Structured Concepts endeavors to present clients an all-inclusive portfolio of Integrated Back office business process outsourcing services that leverages proven technology, process understanding and domain knowledge in the Health care, Banking, & Financial Services field. Their aim is to provide our clients with not just the cost benefit of outsourcing, but also equip them with an responsive back office that can dexterously react to constantly changing needs that are a given in a competitive global business environment. Customer-centric approach to business with its domain expertise and a sound understanding of the customer’s needs, we offers solutions that bring a host of benefits to the customer’s business. They are extra careful to ensure that the customer finds its solutions highly effective and not too daunting in terms of price.

Their core competencies include services such as virtual assistance, data entry & data conversion, accounting and financial services, tax consultancy, medical records retrieval, database creations, document scanning & sorting, and insurance claims.

The compact and handy base model was specifically designed for indoor applications. Shortcut keys for addition, subtraction, area and volume calculation make measuring fast and very reliable. The last 10 measurements are also stored. As with all Leica laser distance meters, the laser dot is clearly visible. You can always see your targeting point, even if the target object is in a hard to access area.

               Disto D2                                Disto A2

For all of your construction laser and laser measurement device needs, visit www.appraiserslaser.com

Marketers and consultants across the nation are invited to nominate lawyers for the Rainmaker of the Year Awards, sponsored by the editors of Originate! - the monthly business development newsletter, and judged by LSSO - the Legal Sales and Service Organization.

 “We want to recognize the lawyers who have geared up to bring in business and applied themselves to make it happen. And we want our readers to learn from those who have been particularly successful this past year,” said Editor-In-Chief Barry Schneider,

Winners will receive a handsome award, be publicized in a nationally-distributed press release and be interviewed for articles to be published in Originate! and on the LSSO website.

The newsletter is now soliciting entries for the Rainmaker Awards from lawyers, firms, marketing specialists, recruiters and consultants, in six categories:

1.     Associate

2.     Small firm lawyer (30 or fewer lawyers)

3.     Partner – transactions

4.     Partner – litigator

5.     Woman Lawyer

6.     Diverse Lawyer

Law firm marketers and marketing consultants are encouraged to submit an entry on behalf of a top rainmaker they know in one of these categories, and self-nominations are also welcome.  There is no entry fee this year. The deadline for submissions is Monday, July 21, 2008.  Entry forms are available online at www.pbdi.org/originate. 

A panel of independent judges with expertise in legal business development has been assembled by the Legal Sales and Service Organization (LSSO):

• Martha Fay “Marty” Africa, Managing Director of Major Lindsay & Africa consultants
• Gabe Miller Esq., General Counsel of The Law Offices of James Sokolove
• Catherine MacDonagh, Esq., President of LSSO.

The judges will determine the best of the best among the submitted entries.

“With sales and marketing now so critical to the careers of individual lawyers and the vitality of law firms, we know how important it is for the best to be recognized and share what they do,” said Beth Cuzzone, a co-founder of LSSO, who is the Director of Business Development for Goulston & Storrs in Boston.

More information on the contest, as well as the entry form, can be found at www.pbdi.org/originate

ABOUT ORIGINATE! — Originate! is an independent online business development newsletter for lawyers is found at www.pbdi.org/originate. The paid subscription newsletter offers practical advice to lawyers: how to get new clients and generate more revenue. Originate! has assembled firm leaders, rainmakers and consultants to publish case studies of successful lawyers, specific techniques to boost marketing results, how-to’s, and market insights.  First published in 2007, the co-editors of Originate! include Barry Schneider of Dallas, TX, Larry Bodine, Esq., of Glen Ellyn, IL, and Michael G. Cummings of St. Charles, IL.

ABOUT LSSO – The Legal Sales and Service Organization, based in Boston and found at www.legalsales.org, is the legal profession’s only organization exclusively focused on sales, service excellence and process issues in law firms and legal departments.  Founded in 2003, LSSO delivers the education and resources that lawyers need to improve their sales and client service skills with a searchable library, exclusive research, tools and information for members only, LSSO’s RainDance Conference, LSSO’s Process Improvement Certification Programs and the Thomas H. Lee Award for Service Excellence. Catherine Alman MacDonagh, Esq. is the association’s Co-Founder & President.

For further information please contact Originate! co-editor Larry Bodine at 630.942.0977.

Laser Measure with your Disto from AppraisersLaser.com

The Leica DISTO™ D3 is a multi-functional instrument to ensure simple, quick and reliable measurements. You can measure distances with absolute accuracy, past obstructions and determine angles quickly and precisely. The integrated tilt sensor also provides you with a horizontal distance measurement. Another sensor detects the lighting conditions and automatically switches on the display and keypad illumination. You can rely on your Leica DISTO™ D3 while working in the dark

What needs to be well recognized, however, is the fact that Italy’s inventions were not limited in any way to merely material things. There are many inventions which represent shortcuts of various kinds for the accomplishment of mental processes and in facilities of this kind the practical genius of the Italians has been particularly fruitful. It was they who invented the various processes in arithmetic that have so simplified calculations. It is to them also that we owe as is made clear in the chapters on Mathematics and Astronomy the algebraic solutions of equations of various kinds that had seemed impossible or could be done only by long time taking guess-work before the Italian mind ordered them.

