Are you an author, publisher, educator, or user-generated content developer? Then this news is for you. Content Management, Social Forums and Authoring Tools for the eTouchBook is now Available.

innovative technology-based products developers for publishers, Somatic Digital, releases a new Digital Portal and Web Service, eTouchBook.com™.

eTouchBook.com gives opportunities to publishers and content owners to manage and directly link their print and digital assets.

With the eTouchBook Suite publishers are available to create a hybrid media distribution experience. That drives to a new ecosystem of transactions, analytics, and interactivity.

"The eTouchBook.com portal centralizes and streamlines the publishing environment to facilitate creating new products," said Jason E. Barkeloo, Founder & President. Barkeloo concludes that, "eTouchBook.com is the portal for helping publishers reinvigorate their print business by reducing their management costs while leveraging their print and digital assets."

According to the PRWEB, eTouchBook.com provides access to:
1. BookDesigner Web Service
2. Publisher forums
3. eTouchBook Client software, drivers, and support.
4. Publisher-specific Interactive Product catalog.

According to co-Founder & Vice President, Software Engineering, David A. Krauth, "eTouchBook.com encapsulates a system of tools and services and help publishers be more efficient regardless of their adoption of the eTouchBook. Publishers and authors now have an environment in which they can collaborate to solve problems, develop new products, and be more effective in their markets."


References:
http://SomaticDigital.com
http://SomaticDigital.com/about/contact
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/8/prweb1247514.htm

Is it possible to learn the world of business from Olympic sports coaching? It is worth asking this question to Leadership transformation practice, 121partners that released new findings which reveal what the world of business can learn from Olympic sports coaching. The finding is originated from 121partners seminar where over twenty HR professionals and the 121partners leadership team, including an Olympic sports coach, brainstormed the ‘six secrets’ that could improve business performance.

• ‘Putting oars on the walls’ -celebrate success more often and more visibly
• ‘I want to win an Olympic gold medal’ - ensure clarity of the ‘big goal’
• ‘Training when others don’t’ - hold people accountable for their level of commitment
• ‘The many people in the boat’- get coach, line manager and mentor to work as a team
• ‘The perfect cake’ - value a holistic approach for each individual executive
• ‘Virtus’ – inspire belief in the individual and the team

Geraldine Harrison, Learning and Career Development Manager at Rolls Royce, said ‘This was a really enjoyable and thought provoking day. The business world has certainly got a lot to learn from the level of commitment, focus and determination shown by Olympic athletes. I know I shall be somewhere near a TV screen on 16 August to see if Alan achieves his dream in the Olympic rowing finals in Beijing.’

References:
http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=40895&hilite=

Well, what is the formula of success of a man? Success in private life, success in business, or spiritual success? That is absolutely individual and depends on the priorities a person sets for him/herself.

Several days ago had some conversation with a friend, who said that all that matters is relation, human relation and than comes all the rest. I share this opinion. In the context of employee and employer relations, as it is one of the actual topics nowadays, except formal business relations one should have human relations with the respect to each other.

Well, to judge only on the basis of own experience and knowledge, that won’t let us analyze the field correspondingly. So I would like to look at the issue on the basis of the survey, that is provided at SourceWire. The survey of over 900 employees and nearly 300 employers found that businesses across the UK are still finding it difficult to recruit and retain staff, despite the economic downturn.According to the survey part of an annual programme carried out by recruitment specialist, Ochre House:

Less than 60% of respondents had been in their job less than two years
68% planned to change employer within the next six months.
39% moved because of pay,
28% mentioned employer’s culture and ethics
26% consider leaving their job because of a lack of training.

"Our surveys over the past five years have shown that career cycles among younger workers, the ‘Generation Y’ aged between 21 and 28, have been getting shorter all the time,” says Ochre House director, Jennie Emerson. “However we’re now seeing that this is spreading to staff of all ages as the old idea of long term loyalty to a company dies out. Organisations need to understand what really motivates their workforce and to adopt a clearly defined strategy for both recruitment and retention.

