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EssayBizLabE-CommerceElectronic Business in Small-to-Medium Size Organisation
Electronic Business in Small-to-Medium Size Organisation
Today's world is moving at a faster speed through technology in every aspect of business while e-business has recognised as the most modern aspect of that technology integration. It influences organisations for discovering newer customs for expanding the competitive marketplace; draw the attention of customers through customisation their offerings and format the overall business process and functionalities to ensure efficiency and effectiveness via e-business.
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Meas (2006) mentioned that SMEs are the main branches of economy from developed to developing countries and in UK SME accounted for almost all of the private business. SME mainly implies the small to medium enterprises having less than five hundred employees and limited annual turnover. On the other hand, e-business is the concept that all the business processes of the organisation done through the digital technology. There are processes like the production process, supply chain process, procurement process, decision-making process etc. Big organisations have already adopted the e-business process in their operations and find them in a competitive position against the competitors. There are two broader sense of SME in the world and the first one is the firm SMEs those deal with the agriculture and farming and secondly, non-Firm SME that deals with the production and services in normal economy. The Firm SME is very common in lower developed countries and some developed country. In this paper, would focus on the non-Firm SMEs rather than Firm SMEs as they have very common and wider practice worldwide and it has engaged its efforts to the target market is the small to medium organisation of the UK that engaged in manufacturing and service.
As a key members of European Union, UK is a country with a flourished economy where a large number of private enterprises doing business in both manufacturing and service industry. With a high standard of living and per capita income, the country is technologically advanced from any other country of Europe. Robertson (2007) added that the influence of technology is everywhere including the operation of the businesses. All business large to medium heavily relied upon on the digital technology like internet, networking for their operation and large firms invest huge amount of money in developing IT infrastructure for the organisation. To compete with this big organisation there is no alternative for the small to medium organisation to adopt ICT in their operation. In UK, the SME firms fall into two broad classification that is the manufacturing industry and the service industry. The manufacturing firms mainly adopt the production technology for their operations and service firms adopt the technologies to build and maintain the relationship with the customers.
Rationale for the research
Levy et al (2005) argued that in UK, the SME manufacturing industry included the producers of commodity and electronic products that used e-business concept in their production process. The manufacturing industry of the country-generated employment for 3834000 people and the annual turnover for the industry was £442776 million DTI (2002). The total number of firms in manufacturing industry was 298425 within which 99% were small to medium firms. These manufacturing firms invested a large sum of money in research and development for developing new products. The R&D of the manufacturing firms was technologically sophisticated that used latest technology for new product development. The researcher used the software package like CAD, CMA etc for new product development and the importance of new product development was high in IT manufacturing industry. For the production plant, the SME firms used plant layout plan, process layout plant, and TQM plan to gear up the production. The use of technological sophistication in production plant substantially reduced cost and time of the producers, which affect the price of the product. As a result, the producers could supply product with low price that ultimately increase the sales volume and turnover of the firm.
Jahankhani (2009) mentioned that the service industry of SME in UK mainly consists of the firms that provided various services like internet, utility services, bank etc. The number of total service firms of SME in UK was 1207000 and it represented 25% of the total private enterprises of the country. This service organisation adopted the e-business process more from the manufacturing firms as they dealt with customer directly. In UK, the customers used to take services through the internet and e-commerce was popular among the service firms and customer of the country. More than half of the total customers spent time in internet and they wanted to get the expected service through the internet. The firms also placed the advertisement and promotional offer in the internet both in their own website and in website of the other company. Another way of giving advertisement was maximizing the use of search engine so that the customer could easily get the required services through searching on the specific services.
Here the process of conducting SMEs' business transaction through digital networks, internet, and other similar technologies has been termed as e-business while retailing involves direct selling to the end users, multi- purpose business involves in serving such multiple products and services to customers while segregation is the process of presenting an entity or its offerings unique from market competitors. Various patterns of SMEs' e-business applications are helpful in obtaining comparative uniqueness of retailing and multi- purpose businesses in terms of internet service, network facilities, cable networking, and digital channels or even ease of selling through online networks. Thus, it is essential to investigate e-business strategies of SMEs, how effective are they to creating such advanced level of customer satisfaction along with meeting both organisational and individual exchange objectives.
Research question and objectives
The main purpose of this research is to examine the impact of e-business on the medium to small organisation. This dissertation has formulated to answer the basic research question as- which e-business techniques of SMEs are most influential for developing competitive advantage for acquisition of customer satisfaction for a retailer or multi- service operator?
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To answer this question and to enable a marketing manager for implementing various forms of e-business tools to differentiate corporate offerings far from competition by increasing customer level of satisfaction, this paper would investigate-
To explore the degree on interdependency of regular business operation and e-business application of SMEs,
To examine the use of internet and high tech networking technology in medium enterprise,
To identify the development of technologies applicable for selected sectors
SME Definition
O'Regan et al (2006) explained that Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) is the lifeblood of the economy of the most of the country around the globe including the flourish economy like USA. In USA, more than fifty percent of the businesses are small to medium size business and it contributes a substantial amount of dollar in the national GDP. In spite of this contribution, it was very surprising to know that there was no specific definition of SME, as it was vary from country to country and even within the country. The definition of SME depends on the size of the organisation and some other factors like total number of employees, amount of investment, annual turnover and the nature of the business. Suppose the capital range of SME for the manufacturing firm is not as same as that of the retailing business (Hammer et al 2010).
Figure: Definition of SME. Sources: Hammer et al (2010).
In the above figure, the definition had given based on some factors like number of employee and amount of revenue. According to SBA Advocacy, in case of Manufacturing and non-exporting service firm small and medium enterprises were those that have less than 500 employees and were similar to USDA. In case of Exporting service firms and farms, the number of employees was also less than 500 for SME. In the light of revenue, the revenue of small and medium Exporting service firms should not exceed $7 million for most enterprise and $25 million for high value enterprise. The limit of revenue for small and medium farms was less than $ 250,000.
According to Siropolis (1998), there were a number of yardstick for measuring an enterprise whether it was a small to medium or big enterprise. These yardsticks were as follows:
Total Asset: Total assets of a firm included the total cash, inventories, machineries, lands, and tangible and intangible resources.
Owners' Equity: Owner's equity encompassed two streams like the shareholders or owners' investment, which also known as capital and money supplied by the creditor, which known as liability.
Yearly sales Revenue: Yearly sales revenue was the annual sales turnover of the firm, which in the previous definition limited to various amount according to the nature of enterprise.
Number of employees: No of employees refers to the number of employees employed in a particular organisation which should less than 500 in every small to medium organisation and it was a very popular method of defining small to medium enterprise.
Inflation proof: Inflation proof was the measurement of changes in firm's financial position by the inflation rate of the economy. It generally assumed the small to medium enterprise was not responding to the change in inflation rate that was the purchasing power of the firm and buyer not constant.
Transparent: The small to medium business was easy to understand and the function of the business was not that much complicated as compare to that of the big organisation.
Comparable: Comparable refers to the comparability of the firm to the industry where it operated. Small to medium firms were easily comparable to the big organisation with in the industry.
Manufacturers Employing Fewer Than
Macaroni and spaghetti 1500 persons
Wholesalers Employing Fewer Than
Paints and varnishes 500 persons
Retailers Earning Sales of Less Than
Automobile dealership
Restaurants $13.5 million a year
Services Earning Sales of Less Than
Television repair 12.5 million a year
Table: Definition of SME. Source: Siropolis (1998).
Classification of SME
By observing the operation of small to medium enterprise in different countries, it had explored that there were mainly two basic types of SME operated around the world.
Firm SME
Renner et al (2008) pointed out that Firm SMEs included those organisation involved in agriculture and agro business. In USA, a large number of Firm doing business on agriculture and agro based product. Agriculture was very important for every economy and world's large demand for the food grains fulfilled by this sector. In most of the cases, Firm business required a small to medium level of investment and few numbers of workers (Herrera & Ramirezy, 2003). The farmers of the different country made a good contribution in the national GDP with a vary low level of investment and due to the increase pressure of population, the current demand for the food ingredient was much higher than the any other time. Almost all of the Firm in third world country including Asia, Africa, and Latin America were small to medium in size and owned by the single proprietor or with one to two person. However, in USA, some big organisation produced agricultural product.
Non-Firm SME
Sun (2006) added that, Non-Firm SME included the small to medium organisation that produced products or generated services with small capital and limited number of employees. Collins et al (2003) explained that, this kind of non-Firm SME includes small to medium manufacturing firm, wholesale, retail business, and service providing firms. These categories of non Firm SME business were as follows:
Manufacturing firm: Manufacturing firms were those that produced food items, refining petroleum, produced computer, and electronic items etc. The capital of this kind of firm was limited and the employees or workers did not exceed more than 500. These kinds of manufactures were very common in third world countries and their contribution to the economy is very crucial.
