Goethe’s Faust Essay Example for Free

Goethe’s Faust Essay Scene vii of Faust ii act v takes place in a steep, rocky side of an unspecified mountain. The scene is dominated by female characters and takes place on earth. It starts with a chorus of nature spirits, in which the nature is describes the mutually interdependent processes taking place. The idyllic conditions described by the chorus of nature are the celebration of processes like plant and animal life, earth and water. Then enter the four anchorite fathers, who seem to represent progressively increasing degrees of spiritual attainment. First there is Pater Ecstaticus who is hovering up and down in the air. Then there is Pater Profundus who apparently lives in the depth of the earth. He marvels at the creative processes of nature and describes lightning, trees which strive to reach heaven and water flowing from heaven to earth. His heart is however is not at peace and he asks for a divine illumination from the Lord â€Å"Oh, God! Calm my thoughts, pacify us/ And bring light to my needy heart! † The third father is Pater Seraphicus. He lives in the middle regions, (probably between the air and earth). He invites the spirits of young boys who died at birth and had not thus experienced earthly life to come and experience the world through his body. Then a group of angels pass by carrying the soul of Faust and relate why they rescued Faust’s soul. We learn that Faust soul was saved because he struggled so much in developing his projects (â€Å"Whoever strives, in his endeavor, we can rescue from the devil. †). In this instance we are also told of the other reason why Faust’s soul was saved which is that Gretchen was interceding for him to Mother of God. The Younger Angels say of how they distracted the Mephistopheles by using roses of holy love. The More Perfect Angels also say that even though the heart of Faust has â€Å"escaped the flames† it is still impure and that the bond between the soul and body is left for â€Å"Eternal Love† to unwind. The angels then take Faust’s soul to the blessed boys above who â€Å"Joyfully receive Him as a chrysalis† after all the ‘threads that surround him’ disappear since ‘divine love has found him. ’ Then we meet the fourth anchorite father, Doctor Marianus who resides in ‘the purest cell’. When he sees â€Å"womanly shapes† floating around he starts praising Mater Gloriosa and together with the choir of penitent women, Magna Peccatrix, (the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet), the Samaritan woman who met Christ at the well and Mary of Egypt together plead to Mater Gloriosa not to begrudge the true soul of Gretchen. They plead that she transgressed without knowledge of her fall. The Gretchen herself goes to Mater Gloriosa and pleads on behalf of Faust asking Mater Gloriosa to allow her, Gretchen, to teach him the new ways there since he is still blinded by the bright light. She says that Faust is a completely new person having â€Å"thrown off every bond/ Of his old earthbound integument,† The scene ends when Mater Gloriosa accepts Faust’s soul and beckons Gretchen and all the others to follow her into the higher sphere. This scene takes place by the Aegean Sea where the Sirens are addressing the Moon. The Nereids and Tritons are also swimming around and even swim to the Greek mythological island of Samothrace, ‘the domain of the mighty Cabiri’ in an effort to show that they are more than fish. Meanwhile, Thales and Homunculus have gone to visit the sea god, Nereus for advice on how Homunculus can be reborn completely. Thale tells Homunculus that though Nereus is stubborn and a grumbler, people respect him because of his wisdom. They then meet Nereus, who is angry and wants to send them away, he tells them of how men can never heed advice and tells them of how Paris laughed at him when he told him of the future he saw, he also tell them of how he warned Ulysses of ‘Cyclops’ horrors and of Circes wiles’ but the advice brought Ulysses no gain. He tells them finally to go to Proteus, the shape changer since he is waiting for Dorides and Galatea. Nereids and Triton arrive then carrying Cabiri in a turtle-shell and Thales and Homunculus watch the procession. Proteus, who is hovering near is so attracted by the light that that homunculus emits. He draws near and Thales asks for advice on Homunculus’ behalf. Proteus suggests that homunculus can repeat the human birth process by starting in the sea and then develop to a full being. They then all (Thales, Proteus and Homunculus) leave together to go and watch the sea festival. In the procession, the Telchines, the nine dog-headed Children of the Sea, pass by and boast that they were the first to shape gods in the image of man. Galatea finally arrives and Nereus, the Sirens and Thales comment on the doves of Paphos which accompany Galatea. Galatea comes closer to her father. And in the process Homunculus drawn near and smashes the glass that holds him at the feet of Galatea and all marvels as the light of Homunculus mixes with the waves in a symbolic marriage with the sea. Analysis of the acts In both these two acts there is a strong reference to the female presence. The female presence in act v is represented by Mater Glorioso, Gretchen, Choir of Female Penitents, Magna Peccatrix, The Woman of Samaria, Mary of Egypt and the female forms that hover in the sky which Dr. Marianus. The strong women influence in this act, as in the rest of the drama, shows the empathetic face of women. The three repentant women plead for Gretchen while Gretchen pleads for Faust. The women are a strong symbolism to life givers. Mater Glorioso gives Faust soul another life by uttering few words. In this act we also know that the soul Faust is received by the young boys in a ‘pupal’ stage. This is so like Homunculus, who is a half being and only survives in a bottle. The rebirth of Homunculus takes place when he joins with the Galatea in a sea wedding. This is what completes Homunculus. Faust soul is also completed by the love of Gretchen. It is Gretchen’s love that finds him and is to lead him in the new place since ‘The new light still blinds him. ’ In act ii, there is also an overwhelming female presence. The sirens, Nereids and Tritons, Galatea, Dorides are all representative of female personalities. Generally this act is one in which the three, Homunculus, Faust and Mephistopheles are on a search of what completes them, which in the three cases happen to be the female personality. References Wolfgang, Johann von Goethe. Faust. Berlin: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1867.

