Employee management, that is the buzz word now. Most companies which fair well at the times of recession know the secret to manage their employees, And the reason behind most pink slips is also the same.

Managements all over the world hire quality Human Resource managers to perform the most needed employee management. The prime resource of any organization be it small or big, is its employees. And the fact is that most developing managements overlook this, and ends up seeing drops in their graphs.

Time and Attendance management for employees is another important task, when this goes wrong, the problem starts where one ends up in non utilization of resources and non compliance to its system.

But luckily we have Technology which can help widely in this field, web applications which can track and give perfect compliance reports of employees help the organisation to stay on track with its employees and perform well with the competition.

Employee solution providers such as iEmployee which has well tuned online human resource management applications, these does not need manual hardware or software install, as they run on iEmployee’s own server. This provides fully automated solution.

So when there is a need to improve employee productivity, and efficiency to an organization in the zones of time management and event management, try your hand with technology solutions.

Natalie Maltais was found using the GPS signal from her mobile phon

Here is something which I found interesting online,

A nine-year-old girl, allegedly kidnapped by her grandmother, has been found using a mobile phone signal and Google Street View.

A police officer and a firefighter in Athol, Massachusetts, joined forces after authorities were alerted that Natalie Maltais had been taken.

Officers used GPS in the girl’s mobile phone to find her approximate location.

They fed the co-ordinates into Google Street View, pinpointing a hotel where the child was subsequently found.

The alarm was raised after grandmother Rose Maltais picked up Natalie from the child’s legal guardians for what was supposed to be a weekend away.

She “said that she wasn’t going to return Natalie and then left the state”, Athol police chief Timothy Anderson told the BBC.

The police contacted Ms Maltais, but after she didn’t return Natalie as promised, they decided to track them down using Natalie’s mobile phone.

Since 2005, US law says that mobile phone providers must be able to locate 67% of callers within 100 metres and 95% of callers within 300 meters.

This requirement has led to GPS capability in most new mobile phones in the US.

Rose Maltais took the child during an arranged visit, say authorities

“This is very useful, although we can only use it in emergency situations such as when a person is missing or lost, or a life is in danger,” said chief Anderson.

Knowing this, police officer Todd Neale contacted the mobile phone provider, AT&T, which gave him GPS coordinates every time the phone was activated. Police must submit a compliance form to the phone provider to request location information.

Joined-up thinking

Officer Neale then got in touch with Athol’s deputy fire chief Thomas Lozier who had previously used GPS to direct firefighters tackling forest and brush fires, and to find lost hikers.

“Last spring, there was an incident where the cell phone transmitted the co-ordinates of some people lost in a local conservation area,” deputy chief Lozier explained.

“We tracked them down using hand-held GPS units and within an hour we’d gotten them back.”

He used mapping software to determine the location of the co-ordinates given to him by Officer Neale over the radio. Then he turned to Google.

Athol’s deputy fire chief, Thomas Lozier, spotted the hotel where Natalie was later found on Google Street View

“As soon as the officer said to me, ‘I wonder how we can research the area’, I thought of it,” he said.

He found the location on Google maps and looked at the Street View, which shows eye-level photographs of the area. That’s when he spotted a nearby hotel.

“I noticed the hotel in the area, and as I was panning the map, I was able to see the road sign at the intersection,” he said.

He used Google to search for hotels near that intersection and found the Budget Inn in Natural Bridge, Virginia.

Officer Neale alerted the Virginia state police, who found the missing child and her grandmother in the hotel as predicted.

The deputy fire chief said how happy he was with the outcome of his team effort with Officer Neale.

“It was brilliant,” he said. “Half an hour later, he called me [on my walkie-talkie] at home. I had my home computer ready to go and he informed me that it had been successful.”

A visit to Disney World was the inspiration behind the Minoru webcam

3D films may soon no longer be the sole province of movie studios with big budgets.

At CES, two firms have been showing off ways for home users to make and share their own 3D films.

One is a webcam with two lenses that mimics human sight and turns the images it captures into 3D footage.

Another firm is producing software that it hopes will make it far easier for home users to show 3D movies on many different types of screen.

Manchester-based PDT has created the Minoru webcam that has two lenses set roughly the same distance apart as human eyes. Software included with the webcam turns the two images into what is known as an anaglyph.

If someone gave you an iPod with one ear piece you would think they were nuts David Holder Minoru

To see the resultant footage in 3D, viewers must wear the familiar spectacles with red and blue lenses. This ensures that only one of the two images being shown is seen by each eye and forces the brain to turn them into a moving 3D image. DIY 3D movies shot with the Minoru can be shared on YouTube.

The webcam can also be used as a more conventional 2D image grabber or as a video conferencing tool with Windows Live, Skype, AOL and many others.

David Holder, the creator of the Minoru webcam, said his children were the inspiration for the gadget.

“I took my kids to Disney World two years ago and they loved the 3D attractions there,” he said. “They just loved the idea of things coming out of the screen, even though they had to wear the glasses.”

Explaining why he embarked on the project to create the camera, he said: “If someone gave you an iPod with one ear piece you would think they were nuts.”

