All 6 entries tagged Management

Mendeley

Writing about web page http://www.mendeley.com/

From Mendeley's website:

Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research.

• Automatically generate bibliographies
• Collaborate easily with other researchers online
• Easily import papers from other research software
• Find relevant papers based on what you're reading
• Access your papers from anywhere online
• Read papers on the go, with our new iPhone app
• View more features…

Mendeley is one of the new software/services that provides advanced references management features.

What I liked in Mendeley

What I really liked in Mendeley is that:

• It can sync your references between multiple PCs/Macs.
• Allows you to read, annotate & comment on PDFs from within the software itself.
• User interface is very nice!
• Can be set so that it starts watching your resources folders, adding every paper/document that is added to these folder to the library itself while tagging these auto added documents as 'To be reviewed' so that you can review and confirm that every bit of information is correct.

If you have been using Endnote (like me), you will be happy to know that you can export your Endnote library to Mendeley directly. Ofcourse, this doesn't mean that you can't use Endnote at all if you swich to Mendeley. You can work on Mendeley and if for any reason you wanted to insert bibliographies from Endnote or for any other reason, you can export your final library to Endnote and use it.

Research & Decide yourself!

Lastly, I just wanted to know that although I see Mendeley as a good choice for referencing management, etc.. However, I don't want to influence your decision in anyway!

You should spend sometime comparing/researching whatever software you are aware of, for example, for me, I ended up comparing Endnote, Zotero and Mendely. I quickly took Endnote out of the equation for a number of reasons such as its lack of easy sync features and inability to edit PDFs within the software. Lastly, I ended up choosing Mendeley over Zotero because:

• Zotero is a Firefox plugin. Therefore, it relies on another software which really adds another variable into the situation that could go wrong. For instance, what if there were some problems in Firefox? What if Zotero become unstable or incompatible for any reason with one of Firefox's future updates? Lastly, what if Zotero affects Forefox's performance?
  
• Mendeley's ability to edit PDFs within the same software is just great!
• The ability to watch folders within Mendeley is nice!

Therefore, it really depends on your work style and the set of features you might require which can be available in a certain software and not in the others.

Do you use any of these?

If you are using one of the mentioned software, I would really like to hear your experience. There might be features that I am not aware of in any of these mentioned software.

: 12 Dec 2010 22:10 |  Tags: Bibliographies Endnote Management Mendeley References Zotero |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Get Your Research Library Organised with Zotero

Writing about web page http://www.zotero.org/

Zoter.org:

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.

Honestly, I find it one of the best tools available for researchers. really!

Zotero video:

Check Zotero's website for more information.

Zotero's features:

• Capture Research Data
• Archive the Web
• Store related PDFs, files, images, and links in your library
• Take Notes
• Drag and drop bibliographies anywhere: into an email, a blog post, or any word processor
• Plugins for Word and OpenOffice make it easy to drop in references on the fly
• Zotero comes preloaded with all major styles, and thousands of additional journal-specific styles are freely available
• Get the best of both worlds: Work locally with your research materials and automatically sync your data between multiple computers
• Even without Zotero, you can access your collection from any web browser. You can even view your collection on mobile devices like the iPhone.
• Share your research with the world and make your library and collections public
• Create group libraries to collaborate with other Zotero users
• And Many more...
  

So, What are you waiting for? Get Firefox if you don't have it and give Zotero a test drive :)!

: 05 Dec 2010 06:07 |  Tags: Bibliographies Citation Management References Research Tools Zotero |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Joomla 1.6 on its way

Writing about web page http://www.joomla.org/component/content/article/5252.html

In a previous post in this blog, I talked about a great Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla and I included many general and specific information regarding this CMS.

Now after the long-time Joomla 1.5 has been out, many (including me) were looking forward to the new version of Joomla 1.6. This is because many important features that were not available in Joomla 1.5 are going to be available in Joomla 1.6.

One particular feature that many can't wait for in Joomla 1.6 is called ACL. This feature basically allows Joomla administrators to create various groups while giving them different permissions and access rights. This was not available in Joomla 1.5 and many of us had to use commercial extensions to have such feature. However, with Joomla 1.6 coming out soon, we will finally be able to do that without the need for any extensions!

