An NRI who flew to Hyderabad from Texas, the US state which reported the first swine flu death outside Mexico, was on Wednesday found to have the flu symptoms. Authorities, who refused to divulge the identity of the person, only said he had arrived in the city two days ago and has now been quarantined.

Special teams of doctors who are screening passengers from US and other affected countries who entered in the last 10 days have also been going to their homes to conduct health check-ups. It was during one such check that the person was found to have signs of swine flu.

Doctors are checking for symptoms like running nose
, fever, body aches and other viral fever symptoms among the passengers.

The first death in the Texan city of Brownsville, which borders Mexico, was that of a two-year-old Mexican boy who had come across the frontier. The cause of death on Monday was pneumonia brought on by the flu virus, which is spreading human to human. So far, 91 cases have been reported from the United States and 2,400 from Mexico, where 150 people have died of the flu. The case in Hyderabad, if confirmed as swine flu, would be India’s first.

According to Andhra Pradesh principal secretary (health
) L V Subramanyam, the patient was brought to the Institute of Preventive Medicine, Narayanguda, to go through the preliminary tests for respiratory problems, cold and cough. After this he was referred to the Government Chest Hospital at Erragadda which is a quarantine centre. The patient will be kept there for 10 days of observation. The family members of the passengers do not have any symptoms and were not quarantined.

“The medical and health officials are looking at the records of all international passengers who landed in the city in the last 10 days and medical tests are being conducted on them,” Subramanyam said.

However, the chest hospital superintendent denied that any patient had been admitted with swine flu symptoms. “We were informed that a patient would be sent to the quarantine facility but he did not turn up,” superintendent S V Prasad said.

Meanwhile, health officials who started screening international passengers conducted initial tests on passengers from 15 international flights which landed at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Shamshabad on Wednesday.

According to the doctors, none of the passengers were found to have symptoms of the flu. “The passengers from all the 15 flights were checked at the boarding point, by the flight attendants and also by the doctors who were stationed in the airport,” an airport health official, Dr K N Reddy told TOI. He said that two duty doctors screened more than 1,000 passengers from early Wednesday morning.

“While some of the passengers were ailing with other infections, including stomach aches, no one was found with conditions which are like that of swine flu,” Reddy said. He said that chances of such passengers on board a plane were less as no one with swine flu symptoms was being allowed to leave their countries.

Source : The Times Of India

For companies planning to launch new initiatives during uncertain times, it’s important “to know from the start that the plan is wrong,” according to Ian MacMillan, Wharton professor of innovation and entrepreneurship. Assumptions are what get most companies into trouble, MacMillan and co-author Rita Gunther McGrath, a professor at Columbia Business School, argue in their new book, Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity.

In an interview with Knowledge@Wharton, McGrath and MacMillan describe how firms tend to approach growth in ways that hurt them, and what they can do to make the most of new opportunities, even during the current downturn. It’s not failure that companies need to avoid, they say, but rather “failing expensively.”

Read the interview here

We have crossed 50 employees with the 4 new recruits we had yesterday.

I would like to congratulate every one of you for enabling this to happen.

With great power comes great responsibility

This team size means a lot of changes in the way, we are used to function.

It means:

1. We have to put more effort to assimilate new recruits into our fold,
2. We have to work hard and focus more to keep this company stable and growing,
3. We have to demand more changes for this team to keep on innovating,
4. We have to create more ways to keep “FUN” at office happening.

I know and am sure, we can pull this off. Because, this team is one of the greatest, I have worked with.

You guys ROCK!

Interesting post on Social Media

Social media has only just taken off, says Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang — and his “Future of the Social Web” report says social networks and marketers will have to change their strategies. “Bad things will happen,” he says.

Read more

Interesting article i read, which i thought should share with all of you, funny:

6 Random Coincidences That Created The Modern World

The stuff they say about time travel is right. You go back in time and change one little thing, and suddenly the future is full of Nazis and dinosaurs.

If you go back through history, you find that time and time again the huge changes that shape our world today all hinged on some utterly random coincidence. Change it, and the entire course of history changes with it.

Read more

Everybody wants to get to the top, whether it is the top of a career, a company, the earnings scale, or the many other ways that we as individuals can define the “top” in our own lives! But with so many people trying to get to the top, how come so many people aren’t moving up? I think there are some fundamental reasons why. Reasons that can be addressed and changed! What are some things you can do to get to the top? Here are some thoughts for you this week!

