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Communication Key to a Better Work Environment Everyone knows the story of A Christmas Carole. On Christmas Eve, poor Bob Cratchit, who is working late again, spends his day working up the courage to ask his boss, Mr. Scrooge, if he can have Christmas Day off from work to spend with his family. When he finally does get up the nerve to ask, Mr. Scrooge lets forth a tirade over lazy people using Christmas as an excuse to have a day a off from work. This fictional story unfortunately rings true for a lot of people who have to work up the courage to ask for things from their employers. An employee who has to feel about their employer the way Bob Cratchit felt about Mr. Scrooge is not a very happy and productive employee. To get the most of out of your workers, you have to create a much more hospitable working environment. To create a better working environment, keeping the lines of communication open is absolutely crucial. How does communication work in your office? Do you get the impression that everyone is walking around on eggshells around you? While this kind of fear from your employees may be good for your ego in some senses, it is really bad for your business. When your employees don?t feel like they can talk to you, you will lose control over what is going on with your business. You may be the boss, but your employees are the ones who are actually on the front lines. To know what is really going on out there, you need your employees to communicate honestly with you. If they feel that you are unapproachable, they will hide problems and concerns from you, and you won?t be able to act to fix them. You can?t expect to run your business with half of the information about what is actually going on, and so your business will suffer for your ?mean boss? routine. There are still other problems with creating an office environment in which your employees feel like you are unapproachable. In general, there will be a dark cloud over the office when you are around. The stress will keep employee morale low, and employees with low morale are employees with low productivity. Besides, who wants to work hard for someone they cannot approach or who doesn?t show they any respect? Shutting down those lines of communication will definitely affect your bottom line as employees ?phone it in? because they don?t feel invested in making your business a success. If you want a better working environment, you have to improve the lines of communication. If there has been a communication breakdown in the past, take the time to address it with your staff. If you staff is small, talk to them each one on one, letting them know that your door is always open and that you want more regular communication with them. If you have a larger staff, schedule a meeting to address the issue. Weekly office meetings are a great way to keep communication channels open and swap ideas in the office environment. If weekly meetings are not feasible, find some way of touching base with your staff on a regular basis, either through weekly emails or a weekly newsletter. Also, you should encourage your staff to communicate with each other. Sharing information among the staff is a great way to generate fresh ideas and fresh approaches to problems. If your office is suffering from a communication problem, make nipping it in the bud a priority. The pay off will be more productive workers and a whole lot less stress. Who knew work could actually be a pleasant place to be?

Web Hosting - Unix vs Windows-Based Hosting, Which Is Better? An operating system functions largely out of sight, or at least is supposed to. It doesn't matter to non-geeks how a file gets stored, or how memory is used, or how simultaneous processes share the limited resources available on a computer. These are among the basic functions of any operating system. Yet, you can find very passionate supporters - who offer very detailed lists of pros and cons - for every operating system. Why? Because, though the low-level functions of an operating system do their work out of sight, there are many other features that rise to visibility. Sometimes, they do so when they're not supposed to. Weighing the pros and cons objectively could consume a book. But to select a web host operating system, a manageable level of considerations apply. They can be weighed even by those who don't know a processor queue from a pool cue. Learning Curves For most web site owners, administering the site/server is just overhead. It's not something they take pleasure in doing and they have plenty of other things to worry about. Many wouldn't know how and have no interest in learning (rightly so, given their priorities). Consequently, ease of administration is paramount for such people. Whether a Unix-based site (usually Linux these days) is easier to administer than Windows depends on your current skill set and the type of tools and level of access the web hosting company provides. But in general Linux is more difficult to install and maintain than Windows and the learning curve is steeper. FTP and Control Panels Often, you don't have to care. For many, the operating system is fairly transparent. FTP file transfers to get a new web page up to a Windows server are very much like they are to a Linux-based site. The user/administrator simply doesn't see what's