Smarter Market Info

A lot of businesses nowadays hardly ever spend a great deal of time looking closely at their electricity payments. Instead, companies keep on paying whatever the electricity provider charges them each month, without realising it they could lower their company’s energy payments a great deal by lowering their energy consumption.

It is exceedingly important to appreciate that amendments to your business’s heating and ventilation units can have a noticeable impact on the level of energy consumed daily. What’s more, small adjustments in your staffs’ habits can also help you to save a lot more energy for your organisation than you would think.

To save business energy the two most crucial things to remember are as follows; swap the appliances that require a great amount of power with more power efficient items, and secondly, better usage of electrical appliances during work can also help you lower your company’s expenses.

Make sure to switch off your electrical machines when they are not in operation. You will certainly be shocked to know that TVs, computers and microwaves use as much as ninety percent of the energy when in the standby mode. A further really important point to keep in mind is to switch off the lighting every time you leave a meeting room, as it’s one of the easiest and most effective tactics to lower power consumption. Not on this, but energy saving light bulbs uses a substantial amount less electricity than standard tungsten filament bulbs. So, by swapping your current set of light bulbs will cut your organisation’s energy usage considerably.

Radiators should also be turned off or at the very least be turned down low when they are not being used as you can save a substantial amount of energy by merely turning the heating on at a lower level. The same rule of lowering the temperature also is valid while heating water.

For efficient business energy management, the upkeep of your organisation’s buildings is very important. The property needs to be correctly insulated and the equipment should be both clean and well looked after so that costs can be kept as low as they can. For natural lighting, windows should not be blocked by furniture in the office. Angled blinds ought to be used so that sunlight can bright up the office on sunny days. Find superb commercial gas deals online today.

In addition, the government is increasingly persuading companies to invest cash in sustainable energy. Because of this, you can claim tax benefits by investing money in power saving practises.

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Technology Tips – Voice Recognition By Frank Furness

Anyone who knows me well will know that I am a technology geek and have the biggest collection of gadgets imaginable. It’s so bad that every time I speak in Hong Kong, the gadget shop owners know me by name. The great thing about gadgets though, is if you use them they can increase the effectiveness of your business greatly. Each month I will be featuring a gadget, software or e-book could will increase your effectiveness. I don’t know if anyone else is like me, but sometimes when I have appointments where I try to sell my services, I sometimes don’t take notes as comprehensively as I should and sometimes forget important points. A great gadget that has assisted me is the Olympus DS3000 digital voice recorder. Every time I leave a meeting now, I dictate file notes on exactly what went on in the meeting and action plans to follow up. When I get back to the office, I plug in one end of a cord to my voice recorder and the other end to the USB port on my computer and it downloads automatically and saves it as a sound file. Now I can listen to it whenever I want to and not forget anything important. Even better, I have also bought Dragon voice recognition software and trained it to recognise my accent. The two programmes connect and the voice file that I recorded can now be converted into a word document. It’s fantastic, I use it for my emails, dictating letters when I’m travelling, file notes and even a book that I’m writing. It’s like having a free secretary. I bought my system from a great guy, Neil Winton at voice Recognition Systems and his email is neil@pc-voice.co.uk. Mention my name, maybe he’ll give me a discount sometime in the future.

Frank Furness CSP CFP is a professional speaker and trainer specialising in sales and sales management. He has educated, entertained and inspired audiences in 42 countries. His publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. For more information or to sign up for the free ‘Sales Tips & Ideas’ newsletter, email frank@frankfurness.com or telephone+ 44 (0) 870 240 6505. www.frankfurness.com

NOTE: You’re welcome to “reprint” this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the “about the author” info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to frank@frankfurness.com Take a look at other articles, free software and e-Books at http://www.frankfurness.com/ Download 39 Power Sales Closing Scripts at http://www.frankfurness.com/closingscripts.cfm

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If we are to tackle the challenges of future populations on the planet, we will need to insure adequate water supply. Our US population is growing, by one person every nine seconds and with this growth the consumption of fresh water increases. The average person uses 80-100 gallons per day in the US. In Third world countries about 4-8 total gallons of water per day. I have tested this myself, it is possible to do this;

http://www.carwashguys.com/082902_2.shtml

We need to start a World Wide Campaign about the importance of water by teaching kids the facts and making sure they understand the needs for these infrastructures in the future. Too many areas are expanding rapidly in desert regions, without sustainable water resources, where population explosions move into neighborhoods and put in lawns. In these areas 40% of the residential water use is expended outside the home.

