What Is The True Cost Of Internet Surfing At Work?

With the amount of information accessible on the Internet, combined with threats by viruses, worms, malicious code, spyware, and disruptions to service attacks - a threat to business productivity and profitability has always existed. This threat goes unnoticed by many business owners, especially in the small to mid market space.

Gone are the days of businesses purely protecting their networks with connection based, or stateful packet inspection firewalls. The threats have changed and SMB/Mid Market companies require a firewall solution to provide connection based protection and also content based security, by protecting their networks from Spyware, Virus/Worms, Intrusions and Content at the perimeter. All businesses require this type of solution immediately, the threats are real, and you just need to look at your Outlook inbox every day to see how real it is. However, many small businesses still to this day, believe it will never happen to them.

Employees personal use of business Internet causes a loss of productivity and hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. This combined with how businesses and personal computers are being targeted by hackers or criminals through phishing and pharming strategies have changed the way businesses need to look at protecting their networks.

Where are your employees surfing on the Internet? Are they checking their home email? Making personal travel plans? Or even looking for a new job all on your time and expense? Are they spending hours a day on Instant Messaging applications with their friends? What content are they looking at? Can you as a business owner be liable for this? And this is the big one when it comes to company confidentiality, are any of your employees sharing confidential corporate information with your competition?

What is the true cost of all of this loss productivity? If you have a business of 25 employees and they surf the Internet for personal use for one hour a day. This equals a total of 6,250 hours per year assuming that everyone takes two weeks of vacation. If your companys average salary is $15.00 per hour, this will equate to $93,750.00 in loss productivity every year, and this number will continue to rise as you give out raises.

Many small businesses are also seeing a rise in their technology support due to increased threats and spyware/malware infections due to inappropriate surfing and download of peer to peer file sharing applications and messaging applications. Employee Internet surfing has generated a high number of service calls due to Spyware infections and other virus like challenges with corporate workstations.

What do small business/mid market companies need to do to protect them and keep their employees productive? There are many solutions in place that offer gateway security and also provide content management protection. IT Matters recommends a Unified Threat Management firewall for small business that will provide all the services in one appliance and at a great price.

For bigger companies who already have invested in a stateful or connection based firewall, they can invest in a Content Management Appliance to enhance the security of their corporate network and also allow them to maintain their previous firewall investment. The investment is ensuring your employees remain focused on their tasks and your company remains productive and profitable. The Content Management Firewall starts at $500.00. Remember, you could be spending all kinds of money in loss production and even risking a lot more if you are a publicly traded company and have shareholders to whom you are accountable.

What are you waiting for? The time is now to act before it is too late!

Stuart R. Crawford is the Director of Business Development, at IT Matters Inc. (http://www.itmatters.ca), a SonicWALL Gold Partner, Microsoft Gold Partner, Small Business Specialist and Microsoft IMPACT Award Finalist 2005 - Network Infrastructure Solution of the Year. He can be reached at scrawford@itmatters.ca.

10 Tips To Prevent Erectile Dysfunction (ED)

Erectile dysfunction has been with us for ages causing problems for men (and also their partners) around the world. ED is a repetitive inability to achieve or maintain an erection strong enough for sexual intercourse.

As men get older the occurence of erectile dysfunction increases. Approximately 5% of 40-year-old men and between 15 and 25% of men over 65 experience erectile dysfunction. Alone in the USA more than 15 million men suffer from ED. But it doesnt have to be solely related to age.

You can prevent erectile dysfunction by changing your lifestyle slightly. This is the easiest way that will cost you nothing but strong will, although it takes longer until the results occur. Abide by the rules below and you will have the chance to build a healthier life overall not just to prevent ED.

Just follow these simple steps:

-Exercise regularly the Harvard Health Professionals Follow-up Study

found that men who do some exercise 3 to 5 hours a week face 30% less risk

of having ED. Regular exercising keeps your heart fit and also maintains

the normal blood circulation (especially walking, running, biking).

-Stop smoking smoking causes narrowing of blood vessels, blockages occur

that affect the required blood flow in the penis thus making the erection

more difficult.

-Reduce the excessive consumption of alcohol avoid drinking more than two

alcoholic drinks a day if you are a man or more than one alcoholic drink per

day if you are a woman. Alcohol has a significant impact on your nervous

system and it also damages your blood vessels thus affecting the sexual function.

The same goes for drug abuse.

-Get appropriate nutrition try to avoid foods that contain saturated fats

(cholesterol) and sodium. The best option would be a diet rich in fresh fruits,

vegetables, fiber and whole grains. You should concentrate on a diet that is

friendly to you heart as ED is often related to circulation problems.