This is a quick preview of Joomla 1.6, you can take a look at some of the changes coming.

: 25 May 2010 13:05 |  Tags: Cm Content Joomla Management Systems |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Events Management made easy

I was searching for a software or web system that would make it easy to create and manage events and payments so that at my administration we could use it to easily create and manage our events.

We used to use the old method of providing registration forms so that people fill them and send them back by e-mail or fax which was a very bad an ineffective of doing this.

First of all, you will have to chase people to make sure if they received or did not receive the registration form and if you are making a paid event then you would have to chase people to pay for the tickets.

So, after quite sometime of searching, I found a very effective online website that provides all the tools we needed to create and manage our events, workshop, seminars or conferences and the best thing is that it is completely free if you don't want to charge for your tickets and even if you do want to charge for your tickets, it is very cheap considering the broad range of benefits you could gain from this service.

In a hurry?

If you are in a hurry Click Here to explore the service by yourself by creating a free account that you could use as long as you want for free unless you charge for your tickets then you would pay a small % of the ticket prices.

Event service Benefits:

There are Many features that this service provides, you should check them yourself by creating a free account. I have just summarised some of the features I liked.

Easy to create events

It is Very Easy to setup up your event. It is a good thing I don't need to go around teaching people how to create and publish the event which is a big bonus. You don't need any coding or technical knowledge at all. Of course, if you want to use some advanced customisations then you would need little extra knowledge in HTML or so.

Look and colors of your event page

It is very easy to customise the colours and design of your event page as the service gives you access to templates that you could use to base your event page on. This means that you no longer need to pay someone to design an event page or form. You could also choose your own colours if you would like to change the design.

Personalised Link

When you create your event, the service provides you with the option to choose a short URL that you could use to promote your event.

Search and Events Directories

Integration of Event form

If you want to publicise your event, it is very important that you make it available in every website of yours that is related to the event. So, this service gives you the ability to embed your event forms in your website. You could also embed just the ticket payment form if you don't want to embed the whole event page. You could also have the code to add buttons that are linked to your event everywhere you want to.

Personalized E-mail Invites

If you are into marketing you would know how it is very effective to have a little bit of personalisation in every e-mail you send to your customers or so. Using this service, you could easily add contacts and information related to them so that you could send events invites to them using their own names not just "Hi, There" but instead "Hi John" for example. This is particularly helpful for us as we are mostly focused on the Quality area so most attenders would be interested in similar events related to ISO, quality or so.

Events Reports

You could easily have access to sales reports related to your events sales and you could easily customize, print or exprt any of them.

Day of event tools

You could easily print check-in lists or badges that you would want to distribute to your attendees on the day of the event based on the list of people who have bought tickets.

Addition of new features

Since I started using this service I have seen new features added into the service. Some of the latest features added is the ability to book hotels in areas close to the events.

Companies using this service

According to the website of the company that provides this service, many companies such as Cisco, FedEx, SalesForce, CNN, BestBuy and many more use this service.

Hopefully you will enjoy the service as much as I did. You should create a free account so you could explore the service.

: 16 May 2009 00:24 |  Tags: Business Events Management Seminars Workshops |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

My Self, my assignment: How KM supports Health & Safety Management

ME

After finally finishing my KBAM PMA which was quite a hard thing to do since I am really drained with all the assignments I did in the last 2 months (Still have RDD PMA god!) and the fact that I have never been anywhere else other than Coventry and Birmingham twice, I really don't feel I have the energy to finish 2 more PMAs (RDD + ECRM which i will have next week) but I guess have to anyway.

Good thing that I am enjoying my project even though I did'nt really do much in it other than gathering the resources and jumping to questionnaire design so that I could distribute the questionnaire and writing my literature review while I wait for responses. Still though, I feel I will have the energy to finish my project and I really hope that my dissertation is strong and helpfull.

