:The Flash Advancer

Acai is a palm from the Amazon rain forest. It has small, purple fruits that have been utilized by Brazilian individuals for food and health for centuries of years. The essential factors in Acai are polyphenols and anthocyanins. Scientific analyses have showed these compounds to be strong antioxidants, benefiting the entire body by protecting the cells from bad freeradicals.

Now, companies ar sprouting nearly overnight porting the gains of acai. They produce acai juice, pills, emollients, lotions and just about anything else you can perhaps think of. Some companies have even created multilevel marketing opportunities behind this berry. It seems there are zero shortages of ideas for multilevel marketing companies. Personally, I continue to be dubious that the products provided through these companies are significantly healthier than what you can purchase on your own. The only benefit, that I can determine, to buying acai juice or acai juice extract capsules through one of these companies is the commercial opportunity that comes with it.

Yet if you are not a salesperson and not into attempting to win over individuals to join a business opportunity you can even so get the gains of a premium acai juice extract. Source Naturals makes a product that that is top flight.

A Quality Acai Juice Extract Does not have to come from a multilevel marketing company.

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Junk faxes waste the resources of every business. It is estimated that they cost businesses tens of millions of dollars a year in wasted paper, toner and fax machine maintenance. There is nothing more aggravating then coming into the office each morning to find a pile of junk faxes promotion everything from mortgage refinancing to septic tank solutions. I don’t even have a septic tank!

Junk fax companies have been fined by the federal government and sued repeatedly, but has anyone noticed a reduction in the number of junk faxes? I certainly haven’t. The question for most businesses is whether there is a practical way to beat the daily waste of resources caused by junk faxes? Many businesses are using the fax-to-email solution provided through online unified messaging systems.

What is Unified Messaging?

Unified Messaging is a highly flexible communication system that ties all of your communications together. It has the capacity to centralize your voice mail, faxes and email messages in one online area through an email address and single phone number. These systems use their own phone lines and provide you with a separate number, so you don’t have to tie up your own or have an additional line installed.

Fax to Email Conversion

One of the best aspects of Unified Messaging systems is the fax-to-email conversion feature. You are provided with a phone number where people can send you faxes and leave voice mail messages. The beauty of the system is that the faxes are then automatically converted to text files and emailed to an inbox.

So, how does this save you money? You simply delete the junk faxes unless, of course, you need to “maximize the potential of your septic tank.” You then read or print out the faxes that are germane to your business. No wasted paper, no wasted toner and no smoke coming out of your fax machine!

An added advantage of the fax-to-email conversion element of unified messaging is the flexibility it gives you. Since the faxes are available to you online, you can print the ones you need at any location. You no longer have the frustrating situation where you are working at home, but need to see a fax that was just sent to your office. You just access your inbox and print it out.

The cost of using unified messaging is very low, particularly when compared to the cost of wasted paper, toner and fax machine maintenance. Depending on the service you use, you may be charged a monthly signup fee, by the minute for phone line usage or both. The best option for your business is entirely dependent upon the number of faxes you expect to receive each month.

Despite the lawsuits and fines issued by government agencies, there is little doubt that junk faxes will continue to bombard your fax machines. Unified messaging provides an inexpensive and practical way to eliminate the cost of junk faxes.

About The Author

Barry Waxler is the President of http://3in1box.com - your unified messaging solution. Visit http://www.3in1box.com to get your FREE unified messaging box or contact Barry at BarryWaxler@3in1box.com

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There is a lot of photography accessories on the market today - some are very useful, but most of them are a waste of money. Here are five of the most important accessories for landscape photography

Tripod: A tripod is important for one main reason, keeping your images sharp. You’ll want to select a small aperture to maximise depth-of-field, so you should be using a shutter speed of less than 1/60 second. It’s impossible to get a sharp image holding your camera in your hand at these slow speeds.

