Top Career Web Sites for Children and Teens

Career assessments and tests help you explore who you. Career books and web sites give you a glimpse of the world of work. Free career information is available on web sites. Some writers have written facts for children and teens. We would like to share some information with you. These web sites use graphics, multimedia presentation, activities, and other techniques to expand our knowledge of careers. We have written information on seventeen (17) web sites. Here are the four different types of exploring careers web sites:

Curriculum

General Career Information

Science Career Clusters

Specific Science Careers

Curriculum Web Sites

Curriculum web sites provide activities, tests, guidelines, as well as career information.

Resource One: Career Cruiser

Source: Florida Department of Education

The Career Cruiser is a career exploration guidebook for middle school students. The Career Cruiser has self assessment activities to match personal interests to careers. The Career Cruiser has information on Holland Codes. Careers are grouped into 16 career clusters. The Career Cruiser has information on occupational descriptions, average earnings, and minimum educational level required for the job.

Teacher’s Guide is also available.

Resource Two: Elementary Core Career Connection

Source: Utah State Office of Education

The Core Career Connections is a collection of instructional activities, K to 6, and 7 to 8, designed by teachers, counselors, and parents. Each grade level has instructional activities that align directly with the Utah State Core. This instructional resource provides a framework for teachers, counselors, and parents to integrate career awareness with the elementary and middle level grade students.

Career Information Web Sites

Some web sites provide excellent career information. Some web sites list facts about job tasks, wages, career outlook, interests, education, and more.

Resource Three: Career Voyages

Source: U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Education

The Career Voyages web site is a Career Exploration web site for Elementary School students. The Career Voyages web site has information about the following industries:

Advanced Manufacturing

Automotive

Construction

Energy

Financial Services

Health Care

Hospitality

Information Technology

Retail

Transportation

Aerospace and the “BioGeoNano” Technologies

Resource Four: Career Ship

Source: New York State Department of Labor

Career Ship is a free online career exploration tool for middle and high school students.

Career Ship uses Holland Codes and the O*NET Career Exploration Tools. For each career, Career Ship provides the following information:

Tasks

Wages

Career outlook

Interests

Education

Knowledge

Skills

Similar careers

Career Ship is a product of Mapping Your Future, a public service web site providing career, college, financial aid, and financial literacy information and services.

RESOURCE FIVE: Career Zone

Source: New York State Department of Labor

Career Zone is a career exploration and planning system. Career Zone has an assessment activity that identifies Holland Codes. Career Zone provides information on 900 careers from the new O*NET Database, the latest labor market information from the NYS Department of Labor and interactive career portfolios for middle and high school students that connect to the NYS Education Department Career Plan initiative. Career Zone has links to college exploration and planning resources, 300 career videos, resume builder, reference list maker, and cover letter application.

Resource Six: Destination 2020

Source: Canada Career Consortium

Destination 2020 helps youth discover how everyday tasks can help them build skills they will need to face the many challenges of the workforce.

Skills are linked to:

School Subjects

Other School Activities

Play Activities At Home

Work at Home

Through quizzes, activities and articles, they might actually find some answers or, at least, a direction about their future. There are more than 200 profiles of real people who are describing what a day at work is like for them.

Resource Seven: What Do You Like

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

What Do You Like is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Career web site for kids. The web site provides career information for students in Grades 4 to 8. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most of the material on the site has been adapted from the Bureau’s Occupational Outlook Handbook,a career guidance publication for adults and upper level high school students that describes the job duties, working conditions, training requirements, earnings levels, and employment prospects of hundreds of occupations. Careers are matched to interests and hobbies. In the Teacher’s Guide, there are twelve categories and their corresponding occupations.

Science Career Clusters

Some organizations have created web sites that feature science careers.

Resource Eight: EEK! Get a Job Environmental Education for Kids

Source: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

Eek! Get a Job Environmental Education for Kids is an electronic magazine for kids in grades 4 to 8. Eek! Get a Job provides information about:

Forestry

Hydrogeologist

Engineering

Herpetologist

Park Ranger

Wildlife Biologist

Park Naturalist

There is a job description for each career, a list of job activities, suggested activities to begin exploring careers, and needed job skills.

Resource Nine: GetTech

Source: National Association of Manufacturers, Center for Workforce Success, U.S. Department of Commerce, and U.S Department of Labor

Get Tech is a educational web site that provides CAREER EXPLORATION information.
Get Tech has information about the following industries:

New Manufacturing

Information Technology

Engineering and Industrial Technology

Biotechnology and Chemistry

Health and Medicine

Arts & Design

Within each area, there are examples of careers.

Each career profile gives:

General description

Salary

Number of people employed to job

Number of jobs available in the future

Place of work

Level of education required

Location of training programs: University Pharmacy Programs.

Courses needed

There is a Get Tech Teacher’s Guide.

Resource Ten: LifeWorks

Source: National Institutes of Health, Office of Science Education

LifeWorks is a career exploration web site for middle and high school students. LifeWorks has information on more than 100 medical science and health careers. For each career, LifeWorks has the following information:

Title

Education required

Interest area

Median salary

True stories of people who do the different jobs

LifeWorks has a Career Finder that allows you to search by Name of Job, Interest Area, Education Required, or Salary.

Resource Eleven: San Diego Zoo Job Profiles for Kids

Source: San Diego Zoo

San Diego Zoo Job Profiles discussed jobs for people who:

Work with animals

Work with plants

Work with science and conservation

Work with people

Work that helps run the Zoo and Park

There are activities listed under each area, for example:

What we do

What is cool about this job

Job challenges

How this job helps animals

How to get a job like this

Practice Being a …

How to Become a …

Resource Twelve: Scientists in Action!

Source: U.S. Department of the Interior

Scientists in Action features summaries of the lives of people involved in careers in the natural sciences:

Mapping the planets

Sampling the ocean floor

Protecting wildlife

Forecasting volcanic eruptions

Resource Twelve: Want To Be a Scientist?

Source: Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of the Agriculture

Want To Be a Scientist is a career exploration web site for kids about 8 to 13 years old. Want To Be a Scientist has a series of job descriptions, stories, and other resources about what scientists do here at the ARS.

These stories include information about:

Plant Pathologist

Chemist

Soil Scientist

Entomologist

Animal Scientist

Microscopist

Plant Physiologist

Specific Science Careers

The last group of web sites is dedicated to providing information on specific science careers, for example veterinarians,

Resource Thirteen: About Veterinarians

Source: American Veterinary Medical Association

About Veterinarians has facts about:

What is a Veterinarian?

Becoming a Veterinarian

Making a Career Decision

What Personal Abilities Does a Veterinarian Need?

What Are the Pluses and Minuses of a Veterinary Career?

Veterinary Education

General Information

After Graduation From Veterinary School

General Information

School Statistics

Preparation Advice

Preveterinary Coursework

Where Most Schools Are Located

About School Accreditation

The Phases of Professional Study

The Clinical Curriculum

The Academic Experience

Roles of Veterinarians

Private Practice

Teaching and Research

Regulatory Medicine

Public Health

Uniformed Services

Private Industry

Employment Outlook

Employment Forecast

The Advantage of Specializing

Statistics

Greatest Potential Growth Areas

Other Professional Directions

AVMA Veterinary Career Center

Becoming a Veterinary Technician

Your Career in Veterinary Technology

Duties and Responsibilities

Career Opportunities

Education Required

Distance Learning

Salary

Professional Regulations

Organizations

Further Information

Resource Fourteen: Aquarium Careers

Source: Monterey Bay Aquarium

Aquarium Careers features careers information. For each Staff Profiles, there is Educational Background and Skills Needed. The Staff Profiles include:

Aquarist

Education Specialist

Exhibits Coordinator

Exhibit Designer

Research Biologist

Science Writer

The Aquarium Careers web site answers the following questions:

What should I do now to prepare for a career in marine biology?

Where can I find a good college for marine biology?

What should be my college major?

How do I pick a graduate school?

I’m not sure of my area of interest. What should I do?