These same issues were a major concern of the ancient Indian cultures who lived on these lands before us. Just like other Indian Cultures in Central and South America, the indigenous people of Australian outback, as well as the water ways and canals built by the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians. Worldwide drought issues will be a problem in the next two decades with an estimated 2.5 billion people without proper fresh water supplies. We must launch our world wide campaign now to promote conservation, proper sewage treatment and empowering peoples to secure and build facilities to insure they will not be without water as the climate changes and leaves whole regions of the world without.

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

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Is everything really explainable by science?
Or does the human body show physical evidence of a Divine Origin?

The axiom a “whole is equal to the sum of its parts” holds true in physics and mathematics as well as biology. It seems so logical that one wonders why such an axiom even needs to be postulated. But is it really all that logical? There is a case in which the sum of an entity’s parts do not seem to add up to its whole. No, I’m not talking about black holes, quantum particles, virus mutations or * infomercials. I’m talking about the human being. The biological components of the homosapien do not seem to add up to what we call the human being.

Strictly on a biological level, it all gives the impression of fitting together very nicely. For example, we all know that the heart pumps blood, and it is usually strain or the deprivation of oxygen to this natural pump that results in heart attacks. By the same token, it is the deprivation of oxygen to the brain which can lead to a stroke or even death. The components which come into play here become more obvious upon a more detailed analysis of the circulatory system.

The heart consists basically of four chambers; the right and left atriums, and the right and left ventricles. The heart’s function is to keep the blood oxygenated by pumping it past the lungs, which absorb oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. Although beating approximately 2.5 billion times in an average lifetime is quite an amazing feat, how the heart accomplishes its task is not at all that mysterious. The heart’s components — chambers, veins, arteries, etc. — propel the circulatory system, a mechanical process which we quite readily understand.

Similarly, the liver, our largest organ, serves as the body’s chemical factory. Some of the chemicals it produces are: albumin, which regulates the exchange of water between blood and tissues; complement, proteins which help the immune system fight infection; coagulation factors, which help the blood clot when blood vessels are damaged; globin, a part of the pigment known as hemoglobin, which carries oxygen throughout the body. In addition, the liver produces cholesterol and special proteins that help carry fats around the body.

This is of course an oversimplified description of an extremely complex organ. In fact, the liver’s complexities make a practical artificial liver a lot farther from reality than an artificial heart. Yet, in spite of its complexities, the liver’s basic functions are not really great mysteries. That is, although precisely how the liver produces and regulates the body’s chemistry may still be far from understood, the notion of producing chemicals or regulating circulating fluids are not exactly mystical concepts. Such chemical functions are performed on a daily basis in laboratories and in many man-made devices.

To sum it up, what the above two organs have in common is that in their cases the “whole is equal to the sum of its parts;” i.e their underlying mechanical principles work satisfactorily as a whole within the context of the living body as well as isolated components within a laboratory setting.

The brain, however, is a little different. The brain and spinal cord comprise the central nervous system, and control virtually every vital function of the body; thought, speech, heart beat, breathing, body temperature, etc. It is believed that the cerebral cortex (the outer portion of the cerebrum) is where movement, sensation, memory and perception, among other things, are processed. Some of these functions are similar to those of other organs in the sense that, in spite of their awesome complexity, their mechanical processes have parallels in man-made objects or in the laboratory.

Computers are excellent examples of how huge amounts of data and images can be stored and transferred in man-made objects. Electrical impulses are utilized in both computers and the brain, although their processes may not necessarily be identical. So, with respect to the purely mechanical process of memory and the transmission of data or impulses, the brain and nervous system hold no great mysteries. As with the liver, the precise processes employed by the brain may be far from understood, but man understands many of the functions performed and has in some cases reproduced their effects.

But this is where the familiarity with the brain ends. After all the sophistication and miracles of modern medicine, biology and biogenetics, the concept of intellect remains a total mystery. There is no substance known to man, either within the human body or the lab, that will produce intellect. To scan the brain, as some scientists have done, with an imaging device and track down the parts of the brain that come into play under certain intellectual pursuits is not the same as isolating a substance that produces intellect. We may know that the brain is the seat of the intellect, but that says nothing about what intellect is or what substance, if any, produces it. A rough analogy might be, determining what part of an engine contains combustion says nothing about how fuel is produced or where it comes from.

