First Define Your Mission, Then Design Your Website

Thursday, September 22, 2011

If you’re a Ft. Myers area business, and you’ve decided to give your website a facelift (or complete overhaul by Fort Myers Web Design), that is great! There are so many great reasons to redesign your website, particularly in the environment in which we find ourselves. Online marketing – a cost-effective, significant way to grow your business – begins with a great website. Before you start marketing yourself online (social media management, blogging, backlinks, etc.), you must begin with a professional, unique website that reflects your business. This means resisting the urge to either purchase a cheap template online or worse yet, use your best friend’s brother’s cousin with an office in his mom’s garage and cardboard cutouts of the original Star Wars cast.

All kidding aside, as you prepare to work together with a reputable, professional website design team, it is important that your web designer takes the time to get to know your business. Even before they do that, though, it is your responsibility as a business competing in Southwest Florida to know exactly who you are and the image presence that you want to project online. In short, before you design your website in partnership with a designer, you need to define your mission.

Answering the following questions will help you define your mission and decide what content to present online.  As a side benefit, answering these questions will also help you determine what your site will include – what tools you actually need, and what tools you don’t.

  • What is the mission of your business? Would all of your employees be able to say the exact same thing? Do they understand your business’ mission?
  • What values do you want to project through your website? Some popular values businesses respond with are: quality, professionalism, etc. Depending on your business’ mission and goals, you may respond differently.
  • How does your business meet a need in the community? Why did you decide to start your business?
  • How does your business differ from your competitors? What sets you apart?
  • What success stories do you have regarding your product/service? How do you want your site to personalize these products/services?
  • Where do you want your business to be in the future? Where would you like to go?
  • Why do you want a website? What are you hoping for in a website?

Answering these questions will help you understand who you are, and it will greatly help your website designer create a site that accurately projects who you are and more importantly, one that gets you where you want to go.

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Syphilis Information

Monday, September 5, 2011

Information Pertaining To Syphilis

While love making has been dubbed as one of the most sacred acts by many religions, it comes with its own risks when man starts taking it too lightly. In different words, while the consummation of love is considered to be pure, promiscuity in the bed can result in some major health related problems. One of the most common problems that can result from imbalanced sexual activities is known as syphilis. The following are some details.

What is syphilis?

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease or STD which, as the categorization suggests, occurs due to sexual contact. The transmission of the disease occurs through direct contact with a syphilis sore which can also be described as a lesion. These lesions occur in a variety of places, the foremost of which are the surrounding areas of the genitals of both males and females i.e. vagina, penis, anus and rectum. However, sometimes syphilis sores are also visible in other parts of the body with the lips and mouth considered to be likely locations. Apart from sexual activity, syphilis can also be transferred to a baby from a pregnant mother.

What are its symptoms?

Symptoms of syphilis depend upon the stage at which the disease is. There are primarily three stages, namely the primary stage, the secondary stage and the tertiary stage. The following are symptoms seen in these stages.

The primary stage:

  • The primary stage is characterized by the appearance of a single sore, even though there can be more than one. This sore is known as a chancre and occurs at the place the disease was contracted. It is worth noting that the chancre is round, small and does not cause much pain. This stage can last for 10 days to three months.

The secondary stage:

  • After the initial chancre has healed or is healing, the second stage begins which typically consists of skin rash and mucous membrane lesions. These can occur in any part of the body and can be numerous as well. Other symptoms of the secondary stage include fever, swelling in the lymph glands, sore throat, hair loss, headaches, weight loss, muscle aches and even fatigue.

The tertiary stage:

  • The tertiary stage usually occurs around three to 15 years after the contracting of the disease and can take three different forms. The first is known as the late neurosyphilis, cardiovascular syphilis and the gummatous syphilis.

What is the treatment for syphilis like?

The problem with syphilis is not that it cannot be treated. It is, instead, the fact that the majority of people ignore the symptoms of syphilis as something inconsequential and temporary. The treatment of syphilis is extremely simple. This is why a person whose sexual behaviors put him or her at risk of contracting the disease should go through regular blood tests for diagnosis purposes. The treatment of syphilis involves a single or a series of injections of penicillin to kill the infection. Once the infection is killed, however, the disease is at an end. It is also worth noting that a person with syphilis is two to five times more susceptible to an HIV infection.

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Email Archiving

Monday, August 15, 2011

The Smarsh hosted e mail archiving and e mail compliance solution will capture each email (and attachment) that enters or leaves your organization, too as internal messages, and preserve them all in evidentiary-quality kind inside a central repository (an email archive). Inside the Web-based Smarsh Management Console, administrators leverage best-in-class search, supervision and on-demand export functionality, critical for archiving email for regulatory compliance.