When choosing a tripod pick one made out of carbon fibres, these are light to carry but are sturdy in the ground. Choose a tripod that the legs will spread out far, this will help to optimise the strength of your support.

Filters: A small selection of filters is well worth packing when heading off for a trip. They don’t take up too much space and will definitely add a bit of spice to your images. A polarizing filter should be top of the list, while a few Neutral Density filters will certainly help with tough exposures. A 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 will help with exposure without affecting colour.

Bring a few warm-up filters to help when the light is cool. The 81-series are the best choice, which will give your images an extra bit of life. There’s a large amount of filters on the market today; these are the most important filters for landscape photography.

Correct Film: Fuji Velvia is an obvious choice for me when it comes to shooting landscapes. This is a slide film that is high in saturation and is perfect for capturing the colour of all seasons. It comes in two speeds of ISO 50 and ISO 100.

It’s always handy to have a few rolls of Black and White film in the bag. You never know when you see a scene and know that it’s perfect for B/W. Whichever film you choose, bring plenty of rolls; don’t be caught in the middle of nowhere without film.

If you are shooting with a Digital SLR bring plenty of memory.

Cable Release: If your camera has a connection for a cable release you should buy one. It is a perfect accessory to minimise the risk of camera shake - especially if you are taking long exposures. It doesn’t take up too much room and is extremely light.

Light Meter: All modern day cameras have light meters built into them, but if you are serious about landscape photography it’s advisable to have a hand-held light meter. These are small and of light-weight, and when used correctly are extremely accurate.

These are the most important bits and pieces for your camera bag; other important accessories include spare batteries, a grey card and a few spare lenses.

TJ Tierney. Award winning Irish Landscape Photographer. If you are looking for more tips visit: Photo tips. To view some of his images visit his on-line gallery: Pictures of Ireland.

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Each year time pressed small business owners spend hundreds to thousands of dollars in the marketing activity known as networking. This activity has multiple purposes including:

• To gain the attention of prospects
• To expand potential prospects’ list
• To build relationships with prospects
• To secure referrals
• Bottom line to increase sales

However, when looking at the use of resources employed to network through local chambers of commerce, professional associations or specific networking organizations such as BNI, LEADS or LeTip, the two questions that need to be asked are:

What is this traditional networking strategy delivering to me in terms of clients whether direct or indirect through these leads or referrals?

And is there another way to achieve more clients and sales using less resources?

Let’s examine the traditional networking return on investment or ROI.

A business owner joins a local chamber for $200 and then attends 1.5 hour monthly luncheon meetings at $20.00 She then spends 3 hours each month on two chamber committees. Additionally, she joined a local association for another $200 as well as a formal networking group for $700. The local association meets monthly in the evening for 1.5 hours and there is no food bill, but the networking group meets weekly for breakfast that costs $10.00 and takes 2 hours. Additionally, she spends 1 hour per week on her reports for the networking group to preparing for the other events.

When we total her time, this active and time starved business owner is devoting 18 hours each month not including drive time which could be easily add another 7 hours for a total of 25 hours. By placing $100 per hour on her time, she is investing $2,500 each month. Her monthly fixed networking costs are $60 for food and $40 for travel. When we annualize these costs combined with the annual membership fees, the total is a conservative $32,300.

Let’s also presume that her average client is worth $5,000. She would have to secure 6.5 clients each year just to break even. For this marketing strategy to demonstrate a positive return on her investment, she would need to acquire at least 7 clients. Even if she acquired 20 clients, the cost would be $1,615 per client leaving her with $3,385 gross profit per client.

Now let’s consider a non-traditional networking strategy called “Fast Pitch” or table networking. Using this strategy, the same business owner would spend 2 hours at each event along with an hour of drive time and would be guaranteed meeting 25 new prospects at each event. She attends 8 events for a total of 24 hours and meets a minimum of 150 prospects (presuming there is some duplication of attendees at each event) during the year costing her $2,400. The fee for the event averages $40 and her gas is $10.00. There is no annual membership fee saving her hundreds of dollars. When annualized, her networking costs are now a conservative $2,800. Her clients are still worth $5,000. So she needs just to acquire 2 clients to break even. If she secures just one client per event for a total of 8 clients, her acquisition cost per client would be $350 leaving her with a $4,650 gross profit.