Marine Science Career Resources include information on:

Marine Advanced Technology Education

Marine Mammal Center, California

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, California

Scripps Library

Sea Grant

Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station

State University of New York at Stony Brook

Resource Fifteen: Engineering The Stealth Profession

Source: Discover Engineering

Engineering The Stealth Profession has a lot of information about engineers:

Types of Engineers

Aerospace Engineering

Ceramic/Materials Engineering

Chemical Engineering

Civil Engineering

Electrical/Computer Engineering

Environmental Engineering

Industrial Engineering

Manufacturing Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Other Engineers

True Stories

Salaries

Education Required

Work Schedules

Equipment Used

Resource Sixteen: Sea Grant Marine Careers

Source: Marine Careers

Sea Grant Marine Careers gives you facts about marine career fields and to people working in those fields. Sea Grant Marine Careers outlines information on:

Marine Biology

Oceanography

Ocean Engineering

Related Fields

In each area, there is a detailed description of the type of the work that the scientists do. There are feature stories for different scientists in the career field.

The career profiles include information on:

What is your current job and what does it entail?

What was the key factor in your career decision?

What do you like most about your career?

What do you like least about your career?

What do you do to relax?

Who are your heroes/heroines?

What advice would you give a high school student who expressed an interest in pursuing a career in your field?

Are career opportunities in your field increasing or decreasing and why?

What will you be doing 10 years from today?

What is the salary range?

Resource Seventeen: Do You Want to Become a Volcanologist?

Source: Volcano World

Do You Want to Become a Volcanologist? provides the following descriptions:

The Word Volcanologist

Daily work

Traits for success

Education

Salaries

Career web sites help you build awareness of the different aspects of careers: the tasks, wages, career outlook, interests, education, knowledge, and skills. We know that you will be fun exploring careers.

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Posted by floridian - January 27, 2012 at 8:55 pm

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A Behind the Scenes and Almost Underground Tour of Disney World By a Former Disney Cast Member

OK, OK, so you’ve been to Disney World about 87 times.

But how would you like an exclusive, private tour to see Walt Disney World as few ever will? As a former Disney World Cast Member I have volunteered to be your tour guide through the behind-the-scenes world of what makes Disney World so magical.

You’ll have fun learning about a variety of backstage locations. We’ll also take a peek under the Magic Kingdom Park and see Cast Member costuming, wardrobe, the so-called tunnel system, Disney’s nursery and tree farm, waste treatment facilities and other service areas.

Let’s start at the end, with sludge. Sludge from the water treatment facility is everybody’s business dried out and then used on the grounds for fertilizer. Reclaimed tinkle water is used for watering grass and plants. The water valves are labeled “Reclaimed Water – Do No Drink” Thanks for the heads up, Mickey!

Now we’ll visit the plant nursery. Remember all those cool and cute topiary designs around the park? Well, this is where Disney Cast Members grow and shape the topiary critters. All this coolness takes time; about seven to eight years to grow a single topiary character. One of my personal favorites is a smiling Mickey Mouse holding a Disney Vacation Club [http://www.edisneytimeshare.com] sign near the entrance to the Wilderness Lodge Hotel.

Then there is the parade storage area behind Splash Mountain. The back of Splash Mountain has many doors labeled, for example, “Access to Scene 31″. Here you’ll see Mickey Mania, Spectromagic, and the Electric Water Parade paraphernalia. You can walk around and look at the parade pieces all you want. But no photos please. The Spectromagic floats are made of mesh, so the driver can see out, and are covered with small Christmas-type lights controlled by computers. There is also a small fan to cool down the driver. If you or the kids have always wanted to look inside the Sea Witch float from The Little Mermaid, this is your big chance.

When I was a Disney cast member I strolled the tunnels on my breaks and dined in the underground cafeterias. Very romantic. Actually, the tunnels are fake. Since the water table is very high in Florida it would be costly to keep real tunnels dry. Disney thus built a neat system of utility corridors at ground level and then covered them with dirt. This made a new ground level one floor higher. The Magic Kingdom was built on top of this. Therefore, Main Street USA is actually on the second floor.

The “Utilidors” make a circle around the park connecting all of the Lands and rides. There is also a utility corridor under Main Street USA connecting the entrance to Cinderella’s Castle. All of the Magic Kingdom utilities are nestled within the Utilidors. There is water, electricity, fiber optic cable, and the ultra-cool Vacuum Trash System.

The Disney World Vacuum Trash System has become a model for several other very large buildings, and even parts of cities and municipalities. The system uses pipes about two feet in diameter to suck all the trash to a central collection point.

Another unusual device in the Utilidors supplies the various odors to different parts of the park. There is one under the bakery that releases chocolate cookie smell into Main Street. Mickey wanted to use real cookie smell, as I recall. But, alas, there was no way to produce non-stop chocolate chip morsels. So, these odor producer machines are used for cookies and that just-right smell in many other places; smoke, orange groves, and so forth

The Utilidor also has various Cast Member services like a Credit Union, a 2-Hour Film Developer, cafeterias, and lockers. Costuming and wardrobe is also located down here. When I worked there I was always amused to see my favorite characters wandering around half dressed or carrying their heads. The walls of the Utilidors are color coded. There are also many maps and directional signs to help lost Cast Members (like me).

So when you visit Disney World for your 88th trip, keep an eye peeled for a sudden and magical character appearance. Mickey or Minnie may just pop out of a hidden door leading from the Utilidor below. And you’ll know their secret!

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Posted by floridian - January 27, 2012 at 5:54 pm

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Easy Rankings in Google and Other Search Engines

The lifeblood of any business- large or small, commercial or charitable, online or offline, relies on two things: traffic and conversion. Whether you are trying to get people to donate on cancer research, buy exercise equipment, or simply enter in the email address or zip code, you need both a means to get traffic to these offers and a means to convert them. However, the one thing that you must be capable at above all else in business is the generation of traffic. Too many business owners think they can head out and create a masterful product that would-in theory-convert like crazy. But then they don’t do much in the way of actually getting people to see their product or service. Though the problem of getting people to see your offer is universal for businesses, it’s probably most easily remedied in online business. That is, you don’t need to pay thousands for TV spots or spend precious time, money, and energy creating and putting up fliers to advertise your business if you start out online. The reason for this is that the more digital you are, the more of an audience you can reach at any point in time, 24/7. Just ask creators of ebooks and internet courses. They have a completely digital business, and using complex web based software and technology, can step away for prolonged periods of time and let the business run itself. The main points of this post are to enlighten those starting a business like this on the most effective, long term strategy for getting traffic. This strategy is known in the inner circles of internet business owners as search engine optimization, or SEO.

Search engine optimization quite simply means optimizing a webpage or an entire web property or plethora of web properties, for better rankings in search engines. Search engines are where 90% of people on the internet go to first when they want anything- information, a product, a service, or to socially connect with others. The three big search engines- and the only ones you really should worry about for SEO- are: Google, Yahoo!, and MSN/Bing. They are placed in that same order in terms of which one has the most market share, to the least. So Google has the most searches (some research estimates over 70% of searches on the internet are done through Google), with Yahoo! And Bing/MSN coming in a little later. If you are a search engine optimizer, then you’re going to want to make your web property appear at least on the first page of results in one of these. That’s at the least. The absolute best case scenario for a search engine optimizer is to get a website ranking at the absolute top of all three search engines. However, ranking in Google is probably the best goal starting out of the gate, as they get the most searches performed on their search engine. Now naturally this is all very basic information, you should also be aware that search engine optimization without really knowing the market your business is in would do little to help you get traffic. That means you have to optimize your site for keyword(s) that get a lot of searches in Google and the like, but also that pertain to your website and offer. There are many places to find out how to determine what people would search for to look for an offer of your type, but the best item in your arsenal is your own brain. What would you type in to find whatever your website is about?

Now how does one get those coveted first page rankings without going through much trouble? First of all, you should realize that these “easy rankings” are not meant to be the be all end all of your internet business. Nonetheless, these strategies do work, and if you are willing to consistently work with the different web properties mentioned through the rest of this article then you will eventually garner a lot of money from using them. Now to the basics of the strategy to gain higher rankings in Google and other search engines.

When people think about making money with websites they often times focus on building a beautiful, extravagant website. Then they leave it untouched, or mention it on a few forums and social networking sites, like Facebook, and figure the rest of the work is up to the Gods of the internet. When, in truth, it should be the opposite. Though you don’t want to avoid putting effort into building your website, and build a website that looks like crap, you would probably be interested to know that there are several hundred thousand websites that are designed to look awful, and instead the focus is on getting them to the top of search engines, which they manage because of the promotion using the techniques in this article. These sites are monetized through Google AdSense, a program that pays the webmaster whenever someone visits and clicks on an ad. However you monetize your site, however you will need to do more than make a crappy website and let it sit. You will need to actively promote it. The best way to do this, is through articles.

