Evolution of Android Platform

Introduction:

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Android is an Open source platform based on Linux kernel and is being used in touch screen devices i.e. smart phones and tablets. It is being developed by Google. Its GUI is based on direct manipulation. It has a special UI for cars, smart televisions and watches. It uses different actions that are loosely connected to real world actions i.e. touch, swap, pinch etc. It also contains a virtual keyboard for textual inputs.
According to a survey by google over 1 billion users are using android and 71% of developers develop on android platform. There are more than 1 million applications which makes android the largest install base of all general purpose OS.
It was developed initially by Android Inc. It was financially backed up by Google and later on went on to buy it in 2005. Android was exposed in 2007 in 2007 with the formation of Open Handset Alliance which is a consortium of software, hardware and telecom companies and devoted to advancing Open standards for mobile devices.Android is being used as a base by the technology companies ready-made, customizable and low-cost OS for high-tech devices. Its open nature has attracted people to attain it as the mostly used base OS and the platform with most number of developers.


Evolution:

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Evolution of Android started back in September 2008 with the release of Android 1.0 with (API level 1/2) and the version was known to be 1.0. Key features involved Android Market, status bar, Google maps with GPS, browser, voice dialing and several others. It was updated to cupcake (API level 3) in April 2009 based on Linux kernel 2.6.27. Salient features included support of third party keyboard, widgets, Animations, auto pairing and stereo support for Bluetooth. Another Update was disclosed in September 2009 with API level 4 and named as Donut. It had multilingual speech support, camera features, betters GUI and WVGA screen resolution with expanded gestures and gestures builder development tool. Soon after in October 2009 Éclairs (Android 2.0) was released with multi accounts with better synchronization, Microsoft Exchange for better email experience, addition of screen resolutions and addition of live wallpapers. By the last decade of May 2010 Google came up with Froyo (API level 8) with enhanced speed, applications with JIT compilation, USB tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot and Cloud device management. Froyo had three small updates with bug fixes and security patches. December 2010 was a complete new experience for android with the release of Gingerbread (API level 9/10) along with the Google Nexus S. Here the adoption of Android really started. GB had better and simpler GUI, screen support, NFC, Download Manager, multi-camera support and garbage collection. GB remained till September 2011 with several bug fixes and improvements.
Honey Comb (API level 11-13) was released in Feb 2011 but its main target was wide screen i.e. tablet PCs. It used a holographic UI with action bar, multi tabs, multitasking, encryption and hardware acceleration. It was updated with external input devices and Google TV support. The view of android and usage statics moved to a new direction with the release of ICS (API level 14/15) with face unlock, roboto-fonts, auto-sync, drag n drop facilities and VPN framework with Tunnel Interface, Jelly bean (API level 16-18) was released in July 2012. It had a smoother UI, expandable notification bar, multichannel and USB audio support and several other features. Was added with two APIs with GUI and security improvements along with several other important features. Android came up with KITKAT (API level 19/20) by the last of October 2013. It was a revolution in the sense of GUI, communication and security. It included auto encryption, NFC Host based card emulation and smooth GUI. In November 2015 Android came up with their latest version Lollipop (API level 21 and 22) with a complete new Material design, Android runtime and several other revolutionary changes for better performance and enhanced battery life.

Emerging Issues in Human Resource Management

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CSB Admin would inform our readers about the emerging issues in human resource management (HR). Below list highlights and describes some of the main emerging issues related to HR that are very important for organizations to manage effectively.


Workforce planning and development:

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For any organization either operating at domestic level or as international, recruitment of the right person on right job is very important and hence a critical issue for human resource management department. For recruitment of right person for any vacancy in an organization, HR manager is completely accountable. Because of diverse culture and religion, it is hard to give the requisite training and development programs to the employees at international level.


Managing Talent:

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To address at global level managing talent is also a serious concern due to high competition. At international level cultural changes produce impediments to manage skills and talent of diversify workforce to implement the strategies and plans in order to achieve organizational goals and objectives. Training and development programs of organization also affects by this issue.


