Secretarial jobs are vanishing as admin work is taken over by IT

DutchNews, April 17, 2017

The number of people with the jobs title ‘secretary’ in the Netherlands has halved since the turn of the century to just 40,000, the Telegraaf said on Monday. 

Next Thursday is officially ‘secretaries day’ but they have little to celebrate, the paper said. One in five secretaries has lost his or her job since 2013 and competition for new jobs is extremely fierce, Freek Kalkhoven of the state jobs agency UWV told the paper. 

The UWV is due to publish new figures later this week that show how administrative positions are disappearing due to the use of IT. In the banking sector too, administrative positions have been hardest hit by automation. 

"WILD CARDS OF THE PLANET" – (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

Kryon.com, November 19, 2016

This live channelling was given in Wilmington, North Carolina

Lee Carroll

To help the reader, this channelling has been revisited [by Lee and Kryon] to provide even clearer understanding. Sometime information is even added or condensed. Often what happens live has implied energy within it, which carries a kind of communication that the printed page does not. So enjoy this enhanced message given in Wilmington, NC.

Greetings, dear ones, I am Kryon of Magnetic Service.

Today I want to talk about wild cards. I wish to help explain what or who they’ve been over time, but in order for this explanation to be understood and accepted and beautiful to your soul, you’re going to have to do some pretending.

Adjusting Your Attitude

If you were a scientist coming from another planet to observe Human history, you would need to do it without emotion or bias. I can tell the story about wild cards, both for your grandfathers and for you, but there is often emotion and bias involved. Because of this, I will say one thing, and you may hear another. Dear ones, it can’t be that way for you to understand this message.

Warning: What comes next has to be disengaged from what you think you know, or from the emotions of who you think you are, what you think has happened, or even from what you feel is historical. Remember, in his pretending scenario, you’re aliens coming from another planet to learn what has happened. You’re pretending so you will disengage. Pretend history will be told to you about a race you’re not part of. This is so you will have no attachment to anything as you listen. This is the only way you will understand this lesson today. It is the only way you will begin to understand the beauty of a spiritual system that pushes you when you need to be pushed.

Wild Cards Examined

Wild card, as used in spiritual language, is a term that is difficult to define. Wild cards can be events, they can be inventions, they can involve one Human or a few. They can be one of many things or many of one thing, but they follow a timeline that you can look at. We want to talk about some of the wild cards that you’ve had in the past, and some attributes of their occurrence that you might not have thought of.

The basic attribute of any kind of wild card is that it’s a surprise event. It’s often shocking, sometimes revealing, but always a surprise. We’re also going to do some of the numerology as we go, and also take a look at the energies that help define what the energy is around specific wild cards.

Numerology is an ancient system that helps define an energy around something. For instance, an event may seem to be one thing, but the numerology will tell a story around it that may be more explanatory. When you see what we will call synchronized numerology – the same numbers repeated around a wild card – it’s very telling, for there are no accidents.

Dear Kryon, you might ask, “Does spirit create wild cards for the planet?” Answer: No, you do. Your consciousness at a certain point in time gives an allowance for a wild card. Sprit is ready to enhance some wild card scenarios and not others. But the energy and consciousness of humanity allows for their occurrence.

A wild card can be a person, an invention, a thing, an event, a new system or a new paradigm that changes the planet. It is unexpected, sometimes startling and often dramatic in its influence. If it’s an invention, it has to be outside of the purview of what would normally have occurred through the evolution of science or the timing of expected scientific evolution. It is often a paradigm shifter, and it’s usually from one person. When you see that, you will know there it’s a wild card. It isn’t always an individual invention, and sometimes it’s collective. But, dear one, you can tell because every single wild card takes everybody by surprise.

Wild Cards in History

You’ve had a number of them, and I’ll list a few so you get the idea. You’ll also get to see a system of singularity that comes to inventors. You’ll see this as I go.

Tesla was a wild card. His ideas were unexpected, controversial and advanced to a degree that even to this day those in electronic engineering shake their heads. They will take a look at what he invented and will comment, “How is it possible for any one person to have seen that? If you study alternating current, it’s a conundrum. Phase relationships of alternating current are brilliant beyond brilliant.” This was Tesla.

However, what you know about him is only what he brought to you. Now, a brilliant mind like that would have other things, don’t you think? Indeed, he did, so you might ask, “Well, where are those other things?” The answer is that those other things were stopped cold – all of them. He only was able to promote the one thing that you needed for the planet. The brilliance of his mind had many other profound ideas, but he was unable to proceed. He saw ways to alter mass in his workshops, but couldn’t. He was frustrated that he didn’t have the elaborate tools to be precise enough to make it work on a regular basis. That’s just one. Transmission of electricity without wires through the ground was the other. However, it would not have been correct at the time for those things to have been presented to humanity. You weren’t ready, but you were ready for alternating current, one of the most needed inventions for the time. Tesla died frustrated, poor, in a small room and alone. He came to do one thing, and was stopped from anything else, then he passed. If you have analyzed the people who were wild cards in your history, there is a pattern.