Article marketing has been around for a long time now. The basic idea behind it is to write an article about a keyword you would want someone to find your website for, and then post it to a very powerful article directory, or a site which houses a compilation of articles. EzineArticles, for example, or Articlesbase. These sites are excellent to use for article marketing, because you can plug a link back to your site (backlink, in SEO terminology) with the anchor text (the text you click on in a website link- it’s usually blue but when you click it, it changes color) the keyword you want your site to rank for. Article marketing has two benefits:

1. Article directories are powerful, so any article added to them has a better chance of being ranked for its key term. You can capitalize on this by writing for keywords that don’t have a lot of competition, or long tail keywords. Instead of writing on the highly competitive key phrase “weight loss” write on “realistic weight loss plan”. You can rank easier for this one than just “weight loss”

2. You can start getting traffic pretty instantly, and you are building up your domain authority for your main website by adding articles over a long period.

Now how do you get started? Well, first of all you should make a list of keywords you want your main web site to rank for. Try to start out small, and maybe add more as you start to rank. Once your site has an initial five or six pages ranking in Google, Yahoo!, or MSN/Bing, you will be able to rank easier with added pages. Start out with 5-10 key phrases, and then write a post or article on your own website about each of the key phrases, perhaps highlighting how your product deals with the specific issue or is an excellent alternative to a common solution. Now for each of these phrases you should write another article at an article directory and link them back to your pages with the anchor text being the targeted keyword of the page on your own site. For example, write a main post on your own site about “Healthy Weight Loss in Florida”, then, write an article at EzineArticles.com, and give it a similar (but catchier title), put the keyword in the article once every 100 words, and then use the anchor text “healthy weight loss in Florida” and link it back to your website’s post. It can be tiring to write so much, but just get into the routine of writing articles every day. Two 300-500 word articles can be completed in under an hour, especially if you know a lot about your subject matter. Another useful trick is to use article syndication. One way you can do this is to manually post your articles at different article websites, or you can pay for a service that will post articles in various places. Provide a backlink to your website in all of the articles that are syndicated and you will be in good shape on any key term you target

It may seem like a lot of work for high rankings, but this strategy isn’t “effortless”, it’s just “easy”. And when you compare getting rankings in search engines to get traffic to advertising out on high ways or putting up thousands of fliers, it most certainly is easy to get rankings! Follow the steps outlined and continue for as long as it takes for you to see your website rise to the top of search engines. It will be well worth it!

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Posted by floridian - January 27, 2012 at 1:28 pm

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The Successful Circumvention Of Cable And Satellite: Apple iTV Opens The Living Room For Podcasters

Apple may have successfully circumvented traditional cable and satellite networks by bringing interconnectivity of personal media to the living room. This is something Microsoft has been trying to do for quite some time. Job’s success with the marketing and sales of the ipod coupled with the fast growth of podcasting has led to a new organic audio and video marketplace that doesn’t rely on traditional distribution sources. Combined together the iPod and podcasting will now effectively become its own independent free internet cable network, thanks to Apple’s iTV due for release in Q1 of 2007 for $299.00.

With a direct link to the living room of potentially 50 million iTunes and iPod owners, the market for podcasting should become extremely competitive and begin to resemble traditional cable and satellite networks in the early days. The very noticeable difference being that podcasting will allow independent producers and individuals to compete in a market with corporate giants where theoretically anyone who develops programs or content that is popular enough can place sponsorship and begin earning revenues from their subscriber and viewer base.

These podcast markets have started developing over the past year, and the audio market is beginning to build a solid foundation. The video podcasting market is really non existent so far. There are independent podcast producers and corporate giants who are placing existent sponsors into podcast placements deals; however there is no viable open market yet to develop for independent and individual podcast producers; like some suggest “ad sense” did for Google and Ebay has done for everyone. As these markets continue to grow and evolve, and as media buyers begin to allocate more of their budgets for podcast and video over the net placement, we will see the first step in the segmentation of mass media into geographic and niche markets as so many people have spoken of. The same way Apple put podcasting on worldwide radar last June with its integration into iTunes; “code name iTV” will change the development and distribution model for media moving forward. The actual product will have to concentrate on the clarity of the picture that is received on the TV set, because this will be the most scrutinized area for users. The concept of integration is a fantastic; it’s just the speed of the technology that will make the user doubtful if at all.

With the track record of Apple media related products, I imagine this device will end up surpassing initial expectations, eventually becoming a regular fixture in 5-10% of homes across the US in the next 14-18 months. The hardware works with iTunes which works on a PC or a Mac so the market in a sense, is gigantic. In fact you do not even have to own an iPod to use “iTV”; it works in conjunction with your computer and an 802.11wireless connection. This gives the device a reach into 90% of the homes in the United States with broadband internet connections.

Again I see a new era rushing towards us for segmentation of markets in media. Whether these markets are new or fragments of existing ones, they present potential for a wide array of new media ventures in a social media web 2.0 world.

What I Want Podcasting specializes in the commercial application of these technologies for corporate business models. They work with the Real Estate and Home Building industry, Travel, Medical, Concert, and Health & Fitness. They help these industries utilize technologies such as podcasting and video over the internet to enhance current business models.

Clients in 2006 have included Taylor Woodrow Homes, Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues, and Baptist Hospital South Florida.

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Posted by floridian - January 27, 2012 at 9:02 am

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Coast to Coast – An Incident Response Article

Disclaimer:

The following is an account of an intrusion event that I handled many years ago. I am no long involved with any of the parties mentioned in this article.

The client targeted was a financial institution and, here, will be called “the Bank.” Some techniques and details of this incident will be omitted, for obvious reasons. The names and specific locations have also been changed. There are different ways people conduct incident response and handling. That’s why there are 31 flavors of ice cream.

Tuesday morning started off like any other day. I was sitting in my office with my morning cup of coffee when my phone rang. My boss stated that he had received a call from a client, the Bank, stating that they were being attacked by hackers. Until that day, I had no working knowledge of the Bank’s infrastructure nor did I know if the staff had the experience or expertise to correctly identify an actual attack versus a port scan, probe, virus, etc. Through my experiences working in security, I have come to realize that a lot people use buzz words like “hackers” to identify events that they do not thoroughly understand.

The initial information I had was sketchy at best. I learned that the Bank had firewall on the front end along with a NIDS and were in the process of implementing the ASA solution into the infrastructure. I contacted the Chief Information Officer of the Bank as I grabbed my laptop bag and headed to their corporate office. I wanted to get a first-hand assessment of their current situation. The information he provided told me they were experiencing something more than just a simple port scan or viral annoyance.

The CIO stated that they were having trouble with an attacker continually modifying the Bank’s customer login portal. They believed this modified page was allowing the attackers to collect the Bank’s customers ATM information in order to create duplicate ATM cards. Branch transactions reports showed that the attackers were successfully withdrawing customers’ funds. The Bank was initially alerted to the attacks when customers started reporting unauthorized ATM withdrawals from their accounts. The CIO said he had a “band aid” solution in place, but they really needed to identify the method of entry and stop the attack. The temporary solution had decreased the frequency at which the page was being modified but had not stopped the attack completely. As I pulled into the corporate office, I knew the next several hours were going to be interesting.

During a quick meet and greet with the staff and management in the conference room, I needed to start the flow of information quickly and begin delegating collection tasks. Since the staff had not identified the point(s) of entry, I requested a network diagram of the infrastructure including all branches and especially all network entry points into the network. Additionally, I requested a copy of the firewall logs and configuration, router configuration, access logs, IDS log, IIS log, event logs from the web server, and SQL logs. On the positive side, most of the logs appeared to intact and the history of some spanned back several months. I asked for two copies of each log, the first copy containing the last 12 hours of activity and the second copy, the complete log.

While the reports were being generated, I questioned the staff about the information they knew for fact. Speculation during the information gathering phase can cause more trouble than good, leading to a wild goose chase and a loss of focus on the facts. The M.O. described by management and the staff suggested this was a fairly complex operation that consisted of a group or multiple persons being involved.

