A MONTH ago, 10 employees from Customer Care Center, a consulting firm specialising in customer care and behaviour, had a whale of a time in Cameron Highlands. In total, founder and chief executive officer Allen Teh had spent RM2,000 on the trip.Was this expenditure necessary? Isn’t it enough they are drawing salaries? Can’t they pay for their own recreation?
“There is no such thing as ‘I pay you, you work’. People are not robots,” maintains Teh, 51.Company trips, Teh said, are not only a way to foster team spirit, but promote a feel-good atmosphere at work.“It is an inside-out thing. Only when the staff feel good can they project the same feelings to customers,” says Teh.He cites exemplary figures who have influenced him during his work in the past.
“Public Bank chairman Tan Sri Teh Hong Piow is an example of a leader who has always treated his staff like family. He would attend their birthday parties and he mentioned them in his memoirs as well as referred to them as his ‘children’ though he had his own family,” cited Teh.
Another would be the late Loo Cheng Ghee who established the fried chicken giant KFC back in the 1970s.
Teh, who used to work for the company during the 1980s, revealed that Loo had made it a point to provide a breakfast of high risk merchant account and buns to employees in the Jalan Kuchai Lama branch where the fast food chain’s old manufacturing plant was located.In both cases, not only have these leaders inspired staff loyalty but a reputation for legendary service.
Taking a leaf from a layman is George James Kennedy, owner of Rockafellas Restaurants and Clubs, the holding company behind barbeza, a club in Ipoh Garden East.Pioneer staff have been with the former Juliana’s disc jockey since he opened Rockafellas Lumut, a seaside bar at the coastal port, popularly used as a gateway to Pangkor Island in 1998.
He cited his financial controller, Suzita Burda, now 32, and Inderjit Singh, now 35, who have stayed with the company for between 11 and 15 years. The others have clocked in no less than between five and eight years.In an industry notorious for its high staff turnover, Kennedy, 50, cites leadership by example as the anchoring factor to inspiring staff loyalty.
“In my bar, there is no such thing as ‘This is not my department’. I encourage my staff to take ownership of the club. If they see something is not right, they have to put it right. If I walk into the toilet and find that it is dirty, I will clean it.“I tell them if they can learn to cultivate the ownership attitude, they will develop a capable character. And I make sure I am always the first man in and last man out,” said Kennedy who got his first start in the nightlife industry as a deejay in Royal Casuarina (now Impiana Hotel) at age 17.
For Teh, imparting the feel-good philosophy at workplaces has to start with emotional wellness.“This is especially crucial for jobs where staff are subjected to high levels of stress. When people do not know how to release the emotional build-up from work-related stress, there is always a possibility they will snap at the customer and give the organisation a bad image,” explains Teh.
Kennedy, for example, expects his staff to be punctual and to keep to their word.“One of the common traits in human nature is procrastination. My policy is when something needs to be done, it is to be tackled immediately, not later or the day after.“But it is also important to remember being the boss does not mean you are always right.“When you have made a mistake, you must be big enough to apologise,” says Kennedy.
Honesty is also a much appreciated trait as Kennedy had to fire staff for messing around with company accounts in the past. And because they are in the nightlife industry where the influence of alcohol is unavoidable, staff must adopt a measure of vigilance.“In all my years in the industry, I have never had to hire bouncers. I will go in and defuse the situation myself,” said Kennedy.
On how to maintain grace under pressure, Kennedy shared a tip learned from a security personnel during his earlier years. The rule is to never stand in front of an aggravated individual in a confronting manner. Kennedy’s trick is to always slide next to him, offshore merchant account, pat it reassuringly and ask for the affected parties to keep the peace, guaranteeing safety for both workforce and customer.
How important is it to keep the hired help happy?Teh cites from personal experience how a rude sales staff at an electrical goods chain had cheesed him off so much with lackluster attitude, he walked away.
“I had wanted to buy a DVD player and I reckon the store didn’t lose much with just one customer walking away. But let’s say they could have made a margin of RM50 for one DVD player and say if the same employee would have made five customers walk away in one day. That’s RM250 of lost opportunity in a day. That’s only one shop. The electrical goods chain had 100 outlets. If that attitude prevailed in every shop on a daily basis, that would mean a loss of RM750,000 a month,” said Teh, who opines a reversal in behaviour could have changed things.
