14 Free Apps That Will Make You Incredibly Productive

14 Free Apps That Will Make You Incredibly Productive Doug Aamoth, writing for FastCompany, has done the hard work of sorting through the dozens of apps that promise to make your life easier to uncover the ones that actually can  make your life easier! Here’s our roundup of the top 14 apps to have at your fingertips to maximize productivity and minimize chaos! Emails and CommunicationsBoomerangThis easy-to-integrate app is essentially a snooze button for your email. You can dismiss an email from your inbox and set a time for it to return later, write a draft response at 1 am and schedule it to send right as you walk into the office, or set reminders to reply at a more reasonable hour. The free version gives you 10 email interactions a month.Burner  and MailDropThis one is so neat- it generates disposable phone numbers (or email accounts) that you can use whenever you need to make a number publicly available (without leaving your own precious digits visible for mass consumption. MailDrop is a no-frills temporary email address that disappears after 24 inactive hours; it’s great for Craigslist or promotional blasts.CordChances are if you have the Apple iOS, you’ve accidentally mashed that little microphone button and sent an audio snippet from the inside of your pocket. Cord helps you do that on purpose and with a group- you can send 12-second voice messages back and forth with ease.Group MeCreate and disband on-the-go private chat rooms when you need to chat with a group of people at once (and then make them stop flooding your text inbox with emoji conversations).VoxerThis converts your phone into a walkie-talkie without the strenuous button pushing or limited 30-foot radius for maintaining a connection. You can also leave voice messages in case they miss your rendezvous.Scheduling and MeetingsMeekanThis group scheduling app identifies available meeting times with just a list of participant emails, accommodates multiple time zones, and coordinates with existing calendars.PreziMany of my stud ents used Prezi instead of Powerpoint this summer- it made me feel old. Retain your youth and relevancy by learning how to use this cloud-based presentation tool! It lets you stream to remote attendees and post public presentations.ToolsCCleanerFor six months I had a defunct wireless client pop up whenever I booted up my Mac asking permission to run itself; I couldn’t seem to figure out where to uninstall it! CCleaner to the rescue! It will speed up your computer by deleting the flotsam and jetsam left behind in upgrades, file transfers, and browsing.CanvasI am a sucker for an easily customizable form app. From invoices to other frequently used workplace templates, Canvas lets you make and share them easily.PostfityIf your business or your personal brand relies heavily on social media (which†¦ it should), an app like Postfity may help you manage the myriad channels of posts and content you want to space out evenly. It has a scheduling tool and a linking functionality so you can share the same thing everywhere, or diversify your media presence.(PSA: don’t have Twitter and Instagram post verbatim to your Facebook. Schedule slightly different content for each feed. Your family, friends, and colleagues will appreciate it).OnavoMaybe you’re constantly going back and forth with how much data you think you’ll use versus how much you actually use. Onavo can help! It will not only help track usage, but will also compress files accordingly to save your data mileage for the cat gifs that really count.SyncSpaceWho doesn’t love a virtual whiteboard? It never gets old! It has everything but the marker fumes, lets you and your team collaborate on a shared visual document, then emails the changes around later.BreatherImagine AirBnb and ZipCar had a baby that let you hold meetings in it. Breather identifies available workspaces around cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, Montreal, and Ottowa; your phone will unlock your insta-off ice for a half hour at a time so you can meet with clients, charge your phone, or just put your feet up before dashing off to the next appointment.BRB scheduling a Breather to present my latest Prezi- everybody check their Voxer messages!

Free Essays on Rashoman & Other Stories

â€Å"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality,† according to Dante Aleghieri, just how seared Ryunosuke Akutagawa is, however, is anyone’s guess. Rarely does it occur in the course of human events that an author of Akutagawa’s analytical genius is able to live without persecution from without, in Ryunosuke’s case, however, the distress came from within. Almost as an impartial umpire he seems to desire taking society over his shoulder and carrying it back, kicking and screaming, into its more moral past, yet at the same time realizes the selfish hypocrisy of his own aspirations and perhaps it is this own reality that drives him to his eventual end. He sees the best men of his generation mining coal and pulling rickshaws, he sees Western ‘civilization’ forcing them to work jobs they hate to buy stuff they don’t need, he sees, in short, the destruction of an idealized tr aditional Japanese culture by a very different west. Part of Akutagawa undoubtedly wants to view the Westerners influence upon Japan as immoral and corrupt, yet he sees the Janus-faced duplicity of his position, who is he to define morality? What right does he or any other member or group in society have to judge morality? Nevertheless one can’t help but apply one’s own values to any and all situations in some sort of self-absorbed ethnocentristic trial of values, something that, without fail, always makes us out in the wrong, and Ryunosuke is human, just like everyone else. No wonder he was so despondent as to take his own life, he was repulsed by what he saw and was, himself, what he was nauseated by such a deep-seated inconsistency is not one easily overwhelmed. Upheaval seems to be the late theme of Japan and its artistic community; the Meiji Restoration turned Japan every which way, just as Akutagawa and his contemporaries did to Japanese literature. As Ryunosuke demonstrates to h... Free Essays on Rashoman & Other Stories Free Essays on Rashoman & Other Stories â€Å"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality,† according to Dante Aleghieri, just how seared Ryunosuke Akutagawa is, however, is anyone’s guess. Rarely does it occur in the course of human events that an author of Akutagawa’s analytical genius is able to live without persecution from without, in Ryunosuke’s case, however, the distress came from within. Almost as an impartial umpire he seems to desire taking society over his shoulder and carrying it back, kicking and screaming, into its more moral past, yet at the same time realizes the selfish hypocrisy of his own aspirations and perhaps it is this own reality that drives him to his eventual end. He sees the best men of his generation mining coal and pulling rickshaws, he sees Western ‘civilization’ forcing them to work jobs they hate to buy stuff they don’t need, he sees, in short, the destruction of an idealized tr aditional Japanese culture by a very different west. Part of Akutagawa undoubtedly wants to view the Westerners influence upon Japan as immoral and corrupt, yet he sees the Janus-faced duplicity of his position, who is he to define morality? What right does he or any other member or group in society have to judge morality? Nevertheless one can’t help but apply one’s own values to any and all situations in some sort of self-absorbed ethnocentristic trial of values, something that, without fail, always makes us out in the wrong, and Ryunosuke is human, just like everyone else. No wonder he was so despondent as to take his own life, he was repulsed by what he saw and was, himself, what he was nauseated by such a deep-seated inconsistency is not one easily overwhelmed. Upheaval seems to be the late theme of Japan and its artistic community; the Meiji Restoration turned Japan every which way, just as Akutagawa and his contemporaries did to Japanese literature. As Ryunosuke demonstrates to h...

