Office Document Strategies Blog

In July 2015, Canada Post announced new proposed postage rates for implementation effective January 11 2016.  There are always several components to a postal rate change as there are many categories of rate.  

The rate most commonly looked at is the single stamp rate which is currently $1.00 per stamp, unchanged from the previous rate.  In the July announcement Canada Post proposed to increase the bulk purchase rate (the way many people buy stamps in bundles of 10 or more) from $0.85 to $0.90 effective with the new rates.  

When a big IT data breach occurs there is lots of media coverage and we all hear some of the gory details on how serious the impact may be.  Unfortunately, we do not hear as much about the smaller breaches that also occur and that means that many companies do not work as hard as they should to protect their computer networks.  

When you look at your everyday operations it is easy to see that a highly IT connected world, fast performance from devices and quick response from systems and people is an increasing expectation.  

In 2011 a UK Professor, Harald Haas, demonstrated how using a simple LED light and a photo receiver it is possible to transmit data without any radio or hard wired connection.  Using subtle changes in the light intensity data is transmitted quickly and securely to a receiving device.  This design has been designated LIFI. 

A startup company based in Estonia is bringing the technology to market to enable it to support the wireless data needs in an office.  Here's the founder showing how it works.

Some of the benefits of this technology can be the security by retaining the light source and receiver within one location without leakage to surrounding rooms as with WIFI.  The transfer is faster and uses much less energy as well.

The inventor of the LIFI system presented a more detailed explanation of how it works at a recent TED talk and demonstrated how current LED infrastructure combined with available solar cells could potentially be used to become part of a LIFI system.  One of the big benefits of this use is that there is less need for new installations and thus a lowering of the power requirements for supporting data transmission.  The solar cell used as the capture station for the LIFI can continue to be used as a capture source for the energy it holds as well.

Here's Professor Haas showing how this all works and explaining how he sees it impacting the needs of our future wireless and internet environment.

The Canadian IT World

A little over a month ago Canada elected a new majority government.  To say it has a different view of the country and the issues being faced than the previous one would be an understatement.  Already we can see that in some ways it is going to fundamentally change the way the country operates.  Whether those changes are for good, bad or are just different will only be known as time passes.  

AIIM the association of information professionals has recently completed a research study looking at the progress that is being made in  reducing paper processes in offices.

One of the frustrations that many organizations experience when they decide to deploy electronic workflows as part of their document management is dealing with signatures on documents.