eChapters

Computer Purchase

With so many factors to consider, deciding which omputer to buy can be a real challenge. From components to software to accessories, new PCs offer a bewildering array of choices. Sifting through the large number of options can be a daunting task. Almost any PC on the market today can more than adequately handle such standard office chores as word processing and spreadsheets, as well as basic Internet functions like e-mail and general browsing. If you want to edit digital video or manage a large database, however, you may need more than the basics.

The best way to pay only for what you need is to carefully consider what you want to do with your system now, and try to anticipate what might interest you next 2-3 years. Specific applications call for certain types of hardware, whether at home or in the office. When you’re ready to buy a computer, here are some recommendations for the average user’s basic requirements:

History of Social Networking Services

The notion that individual computers linked electronically could form the basis of computer mediated social interaction and networking was suggested early on. There were many early efforts to support social networks via computer-mediated communication, including Usenet, ARPANET, LISTSERV, bulletin board services (BBS) etc.

Early social networking websites included Classmates.com(1995), focusing on ties with former school mates, and SixDegrees.com(1997), focusing on indirect ties. User profiles could be created, messages sent to users held on a “friends list” and other members could be sought out who had similar interests to yours in their profiles. Whilst these features had existed in some form before SixDegrees.com came about, this would be the first time these functions were available in one package. Despite these new developments (that would later catch on and become immensely popular), the website simply wasn’t profitable and eventually shut down. It was even described by the website’s owner as “simply ahead of its time.” Two different models of social networking that came about in 1999 were trust-based, developed by Epinions.com, and friendship-based, such as those developed by Jonathan Bishop and used on some regional UK sites between 1999 and 2001. Innovations included not only showing who is “friends” with whom, but giving users more control over content and connectivity.

Introduction

E lectronic-resources is an umbrella term which refers to provision of digital instruction courseware over the public Internet, private distance learning networks or in-house via an intranet. E-resources most often means an approach to facilitate and enhance access through the use of devices based on information and communications technologies (ICT) like personal computers, digital television, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant) and mobile phones. The electronic resources might include notes, PowerPoint presentations, video clips or Internet sites.

Online library resources aim at providing materials, information and services by different types of libraries to the end users. These libraries may be in different jurisdictions, but agree to serve one another on the same basis as each service to its own users through the use of ICT. With the rapid growth of information on veterinary science, there are frequent delays in providing service to the end users when traditional library systems are adopted. The cost of providing service is also rising, mainly because of manual methods and duplication of investments in library holdings. ICT enables the use of the Internet, email, discussion forums, and collaborative software to support students and veterinarians through the use of WANs (Wide Area Networks), and may also be considered where greater flexibility and just-in-time access is desired.

The Internet is a worldwide network of networks connecting millions of users, spread across continents, exchanging thousands of gigabytes of information, accessing numerous databases that cover everything from cooking to astronomy, all relatively inexpensively. The Internet offers virtually unlimited amounts of information related to animal medicine and provides all the tools to access it. ‘www’ is probably the most famous three letters of the last century, signifying a series of servers that are interconnected with each other through hypertext transfer protocol or ‘http’. A significant part of the credit for increasing the popularity of the Internet belongs to the World Wide Web. It is always better to use evaluated web resources as the quality of websites is a problem in cyberspace.

Dirying in India has traditionally been the preserve of landless agricultural labourers and small and marginal farmers, who have maintained very small herd sizes. However, of late, with increasing consumer awareness regarding milk quality, there has been a marked increase in the number of large, well-organized dairy farms which cater to predominantly urban markets. Terms like clean milk production, organic milk, microbial load of milk etc. are being used more frequently while referring to milk quality. Larger, intensive dairy farms not only profit from the economies of scale by way of optimum utilization of land, labour and resources, but also benefit from the fact that it is easier and cost-effective to implement more efficient technologies like machine milking, manufacture of by products, chilling, packaging, bulk transport etc. Further, most of these farms are able to realize a premium price for their products on account of high quality and brand identity, thus leading to greater profitability.

