A personal network is a set of human contacts known to an individual, with whom that individual would expect to interact at intervals to support a given set of activities. In other words, a personal network is a group of caring, dedicated people who are committed to maintain a relationship with a person in order to support a given set of activities. Having a strong personal network requires being connected to a network of resources for mutual development and growth. Personal networks can be understood by: who knows you what you know about them what they know about you what are you learning together how you work at that Personal networks are intended to be mutually beneficial, extending the concept of teamwork beyond the immediate peer group. The term is usually encountered in the workplace, though it could apply equally to other pursuits outside work. Personal networking is the practice of developing and maintaining a personal network, which is usually undertaken over an extended period. The concept is related to business networking and is often encouraged by large organizations, in the hope of improving productivity, and so a number of tools exist to support the maintenance of networks. Many of these tools are IT-based, and use Web 2.0 technologies. == History of networking and business success == In the second half of the twentieth century, U.S. advocates for workplace equity popularized the term and concept of networking as part of a larger social capital lexicon—which also includes terms such as glass ceiling, role model, mentoring, and gatekeeper—serving to identify and address the problems barring non-dominant groups from professional success. Mainstream business literature subsequently adopted the terms and concepts, promoting them as pathways to success for all career climbers. In 1970 these terms were not in the general American vocabulary; by the mid-1990s they had become part of everyday speech. Before the mid-twentieth century, what we call networking today was framed in the language of family and friendship. These close personal relationships provided a range of opportunities to preferred subsets of people, such as access to job opportunities, information, credit, and partnerships. Family networks and nepotism have proven particularly strong throughout history. However, other common bonds—from ethnicity and religion to school ties and club memberships—can connect subsets of people as well. Of course people whom insiders consider undesirable have been barred from such networks, with important consequences. Those who tap into influential networks can be nurtured toward success. Those who are shut out from networks can lose hope of success. Numerous business heroes of the past—such as Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller—exploited networks to great effect. The business networks that seemed natural and transparent to these white men were a closed book to women and minorities for much of American history. Drawing on work from the social sciences, these outsider groups had to identify and then harness the mechanisms behind networking's power. A prominent early example of this process was the formation of corporate caucuses by black men at Xerox starting in 1969. Groups of black salesmen met regularly to share information about Xerox's culture and strategies for navigating it most effectively. Through confrontation and collaboration with a relatively accommodating upper management, the caucuses helped open opportunities for high-performing black employees. The popular and business press began using the terms "network" and "networking" in the mid-1970s in the context of businesswomen consciously pursuing this strategy. Authors encouraged female workers to recognize and exploit the informal workplace systems that provided advancement. They urged women to identify mentors, use social contacts, and build peer and authority networks. The push for networking drew on ideas and relationships from the era's feminist movement, and dictionaries of the time explicitly linked business networking to women's efforts to succeed in the workplace. Since the closing decades of the twentieth century, networking has become a pervasive term and concept in American society. People now invoke networking in relation to everything from business to child rearing to science. While ambitious careerists seek networks as an indispensable talisman, companies purposefully encourage networking among their employees to boost performance and gain competitive advantage. At the same time, Americans are forgetting the workplace activism that first illuminated the power of networking. Unfortunately, this loss of historical context can fuel a backlash against outsider groups who still seek to synthesize networks so they can access the same opportunities enjoyed by insiders. == Characteristics of networks == Broadly speaking, all networks have the following characteristics: Purpose – A network can be established for learning, mission, business, idea, and family or personal reasons. Structure – A network is a group of interlinked entities that form a cluster. Most social structures tend to be characterized by dense clusters of strong connections. Style – The place, space, pace and style of interaction of the networks give an understanding