Managing Globalization:

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Currently, managing globalization is really a big and critical issue for any HR manager. Due to regular changes in technological, globalization and social environment, trade policies’ liberalization and regulations, etc. it has become critical for HR managers to handle with the aggressive environment that affects the performance of organization at domestic as well as global platform.


Managing Demographic Workforce:

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For the organization and HR department managing demographic workforce is becoming tough day to day. Both at domestic as well as global level, there are numerous policies and regulation that influences the recruitment policy of an organization to direct people particularly aging workforce. Company’s pension plan, retirement benefits for aging people are affected by the governmental policies. This is a very significant and complicated confronting for HR managers in recent times.


Managing Changes and Cultural Transformation:

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Managing organizational changes and culture at global level also creates the issues for organization and HR department. In most of the time, organizational changes generate clashes between management and employees that influences the culture of the organization. So change management is an important emerging issue for the HR managers.

Management and its functionalities

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Effective management and leadership involve inventive problem solving, motivating employees and making sure the organization accomplishes objectives and goals. There are five functions of management and leadership: planning, organizing, staffing, coordinating and controlling. These functions separate the management process from other business functions such as marketing, accounting and finance.


Management:

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Management is the process through which a manager works with and through the people (personnel) and other resources, in order to reach the overall goal of the organization.
Management includes the three elements described below:

1. It is a procedure or series of ongoing and connected activities
2. It engages and focuses on attainment of organizational overall goals
3. It attains these goals by working with and through people and other organizational resources

Management functions:

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There are 5 basic management functions

1. Planning
2. Organizing
3. Staffing
4. Coordinating
5. Controlling

1. Planning

This is the first and basic function of management that allows managers to control all the planning procedures and helps organization to run smoothly and effectively. It involves defining a goal and determining the most appropriate way or tricks to reach this goal.


2. Organizing:

This is the second most important function of management that controls the overall structure of the organization as it’s the foundation of any organization to have a definable organization structure. The day to day activities of the organization will be difficult and unsuccessful without this structure. So Organizing involves designating tasks and responsibilities to employees with the specific skill sets needed to complete the tasks. Organizing also involves developing the organizational structure and chain of command within the company.


3. Staffing:

This is very important function of management which relates to HR and hence controls all the recruitment processes and needs of the employees. The very immense function is to hire the right person for the right job so that organization’s goals can be achieved effectively and efficiently.


4. Coordinating:

This function of management controls all the organizing, planning and staffing activities of the organization and guarantees all activities function jointly for the excellence of the organization. Coordinating classically takes place in meetings and other planning sessions with the department heads of the company to make sure all departments are on the same page in terms of objectives and goals. Coordinating involves communication, supervision and direction by management.


5. Controlling:

This is last but not the least function of management and has very importance in all of the above functions. After planning the right strategies the company’s management work hard to achieve those goals for the goodness of the company and after achieving these goals management must compare the achieved goals with standards that made at the start while planning. So in short controlling involves creating performance standards and monitoring the output of employees to ensure each employee’s performance meets those standards.

Trend of HR 2016

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Following are some trends we see in 2016 for HR and these trends have been chosen for you to help by the team of HR trend institute.

HR embraces agile:

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Agile seems to be very hot trend in 2016 in HR where 2015 was the year of analytics but this year is of Agile HR. even many of the HR teams do not know what this term means so here I am going to brief it for your easiness to use it in your organization effectively. As many conference organizations and HR network facilities work hard to find out the trending HR topics for this year and in this list Agile HR has often made the shortlist.