Hosted email archiving solutions Smarsh remedies for classification and supervision efficiency, data-leak prevention and email encryption had been made to integrate together with the Smarsh e mail archiving platform. All services within the integrated suite are centrally administrated through the Smarsh Management Console. Permissioned administrators can assessment electronic communication, implement classification, data-leak prevention and encryption policies, and analyze the effectiveness of enforcement procedures as a result of comprehensive and customizable reporting.

Capture

E-mail traffic is captured instantaneously in the mail server, ensuring that any message sent to, from, or inside of clients’ domains might be archived and processed.

  • Versatile integration | The distinctive Smarsh architecture is platform-agnostic and integrates with on-premise (Microsoft Exchange archiving, Lotus, Novell, and so forth.) and SaaS (Google Apps Premier, one example is) messaging platforms. Journaling is the major capture strategy for archiving e-mail, but Smarsh supports numerous means of capture.
  • Real-time processing | Messages and attachments are delivered and processed within the e-mail archive quickly.
  • Header data/metadata | Complete header data and metadata (including message date and time, IP addresses for all server hops, kinds of servers, and so on.) from every message is captured, indexed and preserved. Additionally, all metadata developed by message overview activity within the Smarsh Management Console is also stored in a read-only format for subsequent evidentiary auditing.
  • Import legacy e-mail | Leverage Smarsh client information management sources and migrate legacy data into one particular platform, building a consolidated e mail archive for fast retrieval and overview.

Back to top rated Preserve

  • Client messages and attachments are often readily accessible via the web-based Smarsh Management Console. They under no circumstances go off-line (unless of course specified by the client).
  • Redundant data centers | E-mail and electronic messages and attachments are preserved within the redundant, geographically-dispersed Smarsh information centers and burned to WORM (write after, study quite a few) optical storage.
  • Retention policies | Messages are retained in accordance with client retention policies (and active legal holds).


Back to best Search

Administrators can search across their e mail archive and electronic message archives depending on virtually any criteria, either ad-hoc or on a consistent, systematic basis.

  • Robust field search | Smarsh indexes the entire electronic message, and enables search by Boolean combinations of virtually every single linked field, which includes: text/HTML body, topic, sender, recipient (like CC, BCC & distribution lists), message date and time, headers (including IP address), attachment type, attachment name, attachment contents (for approximately 400 file varieties).
  • Saved searches | Save search criteria and repeat searches for convenience, consistency and evidence of policy enforcement.
  • E-discovery searches | Run robust ad-hoc discovery searches for one-time instances.
  • Support for various lexicon lists | Clients can customize company-approved lexicons of keywords/phrases for search and/or start with a default list provided by Smarsh.
  • Various e mail addresses, aliases | Search targeted traffic of an unlimited number of e mail addresses per employee.
  • Immediate search results | The moment the desired emails have been identified in the archive’s search page, they can be quickly viewed online, downloaded directly to a PC, or encrypted and copied to portable electronic media.
  • Personal archive access | End-users may access their personal e mail archive securely from any web browser, mobile device, or an integrated e mail client plug-in, and they can search their own archives determined by a variety of criteria like keywords, sender, recipient, date range etc. After messages have been located, users can drag and drop messages, restoring them to their live mailbox (with original timestamp), download, forward, reply, file (tag) and more. End users also have access to customizable saved searches and other tools to conveniently provide access to historical messages.

Back to best Supervise

Your supervision procedures are not at the mercy of inflexible technology. Customize your firm’s supervision expor serience for optimal efficiency in message assessment and effectiveness in identifying and mitigating risk.

  • Hierarchy structure | Permission-based critique hierarchy can be configured to model the review structure of your organization. Administrators can assign message supervision roles/authorities to specific users and groups, and grant the appropriate level of access/functionality to them. Smarsh can grant temporary permissions or access to compliance consultants, outside legal counsel or other individuals.
  • Run saved searches | Execute critique procedures with regularly scheduled saved searches.
  • Versatile search options | Match search type (random percent, risk score, keywords or phrases) to risk profile.
  • Contextual critique | Track chains of emails from many individuals.
  • Complete audit trail | Each administrator session and action taken throughout the entire lifecycle of a message is documented within the Smarsh Management Console.
  • Take action on messages | Reviewers have the ability to annotate, flag, open/close or escalate messages. All actions are logged and the subsequent metadata is indexed and searchable.
  • Reporting Center | Produce analytics reports on corporate email usage, system audit history and message archive information. Demonstrate policy enforcement and ensure accountability among several managers responsible for message evaluation. Reports can be customized.

