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The Pros And Cons of BYOD

In the world of mobile devices, usage falls into 2 main categories: personal and professional use. Thanks to the wide spread nature of mobile devices, the defining line between the two is getting blurred.

Having a device dedicated for work is no longer necessary. We instinctually pull out our smartphone or tablet to email a colleague or review a file while on the commute home. And with the help of cloud services and online sharing services, you can access your work from anywhere.

Yet whether you know it or not, using personal mobile technology for professional use is affecting workplaces on a large scale. How? Here’s a general look at what you need to know about this rapidly growing trend how it could potentially change the way you work.

What is BYOD?

BYOD or “Bring Your Own Device,” is exactly what it sounds like—bringing in your own device to the workplace. Thanks to laptops, smartphones and tablets, BYOD is a trend everyone is already taking part in. No doubt you’ve taken your mobile device to work, and have probably even taken it a step further by accessing your company’s networks and systems. Well, that’s the BYOD trend in a nutshell.

The state of BYOD

However, because these are employee-owned devices, businesses that support this trend need to develop regulations to accommodate them. Currently, there are companies like TrendMicro and Unisys, working to help develop BYOD strategies to make it easy for all parties to access and interact with company databases and servers safely.

Although as popular as it is to work “on-the-go,” BYOD is still a widely debated topic in data intense work environments.

The Pros & Cons of BYOD

Off the top, there are advantages which businesses and employees can gain . You can work anywhere, any time. The hardware is affordable, accessible and you can download any productivity app you need.

Combine that with company resources and IT workflows and your device becomes your most powerful productivity tool. It’s a dream for users who value productivity over location. Added benefits for adopting BYOD include:

Increases productivity; faster response rates
Companies save money on purchasing hardware
The choice of system and device is up to the employee
Flexible work hours; employees can work from home
Direct access to company resources and systems (no need for third party services)
A variety of apps can be used or integrated into workflows (document processing apps)

Yet, organizations are slow to adopt BYOD as a regular business practice. Mobile device management is a major concern for IT managers. For example, changes in mobile platform or device are crucial.

Whether it be Microsoft ending mainstream support for Windows Phone 8 or the critical release of RIM’s BlackBerry 10 platform, how does IT provide adequate support and security for all individual users?

Other issues keeping companies from integrating the BYOD model:

Lack of consistency in the quality of apps
Compatibility issues between apps and colleagues
Data breaches
Liability for devices if lost or hacked
Difficult for IT to maintain control over files and data being shared
Hardware and software support (power requirements, memory storage)
Employees invest their own resources to buy new devices and apps

BYOD: Stats at a Glance

Is your company looking to jump on the BYOD bandwagon? Here’s a visual look at where the BYOD trend stands so far. Where do you and your company fall on this infographic?:

BYOD 2013 Infographic

Source: The Magic Blog

Overall, it’s good to have a sense of the issues surrounding BYOD and what to expect. If your company is going BYOD, get the 411 on the regulations and policies they have in place.

You can stay up to date with the latest BYOD developments on ZDNet.com.

Investintech Blogger On Ice

As you may know from her bio, our blogger loves to figure skate. Reena grew up following the sport and its skaters, but never really tried it out for herself until she started as an adult skater while attending university. After the first lesson, she was hooked.

Figure Scates

Currently, she takes recreational lessons with a figure skating coach and is learning how to skate in both freeskate (singles) and ice dance.

Despite the nerves, she just passed her Junior Bronze ice dance test, the Swing Dance (fourth test in the discipline). It focuses on backwards and forwards skating, edges, and changes in direction. Take a look (she’s the one who starts off skating backwards):

The Basic 411 On Linux, PDF Utilities And Able2Extract 8

For the past couple of months, Linux related news has been popping up in one form or another. For instance, Facebook launched Pages Manager, an app for managing Facebook Pages on your Android, which is based on the Linux kernel. In addition, one of the biggest buzzes at CES 2013 this year is centered upon Ubuntu for mobile phones.

Even gamers who are subscribed to Steam, Valve’s software management and community platform for gaming, are now able to beta test the newly released Linux-based client. And let’s not forget that we just released Able2Extract for Linux, ourselves!

