Author: WaelBadawy
The Importance of How You Spend Your Time Between Jobs – Various Options and Strategies You Should Think Of
With resume gaps now the norm, workers should pay attention to how they spend their time between jobs.
The reason is simple: Employers want to know how job candidates spent their time when they were out of work. Learning? Traveling? Moping? Being productive or non productive ? Planning for the future and doing things or just sitting around as if you were putting in time in a prison cell ? Unless you project the image of a can-do job seeker, you’re likely to have a tough time bouncing back from periods of unemployment.
Most job interviewers will be looking at what you doing to be productive with your time during your period between jobs.
One cannot stress the importance of demonstrating continued involvement with career-oriented activities. It’s not only critically important to the employer, but it’s important to the candidate as well . It takes away feelings of depression, discouragement and hopelessness.
To project an active, engaged attitude during a job search consider these tips for being productive when you’re out of work.
Volunteer your services . Volunteering provides “a double benefit”. In addition to giving back to a cause or organization, you get to work with people who see you in action. It becomes a great new networking environment .
Be a Leader. Join a professional organization, but don’t just attend meetings. Instead, take your involvement to the next level by serving on a board or organizing events. Through that you will often end up finding your next job .
Try taking classes . Employers are often wary about job candidates with outdated skills, especially in technical fields. If you take a class, or even begin pursuing an advanced degree, you already have a ready-made way of countering that perception as you demonstrate your engagement in the field.
Find an Internship . Those early in their careers may want to consider an internship, even if they have previously held a full-time job. The same goes for workers considering a career transition. An interneship may even help you with career transitions.
You may want to try teaching a cllass . Universities, community colleges and continuing-education programs such as in your local Y or in your local shool board often seek experienced people as well as professionals to teach classes. Aside from being a potential avenue for networking, teaching gigs look impressive to employers, positioning you as someone with expertise in your field and the ability to impart that expertise to others.
You can even try to be a Consultant to local organizations , businesses or local non-profit groups . If you are involved in a drawn-out job search try setting yourselv up as an independent consultant
Get business cards and a website. Your assignments may be small ones, but being a consultant allows you to market yourself as someone active and involved in your field.
Perhaps you should join a “Job Seekers Group”. Churches, libraries and other organizations often host groups for job seekers. These groups often serve to help people make contacts and provide support.
You should build social networks . With jobs and other commitments, many people find they don’t have time to develop the sort of social networks crucial to a productive life — and career. Often people ” get it done after they get everything else done,”
You should spend your time expanding social networks. Those connections often mean as much as professional ones during a job search. Start talking to your neighbour, and you learn they know X, Y , Z and B . It has been said by a very wise person
Raymond Strokon that if you know 5 people you know the world .
Have you ever thought of starting a business ? If you’ve ever dreamed of owning your own business, a period of unemployment may actually be the time to try to pull it off. There was a telecommunications executive who started actually initianted a Web hosting company with a number of friends during a serious time of his “between jobs “.
Now his partners have other engagements now and then, but their cooperative arrangement allows them to spend more or less time on the business as their schedules permit. And, not surprisingly, networking for tis business helps in other aspects of their careers.
Remember always to have fun . Life should not be serious. Everything always seems to work out. Remember that ” in the long run we all will be dead.”
Enjoy yourself . Play golf. Go for a run. You may even want to build something or do something that you always wanted to and never had the time before . Perhaps a rec room or a backyard gazebo . It will gives you something good to talk and think about . It can set the tone of your conversation. And conversation, whether online or off, is often the lifeblood of a productive job search.
Profiting From Online Social Networking
This is the second in a series of articles we will be publishing relaying thoughts and ideas from the Internet Retailer Conference in Chicago, which occurred June 5th through June 7th. Peter Kosciewicz, Director of E-Commerce for the Eastwood Company, and Chris Saito, Senior Director, Shopping Products for Yahoo! Shopping, delivered a presentation entitled “Social Networking: The Peer Pursuasion Marketing Tool.”
