[this article is from ::   ]

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Savvy employees know that they need to go beyond just working
hard and hoping someone recognizes them for new opportunities
or promotions. It is critical that individuals, young and
old, learn to market themselves, which is one of the Career
Literacy™ skills needed to be successful in today’s
workplace. Even students who seek internships and first jobs
can begin with the basics of marketing themselves and benefit
from being in the right place at the right time with the right
people. A famous quote supports this: “Luck is where
preparation meets opportunity.” Marketing yourself creates
“luck.”

What does “marketing yourself” really mean? What
are the benefits of marketing yourself as a competent resource
both inside and outside your organization? And what steps
do you take to market yourself?

When marketing yourself, think of yourself as the “product”
and what you can do as the “service.” It’s your
responsibility to identify what expertise you can offer to
your “customer.” For employees, your customer is
your manager and company, and for those in job search, your
customer is a potential hiring manager in another company.
The challenge is that the workplace and its players keep changing,
so the activities needed to build the relationships needed
for marketing yourself must be consistent and ongoing.

Sometimes when people hear the words “marketing yourself,”
they say it makes them feel queasy in the pit of their stomachs.
Often, it is because they think of marketing as pushing yourself
on other people, empty socializing, and superficial small
talk. On the contrary, effective marketing creates a pull
for your expertise. You establish yourself as an expert in
your area and people recognize you for your talents.

Developing the skills for marketing oneself has become increasingly
important as the complexity and change in the workplace has
accelerated. Even for talented, competent people, it’s a buyer’s
market. Individuals always benefit by making themselves more
attractive candidates, whether inside or outside their organizations.
Workers are more mobile, changing jobs, managers, employers,
and geographic locations frequently, so they constantly have
to educate others on their capabilities and experience. Jobs
disappear due to advances in technology, outsourcing, or off-shoring
options, so individuals are in the job market more often.
On the other hand, people skilled at marketing themselves
are first to hear news of emerging opportunities in their
company or field, like working on virtual international teams
or learning a new technology.

There is also a positive personal impact that results from
marketing yourself. You can accomplish your personal and professional
goals more easily and often faster. In addition, you can find
opportunities to contribute your expertise more quickly and,
in fact, have the opportunities find you. You will reap benefits
of increased visibility, employability, and career resiliency.
The process of marketing yourself creates options and choices
for you as well, because you hear about them sooner.

The process of marketing yourself can be similar to the kind
of marketing plan developed for a product or service. Here
is an eight-step Personal Marketing Plan Template, based on
a business marketing plan, to guide you:

1. Define your mission and the benefits you offer

• Start with self knowledge: natural talents (aptitudes),
  interests, personality and values

• Consider what role fits you best: generalist
  or specialist or a combination

• Ask yourself, “What do I have to offer?”

2. Set your marketing objective: What exactly do you want
to achieve?

• Be specific, make it measurable, make it realistic, and
  build in a timeline with deadlines.

3. Design performance measures: What will be the observable,
objective indicators that show that you are accomplishing
or have accomplished your goal?

4. Gather, analyze, and interpret information about your
situation using Career Vision’s “SWOT
Analysis”. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities
and Threats. A SWOT analysis is a structured strategic planning
model often used for a project or business venture. The Career
Vision version of the SWOT analysis is designed for an individual
to use for career management and personal marketing purposes.

• Identify your personal strengths and weaknesses: How
  do you stack up against your competition?

• Identify external opportunities and threats: What trends
  may affect you and your career positively or negatively?

5. Identify your target markets: Who needs to know you, your
capabilities, and professional goals?

• This may mean that you focus your efforts on key managers,
  mentors or human resources staff solely within your organization,
  or that you broaden your outreach through membership in
  professional organizations, depending on your goal.

• Also include the geographic scope of where you want to
  market yourself, for example, the Chicagoland area? The
  Midwest? Nationally? Or internationally? You decide what
  is appropriate for you.

6. Develop your marketing strategy and activities aimed at
your target market

• Volunteer for cross-functional teams and company-wide
  task forces

• Share ideas and trend information with others and solicit
  advice from them

• Take on leadership or committee roles in professional
  organizations

• Attend conferences and continuing education events, even
  if you have to pay for them

• Write articles for company or professional publications

• Present to peers on topics related to your doing your
  jobs better

7. Define implementation strategies: What will you do, when,
what resources will you need, and what might be obstacles
to overcome?