Other wild card inventors have come into the planet just because the earth was ready for a specific invention. Remember, Spirit does not give the information, but allows for it to be released, often all at once, all over the earth. Let me give you some examples.

Another wild card is the Wright brothers. Isn’t it odd to you that it wasn’t that long ago that you got powered flight? It was just yesterday! Some of your relatives were alive when flight was discovered! Dear ones, the Chinese have been flying kites for thousands of years. Don’t you think that they knew the dynamics of a bird? Do you think that century after century after century occurred and nobody figured out how to sustain flight with any kind of power source? Two bicycle makers figured it out!

That’s odd enough, but the fact that they only beat the French by two weeks is something worth looking at. That’s odd! It’s almost like this profound invention was ready to be given to the planet simultaneously, all over the earth, at the same time. Whoever got to it first would be the ones who got the credit. The real oddity is the timing. It’s not logical that it was so hidden, then suddenly so many were working on it all at once.

The Wright brothers were here to show it to you, then stop. All they did was what you saw at Kitty Hawk. They never went past basic wing warping, and did not have first intuitive thought about ailerons, or the basics of flight control today. For them, it stopped there. Dear ones, there was great frustration, and perhaps even health issues from it, from having others take the basics and develop flight so fast beyond them. Dysfunction and sorrow followed them both, and they died without ever being able to participate fully beyond the initial invention. One died far earlier than the other, creating sorrow for the one left behind. They came to do what they did and move on. This is more common than you know with wild cards, especially when it comes to inventions that change this planet.

Who invented the radio? Was is the Italian Guglielmo Marconi, or our frustrated wild card Tesla? Marconi got the credit, but the invention was everywhere, ready to be claimed. The earth was ripe and ready for it, and it was delivered to the consciousness of the planet at the right time. But both men got it at the same time, apart from each other. I’m giving you things to think about.

We have told you that there are wild card inventions coming in the future. One in particular is ready, but you will not receive it until the time is right. It’s almost like there’s a thinking ceiling on what you can do. We even gave you some of the attributes of the coming invention, but not the one who will bring it. We’re not even concerned that you’ll do it in advance, because we know the wild card is coming. An invention is coming. It is an invention that will rewrite physics as you know it. You’d see the patterns in quantum fields, and there would be the big aha! It would be like reinventing the wheel.

“Kryon, why can’t we have it now? What’s stopping it?” We told you, it’s too easy to weaponize. When you reach the point where you won’t weaponize it, it’s yours. All this is coming. It’s natural, and it will come when it’s time just like the Wright brothers, just like Tesla, just like Einstein.

Einstein was a genuine wild card. He was not a quantum thinker at all, but what he presented is still alive and well today and they’re still looking inside the atom for the concepts he gave you. So I will make this statement: Einstein isn’t finished yet, because the very concepts that continue to be received from his work are going to be applied to the invention of the century. So the Einsteinean principles, even though they are not quantum, will be very much involved in what is coming. You might say he was a wild card and continues to be one. The joke is that his concepts last and last, outside of time, yet his main ideas were with time. If you asked Einstein if he was happy with what he brought to the planet, he would tell you no. He was frustrated that he didn’t get to do what he really wanted. Like Tesla, he felt that something was just “out of reach” and he didn’t get to do it.

Then there was World War II. Dear ones, pretend you are an alien scientist. Disengage your emotion. You’ve come in from another planet to look at this.

World War II (WWII) was not a wild card, but the man who created and enhanced it was. This planet was teetering on the edge of ultimate dark energy and destruction. Nobody expected it. The most despicable old energy card played itself out exactly as it should have, with the consciousness of this planet going to where it had brought itself. You had just finished World War I (WWI), yet WWII ignited and continued. So WWII was simply an extension of WWI. You did it again, only this time the weapons were getting bigger and more able to destroy all of humanity. Remember the prophecy of your scripture? You were headed for mass destruction. WWII would become World War III, and by the year 2000, you would be almost gone.

As I mentioned, WWII wasn’t the wild card, rather it was the man who led the lowest consciousness in recent history who was. He was the wild card, and you know of whom I speak. This wild card killed millions of people who were not even participants in the military portion of the war. Genocide had begun, a race war had begun, and many were following his lead. It showed the darkest side of humanity – more than you had ever seen before, and it almost targeted the demise of civilization if he had won.

It was a horror wild card, and the planet had created it. However, when it was over, the entire world took a breath and for a moment, just for a moment, there was a glimmer of realization: “This cannot go on, for we will do it again.” Many things took place due to this realization. Without the wild card, you would not have the European Union, you would not have the United Nations or any attempt at unity on Earth. Disengage from your logic and emotion, dear ones. These things were not created from Spirit, but rather from the depth of lower humanity. This is the dark side at its worst, showing itself with almost free reign, but the world objected to it and started to climb out of it. It was the beginning over half a century ago of what you’re starting to see now in the shift.

The amazing shift that you’re in right now is something that goes slow. It didn’t happen all at once. The Cold War was a natural occurrence out of the consciousness that was part of the end of WWII. But, dear ones, you could never have the shift if that Cold War had continued the way it was. Enter another wild card: The Soviet system fell over.

