The network discusses the growing rift between Steve Jobs and his former CFO regarding and issue that surfaces regarding Jobs landing in hot water with the SEC over some stock options that were seemingly over the edge. Stock options to major companies have always been part of corporate culture and the same is with Apple, one of the biggest earners in today’s technology driven world. The scandal has some millions of dollars in question regarding the value and amounts of shares the former colleagues used to share that some accuse the former CFO of blowing the whistle out on which led to his eviction from the board of directors in 2006. After all the finger pointing and accusations, Steve lands in the sights of the SEC read on

News that all major players in the electric car race have standardized their plugs for a combined effort is welcome news indeed. but is it really a question of feasibility and inter-cooperation? Nope, it’s about dominance in a rising green car market that rivals the likes of events in the IT industry where profits is a direct result of dominance of a budding market worth billions. From Europe to the US, these auto makers have seemingly agreed to take up read on

Years back when the industry was still in infancy and Microsoft has been ruling most of the IT industry in terms of profits or should we say overall dominance, Yahoo and Google came up with the bright idea of a system that would allow subscribers of their free web-based email service to do lots of nifty stuff with contacts and friends who also had accounts with the same email services. Microsoft has introduced the same functionality to their long standing HotMail web-based messaging service which many have been waiting decades for. Yahoo and Google read on

From the Gawker network, the ever updated source on information on new media has raised the alarm on the adoption of new media by traditional print publishers. This has become the norm of today’s economically challenged firms, go to the net but many questions have been raised about such a move since the net was born and began to spread its global reach. This would not only be wise, but would allow these traditional print media to maintain their diverse talent pool while they try to find a way of salvaging their other businesses in print. read on

From the Blog herald: The recent issue that involved John Stewart on his unwarranted rap on social media or the new internet is a bit unwarranted for as the post in the Blog Herald says (by : Chris Garett), there are a lot of truths but also misconceptions about the whole social thingy. First, for example blogging, it started out as a medium on the internet where anybody who wanted to write about anything (mostly their pitiful lives and their utter uselessness roles in society), much like newspapers of days past which started out as mere advert pages that were finally congealed into a more compressed form that included advertising as well as some useful stuff to gain the interest of the reader. Get hold of any newspaper (if you can still find one) and what do you see? Headlines, articles, commentary and advertisements, wait a minute, ads. We’re getting warmer! Don’t tell me you haven’t earned a buck from social media(your bosses companies sure have!)
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Digitization has been approached with caution by major publishers for quite sometime mainly due to fears of piracy and other content related crimes. The current economic conditions makes it relatively expensive to pursue conventional print media and has given way to these people to finally realize that it is the way to go. Major titles from McGraw hill and others have taken up the call and are beginning to experiment with digitization for their book titles. According to CMS Wire, the avenue is the one to pursue for it opens up a whole new arena of profits for publishers due to the advantages and marketing advantages of viral marketing and SEO.
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So much for the power of blogging, but employees who are not careful on what they post on blog sites may end up losing their jobs if they are caught incidentally by their employers when they post something negative about their company and workplace.

Many would say, this is not something in the employee handbook, but then again, this can always be amended at anytime that companies and organizations would wish.

“If there is a negative impact on the organisation’s corporate image which is so serious that it breaches the implied term of mutual trust and confidence, the employee could be dismissed for gross misconduct,” she warned.

Cautioning employers to pay attention to worker’s blogs, Dowling added that blogs could provide evidence of other conduct issues, uncover workplace discrimination or bullying or even leak confidential financial information or new product details.

With the prospect of supremely cheesed off employees whistleblowing dodgy company practices, Dowling added that, “Employers need to ensure that they carefully consider the impact of blogging on their organisation and take appropriate steps to minimise any potential risk.”

Source: Digital Lifestyles. Blathering Work Bloggers Risk The Boot

[tags]blog news, blogger, problogger[/tags]

Blogging has been encouraged as a means of letting out clogged ideas in the mind of people but to date, most of the scattered ideas have become more of a nuisance rather than a helpful tool in the employee development of most companies. Such has been notable in the turnover rates of employees who find them looking for other jobs mainly because their employers are not to forgiving when they are able to read what they are sharing or hiding to express.

