If your company is big enough to provide this "Service", they have a legal department. Have them whip up something. Of course that will only protect your company, not the poorschmoes who are fixing (non)employee equipment, but any layer would rather go after the entity with more money. At any rate they'll have to write something up to keep people from taking advantage of the system. (How easy would it be to abuse the system to get free components?)
And this doesn't answer your question, but, seriously: WTF?
How sadly misguided is this? If they want to give employees and contractors perks, how about something with a little more common sense. Like healthbenefits (for contractors) or gas/travel vouchers. Both are something people would be glad to have and have tax benefits to the company. Or how about spa gift certs or something where there's little liability.
Alternately, they should subcontract the work out (Clearly they have no problem doing that). Get GeekSquad or something out there to do it for you. Sure, the liability is a headache for you, but I can't believe that any marginally responsible company would take on the infrastructure to do something like this. Maid service for all employees would be cheaper and have less overhead. And I'm sure would be a nice perk.
As far as Play footage goes, I'd rather watch someone read a book. (Yes, there are exceptions, and while the survey doesn't say, I'm assuming it's American, and game culture in the US is very different than abroad.)
For the other two, podcast is the worst format. I want to scan, review and get the bottom line, which is something you can't do in an audio or video format.
And frankly 99.93% of podcasts are embarrassingly bad. The only reason podcasts have become popular is because they require even less skill and time to produce than a blog. (If such a thing can be possible.) There are tens of millions of blogs, but how many do you read? Compare that to How many are only visited by spam-bots?
Wikipedia "works" because everyone knows a little bit about something, so there can be meaningful contributions. (And by "works" I mean doesn't implode into a suck hole)
However this is a very specialized topic where even people who think they know something don't know anything. I've been witness to even small-scale wikis become completely useless because of either misguided "knowledgeable" people or in fighting.
Even if something useful is contributed, how is someone going to be able to separate the signal from the noise? Peer reviewed publications have some kind of bar to keep from having to look at every crackpot idea. Wiki's have... what?
However it will give a little more coverage to the problems, so in general it's good PR. But the wiki thing... ugh.
Disclaimer: They've been/.'d so I can't see what they've done.
A waste of money, but the opposite. They're spending lots of money on something that will generate a small income. You have spent a lot of money on something that will drain your small income.
"modern" in the sense that they have a ticket system, or that it's non-traditional. But not "modern" that it's applying new or current information to the problem.
Management is 100% a person problem. Management is about dealing with interpersonal relationships, and that takes time, talent, and work. This is just giving people another weapon to use in office politics, not actually resolving problems. It's an obfuscation pretending it's responsibility. If they had effective management they wouldn't have to file a ticket to let the boss know someone sucks at their job, the boss would already know and take action.
Reminds me of an interactive agency I once worked for back in the Good Old Days. People were getting double booked for meetings and billing their hours wrong, so they spent years and thousands of hours developing an internal time manager. In the end people still used it to double book meetings and bill hours to multiple clients. Nothing was resolved, only they now had a crappy piece of software to do it with. Behavior can't be changed by software.
(Also, a -1 Troll to the summary writer for "India has the most modern management system in the world". Where the hell did they get that?)
A list of games and release dates is just about useless as an evaluation tool for a console. It's like trying to sell a sports car by listing the roads you can drive it on. That's all well and good, but is it any fun?
Find a native Japanese speaker to teach you. Ideally one on one. If you don't speak it, you will not learn it. Ideally get a Japanese boy/girl friend.
Don't expect to learn too quickly, Unless you have an amazing aptitude you'll need to study pretty hard for several years before you can even get the gist of most anime. Is that going to be worth it to watch Naruto without the subtitles? (And still miss most of the subtext). And that's taking lessons several times a week plus hours of homework, study, and memorization.
Spend time learning the culture as well as the language.
I'd start with the "Minna No Nihongo" books and stay way from the "For Busy People" books since they don't provide near as much depth, usage, or have as good of exercises. The "Minna No Nihongo" books also let you focus your attention as much as you want with optional listening CD's and Kanji exercise books that go with the lessons.