Personnel Management and Organizational Behavior Essay Example for Free

Personnel Management and Organizational Behavior Essay Four ways to shape employee behavior are: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment, and extinction. Positive reinforcement is following a reaction with something enjoyable (Robbins Judge, 2007). Employees need recognition for exceeding the organization’s standard on job performance. A well-organized reward program will motivate employees to excel the organization’s standard. Example of this are: employee of the month, quarter or year, and recognitions to employees for presenting ideas to improve the organization’s operation. Negative reinforcement is also referred as â€Å"looking busy†. Supervisors should explain the task to the employee, provide necessary resources, and ensure the work is performed to standard. These actions will help eliminate negative reinforcement. Punishment and knowing the organization’s standard are directly related. The organization’s standard, duties and responsibilities of the employees have to be established in order to hold employees accountable for their incorrect behavior. Punishment can be used as the way to unsure employees follows the standard. The different type of punishments have to be included in the workplace policy to ensure the employee knows what could happen if he/she does not follow the standard. Extinction is a behavior not reinforced, causing it to disappear (Robbins Judge, 2007). Adequate supervision and communication in the workplace are two key elements to assess this behavior and eliminate when is not needed. Managers have to develop ways to shape employee’s behavior in order to improve performance. Shaping the employee’s behavior starts with adopting practice that encourage employees to be responsible, loyal, and committed to an organization’s goal (â€Å"Strategic Planning in the Payroll Department†, 2007). Some of these practices include setting standards, establishing duties and responsibilities, and direct supervision. Discuss the three components of an attitude. The main components of an attitude are: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Cognitive component is a consciously held opinion or belief (Colborn, 2007, p. 68), such as â€Å"sexual harassment is wrong†. Managers should enforce values, high standard, group and cultural behavior awareness to improve the working environment. The affective component is the emotional tone or feeling of an attitude (Colborn, 2007): â€Å"I don’t like Charles, because he harasses his female employees†. Leaders should maintain open communication with their employees to let them express their feelings and emotions. Behavioral component is the intent to behave in a certain way toward something or someone (Robbins Judge, 2007), such as â€Å"I’m going to avoid Charles because of his improper conduct†. This action could cause problems in the work group and if not handle properly it will set a bad example to the employees. In conclusion leaders should understand the components of an attitude in order to establish means to avoid these in the working environment. Enforcing values, high standards, open communication and continues supervising are key to success. How is bounded rationality related to decision making? Bounded rationality is defined as making decisions by constructing simplified models that extract the essential features from problems without capturing all their complexity (Robbins Judge, 2007, p. 161). This concept used a method where a satisfactory solution is obtained in stade of the optimal solution. This approach is driven by previous experiences, limited information and selecting the first solution that satisfies the constraints. Decision-making process is a detail process to obtain the best solution. During this process all alternatives and courses of action are considered and evaluated completely. This approach consumes time and resources because every alternative has to be evaluated in order to obtain the best solution. In my opinion the decision-making process should be exercise as much as possible in order to obtain the optimum solution to a problem. Leaders should be aware of both approaches and select one based on time, safety concerns, priority of the task, and resources available. What is a quality circle? Quality circle is a work of employees and supervisors, who meet regularly to discuss their quality problems, investigate causes, recommend solutions, and take corrective actions (Robbins Judge, 2007, p. 237). A successful quality circle should include the following: a comptroller, individual assignment, tentative times, progress report, implementation and performance monitoring. The comptroller will be in charge of conducting the meetings, keeping record of the problems, progress and implementation. Problems should be brainstorm by the group and assigned to the best qualify employee. Each problem should have a tentative time to obtain a solution. During each meeting a progress report is required in order to ensure timely solution of the problem. Implementing the solution and monitoring its performance will ensure employee’s satisfaction and develop credibility to the quality circle. The end statement of the quality circle is to fix problems in the organization.

An Introduction To Microblogging Information Technology Essay

An Introduction To Microblogging Information Technology Essay Fig 3.1 Microblogging is a shorter version of blogging that  allows  users  to write entries up to 140 characters.   The messages can be viewed by anyone, or users can choose to follow an individual or a company.  While Microblogging is concerned with thoughts from a given source and headlines of present activity, blogging is more related to larger stories, background information and research including Links Pictures. The term  lifestream  or  lifecasting  is  used  in  continuation  of  microblogging.   While Lifestream  presents  all  life  activity,  such  as  changed  IM  status  to: at coffee bar,   Services  like  FriendFeed  provide  this  overall  life   aggregation. Lifecasting  refers  to  micromedia  broadcast  such  as  video,  photos  or  audio  clips   transmitted online. Microblogging Services Providers There are several  web  services  that  provides  microblogging  like: Twitter Tumblr Yammer There are additional services that provides streaming of posts from your followers, like: Twitterrific which is a desktop application that uses to read and post entries to Twitter. Another application is Friendfeed that enables their users to keep up to date on web pages, photos, videos and music that friends and family are sharing. User Behaviour The User behaviour mainly includes posting updates in text possibly combined with links to pictures, videos or websites. The entries they make are usually a combination of their personal thoughts, professional subjects and replies to the users who follow him/her Companies also have accounts for posting company products news, customers feedback and follows users that mention company in their microblogs. As opposed to traditional blogs and newsfeeds, microblogs are far more foreseeable. Microblogging is light information that you can choose to dig into if it has your immediate interest. It ´s also a way to get an overview of what is present in your chosen network. Organizational potential Organisations have aways been a bit apprehensive in using blogs as they have a fear of loosing information. However microblogging involves lower risk as it reveals less information and is therefore more realistic for organisations to use and hence it is a good way to adapt overall blogging. Microblogging can be used in several ways, such as: For posting news related to company. Giving feedback to customers  . Link to other publicity sources. Realtime communication covering various events. Humanize an