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OpenSocket

OpenSocket is a service which converts OpenSocial gadgets into Facebook applications. Thus Facebook's refusal to support the OpenSocial standard was bypassed, and the Facebook organisation was obliged to consider compatibility with the standard supported by other major social networking vendors, including Yahoo! and Google.

Users can register your gadgets in the OpenSocket control panel application within Facebook, and OpenSocket.org manages the hosting. The service is currently running a beta testing programme, targeted at creators of OpenSocial and iGoogle gadgets.

Contents

[edit] Background

The initial goal of Opensocket was to bring OpenSocial widgets to Facebook before they reached MySpace, thus demonstrating the power of technology over business politics. This could be seen as a petition to Facebook to open up once they’ve had a chance to evaluate OpenSocial. Final success would be achieved when Facebook accept that hosting OpenSocial widgets via OpenSocket has been beneficial and they can put their pride aside to embrace this emerging open standard.

The OpenSocket organisation intends to establish new standards of operation in collaborating on an open source social web application. The hosting requirements for a Facebook application—not least the fact that applications are tied to individuals’ accounts—may call for new procedures in the development, testing, and deployment of the application. A side-project would be to allow data from arbitrary Facebook apps to flow into the OpenSocial world.

[edit] Criticisms

The introduction of OpenSocial did more than present additional options for developers and users of social networks. It also reminded the world of the growing need for developer tools, and the borad space that lends itself to opportunities for new services to carve their niche. To that end, a few have offered combination packages for the development of Facebook applications, along with advertising networks specific to the phenomenon.

The OpenSocket Facebook application, which lets users run their OpenSocial gadgets on Facebook, basically allows developers to wrap their OpenSocial gadgets. OpenSocket has indicated that this project is in part an effort to get Facebook to adopt OpenSocial, but with the growing limitations on the development of new Facebook apps, and the small battle that’s going on amongst social networks and new developer platforms, this could ruffle more than a few feathers, particularly those of Facebook and Google.

And though it’s geared for use by both developers and end users, there are still a lot of things left to be worked out for OpenSocket. Users will need to work closely with this service in order to benefit from its cross-platform tools.

[edit] References

There are over six billion people in the world.[1]

References:

  1. ^ CIA World Factbook


Stephen Glaister

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Trek America Travel Ltd
Type Ltd, member of the First Choice group of companies
Founded 1971
Headquarters Crawley,Sussex, England
Products Holidays on various continents
Website http://www.trekamerica.co.uk/

Since running its first tours back in 1971, TrekAmerica has established its place as the largest and most experienced small group adventure travel operator in North America covering the USA, Canada, Alaska and Mexico.

TrekAmerica's adventure holidays offer a unique combination of sightseeing and exciting activities that take the traveller to the big cities, National Parks, remote beaches and many other hidden places off the tourist routes. They offer the opportunity to hike in deep canyons and up high mountains; to explore hot deserts and cool lakes; and to enjoy vibrant cities and little-known towns.




Margaret Mountford Margaret Mountford is a non-Executive Director of Amstrad plc and one of the jury in every episode of the game-show known as The Apprentice. She was appointed to the Board on 22 September 1999. She has many years’ corporate law experience as a partner in the law firm, Herbert Smith, from which she retired in March 1999. She is also a non-Executive Director at Georgica Plc

Mountford used to be a solicitor in a private practice. She was a partner at Herbert Smith, a top-tier company, and it was whilst there that she met Sir Alan - she was doing his legal work for Amstrad's flotation on the Stock Exchange. She retired in 1999 and took up her current role on the Amstrad board as a non-executive Director.

Transport Innovation Fund

In the July 2004 White Paper, 'The Future of Transport', the UK Secretary of State announced the creation of the Transport Innovation Fund' (TIF). The Fund would support:

  • the costs of smarter, innovative local transport packages that combine demand management measures, such as road pricing, with measures to encourage modal shift, and better bus services;
  • local mechanisms which raise new funding for transport schemes; and
  • regional, inter-regional and local schemes that are beneficial to national productivity.


Initial information on TIF was set out in the paper "Transport Innovation Fund" 2 in July 2005. This document provided guidance on the operation of the Fund and explained how the Government would

  • (a) seek proposals for packages and schemes aimed at tackling congestion through demand management and better public transport ("congestion schemes"), and
  • (b) identify schemes which meet productivity objectives.

For both categories (a) and (b), priority would be given to those proposals which are most effective in securing a financial contribution from significant beneficiaries.






The globally integrated enterprise is a term coined in 2006 in the name of Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM Corp, used to denote is a company that fashions its strategy, its management, and its operations in pursuit of a new goal: the integration of production and value delivery worldwide. State borders define less and less the boundaries of corporate thinking or practice.

[edit] The Argument

Palmisano argues that in the international model of the 19th century, most operations were centred in the home country, with only elements of sales and distribution happening overseas. The multinational model of the 20th century—in which companies created small versions of themselves in each country—was a response to the trade barriers that arose after the World Wars. For IBM, this was a very successful model, because it enabled the company to grow in those markets, understand local customer requirements and cultivate local talent. But it also created a lot of redundancy because each country had its own back-office functions (e.g. supply, procurement, finance and HR).

