Effect on use of Computer Technology in Sports

Sports activities has become part and parcel of human being. In fact it is the most popular entertainment by either watching or involved in the games. With the increasing demand for a fair judgement call in a game, there are at times certain judgement called by the umpires/referee might jeopardise the result of the game due to incorrect judgement made by the referee.

Therefore, the use of technology has been proven to have a positive impact on many sports in the modern day. Among the games that had opted to use technology are Tennis, Basketball and Cricket. Latest sports game that is in the verge of using technology to assist the referee in game is Football.

As reported by the mirror.com.uk, on April 11, 2013 the English Football League will adopt the Goal-Line Technology for the coming season 2014/2015 onwards. To date it has seen to have a positive reaction from the fans as it makes watching the game more enjoyable to see the correct decisions being made.

Apart from the Goal-Line Technology, there are other types of technology used in other games such as the Hawk-eye technology which is being used in the Tennis and Cricket game for quite a while. Each of these technologies is mainly to assist the Umpires / Referees in making correct judgement during the games.

How does these Technologies assist the Umpires / Referee?

Hawk-eye Technology in a Tennis Game

This system is the first and only ball-tracking technology to have passed stringent ITF testing measures. The system is able to capture the movement of the tennis ball and show whether a ball was in or out on stadium big screens. By having this new features, it bring a whole new dimension to television coverage and fascinates tennis fans worldwide as the fans would feel closer to the action.
Source: http://www.hawkeyeinnovations.co.uk/page/sports-officiating/tennis




Hawk-eye Technology in a Cricket Game
The system used to assist the third umpire who were position off the ground accessing to TV replays of certain situations (such as disputed catches and boundaries) to advise the central umpires who are out on the field on the finding or decision for the certain situation.
Source: http://www.topendsports.com/resources/technology.htm


Goal Line Technology (GLT) in a Football Game

It is part of the Goal Line Technology, However, the technology have been improved and uses a network of high-speed video cameras to track a ball’s position at a given time whether it has crossed the goalmouth, and the software alerts the match officials via a radio transmission to the referee’s watch.


Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/10232009/Goal-line-technology-in-football-will-avoid-the-pitfalls-suffered-by-cricket-because-no-humans-are-involved.html

Other Advantages of using Computer Technology in Sports
Apart from the above usage, the computer technology is also being used by the sports equipment manufacturer in designing equipment or attire for the athlete which could help to improve the performance. Taking example on the pole vault event, by introducing aluminium, fiberglass, and graphite poles in 1963, the pole vault record shot up 2 ft (0.61 m) in three years and now stands at over 20 ft (6.09 m). While prior to that technological innovation, the pole vault record increased only about 2 in (5 cm) to 16 ft (4.88 m).

Another example is when the giant sports goods producer Nike design the running shoes for Michael Johnson at the Atlanta Olympics. He has set the new world record in the 200-meter sprint by wearing specially designed ultra-light running shoes weighing just 3.4 oz (96.39 g).

However, it would not be an absolute statement for me to say that technology have improved the competitiveness of an athlete. But it's an undeniable fact that the equipment used by the athlete did make some impact to the athlete to certain extend.

Source: http://www.scienceclarified.com/dispute/Vol-1/Have-technological-advances-in-sports-such-as-tennis-golf-and-track-and-field-supplanted-the-athletic-achievements-of-the-participants-in-those-sports.html

Nevertheless, I personally believe that the computer technology has played main role in improving the sports for the athlete performances and for viewing pleasure of the supporters.

The Automation of Cheque Clearing System in Malaysia

Cheque clearing is one of the main banking activities in the Financial Institution. Prior to December 1998, the cheque clearing process in Malaysia were done on manual basis where all the cheques collected by the banks were physically brought to the ‘Clearing House’ (i.e. Bank Negara Malaysia) for exchange and settlement process.

During this period all cheques collected by the Collecting Bank were physically sorted by location before sending it to the ‘Clearing House’ for settlement. At that time, the number of day ‘float’ for the cheque to be cleared will depend on the location of the Paying Bank branch. To a certain extent the days clearing ‘float’ can be as long as 14 working days.

Figure 1 below illustrates the Cheque Clearing process during that period.

