Review: Firefox 2.0 is a solid improvement

Not to be outdone by the debut of Internet Explorer 7 last week, the Mozilla team has released Firefox 2.0 with a minor makeover, a few new features, and a number of enhancements to existing features. It's not a drastic change from the 1.5 series, but Firefox 2.0 bring enough improvements to make the upgrade worthwhile.

Genetic Mutation Linked To Autism

University of Iowa researchers have learned more about a genetic mutation that contributes to autism. The mutation occurred in sperm cells of a father, who does not have autism, but passed the condition on to two of his children.The investigators now know more about how the mutation causes problems with a specific gene and are testing for ... (Read on Source)

Dedicated Server Firm, Layered Technologies, Acquires AT&T, SAVVIS Execs

Frisco, Texas - (The Hosting News) - June 13, 2007 - Self-managed, dedicated server products and services firm, Layered Technologies, Inc., has appointed two new members to its executive team. Jack Finlayson, former President, COO and Director of SAVVIS, and David Howe, Founder and Managing General Partner of Enhanced Equity Fund, L.P. ("EEF"), have joined the company's Board of Directors.

Mr. Finlayson has over 20 years of experience within the technology and telecommunications industry, holding various executive roles engaged in corporate growth, thought leadership management and key marketing initiatives with such companies as SAVVIS (NASDAQ: SVVS), Global Crossing, Motorola and AT and T.

Michael Platner, CEO of Layered Technologies remarked, ''Jack's career accomplishments and experience in the business issues of high-tech, leading edge companies will be a great benefit to our board. Surrounding ourselves with people who understand and share our passion for both on demand hosting infrastructure services, and our commitment to our customers' success, will help us to reach our full potential.''

In January 2000, Mr. Finlayson joined SAVVIS, a global leader in IT infrastructure services for business and government applications, as President and Chief Operating Officer. He demonstrated a key understanding of business issues and expanded the company's success year after year. Prior to joining SAVVIS, Mr. Finlayson was Senior Vice President of Global Crossing Holdings and President of Global Crossing Int'l, Ltd. Previously, Mr. Finlayson also held key executive positions at Motorola where he was an officer and ran the Wireless Infrastructure business for the Americas and Asia. Prior to Motorola, he spent 13 years in various senior management and marketing roles at AT and T. Mr. Finlayson earned a BS in marketing from LaSalle University, and an MBA and Masters Certification in Information Management, both from St. Joseph's University.

David Howe is a Founder and Managing General Partner of Enhanced Equity Fund, L.P. ("EEF"). He has been actively engaged in private equity and venture capital investing for over 16 years. Prior to creating EEF, Mr. Howe served as a partner at both Citicorp Venture Capital Ltd. ("CVC") and Lightyear Capital ("Lightyear").

Todd Abrams, President and COO of Layered Technologies added, ''David's experience in the financial sector and his work in venture capital within the IT and business services will help Layered Technologies navigate the complicated financial landscape as we continue to grow and expand our core businesses.''

While at CVC and Lightyear, Mr. Howe focused on equity investments of $5 million to $35 million per transaction, primarily in information technology and business services. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Integrated Mobile, Inc, Enhanced Wireless Inc, Stratos Lightwave, and Fitness Together, Inc. Mr. Howe received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Based in New York City, Enhanced Equity Fund L.P is a $225 million private equity fund focused on investing in small capitalization growth companies (typically less than $100 million in revenues). EEF focuses its investment activity exclusively in two areas: Healthcare and Information and Business Services. Its investment philosophy and strategy is to invest in smaller high growth companies and partner with successful entrepreneurs and management teams to build value through internal growth and acquisitions.

Based in Frisco Texas, Layered Technologies, Inc. is one of the five largest global providers of on-demand hosting and utility computing solutions, providing dedicated, partially managed server hosting solutions, primarily for the small and medium-sized enterprise (''SME'') market. The firm provides customers with technology, infrastructure and support services designed to enable them to operate servers at secure Tier III/IV data centers, while saving capital and operating costs typically associated with purchasing and maintaining servers at co-location facilities. Layered Technologies servers and associated network facilities are used by customers to host a variety of Internet-enabled applications, including content and e-commerce web sites, software as a service (''SaaS'') offerings, online multiplayer games, shared web site hosting services, and streaming multimedia content distribution and delivery, among other applications.

To learn more about EEF, please visit: www.enhancedequity.com.

For more information about Layered Technologies, please visit: www.layeredtech.com.

Non-English domains could take 2 years (AP)

AP - The Internet's key oversight agency is on track to start testing addresses entirely in foreign characters by November, but rules for determining which ones to permit likely will take another year or two to develop.