8. Periodically evaluate marketing efforts and modify them
if needed: What’s working? What do you need to do differently?
Do you need to do more, or scale back your efforts?

After the first draft of your personal marketing plan is
committed to writing, discuss it with at least three people
you respect such as a mentor, colleague or spouse. Incorporate
their feedback and suggestions, and then begin to implement
your plan. As you make progress, evaluate your results and
revise your plan accordingly.

Perhaps the late Johnny Carson, comedian and long-time
host of “The Tonight Show,” sums up the benefits
of marketing yourself: “Talent alone won’t make you
a success. Neither will being in the right place at the
right time - unless you are ready. The most important question
is - are you ready?”

---

© Copyright 2007, Career Vision / Ball Foundation. Article
may be reprinted with permission.

When you google search for a map route especially if you are far away you get more than one route quite likely. Industry best practices are the same way. Suggestions to the endpoint.

Recently working on a project where the functional design analyst followed _best practices_  for WSDL data typing and directed the developers to tightly bind the data transformations to the existing data model. Problem with this best practice is that the data model is not optimal and at the architect level it is known to be in need of re-engineering to get close to an industry standard model for interoperability with other tool sets and solutions in the industry.

The problem on the ground and in the trench is that the speed to deliver has slowed down because while the translations are tightly coupled to the model their are undiscovered issues in data from system A, B and getting to C from size to data type errors.

To solve any problem in IT one needs to consider from a high level through to a low level what the best mix of pro and con will drive the project to a solution with the best path to endpoint.

There is a good article at IBM Developerworks site that talks about weighing the options on a granularity continuum.

So the endpoint and the best practice to follow… keep in mind to look at all the options before you jump on the highway and get stuck in traffic, to get to the endpoint sometimes the longest distance is the shortest time to get there.

Tweets twits facebook social media ranking share links blog chat mobile phone applications and the tools list goes on.

Ever hear of the watch and the watch maker analogy for God? Web 2.0 is like that. The parts all in place do not make the end product. The thing is more than the sum of the parts. Have you ever heard of ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE? Pirsig wrote a cool story about motorcycles and road-trips.

It all boils down to #Quality. Quality is what make the sum of the whole bigger than the sum of the parts. Quality is #Soul. Soul is what makes people different from non-people. The differentiators are more than the details.

Does this sound a bit Jedi Knight like? A bit Buddhist-tic? Well it kindof is.

WEB 2.0 is  when the people looking at content, can share the content to other places of their choosing which becomes a viral marketing asset. WEB 2.0 is when people who are moved by your content can chat almost real time with others about it in the web space, places like chat boards, social media locations like FaceBook, and share/broadcast interest on Twitter. WEB 2.0 is giving the tools to the people who are looking at your content, so the people can take action. Now, not all action is happy and shinny sometime one invites pie in the face, rocks to the glass house, and mud in the eye moments.

I have heard it said… and referred to as ‘let the wookie win.’

This all still sounds like a lot of the hype, put the tools links the logos out there and you have WEB 2.0 yes? No.

Sorry folks, it is still the content. The content is king, the content that gets people excited enough to link share or comment is the 80% but the 20% that is still needed to make your stuff become WEB 2.0, take notes here, you have to keep the momentum going and not delay or get in the way.

If you are basing your strategy on WEB 2.0 as a marketing model… you have to micro manage your cats and your PR and your buzz and for each content set, have a plan of viral marketing push out to your favorites list to your champions to your biggest fans and yes even your biggest detractors… let the #Devils-Advocate get copy… press is press coverage is coverage and buzz is buzz.

So the Quality? the Soul? the Zen? The secret is you do not have complete control. You can not pre-concieve what you want it to look like what you are searching for… or it will never happen. You have to let the wookie win. For the parts to be greater than the sum of the parts, you have to release the cats, light the wild fire, jump off the cliff and have Faith that you can handle the next thing that happens.

WEB 2.0 is people INTERACTING with people because they are excited. The ability to share that excitement is WEB 2.0. It is not the tool, it is more than the tool.

One has to follow the recipe and then add a certain flair and get on the Group W bench and see if the soufle’ rises.

HIPAA – PHI
LIST OF 18 IDENTIFIERS AND DEFINITION OF PHI

What is PHI?