-Maintain sexual activity actually, it is a matter of frequent erections that

stimulate flow of blood in the penis.

-Control your stress and fatigue although this is not an easy task you should

try to manage your stress, which belongs to one of the most important psychological

causes of ED.

-Get sufficient sleep without sleeping long enough your body will be under stress

and anxiety for the rest of the day and if this persists a longer period, the stress

will definitely have an effect on the proper function of the penis. 8 hours of sleep

a day should be fine with adults.

-Start doing Kegel exercises this is a simple exercise usually performed by pregnant

women. To perform such exercise youll have to tighten and release the pelvic muscles,

which are responsible for the control of urination.

-Take care of your anxiety and depression to get rid of depression or anxiety it is

best to seek a doctors help.

-Regularly check your blood sugar optimal blood sugar levels may prevent the complication

of blood vessels and nerves that usually cause erectile dysfunction. Ask your doctor

for advice.

If you lack strong will or you want to get results instantly you can try to buy Cialis online. However, Cialis or other impotence drugs do not cure the initial causes of erectile dysfunction, they help you to be more self-confident during your sexual activities, though.

But talk to your doctor first if you feel you might have problems with maintaining an erection or you would like to try out some of the erectile dysfunction medications.

You can find more information on erectile dysfunction and Cialis such as buying-drugs-online-safely tips, fresh news, Cialis side effects, precautions, dosage and other resources at www.buycialisonlineorder.com.

http://www.buycialisonlineorder.com

How To Use Piano Chords To Create Complete Sections Of Music

Everyone wants to learn the "secret shortcuts" that will make improvising/composing music easier. And why not? Do you think professional composers don't use them? They do.

What I'm about to show you will have you blocking out sections of music in no time.

If you've been reading my articles about composition, you no doubt have heard me say that a composition is the art of repetition and contrast. And it's true! But before we get to the contrast part, we have to start somewhere. And that's where "sections" come in.

For example, in Lesson 4: "Morning Mist," we use a crossover pattern in the left hand while the right hand improvises a melody. In fact, this is a perfect combination of improvisation and composition because what we have here is a 12 bar phrase repeated twice.

Now, in the lesson itself, I don't tell you it's a 12 bar phrase because I just wanted you to learn how to improvise. But, the fact is that's what this lesson is compositionally.

Here's what it looks like when charted out - chart for Morning Mist (pdf file)

Notice that only 3 chords are used here. But 3 chords are all we need to create this section of music. Essentially, this is a harmonic loop. We use the chords to create a background upon which we improvise our melodies.

Now, after improvising our melody, we may like what we hear and want to memorialize it thus turning this into a full-fledged composition.

The easiest way to create these harmonic loops is to simply pick a key, then a few chords from the key and start improvising with them. Then, when you feel like you're on to something you like, simply chart out when the chords change and that's that. You've created a harmonic loop

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music's online piano lessons He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Visit www.quiescencemusic.com/piano_lessons.html now and get a FREE piano lesson!

If You Want To Go Broke As A Web-Developer Let Me Tell You How.

If you want to go broke as a web-developer let me tell you how.

Early on in my web development career I tried to re-invent the wheel I set up everything from scratch including my customers! I wasted about 5 months and about $20,000.00 on collecting content from them. I heard all the excusesI will have the content to you by Monday. When Monday would roll around I would hearmy kids had soccer games all weekend and I just couldnt get to it.I promise I will have my logos and word docs to you on Friday.. When Friday came around and I would call, .OhIt has been such a busy weekI am so over worked right now I promise I will get it to you next week sometime!

I tried to stay faithful to get that original content and graphics from them. Till I was almost short on making my payroll! Then it all came to a complete stop! I decided to hire and farm out the content. Also I implemented a content management system! Genius.and the bank roll came back.

If you are in the web development game let me help you out here.Save your self some time and moneyFarm out the content to a content writer for a couple of hundred bucksIt will save you about $2000 in time and expenses. Forget about the emails and the follow up calls and gas over to your clients and the disappointment I guarantee you will always get when it comes to content. Customers dont have time! When they originally are trying to save costs on web-development and think they can cut corners. The only thing that they cut is your profit margin in half! ©

Sept 21, 2006
Serena Murphy
http://www.webcarrots.com
serena@webcarrots.com
Las Vegas, Nevada
1-866-840-5505

Serena Murphy is owner and operator of http://Webcarrots.com a web development company that specialized in dynamic web development and online marketing of websites in Las Vegas, Nevada