“This will be particularly important given the fact the survey found most businesses optimistic about the future,” she continues. Although over 70% expected that the UK economy would grow at a slower rate in 2008, less than 10% expected a recession and nearly 45% predicted that their own business would expand over the course of the year. However with 80% planning to increase salaries by less than 4% in 2008, addressing ‘softer’ issues such as work/life balance will be vital if this is to happen. “Employers will need to create an environment that gives their people the flexibility and variety they seek, together with the training and development to succeed and the autonomy to get on with it.”

References:
http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=39815&hilite=

Hardly one can say that schools in developing countries have four significant problems among which are Technology, Funding, Need for Technical support and issues surrounding the Internet but a 2001 BECTA survey on ICT, commissioned by the DfES, asked 1,002 schools in England what the most significant problems were that they faced with ICT systems, the four primary concerns were, Problems with Technology, Funding, Need for Technical support and issues surrounding the Internet.

FictionDB founded in 1999 relaunches its reference website with new access to its comprehensive book database for fiction readers. The number of books FictionDB provides through free access is over 50,000 author book lists and 200,000 unique titles. Together with authors and titles FictionDB offers series lists, synopses and pseudonyms.

In order to make the tools for finding the perfect voice to record a voice over faster, easier and more accessible Voices.com, the voice over marketplace , has released an "application programming interface" (API). Software developers promise another benefit that is freelance voice actors registered at the site will see an increase in work opportunities as well as the diversity of voice over requests.

The Voices.com API will give opportunities to log in to client accounts, post jobs seeking voice over talent, search for voices, and complete the hiring process online, including the approval of audio samples, downloading of files and compensation of talent for their work.

Are you a goal oriented researcher?
MyNetResearch.com might be a help. It is revolutionizing the research process. The new Web 2.0 Portal offers online collaborations worldwide.

The main reason of its global nature is deploying Internet technologies as they enable global collaboration. An online community of researchers MyNetResearch allows researchers around the world to find each other, work on projects using specialist tools, collaborate on grant writing, and keep up with the latest news and discussions in their subject specializations.

The other advantages of it is that researchers can assess documents from any location with an Internet connection, acquire knowledge from expert articles and news feeds containing the most recent research developments in their fields. In addition, blogs and forums allow for free exchange of research ideas between global researchers.

According to the PRWeb, MyNetResearch.com features powerful, specialized research tools for the active researcher, such as the:

Have you sent your CV to the desired organization to find a good job?
Have you been called and asked for an interview?
Was it successful?
Will you manage the work responsibilities and requirements?

That question is not less interesting for the managers. That is a great dilemma. We all know that appearance is decisive, one interview is never enough.

So.... Leadership development consultancy, the Centre for High Performance Development (CHPD), found the way out. It launched a new assessment tool called Sentio™ that can predict job performance and measure talent.

Developing Sentio™ was accomplished in three years and has been tested with experts in behavioural psychology and leadership development.

According to the SourceWire, the Sentio™ feedback report consists of more than 20 pages. It represents the detailed assessment of the capabilities of the respondent. Business challenges of the new tool are:

• Selecting the right person for a job
• Identifying high potentials within an organisation for accelerated career development
• Getting objective information on which to base the selection of training programmes
• Measuring return on investment on training and development interventions
• Benchmarking management populations

Nigel Guenole, research and psychometric consultant at CHPD, explains: “Situational judgement tests, like Sentio™, have high validity for predicting leader performance, which is great, but we’ve made the product even more useful by including scenarios that are relevant to a range of industries and producing two versions of the test of equal difficulty, which enables you to assess progress of candidates twice, for example, before and after development or training interventions.”

Professor Fritz Drasgow, former president of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) and a former chairperson of the American Psychological Association's Committee on Psychological Tests and Assessments, was involved in the development of Sentio™. He said: “Sentio™ presents candidates with highly realistic work scenarios involving critical problems faced by managers. From a list of four actions that might be taken in response to the scenario, candidates then select the actions they believe to be the most effective and least effective. Research has shown that assessing leadership in this way is a highly valid method for predicting performance.”

