MDS BLOG

In today’s litigation-happy society, organizations have no way of knowing when they will need access to certain documents for litigation or audit purposes. When they find themselves in the middle of an investigation or court case, they must delve into the thousands of digital files they have in store in order to find the legally relevant ones to present to the investigators or attorneys. It’s a problem that applies to a relatively small portion of the populous, nevertheless, a solution has come to the aid of businesses and its name is eDiscovery.

Understanding the Process

The foundation of the electronic discovery process is intelligent information management. Electronic discovery takes electronically stored information, analyzes it, then classifies and stores it as appropriate. Without this process, these steps must be performed by employees, and thus are at risk for human error. StoredIQ, a company founded in 2001 to help manage digital data, has grown to offer eDiscovery solutions to companies with sprawling databases.

While storing the data, eDiscovery tools create topology maps that outline the analytics used in categorizing the data. This makes it simple to search for relevant data when the need arises. It also allows you to create customized reports using stored data.

Once electronically stored data that could be relevant in a future litigation is identified, the system stores it in a legal hold repository that cannot be changed. If it is ever needed for litigation purposes, the unaltered data is readily retrieved and presented in an organized way. The system also creates an audit log when performing each of these actions. The log can then be used to prove why a particular action was taken, should a question come up.

Sometimes when handling the storage of important data manually, your business ends up storing unnecessary files in an attempt to have everything you could need for future litigation. This can hamper productivity. With StoredIQ, this is not necessary. The process analyzes the data so thoroughly that any duplicate or irrelevant data is defensibly removed from the system. Again, the audit trails help prove why the data was removed. Potentially responsive data is carefully and efficiently stored and can be reviewed using keyword search when needed.

How This Helps Businesses

When you decide to invest in intelligent eDiscovery solutions for your business, you receive many benefits. First, the process takes much less time when handled automatically rather than by hand, and electronically stored information is collected, preserved and processed much more efficiently. When you face litigation and the deadlines that come with the legal process, your business will be able to meet those deadlines and avoid sanctions, because the data is simple to retrieve.

With this particular solution, you can easily repeat any process you perform. Should you need to pull the same set of data, you can do so time and time again. This provides transparency, and also helps you to create a defensible position as you face litigation. Also, all actions performed during litigation have a legally defensible audit trail. If there is ever any question about the data you provided, you can use these audit trails to defend your actions.

In the end, you have a streamlined, automatic process for storing and retrieving data that is legally defensible, repeatable and manageable. If you ever have to face litigation, the discovery process will be much simpler and more cost effective.

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Thinking outside the box with an MBA is a great way to realize a long-held dream, like becoming a small business owner or C-level executive. And with so many opportunities for online education in this area, an MBA is more accessible than ever before. Today’s MBA means more than just adding to your educational experience in your field.

Reinventing Yourself through an MBA

Earning your master’s degree in business administration can help you find new direction in your career path. Whether you’re looking for a lateral move or to use what you’ve learned in a completely different area, an MBA can establish you as a person who can contribute to your company in unique ways. Applying what you’ve learned from your educational experience in your current situation can bring you interesting opportunities and a variety of responsibilities. An MBA can also provide you with the knowledge you need to increase your management skills and share new and creative project ideas. Updating your resume with new skill sets, recognition gained through the educational process and any new certifications received along with your MBA will enhance your marketability in your area of expertise.

Career Change through an MBA

When earning an MBA, it’s easy to think in terms of your current employment situation or long-term career goals. Today’s MBA allows and encourages those in the business field to think about career change. Unstable job markets make life-long relationships with the same company or in the same field the exception rather than the rule. Those who use online educational opportunities to complete an MBA are realizing limitless possibilities when it comes to a complete career change. The skills learned in an MBA program can help attorneys transfer their expertise to human resource departments, specialized insurance sales and consulting opportunities. Medical personnel are finding new avenues in the areas of hospital and clinic administration, nursing supervision and hospital marketing, fundraising and foundation establishment. An MBA provides engineers with the skills they need to open web-based consulting firms and provide a broader range of services. MBA online education programs can prepare someone in any field for a complete career change while still using his or her undergraduate degree.

