Amazon to Open 300-400 Physical Book Stores

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Article written by Techicated, technology news and resources

The online shopping giant recently revealed that they will be opening between 300 to 400 physical book stores across the country. While there was no official announcement, this move was widely expected given the recent trial bookstore opened.

Amazon will use the data gathered from all book sales online to determine the catalog of books available at each store. Each section will be stocked with titles based on specific category sales data. They will also take is a step further and use data gathered for sales within those geographic areas to narrow down the most popular titles. In addition they will also stock books favored by influencers. It is not yet clear who these are but Jeff Bezos himself will be recommending certain titles.

There are two advantages for Amazon with this approach. The first, now that they have dominated online book sales, is to get a larger share of the sales from physical stores. There are still several large bookstore chains that Amazon will target with these launches. The other is that thanks to the large data set they can also limit the number of books they will need to stock at each store.

The rumor is that these bookstores will also be used as last mile delivery hubs to get books to local customers quickly. Amazon recently ran trials of one hour delivery in certain cities and this is expected to tie in to their attempts to get products into their customers hands faster. For the moment Amazon will only be selling books at their stores. Which is also how they started online.

The advantages and disadvantages of different types of air conditioning systems

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There are several different types of air conditioning systems available in the market today. Each has its appropriate uses. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of the main types:

Central Plant

Advantages – When the plant is away from the occupied spaces, there is very little noise. The entire system is controlled from one central location. This allows the system to start and stop on a timer, usually set to work hours. Maintenance is also easier as there are central locations for each area that requires servicing.

Disadvantages – The biggest drawback is the cost, as plant systems are expensive. Also, space is required for the ducting, plant room, and control room. There is no real control at room level, except to use louvers and control the air flow into the room.

Fan coil units

Advantages – The primary advantage is that fan coil units are cheaper to install than central plant systems. Another advantage, unlike the central plant, is individual room-level control over the temperature. Fan coils do not require extensive ducting and can heat and cool.

Disadvantages – There can be noise from the indoor fan component especially during speed changes. Also, each unit needs maintenance and it has to be on-site. Since it is a pipe based system, long runs of pipes are needed. Heating requires a boiler and cooling requires a chiller.

Three tips for preparing for colocation

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Written by Rack Alley

One of the reasons many organizations opt for LA colocation is growth. In house data centers and server rooms only have so much capacity. This capacity often falls behind requirements and this can affect the growth prospects of the company. In some cases, it can adversely affect outlook if service levels dip below customer expectations. Using a LA data center service provider allows an organization to let someone else handle power, cooling, networking, security has advantages to the bottom line. Here are some tips for preparing to make the move to a third party data center:

Sizing

Colocation, at its most basic level, is the rental of your provider’s infrastructure. While there are many other considerations, you want provision only as much space and resources as you need. It is wise to assume some growth, but any expansion can be undertaken later. Avoid under-provisioning in a bid to keep costs low.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is a resource that you should provision with care. There is no point in paying for too much bandwidth in anticipation of traffic spikes. The better move is to negotiate an allowance for bursts during peak load times. Even the burst can be limited to prevent cost overruns.

Business

Supporting a business requires careful coordination of IT decisions with the business side of the company. The primary reason we make infrastructure changes is to support the growth of the enterprise. The business side will provide valuable information such as regulatory requirements that should be part of the decision.

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Rack Alley is a provider of server hosting Los Angeles at their LA data center.

Four essential shopping cart features

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Written by Secure Net Shop

There are hundreds of options when it comes choosing a shopping cart solution. There are free options, paid, subscription based, and even hosted offerings. There is also a lot of fine print to look at regarding features. Choosing an internet shopping cart is not something that you should treat lightly. Here are four essential features that should be a part of any shopping cart:

Images

A good product image is one of the primary drivers for customers to make a purchase. Product images are a standard feature for any shopping cart. However, there are other extensions to product images that make a sale much more likely. These are options like adding VR images, image zoom, and videos.

Reviews

Nothing sells products better than a recommendation from another customer. Often, people see these reviews as a recommendation, even if the review itself does not encourage others to buy. The feature does not need to be built-in but should provide support for at least third-party review platforms.