Computers take on an increasingly important role in today’s world. In this regard, their utility as tools for imparting high quality professional knowledge to veterinarians is much needed. e-learning covers a wide set of applications and processes, including computer-based learning, web-based learning, virtual classrooms, and digital collaboration. The delivery of content could be via electronic media, including the internet, intranets, extranets, satellite broadcast, audio/video tape, TV and CD-ROM. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the form of on-line teaching, face-to face video-cases and video-performances has recently been applied in the veterinary profession all over the world. ‘m-learning’ is the new buzz word almost indicating learning “anywhere” using mobile phones and Bluetooth or WiFi technologies. However, in the veterinary profession, connectivity is an issue as high quality network service is lacking in most remote areas. Some other terms frequently interchanged with e-learning are online learning, online education, distance education, distance learning, technology-based training, web-based training and even computer-based training (generally thought of as learning from a CD-ROM). e-learning is a broad term used to describe learning done at a computer.

Starting from the middle of the 20^th Century, information has become a commodity. Those best able to access information will be more successful than their peers in their future careers. Technological competence will be as important as medical competence to practice at the highest levels. Advances in computer technology have made access to veterinary and medical databases much simpler than in the past. It is quite likely that in the future, it will be a malpractice for practitioners not to access online information essential to the treatment of their patients. Wireless digital transfer of information will make access to necessary information independent of time and place.

Veterinary medicine and educational delivery are becoming an increasingly international market. Those who are prepared to deliver material in this manner will have a competitive advantage. Use of digital technologies will allow veterinary colleges to share information, including class material, more efficiently. This will enable each college to market specific educational information for students at other veterinary colleges or continuing education modules to graduate veterinarians around the world. On-line certificate programmes in specific veterinary topics will be developed. Use of computer technologies can enrich the teaching environment. By digitizing library, classroom, and laboratory visual images, students can access these materials at any time or place, freeing them from library and classroom schedules. Medical colleges have found that students heavily use these image resources. Computer technologies provide both horizontal and vertical integration of the professional curriculum, allowing students to explore information to the depth at which they are comfortable, without regard to their “year of study” in a traditional “linear” curriculum. Allowing students to see future applications of current learning material provides additional incentive to master basic material. Computers are a tool, just like a textbook, notebook, or calculator.

A nimal disease monitoring describes the ongoing efforts directed at assessing the health and disease status of a given population. The disease can be a specific infectious disease/diseases or health in general, whereas the monitoring activities are the routine recording, analyses and distribution of information related to the disease (or health). The term disease surveillance is used to describe a more active system and implies that some form of directed action will be taken if the data indicates a disease level above a certain threshold.

In today’s click-and-access kind of world, Information Technology is finding applications in every field and animal disease monitoring & surveillance is no exception. The various technologies which are applied are Geographic Information Systems, Global Positioning System, database management, computer aided design (CAD), computer network technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), expert systems etc.

Telemedicine is a rapidly developing application of clinical medicine wherein medical information is transferred via telephone, the Internet or other networks for the purpose of consulting, and sometimes remote medical procedures or examinations. Telemedicine may be as simple as two health professionals discussing a case over the telephone, or as complex as using satellite technology and video-conferencing equipment to conduct a real-time consultation between medical specialists in two different countries. Telemedicine generally refers to the use of communications and information technologies for the delivery of clinical care.

Care at a distance (also called in absentia care), is an old practice which was often conducted via post; there has been a long and successful history of in absentia health care, which, thanks to modern communication technology, has metamorphosed into what we now know as modern telemedicine.

The terms e-health and tele-health are at times wrongly interchanged with telemedicine. Like the terms “medicine” and “health care”, telemedicine often refers only to the provision of clinical services while the term tele-health can refer to clinical and non-clinical services such as medical education, administration, and research. The term e-health is often, particularly in the UK and Europe, used as an umbrella term that includes tele-health, electronic medical records, and other components of health IT.

A Hospital Management System not only provides an opportunity to the hospital to enhance their patient care but can also increase the profitability of the organization. These kinds of applications enable hospitals and doctors to serve their patients better. Computers are being extensively used for routine administrative purposes by health care professionals.

In veterinary medicine, hospital management software is designed for all types of practices, ranging from small, single-vet ones to large ones with multiple locations and vets, and covers a wide range of hospital administration and management processes. It is an integrated end–to-end management system that provides relevant information across the hospital to support effective decision making for patient care, administration & critical financial accounting in a seamless flow. Specific areas of application include scheduling of appointments, registration of cases including client and patient data, case history and electronic medical records, health care reports, reminders, inventory controls, reports and accounting.

