The Colloid Base

Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co (KKR) was founded by Henry Kravis and George Roberts in the 70’s with the help of the First Chicago Corporation. But pushing beyond, hoping to make the businesses in their portfolio more environmentally friendly, KKR have rolled out a unique green project which has changed the method by which businesses and environmental agencies work.

When Henry Kravis from KKR and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) got together in 2008 green issues went mainstream. Key environmental matters like toxic emissions and inordinate water consumption rank high on their agenda. Eco-efficiency (the term was first endorsed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development) is the technique deployed to achieve these goals, applying environmentally friendly techniques such as reducing the dispersion of toxic chemicals, optimizing data centers for efficiency and improving fuel economy through vehicle fleet maintenance. Impressive though it was the KKR and EDF didn’t even realize the full benefits of the project until the person in charge of the project, Ken Mehlman, studied the program following a year in operation.

Surpassing everybody’s expectations, Ken learned that using eco-efficiency not only cut down on ecological impact, but also increased the the net profit from every company besides. Almost all of the firms connected with KKR and Ken Mehlman nowadays actively take part in the Green Portfolio Project. Still, with a current business portfolio estimated at eighty-six billion dollars, you can be sure that this was no easy achievement. These two organizations with the assistance of Ken Mehlman have also expanded on the Green Portfolio project. The Climate Corps Program set up by the Environmental Defense Fund is just one of these enterprises, it campaigns for cost efficient, earth friendly techniques to students taking a Master’s in Business Administration.

KKR and Ken Mehlman have been creating a package of systems that administer resources. Tools like these allow staff see how environmentally friendly they are and identify any underlying issues. Henry Kravis, the KKC, and the Environmental Defense Fund have made going green less painful for companies all over the country. So, in conclusion, the work of these organizations has made green business techniques not only viable, but commercially desirable, and their radical ideas are setting a new standard in the business world of today.

I expect you know that giving your time as a volunteer lets you make your community stronger and in the same stride assist the poor. But how do you schedule this? It’s simpler to get involved when someone else has planned the event. And as you can imagine, when volunteering becomes a team effort with friends from work, it will be far more fun. In reaction, some companies are making themselves into initiatives to help their employees support the community. A leader in this field is Adaptive Marketing LLC of Connecticut who developed shopping programs such as 24Protect Plus.

If you were asked for examples of company-backed volunteer work, you’d most likely talk in terms of giving blood, maybe a Christmas donation drive, nothing more, but this is simply no longer true. Looking at a specific company, Adaptive Marketing has offered staff members the chance to help with anything from tennis shoe recycling efforts to tree replanting events. Once all the pertinent information — location, time, date, details, etc. — had been prominently announced it became very simple for staff members to settle the specific amount of time they’d be giving and what they’d be doing as they did so. There should always be a choice between initiatives, of course. Employees of Adaptive Marketing, the firm who developed the program 24Protect Plus, can select from many volunteer programs. Once you start looking for things to do you see so many; taking part in the education and entertainment of young adults, assisting with environmental programs, or improving the area’s look through arts and culture to list just a few that have already been tried. Often, the more the volunteer enjoys it, the more productive they are, so by providing so many initiatives Adaptive Marketing ensure that progress will be made in a great many areas. A one-off event or a regular addition to their schedule — this is how a firm tends to organize this kind of volunteer initiative, often at a nearby homeless shelter or the local school. Staff members may well claim that they have no time to give, though it would be fairly surprising if they honestly cannot find enough resources to help at some smaller one-day event. It’s common practice for firms to help out the people living around their base of operations. Community goodwill builds from the projects undertaken by Adaptive Marketing’s members of staff, and the members of staff of companies like it, through these initiatives. The simple fact is, one of the benefits of volunteer work is the certainty that you’ve done something good — an upbeat feeling that improves the entire corporate culture.

Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co (KKR) was launched in the 1970’s and in the beginning their specialty was in ‘bootstrap’ buyouts. However, they have put together an extraordinary green project which focuses not merely on maximum ROI, but additionally on the environmental impact of the companies they buy. Environmentally friendly business practices went mainstream a year ago when KKR’s Henry Kravis and the the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) got together. These companies intends to tackle challenging environmental matters, including deforestation, soil contamination, reckless water consumption, and depletion of the ozone layer. Eco-efficiency (the term was originally promoted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development WBCSD) denotes their mission’s framework, through using policies like reducing the dispersion of toxic chemicals, reducing the waste of resources and recycling programs. Irrespective of the fact that the project was a colossal success, no-one understood how far reaching the effects were until Ken Mehlman, the executive in charge of the program, reviewed the first year’s figures. Only at that point did Ken observe that practicing eco-efficiency was not merely helping to maintain the local environment, but it was also helping to save a tremendous range of companies a great deal of money. These days, KKR and Ken Mehlman have almost each and every business in their portfolio participating in eco-efficiency. Considering that this group of business organizations has a net worth of almost $100 billion USD, you can imagine what an enormous achievement this really was.

These two organizations along with Ken Mehlman are further expanding the initial project. The Climate Corps Program administrated by the Environmental Defense Fund is an example of this, it raises awareness of eco-efficient techniques to students studying for an MBA.

KKR and Ken Mehlman have been creating metrics that measure and manage various resources. This type of data is important as companies may easily study their daily operations and find out where they can resolve any issues while simultaneously tracking their progress. Henry Kravis, the KKC, and the Environmental Defense Fund have encouraged all sorts of businesses to decrease their ecological impact. These developments have simplified the process for companies in any sector and proved that making profits need not entail the hefty price of damaging the environment.

Arranging a stag weekend is a big responsibility - whether you are the excited groom-to-be or the well-meaning best man. You need to be certain that all of the men have a wonderful time and that the stag do is a weekend to remember - for the right reasons, of course!

So what are the crucial ingredients for the ideal stag weekend? Well, for most blokes, it must be action-packed and it must be fun.

Getting the location right will decide your stag do’s success. Whether you are heading just 20 miles away or jumping into planes, trains and cars, you need a location that caters for all your entertainment needs day and night.

Scotland has all the facilities for a fantastic stag weekend, mixing a large range of adrenalin-fuelled activities set in stunning views with the friendly hospitality for which this country is known.

You will need to ensure that your intended destination offers everything you want before making any bookings. And don?t forget to check that both the location and its staff have an excellent history of running successful stag weekends. If in doubt, it’s definitely worth asking for references from satisfied visitors.

By providing a wide range of different activities during the weekend, you should be in a position to keep everybody in the group happy. Experienced event organisers with years of experience of organising stag weekends in Scotland will be able to suggest a suitably eclectic mix that includes something for .

If you book with a credible outdoors experience company, the possibilities for an all-adventure stag weekend in Scotland are unlimited. There’ll be loads of activities to test your stag group from morning to night, not to mention the night-time festivities.

For however much energy they’ve expended in the day, party goers are always ready to go hit the club and talk about the afternoon’s fun over a few beers.

All you have to do is to let the event company know what kind of night out you are looking for. Ensure that your selected stag weekend package includes transport between the evening’s entertainment and your group’s overnight accommodation and, so that everyone can relax and enjoy themselves.

That way everybody in your party can concentrate 100% on having a good time and celebrating their friend’s forthcoming marriage.

Today, hands on philanthopy is inarguably as necessary as ever. In all likelihood you will have come across Mr. Naveen Jain’s name as being the CEO as well as co-founder of Intelius, Inc. the acclaimed company offering background checks and public records services. On top of making the Forbes 400 Richest in America list in 2000, this enterprising business leader has won various prestigious awards, foremost the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the Albert Einstein Technology Medal, and the WSA Industry Achievement Award, to list only a small selection. But that is definitely not where it ends. That’s because Mr. Jain and his kin are equally as impassioned about philanthropy and will attempt to give succor wherever possible. All our hopes for the future are carried in our youth. They are moreover an all-important inspiration for this entrepreneur and he uses every chance available to assist them. This, of course, is why he is always persistently leveraging every possibility available to offer help wherever possible. So Naveen Jain, his relations and those at Intelius devote their time to charities such as the Children’s Hospital, the Bellevue Boys and Girls Club, and the Vedic Cultural Center. They hand out magnanimous material support, but most importantly, they devote their time and care to the most deprived and susceptible children. What’s more, he supports the Children’s Hospital striving to advance children’s health. With Naveen Jain being an alumnus of XLRI Jamshedpur and the Indian Institute of Technology, it is no wonder that teaching is a tremendously important rank in his benevolent activities. This also encompasses causes and deserving cause that run the gamut from neighborhood programs to the global. Thus Intelius and its CEO are aiding deserving movements and charities e.g. the University of Washington, the Rotary Club and United Way.

