Steganography

We were asked in class to download a steganography program. The idea behind steganography is that algorithms are used to hide files inside pictures or sound clips. The bits in the files are tag on in random, undetectable ways, to the bits already found in the picture. You can use the program S-tools (which is what we used) to do this. To use, the program itself is very simple, you simply drag and drop and then create a passphrase to protect. The process, if you were to do it yourself, would be much more complicated.

As a Facility manager I am not sure that there is a really effective way of using this program in the work place. You could use it to send very important data, but as long as you aren't being stupid with your email accounts, everything that you send anyways should be safe. The biggest benefit I could see is if you produce some sort of management program that you want to copyright. You can hide the copy right inside the product and couldl reveal it if a situation of infringement arose.

Vektr CMMS

Vektr is a CMMS that we where asked to try out and blog about in my Facilities Management Technologies class. Vektr, like many other programs that i have experienced, has all the possibilities of being a great tool, but lacks the user interface to make it desierable enough to really catch on. If it was the only program I had, and I had to make it work, it would definitely do everything that I wanted it to. It would just take a lot of time to figure out and find how to do things.

Things could be more inuitively laid out, and more options could be given. The main thing that I didn't like was that in order to create custom things, such as inspections, you cannot just go to the inspections tab and create a new inspection sheet there. You have to go to the admin tab and then look up inspections under 1 of the about 10 tabs found along the top.

As a Facilities Manager you want to be able to spend your time managing your facility. You don't want to be figuring out and spending most of your time just setting up stuff because there are so many steps to go through in your CMMS that it takes forever.

Good product as far as having many different options on what you can use it for, I would like to the the user interface become more intuitive before I bought into it.

My Decision

I have decided that I will do my report on remote facilty management options. This will help me know what I am up against as well as help me to know how I can more efficiently manage a business.

Prospective Topics for FM Technology report

Searching through the internet I found a couple of FM technologies that caught my fancy.

1. Axis Pointe- This is a Facility Asset Management software that simplifies management of your buidings and does so with a web based tool. I am very interested in online management software. It will use someone else's database to store the information. It would alway be beneficial because the company servicing the website will be constantly making improvements. This means that you will receive the benefits of software updates, without having to purchase them.

2. IBM- Recently IBM has had commercial on TV about going green with IBM. In the commercial cost savings in operations are proclaimed, but no specific examples are given and it is only stated that it could save a certain amount of money. I think that it would be interesting to learn about what IBM is trying to do and how they are trying to do it.

3. Remote Facility Management- because I am hoping to go into the field of Facility Management I need to know what I am up against. One of the things that could be detremental to the amount of facility manager in the workforce is remote facility management systems that allow you to monitor and manage building systems off-site. It seems like it would be crucial to learn about this technology to get an edge on those who know nothing.