organization by communicating with individuals. Dialogue with stakeholders. Marketing, Recruiting and Stock updates. Internal knowledge sharing Many companies have made an attempt to adapt traditional blogs for internal knowledge platform. However sharing important information in blogs conflicts the challenge of many organnisations. On the other hand a lot can be said with 140 characters without revealing hidden information. And it is a universal fact that microblogs dont reveal information. It is in the best interest of the company to share knowledge which most of the times results in budget savings. But practically departments are focussed on keeping budgets, resources and assignments that conflict with the desired behaviour of knowledge sharing. Who all can and should Microblog within an Organization Whoever is interested in communicating with their stakeholders on daily basis should microblog. Be it sharing information or having a dialogue. It is more easier to adapt as it doesnt require the same amount of communication that is involved in a blog. Followers reply to their posts if they attract their attention. However what is important is their activity i.e. frequency and quality. Departments that can be benefitted from Microblogging Departments with an outward focus such as: Marketing Human resource Sales Logistics IT How to get started Create a user, company or topic name/account. Select the media or channel to publish from such as mobile phones, instant messenger or web. One should put together the team that is going to publish microblogs, educate them in this communication channel, consider topics, goals, ROI, opportunities and how to get a dialog with the followers. MICROBLOGGING TOOLS Fig 3.2 Micro-blogging is a term described as a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. Several start-ups have witnessed phenomenal growth with micro-blogging services, most notably Twitter. In addition, numerous social networks including Facebook and Bebo have integrated similar status update services. The space is hot and its still heating up. So lets take a look at 10 of the key players. Twitter Twitter is the key player in space and the company name is used synonymously with micro-blogging. The free service allows users to post status updates via SMS, e-mail, or web browser. Whats more, Twitter has an open platform allowing third party developers to build on top of it. TwitBin is one such third-party application that allows users to post updates to Twitter directly from their browsers. TwitBin is an extension for the Firefox browser, and like most Firefox extensions, it is free to download and use. Pownce Pownce recently launched a micro-blogging platform with added functionality. On top of messaging, users can quickly and easily share links, files, or events with any or all of his/her contacts. Tumblr Tumblr is a very clean, slick micro-blogging platform. Its focus is on simplicity and elegance. Similar to Pownce, users can share a variety of things, including text, photos, quotes, links, chats, or even videos. Jaiku Jaiku is considered by many to be Twitters closest competitor. Most features and functions are similar. It will be interesting to see how the company plans to emerge from the shadow of its main rival. MySay MySay is what it says. Instead of text updates, users call MySay and say how they are doing today. Then, friends or family can listen via phone, e-mail, or the web. Hictu Hictu is a service for video micro bloggers. A webcam and a mouse-click are all that is needed to create a video post. This streamlined solution saves time and effort for traditional vloggers. Moodmill Moodmill is a way to express your mood or current state of being. A sliding scale facilitates this process, while a quick text update completes the personalized service. Frazr Frazr is also very similar to Twitter. The main difference is one of language. Frazr is focused primarily on the French and German markets. I Rate My Day I Rate My Day allows you the ability to (yes, you guessed it) rate your day on a scale of Worst to Great. Users can also provide a short text update to accompany the rating. Emotionr Emotionr is a way to gauge your happiness on a scale of 1-10 (decimals included). As the name touts, it is a way to express and share your emotions and feelings with those around you. Conclusion Micro-blogging isnt a short-term trend it is here to stay. The evolution of blogging has spawned this new mini version of blogging and many are latching on. The simplicity and the ability to post frequently is what attracts the people most to this concept. We expect much faster adoption and mainstream penetration than blogging in general. MICROBLOGGING SERVICES IN INDIA Fig 3.3 Microblogging is a new form of blogging that has ramped up quickly and created various offshoots uses of itself apart from a common use of updating/publishing thoughts in form of text (usually less than 200 characters),evenmore, microblogging is said to be used as tool in communication, productivity, e-commerce, brand exposure and in many cases a serious business tool because of its instant information retrieval nature, thus nearly a real time info exchange. When Twitter was launched first, it was criticized by many bloggers as a useless startup, but Twitter was revolutionary, after launch of Twitter many similar services got launched. While on global scale brands like Twitter (need no intro) and Jaiku are main players along with Pownce (from Digg), India is also deliberately paving way in Microblogging, though Twitter remain the key player in India too, a lot of Micro blogging platforms were introduced in past few months in India. Below are major microblogging platforms in India; A web app from Indian mobile technology company Webaroo, Sms gupshup is major Indian micro blogging platform. It provide users to send/free free text SMS to any mobile device. Unlike to Twitter, it provides its users to create and join groups to send and recieve SMSs to and from users in these groups respectively. Sending and receiving SMS via mobile and online site usage seems to have 1:5 ratio thus the site doesnt appeal much sleek in User Interface. Vakow-It is the next major micro blogging and SMS based site in India after SMSGupShup, in terms of usage and site traffic. Vakow too provide SMS message from web to mobile devices plus other features such as tagging, to tag the messages and group them based on these tags to send Pictures from web to mobile devices although a light weight, low resolution black white pictures only. Moroever, Vakow has worked out a way, through Twitter API, so that one can send updates from their mobile devices to twitter via Vakow, reason being Vakow cost less twitter, when it comes to sending message from any mobile devices in India to twitter servers. Shockles is one another such service, its a mobile message board, in short functionality are similar to that of Twitter along with features it carry. The application however is different in product marketing in way that it provide Enterprise shockles which is a product in the social software for business category and as per the website amongst the worlds first on-demand and mobile enterprise solution for business social networking and collaboration. Kwippy is one of the most famous nanoblogging service including twitter in india, reason being you can post message from Gmail or GTalk directly to kwippy or integrate Gtalk and Yahoo messenger status, share links. Kwippy is thus a micro/nanoblogging webapp + IM status logger + social network. (A) In kwippy, the whole focus is on the Instant Messenger, right now Gmail address book(Gtalk) and Yahoo only. The friends list on the instant messenger is the most intimate friends list you can find, of all social networks as per Kwippy blog. The microblog app presently is in private beta, but one would get invite soon in a day or