We’ve been hearing a lot of buzz recently about the so-called ‘cloud computing’ but most of us have only little knowledge about it. What is ‘cloud computing’? Is it that important? Do I need it? These are some of the questions that you might think right away every time hearing such an alien phrase.

Cloud computing refers to a lot of things depending on its application. One might get varied answers when researching stuff about what cloud computing is. Essentially, cloud computing is a form of computing wherein applications, information, resources and even media files are managed in a single virtual environment with minimal management effort, service provider support and cost. It has 3 major categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). If further ‘plainly’ explained, it is more like the process of saving files and information in a virtual server which can be accessed, configured and destroy remotely given an internet access is provided.

Cloud computing has been widely used by businesses for ages now. Its been giving them the power to set and monitor financial goals, manage cash flow, and control spending with increased accuracy.

Here in the Philippines, IT Group Inc made ‘ComUnion’, an answered pursuit for better productivity of various small to medium local businesses. They introduced Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Management systems to integrate all data and processes of an organization into a unified system. Their system works by providing benefits that range from standardization and lower maintenance (one system instead of two or more) to easier and/or greater reporting capabilities by keeping all the data in one database.

Comunion is a home-grown business solution that manages the accounting and financial data that provides Web ERP application enterprise software that is free to download, free to use, free to modify, and free to redistribute.

An ERP system can help you automate and integrate the following business processes in your organization:

• Supply Chain Management—Inventory, Order Entry, Purchasing, Product Configuration, Supply Chain Planning, Supplier Scheduling, Inspection of goods, Claim Processing, Commission Calculation
• Financials—General Ledger, Cash Management, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Fixed Assets
• Projects—Costing, Billing, Time and Expense, Activity Management
• Customer Relationship Management—Sales and Marketing, Commissions, Service
• Data Warehousing—and various Self-Service interfaces for Customers, Suppliers, and Employees

“A huge investment of skills, talent and research has been devoted in this project. It is only expected that ITG only wished for it to be continued by commendable people who believes that this project will not only benefit their interest but the community as well. ITG wish to have this continued, moreover promote the local developers; something that ITG envision it to be from the very start.” says ITG President Cris Gamboa.

You can get in touch with ITG through http://www.comunionerp.com/ and they are more than willing to discuss the matter and to know more about their offered services.

© 2011, montsch. All rights reserved.

Do you love your tanned skin and go to a tanning salon often? Then you may consider owing a home tanning bed instead. Tanning beds are increasing in popularity again, due to improved tanning efficiency and increased safety over outdoor sun exposure. As an alternative to tanning salons, purchasing a home tanning bed is a viable and economic alternative.

There are two main types of tanning beds – traditional shell style beds and stand up tanning beds. Both are suitable for use at home. Vertical beds give you a more even tan, because you can more while tanning. There is no pressure points when you stand up rather than lie down in the bed, this contributes to more even tan too. Also vertical tanning beds use more powerful lights, so it takes less time to achieve desired tan.

If you are not sure which style you like better, try them both in a tanning salon. It really is a matter of personal preference, some people like stand up beds, others prefer traditional style.

Also, check some tanning lotion reviews because there is a big difference between tanning lotion for indoor beds, that are used for tanning salons and tanning booths, and products for outdoor tanning.

While lotions that are used for outdoor tanning are designed to prevent damage done to your skin by free radicals, indoor tanning products are designed to help you get that healthy, bronze, natural glow is a faster and easier way.

You should always use a tanning lotion while tanning and afterwards. Lotion will protect your skin from damage that UV rays can do and also hydrate it.

Having a home tanning bed is a great time saver for regular tanners. Weight all pros and cons, and if you have enough room and can afford it get yourself a tanning bed. You won’t regret it!

© 2010, montsch. All rights reserved.

The worm appears in e-mail messages with the subject “Here you have,” and contains what seems to be a link to an Adobe PDF file. In fact the link takes the victim to a Web page hosted on the members.multimania.co.uk domain that then tries to download a screensaver (.scr) file. If the user agrees to installing that file, he is then infected by the worm, which mails itself to his e-mail contacts.

The worm is similar to the ILoveYou and Anna Kournikova worms, which spread in 2000 and 2001, and is a type of malware that has not been a major problem since around 2002, according to David Cowings, a senior manager with Symantec Security Response. “It looks like we’ve had a resurgence of mass-mailing worms,” he said.

In fact, “Here you have” is the same subject line used by the Anna Kournikova worm.

This latest worm seems to do nothing more than send itself out, using the victim’s contact list, Cowings said. “It appears to be mailing itself to all of the mailing lists that are in someone’s contacts. It may also go to individuals,” he said. The worm appeared to be affecting Outlook e-mail users, but it’s not clear if it is also affecting users of other mail programs.

