WHATSAPP tool in knowledge sharing

In the present scenario where communication is an instant factor and a lot of software and mobile apps are available for knowledge sharing, the WhatsApp is most popular among all the categories of people despite of their caste creed and culture.

The WhatsApp a free messaging and calling app which is based on java and android is worldwide popular especially for sharing information and knowledge. It is a unique place for mobile messaging apps which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS and is available for all mobile android phones.

This app was started by Jan Koum and Brian Acton, with the help of their remarkable team, derived from the famous English phrase which is commonly used by the youths worldwide i.e. (What’s up?), that means what is new? 

It is the same what skype did for voice and Internet calling, WhatsApp is doing for the messaging. According to the study, WhatsApp is used by more than 900 million active users.  This is an instant messaging application for smartphones. It enables users to share pictures, videos, and audio or written messages using their Internet connection in a cellphone.

Though there is stiff competition from various messaging service apps like iMessage, LINE, BB and Viber, WeChat, Snapchat etc, still WhatsApp is the most preferred choice and remains the leader in messaging applications.

Here are the benefits of using WhatsApp are as follows:

• It is an easy and free to use application
• It can select the contacts from the contact list of devices and make them visible in the Apps own contacts list
• Users can create groups and get connected to WhatsApp, and having the ability to exchange learning objects easily through comments, texting and messaging
• Any kind of knowledge and information are easily formed and shared through WhatsApp.
• The receiver cannot refuse the receiving of information or message sent by the user as WhatsApp has the features which shows whether the message is delivered or not as well as the message was read or not [the blue and black double ticks at the bottom of the message]

According to WhatsApp official blog [October 31, 2011] stated that one billion messages have been sent in one day by WhatsApp users.  No doubt, it is a remarkable milestone creating a unique and huge messaging system for mobiles for the global marketplace for any mobile handset.

Perceptibly, WhatsApp is used as a tool for knowledge sharing content along with the other contents like jokes, rumors and gossips, videos etc. and one can get in touch with the family, friends and colleagues.  This app is quite popular among the youth for its speedy and easy communication.

The WhatsApp is a new and innovative medium, which helps in communication as well as knowledge sharing that can completely change the lives of youths.  Nowadays, due to the online classes, the students with the help of WhatsApp community/group share the exchange of information and knowledge especially at the low cost of technology. 

Also, the increase in the use of mobile devices in the university environment helps students easily cooperate and collaborate and improves their communication. It brings social presence in helping learners become more engaged.

Nowadays most of the youth having their smartphones, WhatsApp plays an important role in sharing knowledge towards this fast-growing scientific era.   

Can airbus fly?

Creativity and imagination are two separate things.  If they amalgamate makes wonder.  Have you ever thought an airbus can fly? Seems to be unrealistic!  No doubt, this is certainly beyond one’s fancy!  But the truth flying airbus is coming soon and it is hoping to enter the market sooner than you think.

The latest innovation is electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles [eVTOLs], that is faster than a car, more exclusive than mass transit, and quieter than a helicopter. It is indeed revolutionized urban transportation.

According to aerospace giant Airbus says to cut down the travel time in heavily congested areas and to be well-positioned keeping in mind the future aspects, it is important that we must see the need to change the way we are travelling in cities.

The next-generation city airbus is equipped with fixed wings, a split tail section, and eight electrically powered propellers and is capable to reach a cruising speed of 120 kilometres per hour. 

The [eVTOL] is specifically designed, starting from structural mechanics to aerodynamics and electric propulsion.  Its battery can last for 80 kilometres, and a landing noise of 70 decibels, which is audible to human ears is expected low enough to blend in with the sound of regular traffic.

The looks seem to be like a robot taxi and the main goal of eVTOL is to manoeuvre itself by computer in order to make the economics more viable. In future, the target should be self-piloted autonomous flight.  Though this procedure takes time until then, it will fly with a pilot of course.

A lot of engineers are spending hours on all aspects of eVTOL design and experiments are going on eVTOL concepts to strike a better balance between hovering and forward flight.

No doubt the thinking process is quite challenging, but it should be borne in mind public acceptance is as important as developing the technology and the Airbus eVTOL should meet the highest standards for safety certification, which is set out by European aviation regulator EASA.

It is a very important milestone but on the other hand, it also needs to show serious commitment since there is a great potential to make a long-lasting impression. 

As far as city airbus flying is concerned, it is quite understandable that there is a huge gap between flying -- when there is nobody else around you and flying in an environment especially -- where there are other people around you.