According to Kosciewicz, the Web today has grown into an “architecture of participation” that facilitates social networking through devices such as blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasts, and more. Forrester Research has published studies that show that traditional marketing is continuing to lose credibility. For example, in 2002, 78% of respondents in a survey said that ads are a good way to learn about a new product. In 2004, that number had dropped to 46%. In 2002, 14% of respondents agrees that companies generally tell the trust. As pathetic as 14% is, in 2004, it had declined even further – down to 7%. Social networking as a means of marketing overcomes this lack of consumer trust because it relies on the word of the consumer rather than the word of the producer. Research from Datamonitor reported that 85% of repondents in a survey indicated that word-of-mouth from friends, family, or colleagues is more trustworthy than corporate-generated content.
So how do you take advantage of social networking to sell more product? Simple – you open yourself up. You plant the seeds of a community to grow up around your site by using devices such as blogs, customer reviews, and forums to give a voice to your customers or prospective customers. The caveat is that you must be high quality. You must have high quality service and a high quality product. If not, avoid this marketing method.
Kosciewicz outlined four important rules for using social networking on your web site:
1. Guide but don’t control.
2. Never censor.
3. Don’t be afraid of the negative.
4. Don’t be paranoid.
If you open up a forum on your site but then restrict what people are allowed to say, such as removing posts that are negative toward your company or that mention your competitors, then you will do more damage than good to your reputation. Use negativity as a way to improve your business. If people are negative, look at that as feedback and act on it. Make changes, and then let your community know about it. Don’t worry about your community talking about your competition. Your attitude has to be that you are the best, so why worry about it?
As a community develops around your web site, certain members will establish themselves as more influential than others. They will be more outspoken, and will be the ones who often respond to others. Cultivate these members, because they can be powerful allies. Once you have identified the more influential members of your community, contact them regularly, give them free product, become their friend. Feed your influencers information, and they will distribute it for you. But do not make it appear that you are only interested in them because they can help you sell stuff. You need to be genuine.
Measuring the impact of social networking is difficult. Unlike other forms of marketing, there is no direct connect between social networking activity and sells. What you will want to do is track traffic to pages such as customer reviews, referral links, etc.
Social networking can be a powerful marketing tool, if you have a high quality product and are not afraid of an open dialogue with your customers.
If you would like help implementing a social networking strategy for your web site, please join our live seminar
A Simplified 8×8 Transformation And Quantization Real-Time Ip-Block For Mpeg-4 H.264/Avc Applications: A New Design Flow Approach
Abstract
Current multimedia design processes suffer from the excessively large time spent on testing new IP-blocks with references based on large video encoders specifications (usually several thousands lines of code). The appropriate testing of a single IP-block may require the conversion of the overall encoder from software to hardware, which is difficult to complete in the short time required by the competition-driven reduced time-to-market demanded for the adoption of a new video coding standard. This paper presents a new design flow to accelerate the conformance testing of an IP-block using the H.264/AVC software reference model. An example block of the simplified 8 × 8 transformation and quantization, which is adopted in FRExt, is provided as a case study demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach.
Ihab Amer, Wael Badawy, Graham Jullien, Marco Mattavelli, And Robert Turney, “A Simplified 8×8 Transformation And Quantization Real-Time Ip-Block For Mpeg-4 H.264/Avc Applications: A New Design Flow Approach,” Journal of Circuits, Systems, and Computers Vol. 16, No. 6 (2007) 1011–1026
Link to the list of other Peer Journal Publications
The Elevator Pitch: First Contact
Entrepreneurs with businesses in early start-up differ on what they believe to be the most important element, although many professionals will argue that creating a solid business plan should definitely be the first step. A well-crafted business plan lays out all the details and strategies, includes projections for revenue and spending, and will be reviewed in detail by bankers and venture capitalists. But in fact, the most important document that should be created even before the business plan is the ìelevator pitch.î
The fact is, most people will not read a business plan unless they have been motivated to do so beforehand. The elevator pitch is that motivating factor. It’s the hook that gets them into the room. It’s the catchy jingle that gets people to pay attention to the ad. It’s the best parts of the business plan, without the boring details. The elevator pitch is the place for the excitement, not the place to include all the technology, buzzwords and explanations.
An elevator pitch should be able to be condensed into a single-page presentation, short enough to be memorized, or read easily within a few minutesóthat’s how it got its name, it’s a pitch that’s short enough to be presented during the course of an elevator ride. The elevator pitch condenses your business concept into something that can be presented in about a minute or twoóessentially, the parts that matter, the very ìessenceî of the business.
