New Trends and Solutions in Mobile Business

Nowadays the business medium requires anytime and anywhere connectivity. In an increasingly competitive business environment, more and more organizations need fast responses and instant results. Therefore, mobility changes the way companies do business; instant messaging, voice services, real-time LAN access, network access while traveling are transforming the business environment. In this context, WLANs are critical from the business point of view. The effectiveness with which employees make decisions drives to the success or failure of the business; thus, the business must enable employees to access the information needed to exceed corporate expectations. This article presents the key characteristics of the mobile business and analyzes a possible solution offered by a giant of the networking industryWLANs, Mobility, Communications, Mobile Business, Security, 802.11n

The Role of Perceived Critical Mass in Explaining We-Intention to Use Instant Messaging for Team Collaboration

Today, instant messaging has been becoming a major communication technology in business environment. One important causal factor related to the use of instant messaging is critical mass. Specifically, the use of instant messaging requires collective efforts and interdependence among two or more people, and thus is conceptualized as intentional social action in the current study. Drawing on prior studies of social influence and critical mass, we propose a research model and empirically evaluate it using survey data collected from 227 respondents. The results indicate that perceived critical mass impacts usage we-intention both directly and indirectly through attitude and social influence factors. We believe the findings of this study will provide important implications to both researchers and practitioners

Impacts of WeChat on Millennials’ Perceptions and Consumption Behaviors in the Hotel Industry

Social media, known as interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications, has deeply changed and reformed interpersonal communication and business operation with the wide spread of Internet and the development of technology. In the past few years, since mobile apps are becoming more and more popular, the access of social media is not limited to tablet computers only, but is also available for almost all kinds of smart phone devices, such as iPhone, Android, Symbian and so on. The function of social media is not confined to real- time message transmission or information sharing any more. It has expanded to a widely range of features, such as online purchase and payment, e-commerce business, and service for different types of social events. Social media plays an increasingly important role in daily personal life as well as in business activities. People are not merely considered as social media users, but also the component of social media itself. As a result, it is very crucial for people to realize the importance and impacts of social media, especially for those business operators. WeChat (Weixin in Chinses, literally “micro message”) is a cross-platform instant text and voice messaging communication service for multiple mobile devices, developed by Tecent in China, first released in the January of 2011. It is claimed to provide “the new way to connect” and create “a way of life”. It is free to download, install and register, and support all kinds of smart phone platforms with multiple language versions, such as Chinese, English, Japanese, French, and Spanish. WeChat provides its users different ways to communicate and interact with friends innovatively through instant text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, group messaging, lively video sharing, location sharing, money transferring, and contact information sharing. Among all the WeChat users, Millennials is the majority. With the growing-up of Millennials, they are becoming more and more powerful and important to the society and will be the next target segmentation for most of the industries in the very near future. Especially for the hotel industry, the industry that urges to attract Millennials patrons for further substantial development, how to attract Millennials is becoming a critical issue for those hotel operators

Instant messaging an effective way of communication in workplace

The modern workplace is inherently collaborative, and this collaboration relies on effective communication among coworkers. Instant messaging is the multitasking tools of choice most people chatting over IM do other things at the same time.The use of IM in workplace is less intrusive than the use of phone, more immediate than email and has added advantage due to the ability to detect presence.In order for institution to maximize increased business productivity using instant messaging its imperative that organizations define and publish ICT policies, guidelines and regulations.Overall IM boosts business performance by making operations faster, more agile, and more efficient with very little additional cost thus Organizations that deploy IM would reap significant Return on Investment.Institutions should adopt IM meetings which are be more efficient and less prone to straying off topic, because of the relative effort of typing versus talking.Comment: 8 page

Central Data Storage Newly Located at Innovation Campus

Nebraska Innovation Campus has announced a new partner. Dan Duncan, NIC’s executive director, said Central Data Storage recently moved into its office space on the campus. Central Data Storage is a software and services company that offers business-critical data backup and recovery as well as encrypted messaging for highly regulated businesses. Central Data Storage provides daily account monitoring, in-house support, and military grade file encryption that ensures a company’s digital assets are protected, as well as a 24-hour recovery guarantee

Can theories of power help us understand public relations better?

After thanking James Grunig for providing an architecture for thinking about public relations (PR) for 25 years, more academics should now consider questions of reassessing his formidable intellectual legacy. This seems timely, for with his retirement there is a generational change among PR thinkers and some colleagues, especially American and Australasian, have started the reassessment. I am drawn to the feasibility of putting ideas of power relations, instead of concepts of communicative symmetry, at the heart of a descriptive explanation of PR in pluralist, liberal democracies with competitive markets and vigorous civil societies. Grunig’s paradigm has turned the academic gaze too quickly towards communication studies. The task is to turn it, instead, to political studies, particularly towards pluralism and interest intermediation

Business model requirements and challenges in the mobile telecommunication sector

The telecommunications business is undergoing a critical revolution, driven by innovative technologies, globalization, and deregulation. Cellular networks and telecommunications bring radical changes to the way telecom businesses are conducted. Globalization, on the other hand, is tearing down legacy barriers and forcing monopolistic national carriers to compete internationally. Moreover, the noticeable progress of many countries towards deregulation coupled with liberalization is significantly increasing telecom market power and allowing severe competition. The implications of this transition have changed the business rules of the telecom industry. In addition, entrants into the cellular industry have had severe difficulties due to inexistent or weak Business Models (BMs). Designing a BM for a mobile network operator is complex and requires multiple actors to balance different and often conflicting design requirements. Hence, there is a need to enhance operators’ ability in determining what constitutes the most viable business model to meet their strategic objectives within this turbulent environment. In this paper, the authors identify the main mobile BM dimensions along with their interdependencies and further analysis provides mobile network operators with insights to improve their business models in this new ‘boundary-less’ landscape

OpenLearn and knowledge maps for language learning

This chapter presents new methodologies designed to facilitate language acquisition in open learning communities via open educational resources and knowledge mapping. It specifically focuses on the OpenLearn project developed by the Open University. This offers a virtual learning environment based on Moodle platform with free educational materials and knowledge media tools such as the instant messaging MSG, the video webconference FlashMeeting and the knowledge mapping software tool Compendium. In this work, these technologies and mapping techniques are introduced in order to promote open language learning. Ways in which teachers and students can make use of these OpenLearn tools and resources are discussed and some benefits fully described