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Renaissance means 'new birth.' The term refers to the revival of art and learning that occurred in Europe between the Fourteenth and Sixteenth centuries. This was an era when educated and talented people rediscovered the arts and learning of ancient Greece and Rome and developed new ideas about their world. ( the basics.com)

The term, Renaissance, comes from the Latin word 'rinascere' that means to be reborn. The Renaissance was a great cultural movement - - a period of renewal, revival, and growth. The Renaissance began in Italy during the early 1300's. By 1600 the cultural revival had spread to France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and other European countries. (42 explore2.com)

Many Renaissance scholars and artists studied the art and learning from ancient Greece and Rome, attempting to recapture the spirit of those cultures in their philosophies and their works of art and literature. Renaissance leaders began to reject many of the attitudes and ideas of the Middle Ages. For instance during those earlier times, the most important cultural institution was the Church and the important learning was theology, the study of God. Medieval thinking held that the world was filled with evil temptations. Renaissance thinkers began to emphasize people's responsibilities and duties to their society, a society that could civilize people rather than make them wicked.

The changes in thinking during Renaissance happened gradually. New ideas in art, astronomy, science, literature, mathematics, philosophy, religion, and politics were developed and advanced by a few individuals. But the influence of the Renaissance impacted and shaped the future, leading to a modern era.

Historical period: The new age began in Padua and other urban communes of northern Italy in the 14th century, where lawyers and notaries imitated ancient Latin style and studied Roman archaeology. The key figure in this study of the classical heritage was “PETRARCH”, who spent most of his life attempting to understand ancient culture and captured the enthusiasm of popes, princes, and emperors who wanted to learn more of Italy's past. Petrarch's success stirred countless others to follow literary careers hoping for positions in government and high society. In the next generations, students of Latin rhetoric and the classics, later known as humanists, became chancellors of Venice and Florence, secretaries at the papal court, and tutors and orators in the despotic courts of northern Italy. Renaissance humanisum became the major intellectual movement of the period, and its achievements became permanent.

Science:
No single philosophy or ideology dominated the intellectual life of the Renaissance. Early humanists had stressed a flexible approach to the problems of society and the active life in service of one's fellow human beings. In the second half of the 15th century, Renaissance thinkers such as Marsilio FICINO at the Platonic Academy in Florence turned to more metaphysical speculation. Though favored by the humanists, Plato did not replace Aristotle as the dominant philosopher in the universities. Rather there was an effort at philosophical syncretism, to combine apparently conflicting philosophies, and find common ground for agreement about the truth as did Giovanni PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA in his Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486). Renaissance science consisted mainly of the study of medicine, physics, and mathematics, depending on ancient masters, such as Galen, Aristotle, and Euclid. Experimental science in anatomy and alchemy led to discoveries both within and outside university settings.
( Web Museum, La: Renaissance)

References:

WebMuseum, (1995), Historical period, Retrieved from http://www.navigo.com/wm/paint/glo/renaissance/

ABC words, (2002), 42explore2, retrieved from http://www.42explore2.com/renaissance.htm

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During renaissance, fashion from Italian and german designers had a great influence on European clothing. It became a new status symbol, and even a bigger status symbol in that period. Darker colors of fabrics became popular to show off and some jewels that were sewn onto the clothing. The more elaborate the tailoring and craftsmanship, the more expensive the clothing was and helped establish a reputation of wealth for the owner

During the evaluation of women clothing, such as silk, velvet and cotton, it’s the richer you wear the more the fabric. Cotton was very expensive then and was more expensive then and was heavily taxed import goods, mainly in India. Because clothing would retain value and had significant societal importance, people could pawn them if hard times came.
Womens hair covering went from the pointed cone style with no hair allowed to show, to the more popular light weighted type with flowers like a cap style. In later years it became more optional to wear head or hair covering at all. Age determined if you cover the head. Older women wear caps or coverings, the younger ones didn’t.
Men’s renaissance clothing was also over hauled several times to keep up with the latest trends fashion. In European renaissance the intial focus was towards richer fabrics which later gave way to more square fashion and then to barrel fashion. Legs were covered with breeches and hosiery, shoes were square toed, and wide hat to complete the look. Later the barrel look became in style, tailors started to view the human body as only having two parts, the shoulders and the hips. Horse hair was used for the padding and embroideres would change by the thread count of their work.