In early 1998, Bank Negara Malaysia have embarked in enhancing the process by introducing the new system of cheque clearing and settlement namely, Sistem Penjelasan Informasi Cek Kebangsaan Secara Elektronik e(SPICK). With the implementation, there will be no more physical movements of the cheques from the collecting bank/branch to ‘clearing house’. Instead, the images of the cheques deposited will be forwarded or transmitted to paying bank via the ‘clearing house’ for settlement and payment. 

Figure 2 below illustrates the electronic cheque clearing process after the implementation of eSPICK.




As one of the team members that was involved in the automation of the clearing process for one of the commercial bank, I personally believed that the automation have benefited both the customer and the participating Banks. Among the benefits that the customer have gained thru the automation are:

a) Shorter time frame for the cheque deposited to be cleared (within 2 working days) as compared previously where the day hold are between 2 – 14 working days depending on the location where the cheques are drawn.

b) Commission charged to the customer for any ‘outsation’ cheque deposited have been abolished since there are no more handling chargse for sending the cheque to the paying bank.

However, the improvement also has some risk element to the paying bank where the onus of ensuring the genuiness of the cheque presented still goes back to the paying bank. Moreover, verification of the signatories on the cheques are done electronically where it is quite difficult for the verifier to detect irregularities on the cheque.

Although the enhancement are facing the above potential risk, all participating commercial banks still proceed with the implementation as the improvement was able to reduce the overall cost for the cheque clearing and additional measures have been implemented to mitigate the incident occurrence.

Process Improvement on Business Continuity Management (BCM) in a Commercial Bank

Introduction to Business Continuity Management (BCM)

Business continuity management (BCM) are plans developed by an organization that specifies the ability to effectively respond to disruption or threats in order to minimize the impact to the business. Among the plans are:

Disaster Recovery – this emphasis on recovering of the organization’s information technology system.

Business Continuity/Recovery – focus on business operation recovery that is affected due to incident or disaster.

Crisis Management – It's an immediate response after the declaration of a disaster, such as dealing with casualties, deaths, injuries, potentially adverse media reporting and loss of confidence among employees and stakeholders.

Emergency response - Addressing the immediate reactions and responses that are prescribed during emergency situations. Example of such responses: Escalation Process, Evacuation Guidelines and the Roles and Responsibilities of Floor Monitors. E.g. Fire – what to do, who to call, where to run?

In simple terms, we can say that BCM is a comprehensive process to ensure the continuation of business regardless of whatever challenges an organization may encounter.

BCM requirement for Financial Institution (FI) in Malaysia

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) issued guidelines that it is a requirement for all FIs to establish the BCM for all identified Critical Business Function (CBF) in ensuring continuity of business operations in the event of disruption or disaster. In line with the requirement, the Bank that I’m currently attached with have implemented its BCM program in 2004 where the bank have developed the plans focusing on 4 elements as below. Each plan complement to the overall effectiveness of BCM.

Business Continuity Plan (BCP) - a documented collection of procedures and information that is developed, compiled, and maintained in readiness for use in incidents to enable the Bank to continue to deliver its critical products and services at an acceptable predefined level.

Emergency Response Plan (ERP) - addressing the immediate reactions and responses that are prescribed during emergency situations. Examples are Escalation Process, Evacuation Guidelines and the Roles and Responsibilities of Floor Monitors. E.g.: Fire – what to do, who to call, where to run?

Crisis Management Plan (CMP) - It is an immediate response that describes the immediate response after the declaration of a disaster, covering areas such as dealing with casualties, death and injuries, potentially adverse media reporting and loss of confidence among employees and stakeholders.

Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) - Basically look at IT matters. Prior to any disaster, plans must be drawn to prepare for any eventualities.

The overall processes for developing the above plans were done via manual basis, time consuming and requires a lot of resources to complete all of the process in developing the above mentioned plans. For purpose of this entry, I’m sharing with you the detailed and tedious process in developing the BCP as per Figure 1 below.

Manual Process in developing the BCP 

Figure 1

In April 2014, the Bank that I’m attached with have automated the development of the BCM process where the pilot automation was focused to the process of developing the Business Continuity Plan (BCP). The development of BCP consists of 8 processes namely Project Planning, Risk Assessment and Review (RA), Business Impact Analysis (BIA), Recovery Strategy, Plan Development, Training, Testing and Maintenance.