After “doing the math,” Fast Pitch Networking or table networking appears to potentially deliver greater value and yields a dramatic return on investment. For each individual business owner, the results would vary. However, if you want to recover your networking investment, maybe it is time to consider the non-traditional, Fast Pitch, networking strategy.

Leanne helps small business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals to double performance in real time. Click here to learn how to catapult your business to the next level and sign up for a free monthly newsletter. Please feel free to contact Leanne at 219.759.5601. If you truly don’t believe doubling your results is possible, read some case studies where individuals and businesses took the risk and experienced unheard of results.

One quick question, if you could secure one new client or breakthrough that one roadbloack, what would that mean to you? Then, take a risk and give a call at 219.759.5601 to experience incredible results.

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There are a lot of remarkably cheap PCs on the market. Only a few hundred dollars will get you a basic model that will have you on the internet, download photos from your digital camera, and help you balance your checkbook. Since this is the case, why should you even consider building your computer yourself?

It would be very hard to build a low-end computer for less than it would cost to buy one ready made. Once, this wasn’t so. A plain-Jane PC just a few years ago could cost over a $1000. Techno geeks, like myself, could buy the parts for between $450 and $600. The savings were tremendous. An afternoon could be enjoyably spent putting one together, much as some people build model ships and such.

Now, if you search relentlessly for bargain parts, you may be able to meet the price of those low end store bought PCs. But price alone isn’t the only reason to build a computer.

The best reason for building a computer is the knowledge you’ll gain. If you ever need to install a bigger hard drive, or add more RAM, you’ll know how. You won’t be at the mercy of $40 technicians. Whatever need arises, you’ll be able to handle it.

High end computers, those sought by gamers, and graphics artists, can be built far cheaper than what you’ll pay in a retail setting. Wise parts shoppers who are willing to spend some time on the internet and at swap meets can save hundreds by building their dream PC themselves.

To learn how to build a computer, my guidebook, “Building A PC For Beginners” is available, as are several others.

Michael Quarles is the publisher at Monkey See Monkey Do Books

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Background:

The main advantages of HDMI, high definition multimedia interface, over standard analog video transmission is that it is 100 % digital from source to display. However, transmitting HDMI over long distances is not so easy. In this article we will describe some of the issues encountered during HDMI transmission and present a solution that can significantly improve HDMI transmission: the HDMI Extender.

Basic HDMI transmission characteristics:

HDMI is based on TMDS, transmission minimized differential signaling, developed by Silicon Image. In order to support non-compressed HD video quality, HDMI needs to support data rates up to ~1.65 Gbps for each of 3 transmission pairs. In addition, TMDS is based on a characteristic impedance of 50 Ohms ( 100 ohms differential).

The math of HDMI signaling:

Although TMDS is a base-band “digital” signal, mathematically it can be thought of as a summation of harmonically related sine waves. The great French mathematician, Jean Baptiste Fourier (1768-1830), showed that any signal waveform including a square wave (think digital here) could be resolved into a summation of harmonically related sine waves. As the data rate of a digital signal increase, so does the frequency of the individual sine waves that make up the “composite” digital signal. For example, for a 50% duty cycle perfect square wave, the fundamental frequency (lowest frequency component) is of the data rate. In summary, a digital signal is simply composed of the fundamental frequency sine wave and harmonics of this fundamental sine wave. The amplitude of the individual sine waves is determined by Fourier transforms.