of the style of the networks. Namkee Park, Seungyoon Lee and Jang Hyun Kim examined the relations between personal network characteristics and Facebook use. According to their study, personal networks are investigated through several structural characteristics, which can be categorized into three major dimensions according to the level of analysis: Dyadic tie attributes which include the characteristics of ego-alter ties such as duration, multiplexity, and proximity. Ego-alter tie attributes represent various dimensions of relationships between the focal person and their close contacts. First, tie duration refers to the length of time since the tie was originally initiated, which indicates the duration of relationships. Second, multiplexity includes a focal individual's degree of involvement in various types of interactions with network members. The third dimension is the physical proximity between ego and alter. Theories of proximity suggest that physical proximity between people affects their interaction and subsequently, their formation of network ties. The characteristics of alter-alter ties including personal network density. When moving to ties at the alter-alter level, ego-network density, which refers to the extent to which one's alters are connected with each other, is an important dimension of personal networks. Dense personal network structure indicates close interpersonal contacts among alters, and consequently, is considered to promote the sharing of resources. On the other hand, loose connections, or structural holes in ego-networks, have been found to facilitate the flow of information and to provide advantages in searching and obtaining resources (e.g., getting a job). The composition of alter attributes centered on the heterogeneity of alters in one's personal network. The heterogeneity of alters in one's personal network is associated with access to diverse resources and information It is expected, thus, that the heterogeneity attributes may enhance the focal actor's social activities. Each of these characteristics represents unique aspects of individuals' network relationships. == Types of personal networks == Personal networks can be used for two main reasons: social and professional. In 2012, LinkedIn along with TNS conducted a survey of 6,000 social network users to understand the difference between personal social networks and personal professional networks. The "Mindset Divide" of users of these networks was compared as follows: Emotions: Personal social networks: Nostalgia, fun, distraction. Personal professional networks: Achievement, success, aspiration. Use: Personal social networks: Users are in a casual mindset often just passing time. They use social networks to socialize, stay in touch, be entertained and kill time. Personal professional networks: In this purposeful mindset, users invest time to improve themselves and their future. These networks are used to maintain professional identity, make useful contacts, search for opportunities and stay in touch. Content: Personal professional networks: These provide information about career, brand updates and current affairs. Professional development: Personal development networks: These provide access to those who can provide information, knowledge, advice, support, expertise, guidance, and concrete resources to learn and work effectively—thus those who support the continuing professional development. == Personal network management == Personal network management (PNM) is a crucial aspect of personal information management and can be understood as the practice of managing the links and connections for social and profession
Thai QR Payment
Thai QR Payment or PromptPay (พร้อมเพย์) is a real-time payment system in Thailand that allows money transfers through digital channels using identifiers linked to a bank account, including a mobile phone number, citizen identification number, tax identification number or bank account number. The system was introduced in 2016 as part of Thailand's national e-payment infrastructure and was developed under the National e-Payment Master Plan, a government programme intended to expand digital payment infrastructure and reduce the use of cash in everyday transactions. It is owned by National ITMX ltd and Bank of Thailand and developed by Vocalink, a group by Mastercard == History == PromptPay (originally AnyID) is one of the National e-Payment projects and policies by Thailand, to regulate and standardize electronic payments to follow the technologies with internet and smartphones that is expanding and bringing technology into Finance and Commerce. By 22 December 2015, The First Prayut cabinet have approved the project as a national infastructure PromptPay has also been used in cross-border payment linkages with other real-time payment systems in Southeast Asia. In April 2021, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Thailand launched a linkage between Singapore's PayNow and Thailand's PromptPay, allowing customers of participating banks to send money between the two countries using a mobile phone number. In June 2021, the central banks of Thailand and Malaysia launched a cross-border QR payment linkage between PromptPay and Malaysia's DuitNow system. == Services == PromptPay's Services have included Encrypted Transactions and Payment between Two Individuals (C2C) Government Infrastructure Payment Tax Returns Individual PromptPay e-Wallet Thai QR Payment Pay Alert e-Donation Cross Border QR Payment