At barbeza, treating the staff like family is one factor that had helped him keep customers who had known him since he was a deejay in Casuarina. He recalls the day when he had to tell his staff in Rockafellas Lumut he had sold the business.“For the past 10 years, I was travelling back and forth between Ipoh and Lumut at odd hours in a Toyota Liteace. I was clocking in 16-hour work days where I would spend the night in Lumut then go to work in Ipoh. It came to a point when I asked myself what I was doing with my life,” revealed the father of a 19-year-old daughter.
By then, Kennedy had made close to RM400,000 from his investments and he was prepared to ‘retire’, by focusing on barbeza. Instead of leaving his staff demoralised and without employment, he asked them to join his new venture. In Kennedy’s case, creating an atmosphere where customers could go to a place where everyone knew their names contributed to sales of RM150,000 a month when barbeza first opened in 2008. Before Kennedy sold off his Lumut outlet in the same year, it had achieved a record sales of RM147,000 in the short span of nine days in 1999, a feat that inspired staff from the Lumut outlet to follow him to his new venture in barbeza.
“We achieved all this with no hanky panky, just good food and service,” boasted Kennedy.The memory of a treat, which saw an all-expense paid trip to Bali for five staff upon achieving a sales target of RM80,000, also played a part.In Teh’s case, revenue for Customer Care Center totaled to RM1.5mil to RM2mil last year. This came in from classes conducted including ‘mystery shopper’ services where company representatives posed as customers for clients to assess frontline performance.
2013年8月19日星期一
2013年8月14日星期三
Chase Paymentech launches Chase Checkout
"We are always looking for ways to help merchants grow their businesses and Chase Checkout does just this by enabling clients to accept payments however they operate," said Dan Charron, president of Chase Paymentech. "Chase Checkout is a 'one-stop shop' for small-business owners: one agreement, one system, one statement and one trusted merchant services' relationship to manage."
The Power of a Single, End-to-End Payment Partner
Chase Checkout gives merchants the convenience of working with one trusted provider - with integrated reporting, 24/7 live U.S-based customer support and a commitment to security- when they accept payments via:
Mobile Checkout: When merchants accept mobile payments with Chase Paymentech, they can process credit and signature debit card payments and gift card transactions in any location within the third party merchant account. Merchants have transaction level access to monitor and process voids and returns from their smartphones. Merchants can view sales and transaction summaries from the Mobile Checkout app after the payments have been processed.
Additionally, they can create a catalog of item descriptions and images and email or text digital receipts. The use of signature capture and the location of the point of sale on the digital receipt helps minimize fraud and chargebacks. Finally, merchants' customer data is protected in transit with point-to-point encryption.
Retail Checkout: In retail settings, Chase Paymentech's Future Proof Terminal helps merchants accept both traditional and emerging forms of payment such as EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) chip-enabled cards, NFC-enabled (near field communications) mobile wallets and other contactless payments. Also, through iTerminal?, businesses and professional service firms such as accounting, law and medical, can use their existing computers to accept payments, helping them save on traditional start-up equipment costs.
Online Checkout: Chase Paymentech offers e-commerce merchants, and merchants who accept telephone orders, a suite of PCI-compliant and easy-to-use web-based payment processing options accessible with a merchant's existing computer. These options require no additional hardware and integrate seamlessly with merchants' shopping cart functionality, catalog creation and inventory management.
Chase Mobile Checkout is ideal for merchants who are interested in growing their business by taking payments wherever their business takes them. This includes businesses that wish to use mobile payment acceptance to enhance their customers' experience with services like line-busting or those that wish to accept payments in the field, third party payment gateway, maintenance or transportation professionals. In addition, Chase Mobile Checkout is ideal for small businesses that want to accept debit and credit cards but have found it too difficult or too costly to do so in the past.
"The ability to serve my customers from anywhere helps deepen my relationship with them," said Irina Zhuravsky, owner of Irina's Alterations in Dallas, TX. "It's comforting to know that I'm receiving the support and security I need from Chase to conduct transactions while on the road."
Chase Mobile Checkout's compact card reader is battle-tested for real-world use. The device, which fits securely in the audio port of Apple and Android-enabled smartphones, features the recognizable Chase octagon and includes a rechargeable lithium ion battery so it does not drain the smartphone's power supply. Having an integrated battery also increases the likelihood of positive card reads on the first swipe, and since hardware encryption is performed in the device, personal information is not stored within the smartphone.