two. Rest is much similar to Twitter such as lingo like followers,following and tweets being Kwips here Scope of microblogging in India Microblogging is no longer unfamiliar to Indias young netizens . Twitter undoubtedly remains the most popular microblogging service, and theres more to come! So why are so many young Indians interested in micro blogging? The answers its easy ant its simple. But dig a little deeper and the following reasons the 5 Cs seem to be why microblogging appeals so much to the Indian youth. Communication: Microblogging allows you to communicate with thousands of people scattered all over the globe. The youth loves to stay connected and microblogging is just another way for them to stay in touch (apart from texting, emails, IMs, and social networking sites). Ever since the Bollywood brigade has taken to Tweeting, the allure of microblogging has only increased. Connectivity: Connectivity without restrictions of time and space is a great deal that technology has offered the bloggers. You can also use cell phone to connect to the microbloggers tweeting out there, Hence it is practically a mobile and internet combo pack! So there you are blogging from any corner of the world that too even without a computer, sharing the experiences there and then and staying connected to the blogging universe all the time. Content creation: Seeing your own content being read by wide audience is a great feeling which does prompt many bloggers to enter the blogosphere. Though the content many a times remains very basic and does not really have much of a literary value, one has to accept the fact that new media such as Twitter allows people to create their own content and share it proudly with the world. Crisp: The lengthy sagas on regular blogs have no place in microblogging universe. Microblogs are supposed to be less than 200 characters, that is why they are micro. Twitter allows maximum of 140 characters, and this restriction does make the post short and crisp. Any microblogger tries to make the post maximum interesting in minimum amount of words, just what the readers expect it to be. Just like their other choices, the youth likes it short, crisp and to the point. (Even though sometimes the post itself has no point altogether!) Cult: microblogging has become a cult. Just like Yahoo chat and Orkut were. There might be many of your peers who type away every little thing they do; and have 500 followers. And then there is our media who treats this new medium with equal enthusiasm. So you glance through newspapers, or just watch an entertainment channel and know that Shah Rukh Khan has got tons of followers within few days, and what did Priyanka Chopra write to her tweeple even if you do not know what exactly Twitter is. Of course, the movie stars or politicians many a times do it for their own promotion, but that just adds an it factor to microblogs. It makes the youth go after it more. That has suddenly become the aspirational and the thing to do you see. Microblogging is redefining what a conversation is all about, blurring the line between SMSing and blogging, and between the private and public. Blogging on the phone has no extra baggage that blogging on a computer carries: you dont have to be grammatically correct and your blog post could be just any stray thought. In Mumbai, Twitter inspired a tweetup, when Gaurav Mishra, a marketing professional and an early adopter of technology, wrote out a post saying Blog meets are so passà ©. I want a Mumbai Twitter meet. Webaroo Inc, which launched the free microblogging service SMSGupShup in India last April, claims to be growing at nearly 4 per cent every day purely through word-of-mouth publicity. they expect users in excess of 20 million before the end this year. Costs are recovered by placing contextual ads at the end of the SMS. MyToday MOBS, a microblogging service from Netcore Solutions that took off last July, sees nearly 25,000 people publishing on a daily basis again, with zero advertising and marketing costs.India has the worlds third-largest mobile base. If you create services leveraging the mobile as a platform . Its not even just text anymore phone companies are ringing in an era in which pictures, video and audio can be blogged instantaneously. Nokia Nseries introduced its M-Blog last year. When blogging began in the 90s, the only way to blog was to get to a computer and upload images, text and video. But not any more. Reliance has seen a four-fold increase in its m-blog usage since it started advertising the features. In Japan, five out of ten of last years best-selling novels were originally written out on cellphones . Microblogging is helping people release a lot of creative energy free of cost. They could be inspired to compile the microblogs as books eventually and this trend is quickly catching up in india.. Microblogging is definitely here to stay. Blog-camps and virtual get-togethers are already happening with bloggers all across the globe. Microblogging could surely reach lot more number of people. It will evolve more with the convergence of technology, and become a regular part of our lives, both real and virtual. Issues with MicroBlogging Threat   Web surfing is no longer a solo affair.  Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks have quickly become an integral part of the online culture, and with them come a whole new array of potential security threats. In this article, well identify some of the key dangers of  social networking/microblogging Concerns about Micro blogging The main concerns with micro blogging, as with other forms of social media, are privacy, security and integration. In the race to take the first mover advantage(in case of businesses) or just to be among the first to use of these new technologies many users do not consider the potential risks or the shortcomings of these upcoming technology. Nearly all the micro blogging sites gather information about users and some of them consider the personal information provided on account profiles to be their property. These services are reserved with the right to use personal information and to transfer it to third parties. Which are generally mentioned in terms and conditions. (Did you check the Terms of Agreement before you signed on?).Following are the three main key issues:- Privacy   concerns of broadcasting social or work information to everyone who follows your feed Security   concerns of the public seeing possible sensitive work information Integration   how to adapt micro blogging into the corporate culture. Privacy  is a major issue, because the users sometimes broadcast sensitive personal information, which can be viewed by anyone who views their public feed. Micro blog platform providers can also cause privacy issues, through changing or presetting users privacy options. An example would be  Googles Buzz platform, which incited controversy in 2010 by automatically publicizing users email contacts as followers. Google  later amended these settings. Security concerns have been voiced within the business world, since there is potential risk of sensitive work information to be published on micro blogging sites such as  Twitter.   