If you are watching this, you are probably a candidate for using this video from today/tomorrow. Sitting at your desk or computer terminal for long periods of time can cause some serious muscle tension and pain – eyes, hands, back, legs – all get unhappy with prolonged computer usage. However, by taking a few minutes to do some stretches – you’ll feel better and more alert every time.
Category Archives: MyOrbit Blogs
Harvard Newsletter: Tools of Persuasion: Pitch Your Offer and Close the Deal
If you are in any form of business or profession, then this podcast from Harvard Law School is a must-listen item because its packed with valuable insights on how to share good and bad news, how to sell your ideas to a reluctant or untrusting client or business partners using powerful tools of persuasion. This podcast is based on an article by Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman of Harvard Business School – from August 2007 issue of PON newsletter.
Click here to play.
The original post and podcast are available here.
Harvard Law School podcast: Negotiating for Job Satisfaction and Success
There are times in the careers of most professionals, when you will feel if the job you are doing is going the way you wanted it. Even when we take up new jobs, we assume somethings rather than discuss them upfront – which also leads to issues sometimes. These are very common situations, and happen across career stages and industries.
This latest podcast from Harvard Law School features an article from the November 2007 issue of their “Negotiation newsletter”. It talks about how thinking broadly about your career goals can increase your value and opportunities both inside and outside a hiring organization.
The original post and podcast are available here.
And here’s the main site for more info: www.pon.harvard.edu/
Open Handset Alliance announced -Google Android to Arrive soon
Google has announced the details of its mobile OS strategy. It’s called Android and its the brainchild of the so-called “Open Handset Alliance.” The Daily Tech Rag reports on the latest and very interesting development in the Mobile application space.
Google has teamed up with 34 different partners in the technology space (including NVIDIA, Intel, Texas Instruments, Synaptics, Marvell, Qualcomm, Motorola, Samsung, T-Mobile, Sprint, Skype, LG, HTC, KDDI, DoCoMo and China Mobile) to create the Open Handset Alliance (OHA)–a group focused on building an open, fully customizable alternative to closed operating systems like Windows Mobile 6, Symbian S60 and the iPhone OS.
The OHA’s first product will be Android, an open-source mobile OS and associated application suite that’s built on the Linux operating system (and will be open-sourced via the Apache v2 License). The Android SDK will be made available to developers on November 12th and Android-sporting handsets will flood the market next year, from device manufacturers like HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung.
These handsets will be available during the second half of 2008 in the U.S. (from T-Mobile and Sprint) China, Japan, Germany, Italy and Spain. As has been reported earlier, the Android OS will be targeted toward consumers and will be available to OEMs free of charge (the OS will be ad-supported, like all of Google’s other apps).
“A few observations:
- It’s interesting that Google isn’t putting their own name on this but rather, taking a step back and pushing the OHA brand. While this certainly seems like a collaborative effort to a degree, it’s clear that Google is the driving force here–they’ve had the OS in development for three years now.
- Will this force other carriers/device manufacturers (most notably AT&T, Verizon, Nokia, RIM and Apple) to open up their handset platforms?
- Does this mean that just about every desktop developer who has thus far been shuttered out of the wireless industry will make a mad dash for that SDK in order to have an Android app out by next year? You had better believe it.
From the looks of it, Google and the OHA are sitting on what could be a real game-changer here, in terms of openness, user-customization and mobile functionality. Android is expected to usher in an age where mobile devices operate more like PCs, with users downloading, installing and customizing to their heart’s content. ”
Endadget has compiled some useful background information – if you want more details.
Read – Google press release
Read – Android mobile OS overview
Read – Google blog: “Where’s my Gphone?
Books & Journals moving from Libraries to Online
Over the last 5-10 years, the Internet has become the primary resource for information for everything from financial planning to healthcare to food recipes- and hence there is value in digitizing the huge amounts of information residing in paper books and journals, so that its available on the Internet. Many companies and organizations, including search engines are working with book publishing houses and libraries to digitize their collections of books and journals/periodicals.
Here’s a video by WebProNews that speaks with Google’s Gabriel Stricker, Brewster Kahle of the Open Content Alliance, and the Boston Library Consortium’s Executive Director Barbara Preece about their efforts in this direction. Now, there have been a few controversial issues among the various platforms, but all agree that the common goal is to increase the availability of paper books and periodicals in the online world.