Finding star employees with bright ideas

Companies are using collaboration tools to tap the brains of experts in cubicles all over the world.

Computer world - Finding the right employees to meet key challenges has long been a conundrum for corporate executives and project managers. In a big corporation, the expertise needed to fix a stumbling marketing program or jump-start a product development project could be hidden anywhere within a workforce whose ranks could number more than 100,000.

Some multinational companies, like The Procter & Gamble Co. and Cisco Systems Inc., are giving managers a variety of options -- from high-definition videoconferencing to instant messaging and wikis -- to help them find people with the skills they need, wherever those people may be.

In fact, IT managers at P&G and Cisco have been sharing information for about seven years to assist each other in separate efforts to implement collaboration tools from a variety of vendors, including Cisco.

The companies quickly met their initial goals of cutting travel costs and easing the corresponding wear and tear on their workers, according to managers. But they also got an unexpected bonus by gaining the ability to more easily find ideas and expertise previously hidden in cubicles located deep within office buildings around the world.

"We connect in clicks, with video anywhere and work everywhere, so work is not a place but something you do," said Laurie Heltsley, director of global business services at Cincinnati-based P&G. "The ultimate [intellectual property] we have is [our] people."

Since P&G has 138,000 employees in 80 countries, collaboration tools have become a key business driver for the $80 billion consumer products giant. "It is an absolute necessity to be able to collaborate every day. We have a mandate to brainstorm, to listen, to innovate where competition is fierce," Heltsley said.

P&G discovered early on in the collaboration project that its research and development teams could tap expertise found throughout the corporation, she said.

The company wouldn't disclose the exact cost savings it has realized by using collaboration tools, but Heltsley estimated that P&G has saved about $4 for every $1 invested in 70 high-end telepresence systems it started installing worldwide two years ago. The high-definition systems are used four times as often as earlier videoconferencing products were.

The company is now looking to expand its collaboration capabilities, she said. Among other things, P&G hopes to try out Cisco's new Enterprise Collaboration Platform, which was unveiled this month and is slated to enter a beta-test period before the end of the year, she added.

Craig Mathias, an analyst at Far point Group, said the interest expressed by large companies like P&G in expanding their use of collaboration tools helps prove the value of the concept.

"What really defines us as humans is communication and our ability to work together in groups," said Mathias, who has followed collaboration tools since the early 1990s, when they were called groupware. "Collaboration is all about group productivity anytime and anywhere, and of course made better with mobile devices. The whole idea behind collaboration tools is practically primal."

At Cisco, CEO John Chambers uses a video blog to communicate with employees. Thousands of videos are also posted on an internal channel called "C Vision" that's used to share insights and information with workers, said Rick Hutley, vice president of the company's Internet business solutions group.

He said the tools offer Cisco "a huge opportunity to leverage skills and expertise" throughout the company. "We have virtual experts because we don't have enough experts to be in enough places enough of the time," he added.

Hutley estimated Cisco's total savings from using collaboration tools during fiscal 2008 at $691 million but added that "the [dollar] savings is minor" compared to the value of tapping into internal expertise.

My love affair with Batman: Arkham Asylum (a review/love letter)

Let me begin by saying I have not completed this game yet, but I am not calling this an official review either so please hang on to your "how can you write a review before you beat the game" comments. It is not often that I come across a game that has impact on me personally. More often books or movies can have a lasting impression on me if they are strong enough (The Road by Cormac McCarthy or the first few minutes of Saving Private Ryan).

For example, I still think about Bioshock all of the time. When I first beat that game (I went on to beat it again shortly after just because), I couldn't stop thinking about it. The characters, the mood, the setting, it was all so amazing. I so thoroughly enjoyed it in fact, I decided to attempt to listen to Atlas Shrugged on CD since that is where they got a lot of the ideas for the game in a roundabout way. It was decent, but after the first 20 some hours of listening I grew weary and haven't finished it yet.

The point of telling you that is to better explain my love for the new Batman: Arkham Asylum video game. I am not a shill for Eidos, I did not receive the game for free like some reviewers understandably did, I went and bought it myself with my semi-hard earned money based on word of mouth. Now some people probably beat this game in a couple of marathon sessions of playing but with two kids and a wife that likes video games as much as eating liver it makes it hard for me to do so, and for once I am glad to say that I have not had that luxury. I don't want this game to end, ever.

It has single handedly renewed my interest in the Dark Knight. I have been hunting for action figures for my boy (and me), I have been buying comic books again and reading graphic novels and I finally got around to watching the latest Batman movie all of the way through. Yes, this game is so masterfully done it has sparked up interests I haven't had in 15 years. So far, a majority of the better known Batman baddies have made an appearance, my favorite of which is the Scarecrow. The parts of the game with him in them are so well done I was literally choked up during one cut scene. The voice acting is Hollywood cinema caliber with Mark Hamill (Luke himself) playing the part of Joker as well as I have heard it done.