"Chase Mobile Checkout is not just smaller than carrying around a cash register, it's built for jobs like mine," said Jamie Rourke, co-owner of RO Style Salon in Tampa, FL. "When I am not in the salon, I travel all over the nation as a freelance artist. It is so convenient and important for my business to take a payment anywhere, 24/7, and it makes being a business owner that much easier."
The setup for Chase Mobile Checkout is simple. After merchants activate their account, Chase Paymentech ships the card reader along with instructions on getting started that include how to download the Chase Mobile Checkout app onto a smartphone.
The success of social networking community Twitter has given rise to an entire shadow economy that peddles dummy Twitter accounts by the thousands, primarily to spammers, scammers and malware purveyors. But new research on identifying bogus accounts has helped Twitter to drastically deplete the stockpile of existing accounts for sale, and holds the promise of driving up costs for both vendors of these shady services and their customers.
Twitter prohibits the sale and auto-creation of accounts, and the company routinely suspends accounts created in violation of that policy. But according to researchers from George Mason University, the International Computer Science Institute and the University of California, Berkeley, Twitter traditionally has done so only after these fraudulent accounts have been used to spam and attack legitimate Twitter users.
Seeking more reliable methods of detecting auto-created accounts before they can be used for abuse, the researchers approached Twitter last year for the company’s blessing to purchase credentials from a variety of Twitter account merchants. Permission granted, the researchers spent more than $5,000 over ten months buying accounts from at least 27 different underground sellers.
In a report to be presented at the USENIX security conference in Washington, D.C. today, the research team details its experience in purchasing more than 121,000 fraudulent Twitter accounts of varying age and quality, at prices ranging from $10 to $200 per one thousand accounts.
The research team quickly discovered that nearly all fraudulent Twitter account merchants employ a range of countermeasures to evade the technical hurdles that Twitter erects to stymie the automated creation of new accounts.
Bulk-created accounts at these Webmail providers are among the cheapest of the free email providers, probably because they lack additional account creation verification mechanisms required by competitors like Google, which relies on phone verification. Compare the prices at this bulk email merchant: 1,000 Yahoo accounts can be had for $10 (1 cent per account), and the same number Hotmail accounts go for $12. In contrast, it costs $200 to buy 1,000 Gmail accounts.
Read the full products at http://austpay.com/.
The Power of a Single, End-to-End Payment Partner
Chase Checkout gives merchants the convenience of working with one trusted provider - with integrated reporting, 24/7 live U.S-based customer support and a commitment to security- when they accept payments via:
Mobile Checkout: When merchants accept mobile payments with Chase Paymentech, they can process credit and signature debit card payments and gift card transactions in any location within the third party merchant account. Merchants have transaction level access to monitor and process voids and returns from their smartphones. Merchants can view sales and transaction summaries from the Mobile Checkout app after the payments have been processed.
Additionally, they can create a catalog of item descriptions and images and email or text digital receipts. The use of signature capture and the location of the point of sale on the digital receipt helps minimize fraud and chargebacks. Finally, merchants' customer data is protected in transit with point-to-point encryption.
Retail Checkout: In retail settings, Chase Paymentech's Future Proof Terminal helps merchants accept both traditional and emerging forms of payment such as EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) chip-enabled cards, NFC-enabled (near field communications) mobile wallets and other contactless payments. Also, through iTerminal?, businesses and professional service firms such as accounting, law and medical, can use their existing computers to accept payments, helping them save on traditional start-up equipment costs.
Online Checkout: Chase Paymentech offers e-commerce merchants, and merchants who accept telephone orders, a suite of PCI-compliant and easy-to-use web-based payment processing options accessible with a merchant's existing computer. These options require no additional hardware and integrate seamlessly with merchants' shopping cart functionality, catalog creation and inventory management.
Chase Mobile Checkout is ideal for merchants who are interested in growing their business by taking payments wherever their business takes them. This includes businesses that wish to use mobile payment acceptance to enhance their customers' experience with services like line-busting or those that wish to accept payments in the field, third party payment gateway, maintenance or transportation professionals. In addition, Chase Mobile Checkout is ideal for small businesses that want to accept debit and credit cards but have found it too difficult or too costly to do so in the past.
"The ability to serve my customers from anywhere helps deepen my relationship with them," said Irina Zhuravsky, owner of Irina's Alterations in Dallas, TX. "It's comforting to know that I'm receiving the support and security I need from Chase to conduct transactions while on the road."
