People Matter Too

In this article, there is a lot of focus on processes, and trying to come up with the perfect process that fits a business. But what I think is interesting is that the author says that you can't come up with a perfect process without factoring in the people that will be in the process.

A process may sound perfect on paper, but if the people don't buy into it or if the people can't adapt to the process, then the business will fail or will have to find something else to create a change.

Certain changes don't always work even if it sounds perfect. People must be factored into the equation as well. In a growing age of technology I think this is very important because we tend to take people for granted and don't think of them as quite as important as they really are.

After all, we are the central part of the equation in all businesses and processes and we are the factors that make things work or not. Humans must also manage the work and the process for things to be successful. Very interesting to me that not everything can be solved with more technology. Sometimes that is a bad thing.

http://www.cio.com/article/619276/Processes_and_the_People_Factor?source=rss_news

Facebook Outage Leads To Realization

Thursday saw the longest facebook outage in four years according to the article linked below. It made me think...what has facebook done to me.

I have had a facebook account for the past 6 years from my first year at Mississippi State as an undergrad. I have slowly added friends, used the chat mechanism, sent messages and also relied on status updates to figure out what my friends were doing or were planning on doing.

When facebook was down, I couldn'd do any of this. I then realized that I could easily find these things out by other means of communication. Email, text, etc. It made me realized how much technology there is out there. But it also made me realize how facebook has relied on instant communication. I made four phone calls to people I hadn't talked to in a few weeks during that time just to see what they were up to cause I couldn't check in on them through facebook.

The increased phone usage may have been due to me traveling, or perhaps that my birthday was in four days, but considering the content of the discussions, I would believe otherwise. It made me realize that our world is so used to instant information and the ability to get information from a wide set of places at once rather than rely on one medium (phone) at a time and then call someone else.


Strange to think about, but when technology is taken away, you realized how much you rely on it.

http://www.cio.com/article/618313/Facebook_Apologizes_for_Worst_Outage_in_4_Years?source=rss_news

A New stand on a Newsstand

Apple has announced it will team up with many newspapers and magazines to sell subscriptions and single issues to consumers digitally through the iphone, ipad and even itunes.

I personally like this move. We all have discussed over the past few years how the newspaper industry has been dying, and how it will become extinct. Although I believe we are moving to the age where there won't be any paper boys delivering papers in the morning, I think this move will preserve the print media. It will be in a different form, but it will not change that much from what we already know. We will read it on an electronic screen rather than ink on paper.

This move will also help ads be targeted towards each individual person or reader, creating a market of one. Apple could use the likes and preferences through itunes to develop advertisements tailored to the individual. This would cut down on flipping through ads in the newspaper and magazines that don't pertain to you.

The only thing that is keeping publishers from going all-in with this is that Apple will receive a cut of the profits. They say that Sony doesn't receive a cut of the profit from tv shows watched on their sets. While I agree with this point, I still believe this move will help increase circulation and readership by substantial amounts. This move and partnership I think will save the newspaper and magazine industry.

Facebook Banned?

Yes, Facebook has been banned by Harrisburg University on campus. According to the article below, the Provost has blocked the social networking site Facebook and also twitter, instant messengers and other social networking sites.

Apparently, he did not block them for any other reason except to see how the students would react. All computers and wireless systems would block your access, but you could still access it on smart phones.

Actually, this comes as a surprise because the aim of the University is to address Pennsylvania's need for increased technology. While I support the effect of the research, I think the experiment could be done in another way, perhaps using something better to officially ban the networks.

This however was not the first thing I thought of. I always hear of how Facebook is bad for students attention and things along those lines. But, actually, Harrisburg could fully support Facebook and team with the company to implement certain things even further. Facebook certainly has its social components and was started as a site for friends, but it could be so much more. It works as a calendar, group setting, email database, and more.

In this case, I think Harrisburg and other Universities should look at how they could INCREASE the use of Facebook. I definitely think the use of Facebook will help in the professional world as weird as that may sound. I use Facebook for the obvious reasons, upload pictures, keep in touch with my friends, see what is going on around campus, etc. But, I also use it to market my company, set events, and send mass messages regarding certain meetings or information that needs to be explained further. It allows to you to make sort of a personal webpage for an event or organization without paying the domain name fee, and it is a lot faster.

With that being said, I am interested in seeing the results of this study, but I think that the increased use of Facebook could actually be a good thing on college campuses.

American People Get Louder Voice

The White House recently started a site called challenge.gov that will give readers, contributors and other citizens a voice that they may not have had if it were not for updated technology. The purpose of the site is to get the public's help on tough problems that the government is having problems solving.

This is a very unique approach. From a political standpoint, it allows constituents to directly (for the most part) contact their politicians on issues that affect them. Not only can they voice their opinions and say that they would like something to be done, but they can actually give possible solutions to the problems as well. In this way, it is very in tune with the advancement of technology. In my opinion, it will work as a wiki site. Not necessarily for all Americans, but for politicians and the engineers working on particular problems. The pool of possible solutions will be looked at and discussed before arriving at a decision.

This is a social networking aspect that will enhance the political structure of the American system, giving the people more of a voice, something that most Americans want. Also, it will continue to make the U.S. a smaller country in terms of differences each area possesses. By this I mean there is a lot of unfamiliarity between the south and the west coast, and the northeast and the midwest for instance.

This site also allows people to post pictures of landmarks and interesting points in their areas. This allows people to experience what other parts of the country experience and bring us closer together as a country.

The most important aspect of this site, in my opinion is the rapid feedback the government will get from its people, and the possible return of information from the government back to site users. This will be the first major technological advance that will allow what is for the most part one-on-one communication with government officials.

http://www.cio.com/article/610317/White_House_Launches_Site_Asking_for_Citizen_Help?source=rss_news