References

Renaissance fashion,(2005), Real armor of god, retrieved from, http://www.realarmorofgod.com/renaissance-fashion.html

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The word "renaissance" means "to be born again." Its the transition period between the Middle Ages and the modern era, during which there was a cultural and intellectual rebirth in European civilization, is therefore spoken of as the Renaissance

This blog is to discuss the main events which tells howtechnology helped to tranfer the information and helped discusions in National Dialouge.

Information Renaissance concentrates on online National Dialogues where Americans can learn about and discuss public issues. These Dialogues follow a model for group deliberation developed by Information Renaissance in work dating back to 1994. This approach facilitates information exchanges among large numbers of people, increases involvement and encourages involvement. (Network-democracy.org)

By gathering people together, many ideas can be brought to one place and National dialogue can broaden the public understanding of complex legislation and regulations.
1. Effective Education. Information Renaissance works with collaborating organizations to identify and prepare background materials that provide a thorough introduction to the issues under discussion. Because of the scope, quantity and searchability of these materials, participants can easily learn a great deal about complicated problems.
2. Wide-ranging Recruitment. Staff work with professional organizations, public interest, non-profit organizations and media outlets to recruit a demographically broad audience for participation in the Dialogue.
3. High Quality Discussion. A National Dialogue is an asynchronous disucssion - unlike a chat room, which takes place in real time. This format means that participation is not limited to any particular time of day and makes it much easier to accommodate different time zones and busy schedules.
A more substantive discussion can evolve when participants have time to consult reference materials, think about the contributions made by others and have the time to compose their own thoughtful messages.
4. Extensive Interaction. The National Dialogue allows for two-way communication among subject experts, government officials and members of the general public. Participants thereby enjoy quick responses to their questions.

National Dialogue have the following benefits
• Americans can come together online to discuss a complex issue in a deliberative manner. At the same time they can provide government officials with informed feedback on proposals under active consideration.
• The Roundtables provide a forum where experts, elected representatives and government regulators can discuss a policy issue in more nuanced detail. Instead of trading sound bites, the panelists can develop an argument in detail and educate the participants more fully about their outlook on a particular problem.
• An archive of important material is developed during the Dialogue. Background resources, Roundtable discussions and participants' messages are preserved in an online repository. Large numbers of people who did not directly participate in the online Dialogue can thus benefit from the discussions that took place.
• The Web site can be maintained long after the Dialogue has concluded. It provides a valuable archive of authoritative information on the topic.

Resources

Reischauer. R (2005), Information Renaissance National Dialogues, The Urban Institute, Retrieved from http://www.network-democracy.org/epa-pip/about/nd.shtml

Jolliff. C (2006), The crossroads group, California’s only permanent Renaissance village, Retrieved from, http://www.renaissanceinfo.com/

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Renaissance is the meaning of rebirth in French. It is considered as the time for the modern scholars as many changes have happened during the time period 1300 to 1600. It is at this time new inventions were made. During the Middle Ages church has the top power and all its economy is based in the agriculture. The society was dominated by political institutions with commercial attitudes. Many schools and colleges were constructed during this period.