And of course, go to Japan and go somewhere outside of Tokyo/Kyoto and learn to sink or swim.
I agree with what other posters have said about learning Anime Japanese because it's pretty much socially unacceptable. See if you can rent or download Japanese drama's to listen to, since they have more common speech.
Heh, you seem to think that I work more than 20 hours a week and lack any original thought re: Operating Systems.
Hmm.
I'm not saying that dinking around with [whatever] can't be a lot of fun, but that's not the question here, it's about technology, and since we can assume that the original poser isn't asking about pulleys and levers, then I have to say the best way to acquire new technology is make more money.
Or are you guys out there all just happy taking what's in your paycheck?
It seems to me if I have a spare radio telescope to encrypt with, I'm probably sending messages that other radio telescope owners would be interested in.
When I want to buy something I can't afford I get better paying work so I don't have to stand in line at Fry's with the the rest of you penny pinching open source hippies.
Maybe you have time to waste salvaging some POS out of the dumpster, but I spend that time making more money to buy things.
Ever wonder what the world would be like if it was populated solely by 14 year-olds? Now give those kids knives and the ability tor turn invisible. That's Shadowbane in a nutshell.
I've played PvP in a number of online worlds and SB was just the worst. And by worst, I don't mean the worst system, but the worst player experience. There was something about Shadowbane being only PvP that attracted the most socially defective. And I'm grading "socially defective" on a curve for online games.
Sad to see a bunch of people loose their jobs because their parent company took a chance. But then again, games would be more interesting if more companies took more chances.
Sony recently gave up the building to a local mall developer. Thank god, it needed it.[link]
But everyone still realizes that the Walk of Game is still just floor tiles on a disused hallway of a mall, right? If I hadn't been in the place a hundred times I wouldn't even know where it is.
I beleive it's CDMA, but on a different frequency than the rest of the world's phones. I've looked into trying to get this thing to work in the states, but it seems impossible. Otherwise the importers could go crazy with keitai.
Oh well, it gives me yet another reason to go back to Japan.
I own a phone that can do this (Japanese phone). The quality isn't great, but good enough. I haven't found a way to copy the files off the phone yet (it records them on miniSD)
Of course this phone also has GPS, barcode reader, 2MP camera with flash, motion sensor, music service, e-book reading, looks sexy and cost $100 less than my RAZR...
Tivo was a great service while it lasted, and it at least has a good interface. But its days are numbered when put up against media-type PC's and Peer download networks.
The market that the article talks about is a small percentage of Sony's income, but they're not losing it to Apple, they're losing it (And every other part oftheir company) to whoever wants to take it.
Making CD's with DRM that won't even play in your own company's CD players? C'mon, folks, Sony is low hanging fruit. Go in there and kill!
Sorry you got stuck with this. As a marketing effort, a "community" site is probably doomed.
It's been done before.
If your potential customers want to talk about [your product related things] they already are. Somwhere else. Getting them to migrate over to your (heavily moderated) community ain't going to happen.
The marketing effort needs to have it's own marketing effort.
Next, assuming that people want to have a community and don't, it takes a a critical mass of users congregating in the same place at the same time to get a community in motion. At least 10,000 willing participants within a very short time. This is hard to do for a compelling product. If you're just selling nuts and bolts, you're going to have to bust your ass to get enough people to the site to make a community. If the most recent message on the boards was posted two days ago, no one is going to want to hang out.
Staffing?
Even slightly active community takes several people to moderate properly. Most companies who attempt to set up a community are surprised by this maintenancecost. In the end this dooms a successful community because the company can't control it.
So...
Since you're probably doomed, I would do something very simple. PHP-Nuke with most stuff turned off, and a good forum mod. (Good = easy to moderate, good at blocking spambots).
I'd avoid a wiki, they require someone with both vision and good organization to set up properly, are a pain to maintain, and are a community Resource, not a community.
Slashdot Mirror
And this doesn't answer your question, but, seriously: WTF?
How sadly misguided is this? If they want to give employees and contractors perks, how about something with a little more common sense. Like healthbenefits (for contractors) or gas/travel vouchers. Both are something people would be glad to have and have tax benefits to the company. Or how about spa gift certs or something where there's little liability.
Alternately, they should subcontract the work out (Clearly they have no problem doing that). Get GeekSquad or something out there to do it for you. Sure, the liability is a headache for you, but I can't believe that any marginally responsible company would take on the infrastructure to do something like this. Maid service for all employees would be cheaper and have less overhead. And I'm sure would be a nice perk.
The pirates must have a hell of an infrastructure to move 20 billion CD's a year to the Chinese population.
There are three kinds of video game videos:
-Play footage.
-Reviews.
-Industry news.
As far as Play footage goes, I'd rather watch someone read a book. (Yes, there are exceptions, and while the survey doesn't say, I'm assuming it's American, and game culture in the US is very different than abroad.)
For the other two, podcast is the worst format. I want to scan, review and get the bottom line, which is something you can't do in an audio or video format.
And frankly 99.93% of podcasts are embarrassingly bad. The only reason podcasts have become popular is because they require even less skill and time to produce than a blog. (If such a thing can be possible.) There are tens of millions of blogs, but how many do you read? Compare that to How many are only visited by spam-bots?
However this is a very specialized topic where even people who think they know something don't know anything. I've been witness to even small-scale wikis become completely useless because of either misguided "knowledgeable" people or in fighting.
Even if something useful is contributed, how is someone going to be able to separate the signal from the noise? Peer reviewed publications have some kind of bar to keep from having to look at every crackpot idea. Wiki's have... what?
However it will give a little more coverage to the problems, so in general it's good PR. But the wiki thing... ugh.
Disclaimer: They've been /.'d so I can't see what they've done.
A waste of money, but the opposite. They're spending lots of money on something that will generate a small income. You have spent a lot of money on something that will drain your small income.
Management is 100% a person problem. Management is about dealing with interpersonal relationships, and that takes time, talent, and work. This is just giving people another weapon to use in office politics, not actually resolving problems. It's an obfuscation pretending it's responsibility. If they had effective management they wouldn't have to file a ticket to let the boss know someone sucks at their job, the boss would already know and take action.
Reminds me of an interactive agency I once worked for back in the Good Old Days. People were getting double booked for meetings and billing their hours wrong, so they spent years and thousands of hours developing an internal time manager. In the end people still used it to double book meetings and bill hours to multiple clients. Nothing was resolved, only they now had a crappy piece of software to do it with. Behavior can't be changed by software.
(Also, a -1 Troll to the summary writer for "India has the most modern management system in the world". Where the hell did they get that?)
I guess they should build more Wal-Marts then.
A list of games and release dates is just about useless as an evaluation tool for a console. It's like trying to sell a sports car by listing the roads you can drive it on. That's all well and good, but is it any fun?
Writely has
And it's still in beta.
The only thing ajaxWrite currently has over Writely is that Writely is so popular they had to stop the open beta, so the general public can't use it.
Oh and it has "Ajax" in the name for some stupid reason.
Don't expect to learn too quickly, Unless you have an amazing aptitude you'll need to study pretty hard for several years before you can even get the gist of most anime. Is that going to be worth it to watch Naruto without the subtitles? (And still miss most of the subtext). And that's taking lessons several times a week plus hours of homework, study, and memorization.
Spend time learning the culture as well as the language.
I'd start with the "Minna No Nihongo" books and stay way from the "For Busy People" books since they don't provide near as much depth, usage, or have as good of exercises. The "Minna No Nihongo" books also let you focus your attention as much as you want with optional listening CD's and Kanji exercise books that go with the lessons.
And of course, go to Japan and go somewhere outside of Tokyo/Kyoto and learn to sink or swim.
I agree with what other posters have said about learning Anime Japanese because it's pretty much socially unacceptable. See if you can rent or download Japanese drama's to listen to, since they have more common speech.