The staff stated that they had experienced an identical attack the previous year that resulted in a reported loss of around $30,000 in unauthorized ATM withdrawals. This resulted in the staff making various changes to the firewall configurations, the introduction of IDS monitoring, and changes to other system and network devices. The attacks ceased after these changes were made so the problem was thought to have been corrected. The current attack cycle had resulted in the loss of approximately $25,000 and growing so time was a luxury that could not be afforded. The initial attack profile developed by the staff from the previous and current attacks showed that within 10-20 minutes of the customer’s financial information being collected, the attackers were making an ATM withdrawal from their account. The withdrawals were in the amount of the maximum withdrawal limit set by the Bank of $400 per day. In the event there were insufficient funds in that account, the attackers repeated the process on the next forged ATM card. This method was verified via the ATM surveillance cameras. In order to slow the attackers, the Bank suspended all ATM transactions city-wide in Anyplace, Florida, where the unauthorized transactions were occurring. The unauthorized transaction began again shortly afterward in Anywhere, California. ATM surveillance cameras and transaction reports confirmed the attacker at that location was using the same M.O. that was used in Florida.

The staff installed an automated webpage publishing program that would monitor the content of the customer login portal periodically and republish the original when the modified page was found. The stop-gap measure worked for a couple of hours until the attack frequency changed. At this is point, the Bank decided to seek outside help, and I was called.

Presented with these facts, I began to sift through the growing pile of logs, documents, and diagrams. As it stood, the source of the attack could be coming from the Internet but could also be internally based or backdoor method. Several infrastructural changes had been recently added, that had not been documented on the master diagram and was being updated on the fly. A modem bank resided on the network but was ruled out because it was disabled and used for vendor remote access. The diagram showed that VPN tunnels connected each branch back to corporate. There were only two connections to the Internet, a primary and alternate for DR purposes. The backup connection was verified as being inaccessible externally. The web server was segregated on a network apart from the corporate network and fed by a SQL server located within the corporate network. Once all the requested logs were collected, I started a Nessus scan on the internal network to help locate any possible servers, services, or undocumented communication devices that could be the source. Multitasking and efficiency is the name of the game.

The firewall logs did not show any signs of malicious traffic coming through. Review of the IDS logs did not provide any finger pointing either. The reason for this will be covered later. Additionally, the firewall configuration did not contain any “ANY” source/services rules or configuration error. The router logs did not provide any useful information. Doing any type of event correlation was beginning to look bleak. The IIS logs were the largest and took the longest to acquire because they had to be burned to disc. I started searching through the web server logs looking for any instance where the customer login portal page was requested. Due to its function the search returned several thousand entries. Buried deep within the thousands of entries was a HTTP request containing “xp_cmdshell.” Utilizing this SQL Extended stored procedure function, a FTP GET request was made to a remote server which published the modified page on the web server. This had to be addressed but it did not explain why the firewall or IDS did not log or alert on it. The source IP address of that HTTP request came from the external interface of the firewall. A follow-up status meeting was called to realign the response focus.

I disclosed my findings to the staff and was informed that one of the undocumented infrastructure changes made was that IIS and SQL resided on the same server. The SQL server was moved to the web server based on a recommendation made by their own “security” person, whom I later found out was fired for hosting a porn server on the Bank’s network. (Go figure.) Now that the method had been identified, the next step was to see how bad the configuration was and fix it.

Reviewing the permissions on the IIS/SQL server revealed a host of default permissions both with system security, IIS, and SQL. Oddly enough, the permissions on the IIS log directory were set appropriately. I can only guess that either the attackers could not access the logs, did not know how, or did not care. I was able to separate the web server and SQL server fairly quickly using a secure build document and security checklist. There were also some required coding changes made by their developers. Once everything looked good and tested out with both servers, I began investigating the mystery questions.

Why did the web server show the source address as the firewall when it was on a separate segment? Apparently the IIS server originally resided within the corporate network, and when it was moved, the table of the router was never updated. Traffic destined for the web server was forwarded to the firewall, which in turn forwarded it to the web server. It was one of those weird routing situations that you’d think wouldn’t work, but it does. Long story short, was that the routing table was updated.

Why the IDS system did not alert on any of these attacks? The IDS system was implemented upstream between the firewall and the router, a choice location. However it was connected to a switch which did not support spanning. The staff incorrectly “proved” the IDS functionality by attacking the device directly. As a temporary solution to having a network tap, the switch was replaced with a hub until an upgraded solution could be implemented. It’s not the cleanest of solutions, but it worked in the interim.

Why the firewall did not show any signs of this traffic? The firewall was not configured to log successful inbound connections. It did log successful outbound traffic and I was able to rule out the source of the attack originating from within the corporate network. Connection logging can fill log space on a device very quickly, and this was the case here. I mitigated this by configuring a remote syslog server for the firewall and router logs.

In summary, I located the source of the attacks later that day. It turned out be a compromised server in Sweden owned by an excavation company. I notified them of the intrusion and asked if they would look into it. I tracked down the source of the modified customer login portal page, which was located on one of those “free hosting” sites based in of Tennessee. I sent them a similar request. The Bank stated that they were not going to pursue the attackers even though they had video from the ATM machines and lost over $50,000. They felt that the negative PR was not worth it. Management also said they had been told by the local FBI office in so many words that unless it was over $100,000, the FBI really would not get involved. That statement was never verified.

This insecurity could have been identified more quickly if I had received the web server logs in the beginning, but that was the hand I was dealt at the time. Hindsight is always 20/20. On the days to follow, the attackers attempted the same exploit and many other variants, scans, and probes but were never successful. It would have been nice if, given the opportunity, to identify and catch this group. However, it did make for an interesting day, fighting the bad guys.

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Posted by floridian - January 27, 2012 at 5:17 am

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Nursing Home Fires – 5 Recent and Avoidable Tragedies

Deciding to put a loved one in a nursing home is a very difficult choice. It is emotionally stressful to place someone who has cared for you under the care of strangers. In addition to medical care and daily sustenance, safety is a big concern. If a fire occurs in nursing homes, residents are less able to escape than healthy, independent people. To become more aware of the reality of this threat, take a look at summaries of five cases of nursing home fires and the losses suffered by each.

1. Hampton Plaza Fire of 2008

On May 14, 2008, two men were pronounced dead of apparent smoke inhalation following a nursing home fire in Niles, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, on the third floor of the Hampton Plaza Nursing Home. Two more were injured of the same cause without life-threatening damage. The fire was believed to have been caused from smoking materials stored in a closet, belonging to two residents who smoked. The fire claimed the lives of two residents who were asleep in bed when the fire broke out in very late evening. Upon the firefighters’ arrival four minutes after being alerted, Deputy Fire Chief Steve Borkowski claimed that, “There was zero visibility in the room”1 already filled with smoke. In this case, the facility was equipped with sprinklers and smoke detectors which worked properly and responded effectively to the fire.

2. Governor’s Creek Health and Rehab Fire of 2008

An afternoon fire broke out in Governor’s Creek Health and Rehabilitation Center in Green Cove Springs, Florida in April of 2008. The fire claimed the lives of one resident and injured five patients and three staff members. The fire is believed to have been caused by the deceased victim smoking in bed while using an oxygen machine, allowing for rapid spread of the flames. The concrete structure of the facility contained the fire to one room, allowing staff members to break windows to ventilate other rooms as patients were evacuated. The fire was isolated mainly to the victim’s bed.

3. Mount Pleasant Fire of 2007

On December 30, 2007, Blues legend Weepin’ Willie Robinson was the victim of a fire at Mount Pleasant Home in Boston, Massachusetts. Boston’s “Elder Statesman of the Blues” also was the victim of a fire in his room resulting from smoking in bed. He knew this was against policy but would forget at times, finally claiming his own life just before the new year. Robinson was found when the fire alarm and sprinklers were set off in the early morning hours.

4. Tula Nursing Home Fire of 2007

In November of 2007, 31 residents were killed in a nursing home fire in the Tula region south of Moscow, Russia. The facility was in violation of numerous fire safety codes, including not having a fire alarm. The rapidly moving flames combined with thick smoke claimed the lives of the victims. The wooden interiors of the brick building encouraged the fire’s quick advancement. A short circuit in a second-floor ceiling lamp was the apparent cause of the fire. Survivors claim that the lamp began smoking before crashing to the ground to spark the initial flames. Some residents who escaped with their lives were able to jump from windows out of desperation, even losing consciousness for a time. The facility had previously been under appeal to be shut down in violation of numerous fire safety rules, including replacing the electrical system which had been deemed a fire hazard.