The Cold War could not continue, and it was stopped in the form it was in. Dear ones, for those reading now, that was one of the biggest wild cards of all. The consciousness of earth said “no” and it ended. That was a huge wild card. It changed everything; it wasn’t expected; nobody saw it coming, and it changed everything. It may not have changed things immediately to the way you want it right away, but it created that which you needed at that time.

Then there was Steve Jobs. He was a wild card. What he did had little to do with technology, for that would have happened anyway soon enough. Instead, it had to do with the paradigm of the business of music on Earth. He freed it, and the paradigm of how music is obtained and heard will never be the same. However, Steve Jobs did basically one thing for all of you, and then he died. Do you see any kind of connecting of the dots to some of the inventors who come and give you the one thing, then leave? If he had lived, would there be more? Yes, but you’re not ready for it. Consciousness has to support what happens.

Yes, it would seem we have left some things out – the invention of DNA, the atomic bomb, etc. However, these were not wild cards. These are your civilization, within a normal evolution of science. Wild cards are very unexpected things, and there are more coming your way.

The Wild Card of 2016

Remember: No emotion now. You have come from another planet and you’re looking at the end of 2016 – and there is the election. Understand without bias.

So for 2016, let’s do the numerology. You add the numbers and get nine. Nine is completion in simple numerology, and when you see a nine it often means the completion of something. Often it is of a time cycle, an energy or the completion of a paradigm. But it’s very strong.

The nines are stronger than many of the other numerological aspects and you feel them. The president-elect (at this writing) is a strong wild card. He is scheduled to become the 45th president. What a coincidence! Forty-five is a nine. A nine and a nine together are more than significant. They tell a story about what is happening. I will tell you something else. This story is not finished yet and there is more coming. You don’t know what you don’t know, so don’t make up your mind in advance about any outcomes. You’re from another planet, remember? There’s no emotion, no bias, no politics and nothing to judge. Look at it for what it is.

A big stick has just been inserted into what is normal and it’s going to be turned. As the big stick turns, other things will respond that never would have responded otherwise. I wish to tell you, dear one, old soul, relax with upcoming wild cards. They do what they do on purpose so that you will have a better civilization in the future. Sometimes they show you what won’t work, and sometimes they change paradigms that would have never changed otherwise. But what you have now is a profound wild card. That is the message.

It’s so common for you to respond certain ways when you are invested in the process. The knee-jerk reaction is expected or you wouldn’t be a Human. However, for this lesson, you’re from another planet and you’re looking down and you’re seeing it. Pretend.

Isn’t that interesting about a nine and a nine together? It means that truly the end of something is here. Perhaps it’s the end of the old way things were done? Perhaps it’s a shake-up of the system so it can correct itself? Don’t dare make up your mind where it’s going, because it’s not finished yet. However, wait a moment. Did you also realize that 2017 is a “one” year? Not only is the energy one of completion with a double nine, but it moves into “a new beginning” (the definition of a one in numerology).

I have more to tell you about numerology, and also something that will be clearer about this whole situation. I will give this to you in the next channelling.

Can you relax in the face of uncertainty when it’s your own country? Can you relax in the face of not knowing what’s next? When you’re so involved, can you disengage from either side of the fray? That is the test of a Lightworker.

There’s something else coming. Dear ones, this is beautiful. No matter what you think and no matter what your reaction is to this channelling, what is happening is correct for your time and needed for your immediate future. I will speak of this later. The beauty is when you step away and see how grand it is, that Spirit cares enough that it would allow a big stick to occur that would stir your complacency at this time. The real reason? The shift is here.

How do you feel? I want you to relax and smile at what the shift has brought you. For those of you who felt all the “shift talk” was nonsense, this may be your wake-up call. It’s real. Here it comes.

This is the message of the day. I am Kryon, in love with humanity, and for good reason.

And so it is.

KRYON

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Singapore Tops IT Competitiveness in Asia Pacific, Ranks No. 3 Worldwide

Jakarta Globe, Irene Tham - Straits Times Indonesia, September 27, 2011

Singapore has raced past Australia to become the most competitive IT market in Asia Pacific, a new study by the Economist Intelligence Unit shows.

Worldwide, Singapore has clinched the third place, after traditional heavyweights the United States and Finland.

The fourth report Investment for the future: Benchmarking IT Industry Competitiveness 2011 scores 66 countries around the world on six key indicators: overall business environment, technology infrastructure, human capital, legal framework, public support for industry development, and research and development landscape.

The bi-annual study was sponsored by non-profit anti-piracy trade group Business Software Alliance. The United States has consistently retained its pole position as the world's most competitive IT market.

EIU ranked Singapore first in the region and third globally due to the nation's strong showing in its R&D environment and the Government's support for industry development.

Globally, Singapore surpassed Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark.

In 2009, Singapore ranked ninth globally and second in Asia Pacific in IT competitiveness.

Is your social media strategy S-I-C-K?

The Jakarta Post, Michael Wade, Sat, 04/16/2011

Most of us are regularly bombarded by technological innovations that fight for our attention.