The body of the e-mail typically says something like, “Hello… this is the document I told you about, you can find it here.” Because the worm is spreading via contact lists, the e-mail often comes from someone the victim knows.

Symantec started blocking the worm at around 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time Thursday and quickly stopped 65,000 messages, according to Cowings. The number soon ballooned beyond that, but the worm may now have a hard time spreading, because the malicious screensaver file on multimania.co.uk appears to have been taken down, Cowings said.

Multimania.co.uk is a free website hosting service run by Lycos.

In an alert sent out to customers Thursday, McAfee recommended blocking .scr files at the Internet gateway. “McAfee has received confirmation that some customers have received large volumes of spam containing a link to malware, a mass-mailing worm identified as VBMania,” the note reads. “The symptom reported thus far is that the spam volume is overwhelming the email infrastructure.”

The virus attempts to stop and delete security services

* 0053591272669638mcinstcleanup
* AntiVirFirewallService
* AntiVirMailGuard
* AntiVirSchedulerService
* AntiVirService
* Arrakis3
* aswUpdSv
* Avast! Antivirus
* avast! Mail Scanner
* avast! Web Scanner
* AVG Security Toolbar Service
* avg9wd
* Avgfws9
* AVGIDSAgent
* AVP
* Gwmsrv
* LIVESRV
* Mc0DS
* Mc0obeSv
* McAfee SiteAdvisor Service
* McMPFSvc
* mcmscsvc
* McNASvc
* McProxy
* McShield
* mfefire
* mfevtp
* MSK80Service
* NIS
* Panda Software Controller
* PAVFNSVR
* PavPrSrv
* PAVSRV
* prlo
* PSHost
* PSIMSVC
* PskSvcRetail
* scan
* sdAuxService
* sdCoreService
* SfCtlCom
* TMBMServer
* TmProxy
* TPSrv
* VSSERV

McAfee Global Threat Intelligence File Reputation (aka Artemis / Network Security Heuristic) has coverage for at least the main variant at the Very Low sensitivity level or higher.

Emergency McAfee DAT files will be released later today.

© 2010, montsch. All rights reserved.

August of this year is about to end and we are now about to enter another yet month, hopefully, full of hope and surprises. September could always be remembered as a sad month forall the years to come, considering the 9-11 incident.

But as for me, it is my birth month and there shouldn’t be any reason for me to be sad as I believe that I already have everything that a normal man could ever have to be happy at his age. And with my wife always at my side no matter what? I dare anyone to beat that.

Speaking of hopes, surprises and birthdays, there is no other thing that we could think of right away hearing such words but gifts!

We as Filipinos are fond of giving rather than receiving. And as the “ber” month comes, we usually save a bit for us to please our loved ones during the holidays. And where else do we buy our gifts but in the malls. Some of us go to garage sales to buy stuff and save a lot.

As the computer age goes, so as the way we handle things out like shopping. Most of the people nowadays are so busy to go out to buy gifts so they just go shopping online. There are a lot of sites out there which offers items that you could buy as gifts. I myself usually go to www.redenvelope.com and buy gifts as they usually offer great deals thus giving me more savings while I shop at the comfort of our home.

© 2010, montsch. All rights reserved.

A lot of people, of different ages, nowadays are spending more time on the internet rather than going out doing conventional stuff. Some are making money, some are just getting in touch with friends but most are playing online games!

One of the basic requirement of a gamer for their game is, well lets face it guys, it’s got to be free! And where else could you possibly find a site which offers socializing and free games? Think of an “F” word… Yeah right, FACEBOOK.

Recently I was introduced to this game called “Car Town”. The game is just simple as eating your rice crisp for breakfast. Basically, you were given an initial points and cash to buy your own car to start with. You build your own garage, create your service bays, hire your friends as your workers on your own service bays to do jobs such as washing a car.

You could possibly enjoy this game specially if you’re a car enthusiast. Car line up included in the game are awesome! Brands like Honda, Toyota, Ford, Chevrolet are considered ordinary cars while you could possibly own exotics like McLaren F1, Lamborghini LP670-4 SuperVeloce, Mercedes SLR McLaren and so on… Just name it!

Another thing is that you could race with your friends while interacting with them while you earn cash and experience points. I’ve got one important piece of advice though, always be safe and wear your setbelts and always use your rear convex mirrors. Well of course that applies on our real world of driving.

© 2010, montsch. All rights reserved.