Chase Mobile Checkout's compact card reader is battle-tested for real-world use. The device, which fits securely in the audio port of Apple and Android-enabled smartphones, features the recognizable Chase octagon and includes a rechargeable lithium ion battery so it does not drain the smartphone's power supply. Having an integrated battery also increases the likelihood of positive card reads on the first swipe, and since hardware encryption is performed in the device, personal information is not stored within the smartphone.
"Chase Mobile Checkout is not just smaller than carrying around a cash register, it's built for jobs like mine," said Jamie Rourke, co-owner of RO Style Salon in Tampa, FL. "When I am not in the salon, I travel all over the nation as a freelance artist. It is so convenient and important for my business to take a payment anywhere, 24/7, and it makes being a business owner that much easier."
The setup for Chase Mobile Checkout is simple. After merchants activate their account, Chase Paymentech ships the card reader along with instructions on getting started that include how to download the Chase Mobile Checkout app onto a smartphone.
The success of social networking community Twitter has given rise to an entire shadow economy that peddles dummy Twitter accounts by the thousands, primarily to spammers, scammers and malware purveyors. But new research on identifying bogus accounts has helped Twitter to drastically deplete the stockpile of existing accounts for sale, and holds the promise of driving up costs for both vendors of these shady services and their customers.
Twitter prohibits the sale and auto-creation of accounts, and the company routinely suspends accounts created in violation of that policy. But according to researchers from George Mason University, the International Computer Science Institute and the University of California, Berkeley, Twitter traditionally has done so only after these fraudulent accounts have been used to spam and attack legitimate Twitter users.
Seeking more reliable methods of detecting auto-created accounts before they can be used for abuse, the researchers approached Twitter last year for the company’s blessing to purchase credentials from a variety of Twitter account merchants. Permission granted, the researchers spent more than $5,000 over ten months buying accounts from at least 27 different underground sellers.
In a report to be presented at the USENIX security conference in Washington, D.C. today, the research team details its experience in purchasing more than 121,000 fraudulent Twitter accounts of varying age and quality, at prices ranging from $10 to $200 per one thousand accounts.
The research team quickly discovered that nearly all fraudulent Twitter account merchants employ a range of countermeasures to evade the technical hurdles that Twitter erects to stymie the automated creation of new accounts.
Bulk-created accounts at these Webmail providers are among the cheapest of the free email providers, probably because they lack additional account creation verification mechanisms required by competitors like Google, which relies on phone verification. Compare the prices at this bulk email merchant: 1,000 Yahoo accounts can be had for $10 (1 cent per account), and the same number Hotmail accounts go for $12. In contrast, it costs $200 to buy 1,000 Gmail accounts.
Read the full products at http://austpay.com/.
2013年8月12日星期一
Ship Values Rebounding Most
The value of five-year-old Capesizes, the largest iron-ore carriers, rose 5.7 percent to $31.4 million this year, while Panamaxes, the biggest to navigate the Panama Canal, climbed 16 percent to $21.2 million, according to the Baltic Exchange. Investors should buy Golden Ocean and Norden because the shares don’t fully reflect the gains, said Erik Nikolai Stavseth, an analyst at Arctic Securities ASA in Oslo whose recommendations on shipping companies returned 75 percent in three years.
Rising secondhand values are a sign that some investors are getting more bullish on the outlook for third party merchant account, which tumbled as much as 95 percent from their peak in 2008. The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of earnings across four vessel classes, rebounded 42 percent this year as fleet growth slowed and seaborne trade in everything from iron ore and coal to soybeans and fertilizers expanded to a record.
“People are buying ships because they think we’re past the bottom,” said Stavseth, who predicts that shares of Golden Ocean will advance 7.1 percent in a year and Norden will gain 25 percent. “Rising ship prices tell us that the market is moving in the right direction and earnings are expected to increase.”
The Baltic Dry Index reached an 18-month high on July 1 as rates rose for every vessel class in the gauge, according to the London-based Baltic Exchange, which publishes shipping costs along more than 50 maritime routes. Capesize earnings more than doubled this year and those for Panamaxes jumped 35 percent. Both are still below the amount that owners need to break even once financing costs are taken into account.
Capesize earnings will average $16,000 a day next year, the average of nine analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg shows. That’s more than the $14,458 anticipated in freight swaps that third party payment gateway use to bet on future transport prices, Baltic Exchange data show. Owners need $14,500 to break even, according to RS Platou Markets AS, an investment bank in Oslo.