The Outliner of Giants
The Outliner of Giants was commercial outlining software. Like other outliners, it allowed the user to create a document consisting of a series of nested lists. It was one of a number of browser-based outliners that are delivered as a web application, used through a web browser, rather than being installed as a stand-alone application. The Outliner of Giants was released in 2009. The service was shut down on December 31, 2017 and only exports are allowed at this time. == Feature set == Unlike most other browser-based outliners - which often focus on providing a minimum viable product - the Outliner of Giants had much of the functionality typically associated with a desktop outliner, such as the ability to use of columns to structure information. However, The Outliner of Giants did not support offline editing, requiring an active internet connection in order to make changes to an outline document. === Outlining === Like all outliners, The Outliner of Giants supported the creation of a hierarchy of items, with users modifying the parent-child relationship between items in order to structure a document. This included the ability to promote or demote items up or down the hierarchy, or move an item up or down a list of siblings on the same level. The Outliner of Giants did not support the true cloning of items (where an item can appear to be in multiple places within the hierarchy at the same time), although it did support the copying of single or multiple nodes. === Import === The Outliner of Giants could import both plain text and the OPML XML format, which is commonly used to transfer data between outlining applications. === Editing === Outline documents could be edited using a WYSIWYG editor, as well as the Markdown, and Textile markup languages. === Annotation === The Outliner of Giants supported functions to annotate an outline, such as the ability to add colored labels, highlights and text, as well as tags and hashtags. === Collaboration === The Outliner of Giants supported real-time collaboration, where multiple users could edit the same document, and can see the changes made by another user as they happened. === Publication === Outlines created through The Outliner of Giants could be published directly online through the service, either as outlines, pages or in a blog format. === Export === The Outliner of Giants can export outline data as plain text, HTML, as well as directly to the Google Docs word processor.
ReactiveX
ReactiveX (Rx, also known as Reactive Extensions) is a software library originally created by Microsoft that allows imperative programming languages to operate on sequences of data regardless of whether the data is synchronous or asynchronous. It provides a set of sequence operators that operate on each item in the sequence. It is an implementation of reactive programming and provides a blueprint for the tools to be implemented in multiple programming languages. == Overview == ReactiveX is an API for asynchronous programming with observable streams. Asynchronous programming allows programmers to call functions and then have the functions "callback" when they are done, usually by giving the function the address of another function to execute when it is done. Programs designed in this way often avoid the overhead of having many threads constantly starting and stopping. Observable streams (i.e. streams that can be observed) in the context of Reactive Extensions are like event emitters that emit three events: next, error, and complete. An observable emits next events until it either emits an error event or a complete event. However, at that point it will not emit any more events, unless it is subscribed to again. The examples below use the RxJS implementation of Reactive Extensions for the JavaScript programming language. === Motivation === For sequences of data, it combines the advantages of iterators with the flexibility of event-based asynchronous programming. It also works as a simple promise, eliminating the pyramid of doom that results from multiple layers of callbacks. === Observables and observers === ReactiveX is a combination of ideas from the observer and the iterator patterns and from functional programming. An observer subscribes to an observable sequence. The sequence then sends the items to the observer one at a time, usually by calling the provided callback function. The observer handles each one before processing the next one. If many events come in asynchronously, they must be stored in a queue or dropped. In ReactiveX, an observer will never be called with an item out of order or (in a multi-threaded context) called before the callback has returned for the previous item. Asynchronous calls remain asynchronous and may be handled by returning an observable. It is similar to the iterators pattern in that if a fatal error occurs, it notifies the observer separately (by calling a second function). When all the items have been sent, it completes (and notifies the observer by calling a third function). The Reactive Extensions API also borrows many of its operators from iterator operators