fash-biz-digest

As 2007 is coming to an end, the year  could be described as that of corporate governance due to the popularity and dimension of corporate governance in company investor relations. In short, there is no example that illustrates this better than one full page advertisement that appeared in the FT of october 17 captioned "Open letter to the shareholders of HSBC PL."  Which we can describe as a lacerating critic of the management of HSBC, by an institutional investor if we remember that, Knight Vinke Asset Management  sent a petition to prime minister dominique de villepin on the fusion of gdf-gdf.

The founder of Microsoft and L'Entreprise(The French business Magazine)

I have not been able to viste the web site of Bill and Melinda Gates but as an avid newspaper reader. I know that their foundation has been financing many not-for-profit groups around the world. But I was astonished to find out that during the last edition of the French Business Start-up Exhibition, the founder of Microsoft was asked, If it's the duty of businessess to contribute to the development of humanity.

The question is a surprise because the spirit of corporate social responsibility is not a fad and is high on the agenda of many companies. And the founder of Microsoft insisted in his reply, that the progress of the last century improved considerably the conditions of humanity and companies just have to pool their resources together on corporate social responsibility issues as their efforts compliment one another.

Source:  L'Entreprise, Mars 2007

 A tool for dedicated technical translators

Good technical translators when translating financial, legal, building and telecommunications materials like to have easy access to the relevant dictionary. And they will surely admire the recent issue of "Newton's telecom dictionary." A material of almost 1000 pages that contains technical terms relevant to the IT sector. The last pages of the dictionary has the full address of the major industry  organizations, interest groups, international calling codes and industry publications.

www.harrynewton.com

Resources for petroleum research

There are numerous sources for researching the petroleum industry and two major english language tools are the web sites of platts and offshore magazine below:

www.offshore-mag.com

www.platts.com

There is a valuable french resource and this list will not be complete without the web site of the author of "Prize," at:

www.cera.com

In short these three or four sources offer substantial pointers relevant to this sector of the international economy.

Two exhibitions (centre georges pompidou and a municipal library)

For any person, who has a thorough grasp of the biography of charles de gaulle, written by jean lacouture, andre malraux, a close aide of the french intellectual warrior featured prominently in this outstanding work on the life of general.

This year, there are numerous events commemorating the importance of this top flight minister of general de gaulle. One of these events, was an assembly of  top aides, at the ministry of culture, where each member of the gathering recollected the attitude of malraux to a particular event. We can include in this category of events for malraux, an exhibition of 33 items currently running at the andre malraux's municipal library in the heart of the 6th arrondissement. Which can be described as a tribute to the man, who created cultural centers(maison de la culture) all over france during his tenure as the minister of culture. That cannot be denied and I am not a spokesman or a political activist!

The second exhibition is scheduled for next year and in my opinion, it has nothing to do with malraux and will be taking place at the george pompidou center. But it's curious that the designer of the center,(richard rogers)don't like to use that name, centre georges pompidou, he prefers the word beaubourg, because pompidou is a conservative politician. Thus making people to wonder, what he would say, when taking a walk close to the françois mitterrand's library or the place jean paul sartre. However, the generous management of the institution told him to get to grips with the facts as he said,"I've been told, I've got to get it right," during a lunch with an ft weekend journalist, see the issue of 25-26 november 2006. Meanwhile..., whether you like the politician or not, you must visit the two exhibitions, subject to your having the time?

 allocine.fr for film reviews

Advertising agencies and media buyers like to assess the cost of advertising space in terms of socio-economic coverage and penetration. Just like the reviews of amazon.com are essential in the decision relevant to whether to buy a book or not. Within the same vein, the web site of allocine.fr offers a reviews of films and other evaluation likely to favor or discourage the processs of making a decision relevant to a film. And that is why over one million visitors visited the web site of allocine by the end of last month. That alone, is an advertisement selling point.

29 million military files and folders

The e-government agency is fast pushing france into the information technology age. If we take a lookat the delivery of electronic services in the pulic sector.

Now, an initiative that started last year and likely to run for the next ten years will consolidate the offer of military records online at least for the french national service. As the bureau central des archives militaires is currently working on a project to scan all military records(29 million files and folders) with the aid of three scanners, 350 PC's, record editing software and a powerful database.

Source

Micro Hebdo 24 August 2006, page 36-37.

Exclusive research sources

Researchers, writers and students hear very often from reference librarians "we don't have that here," when ask for the back issues of some international newspapers and publications. Apart from the fact that one cannot ask some librarians if they have nexislexis, dialog or factiva subscriptions. The mass of information available online without going to any research library is growing at an interesting pace and let us visit the following places:

http://www.highbeam.com
http://books.google.fr
http://news.google.com/archivesearch

And those familiar with Time magazine will wonder at the quality of their search response if they are able to locate the "archive," link at the end of the home page of the magazine. I was astonished with the quality of the results relevant to keywords like Tafawa Balewa, Biafran War, and Murtala Muhammed.

Again, Time archive starts from 1929 thus making it a great gift to professionals of contemporary affairs.

The Royal Society and academic publishing



The internet opened another world for the academic community and some of the efforts in online publishing are:

-the federal research public access act covering the accessibility of U.S based research materials online.
-the initiatives of the European Commission
-and a project by the UK-based Royal Society to share the cost of publishing with researchers.

Thus making information industry observers to wonder whether this inititative of the royal society is a new dimension in open-source or a transformational shift in the work of the association that has been promoting science and supporting engineering and technology in the UK.

On the web site of the Royal Society http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk the publishing guidelines and papers relevant to the new publishing model are available for consultation. This is a strategy that we need to watch closely.

Microsoft and the academic world

Windows XP deserves little or no introduction in the company of professional and non professional pc users. Industry observers have been following the strategy of the group in its efforts to release the next version of its os.

But the multinational group took observers by surprise when it released recently, a trial run of its academic search product called windows live. Researchers, journalists, writers and the entire academic community are the target publics of windows live. Apart from the big players in the enterprise web search sector, google and microsoft now have products that are going to change the face of academic searching.


http://www.live.com for windows live search