Navigation

A shopping cart should have the facility for a layered navigation system that is independent of the product category. The navigation itself should be dynamic and generated according to the attributes of the products within that category.

Fast checkout

“Just like the supermarket, online shoppers are looking for the shortest line” is an important statement to remember when establishing checkout workflow for a shopping cart. The script should support both a login based checkout as well as a single click checkout for convenience.

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Sell goods or services from your website with a website shopping cart from Secure Net Shop.

The Advantages of Using Magnetron Technology for Deposition

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Written by: Denton Vacuum, LLC

Summary: Magnetron technology consists of high voltage and ion bombardment to produce a quality film layer.

This guide brings you the basics of understanding magnetron sputtering technology. Although it may seem like another ordinary form of PVD coating technology it possesses qualities and characteristics that other deposition methods lack.

The Basics

What exactly is magnetron sputtering technology? For one, it’s a physical vapor deposition coating method that’s used to deposit specific metals onto a substrate. Magnetron sputtering utilizes plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition as its primary form of coating due to its high adhesion rates. The process consists of a sputtering material bombarded by a set of ions to a target surface, therefore creating the thin film itself.

The vacuum chamber of the PECVD coating machine is filled to the brim with a select inert gas and charged with a high amount of voltage. A glow discharge is then created which results in the acceleration of ions to the target surface. This creates the plasma coating. The inert gas ions will then eject the sputtering materials which will result in a sputtered coating layer on the products. This is a common deposition method that is used in a variety of industries today.

Characteristics

Some of the main characteristics of magnetron sputtering technology include a water-cooled target to reduce overall radiation heat, oxide coatings, layer uniformity, and smooth sputter coatings (depending on the specific type of magnetron sputtering system utilized during the process). These make up the bulk of magnetron technology’s strengths and are the reasons why so many people use this technology over others.

The basics of web hosting

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40Written by Rack Alley

In the most basic sense, web hosting is an intangible service. There are cheap web hosting companies that rely on its intangible nature to promote these plans over the more expensive alternatives. In order to better understand the various pricing schemes available and arrive at the best decision, it is important to know what goes into web hosting.

Servers

This is one of the biggest sources of expenditure. With the exception of cases like LA colocation, all servers, and related equipment are purchased and owned by the hosting company. In some cases, higher fees are due to the constant upgrade cycle. This is a good thing as faster servers mean better performance.

Data Centers

The servers will be located at one of the many data centers used by hosting companies. The cost of this is a part of the charges included. These large buildings are designed specifically to host thousands or tens of thousands of servers. Some host will allow region selection like an LA data center.

Software

With the exception of a few open source applications, most software that both runs and runs on servers are proprietary. This is another one of the major costs in hosting. The difference can be seen when comparing the cost of a Linux server and a windows one.

Internet

Web hosting companies purchase web hosting just any other normal organization would. The advantage is that since the connections are large, these costs savings filter down to the individual hosts. However, since the connections need to be distributed amongst thousands of customers, there are strict limits and charges for exceeding those limits.

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Rack Alley is a provider of colocation and server hosting Los Angeles at their LA data center.

How Vacuum Metallization Plays a Role in Commercial and Residential Industries

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The properties of vacuum metallization are seen everywhere – from refrigerators to high-end designer products.

vacuum-metallization-closeupVacuum metallization continues to be used for a variety of commercial and residential industries. The process of vacuum metallization is performed by combining a metal with a non-metallic substrate through the process of evaporation. Now, the most common material used in today’s industry is aluminum because of its low-cost, reflective properties, and thermodynamic advantages that it brings to a coating.

Aesthetic Finishes

Vacuum metallization is performed for a variety of reasons. For aesthetic purposes, it can add a nice finish to a product. The metalized substrate that creates the film can add a reflective finish that can be used with other processes to enhance the decorative look of the product. Additionally, through the use of a PVD system, one can dye the film to provide another unique look to the substrate. If you’ve ever wondered how certain products have such a unique and high-end appearance, it’s because of vacuum metallization.