Some companies have gone to the extent of peeping into the personal journals and sometimes, these may bring back unlikely reactions. These reactions may be deemed as just cause for their termination, something that is clearly to watch out for on the part of the employees as a whole.

“A lot of people think they’re protected by the First Amendment in cases where they’re not,” said David Williams, a partner at law firm Morris James LLP in Wilmington, Del., and a past chairman of the employment and labor law section of the Delaware State Bar Association.

Union collective bargaining agreements and individual employment contracts generally say a worker can be fired only for what is known as “just cause.”

Yet, 92 percent of private-sector workers aren’t covered by collective bargaining, and employment contracts usually are limited to high-level executives.

Even though in Illinois, a company has the right to terminate an employee at will, one local attorney believes that without a policy in place, a worker should not be fired for speaking out on an outside-of-the-workplace issue.

“If there is no agreement, then in my opinion, you can say and do whatever you want,” said Al Williams, a Dixon attorney who specializes in workman’s compensation cases.

Broad statements on workplace free speech can be hard to make though, according to Williams, because company policies and situations can be so varied.

“It is very case-by-case and deal-by-deal, but an employer has to give a reason for firing you, they can’t just do it,” Williams said. – Let the bloggers beware: Companies’ rules may restrict what employees can and can’t say

[tags]blogger, problogger, employee rights, collective bargaining, CBA[/tags]

The best way to get proper testimonies towards how colleges run and safeguard their students is to allow them to blurt out what they want at their own manner of speaking. This is one of the recruitment strategies that colleges such as Ball State University has implemented, giving potential college students of the future an bird’s eye view of what to expect should they consider enrolling at the said university.

Bad and good experiences, the blogging phenomenon has allowed internal insights to set in. The best way to get to know colleges is through the students that are enrolled there. Hence, the blogs are being used as promotional tools at the university home page to have readers look over them initially so that they can relate to the experiences that students of today are truly witnessing.

Here is an excerpt from the Ball State University story:

COLUMBUS – Meet Michael Chandler, a college student who’s had it with parking tickets at Ball State University.

“I swear that’s where most of BSU’s money comes from,” Chandler groused on his blog. “They hand ’em out left and right, without a care in the world.”

Meet the sponsor of Chandler’s blog: Ball State University, which promotes the interactive online diary and several other unfiltered student blogs directly on the university home page as a recruiting tool for prospective students.

Colleges seeking a competitive edge are increasingly enlisting and sometimes paying student bloggers to chronicle their lives online. The results run the gamut from insightful to boring, but the goal is the same: to find a new way to win the attention of the MySpace generation.

“We found it a much freer, less constricting, far more believable way of letting prospective students glimpse what was going on on campus,” said Seth Allen, dean of admissions at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. – College recruiters turn to blogs

[tags]blog news, blog networks, college blogs, student blogs[/tags]

Finding no sense in continuing the ever flopping world of Yahoo photos, rumor has it that this portion of the search engine empire will be shutting down soon in favor of Flickr, a growingly popular photo image hosting site.

Yahoo photos was never really able to reach and achieve its goals. A lot of players entered the scene such as Flickr and sad to note that they had done much better as far as performance and preference is to be gauged. Hopefully, people would be aware of this soon since there are still people who use them and are totally unaware of the impending shutdown of the Yahoo Photo category.

The news is out (all over the place) that Yahoo is shutting down its stumbling Yahoo Photos site in favor of Flickr. But unless you’re read the tech blogs, you wouldn’t know it.

Here we are more than 12 hours after the news broke, and there’s no announcement on Yahoo Photos, Flickr’s news page, the Flickr blog or any Yahoo site. I’m a member of both photo services, and I haven’t received an e-mail or seen a blog post. What gives, Yahoo? Why are you keeping your users in the dark?

I don’t have many pictures in my Yahoo Photos account (I switched to Flickr long ago) but I do have some photos there. What’s going to happen to them? Am I going to have to migrate them to Flickr myself? More importantly, what steps is Yahoo going to take to ensure I don’t lose any photos in the migration?

Updated @ 3:19 PDT: Still no e-mail announcement, but Yahoo has posted migration instructions for Yahoo Photos users. See our post on the topic. – Hey, Yahoo — What’s Gonna Happen To My Photos?

[tags]yahoo photos, flickr, yahoo photos shutdown, yahoo photos migration, yahoo photos closure[/tags]