The elevator pitch skips the hard-core financials, and gets straight to the heart of what it is about the business that really gets you excited. That’s what this pitch is aboutóyou don’t need the proof of concept here yet, that comes in the full-length business plan. The elevator pitch is the commercial that gets people interested.
The elevator pitch should be inspirational and creative, hitting the high points of your business concept, and should accomplish the following:
ï Hit the high points of what it is you hope to do
ï Summarize the problem/solution aspect of your concept
ï Describe the business modelóhow is it going to make money?
ï Create excitement on the part of the reader/listener
ï Describe the profit potential without having to bring out charts and graphs
ï Tell why you/your company are well positioned to accomplish your goal
ï End with a call to action
The first couple sentences are the most critical, and should present your core concept. If you can’t tell what it is you want to do in two sentences or less, then you need to simplify your concept. There will be plenty of time to get into all the details later, once you’ve captured your audience’s interest.
The Benefits of Network Appliance Training Programs
Network Appliance Inc. (NetApp) is one of the world leaders in unified storage solutions. Network Appliance storage solutions account for a wide range of specific hardware, software and services, offering advanced storage management for various network environments. For the advantages it offers, lots of people these days dream to have a Network Appliance certification (NAC). NetApp certifications are highly recognized worldwide, as they facilitate the acceptance in a wide range of IT environments.
NetApp solutions and tools administration graduates can easily build a solid, lucrative IT career virtually anywhere in the world. Attracted by the benefits of NetApp certifications, lots of IT aspirants dedicate their time to expanding their area of knowledge on NetApp solutions and tools, hoping to obtain a certificate in the field as soon as possible. However, it is important to note that hard-work doesnít always improve your prospects of becoming a NetApp graduate!
In order to improve your chances of achieving your goals, you should consider replacing self-study oriented materials with appropriate Network Appliance training programs. Trainer-oriented Network Appliance training programs are by far the best means to quickly assimilate the knowledge and the skills required for becoming a NetApp graduate! Conducted upon a set of active-learning techniques, trainer-oriented Network Appliance training programs involve a higher degree of comprehension, feature that renders them far superior to self-study oriented programs!
A complete, well-structured and comprehensive NetApp training program allows trainees to quickly familiarize with the NetApp curriculum, guaranteeing students that they will be able to pass their future exams. Over the entire course of the training program, the trainees are encouraged to interact with their trainers and the other attending students, allowing them to exchange opinions and ideas regarding various topics of the NetApp curriculum. NetApp training programs are taught by the best professionals in the field, who provide students with feed-back over the entire duration of the program. Structured in various sets of seminaries, laboratories and courses, NetApp training programs allows the attending students to develop all the skills and abilities required in their future careers. Professional Network Appliance training programs guarantee graduates acceptance in the best IT companies in the world!
In present, the most requested certifications are NACA (NetApp Certified Storage Associate), NACP (NetApp Certified Storage Professional), NACE (NetApp Certified Expert), NAC-NA (NetApp Certified NetCache Administrator) and NAC-NIE (NetApp Certified NetCache Implementation Engineers). You can obtain these much desired certifications in no time by attending to a professional, reliable NetApp Storage training program (NAS).
Considering the fact that there are many websites out there that offer you the opportunity to participate in NetApp Storage training programs, the only issue is to choose the right one! In order to obtain the best results, it is advised to participate in NetApp Storage training programs that provide students with official NetApp curriculum-based study materials. In addition, donít be lured by the idea that websites who charge the most are better than others! You should spend some time in comparing the costs and the credentials of such websites before choosing to participate in a NetApp Storage training program.
ProBuilderPlus Review ñ A Venture Into World Of MLM
I want to start with simple statement ñ I have always told myself that I will never fall for Multi Level Marketing or as itís called most often MLM. I have always believed that most MLM business opportunities are nothing more than glorified pyramid scheme brought online. So what changed my mind? How did I, a self taught Internet Infopreneur got sucked into it? Read on Ö to learn how, why, get the skinny on the latest hottest MLM opportunity and see my real day-by-day experience.