Owning a Business with an MBA

Getting a master’s in business administration can also provide a person with the skills he or she needs to start a business. The knowledge gained through an MBA program adds depth to any prior degree and prepares the entrepreneur for the day-to-day operations of a business. Individuals in a variety of fields are learning how to start online businesses from home that provide services to those in their former industries. An MBA helps those wanting to go into business for themselves see areas within their chosen field that are lacking and find ways to provide those services through new business ventures. Those with skills, experience and a new idea can use what’s learned in an MBA program to make their business dream a reality.

Earning an MBA today means so much more than just letters after your name. With the right combination of experience, undergraduate training and an advanced business degree, what was once merely a pipe dream can become a business reality.

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Can you imagine what your educational experience would be like if you had to compose essays without a computer or solve mathematical equations without a calculator? Many students often take modern technology for granted throughout their time in college, but they just as often fail to take full advantage of the many additional technological tools they could be using to further enhance learning convenience and efficacy. Whether you’re working toward earning your technology degree or even a business degree, technological apps can help you tremendously along the way. If you’re enrolled in an online institution, the following five gadgets can help you stay organized and fully prepared to tackle the toughest academic problems and busiest student schedules.

1. 1. iPad

Lighter than your laptop, the iPad offers full access to all of your online classes and essential documents while on the go. This innovative device allows students to get a more hands-on learning experience by using the many built-in apps and apps available at the App Store to gain access to a virtual library of information. With new Multi-Touch textbooks, you can even bring essential reading materials along wherever you go without weighing down your bag.

1. 2. Smartphone

Phones aren’t just for sending and receiving calls anymore. In addition to this basic feature, smartphones are basically smaller and more portable versions of the iPad. With a basic smartphone, students can stay organized with digital calendars, alarms, and countless downloadable educational apps, including scientific calculators, voice-recording software for taking audio notes, and reference manuals, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and so on.

1. 3. Kindle Fire

A must-have for Literature classes, Kindle Fire allows students to have easy access to an entire library of textbooks, novels, magazines and more. Its lightweight and compact size makes it a perfect choice for reading on the go, so you can bring it along while traveling, in the waiting room, at the Laundromat, and anywhere else your busy schedule takes you. With this device, students can squeeze in a quick study session virtually anywhere, which can improve information retention and academic performance significantly.

1. 4. Webcam

If your laptop doesn’t already come with a built-in webcam, purchasing an attachable one is crucial for taking advantage of Skyping opportunities with professors and peers. Webcams are fairly inexpensive to purchase, and come with invaluable benefits for online communication. For example, say you’re struggling with correctly interpreting a graph for your Statistics course. Skype allows you to hold a video conference with instructors, classmates and tutors to receive a visual explanation of the graph and gain a clearer understanding.

1. 5. USB Flash Drive

USB flash drives may not be the most high-tech gadget around, but they are certainly essential items for college students who live a fast-paced lifestyle and are constantly up against assignment deadlines. Say you wrote half of your Marketing essay on Saturday morning, saved it to your flash drive and took a quick break to check your email. Suddenly, your computer becomes infected with a virus and the entire screen goes black. To top it all off: the assignment is due in less than two hours. This scenario is basically every student’s worse nightmare, but with a flash drive on hand it is simply a minor inconvenience. The only step students need to take from here is to remove the flash drive and find the nearest library to complete the assignment before it’s due.

Integrating the above educational gadgets into your schoolwork routine may become so useful that going without them will feel similar to writing an essay without a computer. Above all, these gadgets assist students in making better use of their time and staying organized despite a long list of daily responsibilities. Although not every gadget listed features a price tag that is kind to the average student’s budget, it should be thought of as an investment in improving your academic performance and keeping stress levels low while you complete your online degree.