The platform is certainly building up an appeal to developers, manufacturers and users alike. If you’re an Investintech user starting to get curious about Linux or looking to make the switch yourself, we’ve put together a quick basic overview on the Linux platform, the nature of PDF tools in the industry, and how Able2Extract 8 fits in.

Let’s Back Up A Bit: What Is Linux And What Are Distributions?

Like Windows, Linux is an operating system that first started out in 1991 as a terminal emulator by Linus Torvalds, who wrote the initial program to access UNIX servers of his university independent of an operating system. What eventually emerged was the beginning of the Linux platform.

Because Linux was released and licensed as an open source project, developers are able to build different UNIX-like operating systems on top of its kernel (the Linux core). Each newly built operating system includes a collection of software applications, supporting utilities and libraries, the Linux kernel and an installer. Together the package is called a “distribution” and are free to download and use.

These distributions have the same Linux kernel at heart, but are different in software, desktop, commands, and admin tasks. These elements vary from distribution to distribution. Today, you can find many different communities collaborating, maintaining, and developing tools to drive their favourite Linux distribution forward.

Making The Switch: Where To Go From Here?

As you can imagine, trying to migrate to Linux might be intimidating. Hearing about its filing system and about executing commands can easily scare anyone off. It takes know-how and a lot of time and effort to be familiar with the programmer-like nature of certain distributions.

Tux Linux Distros — Image Courtesy: The-linux-road.blogspot.ca

Fortunately, for new users, there are distributions that do away with such a high learning curve. Some Linux distributions you’ll want to check out include Ubuntu (Canonical Ltd.), Fedora (Redhat), and Kubuntu (Debian). They offer an easy introduction and transition to the Linux OS. By visiting DistroWatch, you can get a good idea about just how many different Linux distributions there are.

Keeping Your Daily Tasks In Check: Software Alternatives

As a new user, you’d probably be looking to make an easy transition with software you’re already familiar with. Well, you’ll be happy to know that GUI based alternatives do exist for Linux. Free open source alternatives like Thunderbird (Outlook), GIMPShop (Photoshop) or OpenOffice.org (Microsoft Office), for example, can give you the same functionalities you need on a daily basis. commercial vendors have also been able to develop propriety licensed software for the platform despite Linux’s open source roots.

A Brief Overview About PDF Utilities

With PDF converters, it may be a different story. Although there are many PDF utilities for Linux, most use a command line interface or only perform one or a limited number of functions such as creating PDFs, splitting and merging, converting to one format, comparing PDF, or annotating and editing PDFs. In most cases, command line utilities like those will require a bit of technical know-how to get set up. Full featured PDF applications you’re familiar with, like Adobe Acrobat, won’t be found on Linux.

Some workarounds with open source word processing suites like OpenOffice.org will let you modify PDF content to some or little extent with their importing (via extension) and exporting functionalities. Yet, as full featured converters, they fall short.

Yes, We Have Able2Extract For Linux

This is was one of the main driving forces of why we developed Able2Extract for Linux—to fill that gap. For a long time, Able2Extract has been only available to Windows users, but many non-Windows users wanted to take advantage of the PDF software too.

Well, we were listening. Now the PDF converter is compatible with the most popular desktop oriented distributions, Ubuntu and Fedora.

Able2Extract Linux Version

Able2Extract can perform different PDF conversions, allowing you to convert to formats like HTML, Text, AutoCAD, and Open Document Formats native to Open Office—Writer, Calc and Impress.

No extra utilities are needed for batch conversions, selective conversions, or viewing your PDF files. Those functions come included and are all built-in, making it that much easier to get things done.

The Linux platform has a lot to offer, and no doubt we’ll be seeing more developments in the industry. So next time you decide to take a serious look at a Linux distribution, you can rest assure that not everything about the switch has to be difficult!

Bridging The Geographical Gap: Introducing Investintech’s Belgrade Office

We just switched up our main Facebook page photo with a spectacular photo of a place that can’t be found anywhere in the world. And rightly so.

The view is a unique one that is significant to us, here at Investintech, and it comes with a little bit of background we thought would help give the photo some context.

You may not know it, but Investintech.com was founded as a finance related startup in early 2000 in Toronto, Ontario. The company was started by a small group of people just barely out of college who wanted to develop a platform that would enable professionals to be more efficient with financial reports.

