example of blog’s use in an organizational context

Southwest airline has a blog through which it communicates with its customers. Nuts about Southwest gives customers a peak into the operations, daily work life and people that make Southwest what it is. The blog embodies the airline’s sense of fun and innovativeness and its dedication to do whatever it takes to make its customers happy. In recognition of its attempt to reach out to its customers Nuts about Southwest has received multiple PR awards including the PR News Platinum PR Award for Best Corporate Blog in 2007. The link for Southwest's blog is www.blogsouthwest.com. This smart move on Southwest's part will gain them many benefits:
• Blogs give a more human feel to a corporation.
• They are a great way to handle a crisis and do damage control.
• Help in getting customer feedback and giving customer service.
• Blogs build relationships.
Some disadvantages of blog pages can be that a misinformation may be spread. Someone may bad-mouth the company and affect its image in people’s minds. So these blogs can cause damage to the company’s reputation instead of improving it.

Reference:
1. http://rd2inc.com/work/southwest-airlines/case-study/
2. http://www.blogopreneur.com/2007/03/30/the-benefits-of-corporate-blogging/

Disadvantages Of Smart Dust

Like every other technology, this one has its disadvantages too. A lot of organizations are concerned about their privacy and security as such a technology makes it very easy to invade the privacy of any other organization. People in their homes will feel insecure with the knowledge that they can be so easily monitored. Not only at organizational level, it is indeed a threat at the military levels too where obtaining top-secret information of enemy countries would become much too straightforward. Secondly, Smart Dust is very difficult to retrieve once it has been deployed as these are very tiny particles. If they fail, they also pose threat to the environment as they are made up of environmentally unfriendly components. One potential problem arises if companies use Smart Dust that draws on radioactive source of energy. Although researchers claim that this does not have any harmful effects (unless burnt and inhaled the smoke or ate the battery) but employees may refuse to work in such an environment as they feel threatened. Smart Dust may help ease human work but can also lead to problems of unemployment as they take over many human tasks.

Reference:
http://www.uhisrc.com/FTB/Smart%20Dust/Smart%20Dust.pdf
http://www.e-core.org.uk/content/smart_dust/smart.htm

Smart Dust advantages

Smart Dust can give organizations many advantages. One important advantage is that it detects and helps regulate the temperature, humidity and light levels of each room in a building at a very much lower cost than the currently used climate-control systems. Thus it helps cost-effective monitoring of the environment of a building. Smart energy technology can help save many electricity costs. It will help ease human tasks as they will be able to work faster, more efficiently and cheaply. Many costs can be saved by cheaply detecting any defects in an object or building before a big damage is incurred.

Reference:
http://www.e-core.org.uk/content/smart_dust/smart.htm
http://www.uhisrc.com/FTB/Smart%20Dust/Smart%20Dust.pdf

Smart Dust potential

Smart Dust has the potential to replace not only humans but other obsolete or costly technologies as well. One technology it can replace is the current climate-control systems as those very much costly and Smart Dust works in much better and cost-effective ways. It will replace any other monitoring systems that are costly or more complex to work with than Smart Dust. Smart Dust costs not tens of thousands of dollars, but is barely tens of dollars worth. Thus it has the potential to replace as well as enter new markets which previous technologies have been unable to reach due to their high costs. Their small size also makes them easier to use by companies as well as households.
Reference:
http://www.e-core.org.uk/content/smart_dust/smart.htm
http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=8535.php

Smart Dust is a revolutionary advancement

Smart Dust is a revolutionary advancement in the sensors and communications systems which have led to remarkable miniaturization and efficient power and cost management for digital circuitry and wireless communication. Smart dust devices are tiny wireless microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS) that can detect light, humidity, and the tiniest of vibrations amongst other changes in their environment. A single Smart Dust node contains a compact, self-sufficient device (1-2 mm3) with one or more sensors, computational and communication capabilities and a power supply and is linked into a mesh-type network, relaying information from point to point, sending small signals out in a small radius, in all directions. The Smart Dust technology is still at its development stage, a lot of issues such as its power supply are currently under experimentation. However, such a technology has immense possibilities and applications: it can be used to detect defects in products or a building; low cost home and office security systems; monitoring environmental changes; and detecting diseases in the human body at their beginning stages. These are only very few examples, the list can indeed be extended to include every field where human effort is limited and can be enhanced by the use of this ground-breaking technology.

Reference:
http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~jmk/pubs/jcn.00.pdf
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/79572/Smart_Dust?taxonomyId=15&pageNumber=1