The challenges of HDMI signaling over long cables:
Transmitting high-speed HDMI signals is not easy because the frequency of the individual sine waves is such high frequency. As frequencies of the signal increase, the design of a good HDMI transmission product falls in the realm of good RF/microwave engineering. The challenges of high-speed digital transmission can be broken down to :

Attenuation: as frequencies increase, signal attenuation of the cables increases due to the “skin effect.” Essentially, the “skin effect” describes the phenomena that as the frequency of a sine wave increase, the wave tends to travel on the outer portions of the cable conductor. Whereas ordinary 60Hz AC signal might travel through the entire cross sectional area of the conductor, a high frequency may only travel along the outer edges of the conduct therefore the “impedance” to signal travel is greater. Think of this as a water pipe where the center of the pipe is blocked and fluid can only travel on the outer edges of the pipe. In addition, the attenuation of a cable increases with the cable length.

Intra-signal pair skew: recall that higher frequency sine wave also have shorter wavelengths. HDMI is based on differential signaling, therefore the “skew” ( any delay between a transmission pair ) of each the signal must be minimized. Any differences in trace/cable lengths will tend to skew the arrival time of the signal to the receiver. As frequencies and cable lengths increase, the errors will be more pronounced.

Impedance matching: : HDMI is based on 50-Ohm ( 100 ohm differential) impedance. All cables, traces must be matched to this characteristic impedance. Any “mis-match” causes reflections, which degrades transmission performance.

Using a HDMI extender to mitigate transmission problems over long cables:

In many front projection installation where cable lengths are significant, the problems described above will surface in the form of “pixelization” or even a complete picture drop out. An external HDMI Extender can be used in order to correct and compensate for the long cables that causes the impairments. The HDMI Extender automatically adjust and compensate for cable attenuation up to 40 dB. In addition, an adaptive equalizer compensates for the time-based skews. A limiting amp “squares ” up and re-shapes the input signal before sending to the output through output buffers.

The HDMI Extender is low power and can be attached to the display end ( after the long cable) to completely rectify any errors caused by transmission over long HDMI cables. The extender is housed in a small ease to use package. Power can be supplied directly from the HDMI source, however an external AC adapter is provided and recommended. The HDMI Extender can be used with DVI-D products simply by using a HDMI to DVI-D cable or adapter.

Conclusion:

HDTV technology is changing rapidly. HD connections such as HDMI will become the de facto standard in HDTV connections. Transmitting HDMI signals over long cables is a challenge and often causes pixelization and signal drop out. An external HDMI Extender can be placed at the display end of the cable to completely compensate for signal degradation caused by a long HDMI cable.

Jeff Su is product marketing manager at Octava Inc. http://www.octavainc.com. Jeff is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology (BSEE, MSEE) and has over 10 years of experience in CATV systems, RF, and microwave designs. He may be reached at info@octavainc.com

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College Tam

The tam originally was a type of woolen hat worn by Scottish men and is today incorporated as part of the headgear worn by faculty members during graduation ceremonies. It symbolizes the achievement of a doctorate degree but it is sometimes worn by faculty members without doctorates in place of the standard mortar board. The college tam which resembles a beret is usually made in traditional black velvet but can also be made to match the robe color or the university’s specific requirements. The tassel is usually black but may also be made to specification.

Most colleges establish the number of sides on their tams and in some cases those receiving Master’s degrees are allowed to wear the tam. A college tam is usually made with specific head sizes to fit different individuals. Most sizes range between 21 and 23 inches. To get the accurate hat size one should measure the circumference of the head roughly one inch above the eyebrow. If one plans to purchase a custom made tam it is advisable to confirm the specifications with the authorities concerned with academic regalia. The tassel on the college tam usually comes fused on to the top of the tam and they often have a distinctive shine that is different from ordinary tassels.

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Too many small business websites are impersonal and often times downright boring. What seems to be forgotten on these business websites is that people do business with people. So why don’t we ever talk about the people they’ll be doing business with?

You can easily set yourself apart from your competition by simply talking about yourself and your staff on your website. Who are these people? What do they bring that’s interesting and unique to your organization? What in their background and experience makes them more qualified than anyone else to help your customers?

