Michael J. Maher – författare

In any business the best projects come from referrals. So what if you had, at your fingertips, a fool-proof system for exploding your business by word of mouth? The Seven Levels of Communication tells the entertaining and educational story of Rick Masters. Down on his luck, overweight, cynical and with nothing to lose, Rick meets Michelle, a mortgage professional who has built a successful business without advertising or personal promotion. Sceptical, he agrees to accompany her to a conference to learn more about her mysterious methods, and then becomes her student. Rick soon discovers that the rewards for implementing these strategies are far greater than he had ever imagined. As his business grows, Rick rediscovers significance and meaning in his life, sees his self-image and personal relationships improve and finds authentic happiness through service to others.In The Seven Levels of Communication, readers will learn the specific strategies that helped Rick go from relationships to referrals. Each chapter is filled with tools, tips and techniques that readers can begin to use immediately for business and personal success.

Buoyant, irrepressible and hot-tempered, John Charles Thomas captivated audiences worldwide with his incredible voice. The son of a minister, he studied voice at the Peabody Conservatory under the tutelage of Adelin Fermin, one of the few voice teachers in America capable of training Thomas in the French operatic style.By 1915, Thomas had become a leading performer on Broadway, and ten years later had embarked on a trans-Atlantic career in opera and concerts. At the height of his popularity from 1934 through 1946, he was a popular star of radio, phonographs, and the Metropolitan Opera, a favorite of both popular and classical audiences. His decision to leave opera and focus on his radio career during the Second World War cost him his reputation as a serious artist. The singer who introduced "Home on the Range" and launched many other American standards has been largely forgotten today.This thorough biography details Thomas's life and career. Beginning with his school days at the Peabody, it traces his Broadway career as the star of Step This Way and Maytime and his highly successful career as a concert, recording, and opera star. Appendices provide a discography of his recordings, a list of operatic appearances in Brussels and the United States, and the songs he performed on radio broadcasts from 1934 to 1948.

The9thAsianComputingScienceConferencewasheldinChiangMaiinDec- ber 2004. This volume contains papers that were presented at that conference. The conference was dedicated to Jean-Louis Lassez, on the occasion of his ?fth cycle (60th year) birthday. Its theme was "higher-level decision-making". Philippe Flajolet was invited to give the opening keynote address, while Yuzuru Tanaka and Phillip Rogaway were also keynote speakers. In addition to the keynote speakers, distinguished colleagues of Jean-Louis Lassez were - vited to present talks in his honour. Many of those talks are represented by papers in this volume, but I would like to thank all those speakers: Jonathan Bernick Alex Brodsky Vijay Chandru T. Y. Chen Norman Foo Martin Golumbic Richard Helm Claude Kirchner H' el' ene Kirchner Kim Marriott Krishna Palem Kotagiri Ramamohanarao Vijay Saraswat Masahiko Sato R. K. Shyamasundar Nicolas Spyratos Andrew Sung Pascal Van Hentenryck Jean Vuillemin Following a call for papers, 75 papers were submitted, comprising 47 from Asia, 13 from Europe, 8 from Australia, 5 from North America, and 2 from the Middle East. Submissions came from a total of 23 countries.Korea, China and Thailand were the most-represented countries. These papers underwent ano- mous refereeing before the Program Committee selected 17 papers for presen- tion at the conference. I thank the Program Committee for doing an excellent job under severe time pressure. I thank the General Chairs of the conference, Joxan Ja?ar and Kanchana Kanchanasut, for their support.