Easy Custom Labels for Your Medications

August 31, 2009 by · 22 Comments 

I am married and 65 years young. I graduated as a Mechanical Engineer from Drexel University and worked for over 35 years as an IT (Information Technology) Consultant in my own company, Odyssey Data Systems, Inc. My IT background gave me the skills to analyze and solve many complex business problems.

As I grew older, I found that both my wife and I began taking more and more medications and vitamins. Some were brand names and others were generic versions. Some were marked “Take as needed”, meaning that they stayed in the medicine cabinet until they expired (really forever). Others started as brand names and once they were refilled, became generic versions (the names of which were almost indistinguishable). All pharmacy labels showed what was in the bottle, how much to take and how often; but hardly ever indicated what the medications or vitamins were to be used for.

In addition, whenever we saw a new doctor, he or she always wanted to know what medications we were currently taking. So, we gathered the bottles and tubes, put them in a bag and diligently carried them to the initial consultation. Of course, we then had to return them to the proper location in our medicine cabinet, so as not to be further confused.

If, god-forbid, we needed to see a new doctor in an emergency, that vital information was not immediately available, therefore being extremely dangerous. Well, fully realizing that we were not the only people to have these problems, I began the project of solving them with a type of medication identification help. I then formed my new company – Labels-4-Meds, LLC, in September of 2007.

The premise was simple – develop a web site to permit people to customize and purchase small, but extremely distinguishable medication labels and vitamin labels. Each medication sticker would contain a particular shape in a particular color (like a red heart) to have immediate and special meaning to the individual (like my wife’s heart medication). In addition, the person could customize the word or words to print on the label, in bold black letters (like Blood Pressure), to clearly indicate the medication’s or vitamin’s usage.

Since the information about the medication or vitamin had to be entered to identify the particular label, then a secondary benefit resulted; that being an index sheet which listed all the medications and vitamins, their color, shape, usage word(s) and optionally: their brand or generic name and dosage.

This was all done inexpensively with lots of documentation, examples and step-by-step instructions. There is obviously much more to this, than is necessary in this brief introduction. If you, your parents, your neighbor or your patient could benefit by helping them to be less confused about their medications, then please look us up on-line at Labels4Meds.com .

Website creation basics

June 21, 2009 by · 35 Comments 

Tim Berners-Lee published what is considered to be the first website in August 1991. Berners-Lee was the first to combine Internet communication (which had been carrying email and the Usenet for decades) with hypertext (which had also been around for decades, but limited to browsing information stored on a single computer, such as interactive CD-ROM design). Websites are written in a markup language called HTML, and early versions of HTML were very basic, only giving a website’s basic structure (headings and paragraphs), and the ability to link using hypertext. This was new and different from existing forms of communication – users could easily navigate to other pages by following hyperlinks from page to page.

As the Web and web design progressed, the markup language changed to become more complex and flexible, giving the ability to add objects like images and tables to a page. Features like tables, which were originally intended to be used to display tabular information, were soon subverted for use as invisible layout devices. With the advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), table-based layout is commonly regarded as outdated. Database integration technologies such as server-side scripting and design standards like W3C further changed and enhanced the way the Web is made. As times change, websites are changing the code on the inside and visual design on the outside with ever-evolving programs and utilities.

A web site is a marketing tool but in basis is a collection of information about a particular topic or subject. A web site might be compared to a book, where each page of the book is a web page. Multimedia and diseño web is the key for a success website.

There are many aspects (design concerns) in this process, and due to the rapid development of the Internet, new aspects may emerge. For non-commercial web sites, the goals may vary depending on the desired exposure and response. For typical commercial web sites, the basic aspects of design are:

The content: the substance, and information on the site should be relevant to the site and should target the area of the public that the website is concerned with.

The usability: the site should be user-friendly, with the interface and navigation simple and reliable.

The appearance: the graphics and text should include a single style that flows throughout, to show consistency. The style should be professional, appealing and relevant.

The visibility: the site must also be easy to find via most, if not all, major search engines and advertisement media.

A web site typically consists of text and images. Since a website can be a business, selling and trading on internet is comercio electronico.

Once a web site is completed, it must be published or uploaded in order to be viewable to the public over the internet.

Once published, the web master may use a variety of techniques to increase the traffic that the web site receives. This may include submitting the web site to a search engine posicionamiento google, exchanging links with other web sites, creating affiliations with similar web sites, etc.

Multidisciplinary requirements

Web site design crosses multiple disciplines of information systems, information technology and communication design. The web site is an information system whose components are sometimes classified as front-end and back-end. The observable content (e.g. page layout, user interface, graphics, text, audio) is known as the front-end. The back-end comprises the organization and efficiency of the source code, invisible scripted functions, and the server-side components that process the output from the front-end. Depending on the size of a Web development project, it may be carried out by a multi-skilled individual (sometimes called a web master), or a project manager may oversee collaborative design between group members with specialized skills .