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OpenStack was founded by Rackspace Hosting Company and NASA, and is a new open source software for creating private and public clouds. OpenStack was borne out of a necessity for corporations, researchers, global data centers and other organizations to deploy large cloud operations for private or public clouds. They are also offering a new trial called Whiskey.

As Node.js is becoming more and more known, there are more tools needed to test the applications that it is built upon. Rackspace started to use Node.js so they wrote their own testing tool for Node.js called Whiskey. It was named Whiskey because it was the developer’s favorite beverage.

Rackspace has announced the release of its open source test framework called Whiskey. Whiskey is a suite for testing applications written in Node.js, which is a very popular JavaScript application framework that uses Google’s JavaScript engine. Rackspace created Whiskey because they found that test frameworks were limited. In using Whiskey, the code coverage module gives them much more flexibility and features. It has three reporters, text, json, and html, and also supports aggregating code and coverage reports. Whiskey also supports async tests, tap output, generates Makefiles, and reports variables that leak into the global scope.

You can currently run Whiskey in single processes, but the platform has one master process with many child processes that communicates with each other through TCP. There is a plan to enable a Whiskey Node.js that will run over multiple servers in the near future.

Whiskey also has the functionality to report on variables, which makes it easier for the developer to find errors that have been created. For example, if you define a variable and then forget the var keyword, you can run a report on the variables to find the error. You can find the error much quicker using this process in Whiskey.

Whiskey can be downloaded and installed on your system and the source code is available online. You can also find test file examples online to view.

There is also an Android app by Rackspace that allows IT managers to access the cloud server from almost anywhere. You can use this app to quickly and easily administer your cloud servers and cloud files. To use this app you simply log in and enter your API key. This app supports multiple accounts, supports US, UK and custom API endpoints, and lists all cloud servers in your account. You can also use this app to create new cloud servers, delete existing cloud servers, and resize Cloud Servers. This app will also allow you to perform soft and hard reboots, manage backup schedules, ping cloud servers, rename or rebuild the cloud server, change the root password for the cloud server, and create and view cloud file containers. You can upload text files to the cloud files, and download and preview Cloud files. You can also secure your Cloud server with a pass code lock. With this app your Cloud can move with you anywhere you go.

In essence, the Rackspace Cloud app puts an impressive amount of the functionality of a full-featured server management setup into the palm of your hand; no small feat considering the suite of processes that running a server takes. Using the cloud to administer the cloud is a feat on ingenuity, but it is just the tip of the iceberg for what is to come with cloud integration in our society.

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In 2011, everyone was talking about Google+, a new social networking platform originally expected to be similar to Facebook or Twitter. Opinions were heavily divided. While some people believed Google+ was a positive addition to the world of social media, others argued that there was no reason to add yet another social network to the mix when there were already so many—incidentally, the same argument was prevalent among critics when Twitter first emerged. Google+ offered several useful tools that were unavailable on Facebook, and it quickly became popular among Internet users of all ages.

Circles

Some of the unique features of Google+ make it a highly useful social networking platform for educators and students. One such feature is the ability to create circles. When a user makes a post or uploads media, he or she can elect to make it available to everyone or a limited group. Using this technology, a teacher can easily create a circle for his or her students and use it to send information about class schedules, homework and exams. Students can also create a circle for classmates in a specific class which might foster collaboration between students.

Hangouts

Another Google+ feature useful for students and teachers is Hangouts. A hangout allows up to ten people to join a group video chat and interact with one another. Using a hangout, a teacher can hold an online study session with up to nine students at the same time. Students can also use this feature to work on group projects or talk about homework.

In addition, hangouts are especially beneficial for students taking online classes. Prior to the development of Google+, online classes were often conducted using electronic correspondence technologies, such as email and class websites. However, with the use of a hangout, a teacher can conduct an online course in real time. Students can ask questions, and the teacher can provide an immediate answer. This revolutionary development allows online courses to function more similarly to a standard offline course, which brings online education to a completely new level.

