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As we enter a new age of communicating and working online, we’re faced with new challenges that require more protections than what we’ve been presented with offline. Although some aspects of these online challenges are analogous to the offline environment, there are a significant number of issues that are specific to Internet networking - in particular, job software.

This is a truly interesting aspect of the working environment especially when we’re faced with a set of legal procedures already put into place. Legal documents that typically accompany sub-contracted job offline are somewhat applicable to a job software system, however at the same time, they aren’t completely appropriate. The nature of the Internet just doesn’t allow us to apply the same procedures and conditions pertinent of the brick and mortar employment office to the dynamic character of an online job software system.

So instead of blindly following what has been set before us in the past, we must quickly adopt current (although changing) practices of ethics and we must adhere to and reinforce them in an effort to validate them. Only when we do so can we create an Internet-based atmosphere that is lucrative for all parties involved.

Having said that, we need to consider requirements. We need to consider what is required to create an atmosphere that reinforces the values we expect offline and online. As mentioned earlier, the offline contract model alone is not sufficient. It simply doesn’t make appropriate adjustments for things like email, Internet connections, or viruses. Nor is Internet terminology addressed in offline agreements. Without taking these things into account, we can mistakenly assume that offline laws are adequate to protect our investments.

Because these considerations need to protect a job software system’s clientele and the system administrator at the same time, they need to be carefully crafted in such a way that the system fosters confidence. That is - confidence that private information won’t be divulged or accessed by strangers, confidence that clientele computers will be protected from viruses, and of course, confidence that disputes will be handled in a way that they are reinforced in any court of law.

As it currently stands, most job software systems have success with reinforcing legalities via terms of service agreements, privacy policies, and sensitive material policies. In these materials, emphasis is on protecting all parties from things like copyright violations, warranties, defamatory content, and viruses. While these protections are typical, they may not be enough to protect a job software system from unforeseen events.

In all the discussions of malicious Internet activity, purposely-malevolent acts must be addressed in any agreement, and they must be met with legal repercussions if a job software system is to recover and maintain a reputation of integrity. Because the clientele that accesses your job software system will expect legal reinforcements, conditions or terms need to be clearly defined and accessible not only by your users, but also by the legal representatives that will help you in times of crisis.

Therefore terms of service agreements, privacy policies, and sensitive material policies should be within reach from every part of a job software system, and they must be written in a manner that does not cause confusion or create loopholes. Users must also agree to the conditions inside these types of agreements before they are even allowed to access the system. Every once in a while, the way that an agreement statement is written or presented is intentionally misinterpreted for the benefit of a hacker or simply someone who does not wish to comply with “the rules.”

To reinforce responsibility, the agreement terms of a job software system cannot be open to interpretation. The terms of such agreements must permeate every conceivable situation we’ve encountered in the history of Internet crime thus far and they must comply with the laws of a governing state. Since there is no “international” state or “international” law to date, the governing state is usually the state in which the job software system administrator conducts business.

All of this by far is a very broad introduction to the complexities involved in setting up a legal job software system and there are certainly more specific issues that each system must address. As we continue to build a global network that evolves, it’s just goes to show you that while the world wide web is prone to illegal activity, it’s still possible and reasonable to expect legal protection for job software systems once the proper tools are put into place.

Ron McNeil promotes job software that allows you to run your own job board software site powered by WebScribble software located at http://www.webscribble.com/products/webjobs/

Efforts to differentiate a job script from the myriad of others already in existence are never in vain. But these efforts aren’t always easy to make. At one extreme, the characteristics of a standard job script contribute to a welcomed stable working environment - however clientele may not feel comfortable leaving a job software that’s working just fine simply to try one that’s no different. At the other extreme, a job script that’s wildly different from the norm has the propensity to alienate itself from the industry altogether.

At some point, there has to be a happy medium in which a job software can attract and keep new clientele without scaring anyone away. The following offers a few suggestions you can use to keep your job script exciting and productive at the same time.

1. Lead a clientele directed job software. Let your clientele develop the job script’s user agreement or establish effective communication methods. The idea here is to let both the freelancers and clients that use your job script shape their own online employment experience. In doing so, you will generate a tremendous amount of goodwill - however this suggestion does not come without warning. You must lead a clientele directed job software within reason. Nothing you allow your clientele to do should interfere with governing laws. Nor should they disrupt the reputation that you’re trying to build.

2. Enforce a global pay rate on your job script. Our different currency rates give some freelancers and clients a financial advantage over one another simply because of the location in which they live. For example, the fees that a freelancer in India may charge may be significantly lower than the fees that a freelancer in North America may charge. To discourage disgruntled American workers from labeling your job script environment as a breeding ground for slave labor, enforce the first international pay scale that appropriates fees within a reasonable pay scale.