Integration could be the hardest issue to overcome, since it can be argued that  corporate culture  must change to accommodate micro blogging. It helps to share information with potential clients in the most concise manner. They feel that employees might be distracted which might affect their productivity at work. One more issue is that business is not able to decide upon which website which they should use depending on the popularity in different areas A major issue for an organisation is the concern that employees might broadcast sensitive work information. Micro blog posts (unless sent as private direct messages) are searchable by other users and websites. An organisation will never want the public seeing possible sensitive work information on the public micro blogging sites. Just because people are using new means of communication does not mean that an organisation has any obligation or should really sanction or implement these upcoming technologies. However, micro blogging has become a popular and useful communication tool, which can be used to benefit some organisations. If an organisation allows the use of various public micro blogging service by employees, then there is a need to implement a policy with clear guidelines on appropriate usage. If, on the other hand, an organisation decides to integrate micro blogging into the corporate culture, they should investigate enterprise solutions and find one that will be easy to inte grate with their existing platforms. Define privacy Marrying privacy and social networking/micro blogging may seem unreal to some. How can you be social and open and yet protect your privacy? Well, just because you are choosing to share some of your personal/private information with a selected group of people does not necessarily mean that you want to share all of your information, or that you want this information to be visible to all. Facebook in particular has suffered from a number of issues related to privacy concerns. If you have used Facebook for a while, you may have noticed ads with your friends names or photos associated with them. Facebook does provide privacy controls for you to customize what types of information should be available to third-party applications. If you look at the Facebook Ads tab of the privacy controls, though, youll notice that it offers no way for you to opt out of the internal Facebook Ads. It merely states that Facebook strives to create relevant and interesting advertisements to you and your friends. Enterprise Microblogging Security Security:  This will probably be of paramount concern at least initially in most businesses. All businesses want to make sure that they keep internal communications safe from intrusive outside eyes. An enterprise microblogging solution must provide for fine-grained authorization and trustworthy security of communications. Management, through the IT department will try and want to restrict who can see certain posts and who cannot. Remember who your friends are When you write a Twitter tweet or post a Facebook status update, you have to keep people who will be able to see your post in mind. More and more these days, we hear stories of people who have forgotten that their boss is part of their network and have said things online that have gotten them reprimanded, even  fired. The consequences of inappropriate online comments have become so common that they have earned an entry in the Urban Dictionary:  Facebook fired. Saying something as obvious and seemingly innocent as Im tiredor things such asAny better paying job?Im available in a status update during work hours can have dire consequences if the wrong people see it.Or even posting some jokes about other community or religion can have some serious consequences. MICROBLOG VS EMAIL Google CEO Eric Schmidt had this to say about the microblogging service Twitter: Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor mans email systems. In other words, they have aspects of an email system, but they dont have a full offering. The question about companies like Twitter is: Do they fundamentally evolve as sort of a note phenomenon, or do they fundamentally evolve to have revocation, identity, storage and all the other aspects that traditional email systems have? Or do mail systems broaden what they do to take on some of that characteristic themselves? At first sight, it seemed like an example of Google not getting it when it comes to Twitter. But actually it is a new way of not only posting notes about what ones doing, but it also has a lot of communications usage via @replies and direct messages (DMs). Reflecting on Schmidts statement, it can be inferred that microblogging is slowly replacing a lot of email activity. As more companies are taking up microblogging with services like Yammer, Socialcast, Present.ly and SocialText Signals, employee communications amongst employees is both increasing and getting diverted away from email. Something like this: Fig 3.4 Socialcasts Tim Young had this to say about email: Email is dead. If your company is relying on email for communication and collaboration, your company is walking dead in this new economy. Being the CEO of Socialcast, it is not a very surprising statement. The shift described applies regardless of the microblogging application used. Features present in Social Networking sites Microblogging does not replace email. But these guys are advancing their product, and are rising up the performance axis. Here is what Yammer or any other social networking site now offers: Behind the firewall installation Public notes @replies DMs Groups Private groups File attachments Favorites (a form of bookmarking) Tagging Conversation threading Unlimited character length (i.e. not limited to 140 characters) Search Look at that list. When you think about your own internal email usage, whats missing? Folders or the Gmail equivalent of tags seem to be something for the down the road. Thus, Microblogging still has the insurgent, disruptor profile relative to corporate email. But dont underestimate that. Theres what IT knows is needed behind the scenes. and then theres what the users actually do when given the different applications. Expanding Communications, Marginalizing Email Microbloggings premise is that public proclamations of what youre doing and information that you find are a new activity for people, and they have value. Information is shared much more easily and in-the-flow of what were all doing anyway. This use case is what promises to dramatically increase communications among employees. As were seeing with Twitters explosive growth, it takes time for people to know why they should microblog. But once they get it, it takes off. So services like Yammer/Twitter etc. have your attention as you post updates and read what others post. In reaction to someone posts, you hit the Reply button. Youre having a conversation that others can see, and join as well if they want. You can decide to have separate conversation with someone in that context. Which starts the marginalization of corporate email. Why? Because a lot of whats going to generate interactions is occurring right on that microblogging app youre looking at. Its the most natural thing to act in-the-flow and use that application in lieu of email. Well-designed microblogging applications are also quite seductive in terms of ease-of-use. The logical end use cases of emails are: Notifications External communications This isnt something thats imminent. Email is quite entrenched in daily workflow, older generations arent likely to stop using it and internal microblogging is still nascent. COMMUNOTE AT COMMUNARDO ENTERPRISE MICROBLOGGING CASE STUDY Company information and case study background Communardo Software GmbH in Dresden, Germany offers software solutions and consultancy in the context of knowledge management and team collaboration. The company has been growing in robust during recent years .It has got an employee strength of 160+. For the most part the employees work in negeriads.com knowledge-intensive project contexts with one to one communication network. The internal IT environment contains group-supporting applications like an intranet wiki, blogs and project spaces. As Communardo itself is a consultancy firm in the area of Web 2.0 its employees are affiliated with the early adopters of new web services. Some of the employees tried Twitter and realised its potential to improve their collaboration at work and the quality of their input in the office. In 2008 they suggested using Twitter or a Twitter-like tool for the companys project