Wholesaler: Wholesaler was those who brought product from the manufacture, sold it to the retailer and usually wholesaler buy a large amount of product from the producers, and sold it to the different retailers in small lots. Sometimes wholesalers supplied raw materials and semi finished product to the producers and sold the produced good to the retailers. The number of employees for small to medium size wholesale business was not more than 500. The example of wholesale business includes the sporting goods, furniture, paint, and varnish and so on.
Retailer: Retail small to medium business organisation were those who directly brought product from the wholesaler, manufacturer, or supplier and sold it to the final consumer. The retail business included the small retail shop to the big retail super stores like Wal-Mart, Harold etc. The retailer may be the grocery, whose annual income should no go beyond $13.5 million, may be automobile dealers whose income should not go beyond $11.5 million annually and it may be restaurant that income should not exceed $10 million per year.
Service provider: service providers included the general service providers like television repair, computer repair or professional service such accounting, legal etc. generally the size of this kind of business is small and handled by single person or with very limited number of employees. In the third world country this service providers were small but in the developed world, the size may be medium to large. The income level of computer service providers should not exceed the limit of $12.5 million in a year, the income level of profession service providers should not cross the limit of $4 million per year, and the income of the service providers of television repair should not cross the level of $3.5 million per year.
Main feature of SME
Clayton (2002) added that small to medium business organisation was important in every economy and got the special attention of the government and other stakeholders beyond the national boundaries. In every economy, SME had a great contribution the employment, business growth, GDP, and innovation. In this section, the main features of SME were given based on economy of USA.
Business and Employment: Though the limit of employment in SME was 500, most of the case the number of employment in this kind of firm was very limited which was not more than 20. In USA from the total number of 26.8 million SME, only 6 million firms had employee for their businesses. In spite of employer or non-employer, SME presented approximately 99.9 percent of the total number of firms in USA.
Figure: Non-farm private employer firms by firm size, 2006. Source: Hammer et al (2010).
Though SME presented the big portion of the total firms, the number of the employment by this sector was not satisfactory and this big number of firms only provided fifty percent of the total employment. Total SME including the Firm and non-Firm business provided approximately 119 million employment and more than seventy percent of this employment generated by non-Firm firms who has less than 100 employees.
Figure: Non-Firm private employment by firm size, 2006. Source: Hammer et al (2010).
Another important aspect of the employment was most non-Firm employers were services provider and not the production firm. This was also true for the big organisations because the large firms, which provided jobs, were service in nature and in USA most of the employment was in service sectors.
Employment Growth: The number of total employment provided by the SME in USA was roughly constant in nature that from 1998 to 2006 it was fluctuate not more than one percent. As it already mentioned in the previous section that the share of employment in USA by SME was not more than 50%, it was constant for a decade. Statistics showed that the number of employer more than one hundred in SME showed upward trends and the portion of employment increased by this large SME firm in the country.
Economic Activity: SMS showed a great contribution to the economy of the country of the world including lower developed country (LDC) to higher developed country (HDC). The total contribution of SME in US economy in the year of 2006 was $4.7 trillion. It was not surprising to look that 70% of the total GDP generated by SME came from the service sectors. In the first world country, the number of service firm fall in the category of SME increased in good pace. However, the situation was little bit different in LDC where the number of SME of manufacturing was increasing over the service firm. It was due to the transition of economy where the economy of the western world shifted from manufacturing base to the service base. In the case of LDC, the vice versa was happening.
Affect of Globalisation on SME
McMaster et al (2005) explored that the globalisation is a concept made the world more closely than ever before and in effect, the world became small but the market became large. The main benefits of globalisation were it broke the national boundaries and made all country under one roof. This concept was much influential for business organisation around the world and it affected the way of business done by small to medium organisation. Previously, SME focused on the local market and served the demand of the local customers. The level of operation was also limited to a specific location whereas now a day beside the big business giant, SME also served the customers or buyers outside the locality. Increased rates of exporting firm of USA fall in the category of SME due to the globalisation. It created opportunities for the less developed countries like Asia, Africa to increase there national Income (NI) through exporting to the first world countries. The rapid changes in technologies created room for this SME business to flourish in the world market. The world market was freer now which called the enterprise economy where free market was the basic (Hawkins et al, 1999). Any business organisation could enter into any market of the world without any economic or political barriers. Using this concept, the Chinese economy had advance far through entering into the European and US market. The SME of the Chinese economy had been developed faster than the SME of any other countries through using the benefits of globalisation.
The cultural diversity was another factor affected the way of business done by the SME around the world. Previously, the cultural differences were more intense among the different cultural groups that hiders the free flow of business from one country to another country. As a result, the product and service generated by the SME was served only one cultural group. Currently, due to the advancement of technology and globalisation SME served the customer beyond the national boundaries.
Darby et al (2003) argued that e-business refers to the business, which perform all of its business processes through utilisation of internet and digital technology. E-business included all the functions of a business like e-commerce, internal management processes, and external processes of maintaining relationship with suppliers and customers. The major business processes of e-business were as follows:
Production Process: Production process included the use of information technology and internet in procuring, processing the raw materials. The producers were also used information technology to maintain the relationship with the suppliers and payment system. When a business organisation decided to use e-business in its operation the focus was on the production function if the organisation produced products. The production involved collection of raw materials, maintain inventory, continue the production process in the plant and finally put the finished product into the stock before collected by the sales department. During the process production department needed to collaborate with the suppliers and sale department for accurate information about the demand of the raw materials and finished products (Anon, 2002). Whenever an organisation turned into an electronic business then all this process was done through the computer and internet. All the information required by the production department was available in computer and delivered the information to the other stakeholders through using the internet of intranet. It made the business far easier than before and overall efficiency of the organisation increased.
Customer relationship process: Customer was the key for every organisation success and almost all of the organisations given the highest importance on the customers. Previously big organisation took various studies on the taste and preference of the customer for enhancing the viability of the product it entailed expending of a large sum of money in research. This kind of research for customer demand was quite impossible for the small to medium size organisation for their capital constrain (Laudon & Laudon, 2004). With the introduction of e-business, all the business process done through the e-commerce that made the use of IT and networking for prompt transmission of data over various destination and it required a small amount of investment and expenditure. As a result, beside the big organisation, SME also could get the data on customer within short time less expenses. They can made efforts on enhancing the relationship with the customers through the internet, which was very difficult in manual systems.
Knowledge Management Process: It was a distinct process of the organisation adopting the information system and e-business in its operation. One of the main functions of the e-business organisation was the transmission of the information on various aspects of the organisation. Knowledge management systems helped the organisation to collect, store and use the necessary expertise and knowledge to operate successfully the business. Most of the time, this system served as a distinct competency or core competency for the organisation.
Enterprise Process: It was a holistic view of the e-business of the organisation though which all the major process of the organisation coordinated with each other to made the overall goal attainable. Previously, the functional department of the organisation worked on its own goals not able to coordinate the function of department with another. As a result, the departmental goal might attain but main goal of organisation might not be attainable. This could happen due to the lack of proper coordination among the various functional departments. By introducing the enterprise system in the organisation now, organisation can attain this objective of coordination more fruitfully than ever before. Through the enterprise system, organisation could make good coordination with the production process to supply chain, production department to sales department and finance department could best assess the financial needs of the various departments.
Hicks (2004) argued that most of the times, people used the concept of e-business and e-commerce interchangeably but there were some fundamental difference between e-commerce and e-business. As already described, e-business was making the major business process digital whereas e-commerce indicated use of digital technology in the transaction of a business. E-commerce was one of the components of e-business and it was the most important effective elements of e-business. In a true sense, e-commerce referred to the use of digital information technology to transfer goods and services to the customers without physical transaction and generating the value and exchange of ownership through internet and digital technology (Andam, 2003). E-commerce also served as a basis for building a long-term relationship with its customers and stakeholders of a particular business. In the year 2000, the revenue generated from the e-commerce was amounted to $350 billion around the world the figure in 2004 was $3.14 trillion which clearly indicated the growth of the e-commerce around the world. Within these huge amount of transactions, good number of transactions crated by the SME around the world.
Figure: Worldwide E-Commerce Revenue, 2000 &2004. Source: Andam (2003).
There are four types of e-commerce that includes the B2B (business to business), B2C (business to consumer), C2C (consumer to consumer) and M-commerce (mobile commerce). These types of e-commerce served the different purposes of the organisation.