3. Set up and hold annual conventions for the people who use your job software. One of the best ways to instill the value of community is by hosting conventions for the people that have made your job script a success. A convention needn’t be terribly expensive since there are certainly alternative, less-expensive ways to meet people. One such way is through an online convention - complete with video, speech, and chatrooms. Another way to physically get your clientele together is to meet at a sports event or at a low-cost luncheon.

4. Configure your job software so that it doesn’t include weekends or holidays as workdays. Offline, very few people work on the weekend or holidays and chances are, job script administrators don’t work on theses days either. So why include them inside the time span in which a project or job is to end? Both freelancers and clients welcome weekend and holiday breaks, so by automating them into your script, you’ll yet again, break from the norm and create goodwill among your users at the same time

5. Send out monthly or bi-monthly surveys to your job software users and ask for feedback, suggestions, criticisms, and questions. By requesting ideas and suggestions for improvements, you’ll show that you care about how well your job script is reaching its goals and satisfying the needs of your users at the same time.

6. Select a charity each month and dedicate a portion of the income your job software generates toward that charity. Another way to instill community is to band together toward a cause. By making a regular contribution to a charity of your choice (or of your clientele’s choice), you can generate a sense of family among your users and help improve the environment or society all at once.

7. Feature a “Freelancer” or “Client of the Month” section on your job script. Sooner or later, your users are going to get curious about each other and a special section dedicated to spotlighting one individual out of many is an appropriate way to satisfy that curiosity. Featured users could submit their own personal stories and with an accompanying photograph while the whole gang gets to know who uses your job software on a personal level, one-by-one.

8. Display industry news as part of your job script. A little more difficult to implement than the above suggestions, this idea has the potential of providing direction to your existing user base, or - validating the intentions of those whom may be questioning their choices. When your clients see actual news stories about the industry that they’re working right from the very job software that they use every day, they can get a good idea of how their efforts contribute to its development.

Ron McNeil promotes job software that allows you to run your own job script site powered by WebScribble software located at http://www.webscribble.com/products/webjobs/

There’s a saying that states ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. But if it is broke, and you don’t know why or how, then how would you fix it anyway? You always have to know how something works, or why it doesn’t before you can improve it or fix it. The same applies with SEO.

Search Engine Optimisation aims to improve your site making it user friendly, Google friendly and providing the right key words and phrases to push your site up the search engine ratings, thus bringing you more attention and more business.

Web analytics is a system used within SEO to determine how well your site is performing. With this information, SEO experts can then employ various means to alter your ratings for the greater good. While analytics can be a complicated business, it is not an exact science.

It will show how much your site is searched and viewed and is very useful in this regard but the one thing it won’t do is specify user interaction and whether the viewings are positive or negative.

To get around this, a new product is now on the SEO market. An innovation of information gathering, this product will be web site owner’s dreams come true, bringing clarity and understanding to the information gleaned from analytics.

This is a new way of measuring analytics that will give the web site owner so much more useful information about its users and also a big insight into how well it is doing and therefore more ways in which it can be optimised by SEO companies to direct more traffic in the right direction.

How many times have you clicked open a web page to find it’s not really what you were looking for, or that the quality of the site was so poor you couldn’t be bothered to struggle your way round it? It’s all very well web analytics being able to tell you how many people have clicked on your site but that doesn’t necessarily say it is working as well as it could be.

With this new SEO product, ‘engagement’ will now be measured, telling you exactly how people interact with your web site. It will work by measuring amount of interaction on a site via purchases, media, uploads, ratings and comments among other things. Given that all businesses are unique, the system can be updated to give more relevance to certain pages that are viewed and less to others.

This will give the web site owner and his SEO company a much clearer overview of how well the site is doing and what changes need to be made to ensure its search engine friendliness. It will even be able to show how some page items co-relate with others.

To make this new SEO service even better is the fact that it will be free to most users. For those companies who breach a certain level of unique, there will be a subscription fee and this will help to fund the free platform for the wider users. Even when paying for this service, it will still save the web site owner thousands of pounds that used to be spent on analytics.

The only area of concern thrown up in this SEO advancement is the concern that advertisers will gain too much information about web site users, thus infringing on their privacy. Of course, the information will be used to better target advertising, making it more effective, but no web site user wants to be bombarded with advertising.

Like all areas of an ever changing business, this will have to be a tried, tested and attuned use of information retrieval.

Web site expert Catherine Harvey looks at the new software available for use by SEO companies. To find out more please visit http://www.highposition.net/

Have you ever printed UL approved labels with your standard barcode printer and noticed that the ink was rubbing off? Did your Information Technology Staff think something was wrong with your printer because of this? The printer was actually doing its job just fine. The real problem was that the ribbon you were using wasn’t a UL approved resin ribbon. Certain Ribbon, just like certain labels, must be UL recognized because of their different applications.