Back to prime Produce

Administrators can retrieve and produce as lots of messages as necessary, in original type, on demand.

  • Production options | Messages can be securely downloaded to a PC or encrypted and saved to a portable media device. This can be utilized for real-time access to information during an investigation or examination, or to restore information for disaster recovery purposes.
  • Versatile e-discovery export | Export message information in popular e-discovery vendor “load file” formats (and the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) XML Interchange Format Schema) and transfer it directly to document review and processing systems.
  • Monthly DVD service | As part of its service package, Smarsh delivers monthly copies of client information by way of encrypted DVD.

How it Works
E mail website traffic is captured instantly at the mail server, ensuring that any message sent to, from, or inside clients’ domains might be archived and processed by Smarsh software. Smarsh supports multiple message capture methods but primarily employs the journaling function for e-mail archiving, standard on most mail servers. Unlike other POP connectors or a local journal, journaling directly and instantaneously to offsite Smarsh e-mail archive servers ensures that:

  • all emails and attachments are instantaneously placed within the e-mail archive,
  • the archive can be used for disaster recovery purposes as all messages are instantly saved offsite, functioning as e-mail backup,
  • there is NO window of opportunity for employees or administrators to tamper with messages before they are sent to the archive.

Captured messages are placed in an archive mailbox using SMTP delivery (secured by TLS encryption or a VPN tunnel). This mailbox is exceptional to every single client to avoid any commingling of messages. Next, our proprietary archiving software retrieves these messages from the e-mail archive mailbox and:

  • scans new messages for keyword, phrase or rule violations established by the customer,
  • indexes every message and attachments using a full-text index/catalog to permit searches in our net applications,
  • stores duplicate working copies of attachments and e-mail files to a redundant file server/storage network to facilitate immediate access to message files and attachments within the Smarsh Management Console,
  • replicates archived messages to remote data centers,
  • creates an MD5 hash which can be used for subsequent certification and verification that the message has not been altered,
  • burns messages to WORM optical storage for regualtory compliance.

The Benefits of the Smarsh Cloud Model Security & Privacy

You usually maintain ownership and control of your data. Numerous physical, procedural and technical safeguards are in place to protect and limit access to your information. Smarsh data centers are redundant, geographically-dispersed and SAS 70 (Type II) audited. All systems are protected by multi-tiered firewalls and proactively monitored within the Smarsh Network Operations Center. Encrypted access to your information is granted only to your firm’s approved system administrators.
Performance

  • Free up storage capacity | Forrester Research survey information indicates that storage capacity requirements are growing between 20 and 40 percent each and every year.1 By “off-loading” information, your company can free up valuable storage space and optimize server performance. Remove content from your messaging server and migrate it to an archiving platform.
  • Global availability | Complete platform functionality is available securely 24-7 through the Internet.
  • Search and produce information quickly | Smarsh offers the storage, database and indexing expertise to ensure optimal search and retrieval times, even as the volume of your archive grows.
  • Seamless updates | Rather than waiting for the release and installation of your software’s next version, Smarsh platform updates are introduced regularly.

Deployment

  • Speedy on-boarding | Your firm can be up and running on the Smarsh platform in days or weeks rather than a long-term phased timeline. With its diverse and growing client base, Smarsh has encountered a variety of system integration scenarios and manages the deployment process for you.
  • Flexible integration | The distinctive Smarsh architecture is platform-agnostic and integrates with on-premise (Microsoft Exchange, Lotus, Novell, and so forth.) and SaaS (Google Apps Premier, as an example) messaging platforms.

Cost

  • Predictable pricing | Smarsh does not charge for storage or disk space, significantly reducing costs for traditional email backup. Pricing is predictable, easy to budget and does not require large capital expenditures.
  • No software/hardware to maintain | Smarsh manages all hardware and software within its information centers, and upgrades are automatic and included as part of the managed service.
  • Minimized internal IT operating burden | Maintain access and ownership of all of your information, and liberate your IT team to focus on core competencies.

 

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Overview of Common STDs: Syphilis

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Syphilis is an STD caused by the bacterium Treponemapallidium. There are two types of the infection, venereal syphilis and congenital syphilis. Venereal syphilis is passed on through sex, and congenital syphilis is passed on from mother to child.