Elements of Agile HR:

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• Keep your HR team small
• Stop with all your regular meetings
• Make sure there is fresh input in your team regularly
• Find innovative and flexible partners
• Do not strive to be perfect

HR  Performance Ratings:

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In 2015 a few big corporations pompously announced that they were improving their performance management processes. As I have very mixed feelings about this trend. Yes, the feedback frequency should be a lot higher that once per year. Yes, nobody profit from a patronizing and uneven approach. Yes, conveying people a rough performance rating is not very obliging.  But: measuring performance is very important, and the redesign or abolishmentof performance management should not mean that one stops with measuring performance as well. Hopefully Performance Consulting will emerge as a trend in 2016.


Individualization:

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Treating employees as not the part of a group or a segment but seeing them as individuals in organizations is more visible in 2016. In this case HR should learn from marketing as they still far behind from the way they deal with their employees as compared to clients. But by adopting individualism concept there is a small movement to understand the employees and their needs individually rather as a whole in a team.


Talent everywhere:

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Talent management is becoming a broader concept slowly but still in much organization this concept is narrow and they do not know how they can engage and retain talent. The talent pool is broader. More and more talent does not want to be employed by (big) organizations. They are self employed, and are involved if you can proffer a demanding opportunity. While others wish to work for start ups. The trend: connecting to talent outside the organization, and design new talent development programs that are also helpful for these groups. This can be done directly, or through intermediaries.


Artificial intelligence:

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Artificial Intelligence is rising up and also in going to the HR field. 2016 will possibly not be the year of ‘Machine learning’, but the advances are going quick. For e.g. “Personality Insights”, powered by IBM Watson. Feed the machine with text written by the person you want to analyze, and Personality Insights gives you a sound personality profile within seconds

Literature Survey of Green HRM

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Green is the most beautiful color in the world and is the color of nature. A walk down green meadows and jungles makes you feel happy, relaxed and free from stress and strains of life. Being with nature and environment can ultimately bring us happiness and prosperity- be it our personal lives or business endeavors and in business world Green HRM can become an active partner in achieving objectives by creating HR platform where the workforce experience high job satisfaction and being better engaged. In this growing era the nature is being destroyed by the companies in order to fulfill the human needs so it is indispensable for all the businesses to have a proactive approach towards the management of environmental activities all around the globe (Daily et al., 2012; Jabbar et al., 2010; González-Benito & González-Benito, 2006). 

Before the revolution in business world the victory of business was mainly depend on economic value but nowadays all the business firms have to take into consideration the diverse effects of ecological footprints of their businesses and should try their best to reduce these effects and to give importance to environmental and social factors as well so that they can gain success and generate value for shareholders and as well as for stakeholders (Govindarajulu and Daily 2004; Daily et al., 2012; Sroufe et al., 1998). According to Martinez Fernandez, & Hinojosa (2010) in this industrialization era environment is being polluted tremendously by the waste of industries especially which is not renewable, it is of much importance for the government of every country as well as the organizations to make policies to reduce the effects this waste on the environment. 

The increasing impact of polluted environment on our daily lives is a force for individuals and firms to adopt green policies so that we can save our nature (natural resources) for us as well as for coming generation. We are considering that desire to go green all over the world is increasing and in the near future it will become the norm for all the businesses due to its tremendous effects on business goodwill such as green technology, green products etc. there is a growing need for the incorporation of the management of environmental activities into HRM and this concept is called Green HRM (GHRM). So this is the factor forcing the corporate sector to adopt GHRM (Boiral 2006. González-Benito and González-Benito, 2006). Daily and Haung (2010) argued that the effective implementation of the environmental management system can only be done if the right person hire for the right job with the right skills and competencies for that particular job therefore, the functions of HRM has become the driver of the sustainability of atmosphere by aligning the organizations policies and practices (the HRM strategy) with the company’s overall strategy. This approach of going green is considered pretty profitable and effective since early 2000 (Lee; 2009). GHRM is a strategy used by the business firms to reduce the carbon footprints of each employee and talent retention and this term can be mixed with the concept of corporate social responsibility. According to Lee (2009) in order to measure and protect the environmental factors the strategy adopts by the firms is called GHRM. It is of the crucial importance for the organizations to insure that the environment where individuals lives is surely promoted and preserved (Daily and Haung; 2001). He further says that the organizations with the adoption of GHRM practices and policies are enjoying more benefits as compare to the companies having no such policies. 

