Characteristics of communication

• Communication is a process – it is continuous, ongoing, and dynamic
• Communication has information (message/content)
• Communication requires a sender and a receiver
• Communication requires a medium (symbols, signs, behavior, speech, writing, or signals)
• Communication requires shared understanding – all parties understanding the same things the same way
• Communication is transactional and irreversible

 

Note: This is an extract from my book “Project Communication Management Summarized”, you may ready the book for complete context and content.

Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo has a tool called yahoo pipes which works much like a hose pipe we use in our gardens. All you have to do is fetch some data (search results maybe) and pipe it through another filter to sort and eliminate some records. That’s it…your kind of data is ready!

For non-technical people (the one who are unable to understand the above paragraph), there are pipes built by others which can be used by you. Lets say you are looking for a good deal on camera phone with Bluetooth, there is a pipe available which will search for all the deals and show you the results.

The ones I liked:

1. People Search - This tool is fetching search results from Yahoo, MSN, Google and Flickr to find any people entered with "Name FirstName".

2. Google and Yahoo news - Searches Google and Yahoo news, then merges them together into one feed.

3. Page to Podcast - This pipe extracts mp3 links from page, analyze ID3tag, and makes Podcast.

4. Meta Search Alert - This Yahoo Pipe: 1. Aggregates these search results from (Del.icio.us + Findory + Flickr + Google Blog Search + Google News + Google Search + Icerocket + Live Search + Technorati + Yahoo News + Yahoo Search); 2. Filters the results and ensures that the links are unique; 3. Sorts the results by date…

URL: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes

Get a temporary email address on http://www.guerrillamail.com/

I found an interesting website today, it is Guerrillamail.com - the self proclaimed anti-spam solution.

Steps to use it:

1. Get an antispam temporary email address on their website.

2. Use this email address to signup for a service you only planning to use once

3. Receive the confirmation e-mail(s) in your temporary antispam inbox

4. After 15 minutes your temporary emailaddress will expire and all mail send to this address will get caught by our antispam filter!

Project Communication Management

Projects are executed by humans. And humans must interact. There is no doubt that communicating frequently and often is necessary throughout the life of any project. Good communication skills of the team ensure success for projects.

Communication is the most important skill for a Project Manager.  Project Managers spend 90% of their time communicating.

 

Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I'll remember. Involve me and I'll understand. - Author unknown Note: The best way to communicate in the teams is to involve team members in all activities. Project manager along with team members is responsible for managing communication on project.

 

Communication may be done using symbols, signs, behavior, speech, writing, or signals, as well as through project charters, project plan, project scope statement and status reports. The list of ways a Project Manager communicates is longer and you will get familiarize with it as you read this book, for now, this small list is an indication of the significance of communication to a Project Manager.

 

Note: Lack of communication is one of the primary reasons why projects fail.

 

Projects fail when expectations are not aligned with results. Timely and effective communication can bridge this gap to avoid surprises at the end. Expectations, goals, and priorities of the project stakeholders should be well documented and communicated to the stakeholders.

Proactive Project Managers know that communication is an ongoing process throughout the life of the project. They set proper expectations for all the stakeholders by determining the information and communications needs of each stakeholder.

Communication by definition is the process of conveying information from a sender to a receiver with the use of a medium in which the communicated information is understood the same way by both sender and receiver.

 

Communications management employs the processes required to ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, distribution, storage, retrieval and ultimate disposition of project information.

—A Guide to the PMBOK®

 

 

Java ServiceLoader - java.util.ServiceLoader S

A lesser known Java SE 6 feature is java.util.ServiceLoader class. ServiceLoader is a general factory that can be configured in a standardized way. You may think of it as clever mechanism in the way that we could add new services by simply loading the correct class…at runtime.

You can visit http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/ServiceLoader.html for more information.