What does it mean to be a true professional ?

28 days ago | Lalita Chandel: Emotional Intelligence

I read an interesting article about professionalism on my favorite technical forum We use this term very often in our working environment, but do we really understand the basic factors that differentiate professionals from others. I liked the way author has explained these 10 basic points.

It was a good revision for me and I hope, others would like it too.

1. Put customer satisfaction first

2. Make expertise your specialty

3. Do more than expected

4. Do what you say and say what you can do

5. Communicate effectively

6. Follow exceptional guiding principles

7. Praise your peers not yourself

8. Share your knowledge

9. Say "Thank You"

10. Keep a smile on your face and the right attitude in your heart

Caffeine : New search index from Google

2 months ago | Lalita Chandel: Emotional Intelligence

Google announced the completion of new web indexing system "Caffeine" this week.

This is what Google says about it:

Old index system had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, the entire web would need to be analyzed, which meant there was a significant delay between when a page was found and when it is available as a search result.

With Caffeine, web is analyzed in small portions and search index's are updated on a continuous basis, globally. As new pages or new information is found, it is added to the indexes, which helps in finding fresher information than ever before. Apart from this, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel.

Stable version of Chrome released today

3 months ago | Lalita Chandel: Emotional Intelligence

with new bookmark synchronize features, extensions, incorporation of HTML5 features etc..

http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-chrome-stable-release-welcome-mac.html

Five Ways to Guarantee Your Failure as a Web Professional !!

7 months ago | Lalita Chandel: Emotional Intelligence

I found this interesting !!

http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/five-ways-to-guarantee-your-failure-as-a-web-professional/

Six hat thinking !!

7 months ago | Lalita Chandel: Emotional Intelligence

The main difficulty of thinking is confusion. We try to do too many things at once and it is really not possible to think in different directions at the same time. Emotions, information, logic, hope and concept all crowd in on us and It is like juggling with too many things at the same time.
After reading Six hat thinking by Edward de Bono, I realized that there is a very simple concept which allows a thinker to do one thing at a time. There are five distinct states in which the brain can be sensitised. In each of these states the brain identifies certain aspects of issues being considered (e.g. emotional view, pessimistic judgement, neutral facts). In order to make it easier to work with these states, the use of coloured hats as metaphors for them is used and putting on any one of these hats defines a certain type of thinking.
The best part of this method is that, we can separate emotion from logic , creativity from information and so on.

Here is a brief description of each of the hats and the thinking processes that they represent :-
1.White (Facts & Information): White is neutral and objective. It is concered with objective facts and figures.
2.Red (Feelings & Emotions): Red suggests anger, rage and emotions. It gives our emotional view.
3.Black (Critical Judgment): Black is sombre and serious. It is cautious and points out the weaknesses in an idea.
4.Yellow (Positive): Yellow is optimistic and covers hope and positive thinking. It is exactly opposite of black hat and looks for the reasons in favour of something.
5.Green (Creativity ): Green indicates new ideas. It is based around the idea of provocation and thinking for the sake of identifying new possibilities.
6.Blue (Control): Blue hat is concerned with control, organization of the thinking process and use of the other hats. This is the hat under which all participants discuss the thinking process.

30 must have RSS feed for web designers and developers

7 months ago | Lalita Chandel: Emotional Intelligence

http://www.webdeveloperjuice.com/2010/01/09/30-must-have-rss-feed-for-web-designers-and-developers-opml-file/

Windows Skydrive vs Google Docs

8 months ago | Lalita Chandel: Emotional Intelligence

Google Docs Finally Makes It Easy to Download All Your Documents

8 months ago | Lalita Chandel: Emotional Intelligence

Google docs has now expanded the export feature with a new download "Export All" option. Using this functionality, we can download our entire library of Google Docs documents to the harddrive as a zipped file. This feature will be very handy if we ever want to move from a standard Gmail account to Google Apps (with our own domain).

Top 10 Hot technologies

about 1 year ago | Lalita Chandel: Emotional Intelligence

While browsing, I came across an interesting article which talks about 10 hot technologies for 2009 (ex Cloud Computing, Green IT.....etc )
http://technology.inc.com/managing/articles/200812/technologies.html
Nice read !

Emotional Intelligence

about 1 year ago | Lalita Chandel: Emotional Intelligence

Just finished reading "Working with Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman. It was really nice to know that the single most important factor that distinguishes a star performer from others in every field is not just high IQ, advanced degrees or technical expertise, but there is something called as "Emotional Intelligence".


Emotinal Intelligence: It refers to the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships. It describes abilities distinct from, but complementary to, academic intelligence, the purely cognitive capacities measured by IQ.

Below are five basic emotional and social competencies, defined under Emotinal Intelligence: -

Self-awareness: Knowing what we are feeling at the moment, and using these preferences to guide our decision making; having a realistic assessment of our own abilities and a well-grounded sense of self-confidence.

Self-Regulation: Handling our emotions so that they facilitate rather than interfere with the task at hand; being conscientious and delaying gratification to pursue goals; recovering well from emotional distress.

Motivation: Using our deepest preferences to move and guide us towards our goals, to help us take initiative and strive to improve, and to persevere in the face of setbacks, and frustrations.

Empathy: Sensing what people are feeling, being able to take their perspective, and cultivating rapport and attunement with a broad diversity of people.

Social skills: Handling emotions in relationships well and accurately reading social situations and networks; interacting smoothly; using these skills to persuade and lead, negotiate and settle disputes, for cooperation and teamwork.