5. Southern Russia Nursing Home Fire of 2007

A southern Russia nursing home lost 62 residents as the result of a fire in March of 2007. The high death toll is attributed to an incomplete alarm system as well as the sluggish response of a watchman who heard two fire alarms and alerted the nursing home staff prior to notifying the fire department, delaying authorities by approximately 21 minutes. Many of the victims were bed-ridden and unable to escape the smoke and flames invading their rooms. The fire came as the deadliest in Russia in more than 15 years. Home to more than 90 residents, the facility violated 36 fire safety standards. The facility contained insufficient equipment to protect against smoke, and the wooden panels lining each room were not flame-proofed.

Nursing Home Fire Safety Factors

It is impossible to be too particular about to whose care you entrust your loved one. When selecting a nursing home, be sure to include fire safety questions in your inquiry such as:

- Does the facility use fire-retardant on combustible materials?

- Does the building meet fire safety code?

- Does the facility have and maintain adequate fire protection equipment such as fire alarms, sprinklers, and extinguishers?

- Will the fire department automatically be alerted of a fire in the building?

- What is the smoking policy of the facility?

Even when all of the fire safety standards are met, there is no guarantee that fires will not ignite or be extinguished before anyone is harmed. In the American instances above, many lives were saved due to the structure of the buildings and the usual quick response of rescue workers. However, even with these assistances, smoke inhalation cannot be remediated if the poisonous gas has already invaded the lungs. In circumstances especially where residents are prone to forgetfulness as in the case of Weepin’ Willie Robinson, fire hazards are always a possibility. It is far better to prevent fires from starting than to extinguish them afterwards.

Paul Galla

1 [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-nursing-home-fire-both-16may16],0,1400649.story

2 http://www.news4jax.com/news/15935283/detail.htmlp

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Posted by floridian - January 27, 2012 at 1:58 am

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Internet/Network Security

Abstract

Homogeneous symmetries and congestion control have garnered limited interest from both cryptographers and computational biologists in the last several years [1]. In fact, few steganographers would disagree with the investigation of spreadsheets. Our focus in this work is not on whether write-back caches and evolutionary programming [13] can cooperate to achieve this intent, but rather on exploring an analysis of Markov models (Eale).

Table of Contents

1) Introduction

2) Related Work

3) Eale Investigation

4) Implementation

5) Results

5.1) Hardware and Software Configuration

5.2) Dogfooding Eale

6) Conclusion

1 Introduction

Many security experts would agree that, had it not been for voice-over-IP, the simulation of the transistor might never have occurred. On the other hand, robots might not be the panacea that computational biologists expected [15]. Next, the basic tenet of this approach is the simulation of the Ethernet. Such a claim at first glance seems counterintuitive but has ample historical precedence. On the other hand, extreme programming alone cannot fulfill the need for embedded modalities.

Two properties make this solution different: our algorithm is based on the deployment of the Turing machine, and also our framework is copied from the principles of e-voting technology. The usual methods for the improvement of reinforcement learning do not apply in this area. In the opinions of many, the basic tenet of this solution is the development of rasterization. It should be noted that Eale explores thin clients. Obviously, we validate that the infamous multimodal algorithm for the development of e-commerce by Kobayashi et al. [14] is Turing complete.

We explore a novel solution for the emulation of DHCP, which we call Eale. daringly enough, we view software engineering as following a cycle of four phases: management, storage, visualization, and synthesis. Even though conventional wisdom states that this issue is mostly overcame by the refinement of I/O automata, we believe that a different approach is necessary. It should be noted that Eale synthesizes Bayesian information. Combined with the partition table, such a hypothesis evaluates a flexible tool for controlling Boolean logic.

Our contributions are twofold. Primarily, we describe new extensible models (Eale), which we use to confirm that voice-over-IP can be made mobile, Bayesian, and scalable. We explore an application for Byzantine fault tolerance (Eale), verifying that the well-known wireless algorithm for the refinement of cache coherence by Lee [16] runs in W(n!) time [1].

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. We motivate the need for erasure coding. Further, to realize this purpose, we confirm not only that local-area networks and voice-over-IP are largely incompatible, but that the same is true for evolutionary programming. Third, to address this issue, we motivate a novel algorithm for the emulation of simulated annealing (Eale), which we use to show that red-black trees can be made heterogeneous, modular, and event-driven. On a similar note, to achieve this purpose, we discover how lambda calculus can be applied to the understanding of journaling file systems. In the end, we conclude.

2 Related Work

While we are the first to explore active networks in this light, much existing work has been devoted to the improvement of multi-processors [3]. Although Christos Papadimitriou also constructed this method, we studied it independently and simultaneously. Unfortunately, these approaches are entirely orthogonal to our efforts.

We now compare our solution to prior autonomous theory solutions [2]. J. Smith [21] originally articulated the need for symbiotic epistemologies. This is arguably fair. The original approach to this question by Wilson and Maruyama [24] was good; however, this finding did not completely fulfill this goal. Further, Watanabe suggested a scheme for controlling the improvement of access points, but did not fully realize the implications of optimal epistemologies at the time. In this position paper, we surmounted all of the obstacles inherent in the previous work. A recent unpublished undergraduate dissertation proposed a similar idea for introspective symmetries [10,4,17,18,12]. The original solution to this quandary [23] was considered typical; on the other hand, this did not completely surmount this grand challenge [19]. This solution is even more costly than ours.

Eale builds on related work in self-learning configurations and algorithms. Along these same lines, Bose and Zheng introduced several stochastic methods, and reported that they have profound impact on multi-processors [6,9,8]. Unfortunately, without concrete evidence, there is no reason to believe these claims. Along these same lines, Martinez developed a similar heuristic, on the other hand we validated that our approach is maximally efficient [20]. Further, Wu et al. developed a similar system, unfortunately we validated that Eale follows a Zipf-like distribution [23]. As a result, the system of Watanabe and Wilson is a private choice for adaptive symmetries [17].

3 Eale Investigation

Consider the early architecture by J. Lee et al.; our design is similar, but will actually answer this question. We hypothesize that each component of Eale locates knowledge-based algorithms, independent of all other components. Similarly, we assume that each component of our application emulates virtual communication, independent of all other components. This is a compelling property of our application. The question is, will Eale satisfy all of these assumptions? Unlikely.

Figure 1: A design plotting the relationship between Eale and interposable information.

We executed a trace, over the course of several months, verifying that our methodology is unfounded [16]. We consider a framework consisting of n robots. Along these same lines, we hypothesize that each component of our methodology prevents encrypted modalities, independent of all other components. We use our previously visualized results as a basis for all of these assumptions.

Figure 2: A novel system for the analysis of robots.

Reality aside, we would like to simulate a framework for how our algorithm might behave in theory. We executed a trace, over the course of several years, demonstrating that our framework is unfounded. We show the diagram used by Eale in Figure 1. We postulate that each component of our algorithm emulates homogeneous symmetries, independent of all other components. Along these same lines, we consider a framework consisting of n checksums.

4 Implementation

In this section, we construct version 7b of Eale, the culmination of years of programming. Continuing with this rationale, it was necessary to cap the complexity used by Eale to 968 connections/sec. It was necessary to cap the interrupt rate used by Eale to 4756 celcius. The codebase of 41 Simula-67 files and the centralized logging facility must run in the same JVM. Next, since Eale runs in Q(logn) time, programming the centralized logging facility was relatively straightforward. We plan to release all of this code under BSD license.

5 Results

We now discuss our evaluation. Our overall evaluation seeks to prove three hypotheses: (1) that USB key speed behaves fundamentally differently on our decommissioned Commodore 64s; (2) that tape drive space is more important than an application’s effective API when optimizing energy; and finally (3) that scatter/gather I/O has actually shown weakened median time since 2001 over time. Only with the benefit of our system’s ROM speed might we optimize for simplicity at the cost of security. Second, the reason for this is that studies have shown that mean power is roughly 43% higher than we might expect [5]. Third, our logic follows a new model: performance might cause us to lose sleep only as long as scalability constraints take a back seat to average sampling rate. Our evaluation approach holds suprising results for patient reader.