Walt Disney Company Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Walt Disney Company - Assignment Example From this study it is clear that management and leadership development involves training employees on good leadership qualities and what it entails being a good manager. Employees get skills and lessons for team building because leaders ought to build teams and be good team leaders. Supervisory and organization skills are required to make a good manager as it enables one to create good business relationships, facilitating the meeting and also mentoring their junior employees.This study highlights that professional development involves taking professional courses and certification that help employees better their skills and be the best. Performance support systems and reimbursements to pursue job-related degrees help the employees to be more abreast with the modern world and changes that occur in the job market. Employees pursuing further studies mean that they get to qualify for promotions and also can move to companies where they get to advance their career status. With the developm ent of technology, any company would want its employees to have high tech computer skill to be able to operate the machines and computer they use at work. With new software coming up in production, the employees should be ready to use them and training in computer helps a great deal in this. The company offers mentoring programs that include internships, scholarships and programs to mentor startups such as the Disney Accelerator. Mentorship programs benefit not only the beneficiaries but also the company.

Experimental Research Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Experimental Research - Essay Example On the other hand, the prevailing data just prior to the initiation of price promotion will also be gathered. This is to ensure finding the potential impact of price promotion on the number or average number of tissues sold each week for the two-month-period experiment. In other words, there must be a comparison of data, because this is one of the ways in order to know if there is an existing relationship between the price promotion and the number of items sold for tissue. The 50 cents off-coupon should be denoted â€Å"1†. The buy-one-get-one-free promotion should be denoted â€Å"2†. And finally, the no promotion or regular price offering should be denoted as â€Å"3†. In this way, the actual data should look like what is presented in Table 1. The point of denoting the price promotion into numerical values is to be able to use a quantitative method of analysis that will determine the relationship or the cause and effect of price promotion and the number of items of tissue that will be sold. If there is an existing relationship this means that there should be either a higher positive or negative correlation between the chosen variables, the price promotion and the number of quantity sold for tissue product as shown in Figure 1. After conducting a correlation analysis, the regression analysis will also be conducted in order to determine the actual model showcasing the actual relationship between the chosen variables. In other words, the experiment will not only test the relationship of the variables, but their actual associations. This is one way of knowing or representing the cause and effect relationship of the dependent and independent variables of the

Administrative Competence of Local Officials Essay Example for Free

Administrative Competence of Local Officials Essay Explain what mechanisms would you suggest to improve the administrative competence of local officials to make local government units effective partners of the national government in the development of the country? With the changing concept of local governance, the local government personnel should be qualified and highly trained for their enabling or facilitative functions. A basic question that is raised is, do they have the competence to perform the enabling functions of local government? In the Philippines, both national and local governments have the responsibility to develop and improve the competencies of the local government personnel. The Civil Service Commission (CSC) and the Local Government Academy (LGA) of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) are mandated by law to build HR capabilities at the local level. See more: Beowulf essay essay The CSC either conducts training activities through its regional 8 offices throughout the country or through its accredited training institutions. Through its regional offices, the CSC has been conducting courses for all state workers which cover the following general areas: supervisory, middle management, clerical or secretarial, technical or professional, values development, employee development, induction, and orientation or reorientation. To develop optimistic work attitudes among the state workers, the CSC offered and administered values development programs which included the Alay Sa Bayan (Offering to the Nation) training program. The CSC has also been touching base with the local government executives through the various Local Government Executive For a. Through this mechanism, the local government executives are updated on the latest civil service laws, rules and regulations and other relevant provisions of the Code. The program is focused on developing and strengthening the managerial and leadership skills of local officials. Training programs are designed to enhance skills and knowledge of employees to make them more effective in their jobs. These are centered on orientation and reorientation; values development; updating of skills for supervisors, middle managers, clerical force, and technical or professional employees; and personnel development. These imply that the kind of training that they receive would make them more effective service providers.

The Cold War Era Essay -- United States Soviet History Essays

The Cold War Era Works Cited Missing The late 1940s to the mid 1980s the American society saw what could quite possibly be titled the biggest technological effect on society. This era, The Cold War, was a period in which fear of attack or invasion and a need to be superior reigned in the American society. It led to the development of space technology, during the Space Race, communication systems, and military technology in what has been appropriately deemed the Arms Race. On October 4, 1957 [1] a huge change concerning technology in society occurred. On this date, the United Soviet Socialists Republic (USSR) launched Sputnik into outer space. The launch of Sputnik instilled a fear in the American society and an urgent call to increase technological capabilities to protect the homeland from Soviet attacks and also to prove the United States’ superiority. The United States’ official involvement in what has commonly been termed the â€Å"Space Race† began in 1958 after the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA. When created, NASA immediately began working on the idea of human space flight. The first high profile program was titled Project Mercury. In this program, NASA’s main course of action was to find if human beings were capable of surviving in space. Projects that followed included Project Gemini and Project Apollo [2] and, slowly, America made its way into the forefront of the space race. The sketches and preliminary drawings for Project Mercury are seen to the right. Although ot a new technological advancement, the idea of being able to put human beings into space was a new idea that required an incredible amount of advancement in technological fields not yet understood by man.... ...Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was signed by the United States and USSR on December 8, 1987 and ratified by the United States Senate on May 27, 1988. This is considered to be the end of the Cold War as the mass elimination of weapons developed during the era commenced, including the elimination of the PERSHING. The last of the PERSHING missiles were eliminated in May 1991. [8] The Cold War Era was an era in which the fear of technology and the impending need for developments became the central focus of the society. This era epitomizes the power technology has over an American society and, consequently, the world. Over twenty years were spent developing technologies to protect the nation against the technologies of another. The impact of technology during this era, although not in every home to the degree that it is today, was one of massive proportions.