Can these young hitters turn it around?

What are the chances of big second half performances from struggling young hitters like Reid Brignac and Trevor Crowe? (Read on Source)

Convert .flv (Google Videos) to .mpg using ffmpeg

FFmpeg is a complete solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec, the leading audio/video codec library. FFmpeg is developed under Linux, but it can compiled under most operating systems, including Windows. In ubuntu This package contains the ffplay multimedia player, the ffserver streaming server and the ffmpeg audio and video encoder.

Be careful when acquiring call centre platforms

... regime. Look out for an annual licence fee, as opposed to a once-off fee. VPN or no VPN? Finally, Langenhoven says the technology must be examined for its possible ...

Ex-Astronaut's Lonely Mission: Save Earth From Asteroid Strike

Rusty Schweikart knows it's not a matter of if, but when, an asteroid will hit the Earth. The science can be developed and deployed to avoid this near-certain global catastrophe, he says. So why isn't anyone listening? (Read on Source)

Search Engine Land Ties for #3 Among Advertising Age's Ranking of Top Media and Marketing Blogs

News analysis site on search and interactive marketing ties two others for third slot for the first week The Power 150 on Advertising Age. (PRWeb Aug 13, 2007) Post Comment:Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/WmV0YS1QaWdnLUluc2UtSGFsZi1UaGlyLVplcm8=

TopCreatives, the Online Community for Creative Professionals, Launches Creative Challenge for Styky

TopCreatives, the premier online community for creative professionals, has launched a new online creative challenge for Styky. Following on the heels of a highly successful logo design challenge, creative professionals from around the world are invited to submit concepts for a new print ad campaign. The creatives who submit the top concepts will receive cash prizes, as well as publicity among a rapidly growing global creative network. (PRWeb Aug 27, 2007) Post Comment:Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/SGFsZi1GYWx1LVNpbmctSW5zZS1UaGlyLVplcm8=

Google?s Q3 Profit Up 46%

If you hold shares in Google, you probably already know the search engine had a great third quarter. For the rest of us, here’s the summary that will allow us to sleep well, knowing there’s no sign of a slow down. Net income rose to $1.07 billion, or $3.38 per diluted share, compared with the year-earlier [...]

Corey Rudl Family Settles Lawsuit

If you might recall, in 2005 I wrote about the accident that tragically killed Corey Rudl, one of the true internet marketing pioneers. Corey’s wife and parents have settled a lawsuit against Porsche and the racetrack where Corey Rudl was killed. Corey Rudl was riding as a passenger of Ben Keaton in a Porsche Carrera GT, [...] (Read on Source)

SemTech Panel: Taking Semantic Technology to the Masses

How will the Semantic Web make the jump to the mainstream? That was the topic of a panel at the SemTech 2008 Conference that is going on right now in San Jose. The panel was moderated by Carla Thomson from Guidewire Group and featured Josh Dilworth from Porter Novelli, Tom Tague, who heads the Calais initiative at Reuters, and Mark Johnson, who ... (Read on Source)

Conference Call With Joseph Mallozzi & Robert Picardo

Our reporter Linda Craddock has been very busy these past few weeks rounding up interviews for all our fans of “Stargate: Atlantis,” the next Mummy film, the new television series “The Middleman” and more. She recently sat in on an invitation-only press conference sponsored by the GE CORP AM INITIATIVES GROUP. The ... (Read on Source)

New Oakton budget raises revenues, expenses nearly 5 percent

... said. But the biggest new item in the budget is money budgeted for substantial Web design work and a new marketing initiative. Together, they total more than $1 million. "The ...

Movers & Shakers: Monday's biggest gaining and declining stocks

Among the companies whose shares are expected to see active trade in Monday's session are Allegheny Technologies, Anheuser-Busch, Continental Air, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Flagstar Bancorp, Microsoft, Norsk Hydro and Yahoo.

IES Named to 2008 Micrsoft Dynamics President's Club

Microsoft Honors Internet eBusiness Solutions (IES) for Outstanding. (PRWEB Jul 11, 2008)

Read the full story at http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2008/07/prweb1097224.htm

7 Stocks you need to know for Thursday

Nvidia NVDA Quote Chart News PowerRating gained more than 10 on word that...

SEO Chat Forums - Redirect from www.mysite.com to mysite.com?

Date: August 21st, 2008 03:59 AM - igniz - Untitled Post: it's also my problem but i think for more hassle free, i using this format [http://] + [www.] + [website url name] + [.com] + optional extensions. just a suggestion....

