INDUSTRY TREND DIRECTION FINDER FOR MBAs

In this regular feature called INDUSTRY TREND DIRECTION FINDER FOR MBAs, you find the current industry trends in managing the factors of production and service which remain largely uncovered in the contemporary management books.

Though they are extensively covered in the trade journals of repute and global standing, they go unnoticed by the management practitioners and students as well due to their cyclicity and quick progression from trend to trend, topic to topic and theme to theme.
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REAL SIMPLE SYNDICATION [RSS]

REALLY PUTS SOME ZING INTO THE

MEDIA INDUSTRY AND ACADEMICS

Many students don't know what RSS feeds are, but some University departments are using this time-saving Internet technology to improve academic life.

RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, allows Internet users to subscribe to their favorite Web sites and receive new content as soon as it's posted.

RSS KEEPS YOU ABREAST OF WHAT IS GOING ON

After subscribing to feeds from newspapers, television websites, blogs and even podcasts, a user doesn't have to spend time visiting each site individually.

A user instead can go to one location that collects the information from all their favorite Web sites.

Several University departments are using this RSS technology to keep students and professors informed.

WHAT IS RSS

RSS is a lightweight XML format for distributing and organizing specific news headlines and other content on the Web.

It is an alternative means of accessing the vast amount of Internet based information.

Instead of the user browsing websites for information of interest, the information is sent directly to the user.

WHY THE INTERNET IS AGOG ABOUT IT

A family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts, a RSS document, which is called a "feed," "web feed," or "channel," contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text.

RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.

Basically, RSS pushes content to you, making it possible to be up-to-date in pages that change constantly.

With RSS one saves the time of actually visiting the page and looking for changes, since we get an update only when there is one.

Why is it important for academics?

There are many uses of RSS in this context, but we will talk about two today.

HOW RSS IS FINDING THE BEST APPLICATION IN ACADEMICS

First, one thing that we academic check constantly is the table of contents of recent journals.

Well, some (if not most) journals have an RSS feed that will serve the changes.

Just go to the homepage of each of your favorite journals, and look for an RSS icon.

Click on it, and the program that handles RSS in your computer (it could be your browser, or an specialized program; I like the free greatNews) will open the feed.

Every now and then, that program will ping the site and download new content.

If you do that for say 10 journals, you will save lots of time and be completely up-to-date.

KEEP THE ENTIRE CLASSROOM ON TIPTOES

Second, you can use RSS to maintain a group of people working together ’on-the-loop’.

For example, you could post assignments and an entire classroom could be subscribed to the RSS feed.

This way, you do not need to collect mail addresses for each student, and there is no risk of a SPAM filter intercepting your assignment.

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BROAD FRAMEWORK OF

KRAs OF A REPUTED B-SCHOOL

Here is a lowdown of how reputed B-Schools in the US are weaving their Key Result Areas (KRAs) around the institutional vision, core values and mission statement.

Key Result Area 1

Define the academic standards and develop a plan to achieve them.

Key Result Area 2

Define an organizational structure to assure that it drives and supports the B-School vision.

Key Result Area 3

Develop partnerships to drive an effective learning environment, academic achievement, and social and behavioral development.

Key Result Area 4

Enhance relationships with companies, external faculty, research bodies and student parents.

Key Result Area 5

Develop a proactive communication plan to address internal and external audiences.

Key Result Area 6

Establish a staff development plan that recognizes and rewards employees who support and work toward the B-School mission and vision.

Key Result Area 7

Develop a facilities plan that supports the B-School mission and vision.

Key Result Area 8

Develop a fiscal plan that supports the B-School mission and vision. _________________________________________________

WHY COMPANIES HAVE

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

[CMS]

In today's global crossover context, content management systems [CMS] basically refers to how you manage the digital media assets you own ----- be it a website or web page or media.

For Microsoft, this is a necessity of staying afloat amid other rivals who are able to gain the e-mail marketshare by capturing mindshare. Gmail and Yahoo for instance.

A good CMS can boost your E-Commerce or E-Biz and lend better support for intellectual property rights [IPR] management as well as protection while the expression ' content management system ' itself continues to have a number of connotations and meanings depending on the context it is used in.

There is currently no tendency away from the specialized systems towards more generic CMS.

This makes any predictions concerning market and technology trends difficult.

Expectations concerning the market growth in this area have not been met either.

In fact, so far no single market for content management products has emerged.

In the above chart, you find how CMS operates in the context of corporate marketing and sales.

Rather, CMS are part of sub-markets of different domain-specific markets such as Web publishing technology, document management, or the media production and broadcasting space.

CMS relies heavily on Perl Hypertext Preprocessor [PHP], which is a reflective programming language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages.

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