Protected health information (PHI) is any information in the medical record or designated record set that can be used to identify an individual and that was created, used, or disclosed in the course of providing a health care service such as diagnosis or treatment. HIPAA regulations allow researchers to access and use PHI when necessary to conduct research. However, HIPAA only affects research that uses, creates, or discloses PHI that will be entered in to the medical record or will be used for healthcare services, such as treatment, payment or operations.

For example, PHI is used in research studies involving review of existing medical records for research information, such as retrospective chart review. Also, studies that create new medical information because a health care service is being performed as part of research, such as diagnosing a health condition or a new drug or device for treating a health condition, create PHI that will be entered into the medical record. For example, sponsored clinical trails that submit data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration involve PHI and are therefore subject to HIPAA regulations.

List of 18 Identifiers

1. Names;
2. All geographical subdivisions smaller than a State, including street address, city, county, precinct, zip code, and their equivalent geocodes, except for the initial three digits of a zip code, if according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census: (1) The geographic unit formed by combining all zip codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people; and (2) The initial three digits of a zip code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people is changed to 000.
3. All elements of dates (except year) for dates directly related to an individual, including birth date, admission date, discharge date, date of death; and all ages over 89 and all elements of dates (including year) indicative of such age, except that such ages and elements may be aggregated into a single category of age 90 or older;
4. Phone numbers;
5. Fax numbers;
6. Electronic mail addresses;
7. Social Security numbers;
8. Medical record numbers;
9. Health plan beneficiary numbers;
10. Account numbers;
11. Certificate/license numbers;
12. Vehicle identifiers and serial numbers, including license plate numbers;
13. Device identifiers and serial numbers;
14. Web Universal Resource Locators (URLs);
15. Internet Protocol (IP) address numbers;
16. Biometric identifiers, including finger and voice prints;
17. Full face photographic images and any comparable images; and
18. Any other unique identifying number, characteristic, or code (note this does not mean the unique code assigned by the investigator to code the data)

There are also additional standards and criteria to protect individual’s privacy from re-identification. Any code used to replace the identifiers in datasets cannot be derived from any information related to the individual and the master codes, nor can the method to derive the codes be disclosed. For example, the unique code cannot include the last four digits (in sequence) of the social security number. Additionally, the researcher must not have actual knowledge that the research subject could be re-identified from the remaining identifiers in the PHI used in the research study. In other words, the information would still be considered identifiable is there was a way to identify the individual even though all of the 18 identifiers were removed.

What is not PHI?

In contrast, some research studies use data that is person-identifiable because it includes personal identifiers such as name, address. However, it is not considered to be PHI because the data are not associated with or derived from a healthcare service event (treatment, payment, operations, medical records), not entered into the medical records, nor will the subject/patient be informed of the results. Research health information that is kept only in the researcher’s records is not subject to HIPAA but is regulated by other human subjects protection regulations.

Examples of research health information not subject to HIPAA include such studies as the use of aggregate data, diagnostic tests that do not go into the medical record because they are part of a basic research study and the results will not be disclosed to the subject, and testing done without the PHI identifiers. Some genetic basic research can fall into this category such as the search for potential genetic markers, promoter control elements, and other exploratory genetic research. In contrast, genetic testing for a known disease that is considered to be part of diagnosis, treatment and health care would be considered to use PHI and therefore subject to HIPAA regulations.

Also note, health information by itself without the 18 identifiers is not considered to be PHI. For example, a dataset of vital signs by themselves do not constitute protected health information. However, if the vital signs dataset includes medical record numbers, then the entire dataset must be protected since it contains an identifier. PHI is anything that can be used to identify an individual such as private information, facial images, fingerprints, and voiceprints. These can be associated with medical records, biological specimens, biometrics, data sets, as well as direct identifiers of the research subjects in clinical trials.

The table below summarizes the characteristics of research data that would be
considered PHI and research data that would be considered RHI (Research Related Health Information).

