Desktop Publishing

End user and organizations can use desktop publishing (DTP) software to produce their own printed materials that look professionally published.

That is they can design and print their own newsletter, brochures, manuals and books with several types, graphics, photos and colors on each page.

Word processing packages and desktop publishing packages like Adobe PageMaker and QuarkXPress are used to do desktop publishing.

Typically, text material and graphics can be generated by word processing and graphic packages and imported as texts and graphics files.

Optical scanners may be used to input text and graphics from printed material. Files of clip arts also can be used, which are redrawn graphic illustrations provided by the software package or available from other sources.

The heart of desktop publishing is a page design process called page makeup or page composition. Video screen becomes an electronic paste-up board with rulers, column guides and other page design aids.

Text materials and illustrations are then merged into the page format that has been design before.

The software will automatically move excess text to another column or page and help size and place illustrations and headings.

Most desktop publishing packages provide WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) displays so user can see exactly what the finished document will look like before it is printed.
Desktop Publishing

Piracy of Intellectual Property

Software is not the only intellectual property subject to computer based piracy. Other forms of copyrighted material, such as music, videos, images, articles, books and either written works are especially vulnerable to copyright infringement, which most courts have deemed illegal.

Digitized versions can easily be captured by computer systems and made available for people to access or download at Internet websites, or can be readily disseminated by e-mail as file attachments.

The development of peer to peer networking technologies like the Napster and Gnutella models have made digital versions of copyrighted material even more vulnerable to unauthorized use.

For example Napster and other similar software enable direct MP3 audio file transfer pf specified tracks of music between PC and those of other users on the Internet.

Thus such software creates a peer to peer network of millions internet users who electronically trade digital versions of copyrighted or public domain music stored on their PC’s hard drives.
Piracy of Intellectual Property

Event Notification in E-commerce System

Most E-commerce applications are event-driven systems that respond to a multitude of events – from new customer’s first website access, to payment and delivery processes, and to innumerable customer relationship and supply chain management activities.

That is why event notification processes play an important role in E-commerce systems, since customers, suppliers, employees, and other stakeholders must be notified of all events that might affect their status in a transaction.

Event notification software works with the workflow management software to monitor all E-commerce process and record all relevant events, including unexpected changes or problem situations.

Then it works with user profiling software to automatically notifying all involved stakeholders of important transaction events using appropriate user preferred method of electronic, messaging, such as E-mail, newsgroup, pager, and fax communications.

This includes notifying a company’s management so they can monitor their employees’ responsiveness to E-commerce events and customer and supplier feedback.

For example, when we purchase a product at a retail E-commerce website like Amazon.com, we automatically receive an E-mail record of our order.

Then we may receive e-mail notifications of any changes in product availability or shipment status, and finally, and e-mail message notifying us that our order has been shipped and is complete.
Event Notification in E-commerce System

Information Security And Secure Business

Information Security And Secure Business
Practices The PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) stresses the importance of information security in the modern age of high-speed transactions and technologically advanced criminals. If someone were to appropriate a customer's sensitive information illegally, they could do serious harm to that customer – and in the end, damage to your business as well.

Information security is a key component of many requirements of the PCI DSS. Customers now expect a certain level of security before they will trust you with their information. As more and more security breaches reach the public notice, customers will become more weary, and more savvy as to how they guard their important information.

If they can't trust a merchant to guard their data, they will do it themselves, and that will most likely happen in the form of just not giving it out. And that's not good for any business.

Major principles of information security consist of maintaining confidentiality and integrity. Confidentiality implies that if a consumer entrusts sensitive data to you, you must do everything possible to protect it.

This means that disclosure is not an option. For many transactions, personal information must be used. As a merchant you must not allow unauthorized disclosure whether accidental or on purpose.

The integrity of a system refers to business practices that do not allow any unauthorized personnel to create, modify, or delete any sensitive data. This loss of integrity can occur through various means, including malicious criminal activity, accidents through improper precautions, or viruses or other malware.

The PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) was created to help merchants achieve a sufficient level of information security and secure business practices. Any company that stores, transmits, or processes credit card information is required to become compliant or risk a range of fines and penalties.

There are 12 requirements to the PCI DSS, and each of them contributes to the integrity of your information security system.

You begin by installing a firewall to control the traffic that can get into your system. You must also be sure to change any vendor-supplied passwords that may have come as defaults on your system.

Next is the protection of cardholder data. Information security can depend on strong encryption. This includes encryption on data stored on your system as well as data that is in transit.

Then, to guard against viruses and other invasive programs, you need to make sure you have updated anti-virus software and employ and maintain secure systems and applications.

Access to this critical data must also be strictly controlled. This means only people with a business need-to-know should have access and each person who does have access must have a unique ID assigned to them. Physical access must also be restricted so criminals can't walk out with hard copies or hardware.

Tracking and logging procedures should also be implemented. This way, should your information security happen to be breached, you can discover how it was done, and set in motion the proper procedures to rectify the problem. And all these procedures also need to be regularly tested and updated.

Once these practices are in place, you are almost PCI compliant. You still have to maintain a policy that addresses information security.

In other words, to maintain the integrity and confidentiality of personal information, you need to settle on the right practices and make sure that everyone in the company knows and understands their own responsibilities in preserving information security.
Information Security And Secure Business Practices
Written by: Andy Eliason
Source: http://www.Free-Articles-Zone.com

Electronic Spreadsheet

Electronic Spreadsheet packages like Lotus, Microsoft Excel and Corel QuattraPro are used for business analysis, planning and modeling.

They will help develop an electronic spreadsheet, which is a worksheet of rows and columns that can be stored on PC or a network server, or converted to HTML, format and stored as a web page or websheet on the World Wide Web.

Developing a spreadsheet involves designing its format and developing the relationships that will be used in the worksheet.

In respond to the input, the computer performs necessary calculations based on the formula defined in the spreadsheet, and displays results immediately, whether at workstation or website. Most packages also help develop graphic displays of spreadsheet result.

Spreadsheet can be developed to record and analyze past and present advertising performance for a business.

Hyperlinks also can be developed to a similar websheet at marketing teams’ intranet website.

The computer can recalculate the affected figures, producing new market shares figures and graphics. So that better insight on the effect of advertising decision on market share.
Electronic Spreadsheet