Now that we have survived another flood, thankfully averted for the CBD by the levee, it’s time to review your flood evacuation plan.
Many businesses did experience major flooding and their evacuation plans were critical.
How smoothly did your plan work when it came to the crunch?
One of the hardest things about flood evacuation is the suddenness of the need to implement, and assistance from people outside your business who don’t know your plan.
Everyone feels stressed, and as it was this time, it could be in the middle of the night.
Some businesses wisely began implementing the first stage of their plan up to 24 hours before the evacuation become necessary, and this must have saved them a lot of time and stress when the full evacuation started.
Now whilst everything is fresh in your mind, review your plan as you get your business back into full operation this week.
What worked smoothly and what could be improved?
The more detail you have, including the order of the evacuation can mean that outside helpers are able to give assistance easily.
Print the plan and have several copies to allow allocating sections of the plan, and act as a checklist, so that you walk out knowing that nothing important has been forgotten.
There are some simple things that can be included in your plan to assist in protecting your technology.
Don’t forget to move electrical leads well off the floor area and unplug from power.
Implement a good backup plan. Use external or removable hard drives, easy to remove from the premises – no heavy lifting, and little space needed in a vehicle.
A simple backup system is critical for every business as many other things can go wrong with technology. Thinking of how easily you can remove your data in an emergency of any kind can take a lot of pressure off the evacuation procedure.
Use the links on this site to read more about backing up your computer systems.
I’ve included here links to ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) data that was used in the previous post concerning the usage and up-take of internet technology by business.
Interesting stuff, thanks Australian Government!
I would imagine that hardly any business owner could say they do not use the world wide web in some capacity. Information is available at our fingertips instantly and in huge volumes so that I struggle to avoid information overload.
I can browse huge libraries and catalogued information such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics at my leisure.
I can read annual reports of any major company, newspapers from anywhere in the world, stock market information or check what my competitors are offering.
It’s a balancing act though isn’t it?
How much technology should you employ in your business, and how much information can you make effective use of?
The answer is of course different for every business.
A comparison of business use of internet technology in 1997-98 shows that the late 90’s was a critical time of internet take-up by business. Prior to 1997 only 16% of employing businesses had access to the internet, yet by 1999 it had risen to 43%
By the end of 2006 the figure was at 81% and in early 2008 it was 86.5%
Interestingly only 15% of employing businesses were offering EFTPOS, and only 2% were using the internet to receive payments in 1998
We would all agree that it is virtually impossible to conduct business today without the aid of some technology – imagine not having a telephone!
Well over 80% of business have broadband connections and therefore have the means to use the internet for their business and it would seem that within the next 5 years every business will be expected to work this way.
By the end of 2007 the estimated value of internet income in business was $68 billion, or 3.5% of total income from sales of goods or services.
How is your business taking advantage of technology?
The series of resolution columns that have been published in the Northern Star Newspaper over the past month (you will find 3 column postings on this) have discussed generally three themes:
- Monitor display resolution
- Image resolution
- Printing resolution
Some examples
Check out how resolution effects the following image:
| This is the original image -
width 212 pixels, height 242 pixels,
resolution 72 ppi
with a printing size of 7.46 cm x 8.54 cm
jpeg compression level 12 - high |
 |
 |
Now the resolution has been upped to 300 ppi
the screen dimensions are the same bu the printing size has changed to
1.79 cm x 2.05 cm
see what differences you can or can’t notice in the image |
| Back to the 72 ppi image but changing the pixel dimensions to
500 width but cropping it down to save space here to
width 431 x 496
jpeg crompession level is still 12 - high |
 |
 |
Finally saving the same image with a low resolution |
In fact it is impossible to give any detailed analysis of these topics in 300 word columns, but then of course the purpose of the column is to get you started in thinking about a concept and hope that you then go on a journey to find out all that pertains to your own needs or situation.
I’ve collected a large volume of research in order to write those columns and below am providing you with a listing of online articles to take you further in understanding resolution.
Enjoy your journey!
Monitor Resolution stuff
Image Resolution stuff
Printing Resolution stuff
I have been discussing resolutions over the past few weeks and have covered how your computer monitor addresses and uses resolution, and how it affects images on your screen.
There is yet another side however to resolution when it comes to images and that is the print resolution.
The software used by your printer translates pixels into ink dots and are expressed as dots per inch. Printers have different capabilities as to how many dots per inch they can produce, and in general the more dpi, the smoother the tones in the printed image and the wider the colour gamut produced.
The minimum resolution for magazine-quality printing is 300 ppi but there is a surprising effect on the size of your image.
An image that is 640 x 480 pixel dimension, printed at 300 dpi will only print at 3.2 x 1.6 inches.
So our monitor resolution and print resolution are 2 different environments. This becomes particularly important for images that are designed to be viewed for instance on a web page.
This can actually be good news!
If you are displaying copyrighted material on your web page of your own images and are concerned that someone may take your images and reproduce them illegally then you can take advantage of these resolution issues.
Using bitmap images such as jpegs, set with a low resolution suitable for screen of 72 dpi will produce great screen viewing images to showcase your products, whilst ensuring that any attempts to enlarge or print as high quality cannot be achieved.
The fine balancing acts that I have been describing may well be the reason that you obtain professional advice on images for your web site and printed brochures.
