Walking and texting leads to accidents

Aston University in Birmingham is conducting research into human interaction with novel technologies.

The organisation says that approximately 70 per cent of the world's population own and use mobile phones and in the UK, mobile owners each have on average 1.8 handsets. This means a vast number of people, young and old, are using mobile devices, and the combination of walking and texting is making the average pedestrian increasingly susceptible to accidents or even death.

Overall, as many as 1 in 10 people in the UK are believed to have suffered injuries as a result of combining the two activities. The Aston Interactive Media (AIM) laboratory - a UK laboratory first is designed to support the evaluation of human interaction with mobile and potentially hazardous, environments.

Source: Birmingham Chamber of Commerce
 

Angling Development Board signs up with Discus

The Angling Development Board and Discus Systems have agreed a service contract. The contract is to look after on-site servers, workstations, and remote users. We have also supplied ADB with ESET antivirus software, Discus spam filtering and Storagecraft backup and disaster recovery software.

The ADB is the development arm of Angling Trust. It is supported by Sport England, the Environment Agency, British Waterways and Sports Coach UK. Working with key partners, the ADB aims to establish an infrastructure to develop the sport of angling within England. This includes working alongside national, regional and local angling and non-angling organisations.
 

Wayville Trading chooses Discus

We are pleased to welcome Wayville Trading Limited, a brand new company formed by Phil Brown, formerly the Managing Director of Pearse Complex Alloys and Consolidated Stainless Recycling. Phil has used Discus for IT support in his two companies for over 13 years and chose Discus to setup the IT requirements for his new venture based in Bromsgrove.
 

Dains stays with Discus

After an extensive evaluation of the marketplace, Dains, a leading Midlands firm of accountants & business advisers has again selected Discus for its IT support.

'Dains and Discus have a longstanding relationship,' says Terry Biddulph, Discus Systems' MD, 'but we have never taken their business for granted. In the current economic climate we have listened to them and taken their needs into account. Money is important, but at the end of the day we believe they renewed with us on the grounds of the excellent and timely service we have provided over the years of our relationship. They trust us to do a good job.'
 

Discus staff attain VCP5 Qualification

Dayle Biddulph and Andrew Guy have recently attained VCP5 qualification - the latest incarnation of VMWare's technical certification. Already certified to VCP4, the achievement of this qualification means that they are up there among the very best with regard to virtualization skills. Well done!

 

Copper - once again in demand

What would you do if you turned up to find your email wasn't working? Curse Microsoft? Contact IT Support?

Perhaps. But what if some light-fingered gentlemen had thoughtlessly removed all the copper cable connecting your business to the outside world?

You don't believe it could ever happen? Neither did one of our customers until recently. Then the unthinkable happened. They turned up one morning to find thieves had ripped out the main copper cabling used for communication.

No Internet. No email.

No way they could do business. Or was there?

Thankfully, yes.

Within hours they were up and running again thanks to Discus Systems' Email Continuity solution, a standby email solution that offers virtually uninterrupted email in the event of disaster, minimising disruption to your business.

For as little as 30 pence

Packington Estate chooses Discus Systems

Prominent landowner, Packington Estate, engaged Discus Systems to install a high speed Internet link at Park Farm Barns, one of the Estate's managed business complexes. Faced with the choice between a fibre-based leased line and a wireless leased line solution from Discus, the latter was selected on the grounds of substantial savings in both cost and time to install. Discus Systems' Wireless Leased Line provides an uncontended (no sharing of bandwidth) solution.

Malcolm Wiggin of Packington Estate says

'Park Farms Barns were in need of a high-speed link to enable our business tenants to effectively carry out their business. Faced with the choice of an expensive, long lead-time fibre-based leased line, or much less expensive, wireless leased line from Discus Systems, we opted for the latter. One of the benefits of wireless is that there is a minimal impact on the environment during installation - no digging of trenches, unsightly working and disruption to pedestrians or vehicular movements. We are very happy with our choice.'

Nicola Wins Kindle

Damien Biddulph, Discus Systems' Sales Director, is pictured presenting Nicola Edden of CP Bigwood with the Kindle 3G she won in our recent competition.

Happy e-reading, Nicola!

Discus Systems' Wireless Leased Line

Twiddling your thumbs waiting for the Internet? File transfers taking forever? Losing online business because of sluggish communications? You don't need us to tell you your pipeline to the outside world needs beefing up.

But before you contact BT, why not weigh up the advantages of a wireless leased line?

Substantially cheaper than a fibre-based leased line. For example, a 10 Mbps circuit can be installed for just £1000 with a monthly rental that is up to 80% cheaper than a wire-based circuit.
Much simpler to install - days as opposed to weeks.
A wireless circuit is uncontended - the full bandwidth is available to you exclusively.
No disruption to the physical environment. Do your bit for the planet!
For further information email u2us@discus.co.uk or for an informal discussion contact Terry or Martyn on 0800 880 3360
 

Dropbox - simplify your life

Dropbox is a handy tool for saving and accessing your important documents across multiple devices. The cloud-based service saves your work to an easy-to-access folder available on any computer as well as the Dropbox website. Dropbox protects digital files from crashed hard drives, frozen computers, and misplaced flash drives. It synchronises documents, photos, and videos across multiple systems, moving them from laptop to smartphone to iPad without so much as a single wire or USB cord.

Any file you save to Dropbox also instantly saves to your computers, phones, and the Dropbox website itself.

Your files are always available from the secure Dropbox website.
Dropbox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
Works even when offline. You always have your files, whether or not you have a connection.
Dropbox transfers just the parts of a file that change (not the whole thing).
Manually set bandwidth limits -- Dropbox won't hog your connection.
Dropbox keeps a one-month history of your work.
Any changes can be undone, and files can be undeleted.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and AES-256 bit encryption.
Dropbox is available for free (though users can only store 2GB of data) or for a monthly fee for users that want access to over 50GB of storage.