Environmental Safety Essay

What would happen if businesses ignored social responsibility? what would happen if environmental safety was not considered? The world would be full of toxic elements and wastes. Businesses have to ensure social responsibility as part of the society. Social responsibility is the involvement of a business in social matters to ensure product safety, good services,employees good health and the general societal development. As Lance says, â€Å"Businesses have an obligation to the community† (Besser, 2002. 13). This, a business should do alongside the real aims a business was set up for. They are therefore said to be interdependent with the society. For a business to accomplish social responsibility, a social issue has to be identified, analyzed then implemented thus responding to the development of the society (Besser, 2002). IDENTIFICATION: There are so many social issues a business has to deal with, for example employee issues just to ensure employee’s good health and good working conditions,legal issues that demand for operation according to the rule of law, economic issues that requires production of quality and safe goods and services, and the ethical issues that considers ethical matters in a society (Hughes and Kapoor. 9th edition). The main issue in this discussion is environmental safety. This is classified as a legal issue but can as well be an ethical issue since the society is not asleep (Hughes and Kapoor. 9th edition). Harming the community is not acceptable and a business would never have success with that. The society will rebel, and who would deal with such a business anyway? Do you think a society would need goods and services from a business that does not put into consideration there health and wellbeing? Environmental pollution has always been a barrier to good business and customer relationship if in any case a business does not handle that carefully. For a business to ensure success among other managerial duties, it has to implement programs to deal with the social issue and ensure safety by preventing and reducing pollution. This kind of pollution can be through many ways from a business. When it is an industry, there could be air pollution due to the toxic gases produced during production processes. There could also be air pollution due to radioactive materials within the company. Environmental safety mostly deals with businesses that produce toxic materials and waste to the environment. Waste products therefore also pose a big threat to pollution if not disposed appropriately. The other is water pollution due to toxic waste dumped to water sources (Environmental Protection Agency, 2008) . ANALYSIS: A business has always to consider it’s managerial integrity, the ethical values, the philosophy of operation as well as commitment to organizational competence when dealing with a social issue (Besser, 2002). Analysis is a tough area for the business plus considering how it will implement it. But there is a governmental organization, with the control systems that help the businesses meet the requirements for social responsibility. For the environmental issue,the U. S Environmental Protection Agency offers guidelines and compliance programmes to various pollution prevention methods (Environmental Protection Agency, 2008). Therefore a business has just to analyze the sources of pollution within it and what likely can cause pollution and look for control methods from the Environmental Protection Agency. There are various ways pollution can occur, through water, air, air and radiation, and wastes (Environmental Protection Agency, 2008 ). The business should look for the guidelines, requirements, and any methodologies for every source of pollution from the business. IMPLEMENTATION: Good management is required for the success of a business. Just as stated before, one of the managerial duties is dealing with social responsibility. A business has to draw out a plan in order to implement this. Programs with the steps for implementation are different and are used on preference. Just like the advocates of the social responsiveness program prefer their program due to certain beneficial factors to them (Besser, 2002). A business therefore has to select that program which it prefers based on it’s own reasons of benefits. One of the steps to implementation is the three concentric circles of the CED. This includes the inner circle, that deals with the economic responsibility ensuring quality and safe products and the provision of jobs and services. The intermediate circle which ensures the business policies and practices are consistent to the societal values. The last circle which calls for the business to work towards community development. A second program with steps that could be used is the social involvement program. This program does not believe in social responsibility as the advocates refused the name of social responsibility before. They prefer social responsiveness and therefore has activities that deal with the consequences due to the business’s activities in the process of accomplishing their mission of economic function to the society. This therefore ensures product quality and safety, reduced and prevented pollution of the environment thereby meeting social requirements. A third program is the Carrol’s category of social responsibility. Carrol’s program is based on the views that the society expects more than economic duties by the businesses. The steps are in order of importance, with economic responsibility being the first, followed by the legal issues then ethical and lastly discretionary responsibilities that demands for social improvements. The ethical issue requires a business to conduct it’s activities in an ethical manner. Legal needs production following the rules of law (Besser, 2002). For a business to ensure environmental safety, it can choose from either of the programs. Being that the national safety standards for the environment are already set by the Environmental Protection agency by the United States government. Implementation then is done. Social responsibility, has to be part of the business. Good relationship between society and business leads to more sales therefore more profit and the big blessing is success! References Besser T. , 2002. The conscience of Capitalism-Business social Responsibility to communities. Greenwood publishing group. IOWA U. S Environmental Protection. Compliance and Enforcements retrieved from http://www. epa. gov/compliance/business/? cm_sp=ExternalLink-_-Federal-_-EPA