Since the advent of penicillin, cases of syphilis have been declining. Despite that, data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) shows an estimated 12 million new cases a year worldwide. In 2009 there were almost 45,000 new cases of this STD reported in the United States alone. That’s a decrease of 3.2 percent from the previous year.

Symptoms

Syphilis shares common traits with other STDs. Either no symptoms, or mild ones in most cases. If any symptoms do appear, it’s possible for them to take up to 3 months after the initial infection. Syphilis works in stages, and each stage displays different symptoms.

Primary stage syphilis may result in ulcers at the site of infection. This will be around three weeks to a month after contact with an infected person.

They include:

  • Ulcers on the vulva or the cervix in women.
  • Ulcers on the penis in men.
  • Ulcers around the anus and mouth.

Secondary stage syphilis occurs only if the infection is not treated at the primary stage.

Symptoms include:

  • A flu-like illness
  • Lethargy
  • Loss of appetite
  • Swollen glands
  • A non-itchy rash
  • Flat, warty-looking growths on the vulva
  • Flat, warty-looking growths around the anus
  • White patches on the tongue or roof of mouth.
  • Hair loss

If the infection is still not treated in secondary stages, it will progress to tertiary stage. This stage is harder to detect as symptoms often disappear. The infection can still be diagnosed with a blood test, and treated with drug therapy. Any damage done during tertiary stage is not curable.

Transmission and Treatment

Being an STD, syphilis is primarily transmitted during sex (venereal syphilis), or from mother to child (congenital syphilis). There needs to be direct contact with the syphilis sore to pass the infection on externally.

A series of tests will be necessary to correctly diagnose the STD. They will include:

  • A blood sample to be sent to an STD laboratory.
  • A specimen is taken from all sores
  • The genital area is examined for primary signs of syphilis.
  • Women are given an internal examination to check for sores.
  • A sample of urine

The blood test primarily looks for antibodies, so it’s possible to test negative at first. If other symptoms are present, it’s likely that a sufferer will be asked to return after a few weeks to allow the immune system to produce them in numbers detectable in the test.

Treatments for syphilis are still based around penicillin. A popular course is a two week course of injections, but there are pills and capsule treatments too. As with any Sexually Transmitted Disease, contact with others should be minimized until the all-clear is given.

Once the course is complete, the patient may be asked to return periodically to have blood tests. This is to ensure the infection has been completely eradicated.

Complications

It is important to note that an individual that has contracted, and been treated for syphilis will test positive on any future tests. This is because antibodies will remain present in the body afterwards. Doctors can provide a certificate explaining that they have been treated and no longer have syphilis, if necessary.

If the infection reaches tertiary stage, it’s possible for it to cause heart and nerve damage.Any heart or nervous-system damage that occurred before the start of treatment may be irreversible.

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Every Failure a New Beginning

Monday, June 27, 2011

An obvious statement for you: change is hard. In some way or another people acknowledge that statement every day. And that simple declaration usually produces enough contradicting force to get people to give up on whatever it is they are trying to accomplish. However, the ability to overcome something as difficult as change can be as simple as understanding one key principle: It’s OK to start over. But more on that in a bit…

Why is change so hard? Well, it’s because we are habitual. Our minds are so set on doing things the way we always do them that when we try to go another way we usually end up falling back on old habits. In other words: we fail. For example, there are sites that provide HCG diet recipes to help people know how to eat right. But, for some people, those foods completely rework their nutritional system, and, after trying the new foods for a few days, people go back to what they were used to eating. But the HCG diet requires a healthy diet along with the supplement. Therefore, people fail in their weight loss goals.

When we fail we get disappointed and we think, “Trying to change wasn’t worth it, because I was doomed to fail.” That thought is maybe only partly true. The part that says “I was doomed to fail” might be true. The part about the attempt not being worth the effort is absolutely false. False false false. It is essential to understand that when trying to create a new lifestyle that will completely turn around everything we were doing before we are bound mess up at least little bit, and sometimes a lot. In those moments of failure it is crucial to recommit, to analyze what went wrong, redevelop the plan and start over.

When I think about it, it seems like change should be incredibly easy. Usually, when we want to change, we want to improve something about ourselves that we think is wrong. We all have problems that are definitely within our capacity to control. I get low test scores, so I want to change my study habits. I think I’m unhealthy, so I change my eating and exercise habits (or the lack thereof). But knowing what is wrong with me, knowing what I want to improve and how I want to do it are only parts of what I need to understand in order to change my life. I need to know that I might fail, and when I do I can start over.

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