Livestock wealth is very precious for a developing country like India. In India, animal husbandry is no longer a subsidiary to agriculture or a backyard vocation. Animal husbandry has metamorphosed into an industry and the latest reports suggest that the contribution of animal husbandry sector to the GDP of the nation is substantially higher despite the meager input. Animal husbandry offers a better scope for marginal farmers whose income from agriculture is dwindling fast due to vagaries of monsoon, fragmentation of landholdings, pest problems, poor pricing etc. Though the growth of livestock industry is very promising, in order to make India a global leader in animal husbandry, it is imperative to integrate it with developments in other fields. The developments in Information Technology over the past few decades are tremendous and offer great potential in improving animal health through various measures like effective disease forecasting, rapid and accurate disease diagnosis, modern therapeutic measures etc.

Veterinary Informatics is the discipline concerned with the application of information science, engineering, and computer technology to support veterinary health care. Veterinary informatics and the larger field of medical informatics is often called health care informatics or biomedical informatics and forms part of the wider domain of e-health. Applications of Information Technology in different aspects of animal health are discussed below.

Evolution of the Internet

The Internet, as we know it today had a very humble beginning. J C R Licklider of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology envisioned the Internet as far back as 1962 in a series of memos written by him that talked about social interactions that could be enabled through networking, a concept that he termed his “Galactic Network”. He joined DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in October 1962 and was its first research head. There, in collaboration with Lawrence G Roberts and other scientists in 1965, the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was conceived. With other developments, ARPANET was transformed into the Internet as we know it today. The technology involved in this was a very basic packet switching network that later moved to include packet satellite networks, ground-based packet radio networks and other networks. In packet switching mode, the hub router, which acts as the intermediary, decides the best path for sending or receiving data packets, unlike circuit switching mode (used in telephony) in which there is a dedicated path by which the data travels from the source to the destination.

The future of networking was based on this skeleton. Further down the line, the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) was developed, which had the ability to address networks and machines further downstream. Other technologies like telnet, e-mail, internet telephony etc, were also developed subsequently. By 1990, the ARPANET was decommissioned and TCP/IP had displaced most other Wide Area Networking (WAN) protocols and was fast becoming the accepted protocol for internetworking. After a while, the World Wide Web (WWW) came into existence. A consortium called the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was formed in 1992 and it had taken on the responsibility for evolving the various protocols and standards associated with the web. Soon after this, commercialization of the internet started taking place. There was a marked increase in the number of communities across the internet. Bulletin Board Services and Usenet groups were now home to more computer users than ever before. With the advent of such information, corporations and businesses also started looking at the internet in terms of business viability. In 1994, Pizza Hut started offering pizza ordering on its Web page while First Virtual, the first ‘cyberbank’, launched its online presence. By this time, there were more than 38,64,000 hosts on the Internet. Since then, the Net has grown rapidly and the process continues to this day.

Though the Internet hit India in the late 1980s, it was deemed fit only for researchers and scientists. Commercial internet access was first introduced by VSNL in August 1995. Today internet in India has ballooned and India has become a giant in the IT Enabled Services (ITES) field. With falling internet access costs and increasing users, India’s ranking in terms of internet users is rising fast.

The Internet is growing at an amazing rate. The main reason for this is that the Internet has now become an accepted part of the mainstream urban life. It is used for almost everything imaginable, from recreation and entertainment to learning about rocket science. However, not everything about is good. There is an information overload and not all the data that is available is true and should not be accepted at face value. The internet is not limited to the PC anymore and has percolated down to various devices thanks to advancement in technologies like GPRS, EDGE, CDMA, WiFi etc. through which it can be accessed with a mobile device.

For the prospective small business owner who possesses the necessary personal qualities, managerial ability, and capital , and who is not inheriting a family enterprise, there are two ways to get the business started: buy out an existing establishment or start from scratch with a new firm.

Buying an Existing Business

There are both advantages and disadvantages in buying an existing business. If the small business entrepreneur decides to buy an existing business, there are many things (s)he must investigate and analyze the business if (s) he is to make a good purchase decision.