Performance Management in Non-Profit Organizations Essay

Non-Profit organizations are trusted to address some the most challenging issues affecting society: ending violence in inner-city communities, educating disadvantaged children, diminishing health disparities and empowering disfranchised populations to bring about change are just a few of these very difficult tasks non-profits take on. Considering the importance of that work and the pivotal role these organizations play in alleviating the burden of those issues to society, it is fair to say that non-profits are held against high expectations and consequently need to show stellar performance to live up to the magnitude of the scope of the work they were trusted upon. It is also fair to say that their performance will not only affect their bottom lines, but also the welfare of the communities they serve. Public and nonprofit organizations significantly affect, and have great potential to improve, the lives of citizens and communities in such areas as public safety, transportation, parks and recreation, economic development, education, housing, public health, environmental management, space exploration, social services, and more. In each of these areas there is interest, and sometimes very great interest, in ensuring that public and nonprofit organizations perform well and help society to move forward. (Berman, 2005) Looking at nonprofits from that viewpoint and understanding the impact their performance has on society, one would think that these organizations are usually driven by results and have efficient performance management systems in place. The truth is that it is not the case, non-profits are known to be mission-driven and the notion of performance-based management is somewhat new to most of those organizations. Non-profit organizations are of increasing importance in modern economies, not only as providers of goods and services but also as employers (Speckbecker, 2003). Moreover, there seems to be a growing awareness that nonprofits need management just as for-profit organizations do. As Speckbecker says: â€Å"Twenty years ago, management was a dirty word for those involved in nonprofit organizations† (Speckbecker, 2003). It meant business, and nonprofits prided themselves on being free of the taint of commercialism and above such sordid considerations as the bottom line. Now most of them have learned that nonprofits need management even more than business does, precisely because they lack the discipline of the bottom line.† (Speckbecker, 2003). In the business world, market forces serve as feedback mechanisms. Companies that perform well are rewarded by customers and investors; underperformers are penalized. Performance is relatively easy to quantify through quarterly earnings, ROI, customer loyalty scores, and the like. Moreover, such metrics can be calibrated and compared, ensuring that the companies producing the best results will attract capital and talent. Managers are encouraged to invest in the people, systems, and infrastructure needed to continue delivering superior performance. And internal feedback mechanisms, from up-to-the-minute operating data to performance reviews, keep everyone focused on critical activities and goals. In the nonprofit world, missions, not markets, are the primary magnets attracting essential resources, from donors inspired by organizations’ audacious goals; from board members, who not only volunteer their time and expertise but also often serve as major funders; and from employees, who accept modest paychecks to do work they care passionately about. (Bradach, 2005) There are many opportunities for performance improvement in the Non-profit field and there are many organizations that have successfully used performance measurement methods. This paper looks at some areas in which improvement has often been recognized and sought in recent years in order to better serving external stakeholders’ needs, improving organizational effectiveness and using resources efficiently, improving project management, and increasing productivity through people. Modern performance improvements efforts often raise the bar in these areas, and managers are increasingly expected to be familiar with the strategies and standards that they involve. These areas offer important opportunities for increasing performance and productivity. When it comes to performance management in nonprofit, the first issue that comes to play is how to define performance. When dealing with a segment whose products are not tangible, how can one define the effectiveness of that kind of work? At the same time, the expectations being placed on these organizations to show results by their staff members, their boards, and public and private donors are rising. Nonprofit leaders are put in a difficult position where they need to demonstrate accountability and quantify the goals they want to achieve. For that reason, most of them have resorted to a set of commonly used performance measures to ensure they are being much more explicit about the results they intend to deliver and the strategies they’ll apply to achieve them. This paper will discuss some of the performance measures used in the non-profit sector. Performance Measurement Performance measurement is the activity of documenting the activities and accomplishments of programs. (Thomas J. Tierney and Nan Stone, 2005). The performance of a nonprofit can be measured by quantifying outcomes and outputs that have been achieved through the services they deliver. For example, by showing how well students in a certain school district are doing with standard testing scores, reduction in communicable disease rates and how many inmates were connected with housing and jobs after discharge. It is about measuring what programs are really achieving and letting people know how resources are being translated into results. Performance measurement systems provide considerable detail about programs. It can be argued that performance measurement by itself does not constitute performance improvement; it is an information-gathering strategy. However, the purposes to which this information is put are clearly associated with improving performance (Berry, 2003). Coming from the point of view that performance is in the eye of the beholder and again revisiting the issue that nonprofits deal with issues that may not be tangible and are hard to quantify, the first question one can ask is who is watching non-profits to make sure they are doing a good job? Moreover, what qualifies as a good job for an organization such as AIDS Action? A cure for AIDS has not been found yet; does it mean that organization failed? Understanding what performance for nonprofits is may not be as clear cut and straight forward as it is for for-profits. After all, we are not looking at how many pairs of shoes have been sold or how many new branches of a bank have been closed. We are looking at quality of life indicators and those are much harder to measure. The most fundamental decision a nonprofit can make is to define the results it must deliver in order to be successful. That process entails translating the organization’s mission into goals that are simultaneously compelling enough to attract ongoing support from stakeholders and specific enough to inform resource allocations. (Thomas J. Tierney and Nan Stone, 2005) Most traditional management accounting systems are based on financial results and their practical relevance for performance management in for profit organizations is obvious. However, the concept of profit as defined as a way to measure results is not valid for nonprofit organizations. Clearly, this does not exclude that nonprofit organizations generate profits in the sense that they generate a cash surplus. For example, a hospital or a theater may calculate the surplus of specific â€Å"products† (a specific operation or a play at the theater) or the surplus during a particular period. (Speckbacher, 2003). However, the main difference is that even though these non-profits had a surplus, their focus is still their mission. They didn’t make decisions based on how they could make more money; they made decisions based on what was better for their programs. The fundamental difference between profitable and non-profit organizations when it comes to financial decision making is that for the latter the mission is still the focus. The past several decades have seen unprecedented growth in the scope and complexity of relationships between government and nonprofit organizations. These relationships have been more fruitful than many critics had feared and more problematic than many advocates had hoped. In the recent years, governments have increasingly relied on non-profits to address issues on a community-level. Non-profits deal with a wide array of issues and for each of these topics; these particular non-profits are experts on that subject. The government has acknowledged that expertise and also the fact that those organizations are usually community-based and more in tune with the particular needs of those communities or interest groups. As government’s dependence on nonprofits for public services, usually through contracts and grants, has increased, government officials have steadily increased their accountability demands for nonprofits, especially through greater regulation and performance-based contracting (Behn, 2001). Expectations for information and greater transparency in programmatic and financial operations are also on the rise at both the state and federal levels. In addition, many leading associations representing nonprofit organizations have called for greater levels of self-regulation, including better governance procedures (Maryland Association of Nonprofits, 2009; Panel on the Nonprofit Sector, 2007). A very common concept that derived from this relationship between government and nonprofits is performance based contracting. This paper will review that concept and outline a few additional approaches Non-Profits can use to measure performance. Performance Contracting Performance Contracting became very popular in the mid-90s with the â€Å"reinventing government† movement. New public management (NPM) practices generated a spike in the interest level from the government in doing business with non-profits. And due to this increased interest, all the ideas and concepts that concerned improving the performance of public services transcended to the non-profit arena. Moreover, this movement and the related NPM encouraged policy makers to adopt more market-based strategies for addressing public problems, such as contracting with private nonprofit and for-profit agencies (Lynn, 1998). In addition, the welfare reform legislation of 1996 created the Transitional Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, replacing the long-standing Aid to Dependent Families and Children (AFDC) program (Berman, 2005). A central component of the new TANF program was performance-based contracts to encourage service providers to place individuals in permanent employment quickly (Berman, 2005). These contracts were also part of a broader strategy embodied by TANF to reduce the role of cash assistance in helping low-income individuals; social services delivered extensively by nonprofit and for-profit agencies through performance contracts were designed to help individuals who might have previously relied on cash assistance to obtain employment and/or learn new skills to prepare themselves for the labor market (Berman, 2005). Non-profit organizations greatly benefited from these new trends in New Public Management which allowed them to conquer a bigger space in the public arena, as they had increased visibility and more access to resources. Under the core principles of that movement, communities had to be empowered to address their own problems and the federal government trusted non-profits to implement high-level projects, as pointed out before. Consequently, governments become increasingly