More often than not, these ‘latest and greatest’ fads fail to make much of an impression on our lives (remember Second Life?).

What is true for our personal lives is also true for our professional lives, only the stakes are higher. Why did we listen to IT experts about Y2K, enterprise systems, business intelligence, web services, and all those other white elephants that continue to suck our budgets dry?

Today, the latest buzz to light up the IT universe is social media. But is this just more of the same? The answer, of course, is... that depends.

By now, most people know about social media. Yet, few managers have figured out how to use it in their organizations.

Most firms are dabbling around the margins or simply waiting on the sidelines to see whether it has staying power.

Indeed, fewer than half of the 50 largest firms in Europe have links to any social media applications from their home pages.

The situation is not much better in the US, where a 2010 study found that 36 percent of Fortune 500 companies have no social media presence whatsoever[i].

So, how involved should your organization be in social media, if at all?

In my opinion, organizational success with social media comes down to how SICK your strategy is.

SICK is short for:

1. Segmentation
2. Implementation
3. Critical mass
4. Knowledge integration

Segmentation

Social media has many variations, and you should decide what you want to do and where you want to play.

Indeed, segmentation needs to occur along three dimensions: segmentation by objective, segmentation by stakeholder, and segmentation by application.

Let’s look first at objectives. Organizations must identify what they want to achieve with social media.

Common options include branding, informing, innovating, selling, and recruiting. If the answer is not obvious, or cannot be clearly articulated, then the best approach is ‘don’t do it!’

It is important to clearly define objectives in advance, since the form of your social media strategy will vary depending on the choices you make.

For example, recruiting tends to work well on YouTube but not necessarily with Twitter, branding works well on Facebook, while informing is best done with RSS feeds.

If you are not clear on your objectives, then you run the risk of using resources on approaches that are not productive.

The second segmentation category is stakeholder. Different segments respond to different approaches.

The fastest growing Facebook segment, for instance, is women over age 55. Very few of them, however, are on Twitter.

The approach taken to entice an impulse snack food purchaser will be very different from the one used to communicate the benefits of baby nutrition to a new mother.

In short, you need to be clear on what segments you are targeting, and then adjust your social media strategy accordingly.

The third segmentation category is application. If you have properly segmented your approach by objective and customer, then it will often be quite clear which social media application to use.

B2B firms may have less need for Facebook than, say, Coca Cola, but they might get a lot of value from an innovation tournament, or an RSS feed.

You have to understand the pros and cons of each application and play to its strengths.

Implementation

Many firms today have a scattershot social media strategy. They may have a couple of brand-focused Facebook sites run by different divisions, and PR may have a Twitter account, but there is little consistency or coordination behind the scenes. Dangers lurk if a structured approach is not taken.

Many firms have paid a steep price for undisciplined social media practices — some recent examples include United Airlines (United breaks Guitars!), Kenneth Cole (Egyptian insensitivity), and Nestle (Kit Kats and Orang-utans).

Your social media strategy should be well coordinated. This means implementing rules and codes of conduct, training employees on social media norms, articulating a consistent corporate message, measuring performance, implementing strong governance, and avoiding unnecessary proliferation (including shutting down sites where necessary). This part of the strategy is a necessary evil.

Critical Mass

If you build it, will they come? Probably not, unless you make it worth their while. Of course, social media is only effective if there is a critical mass of people using it.

In this respect, it’s not really social media at all, but collective media. There is nothing sadder than a corporate Facebook page with 86 absentee fans and stale content.

Building critical mass is hard work. It requires lots of content that is updated regularly, and a high level of engagement — often including senior management involvement.

Practically speaking, it requires well trained, full time staff to monitor and respond to consumer questions, comments and concerns.

If you are lucky, you will have regular interaction with 10 percent of your community, and for a site to have the required amount of communication ‘liquidity’, in my experience it needs at least 100 participating users.

That means that your site better have 1,000 or more members (Facebook fans, Twitter followers, YouTube views, etc).

Building such a degree of engagement is tough, but organizations are getting creative.

The airline JetBlue hit a home run with its ‘All you can jet’ Facebook promotion. Some progressive firms are even providing discounts to prolific bloggers and tweeters in the hopes that they will spread a good word or two about their experiences with the company.

Knowledge integration

The final piece of the social media puzzle is knowledge integration. Social media provides a wealth of information about products, customer experiences, competitors, and areas for improvement.

It is the proverbial canary in a coal mine for many organizations.

Unfortunately, many firms are still very poor at integrating and acting on the information they receive through social media channels.

They often lack a mechanism to filter and capture insights, and feed these into the decision making apparatus. Some companies take this very seriously.

For example, when Starbucks learned through its social media channels that customers disliked having to throw away their paper cups, the company implemented a campaign encouraging the use of reusable containers, and offered a free cup of coffee in return.

Given its massive user base and rapid growth, social media is likely here to stay.

However, organizations who want to be involved need to approach it with care. There can be benefits, but also risks.

When it comes to social media, it’s good to be SICK!