NFL Tells Ed Hochuli: Stop Responding to Angry Chargers Fans' E-Mails

Filed under: Chargers In the week since referee Ed Hochuli blew a call that cost the San Diego Chargers a game against the Denver Broncos, thousands of Chargers fans have inundated Hochuli with e-mails. Surprisingly, Hochuli replied , telling fans that he was sorry, that he agrees that he screwed up royally and that he feels terrible about it. ... (Read on Source)

3 Tools to Generate and Manage Keyword Phases

Dealing with huge keyword lists is time consuming and often you can’t do without (semi-)automation. While most of the work is usually handled through notepad (”find and replace” option) and Excel (”sort”, “insert”, etc options), some online tools may also be much help: (Read on Source)

TV on the iPhone: Don't Hold Your Breath

It's the sharpest little screen on the sharpest-looking cell phone on the planet. Many of those who have watched a music video, TV show or full-length movie on an Apple 3G iPhone come away wide-eyed and impressed with the 3.5-inch display featuring 480-by-320 pixel resolution.

KOffice 2.0 Beta Hints at Improved Capabilities

Linux.com: "KOffice has been trailing the office application leaders for a long time. Despite years of development, it has yet to match OpenOffice.org feature for feature, although its features are complete enough that they have attracted a loyal community. Judging from the first beta, KOffice 2.0 will still not rival OpenOffice.org or other free software rivals, but it should be a major step in that direction."

Financial Crisis to Fuel Rise in Litigation

Two occupations that for sure won’t be experiencing unemployment troubles during the financial crisis: politician and lawyer. Politicians will be busy pointing fingers and looking clueless while lawyers will be bracing for a boon in litigation stemming from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. A survey of 360 in-house counsel in the UK and US show small businesses and major corporations alike are preparing for a busy lawsuit season expected to affect pretty much every sector.

Penn State sniffing around - Boston Globe

NCAAfootball.net
Penn State sniffing around
Boston Globe - 7 hours ago
By Mark Blaudschun Pencil in - yes, pencil, because we still have a few games to play - Penn State into the Rose Bowl Jan. 1. With its 13-6 win over Ohio State Saturday night, coach Joe Paterno's team is 9-0, does not have to worry about a conference ...
Top five stay the same in BCS standings; Texas heads to Texas Tech ... USA Today
Penn State gains on Alabama in BCS standings FOXSports.com
Los Angeles Times - San Francisco Chronicle - Washington Times - Denver Post
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Getting to know 24 hour Answering Services

Many different varieties of businesses have a central call center. Whether the reason of the call center is to offer an answering service or a live receptionist to help with a customers problem, most call centers are operated in a similar way. In order to be a eligible contender for a call center position, most hiring managers are searching for people who have excellent speaking skills, can exercise professionalism, and handle a busy environment.

Most companies prefer the representatives verbal communication be English however there is often more pay offered for those who can communicate another language fluently. Having persons on staff who fluently speak other languages can save the company a great deal of money because they do not have to use pricey translation lines. These abilities lend to the hectic but often satisfying environment that is referred to as a call center. A call center is an industry that constantly has to anticipate what may influence their business. They spend thousands of dollars attempting to predict how many calls they may accept in order to correctly staff as well as route calls based on call volumes and every operators performance plays a dynamic in those predictions.

Most positions are more than a telephone answering service for small businesses; usually the purpose of the position is to be a problem solver and much more. When working in a call center the expectation is that the representative who picks up the phone is the embodiment of the company, in fact for that customer they are the company. It is very important that every customer be treated with respect, diligence, and accuracy. The principal focus is to get the purpose of their call tended to and progress to the next customer. Most companies have a specified framework they like the call to fall within. Calls that are too short tend to demonstrate that not enough time was spent with the customer, yet calls that are too long cost too much profit.

It is an interesting balancing act that is subjective by call forecasting, staffing, and measuring statistics. There may be situations that require the individual to speak with a customer that is very upset and difficult to satisfy. Conversely, there are also customers who are just calling to chat and do not realize they are negatively impacting the representatives phone measurements, while the conversation grows so does the operators anxiety. Regardless, it can often be a very demanding job for many who choose to take on a position at a call center, but if the customer is affected in a way that only that representative could have assisted them, it often makes the representative feel as though they have made a positive difference.

Tanya Wiseman writes articles for:<br><a href="http://www.concordecommunications.com/clients.html">Call Centers</a><br><br>Or see more information on this blog:<br><a href="http://communications.jometro.com">Articles about Answering Services</a>

Pony Up, America: New Stimulus Package Puts Billions Toward Transportation

The new economic stimulus package currently wending its way through Congress will put a significant amount of tax dollars into roads, bridges and other public works projects.