References?
http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=38840&hilite=

Have you ever thought that if children in Cambodian village had connected laptops how their lives would be transformed?

Questions like this led to foundation of One Laptop per Child and the creation of XO laptop.
The mission of this project is to provide children’s self-expression and exploration. While children are by nature eager for knowledge, many countries haven’t enough resources to devote to education. By giving children their own connected XO laptop, we are giving them a window to the outside world, access to vast amounts of information, a way to connect with each other, and a springboard into their future.

Xo is designed by experts from academia and industry. It’s a product of the very best thinking about technology and learning. It was designed with the real world in mind. As a result, the XO laptop is extremely durable, brilliantly functional, energy-efficient, responsive, and fun.

With the XO laptop, children aren’t just learning about the world around them. Their learning becomes apart of journey. By discovering how to use their XO laptop in new ways and exploring new ideas, children are constantly engaged in a process of learning by doing.

One Laptop per Child’s mission is to provide laptops to as many children as possible in developing nations. In order to have a maximum impact it is essential that every child in a given community has their own laptop. One way to make this happen is to work with local governments and organizations who will distribute large numbers of laptops at a time.

There is a program Give One Get One, for every laptop you received, a laptop is sent to child in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia or Rwanda.

So you can increase your child’s knowledge and help others to do it too.

Reference:
http://laptop.org/en/index.shtml

The basis of any success is having motivation. If there is one there is the other. They coexist with each other and pass the path side by side. The importance of motivation, especially at work is the main step forward to the productive accomplishment of the work. Motivation is mostly individual, and different people define from various point of view. The most noticeable one is the environment.

• 49% say an office makeover would increase their productivity.
• More than half would be more organised and enjoy work more in a better office.
• 43% embarrassed by current offices.
• Friendly co-workers and good lighting key.

Priorities are determined by the work force. But anyway the higher the level of comfort, satisfaction at work higher is the result. According to the SourceWire, the research survey findings show very interesting statistics:

• Sample size: 141
• Industries: sales, education, marketing, research, public sector, charity, financial services, construction.
• Company size: 2 – 500 people
• Is your office space modern & functional: 21%
• Is your office space in need of a revamp: 47%
• Will an office makeover increase productivity: 49%
• Well-designed office = more organised: 64%
• Well-designed office = greater job satisfaction: 62%
• Embarrassed by current office: 43%

• Top factors for pleasant working environment (as ranked in top three):
o Friendly co-workers: 70%
o Good lighting: 40%
o Comfortable desk chair: 38%
o Flexible working options 38%
o Competitive salary: 28%
o Clean toilets: 28%
o Latest technology: 21%

• The effects of a working environment impact:
o Ability to win new business: 40%
o Client relations: 36%
o Staff morale: 57%
o Staff retention: 43%
o Absenteeism: 11%
o Decision to accept new role: 57%

Daniel Taylor, Managing Director of Metro Design Consultants comments:
“The office environment says a lot about a business and can give clues as to how professional it is, and the general attitude of staff and management. A thoughtfully-designed space, with attention to the ergonomic details, will no doubt rub off on employees, helping to make them more proficient and hence more valuable to the business.”

Reference:
http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=iTzmz

RateMyProfessors.com that is the Internet's largest listing of collegiate professor ratings comprises with more than 6.8 million student-generated ratings of over 1 million professors. The main criteria student rates professors are helpfulness and clarity. The web site exists since 1999.
The RateMyProfessors.com provides ratings on college and university professors from over 6,000 schools across the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Wales. But there is no limit and every day the list might enlarge.

In the history if its existence RateMyProfessor was viewed and highlighted differently.