dependent on such organizations to tackle some of the more critical issues in society. And due to the fact these issues, such as welfare, violence prevention and land preservation are of high interest to the government officials’ constituents; accountability came in to play. These performance-based contracts are being executed with tax dollars and the government officials need to be accountable to their voters on how these resources are being allocated and what results those programs are bringing. What it comes down to is that Non-Profits are in charge of executing what elected officials promise their constituents. Therefore, the need to enter contracts with a clear expectation of how the budget will support programs and goals and how those monies will translate into improvements to that community or segment. Non-Profits greatly benefit from this relationship with government. From both the point of view of business development, since their contract revenue has significantly increased with the grants and contracts received from the federal government. And from the point of view of implementing performance management activities, since this new way of conducting business paved the way for the introduction of valuable concepts related to performance management in non-profits. In Summary, new public management brought a new set of ideas and principles that were embraced by nonprofits and changed some of their paradigm with regards to their own definition of success and they relationship with their mission. Performance started to be evaluated by directly connecting program budget to goals and outcomes to understand the impact of those contracts had on addressing the issues at hand. Over time, performance contracting spread to a wide variety of service fields in the United States and elsewhere. New York City, for instance, has restructured hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts with social and health agencies as performance contracts. Some state governments have â€Å"privatized† at least some of their child welfare services by shifting public services provided by state or county staff to performance-based contracts with nonprofits, with the goal of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of child welfare services (Courtney, 2000). The same has been done by the Health Resource Service Administration (HRSA) and Substance Abuse Mental Health Administration (SMAHSA), in the past five years when they increased substantially the funding available to communities to address major public health epidemics, such as HIV and Heroine/Crack use, that the government alone wouldn’t be able to tackle. Due to the magnitude of these contracts and the threat these issues pose to society, the issue of performance has been addressed tirelessly and governments pressured nonprofits to come up with a set of measures to account for their performance and their ability to fulfill the terms of those contracts. The benefits and disadvantages of performance contracts have been extensively discussed in recent years. Within the performance management strategy movement, other strategies have been employed that strive to be more nonprofit-centric. These strategies include benchmarking, logic models, balanced scorecards, and social return on investment (SROI). All of these strategies have been used to measure performance in non-profit organizations in recent years and can illustrate examples of how organizations are applying management concepts to their operations. (Heinrich and Marschke, 2008). The Performance management contracts introduced nonprofits to these concepts and in result they became better able to manage their own performance as a whole, and not only when it relates to these contracts. (Heinrich and Marschke, 2008). All these concepts will be discussed in this paper. Benchmarking Benchmarking involves identifying excellence and using it as a standard by which to measure performance. Benchmarking entails an effort to compare a specific nonprofit organization (or set of agencies) with other comparable organizations. It has its roots in the for-profit management world where companies are often compared on various measures, including profitability. The attraction of benchmarking is that it offers nonprofits a mechanism for them to assay their organizations, including administrative costs, the efficiency of their fund-raising operations, and number of members in comparison with other organizations with similar missions and profiles. Outcome evaluation is also very complicated, so benchmarking offers a strategy for program improvement and greater accountability, even in the absence of specific outcome data that are often lacking for many nonprofit programs (Kara D. Rutowski, Jeffery K. Guiler and Kurt E. Schimmel, 2007). Looking again at the issue that the product delivered by nonprofits may not be so easily measured and quantifiable as services and products in the for-profit industry, it is harder for nonprofits to assess their own performance looking at standard reports. For instance, let’s look at an HIV Testing Program whose goals are to promote HIV testing and raise awareness of risk factors. Hypothetically, let’s consider that such program tested 1000 people during a given year and only 4 were positive. How will they measure their performance based on those numbers? That can be quite difficult to determine if a 4% seropositivity rate is an indicator for success or failure. However, using the benchmarking approach this program can compare itself to how it did as it relates to other programs serving similar populations and obtaining similar results. According to HIVqual (HIVqual.org), an organization that specializes in providing benchmarking for different clinical indicators for HIV treatment, despite seeming low that 4% rate is well above the national average. The National average according to the HIVQual Project is about 1%. In this case an apparent low performance indicator, 4%, turned out to be an excellent outcome. Without access to that kind of information that program manager would not know how well he was doing and whether or not his program was being successful. Undeniably benchmarking tends to be most helpful with easy to obtain information, such as number of administrators, membership levels, and the amount of donations. However, the health care industry utilizes it a little more comprehensively, especially when looking at health outcomes of a particular community and health disparities data. The field of Public Health has also embraced that strategy for community-wide data evaluation, such as rates of violence and STD transmission, and used it to compare how effectively neighborhoods have addressed such problems. Also, the Boston Public Health Commission compares individual program data with city-wide data to determine how well a program is performing in comparison to others. Benchmarking is an attainable way to measure performance, as non-profits are comparing their outcomes to national and local averages they can have a clear idea of where they rank and where they need to improve. However, that approach can only be utilized if such data exists. As mentioned before, in the health care industry this method is widely used and there are plenty of data available on clinical outcomes. Different types of benchmarking may be undertaken, depending upon what the organization hopes to achieve (Rutowski, Guiler & Schimmel, 2007). Industry benchmarking, or functional benchmarking, is the measurement of several aspects of the company’s operations and a comparison of these across an industry. Competitive benchmarking is used to compare an organization with its competitors. Process or generic benchmarking is used to compare similar procedures at different companies. There has been relatively little research exploring benchmarking in nonprofit organizations outside of the healthcare industry (Rutowski, Guiler & Schimmel, 2007). Hopefully, nonprofits will follow the trend set by healthcare and employ this strategy as a performance measurement technique more efficiently in the upcoming years. Balanced Scorecards Another performance management strategy commonly utilized by nonprofits is the balanced scorecard developed by Robert Kaplan in 2002. The balanced scorecard is intended to counter the criticism from within the nonprofit sector that the application of certain types of performance management strategies borrowed from the for-profit sector do not sufficiently account for the social mission and values of many nonprofits (Berman, 2005). Kaplan describes the innovation of the balanced scorecard as follows: â€Å"The balanced scorecard retains traditional financial measures. But financial measures tell the story of past events, an adequate story for industrial age companies for which investments in long-term capabilities and customer relationships were not critical for success. These financial measures are inadequate, however, for guiding and evaluating the journey that information age companies must make to create future value through investment in customers, suppliers, employees, processes, technology, and innovation.† (Kaplan, 2002) The balanced scorecard is a strategic-planning tool that seeks to integrate financial, programmatic, operational, and mission-related objectives, so a nonprofit agency can strive to create a more efficient and effective organization while at the same time remaining faithful to its mission. (Berman, 2005). The balanced scorecard does involve a significant investment by a nonprofit organization because of its substantial data requirements and the need for extensive consultation among the different stakeholders of a nonprofit, including the board, staff, clients, community members, and funders. As a result, the balanced scorecard tends to be embraced by larger nonprofit and public organizations eager to drive substantial change in their operations. The balanced scorecard is also particularly worthwhile for organizations that seek to rethink or improve their relationship with their users, such as parents in a family-service agency or patients in the case of a hospital. In this sense, the balanced scorecard reflects the enhanced primacy placed on responsiveness to customers in all types of organizations (Berman, 2005). However, despite its holistic approach to organizational strategy, the balanced scorecard tends to focus on measurable indicators of costs and program utilization and thus is not widely used to consider the citizenship and community-building role of nonprofits although it potentially could be used to address these issues. (Berman, 2005) Also, the measurement of program impact through the balanced scorecard approach remains challenging given the difficulty of obtaining relevant outcome data because of the expense and the long-term effects of many nonprofit programs. (Berman, 2005) Balance score cards are a viable alternative for nonprofit organizations. In this system, one takes a look at various elements affecting performance and not a single isolated measure. Due to the fact that non-profits are very in tune with their mission, and are constantly focusing on trying to allocate their limited resources efficiently in order to achieve their goals, this system works very effectively as it provides these organizations with this bigger-picture view they much need. The balanced scorecard system has a multiple focus on several perspectives, including financial performance, and that will give nonprofits the tools they need to make decisions regarding where moneys will be invested in comparison with performance analysis of different programs. For a nonprofit organization, profit is not a determining goal of strategy; but no margin, no mission. Therefore, they need to be able to put their money where they can see results. The other issue to be considered with this approach is stakeholder involvement. In this case, the balanced scorecard provides a comprehensive framework that will help association