Digg it UP - Communications

10 Rarely Used Ways To Upgrade Your Ad
1. Tell your potential customers special events your business has sponsored. It could be charities, fund raisers, charity auctions, etc.2. Tell your potential customers about any mergers or joint ventures with other reputable organizations or businesses they would recognize.3. Tell your potential customers some valuable info. This will create rapport with them. It could be tips, a how-to excerpt, etc.4. Tell your potential customers about reviews of special events your business attended. It could be trade shows, seminars or conferences.5. Tell your potential customers stories about your customer service. It could be how you help a new customer, an award you won, etc.6. Tell your potential customers stories about your employees. It could be about why they like to work for you, their personal profile, etc.7. Tell your potential customers about milestones and goals your business has achieved. It could be a sales goal, customers served goal, etc.8. Tell your potential customers about innovations your business has discovered. It could be inventions, new technologies, patents, new products, etc.9. Tell your potential customers the things you have done to improve your product. It could be lighter, faster, heavier, slower, etc.10. Tell your potential customers a little history or past informat

. Analog signals are a continuous wave of amplitudes and frequencies showing shades and ranges of color as well as depth and brightness. When you convert to digital, which is strictly 0’s and 1’s, you then need to develop a grid to represent values, intensities and saturations of different color values so that the image can be interpreted and reformed at the receiving end.

This vast amount of digital information requires huge bandwidth and means that the time it would take to transmit video images would be impractical for most applications. That’s where compression is crucial. When determining how video conferencing wor

Choosing a Job for the Long Haul
Early in a worker's career, he or she normally moves among jobs fairly regularly, picking up new experience and technologies and figuring out what she enjoys doing. Think of this as the "dating" stage, when every job brings exciting new possibilities and challenges and it's always worth looking to see what's over the next hill.But in the middle of her career, the job-hopping becomes wearing and she wants to settle down into a job where she can develop a long, deep relationship and make a significant contribution to the company. To continue the metaphor, she's ready to move from dating to marriage (or at least a long-term relationship). And at this point, some programmers get confused and a little scared. Lately I've been coaching several workers and managers in this phase - they're not worried so much about getting another job, but they don't know how to pick one they can stay with and grow in for a decade or more. The usual question is something like this:"I've outgrown this job and I'm ready to move on, but I really want a job that will make me happy for a long time, and I don't want to make some of my past mistakes. How do I know what to look for, and how will I recognize it when I see it."This global, existential question is too big to answer in one go, so we usually break it down into several smaller questions:"What are my co

You may think you understand video conferencing pretty well until someone who isn’t at all familiar with it approaches you for a simple definition. When they ask, “What exactly is video conferencing?” you could suddenly realize you’re at a loss for words.

The simplest definition of how video conferencing works is simply by the integration of video, audio and peripherals to enable two or more people to communicate simultaneously over some type of telecommunications lines. In other words, you are transmitting synchronized images and verbal communications between two or more locations in lieu of them being in the same room. How video conferencing works is a little bit harder to explain than answering the question, “What is video conferencing?”

Millions of people use video conferencing every day around the globe, but very few people know just how the technical aspects of the process work. The main ingredients of successful video conferencing are video cameras, microphones, appropriate computer software and computer equipment and peripherals that will integrate with the transmission lines to relay the information.

The analog information recorded by the microphones and cameras is broken down into discreet units, translating it to ones and zeros. A Codec encodes the information to a digital signal that can then be transmitted to a codec at the other end, which will retranslate these digital signals back into analog video images and audio sounds.

The theory’s the same, the transmission has changed

In the earlier days of video conferencing, T1, ATM and ISDN lines were used almost exclusively but were really only practical for room-based video conferencing systems. These dedicated lines were expensive and only large corporations tended to have the facilities and money to invest in this type of set-up.

As the Internet became more a part of the everyday lives of all businesses, however, it changed how video conferencing was conducted. The TCP/IP connections of the Internet are much less expensive and can carry large quantities of information, including video packets for conferencing, relatively easily. Because of this, video conferencing has become much more prevalent in small businesses and in desktop packages that can be set up with software for computer-to-computer networking.

Compression makes video transmission practical

The problem that arises when you convert analog to digital for transmission is the loss of clarity in an image. Analog signals are a continuous wave of amplitudes and frequencies showing shades and ranges of color as well as depth and brightness. When you convert to digital, which is strictly 0’s and 1’s, you then need to develop a grid to represent values, intensities and saturations of different color values so that the image can be interpreted and reformed at the receiving end.

Stop Selling Insurance!
Whenever I conduct a workshop or give a talk to a group of agents, I ask how many of them are in the business of selling insurance. Inevitably about 25% raise their hands. My response to them is, “If you’re in the business of selling insurance you’ll have a hard time succeeding because NO ONE WANTS TO BUY INSURANCE!”No one wants to buy insurance. Not homeowner’s, auto, life, health or disability… They only want what the insurance provides. They only want the benefit. Believe me, if people could get the benefits they wanted in some other way, they would. So,… if you “sell insurance” success will be tough. On the other hand, if you’re in the business of helping people it’s a different story. Now, you might protest that the distinction is simply a matter of semantics, but there are fundamental differences between having a sales focus and having a helping focus.This difference affects pretty much everything a person does along with how they do it. If they have a sales focus, their focus is on making the sale! Everything from the initial contact to the presentation to the close to the follow-up is done from a sales perspective. Marketing, contacting, presentation, and follow-up are from a product and/or company perspective. On the other hand, a person who is focused on helping rather than selling will understand that the service they provide (h

How video conferencing works is a little bit harder to explain than answering the question, “What is video conferencing?”