According to the official site RateMyProfessor was reported by the following sources:
Web site lets students tell about teachers
Inside Higher Ed [ Could RateMyProfessors.com Be Right? ]
MTV Networks' mtvU Agrees to Acquire RateMyProfessors.com
Boston Herald
SFSU Express
Boston University [Prof. rating website adds photo feature]
Boston University [EDITORIAL: RateMyPrivacy.com]
Inside Higher Education
The Hoya
Fox News
ABC 6 News
Boston Globe
Progressive U
Baltimore Business Journal
CNN Money
TMCnet
Toledo Blade
Oregon Daily
SMU Daily
Philly Blurbs
Detroit Free Press
Calvin College
Lehigh University
Education Guardian (UK)
East Tennessee State
The Village Voice
Ohio State Lantern
Wired News
University of Georgia
Lawrence Journal
Slate
Central Flordia
The Gainseville Sun
Arizona State
Rutgers
The Augusta Chronicle
Albion
Northern Iowan

Despite all these likes and dislikes of students the ratings do not give us objective, fair and impartial information. Because we, human beings, are subjective by nature and the evaluations that are provided by the students might be reliable but...

As we have already mentioned in this post the site includes information provided by 6.8 million students. There might be 6.8 million opinions about one and the same professor. The majority of the same opinions solve the problem and determine who is who. But reasons to rate professors negatively are possible for the reasons the professor is not faulty in. So we come up to the point that ratings might not be taken into consideration as the ratings showing 100% guaranteed statistics. For the maximum results not only professors ratings should be analyzed but also the ratings of students to come to the conclusion what is the reason to evaluate the professors positively or negatively. Though the idea of 67.8 million students does matter.

CV Screen that was already highlighted at BLOGVASION.COM reports that IT Jobs have risen by 17% according to the first two months of 2008.

This conclusion was made on the basis of evaluation the result of last 3 months of 2007 and first 2 of 2008.

CV Screen's Matthew Iveson commenting on the findings suggested that despite fears of a slowdown, confidence is still high within the IT industry “We’ve not only noticed an increase in the number of applicants but also in the number of new IT vacancies being registered.”With fears surrounding the global economy, Iveson added “Despite fears surrounding the credit crunch, CV Screen registered a record number of IT Jobs in February which is testament to our success and also a sign that the market is still buoyant in the early months of 2008.”

CV Screen's Matthew Iveson says: “We’ve not only noticed an increase in the number of applicants but also in the number of new IT vacancies being registered.”Iveson adds “Despite fears surrounding the credit crunch, CV Screen registered a record number of IT Jobs in February which is testament to our success and also a sign that the market is still buoyant in the early months of 2008.”

Reference
http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=iTLAQ

Well, before destroying the stereotypes, let’s find some definition to it. If we ask “About.com” then Stereotype is “fixed impressions, exaggerated or preconceived ideas about particular social groups, usually based solely on physical appearance.” Stereotypes might be divided into positive and negative, stereotypes based on race or gender…

The last one, gender, is the topic of our post. Alison Quill, who is the founder of BrightMinds and a former secondary school science teacher aims to reverse the stereotypical view, and tries to make evidences that not only boys are presented in lighter view at science but girls too. The very first thing she plans is to call the UK toy manufacturers.

According to the SourceWire “I am fed-up with receiving chemistry sets or electronics kits to review with no girls’ photos on the box packaging – only the standard grey-haired, bespectacled, white-coated, male, mad professor” says Alison Quill. "I have even had construction products with the words 'Toys for boys' on the box!"Recent statistics of the Institute of Physics show that the numbers of boys who succeeded at science and achieved high results at A level in general. As for the Girls 22% of them are taking the course of science.

Despite this statistics there is another indication of achievements of girls, and it shows that 34% of them obtain an A grade, and only 27% of boys do so. This gives Alison opportunity to think over this issue realistically involve girls in science. ‘Parents, teachers and students need to get out of the mindset that science is a boys’ subject. But so do the toy manufacturers. Take a look at most science-based kits and the images on the packaging almost always show only boys.’ ‘It would be great if all parents could make a pledge to boycott science products where boys are the sole audience. Maybe we can make some headway this week towards encouraging greater take up amongst female students’.