Figure 2 below describes the processes that have been automated via the BCM System where with the automation it has tremendously reduced the overall time line to developed the BCP to 50% of the time taken to develop the BCP manually

Automated Process in developing the BCP


Figure 2

Process Improvement Gained and Benefits in Automating the BCP Processes

The improvements are segregated into 3 main categories namely the Planning Stage, Disaster Stage and Risk Monitoring stage.

a) Planning Stage

This stage is where all the identified Critical Business Functions (CBFs) to complete the 8 processes in developing new or reviewing existing BCP during ‘peace time’. With the automation, it has managed to shorten the time taken for the documentation, improve control and minimize the risk element of human error for manual documentation.

b) Disaster stage

Business Recovery Team (BRT) would be able to provide timely updates directly via their mobile devices to the Dashboard that facilitate the Crisis Management Team (CMT) members in command centre to view real-time dashboard updates on the recovery status of BRTs. Figure 3 below illustrates the real time update to the dashboard.

Figure 3

c)  Risk Monitoring

Thru BCM System, the Bank is also able to enhanced risk monitoring for potential risks and exposures where it allows the flexibility for the Bank to customize report extraction according its requirements (e.g. trend analysis by incident types based on location).

Apart from the above improvements, it also benefited the Bank with following improvement which include on the Return on Investment (ROI).

• This is an efficient improvements, risk mitigation as well as compliance driven project to enable a consistent approach in managing BCM effectively with automation to meet Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) Guidelines on Business Continuity Management in ensuring the continuity of critical business functions and essential services within a specified timeframe in the event of a major disruption.

• Effective management of disasters and business interruptions will allow the bank to manage its recovery processes with minimal disruption to critical business functions and essential business services. This will enhance the public’s confidence and mitigate reputational risk.

• With the implementation of the system, the bank will be able to meet BNM’s Guidelines for an effective BCM procedures and practices by improving its resilience, preparedness for any eventualities with coverage for support to the critical business functions and non-time critical services being increased to 100%. In addition to this, the use of the system will enable a consistent approach in managing BCM effectively, thereby minimizing operational risks.

• Implementation of a BCM system also provides a competitive advantages over the bank’s competitors as it would be the first bank in Malaysia to implement a BCM System fully automated BCM processes.

Conclusion

My personal opinion that the BCM systems is a very critical and important tool that is a must have item in a big organisations where there are large number of CBFs. The system would enable the organisations to ensure that all identified CBF have developed its BCP and most importantly it helps the Management of the organisation to obtained real-time recovery status of the CBFs in the event of real incident/disaster .

Most Important features in a Smartphone

Buying a smartphone can be very challenging event for consumers nowadays. Main reasons are due to the smartphone companies competing to produce an up to date features in their smartphones in which the claimed to meet consumers expectation. Among the features that has always beiing focused on are:

·         Operating system

·         Camera features

·         Slick design

·         Application features.

In reality, are the above features really considered as most important features in a smartphones? Surprisingly, the above features are NOT one of the important features that consumers will mainly looking for. Many of the smartphone companies overlooked this feature. A survey was conducted by a consultant company in United Kingdom revealed that 89% of the respondents claimed that the battery life was an important features to them when deciding to purchase a new smartphone. (source: http://bgr.com/2014/05/21/best-smartphone-battery-life-2/)

I personally concur with the findings from the survey, simply because it would be irrelevant to own such a sophisticated smartphone but unable to operate for a long period of time due to the ‘short’ life span of the battery. Without this long life span of a smartphone battery, it will mean that a smartphone isn’t very smart or useful if it's dead or cannot be use.

However a point to note that it would not be a fair statement for me to say that there hasn't been progress in making better batteries. Basically, the enhancement of the batteries for the smartphones were not as fast as the development of the devices such as bigger screens, more data and app use, faster processes, and all of the other advancements in the smartphones. The enhancement of the features simply require more power and contribute to the factor why current battery in the smartphones could not last long.

Perhaps these smartphone companies could adopt the lesson learnt from the batteries that are being used in space shuttle that have been launched to the orbit for months long. As we know the space shuttle uses numerous high tech of computer devices and all of these devices utilizes battery operated energy. Should any of the smartphone company able to make breakthrough in the revolution of a longer life of the smartphone battery, I believe the company would be able to capture the market share of smartphone as we can see a significant chunk of smartphone buyers out there who might conceivably switch to the smartphone that can provide them with top-notch battery life.

http://bgr.com/2014/05/21/best-smartphone-battery-life-2/

What is a firewall?