The combined capacity of the dry-bulk fleet will expand 7 percent this year, the least since 2008, according to London-based Clarkson Plc, the largest shipbroker. Rates plunged after owners ordered too many new vessels just before the global recession. The fleet grew 63 percent since 2008 as seaborne trade in commodities advanced 24 percent.
While rates are surging this year, they are still far below the peaks reached before the five-year slump. Capesizes earned as much as $234,000 a day in 2008, compared with $10,550 now. Panamax rates that last priced at $7,481 rose as high as $94,977 in 2007, Baltic Exchange data show. Panamaxes, each capable of hauling about 75,000 metric tons of cargo, need about $11,000 to break even, Platou says.
Vessel values are also still below their record highs. A five-year-old Capesize sold for as much as $153.8 million in 2008 and Panamaxes were trading as high as $90.72 million in 2007. The combined market capitalization of the world’s 75 largest publicly traded shipping companies came to $118.5 billion at the end of July, from as high as $260 billion in 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The only long-term solution for FIs to maintain brand equity is to launch their own mobile wallet or become a major component of an industry-leading platform, the Mercator report said.
"Banks should only get involved with truly open mobile wallets that are able to store any type of payment card held by a consumer, along with loyalty and membership cards and identity credentials," Hewitt said.
In the short term, banks can build high-value mobile banking platforms to stand in for fully-fledged mobile payments wallets, the report added, and these platforms will provide a ready customer base when banks launch their own mobile wallets.
Digital bank accounts, which are offered by branch-based banks, online-only banks such as Simple and U.S. prepaid card issuer PreCash's FlipMoney, are used for bill payments and for P2P payments via smartphone. These accounts presently do not offer a mobile shopping payment capability, Hewitt said.
Mobile payment products access a primary or private-label payment account offered by a single merchant or merchant aggregator. Examples include PayPal and Starbucks' mobile app, which links its prepaid card to a smartphone.
True mobile wallets are interactive, virtual forms of physical wallets that let consumers select a specific payment type, such as a credit or debit card, to use at the point of sale. Examples include Paydiant, which just won a contract to supply mobile wallet solutions to Pulse network participants, Visa's V.Me and MasterCard's MasterPass.
Rising secondhand values are a sign that some investors are getting more bullish on the outlook for third party merchant account, which tumbled as much as 95 percent from their peak in 2008. The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of earnings across four vessel classes, rebounded 42 percent this year as fleet growth slowed and seaborne trade in everything from iron ore and coal to soybeans and fertilizers expanded to a record.
“People are buying ships because they think we’re past the bottom,” said Stavseth, who predicts that shares of Golden Ocean will advance 7.1 percent in a year and Norden will gain 25 percent. “Rising ship prices tell us that the market is moving in the right direction and earnings are expected to increase.”
The Baltic Dry Index reached an 18-month high on July 1 as rates rose for every vessel class in the gauge, according to the London-based Baltic Exchange, which publishes shipping costs along more than 50 maritime routes. Capesize earnings more than doubled this year and those for Panamaxes jumped 35 percent. Both are still below the amount that owners need to break even once financing costs are taken into account.
Capesize earnings will average $16,000 a day next year, the average of nine analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg shows. That’s more than the $14,458 anticipated in freight swaps that third party payment gateway use to bet on future transport prices, Baltic Exchange data show. Owners need $14,500 to break even, according to RS Platou Markets AS, an investment bank in Oslo.
The combined capacity of the dry-bulk fleet will expand 7 percent this year, the least since 2008, according to London-based Clarkson Plc, the largest shipbroker. Rates plunged after owners ordered too many new vessels just before the global recession. The fleet grew 63 percent since 2008 as seaborne trade in commodities advanced 24 percent.
While rates are surging this year, they are still far below the peaks reached before the five-year slump. Capesizes earned as much as $234,000 a day in 2008, compared with $10,550 now. Panamax rates that last priced at $7,481 rose as high as $94,977 in 2007, Baltic Exchange data show. Panamaxes, each capable of hauling about 75,000 metric tons of cargo, need about $11,000 to break even, Platou says.
Vessel values are also still below their record highs. A five-year-old Capesize sold for as much as $153.8 million in 2008 and Panamaxes were trading as high as $90.72 million in 2007. The combined market capitalization of the world’s 75 largest publicly traded shipping companies came to $118.5 billion at the end of July, from as high as $260 billion in 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The only long-term solution for FIs to maintain brand equity is to launch their own mobile wallet or become a major component of an industry-leading platform, the Mercator report said.
"Banks should only get involved with truly open mobile wallets that are able to store any type of payment card held by a consumer, along with loyalty and membership cards and identity credentials," Hewitt said.
In the short term, banks can build high-value mobile banking platforms to stand in for fully-fledged mobile payments wallets, the report added, and these platforms will provide a ready customer base when banks launch their own mobile wallets.
Digital bank accounts, which are offered by branch-based banks, online-only banks such as Simple and U.S. prepaid card issuer PreCash's FlipMoney, are used for bill payments and for P2P payments via smartphone. These accounts presently do not offer a mobile shopping payment capability, Hewitt said.
Mobile payment products access a primary or private-label payment account offered by a single merchant or merchant aggregator. Examples include PayPal and Starbucks' mobile app, which links its prepaid card to a smartphone.
True mobile wallets are interactive, virtual forms of physical wallets that let consumers select a specific payment type, such as a credit or debit card, to use at the point of sale. Examples include Paydiant, which just won a contract to supply mobile wallet solutions to Pulse network participants, Visa's V.Me and MasterCard's MasterPass.
2011年10月18日星期二
Home Air Cleaners – The way Owning One Helps The Elderly
There’s a few things you can do, if you’re an elderly person, to be proactive about looking after your health. Everybody knows that when people age, their health starts to deteriorate. The elderly need to eat healthy food, and exercise like every other age group, but another thing that would be a benefit for them would be an air purifier. You will get to breathe healthier air when you use an air purifier in your house or room.
These are electric machines that take the harmful air particles and get rid of them or sometimes destroy them. Clean air at home is good for everyone, but especially for senior citizens. Older people are prone to complications, in addition to being more prone to getting ill. A part of this could be eliminated by having cleaner air, and removing many of the causes of the disease. You ought to be thinking of getting an air purifier, but before you rush out and buy one, talk with your healthcare provider. You have to be able to get the all the information you need from them, even if it’s unlikely that they’ll be experts on air purifiers.
Their endorsed air purifier may destroy bacteria as well as trapping it, and that could be useful information for you. Prior to buying you must ensure that you have identified the one best for your circumstances. It’s particularly important to get the best one if you are an allergy sufferer. You will have to do the research even if you’re not buying for yourself, but for your parents or any other elderly person. Several of the important details to bear in mind are the cost of the air purifiers, the quality you need, the sizes of the rooms, and whether they fit into a budget.
Remember also to talk to the healthcare providers for their recommendations. A large number of places offer discounts to the elderly, which will help offset the cost of the purifier you buy. According to what type you’re going to choose, you may want to search online for the best prices. Try home improvement stores, department stores, quite possibly electronic stores. There’s a place that has the air purifier that is going to clean your house just right. In case you are not able to get a discount, don’t let that stop you from getting the air purifier. The product is definitely worth even the full price.
Providing them with clean air to breathe will make the final years of the senior citizens whose welfare concerns us a lot more enjoyable. Quite possibly guests can benefit. The appropriate air purifier will be chosen by relating it with regard to the house or apartment where it will be used.
For particular fantastic hepa filter, inspect Air Purifier website for the dozens of advantages of having and running a air purifier.
These are electric machines that take the harmful air particles and get rid of them or sometimes destroy them. Clean air at home is good for everyone, but especially for senior citizens. Older people are prone to complications, in addition to being more prone to getting ill. A part of this could be eliminated by having cleaner air, and removing many of the causes of the disease. You ought to be thinking of getting an air purifier, but before you rush out and buy one, talk with your healthcare provider. You have to be able to get the all the information you need from them, even if it’s unlikely that they’ll be experts on air purifiers.
Their endorsed air purifier may destroy bacteria as well as trapping it, and that could be useful information for you. Prior to buying you must ensure that you have identified the one best for your circumstances. It’s particularly important to get the best one if you are an allergy sufferer. You will have to do the research even if you’re not buying for yourself, but for your parents or any other elderly person. Several of the important details to bear in mind are the cost of the air purifiers, the quality you need, the sizes of the rooms, and whether they fit into a budget.