directors and managers better define strategies, track performance, and provide data to show their various stakeholder groups how well they are performing in terms of mission value and outcomes. It helps as far as celebrating their successes and selling their message to others. Well-rounded and well-presented results will make those organizations look more appealing and that could potentially attract endowments, additional contracts and positive publicity. Logic Models Another performance management approach that is widely used by nonprofits is a logic model. As a matter of fact, many public and private funders now require nonprofit grant and contract applicants to develop a logic model as part of their grant application. Logic Models have become a standard performance measure for contracts due to the fact that they focus on process and outcomes. Logic models force nonprofits to map the entire â€Å"production process† for their programs, from the initial inputs such as staff and resources to the long term outcomes. For funders, logic models offer an opportunity to hold nonprofits accountable for the implementation of their programs. Thus, funders could sanction a nonprofit that fell short of its intended service deliver model after a contract or grant was awarded (Berman, 2005). For Nonprofits, logic models allow them to select which outcomes they want to achieve, so they can focus their efforts on achieving these particular goals. These goals are not chosen randomly, this consists of a â€Å"logic† process, from a cause-consequence frame of reference; therefore, these goals are very achievable and these organizations are very likely to succeed. Logic models have certainly caught the attention of nonprofits nationwide. Arguably their greatest value is on the â€Å"front-end† of service implementation. Ideally, the process of creating a logic model should engage a broad spectrum of a nonprofit agency’s staff and volunteers in thinking about impact and outcomes (Berman, 2005). This level of involvement helps them refine their strategies and win the support of agency stakeholders. By having everyone on board, these agencies will be more likely to achieve program goals. Logic models as a strategy to drive better outcomes and help funders select the most effective agencies for funding remains quite problematic. Furthermore, logic models tend to focus on programmatic performance and generally do not engage the agency in thinking about governance or citizen–agency relationships. (Berman, 2005) SROI – Social Return on Investment Another performance strategy designed for nonprofits that also take into account their difficulties in evaluating programs and defining success is the Social Return on Investment (SROI). This strategy was pioneered by Jed Emerson and colleagues at the Roberts Foundation in San Francisco who envisioned SROI as a vehicle for assessing the social value of nonprofit programs. Too often, nonprofit programs, especially social service programs, are evaluated quite narrowly and thus may not appear to demonstrate significant value for the community (Berman, 2005). Topics, such as quality of life, positive decision making, civic pride and affinity for diversity, for instance, are very hard to measure. One can measure how many people attended a benefit to raise autism awareness, but how can we measure how the lives of those who attended were impacted by their participation? Bearing that challenge in mind, SROI is designed to overcome this problem through a more inclusive approach to thinking about costs and benefits that consider the savings to society of nonprofit services. For example, a person’s employment because of job training and placement by a nonprofit would produce long-term benefits for society that should be considered when evaluating the impact of a nonprofit program (Tuan, 2008). This type of argument may be a hard one to make. There is the counter-argument whether or not current citizens are paying for current services. There is also the counter-argument that tax dollars should be directly benefiting tax payers, and projects such as school renovations may sound more appealing than investing on something that people will see results in the long run. Similar to other performance management initiatives, SROI focuses on programmatic impact rather than governance (Tuan, 2008). SROI is also quite complicated in practice so its adoption within the nonprofit sector has been quite limited, although the conceptual framework employed in SROI has encouraged funders and nonprofits to approach social impact more inclusively and to be rigorous and data-driven in thinking about costs and benefits. SROI has also spawned other efforts to think broadly about the social value of nonprofits (Tuan, 2008). In times where government and the country in general faces a dreadful budget crises making decisions from where to cut from such an abstract idea may be not the best way to measure performance as it relates to results from financial investments. This approach is probably the one that makes more sense from a long-term perspective. However, many non-profits can not afford that kind of thinking and need to have more tangible data to account for their performance. The idea of social impact can and should be used for lobbying and for getting buy-in from constituents; however, resting on that strategy to justify resource allocation and to measure results may be a risky decision to make. Conclusion: Overall, the varied performance management strategies commonly used by nonprofit organizations tend to minimize attention to internal management and governance as well as the external relations in favor of a focus on impact and the relevant costs and benefits (Berman, 2005). As previously discussed, the biggest issue faced by non-profits is the fact that their product may not be as easily defined as the services and goods are in the for profit world. The issue of the market inclination and how people are responding to their services is also another important one to be kept in mind. Non-profits are not dictated by their consumers’ behaviors, but by the environment as a whole. The definition of success in the nonprofit world is very complex and can be looked at from different angles as explained through the strategies above. Non-profits have increasingly tried to incorporate performance management strategies to its practices. And although the management of these organizations may be a little more in tune with those principles, we can not forget that those concepts may not be as evident to their staff. For many of the direct line staff, it is very hard to evidence the impact of performance management on management decisions and service improvements. Managers may be aware of the value of performance measurement in influencing decisions and improving services, but sometimes the communication with staff tend to be broad and disappointingly vague. As non-profits utilize these concepts to run their operations, they need to understand that front line staff needs to be equally aware of how the organization is performing and how that affects them. There is a presumed linkage to budget decisions, although promised in theory, is often difficult to detect in practice. Many non-profits have been good about disseminating those ideas among their managers, but that may not have been equally successful in getting their staff on board. In conclusion, performance management in nonprofit is a very broad topic that can be viewed from many different perspectives. The need to become more accountable to results has forced many of these organizations to adopt performance management systems. There are a few commonly used systems as explained in this paper, they each have their strengths and their weakness and it is up to each nonprofit manager to decide which one suits them best. This is a very new field, however, that has emerged with New Public Management and become more prominent in the 90s. There is a lot of room for new theories and approaches to be developed, and I am sure in the near future we will be hearing more innovative concepts coming into play. Regardless from which angle you look at predominance for nonprofit organizations, there will always be the issue of hard-to-define products and goals. And there will always be the cultural issues within those organizations where staff may not be as in tune as managers are of the needs to define success and measure performance. People join non-profits because they have affinity with their missions and the idea that they have to achieve goals and quotas may not be as tangible to them as their desire to help others. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Bradach, Jeffrey (2005). Non-Profit Effectiveness. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 2. L., Thomas, J. Tierney, and Nan Stone (2006). â€Å"Delivering on the promise of nonprofits.† Harvard Business Review. 3. Lencioni, Pat. â€Å"Nonprofits vs. For-Profits: Mission and Performance.† Business Week Online 6 May 2009. General Reference Center Gold. Web. 1 May 2010. 4. Berry, J.M. (2003). A voice for nonprofits. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 5. Behn, R.D. (2001): Rethinking democratic accountability. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 6. Behn, R.D., & Kant, P.A. (1999). Strategies for avoiding the pitfalls of performance contracting. Public Productivity & Management Review, 22, 470-489 7. Blalock, A.B., & Barnow, B.S. (2004). Is the new obsession with performance management masking the truth about social programs? In D. W. Forsythe (Ed.), Quicker, better, cheaper? Managing performance in American government (pp. 485-519). Albany, NY: Rockefeller Institute Press. 8. Bovaird, T., & Downe, J. (2009). Innovation in public engagement and co-production of services. Meta-evaluation of the local government modernization agenda-White policy paper. 9. Emerson, J., Wachowicz, J., & Chun, S. (2000). Social return on investment: Exploring aspects of value creation in the nonprofit sector. San Francisco: The Roberts Foundation. Retrieved December 6, 2009 10. Lynn, L.E., Jr. (1998). The new public management: How to transform a theme into a legacy. Public Administration Review, 58, 231-237. 11. Lyons, M. (in press). Australia: A continuing love affair with the new public management. In S. Phillips & S. R. Smith (Eds.), Governance and regulation in the third sector. London: Routledge. 12. Marris, P., & Rein, M. (1982). D ilemmas of social reform: Poverty and community action in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 13. Marshall, T.H. (1964). Class, citizenship, and social development: Essays. New York: Doubleday. 14. Berman, Evan M. Productivity in Public and Nonprofit Organizations. Armonk, NY, USA: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2005. p 15. 15. Tuan, M.T. (2008). Measuring and/or estimating social value creation: Insights into eight integrated cost approaches. Seattle, WA: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Retrieved December 11, 2009. 16. Speckbacher, Gerhard. The Economics of Performance Management in Nonprofit Organizations. Nonprofit Management & Leadership; Spring2003, Vol. 13 Issue 3, p267, 15p 17. Ammons, David N., and William C. Rivenbark. â€Å"Factors influencing the use of performance data to improve municipal services: Evidence from the North Carolina benchmarking project.† Public Administration Review 68.2 (2008): 304+. General Reference Center Gold. Web. 3 May 2010 18. Kara D. Rutowski, Jeffery K. Guiler and Kurt E. Schimmel. Benchmarking organizational commitment across nonprofit human services organizations in Pennsylvania. School of Business, Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, 2007. 19. Courtney, M.E. (2000). Managed care and child welfare services: What are the issues? Children and Youth Services Review, 22(2), 87-91. 20. Kaplan, R.S. (2002). The balanced scorecard and nonprofit organizations. Boston: Harvard Business School.

