rapidBLOG

This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace. Courtesy www.theRSA.org.

Annotations - a note of explanation or comment added to a text.

According to Raffi, Twannotations will bring a context perspective and will add to increased search and streaming ability. The way he's described the Twannotations looks like is that every tweet annotation will have a “type,” and each type can have several attributes - types can be repeated but attributes cannot, and these will be publicly visible unless you set your account to private. Interesting fact, Twitter is not going to validate Twannotations, but there will be an annotations explorer where one can see the treending annotations, stats, and developers 'wiki' zone.

Here's the presentation:

We all know the value of entrepreneurship, and the benefits it reaps for all of us - be it economical, life-learning, technology advancement, research-wise and academically. Entrepreneurship is not only about job growth, creation of new jobs, or technical innovation, but it also fosters a culture that is forward looking, helps in transforming local & national economies and prepares the local region for tough competitive economic and technology environment. 

Entrepreneurial firms drive the future of innovation and prosperity in nearly every community, and, thus, are the focus for any economic development efforts. But with advent of recent economic downturn there should be more efforts to promote local economic development. And when it comes to transformation I don't think there's any single cookie-cutter approach or a silver bullet that can help us instantly transform our economy. Rather, the development of a culture that fosters entrepreneurship as a long-term strategy can only supplement growth and help fuel the transformation of local economies.

Jerry Yang, Co-Founder of Yahoo! recently presented his thoughts on high-growth entrepreneurship at the Presidential Summit of Entrepreneurship.

Some of Jerry's thoughts:

...the power of the Internet, innovation and ideas, and entrepreneurship is borderless.  People around the world, especially young people, are increasingly enthusiastic about chasing new opportunities and starting their own businesses.

...While entrepreneurship may be an individual’s pursuit, a “high growth entrepreneurship” environment where technology entrepreneurs can thrive doesn’t happen by accident.

...You need to have the right foundation to enable entrepreneurship to flourish.   A foundation that includes: a commitment to research and development; investment in education (including fundamental science at the University level); access to capital funding; and a culture that encourages an entrepreneur ecosystem – from immigration and technology access to online communities and mentors who encourage our youth.

You can watch the full video here. 

This is an interesting piece by Hugh MacLeod, and touches the core - the basic fundamentals of how long you have to wait to wait for something in anticipation for the much awaited outcome that is not going to realize very soon. And then in the end its a may be. And yes rightly said Hugh. But how many of us realize that patience is a virtue, and in a tweeting world today I wouldn't count many. 

In Hugh's words:

This cartoon is about the nature of PR. Unlike most marketing, the game isn’t about writing a check, pulling a lever and waiting for the sales to come in. It’s a wee bit more subtle and long-term than that.

 

And educating the client about the long-term view is probably the hardest part of the job…

(*REVISED FOR 10.6

Details found at - http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060322202753429

Written by © Mark Hunte - 2009*)

tell application "Address Book"

set biglist to {}

set theGroup to "Dupilicate Entries"

if not (exists (group "Dupilicate Entries")) then

make new group with properties {name:"Dupilicate Entries"}

save

end if

set the_names to name of people

repeat with i from 1 to number of items in the_names

set theName to item i of the_names

if theName is not in biglist then

copy theName to end of biglist

else

set counter to (people whose name is theName)

if (count of counter) > 1 then

repeat with i from 1 to number of items in counter

set this_item to item i of counter

add this_item to group theGroup

end repeat

save

end if

end if

end repeat

end tell

These are some of my recent thoughts on Cheating Online - Academic Dishonesty posted elsewhere as part of my learning to be an online instructor. I felt compelling enough to be shared with the rest of the world. So here it is. 

As part of some of the online learning courses that I've completed in the past - my experience states that, if the instructor and a student have a fair bit of understanding about where they are coming from and where they wanna be at, then, policing and monitoring takes away that "learning" discipline - where the students and instructors are considered to be part of a democracy.

If the course structure and organization is such that - that it makes the student think on their feet rather than their text book then "Cheating Online" will become a rarity as it will lack research & material available to them, and will discourage such a lure behavior.  