Remember also to talk to the healthcare providers for their recommendations. A large number of places offer discounts to the elderly, which will help offset the cost of the purifier you buy. According to what type you’re going to choose, you may want to search online for the best prices. Try home improvement stores, department stores, quite possibly electronic stores. There’s a place that has the air purifier that is going to clean your house just right. In case you are not able to get a discount, don’t let that stop you from getting the air purifier. The product is definitely worth even the full price.
Providing them with clean air to breathe will make the final years of the senior citizens whose welfare concerns us a lot more enjoyable. Quite possibly guests can benefit. The appropriate air purifier will be chosen by relating it with regard to the house or apartment where it will be used.
For particular fantastic hepa filter, inspect Air Purifier website for the dozens of advantages of having and running a air purifier.
2011年5月15日星期日
Smog-eating aluminum panels launch
Buildings that eat smog? Alcoa, a maker of aluminum products, introduced an architectural panel Thursday that it says not only cleans itself but also the air around it.
The aluminum panel has a titanium dioxide coating that, when combined with sunlight, acts as a catalyst to break down pollutants such as smog into harmless matter that rain washes away.
“It could have a significant impact” if enough buildings use the product, says Craig Belnap, president of Alcoa Architectural Products. The company says 10,000 square feet of its panels have the air-cleansing power of about 80 trees.
The panel is the latest in a series of building products — whether cement, tile or paint — touted for their pollution-fighting abilities:
Ceiling tiles that remove formaldehyde, which is linked to health problems, were announced this week by Armstrong Ceiling & Wall Systems, which says the product has been certified by UL, an independent non-profit testing group.
The Ionic Bulb by Florida-based Zevotek, now available in stores nationwide, is an energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamp that contains an air purifier to eliminate allergens, pollen, smoke and dust.
“All such claims should be approached with caution” and validated by independent academic labs, warns Martin Holladay, senior editor of GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, a website that covers sustainable construction.
The coating on Alcoa’s panels has long been used on concrete such as the TX Active product — with proven results.
Such concrete reduced nitrogen oxides — the smog-causing compound emitted by vehicles — 25% to 45% in a small area of a Dutch town where it was used on roads, according to a lecture last year by Jos Brouwers at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.
“It does work,” says Nadav Malin, president of BuildingGreen.com, an online source of eco-friendly construction. “But you’d have to have a lot of this out there in the built environment to make any dent in air pollution.”
“It could be part of a solution,” says Alcoa’s Belnap, adding that the Reynobond panels also lower maintenance costs for commercial buildings by reducing water and dirt. He says Alcoa teamed with Japanese manufacturer TOTO to add the EcoClean coating and had its air-purifying impact verified by an independent lab.
The panels will cost about 5% more than similar aluminum ones and will become available nationwide this summer.
The aluminum panel has a titanium dioxide coating that, when combined with sunlight, acts as a catalyst to break down pollutants such as smog into harmless matter that rain washes away.
“It could have a significant impact” if enough buildings use the product, says Craig Belnap, president of Alcoa Architectural Products. The company says 10,000 square feet of its panels have the air-cleansing power of about 80 trees.
The panel is the latest in a series of building products — whether cement, tile or paint — touted for their pollution-fighting abilities:
Ceiling tiles that remove formaldehyde, which is linked to health problems, were announced this week by Armstrong Ceiling & Wall Systems, which says the product has been certified by UL, an independent non-profit testing group.
The Ionic Bulb by Florida-based Zevotek, now available in stores nationwide, is an energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamp that contains an air purifier to eliminate allergens, pollen, smoke and dust.
“All such claims should be approached with caution” and validated by independent academic labs, warns Martin Holladay, senior editor of GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, a website that covers sustainable construction.
The coating on Alcoa’s panels has long been used on concrete such as the TX Active product — with proven results.
Such concrete reduced nitrogen oxides — the smog-causing compound emitted by vehicles — 25% to 45% in a small area of a Dutch town where it was used on roads, according to a lecture last year by Jos Brouwers at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.
“It does work,” says Nadav Malin, president of BuildingGreen.com, an online source of eco-friendly construction. “But you’d have to have a lot of this out there in the built environment to make any dent in air pollution.”
“It could be part of a solution,” says Alcoa’s Belnap, adding that the Reynobond panels also lower maintenance costs for commercial buildings by reducing water and dirt. He says Alcoa teamed with Japanese manufacturer TOTO to add the EcoClean coating and had its air-purifying impact verified by an independent lab.
The panels will cost about 5% more than similar aluminum ones and will become available nationwide this summer.
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