He added: “I’ve never made anything that’s grabbed so much attention.”

Diverse screens

Also at CES, American firm TD Vision showed off a software codec that makes it much easier to show 3D movies on many different screen types.

Ethan Shur, spokesman for TD Vision, said the company had also developed a prototype 3D camcorder that would work with the software to turn footage into a 3D movie.

To ensure the film can be played back on different screens, it stores information about the anaglyphic characteristics of each scene separately from the standard images.

The firm’s breakthrough is finding an economic way of storing only information about the parts of each frame that change to evoke the 3D effect.

“The magic is in the method of how it compares the left and right view,” he said. “It takes only the differences, the delta, the changes.”

Having the 3D information stored separately means that the footage can be played back as 2D on a normal television or as 3D on more capable screens.

Initially, said Mr Shur, TD Vision was working with broadcasters and DVD makers to use the 3D codec but had plans to address consumers in the future.

Christmas, one of my favorite holidays, season of joy, gifts, sharing – caring, a beautiful history and not to mention Santa Claus! But you know days are not like it used to be, people are busy, far from each other, even sending a holiday message from a remote place is not an easy task, there seems to be a lack of cheer for the season.

But thanks to the technology we have, no place is too far or not reachable, be it middle of the ocean, or half way up a glacier, there is always a way to send a message home. So here are some ways to keep connected with your family and friends:

E-MAIL

For many, this is the cheapest and easiest choice. Electronic mail covers the entire spectrum, from basic text message, through to sound and movie files.

As long as you have got an internet connection and a means of getting online, then an electronic season’s greeting can be sent with just a few clicks of a button.

SMS / TEXT MESSAGE

Short Message Service’s – or SMS’s – are almost as versatile as e-mails, enabling users to send photos and short video clips, as well as traditional text messages.

The popularity of the service has skyrocketed in recent years. According to the Mobile Data Association, more than 1.4 billion texts were sent in the UK every week in 2008, which is more than the entire number of texts sent in 1999.

According to data from the Mobile Data Association, from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day last year, 6,466,506 video and picture messages were sent.

Instant Messaging is a way of sending text messages (and in some cases, images) in real time across the internet.

Chat – or IMing – allows users to have a conversation between two or more people, or to send pending messages to a user, who will then get the message when they log in. Think of it as hybrid of e-mail and SMS in real time.

For some, constant or regular access to the internet is impossible. One solution is either writing a blog or sending a electronic greeting through a social network site, such as MySpace or Facebook.

It does mean you can send a global message to everyone you know, although they often lack that personal touch.

VOIP

Internet telephony aka VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol to give it its full name) is a way of transmitting voice communications over the web.

Although the first communication of someone’s voice over the internet happened in the early 1970s, it wasn’t until the late 1990s – when internet speeds rose from an average of 300 bits per second (bps) to 56 kilobits per second (kbps) – that it became a viable proposition.

Today, with a typical internet connection typically running at 3,000 kbps, you can now not only send speech over the net, you can send video too.

What’s more, you can often use your VOIP package to dial into a public switched telephone network (PSTN), meaning you can make a call anywhere there is an internet connection, with only a minimal charge made by an Internet Telephony Service Provider.

However, unlike PSTN networks, quality can often be hit and miss and due to frequent distortion and delay, using VOIP to send a fax is very difficult.

SATELLITE PHONE

Similar to a mobile phone, a satellite phone – or satphone – dials in using a satellite connection, rather than a conventional mobile network.

Modern handsets are similar in size to a regular mobile phone, although units installed in ships may have a directional dish that points at the closest satellite.

The only problem is that they need a clear line of sight to the satellite, so they perform poorly inside buildings.

BGAN

In principle, this works in the same way as a satphone.
But rather than direct voice communication, it taps into the B-Gan (Broadband Global Area Network) at 492kbps.

It is also somewhat larger – about half the size of a conventional laptop. It work on land, sea, and air; BMI is currently trialling a system that would give air passengers with a Blackberry access to the internet.

E-BLUEY

This is a free service operated by the British Forces Post Office and allows servicemen and women to receive typed letters in the field that have been written and sent over the internet.

Once the e-mail has been received, it is printed and put into a self sealing envelope and then sent out to the troops, along with the traditional mail.

On average, 100,000 e-blueys are sent each month, although this figure increases during Christmas and when roulement occurs ie when combat units go on a tour of duty.

Families of servicemen can also embed an image into the message, turning it into the eponymous picture-bluey.

VHF / SSB / HAM RADIO

If an internet connection is impossible, there are no telephone lines, and a post box is just a distant dream, then some people hook themselves up with an amateur radio.

Although operators can communicate across the globe, the range of available frequencies is limited, with the bulk of the radio frequencies occupied by military or commercial use.

At its most basic level, amateur radio operators – hams – use Morse code to communicate.

However, some sets can be used to talk to communication satellites called OSCARs (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio), as well as bouncing signals off the moon or meteor showers.

These are the technologies available as of now, but there will be more to come in the future. And I like to convey my Christmas wishes to everyone out there through my Blog

Wishing yo all a Very Merry Christmas!