OK, so you are not sure what UL is and if you need UL product? Well, UL stands for Underwriters Laboratories and their mission is to be the trusted source across the globe for product compliance, and that is exactly what they are. UL has developed more than 1000 Standards for Safety. Their Standards for Safety are essential to helping ensure public safety and confidence, reduce costs, improve quality and market products and services. Millions of products and their components are tested to UL’s rigorous safety standards with the result that consumers live in a safer environment than they would have otherwise. To see if your product fits into this category for testing, visit the ul web site.

Most electrical products fit into this category and the manufacturer of these products will print the labels that go onto the product with thermal transfer printers. Well, if the product is UL approved, then the labels going on the product must be UL approved as well. These labels are made up of a synthetic nature. Any synthetic label will require a much more rugged ribbon for printing. Also, that ribbon must be UL approved as well.

The question has come up asking if the barcode printer has to be UL approved. There really is no such thing as a UL barcode printer. All barcode printers can print UL labels as long as it is a thermal transfer barcode printer. The key is to load the printer with the proper UL approved labels and ribbon, because that is what actually goes onto the product you are manufacturing.

Now the key is to remember to turn up your heat settings if you have been using a wax ribbon in the past. This is because a resin ribbon requires more heat from the print-head to print properly. The wax ribbon transfers very easily to the label with little heat, but resin, because it is much more durable, requires much more heat to transfer it from the ribbon to the synthetic material. This also makes the image it prints much more durable and is why UL has approved it for use on UL approved products.

UL approved product can be found by using the UL web site for approved product. UL requires backup documentation to prove the materials used on your product are UL approved. This backup material can be provided by your label and ribbon source, if they are supplying you with properly approved material. Beware of suppliers that just state the material is approved. Always get the backup documentation. This will prevent any risk of shutdown in the event UL inspects or audits your processes.

John Barth founded Adazon Barcode Labels and Barcode Equipment www.adazonusa.com in 2003 and has a wealth of information in the barcode arena from over 20 years of experience in distribution. John’s experience allows companies to cut costs on barcode scanners, custom labels and total barcode solutions. For more information call 847-235-2700.

Most companies have massive amounts of unused and underutilized storage scattered across their enterprise. A recent study of 200 organizations found that 15% of all storage was allocated but never used; 10% was left behind when the server was moved, and 40% had not been referenced by an operating system for six months.

That’s a lot of waste - of resources, of IT time, and of money.

“Increasingly, it is clear that IT can no longer afford to host discrete applications across discrete hardware for discrete organizations,” says IDC analyst John Humphreys in a recent white paper.

Enter storage optimization. This is a process of visualizing, accessing, and relocating the valuable wasted resource of your untapped storage. This allows the enterprise to look at its data as a single entity, rather than scattered silos. The benefits are wide-ranging:

* Data is no longer wasted.

* You can always visualize the amount of data you have.

* Data management is simplified and automated.

* You can align your storage plan with business needs, processes, and technology.

* The potential for security breaches, compliance issues, and backup problems is reduced.

* You can defer unnecessary capital expenses.

IT is freed from fighting fires and can move from a reactive to a proactive stance, spending time on more strategic issues.

More effective use of storage - capturing and using your untapped data brings performance benefits, as well, since the process not only releases more storage but helps you put a structure into place for using your storage in the most effective way possible.

Humphreys calls the current optimization landscape “Virtualization 2.0,” as companies leverage consolidation for ever-more-strategic purposes, including lowering operational expenses, improving service levels, and responding faster and better to changing business needs.

It’s important to keep in mind storage optimization is not one-size-fits-all and must be carefully designed to the specific needs of your organization’s priorities regarding flexibility, manageability, and other important considerations.

The five-step approach:
1. Define business requirements. Talk with all stakeholders and develop a strong understanding of all the issues that will affect the storage strategy, including customer expectations, compliance, and competition.

2. Assess current storage. By identifying business requirements and SLAs, you can quantify the short-term, mid-term, and long-term ROI for redeploying storage assets.

3. Tier, consolidate, and simplify. A centralized strategy will make it easier to control and manage storage centrally, using standardized IT platforms, tools, and interfaces, allowing you to find pockets of unused data. Currently, 40% of companies have just two tiers for their storage, meaning they typically have low-value data on expensive media.

4. Define service levels. Not all data is equally valuable or needs the same level of protection - and the value of data changes over time. Many companies have outdated reports still classified as important information that is kept on expensive media.