Culture-History, Social Evolution, and Archaeology

Culture-History, Social Evolution, and Archaeology The culture-historical method (sometimes called the  cultural-historical method or culture-historical approach or theory) was a way of conducting anthropological and archaeological research that was prevalent among western scholars between about 1910 and 1960. The underlying premise of the culture-historical approach was that the main reason to do archaeology or anthropology at all was to build timelines of major occurrences and cultural changes in the past for groups that did not have written records. The culture-historical method was developed out of the theories of historians and anthropologists, to some degree to help archaeologists organize and comprehend the vast amount of archaeological data that had been and was still being collected in the 19th and early 20th centuries by antiquarians. As an aside, that hasnt changed, in fact, with the availability of power computing and scientific advances such as archaeo-chemistry (DNA, stable isotopes, plant residues), the amount of archaeological data has mushroomed. Its hugeness and complexity today still drives the development of archaeological theory to grapple with it. Among their writings redefining archaeology in the 1950s, American archaeologists Phillip Phillips and Gordon R. Willey (1953) provided a good metaphor for us to understand the faulty mindset of archaeology in the first half of the 20th century. They said that the culture-historical archaeologists were of the opinion that the past was rather like an enormous jigsaw puzzle, that there was a pre-existing but unknown universe which could be discerned if you collected enough pieces and fitted them together. Unfortunately, the intervening decades have resoundingly shown us that the archaeological universe is in no way that tidy. Kulturkreis and Social Evolution The culture-historical approach is based on the Kulturkreis movement, an idea developed in Germany and Austria in the late 1800s. Kulturkreis is sometimes spelled Kulturkreise and transliterated as culture circle, but means in English something along the lines of cultural complex. That school of thought was generated primarily by German historians and ethnographers  Fritz Graebner and Bernhard Ankermann. In particular, Graebner had been a medieval historian as a student, and as an ethnographer, he thought it should be possible to build historical sequences like those available for medievalists for regions that did not have written sources. To be able to build cultural histories of regions for people with little or no written records, scholars tapped into the notion of unilinear social evolution, based in part on the ideas of American anthropologists Lewis Henry Morgan and Edward Tyler, and German social philosopher Karl Marx. The idea (long ago debunked) was that cultures progressed along a series of more or less fixed steps: savagery, barbarism, and civilization. If you studied a particular region appropriately, the theory went, you could track how the people of that region had developed (or not) through those three stages, and thus classify ancient and modern societies by where they were in the process of becoming civilized. Invention, Diffusion, Migration Three primary processes were seen as the drivers of social evolution: invention, transforming a new idea into innovations; diffusion, the process of transmitting those inventions from culture to culture; and migration, the actual movement of people from one region to another. Ideas (such as agriculture or metallurgy) might have been invented in one area and moved into adjacent areas through diffusion (perhaps along trade networks) or by migration. At the end of the 19th century, there was a wild assertion of what is now considered hyper-diffusion, that all of the innovative ideas of antiquity (farming, metallurgy, building monumental architecture) arose in Egypt and spread outward, a theory thoroughly debunked by the early 1900s. Kulturkreis never argued that all things came from Egypt, but the researchers did believe there was a limited number of centers responsible for the origin of ideas which drove the social evolutionary progress. That too has been proven false. Boas and Childe The archaeologists at the heart of the adoption of the culture-historical approach in archaeology were Franz Boas and Vere Gordon Childe. Boas argued that you could get at the culture-history of a pre-literate society by using detailed comparisons of such things as artifact assemblages, settlement patterns, and art styles. Comparing those things would allow archaeologists to identify similarities and differences and to develop the cultural histories of major and minor regions of interest at the time. Childe took the comparative method to its ultimate limits, modeling the process of the inventions of agriculture and metal-working from eastern Asia and their diffusion throughout the Near East and eventually Europe. His astoundingly broad-sweeping research led later scholars to go beyond the culture-historical approaches, a step Childe did not live to see. Archaeology and Nationalism: Why We Moved On The culture-historical approach did produce a framework, a starting point on which future generations of archaeologists could build, and in many cases, deconstruct and rebuild. But, the culture-historical approach has many limitations. We now recognize that evolution of any kind is never linear, but rather bushy, with many different steps forward and backward, failures and successes that are part and parcel of all human society. And frankly, the height of civilization identified by researchers in the late 19th century is by todays standards shockingly moronic: civilization was that which is experienced by white, European, wealthy, educated males. But more painful than that, the culture-historical approach feeds directly into nationalism and racism. By developing linear regional histories, tying them to modern ethnic groups, and classifying the groups on the basis of how far along the linear social evolutionary scale they had reached, archaeological research fed the beast of Hitlers master race and justified the imperialism and forcible colonization by Europe of the rest of the world. Any society that hadnt reached the pinnacle of civilization was by definition savage or barbaric, a jaw-droppingly idiotic idea. We know better now. Sources Eiseley LC. 1940. Review of The Culture Historical Method of Ethnology, by Wilhelm Schmidt, Clyde Kluchhohn and S. A. Sieber. American Sociological Review 5(2):282-284.Heine-Geldern R. 1964. One Hundred Years of Ethnological Theory in the German-Speaking Countries: Some Milestones. Current Anthropology 5(5):407-418.Kohl PL. 1998. Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Constructions of Nations and the Reconstructions of the Remote past. Annual Review of Anthropology 27:223-246.Michaels GH. 1996. Culture historical theory. In: Fagan BM, editor. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. New York: Oxford University Press. p 162.Phillips P, and Willey GR. 1953. Method and Theory in American Archeology: An Operational Basis for Culture-Historical Integration. American Anthropologist 55(5):615-633.Trigger BG. 1984. Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist. Man 19(3):355-370.Willey GR, and Phillips P. 1955. Method and theory in American archaeology II: Historical-Developmenta l interpretation. American Anthropologist 57:722-819.