Characteristic HIPAA	PHI	RHI
Individually identifiable ie., meets HIPAA definition of IIHI	Yes	yes
Used for support clinical decision making for an individual, or for payment or operations	Yes	No
Associated with healthcareservice event	Yes	No
Need-to-know, minimum necessary access control	Yes	Yes
Separation of person identifiable and non-person identifiable data elements wherever feasible	No	Yes
Individual authorization (consent) for creation and use of data	Varies by use	Yes
Business Partneragreements for disclosures	Yes	No
Logs and audit trails of use and disclosure	Yes	Consistent with current best practice for research records
Right to request amendment of records	Yes	At discretion of investigator

Table source: http://cphs.berkeley.edu/content/hipaa/WhatIsandIsNotPHI.pdf

Denver, Co., December 17th  2007 – Leveraging 13 years of IT experience in business reporting and enterprise applications, development, implementation and migration projects, Justin Mead of Rocky Mountain Managed Information of Loveland Colo., has been contracted by Comsys on behalf of Sprint Nextel Corp. to help consolidate the Fortune 100 company’s call-center operation reporting. 

Starting on Jan. 2 as a Sr. Systems Analyst/PM with Sprint, Mead will:
- identify gap analysis of existing and new reporting efforts
- define requirements for new reporting efforts; and
- follow these processes through the full application development lifecycle (SDLC) from requirements definition, development, testing and on to implementation.

The contract is for 6 months, it likely will extend to 12+ months.  

This is the third contract that Mead has involving Fortune 100 clients. Sprint Nextel Corporation ranks 59th, McKesson came in at 16th and the Fair Isaac client held the ranking of 82nd of the top 100 business in the country. While the industry exposure Mead has had with these projects has ranged from Telecommunications, Healthcare, and Financial the common thread and Mead’s skill set have all been with in facets of reporting analytics. 

Technical solutions Mead will have involvement with while on the Sprint contract will be with in the Microsoft Solutions Framework with ASP, .NET, and SQL Server. 

“The contract opportunities in the greater Denver area are abundant.” Mead said. “I received many interesting offers and projects. I decided to go with Sprint because of the opportunity to take multiple sub projects through the full SDLC while engaged for the duration of the contract.”
 

Mead wanted to “extend thanks and gratitude” to all recruiters and agencies whom in the last 30 days worked tirelessly to locate an ideal situation where his skills as a Senior Business Systems Analyst with significant reporting functionality could be put into play to meet contracted goals.  

COMSYS IT Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ: CITP) is a leading information technology services company in 52 markets across the U.S. and offices in Canada and the U.K. COMSYS currently serves more than 30% of the Fortune 500 and 60% of the Fortune 100 companies. With approximately 5,000 consultants in 52 markets in the U.S, Canada and the U.K. COMSYS can deliver services onsite, offsite or offshore. For more information, visit www.comsys.com. 

Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two robust wireless networks serving about 54 million customers at the end of the third quarter 2007; industry-leading mobile data services; instant national and international walkie-talkie capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com. 

Rocky Mountain Managed information, (RM-Mi) has been managing Information since 2004 for it’s clients to provide a competitive business advantage whether it is in business systems analysis, data integration, application development, web hosting and site design or marketing and copy writing of presentations or technical documentation, RM-Mi offers diversified Information Consultant Services. 

Feel free to send inquiries as to the status of this project and or future projects to moreinfo@rm-mi.net and or for more information visit www.rm-mi.net.

http://businessintelligence.ittoolbox.com/groups/career/bi-career/cognos-consultancy-contractor-opportunities-training-career-1744246

Cognos Consultancy, Contractor Opportunities - Training- Career

Asked by David … on 12/2/2007 1:10:00 PM

Hi. Firstly I apologise if this is the wrong area to post this.I am an ex business manager.(A Man, taken 5 years out to bring up our two children while my wife pursues her career) 30yrs plus experience in a number of high tech industries in sales and marketing at a senior level(software / engineering/ semiconductors/ print/chemicals/lithography /electronics/++++) I have spent some time looking into Business Intelligence software and it seems Cognos is an excellent set of applications and solutions. They seem to have a comprehensive set of training tools both office and e based.

With determination and commitment would it be possible to embark upon the Cognos training as an individual and then be in a reasonable position to be considered as a Cognos consultant/ contractor upon completion.I am ore than willing to fund the invetment if there is a reasonable possibility of success.Business Intelligence seems to be an area that is ideally suited to my basic inquisitive and research orientated personality and I am in a good position with an MBA and a long business career to understand the requirements of customers across different functionalities.
Any help or advice is appreciated.

Dave

Reply from justin on 12/3/2007 8:17:00 PM

Dear Dave,

It really is a matter of what your business model is for yourself. If you are asking the question ‘can I take a series of courses and then position my self in the field as…’ the short answer is sure you can position yourself as Dorthy from OZ if you would like but the proof is in the pudding and to get repeat business and or referrals you will want to make sure you place your skills and experiences in the right manor.

