Interesting Reading 11/19
Zappos CEO: transparency helped employees during layoffs
http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=309
Just under two weeks ago Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer, very
publicly laid off nearly 8 percent of its workforce. The truth is, the
company didn't intend for everything to be so public. It just was, due to
the social media darling's corporate culture of transparency.
Is this bad? Not according to Tony Hsieh, Zappos.com CEO.
"We've generally found it to be beneficial to be public online about
everything," he said. "And we will continue to do our best to be as
transparent as possible."
Even, sometimes, if transparency is hard. Zappos.com gained prominence on
the social media radar earlier this year when Hsieh, his executive team
and hundreds of the company's employees created a one-brand army on
Twitter. Those hundreds of employees reacted strongly to the news of the
layoffs - online - on the company's Twitter-focused feed. To some
companies, this might've created bit of a public relations nightmare or a
crisis to manage. For Hsieh and his team, it was something to embrace.
"We believe that transparency is important and have continued to encourage
our employees to Twitter," he said. "We also publicized on our blog the
email sent to employees within minutes of it being sent internally."
If you watched the Zappos employee Twitter feed post-layoff, you would've
seen a few thingsĀ
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Offshoring Patent Services to India
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/08d9d4/offshoring_patent
Revenues from the Indian patent services offshoring industry are estimated
at $46 m for the calendar year 2007 and are expected to reach $206 m by
end 2012.
Typically catering to the international markets, patent services
outsourcing to India is still in its infancy with a history of only about
3 to 4 years behind it. There are about 50 vendors in the industry with an
estimated 1,550 professionals employed as of end 2007. While a few vendors
have been in this business longer, this industry has gained momentum only
in the last few years.
Patent services include a wide range of specific tasks or services. We
have divided these services into the following broad areas: Patent
searches, Patent illustration and proofreading, Patent drafting, Patent
analytics, Patent asset management, Patent litigation support and Patent
consulting.
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LIFE photo archive hosted by Google
http://images.google.com/hosted/life
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching
from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available
for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.
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HP Touchsmart TX2 Laptop is a 12-inch Multitouch Wonder
http://gizmodo.com/5092686/hp-touchsmart-tx2-laptop-is-a-12+inch-multitouch-wonder
HP's Touchsmart tx2 is awesome because its the first consumer-oriented
convertible notebook to feature a multitouch technology built into the
display. The 12.1-inch screen uses a capacitive touchpanel that can track
two points simultaneously, operates with fingers or a stylus, and comes
with the Mediasmart 2.0 interface customized for the notebook. While
Dell's oft-mentioned Latitude XT came out last year with the multitouch
power to simultaneously track all five fingers, the feature was kept
dormant until the middle of 2008 and lacks any realy mainstream software
to take advantage of the tech.
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Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War
http://www.socialcomputingmagazine.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=621
You'd think Knowledge Management (KM), that venerable IT-based social
engineering discipline which came up with evocative phrases like
"community of practice," "expertise locater," and "knowledge capture,"
would be in the vanguard of the 2.0 revolution.
You'd be wrong. Inside organizations and at industry fora today, every
other conversation around social media (SM) and Enterprise 2.0 seems to
turn into a thinly-veiled skirmish within an industry-wide KM-SM shadow
war. I suppose I must be a little dense, because it took not one, not two,
but three separate incidents before I realized there was a war on. Here's
what's going on: KM and SM look very similar on the surface, but are
actually radically different at multiple levels, both cultural and
technical, and are locked in an undeclared cultural war for the soul of
Enterprise 2.0.
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Backpacker's Diary: Next Gen PC Design Competition
http://www.nextgendesigncomp.com/entrydetail.aspx?id=944
Backpacker's diary is a PC concept that integrate with the form of
traditional book, the target user is the enthusiastic travelling fans. In
this "book", different pages include different functions, like media
recording, solar recharging and EL illuminant. The approach of reading a
book takes the traditional way of operating computer, which encourage
those backpackers to experience and share more about their trips.
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