The original start up faced a number of issues and challenges, and consequently, the focus after three years of hard work shifted towards data extraction from PDF files. On December 1, 2003, Able2Extract v.2.0 was released. For the next four years, Investintech.com steadily grew, gradually developing more products such as Able2Doc, Absolute Server, and Sonic PDF Creator.

As business operations became more complex, the company opened an office in Belgrade, Serbia in 2007. Today that office is filled with more than 20 great colleagues and hard working individuals we are proud to have as members of the Investintech team.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

What you are looking at in the photo is the Investintech view from two different parts of the world, bridging the geographical gap between both offices. You can see our Toronto headquarters facing our Belgrade counterpart in the awesome photo mashup our design team put together.

The photo represents two very iconic and distinct landmarks. You may already be familiar with the CN Tower skyline located in downtown Toronto. The foreground, however, is from Belgrade. It depicts the plateau on which the statue of “The Victor,” the protector of Belgrade, stands. It resides in the part of the Kalemegdan medieval fortress that is the core and the oldest section of Belgrade. It stands on the cliff like ridge overlooking the confluence of the Sava River into the Danube. (Read more: http://bit.ly/4lD8Mm)

Sit back and enjoy the view!

Credit:

Mad Max Prhotography https://www.facebook.com/MadMaxphoto

gtkenji http://www.flickr.com/photos/38969864@N03/

3 Different Ways To Post Your PDF On Facebook

Everyone loves Facebook, and with good reason. The social network has rolled personal networking, content sharing, and business marketing all into one platform. And it’s due to things like Facebook fanpages that have made it easy for businesses and organizations to connect with their communities on a more personal level.

As a result, Facebook Fanpage administrators are always looking for different, more efficient ways to use them. In fact, one user had an excellent idea for her Facebook page that turned into an interesting question about PDF documents and Facebook Notes:

I would like to post a pdf (or Word) document to my Facebook page (not my personal page, to my business page). I would like to post it as a “Note” that everyone who has “liked” our business page can access. And I would like those who view the document to be able to print the document. Is that even possible.

It may sound like a simple thing to accomplish at first, but unfortunately, after some searching, we couldn’t find a direct way to do this. But we did manage to find a few interesting workarounds that came close, and we thought they were worth sharing.

Posting PDF Files With A Link

The first method involved sharing the PDF document as a link, which was probably the simplest way to post a document within a Note:

… We looked into this and, unfortunately, the only things you can embed within a note is an image and a hyperlink. Thus, the only straight forward way to add a document is through a URL linking to the document in your note (such as the Share link provided by our conversion apps or by websites like Scribd.com). And you can only restrict who sees the entire note with the Privacy option.

You’ll only have a link to your document, not the actual document itself. But, on the bright side, you can make the PDF URL an active link by using the HTML tags: <a href=“ Your PDF link here” >Your text here</a> with your link and hyperlink text:

To check your link, hit Preview. The HTML tags should disappear, leaving you with an active link in your Note:

Using a link to post a PDF works with group, fanpage, and personal Walls, as well. The only difference is that you have to post the .pdf link into your Facebook status like you would with any web link you want to share on your Wall.

Code Your Page Using Static HTML: iframe tabs App

The second option we were able to find, while a bit more technical, was more visually appealing than using a link:

If you’re a bit tech savvy with coding though, we found that it can be done via Static HTML: iframe tabs App —https://apps.facebook.com/static_html_plus/?fb_source=search&ref=ts. It will let you embed any type of code you want, including code for a PDF, and can be used for any Facebook app page. The PDF embed code can be provided from any document uploading site (http://youtu.be/UtBWa8dE36M ).

Here’s a direct look at the YouTube Video tutorial:

Using JPEGs And Photo Albums

However, in the end, the user solved the problem by using a few creative tactics, offering yet a third way to do it:

I converted my documents to JPEG and placed them in “Photos”. Everyone who has access to the page can open Photos, then open an album, then right click on each photo/document page and “print photo”. It’s weird, but it works.

Indeed, it does work. Even though the content was converted from PDF to JPEG, the PDF content was still viewable. It was a great trick that even allowed her to restrict printing access only to fans.

If you found a handy solution for this issue yourself, let us know. We’d love to add it to the list.