5. Monitor, manage, provision. Automatic monitoring and reporting capabilities makes data trackable across applications, platforms, departments, and vendors. You can have more efficient operations through better management and accurate charge-backs on a pay-per-use basis.

The information stored on computer systems is doubling every year, and the cost of managing storage is now nearly as much as the cost to buy it. With storage utilization rates running at only 40 to 60%, half of every dollar spent on storage may be wasted.

To see the payoff of storage consolidation in practice, let’s look at KnowledgeBase Marketing(r), a subsidiary of one of the world’s most comprehensive communication services organizations with 2,000 offices in 106 countries. They implemented a “blended” storage model that consolidated storage for its open systems platforms across two tiers. Results: 40% reduction in storage TCO, 50% reduction in storage administration time, 3X improvement in I/O throughput, and 86% reduction in transaction costs.

Companies in a diverse array of fields - energy, media, and education, for starters - have reported similarly impressive benefits from their own storage consolidation efforts.

To fully benefit from storage optimization, you must approach this as a methodical exercise. The right approach to optimization can result in a system that provides the correct degree of flexibility, availability, and security for your specific needs.

For the full version of this report and more info on storage optimization, visit our blog or email us at support@technologysolutionssimplified.com. Our deep technical expertise and dedication to superior customer service provide a competitive advantage for our business partners.

From environmentalists and regulators, to CIOs and data centre managers, the ‘green’ data centre is now firmly on the agenda. Rightly so, with an average rate of energy consumption around 50 times greater than its equivalent in office space, the data centre offers a clear opportunity to save energy and reduce carbon emissions.

The industry is taking its energy and environmental issues seriously and a number of scenarios for more environmentally-friendly data centre design and more energy-efficient hardware solutions were presented.

However, in our rush to embrace the future, we should not forget that most data centre managers do not have the opportunity of a new build or major upgrade to find ways of reducing energy consumption or CO2 emissions - they have to work with the data centre and IT equipment they’ve got.

An audit of a data centre will usually identify pragmatic opportunities for environmental ‘quick wins’. These can make an immediate difference to the data centre’s CO2 footprint and are also a good foundation for many of the more strategic, longer term, environmental initiatives that were debated at the Datacentre Energy Conference.

5 environmental ‘quick wins’ in the data centre

1 - Purchasing Power:
Adopting green criteria as part of the energy purchasing policy is an easy step - wind, wave or solar power does not need to be on site, it can be fed into the grid from anywhere from a ‘green’ energy supplier. Furthermore, if enough companies move their business to green energy suppliers, the traditional energy companies will take notice and adopt more renewables.

As an organisation you could look to becoming carbon neutral through the purchase of Carbon Offsets. A typical tree planting or wind farm project could save up 30,000 tonnes of carbon and these can be bought as carbon credits to match and neutralise your data centre’s own carbon emissions.

2 - Use the ‘off switch’:
Most of us have grown up with habits based around plentiful, cheap energy. Changing these habits and getting used to turning off devices not in use will make a significant impact on data centre power consumption. Keeping data centres lit up 24/7 is unnecessary.

Manage lighting with the use of low energy bulbs within controlled zones. Furthermore, many servers remain switched on, even when they are not in use. An average PC switched on for 24 hours per day, 220 days per year will be responsible for up to a tonne of CO2 over a 3-year period and cost 53 pounds per year in electricity. This can be changed, literally, at the flick of a switch.

3 - Recycle:
The average data centre produces in excess of 5 tonnes of cardboard and paper rubbish each year, so recycling can be a ‘quick win’. Also, take positive steps to reduce the problem at source by encouraging suppliers to reduce unnecessary packaging. Think about ways of recycling IT equipment. An estimated 1.5 million computers are buried in landfill sites every year - you wonder how many telephone handsets are buried too!

Question whether memory can be re-deployed, and whether printer cartridges, hard disks, cables, and racks be re-used or recycled. Of course, UPS batteries must be recycled but look for other opportunities around the data centre - do damaged floor or ceiling tiles have to be sent to landfill?

4 - Rethink:
Challenge long established assumptions. For example, application developers tend to specify new equipment to support their software. However, an examination of the actual, rather than perceived, load may reveal a processor utilisation of around 10-20%.

If this is the case, consider combining non-critical applications on a single server. There is a major opportunity with test/development servers which could be switched off when they are not in use. Typically this is not the case.

5 - Just do it:
A few well executed actions are worth more than any number of well intentioned plans. Involve your people, develop a strategy with them, and get started with the simple stuff.

The greening of the data centre can start now by implementing a few easily achievable actions - encourage your staff and your management along this road with you and the impact could be very surprising.

Shaun Parker has a business designing and creating data centres for businesses. To find out more information on data centres visit http://www.migrationsolutions.com