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Data is everywhere, but it is disconnected. Marketing campaigns don't benefit from the latest product knowledge. Sales prospecting activities are not reflected back to management and other staff, which creates embarrassing overlaps in communications. No one can give the executives a consolidated report because no single system has all the data. Information abounds, but no one can answer the question "How are we doing?" without hours of data crunching from different systems.

Google has several former NASA scientists on its staff, he explained, and forging a relationship with its Silicon Valley neighbor just made sense "It was a very natural collaboration. NASA has an interest in high-power computing and many other technical things," Pederson said....

His staff is discussing partnerships with many of the Internet's heavy hitters, he said. Potential partners include AOL, Yahoo, Google OneBigPlanet is getting traction at every level and with key players, he explained. For example, Aubertin is looking at a dozen different comm...

Once you have made your immediate improvements and talked to your staff, you need to think about ascertaining where you are today and creating plans for what you want to achieve in the future. Here are some sample questions to ask and goals to set for improvement. Current St...

It's too late for any large systematic changes to be implemented for this year, Matthew Zimmerman, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told LinuxInsider. However, what should we use down the road? Voter-Verifiable Trail...

Who? Who will the system affect? That is, what are all of the different types of users the system must satisfy? These are sometimes called "actors" or "roles" during analysis. At a minimum, you need to think about sales staff, sales support staff (because you know that salespeople are not administrative by nature), marketing staff, managers, assistants, customers and prospects. It is tempting to skip this step, but if you do some audiences will not be properly represented in the next step and the effort will be shortsighted. This raises the risk of choosing poorly...

Retrain Staff When your people are exhausted, fatigued and disenchanted, train them. After all, at the end of the day, a business is all about people and when the recessionary cycles hit, they hurt everyone....

UHC's compliance efforts also included staff training and education. "We work to continuously ensure the privacy and security of all patient information. We provided all employees with HIPAA training prior to its implementation and all new employees are trained on their first day of employment at the UHC," Younger added.

"We were part of the legal effort to get experts in to see what happened," Matthew Zimmerman, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told LinuxInsider "From the state to the county to the technology vendors, they all moved in lock-step to prevent ...

Passed in 1996, the legislation's privacy rule, which took effect in April 2003, places restrictions on who can share a patient's medical records, with whom and under what circumstances. The regulations govern the dissemination of information from healthcare professionals and their staff as well as insurance companies, billing services, clearinghouses and community health information systems...

However, it's the national economy and U.S. programmers -- particularly those upwards of 30 years old -- that are the losers no matter what form globalization takes, whether it's importing skilled IT staff through the H-1B and L1 visa programs or outsourcing work or operations offshore, contends Norman Matloff, an accomplished IT engineer and computer science professor at University of California, Davis, who has researched the issue extensively.

While outsourcing the contact center in the past has sometimes translated to a lower quality experience for shoppers, it doesn't have to -- as long as the agents are empowered with information to make their interactions effective, efficient and profitable. Retailers must be aware, however, that because more contact centers are being staffed with a transient, geographically diverse workforce (for example work-at-home moms), quality control can becomes an issue.

"H-1B visa workers have played an integral part in the booming IT industry in the U.S. These H-1B workers have created and supported innovations, products and services that have helped all Americans. On average, H-1B professionals will have a two- to three-person, non-H-1B U.S citizen support staff created for the high level position that the H-1B holder assumes," added David Silver, principal attorney at Darren Silver & Associates, a law firm that specializes in assisting small, medium-sized and Fortune 500 companies with H-1B and L1 visa application processes...

In the case of the award-winning journalists and writers of Common Ties, using a wiki for collaboration is integral to the central mission of the company. Common Ties is built on collaboration; writers submit powerful true stories to the editorial staff, which pairs them with artists who can illustrate them. The end result is amazing: haunting 50-word stories, each with a single accompanying image...

No additional staff or infrastructure. With a SaaS-based solution, a company does not have to bear the burden of an upfront investment in hardware, software and personnel. Not only is that costly, but, as mentioned above, it is very difficult to accomplish in today's competitive security hiring environment. And all the costs involved in building a scalable infrastructure and technology are borne by the SaaS provider...

SAP said it was "living the Web 2.0" -- which is the harbinger of its cultural change. "Now, I treated that as a marketing claim until I had the ability to speak with some of the senior management at the conference (from CEO Henning Kagermann -- a really nice guy -- to SVPS of varying title to VPs to some of the less senior) and I had the ability to listen in on some 'ordinary' organic conversations -- and I think they are being authentic. "Keep in mind, I'm a skeptic not by nature but by profession to some degree. But the level of interest and activity among a decidedly younger management and staff than I expected (given that I'd talked with several of them in the past) around Web 2.0 tools and the freedom to innovate which seems to have seized control over the last year or so or some more recent time period is amazing."

While natural language speech recognition solutions can bring a plethora of benefits, creating an effective speech application is not a trivial exercise. It takes expertise, forethought and detailed planning to avoid pitfalls, mitigate risk and deliver a compelling return on investment. Most organizations don't have speech application expertise on staff, so outside help is essential. ...

"It appears that every time a National Security Letter recipient has challenged an NSL in court and forced the government to justify it, the government has ultimately withdrawn its demand for records," commented union staff attorney Melissa Goodman. "In the absence of much needed judicial oversight -- and with recipients silenced and the public in the dark -- there is nothing to stop the FBI from abusing its NSL power."

Members of the Second Life community, meanwhile, "including Linden Lab staff, actively monitor against minors accessing the service," the company went on. "Suspected minors must provide proof of age, and if this is not provided, they are blocked from the adult Second Life grid and directed to Teen Second Life." ...

Where Jobs gets stuck is that he doesn't get that in the PC segment, for about 70 percent of the market, IT gets the "No" vote, and they are understaffed and overworked, not "bozos." In addition, while he is a craftsman, he really doesn't represent the average user, nor is he an engineer -- so products, while beautiful, often lack capabilities that many require because Jobs doesn't see the requirement...