in other programming languages. Reactive Extensions is different from functional reactive programming as the Introduction to Reactive Extensions explains: It is sometimes called "functional reactive programming" but this is a misnomer. ReactiveX may be functional, and it may be reactive, but "functional reactive programming" is a different animal. One main point of difference is that functional reactive programming operates on values that change continuously over time, while ReactiveX operates on discrete values that are emitted over time. (See Conal Elliott's work for more-precise information on functional reactive programming.) === Reactive operators === An operator is a function that takes one observable (the source) as its first argument and returns another observable (the destination, or outer observable). Then for every item that the source observable emits, it will apply a function to that item, and then emit it on the destination Observable. It can even emit another Observable on the destination observable. This is called an inner observable. An operator that emits inner observables can be followed by another operator that in some way combines the items emitted by all the inner observables and emits the item on its outer observable. Examples include: switchAll – subscribes to each new inner observable as soon as it is emitted and unsubscribes from the previous one. mergeAll – subscribes to all inner observables as they are emitted and outputs their values in whatever order it receives them. concatAll – subscribes to each inner observable in order and waits for it to complete before subscribing to the next observable. Operators can be chained together to create complex data flows that filter events based on certain criteria. Multiple operators can be applied to the same observable. Some of the operators that can be used in Reactive Extensions may be familiar to programmers who use functional programming language, such as map, reduce, group, and zip. There are many other operators available in Reactive Extensions, though the operators available in a particular implementation for a programming language may vary. ==== Reactive operator examples ==== Here is an example of using the map and reduce operators. We create an observable from a list of numbers. The map operator will then multiply each number by two and return an observable. The reduce operator will then sum up all the numbers provided to it (the value of 0 is the starting point). Calling subscribe will register an observer that will observe the values from the observable produced by the chain of operators. With the subscribe method, we are able to pass in an error-handling function, called whenever an error is emitted in the observable, and a completion function when the observable has finished emitting items. ==== Usage in stream-oriented programming ==== Certain RxJS primitives such as BehaviorSubject make it possible to create pure stateful streams to track application state of arbitrary complexity in simple terms. The button below will feed an event to the stream, which in turn will re-emit the next natural number every time, back into the tag that follows and displays the count of clicks detected. Libraries such as Rimmel.js, designed around RxJS Observables, enable integration between reactive streams and the HTML DOM: == History == Reactive Extensions was created by the Cloud Programmability Team at Microsoft around 2011, as a byproduct of a larger effort called Volta. It was originally intended to provide an abstraction for events across different tiers in an application to support tier splitting in Volta. The project's logo represents an electric eel, which is a reference to Volta. The extensions suffix in the name is a reference to the Parallel Extensions technology which was invented around the same time; the two are considered complementary. The initial implementation of Rx was for .NET Framework and was released on June 21, 2011. Later, the team started the implementation of Rx for other platforms, including JavaScript and C++. The technology was released as open source in late 2012, initially on CodePlex. Later, the code moved to GitHub and has been ported to several other languages, including Go, Java, Kotlin, PHP and Rust.
Read the Docs
Read the Docs is an open-sourced free software documentation hosting platform. It generates documentation written with the Sphinx documentation generator, MkDocs, or Jupyter Book. == History == The site was created in 2010 by Eric Holscher, Bobby Grace, and Charles Leifer. On March 9, 2011, the Python Software Foundation Board awarded a grant of US$840 to the Read the Docs project for one year of hosting fees. On November 13, 2017, the Linux Mint project announced that they were moving their documentation to Read the Docs. In 2020, Read the Docs received a $200,000 grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. For 2021, Read the Docs reported 700 million page views and 196 million unique visitors. In 2013, a "Write the Docs" conference for Read the Docs users was launched, which has since turned into a generic software-documentation community. As of 2024, it continues to hold annual global conferences, organize local meetups, and maintain a Slack channel for "people who care about documentation."