Given your previous life in business with a mark/com and sales of technology it is feasible that you could place your self as a COGNOS trainer of the entry level UI tools but to go further then that you would need to distinctly need to re-evaluate what your position/business model is.

To be effective in BI, really takes time directly in the roles working up through the ranks of user, developer, back end architect before you get to consultant. As a trainer, the ones who have value are the ones who clearly have applied experience and can solve the trainees real-world problems during the classes. To be effective in BI as a consultant takes enough depth of skills / experiences to find creative solutions to very complicated situations.

Other wise you become Dilbert fodder.

It may be an easier pitch to go get PMI certified, start being a Project Manager and then focus on projects in the BI world and learn and gain experience from that angle to then be a Program Manager and or work to the consulting.

The real issue to learn how to solve is data. Data quality, what are the business KPI (key performance indicators) that are the reporting facts, to intimately understand the architectural affects of the system, to be able to translate business to technology and simplify technology keeping the eye on the ROI and deliverables.

My thoughts.

Justin Mead

Rocky Mountain Managed Information
:: Consulting Services since 2004 ::
www.rm-mi.net Business Data Systems
Integration Specification Design Analysis
3 0 3 5 8 8 1 9 9 6 justin(at)rm-mi(dot)net
Profile on Linkedin
Profile on Yahoo

From: Colorado Alliance of Illustrators [cai_network@msn.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 7:38 PM
To: cai_network
Subject: Call for Action to Prevent Orphan Works Amendment

Importance: High

The problem is I keep loosing the Popup Toolbar (shortcut menu) ‘start group property’ when I create a custom popup menu. Even after reading a google search files…

[http://www.google.com/search?q=access+popup+menu+group&hl=en]

on search string (access popup menu group) … I had to read and reread the only one valid result I found multiple times to ‘get it’ so here is what I got…

 

First: To add the bars to custom popup menus and keep the group by property you create a custom shortcut toolbar.

There are a couple of ways ‘in’ to the control you need to get to. One way is by clicking into :TOOLS:CUSTOMIZE:> to get this window

 
Click on [New] and call it something, this case I used Custom 2
Then you will see this little popup show on your screen, you need to select items you want on the popup menu by going to the Commands tab and click and drag what you want into the popup window. Once you have the items you want, click [Properties] to get the following window.

 
You will see I added a few odd things, sort, open favorites, home, output to notepad, analyze , and analysis with excel. Now, on the [Type] properties, change that to POPUP and then [Close] and you will get a box telling you this thing will disappear and here comes the tricky part.
Notice on Image01 that item [Shortcut Menus] is selected, make sure you also have this selected now on your customize screen. This will bring a menu up on your monitor.
Now, go to the [Commands] tab and click the [Rearrange Commands] button and looking at this next image for guidance…

 
You see the Customize screen, showing the Commands view and the Rearrange Commands button.. that you just clicked to get the stuff on the right… click the Toolbar radio button and scroll down to your menu you created, in this case it is [Custom 2] and note that the controls you will see are the ones you added.
Now you may have gotten this far but by the MSDN describes this ‘creating a custom shortcut menu for access differently… the same way I self stumbled into and found. What I wanted to do was to group my controls and every time I tweaked the property to show this, it would not stick… So here is what you do, come into the process as I have described above and then…
Like in the image03 view above, click on where you want to add a group line, like to show it above [open hyperlink] and above [output to notepad] select the control and click the [Modify Selection] button.

 

See here, I have a line now above the [Open Hyperlink] and I am about to add one above the [Output to Notepad] by selecting the ‘modify selection’ and selecting the [begin a Group] property.
Now to make it show up on your form… in Design mode select Properties for the form and  as you see in the image05 below, on the Other tab, select the drop down of your custom menu you just made, in this case, Custom 2, on the Property ‘Shortcut Menu Bar’ and of course your ‘Shortcut Menu’ must be enabled.

What you will see now when you right click in form view mode of your form is your popup menu with the pesky group by lines showing.
 

 tada!

