Author: blogger

People Who Own (or Owned) Land Underlying Or Adjoining Certain Railroad Corridors In California…

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If you own or have owned land underlying or adjoining railroad corridors in California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming, you may be entitled to money from the settlement of a pending class action lawsuit.

The rail corridors in question are:

California-Mojave 02 to Los

Angeles 03

California-Reno to

Sacramento

Colorado-Julesburg to

Longmont

Idaho-Boise to Brigham

City

Kansas-Topeka to Salinas

Michigan-Saginaw to

Grayling

Montana-Fargo to Billings

Montana-Billings to Seattle

North Dakota-Fargo to

Billings

Oklahoma-Vinita Jct. to

Tulsa

Oregon-Boise to Spokane

Utah-Boise to Brigham City

Washington-Yakima to

Everett

Washington-Tacoma to

Kalama

Wisconsin-Eau Claire to St.

Paul

Wyoming-Cheyenne to Salt

Lake City.

AT&T, which owns telecommunications cable on the properties, has agreed to pay net compensation benefits ranging from approximately $.60 to up to approximately $3.80 per linear foot to qualifying claimants.

If you, or an estate or entity you represent, own or have owned land along these corridors, your rights may be affected by the proposed legal settlement.

The deadline to comment on, object to or opt out of the settlement is October 11, 2007. Local fairness hearings are scheduled for:

California Fairness Hearing

November 28, 2007

Colorado Fairness Hearing

December 18, 2007

Idaho Fairness Hearing

November 30, 2007

Kansas Fairness Hearing

December 19, 2007

Michigan Fairness Hearing

December 21, 2007

Montana Fairness Hearing

December 17, 2007

North Dakota Fairness

Hearing

December 20, 2007

Oklahoma Fairness Hearing

December 19, 2007

Oregon Fairness Hearing

November 27, 2007

Utah Fairness Hearing

November 29, 2007

Washington Fairness

Hearing

November 27, 2007

Wisconsin Fairness Hearing

December 21, 2007

Wyoming Fairness Hearing

December 18, 2007.

A final fairness hearing is scheduled for January 17, 2008, and the deadline for filing a claim is February 18, 2008.

Crossnet Managed Services Provides Network And Telecom System Monitoring

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Network and telecommunications services come in many shapes and sizes. There are many that offer the service, but few that truly excel in delivering service and maintenance. Cross Telecom is an industry leader in providing the best in services and Avaya maintenance to clients. One way they have ensured this continued success is through CrossNet Managed Services. CrossNet Managed Services is a comprehensive and flexible suite of managed services, which utilizes Cross Telecoms experience and expertise.
CrossNet Managed Services offers a proactive network and telecommunications system monitoring and management platform, which means you get real-time support of your system; remote system backup for business continuance and disaster recovery, enabling your business to move forward no matter the setback. Systems audit and analysis reporting ensures that your valuable data and assets are effectively reaching your companys goals.
CrossNet Managed Services is one of three pillars that make up CrossNet Services. CrossNet Maintenance and CrossNet Support are the other two pieces. These three components encompass the elements of ensuring stable, secure, and efficient operation of your network and telecommunication systems. Here are some of the features CrossNet Managed Services delivers.
Storage Services: Cross Remote System Backup services provide customers with a secure encrypted offsite disaster recovery copy of Avaya PBX translations. Cross servers are hosted in a SAS70 Type II certified data center, and data is encrypted both in transit and while at rest. Backup jobs are scheduled for weekly transfers using secure file transfer protocol. Backup files are encrypted by the PBX using an implementation of Open PGP.
Reporting Services: Cross System Audit and Analysis is a service providing system inventory, configuration information, and analysis for Avaya PBX systems. The audit process collects data from the cabinets, carriers, and media gateways down to the individual stations. Once Cross has prepared the analysis from collected data, an Overall Impact Rating is applied to each PBX surveyed. This allows you to quickly identify PBX systems with the most critical upgrade needs and to prepare migration plans before major support and liability issues arise.
Monitoring Services: Visualize, monitor, and pro-actively manage your environment. CrossTrak Monitoring and Management is a secure distributed network management service that will monitor your entire voice and data network infrastructure. CrossTrak can provide you with proactive availability monitoring, statistical measurements, and real-time alerts and notification.
Cross is an Avaya Premier, National Platinum Business Partner and Avaya Business Partner of the Year award winner. By providing a complete portfolio of Voice, Data, IP Telephony, Wireless, CrossNet Maintenance and Support, Professional Services and Cross University, Cross has defined itself as a complete, end-to-end integrator of converged technologies nationwide. Having one of the largest and most experienced technical teams within the industry, Cross delivers business transforming communications solutions that will create a distinct competitive advantage for our customers. For award winning customer service on Avaya telecommunication products, contact Cross Telecom to meet your needs.

Steps to Successful Negotiation

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Negotiation skills are an attribute which every woman wanting to get ahead must have. In business today, successful negotiation is extremely important and is one of the pre-requisites for achieving success. The following are 5 steps which should be followed in order to negotiate successfully in business.

The very first step is to place yourself in the shoes of the person whom you are negotiating with. Look at things from the other persons perspective and evaluate what their objectives are. This will help you to understand what outcome they are looking for and hence could give you an advantage in the negotiation process. You will also be able to analyze how the other group views you and your proposal.

The next step which should be followed is to know everything about the business you are dealing with. You need to prepare prior to your meeting and find out as much as possible about them. Things which you need to consider should be how well the business is doing at the moment, whether they are carrying out the deal to meet some financial requirement and/or what the purpose is for them to be carrying out business with your company. The main reason for this step is to find out the motive behind the business dealing.

Always remember the person asking the questions is the person who holds the power. Ensure you ask questions to clarify the outcome are required and what is required from you.

There are many techniques involved with negotiation and you should make use of the one you feel most comfortable with. There are generally 3 types of techniques which every woman should select from. These three techniques are:

-Competitive/Conflict negotiation
-Cooperative Negotiation
-Problem Solving Negotiation

Each of these techniques is unique on their own and follows a different plan. Research them all and then select one, which suits your style of negotiation and which also, helps your company fulfill its business needs.

The fourth step is to prepare a strategy. In order to achieve your objectives and come out successful from the negotiation, you need to have a well thought out and planned strategy. You can never predict what is going to happen so being prepared is the best option. Prepare the things you need to say and what you want to achieve beforehand. Knowing this information in advance, frees your mind to concentrate on managing whatever happens on the day.

Some of the tasks you should focus on completing before the meeting should be the time at which you will be carrying out the negotiation – is it suitable to both parties? Next, the duration of the meeting should be kept in mind, have you left enough time between meetings, so you dont have to rush from one to another staying focused is the key. Where should the meeting be held to ensure a successful outcome is also very important?

The fifth and final step in negotiation is that you remain calm. There will be aspects in the meeting when you will not know what to do or say. At these moments the best thing to do is remain calm and patient. Do not let them know you are feeling pressured and most of all, do not let the other party intimidate you. If in doubt, ask a clarifying question.

Things That Can Get Educators in Legal Hot Water

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Remember those World War II posters that warned, “Loose Lips Sink Ships?” Well, that dire wisdom is just as urgent today. It is possible that a comment ingenuously made in the faculty room, in an email, during an IEP meeting or a phone call can cause a teacher embarrassment, at best, or a district to become embroiled in a lawsuit, at worst. Caution to be professional at all times as well as ever mindful of confidentiality laws has always been a top priority of school districts. However, in our digital age, this issue has taken on a new meaning and has escalated caution to another level.

In order to ferret out the most critical concerns facing schools today and some tips for how to deal with these concerns, I spoke with four lawyers who work with schools on a regular basis. Following are some of the insights gleaned from those conversations.
What is considered written documentation?

Anything and everything written about a student on school grounds can be subpoenaed for use in court. Attorney Dianna Halpenny of Sacramento, California, reinforces that anything in writing with a student’s name in it is part of the official student record. It is not necessarily true that if teachers keep it at home that it is not a student record.

Email communication

When faced with the challenge of keeping email private on school servers, teachers used to be advised to use web mail versus a downloadable email client such as Microsoft Outlook, Eudora, or Thunderbird. The belief was that web mail such as Yahoo mail; Hotmail, Mail2Web, etc. were safe.

Attorney Pamela Parker of Austin, Texas, reveals another, less known, fact: even web-based email is forensically accessible. Web-based email history may still be on the school server. Parker acknowledges that schools are not necessarily monitoring emails; however, a forensic computer specialist can recreate the emails if necessary. The reality of today’s world is that everything that is digital lives forever. Parker employs a sound analogy, “Having a conversation by email or text message is no different than having a private conversation on stage at Carnegie hall in front of a full house. Most people won’t pay attention, but some will.”