The theory’s the same, the transmission has changed

Compression makes video transmission practical

How To Design New Websites 50% Faster, And Continues To Get Faster As You Do More
One of the toughest step of web designing has always been the part where you have to crack your head, thinking of the best concept and presentation for the topic you're doing, and ultimately to get it realized. If you are a perfectionist by nature, simply double up that level of difficulty. Depending on the situation, the difficulty level might increase even further, taking into consideration other unavoidable factors such as client's complex requirements, insufficient supporting materials, lack of time, etc.Designers are designers for a reason. They're naturally gifted, both in the creative and innovative departments. They can visualize and picture things even before they're physically constructed. Nevertheless, they still do have limitations to the creative ideas which they can generate from time to time. They do need certain point of reference to fuel up their creative banks, as well as to speed up the overall designing process.Having said that, let us help ourselves by making use of any existing designer's piece of work. One of such areas where you can harvest such ideas is web templates. The main reason why you can generate such unlimited great designing ideas from analyzing web templates is simply because they probably fulfill every single requirements of a typical information database. Web templates don't only come in abundance, but they come be

and zeros. A Codec encodes the information to a digital signal that can then be transmitted to a codec at the other end, which will retranslate these digital signals back into analog video images and audio sounds.

The theory’s the same, the transmission has changed

Compression makes video transmission practical

When Disaster Strikes
One year ago Hurricane Katrina devastated several southern states and created complete and total devastation to thousands of people. Many were completely displaced and forced from their homes. In all senses, the people that were directly hit by Katrina’s wrath lost everything they owned. Homes, businesses and schools were completely and utterly gone. Many people had nowhere to go and were in dire need of assistance.When a natural disaster strikes with the magnitude of power such as Hurricane Katrina, many are left to wonder how they will ever go back to a normal life. It is hard to imagine losing everything but many people did in fact lose everything they owned. Children could not attend school because of course the school was completely devastated by wind and water.Our Federal Emergency Management System has done their best to help the people affected by Katrina but in most cases it just wasn’t enough. Business owners were forced to either rebuild or close their business, affecting their entire livelihood and causing grief to many. Although it has been a year since Katrina unleashed her fury, many business and homeowners turned to the government for assistance.The government offered businesses and homeowners that wanted to rebuild, low interest loans to basically jump-start their lives. Many found the low interest loans a great comfort as the

part of the everyday lives of all businesses, however, it changed how video conferencing was conducted. The TCP/IP connections of the Internet are much less expensive and can carry large quantities of information, including video packets for conferencing, relatively easily. Because of this, video conferencing has become much more prevalent in small businesses and in desktop packages that can be set up with software for computer-to-computer networking.

Compression makes video transmission practical

A Simple but Effective Strategy
There are many strategy models. Treacy and Wiersema provide a very valuable “value strategy” giving companies a set of three option (combination) to balance. It is, put very simply; about products, clients and streamlining operations.Yet even more simple is to observe the tennis player, or maybe better the chess player. One simple strategy is not to make mistakes. Let the other side take them first. Is this a defensive strategy or just common sense? If the opponent is starting an offensive attack and is gaining some initial games, you have put yourself in a disadvantage.Don’t make too many mistakes! This message will probably be received differently when you have a European or American background. It is said – but do not ask me about a reference -- that the Europeans like to “over” plan their investments and projects, where the American style is less bothered whether investment have a short live span. “If the world is changed within a years time, we just have to reinvest.”Investing and entrepreneurship do not play by themselves; risk is always part of the game. If you invest you will not be sure about future returns. So in a sense you should be careful. If you plan too much and wait too long, there is no entrepreneurship and there is also no strategy, there are only words. They easily fade away.In current business, but I wonder if this h

The higher the compression ratio, the more quickly the information is capable of being transmitted. In many cases, however, this also means some loss in clarity or audio/video quality. For instance, a compression ratio of 4:1 would be terribly slow but have a fantastic picture quality. But by the time it was transmitted, everyone at the other end would probably have left the room for a cup of coffee. Lossy compression discards unneeded or irrelevant sections of a signal in order to transmit only the essentials, speeding up the transmission time significantly but sometimes resulting in loss of quality.

Compression can either be intra-frame or inter-frame for material that is repetitive or redundant, such as that wall behind the conference participant. Since the wall remains static and never changes, this image is redundant and can be eliminated from transmissions to an extent with proper compression. Intra-frame compression assumes the redundancy will be present in parts of a frame that are close to each other. Inter-frame compression assumes that there is redundancy over time (i.e., like that wall). Either of these can achieve a fairly high degree of accuracy and reduce the bandwidth needed for transmittal of signals.

A newer version of compression/decompression is SightSpeed technology, developed by Cornell University. SightSpeed compresses only images considered essential and eliminating what is considered ‘filler,’ relying on the brain to fill in the decompression at the other end. Based on an artificial intelligence model, SightSpeed achieves compression of about 90:1, compared to the typical 15:1 for video conferencing.

Any video conferencing session you use will provide compression of the transmission signal. The key is determining the balance between speed and video picture quality that is right for your needs.

Point to point video conferencing

Point to point video conferencing is just what it sounds like – a link between two different points on the planet, or two different video conferencing terminals. It could be between an office in New York City and a conference room in Munich. Point to point video conferencing can easily be initiated by someone on one end contacting the other end as though making a standard telephone call. There are no special arrangements to be made other than knowing that the participants will be there.

Multipoint conferencing is more complex

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Digg it UP - How Video Conferencing Works - Multimedia, Interactive Communication Across the Miles

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