5.1 Hardware and Software Configuration

Figure 3: The mean distance of our system, as a function of instruction rate. This follows from the visualization of DHCP.

Many hardware modifications were mandated to measure our heuristic. We performed a quantized prototype on Intel’s metamorphic testbed to quantify symbiotic communication’s influence on G. Sundararajan’s visualization of DNS in 1980. we removed 3MB/s of Internet access from our network to quantify the randomly symbiotic behavior of random communication. Configurations without this modification showed exaggerated median signal-to-noise ratio. We added some FPUs to our XBox network to understand the effective RAM space of our sensor-net testbed. Third, we tripled the effective tape drive space of our network [1]. In the end, we removed 10MB of NV-RAM from our probabilistic cluster to better understand CERN’s desktop machines. Had we emulated our network, as opposed to simulating it in hardware, we would have seen improved results.

Figure 4: The average distance of our methodology, as a function of throughput.

Eale runs on patched standard software. Our experiments soon proved that interposing on our SCSI disks was more effective than reprogramming them, as previous work suggested. This is an important point to understand. our experiments soon proved that exokernelizing our exhaustive sensor networks was more effective than monitoring them, as previous work suggested. We note that other researchers have tried and failed to enable this functionality.

5.2 Dogfooding Eale

Figure 5: These results were obtained by Wilson [7]; we reproduce them here for clarity. Our purpose here is to set the record straight.

We have taken great pains to describe out evaluation setup; now, the payoff, is to discuss our results. We ran four novel experiments: (1) we dogfooded our algorithm on our own desktop machines, paying particular attention to flash-memory throughput; (2) we dogfooded Eale on our own desktop machines, paying particular attention to RAM throughput; (3) we dogfooded Eale on our own desktop machines, paying particular attention to effective ROM throughput; and (4) we asked (and answered) what would happen if opportunistically lazily wireless linked lists were used instead of Lamport clocks [22]. We discarded the results of some earlier experiments, notably when we deployed 08 UNIVACs across the underwater network, and tested our access points accordingly.

We first shed light on all four experiments as shown in Figure 5. The key to Figure 4 is closing the feedback loop; Figure 4 shows how Eale’s work factor does not converge otherwise. Second, we scarcely anticipated how wildly inaccurate our results were in this phase of the evaluation. Note the heavy tail on the CDF in Figure 4, exhibiting exaggerated latency.

We have seen one type of behavior in Figures 4 and 4; our other experiments (shown in Figure 3) paint a different picture. Note how emulating Web services rather than simulating them in hardware produce less discretized, more reproducible results. Along these same lines, the results come from only 2 trial runs, and were not reproducible. Along these same lines, operator error alone cannot account for these results.

Lastly, we discuss experiments (3) and (4) enumerated above. Gaussian electromagnetic disturbances in our 1000-node testbed caused unstable experimental results. Furthermore, the curve in Figure 3 should look familiar; it is better known as h*Y(n) = logloglogn. Error bars have been elided, since most of our data points fell outside of 27 standard deviations from observed means.

6 Conclusion

In our research we proposed Eale, an algorithm for linked lists. On a similar note, our architecture for enabling Lamport clocks [11] is particularly useful. Further, we verified that even though the seminal embedded algorithm for the understanding of forward-error correction by Shastri and Lee runs in Q(logn) time, the lookaside buffer and the memory bus can interact to fix this obstacle. Furthermore, one potentially profound drawback of our framework is that it cannot provide empathic theory; we plan to address this in future work. On a similar note, one potentially profound shortcoming of our methodology is that it will be able to manage cache coherence; we plan to address this in future work. The improvement of systems is more robust than ever, and Eale helps futurists do just that.

References

[1]

Abiteboul, S. Idol: A methodology for the understanding of expert systems. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Heterogeneous, “Smart” Methodologies (Jan. 2001).

[2]

Abiteboul, S., and Agarwal, R. SCSI disks considered harmful. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Wireless, Perfect Symmetries (Mar. 2000).

[3]

Agarwal, R., and Wu, E. Refining robots using certifiable methodologies. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Atomic, Omniscient Information (Jan. 2003).

[4]

Bhabha, I. F., Tanenbaum, A., and Schroedinger, E. Comparing flip-flop gates and cache coherence using TUSH. Tech. Rep. 762/215, Devry Technical Institute, July 1990.

[5]

Clarke, E. Simulating fiber-optic cables using decentralized communication. In Proceedings of OSDI (Nov. 1999).

[6]

Davis, J. The influence of read-write methodologies on software engineering. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Linear-Time, Cacheable, Atomic Models (Aug. 2005).

[7]

Garcia, U. Cacheable, omniscient models. In Proceedings of HPCA (Sept. 1996).

[8]

Hennessy, J. Construction of thin clients. In Proceedings of the Conference on Flexible, Unstable Methodologies (July 2003).

[9]

Hoare, C., Nehru, L., Taylor, Z., Smith, O., Needham, R., and Milner, R. Deconstructing multi-processors. In Proceedings of PLDI (Dec. 1998).

[10]

Hopcroft, J., Florida, M. R. M., Thompson, G. R., and Hartmanis, J. Analyzing superpages and 802.11b. Journal of Automated Reasoning 1 (June 2004), 41-58.

[11]

Lee, M. W., Stearns, R., and Wu, R. DunghillMasora: A methodology for the extensive unification of replication and multi-processors. NTT Technical Review 98 (Oct. 2004), 71-86.

[12]

Lee, Y. Improving randomized algorithms using ubiquitous technology. In Proceedings of the Symposium on Omniscient, Wireless, Empathic Information (Apr. 1991).

[13]

Martin, Z. N., and Qian, D. Towards the analysis of 802.11b. Journal of Unstable, Random Models 231 (May 2004), 20-24.

[14]

Newell, A. Kid: Cooperative, encrypted methodologies. Journal of Permutable Technology 87 (Aug. 2005), 41-57.

[15]

Newton, I., and Floyd, R. Contrasting superblocks and spreadsheets. Journal of Concurrent Technology 39 (Jan. 2004), 20-24.

[16]

Pnueli, A. A study of e-commerce. Journal of Automated Reasoning 69 (Feb. 1999), 45-55.

[17]

Robinson, C., Cocke, J., and Levy, H. Decoupling Boolean logic from DHTs in suffix trees. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Wearable, Ubiquitous Models (Jan. 2005).

[18]

Scott, D. S. A case for Smalltalk. In Proceedings of the Conference on Decentralized, Real-Time Modalities (Aug. 1999).

[19]

Scott, D. S., Zheng, U., and Martinez, I. I. On the investigation of IPv6. Journal of Amphibious, Classical Methodologies 38 (Aug. 1990), 73-98.

[20]

Sun, P., Gupta, K., and Kaashoek, M. F. Comparing agents and Boolean logic with Hinny. In Proceedings of the Symposium on Certifiable Modalities (Feb. 1990).

[21]

Thomas, M., and Seshagopalan, O. SIG: A methodology for the refinement of B-Trees. Journal of Compact, Collaborative Theory 18 (Sept. 2004), 55-60.

[22]

White, a. Scalable, replicated epistemologies for write-ahead logging. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Permutable Methodologies (July 2004).

[23]

White, J., Hopcroft, J., and Lakshminarayanan, K. Contrasting RAID and 128 bit architectures using Hye. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Compact, Compact Algorithms (Feb. 2004).

[24]
illiams, Q., Einstein, A., Sun, B., and Shamir, A. Decoupling the location-identity split from active networks in IPv4. In Proceedings of WMSCI (Sept. 1994).

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Posted by floridian - January 26, 2012 at 9:34 pm

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SEO Internet Marketing Techniques Place Dental Websites on Page One

Fort Collins, Colo. — Once upon a time, a dental practice could just throw together a website, toss it up on the Internet and wait for clients to flock to their site.

With the exponential growth of Internet sites, however, this outdated strategy ensures Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines will relegate such websites to their bargain-basement pages.

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It wasn’t long before a new specialty emerged: Search Engine Optimization. This complex process employs a variety of tactics to ensure the site appears on the first pages of the major search engines. When combined with dental website design and development, SEO is a sure-fire method of improving the volume and quality of traffic for a website.

A 2006 study by Jupiter Research corroborated what had already become common knowledge: “62 percent of search engine users click on a search result within the first page of results, and a full 90 percent of users click on a result within the first three pages of search results.”

The study also found 88 percent of surfers unable to find the desired information in the first three pages are more likely to change their search engine terms than to look through additional results pages.

Is it any wonder page ranking became a vital aspect of Internet dental marketing?

Burying “keywords” into a websites code and content is the primary key to optimization. Keywords are the words or phrases surfers use to find the information they seek.

Sinai Marketing CEO Ali Husayni offered an example of how this dental website marketing process can move a site to those highly desirable first pages.

“The cosmetic dentists at Smile South Florida came to us because they weren’t getting the desired traffic to their site,” said Husayni. “When we first began working in January with Dr. (Charles) Nottingham and his team, they appeared just twice on the first pages of Google and nine times on Yahoo for their 212 primary keywords. They were practically non-existent on MSN.”

By implementing a variety of SEO techniques, including link building (creating inbound links to a website) and regularly updating site content, the Fort Collins, Colo.-based Sinai Marketing blew Smile South Florida’s competitors out of the water.

“By April, they were appearing on the first pages of Google for 208 of their 212 keywords,” said Husayni. “They were amazed to see such fast results.”

The numbers for Yahoo and MSN were equally impressive. For the same 212 keywords, Yahoo posted 176 and MSN posted 514 first-page appearances. (MSN indexes for duplicate appearances.)

Alex Nottingham, marketing director for the Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton-based dental practice, was fascinated by the SEO process. Before long, he was optimizing the site on his own for such keywords as “Boca Raton cosmetic dentist” and “Fort Lauderdale extreme makeover.”

First page placement proved just the ticket to attract pre-qualified, potential patients, saving Smile South Florida an enormous amount of time, energy and money.

“In my 30 years of dentistry, I have never seen so many new patient consultations,” said Dr. Nottingham.

SEO expert John Reese perhaps put it best: “The key to dominating any market online (now or in the future) is simple. It comes down to who has the highest average visitor value and who has the most traffic.”

© 2007 Sinai Marketing, Inc. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Sinai Marketing is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

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Posted by floridian - January 26, 2012 at 5:13 pm

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How to Achieve E-commerce Success -You Gotta Plan!

Before becoming a netpreneaur, I was an entrepreneur. First, I owned a successful child care center which grew to capacity in less than two years. When I sold that, I bought a little flower shop that had less than 300 customers and grew it to what it is today, one of the most successful, award winning companies in South Florida with more than 7,000 customers who purchase from us on a regular business. To better serve our customers, we took our business to the Internet. We still have a brick and mortar storefront, yet everyday we receive more and more customers via the Internet.

How about you? Do you or did you have a traditional business or professional practice? Is it successful? Unless you were born under the star called “LUCKY,” you probably did lots of planning. A business plan, a marketing plan, maybe even a succession plan for what to do with your business when you were through.

You may have heard the statistics that half of all small businesses fail in their first year and of those, only 25% make it through to five years. According to youngbiz.com it can be even less for e-businesses.

Build it and they will come! Not! You can have a terrific site, with lots of bells and whistles and if people don’t know you exist, you never get any visitors, let alone customers.

Planning is the key to success in business. Amazon.com had a plan, Bill Gates had a plan, eDiets had a plan, and I’ll bet they still do. Once a business launches on the net, you will need a marketing plan to be successful. Your biggest challenge will be to find time to plan. However, if you don’t find time now, you will find yourself with plenty of it (time, that is) later on, and no business to speak of.

Unlike a business, generally created to get financial backing from investors, Netpreneurs create marketing plans for themselves. Where do you start? First you have to ask yourself these questions. Where do you want to be in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years? How many customers do you want or better yet, how much money do you want to make? Who are your customers? Do you know what they want, need and expect? Can you give it to them? What are your competitors doing? What are you doing that is different? How will you promote your business?

Now Create your Website marketing plan.

Put it in writing! Not only do you have to plan, you have to write it down! Take a notebook or idea book and write the following: your vision, mission strategies, goals and the time frame you wish to accomplish these goals. Keep this notebook next to your computer to refer to. It will help you stay focused.

What is your vision for your business? Your vision is what you want your web site to accomplish. Write your vision statement in your notebook. The vision statement for my flower shop is to “Make a reasonable profit via the Internet by providing a quality product, delivering exceptional service, at a price my customers will pay.”

What are your goals? What do you believe you can accomplish that may be a bit of a stretch but doable? If the goals are too easy, you are not getting the most out of your planning process. And you could be losing money. Can make a profit of 20% in 3 months? Can double your customer base in 6 months? If so, write it in your notebook.

What steps do you need to take to achieve your goals? How much do you have to sell to achieve your goals? You must first know your profit margin to determine this figure. Then you have to figure out how you are going to find the customers to make your goals come true.

What are your marketing strategies? Start with those goals you know you can attain. How will you reach your market? Are you going to use search engine optimization, email, newsletters, networking, advertising on related sites, advertising in trade magazines, or write an article to submit to online publications? Participate in online forums, message boards and newsgroups. Include your URL (Internet address) in your signature file.

What is the time-frame for accomplishing your goals? Create a time-line for every goal in your notebook. Next to each goal, write down the starting and ending dates of when you plan to accomplish that goal as well as what type of marketing strategies you are using.

Are you keeping track of your marketing results? If you are doing any advertising whether it is online or offline, track the results. You can track online advertising using ad tracking software such as adtrackz.com, to track all the links you place online. Analyze web site statistics to find out how visits found you. For offline advertising, place codes or words in your advertising to keep track. Your online order forms should have a place to enter the code. To learn how customers found us, we use a numeric code on all advertising/marketing materials.

What is your return on investment? How much money did the marketing strategy cost? How much money did you take in? Subtract the second figure from the first and that is your profit (or loss).

Keep track of those marketing campaigns that worked and those that didn’t. Do more of the first. Reevaluate the second. Can you change one thing in the strategy and achieve different results? Try it! Add new strategies to the mix.

Stay focused on your goals. Nothing feels better than accomplishing a goal. Except maybe, all the money you are going to make when you do!

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Posted by floridian - January 26, 2012 at 2:10 pm

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The Potential of the Third Generation of Tech Entrepreneurs

An Excerpt from the book Zero to One Million: How to Build a Company to One Million Dollars in Sales

Since the start of the technology age there have been three generations of entrepreneurs. The first generation consisted of people like Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, EDS billionaire Ross Perot, and yes, even Bill Gates, now over 50. These guys “got it” back in the day before the Internet. They were the “transformation entrepreneurs” and were integral in bringing the United States into the Information Age.

Next on the scene were the guys and girls that grew up with Commodore 64s, Atari, and Ronald Reagan. From this first breed of Internet Age entrepreneurs came people like Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo!, Pierre Omidyar of eBay, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com. All born more or less in the late sixties, these guys grew up watching the development of computers and were prepared to jump on the opportunity they saw in late 1994. They did well, and their companies tripled and quadrupled each year from 1995-1999. These guys were the frontrunners and were intelligent enough to see the possibility of the Internet twelve or thirteen years ago, perhaps the reason why all three of these companies are still around today.

There is a new breed of entrepreneurs that is already beginning to make their mark on our world. I am one of them. We are the eighties generation. We are as the music group POD says, “The Youth of the Nation.” While yes, there are many of us who are disillusioned, uncaring, or depressed; I am seeing today something truly amazing. There is a subculture of youth in both the United States and in every country in the world that gets it.

I am very fortunate to have contacts in about forty countries. In 2000, I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to go on a 53-day expedition to Spain, Florida, New Mexico, and Mexico called La Ruta Quetzal. On this trip I met three hundred fifty students from forty-three different countries. It has truly been priceless to be able to have these contacts. For example, during the Argentinean economic collapse in early 2002 I was able to jump on my computer and email Ana from Buenos Aires to see what the real situation was like. When a U.S. spy-plane was shot down in China in April 2001, I was able to email my friend Sonsoles in Beijing to get her take on the incident and her thoughts on what Jiang Zemin would do.

During the World Cup in June of 2002 I was able to chat live with my friend Kevin in Dublin as he grieved over each missed penalty kick in Ireland’s overtime elimination defeat to Spain. For the pre-1980 people reading, would it not have amazed you when you were seventeen to have had the ability to chat live from Florida with your friend in Dublin while both watching the same penalty shot being taken at the exact same time in Seoul, South Korea?