Teachers may send an email to a parent, colleague, supervisor, etc. believing that the email will remain confidential between them. However, there is no guarantee that the recipient of an email will respect that confidentiality or realize the importance of keeping the interaction private. Sometimes, despite all good intentions, emails are forwarded accidentally. This easily happens when the writer uses “reply all” or continues to respond to an email that has the entire thread attached. I’ve been amazed at what I’ve had included in a message to me when I have been added as a recipient midstream in an email conversation. When I scroll down, I might read conversation to which I should not have been privy. Here’s a tip: Look at what’s attached to the bottom of your email before you hit “send!”

Phone messages

Another consideration is phone messages. Not only can they be overheard, they can be forwarded. Parker contends that even a teacher’s children might see and pass on text messages or phone emails. Parker advises educators to have critical conversations in person.

Attorney Brad King of Richmond, Virginia, goes on to explain that even messages on personal phones, especially those regarding relationships with students, can become public domain. He explains that teachers’ phone records can be involved in litigation. Again, the digital age brings a new level of accountability to the issue. Digital phone messages, as well as text messages, are easily forwarded and potentially retrieved.

Text messages

Have you ever gotten a text or sent a text that was meant for someone else? Are you sure that deleted texts are not potentially accessible if a related case was brought to court? How much text messaging is available is dependent on your telecommunication carrier. There may be information out there that you do not know is there.

Contributors:
Diana D. Halpenny
Attorney at Law
Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard, Inc.

Pamela Parker
Attorney at Law
Austin, Texas

Bradford A. King, Esq.
Thompson McMullan, P.C.

Mark Joel Goldstein
Attorney

Big Data Means Big Opportunities For Business According To The Cebr Report

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Big data is a rather confusing and amorphous term that can mean so many different things to different people. A recent survey by Computing illustrates this perfectly. In order to get to the crux of the issue and find out precisely what the term meant to its readership, Computing issued a 10 word challenge: explain what big data means to you in 10 words or less. The results proved to be interesting to say the least. 28 percent described big data as vendor hype, 37 percent viewed it as nothing other than a big problem, because they associated the term with increased data volumes, whilst only 27 percent claimed it represented a big opportunity that sadly too few organisations were prepared to grasp.

However, whilst they might not be able to agree on the definition, there is a general consensus that if business and enterprise can find a way of getting information economically out of very large data sets, then there could be exciting new opportunities created and lots of money to be made in the process. How much money precisely has never really been quantified until now, but last month a report by The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) and SAS, a major player in business analytics software services, concluded that harnessing big data could ultimately contribute 216 billion to the UK economy and create up to 58,000 jobs between 2012 and 2017. Whatever your views on the definition of big data, or the value of big data analytics, youll have to agree theyre pretty impressive figures.

The report, called Data Equity: Unlocking the value of big data, is in fact the first comprehensive study in the UK that looks at the potential impact big data mining will have on the UK economy, and gives credence to the claim that has long been made by the industry that big data is set to herald the next phase of technology-led business innovation, productivity and competition. The vast growth of information available to enterprise opens up tremendous opportunities for business, but it also poses rather large challenges too. How is this wealth of information best utilised? How can business and enterprise use the ever-increasing amount of data effectively and efficiently?

Well, according to the report the answer is, of course, by using cutting-edge big data analytic solutions, to unlock the value of data and reveal hitherto unseen patterns, sentiments and customer intelligence. As an example of such high-tech solutions, SAS quoted work it had done with a leading telecommunications company to improve the mining of its data sets. The powerful analytics software has now been able to cut down the complete analysis of its customer base from 11 hours to 10 seconds.

The report calculated that big data contributed about 25.1bn to the UK economy in 2011 and this is forecast to reach 40.7bn by 2017. It also claimed that big data analytics adoption will also increase from 34 per cent in 2011 to 54 per cent in 2017.CEBR said that big data will benefit the UK economy in three ways: business creation, efficiency and innovation. It also claimed that the large majority of the 58,000 jobs created would be data specialist roles, though Charles Randall, analytics product manager at SAS UK & Ireland, said that this large increase in necessary jobs raises concerns about where people with the necessary skills are going to come from.

The report found that the financial services and investment banks currently had the highest level of adoption of big data analytics solutions. However, CEBR forecast that the manufacturing sector will benefit the most from high-performance analytics and will increase its output by 8.1bn by 2017.