In addition, we’ve updated your A+ practice exams, study guides, guide content, assessment quizzes, certificate of mastery exams and more. It’s like a whole new course! The brand new A+ is available for check out right now in your Ultimate Access library.

Looking to advance your IT career? LearnSmart offers the absolute best training materials for technologies including CompTIA A+, Network+,  MCITP Certification, CCNA Training and more. The LearnSmart Cloud Classroom makes studying better and more convenient by putting your training in the Cloud and supporting compatibility with most mobile devices including the iPad 2, Android and many more.

Paul Allen–of Ancestry.com–” sampled a number of surnames from the U.S. Census Bureau data and compared it to surnames of Google+ users. By comparing surname popularity in the U.S. with the number of users on Google+ with each surname, he can guesstimate the percentage of the U.S. population that signed up for Google+. Finally, he calculated a ratio of U.S. to non-U.S. users to generate an estimate for the number of Google+ users worldwide.”

The result is over 9.5 Million users and that number increasing exponentially. While the data is unofficial, it is the most reasonable estimate to come out thus far. Google is currently quiet about the number of current users, but are expected to comment at some point in the near future. Regardless, 10 Million users can easily turn into 20 Million users considering the nature of social networking sites. Google has done a better job releasing Google+ compared to some of their other products like Wave and that traction they have gained could mean genuine competition in the social media market.

What is the fate of Social Media? We can only speculate, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with Google+. Let us know your opinions below!

Looking to advance your IT career? PrepLogic offers the absolute best training materials for technologies including CompTIA A+, Network+,  MCITP Certification, CCNA Training and more. The LearnSmart Cloud Classroom makes studying better and more convenient by putting your training in the Cloud and supporting compatibility with most mobile devices including the iPad 2, Android and many more.

It appears the pain and suffering is over. Consumers are finally moving on, at least in the United States. Windows XP still maintains a healthy lead in Global share. Windows 7 has apparently proven its worth in the US market. While some die hard XP fans will express dissatisfaction with this news, it certainly is a positive for Windows.

We have seen plenty of new interest in our Windows 7 learning products like Windows 7 Configuration and Windows 7 Enterprise Desktop Support. Be sure to also check out our MCITP certification, A+ certification, CCNA certification and Cisco certification materials as well.

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One of the most important investments you can make in life is that of your Education. Education is an incredibly powerful asset because it can lead to impressive outcomes–success, opportunity, understanding, and even happiness. When you invest in your education, you are ensuring that you have control of your life.

You must invest in yourself. Any certified IT Professional will tell you how grateful they are to have spent the time and energy to create a future for themselves. They are working in an ever expanding industry doing what they love and making a nice living doing it. Yes, they spent hours studying, learning and perhaps struggling—but now they aren’t. They are settled, knowledgeable, employed and certified.

Sometimes, making an investment can be hard. It’s easy to be short sited and only see what we are losing, rather than what we are gaining. What must be remembered is that long term gains are far greater than the short term losses involved with making the proper investments in our future. Do you think Warren Buffett regrets spending $25 to buy a Pinball machine to place in barbershops at the age of 15, only to own several more machines months later? Absolutely not. This investment preceded a long, successful career which placed him in the running as the wealthiest person in the world.

Chances are you have some things in mind already. Ideas you have been toying with. Perhaps you want to start a business or invent something. Maybe you want to build up your certifications to increase your job options. Regardless of what your investment is, don’t be afraid to make it. Get out there and give it all you got, because that is the only way to make big things happen. You have to just go out and do it. Then one day, when you reflect on your life journey, you will remember the sacrifices you made to achieve your goals and become what you always wanted to be.

What goals in life do you need to invest in? Let us know by leaving a comment!

Submit your photos to dccablingcontest@cisco.com before 3/25/2011 for consideration.

PrepLogic offers Cisco training for the CCNA, CCNA Security, CCNA Voice and CCNA Wireless, CCIP, CCNP SWITCH, CCNP ROUTE and  CCNP TSHOOT.

Online real-estate brokerage Redfin Corp. is familiar with the talent war taking place among Internet companies. Redfin Corp., like many other companies in the on-line business, is quickly realizing attracting the best and brightest engineers comes at a price, a rather hefty price.  Redfin told the Wall Street Journal:

It has recently been up against salary-and-bonus offers of $100,000 to $150,000 a year for new college grads from social-gaming start-up Zynga, among others—far above the $80,000 or so a year Redfin would normally offer.