Justin Mead
Rocky Mountain Managed Information
©2006 RM-Mi all rights reserved
http://www.rm-mi.net/whitepapers/HowtoEnableCustomPopUpMenuGroups.htm

I keep loosing the Popup Toolbar (shortcut menu) ‘start group property’ when I create a custom popup menu. Even after reading a google search files…

[http://www.google.com/search?q=access+popup+menu+group&hl=en]

on search string (access popup menu group) … I had to read and reread the only one valid result I found multiple times to ‘get it’ so here is what I got…

 [this paper available at
[http://www.rm-mi.net/whitepapers/HowtoEnableCustomPopUpMenuGroups.htm]
with pictures that spell out and show how to]

First: To add the bars to custom popup menus and keep the group by property you create a custom shortcut toolbar.

There are a couple of ways ‘in’ to the control you need to get to. One way is by clicking into :TOOLS:CUSTOMIZE:> to get this window

 
Click on [New] and call it something, this case I used Custom 2
Then you will see this little popup show on your screen, you need to select items you want on the popup menu by going to the Commands tab and click and drag what you want into the popup window. Once you have the items you want, click [Properties] to get the following window.

 
You will see I added a few odd things, sort, open favorites, home, output to notepad, analyze , and analysis with excel. Now, on the [Type] properties, change that to POPUP and then [Close] and you will get a box telling you this thing will disappear and here comes the tricky part.
Notice on Image01 that item [Shortcut Menus] is selected, make sure you also have this selected now on your customize screen. This will bring a menu up on your monitor.
Now, go to the [Commands] tab and click the [Rearrange Commands] button and looking at this next image for guidance…

 
You see the Customize screen, showing the Commands view and the Rearrange Commands button.. that you just clicked to get the stuff on the right… click the Toolbar radio button and scroll down to your menu you created, in this case it is [Custom 2] and note that the controls you will see are the ones you added.
Now you may have gotten this far but by the MSDN describes this ‘creating a custom shortcut menu for access differently… the same way I self stumbled into and found. What I wanted to do was to group my controls and every time I tweaked the property to show this, it would not stick… So here is what you do, come into the process as I have described above and then…
Like in the image03 view above, click on where you want to add a group line, like to show it above [open hyperlink] and above [output to notepad] select the control and click the [Modify Selection] button.

 
See here, I have a line now above the [Open Hyperlink] and I am about to add one above the [Output to Notepad] by selecting the ‘modify selection’ and selecting the [begin a Group] property.
Now to make it show up on your form… in Design mode select Properties for the form and  as you see in the image05 below, on the Other tab, select the drop down of your custom menu you just made, in this case, Custom 2, on the Property ‘Shortcut Menu Bar’ and of course your ‘Shortcut Menu’ must be enabled.

What you will see now when you right click in form view mode of your form is your popup menu with the pesky group by lines showing.
 

 tada!

Justin Mead
Rocky Mountain Managed Information
©2006 RM-Mi all rights reserved

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70219-0.html

By Dylan Tweney | Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Feb, 17, 2006

For most people, open source is a synonym for free software. But for programmers, open source is about sharing code, building on the work of others and not having to reinvent the wheel — at least, that’s the ideal. In practice, code reuse remains very low, because it’s often too hard for programmers to find relevant bits of code for their applications.

A new search engine for programmers promises to alleviate that problem by making it easier to find and share code. That in turn could increase programmers’ productivity and give a fresh boost to the open-source movement.

Krugle, which launches officially next month, indexes programming code and documentation from open-source repositories like SourceForge and includes corporate sites for programmers like the Sun Developer Network. The index will cover around 100 million pages of what company founder Ken Krugler terms the "technical web" — high-quality technical pages for professional programmers. (By contrast, Google’s index covers about 11 billion pages.)

"This winds up being a window on all the open-source code in the world," said Krugler, who estimates the Krugle index will contain between 3 and 5 terabytes of code by the time the engine launches in March.

The new service joins other source-code search engines like Koders and Codefetch, but Krugle intends to differentiate itself by allowing developers to annotate code and documentation, create bookmarks and save collections of search results in a tabbed workspace. Saved workspaces have unique URLs, so developers can send an entire collection of annotated code to a co-worker just by e-mailing a link.

Krugle also contains intelligence to help it parse code and to differentiate programming languages, so a PHP developer could search for a website-registration system written in PHP simply by typing "PHP registration system."

Greg Olson, a co-founder of early open-source success story Sendmail and a consultant with the Olliance Group said Krugle will make it easier to reuse program components — something that the open-source movement has long promised, but never effectively delivered on. (Olson advised Krugle on the startup’s open-source usage.)