B2B (business to business): This e-commerce involved with supplying goods or services to the retailers for selling to the final consumers. Small to medium organisation could produced goods or products to sell to the retailers that indicates the business-to-business transaction. To make the transaction easy and simple with the retailers, SME might use e-commerce through which all the transaction made via internet digitally. As a result, the business organisation made higher profit without entailing much cost.
B2C (business to consumer): Business to consumer transaction most of the time took place in retail business where the final consumer collect their necessity directly from the retail outlet. Through the introduction of e-commerce, the consumer not required to go to the retail outlet for collecting the goods rather they can collect it through internet and payment system also available there for the consumer. This substantially reduced the time and cost for making the transaction for both the consumer and the seller.
C2C (consumer to consumer): Through e-commerce, consumer can exchange goods and services with other consumer and the transaction took place between two consumers known as the C2C transaction. There was some website in internet, which developed under SME plans gave the consumer the chance to deal with one another in safer way.
M-commerce (mobile commerce): M-commerce was a concept derived from the e-commerce where business and consumer can deal with each other through the wireless phone, which was known as mobile or cell phone. It made the transaction of business with the business or consumer easier, took last time, and cost that increase the efficiency of the business.
Motivation for the Research
The researcher motivated to initiate the research to explore the impact of e-business on the small to medium organisation, especially in UK where the technological advancement in higher than any other places of Europe. It helps to understand the interdependency of e-business and SME.
It is a Descriptive research where the researcher tries to explain the concept of e-business and explore the implication of the concept in small to medium enterprise in UK. Here the researcher only explains the current conditions of e-business and its effect on the SME in UK. The researcher has no influence over the factors, which influences the e-business or SME.
In this research, researcher uses both qualitative and quantitative techniques of research where the researcher uses the objective evaluation in some area and subjective evaluation in other area of SME where e-business concept used. In this research, there are scopes for use both the quantitative and qualitative approaches. Researcher uses interview and observation for evaluation.
Sample Design
Researcher interview a sample of 20 SME firms and interviewed 20 executives form those firms for the judgment. The researcher does not use any types of sampling techniques so that the sample selection falls in the random sampling.
Measurement technique
In this report, the researcher uses the simple technique, which is also known as nominal scale technique. With this technique, the researcher put the opinion in the tabular forms for graphical presentation.
Testing of sound measurement
Validity: the validity is a concept that dictates the degree to which the result differentiates if actual measurement is used. (Kothari, 2008). To measure the validity the researcher used historic data on this topics and the result confirms to the result generated in other research.
Reliability: Reliability is the consistency in result as the reliable research shows consistent result in repetitive study (Zikmund, 2006). The common problem of any research is the inconsistent result in different study on same issues. To reduce this problem, the researcher carefully design the research plans and in some areas conduct repetitive research for confirmation.
Generalizability: The researcher uses Generalizability concept when using the secondary data for research purpose. This paper also can generalize as when using primary data it compared with the existing result.
Data Collection Method
For collecting the primary data for research purpose, the researcher uses the following techniques:
Interview method: Through the development of a simple questionnaire, the researcher collects primary data by interviewing the executives of different SME in UK.
Observation: The researcher also uses the observation method when visiting the SME firms for interview purpose. Due to the time and resource limitation researcher used this method in some area
Existing literature: Researcher using the literature existing on the e-business and SME in UK and other country,
Internet: Researcher uses the internet for previewing the literature, journal, and blogs on this topic (Malhotra, 2009).
Limitation of Data Collection Process
However, the researcher gave the maximum effort to do make the research a good one but there are some limitations in conducting the research. The financial constrains and time limitation is mentionable limitation of the research. To conduct a research like the present it requires large sum of money and sufficient level of time.
Viva Section
For this paper, viva is not applicable in a sense that it is a descriptive dissertation and only few sections used primary data for analysis purpose. Most of the data used in both literature and analysis part is mainly based on the secondary sources that is the analysis done by other. However, few sections address the primary data for analysis as the using ICT in different operation of the SME. Here the researcher of this dissertation contact with some SME companies like Softcat, Christians Against Poverty, Brand Learning, Qedis, Lane4, Shine Communications, Fairbairn Private Bank etc. where the researcher talk with some executives who are cooperating me by giving me the required data. Using the data I make some analysis on use of ICT like Internet, E-commerce, E-business, networking etc. Again, the focus is on the secondary data and as a qualitative and descriptive research, the viva portion is not applicable for this dissertation paper.
Results and Analysis
Analysis of The effect of E-business on SMEs
Small to medium organisation operated in an environment with limited number of employees and resources constrain. It was difficult to implement all the e-business application within a single firm and was especially true for the SME operating in the LDC. In the context of Europe, a large number of firms adopted e-business application. In case of UK, the government of the country took initiative to make the all business including the SME digital through the using of e-business application. Recently, a good number of SME in UK used e-business application in their business and new technology had adopted instead of the old technology that prompt the operation of the SME. Historically, 99% of the total business enterprises of UK were SME and it accounted for 58.9% of total employment and 51.9% of total turnover of the country. One of the main features of e-business was the use of internet in business operation and UK was one of the top most internet users in SME operation in the world.
Figure: SMEs with Internet Access. Sources: Dharssi & Murray (2001).
Effect of E-business on Manufacturing Sectors
Manufacturing industry was one of the major sources of SME business around the world. In UK, the number of manufacturing firm was approximately 298425 within which 99.3 was small to medium firm. These manufacturing firms generated 3834000 numbers of employments where the share of SME was 52.8%. Total turnover from the manufacturing firms was £442776 million in which 38.5% was providing by the SME. This tremendous performance of small to medium firm on manufacturing in UK presented the position of SME in the total economy of the country.
To stimulate the performance further, the government of UK took some initiatives to make these firms digital through extensive use of digital technologies and the government gave subsidy to implement this projects. Response to the government initiatives, almost all of the firms in manufacturing industry implemented partially or fully the application of e-business and e-commerce in their operations. There were some specific operations of manufacturing which were different from that of the service industry and these firms mainly focus on these operations to turn it from the manual to digital operation. Here, the effect of e-business on the special operations of manufacturing industry had been explored.
Research, Development, and Engineering
Currently, in every manufacturing industry new product had been developing in every 24 hours around the world. To sustain in the competition, there were no alternative to develop new product in the market. For this reason, most of the manufacturing firms invested huge amount of money in new product development that was in R&D and engineering. In UK, from the total SME of 4.8 million, 38% of this was the manufacturing firms that contributed to the national economy largely. In examining 20 small to medium manufacturing firms of London, UK the following result dictated the involvement of ICT in R&D and engineering of those manufacturing firms.
In the following figure, it showed that within the 20 firms, 11 firms used almost 85% of its R&D activities through the various computer applications, which made the work flawless. Another 6 firms used ICT in 60% of their R&D activities and only 3 firms used lower level of computer application and various simulation programs in developing new products. The applications mainly used in new product or process development by the SME of UK were CAD, CMA, and CME. From this scenario, the effect of E-business in the research, development and engineering in Europe, especially in UK would clear. Other research done by the various person and organisation also supported this result as most of these works showed the upward trends in using ICT and e-business tools in manufacturing in general and in R&D in particular.
Production was the main function of the manufacturing firms and the success of the firm depend upon the proper implementation of the production plan. From the time of industrial revolution, most of the industry relied on the machine for production and human was the key to handle the machine. In SME, the size of the machine was also small to the medium, which was previously handled by the man. Due to the rapid expansion on technology and implication of e-business forced the manual industry to turn into the digital industry run and controlled by the computer. In UK, the small and medium manufacturing industry took ICT in their production plant and through the using of computer it would required less time and energy to produced goods. Beside this, using technology in production reduced the rate of error and increased the accuracy in production.
According to the e-business survey 2002, 31% of total manufacturing SME adopted integrated electronic system in their operation and these firms employed more than 1000 people in their firms. After than, within this eight to nine years the situation had changed more and a substantial number of firms adopted the electronic technology in their production plant and process. Developing applications for plant layout, process layout etc. largely contributed to productivity and most of the new SME used this application when developing new plants. It substantially saved the time of the worker and they could use full time in production without any idle time. Previously, the coordination among the workers was poor so that workers had to wait for the completion of one process to start their own process. As a result, the cost of production was increasing and it would tough for the SME to compete with the large organisation in the market.