Assignment Task:

Knowledge management and how it could support Health and Safety

Improving Communications

Knowledge management could facilitate the process where projects and activities could be documented and captured and inserted into the organization's database, ERP system's database or the company's intranet where people could access the knowledge and use it. When it comes to Health and Safety, I guess if there are any projects related to Health & Safety in the company, any knowledge related to these projects could be captured into the knowledge database. Therefore, by capturing the information or knowledge related to these projects into the database, top management or people with the authority to access this kind of information could do it easily. For example, if there are any issues or problems faced by a certain project and these problems were captured and inputed into the database, the top management could easily access the database and be able to see information related to these problems and could then perhaps get involved to try and help the project team in resolving these problems.

Improved sharing of Best practices and Lessons Learned

Knowledge management could make it easier for organizations to capture and share their best practices and any lessons learned related to any projects or activities. When it come to health & Safety, the same could happen. Sharing of best practices that could help employees avoid making mistakes or undesired activities could improve the organization's performance while ensuring a healthy and safe work environment.

These are the main key points that I think are very good when it comes to supporting and improving health and safety in an organization by the use of knowledge management and its tools.

If you think that there are more points, please feel free to share them with us!

: 27 Apr 2009 03:20 |  Tags: Health Kbam Knowledge Management Safety |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Health and Safety

As part of my KBAM module assignment, I chosen to pick the Health and Safety as an issue to discuss in a virtual company called Waiveriders.

Back in my country, I have never really thought about Health and Safety. Maybe because I take that for granted and that it would be in place.

According to a research I saw somewhere, in many organizations, health and safety is at a good level and there isn't really any problems of health and safety in many organizations and it is mostly up to a good level without giving it too much attention.

The only time I really thought of health and safety was when me and my team were auditing one of the faculties in the university which I work at and we found that one of the storage rooms had glasses on the ground and some items were not positioned correctly on the shelves and some chemicals on the ground. Other than that, I don't remember thinking about safety back there at all.

A few years ago, my university administration decided that no smoking should be allowed within the university. I was very happy when I heared this, however, knowing that this will not be implemented effectively and people will not be punished for smoking in the university, I became sad. Needless to say, this is exactly what happened.

I really hate smoking and I really hate the smell and I hate to see people smoking in public places while affecting everyone else with it without their permissions! As a guy who suffers from an asthma, I hate being close to smokers!

Now that I have read a few point about health and safety and its management, I found out that there are regulations that requires the organization to create a health and safety policy with a statement of intention of the desire to improve health and safety in the organization. Furthermore, I found out that creating the policy itself will require that proper responsibilities and arrangements are made so that people know what to do. It is important to delegate responsibilities so people have the authority to carry on any activities related to improving the health and safety in the organization.

I am quite sure that the decision to prohibit smoking in my university was not carried out effectively and responsibilities were not given to a group of people who could be in charge of punishing who doesn't listen, even if it the university director himself!

Lastly, it is really important to have documentation and instructions related to the health and safety and activities related to them. Furthermore, if you find out that a specific health and safety problem could be caused by people using machines or equipments incorrectly, you need to provide them with the correct instructions that help them do their job in an effective way that does not cause problems.

The hard working guy

There is a funny joke that goes around that a hospital found out that a number of their patients started dieing Monday night each week. After taking a closer look and investigating, they saw that every Monday night, the guy who is supposed to clean the floor unplugs some of the critical systems to plug his own vacuum cleaner. This is a joke but really I would not be surprised to see this happening as in my opinion, the hospital should have taken better measures to protect the patients lives. Maybe use some Poke-Yoke approach so that the cables could not be unplugged or something. Who knows!

I think what I am going to do after I get back is that I will start checking if we have the proper safety tools such as fire extinguishers and so, in case something goes bad :(

Fire Alarms in the building which I work at

Every now and then, alarms goes on by themselves even if there is no fire. Employees are used to the alarm as it is something they are used to. Apparently, the maintenance team did not really bother maintaining the fire alarms or trying to investigate the cause of this. The important point is, if a fire starts in the building, I bet that no one would move a muscle when the fire alarms goes on. Sad but true! Maybe they should send a messenger to alert every employee or send them e-mails that this is not a drill or an alarm-malfunction issue and that it is a real fire and that you need to run for your life!

Anyway, back to my assignment!

: 21 Apr 2009 23:52 |  Tags: Health Kbam Management Safety |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem