Introduction                                                                                                         (top) 

The BbyB Beacon is an electronic publication to keep the members of Bit by Bit informed about the current affairs of the company. It contains announcements of important events like training programmes, Management Review Meetings, etc.


Contact Information
Any contribution to the newsletter in the form of technical articles, or items of general interest, are welcome. Please send them to pratima@bbyb.com or sreedhar@bbyb.com

From the Management

One month of 2004 has already gone by. The year got of to a great start with our 'stress buster' holiday at Summer Sands Mangalore. Time to already start planning our next one sometime in June or July...

One of the major perks I believe in working at BbyB is the flexible approach that we take towards leave and hours of work etc. A system like this is to be 'used' and not 'abused' as abuse by just one individual can cause the whole system to come crashing down. It would be a sad day if BbyB were forced to stop the flexi-time system that has worked beautifully more than 13 years.

Regarding 'Programmer of the month' issues - If you have taken up an issue and have not been able to finish it or are not interested in finishing it - If you have done any work on it please submit a paper documenting what you have done to Pratima. In case some other programmer then wants to take over that work, they will have some thing to start with and not have start working from scratch.

The raises have come into effect from this month and most of you should be already aware of it from your pay slips. If you have any issues regarding that please feel free to contact me and we can discuss it.

Raghu.

From The Editor

Action Dimension

There is a difference in people's ability to get things done. Two people with the same background, education and training can be very different when it comes to taking action and following through.

It is referred to it as the Action Dimension. It is that extra drive to accomplish that some people have. Understanding it can help you find out who is truly action oriented and effective.

Action Dimensions is made up of three critical factors:

Initiation - The ability to get into action instantly

Concentration - The ability to focus one's thinking and cognitive skills on the goal

Persistence - The ability to stay in action once the goal is chosen.

Putting people together who complement each other in terms of the above mentioned abilities and selecting strong action oriented people for leaders will result in a team which has all the above mentioned skills.

If managers really want to find those employees who are the most productive they must look for all three of the abilities that make up a truly action oriented employee-- initiation, concentration or persistence. Finding and encouraging these employees will yield higher productivity. Managers must also look to see who is reaching quality solutions as well as taking action and ensure that the team has some members with high cognitive skills.

Anybody with the appropriate cognitive skills, personality and action orientation will be an effective employee.

It is important to understand that the action orientation dimension is made up of three separate abilities - initiation towards a goal, concentration and persistence. Training supervisors and managers to understand this will help them know which employee is truly in action and help them see where some employees are lacking one of these skills. Armed with this knowledge, managers can aid employees maintain an action orientation.

It is also important to understand that this action orientation is not the same as intelligence and personality. Making sure that employees have the cognitive skills and possess appropriate personality sets is also important. Knowing all of this should help organizations balance teams with members who complement each other.

Other News                                                                                                           (top) 

Stress Buster - December 2003

The winter vacation organised by Bit by Bit for its employees was a huge success.

What made it memorable was the fact that it gave all of us three whole days to relax and soak in the beauty of Mangalorean beach-side.

Below are some pictures from the trip.

Click on each to enlarge

Programmer of the Month                                                                                    (top) 

The 'Programmer of the Month' for January 2004 is Masood Imran for his outstanding work on Generating Directions and Map between any Two Postcodes in UK and Exporting SQL data to XML format.

MapQuest TripConnect Plus

TripConnect Plus provides online customers with detailed door-to-door directions and highlighted route maps from their point of origin to their destination. TripConnect Plus offers highlighted routing with both text narratives and map graphics for driving directions, turn-by-turn distances, total mileage and total driving time. This service is ideal for directing customers from their home to business locations.

TripConnect Plus functionality includes:

• Seamless Integration. Seamlessly imbed TripConnect Plus into web site.
• Branding Power. Use MapQuest HTML templates to design the look and feel of the map pages, change the templates for a different look, or integrate MapQuest maps into existing pages.
• Map and Narrative Display. TripConnect Plus displays detailed route maps and textual turn-by-turn driving directions for routes.
• Intuitive Pages. Access easy-to-use pages to customize route for city-to-city or door-to-door directions, to generate a list of possible address or city matches for ambiguous searches, and to receive route information in a variety of formats.

Generating a route encompasses the following steps:

1. The user clicks on a link containing a call to the TripConnect Plus CGI application.
2. The web server receives the HTTP request to start the TripConnect Plus CGI application.
3. The server passes a request (such as an address or latitude/longitude pair) to the client application. The TripConnect Plus CGI application packages this information and sends a request to the MapQuest servers.
4. The MapQuest brokers receive the TripConnect Plus request. The brokers then determine which MapQuest servers are available to fulfill the request. An available server processes the request and sends it back to the client.
5. Upon receiving the results from the MapQuest servers, the TripConnect Plus CGI client application formats the results into an HTML page and forwards it to the web server. The mqtripplus program parses the specified template file to replace extended tags with result information formatted in HTML. Existing HTML is left untouched.
6. The web server passes this HTML page to the user's browser.
7. The web browser displays the requested route information.

              

Programming Issues                                                                                              (top)

New Recruits                                                                                                        (top) 

Bindi S completed her MCA from Maharaja Women's College, Erode - Bharatiyar University in 1999. She has been appointed as a Domain Member (VB).

Upcoming Birthday                                                                                                (top)

Shubha and Arun Kumar celebrate their birthdays on 20th February.