Michael Wade is a Professor of innovation and strategic information management at IMD (www.imd.ch). He teaches in IMD’s program Strategic Marketing in Action.

Editorial: Print dying, journalism thrives

The Jakarta Post | Tue, 02/09/2010 9:18 AM | Opinion

Print may not be dead but those who still glorify printed materials, including newspapers and books, are preventing the industry and society from taking the necessary steps to prepare society to enter into the digital era. One hard truth those in self-denial refuse to swallow is that the printed world is a sunset industry. One would be much better off preparing not only for its inevitable demise, but more importantly, for an emerging society dominated by the digital world.

The National Convention on the Mass Media in Palembang this week hears two contrasting views of how the Internet impacts the media industry and society.

One camp still insists there is ample room for growth for the printed world, and the Internet will not replace the printed materials. Newspapers will survive just as they overcame earlier challenges from telex, the radio, television, facsimile and cable TV.

Another camp, which predicts 100 million Internet users in Indonesia in the next three years, asks the important question: Is Indonesia ready for the digital world? Andy Sjarief of Media Track believes that Indonesia can still take control of the direction of the Internet development, but it needs to get its act together.

The implied message is clear: Drop any pretension that the Internet is not a threat and start entering the new digital world to make sure that we don’t lose out in the fierce global competition, unleashed by the ongoing revolution of the communication and information technology.

Being a sunset industry means it is only a matter of time before the printed world loses its relevance. The experience of the United States and Europe tells us that it is not so much a question of people ceasing to read or buy newspapers, as a question of the industry losing its commercial viability. The writing had been on the wall for some years, and the economic recession helped to speed up the demise of dozens of newspapers in the US by a few years.

Expect more titles to close down and migrate to the digital world in the coming years, including in Indonesia.

The sooner we accept that print is dying a slow death, the sooner we will be in making adjustments. In journalism, this means reinventing the profession to fit to the new situation, a world in which anyone, thanks to easy and cheap access to the Internet, can do the work that has traditionally been the domain of journalists: to disseminate information to the masses.

Professional journalists today have to compete with “netizens” or citizen journalists, including bloggers and just about everyone with accounts in social media like Twitter and Facebook, in breaking news and in spreading information. On many cases, they are breaking the news before even journalists reach the area, which raises the question, how should professional journalists respond?

In this kind of competitive environment, it is wrong to ignore the ground rules and ethics in journalism. If there is one thing that does not change in journalism — whether print, broadcast or the Internet — it is that credibility and trust continue to be the chief currencies underpinning this profession. Good journalism means sticking to the old and tested principles and values that make this profession the fourth pillar in democracy, including honesty, accuracy and fair reporting.

Print may be dying, but the traditional journalism will continue to live for far longer. When society suffers from a massive information overflow, good and honest journalism becomes even more, not less, relevant than ever.

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Mojos, the ‘F’ word and the future of newspapers

Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, THE JAKARTA POST, BANGKOK | Tue, 03/10/2009 10:10 AM  

Newspapers are an endangered species. Like the lumbering dinosaur, the cumbersome newsprint is making way to the more nimble genus and lithe platforms of new media. 

The fate of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Minneapolis Tribune and Denver’s Rocky Mountain News is akin to that of the 40-ton brachiosaurus. 

The global financial crisis is an extinction level event for traditional media in the same way that climactic changes obliterated the Mesozoic era. 

To our south, News Ltd. (part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.) which publishes The Australian,

and Fairfax, publisher of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, made several hundred retrenchments in the past six months with more likely to come. The Australian Financial Review is shutting its bureaus in Jakarta and London. 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has stepped in by further subsidizing dwindling French newspaper subscription. In Britain, the government is debating aid for its regional papers, while in India several publications are effectively holding the election-facing government to ransom by “beseeching” tax breaks and sponsored advertising. 

The demise of print media is not all due to the Internet or the haughtiness of print journalism. Even online advertising rates are not what they used to be in the dotcom heyday of the late 1990s. 

The inability to adopt to new mindsets, a misguided interpretation of free information, and the conglomeration of media ownership seem to have been the catalysts for the downfall. 

Today, everyone is a journalist. 

Modern technology embodies the two essentials that characterize field reporting: speed and convenience. The pen may still be mightier than the sword, but the ubiquitous mobile phone is the quill of digital journalism. 

Most print organizations, especially in Asia, have only in the last few years begun to realize

the concept of Mojos – mobile journalists. 

Reporters capable of breaking news, in-depth stories and digital information (webcasts, blogs and video) all at once. Rather than rightsizing their young editorial staff to accommodate the new platforms, most organizations instead enlarge operations by creating separate entities, print and digital, which creates dualism and doubles overhead. 

Specialists – photojournalists, investigative reporters, op-ed writers – are essential elements, but the bulk should be platform-agnostic journalists who can convey the established values of conventional quality journalism in a new medium. 

Technology has allowed everyone to be a journalist. Citizen journalists are a qualified truth in modern journalism. However, it would be a mistake to allow the primary dissemination of information – the foundations of democratic society – to go to blogs and mailing lists permeated by rants and foolish outbursts. 