Different Business Services To Help You Through Recession

March 4, 2009 by · 28 Comments 

There is a tough road ahead for many companies with the current financial crisis. We have already seen many big businesses struggling to cope and many businesses are looking for a way through the recession. There are two ways most businesses can cope with the loss of business due to a fall in consumer and business spending. Many will choose to cut spending on marketing and other areas where costs can be reduced. This however may not be the best means on improving their financial situation. The other option for a business is to improve their services and advertising to encourage more enquiries and sales. In order to do this many businesses will require the help of outside consultants and agencies as they don’t have their own facilities.

One of the perfect ways to get round the recession is to improve your companies marketing to encourage more enquiries and sales. There are many ways this can be done from increasing your online marketing, magazine advertising and promotion to company branding, discounts and hosting events. Different types of marketing are suitable for different companies depending on their business model. Hiring the services of a marketing agency or consultant is a good idea as they will be able to analyse where your business should focus their efforts. An example of this would be using a marketing agency in Bournemouth, if your businesses customers are all based locally in the Bournemouth or Dorset area. Using a marketing agency in Bournemouth would be an advantage as they will have a good knowledge of the local area and which markets to target. If you were looking to target a much bigger market then you would need to hire a marketing agency that has experience dealing with country wide advertising and branding campaigns.

Holding a seminar or a conference is a great way to attract new business as well as a way to network with other businesses. However the amount of event management skills required when putting together such an event could be beyond many employees. A conference management consultant will be able to help by finding a suitable venue and organising the running order for the event. Many conference management agencies also provide other services, if you were planning on speaking at the conference and lacked some public speaking skills then a conference management consultant might be able to help. Many provide presentation skills training which will help improve public speaking skills.

A management business consultancy may also be able to help with improving the way your business works. Most business management consultancies tend to be collections of specialists that have joined together to provide a package of different services. By using a management and business consultancy you can refine and improve your business practises to help improve efficiency. These services usually include reviews and advice on telecommunications and information technology systems within your business as well as providing hospitality consultation. This makes it similar to hiring a separate telecommunication consultancy and information technology consultancy to improve your services to customers but instead you can save money by hiring a team of business and management specialists in one package.

These are just some of the many services and consultants that are available to advise and work together with businesses.

 

Why Should you Outsource?

January 20, 2009 by · 23 Comments 

Outsourcing has become a famous business buzzword today. You can hear outsourcing being talked about on TV, written on newspapers and magazine, and spoken by businessmen and other personalities. Of course, you need to know what outsourcing is just in case someone from a party starts talking about it or start to ask you about it. To have an idea what outsourcing is, outsourcing is the process of hiring or contracting another company or person to do a particular business function. Today, almost every business organization or group has started to outsource in one way or another.

While it is true that outsourcing is a business practice that has been done long ago, it is getting more popular and is slowly becoming a trend in large scale enterprises. Before, the process that is being outsourced is typically considered as process non-core to the business. Let us say, for example, a financial company will outsource landscape services and janitorial services to a company who specializes in these kinds of work. The company will outsource these functions since they are not part of the company’s strategy and specializes. However, things have changed today. Today, companies hire third-party providers to perform significant and core operations of the business. A company today will outsource major business functions to third party service providers.

Outsourcing today is used by many companies and businesses. In fact, experts say that ever since work and process specialization has existed, companies have long started to employ outsourcing functions and let third-party companies perform business processes such as data entry, encoding, billing, recruitment, payroll, and many more. Currently, outsourcing takes many forms. Business organizations hire service providers and third-party companies to handle certain business processes. From narrow business functions to whole operations, companies who outsource trust an entire operations unit to outsourcing companies who specializes in different business operations. Today, the most common forms of outsourcing are business process outsourcing (BPO) and information technology outsourcing or ITO.

The process of outsourcing is different from company to company. More often than not, the decision to outsource a specific business process is considered to be strategic and top management level decision and normally requires board approval. While it is true that outsourcing will lead to long run cost efficiency, it is still very expensive to outsource. It is a big decision to make for large scale enterprises since the directing of a business function to a third party service provider includes not only big expenses, but also the transfer of people and the sale of some company assets to the third party outsourcing company. Some companies even seek the advice of outsourcing consultants to lend a hand in decision making and service provider evaluation.

If you want to know more about outsourcing, you can read a number of articles online or simply open the business section of your favorite magazine or newspaper. Outsourcing has been done for a long time now and it is certainly here to stay. As long as there are companies who will outsource and as long as there are third party service providers willing to carry out the business functions, outsourcing will thrive and will help many businesses grow