The female arch enemies are fun to look at and are about as sexy as you can get for a game rated T, the gameplay is intuitive and the challenges are fun as well. To just cruise through the game quickly is to miss out on a lot. There are hidden items throughout Arkham mostly hidden by the Riddler which add for some fun hunting. Batarangs, Batclaws, etc. Eidos thought of everything.

This isn't only the best comic book based video game I have ever played, this may be one of the best video games I have ever played. Please, even if you wait until it comes down in price, do not miss this game. Give it a chance. And developers, the next time you go to make a game based on a comic book hero, play through Batman: Arkham Asylum first.

Video camera hidden in tire-shaped clock

"The Best Wish For My Good Friend" is to spy on him with the video camera hidden in the "R" of this clock.

- The Real Tire Clock comes with Remote Spy Camcorder.

- Press once to record, easy to control. Plug it to the PC as a flash drive via USB Cable.

- Come with Stand as a Desktop Clock

- AA battery x 1 piece for a Tire Clock

- Tire Clock and Spy Camcorder are working independently

- Diameter: 17.5 cm, Depth: 4.5 cm

- Pinhole Lens

- Resolution: 352 x 288 pixel

- FPS: 12 frame per second

- Recorded file format in AVI

- Color Video and Audio

- Built-in 2GB Memory

- Rechargeable Li-ion battery

The Tire Clock Spy Camcorder with Remote Control $69.00

College News reviews: Raven Squad

An ambitious, but ultimately disastrous experiment in combining the FPS and RTS genre

Mark Fujii


Gamers often complain about how repetitive and uninspired first-person shooters have grown over the years, and it’s not difficult to see why. In a genre that’s arguably been over saturated with cheap imitations of top-tier games like Call of Duty and Half-Life, it’s the rare shooter indeed that dares to break away from the tried and true conventions of the genre and experiment with something new.

Raven Squad: Operation Hidden Dagger, developed by Atomic Motion and published by SouthPeak Interactive, is such a rarity. It strives to combine military first-person shooting with real-time strategy and create an innovative hybrid of the genres that gamers have seldom seen before.

On paper, the premise sounds incredibly promising. When actually executed, however, it quickly becomes clear that Raven Squad is a video game that really should have probably been canceled before the project ever really took off.

In Raven Squad, you play as two teams of mercenaries who crash land in the middle of the Amazon after a mission goes awry. What exactly you’re doing in the Amazon is never really explained, and while there’s some very vague mentioning of one member of the team trying to get to a card game in Vegas, that’s pretty much the extent of the game’s story.

Each team consists of three different members that are equipped with their own individual weapons. The first team, for instance, has a machine gunner, while the other has a guy armed with a sniper rifle.

The idea is to coordinate the two teams together and take advantage of each member’s unique armaments to gain an edge against the Amazonian soldiers. For example, you can lay down suppressing fire with one team while the other chucks in grenades and storms the place guns blazing.

Raven Squad handles most of the gun play through first-person view to give gamers more control of the action, but you can also switch to an overhead view also. Transitioning to the real-time strategy mode allows you scout ahead for enemy patrols or points of interest, and it also enables you to give specific instructions to both squads simultaneously.

Again, in theory, Raven Squad sounds like a promising game, but the laundry list of problems that Raven Squad suffers from is endless. The graphics are underwhelming and bland, the weapons don’t handle with any degree of authenticity, and the enemies are either borderline mentally handicapped or capable of shooting you in the face from a mile away. Your squad’s intelligence is comparable to the densest of rocks, mission objectives are usually vague, and there’s more bugs in Raven Squad than most insect collections.

You can, of course, decide to handle everything in RTS mode to avoid most of these issues. It’s fairly simple to just tell both groups to run around the map and engage one group of enemies after the other, but it’s incredibly boring as a gaming experience. Your team will pretty much dispatch any enemies they come across without you having to order any specific instructions, and if you do end up dying, it’s probably because the game’s path finding routinely sends your soldiers running blindingly into boulders, trees and other impassable barricades.

There’s almost no strategy involved if you choose to play Raven Squad exclusively in RTS mode. Weird as it sounds, you’ll probably enjoy the game more if you grit your teeth and just endure the myriad problems in Raven Squad by playing it as a shooter.

And then there’s the issue of the game’s audio. Most of the voice actors sound like they’re reading their lines from a poorly written script for the first time, and the rest have thick, quasi-stereotypical, ethnic accents that are just as atrocious. You’ll cringe and wince with every line of terrible dialogue in Raven Squad, and truth be told, it’s almost worth buying the game just to experience it. It’s really that awful.

Even if you can somehow endure Raven Squad’s absolutely broken gameplay, chances are you’ll be able to complete the story mode in less than ten hours. The game also has a cooperative mode that allows a fellow gamer to control the second team of mercenaries.