During the 150th anniversary of the Atlantic Monthly last year, editors argued that reading habits had not declined, but the way people were paying for their reading had changed. 

Despite technological advances, conventional and digital media retain the same model in generating revenue: page viewed advertising. When advertising tanks, so does the publication. 

When the Internet burst onto the scene, the (un)conventional wisdom was to provide everything for free. For anything other than premium porn, the “F” word (free) was the pervasive dictum on the Web. 

That precept is now seriously being re-examined. Good stories, good photography, good art and especially good journalism cannot pay for itself. 

Consumers act like one, by paying for it! 

The lessons of millions of songs, books, newspapers and movies sold on Apple’s iTunes, Amazon’s Kindle and Netflix are evidence that consumers are willing to pay, as long as a practical, safe payment system with immediate delivery options is readily available. 

Furthermore, the present perils of many newspapers may not necessarily be due to poor editorial quality or the absolute decline of readership, but the way big business have treated newspapers as a portfolio investment. 

Stephen Quinn, lecturer of journalism and media management at Deakin University in Australia, said that if a newspaper is on a backslide due to economic recession, it can survive with sound management and innovation. 

“If the issue is debt, then it’s difficult,” he remarked at an editors’ meeting over the weekend in Bangkok to mark the 10th Anniversary of the Asian Newspaper Network. 

Hence the doom that saw most American papers file for bankruptcy. 

The utmost concern for many newspaper editors, however, is not that they are a dying species, but that they may become a protected species under the aegis of the government. 

Developments in France and India are a sellout of the Fourth Estate. 

Mathias Döpfner, publisher of Bild in Germany, in a recent interview conceded that talk was rampant that the bailout model for banks and US carmakers should be extended to newspapers. 

“That would be a dark day for press freedom,” he said. 

“A bankrupt media company is better than a government-funded one.”

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Wolfram Alpha...Brilliant tool, Google killer, or lots of hype?

ZDNet, Posted by Christopher Dawson  March 9th, 2009 @ 2:32 am, 

Wolfram Alpha has been covered recently by everyone from ZDNet’s own Larry Dignan, to Techmeme, to Ars Technica, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and skepticism. 

Most of us in Ed Tech will recognize the name Wolfram from Mathematica fame and Wolfram’s Math World. The former is complex, but incredibly powerful software for mathematical investigations and visualizations and has made its way into a lot of high school and college math classrooms (as well as into industrial applications). The latter is the everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-math-but-were-afraid-to-ask website and is a huge resource for instructors and students at all levels of mathematics (beyond elementary school, at least). 

Wolfram Alpha, to be launched in May, is intended to do for search what Mathematica did for math software. I won’t requote Wolfram or the various analysts; their thoughts can all be found in the links above. The key point to take home, though, is that Alpha is designed to synthesize huge amounts of data on the Web and answer questions. 

Obviously, Google can do this too, but the question “What was the price of oil on February 3, 2007" yields over 19 million answers on Google. In theory, Wolfram Apha should give you one hit: the answer to your question.

Perhaps the real question to be asking is whether this is a good thing for Ed Tech. Do we want students to develop good search skills to navigate the incredible amount of data available to them on the web? Or is this the future of search and a new, powerful tool for students and teachers? 

I think it’s going to be the latter. NMC’s Horizon Report points to semantic-aware search as one of the top technologies to watch in the next 4-5 years. If Alpha works as planned, it’s already here. Regardless, this is a serious step closer to allowing students to retrieve data quickly and easily from the Web, without wasting time on fruitless searches. In fact, this will put students a lot closer to the information nirvana promised by the Internet, in which they can simply get and use the information they need without having to weed through countless pages of ad-driven nonsense.

Online media most reliable source of info: survey

The Jakarta Post | Tue, 02/10/2009 3:40 PM  

Online media ranks as the most reliable source for news by businessmen in Indonesia, a survey says. 

The survey, conducted by Edelman Trustbarometer on 200 businessmen with a minimum income of Rp 30 million a month, says that 41 percent of its respondents voted for online media as the most reliable source of information, 40 percent voted television and 36 percent voted for company management reports. 

Edelman director Aditya Chandra Wardhana said the survey showed that most of the businessmen surveyed depended a lot on fast access to information in their decision making process. 

The businessmen, he said, thrived on breaking news related to government policies or events that had global reprecussions that could affect their businesses. 

"After they get the information, the would contact analysts," he said. 

The survey also shows that 77 percent of the respondents said that mass media is the most trusted source of information, more so compared to corporate, government or NGO reports. 

The Edelman survey has been carried out for 10 years and has an error margin of five percent. (and)

U.S. to use new media technology to help promote tourism in Bali

Ni Komang Erviani, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar   

U.S. Ambassador Cameron Hume said Monday the U.S. government was ready to help promote Bali to American citizens, acknowledging the Indonesian government's seriousness in maintaining the island's security. 

"I want to bring together tourism professionals from both countries so there will be a more serious and large-scale tourism campaign to bring more Americans to this island," Hume told reporters after a closed meeting with officials from the Bali Tourism Board (BTB) in Denpasar. 