Many rich Italian cities like Venice, Milan and others started the renaissance. The merchants who are wealthy enough started spending money on paintings, new banking techniques and made changes in the government. They gave rise to a type of scholar called humanist, which is concerned with the studies of humans and culture. They have studied the literature and philosophy of Latin and Greek languages. Many new sciences were studied with music and mathematics was given the top preference.
Painting

Art and sculpture were the new forms of painting which are discovered. The artists were compared with the poets and writer for the time first time during the renaissance. Mathematics and painting was combined to draw a relatively precise image which is both rational and proportional. It is during this time they have discovered the oil paint and mix colors. They have studied how light travels and strikes the objects and how human eyes receive it.
Printing

Printing is one of the important technologies developed progressively in this time period. They first used movable metal pieces, and then could be rearranged to form words and sentences. Johan Gutenberg was the first to print the book. It was a copy of bible. By 1500 printing presses were spread all over and printing was affordable and everyone could read the books. It made books cheaper and everyone could afford them. So literature spread worldwide at that time where only priests and monks and church officials were only able to read. They became intreasted in other language books as everyone started to read the local languages and hence people started reading other languages like English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Other than painting and reading, people developed interest in politics. Everyone started to know about the town other than one they are in. They have belief of serving the church and getting to heaven. As the literacy increased people recognized that Catholic churches only told populous what they wanted them to hear. This caused many people to break away and form protestant religious.

Renaissance produced many great minds like Leonardo da Vinci. He was not regarded as a genious at his time. His art work of Mona Lisa and The last supper we one of the best even today. He earned the crdit for the idea of the helicopter. Another great mind was the Martin Luther. His beliefs challenged the church although many people agreed with his ideas.
It was the time of awakening in Europe. It include the general loss of power by church and increase in literacy and education.

References
European Renaissance, (2006), Essay finder.com, retrieved form http://www.cyberessays.com/History/24.htm

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X-engineering (some times also called cross engineering) “ is the art and science of using technology enabled process to connect business with other business and companies with their customers to achieve business and companies with their customers to achieve dramatic improvements in the efficiency and create value for everyone involved.”(X-engineering the corporation, November 30, 2007 pg 3).

In the previous blog about re-engineering, it is applied to the organization mainly to cut the costs, raise quality, and increase speed and productivity. Where as X-engineering also improves the internal efficiency and that is just the beginning. It improves the operational process across the organizations that are among the companies and their suppliers. X-engineering argues that a company has to extend its process outside and think outside the box and hence the X.

It is all about selling the products in a good price without any dealers in between the company and the customers. Customers should be able to order the products they are looking for directly form the companies website. This is where the web2.0 technologies come into play.
According to James champy the ideas behind the X-engineering are:

• Start with a great aspiration- re inventing the whole industry, re creating the whole process for example.
• Being persistent in the same field. The time to adopt new things in the industry may take longer than expected and the business may take a few unexpected turns.
• Separated industries provide a great opportunity to the customer, offering great choice with the easy search and purchase.
• Always start slowly with a simple proposition and start building the proposition in the direction lead by the market. But the companies should be ready to adjust the proposition based on the customer’s requirements. Unique processes can be the proposition that can be offered to the customers.
• Share unique differentiator processes with your customers or otherwise be open with your processes and share good ideas.
• Developing a common or a standard information technology helps to communicate between the organizations easily. This is a huge business asset.
• A trust should be created to make stronger relationships with partners and assure their participation in the proposition.
• Pull and push process between the customers and the company must be understood and so live with it. It enables you to build a company that has a virtual scale as large as industry.

References
Champy. J,(2002), X-engineering the corporation, X-engineering in action, warner books, Inc.

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Web 2.0 began with the conference between O’Relliy and MediaLive International. It has come to the note that the web was the more important than ever, with many new exciting applications and sites popping up. The company’s which has survived from the crash of web1.0 has realized that they had something in common. In the way the web 2.0 conference was born.

Many of the companies have started using the word web2.0 as a “buzzword” without even understanding the meaning of it. The questions is different as many of those buzzwords are not even the web2.0 applications.

Web as platform:
Double Click and Akamai were web 2.0 pioneers, yet we see how it is possible to realize that there are many more possibilities by embracing additional web2.0 design patterns.