The emphasis should be given more to the "learning" aspect rather than the assignment completion. What am I learning today or as part of this group is certainly not well judged by how quickly and efficiently I complete my assignments but what value as a student I bring to a particular course for myself and others to take away as "learning".

Thus, the key facts should be - greater level of interactivity - between students and instructors, opportunity to mentor and be a mentee (within student groups), elimination of text book based assignments, introduction of project based work group exercises, team exercises, focus on independent research and collective analysis, more use of online and social media tools, and the ability to self-measure against the learning plan that student creates with the help of the instructor.

Understanding that certain online policing tools will help in bringing some discipline in assignment submissions, but the whole point of distance education or online learning is to create a unique set of educational framework that is very distinct from the classroom behavior and self-sustains an educational responsibility between the student and the instructor.

I'm not against such tools, but I am for discovering new means of educating students that brings collaboration, self-responsibility and self-realization of "learning" amongst them. 

It's only German cars for me. It's simple, it's not only about the efficiency of the factories, reliability or anything like that - it's also about how the car makes you feel. I've yet to drive a Japanese car that would give me the same feeling of quality and consideration for the needs of the user.

As someone rightly said, a man is nothing without his car.

With the recent advent of Toyota's glitch in Camry and now Prius, the Japanese should learn a thing or two about safety and reliability from the Germans. Not everything cheap and eco-friendly is the best. Lessons in lean manufacturing and Kaizen are great theories, cutting costs and bringing affordable cars to people is a great effort but not at the costs of peoples lives who trust Japanese cars and drive them.

I respect how reliable Japanese products are but still prefer German cars! I think I contradicted myself here, what I wanted to say instead that I respect the way Japanese make their products but automobiles might not be their best strength to date.  

The reason I like German cars because of a certain thoroughness to their design and their consideration for the user's aesthetic in a way that Japanese cars don't quite fit the bill. I often find that Japanese build their cars with ruthless efficiency, and they most often miss out on small features like air conditioning air flow adjustment for each vent, illuminated door courtesy lights, and air vents for the rear passengers in the back of the center console/tunnel. I feel Japanese design is purely functional and that's it, while German design is functional, reliable, built to last, different and has a look of it's own.

And it was the Germans who invented the automobile. The idea of reliability and quality isn't some that had to do particularly with autos, but with German products in general. The Germans often set standards where the other cars are judged. Germans have been undoubted kings of reliability and have always come ahead of anyone else, in terms of Engineering innovation. And that's why they've earned greater respect, than any other motoring industry around the world.

I respect how Japanese products are built but prefer German cars over reliability, safety, engineering and aesthetics. Its just those little things, that make German cars for car enthusiasts, IMO.

And finally, on the recent Toyota's debacle - German cars don't have throttle pedals that get stuck, here's an interesting video I'd like to share:

© Manoj Khanna/Open Source World/rapidblog.com 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 Powered by Dextrus Prosoft, Inc.

The @ symbol
@ symbol is used as a public reply to or mention of another person on Twitter. In more simpler words, by putting an @ before a person's username>> you reply to something that they said or you mention that person in your tweet.

To find out where you got mentioned or replied to, log into your Twitter account, on the right hand side of your home page you can click to find when others within the Twitter-O-sphere used @your_username to mention you or replied to your posts.

Some examples,

@khannamanoj hi, what r u in town for?

@khannamanoj I'm at myname @ someurl dot com.

Why You Need A Software As A Service (SaaS) Strategy -- http://bit.ly/6i7tvG via #SaaS #strategy #technology #management

RT (retweets)
RT or retweets occurs when you re-tweet someone else’s Tweet, and essentially you're giving credit to the original source. For example, if you take the Tweet above about SaaS strategy and wanted to re-tweet it, you would Tweet:

RT @khannamanoj Why You Need A Software As A Service (SaaS) Strategy -- http://bit.ly/6i7tvG via #SaaS #strategy #technology

© Manoj Khanna/Open Source World/rapidblog.com 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 Powered by Dextrus Prosoft, Inc.