Surprisingly, Raven Squad is actually a little bit more tolerable this way. You can actually devise strategies while collaborating with a fellow human being. While this small bit of redemption hardly vindicates itself for all of Raven Squad’s other glaring flaws, it’s still worth noting if you and a friend happen to be unfortunate enough to pick the game up.

Final Verdict

Raven Squad is ambitious enough to try and experiment with the shooter, and that should be admired. However, with every risk comes the very real possibility of utter failure, and that’s what Raven Squad ultimately ends up being. The game tries to fuse RTS and FPS elements into one game, but it never bothers to get any part of those genres right.

The shooting is horrible, the strategy element of the game is horrible, and pretty much everything else about the game is so terrible that it makes me wonder what the developers were thinking when they decided Raven Squad should go gold.

Raven Squad does have a few redeeming values scattered here and there, but none of them are enough to warrant purchasing or even renting Raven Squad. Unless you feel like torturing yourself with the game’s ridiculously bad voice acting. That’s always worth a chuckle or two.


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Boy Hidden Behind Wall Remains In State Custody

The boy hidden behind wall remains in state custody. He was hidden from visitors in a secret room behind a wall during a custody battle, which remains unresolved.
shannon wilfong mug shot


The story has swept TV news, and enraged parents all over the country. How could a mother kidnap her son and keep him confined inside for two years? She claims she was concealing his whereabouts from his father, who she says abused him.

When authorities raided the house, they found Ricky and his mother hiding in a secret room with a very low ceiling. Shannon Wilfong is now charged with felony abduction. I haven’t passed the bar exam in my state, but it seems like abducting and hiding a 6-year-old won’t exactly get the courts on your side.

The fact that stories like this one carry so much weight in our culture speaks volumes about us. We seem to have a morbid curiosity when presented with a headline that sounds like something out of a horror movie.

The first thing I thought of was the The People Under The Stairs, a movie about a deranged couple who adopted kids, but when they couldn’t live up to their impossible standards they would lock them in the basement. A character nicknamed “Roach,” escaped the basement and dwelt in crawl spaces between the walls.

In this case, reports suggest he was only kept there when visitors came over—still a horrible scenario. But after watching the video below, I was relieved to learn that he was happy and talkative when in the company of police officers. Sadly though, Richard “Ricky” Chekevdia will likely turn 7 on September 14th without a stable home environment. Let’s hope the courts come to a quick and prudent decision, and he can have a better quality of life.

Until then, the boy hidden behind the wall remains in state custody.

Amazon Defense Coalition

: American Businessman Wayne Hansen Has Ties to Chevron in Bribery Scheme, Investigation Finds
Wed Sep 9, 2009 2:37pm EDT

New Information Contradicts Earlier Claim by Oil Giant As Questions Grow About
Chevron`s Own Role

Chevron Refuses to Make Key Witnesses Available; Refuses to Release Second Video
to Public; Refuses to Disclose Details of Payments to Contractor


WASHINGTON
American businessman Wayne Hansen, who secretly made a video recording which
implicates himself and a Chevron contractor in a bribery scheme related to the
company`s $27 billion liability in Ecuador, is connected to a consulting firm
that lists Chevron as a client and may have his legal fees paid by the oil
giant, according to news reports and a spokesperson for the rainforest
communities suing the company.

Chevron`s ties to Hansen directly contradict repeated assertions by Chevron
lawyers and spokespersons that the company has no relationship to the American
businessman, said Karen Hinton, a spokesperson for the indigenous and farmer
communities suing the oil company in Ecuador.

"Chevron needs to answer several critical questions to clarify its own role in
these events, and it also needs to explain why it has not previously disclosed
its connection to Hansen. If this is not the Wayne Hansen who recorded the tapes
that Chevron put on You Tube and released widely to the news media, then Chevron
should identify who the real Wayne Hansen is," said Hinton.

Hansen has dropped out of sight since the scandal erupted last Monday when
Chevron posted the videos shot by Hansen and a former Chevron contractor, Diego
Borgia, on You Tube. The videos show Hansen and Borja secretly filming themselves
and other persons with hidden cameras discussing a bribery scheme in which
Hansen would apparently be the beneficiary of a environmental clean-up contract
should Chevron lose the case.

Chevron`s ties to Hansen raise further questions about whether the company in
any way facilitated the bribery scheme to undermine the 16-year litigation on
the eve of a final judgment, which was expected within weeks, said Hinton. The
judge in the trial, Juan Nunez, rec used himself last week so Ecuadorian
authorities could investigate the matter. He was immediately replaced by a new
judge from the same court.