Various distinctive advantages which are related with the implementation of these practices are culture improvement of the organization and teamwork promotion (Jabbar et al., 2012), operational performance boosts (Jackson et al., 2012) and the reduction of overall cost (Hart 1997). It is concluded from the above discussion that the implementation of these policies is necessary for all the businesses in order to safe nature and employees rights so that they can gain competitive advantage. So the main aim of this study is to find the link between GHRM policies and the benefits by adoption of these practices by all the businesses. 

GHRM is an area of the study where HRM policies and practices are used to ensure the efficient use of natural resources in any business and more specifically it encourage the cause of ecology. It lessen the carbon footprints through the efficient and effective use of available resources such as telecommunication, less printing of papers, job sharing, video conferencing and interviews through Skype (reduce traveling expense) etc (Shakti; Gill Mandip, 2012). So according to this view there are two main essentials of GHRM i.e. environmental friendly practices and employee retention. The practices of GHRM include R&S, PMS, T&D and employee participation and engagement (Meily Margaretha and Susanti Saragih, 2013). The organizations using GHRM policies are enjoying many benefits such as reduction in carbon footprints, cost cut, preservation of environment, preservation of natural resource, employee retention and work life balance. GHRM play a very significant role in the business in order to solve environment related issues (Shaikh, 2010).

Teacher is the best guide

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We all have passed through a stage of school and college. Several teachers have taught us. We like and respect some of others because of their good nature and look towards others in a different tone due to some unknown reasons. The fact is that a good teacher is the best guide you can ever had. He can ruin or make career of any person.

There are several proverbs that define the importance of teacher in every life. One of my teachers always said

A teachers place is always empty

Yes you always feel the need of a teacher in every life. So Hazrat Ali (R.A.) always said

The person who taught me a single word is my teacher and I am his servant. He has the right to free me or sell me.

This saying actually describes the importance of the teacher in our lives. Here we are presenting you a best example of teacher who changes lives of a naughty class with her good attitude and great thinking. She used the abilities and efforts of the students in meaningful way.

Please mention your favorite teachers ………. To pay a tribute

Adobe Acrobat Reader

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Introduction:

Adobe Acrobat reader is a perfect PDF management tool presented by Adobe Systems. It is used to view, edit, comment, highlight, bookmark and sign your files and forms. You can view many kind of PDF file and have a print. When you find interesting or useful information you can highlight and bookmark and reach easily whenever required. If you are attending a lecture and teachers tells something special you can readily add the comments on the instance to remind what it actually means. You can do all this great stuff without paying a single cent. If you are a pro and you need to quickly edit your PDF files you can do it easily with by just buying a membership of around 13 dollars. It opens the door to several unmatched features such as signing your documents through digital signatures so no worries of signing official documents manually just Do it while you are creating your files / forms and stay free. Never lose your documents by sharing them on the cloud and access them anywhere you want. Need another file format for submissions or other purposes its just a click away with adobe acrobat pro and scan your important documents directly to PDF format and edit them how you like them.

Features:

Compatibility	Windows, MAC OS, Android, IOS, Linux, Windows Mobile, Black Berry
Available Version	DC, X, XI
Size	Pro: 501 MB Free(Reader): 72 MB
Pricing	Pro: 15$ / month Standard Pro: 13$ / month
First Release	15th June 1993

Conclusion:

Adobe is a perfect tool for any kind of your PDF management. It offers great features and compatibility. You must use whenever you require to manage your data files. It is safe, secure and easy to use.

Download Links:

• Official: Adobe Reader,Adobe Acrobat Pro
• File Hippo : Adobe Reader
  
• Cnet Downloads :Adobe Reader