AdSense

AdSense

AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis. Google is also currently beta-testing a cost-per-action based service.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses (merchants/advertisers) in which an affiliate (publisher) is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts.Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors and various types of affiliates/publishers who utilize a number of different methods to advertise the products and services of their merchant/advertiser partners.Affiliate marketing overlaps with other internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates are using the same methods as most of the merchants themselves do. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, email marketing and to some degree display advertising.Affiliate marketing - using one site to drive traffic to another - is the stepchild of online marketing. While search engines, e-mail and RSS capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing, despite lineage that goes back almost to the beginning of online retailing, carries a much lower profile. Yet affiliates continue to play a fundamental role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.[1]

Actuary

Actuary

An actuary is a business professional who deals with the financial impact of risk and uncertainty.
Actuaries have a deep understanding of financial security systems, their reasons for being, their complexity, their mathematics, and the way they work (Trowbridge 1989, p. 7). They evaluate the likelihood of events and quantify the contingent outcomes in order to minimize losses, both emotional and financial, associated with uncertain undesirable events. Since many events, such as death, cannot be totally avoided, it is helpful to take measures to minimize their financial impact when they occur. These risks can affect both sides of the balance sheet, and require asset management, liability management, and valuation skills. Analytical skills, business knowledge and understanding of human behavior and the vagaries of information systems are required to design and manage programs that control risk (Be An Actuary 2005).
Actuaries' insurance disciplines may be classified as life; health; pensions, annuities, and asset management; social welfare programs; property; casualty; general insurance; and reinsurance. Life, health, and pension actuaries deal with mortality risk, morbidity, and consumer choice regarding the ongoing utilization of drugs and medical services risk, and investment risk. Products prominent in their work include life insurance, annuities, pensions, mortgage and credit insurance, short and long term disability, and medical, dental, health savings accounts and long term care insurance. In addition to these risks, social insurance programs are greatly influenced by public opinion, politics, budget constraints, changing demographics and other factors such as medical technology, inflation and cost of living considerations (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2006).
Casualty actuaries, also known as non-life or general insurance actuaries, deal with catastrophic, unnatural risks that can occur to people or property. Products prominent in their work include auto insurance, homeowners insurance, commercial property insurance, workers’ compensation, title insurance, malpractice insurance, products liability insurance, directors and officers liability insurance, environmental and marine insurance, terrorism insurance and other types of liability insurance. Reinsurance products have to accommodate all of the previously mentioned products, and in addition have to properly reflect the increasing long term risks associated with climate change, cultural litigiousness, acts of war, terrorism and politics (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2006).
In 2002, a Wall Street Journal survey on the best jobs in the United States listed actuary as the second best job, while in previous editions of the list, actuaries had been the top rated job (Lee 2002). The survey used six key criteria to rank jobs: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands, security and stress. A similar survey by U.S. News & World Report in 2006 included actuaries among the 25 "Best Professions" that it expects will be in great demand in the future (Nemko 2006).

Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary

Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary

Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary was a United States high school administered by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago for young men considering the priesthood. Located in downtown Chicago, Illinois at 103 East Chestnut Street adjacent to Loyola University Chicago and near Water Tower Place, it closed on June 22, 2007, and will become the Pastoral Center and headquarters of the Archdiocese after a year of renovations.
The predecessor of the school, Cathedral College of the Sacred Heart, was founded in 1905. George Cardinal Mundelein announced plans in 1916 for the building of a preparatory seminary at Rush and Chestnut in downtown Chicago, and named the school in honor of his predecessor, Archbishop James Edward Quigley.[1] Echoing the educational theories of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Cardinal Mundelein surrounded Quigley students with great architectural beauty:
"This will unquestionably be the most beautiful building here in Chicago, not excluding the various buildings of the University of Chicago."[2]
Quigley's Chapel of St. James,[3] with stained glass modeled after Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, was dedicated upon the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Archdiocese of Chicago and Mundelein's twenty-fifth priestly ordination on June 10, 1920.[4] Designed by the architecture firm of Gustav Steinbeck of New York and Zachary Taylor Davis,[5] with stained glass by Robert Giles of the John J. Kinsella Company of Chicago,[6] it is today listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is one of Chicago's most breathtaking spiritual spaces.
The Quigley seminaries have educated almost 2,500 priests,[7] two cardinals,[8] over forty-one bishops,[9] two Vatican II periti, separate recipients of the Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and, in sports, two members of the Basketball Hall of Fame, making significant contributions through Quigley alumni to the quality of life in America and beyond, and within Catholicism in particular.

World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, a user views web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks. The World Wide Web was created in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Since then, Berners-Lee has played an active role in guiding the development of web standards (such as the markup languages in which web pages are composed), and in recent years has advocated his vision of a Semantic Web. Robert Cailliau, also at CERN, was an early evangelist for the project.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis, and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. The term gained currency following the first O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004.[2][3] Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use webs. According to Tim O'Reilly,
"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."[4]
Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee, have questioned whether one can use the term in a meaningful way, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have existed since the early days of the Web.[5][6]

Yahoo! Mail

Yahoo! Mail

Yahoo! Mail is a Web-based email (webmail) service from Yahoo!. It is the largest [1] e-mail provider on the Internet, serving millions of users.[2] Yahoo! Mail's major competitors include Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail, and AIM Mail.
As of August 26, 2007, the AJAX version of Yahoo! Mail is considered complete, and gradually being rolled out to users. It replaces the older, classic version to become the default interface for Yahoo! Mail. Development of what has now become the new interface started in July 2004, although it is possible other prototypes were in development before then. It is currently compatible with Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox as well as Camino (and other Gecko based browsers) (as part of Yahoo!'s plan to eventually upgrade all of their sites to be compatible with Firefox[3]). Although usable under Opera and Safari there are

Leif Hansen

Leif Hansen

'Leif Christopher Hansen' (b.1957) is the founder and owner of a chain of auto body shops, Leif's Auto Collision Centers, one of Oregon's largest and fastest growing automotive businesses.
Hansen was born in Hawaii where he worked as a full time auto body repair man since the age of fifteen. By his early 20's Hansen admits he was involved in drugs and in the late 1980's he was charged with auto theft. In 1990, Hansen moved to Oregon with his wife and child, where he started an auto body repair business, Leif's Auto Collision Centers, while successfully serving five years probation.
To many, Hansen is a pro-consumer crusader who never backs down from a fight. For many of those in the insurance industry, Hansen remains an enigma, but a serious threat to their Direct Repair Programs (DRP's) and insurer's pattern of illegal sterring, encouraging shoddy repairs and the required use of cheap replacement or aftermarket parts.
Today Hansen is one of Oregon's best known media personalities, driven by his ~$1,000,000 per year advertising budget which include familiar television and radio commercials. He made his fortune by appealing directly to the customer through self narrated advertisements, where he promises first rate service, unencumbered by price fixing agreements with the insurance industry.
As of 2005, Hansen has maintained a 20% annual growth rate of his business for more tha a dozen years. He relies on a combination of anti-insurance company advertising and, according to Willamette Week, lawsuits. Hansen's employees constantly gather new evidence for potential lawsuits against insurance companies, who he says are using illegal means to harm his business and others in the auto repair industry. Leif's Auto is the only auto body repair company in the nation to have a full time lawyer on staff. Several of the lawsuits filed by Hansen alleged defamation by various insurance companies.
In recent years, Hansen has gone directly to Oregon Legislature to protect consumers from illegal steering practices. In 2005 Hansen founded a consumer-focused political action committee, Oregonians for Safe Auto Repair (OSAR) to push for leglislative changes. In June 2007, OSAR was successful in passing Oregon Senate Bill 523-A. On June 20, 2007 Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, signed the bill. On January 1. 2008, Senate Bill 523-A will officially become Oregon law. [1] The law requires insurance companies to inform consumers that they have the legal right to choose where their vehicle is repaired. Under the law, insurance companies must inform consumers of their rights prior to making a recommendation for a repair provider. The law also prevents insurance companies from limiting reimbursement when consumers choose a repair provider without a referral from the insurance company.[[2]] The law gained the support of Oregon's Attorney General, the State's Consumer Fraud Protection Department and The Oregon Trial Lawyers Association. OSAR members are planning future legislative efforts in 2008 and 2009 in an effort to combat industry-wide anti-steering practices on the part of many auto insurance providers doing business in Oregon.

Conference call

Conference call

A conference call is a telephone call in which the calling party wishes to have more than one called party listen in to the audio portion of the call. The conference calls may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the call, or the call may be set up so that the called party merely listens into the call and cannot speak. It is often referred to as an ATC (Audio Tele-Conference).
Conference calls can be designed so that the calling party calls the other participants and adds them to the call. In most cases, the participants are able call into the conference call themselves. They do so either by dialing into a "conference bridge" (a specialized type of equipment that links telephone lines), or by using a special telephone number set up for that purpose.
Most companies use a specialized service provider for conference calls. These service providers maintain the conference bridge, and provide the phone numbers used to access the meeting or conference call.
Three-way calling is available (usually at an extra charge) for most customers on their home or office phone line. To three way call you call the first person you wish to talk to. Then you must press the flash button and dial the other person's phone number. While it is ringing press flash again. This will put your three people together. This option allows callers to add a second outgoing call to an already connected call.