Google Apps

Along with the circle and the hangout, Google also offers several educational applications that can support online learning. For example, OpenClass is an application that allows students to access notes, assignments, books and grades all in one place. A second application, called Google Docs, allows students and teachers to create documents, presentations and spreadsheets which is useful for collaboration on class documents. Finally, some of Google’s more general applications, such as Google Calendar and Gmail, are also useful in education. Gmail allows students and teachers to communicate via email, while Google Calendar allows educators to notify students about class schedules and exam dates.

Google +, released prior to the beginning of the traditional fall semester, has grown to over 90 million regular, monthly users. As more schools adopt Google products for better engagement among faculty, administration and students, innovation in education is sure to grow.

About the author: Derrick Cruise is a professional writer living in the Indianapolis area. He specializes in social media and career search articles.

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Just ten years ago, the idea of a classroom of children talking to another classroom of children across the globe seemed like a pipe dream. But with Skype’s In the Classroom initiative, connecting students and teachers all over the world is just a click away. Skype is a software application that enables users to make video and voice calls via the Internet; Skype also has an instant message feature. Its uses in the classroom open a host of options for both teachers and students.

Launched in March of this year, the service has become a popular teaching and learning tool: more than 16,000 teachers are leading more than 800 projects with their students. The advantages of Skype in the Classroom are evident, but the possibilities for higher education are still being explored. Aside from the benefits it could lend to online education, traditional education programs can also be enhanced with Skype.

Taking the distance out of distance education

Colleges and universities have kept up with technology, and many offer online courses. But few incorporate Skype, which could allow students and instructors to meet face to face no matter where they are. For online classes that meet asynchronously, students could start study groups that meet at convenient times and work on group projects—all without the hassle of finding a physical place to meet. And for collaborations on research projects that involve multiple universities, Skype can make traveling unnecessary, which is a great way for universities to save money.

Instant office hours

Because today’s professors have such hectic schedules, office hours are sometimes sporadic and unpredictable. But with Skype, professors and instructors can meet with students face-to-face at times that are more convenient for both parties. This can be especially useful for graduate students and their project directors—grad students often have other jobs or fellowships, which means they don’t have a lot of free time. A quick Skype chat can save hours of travel and preparation time.

Educating the masses

As higher education costs continue to rise, the dream of a college education is out of reach for more students than ever before. But several universities are using the Internet to teach college courses on a massive scale. With online video chat programs like Skype, it’s possible to educate hundreds—maybe thousands—of students at once. Skype can also be used to reach students in rural or low-income areas. Of course, the digital divide—low access to the Internet among rural and poor communities—is still an issue, but finding ways to broaden the scope of the Internet includes finding low-costs ways to reach needy communities.

Skype is just one software program that’s changing the educational landscape, but as technology progresses, it won’t be the last. Skype has the ability to reach millions of students, which can revolutionize teaching and learning. College and university instructors and administrators should continue to explore the ways that Skype can make teaching and learning more effective.

About the author: Derrick Cruise is a professional writer living in the Indianapolis area. He specializes in technology and education articles. In his spare time, he contributes to stand-up comedy routines.

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It is difficult to imagine life without the Internet in its many means of access now such as desktop computers, laptop computers, netbooks, smartphones and notepads. A mere 21 years ago, most of us lived quite easily without its omnipresence in our daily lives.

Before the introduction of the Internet to the world at large, online education programs did exist. In the 1980s, the corporate world launched relatively prehistoric online education programs in the form of computer-based programs to ensure employees were vested with the most current information. This means of disseminating information was severely limited. With the advent of the Internet and its various improvements over the years, the corporate training process vastly improved and became efficient as employers could train employees in remote locations with fewer concerns of travel expenses, hiring job trainers in several locations, or risking employees at different locations suffering due to outdated information.