If you don’t know, I know how to cook, though I’m not an expert. I’m also a food lover. Can’t you see? hahaha. Somebody told me that I need the best weight loss pills. I gain almost 200% of my weight before. Well, who can’t resist a yummy food!

© 2010, montsch. All rights reserved.

Men seem to be losing their masculinity for many reasons like when they buy diet pills, and more husbands are now hen-pecked than ever before. Is the lack of lack of more macho toys for boys has something to do with this?

If yes, the Sharpshooter remote controlled helicopter might be just the answer for this. The Sharpshooter remote controlled helicopter comes with a dozen missiles for you to wreck havoc on enemy lines, and you can always practice your firing skills with 6 targets bundled in the package. The Sharpshooter remote controlled helicopter comes with a rapid charging controller so that you can always dive back into the action soonest possible.

© 2010, montsch. All rights reserved.

Solar energy seems to be the way to go regardless of where you stay (we’re talking about populated areas and not some of those tribal peoples who live in extreme cold conditions, introduced to us through National Geographic), as it is free, environmentally friendly and capable of keeping your devices juiced up no matter what, albeit requiring far longer than usual compared to a regular power outlet. There is a new method of implementing solar cells, and we’re not talking about having it on your roof or the top of your car – as a partnership between researchers from Donghua University in Shanghai, China and Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, managed to come up with photovoltaic cells that can be used to recharge batteries in implanted devices simply by shining a near infrared laser beam via the skin.

Sounds creepy? Yeah, this was made possible using rare earth upconverting nanophosphors that are capable of absorbing 980 nm laser light, where it is followed by emitting visible luminescence that will subsequently excite traditional solar cells to produce electricity. This might get a bit more technical than usual, but the boffins discovered that “under the irradiation of a 980-nm laser with a power of 1W, the visible up-converting luminescence of rare-earth nanophosphors can be efficiently absorbed by the dyes in 980LD-PVCs so that they exhibit a maximal output power of 0.47 mW.” Before it can be used on us humans, further testing must be conducted, and initial results have showed that even after being covered with 1 to 6 layers of pig intestines with a thickness of around 1mm per layer, 980LD-PVCs still managed to exert a maximal output power of between 0.28 and 0.02 mW, which is more than enough juice to power a whole host of biodevices.

I hope this might be a natural cure for hair loss. Guess we might just have heart pacers that keep on going, and going, and going in the future, eh?

© 2010, montsch. All rights reserved.

It’s pretty amazing what they can do with prosthesis these days, but these mechanical arms and legs tend to drag a little as the human walks.

In order to make these prosthesis parts more in sync with humans, people from the University of Michigan and Delft University in the Netherlands are conducting some new experiments. These researchers are tying to create an artificial foot that can recycle the kinetic energy generated by the stepping of the foot itself.

Here’s the basic concept: this foot mimics the natural “push-off” of the human ankle, and then uses “a microprocessor to control the device and capture the energy that is normally dissipated by the leg”. Current studies with the experimental foot have shown that “energy recycling restored ankle push-off to normal and reduced the net metabolic energy penalty to 14 percent”.

I am told that this prosthetic leg requires a small battery to operate, and it runs off less than one watt of power. Of course, if you are harnessing the kinetic energy of walking, then is there any reason that we cannot set it up so that the walking and running will charge the battery?

Of course, I don’t really know much about this technology to assume something like that. After all, this is still concept technology. So if it is possible to charge the battery by walking, I’m sure they’ll figure that one out.

© 2010, montsch. All rights reserved.

Oxyfit is a backpack with your own personal oxygen supply.

You might be wondering why you would need your own personal oxygen supply. I mean, is the air that polluted? Well, pollution isn’t the only reason why you would need oxygen.

According to the Oxyfit product description, an increase of oxygen lets you “run farther, work longer, and even lose weight”. It sounds like the boasts of an energy drink, but here is the science: the increased supply speeds up the body’s “metabolic engine, burning more calories and stimulating fat loss”. Also, it can produce “nootropic (brain stimulating) and anti-aging effects through increased moisturizing of the skin”.

Apparently, athletes have been using this type of therapy to improve their game for years, not to mention those who frequent oxygen bars. I guess I’ve never felt a need to pay for oxygen any more than I would pay for water. Of course, the bottled water industry is pretty big, and I have paid my share to them over the years.

I don’t think I could pay $2,681 (with $49 shipping) for an Oxyfit. It comes with an oxygen tube, aspirator, battery pack, and tote bag or backpack. Hopefully, there is a pocket for my wife’s prenatal vitaminsThis weighs about 3.5 pounds and comes with a lithium battery that can last 90 minutes per charge.

© 2010, montsch. All rights reserved.