Generally, urban air mobility caters for a safe and efficient aviation transportation system that will ferry transport passengers or cargo at lower altitudes within urban and suburban areas.  It also connects the sky to better link people to cities and regions and can contribute to a multimodal mobility system. 

The glimpse of the Airbus will be a four-seat prototype and it has been predicted that the commercial liftoff not be earlier than 2025. 

Basic Concept of Family Values

Family value is played an important aspect and it links with the social and demographic factors.  The transformation of family values is purely based on the extent of age, educational level, and place of residence.  These are the factors that influence the dynamics of changing family values.

Whenever we are talking about the transformation of family values, it is cemented on the transformation of attitudes towards family, marriage, children, and women combining family and profession roles, which are in general analysed. 

Nowadays the changes in family values are multidirectional.  On the one hand, the significance of the family and marriage is growing. While on the other, the amalgamation of professional and family roles of women is getting more common.  It is the general norm, which has been manifested in different social groups swayed by education level, age and place of inhabitance.

Perceptibly, the importance of family is a universal trend.  In the modern era, the urbanized growth of a young generation with a high educational level to be more focused on family and children and to balance both family and professional roles is quite a bit challenging!

The family remains very significant, as a basic vital value.  Now, it has been observed that the institution of the family continues to change.  The stability of family relationships is decreasing.  The underlying factors are:

• Increasing age at which people get married and have children
• The high divorce rate
• The decreasing fertility

It is important to understand the basic concept of change in the family institution and need to examine the transformation of family values.  Since the family continues to be the basic social unit, thus the perception of marriage and childbearing and attitudes towards the relationship between family members – should be clearly defined so that it does not affect the moral values.  Civilisational changes are occurring throughout the family.

According to the researchers, value changes all over the world can be described by the common patterns of:

1. from traditional to secular-rational values
2. from survival to self-expression values

Transformation of the value system is dependent on the cultural-historical context as well.  However, women are now career-oriented and are of the views, and advocates of the equal distribution of duties in the family at the same time.  It is also noticed that today’s youth are more liberal and less inclined to religion that can be looked over as per the countries when we are talking about the general trend of values modernisation.

it is a universal trend that the concept of family is given greater importance with the increasing course of time and the self-realisation, if they agree that the family can be the central role in a woman’s life.

Perceptibly, the factors that determine the transformation of family values are:

• Age as a factor of value transformation
• Education as a factor of value transformation
• Settlement type as a factor of value transformation

Besides that, other factors like -- position on the labour market, the perspective of professional self-realisation, and income growth.

There may be an apprehension that due to urbanisation and the growth of the education level among the current young generation could contribute to a decrease of pronatalist attitudes and an increase in the idea of women combining family and professional roles.

As we are living in the modern era that does not signify or still there are no visible signs to prove that family and marriage will be less important in the nearest future.     

As it says, “Family is the smallest unit that touches humans in the world.”

5G Networking

There is a talk of the town that from 4G networking we are now going to  fifth generation (5G).  The people are skeptical and a bit excited about 5G when it will be launched.  What will be the overview of 5G networking? It is assumed that the evolutionary part of 5G will consist of improvements in the performance compared to 4G.

Currently, the 5G of cellular networks is under deployment by network operators and new 5G end-user devices are about to be commercialized by many manufacturers and right now 5G is still far from being reached.  One of the main 5G technologies is to be exploited the network slicing.  With the introduction of network slicing, it will be more flexible and efficiently provide the services like voice communication, video streaming, e-health and vehicular communication.

Perceptibly, it is a bit challenging, but the target can be achieved by using the novel technology of network slicing.  In general, the networking slicing is targeted in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which is currently in progress and motivates on the security aspects of network slicing.

Networking slicing stands with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Network slicing can take advantage of SDN and NFV, but it should act as an independent technology. 

It is important that the security and privacy aspects need to be clarified otherwise the consequences of network slicing might be severe.

As network slicing is a young field, is pertinent to investigate security aspects.  There are three different perspectives:

• Life cycle of a network slice
• Intra-slice security
• Inter-slice security

In order to exposure in 5G, Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) is examined and investigates the security requirements and network capabilities to identify flaws that might emerge through the use of network slicing.

It has been observed that for the development of 5G several research projects have been conducted or are currently in progress, including aspects related to network slicing and security. 