The revolutionary means of educating people online finally took hold in the educational community in 1994 with the distance learning organization known as CALCampus, which introduced the first entirely online curriculum. CAL started as Rhode Island’s Computer Assisted Learning Center for Adults, and was quick to recognize the value of the World Wide Web and integrated it into its repertoire, offering online courses for high school and secondary school course work. Soon, other colleges and universities took note and began to institute similar programs.

The early days of online education would probably be quite surprising to students introduced to online studies in the modern age. In addition to being text-heavy with few, if any, images or graphics, the ability to submit projects, instructor communication and other aspects of online learning have improved since those early days. Not only do modern online students benefit in vast improvements in technology, but they also have access to a wide array of helpful gadgets to make their online learning experience even easier.

External hard drives

Long gone are the days of clumsy floppy discs. Students can now easily save valuable online data, research, final assignments, audio-visual data, and much more in an external hard drive that can hold hundreds of gigabytes of data. These portable hard drives allow students to keep a class’s course work all in one secure location as a backup to their computer.

Soundproof headphones

Sometimes students can’t find a spot that is quiet enough to really focus and study for a critical examination. Whether it is roommates on a different examination schedule who choose to turn up the television’s volume too high, or neighbors who don’t attend school and don’t understand that the student is trying to study, soundproof headphones can be a solution to the frustration of distraction while trying to study. Students can seek out high quality, soundproof headphones to help them maintain focus.

Organizational apps for smartphones or tablets

A good calendar is essential to a student’s productivity. There are hundreds of apps on the market to help the modern online student stay on track and current on all deadlines. But organizational apps will help students keep track of, and highlight, their notes and plans for classes. CourseSmart is just one of the apps that can help students plot and stay their course.

Learning online has become more than just a supplement to teaching and learning—it’s quickly becoming the norm. Learning to embrace the newest technology, and how to use it teach and learn more effectively, has the potential to change the future of education.

About the author: Derrick Cruise is a professional writer living in the Indianapolis area. He specializes in technology and education articles. In his spare time, he contributes to stand-up comedy routines.

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5 Apps for online college students

In the age of digital textbooks, smartphones and online degree programs, having a list of must-have phone apps for your college experience can be a big help. Here are five course-related we rate as most useful.

1. Evernote
   First on our list is an app that allows students to copy classroom notes and record course lectures.  Evernote can be a life saver for students who want to replay a class session. The audio and visual files are searchable and easy to organize.
2. Dropbox
   Next is Dropbox, the most popular cloud technology app for computers and smartphones which allows users to synch files from multiple devices while reducing, or even eliminating, the need for flash drives which can be easily lost or compromised. For students using one computer at home, another at the library, and a smartphone while travelling, Dropbox provides a simple means to keep up with classwork and juggle various versions of one document for group projects.
3. My Class Schedule
   Students have a lot to juggle. Keeping track of tests, assignments, projects, and personal events makes a mobile time management app number three on our list. My Class Schedule is an Android-only app that can keep your entire life on track with easy reminder features that prevent last minute due date surprises that can rob you of sleep and GPA. The app has a free version with ads, but an ad-free version can be purchased for a nominal fee.
4. InClass
   iPhone users have their own excellent time management app that is highly comparable to the Android app, My Class Schedule. With a different user interface than the Android app, InClass still offers the same capabilities to organize the various events in your life.
5. Thinking Space for Android devices, SimpleMind+ for the iPhone
   Each term paper, class project, and synopsis a student writes involves organizing concepts and ideas and then breaking those down to subordinate thoughts. These brain mapping apps are both free and extremely helpful in organizing thoughts into visual representations you can use on the go. Long after you graduate, the apps will remain relevant well into your career.

About the author: Derrick Cruise is a professional writer living in the Indianapolis area. He specializes in technology and education articles. In his spare time, he contributes to stand-up comedy routines.

Website: http://skyesartwork.com/

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