The freeGuard Capture 1000 appliance that is an Internet content recording device allowing organizations capture, track and report on Internet activities: browsed web pages, web mail, SMTP / POP3 mail, IM (MSN, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ), FTP and Telnet and that works as a powerful Email archiver and an instant messaging archiver presents cost effective freeGuard Capture 1000.

According to the 24-7PressRelease it provides:

• Complete capture and record of HTTP, SMTP, POP3, IM, Web Mail, FTP and Telnet Content in an easy-to-use interface

We ask thousands of questions every day, right? Right. And these questions are more and more focused on the specific fields like arts, business, law, money, health that mostly depends on our professional education and ineterests. And I am sure everybody knows the abbreviation FAQ-Frequently Asked Questions. There are so many web sites to find the corresponding answer to the question that one can ask?! Media sources that are so much segmented offer specific users the information one seeks and that catch the audience so important in media.

Few sites include all spheres together. Few people are able to answer each of the questions that might appear in our minds and few can say “ASK ME” leaving the space to write the question in and encourage to click “Search.” The ASK ME HELP DESK offers answers to all questions that would be provided by the experts. To receive answer to the asked question one can by free registration. It will help to:

Get free answers from experts in any of our 300+ topics.

Accept money for answers that you provide.

Communicate privately with other members (PM).

See fewer ads.

According to the ASK ME the site has 129900 members.

Ask "ASK ME" and receive answers from experts.

1,300 students from Dallas Baptist University are going to commit 28 minutes audio support to listen to the bible in 40 days at a chapel service. The campaign that is called You’ve Got The Time DBU, is using Audio New Testaments from Faith Comes By Hearing, the world's leading Audio Bible ministry.

Each of us is an individual with missions and goals we strive to achieve. Some definitely know what is the purpose of him/her existence, do the work that is valuable and pleasant to accomplish. There are several aspects worth mentioning. These are values that are one of the most important and that defines the further development of events in ones career and not only; there is no value without followed step- interest. Interest to everything: job, entertainment; These two stages are followed by personality where the main role is played by a person's individual traits, needs, motivation, attitudes; The last step is skills through which one accomplishes all the above mentioned in a variety of ways and these ways and capabilities of each of us might be as various as possible. Different fields identify and define priority skills according to the their own criteria. Those who already know the field to work in are busy with self assessment. There are several ways to self-assessment in different spheres.

According to the SourceWire the non-profit global leader in educating and certifying information security professionals throughout their careers, announced the launch of a new online self-assessment tool known as studISCope (pronounced “study scope”).

Suppose, the intensive reader of Blogvasion.com noticed that I covered the library issue several times, firstly in Libraries Upside Down, secondly in The Myth That Books Are Heavy Is Destroyed. The posts were about digitalization of libraries that are more convenient, time efficient, and comfortable. Though there were some disadvantages that I occurred in the process of reading itself. Technology development speed rises day by day. Reading news in PC or Laptop is quite OK. But as for the books, journals, large texts require different atmosphere, and conditions.

It was quite logical, and predictable to have the product that would resemble a book itself. Amazon.com made step forward in this direction. It presented a revolutionary portable reader. It downloads books, blogs, magazines and newspapers to a crisp, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper, even in bright sunlight, wirelessly. According to data 90,000 books are available in the Kindle Store, including 101 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases.

As Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO said: "We've been working on Kindle for more than three years. Our top design objective was for Kindle to disappear in your hands -- to get out of the way -- so you can enjoy your reading.”

“We also wanted to go beyond the physical book. Kindle is wireless, so whether you're lying in bed or riding a train, you can think of a book, and have it in less than 60 seconds. No computer is needed -- you do your shopping directly from the device. We're excited to make Kindle available today,” he adds.

According to the Amazon.com the product is overviewed as follows: