Corporate email and all it entails is still the number one headache for IT departments. No matter what size organization you work in, the availability of email is the primary concern of managers throughout the business. Even in these paranoid times where it seems every other dollar spent is on security, it’s still email, and exchange archiving, that dominates most IT meetings.

While Exchange isn’t the only email platform out there, it’s still the favorite for those who like their platforms predictable. Exchange archiving is a relatively new innovation, only really being introduced properly in Exchange 2010.

There was of course a cobbled together version using other software that businesses could put together, but we’re only just into an integrated archive system now. Email archiving is still in it’s infancy, and still being taken up by business, despite the high profile court actions of the past years where email has been pivotal as evidence.

There are two basic approaches that business can use to store and manage their email or Exchange archiving. One approach creates the function in-house while the other relies on an off-site service.

The first approach, keeping it all in-house is the preferred method for many. It involves a lot of expense, expertise and maintenance, but it offers the best security. It’s possible to ring-fence the system and restrict access to it, all within the confines of the business. This approach is generally only feasible for larger organizations.

The initial setup cost can be significant, as can the investment needed to maintain the system. Exchange alone can have significant hardware requirements, add to that, a secure network, firewalls, anti-virus and the exchange infrastructure, and you could be looking at a significant amount of money. Only those organizations of a certain size would see the benefit of such an investment.

The other option is to allow email to be handled off-site. This is generally referred to as the hosted model. This is where a third-party vendor hosts the hardware in their data centers and the organization pays a monthly fee to access it.

In the hosted model, the business only has to have an internet connection to the data centering order to have access to the system. Any email to and from the customer site is funneled through the service provider for storage and indexing. All of the investment needed in the traditional in-house setup is avoided.

One of the perceived downsides of a fully hosted model is the concern that businesses are placing their private communications in the hands of another company. While this is a legitimate concern, the provider is probably more concerned with your security than you are.

The hosted model for email archiving is a method that is gaining traction in the business community. As budgets are cut, or at least restricted, IT managers are looking for new ways to spend less and get more. The hosted model is in the perfect position to help achieve that.

On Wednesday, December 15 2010, Microsoft held a ‘Bing Search Summit’ in San Francisco, where it showcased some of the latest addition to its search engine, as well as some new facilities for its mobile applications on iPhone and Android.

The dominant theme here was to highlight numerous minor enhancements the Bing team has been making to help boost its search experience. The goal: boil search down to the tasks that most users are typically conducting on Bing.

Microsoft says that the bulk of Bing queries fall under 155 query segments, which include things like Music (4.6% of searches), Consumer Electronics (1.6%), and Recipes (1.1%). Bing wants to take these segments and establish which verbs they actually involve: music has “download songs” and “read lyrics”, electronics has “read reviews”, and “see the ratings”.

To best tackle these, Bing has created 400 “unique visual experiences” depending on the search (this is to say that photos, images, and links are presented in distinct ways depending on what the user is searching for. Microsoft believes that with this, it does more than their chief competition (Google). Today, Bing is launching 50 new integrations.

Bing’s Derrick Connell then embarked on a whirlwind tour showcasing some of these new features. While most of these additions were subtle, that’s just about the point: they will save you a few seconds here and there. Here are a few of the examples he mentioned:

• For a travel search query like “flights from London to New York in November”, Bing will include a form in your search results, with fields pre-populated with airports in New York and the first weekend in November. A query for “Michael Moore healthcare movie” will display Sicko as your first result, with a grid of reviews from sides like IMDB following below.
• TV shows have a new overview page where you can click around TV listings, and play an episode in-line provided Bing has access to it
• You can now look at destination overview portals for major cities, which displays images, hotels, and other relevant information
• Product reviews are displayed inline along with search results about products

Bing also displayed some minor tweaks to its image results. Now when you view images while under the ‘small’ mode, whitespace will be eliminated and in it’s place will be big grid of images. Clicking on an image will display its full sized mode in a pane above the rest of the linked page as usual, and now you can quickly jump to other related images using a crisp mouse-over effect.

Social

The next big aspect in Bing’s strategy is its social component, which orients around the Facebook integration that it launched in October.

Bing has been incorporating Facebook ‘Likes’ into its results for some months now — if a friend has ‘Liked’ an article that’s relevant to your query, Bing will taking notice of that. But these ‘Likes’ have always been shown in a separate widget — soon, they’ll actually impact the search algorithm itself, so links will be reordered based on social signals.

For its Maps products, Bing has moved its focus from Silverlight to HTML5 and AJAX (this was announced last month). Bing Maps will start to show interior maps of shopping centers as part of its Maps, and it’s also partnering with EveryScape to showcase interior panoramas of venues.

To finish off the presentation, Bing showed a new version of its iPhone application. The app has integration with Grubhub and OpenTable, and as well as street-level views. Bing also gave a preview of a very cool Panorama creator that’s based on the Photosynth backend — it looks like it will compete with Occipital’s Panoramic 360 app.

It should be stressed that Bing isn’t trying to compete with Google in terms of speed. Instead, it’s taking advantage of its nonstarter position to try to figure out how to help users complete their tasks more quickly than they would using normal search. Of course, despite its long history of featuring a spartan interface, Google has also been making a lot of progress in this field — and you can be sure if it notices that Bing is doing something better, it’ll incorporate some of those changes itself

There are a number of things that you can do to optimize Twitter that many people don’t really think about when they set out. These things may seem really minute, but actually will have a tremendous impact on your Twitter experience, and how well it works for your business.

When you are putting together your Twitter in the first place, do not neglect those initial steps and skip forward in favor of getting things going in a faster way. Take the time to choose a great profile photo that is tasteful yet eye catching. The company logo or a good shot of the CEO are always great ideas.

Make sure that you do fully fill out the profile. A decent introduction to your company is best, keep it short, sweet and make sure that it is well written and clear.

Remember that Twitter is still yet another facet of social networking, and use it as such. Though it is a much briefer platform to announce things- bear in mind that you are again, connecting with those who want to know more about your products and services. Treat it very much like any other social networking platform- and be social. Retweet things that you find interesting, post the occasional photo, announce Twitter only deals and incentives- these are just a few of the ways you can get your Twitter feed really buzzing.

Having said that, pay attention to your following to followers ratio. If you are following more than are following you, pare that down so that it is either a higher “followers” number, or fairly even.

Bringing Twitter into your social media marketing plan is always a good idea, but it is not without effort. Take the time to not only set your Twitter up in an appealing way, but also to interact with those who follow you.

This is a guest post by Dario Ruff, CEO and Founder of Avenue180 LLC., a search marketing agency based in Atlanta, GA. Dario has helped clients like NBC Universal, Office Depot, MTV, Trane Residential & Commercial and H&R Block navigate and engage their target audiences across the ever-changing digital landscape. Fort Myers web design also contributed to this article.

pcpro.edu

As the popularity of online learning increases, more and more challenges are developing. These challenges can be resolved; it’s just a matter of finding the right solutions. Before students enroll in an online course, they should prepared to make the changes necessary that will help attending an online class much easier. Listed below are some of the more frequent challenges that are being faced in an online classroom.

1. Technical issues. Because technology is man made, at some point it will fail. Printers, routers, modems and computers, no matter how well built, can malfunction or break down at any time. In addition to technology being able to fail, there can be compatibility issues. Older computers usually tend to run a dated version of software, and cannot handle newer software. People are obligated to buy new computers, because they need a computer to complete tasks online. Even newer computers have limitations, and may not have the hardware requirements that the online software requirements need. Computers are also susceptible to viruses, spyware and malware that can cause a computer to run poorly or disable it. Slow internet speeds are also an issue when taking an online class. Online classes sometimes require web conferencing and a slow internet speed can delay you in getting the class presentations, information and posting to discussion forums and threads. All of these problems can cause large amounts of frustration for anyone using a computer for work or education, but it can hinder the ability for students to be able to complete assignments and study online. The way to prevent this is to make sure that there is a back up computer or location in which these assignments can be completed. Also in the event of hardware failure, keep a second copy of assignments and documents on an external hard drive or other external media.
2. Staying focused and motivated. Whether or not a school is online or campus based, focus and motivation are imperative. In a classroom, students have the ability to learn and interact with peers face-to-face. Having these interactions, and being able to communicate in such fashion, the student is not alone. The student in an online classroom is limited to viewing a person’s face on a computer screen, and sometimes can never have been in face contact with the instructor. Being isolated from people is a difficulty that people have to commit to. It isn’t easy to stay motivated during a course, but students can find ways to keep their focus straight.
3. Self discipline. Along with keeping motivated and focused, a student must know how to self-discipline to do well with an online education. There is a lot of freedom and flexibility that comes with learning online, but there is no one in front of a student to keep their attention. Learning online requires that the student is responsible for completing the assignments at their own leisure. This freedom that comes with can lead to putting things off until the last minute, and cause students to trail behind. Students must be able to set aside time for their studies and personal lives, but must stick to it in order to be successful.
4. “Hands-on” courses require physical study. There are many online courses and programs that you can complete entirely online. All the same, certain programs may not be offered. For instance, if you are looking to pursue an education in chemistry or looking to become an M.D, it will not happen online. Many of the classes offered for these programs require students to be in a lab working; you cannot become a doctor or a chemist online, overnight. It requires years of in-lab, and in-hospital study. These courses eliminate the attractive features of online education. This also means to be careful when choosing an online school; the ones who claim they can provide you with one of these types of degrees are probably unlikely.

These challenges must be taken into consideration with taking online courses. Students should reconsider their options and limitations to online courses if any of these challenges seem impossible to face.

Greensboro, NC–When Diane Speaker’s husband, Richard, passed away, he left her something more than just pictures and 43 years of memories.

“When he was 18, he was in a motorcycle accident. And they tried to save his leg.”

But doctors ended up having to amputate his right leg.

He started wearing a prosthetic leg in his 20’s, and when he died this past January, Diane did not want the prosthetic to go with him.

“He was a person that didn’t want to waste anything, either. So wasting an artificial leg, which is an expensive apparatus, plus all the socks that go with it, you’re talking quite a lot of money here.”

That’s when Diane found Paul at Advanced Prosthetics and Orthotics, and donated Richard’s prosthetic leg.

“We’ll give it to people who can absolutely use it,” says Paul Morton, a certified prosthetist.

Paul had traveled to Haiti after the earthquake, helping amputees get fitted for customized appendages.

“In a good way, the earthquake has exposed that country to the overwhelming need for prosthetic care.”

He’s going back in October, and hopes to take a bulk shipment of donated prosthetics with him…including Richard’s.

“It makes me feel great, and I know it’d make him feel great too,” says Diane.

“There’s no telling,” Paul says about who the limb will go to. “It could be a young kid who had a motorcycle accident, or an older diabetic female patient, who knows!”

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/donating-prosthetic-limbs-to-help-amputees-in-haiti/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/photography/ http://www.invisionskins.net/photography/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 07:19:44 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/?p=75

Photography with the use of a camera dates back to the first decades of the 19^th century. These photographs, rather than paintings and sculptures, were able to grab a brilliant array of details that, despite how fantastic an article might have been, were unattainable in other forms of impressionism. Since the creation of the camera, different photographic techniques have developed—both for reasons of technology evolving, but also the technology evolving because these techniques were in such demand by photographers.

Black and White

All photographs used to be monochromatic. That means that it was a single hue of a color. In this case, they were all black and white. At first, this was the only way that photographs could be created; however, as time went on, it became more of a personal choice—due to both cost of the film and the traditional look a black and white photo gave—that black and white photography to this day is still used. It is not uncommon, for example, for a bride to request certain photos be in black and white from her wedding. It adds a sense of antiquity and elegance to the photographs. And, it adds a level of art to the photographs.

Color

The first color photograph was made in 1861 using three different cameras—one with a different color filter. However, it wasn’t until 1935 that Kodak developed a tri-color pack for its cameras. This brought about the age of color photography. However, as mentioned above, black and white still was used predominately because of how much more expensive it was to develop color photographs in comparison to black and whites. In 1963, Polaroid released their instant color film which allowed for people to take color photographs and have the image there and in their hands seconds after.

Full-Spectrum, Ultraviolet and Infrared

This type of photography is less for the random photographer and more for serious application. In this form, an individual is trying to get access to different wavelengths of light. Therefore, by implementing different lenses and filters, they’re able to block out visible light and instead focus in on the ultraviolet or infrared. The primary use of a full-spectrum camera would be for applications such as forensics and law enforcement. However, geology and fine art photography have also tagged on for use.

Digital

The final and newest form is known as digital photography. Unlike the other three types of photography that actually have a physical film within the camera, the digital camera takes an image and digitizes it. This turns it into a file that can then be transferred from computer to computer. When the time comes to print it, the image can either be sent to a film lab or it can be printed directly from the computer. The Nikon D1 was the first DSLR camera which would be the first camera used by professional photographers. Before then, they only used film cameras.

These are the four main categories of photography. Some are traditionalists and prefer to only take black and white photos with a film camera. However, the digital camera has been released with the capability of doing black and white, color as well as full-spectrum. This has opened the market for many different types of digital cameras to be developed.

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/photography/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/commercial-real-estate/ http://www.invisionskins.net/commercial-real-estate/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 07:15:09 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/commercial-real-estate/

Commercial real estate is any type of real estate that is going to be used for profit. For example, an apartment building, an industrial building, an office building or a retail building would fall under the classification of commercial real estate. Personal real estate or residential real estate is any real estate for personal use such as owning a house. Commercial real estate is an incredibly big business that can require millions of dollars of investment money to get involved in.

The way commercial property works is relatively straight forward. An individual or a group of investors come together and pool their money. They then take that money and purchase a property. For example, five investors might together pull $10 million to purchase a five story office building. They’d meet with a commercial real estate broker and go about making the purchase. Because there are multiple people investing in the property, it would be important to create some sort of a partnership or LLC.

Once the property was purchased, the important step is to somehow convert it into a profitable entity. Therefore, what they will then do is begin to try and find possible clients to rent the property. When dealing with commercial real estate, the main way of turning a profit is to have enough people renting office space. For example, if the business plan were to bring in $500,000, each floor of the five floor office building would have to bring in $100,000.

Investing in commercial real estate, though, is a tremendously dangerous investment because it is so expensive. According to Real Capital Analytics, more than $160 billion of commercial property in the United States is currently in default. That means that so much property is completely worthless to the individuals who owned it so they were unable to pay the money on the loan. In other words, because they were unable to bring in enough rent money, they had to default on the property.

Because of this, it is important to invest wisely in commercial property. Pay attention to the demographics of the region. If it is a safe region and has a higher flow of people, a commercial property is bound to do good, especially when it comes to retail. The more traffic, the more one can charge per month for the lease. However, when talking with office buildings, it is important that the buildings are in a region that can be easily reached by employees of the business.

In the end, investing in commercial real estate can bring in a considerable amount of profit. However, without a successful business plan, the property could result in a default which is bad for one’s credit. Bringing together numerous different investors, though, is a good way to reduce liability on the property. More so, if the property fails, the burden doesn’t fall on one person but instead it falls on all of the partners of the agreement. Therefore, it benefits the entire group to work together on the commercial real estate plan.

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/commercial-real-estate/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/benefits-of-wordpress/ http://www.invisionskins.net/benefits-of-wordpress/#comments Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:36:54 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/benefits-of-wordpress/

Some of the important benefits of WordPress are content management, search engine optimization, plugins, themes, blogs and cost effective works.  Content at wordpress can easily be managed.  In fact it is much easier than updating on MySpace or Facebook.  It saves lot of time and money of many people.  Instead paying to a firm or a freelancer for their updating services on web sites, the client can conveniently update one’s site very easily.  The second benefit of search engine optimization is that the friendly wordpress engine will enable Google ranking and also enhances efficient working.  More people if driven to your web site, it will definitely reflect on your revenue.  Similarly, plugins such as All in One SEO Pack can also help your search engine optimization.

Plugins are very benefiting with the fact that once, WordPress enables plugins which are suiting for web advertising, flickr, twitter, e-commerce, newsletters, weather reports, RSS feeds, SEO and for any other purpose.  Many plugins are developed as widgets that can be easily added to your site by using Wordpress management system.   Themes enable WordPress to activate a new web design while the content remains same on the web site. There are no other hassles of copying or pasting to a new web designer or developer.  By being cost effective means,  WordPress can be downloaded for free and cost is only for developing themes, installation, styling, plug-in and hosting.  Similarly blogs are known on WordPress platform. It is very easy to use and updates are very easy on WordPress engine. Blogs are also useful to enable people to comeback to your site and also to invite more number of visitors.

In this way, various benefits of WordPress offer many services to the customers. Not all benefits are the same, but each benefit has its unique functioning and the way in which it offers its services to the consumers through WordPress.  If you have a web site, this is the right time to get connected to the WordPress to grow your business.  There can be no other best time because, technology is catching up on  a fast pace and it is important that your presence on web is very important.  Therefore, if you wish to expand your business and drive more traffic to your web site, get connected with WordPress and check the blogs on daily basis to derive maximum benefit from the WordPress.

It is also important that you must have a good understanding about the working and functioning of WordPress. When you gain good working knowledge about WordPress, you can gain more advantage from it and you can grow more revenue from your web site. In this way, you can be more successful on WordPress.

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/benefits-of-wordpress/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/create-the-space/ http://www.invisionskins.net/create-the-space/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:33:05 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/create-the-space/

There’s a plain page or not at all a page r if not an awkward page available to show the information of your company. How does this sound? Does it seem you don’t even exist? Well that’s true. With the huge impact of the World Wide Web in our day to day lives. It has become imperative for all of us to make use the designing tools in order to develop a website for the company and then flaunt it.

This technology has a huge impact in increasing your customer base since it is a source of your existence easily accessible to your users at any point of time. The creativity lies in the arrangement of your content on your website and indeed the display as well.

The reason behind the development of a website   is to have all the various files on various servers available and display the information and the user friendly options to the visitor visiting the site at convenience. For a simple display of images and text languages like HTML/XML can be used. If an another scenario a website is intended to be a highly graphical equipped one, then the use of much complex software such as flash come in to the picture.

Website development

It is imperative to understand the needs being accomplished by the web design created. What would that need be? Firstly, you would want your potential customers to be glued on your website. They should have all the information easily accessible and in a presentable manner. Well to make that possible, all we do for you is go through a planned approach so that the result does not disappoint you.

A website is no different from a book which implies that when you try to read a book, you prefer to have the access to the information at ease. Similarly, the creation of the website requires the context to be in place in order to make the clients aware of your knowledge being imparted and then, follows the designing phase. You have the framework ready and now you need to understand why the website is being created. If it’s a source of enlightening the knowledge of the audience, a basic website would satisfy. In the other case, is you are having it as a source to have transaction with the clients, a dynamic website would be preferred. A clear idea of the targeted audience and style of displaying is essential.

Few steps to take and another source of opening your doors to the potential customer is achieved!

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/create-the-space/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/landing-page-%e2%80%93-your-best-salesperson/ http://www.invisionskins.net/landing-page-%e2%80%93-your-best-salesperson/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:31:35 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/?p=70

There is a well-known proverb – “First impression is the last impression”. I won’t say that first impression is last impression but yes, it is very important to impart a good ‘first impression’ as it moulds people’s thinking. The ‘first impression’ applies not only to human beings but to the websites as well. With respect to a website, it refers to the first page of the website which the visitor sees when they click on the website link. This page is also called the ‘landing page’. There are many factors contributing to the impression of the landing page, including look and feel, functionality, ease to use, adequate information, relevant content etc. Here I will discuss some of the key points about landing page and that how you can make landing page your best salesperson.

It should not necessarily be the home page but it can be any page of your website. Think of the landing page as a way to welcome your visitors and that you want to give them your best. This way you will be able to design a page which is very impressive and will be able to retain visitors for a longer time period.

Landing pages become more important when you know that what kind of visitors you have. When you want them to sign up for a specific purpose, promote a product or want to get ads published to pay for the incoming traffic, in those cases the designing of the landing pages becomes even more important.

Here I would like to discuss some of the key factors in deciding and designing the ‘look and feel’ of landing page:

• Visual appeal: the page should be pleasingly catchy to human eye. Instead of putting in just text full of relevant content, put some images, videos, animation etc. to give a greater impact.
• Key message focus: don’t try to put everything you know on the page. Just put the things you want to focus and can attract the visitor towards the site.
• Catchy titles: the thing that binds the visitor to read content is the title or headline. The headline should be simple, direct and clear and must tell the visitor about what is to be accomplished.
• Rich user experience: there should be a clean and clear navigation pathway. The experience of the visitor on your page should be smooth and flawless.
• Clean and clear: use of abundant white-spaces makes your message easier to scan, read and differentiate from other messages. Users usually scan though a lot of pages, a clean page will help them scan your page easily.
• Deliver value: answer all the queries of visitors even before they ask. There should be answers of all what, why, how on your page, that a visitor can ask. Use of bullets proves better than plain text.
• Convincing message: the landing page works for you as your salesperson. It should be able to convince the visitor and compel them to buy whatever yiu are selling.

If you design your landing page keeping these small but important things in mind, I can assure you that you are hiring the best salesperson in the industry.

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