First of all, define what the “top” means for you. This is extremely important because if you don’t know where you are going, you will never get there! Some people don’t want to be the CEO of the company. In fact, many think they are better off than the CEO even though they don’t make as much money. Instead, they think they are at the top because of less stress, weekends with their families, etc, and I see their point. It doesn’t matter what others think is the top, only what you do, since you are only gauging whether or not YOU get there! So where is it for you? That is the first question for you to answer.

Be passionate about your goal. Passion is the energy that drives us, or, as Alexander Pope said, passions are the “gales of life.” Passion is the wind in the sales of work. Find some thing you love and you will find something you can get to the top of. If you don’t love it, you may still make it to the top, though highly unlikely. And even if you do, there will be no joy. Let your passion carry you, because it will carry you far! Thomas Fuller put it this way: A man with passion rides a horse that runs away with him.

The will to continue in the face of hardship. Another reason most will not get to the top is because they simply refuse to scale the mountains of hardship that separate them from the top. If you want to get to the beautiful view from the top, you will have to climb over any obstacles. Instead, many choose to stay at base camp!

One would think that Bjorn Borg, one of the greatest tennis players to ever live, would consider his skill his greatest asset. Instead, this is what he says, “My greatest point is my persistence. I never give up in a match. However down I am, I fight until the last ball. My list of matches shows that I have turned a great many so-called irretrievable defeats into victories.” Continue until you get to the top!

Love people and treat them right. What? Love people? That’s right! Why? Because if you are going to get to the top, you are going to need other people. Be a jerk and you will find people dragging their feet on you. Treat them right and you will find them helping you and even cheering you on!

Master the appropriate skills. Average skills will get you to the middle. Top skills will get you to the TOP! This is most assuredly true when combined with the points above. Are you achieving excellence in the skills you need? Are you growing day by day, month by month, year by year? You can always get better and getting better will take you closer to the top! Even if you only improve a little, you can keep improving that small amount and it will eventually become a big amount! Demand the best from yourself and you will get to the top. Remember the words of Jose Ortega y Gasset: “We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.”

• DEFINE THE TOP
• BE PASSIONATE
• PERSEVERE
• LOVE OTHERS
• SKILL MASTERY!
• THESE WILL TAKE YOU TO THE TOP!

Team Nirvana is a blog which represents a stage where I let people be aware of what they can learn more from the tools already present and how they can optimize the tools and applications which are scattered and lying around the World Wide Web. I inform the readers of the better services and features provided by these applications. These applications, in the sense, which caters to the needs of the people and by comparing the products and apps, I tend to make you choose a better one rather than living and playing with a not-so-advanced-app.

Today, I would like to provide a collection of tools which can be used to check and the traffic of your site or blog and other options like:

• Where the traffic is originating from?
• What are the keywords used to arrive at your site from a search engine?
• How long is the traffic staying on your site?
• Where is the traffic leaving to after checking your site?
• Which site is referring you?
• Where are your backlinks originating from?
• What is the percentage of traffic coming from search engines(also known as Organic Traffic)?
• Which country viewers are the most active?
• Which page is getting the most number of visits?

Well, those are some of the important questions which you need an answer to and very detailed specs are provided to the end-user by many applications. But, one important thing is that, not a single application can provide complete details like these and at times you end up using 2 or 3 applications and at the end of the month or 3 months, you need to check all the statistics and correct yourself or emphasize yourself at a source. Now, lets know what are the different sites which provide you applications to track your progress in the sense of your website or blog.

1. Google Analytics
2. Woopra
3. Alexa
4. Compete
5. StatBrain
6. StatCounter
7. Have A MintYes, that is actually a site name )
8. Fox Metrics
9. Crazy EggCan find out what your visitors are clicking and reading through their Heat Maps)
10. HiStats
11. SemRush
12. FuseStats
13. ClustrMaps
14. BraveNet
15. ExtremeTracking

Some exclusive services like Heat Map have to be paid for. But, if you wish to track what the readers are checking on your web site, then it is advisable to go to the extra length and utilize this service.

Source: teamnirvana

With the word teamwork, the first item that stands out is the word team. This means that there is a collective group of people working together to achieve a common goal. Teamwork is very essential in any organization as the concept allows for success in any field. All coaches, managers, team-leaders and any other heads of a group emphasize on a unified team and working as one unit to achieve positive results. Working together without an individual or a certain group in the team exhibiting selfish tendencies could create an exceptional team. There may be a team composed of extraordinary individuals but if they do not work together as a collective item, they may end up losing or being humiliated by ordinary individuals that worked as a team. To achieve a strong and effective team mentality, requires a great deal of sacrifice, commitment and hard work. There are a number of factors that should be in place for a cohesive group to be in place and work seamlessly together.