The case is taking place in Ecuador at Chevron`s request after it was initially
filed in the U.S. Texaco (now Chevron) is accused in the suit of deliberately
dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into Amazon waterways when
it operated a large oil concession from 1964 to 1990, creating what some experts
believe is the worst oil-related contamination on earth. In 2008, a
court-appointed Special Master and team of technical experts found damages could
be as high as $27.3 billion.

The revelations about Hansen add to a growing list of questions about
inaccuracies in the videotapes and inconsistencies between Chevron`s assertions
and known facts.

Bloom berg News is reporting that Hansen - who has not been available for
questioning -- has apparently hired an American lawyer. Chevron spokesperson
Kent Robertson said in the news article that the oil company "is considering"
paying his legal fees.

See the Bloom berg article:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=azwOVWeGukJI

Further, Hansen`s biography obtained on the Internet identifies him as the
former Chief Mechanical Engineer and Director of Energy Engineering at RJM
Associates, which lists Chevron as a client. The owner of that company, Richard
Miller, has longtime ties to Texaco and started his career with the company in
1967 -- coincidentally the same year Texaco dug its first well in Ecuador`s
Amazon. Chevron has failed to disclose its connection to Hansen in any of its
press materials.

See the following links.
Hansen bio: http://www.eicconsultants.com/seminars/presenters/hansen.htm
RJM Associates web site: http://www.rjmanda.com/

Other key questions remain that only Chevron can answer, Hinton said. These
include whether Chevron or any of its officials - including those in its legal
office in Quito -- orchestrated the bribery scheme. Ecuadorian authorities are
expected to focus on this question as well as the role of Judge Nunez.

Additional questions appear to contradict Chevron`s version of events:

* Chevron claims there were two hidden cameras - yet Chevron has released only
one video to the media, suggesting the two tapes were spliced together. Chevron
has refused to release the second videotape or explain how the tapes were
edited.
* Chevron claimed it received the videotapes in early June, yet the fourth
meeting - the only meeting where a bribe was discussed - took place on June 15
and emails about the scheme were exchanged by Borgia in late June well after
Chevron claims it learned of the activities. Chevron`s legal department needs to
disclose any contacts Chevron officials had with any participant in the final
meeting and whether Chevron officials scripted or in any way influenced that
meeting.
* Chevron also has refused to fully explain its relationship to Borgia. Chevron
has not disclosed how much money it paid to Borgia, any other assistance it has
given him, when the company first had contact with him, and whether its
Ecuadorian legal team directed or otherwise influenced his actions. In its
initial press materials, Chevron did not disclose that Borja worked for the
company as late as March of this year during the environmental trial in
Ecuador.

Andrew Woods, an American legal adviser to the plaintiffs, also said it is clear
from the videotapes that Chevron`s contractor Borgia taped himself offering a
bribe for a remediation contract - a fact which may have violated U.S. criminal
laws, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, if indeed Borgia was acting on
behalf of Chevron or any other American entity.

Lawyers for the Amazonian communities are urging U.S. authorities to fully
investigate the facts surrounding the videos given that many of the witnesses
from Chevron are in the U.S., and that Chevron itself has continually criticized
the Ecuadorian government for being biased against it in the trial and thus
would not accept any findings that did not comport with its wishes, said Hinton.
Already, Ecuador`s national prosecutor and Judicial Council have launched
separate investigations into Chevron`s allegations.

On Saturday, the Laos Angele's Times - the largest daily newspaper in Chevron`s
home state of California -- published an editorial calling for the company to be
included in any investigation of the facts surrounding the bribery scandal. It
also concluded it was unclear from the videotapes if Judge Nunez is even
implicated, as Chevron also repeatedly claims in its recent press materials.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they did not expect the trial to be affected in
a significant way by the recursion, particularly since the vast majority of the
evidence - including 100% of the evidence used by the Special Master to assess
damages - had already been presented to the court before Judge Nunez took over
as presiding judge.

About the Amazon Defense Coalition

The Amazon Defense Coalition represents the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and dozens
of rain forest communities and five indigenous groups that inhabit Ecuador`s
Northern Amazon region. The mission of the Coalition is to protect the
environment and secure social justice through grass roots organizing, political
advocacy, and litigation. Two of its leaders, Luis Yanza and Pablo Fajardo, are
the 2008 winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

UP!!!!!

Released Date: 20th August 2009

Language: English

Classification: (U)

Running Time: mins
» showtimes
» Movie Trailer
Rated 18 times, average score of 4.0
View comments | Review Movie
Plot

A 78-year-old man named Carl Fredricksen spent his entire life dreaming of exploring the globe and experiencing life to its fullest. Due to his age, he thinks life has passed him by. One day, an 8-year old wilderness explorer named Russell, changes his outlook on life and the pair goes on adventures, encountering wild terrains, unexpected villains and jungle creatures.

Cast & Crew

Director: Bob Peterson, Pete Docter

Cast: Christopher Plummer, Edward Asner, Jordan Nagai