That was worth the patience, because, since the marginal RZ of the beginning of the Nineties, one doubted the aptitude of the Italians to revive the virus of the alfists.

Car lovers were prompt to show their passion towards the power of the V8, developed in Maranello and concealed under a carbon skin. During the Paris Motor Show in 2006, where the Italian diva played the stars behind a glass, Alfa Romeo received more than 1,000 orders. This car is produced in limited numbers at Maserati, in Modena, at a rate of two units per day.

The 8C Competizione carries quotations and references to the cult Alfa models. If the name pays a vibrant homage to the famous 8C of twenties Zagato, the silhouette reminds of a little Giulia TZ in the grill, and of the 33 Stradale of 1967 designed by Franco Scaglione.

To place side by side the model and its copy, separated by forty years, causes a shock. As much the original is frail and tiny (39 inches high), as much the modern and round 8C appears to raise of another scale. The style deserves praises to have made a success of the challenge to preserve the purity of the engineering draft of 2003. The engineers had to meet this requirement at the time to graft a strongly shortened platform of Maserati Quattroporte. This strict 2-seater succeeds in putting a large V8 in front central position, with the gearbox at the back in order to guarantee an almost ideal distribution of the masses (49 % at the front, 51 % at the back).

The excitement is full when, after having started 286ci V8 which delivers 450 HP, one presses on the “sport” button located on the central console. The V8 thunders with a musical aggressiveness. The steering is of a total precision, and the brakes oversized.

In addition to a call center dedicated to the beast, Alfa offers to the 500 owners to carry out a training course (US$12,000) and a multitude of custom equipment: custom paint (US$22,000), braided or granulated leather (US$3,000) matched with specific seams (US$500), custom brake color (US$1,500), plate “500 Limited Edition” with the owner’s name (US$800) and a set of luggage (US$5,000) coordinated with the car’s upholstery. Especially designed to occupy the rear space, the latter is strongly recommended.

Enthusiastic with the success of the 8C, Alfa Romeo now plans to produce a spider version limited to 500 numbered units. But not before 2009 and the return of the Quadrifoglio on the North-American continent.

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Galileo’s inventions alone would do credit to any country. He observed the oscillations of the swinging lamp in the Cathedral of Pisa and utilized the isochronism which he noted for an astronomical clock. He suggested its use for the measuring of successive intervals of time and his studies on the pendulum led to its employment for many scientific purposes. He threw out a hint for the study of the human pulse by it, an important factor for modern medicine. He established the laws of falling bodies as they are still formulated, demonstrated the laws of projectiles, and largely anticipated the laws of motion as finally established by Newton. We have from him a series of telescopic discoveries and inventions relating to astronomy. He could have accomplished all this only in the midst of encouragement and liberal patronage and quite contrary to the usually accepted notion of bitter persecution “Galileo s long life” as Bertrand the Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences declared, “must when considered as a whole be looked upon as one of the most serene and enviable in the history of science.”

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The Italians

Italy has been especially prolific in the invention of facilitations for education. The astronomical clock was invented in Italy and various combinations of mechanical moving spheres to illustrate astronomy. Father Kircher’s works, and he published textbooks in nearly every department of science, On Magnetism, On Light and Shadow, on Music, On Sound, On the Art of Harmony and Discord, On Astronomy, On Geology as well as on other phases of science are full of most ingenious inventions illustrated by sketches to help the teacher to demonstrate scientific principles. It was he who invented the idea of having a scientific museum and making collections of all sorts of objects for scientific teaching purposes. The great Kircherian Museum’s collections are now mostly at the National Museum of Rome, though it has suffered much from vicissitudes by which his order (the Jesuits) was suppressed and driven out at various times, it still enables us to understand the wonderful practical genius of this man of science. He was not himself an Italian but a German, but all his work was done down in Italy.

The barometer is an invention of Toricelli and the hint for its invention came in a very interesting way, which illustrates the practical inventiveness of the Italian mind. A very deep well near Florence had been fitted with a pump, but it was found that in spite of the most careful fitting of piston, and valves the water could not be made to rise higher in the tube than thirty two feet. Toricelli who was official scientist to the court was asked to explain this surprising paradox, for everyone thought that suction, as it was called, if only exerted with force enough could raise water to any height. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” it was said, and water would rush in to fill any space out of which air was taken. Toricelli reached the conclusion that the air had a definite pressure and that it was this which caused the water to rise but only to the extent of the pressure of the air. He demonstrated this by sealing one end of a tube filling it with mercury and then being careful to exclude all air he inverted it in a basin containing mercury. The mercury in the tube instantly sank to a level of about thirty inches above the level of the mercury in the basin. This left above the column of mercury in the top of the tube a vacuum which is the most perfect that can be obtained. He at once demonstrated a great principle, corrected a false scientific conclusion and invented a most useful instrument for measuring the weight of air, because this simple apparatus needs only a scale to be a perfect barometer. How much this instrument has meant for mankind in all the 360 years since its invention is needless to say. All lives and property saved by weather reports are all thanks to the information obtained from the barometer. The additional information obtained from the thermometer is also due to an Italian invention.