Now the globally integrated enterprise can locate functions anywhere in the world, based on the right cost, skills and environment. (IBM now has one supply chain, for example.) This new organisational form has emerged because everything is connected, and work can move to the place where it is done best. The barriers that used to block the flow of work, capital and ideas are weakening.

Palmisano mentions the Law of Global Integration, driven by three forces—economics, expertise and openness—without explicitly stating what it is or how it can be verified.

[edit] Criticisms

Brad Setser of RGE Monitor wrote:

'In my view, this underscores a key element of tension in America’s current backlash against globalization that was not evident in the late 1980s. Today, the pressures are being borne disproportionately by labor, whereas 20 years ago, capital and labor were in the struggle together. In the late 1980s, many of the once proud icons of Corporate America were fighting for competitive survival at the same time that US workers were feeling the heat of global competition. The pain was, in effect, balanced. Today, US companies, as seen through the lens of corporate profitability, are thriving as never before while the American workforce is increasingly isolated in its competitive squeeze. In essence, capital and labor are working very much at cross purposes in the current climate, whereas back in the late 1980s they were both in the same boat.'

Others dislike the implied 'feudalism':

'My reading of the article is little more than a self-congratulatory positioning of the "modern" corporation as a middleman managing customer relationships on the one side and globally supplied commodity services on the other, and passing this off as a principal mode of "creating value". Of course the things enabling this role are protection of "intellectual property", and "global security" (globally harmonized legislation and enforcement of your rights and your subjects' obligations). There is indeed a bit of a feudalist whiff to it. There was one statement towards the end catching my attention—"A third challenge will be to figure out how to maintain trust in enterprises based on increasingly distributed business models." I say, good luck, Mr. Palmisano.'

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources

Thegn 13:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC)Image:ThegnL.png






Goltho is a village of Anglo-Saxon roots situated in Lincolnshire. The origin of the name is uncertain, perhaps from an Old Scandanavian (Viking) first name or the Viking word for "ravine".

It is a parish about ten miles northeast of Lincoln and two miles southwest of Wragby. Wragby parish lies to the east, Rand parish to the north and Apley parish to the south. It is described in White's 1842 Lincolnshire Directory as 'a parish of scattered farms'. The parish covered about 1,360 acres in 1842. Ecclesiastically, the parish was united with Bullington to form one tithe-free parish in the peculiar jurisdiction of the Bishop of Lincoln. Together, the two parishes covered about 2,540 acres. The parish is skirted on the north side by the A158 trunk road as it passes between Lincoln and Horncastle.

The Anglican Church, dedicated to St. George, is more properly called a chapel. It is a small red brick building. By 1900, the church had been converted to use only as a mortuary chapel.

Goltho Hall, torn down long before 1842, was the ancestral seat of the Grantham family, who sold the estate to the Mainwaring family. It was rebuilt around 1875, near the site of the old hall.

Goltho contains a medieval village settlement consisting of a moat, and crofts with buildings, seen as cropmarks and earthworks. Excavation in 1973 revealed an early medieval ringwork and medieval motte and tower. This is a site than has undergone a rare extensive and detailed excavation and was found to have had a complex history. This started as a Saxon defended manorial site and had the earthworks modified on several occasions (and timber buildings rebuilt) including use as a Norman castle.

For governance, the parish was in the ancient Wraggoe Wapentake in the West Lindsey district and parts of Lindsey.

[edit] References

  • Everson, P.,1990 'The problem of Goltho' Medieval Settlement Research Group Report Vol5 p9-14
  • Stocker, D., 1989, 'Review of G. Beresford, 'Goltho: The Development of of an Early Medieval Manor c. 850-1150 Archaeological Journal Vol14 p627-9
  • Everson, P.,1988, ‘What’s in a name? “Goltho”, Goltho and Bullington' Lincolnshire History and Archaeology Vol23 p93–9
  • Hodges, R., 1988, ‘Origins of the English castle' Nature Vol333 p112–13
  • Beresford, Guy, 1982, 'Goltho Manor, Lincolnshire: The Buildings and their Surrounding Defences c.850-1150' in Brown, R.Allen (ed), Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies 4, 1981 (Boydell Press) p13-36, 171-4
  • Beresford, Guy, 1977, ‘The excavation of the deserted medieval village of Goltho, Lincolnshire' Château Gaillard Vol8 p47-68 plates 1 and 4
  • Selkirk, A., 1975-6, ‘Goltho, a deserted medieval village and its manor house' Current Archaeology Vol5 p262-70
  • Salter, Mike, 2002, The Castles of the East Midlands (Malvern) p50
  • Roffe, David, 1993, 'Castles' in Bennett, S. and Bennett, N. (eds), An Historical Atlas of Lincolnshire (University of Hull Press) p40-1
  • Higham, R. and Barker, P., 1992, Timber Castles (Batsford) p281-6
  • Beresford, G. et al, 1987, Goltho: the development of an early medieval manor c 850–1150. (London: English Heritage)
  • Bassett, S.R., 1985, 'Beyond the edge of excavation: the topographical context of Goltho' in Mayr-Harting, H. and Moore, R.I. (eds), Studies in Medieval History Presented to R.H.C. Davis (London: Hambledon) p21-39
  • King, D.J.C., 1983, Castellarium Anglicanum (London: Kraus) Vol1 p265
  • Beresford, G., 1975, The Medieval Clay-Land Village: Excavations at Goltho and Barton Blount (London: Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 6)