In current rapid changing computer technology edge having a firewall installed in the computer servers or mainframe can be considered as one of the mandatory tools or system or program to be installed in the computer. A firewall is to safeguard against threats from the internet that may jeopardize the software or the operating system in the equipment.

How Does The Firewall Works?
In a simple language I would say that a firewall will monitor the information traffic (inflow and outflow) where it will allow the 'good data" into the computer systems and also protect the equipment from attack by malicious users or software such as viruses from any attack. In other words, a firewall establishes a barrier between a trusted secure internal network and another network (e.g.the internet) that is assumed not to be secure and trusted. Firewalls exist both as a software solution and as a hardware appliance.
Figure 1

Categories of Firewall
There are various types and definitions of the firewalls available in the market that can easily be purchased. Depending on the type of the preference,needs and budget, consumers can easily purchase the firewall for their use.However in my opinion, these types of firewall can be categories into 2 broad spectrum of firewall namely 'Hardware Firewalls' and 'Software Firewall'.

a) Hardware firewall
This category of firewall is mainly used for multiple computer that linked to a network. The firewall are built into network devices such as routers and it can protect every equipment that linked to the network. However, to set up this category of firewall requires some configuration to work effectively. This firewall usually applies the method of 'Pocket Filtering techniques' where it will monitor the header of each packet that enters or leaves the network before it decide to accepts or rejects the packet based on user-defined rules Packet filtering is fairly effective and transparent.

b) Software firewall
This category of firewall is commonly used for a single computer network or also known for home users. The device usually come as stand-alone applications or as part of a complete specification such as anti-virus protection software especially when consumers purchased the new generation operating systems personal computer. Apart from monitoring the inbound and outbound data traffic, the firewall also protect the computer against Trojan or Worm applications. (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321050).

How do we determined which firewall can complement our needs?
In order to select the appropriate type of firewall, we must first determine the type of information that we want to protect and evaluate how severe the consequences could impact us if an attack hits. It helps us to determine the amount of money and time that we should spend on purchasing appropriate firewall. Researches by the expert highlighted that it is important for us to identfy the true costs of firewall taking into consideration of the 'hidden' costs which includes installation, setup, training, maintenance and regular updates (http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/small/Eq-Inc/Firewalls.html#ixzz3HdsSZpzM)

In addition, the expert also highlighted some useful tips for the consumers to consider before making the choice of purchasing the firewall.

Among the tips are as below :-
i. A firewall should not affect or slow down the consumer's internet connection too obviously.
ii. To explore reviews on the intended firewall from a computer magazines or on the World Wide Web .

Upon attaining the desired review information, consumers will have a better understanding on deciding the desired firewall. It is also important for the consumer to test the firewall once the installation is completed. Based on the research, many firewalls are breached by hackers due to faulty installation or configuration.There are some basic firewalls available for free and can easily be downloaded from the World Wide Web. However these free firewalls only offers some basic options and do not provide technical support services in the event consumer face problems.
(http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/small/Eq-Inc/Firewalls.html#ixzz3HsaSZpzM)

Benefits of using Firewall
According to Brain Hooper of Demand Media, a firewall monitors consumers connection and prevent authorised date from entering consumers computer from a network or the internet .

The benefits are :-

• Monitors Traffic - determine whether it contains potentially hazardous to the network's security and prevent it from entering the systems.
• Block Virus (Trojans) - It blocks these types of intruders from infecting the computer files. Trojans are dangerous because it silently transmit information from the computer to a web server.
• Stop Hackers - it keeps hackers out of your network and prevent them from compromising the computer for illicit activity such as spreading virusses.

(http://www.cisco1900router.com/tutorial-of-firewall-types-and-their-advantages-and-disadvantages.html)
(http://science.opposingviews.com/benefits-firewall-security-3806.html)

The Disadvantages of a Firewall
According to Shea Laverty of Demand Media (http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-firewall-62932.html), a firewall should never be the only line of digital defence.

Among the disadvantages are :-

1. Affect Overall Performance of a Computer - firewall software is constantly running and use processor power and RAM memory to perform it's function .
2. An Attraction to Intruder to Break Through The Firewall - Proof of satisfaction being able to break through the firewalls

(http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-firewall-62932.html)