Vacuum Metallized Surfaces for Insulation

The process of vacuum metallization is perform to increase the functionality of the substrate that is being coated. Furthermore, this makes it great for insulation purposes, primarily because of its increased reflective purposes. For commercial and residential fields, there are radiant barrier reflective insulation materials involved that are created through the process of vacuum metallization.

To sum it up, vacuum metallization is a process that is continuously used in a variety of industries. Its ability to increase the substrate’s functionality has essentially provided a unique way for industries to flex their versatility.

For ion beam assisted deposition equipment and other ophthalmic products, visit Denton Vacuum, LLC today. Trust the folks at Denton Vacuum, LLC to find you the finest quality equipment for your thin film deposition needs.

How Diamond Like Carbon Coatings Are Formed

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diamond-like-carbon-coatings

DLC coatings are dense, consistent, and relatively simple to create.

Written by: Denton Vacuum, LLC

Diamond like carbon coatings, or DLC coatings, can be deposited using a variety of deposition methods such as sputtering, cathodic arc, ion beam, electron beam, and lasers. Through the process of physical vapor deposition, one can create a high quality and consistent DLC coating that can be used for a variety of applications.

Coating Process Sample

One of the most common ways to produce DLC coatings is through a sputter coater, which is essentially a vacuum chamber that has the ability to deposit metals onto a substrate through a complex process. The product can be placed within the chamber on a fixturing carousel when it is evacuated. The produce will then be preheated to a low processing temperature that will not exceed a certain temperature – typically 300 degrees Fahrenheit. The preheating phase will then condition the substrate for the coating to ensure that all of the moisture that has been absorbed by the material has been outgassed before the deposition process occurs.

The process will then transition into the ion etching phase where the product will be bombarded with ions and electrons. There will then be a scrubbing phase, which cleans the surface and remove any micro oxides. The process will then move on to the coating phase, which involves thin film evaporation to occur to begin the production of the DLC coating. When the underlayer coating reaches the proper thickness, the process will then transition into the DLC coating step, which deposits a dense and smooth amorphous carbon layer onto the product surface.

What makes in hosting or colocation viable?

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2Written by Rack Alley

Moving servers to the cloud or data centers and shutting down internal server rooms seems to be how and where most organizations are heading. However, outsourcing all server hosting Los Angeles resources may not actually be a good idea in some instances. It all depends on where the organization in particular gets its competitive advantage. Here are some examples of what makes server hosting Los Angeles internally viable:

Saas and technology companies whose technology is their competitive advantage will want to keep their servers in house. For example in house hosting is usually only done by larger companies that rely on revenue from those websites. This is because risks will arise and need to be mitigated and it is easier to identify when it is in house.

Hosting and Iaas companies that sell on the fact that their la web hosting is more reliable than the competition will also want to keep everything in house. Especially since they develop that infrastructure in order to maintain that advantage. Some or most of that advantage is in the software to hardware interaction which makes in house more attractive.

Companies that require very specific hardware resources will also find that they will need to remain in-house. Most providers will provide hardware that is specific to their own reliability and testing and that may or may not overlap with these hardware requirements.

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Rack Alley provides premium colocation services perfect for small and enterprise customers at their Los Angeles data center .

 

The benefits of using a third party data center

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Written by Rack Alley

3One of the biggest jobs in the construction industry right now is to dismantle server rooms and data centers of individual organizations. The reason: everyone is moving their server farms to the cloud or third party data centers. There are many advantages over maintaining your own, and now that costs have come down drastically, it makes more sense to move all possible workloads to the cloud. Here are a few of those advantages:

Location

While you might be able to serve your customers from your in house data center, nothing will beat the performance of a data center that is local to your customer. Los angeles colocation provides significantly improved performance over serving those same customers from another location.

Infrastructure

Larger data centers will have significantly better power systems, backup power, cooling and network performance. Even internet bandwidth will be cheaper and faster. One of the biggest though is that you will get around the clock support and monitoring by staff.

Provisioning

The ability to bring up server resource almost instantly on demand can only really be appreciated when you need to do it. Even for something like los angeles web hosting, a simple selection, confirmation will have it ready for access in minutes. The same can be done for servers, virtual servers and even high performance computing.

Rack Alley is a provider of colocation services, including server hosting los angeles.