With investors eager to buy a piece of their rapid growth, Facebook, Zynga and Twitter have been heavily recruiting with robust job offers, raising the compensation bar for others start-ups.

Rich Skrenta, CEO of Blekko, a search-engine company in Redwood Shores, Calif faces this dilemma, telling the Wall Street Journal:

“We have people who walk in through the door and they like what we’re doing, but they’ve already got four offers from big companies.  A significant fraction of them go elsewhere. …They’ll say, I like what you’re doing, but I’m going to Twitter or Facebook.”

With these kinds of potential staring salary offers and aggressive recruiting, who’s to blame the engineers for saying, let the talent wars rage on!

Several questions are written using the same set of answer choices, but the list of answer choices is “extended” to include more options than you would see for a typical multiple choice question. In other words, more than four answer choices are presented for each question. The most important piece of information that you need to know about these items is that the same answer choice could be correct for more than one question in the set, and some answer choices may not be the correct answer for any of the questions.

These items appear together on certification exams. They are preceded by a brief introduction and instructions reminding you that an answer might be correct for more than one question or not correct for any. In some ways, this experience is similar to the experience you have when answering case study items–extended matching items with the same set of answer choices appear together on the exam because they are related to each other (i.e., they have the same set of answer choices); however, unlike case study items, these items are not timed separately, and you can return to these items at any point until you submit the exam for scoring.

Microsoft is adding the extended matching item type in order to better assess a candidate’s skills and abilities.  Extended matching requires candidates to understand under what conditions certain actions are correct and when they are not (similar to how a person’s skill would be tested in the real-world). Opposed to traditional multiple choice questions that do not test a candidate’s skill in such a rigorous or practical manner.

Thinking about earning an MCITP certification? PrepLogic offers comprehensive MCITP training in the form of video training courses, study guides, practice exams and audiobooks. Call 1-800-418-6789 to speak with an account representative about affordable, IT certification training.

Professional certifications are already viewed by hiring managers as a high-value validation of IT skills. The CompTIA study suggests certifications will grow in importance as organizations seek to fill tech jobs. Eight in ten human resources (HR) professionals surveyed believe IT certifications will grow in usefulness and importance over the next two years. But employers also expressed concerns about some aspects of using IT certifications in the hiring process. There is a perception among some hiring IT managers that the HR department does not have a solid understanding of IT certifications. Some firms also said verifying a job candidate’s credentials can be a challenge due to the time involved and effort required.

Experience, track record and accomplishments rank as the most important factors when evaluating job candidates, according to the study. But education and credentials such as certifications also rank high. For example, 86 percent of hiring managers indicate IT certifications are a high or medium priority during the candidate evaluation process.

The study suggests that certifications will become even more important as employers struggle to find individuals to fill job openings. Despite a virtual buyer’s market for hiring, roughly eight in ten HR executives in the United States said it’s challenging to find the right candidate with the right skill set to fill their openings. Many IT managers in the study share a similar view. Tim Herbert, vice president, research, CompTIA notes, “In an environment of needing to do more with less, organizations cannot afford the time and cost of bringing on a new employee who cannot contribute immediately.”

The CompTIA study Employer Perception of IT Training and Certification is the result of two separate online surveys: to 1,385 business and IT executives that made a recent IT hiring decision in the United States, United Kingdom and South Africa; and to 300 HR professionals in the U.S.

PrepLogic offers training for over a hundred different certifications, including CompTIA certifications, Cisco certifications and MCITP certifications. Visit http://www.preplogic.com to learn more about advancing your career with affordable IT skills training.

-newsroom.cisco.com

Find out how to earn a Cisco certification and other Cisco training by calling a PrepLogic account representative at 1-800-418-6789.

“Tom Silver, Dice’s senior vice president of North America, says the biggest demand for hires was for Java programmers, Oracle database experts and network security specialists. An advanced Java programmer in Silicon Valley can garner as much as $107,000 in the region versus $91,000 in other parts of the nation, he says.”

-“Local Technology Salaries Lead the Nation“. The Wall Street Journal. 3 February 2011.

Recruiters report quality engineers are in high demand, with even novice engineers commanding $120,000 to $150,000 a year. Project managers are no stranger to these kinds of high-paying salaries. Ali Behnam, founder of Riviera Partners, a recruiting firm for start-ups, says a good project manager can earn a salary of $150,000 a year.

Not such great news for young start-up companies who can’t afford to match these kinds of salaries quite like Facebook Inc. or Zynga Inc. But, fantastic news for all of the hard-working techies! As competition among firms for good employees increases, so too will the price of a “competitive” salary.