Netscape Vs Google

Netscape framed the web as platform, but in the terms of old software. The product was the web browser which is a desktop application. It is established to for high price server products. Netscape provided a webtop which is to replace a desktop and planned to populate it with information updates and applets by information providers who will purchase Netscape servers.
On the other hand Google, which began its life as a web application, but delivered the service to the customers for which it was paid directly or indirectly. There is licensing of the software and no scheduled software releases and no updates, but it went on with a steady continuous improvement. Google service is not a server application, but it is delivered by a massive collection of servers.
Both Netscape and Google could be considered as software companies. It is clear that netscape belongs to the companies like oracle or Microsoft whereas Google belongs to the internet applications like Amazon, ebay, etc..

DoubleClick Vs Overture and Adsense

Double click was a pioneer of web services long before web services even had a name. But this was limited to the business model only. In 1990’s the size mattered and that the internet was being dominated by the top websites which were measured by media matrix and other web ad scoring companies. Finally doubleclick had an advantage of citing proudly on its website as over 2000 sucessful implementations of its software.
Google came to an understanding and make all the small website in to a collectively big one and turned into a bulk of web contents. Overture and google figured out how to place ads on virtually any webpage. They have pop-up’s and consumer friendly text advertising.

Akamai Vs BitTorrent

Akamai is same as Double-click and is optimized to do business. It serves the individuals at the web by smoothing their access to a high demand sites at the center.
Bit torrent is a p2p software. Here every host is a server. The files are broken up into fragments that can be reassembled from different locations. If the file is more popular the faster the file the file can be transferred, as there are more hosts which can provide the file with more bandwidth and parts of the file to complete the file.

References
O’Reilly, (2007), Akamai vs Bit torrent, retrieved from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=2

Web 2.0, (2007), characteristics, retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2#Characteristics

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The most important thing a student has to remember is to how to manage his time. It is not just about making the schedules and following to do lists, but to put the lists in action and being cautious about the time to spend.

Everyone is having problems with managing our time. What matters the most is how we deal with it. By being a good manager one should commit himself to learn from the best and that means by acquiring the books and tools to put by time management. Learning about time management does make anyone good at it. In order to be successful, one have to develop a process of evaluating his own progress and developing a process by which one can refine his time management habits continuously

10 tips for time management in multitasking world

It doesn’t matter how smart one can be, if they cannot organize the information well enough to take it in. In today’s world one can differentiate themselves by the ability to handle information and manage time. “ careers are made or broken by soft skills thay make you ablw to hand a very large workload.” Merlin Mann.

1. Don’t leave e-mail sitting in Inbox: The important skill one needs is to respond to the skill when one gets it. As soon as one gets a task he should be able to turn it into action. Organize all the emails into folders. If it is something to do in a day or two, move the e-mail into to-do list. If it is a meeting with someone, make a note on the calendar, if it is a reference, print it out.

2. Avoid multitasking: “A 20 year- old is less likely to feel overwhelmed by demands to multitask, but young people still have a loss of productivity from multitasking.” Trapani. People cannot concentrate in two things at the same time. Even if they do they do have the ability to produce a quality work.

3. Do the most important thing first: Start doing the most important thing as the first thing to do in the day before even you check the email. If you start doing the work at least for an hour and even it is not completed in that time frame, you can go back and do it again always. This is best if we can organize the night before so when you start working you already know what is the most important task of the day is.

4. Check your e-mail on a schedule: It is not important each and every e-mail as it arrives. Just because someone has sent an email and can contact you immediately doesn’t mean that you have to respond them immediately. – Dan Markovitz (President of productivity consulting firm TimeBack management). People want a predictable response, not an immediate one. As long as they know how to reach you in emergency, most of the emails can be answered just a few times a day.

5. Keep web site address organized: Keeping track of the website address as a book mark is the one of the easiest way to have the web organized. It is important to save them all at one place so that they can be retrieved easily. As there is a saying which goes as Don’t hide it where you can find it”.