Network slicing is an important aspect that generally allows sharing of the same infrastructure for providing differentiated 5G services.  Now differentiation can be seen in terms of functionality [e.g., mobility, security, control] and performance [e.g., latency, throughput, error rate, reliability, availability].  It is an end-to-end logical network custom mainly define to satisfy required networking characteristics and provide specific services to serve particular use cases [ e.g., voice communication, video streaming, e-health, vehicular communication].  Thus, a logical network is a set of network function instances on top of physical and virtual resources [e.g., storage, network, processing, and access nodes].

The overall architecture of network slicing consists of three layers each with its management functions.  Namely:

• Resource layer
• Network slice instance layer
• Service instance layer

While using 5G, there are general security recommendations related to the inter-slice communication include:

• A minimal security level should be granted for every slice
• In order to prevent attacks, isolation between the slices should be strong enough
• Communication between slices should be reduced at minimum
• Allocation of resources should be minimal

A 5G customer device is allowed to attach to multiple slices since data is important, thus isolation of data should be feasible at the customer device too.

Though there are possible threats and recommendations concerning the 5G networks slicing security and a variety of issues are cropped up that need to be addressed.  This is an early development stage, the in-depth security analysis is to be explored and need to be clarified.  Moreover, there is an indication of some possible research in this direction.

Model and approach to grow revenue

The crux of small technology companies is how to approach to grow revenue.

It is important to have experience and vast knowledge of research on how to grow a successful business in a world that is increasingly embracing open source.  The main issue is how to leverage an open-source product as the keystone of a company and to engage the community to support a company's growth?  No doubt, it is a challenge that startups face as they start to grow. 

For any business, growth is important especially for technology companies.  It needs constant innovation, advancement, and evolving consumer needs.  Also, keep in mind the long-term profitability alongside develops a brand and attract new investment. 

Whenever we are talking about growth it requires capital, making consistent revenue a necessity. On the other hand, growth requires some experimentation with different strategies, where failure is the constant fear!  But one has to kick to start.

One can browse hundreds of books on business growth, with many promising and strategy for success.  But the reality there is no single growth formula that generally works for all businesses.  Business and growth are interrelated where growth requires focus & energy and it has been directed the particular aspect such as revenue growth, market growth, product line growth, or even shareholder growth. 

The main core of success is purely dependent on disciplined, incremental, consistent growth.

In order to grow the revenue of technology companies and startup through active participation in a business ecosystem, one should compare it to traditional approaches and identifying when the business ecosystem approach works better, as well as the benefits and risks also.  In addition, should focus on the importance of short and long-term strategic planning.

A small technology company or the founders of a startup must follow the guidelines to grow.  The top management has a pivotal role to get the house in order.  Firstly, the small technology company should follow:

• To raise the bar for performance
• Act based on the fact
• Divest what adds no value
• To put legal, cash, intellectual property and personal affairs in order

Also, we need to secure stakeholders’ commitment.  For this the company needs to:

• To create mind and share about their products and services and the unique reason “why” the company does what it does  
• Pertinently share the view, analyze the broader market opportunity and execute the plan
• Simplify its products, services and be ready with a solution to make them hassle-free for customers and partners
• Constant improvements in its operations

While dealing in the process, the top management team of a small technology company needs to remove obstacles by addressing four critical impediments to growth:

• Lack of funding
• Lack of skills
• Lack of time and
• Lack of access to customers and channel partners

A small technology company or a technology startup must identify and execute an appropriate growth formula. Common growth formulas used by small technology companies include:

• Help strong customers grow their business
• Bring innovation to market
• Apply good technology to novel market opportunities
• Sell services to a market niche first and then develop and sell products or solutions
• Provide value to users, economic benefits to customers

Generally, the growth formula makes it easier for company employees to make decisions, provides strategic clarity, reduces complexity, increases learning and makes new employees productive faster.

Alongside, we cannot ignore the business ecosystem.  A business ecosystem is a community of companies, organizations and individuals that share a desire for achieving high-impact results, deliver benefits to their customers and maintaining the health of their community. 

The two main responsibilities of the keystone are to increase the: i) volume of transactions among members, and ii) efficiency of new product creation.

