TriVision President Awarded AACC Businessperson of 2009

Mr. Abraham Lutfi, founder, CEO and president of TriVision Studios and Kabul Felez International, was named the “AACC Most Distinguished Businessperson of the Year 2009” at the Fifth Annual AACC Business Matchmaking Conference held in Washington, DC from October 18th – 20th, 2009. Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce (AACC) is the primary non-governmental U.S. organization with the mission to further business and to develop the private sector in Afghanistan. The conference, which was held at the Ronald Regan Building and International Trade Center, as well as at the W Hotel, is an international networking forum for potential Afghanistan and U.S. business partners, government agencies, contractors, and financial institution reps who are interested in investing, building businesses and funding projects in Afghanistan.

This prestigious award presented to Mr. Lutfi represents an active businessperson who has been successful in establishing a U.S.-based Afghan company within Afghanistan while creating jobs and benefitting Afghanistan’s economy. For more than four decades, Mr. Lutfi has been a prominent and active figure of the business community both in Afghanistan and in the United States. He founded Kabul Felez International in 1968, which for over 30 years was Afghanistan’s leading private manufacturer of high-quality furniture and industrial steel construction with nearly 300 employees. After a temporary halt of its operations due to the political turmoil of the time, Mr. Lutfi was recently able to return to his country and re-establish the factory. Today, Kabul Felez International continues to operate actively in Kabul while positively contributing towards the country’s reconstruction process.

Mr. Lutfi is also the president and CEO of TriVision Studios, a marketing and multimedia company operating successfully in the United States since 1992, and in Afghanistan since 2006. TriVision is an award-winning, full service agency that develops innovative strategies to achieve powerful and creative marketing, entertainment, and media campaigns for its clients. TriVision specializes in high-impact, result-oriented, brand advertising communications for online, print and broadcast media. Since the inception of AACC, TriVision has been the company behind most of AACC's marketing and media efforts, including the creation of the AACC logo/brand, design and print of its marketing materials, as well as production of audio-video services.

At present, both companies are involved in business efforts in Afghanistan and U.S. government agencies, as well as other foreign corporations and NGOs. As an Afghan-American businessman, Mr. Lutfi's dedication to the rebuilding of Afghanistan is strengthened by his heritage and business history. Mr. Lutfi's capability to establish a successful enterprise in the U.S. while having rebuilt a company from ground up in Afghanistan, demonstrates his ability to start, manage, and grow profitable companies, which in turn also benefits the private sector and economic well-being of the country.

The award reception held at the W Hotel in Washington DC featured many prominent guest speakers including Afghanistan’s Ambassador to the United States, H.E. Said Tayeb Jawad plus Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations and former United States Ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan. Other special guests included the president and CEO of the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA), Mr. Noorullah Delawari.

Aside from being an excellent and informative networking opportunity, the 3-day conference gave participants exposure to opportunities in key sectors of agri-business, construction, energy and power, mining, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and more. To learn more about the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, please visit their website at www.a-acc.org.

To read more about Abraham Lutfi and his journey to the establishment of his two successful enterprises, TriVision Studios and Kabul Felez International, please click here. To watch a video clip of the award reception, please click on the thumbnail on the left.

Becker Professional Review

For more than 50 years, Becker Professional Education has helped equip professionals and their companies for the challenges of tomorrow in the accounting, finance and project management professions.

Becker Professional Education is a subsidiary of DeVry Inc. (NYSE: DV) and a global leader in professional education. Its CPA Exam Review and Stalla Review for the CFA® Exams are the largest and longest-running review programs worldwide. Becker provides world-class education in three formats: live classes, online or self-study.

More than 400,000 individuals have prepared for and passed the CPA exam review using the Becker Professional Education programs. Becker Professional Education offers an integral approach of study by using different course components to work together seamlessly, letting students achieve success fast and effectively. Each of its review course components aligns with one of the four essential elements of successful exam preparation: understand, apply, practice and review.

For over three years, TriVision Studios has provided full production services for Becker Professional Review using its studio facility to record instructor lectures in video format, audio CD and audio cassettes. These lectures were edited and packaged for CPA students in order to prepare to pass the exam in a short amount of time.

To read more about Becker Professional Education and its study programs, please visit www.becker.com.

The Arrival of Windows 7

It is finally here. Windows 7, the most recent operating system of Microsoft Windows was officially released to retail stores as of October 22, 2009. Less than three years after the launch of its predecessor, Windows Vista, Windows 7 was designed with a more focused, incremental upgrade to the Windows line of personal computers.

Windows 7 comes with a number of new features and advances such as a multi-touch support (i.e. touch screen and handwriting recognition), a redesigned Windows Shell with a taskbar (called the Superbar), a home networking system called HomeGroup, and many performance improvements. Speed is one of Windows 7's major selling points. Windows 7 can turn a notebook that is nearly unusable under Windows Vista into a potent workhorse. Other key features include the way it helps users navigate an overcrowded screen. Called Aero Peek, this feature lets one hover over a "show desktop" field in the right of the task bar and show the outlines of every window currently open.

On the other hand, some features and capabilities that were previously part of Windows Vista have been removed, such as the classic Start Menu user interface and Windows Ultimate Extras. Also, four applications that used to come with Vista - Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Calendar and Windows Mail - are available separately as part of a free package suite called Windows Live Essentials.

According to Microsoft founder & CEO, Bill Gates, this new version of Windows is intended “to be more user-centric.” In other words, not only will there be performance improvements, but users migrating from Windows Vista to Windows 7 will not have the same device compatibility issues when they encountered migrating from Windows XP.

Reviews of Windows 7, when compared to Windows Vista, were mostly positive. CNET gave Window 7 Home Premium 4.5 out of 5 and stated “Windows 7 is more than what Vista should have been, [and] it's where Microsoft needed to go." PC World called Windows 7 a "worthy successor" to Windows XP. It also called Windows 7 one of the best products of the year.

Windows 7 is available in six different editions but only the Home Premium, Professional,and Ultimate editions are available for retail sale to consumers in most countries. Marketed by Microsoft as “Making your PC Simpler”, Windows 7 is priced anywhere between $149.99 (family-pack) to $219.99 (Ultimate Edition). Student discounts for the operating system are also temporarily offered by Microsoft for prices as low as $30.

It seems that Windows 7 has already made an impression by selling twice as many copies than any previous version of operating systems during its first few weeks. It is reported that while Vista sold 20 million copies in its first month, Windows 7 has sold double – a healthy 40 million. It is also noteworthy to mention that during this down economy, Windows 7 gives Microsoft a real opportunity to get back at [the Mac] audience. With the down economy, people understand that in comparison to Windows 7, the Mac is a lot more expensive for essentially the same computer.