6. Know when you work the best: Some people work in the morning and they consider as the best time. People should be more productive in the time they are working and try to schedule in that time period. You need to manage the time schedule to keep your best time free for most of your important work.

7. Minimize your keystrokes: Keystrokes matter the efficiency, if you are on the computer the whole day. Try to reduce the key strokes by 3 times a day.

8. Make it easy to get started: No one have problems in finishing the projects, but everyone have troubles in starting them. Try to break down the projects into as many chunks as you can try to finish them as soon as you can so that you don’t have to get overwhelmed.

9. Organize your to-do list everyday: Some people try to rewrite the things again and again as it shows the commitment of doing the things. Other people like software to do that for them. But of all know what you have to do on that day as you cannot start anything without knowing what to do.

10. Dare to be slow: There are more important things to do rather than responding the emails. Some time starting the work need a specific time.

For more information refer to the website 1) http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/12/10/10-tips-for-time-management-in-a-multitasking-world/
http://www.managingmytime.com/Being-A-Student-Of-Time-Management.html

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Re-engineering is the redesign of an organization or a business process. (Wikipedia.com) If management wants company that is responsive, competitive, efficient and profitable there might not be a so many companies that are clumsy, noncompetitive, inefficient and loosing money.

Many companies set a goal of filling customer orders quickly, but goal is providing a good quality service. Often efficiency of the company’s parts comes at the expense of the efficiency of its whole. For example if a plane belonging to a major airline was grounded due to some technical issues in airport X. Unfortunately the nearest mechanic qualified to repair the was in airport Y. The manager of airport Y refused to send the mechanic to the airport X that afternoon, because after completing the repairs the mechanic would have to stay overnight at a hotel and hotel bill would come to managers Y’s budget. Instead, the mechanic was dispatched to airport X early in the following morning and enables him to fix the plane and returns on the same day by evening. A multimillion dollar aircraft sat idle, and airline lost thousands of dollars in revenue, but managers Y’s budget wasn’t big enough to hit a $100 hotel bill. Manager Y’s was either foolish or careless. He was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing that is controlling and minimizing his expenses.

Sometimes work requires cooperation and coordination of several departments within a company and it is often a source of trouble. When retailers return a source of goods for credit to a consumer products, manufacturer there are several departments that are involved in receiving and accepting a goods. The departments like the inventory management, promotions, sales, general accounting updates, adjustments and so on departments come into play. Yet no one is responsible of handling returns. Returned goods end up missing in the storage in the warehouse.
The worst part is unhappy retailers are less likely to promote the manufacturer’s new products. They also delay in paying the bills and often pay only what they owe after deducting the value of the returns. This leads the manufactures accounts into web that is never there, since the customers check doesn’t match the manufactures invoice.

If managers can’t decide what their companies are in trouble, neither do they agree on what to do about it. Some people think companies would bounce back if only they had the right products and services for the times. “It is not the products but the processes that create products that bring companies long-term success” (Champy. J).

Some people think that automation is the answer to business problems. True computers can speed up the work and in the twenty to 40 years companies have spend billions of dollars to automate the tasks that people once did by hand. Automation does get some jobs done faster, but ultimately same jobs are being done.

The word re-engineering has earned a bad name in the economy as people tend to spend more money on the name of saving money or due to performing the re-engineering activities in the adverse conditions.

Conclusion: The problem is that companies are doing business in the twenty-first century with companies desined during the nineteenth century to work well in the twentieth century. There is high need of a system which is something entirely different.

References:

Strassmann. P.A (1995-2006) Strassmann Inc, retrieved on November 31, 2007 from website http://www.strassmann.com/pubs/reengineering.html

Reengineering (2007), retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reengineering

Champy.J and Hammer M (2005) Reengineering the corporation, the crisis that will never go away, harpercollins publishers

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