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A number of people really want to use the latest in technology, but they just feel held back by a lack of understanding toward the programs. One of the best way for them to overcome this problem is to just get Microsoft Office training. Microsoft Office practically runs the world. If they get a good overview of the programs in the suite, then they will know how to build presentations, databases, and write. That should be all the basics that they really need.

This isn’t that easy for everyone though. Some people have rough schedules or face a tough drive to the local training center. They need a good way to train on their own schedule without leaving the home. This is where the Microsoft Office training CD comes into play. This is a way to teach them everything that they need to know while they are using the computer. If they can put the disc in the drive, then they are set. The CD contains lessons, examples, and simulations to walk them through all the little problems that they could face. Once it is all said and done, they should be just fine. If nothing else, it is a really great way to get them past any initial fear of technology.

In late 2006 a coalition of 23 of Japan’s biggest TV broadcasters and copyright organizations, alarmed at the uncontrolled spread of their content on the Internet, were preparing to battle YouTube. Two years on, the video-sharing site has just signed a site-wide licensing agreement for its content and is telling Japanese content owners that user-uploads of copyrighted content aren’t necessarily a threat.

Armed with a new tech toolkit to identify the owner of uploaded content, YouTube says it is committed to making money for its partners.

“We really want to focus on monetization,” said David Eun, the company’s vice president of content partnerships and one of the executives originally sent to Japan to allay industry fears. He was speaking at a Tokyo news event held to outline YouTube’s business plan for the coming year.

“We really understand that YouTube can provide a fantastic opportunity for research, reach to send content and distribute it to new audiences but we also understand that revenues are very, very important,” he said.

At the forefront of this push to make money from videos is Content ID, the system YouTube uses to scan uploaded video clips and look for matches amongst a database of reference video provided by copyright holders. It requires at least 20 seconds of video to make a match but will even catch clips of differing quality, such as those recorded off a TV screen with a camcorder.

“This technology is continuing to improve but we are already surprised at how well it is working and how accurate it is,” said Eun.

Faced with a match, content providers have three options: block the content, simply track it to get insight into who is watching it and when, or run ads around it to make money. There are roughly 300 partners using Content ID and in about 90 percent of cases they choose the latter option, said Eun.

“For our most popular videos we have more user-uploaded videos being claimed by partners than the partners themselves have uploaded,” he said. “For some partners this traffic increases by 50 times so it proves to be a fantastic way for content owners to increase their inventory and to increase their ability to target what kind of content is most interesting to users because it is the users themselves who are uploading the content.”

The company is also experimenting with in-video ads, which appear 15 seconds into videos as an overlay at the bottom of the screen. Users have the ability to switch them off but, Eun said, experience is proving them to be eight to 10 times more effective than standard display ads when measured by click-through.

YouTube’s position in Japan has strengthened in the last two years. Japan is now YouTube’s largest market outside the U.S. and is a permanent feature in the top ten Web ranking.

Consumers who rely on the user-edited Web resource Wikipedia for information on medications are putting themselves at risk of potentially harmful drug interactions and adverse effects, new research shows.

Dr. Kevin A. Clauson of Nova Southeastern University in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida and his colleagues found few factual errors in their evaluation of Wikipedia entries on 80 drugs. But these entries were often missing important information, for example the fact that the anti-inflammatory drug Arthrotec (diclofenac and misoprostol) can cause pregnant women to miscarry, or that St. John’s wort can interfere with the action of the HIV drug Prezista (darunavir).

“If people went and used this as a sole or authoritative source without contacting a health professional…those are the types of negative impacts that can occur,” Clauson told Reuters Health.

Wikipedia is an online, free encyclopedia covering millions of topics in more than 250 languages. Users add and edit content themselves. Clauson and his colleagues decided to investigate the accuracy and completeness of drug information on Wikipedia given that one third of people doing health-related Internet searches are looking for information on over-the-counter or prescription drugs, and that a Wikipedia entry is often the first to pop up with a Google search.

The researchers compared Wikipedia to Medscape Drug Reference (MDR), a peer-reviewed, free site, by looking for answers to 80 different questions covering eight categories of drug information, for example adverse drug events, dosages, and mechanism of action.

While MDR provided answers to 82.5 percent of the questions, Wikipedia could only answer 40 percent. Answers were less likely to be complete for Wikipedia, as well. Of the answers the researchers found on Wikipedia, none were factually inaccurate, while there were four inaccurate answers in MDR. But the researchers spotted 48 errors of omission in the Wikipedia entries, compared to 14 for MDR.

“I think that these errors of omission can be just as dangerous” as inaccuracies, Clauson told Reuters Health. He pointed out that drug company representatives have been caught deleting information from Wikipedia entries that make their drugs look unsafe.

The researchers did find that after 90 days, the Wikipedia entries showed a “marked improvement” in scope.

Wikipedia can be a good jumping-off point for Internet research, Clauson said, but shouldn’t be seen as the last word on any topic-and should certainly not be used as a resource by medical professionals. “You still probably want to go to medlineplus.gov or medscape.com for good quality information that you can feel confident in,” he said.