teams. Until then broad email conversations or the usage of the wikis discussion pages were common and lead to a large number of unmanageable masses of information. The anticipation of the benefits of microblog- ging was that it would reconnect different parts of the company which were separated during its growth and that it would be the best tool for representing the flow of information in the project teams. The initial decision of the top level management was against using a public microblogging service like Twitter for internal use. The reasons for this were the perceived functional deficits (e.g. no rights management, few possibilities for search and filtering) and strategic reasons (data protection, security of investment and reliability). Since there were no solutions for enterprise microblogging available, the only fast and easy way to set up a microblogging-type communication system was the use of the blogging software WordPress enhanced with a special theme called Prologue. This setting was tested in a project team. The approach in general was found very useful in Indonesia Furniture Handicraft Wholesale Marketplace, and hence it was adopted company-wide. However, the modified WordPress could not meet functional expectations. Conceptualisation and Implementation Communardo formulated the following requisites for its internal microblogging tool: Topic-centred content structuring and rights management should be available. Various integration scenarios(LDAP, RSS, portlets, mobile client, XMPP, corporate identity) should be supported. Information management should be possible through tagging and filtering. Security features (like encryption, user management and robust software design) should be included. The first requirement showed a remarkable difference from the example of Twitter. It was argued that the so-called noise postings should be minimised. Noise postings are not relevant for the user but because of their quantity hide important ones. A topic-centred structuring was also seen as the condition for effective rights management. The assumption behind this was that each person acts in different roles, such as project manager. So it should be conceivable that project-relevant postings by each person would be accessible only to co- workers involved and are part of the same project. The possibility of establishing rights settings for every single posting, however, was rejected in favour of simplicity. Thus, the solution was the conceptualisation of multiple microblogs where single users could be added and then those users could follow that microblog. The approach was implemented in a non-functional user interface prototype. In this early stage of the project special usability consultants were asked to test the prototype including different versions of tagging. The aim of these tests was to find out if the handling would be intuitive. The findings were used to rework the first concept. After the conceptualisation phase Communardos top management decided to move on and started the implementation phase. The technological planning took place parallel to the screen design. The project team kept the iterative proceeding and published the resulting tool as quickly as was possible. This is what we are going to describe in the next paragraphs. The resulting software artefact The resulting software is a browser-based microblogging system which uses Web 2.0- typical technology (i.e. Ajax). Communardo chose the name Communote- a combination of the companys name and the word note. At first look Communote looks similar to Twitter. In fact the key elements are the same: like the posting stream is the major part of the system and a panel with filtering and navigation options is situated on the right. A major difference is the drop-down list on the top. This UI element is used to choose the microblog in which to post. The first page shows a combined view of all postings from one users microblogs. To post a message the user has to either choose a single microblog using the drop-down list or reply to an existing message. The panel on the right contains a dynamic tag mass and additional filtering possibilities. Filters are available for tags, free search, authors, microblogs and time periods. They could also be

Self-defense in Criminal Cases Essay -- essays research papers

Self-defense in criminal cases. One of the frustrations faced by many businesses is that after the perpetrators of crimes have been identified, the District Attorney's office will not pursue the case. One option is for victims to sue the DA in an attempt to compel him to prosecute, but this would be costly and proving dereliction of duty would be difficult. The DA is effectively immune. Other options are more promising. The law should encourage (and prosecutors' offices should welcome) private preparation of criminal cases. Prosecutors' budgets simply do not allow vigorous prosecution of all the available criminal cases. Logic and evidence show that in private law, plaintiffs win about 50 percent of the cases that are tried. This is because the parties are more likely to settle lopsided cases out of court. Public prosecutors, by contrast, win far more than 50 percent of their trial cases because they have budget constraints and so elect whenever possible to go to court with only the cases they are likely to win. Vi ctims should be allowed to hire private attorneys and other professionals to prepare cases against the accused and thereby extend public prosecutors' resources. The attorneys can be retained pro bono (for the good) or for compensation. This is already done in some white collar cases where financial complexities exceed the prosecutors' expertise, such as complicated embezzlement cases, some oil and gas swindles and cases involving the misapplication of construction trust funds. At present, many cases are never prosecuted for one reason or another. For example, in about 40 percent of federal embezzlement and fraud cases, charges are dropped because of insufficient evidence to convict, given the resources at hand.85 In some instances prosecutors "deputize" attorneys to try cases, too. Many private attorneys have criminal experience as former prosecutors or public defenders. A logical extension of private preparation for trial is the complete privatization of the prosecutor's job by contracting out. Private attorneys, of course, are often appointed on a pro bono basis for criminal defense. Private attorneys could be deputized for a single trial or for ongoing prosecutor's work, either pro bono or under contract. The same remedies are available to finance criminal prosecution as civil litigation. Commercial insurance policies could be exp... ...ting witnesses before a grand jury, or the person being investigated, has become a well orchestrated, even cynical, minuet. The first and most important task may be overcoming the cynicism of so many lawyers in and out of government to whom concern for "fairness" somehow signifies weakness. It is a cynicism that government lawyers should not have the luxury of acting upon. In reality, a commitment to fairness is a highly reliable sign of strength and confidence in the merits of one's position, and it is usually those who fear the fairness of the forum who most fear outcomes based on merit. Recently, a controversy has erupted over whether Justice Department lawyers are bound by state codes of ethics and analogous local federal court rules of practice. The issue stems from rules that restrict contact by lawyers with parties known to be represented by counsel, including corporate parties. In essence, the government is seeking to exempt its own lawyers from state and federal court ethical restraints in ways that would go far beyond issues of witness contact. Courts, thus far, have been unsympathetic to this government effort at unilateral exemption from the rules of ethics.