Web Design Certifications - Beginner Through Advanced

Web Design Certifications - Beginner Through Advanced So you have become quite the master of web design. Your pages look fabulous and you are pretty sure this is what you want to do for a living. If you are also looking for a way to make your skills stand out in the pile of resumes on the desk of a future employer, then you might want to consider a webmaster certification. There are quite a few web design certifications out there that will test your ability to design, code, and implement web pages and sites. Although many are oriented towards the beginner, there are also a few very advanced certifications that will elevate you to the level of Web Master. Beginner Web Design Certifications Beginner web design certifications focus on page layout, use of graphics, HTML, use of browsers and style sheets. These will start you on the path to more advanced certifications. CIW Associate:Â  The CIW Associate certification only requires one exam. Its referred to as the Foundations exam and must be passed before going on to any other CIW track. The exam covers internet, page authoring, and networking basics. Earning the CIW Associate also qualifies you for the CWP Associate CertificationCWD (Certified Web Designer):Â  The CWD certification is offered by the Association of Web Professionals (AWP). You will need basic internet and design knowledge to pass the single exam. The exam is given online by Jupiter Systems, who are the current sponsors of the AWP. A Web Manager and Technician Certifications are also offered by the AWP. These are more intermediate certs and focus less on design.CAW (Certified Associate Webmaster): The CAW certification is offered by WOW and covers most of the basics with a focus in markup and scripting. One exam is required, costs $125 and is available through VUE.HTML Developer Certificate from W3C:Â  The World Wide Web Consorti um (WC3) is the group that sets the standards for the internet. They offer a basic, 70 question exam that results in a certificate and tests you on HTML, XHTML, and CSS. All the materials needed to study are free on the site so, considering the source and the cost, this is a great choice for a certification.​ BCIP (Brainbench Certified Internet Professional):Â  Brainbench offers several good certification preparation exams. In addition, you can apply several of the skills exams to get the BCIP certification. It requires 4 exams in total and a couple of them are free. Most run from $20 to $50, making this a very affordable certification and an excellent way to test your skills in preparation for more advanced certs. Intermediate Web Design Certifications Expect to have knowledge of coding and scripting along with some solid job experience to jump to the intermediate level of certification. AWP (Associate Webmaster Professional): Sponsored by WebYoda, the AWP requires one exam. Exam topics cover Internet Fundamentals, basic and advanced HTML XHTML knowledge, and expertise with CSS.Coldfusion MX Developer Certification: If you have experience with programming languages and one year of working with Coldfusion, you are eligible for this exam. It consists of 66 questions. A score of 80 percent or above will earn you an Advanced Developer Certification.DreamWeaver MX Certification:Â  Proficiency in Dreamweaver plus experience with coding, graphics, and website management will help you with this exam. The exam is 65 questions and you must score 70 percent or better to pass.Flash Certification: Macromedia offers two tracks for the Flash certification: Flash MX Designer and Flash MX Developer. Each requires one 65 question exam. The Designer exam requires knowledge of Flash motion design, optimization, and publishing. The Developer exam requires knowledge of relational databa se design along with one to two years of experience in software development web design. MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist): This certification was created for anyone developing on .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications. You must pass two exams, one focusing on the .NET Framework 2.0 foundational skills and another focusing on Web-based client development. From here you can take one additional exam to obtain the MCPD: Web Developer certification. Advanced Web Design Certifications Advanced certifications will require that you expand your horizons well beyond proficiency in internet and design concepts. Depending on the cert you choose, you will now need to master e-business, marketing, security, management, and more advanced scripting skills. CIW Master:Â  There are several tracks for CIW Master candidates to choose from, including Administrator, Developer, Web Site Manager, and Security Analyst. Each track requires multiple exams on a variety of subjects.CWP:Â  The CWP certification requires that you hold the AWP certification and take one exam. Although training offered by WebYoda (the sponsor of the CWP) is recommended, it is not required. The exam covers web design graphics, e-business concepts, intermediate Java skills, and e-marketing concepts.Global Knowledge Webmaster:Â  This certification is achieved through a serious of lecture and lab classes covering Java (or Perl), advanced web design, databases, and XML development. Want a way to validate your awesome web design skills? Get Certified. So you have become quite the master of web design. Your pages look fabulous and you are pretty sure this is what you want to do for a living. If you are also looking for a way to make your skills stand out in the pile of resumes on the desk of a future employer, then you might want to consider a webmaster certification. There are quite a few web design certifications out there that will test your ability to design, code, and implement web pages and sites. Although many are oriented towards the beginner, there are also a few very advanced certifications that will elevate you to the level of Web Master.

My previous personal statement needs to be rewritten a bit and there Essay

My previous personal statement needs to be rewritten a bit and there are some things that should be added to it - Essay Example I am particularly interested in integrating my knowledge of the Russian-speaking world with my studies, as Russia is one of the worlds most exciting emerging markets. I am enthusiastic about expanding my knowledge in the current affairs, more so in the context of business and economy. In several occasions I try my level best to secure some little time off my academics and just read some periodic publications such as The Economist. Steve Jobs, the Apple Inc. co-founder, is one person that has greatly shaped my business perspective and attitude towards life. After reading his story in one of the Economist publications, I have come to develop an interest of reading biographies, autobiographies, and stories about remarkable innovators and business leaders of our time. The time I have spent reading through these publication has been beneficial as it has served to complement the theoretical knowledge acquired in class. For instance, I was fascinated when a story about the current dispute involving Tesco’s and Sainsbury over price comparison promotions. This dispute helped me appreciate the role of ethics in business operations. Other activities that I enjoy doing are mingling with people and just get to understand their perspective about various issues in life. I love sports such as football and skiing. Engaging in these activities have not only taught me the beauty of hard work, perseverance, and practice, but have also taught me how to work within a team as well as lead a team. Knowledge and experience are two things I most treasure in career advancement. It is because of this reason that I am currently furthering my studies to at least bolster my understanding of various issues in business. Previously, I have worked at Technoservice, Moscow, alongside strategists who at that time were investigating ideas on how to introduce off patent car

Native Americans' music Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Native Americans' music - Essay Example The song text in Native American music is inclusive of both public and secret pieces. The secret song pieces have been used for sacred purposes and ceremonies alone and have been claimed to be both ancient and unchanging. There are public sacred songs and ritual speeches which are looked upon as being musical because of the way in which they use rhythm and melody, and the ritual speeches are often in direct description of the events of a ceremony and the reasons for and the ramifications of a certain ritual or a celebration. The native music of Washington state also includes the legacy of Native American Flute Music that held high significance in the long and rich tradition of their music. It has achieves some measure of fame for its distinctive sound and the music as such was used in assistance of courtship, healing, meditation, and spiritual rituals. The Native American flute is the only flute in the world constructed with two air chambers - there is a wall inside the flute between the top (slow) air chamber and the bottom chamber which has the whistle and finger holes. The top chamber also serves as a secondary resonator, which gives the flute its distinctive sound. There is a hole at the bottom of the "slow" air chamber and a (generally) square hole at the top of the playing chamber. A block (or "bird") with a spacer is tied on top of the flute to form a thin, flat airstream for the whistle hole (or "window"). Some more modern flutes use an undercut either in the block or the flute to eliminate the need for a spacer.