Inventory management & Quality control
Previously one of the main problems for the manufacturing firm was the inventory management that was the production department could not able to maintain an inventory level for both the raw materials and finished product, which could match with the plant capacity and market demand. There was a special dilemma for small to medium firms such as if it maintained a high-level inventory that would increase the cost whereas if it maintained low-level inventory that would lose the customer. To make the problem solved, e-business model generated a process based on computer application, which automatically calculated the optimum level of inventory for the definite period and also gave the signal to the department when the level of inventory was lower required to fulfil. Using this software application, small to medium firms could able to save the time and cost over the inventory management. In UK, a large number of firms used inventory management application to maintain the optimum level of inventory for storage. In surveying 15 firms, it was found that 12 of these 15 firms used the inventory management application for maintaining their inventory. They mainly used the software developed by the Microsoft and other companies in the industry.
Quality was one of the most important parameter for customer acceptance of a particular product or service. In the third world country, quality did not get that much attention but in the first world country including the European region, quality was the supreme priority to the customer for buying a product. In UK, the firms were competing highly on the quality and less on the price. SME basically had not that big plant like big manufacturer to realize the economics of scale and ultimately compete on the quality of the product. With the introduction of e-business, a radical change had took place in the quality and using various quality control package, manufactures were able to reduce the flaw in the product. The concept of total quality management (TQM) had developed through the use of ICT in the quality control where TQM was not possible in the manual industry, it required automated industry to achieve the total quality not only in the production process only but also in every steps of the organisation. The following result had explored through surveying the TQM of 20 SME firms of UK. There were twenty firms within where 15 firms used TQM application to maintain the product quality in every process of their production, while five firms used direct monitoring through the supervisor during the production process.
The labour productivity of UK had tremendously improved through the introduction the e-business and e-commerce in manufacturing firms and industries. This improvement was identical in SME of UK as this sector of business showed radical improvement in labour productivity and as a result, 99% of the total manufacturing firms occupied by the SME. Research showed that firms having more than 250 employees used the electronic links in business process around 50% that was the medium firms and firms having less than 20 employees used electronic links in business process around 10% that was the small firms. It also depicted that, the success rate of the firms using electronic business process in labour productivity was greater than the firms who are not using the electronic business process.]
Figure: Average labour productivity in Services, by type of e-business link. Source: Goodridge & Clayton (2004).
From the above figure, it observed that the labour productivity of the manufacturing firms per employee was approximately £35000 per year using the ICT in the business process. In every sector, the overall productivity of the current year increased from the previous years. Human resource was the most important resource of any organisation and in manufacturing industry, without labour, no production would take place. Many one believed that the automation and increased dependence on machine would lose the weight of human and would result in job loss. However, the actual scenario was little bit different from the assumption and the research showed that the use of e-business in major business process increased the overall productivity of labour in SME of Europe including UK.
Figure: Average labour productivity in Production, by type of e-business link. Source: Goodridge & Clayton (2004).
In case of labour productivity of manufacturing firms, those firms that adopted the e-business in their business process showed an increased rate of productivity in all the functions of the manufacturing firms. In UK, every employ of small to medium manufacturing firms showed nearly £40000 labour productivity annually which tends to grown further.
Effect of e-business in Service Sectors
Beside the manufacturing sectors, service sectors served as the major portions of SME in developed worlds including the UK. The recent trends in business in the developed country showed the economy of those countries transit from the manufacturing base to the service base (Westermeier & Plave, 2004). In UK, the total number of SME in service sector was 1207000 that represented 25% of the total private sector of the country. Within the service sector mining, water, gas, electricity etc showed 19% growth and financial intermediaries showed a growth of 10% but the other service industry exhibited a negative growth. The private sectors SME accounted for 4,502,000 numbers of employments in UK, which was the 15% of employment of the total private sectors. This SME sector generated a turnover of £454 billion per year that was the 15% of total turnover of overall private sector of the country.
The number of SME in wholesale and retail business in UK was 583000 that generated employment of 4963000 that represented 21% of total employment of service sectors in the country. In the following figure, the total number of enterprises in private sectors showed according to the different area of UK. In London, highest number of enterprise established which was 800000 and South Wales ranked in the second position. From the figure, it was clear that a large portion of the total SME established in the developed area where the demand was top most. Another reason behind this position was that in comparatively developed area the opportunity for using the information technology was higher than the less developed area. As an example, in London most of the SME operated in service sectors used advanced technology and e-business implication in main business processes that gave those a competitive edge.
Figure: Enterprises in each region and country, UK private sector, start of 2008. Source: Anon, (2009).
Sales, Marketing and Promotion: Most of the SME used e-business and e-commerce in their advertisement and promotional campaign to attract more customers to the business. The popular concept of marketing among the SME was e-marketing that implied the use of internet in marketing the product or service to the customers. In UK, most of the SME in service sectors used this newer concept in their marketing and promotion. Within the total customers of UK, age ranged from 15 to 45 frequently used internet for searching the product or service required. The SME targeted this segment of the market for their services. Every SME had the database for the customers and whenever new services came, it communicated with the customers through the internet. Those could use some social networks as a means for communicating with the target customers. In UK, the number of sales through the internet increased and within one year, it was almost double of sales through the online. Approximately 45% of medium retail firms used internet for selling their products and 38% of total sales in retail business in UK done through the internet. However, big retailers did not use online for their product sale on 5% of the total sales done through the internet by this firms. A good number of medium firms used internet for selling their product or services and the sales in internet fall in between 26% to 50% of the total sales of those companies. In last five years, it showed in research that, both the number of sellers and volume of sales through internet had increased by 50% previously, which was on only 10% to 15%. By observing the selling of 20 firms, the following result has found as
Number of firms Internet Sales
From the following figure it showed that with in the twenty firms, only four firms had more than 50% sales through internet. It also showed that ten firms had 38% sales over internet and six organisations had less than 27% sales over internet. The main reason behind this decrement was the security problem and the buyers were not satisfied with security system of internet. The increased cyber crime was the instance of low level security in online and the online payment system might hiked by those criminal that loss the loyalty of the customers.
Figure: percentage of companies ordering supply goods / services online (by sector and size, 2007). Source: The European Commission, (2008).
In above figure, the use of computer in business and customer service had shown in the various sectors including the retail and transportation services. From this figure it observed that the degree of used of computer largely depend upon the size of the firms including the employees.
Marketing was the main activities of any service organisation and successful operation and profit gaining of the service firms largely depends on the marketing of the company. The SME firms took two approaches in marketing when using the e-business concept and advertisement through internet. Firstly, it placed advertisement in the website and secondly, it tried to optimise the affiliation in search engine so that the customer can easily get the information of the company while searching in the internet (Adam, Mulye, Deans & Palihawadana, 2002). In advertising in internet, most of the time firms used the website of the other big renowned company where most of the customers visit. Though placing advertisement in other company's website might increase the level of cost, the benefit of this kind of advertisement frequently surpassed the cost (Bui, Le, and Jones, 2006). There were some search engines that customer used for searching their necessary commodities or services from the internet (Chaston & Mangles, 2003). The optimisation of search engine treated as an important tool for marketing by the service organisation. Research showed that in food industry, approximately 52% of the SME firms engaged in the technique of search engine optimisation for marketing and 40% non-food SME firms used it as a marketing tool. However, in comparison, the SME firms of UK in online marketing was lag behind the online marketing of US firms.
Figure: percentage of Uses of internet by firms of different size and country. Sources: The European Commission, (2008).
In the following figures, the percentages of using search engine for marketing given on the country basis. In UK, firms including the large to small firms used this technique of marketing was 64% and within this framework, 52% to 59% of small to medium organisation used search engine optimisation. The share of using e-marketing in large organisation was higher in every country including UK, where roughly 76% of large firms used e-marketing as the main tools for marketing their product and services.
Procurement was a very important from the viewpoint of the retailers as these retailers took an important place in the supply chain. To fulfil the customer order retailer had to procure the product or services from the suppliers or producers and placed it to the customers. Procurement was the process of information transmission and material flows between the suppliers and retailers. Whenever the whole process was doing through the ICT then it called the e-procurement. Basically, retailer did not produce goods or services rather it sales the products or services of the producers or suppliers, and in order to compete with the other retailers of other products, it had to build the competitive advantages on the procurement process. A substantial cost involved in procurement process and reducing the level of cost in this area was the major challenges for the retailers. Retailers were responsible for at least 55% of the total employment in SME and tried to use the technology or computer network for ordering the product from the suppliers such as EDI. Within the retail sector, at least 43% of the retailers used ICT in their procurement system and these retailers responsible for generating 35% of employment in the industry. These retailers placed at least 5% of their order from supplier through internet and 40% of the firms used full implication of e-procurement in their procurement process. The number of SME in retail business in UK used e-procurement system was increasing during last five years and some firms which did not use the e-procurement system could also used the online order for their procurement from the suppliers.