The U.S. government was among those which recommended against its citizens visiting Bali over security concerns following the Bali bombing attacks in 2002 and 2005. 

The lifting of the travel restriction made earlier this year signified a major improvement in U.S. government foreign policy toward Bali. 

Hume said apart from conducting regular information campaigns about Bali, they could promote the island through the latest media formats, including GPS (Global Positioning System) technology available on the Google Earth application on the Internet. 

By August this year, Bali's tourism agency recorded that almost 47,000 Americans visited the island. 

BTB chairman Ngurah Wijaya said he was enthusiastic about the U.S. plans and expected they could arrange further technical meetings to discuss ideas in the immediate future. 

"I hope the plan will materialize soon enough," he said. 

Separately, a group of Indonesian honorary consuls from countries across Latin America, Europe and Africa have traveled to Bali to learn about the culture firsthand under an initiative by the Indonesian government, an official said. 

The group's leader, Handriyo Kusumo Prio, also an official from the Foreign Ministry, said the group earlier visited Yogyakarta for the same reason. 

"It is the government's token of appreciation for years of their voluntary work promoting Indonesia," Prio said. 

Throughout the 10-day visit, he added, the government expected the honorary consuls would update their knowledge about Indonesia. 

"So they can further promote Indonesia in their countries," he added. 

The Indonesian government has appointed 64 honorary consuls around the world. These consuls, mostly local tourism business people and professionals were chosen to assist the government promote Indonesia's tourism to their international counterparts. 

The consuls, all volunteers, come from countries such as Australia, Brazil, India, Ireland, Nepal, Paraguay, Portugal, Russia, Spain, and Turkey. 

On their first day in Bali on Monday, the honorary consuls met Governor Made Mangku Pastika for an initial briefing. 

"Hopefully your stay in Bali will enable you to explore the beauty of our island, so you can pass on what you have learned to others overseas," Pastika told the consuls. 

He said the visit was significant considering the government's current efforts maintaining the island's security situation. 

"Let the consuls see that we mean business here," he said. 

The consuls will visit the Taman Ayun Grand Temple in Mengwi, Tanah Lot Temple in Tabanan and the Tampak Siring Presidential Palace in Gianyar. 

Nalan Rimer of Turkey said she was excited by her firsthand experiences of Bali. 

"Now I have completed my knowledge, as I have had the chance to experience Bali for myself."

Jakarta to host "Pesta Blogger" on Saturday

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta 

Information and Communication Minister Mohammad Nuh said on Wednesday that Jakarta would host this year's national blogger gathering on Saturday, heralding the theme "Blogging for Society". 

Nuh said the event was to be titled Pesta Blogger 2008 and would be held in the BPPT II building on Jl M.H. Thamrin, Central Jakarta. Nuh added that the gathering would be attended by the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia Cameron R. Hume. 

"To establish an information-based society, we need creativity. Events like this undoubtedly give people room to express themselves," Nuh said, as quoted by kompas.com. 

The event's administrative chairman, Wicaksono, said bloggers from across Indonesia would participate, and that his team expected to double the attendance levels seen at last year's gathering. 

"We hope this event will make a positive contribution to society," Wicaksono said. (and)

For what IT’s worth

By: Stephen Kelly, CPIFinancial 

Tough times call for tough decisions and when it comes to cutting costs, managers need to know what really pays the bills. Stephen Kelly calls on businesses in the financial sector to acknowledge the real value of software assets

"In a time of heightened financial anxiety, the integral role of IT and the effective investments in these key technology assets have never been of more importance." 

During 2007, the global economy has become increasingly volatile. Despite the M&A market still flourishing after the boom of 2006, the level of regulation and corporate governance has risen dramatically and the world’s financial markets have become increasingly shaky in recent months. All this adds up to the fact that global organisations are under more scrutiny than ever before, meaning all assets are constantly being revalued and reassessed in order to optimise market value. 

Yet, despite financial institutions striving to get the most accurate assessment of the value of their business, they are ignoring one of the most valuable aspects and one of the most critical assets of their day-to-day business. Their IT. 

Over the past 20 years, financial organisations of all sizes have become totally dependent on their IT, not only to help them get by on a daily basis, but also to record every transaction and piece of data processed within the business. However, despite this huge reliance, IT assets are, on the whole, totally ignored or poorly evaluated compared with other assets such as brand, property and intellectual property. 

Recent research of chief information officers (CIO) and chief financial officers at global organisations, of which financial services comprised 20 percent of respondents, with turnovers of up to $10 billion, revealed that only 9 per cent think that the real financial value of core software assets is properly assessed compared with these other assets. 

Even on its own, this is an alarming statistic. But when one considers that the same research discovered that over 75 per cent of companies deem these core software assets to be critical to their business strategy, it is staggering that they do not attribute any value to them. 

Information technology has become a key strategic tool in enterprise today with chief executives and chief financial officers alike using the data gleaned from their respective systems to help make corporate decisions on how to develop the company. And increasingly, market leading companies are achieving competitive advantage by linking effective technology to other business imperatives such as customer satisfaction. So for financial organisations to not recognize the value of IT, especially in this time of financial market nervousness, seems to indicate that they are missing a trick. 