Getting foodstuffs to the hungry of the world is another critical aim to Naveen Jain and those around him and it makes no difference at all to him whether it is a kid in Dallas or Islamabad, or an elderly lady in Guadeloupe or Cologne in need of help. While he is acutely cognizant that the objective of feeding every starving person in the world can look like an insurmountable task, he is also aware that the impossible can indeed be achieved when everybody exerts themselves towards a unified end. If this CEO obtains his objectives, there will come a certain conclusion to privation and famine in the world in the future. You may assume that functioning as the boss of a thriving enterprise on top of being a committed spouse and parent would afford him no spare room for altruism and aiding his fellow men. Even so he ensures that each and every one of his altruistic undertakings is given as much aid as he can plausibly ramp up. This philanthropic man is decidedly more than a simple though admittedly very successful maverick of Web commerce. He is an exceptional person and an exceptional community patron.

MySpace, co-founded by Dewolfe, has been receiving a lot of bad press lately. Management of high level are leaving, its main rival, Facebook is expanding dramatically while MySpace is running flat, word on the street that Google will withdraw from an advertising contract that takes up 40% of MySpace’s revenues. That’s why DeWolfe is eager to find out new strategies to give MySpace’s revenues a boost. For example, the MySpace Music which has been launched for one year, will have the new feature of selling concert tickets and band merchandise online. Its game offerings are also upgrading, “virtual” merchandise such as cupcakes can be purchased for visitor’s friends and loved ones. The new focus of MySpace and improving 2.0 MySpace Layouts will be increasing the revenues rather than attracting more new users. “I don’t know Facebook’s profitability,” DeWolfe says. “But if I could have 300 million people using MySpace or be profitable, I would take profitability.”

DeWolfe claims MySpace is profitable. But News Corp thinks that spending on new features and the international expansion has been too much that it dwarfs earnings. Meanwhile, Wall Street has not been impressed a lot by MySpace last year. Analysts predict that once Google withdraws from the advertising contract, it’s not going to be easy for MySpace to find another search engine which can pay as much as Google.

MySpace, with 126 million unique visitors worldwide is relatively small compared with its chief rival, Facebook, which has 236 million in January. However, MySpace does have some advantages in the U.S. market. The visitors of MySpace spend more time on the site than those of Facebook. According to a report from a tracking firm ComSore Media Metric, advertisers prefer visitors spending more time because they will be able to see their ads. DeWolfe is not yet satisfied, he is implementing several new ways to hold the visitors a little longer such as more six-minute shows and new video games. However, visitors hanging around the site longer can not guarantee that MySpace’s revenues from selling ads will increase. When the economy is in its downturn, online display marketing has been hit the most. Michael Nathanson, a senior analyst from Sanford C. Bernstein, is not optimistic about MySpace’s future. A 4% decline in ads sales is possible according to Michael.

There is no doubt that “hyper-targeted” ads are most attractive to advertisers nowadays. It is only natural that MySpace is employing this marketing method as many other online media companies did. Target group can be as accurate as 18-50 women who like Gucci and live in Australia. Sony, McDonald’s and Toyota are all potential buyers of these hyper-targeted ads. One thing that its rival Facebook doesn’t offer advertisers is the “home-page takeover”, which is really popular among advertisers according to Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst with the market research firm eMarketer. Rumors are that contracts for two founders of MySpace at News Corp may not be renewed.