"It’s so cumbersome now to use tools like Google to search for code that the majority of programmers just write their own code," said Olson — even if they know that an open-source component is probably available that would meet their needs. "If you can’t find the pieces, it’s too frustrating to try to reuse components. But if you can reuse components, you can get a factor-of-10 improvement in productivity."

Simon Phipps, the chief open-source officer for Sun Microsystems, said Krugle could be useful as a learning tool, but the many different licenses that apply to open-source code are a potential stumbling block. In addition to the widely used Gnu Public License, Mozilla Foundation projects have their own licensing terms — and copyright holders may retain some rights even in otherwise publicly available open-source code, said Phipps.

"Let’s say you turn up a bit of code that’s licensed under the GPL … if you use it, that means your whole project needs to be licensed under the GPL. I hope that people are aware of these issues, because the licensing situation could get pretty hairy."

Krugle will make money from advertising on its free, public search engine. The company is also planning to create an enterprise edition, due in 2007, to facilitate code-sharing within companies.

There is a growing trend to use maps as the interface for many things. Such as Nextel ( http://www.nextelpartners.com/ ) phones having integrated partnerships with GPS and AVL solutions

(http://eastbay.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/2004/11/29/story7.html?page=1)

(http://www.cloudberry.com/company-partners.php)

(http://www.cloudberry.com/cloudberry-overview.php)

Articles such as (http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,70020-0.html?tw=rss.technology) that talk about the reality of satellite images being darn crisp, about Amazon and msn maps having links to ground based images of streets where the whole interface is likely to overtake the yellow page reality.

http://nationalatlas.gov/HELP/doqhelp.html

http://earth.google.com/
http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com/

http://maps.a9.com/

http://www.frappr.com/

Services like FRAPPER that allow you to link things directly into the map points, whether it is research sites, business units, competition, or people who like to ride mountain bikes… this is all possible and just a click away where as five years ago, took a lot of integration with ESRI tools and map layers…

There will be a growing trend to localize how people find or list the services they offer. So if you are a Therapist, muffler shop, custom printing, or any kind of business… if you are the first one to get listed on these sites or incorporate your online presence with map interfaces…

You will have a competitive advantage for a while and that is good.

http://local.live.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/default.mspx

Found a real good site the other day…. http://www.knowthis.com/ 

It contains current links to magazine articles, is clearly organized and is full of tutorials and pertinent information that is very useful in directing the thought process and shaking the tree of ideas for new apples to fall.

Go ahead and take a look about…

The list of web site links (URLS) and summary of each article follows:

1>> http://www.nase.org/sea_janfeb01/feature4.asp
Whatever type of business consultant you decide to hire, you need to choose carefully. And you need to know how to get the most from the consultant you select. The Institute of Management Consultancy (http://www.imc.co.uk/) offers these nine rules for choosing and using business consultants effectively.
.

2>> http://www.idealist.org/is_cons/helpcons.html
part a> A good consultant, looking at your situation objectively, should be able to identify and implement the solution to the problem more quickly and efficiently than you or your staff. The trick is knowing what types of problems warrant a consultant’s services. Here are basic guidelines:
part b> Develop objectives that identify: The RFP provides basic information about your organization, and the project or problem you would like the consultant to address. The RFP should establish a general format for the proposals, which will allow you to evaluate and compare consultants equally and efficiently. The following is a proposed format for an RFP, which can be modified to fit the needs of your agency.
part c> How to manage a consultant
Insist on a work plan from the consultant Give the consultant sufficient information to get them up to speed Request that the consultant provide progress reports on the project as follows: …
.

3Þ http://www.icca.org/10tips.asp
10 Tips for Hiring a Computer Consultant As business-related technology becomes increasingly sophisticated and complex, many business owners, office managers and systems operators are turning to independent computer consultants to develop high tech business solutions that keep a company ahead of the competition and ensure their operation has the tools and training needed to run smoothly and efficiently.
.

4Þ  http://www.planning.org/consultant/choose.htm
Choosing a Consultant
This is a revised and edited excerpt from Selecting and Retaining a Planning Consultant: RFPs, RFQs, Contracts, and Project Management by Eric Damian Kelly, FAICP. It is Planning Advisory Service Report No. 443, published by the American Planning Association in February 1993.
.