So, lets start with why. I run a website dedicated to affiliate marketing and home based business. I investigate and share my experiences with anyone willing to read my articles and make recommendations on what I consider a solid opportunity. I make my money on Yahoo ads and on multiple affiliate sales I get, when people do follow my recommendations. In last two month I have gotten at least 10 emails from my visitors asking me about different MLM programs and my personal opinion. Since I have only had experienced myself only with SFI, a known affiliate MLM I could only answer based on that, which wasnít enough Ö So here I was. I have picked the hottest MLM I could find currently running and one of the youngest with low membership fees ñ ProBuilderPlus. This review is dedicated to my readers and hopefully my experience will help you make your decision.
Now to the how part we move Ö How do you make money using ProBuilderPlus business opportunity? Itís really a quite simple forced matrix with 3 levels of payoff but quite a bit more intricate system of payments. Once you build a matrix of 9 people in your downline, doesnít matter how far, you guaranteed a weekly check of $30. But it doesnít stop there. You also get $10 for each paying member you personally refer and then $3 for second level from that member and $2 for 3rd level. All this in addition to payments based on maintaining your minimum matrix. As your matrix grows, so does your weekly income.
The system is quite simple but letís have a look at how effective it is and what does it takes to recruit new membersÖActually this is the part that surprised me most and quite pleasant surprise it was. It was designed to be used by anyone, with no marketing experience and no prior knowledge and recruiting is a lot easier than I thought was possible. I have joined this system for free, while doing evaluation of multiple MLM programs about 7 or 10 days ago. As soon as I did I started receiving emails with interesting subjects:
“Here you go Alex, we put Kathy under you…”
“Here you go Alex, we put James under you…”
“Another One Alex – Joseph just joined YOUR Powerline…”
“Alex – AWESOME Mark just Upgraded to Member in YOUR DOWNLINE…”
And they just kept on pouring in. Before I knew it I had 587 pre-enrolled members, free members but all interested to learn how to make money, all with an open mindset and just waiting for a push to be converted. And believe you me, emails with subjects like I shown above was powerful push even for a skeptic like me, so I decided to join, reasoning that I can always cancel.
And now I move to the tools that system provides, and their quality. It comes pretty much with everything one might require:
1. An autoresponder follow-up system that makes you want to upgrade.
2. A matrix structure and pay plan that almost guarantees you make money.
3. Lead capture pages that get the job done.
4. A traffic rotator that allows you to funnel traffic to your downline.
5. Online training that highlights simple steps to success.
6. A Contact Manager that allows to to stay in touch with people you personally sponsor.
7. A tool that allows you to send a voice message to thousands of people per MINUTE.
Quality design shows in every tool and all of them quite compelling as far as MLM goes.
Day 1-3.
All we are left with is my personal experience. I have had accounts already with several traffic exchange programs that require members to click on your add and actually look at page. I have found them quite effective for building my mailing lists, so I figured I would just add my link from ProBuilderPlus to rotation and see what it brings. Completion of that part only took me a few minutes and once done I had a chance to have a closer look at all tools I described above and specifically training. Nice day of work, if I can say so myself Ö
Day two went pretty much on autopilot, due to my preoccupation with regularly scheduled job and I only had an opportunity to check my stats on third day. To my surprise I had over 530 views of my signup page and one paying member! That is $10 back to my pocket, 2 more and I will return my investment. Not bad, not bad at all.
To do a quick summary ñ I donít know if you can become filthy rich using this system or not but looking at weekly leaderboard I can see people with over 414 paying members enrolled, and that is for one week. So what I will do is continue to investigate this opportunity and post updates on my regular site, so feel free to visit and read them if you liked this article or just want to learn more from a person who is doing it and honestly sharing. No hype, no fuss, just an honest opinion.
Plant a Seed and Watch Your Business Grow
Do you have all the business you could possibly want or need? If you’re like me, you’re still growing your business. Marketing is an ongoing item on my agenda, and I’m always looking for new ways to market my services. Where do you begin the process of attracting more business? How do you get the ball rolling in the direction you want your business to be heading? Well, it’s really simple. Start planting seeds! If you can start your garden growing this spring, why not start your business growing too?