And–or tree
An and–or tree is a graphical representation of the reduction of problems (or goals) to conjunctions and disjunctions of subproblems (or subgoals). == Example == The and–or tree: represents the search space for solving the problem P, using the goal-reduction methods: P if Q and R P if S Q if T Q if U == Definitions == Given an initial problem P0 and set of problem solving methods of the form: P if P1 and … and Pn the associated and–or tree is a set of labelled nodes such that: The root of the tree is a node labelled by P0. For every node N labelled by a problem or sub-problem P and for every method of the form P if P1 and ... and Pn, there exists a set of children nodes N1, ..., Nn of the node N, such that each node Ni is labelled by Pi. The nodes are conjoined by an arc, to distinguish them from children of N that might be associated with other methods. A node N, labelled by a problem P, is a success node if there is a method of the form P if nothing (i.e., P is a "fact"). The node is a failure node if there is no method for solving P. If all of the children of a node N, conjoined by the same arc, are success nodes, then the node N is also a success node. Otherwise the node is a failure node. == Search strategies == An and–or tree specifies only the search space for solving a problem. Different search strategies for searching the space are possible. These include searching the tree depth-first, breadth-first, or best-first using some measure of desirability of solutions. The search strategy can be sequential, searching or generating one node at a time, or parallel, searching or generating several nodes in parallel. == Relationship with logic programming == The methods used for generating and–or trees are propositional logic programs (without variables). In the case of logic programs containing variables, the solutions of conjoint sub-problems must be compatible. Subject to this complication, sequential and parallel search strategies for and–or trees provide a computational model for executing logic programs. == Relationship with two-player games == And–or trees can also be used to represent the search spaces for two-person games. The root node of such a tree represents the problem of one of the players winning the game, starting from the initial state of the game. Given a node N, labelled by the problem P of the player winning the game from a particular state of play, there exists a single set of conjoint children nodes, corresponding to all of the opponents responding moves. For each of these children nodes, there exists a set of non-conjoint children nodes, corresponding to all of the player's defending moves. For solving game trees with proof-number search family of algorithms, game trees are to be mapped to and–or trees. MAX-nodes (i.e. maximizing player to move) are represented as OR nodes, MIN-nodes map to AND nodes. The mapping is possible, when the search is done with only a binary goal, which usually is "player to move wins the game".
Cloud-based design and manufacturing
Cloud-based design and manufacturing (CBDM) refers to a service-oriented networked product development model in which service consumers are able to configure products or services and reconfigure manufacturing systems through Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Adapted from the original cloud computing paradigm and introduced into the realm of computer-aided product development, Cloud-Based Design and Manufacturing is gaining significant momentum and attention from both academia and industry. Cloud-based design and manufacturing includes two aspects: cloud-based design and cloud-based manufacturing. Another related concept is cloud manufacturing that is more general and popular. Cloud-Based Design (CBD) refers to a networked design model that leverages cloud computing, service-oriented architecture (SOA), Web 2.0 (e.g., social network sites), and semantic web technologies to support cloud-based engineering design services in distributed and collaborative environments. Cloud-Based Manufacturing (CBM) refers to a networked manufacturing model that exploits on-demand access to a shared collection of diversified and distributed manufacturing resources to form temporary, reconfigurable production lines which enhance efficiency, reduce product lifecycle costs, and allow for optimal resource allocation in response to variable-demand customer generated tasking. The enabling technologies for Cloud-Based Design and Manufacturing include cloud computing, Web 2.0, Internet of Things (IoT), and service-oriented architecture (SOA). == History == The term cloud-based design and manufacturing (CBDM) was initially coined by Dazhong Wu, David Rosen, and Dirk Schaefer at Georgia Tech in 2012 for the purpose of articulating a new paradigm for digital manufacturing and design innovation in distributed and collaborative settings. The main objective of CBDM is to further reduce time and cost associated with maintaining information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructures for design and manufacturing, enhancing digital manufacturing and design innovation in distributed and collaborative environments, and adapting to rapidly changing market demands. In 2014, the same research group also published the worldwide first two books on the subjects of Cloud-Based Design and Manufacturing (CBDM) and Social Product Development (SPD) with Springer, edited by Dirk Schaefer. == Characteristics == CBDM exhibits the following key characteristics: Cloud-based distributed file system High performance computing Cloud-based social collaboration Ubiquitous access to distributed big data Rapid manufacturing scalability Agility On-demand self-service Semantic Web Real-time request for quotation Pay-per-use pricing model Multi-tenancy CBDM differs from traditional collaborative and distributed design and manufacturing systems such as web-based systems and agent-based systems from a number of perspectives, including (1) computing architecture, (2) data storage, (3) sourcing process, (4) information and communication technology infrastructure, (5) business model, (6) programming model, and (7) communication. == Service models == Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) Platform as a service (PaaS) Hardware as a service (HaaS) Software as a service (SaaS) Similar to cloud computing, CBDM services can be categorized into four major deployment models: the public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and community cloud. == Research progress in Academia == The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) MENTOR program Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council cloud manufacturing program European Commission's Seventh Framework Program (EC FP7)