If you look at it from the differing angles of the individuals involved, it truly highlights the fragility of the situation. From a chief financial officer’s point of view, one of their main jobs is to know the value of the company, whether it is verifying if it has the resources to acquire, or if it is subject to an acquisition approach. Also, with heightened regulatory requirements, it is imperative that a chief financial officer provides total transparency and the most accurate assessment possible to ensure compliance and not be liable to auditory investigations. 

From a chief information officer’s perspective, why wouldn’t they want to have IT assessed? They lead departments of up to 200 people, helping to maintain an indispensable function to the business. Despite continual calls for the chief information officer to have a seat on the board of directors, we increasingly hear that the tenure of a chief information officer is one of the shortest amongst senior management. 

By quantifying the financial value of the contribution of IT to the business, the CIO can not only show the sterling work of his team, but also prove their individual value that they are providing such an important commodity to the business. Quantifying the value of IT and demonstrating the benefits it can bring to the business as a whole would also serve to bridge the current disconnect between the IT and business departments. 

So how would a CIO go about demonstrating the real value of their software assets? Effective measurement of IT asset value is closely linked to the performance and contribution of the CIO at board level. However, in order to communicate this, research indicates that the CIO has to go back to square one and actually realise what they are dealing with. It may sound fundamental, but the research revealed that an astonishing 60 per cent of CIOs globally do not even know the size of their core software assets. How are they meant to show value to the board if they do not have this basic information? 

CIOs need to identify where the business benefits lie in their current systems. This will enable financial organisations to preserve existing IT investments and get the most out of IT without footing the cost of replacement with new, unnecessary software.

This means taking a fresh look at how core IT assets can be further exploited. In today’s economic climate, this issue is imperative for CIOs under pressure to get increased return from every dollar spent on IT. Additionally, they need to have the tools in place to allow them to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk. By getting these basics in place, they will be able to start highlighting the value stored within their respective infrastructures and keep pace with today’s hostile economy. 

In a time of heightened financial anxiety, the integral role of IT and the effective investments in these key technology assets have never been of more importance. While companies reconsider investment programmes in the light of financial instabilities, there has never been a better time for the IT department to highlight the benefits it is bringing to the business. This will not only dissuade businesses to implement costly and disruptive ‘rip and replace’ IT strategies, but will also finally allow financial organisations to acknowledge the real value of IT assets, and therefore give a true representation of the value of the business. IT’s worth thinking about. 

Stephen Kelly is chief executive of Micro Focus

 

Google Health Begins Its Preseason at Cleveland Clinic

By Steve Lohr, The New York Times

For 18 months, Google has been working to come up with a product offering and a strategy in the promising field of consumer health information. Until now, the search giant hasn’t had anything to show for its labors other than bumps along the way — delays and a management change.

But on Thursday, Google’s technology for personal health records, which is still in development, is getting a big endorsement from the Cleveland Clinic. The big medical center is beginning a pilot project to link the health information for some of its patients with Google personal health records.

Cleveland Clinic is at the cutting edge of health information technology, and its more than 100,000 patients each has a personal health record. But a sizable portion of those patients are retirees, notes Dr. C. Martin Harris, the clinic’s chief information officer. Many of them, he said, spend about five months elsewhere, typically in Florida or Arizona, and the clinic’s sophisticated electronic health records don’t follow them there.

“It forces the patient to become his or her own medical historian,” Dr. Harris said.

The Google personal health record, he said, is a solution to that problem, among others. A person can approve the transfer of information on, say, medical conditions, allergies, medications and laboratory results from the clinic’s computers to a Google personal health record — a series of secure Web pages.

The pilot project will last six to eight weeks, and involve less than 10,000 patients. The project with Cleveland Clinic is “a milestone” for Google, said Marissa Mayer, a vice president, who took over management of the health team six months ago.

Google’s personal health record is still in development, and it will be introduced publicly and made widely available, after the pilot project is concluded, Ms. Mayer said.

To be sure, Google is only one of several companies trying to make a business from Web-based personal health records. Microsoft, for example, brought out its entry, called HealthVault, last October, and it has commitments from medical centers including New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the Mayo Clinic. WebMD, Revolution Health and others also offer personal health records.

While it’s still not entirely clear what Google’s personal health record will be like, its approach seems to be ambitious and comprehensive. Google has its own user interface, while Microsoft, for example, appears to be focusing on back-end storage. Google is offering automated data links, so the patient does not have to type in personal data, as is required with some personal health records. And Google, along with Microsoft, has the deep pockets and technological knowhow to offer personal health records free to millions.

Other medical centers are ready to sign up. “This is truly a patient-controlled health record, and that’s a very significant step in the drive toward a more consumer-oriented system of health care,” said Dr. John D. Halamka, chief information officer of the Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Halamka is also chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, which plans to link its electronic patient records with Google personal health pages. He is also a member of Google’s Health Advisory Council.

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