Banking service was one of the important areas of every economy around the world and in UK; banking sectors represented a large portion of SME operation. Unlike the other sectors, banking firms were more responsive to the technological change and adopted the most recent technology for its operation. All the business processes of the bank were doing through the implication of e-business. Banking provided financial services to the customers, which required a high level of securities and easy operation, which was not possible through the manual system that might increase the security but kill the time of the customers. In whole Europe, the banking sectors employed more than three million people and generated €490 billion from value added service and UK banking sector provided approximately 21% of this total value added services in whole Europe. The business process of banking services included the general banking process, advance process, cash receipt and withdrawal process etc. Modern bank provided various value added services like, Q-cash, ATM, Credit Card services, e-shopping and so on which heavily relied on the internet and digital technology. To compete in the market there were no alternative to adopt these services for the customers.
The new concept of e-banking had developed in UK bank industry and 30% of the all transaction in bank executed through the online banking that created an extensive pressure for SME bank to acquired more technology in different branch. In UK, in every ten banks, six banks offered online banking to the customers and the customers were not willing to come to the branch for their transaction rather they preferred to do the transaction through the internet. SME banks tried to build customer relation management (CRM) that was important for building the customer loyalty for the bank and it required not only the technology but also some skills and efficiency to handle the customers.
In banking industry, the effect of e-business was not always positive but the concern for security was identical. Research showed that every year banks and customers lose three million euro for hacking by the hacker. Not only the financial loss, but also other personal concern like the hack of personal data of the customers and the business data of the bank represented the real challenges for the bank. In the manual system, the data had preserved in papers but ICT reduced the use of paper, which caused the permanent loss of the data if the system crashed in any way. To protect the data system it required a large sum of investment which sometime not possible by the small to medium bank of the industry. Another important issue in this regard was the development of internal and external network of the bank for providing the integrated service to the customers. To solve the problem the banking sectors of European zone adopted Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) that was not implacable to UK as it did not accept the euro as a single currency. In the following research, it showed the use of e-banking in UK by the SME bank.
Service Use of ICT
E-banking 75%
Loan processing 45%
ATM 90%
Intranet 65%
Extranet 52%
From the following figures, it was clear about the use of ICT in various service areas and in the survey of twenty banks, the use of Automated Taller Machine (ATM) was higher among the banks and the use of extranet for networking lower in the industry. The research also showed the use of e-banking among the bank was 75% that was mandatory for doing banking business in current market where customers were used to make transaction through online.
Logistics and transportation
Logistics and transportation was very important for the manufacturing firms as without these supports no manufacturing plants can run their production. In UK, the transportation and logistics services developed in a way so that it could best support the manufacturing firms. SME manufacturer of UK had limited capital and workforce to run it individually and as a result, some independent firms had developed in this area for supporting the manufacturing firms. The transportation services included the rail road transportation as well as the freight transportation fro raw materials and finished products. On the other hand, logistics support included the warehouse facilities, cargo handling etc. In UK, the 1.6% of national GDP came from the road transportation facilities that carried the goods through the trucks, vans etc. and within the industry nearly 4.3 million people worked on this sectors. About 45% of the total goods in UK moved through the truck 85% of the total passenger moved through the car.
Logistics included all the activities like moving the raw materials to finished goods, storing these goods in the storages, inspection of the quality of the goods etc. In the whole world, the turnover from the logistics industry was €5.4 trillion that contributed 13.8% of the total GDP of the world. Around 97% of the SME transportation and logistics services (TLC) in UK used internet for connecting the various stakeholders in different locations. The use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system was a computer based system used by the TLC firms in UK but the ratio of use of this technology among the SME firms were less than the large firms. Using this system substantially reduced the use of paper in the industry, which directly contributed to the efficiency of the firms. 13% of the total SME firms in this industry reported that they used the electronic system in communicating with their business partners but on the basis of paper format.
Within the industry, the ERP system has adopted by only 9% of the small firms in comparison to 41% by large firms and 23% by medium firms. There were some specific applications for these sectors, which included the Cargo Handling Technology, Management System for International Transportation, Fleet Control System and so on.
Figure: companies using software in Procurement. Source: The European Commission (2008).
In the following figure, it showed that within the small firms the use of application was very low that was only 3% to 8%. On the other hand, 43% of large organisation, this employed more than 250 employees to use these technologies in their operations.
This paper explored the effect of e-business on the SME firms based on the UK market and the result was that most of the big and medium organisation used e-business in performing their major business processes. The customers of UK were more technologically sophisticated and the rate of use of internet was high. To cope with these customers, most big and medium organisation developed technology infrastructure in the organisation at various levels.
A large portion of SME was the small firms where the use of e-business was literally absent and the possible reason behind this might be the lack of both financial and human resources, it should take immediate measure in these concern;
SME companies should try to bring flexibility in payment system by letting the users more options for making an easy online trade;
To make this large small firms digitally enabled, the government of UK should take some initiatives and these initiatives may include reducing the cost of the technological product, give subsidy to the small industry, the rules and procedures should make easy, the rate of tax should reduced or even made free etc.
The SME companies should asses all possible risks and issues of vulnerability and it should develop security policy to minimise the information risks;
The number of firms used e-business in all of its operation but online trading process suffers problems of security, safety, and expenses. This firms also faced financial constrains and the overall IT infrastructure can also lead to the wastage of huge money and time for those company to exploit all the benefit from it. To solve the problem the government of the UK can spend on this IT sectors to develop a well structure;
Not only the government, but also the private enterprise should come up with investment in this sector to facilitate the other business operation of the SME firms;
Finally, firms that produced the IT products and provided IT facilities can reduce the cost of these products to ease the use of these products and services by the small to medium firms.
The effects of e-business on the SME are identical as most of SME firms adopted the technology in their business processes to compete in the market. In the developed world, the SME was the main base of the economy and major portion of the GDP of those countries generated from this sector, for example, UK is one of most developed country of the world where the contribution of SME was higher than any other format of business. Almost 99% of the private enterprises were SME and generated most of the employment and revenue for the country. The modern e-business had a profound affect on this huge number of SME of the UK and to compete with the large scale of business in the industry, there were no alternative to adopt the e-business application in the business of the SME. As one of the most important part of e-business e-commerce was mandatory for the SME especially for the SME operating in the service industry. In this research, it showed that, in UK most of the SME both in manufacturing and in service used the e-business in at least some of their operation. The manufacturing industry used ICT in order to develop new products and services and maintain the supply chain for the raw materials and finished products.
Some firms also used application for the factory and process layout, which substantially reduced the cost and time of the producers. The implication of e-business found much in the service industry that directly interacted with customers. This service sector mainly used the e-commerce technology for dealing with the customers and the use of internet was very common in marketing the product and services by the various SME firms. Some company also maintained the database of the customers to directly contact with the individual customer for direct marketing campaign. Beside this firms, banking service was another sector where almost all of the business process done through the e-business and customers preferred to make their transaction through the internet which commonly known as e- banking. One of the major findings of this paper is that, the small to medium organisations are increasingly involving with e-business application and generating more boosted revenue than ever before, thus SMEs has shaped the modern business world in a stage of dynamic enough to create adequate charm and scope of more expectation by adding extra value in their own field.
Adam, S., Mulye, R., Deans, K. & Palihawadana, D. (2002) E-marketing in perspective: A three country comparison of business use of the Internet. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol-20 (4), pp. 243 – 251. Web.
Andam, Z. R. (2003) E-commerce and E-business, UNDP-APDIP. Web.
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Anon. (2009) SME Statistics 2008. Web.
Bui, T. X., Le, T. & Jones, W. D. (2006) An Exploratory Case Study E-Marketing in Ho Chi Minh City. Thunderbird International Business Review, Vol: 48(3), pp. 369–388. Web.
Chaston, I. & Mangles, T. (2003) Relationship marketing in online business-to-business markets: A pilot investigation of small UK manufacturing firms. European Journal of Marketing, Vol-37, Issue: 5/6, pp.754 – 774.
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Alas, not an optio. Windows only.


While picking up a dead moth from the living room floor, I noticed a spider greedily devouring it. That got me curious. . .
Jumping spiders are common throughout North America. Generally carnivorous, jumping spiders are usually found in vegetation where they lie in wait for insects upon which to prey. Their common name derives from the leaps jumping spiders make when pouncing on their victim. Before jumping, the spider secures a silk thread by which it can climb back to its perch if it misses the mark. The power for jumping comes from the jumping spider's fourth pair of legs. Unlike grasshoppers and other jumping insects, the legs are not muscular and modified for jumping. Instead, the internal fluids of this arachnid extend into the fourth pair of legs and hydraulic pressure propels the jump.
Jumping spiders do not spin webs but rather make little silken shelters under leaves, bark or stones. They moult, build egg cases and overwinter in these little "tents". Most active during the day and liking sunshine, jumping spiders also spend their nights in their cocoon shelters.
Jumping spiders can be recognized by the rectangular shape of their cephalothorax and the roughly rectangular shape of their head, looking face on. The arrangement of the jumping spider's eight eyes are also characteristic. The eyes occur in three rough rows. The first "row" contains two large eyes that face forward. The next row has two very small eyes above and to the outside of the large median eyes. Finally two pair of eyes in the third row face upward and slightly forward. Jumping spiders have the best vision among invertebrates.
I believe this jumping spider is Phidippus clarus, a species whose markings are quite variable.
The pictures were taken in our Lookout CA house (Modoc County).
Gallery | This entry was posted in Arachnids, Insects and tagged arachnid, jumping spider, nature photography, Phidippus clarus. Bookmark the permalink.
I love jumping spiders and your shots are wonderful. I wish I saw them more often–there is something really special about those eyes.
Thanks – those big eyes staring at and following one are almost look cute.


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Tag: Johnny Desjardins
Wait, What? Ep. 225: Where We Died in Dallas
Tagged as:	All-Star Squadron, America, Batman, Bob Haney, Cary Nord, Chris Claremont, Cullen bunn, Darth Maul, David Lynch, Deathlok, Deathlok The Demolisher, Fabian Rangel Jr., Fantastic Four, Fred Van Lente, Gabby Rivera, Graeme, Immortal Brothers: Tale of the Green Knight, Interviews with Monster Girls, Jack Kirby, Jeff, Jim Aparo, Jimmy Broxton, Joe Quinones, Johnny Desjardins, Jorge Fornes, Kyle Higgins, Logan Faerber, Matt Kindt, Namwolf, Paul Cornell, Petos, Ray Fawkes, Rich Buckler, Steve Englehart, Superman, Swordquest, The Brave and the Bold, The Sovereigns, Thomas Giorello, Tom King, Twin Peaks, Vampirella, Wait What?, Worlds' Finest, X-O Man of War
http://theworkingdraft.com/media/podcasts2/WaitWhat225.mp3
0:00-16:42: Greetings! Although after a bit of appreciation for people's clarification of the first appearance of Black Bolt's full name, we downshift to a more subdued discussion about the passing of artist Rich Buckler, a fact we learned about approximately an hour before recording. Jeff was a big fan of the man in his prime, Graeme has a reawakened appreciation for Buckler during his DC era, and we take a time to talk about our knowledge of the man's work, an appreciation of his skill and talent, and a certain amount of wondering about what might've happened if Buckler had entered the field just a few years. RIP, Mr. Buckler.
16:42-28:24: And somewhere in there we start talking about some of the lost indie publishers of the late '70s and early '80s, the popularity of dudes like Gerber and Englehart and McGregor, and the continuing brain boggler that is Chris Claremont's unlikely triumph as the most popular and influential creator of the era.
28:24-1:20:59: And then there were technical difficulties! And then we keep talking more about Claremont! Plus: the rise and fall into obscurity of creators over the years; the amazing work of Margaret Millar and its return to print; whether or not Fantastic Four is returning during Marvel Legacy; the cancellation of Black Panther and The Crew, and a lot of speculative discussion about Marvel generally; what Marvel and DC are doing for Kirby's hundredth birthday; and much, much more.
1:20:59-1:45:16: Here's the part where we talk about why we've been too busy to sit down and just read comics! Also, a discussion of our current TV obsession and the things we will or won't do to get it, a certain trepidation over the return of Twin Peaks, and more.
1:45:16-1:58:00: But somehow! We manage to return to the topic of comics and the few that we've read recently! (Always nice to hear in a comic book podcast, I've been told.) Graeme runs us through the new X-O Man of War series by Matt Kindt and Thomas Giorello; Immortal Brothers: Tale of the Green Knight by Fred Van Lente and Cary Nord; Swordquest by Chad Bowers, Chris Sim and Scott Kowalchuk; Vampirella by Paul Cornell and Jimmy Broxton; The Sovereigns by Ray Fawkes, Kyle Higgins, Johnny Desjardins, and Jorge Fornes; and The Greatest Adventure by Bill Willingham and Cezar Rezak (with covers by Cary Nord).
1:58:00-2:22:21: And in case you care what Jeff has been reading, he runs through his list very quickly: amazing old issues of The Brave & The Bold by Bob Haney and Jim Aparo; Interviews with Monster Girls Vol. 2 by Petos; 'Namwolf #1 by Fabian Rangel Jr. and Logan Faerber (with another shout-out to Kyle Starks' Rock Candy Mountain); Vol. 1 of Darth Vader by Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca; Darth Maul #1 by Cullen Bunn and Luke Ross; America #1 by Gabby Rivera and Joe Quinones; and Medisin #1 by Jeff Dyer, Mark McKeon, and David Brame. Jeff also read a lot of Deathstroke recently, and promises to talk about that on a future episode.
2:22:21-2:25:50: And in a future episode, Graeme really wants to talk about Tom King's Batman. "It's giving me the feels, Jeff," Graeme confesses and goes on to lay down the bones of what he's interested (SPOILERS for the end of The Button), leaving us hardly any place to go but to…
2:25:50-end: Closing Comments! Look for us on Stitcher! Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios and Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for their continuing support of this podcast.
Next week: Skip week! Read some comics, and join us back here in two weeks, won't you?
Are you a fan of RSS?
You can find the podcast feed here: theworkingdraft.com/itunesRSS.xml
And the website feed here: waitwhatpodcast.com/feed

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Gavarret-sur-Aulouste is een gemeente in het Franse departement Gers (regio Occitanie) en telt 133 inwoners (2004). De plaats maakt deel uit van het arrondissement Condom.

Geografie
De oppervlakte van Gavarret-sur-Aulouste bedraagt 8,6 km², de bevolkingsdichtheid is 15,5 inwoners per km².

Demografie
Onderstaande figuur toont het verloop van het inwonertal (bron: INSEE-tellingen).

Gemeente in Gers

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Nowadays, it's Android that takes a lot of marker share in mobile industry. Owing to various apps being developed on Android, our lives are becoming increasingly colorful. However, it's inevitable that people may need to share things on their mobile with another one remotely or record something interesting on their mobiles. Perhaps one of the best way is to record your screen as video. Though various screen recorder apps are available on app store, it's confusing to choose an efficient tool that suit you best. therefore this article has reviewed how to record Android screen with pros and cons.
II. Rooted solution – Rec.
One available app highly recommended is Apowersoft Screen Recorder. It is capable of capturing demos, tutorials, games and any other screen activities on your Android phone.There are many options like resolution, bit-rate, frame rate which can be set by yourself. Besides recording screen, you are able to add your webcam together while sound from your phone and microphone can both be recorded synchronously. With powerful features though, this app is quite easy to use, even for a newbie. Plus, it offers an option to hide the app that you do not want to record. By the way, you do not need to get rooted for Android screen recording but it is now supported Android 5.0 and versions higher.
Pros: Not root required, supports recording mobile video and sound.
Cons: Only supports Android 5.0 and later versions.
II. Rooted method – Rec.
Authorized by administrator, Rec. is an Android screen recorder app that enables you to capture your phone screen as a video. However, this app requires you to root your device before using. With this tool, you are allowed to record video with microphone sound (not system sound) for five minutes. Before recording, you can adjust bit rate, recording duration and gesture command.You are required to pay for removing the time limit of recording. It's really workable in making tutorial videos about apps and gameplay.
Pros: Easy to use and supports gesture command (Shake phone to stop recording).
SCR is another app for Android screen recording on Lollipop, it allows you to do screen recording for 3 minutes (You have to upgrade to paid version to remove this restriction). It provides a setting board for you to configure video encoder, resolution, Bitrate and image transformation. In the meanwhile, this app can record the internal sound of your device when recording the screen. However, this app requires rooting except for running on Android Lollipop 5.0.
Pros: Supports recording mobile sound.
Cons: The free version only provides 3 mins' recording and will attach watermark to every recorded video.
Each of these Android screen recorder can fulfill the essential needs of recording but may come different in specific aspects. Generally viewing these ways, Rec. and SCR are limited in the length of recording the screen. Therefore, Apowersoft Screen Recorder shall be the best choice for it contains not only basic recording features but also more extra functions.


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Tag: Vinay Pathak
Pappu Can't Dance Saala – movie review
Pappu Can't Dance Saala is yet another Bollywood flick featuring odd couples – the subject which has always connected with audiences. There were many subjects which the hindi film industry has served us - incompatible individuals who somehow hall in love even with their conflicting personalities which are exploited for humour. Ideally, Pappu is a pseudonym addresses to those males who, generally speaking are considered nincompoops. Vidhyadhar Acharya (Vinay Pathak), a medical representative in Mumbai, has come to the city from Benares. He is a simpleton who hasn't left his small town values behind in Mumbai, the city which never sleeps. The film Pappu Can't Dance Saala has a fine story which depicts the intricate style of living of those thousands of small town dreamers who arrive in this mega city. It wouldn't be fair to address them as 'pappus' Vidhyadhar lives in a ....
Jo Dooba So Paar, Its Love in Bihar – movie review
There's nothing more dangerous than a Bihari in love. Jo Dooba So Paar, Its Love in Bihar movie review... The film takes you on a funny, rustic and romantic journey of love in the times of guns, goons and grenades. Discover a new and sweet facet of Bihar and Biharis that you perhaps never knew existed. Unless, of course, you are a Bihari yourself. Jo Dooba So Paar, Its Love in Bihar is the story of the lovable Bihari boy Keshu (Anand Tiwari), son of a truck driver and a school drop-out, and his one-sided love affair with the US-bred Sapna (Sita Ragione Spada), who makes a sudden entry into his village on a college project. This American girl has come to the town to do a research on Madhubani paintings. Sapna also enjoys spending time with Keshu, and so Keshu thinks that she too is interested in him. His friends tune him up to express his love to her. She has a strict uncle an ....
Tere Mere Phere – movie review
Tere Mere Phere is a comic look at the most complicated happening in mankind's life - The institution of MARRIAGE! Directed by a talented actress Deepa Sahi this film is shot in the heartland of the mighty Himalayas, with its lush green valleys, its torrid streams and its cold desert mountains. The zigzag roads of the high mountains make this mad ride about love all the more exciting! A visual treat that is shot magnificently amidst the beautiful locales of the great Himalayas. There is a universal saying that if "distance makes the heart grow fonder" then proximity should have the reverse effect! Tere Mere Phere is a story about a newly married couple, Pooja and Rahul who have a perfect love affair and a perfect marriage and go on a perfect dream honeymoon in a motor home driving through the breath taking Himalayas… but then can life ever be perfect? As the protagoni ....
Bheja Fry 2 – movie review
Bheja Fry 2 is the sequel to Bheja Fry (2007) which has Vinay Pathak as the protagonist. Bheja Fry 2 movie review... Good hearted but not worldly-wise, the roly-poly tax inspector, Bharat Bhushan (Vinay Pathak) is back to fulfill his long cherished dream of becoming a singer. To further his ambition, he enters a game show hoping to win a cash prize with which he can make his own music album. Eventually, Bhushan goes on to win the competition which also gifts him a free stay on a cruise ship. And in the process, he manages to find a potential love interest in Minissha Lamba. It is on this cruise that he meets Ajit Talwar (Kay Kay Menon), an acrid tongued sadistic business tycoon, who is taking sheath on the cruise to flee from the Income Tax department. On the ship, after a string of oddball occurrences owing to a mistaken identity, Ajit Talwar and Bharat Bhushan wind up stran ....
Chalo Dilli – movie review
"The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination". The beautiful demography and diversity of our country comes across on the colourful canvas of the screen. Chalo Dilli is the journey of mismatched strangers together on a trip which alters their lives. Chalo Dilli movie review... Dynamic go-getter Mihika Banerjea (Lara Dutta) thinks she has her life totally under control. This highly successful Senior Vice President of Investment Banking with a top Multinational Bank is a dynamic, no nonsense lady who is extremely focused on her career. She does not compromise in life and is used to getting her way. What helps is her being finicky about things and her fetish for cleanliness. From Business class travel to Mineral water from the Alps, she is used to having the best things in life. And is willing to ....
Utt Pataang – movie review
Vinay Pathak, an established name in the 'small' films circuit plays a double role in this thriller Utt Pataang directed by Srikanth V. Velagaleti. Utt Pataang starts quite promisingly and is a thrilling comedy flick about several incidents occurring during a night. Utt Pataang isn't a brainless comedy as the name suggests. Yet it has eccentric characters, nursing broken hearts and desperately longing for love. The film is basically an account of happenings on one particular night. Ram (Vinay Pathak) is a 35-year-old ordinary guy from Mumbai who has been ditched by his rough and foul-mouthed lady love Sanjana (Mahie Gill).. Nandu (Saurabh Shukla) is Ram's friend a rather clueless, inept detective. While having dinner at a restaurant, Ram and Nandu meet Koyal (Mona Singh), a small-town girl who has been betrayed by her boyfriend. The cunning Nandu hooks up Ram with Koyal ....
Raat Gayi, Baat Gayi – movie review
Raat Gayi Baat Gayi is a whodunit on a one night stand that could have been. No one knows for sure if it actually happened. The One Night Stand is never ever just a one night stand. It either erupts into a huge, life altering explosion or quietly morphs into a dangerously disruptive, scary experience that makes you wish you never went to bed again with a stranger. In fact, you sometimes wish you never went to bed again with anyone. Raat Gayi, Baat Gayi movie review... Rahul (Rajat Kapoor) is an ad film maker and a perfect family man. He and Mitali (Iravati Harshe) have been married for eight years now and they have a beautiful daughter that he dotes upon. Rahul is loyal to his friends, socially successful and charming. A single encounter with a mysterious woman changes a lot of things he would formerly assume as established facts about himself and his married life. Dalip Tahil a ....
Straight – movie review
Straight is is a hilarious take on confused sexuality of the central character Pinu Patel (Vinay Pathak). It weaves a light hearted comic tale around a motley group of Gujarati NRIs in London played by Ketki Dave, Rasik Dave and others. Last year it was Dostana, now it is Straight. The subject of homosexuality is finally out of the closet in our films. Now "Straight" has Vinay Pathak believing he is gay. In the midst of central London, a successful Indian restaurant called 'Gaylord' is run by Pinu Patel, a Londoner of Indian origin. Pinu suffers from much insecurity, his chief qualm in life is that he is a virgin and has never experienced intimacy with a woman as he is very shy and introverted. His closest friend and ally is his foster brother Rajat (Siddhartha Makkar), whose personality is stark opposite to his own. Rajat has an air of casual, confidence about him and is a ....
Dasvidaniya – movie review
Dasvidaniya is a superb story about the realization through the eyes of a dying man. It is a bittersweet comedy about Amar Kaul who is diagnosed with cancer and how he spends the last three months of his life. The film flows through to your heart effortlessly which leaves you with a lump in the throat at times or giggling away at the jokes it throws at you. This film will also make you identify and even fall in love with the simpleton 'loser'. Shy and quiet Amar Kaul lived a mundane run of the mill life - like millions of others. Amar is a 37-year-old timid and lonely bachelor living with his eccentric old mother (Sarita Joshi) who has a hearing problem and is an addict to soap operas on television. Amar's existence was non-existent to people around him. And then one day a doctor told him that he will die within 3 months. In a hurry Amar Kaul rushed to make a list of things to ....
Via Darjeeling – movie review
In Kolkata, there is an age old Bengali tradition called 'adda' where friends get together in the rains, & exchange stories & gossip, over drinks & dinner. Via Darjeeling movie review... One rainy evening, idling over drinks and dinner, Inspector Robin Datt (Vinay Pathak) narrates to his friends, a curious story of about two years back from his police files - Newly married couple Ankur (Kay Kay Menon) and Rimli (Sonali Kulkarni) were on a honeymoon in Darjeeling. One day, Ankur had a squabble with the taxi driver for reckless driving. On the eve of their return to Kolkata, Ankur suddenly went missing. Investigations by Inspector Robin revealed that Ankur was short tempered too. To make the matter complex, Rimli felt that some stranger Bonny (Parvin Dabbas) was stalking her. Ankur could not be located and some days later, the case was closed abruptly... It's a rainy ....


Due to the beautiful weather, Matt and I finally fit in another photo walk. Although Logan is usually frigid land of ice, snow, and sniffly noses, Sunday surprised us with temperatures in the mid-50s and a sunny breeze.
We made our way up to Second Dam (which Matt had never seen) to take these pictures which hint at Spring. While there, a bald guy in a black leather jacket offered to take our picture…then proceeded to do a mini "photo session" with us. Some of them actually turned out pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself!
Next ArticleWear It or Share It Challenge!!


While working with clients, I try to do everything possible to help them return to all their "normal" activities. We'll typically have conversations about doing things differently or even giving up some of their usual activities, and those conversations are not always easy ones. I'll say things like, "The system is just not perfect anymore," and most of the time it seems to help them realize their limitations. At times, though, my clients have been absolutely resistant to making any changes in their "normal" routines. I knew that making modifications would make their lives easier or less painful and, still, some resisted.
I have had to heed this message myself. In my twenties, I tore ligaments and cartilage in my knee. That resulted in having to wear a brace for any hiking, skiing or rock climbing that I did. Then in my thirties, I broke my kneecap badly enough to have half of it removed. Going forward, I had to be more careful in all my sports, yet I continued to do them all. By my fifties, I started to realize my "system was just not perfect anymore." I gradually did less and learned to be even more careful. In the last year, the lawn has taken two days instead of one day to mow. I might now do half a day of yard work and then rest. Walking is okay as long as there are no hills. These changes happened over time and yet each one was relatively easy to adjust to, as long as I was open to changing routines.
I have fought this change for a long time now, and finally, I traded in my stick shift for a manual.
Then I finally needed to give up my stick shift car; I have been driving one since I learned to drive. I love driving a stick shift because there was always something to do. I had to pay attention more acutely and I enjoyed the challenge of driving those windy back roads, while driving them well. I have fought this change for a long time now, and finally, I traded in my stick shift for a manual.
Now when I am discussing changes my clients are resistant to, I understand. I think of my own struggle to fully understand that my "system was just not perfect anymore." It's not always about not doing what we love to do—it's often about doing things differently.


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Tag Archives: pilgrimage to Jiba
Blogging Anecdotes of Oyasama 44
September 27, 2009 Blogging Anecdotes of OyasamaMasui Rin, pilgrimage to Jibaroykoogee
44. A Snowy Day
After Rin Masui entered the faith, she diligently visited the Residence during the years 1875 and 1876.
One of her visits was on January 10th. It had been snowing heavily since the morning. Rin was on the way to the Residence from Kawachi. When she entered Yamato Province the snow began to fall in a whirl as a storm gathered. She was crossing Taka Bridge of Nukatabe. The bridge at that time was less than one meter wide and there was no railing on it. She was afraid that she might fall so she crawled barefoot on the snow-covered bridge.
She had struggled along to the middle, when a sudden blast of wind struck her, causing her to sway dangerously, almost falling off the bridge. This happened many times. Each time she clung to the bridge, pressed against the snow, and crawled like an ant, praying earnestly, "Namu, Tenri-Ō-no-Mikoto, Namu, Tenri-Ō-no-Mikoto." She was just barely able to cross the bridge. Then, going through Miyando and Nikaido, she arrived at the Residence around four o'clock in the afternoon. When she slid open the door and entered the Place for the Service, Iye Murata told her, "Just this moment Oyasama was looking out of the window, and said:
'Well, well. Someone is coming on this stormy day. How sincere she is! She must be having a hard time of it.' "
Rin was overjoyed with her safe return to the Residence, saying, "Ah, thank God!" Her hands and feet were numb after walking about thirty kilometers from Kawachi to the Residence in the snowstorm. Those people who happened to be there helped her take off her traveling attire, took good care of her in many ways and warmed her with three braziers until warmth returned to her body. Then she went into the presence of Oyasama to pay her respects, and Oyasama said to her:
"Oh, I am so glad to see you have come. God the Parent lent a hand to bring you home. You had a hard time, slipping at many places. However, you were joyful. Sah, sah, God the Parent accepts fully, fully. Whatever you ask, it is accepted. God protects you. Enjoy it, enjoy it, enjoy it!"
So saying, Oyasama grasped Rin's cold hands with both Her own. It was something more than warming them over the brazier. Rin was moved with gratitude and awe at the inexpressible warmth of Oyasama.
Anecdotes of Oyasama, pp. 38–39 Continue reading Blogging Anecdotes of Oyasama 44 →
The Footsteps of Our Predecessors 60
November 6, 2008 Footsteps of Our Predecessors, Translationsconversion story, first meeting with Oyasama, fusekomi, pilgrimage to Jiba, Yamamoto Risaburoroykoogee
The following is a translation of Part 60 of the series "Senjin no sokuseki" (Footsteps of Our Predecessors) from the December 2007 (No. 468) issue of Taimo, pp. 34–35. This translation is a provisional one at the moment and may require further revision.
Part 60: A Bridge Between Countries
In autumn 1870, Risaburo Yamamoto of Kashiwara Village, Kawachi Province, injured his chest at a sumo wrestling match at the age of 21 and became bedridden for the next three years. Although he had various doctors treat him and healers pray for him, he failed to recover from his injury. Instead, his condition worsened to the point where his life was hanging in the balance. Such were the circumstances in summer 1873.
Continue reading The Footsteps of Our Predecessors 60 →
October 23, 2008 Footsteps of Our Predecessors, Translationspilgrimage to Jiba, Shimamura Kikutaroroykoogee
The following is a translation of Part 56 of the series "Senjin no sokuseki" (Footsteps of Our Predecessors) from the August 2007 (No. 464) issue of Taimo, pp. 34–35. This translation is a provisional one at the moment and may require further revision.
Part 56: There Is No Other Path to Salvation (Part 2 of 2)
After experiencing deep emotion upon hearing the teachings of God the Parent for the first time, Kikutaro Shimamura began to visit Takeji Tsuzuki on a daily basis. Yet Tsuzuki had just converted to the faith himself and had not received the truth of the Sazuke, so he could not elaborate any more beyond what he said the first time.
September 18, 2008 Footsteps of Our Predecessors, TranslationsJapanese religiosity, konpeito, pilgrimage to Jiba, salvation narrativeroykoogee
The following is a translation of Part 51 of the series "Senjin no sokuseki" (Footsteps of Our Predecessors) from the March 2007 (No. 459) issue of Taimo, pp. 34–35. This translation is a provisional one at the moment and may require further revision. I took some liberties when translating this one.
Part 51: Prayers to God Who Lives Here
In mid-November 1886, just when the harvesting of rice was completed, a 58 year-old woman named Kyo Yamamura helped fulfill a neighbor's heartfelt wish by accompanying her on the famed 33-temple pilgrimage in the western provinces (Saigoku junrei). Departing Kyoto, the pair went from Kawachi, Nachi, and Koyasan before entering Yamato Province. On the road from Hasedera to Nara, they traveled with a man in his 40s. This man suggested: "There is a wondrous living goddess in this area who has gained much reputation recently. Would you like to come to worship along with me?"
May 29, 2008 Footsteps of Our Predecessors, Translationsmissionary work narrative, Nakagawa Yoshi, pilgrimage to Jibaroykoogee
The following is a translation of Part 35 of the series "Senjin no sokuseki" (Footsteps of Our Predecessors) from the November 2005 (No. 443) issue of Taimo, pp. 34–35. This translation is a provisional one at the moment and may require further revision.
Part 35: The Faith of Yoshi Nakagawa (3 of 3)
Yoshi, who just gave birth to her third child Mitsunosuke, had made a promise to take a blind old lady to Jiba. The day that Yoshi made this appointment happened to be three days after she gave birth. In normal circumstances, a person would have either been forced to postpone or cancel the appointment altogether on the premise of having just given birth. But Yoshi was different. She had not only made a promise to this old lady; she had made a promise to God as well. The people around her tried to persuade Yoshi from doing so but she paid no attention to their pleas.
December 13, 2007 Footsteps of Our Predecessors, Translationsfatigue transference, Moroi Kunisaburo, outside interference, pilgrimage to Jiba, remote viewingroykoogee
The following is a translation of Part 13 of the series "Senjin no sokuseki" (Footsteps of Our Predecessors) from the January 2004 (No. 421) issue of Taimo, pp. 34–35. This translation is tentative and may require further revision.
Part 13: "With a Flag Flying"
In January 1884, Kunisaburo Moroi made his third pilgrimage after his conversion, bringing ten people along with him. The group left Enshu (western Shizuoka) on January 21.
On the way Kunisaburo had a sudden idea in Toyohashi. He bought four feet (1.2 meters) of cotton sheeting and made a flag with a red sun and the characters "Tenrin-O-kosha" 天輪王講社 (Tenrin-O Confraternity) in the middle with the words "Totomi-kuni Shinmei-gumi" (Shinmei-gumi of Totomi Province) on the side. He led the group with this flag flying the rest of the way heading to Jiba.