This new breed of entrepreneurs, even if we all do not yet fully grasp the impact of globalization and how important the changes that are occurring today truly are, are either going through college right now or will in the next five years. The case studies they will have in Financial Management 202 will not be the rudimentary mathematical bores they perhaps were for many in their college days of old. They will be riveting tales of unlimited wealth, power, and innovation; in some cases collapse and fraud and in others extraordinary success.

I said a few paragraphs ago “there is a subculture of youth in both the United States and in every country in the world that gets it.” But what it is that we get? We understand the following eleven principles:

1. The world is global and interconnected. A negative economic report from one country can ravage the economy of a continent overnight, a trillion dollars can leave a country with the click of a few mice, and an explosion in Shanghai can cause bond prices in London to jump 10% within an hour.

2. Anyone with $1000 and some intelligence can either make a billion dollars or destroy the world.

3. In our economic prosperity, we must strive toward creating a sustainable existence or else the end of our lives and our children’s lives will be years of difficulty and sacrifice.

4. Academic education is important, but at all but the best schools, an academic education will not give one the knowledge needed to be financially prosperous. As Thomas J. Stanley states in The Millionaire Mind, having a 1000 or 1500 on your SATs has no correlation to your likely net worth in twenty years. Just as important, if not more, is one’s education and learning outside the classroom.

5. If one is going to become extraordinarily wealthy they better have integrity, ethics, and keep their accounting truthful and accurate.

6. The world is going to change in tremendous ways over our lifetime.

7. Competitive market economies are essential to a high standard of living. An incentive system is necessary to get workers to work and a price system is necessary to properly allocate a limited supply of resources and goods. Competition is necessary to keep everyone honest and working efficiently to produce the optimum output with the minimum input. Although some believe capitalism creates inequities and is immoral, it is a few of the participants within this system that cause these unfair inequities. This lack of integrity among some participants will always be present. However, due to intelligent laws, regulations, oversight and the inherent positive properties of the market coupled with democracy such as transparency, freedom of the press, and a better educated proletariat this ethical problem is better now than in the days of centralized ownership of resources and dictatorships. Since there is no incentive to earn a profit or innovate, state-owned enterprises often breed inefficiency.

8. However, without honest, ethical, and compassionate people at the helm of a democratic and market system, or the proper laws and legal institutions to ensure this integrity, this system is no better than totalitarianism, autarky, or anarchy. Further, we must always take principle number three into account.

9. For prosperity to spread to developing countries we must not look to short run elixirs. It took 175 years to turn the U.S. into an economic superpower. The same change cannot take place in Somalia, Zimbabwe, or Afghanistan without the proper development of human capital, industrial capital, and a fundamental legal framework.

10. It is not he who works the hardest that succeeds; it is he who has the best ideas, works with the most intelligence, and builds the right team to help him accomplish his goals.

11. The ability to adapt to change and ability to learn quickly is as important as what you know right now.

Those that do not grasp these principles will have a hard time becoming successful or building a prosperous business. While the large majority of American youth do not (at least yet) have the faintest idea of what these principles are or what they mean, there is a growing minority that does. While progress is being made with the help of organizations such as Junior Achievement, the public secondary educational system of the United States, in many places, at times seems that instead of teaching the above principles it is teaching students to be provincial, closed-minded, economically-challenged, and financially inept. It almost seems if students in the American education system are taught from 1 st through 12 th grade to believe that the U.S. is the only country in the world, the only one that matters, and that our goal after we leave school should be to search for a secure well-paying job. These ideas will not produce the dynamic innovators and leaders needed to tackle the problems of this new century.

However, there is a growing minority of youth in the U.S. that does understand the world, globalization, a bit of history, and the basic concepts of business and economics. More importantly, the eighties generation throughout most of the rest of the world is not so provincial. On my 2000 Ruta Quetzal Expedition I was embarrassed to only know two languages. Most of the participants, all just fifteen and sixteen like I, knew at least four languages, and some knew as many as six. They not only knew the languages, but they understood the culture of whomever they were speaking with, whether they were Japanese, Swedish, Colombian, American, or Malaysian. The world is growing smaller by the day, and anyone who does not understand world culture, speak another language, or grasp globalization will have a glass ceiling in their profession, in their life, and in their business.

There has been some great progress on this front recently. Books such as The World is Flat and The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman, The Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing by Robert T. Kiyosaki, Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz, and Reinventing the Bazaar by John McMillan enlighten us all.

This new breed of entrepreneurs did not grow up with 15% inflation, the Commodore 64, or Ronald Reagan (although I did love to play my Space Invaders game on my used Atari when very young). Instead, we have grown up with Nintendo and Sega Genesis, MTV, Bill Clinton, the World Trade Center attack, and most importantly, the Internet.

I was eleven, not twelve and not thirteen, but eleven. It was 1995 and I was helping people who were 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90 learn to use their computer, send emails, browse the web, and write a letter without a typewriter. More often it is the four year old that is teaching her dad how to attach a picture to an email, or the seven year old showing his uncle how to burn a CD, than the other way round.

Right now I am 21. Anyone my age or younger will understand what I am about to say. I do not know what the world was like before the Internet. Let me repeat this–I do not know what the world was like before the Internet. Yes, yes, of course I have memories before 1994, but to be honest I really didn’t understand how the world worked back then. I did not read the paper too often then and only rarely watched Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather. I have grown up to know routers, Intranets, FTP access codes, HTML, and ecommerce.

This new breed of entrepreneurs; the investment bankers, analysts, economists, options traders, politicians, business owners, leaders, and entrepreneurs of 2005-2065, understand technology and they use it every hour of their waking lives.

We understand the above eleven principles. We know we live in a global interconnected village. We know the government will likely not be able to take care of us in old age. We know we must be responsible for our education and our financial well-being. We know that there is extreme suffering, sacrifice, and corruption in many parts of this world that will not cease unless we do something about it. We understand technology and understand the changes that have taken place in business and the business and economic lessons that have been taught to us over the past five years. In order to build a successful business you will need to understand these things.

This new breed will not be a typical, usual group. As long as we can avoid collapse in the Middle East and Southern Asia, a third world war, and protect the enlightened world from the destructive plans of those whose motives may be well-meaning but whose beliefs are based on half-truths and death, the world is our oyster. Who is to say that my generation cannot develop a more effective way at ensuring essential nutrients and enough food gets to those in need? Who is to say that we cannot double the standard of living in my lifetime or consign absolute poverty in developing nations to the dustbin of history?

This new generation is already doing remarkable things. Just read this excerpt from the May 29, 2002 issue of Business Week:

Never before have teens had the know-how, the access, and the tools at their disposal to pursue business on an equal footing with adults. The number of teens doing some kind of business on the Net is already a lot bigger than many grownups would ever expect. For every teen millionaire, there is a veritable swarm of regular kids who routinely earn pocket money doing software work via the Net. It’s impossible to pinpoint exact numbers, but they are large. Researcher Computer Economics Inc. in Carlsbad, Calif., estimates that 8% of all teens, about 1.6 million in the U.S., are making at least some money on the Net. ”There’s not a period in history where we’ve seen such a plethora of young entrepreneurs,” says Nancy F. Koehn, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

The article goes on to talk about teen entrepreneurs that have made hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars over the past six years by creating popular web sites, developing software programs, and consulting for businesses. Personally, in my own work with the Carolina Entrepreneurship Club and the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization I have come into contact with many fellow young entrepreneurs. It seems to me that many in our generation surely do understand the great opportunity we have and the special time we are in. No matter what your age is, if you can learn these same principles we have learned, you will greatly increase your chances at building a successful business.

In the coming decades, new leaders will appear who have grown up with technology being a part of their lives for as long as they can remember. This new generation will intrinsically understand the principles of a global world and be much more effective in building successful companies than any person who does not. Whether or not you are in this generation, you better understand these principles.

In 2005, I was named as one of the “Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25″ by Business Week. Every single one of these entrepreneurs was born in the 80s and is part of this Third Generation of Tech Entrepreneurs. I hope you’ll get to know us. We’ll be around for quite some time and we’ll have an unprecedented opportunity to affect positive change in our world and society for the next six decades through both traditional and social entrepreneurship. I think I know us well enough to be confident we’ll not let the opportunity pass us by.

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Posted by floridian - January 26, 2012 at 9:10 am

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