The Evolution Of The Pc And Microsoft Essay -- essays research papers

The Evolution of the PC and Microsoft   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Xerox, Apple, IBM, and Compaq all played major roles in the development of the Personal Computer, or  ³PC, ² and the success of Microsoft. Though it may seem so, the computer industry did not just pop-up overnight. It took many years of dedication, hard-work, and most importantly, thievery to turn the personal computer from a machine the size of a Buick, used only by zit-faced  ³ nerds, ² to the very machine I am typing this report on.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Xerox started everything off by creating the first personal computer, the ALTO, in 1973. However, Xerox did not release the computer because they did not think that was the direction the industry was going. This was the first of many mistakes Xerox would make in the next two decades. So, in 1975, Ed Roberts built the Altair 80800, which is largely regarded as the first PC. However, the Altair really served no real purpose. This left computer-lovers still yearning for the  ³perfect ² PC...actually, it didn ¹t have to be perfect, most  ³nerds ² just wanted their computer to do SOMETHING.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The burning need for a PC was met in 1977, when Apple, a company formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, released it ¹s Apple II. Now the nerds were satisfied, but that wasn ¹t enough. In order to catapult the PC in to a big-time product, Apple needed to make it marketable to the average Joe. This was made possible by Vi...

The Meaning of Community :: Definition Essays Community

The Meaning of Community Community is defined in two different ways. The Universal English Dictionary describes a community as 'a society or body of persons living in the same place, having the same rights, privileges, and interests, and acknowledging the same laws.' Another definition by the Oxford English Dictionary describes it as 'common character or commonness.' Even though these are different ways to describe this word, their meanings are quite similar and are used greatly in their own ways with everyday life. Looking at the definitions and comparing it to how it is used in everyday life and conversation, there is not much of a difference between them. People use the word ?community? to describe the area where they live and what they can and cannot do in their community. The rules, regulations, and privileges are the same in their community just as described in the definitions. After reviewing what the word actually means, a main thing that sticks out would have to be that a community of people has "rules and privileges that must be followed and obeyed by everyone" (Merriam-Webster). It is almost as if it has its own little ?government? that sets standards and regulations for the people to follow. However, something that may have already been known would be the description of common character or commonness. A community has to have these things in order for peace and happiness to survive. Projects and readings for the class help with the understanding of a community. Working on the project is almost like working in a community with the rules and deadlines that must be followed and done properly. There have been readings about people working on, or helping with, communities if it needs help on certain issues. These readings have helped tremendously on the gaining of knowledge of the meaning of a community and how much a community needs help if it is in trouble. Community is a word that can be looked at in many different ways and have many different opinions to what it actually means in certain situations. People of communities realize that they must follow the laws and not misuse their privileges that have been granted to them by the ? The Meaning of Community :: Definition Essays Community The Meaning of Community Community is defined in two different ways. The Universal English Dictionary describes a community as 'a society or body of persons living in the same place, having the same rights, privileges, and interests, and acknowledging the same laws.' Another definition by the Oxford English Dictionary describes it as 'common character or commonness.' Even though these are different ways to describe this word, their meanings are quite similar and are used greatly in their own ways with everyday life. Looking at the definitions and comparing it to how it is used in everyday life and conversation, there is not much of a difference between them. People use the word ?community? to describe the area where they live and what they can and cannot do in their community. The rules, regulations, and privileges are the same in their community just as described in the definitions. After reviewing what the word actually means, a main thing that sticks out would have to be that a community of people has "rules and privileges that must be followed and obeyed by everyone" (Merriam-Webster). It is almost as if it has its own little ?government? that sets standards and regulations for the people to follow. However, something that may have already been known would be the description of common character or commonness. A community has to have these things in order for peace and happiness to survive. Projects and readings for the class help with the understanding of a community. Working on the project is almost like working in a community with the rules and deadlines that must be followed and done properly. There have been readings about people working on, or helping with, communities if it needs help on certain issues. These readings have helped tremendously on the gaining of knowledge of the meaning of a community and how much a community needs help if it is in trouble. Community is a word that can be looked at in many different ways and have many different opinions to what it actually means in certain situations. People of communities realize that they must follow the laws and not misuse their privileges that have been granted to them by the ?