The business ecosystem approach is a more effective way to grow a small technology when a company can generate more sustainable revenue as a member of the ecosystem than without such membership.  In order to make an effective business ecosystem the supplier needs to:

• Develop a strong brand
• Invest to improve product quality
• Reduce time to cash

It is pertinent that the small technology company should interact with a large number of members in different parts of the world and using the platform in order to:

• Deliver value to all the organizations
• Lever resources, talent and learning from other organizations
• Co-create solutions, products and services
• Link to other business ecosystems

There are risk factors also that a small technology company needs to know.  A company is exposed to three major risks:

• Increase the price of the transaction
• Weaken relationships with customers
• A significant percentage of the value the small company helped to create
• It has been seen stronger companies may become members of the ecosystem and choose to compete directly with the small technology company
• When a company does not derive sufficient benefits to justify the costs associated with membership

The general approach to grow revenue is solely dependent on three factors:

• Should operate in the traditional, standalone mode
• Be a player in somebody else’s multisided platform
• Operate and evolve a multi-sided platform on its own or with others

One should comprehend between develop community and business community.  The develop community cannot be termed as a business economy regardless of how active the development community is.  Whilst a business ecosystem impetus company access to cash and leadership as well as supporting a company in achieving a wide range of business goals.  It acts as a multi-company collaboration, not developer collaboration.

Small technology companies and technology startups should look for a new approach to grow revenue.  The capability to generate revenue is important to both companies and regional economic development organizations.  When we are talking about business ecosystems -- can accelerate revenue growth only if the company has a solid base to grow. 

The rules of the game are continually changing but one should not abandon the core business, but focus on it with renewed vigour and lookout for a new level of creativity.  As an entrepreneur one has to see the opportunities everywhere he/she looks, but many people see only problems everywhere they look.  This concept must be changed, and one needs to be pragmatic. 

Hare Krishna Movement in West

Hare Krishna movement is not only a movement.  It brings an adoption of a new pattern of thinking, level of personality and quest of personal identity.

Hare Krishna Movement first appeared in the West closing to the end of 1960, particularly in America.  Slowly and gradually, it spreads to Europe, and finally, it arrived in Central and Eastern Europe.

The ISKCON [The international society for Krishna Consciousness] is solely responsible to propagate the fundamentalist theology of Krishna consciousness.  From the early 1990s, it has been seen in Hungary. 

Swami Prabhupada was the main architect who sprang up to popularize the teachings of Bhagwan Shri Krishna through ISKCON.

In the initial stage, Hare Krishna Movement is under suspicion, and it is a bit challenging to accept in the West and across Central and Europe.  In the beginning, the people are raged, and they accused the Movement of brainwashing but slowly due to the broadening understanding and to the internal reforms of the ISKCON, this Movement is widely accepted as a change of identity.

Now, this movement has made an impact and it finds it better to adapt to Western civilization.  One can analyze the induction of the Hare Krishna Movement permits family life and improving women’s situation within the Movement. 

From the Hare Krishna Movement, it has been observed that they want to achieve the most important goal i.e. the eternal unchangeability, the Krishna consciousness. 

The Hare Krishna Movement or ISKCON traditionally regarded a new religious movement in sociology.  Research showed that the Krishna Movement, those who have long longer the person’s membership helps to stabilize the self-image of its members.  It is divided into two aspects -- re-interpreting the past based on the experiences of the present, and on the other hand, re-interpreting it based on the “truth” or not.

It is important that every person needs to understand the surroundings and functionality of the world i.e. internal or external cause.  Internal attribution means that one is responsible for the events, while external attribution means the opposite, that the others are responsible for the events – the surroundings, nature, society, and not the individual.

When we say ‘God is love” but no one can precisely tell what God is like, for no one has ever seen Him.  That is an iconic feeling to have something or formerly been hidden from them and to trace the root of its Krishan Consciousness reckons the new pattern of thinking.

When the Western people are religiously converted and follow the devotion path of Krishna Consciousness, they are called Krishna monks or merely Krishna followers and, in this process, the changes unfold -- is in the form of awakening.  Those who are Krishna Consciousness have to strictly follow vegetarianism, abstinence from drugs and intoxicants, sexuality allowed only in marriage for the purpose of procreation and regular prayer life.

The main core of Krishan Consciousness is the

• Meaning of life
• Quest for an eternal purpose
• Incomplete/missing but never know what exactly it is
• Search for real and pure
• Intellectual search [closer and closer to the Krishna consciousness]
• Received genuine answers to everything
• Acquisition of the knowledge
• One’s earthly life is determined by its karma

For Krishna followers or Krishna monks, it is a new mindset, as a personal way of thinking and a lifestyle.  The purpose of their work is to improve themselves and to convert others, who are truly in quest for authenticity.  

In general, when we encountered hardships and difficulties, we tend to dishearten but once you become the Krishna consciousness, all the sufferings become meaningful and they think of karma, and afterwards, the life becomes more relaxed.