You can start by telling everyone what you do, including those people in your life you see every day. Talk to your hairdresser, dentist, financial advisor, or babysitter. You just never know who they might know who may want or need your products or services. Leave business cards with those people, so they can hand them out to others who may be interested in contacting you. That old saying that includes the line “the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker” may just ring true after all.
Plant seeds everywhere you go. Typical ways to market your business are fine, but the best way is by simply using word-of-mouth. “Who do you know…” can be a very powerful statement when you are talking to others about what you do or what you sell. Let your presence be known. Be creative! I have a Team 100 list of the top professionals I know. When someone either in my professional circle or my personal circle is looking for a particular service, I’m able to refer them to someone I know and trust. All of the professionals on my list are able to refer me to those they know as well. It’s a win/win situation. My name is on their list, their name is on mine, so the seed has been planted, and keeps growing.
These are just a couple of great ideas to help you get started in growing your business (if you want more business that is!). Taking some small action every day is better than doing nothing at all. Following a simple action plan consistently will most likely lead to several great opportunities down the road. Who knows? If you put in the effort, you just may find new business knocking on your door instead of the other way around.
Spring into action…and watch your business grow by leaps and bounds!
On Networking Groups (Part Two)
In “On Networking Groups – Part One”, I spoke briefly about the four types of networking groups. Now, let’s take a look at a category of networking groups.
One category that most people are familiar with is the Chamber Of Commerce. Chambers serve a long standing role in the business community. It is a role of development and support. A Chamber Of Commerce can offer business both small and large with networking opportunities, training programs, legislative assistance and a host of other benefits. A Chamber Of Commerce can be a local, statewide, national, or international organization with separate memberships for each. If you belong to an area Chamber of Commerce, you do not belong to a state or national Chamber. Each plays their own role in the business community.
Some Chambers of Commerce take more of a role in the community to influence policy while others might focus more on business development. Most of them however have a wealth of information for the member that goes unused by most.
For example, let’s say you have a business and you have a question about a city ordinance that relates to your business. Most often a Chamber of Commerce can provide you with the answer to your question. Each of them has a database of members that can often be accessed through some point. Usually computers are made available to members with databases that can be searched for information on other members.
When looking for networking opportunities within a Chamber Of Commerce, most people think only of leads groups or the common after hours. The reality is that any function hosted by a chamber of commerce holds opportunities for networking with other business owners and business leaders.
Chambers of Commerce generally have a yearly membership of several hundred dollars for an individual or company. There are various levels of membership that can be had. Most Chambers offer an executive level membership that includes exclusive meetings between a more elite level of business people. When looking for this type of prospect, you can often gain access to them by joining at this level. The problem you might have is actually paying for this level or attending the functions as they are provided.
I and many other experts on networking recommend anyone who networks to be a member of several groups. This should include a Chamber of Commerce. Keep this in mind when considering a Chamber of Commerce. If you are involved in your community in other business networking organizations like the Rotary Club, a local Merchant’s association, or smaller networking group, you might want to consider joining a Chamber of Commerce in another part of town. This will make you a part of that community as well and open the doors to increased prospects and opportunities.
In any event, you should always attend a Chamber of Commerce function in any area several times and find out what types of assistance they can offer for the growth of your type of business. Do not join any group just for the sake of joining a group. Find out what types of members attend the functions that are offered to determine the amount of exposure you will have to your target prospect.
When you attend a Chamber of Commerce meeting for the first time, look for the most popular person in the room, the one who everyone seems to want to talk to and get to know them first. This way you will make faster connections to the rest of the group. Often the leaders of the group can help you to get in the mix quicker.
Look for people who do what you do and analyze their strengths and weaknesses for opportunities to build alliances with them. If they have been a member for a long time, it is likely that they have most of the business in their industry at this point in time. It is hard to compete in such circumstances, so try an alliance before you bang your head against the wall trying to compete or just giving up.
Chambers of Commerce have been around for many years and there are all types, including minority and international. Be sure to visit many before deciding which to join and your membership dollars will serve you better.