Tell me again why it shouldn't make anyone's top 50 list of stupid business jargon?
But kudos to the data mining folks. Their products have lottery-grade ROI, and it's still a growing business.
The submitter mentions it twice in two sentences, and I still don't know what it means. Seems to be an expensive Google adword though...
Seriously though, this is all buzzword bingo for the Pointy-Haird Boss, right?
Jesus, that's a hell of a bingo prize.
Heh, you seem to think that I work more than 20 hours a week and lack any original thought re: Operating Systems.
Hmm.
I'm not saying that dinking around with [whatever] can't be a lot of fun, but that's not the question here, it's about technology, and since we can assume that the original poser isn't asking about pulleys and levers, then I have to say the best way to acquire new technology is make more money.
Or are you guys out there all just happy taking what's in your paycheck?
Did you travel in time from the past?
It seems to me if I have a spare radio telescope to encrypt with, I'm probably sending messages that other radio telescope owners would be interested in.
How does this increase security? It's not like quasars are private property. Anyone can look at 'em...
When I want to buy something I can't afford I get better paying work so I don't have to stand in line at Fry's with the the rest of you penny pinching open source hippies.
Maybe you have time to waste salvaging some POS out of the dumpster, but I spend that time making more money to buy things.
Ever wonder what the world would be like if it was populated solely by 14 year-olds? Now give those kids knives and the ability tor turn invisible. That's Shadowbane in a nutshell.
I've played PvP in a number of online worlds and SB was just the worst. And by worst, I don't mean the worst system, but the worst player experience. There was something about Shadowbane being only PvP that attracted the most socially defective. And I'm grading "socially defective" on a curve for online games.
Sad to see a bunch of people loose their jobs because their parent company took a chance. But then again, games would be more interesting if more companies took more chances.
But everyone still realizes that the Walk of Game is still just floor tiles on a disused hallway of a mall, right? If I hadn't been in the place a hundred times I wouldn't even know where it is.
Better than being removed after release.
Taking something like
news.google.com -> Personalize -> Save Page as...
Except automated?
I guess sometimes the simple ideas are the best one.
Except when they're just dumb.
I beleive it's CDMA, but on a different frequency than the rest of the world's phones. I've looked into trying to get this thing to work in the states, but it seems impossible. Otherwise the importers could go crazy with keitai.
Oh well, it gives me yet another reason to go back to Japan.
I own a phone that can do this (Japanese phone). The quality isn't great, but good enough. I haven't found a way to copy the files off the phone yet (it records them on miniSD)
Of course this phone also has GPS, barcode reader, 2MP camera with flash, motion sensor, music service, e-book reading, looks sexy and cost $100 less than my RAZR...
Tivo was a great service while it lasted, and it at least has a good interface. But its days are numbered when put up against media-type PC's and Peer download networks.
Making CD's with DRM that won't even play in your own company's CD players? C'mon, folks, Sony is low hanging fruit. Go in there and kill!
It's been done before.
If your potential customers want to talk about [your product related things] they already are. Somwhere else. Getting them to migrate over to your (heavily moderated) community ain't going to happen.
The marketing effort needs to have it's own marketing effort.
Next, assuming that people want to have a community and don't, it takes a a critical mass of users congregating in the same place at the same time to get a community in motion. At least 10,000 willing participants within a very short time. This is hard to do for a compelling product. If you're just selling nuts and bolts, you're going to have to bust your ass to get enough people to the site to make a community. If the most recent message on the boards was posted two days ago, no one is going to want to hang out.
Staffing?
Even slightly active community takes several people to moderate properly. Most companies who attempt to set up a community are surprised by this maintenancecost. In the end this dooms a successful community because the company can't control it.
So...
Since you're probably doomed, I would do something very simple. PHP-Nuke with most stuff turned off, and a good forum mod. (Good = easy to moderate, good at blocking spambots).
I'd avoid a wiki, they require someone with both vision and good organization to set up properly, are a pain to maintain, and are a community Resource, not a community.