behind the curtain. Many companies provide other utilities that completely mask any awareness of the operating system underneath. When that's the case, the web site owner has no reason to care, until or unless they need or want to go 'inside the black box'. Performance Performance issues can be relevant in selecting which operating system host type to choose. But for the most part, that aspect is outside the web site owner's control. Overall performance can be good or bad on either system, depending on many factors that the publisher will rarely see. The issue is a wash, as far as tipping the scales is concerned. What is more likely to be seen by a web site owner, at some point in their (and their site's) development is the database product that can be used to store information. Databases Microsoft SQL Server is relatively simple to use, yet extremely powerful and can deliver great performance. But it doesn't run on Linux. At least, not without special software to emulate Windows, which usually kills performance. On the other hand, with a bit of time invested, MySQL isn't significantly more difficult to learn than MS SQL Server and there are many free installations. Cost may well outweigh other considerations for most on this issue. Programming Languages Last, but not least, there are differences in programming languages that can be (or at least typically are) used on Windows vs Unix. If you have programmers who are skilled in Visual Basic, ASP and other Microsoft technologies, then a Windows-based host will be your preferred choice. For Perl and PHP programmers, Linux is the more common platform of choice. No single factor can push you to one versus the other operating system. And, in the long run, it isn't the primary consideration, unless you just enjoy playing with operating systems.

Find Free Stuff Online by Visiting the FreeStuffOnline Website Whatever it is somebody is searching for, he might be able to find it on the FreeStuffOnline website. The FreeStuffOnline website is a page that offers links to other pages that have products that are free off charge available to anybody. Pages like this one collect links and web addresses that offer free products and then publish it as a great resource to the broader public. The links offered by FreeStuffOnline leads to a variety of different topics and offers and there might be just what someone one is looking for. The web page offers categories such as educational freebies, which includes Study notes, Encyclopedias, books and more. Family freebies have categories for babies, children and parents. For the computer world there are free products such as free antivirus software, freeware programs, games and graphics, shareware, music and screensavers. For the cell phone fanatic, there are links to free cell phone ring tones and short message programs. A seasonal freebie category holds anything that relates to the major holidays in the United States, such as Christmas, Halloween, Easter and more. The category ?internet? offers links to free web hosting pages, e-mail providers and much more. The way such pages work is by the various masters that take care of adding and removing links. As a matter of fact, anyone can add freebie links to the page. This is one of their most important tools to keep such a freebie page working. Anyone who finds a good freebie that is not a fraudulent page should go to the FreeStuffOnline web page and add the link. Other people will benefit from the link just as much as the person that added it. To keep such sites possible the effort of anyone that is looking for freebies is necessary. There are many organizations out there that specialize in providing help for the ones that do not have a wealthy family to pay for all of it. Organizations that specialize in literature offer PDF files of books of world famous authors such as Shakespeare, books that anybody should have the chance to read. Other pages specialize in children?s songs. Downloadable MP3s, legal downloads of these songs are available to make music an integral part of young children?s lives. Even for the new craze of sharing pictures, files and other important date there are links that guide the user to pages that will offer such services for free. Sharing pictures with loved ones should be easy and free and available to anybody. Whether it is the grandparent that lives hundred of miles away or a father that serves in the army, these pages offer the opportunity to anyone to share important data such as pictures over the distance. Using an online file sharing web page also has the advantage of speed over regular mail. Until the pictures are sent to their destination by mail, it can take days, but on the Internet the process takes a few seconds and the person at the other PC can see the data almost instantly. When these files are shared there is always the possibility to have the pictures printed at one of the photo stores and the person will still be able to hold printed pictures in their hands. One other important fact to know about these free online pages like FreeStuffOnline is that whenever you come onto a link that is not working, let them know, only by people telling the web master that the link is not working it can be removed. Helping to maintain the page by alarming for broken links can reduce the frustration to other that was trying to check out the link.