Upon dissection of the human brain, aside from some jelly-type matter, nerve fibers and perhaps neurotransmitters, all of which come into play in our thought and motor functions, there emerges not a shred of evidence of a substance that produces a sense of humor, the appreciation of art, or the ability to differentiate between good and evil. Even if not the precise method, at least a clue as to how these human qualities are produced would, I think, have been in order at this advanced stage of the twenty-first century. But nothing! Zilch! This seems to fly in the face of the principle a “whole is equal to the sum of its parts:” whereas the human brain seems to be the seat of consciousness, its biological components do not seem to possess the potential of producing such a quality.

Is it possible that “consciousness” actualy is a separate entity and has no physical roots? And can it’s effect on humans be taken as proof that such an entity exists? “Black holes,” despite the fact that they cannot be directly detected, are universally accepted as science.

A black hole in astronomy is a celestial object of such extremely intense gravity that it attracts everything near it and prevents even light from escaping. Because light and other forms of energy and matter are permanently trapped inside a black hole, it can never be observed directly. It can only be detected by the effect of its gravitational field on nearby objects. Yet, as undetectable as they are, black holes are considered as real and as scientific as planets and stars.

In the same way, consciousness can be “proven” to have its own existence by the effect it has on humans, giving them qualities such as reasoning abilities, appreciation of art, humor, etc. Unlike a black hole, however, since we cannot prove the existence of any physical substance or process that can produce such features, consciousness takes on a unique existence — an effect without a physical origin. Call it what you will, but this precisely coincides with the age-old concept of a “soul.”

I realize that a soul in itself may not be a scientific concept. But when you can prove its features and qualities as surely as you can prove a black hole’s effect on its environment, you have effectively proven its existence. Unlike a black hole, it’s origin does not appear to be physical, but, very much like a black hole, it definitely reveals itself within its environment.

Unscientific, at this point, would be to deny that an entity exists that gives human beings their unique intellectual features. There is no question that it exists. The only question is, what do you call it? If “soul” is to religious sounding for you, call it what you will, but there is definitely something at work here that is not of a physical nature.

If you don’t believe a “soul” has been proven here, you may want to start questioning things like black holes. Nobody will prove them to you any better.

Josh Greenberger: A computer consultant for over two decades, the author has developed software for such organizations as NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, AT&T, Charles Schwab, Bell Laboratories and Chase Manhattan Bank. Since 1984, the author’s literary works have appeared in such periodicals as The New York Post, The Daily News, The Village Voice, The Jewish Press, and others. His articles have ranged from humor to scientific to topical events. Visit his site: shopndrop.com

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DISADVANTAGES OF BECOMING A DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHER

If you have been a ‘film photographer’, the first and biggest disadvantage is the cost of new cameras, at least. If you are already computer literate, and have a good computer with some kind of imaging software, good. But if not…well, I sorry for you, eh! Add all that expense, too. And if you’ve been a medium format photographer as I was, you’re not only going to need new cameras, but new lenses, too! With computers and imaging software, even without printers, you have a large investment to look at.

On the up side of that startup expense is all the money you’re now going to save by not having to buy film and pay for processing and proofs.

There is the time element that comes with a “digital workflow”. You, or someone is going to have to upload your images to your computer to edit. Then color correct, retouch, and anything else you want done to your images. And especially at first, it is quite time consuming as you follow your learning curve.

In my humble opinion, these are the only aspects of digital photography that can be called disadvantages. And then there’s the argument that “Digital has taken away business from professional photographers”.

The argument goes that it is now so easy to take your own photographs, for whatever purpose and at such low cost, that companies are taking their own photographs for their advertising needs, and people are taking their own, or their friends family photos. And that this is taking business away from professionals.

There really can be no argument against the truth of this statement. It is easy to take pictures. And, really, it always has been since the invention of the “instamatic camera”! Anybody can aim and push the shutter release button. And that will make a picture. It’s been that easy with film cameras since the 1960s. So, what’s the difference now?

I don’t know this for certain, but I bet that when automatic film cameras first came out, there was a small dip in business for a variety of pro photographers. Why? Because it was so easy now for anybody to take a picture! And I’m equally sure that some people who got a camera actually got good at making photographs.

In reality, though, if you want professional quality photography, you need to have the photography done professionally! There’s a lot more to it than point and shoot. And I believe that eventually the novelty of ‘easy’ digital photography will wear off, and the more educated and critical people will take their photography jobs to professionals.

About the author: Stan P. Cox II runs a Portrait and Commercial photography studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, and has been a professional Hawaii photographer for 31 years. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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