High-Throughput Identification and Classification Algorithm for Leukemia Population Statistics
Abstract:
Early detection of leukemia and reduced risk to human health can result from interdisciplinary integration of image analysis with clinical experimental results. Image analysis relies on efficient and reliable processing algorithms to make quantitative judgments on image data. This article presents the design and implementation of an efficient and high-throughput leukemia cell count and cluster classification algorithm to automatically quantify leukemia population statistics in the field of view. The algorithm is divided into two stages: (1) the cell identification stage and (2) the cell classification and inspection stage. The cell identification stage accurately segments background and noise from foreground pixels. A boundary box is generated enclosing the foreground pixels identifying all isolated cells and cell clusters. The cell classification and inspection stage uses one-dimensional intensity profiles that behave as signature plots to segregate isolated cells from cell clusters and evaluate total count within each cluster. The designed algorithm is tested with a variety of leukemia cell images that vary in image acquisition conditions, image sizes, cell sizes, intensity distributions, and image quality. The proposed algorithm demonstrates good potential in processing both ideal and nonideal images with an average accuracy of 91% and average processing time of 3 s. The performance of the proposed algorithm in comparison to recently published algorithms and commercial image analysis tool further ascertains its robustness.
Brinda Prasad and Wael Badawy, “High-Throughput Identification and Classification Algorithm for Leukemia Population Statistics,” The Journal of Imaging Science and Technology 52(3), 2008.
Link to the list of other Peer Journal Publications
15 Tips to increase your Adwords profits
1. Create a list with all possible keywords that fit to your product, service or business field. The more the better. So you will get also a lot of keywords which you must pay for only the minimal commandment of 5 cents.
2. Benefit from misspelling in order to find keywords which your competitors did not think of. For example if you have a emergency service , do not only bid for “emergency” but also for “imergency”, “imergensy” or “immergency”.
3. The first position on Googles search result page achieves usually most clicks. However this is also the most expensive position. Give it a try if the second to fourth display position gives you more visitors and more customers for less money.
4. The position of the Adwords-ad is determined not only by the maximum click price that you are ready to spend. Google evaluates also the relevancy of the displayed ad in order to position the Adwords-ads. The more clicks your ad receives, the higher it gets listed.
5. The headline in the Adwords-ad must catch the viewers attention. If you implement the keyword in the header line, you receive considerably more clicks onto your ad.
6. In the ad-text mention one or two reasons, why the internet user should click on it. Which problem solves your product or service? Do you offer a product at a cheaper price or do you ship without the dispatch charges?
7. Avoid price wars at which a competitor and you attempt to outdo the click price for a keyword continuously mutually. You only see to it that the click price fires into the sky. It is better to find search-terms which consist of several words and which are more precise.
8. Google AdWords offers keyword-options which you should absolutely study. If properly set up you can make sure that your AdWords-ad appears only for example if the internet-user has exclusively entered your term and no further.
9. Use “excluding keywords”. Those ones are keywords for which your ad is supposed not to appear. In this way you do not have to pay for clicks, when somebody is searching for free stuff or only for a pamphlet.
10. Construct for every keyword and for everyone of your AdWords ads an own landing-page. There you can offer especially that which the internet-user searched for.
11. An own landing-page beside has also the advantage that you can measure exactly how many customers a specific Keyword and a specific ad brought in. You can optimize your displays continuously in this way and increase the purchase rate.
12. Update your AdWords-ads at specific events or holidays, for example to the New Year, Valentine, Easter or Christmas.
13. If you mention the price for a product or a service in the AdWords ad, then you can exclude in front the free- and all-free-searcher from clicking your ad.
14. Be conservatively in the selections of the countries and the languages’ in which your AdWords ads are supposed to appear. If your product or your service turn only to customers speaking in a German manner, you should tune “Germany” and “Austria” as countries. With corresponding success you can try out also further countries, for example Switzerland, and areas close to the border. This method can also be applied to any other language.
15. The Google ads are also displayed on partner sites of Google, for example at Focus.de or T-Online.de. If your AdWords ad costs too much and/or goes for too little profit, then interrupt the option that lets announce your ad also on the partner sites of Google. Test wisely. Not all ads run well on the partner sites.
Here you got 15 powerful methods to increase your Adwords profits. All you have to do is to take action and apply them NOW!
Happy earnings!
More info’s and free registrations (restricted to pros), please join our live seminar