The first of such factors is good leadership. Team leadership is quite essential as the members are supposed to look at the leader as a beacon for the continuity of a successful venture. The leaders should acquire skills to maintain and create a positive atmosphere in the work place and inspire and also motivate the members of the team to be highly confident, committed and take a positive look to work. Good and effective leadership is mainly a very essential component for a good collaboration. Communication is essential in any interpersonal contact and more importantly of a team. Clear communication should be emphasized to both the leaders and the members of that particular team. Expressing of ideas, articulation of feelings, considering each other’s point of view, and expressing the goals and plans that one has is a good way to cement a team. Establishing the roles one has to play is also important as every member needs to understand what his or her role in the team is and his or her responsibilities. The leader can outline this on the onset of the team formation, in a clear manner defining purpose of every member.

No matter how strong and compact a team functions together, there will always be conflicts and arguments arising. Conflict resolution could be handled by a structured method to counter this predicament. To help others and avoid offending others, members should be able to talk about the problems freely. Team leaders should get to the core of the argument instead of avoiding the issue. They should be able to approach the situation head-on. This could be achieved by the leader meeting with the conflicting parties to solve the problem by remaining impartial to either side. When a team leader sets a good example, he or she makes it possible for productive achievements to be made. To keep members of the team motivated, committed and positive, there is the need for the leader to exhibit these qualities for the others to follow.

Source: ezinearticles

Finding the perfect SEO tool amidst the many you may have tucked away for safekeeping can be tricky. Ann Smarty suggests organizing tools by task such as search, keyword and backlink. Marketers also can organize the tools by the frequency in which they are used.

Smarty provides instructions on how to use two organizational tools that might come in handy: Firefox and Wikipad. For Firefox, the bookmarks are searchable by title within any folder, so you can search stored SEO tools by any keyword, she writes.

Read the whole story at Search Engine Journal.

Did you know that one of the best things you can do to increase productivity is to start each day by deciding what it is you want to get done, create a plan to do it and then get to work? This works so well because your goals stay present in your mind and become real.

But for many of us, even if we do identify our primary goals for the day, somehow along the way life happens and we get distracted. We never get around to those things that are most important.

Have you ever wished that “they” would leave you alone for 5-minutes so you’d be able to finish the project you’re working on?

Have you ever been right in the middle of something and your phone rings, you answer the phone and completely lose track of everything you had been working on?

Have you ever been doing research on the internet and then an ad or interesting article catches your eye and an hour later you find yourself lost and miles and miles away from what you were doing?

Have you thought to yourself, “I’ll get right back to it after I answer handle this quick email” but then at the end of the day you realize that you never got back to it?

Have you ever looked through a pile of mail on your desk searching for one specific thing only to get sidetracked by all of the other things in that pile that suddenly need to be done?

The various forms of communication that we have available to us are some of the biggest distractions out there. Things like email, phone calls, text messages, snail mail, online advertisements or even colleagues stopping by our desks to talk with us or say “hi”. What often happens is that these communications distract us from what we identified as being what we want to accomplish on a given day.

We live in a society that places extreme value on both productivity and constant communication. Many of us (including myself) are finding that it is the very nature of instantaneous communication that hampers our productivity the most.

What these types of communication do is to force someone else’s priority to the top of your mind. Just because someone else wants information from you and sends you an email or calls you, doesn’t mean that you need to give them an answer immediately. In fact, just a moment ago, as I was sitting here writing this article my phone rang and I picked it up. My train of thought was interrupted and slowed my progress on my work. To make matters worse, I allowed myself to be interrupted by someone dialing a wrong number.

We can’t ignore the outside world completely nor would we want to. As social beings we thrive on being in touch. There are colleagues, clients, family and friends who truly need our help and we want to be able to help them. But what we can control is how we choose to deal with this communication.

Here are five strategies for you to use to manage these distractions over the course of your day to help you improve your focus and increase your productivity.

Shut off the “you’ve got mail” feature of your email.

Identify the time of day when you have the fewest interruptions. Use that time to work on your more intensive projects.

Give yourself permission to ignore the phone when it rings when you’re right in the middle of something.

When someone stops by to speak with you while you are in the working on a project, tell them your mind is on something else but that you’d like to schedule a time to speak with them later when you will be able to give their issues your full attention.

Source: 1888articles