Having four kids, it is very funny to perform even the simplest magic tricks for them, especially the younger ones. That is because when I do magic tricks for kids, they think that I actually have magical powers. Now, my older kids just think it is funny and try to catch me at my slight of hand stuff, but my younger ones are convinced that I have powers beyond their comprehension. Sometimes my three year old will ask me to teleport him somewhere. I shouldn’t be too proud I guess, since these are the same children who believe that automatic flushing toilets are magical too.
My son recently started getting into the art of doing magic. However, he found out very quickly that it is not nearly as easy as the guys on television make it seem to be. He was getting discouraged so I decided to look online for some easy magic tricks for him to do. I actually found quite a few, but he is a little frustrated because no one tells how to do the really neat tricks that he has seen (making big things disappear, hands going through people, etc.). I told him that like most things, he has to start with the basics and then move to the more complicated stuff.

If you already have a wireless network for your computers, you may be very interested in what’s coming next. Would you like it if your PDA, your mobile phone, your mp3 player and almost everything else you connect to your computer could be wireless too? It’s already a reality…

Personal Area Network.

Using wireless networking with your personal gadgets is often called PAN, which stands for Personal Area Network. The idea is that, in the future, we’ll all have laptop computers with their batteries charged and no more need to connect any wires to them at all — you just place your Bluetooth device near the computer, and the computer sees it and can use it straightaway.

Bluetooth has been around and in-use since 1999, and it’s only getting more popular. It was designed to be secure, low cost, and easy to use from day one.

There are two classes of Bluetooth that are in popular use: class 1 and class 2. Class 2 is the most common and cheaper standard, allowing you to use a device that is up to 10 metres (32 feet) away. Class 1 is rarer, but you can still find devices that use it easily enough, and it has ten times the range: 100 metres or 320 feet.

How Does It Work?

Bluetooth is more flexible than 802.11 wireless networking, in exchange for the shorter range. Essentially, a Bluetooth-enabled computer has one Bluetooth receiver installed in it, and this receiver can then be used with up to 7 nearby Bluetooth devices. On the other end, wireless devices do not need to have Bluetooth installed if they support it — it is already integrated.

Like 802.11, Bluetooth works by using radio signals to create bandwidth. It is not, though, the same thing as an old-style wireless mouse or keyboard, which required a receiver to be plugged into one of your computers’ ports, and didn’t have range or stability anywhere near that of Bluetooth.

Many computers now come with built in Bluetooth, especially Apple Macs. If you want to add Bluetooth to a computer that doesn’t come with it pre-installed, you should probably use a USB to Bluetooth adapter, although internal Bluetooth devices to install in your computer are available. If you have a laptop and a spare PCMCIA slot, you can get Bluetooth cards for that too.

What Can You Do With Bluetooth?

Mobile phones with Bluetooth are very popular, and so are PDAs — the instant synchronisation of addresses and calendars to a computer is a useful feature. Other than that, almost anything that would usually use USB can be done using Bluetooth, including digital cameras, mp3 players, printers, and even mice and keyboards. If you take a look through the comprehensive list of Bluetooth ‘profiles’ (kinds of devices that could, in theory, be Bluetooth enabled), it includes cordless phones, faxes, headsets, and even video.

Basically, more than anything, Bluetooth is a replacement for USB: some say that while 802.11 wireless networking is wireless Ethernet, Bluetooth is wireless USB.

Not Just for Computers.

Part of the power of Bluetooth is that it isn’t just used to connect things to computers — it can be used to connect almost anything to anything else, if both things are Bluetooth-enabled and recognise each other.

Mobile phones, in particular, take advantage of this. Hands-free headsets often use Bluetooth to communicate with the phone. Some cars, for example, now have on-board computers that will connect with a Bluetooth phone and allow you to make hands-free calls, regardless of where the phone is in the car (even if you’ve left it in your bag in the trunk!)

On top of that, of course, Bluetooth devices can communicate with each other. This has led to some people sending messages from their Bluetooth PDAs to others in close range — not an especially useful feature, but quite fun. This is called ‘bluejacking’, and the first recorded instance of it was a man who sent a Bluetooth message to another man’s Nokia phone while they were in a bank together. What did the message say? ‘Buy Ericsson’.

Since then, it has become possible to send images by bluejacking, and it is widely believed to be the newest advertising medium — yes, it lets billboards send messages to your phone, a practice known as ‘bluecasting’. Whether you think that’s cool or annoying, of course, is your choice.

Joe Byrne is a computer specialist specializing in network communications and Voice over Internet Protocol. Click on Voice over Internet Protocol for more information on VoIP.