of a card reader. A person with intent to steal information could just walk past a card carrier with a card reader and pick up the theft victim's credit card numbers, expiration dates and sometimes even the card owner's name. 20% of the card information that was stolen in an experiment has RFID chips. RFID technology increases the chance of identity theft, even passports have RFID implemented in them, this makes them very vulnerable. Passports carry very sensitive information and anyone with a RFID card scanner could wake pass a passport carrier and gain his or her personal information. The stakeholders in this issue include the card carrier or passport carrier whose security is endangered, the information thief who is gaining unauthorized access to a person's personal information and the businesses such as Visa or MasterCard whose reliability is being endangered. This is a security issue that has hampered the positive buzz surrounding RFID technology and its convenience.

"People who post intimate details about their lives on the internet undermine everybody else's right to privacy, claims an academic."

This relates to ITGS because the stakeholder her is a 17-year female who goes to high school in California and does her homework. However, when it comes to doing homework she gets distracted really quick and forgets. When she comes back she feels like she has so much homework until she finally she goes in to a room where she is isolated without technology which helps her complete concentrate and finish her tasks for school. This shows that home leisure comes in affect where technology at home which in this case is a computer and a phone directly links it to social networking and communication. If she was without a phone and a computer I am pretty sure it would less harder for her to get distracted. Sometimes using a computer will help complete the task faster this then will give her more time with her social life. What I am trying to say is that technology has its advantages and disadvantages.

"Visually impaired customers of American Express say they can no longer read their credit card statements online. In December Amex changed its format for UK statements from HTML to Portable Document Format or PDF. However, it failed to encode the new PDF documents so they could be read by "screen readers," special software used by blind or partially sighted people. "

"heavy media use is associated with several negatives, including behavior problems and lower grades. "

""It really is quite a program to seize control of all the new forms of media, one by one," said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor and publisher of Danwei.org, an English-language Web site about the Chinese media and Internet that is currently blocked in China. "It has been a bad half year for censorship.""

"On Dec. 9, perhaps anticipating DOJ action, Amazon announced that audio menu features would be available on Kindle e-readers by summer 2010. Amazon's press release at the time noted that Kindle "has enabled many vision-impaired readers to enjoy books more easily than before, and has also helped dyslexic readers and those with learning disabilities improve their reading skills. ... To make Kindle more useful for the blind, the Kindle team is currently working on an audible menuing system so blind and vision-impaired readers can easily navigate to books unassisted. ... In addition, a new super size font will be added to Kindle, increasing the number of font sizes from six to seven. This seventh font size will be twice the height and width of the current largest font" "

"Mrs Watt's local hospital is in Fraserburgh. She was seen by a local doctor who then decided to link up by video with specialists at the A&E department in Aberdeen. After assessing the injury they decided Mrs Watt needed to travel the 40 miles into the city to have the break properly reset and plastered. Mr Ferguson explained that the use of telemedicine had proved crucial. "All the local casualty departments throughout NHS Grampian have got a video conferencing link through to us. "Already today we've seen more than 20 patients that way and only three have had to come into Aberdeen. "All the rest have been treated locally which of course saves people travelling in this weather and saves time and resources here.""

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After the professor of computer science and technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University and his students broke the encryption of a popular RFID system in car keys, it was apparent that there is a security issue when it comes to the use of RFIDs. The stakeholders are consumers who use products that have radio frequency identification systems embedded in them. As seen from the experiment done by the professor and his students, people can have their cars broken if the encryption of this identification is broken. The area of impact is business because this identification is on items sold in stores. The IT system is RFIDs, which are radio frequency identification. These forms of identification are similar to bar codes because when scanned can show people the price of items. However, being more advanced, RFIDs also show what the item is, the trends in sales and much more.

"BlackBerry-maker ready to launch hotly-anticipated tablet device, sources tell the Wall Street Journal." About their new tablet device that is similar to Apple's iPad.

The requirements for ITGS are that it has Social and Ethical Significance and IT Systems. The Social and Ethical Significance that is included to this article are home and leisure and reliability because this product will be used by the people for the people. It is something that people will enjoy when used. This will create more ways to faster and easier way of keeping up with social networking, digital entertainment and many others. The reliability of this product will be compared to the iPad. For instance the 7in Blackberry is known as the BlackPad and is now a trademark by Blackberry. It weighs almost the same as an iPad and will be on AT&T or Verizon or only on AT&T and Verizon. The IT systems required for this product is a network provider which will be between AT&T and Verizon, wireless internet, internal memory, flash (is expected soon) and many others that are normal as regular phones and Apple's iPad. The stakeholder will be the people buying the BlackPad and the people learning how to adjust to this new generation of phones.

"Systems like these - known in the industry as nurturing games - are built to require regular investments of time and, for fullest enjoyment, money. The games are usually hosted by social networks like Facebook, or can connect to such networks so friends can follow one another's progress. They feature living digital property - the crops in FarmVille or the fish in Happy Aquarium - that can die without care and feeding. At FooPets, death is averted because, after a short period of neglect, the pet goes to a FooShelter. (And reclaiming it becomes an expensive proposition.)"

Check out the insidious way such game producers get youngsters to pay actual money.

"According to the Global Web Index the answer could be simple and obvious: why bother downloading something illegally when you can watch it or listen to it perfectly legally using streaming media services?"

There are many more concepts here than are relevant to ITGS, but it's a good guide to much of the vocaubery.

"As you weigh the choices, you might want to consider views of privacy advocates like the ACLU that have thought through some of the possible implications of certain settings."

This article is about outsourcing of lawyers in India to cut costs and do work that would otherwise be reserved for those often unskilled young lawyers. By relying on outsourcing to do the petty and tedious tasks of Western law firms, lawyers are saving their time, money, and are given access to a much larger work force for a given price. The combination of these main points greatly increases efficiency around the law firm and allows the lawyers to be more focused on doing their job effectively and with more depth. People with experience in outsourcing from a variety of industries strongly encourage the use of outsourcing for the simple and mundane tasks of the business for a multitude of reasons described before that could save the company a great deal of time and money.