Marketing Glitz

Individual Assignment – Glitzz Case Study 1. What factors influence the pricing decisions for a product such as Glitzz? Analyze the factors and comment on the range of prices that can be set for Glitzz. The factors that influence the pricing decisions for Glitzz are the pricing objectives, costs, and demand. The pricing objectives will be needed to direct the role of the price in the market. Higher prices will need to be set if the objective is to have higher profit margin instead of higher market share. However, if the objective is to survive in the industry, the prices need to be low to get more sales to meet its operating cost.For the case of Glitzz, the pricing objective is between having higher market share and to survive in the industry. Costs play an important role in the pricing decision as it set the minimum price for the product in order for the company to operate and cover their cost to prevent losses. There are five cost concepts, namely the fixed cost, variable co st, unit variable cost and marginal cost and total cost. Fixed cost is the sum of expense of the firm that is stable and do not change with the quantity of a product that is produced and sold. The fixed cost for Glitzz would be the machineries, rent of factory building, and insurance.The variable cost is the sum of expenses of that firm that vary directly with the quantity of the product that is produced and sold. The variable cost for Glitzz would be direct labour and raw material used to produce the bottle of jewelry cleaner. Total cost is the total expense incurred by the firm in the process of producing and marketing the product. Unit variable cost is the variable cost expressed on per unit basis and the marginal cost is the change in the total cost that results from producing and marketing one additional unit of product.Demand is also one of the important factors for pricing decision as it helps to relate the quantity sold with the price. Demand is dependent on the key factors, consumer taste, consumer income and the price and availability of similar products. They look into the consumers willingness and their ability to pay for the product. As stated in the case study, very few consumers are willing to pay a price which is higher than $20. Hence, the consumers willingness to pay and affordability for the product needs to be lesser than $20. In the case of Glitzz, the type of competitive market is monopolistic competition.There are similar products in the market but Glitzz will be competing with the non price factor which is their special formula for the cleaner with natural ingredient that is gentle on skin. This is to stand out from their competitors like the Brilliant Restorer and Connoisseurs by charging at a slightly different price as compared to its competitors. Therefore, the price has to be set at an affordable range around $12 to $20 in order to manage long run profit and develop a quality product to penetrate the competitive market.This price s hould not be lower than the cost and its competitors due to its unique non price factor that their competitors did not offer. 2. What price would you recommend for Glitzz? Why? I would recommend Glizz to set their price at $17. 90. Most of its competitors like the Brilliant Restorer and Connoisseurs are setting their prices ranging from $6. 97 to $16. 90. As Glitzz is a newly packaged product that is entering the monopolistic competitive market, it has to be competition oriented.With the pricing objective to gain market share, they are not able to gain market share by having price war. Hence, the price has to be set in a way that it does not deviate much from its competitors. Furthermore, the price is also priced odd-even as theory shown that the demand increases when the price drop. Thus, pricing at $17. 90, it seems to indicate that the price has dropped from $18. This can help as way to increase their demand by having customers to kick start their first purchase of Glitzz product in order for Glitzz to pave its place in the market.However, the price is set slightly above the competitors as a form of prestige pricing to attract quality customers as Glitzz is offering a product of quality with the natural ingredient used for its jewelry cleaning solution that is gentle on skin, non-corrosive and nonabrasive. A product that brings positive benefits to the customers should not set its price at a very low rate as it will devalue the product and lost credibility for the benefits that the product has promised. In addition, the price should not be over $ 20 as research has been conducted to show that very few customers are willing to pay above $20 for the product. . What Strategy would you propose for Glitzz? What costs and expenses would be involved? Given your recommended price in (2), what would be the breakeven point? I would recommend Glitzz to use Flexible-price policy together with demand and competition oriented approaches like prestige, odd-even and above- market pricing. Both the demand and competition oriented approaches focus on consumer demand, revenue implication and the markets performance and this helps Glitzz to stay competitive and in operation.Moreover, with flexible pricing policy, Glitzz is able to use price discrimination by setting different prices for different type of customers. The price can be set at a discount for business to business customers like Lee Hwa. Glitzzs product will be frequently used by jelwelry shops like Lee Hwa as Lee Hwas products are the jewelries. The jewelries have to be kept clean and shiny to attract consumers attention and desire to purchase their jewelries. Hence, Gltizzs product will come in handy to facilitate the jewelry shops sales as it aids in the cleaning and polishing of the jewelries.Hence, being the main stream of customers for Glitzz with their high usage and quantity purchased, Glitzz can lower their price and gives discounts to these jewelry shops. On the other hand, the price w ill be higher for the mass market as compared to the jewelry shops due to the lower usage and quantity purchased. The consumers in the mass market will purchased the jewelry cleaning product less frequently as they do not have the need to maintain their jewelry at its best condition everyday and the product is commonly used especially during special occasion like New year or parties.Hence, Glizz is able to set at higher price for the mass market at departmental stores like Robinsons. In addition, setting a higher price could also allow Glitzz to earn a smaller amount of profit when there are seasonal discounts for their product in the departmental stores. The cost and expense involved were the consultation cost ($5000), cost of the content and packaging (20000 x $5= $ 100 000) and budget for advertising ($ 1-2 million).The budget for advertising will somewhat made up the majority of the cost as these activities are important for the long-term future of the products by developing bra nd awareness and preference. The activities will include advertising cost on mass media, promotions and marketing cost that are incurred. Assuming that budget for advertising is $1million, Fixed Cost= $5000+$1000000=$1005000 Unit Variable cost = $5 Recommended Unit Price in Question 2 = $17. 90 Break-even point (BEP) = Fixed Cost/ (Unit Price- Unit variable cost) = 77906. 9767 = 77907 Quantity (round up to nearest whole number)