All of this can be taken one step further by incorporating “Video Business Cards” into your website. A video business card is a short streaming video of someone presenting themselves. For a small business owner it might simply be their elevator speech, or 30 second introduction: “Hi, my name is Bob. I work with XYZ Company and we work with ABC companies who need help with their such and such.”

Imagine how much more real you would become to your website visitors and prospects if they could see YOU introducing yourself on your website? You could even include your video business card in your e-mail introductions to the prospects you’ve not had a chance to meet yet.

People do business with people they know, like and trust. A video business card gives people who you’ve not yet met an opportunity to get to know you and like you before you talk to them!

Scott Ingram is the founder of NetworkInAustin.com, a networking resource for networkers in Austin, Texas who use networking as a business development and marketing strategy. They recently taped Video Business Cards as a member benefit for their premium members. You can learn more about Scott by watching his video or reading his Networking Blog.

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The HSE has been troubled by the news that night shift work could be giving rise to the number of breast cancer cases. The Chief medical officer of the HSE, Dr. John Osmond reported to the BBC that to gain more clarity on the issue, a research body has been set up to look into the matter. It will be headed by an eminent epidemiologist and will submit its report by 2011.

The possible link came to light after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) passed a ruling saying that women working in night shifts for a long time tend to be prone to breast cancer. Taking swift action based on the report, the Danish Government has already identified 40 such women in the country and has paid compensation to them.

The UK unions fear that here too a large number of women will be at risk of this deadly disease, as 20% of the total workers in the country work in night shifts.

Avoid unexpected accidents by having staff properly trained by the experts at Workplace Law. Find out more about their well regarded nebosh course.

There are other ill effects of night shift work too, which manifest themselves in symptoms like uneasy sleep, frequent indigestion and extreme fatigue. These workers also show a tendency to suffer from sudden accidents at their workplace. The HSE and the government are now planning to respond appropriately to deal with this situation.

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Do You Really Need a Toll-Free Number for Your Business? The answer is YES! If you run a home business, whether it’s a direct sales business, a part-time venture, or if you work full-time from home, if you don’t have a toll-free number, you could be leaving money on the table.

Studies show that a potential client is 50% more likely to contact a business who has a toll-free number. Marketing via the internet draws potential clients from all over the globe. That’s what makes the internet such a powerful money-making vessel.

A lot of businesses just starting out try to cut corners and may assume that a toll-free number is too expensive. This could not be farther from the truth. These days, you don’t have to spend a fortune for toll-free service.

When I started my business, I found out about a very reasonable toll-free service provider called Kall8. With Kall8, there is only a $2.00 set up fee. You get to choose your phone number from a list of available numbers. Once you do this, there is a low $2.00/month base charge and 6.9 cents per minute. You will have instant access and can set up your account the way you want. They offer tons of services such as:

Instant Activation

Secure Web Account Management

Detailed Call Reporting

Interactive Voice Response

Custom Call Routing

Voicemail

Caller ID

Conferencing

Inbound Fax

These are only a few of the many features included in the flat $2.00/month fee. With the custom call routing feature, I have my calls set up to go directly to my cell phone so that I can still receive my business calls while I am away from home. When my cell phone rings, I know it’s a business call because it will show my toll free number, then I can answer it in a professional way. I have been using Kall8 for over 2 years and never had a problem with their service. Their competitors charge 5 times more for less calling features.

Direct sales representatives, work at home moms, new and experienced internet entrepreneurs can take their business to new heights with toll-free service. Couldn’t your business use a boost?

About the Author

Dana Williams is a work-at-home mom and internet entrepreneur. She offers mothers information on starting and growing their own home businesses. She offers a free newsletter with free tips, tools, and articles on making your business a success. Visit her online at http://www.danawilliams.com. To order Kall8 toll-free service, go to http://kall8.danawilliams.com.

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