5Þ How To Hire.pdf
How to Hire a Management Consultant and Get the Results You Expect The inspiration for this manual came from a similar one developed in 1979 for the Small Business Association of New England by Stewart A Washburn CMC, FIMC, for The New England Chapter of The Institute of Management Consultants USA (IMC USA). Richard C.TenEyck CMC, FIMC, edited the initial manual for national publication. He later served as Chairman of IMC USA.
Despite numerous fads and changes during the ensuing years, no significant portion of the original content changed. This attests not only to the fundamental nature of the material, but also to the dedication of members of IMC USA to building the management consulting profession.

How-to articles - Performance
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/ph/2509?sid=49
___________________________________________________

dy>

Information about query performance in an Access database Describes the tips and the techniques that you can use to improve the performance of your queries in Access 2000 databases, in Access 2002 databases, and in Access 2003 databases.

How to keep a Jet 4.0 database in top working condition By default, Microsoft Jet is the database engine that is used in Microsoft Access. This article describes best practices that you can use to help keep your Jet database in top working condition. This article describes databases that are running in…

Defragment and compact database to improve performance Explains that you can defragment your hard disk and compact your database to imporve the performance of Microsoft Access ___________________________________________________ These are an example of searching for ways to optimize an Access Application for a client. The location to goto and search Microsoft for information? That place is known as the Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1) and can be very helpful. It also can be very confusing. The reason is partially due to asking the right questions sysndrome. I have seen people spend most of a day trying to find answers at the big M and not find really what they needed. One trick is to GOOGLE a little first. (http://www.google.com/) By doing this you are actually looking for hints on how to phrase your question. Put in all the words you think may work, see what you get. Put in two words, see what you get. Put in three words, try that. Keep in mind that your goal is to find out how to ‘ask the question.’ Now, you may find your answer on Google, and or you may find links back to Microsoft’s Knowledge Base. The key here is to try different angles to the same problem. You will get the best results that way. LUCK!

Business intelligence

Medical informatics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_informatics

Medical Informatics is the name given to the application of information technology to healthcare. It is the:

Medical informatics is often called health informatics or biomedical informatics, and forms part of the wider domain of eHealth. These later-generation terms reflect the substantive contribution of the citizen & non-medical professions to the generation and usage of healthcare data and related information. Additionally, medical informaticians are active in bioinformatics and other fields not strictly defined as health care.

Aspects of the field

These include:

• architectures for electonic medical records and other health information systems used for billing, scheduling or research.
• decision support systems in healthcare
• messaging standards for the exchange of information between health care information systems (e.g. through the use of the HL7 data exchange standard) - these specifically define the means to exchange data, not the content
• controlled medical vocabularies such as the Standardized Nomenclature of Medicine, Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) or Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC) - used to allow a standard, accurate exchange of data content between systems and providers.
• use of hand-held or portable devices to assist providers with data entry/retrieval or medical decision-making

More information at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_informatics

Database

Consultant

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consultant

A consultant is a professional that provides expert advice in a particular domain or area of expertise such as accountancy, information technology, the law, human resources, marketing, medicine, finance or more esoteric areas of knowledge, for example engineering and scientific specialties such as materials science, instrumentation, avionics, and stress analysis. See related Certified Management Consultant and MBA.

How a consultant works

Often the consultant provides expertise to customers which only rarely or occasionally require this particular type of knowledge, thus providing an economy to the client.

More recently the term is also used somewhat euphemistically to mean a person that is only temporarily employed by a company and working under the company’s direction in a skill area that the company already has, in other words as an adjunct to the company’s core set of employees. This usually implies that the consultant is more expendable when the demand for that particular skill diminishes.

Often a consultant is not an independent agent but is a partner or an employee of a consultancy, that is a company that provides consultants to clients on a larger scale or in multiple, though usually related, skill areas.

A consultant giving career advice and training to an individual or a team is a Coach (see Coaching)

Consultants are very pervasive in upper management in most industries. New trends are spread through corporations by the efforts of consultants, such as Six Sigma.

There are also independent consultants/directors who are interim executives or non-executives with decision-making power under corporate policies/statute. They sit on boards or committees.

Why Hire a Consultant or HOW TO Hire a Consultant

More information at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consultant

Root … the source … the first entry. In Root you will find generalities about the industry of Informatics Business Systems and Business.

Welcome.