Organized retailing is spreading and making its presence felt in different parts of the country. The share of organized retailing in the total retail sector is set to increase from about 2 % to 8 -10 % by 2010. The retail sector generates 6 % of total employment in India. The reasons behind the increase in growth of retailing is changing life styles of Indian consumers. The key factors that drive the growth of organized retailing are:

• Rising urbanization
• Growing economy
• Higher disposable incomes
• Growing consumerism
• Entry of national/international business houses into retailing
• Increasing nuclear families
• Changing number of educated and employed women population
• Media proliferation and rising awareness level
• Brand proliferation
• Traveling by the working groups of the society
• Popularity within working and studying bachelors for convenience food.

The largest category of retail businesses are specialized retailers selling food, and beverages from fixed retail outlets. The major formats of retailing are furnished in Table17.1.

There is sufficient support to view that foreign trade plays has a vital role in the economic development of a country. Its contribution to the growth of National Income can be quite substantial. If a country is pulled into world trade, then the country can and should maximize its real income by specializing along lines of comparative advantage. The volume and composition of foreign trade have a profound influence on the character and the extent of development of a country. From the point of view of economic development, both import and export are important. It is through import that a country could obtain plant, machinery and equipment, components, raw materials, technical know-how, etc., which are indispensable for accelerating economic development.

India’s share in world exports was 0.54 per cent in 1970s, which has risen to 0.81 per cent in 2000s and exports has grown 700 times and imports more than thousand times during the course of economic development. It is clearly observed from Table 16.1 that import is greater than export. The rate of growth of export between 2001-02 and 2007-08 was 90 per cent, whereas import growth rate was 150 per cent in the corresponding period.

Agro-inputs are either biological or chemical or inorganic compounds used in the production of agricultural and allied products. Some of the agro-inputs used in India are :

• In-organic fertilizers
• Pesticides which include insecticide, fungicide, nematicide and herbicide
• Seeds which include varieties, hybrids and genetically modified plant materials
• Vegetatively propagated planting materials
• Bio-fertilizers
• Organic inputs which include compost, vermicompost, enriched farm yard manure, oil meals and farm yard manure
• Bio-pesticides
• Bio-control agents
• Plant Growth regulators
• Micro-nutrients
• Farm machinery and agricultural tools and implements
• Animal feed
• Poultry feed.

The production and distribution of above mentioned agricultural inputs create agri-business opportunities. The agricultural input production inputs and distribution firms may be big companies like Madras Fertilizers, SPIC, FACT, EID Parry, Monsanto, Syngenta or MAHYCO and the like. They may also be small business firms like vermicomposting, coir pith decomposing.

Government Programmes for Agribusiness

Both the central and state governments have devised programmes to luve the entrepreneurs for setting up agribusiness in India. They may be classified as programmes falling under small-scale industries, Khadi and village industries, small and medium industries, large industries based on the finance required for investment. Apart from these many efforts were taken especially after signing, the WTO agreement to harness the export market. They include conversion of Export Processing Zones (EPZ) into Special Economic Zones (SEZ), establishment of Agri-export zones for which government is attracting private investors to make investment in infrastructure development of cold storage chains, improvement in road, rail, sea and air transport systems.

The Ministry of Small Scale Industries & Agro and Rural Industries designs and implements the policies through its field organizations for promotion and growth of small and tiny enterprises, including the coir industries.

The Ministry also coordinates with other Ministries/ Departments on behalf the Small Scale Industries (SSI) sector.

The implementation of policies and various programmes/schemes for providing infrastructure and support services to small enterprises is undertaken through its attached office, namely the Small Industry Development Organization (SIDO), statutory bodies/other organizations likely Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) & Coir Board a Public Sector Undertaking -National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) and three training institutes -National Institute of Small Industry Extension Training (NISIET), Hyderabad, National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development (NIESBUD), New Delhi and Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE), Guwahati.

A management information system (MIS) is an organized collection of people, procedures, software, databases, and devices used to provide routine information to managers and decision makers. The focus of an MIS is primarily on operational efficiency. Marketing, production, finance, and other functional areas are supported by MIS and linked through a common database. MIS typically provides standard reports generated with data and information from the transaction processing system (Fig. 13.1)

Financing the Business

The capital of a business consists of those funds used to start and run the business. Capital may be of two types: fixed and working.

Fixed capital refers to items bought once and used for a long period of time. This includes such things as building, fixtures and equipment. Fixed Capital does not vary with the level of output.

Working capital is the type of funds, which is needed for carrying out day-to-day operations of the business smoothly. The management of working capital is no less important than the management of ‘long term‘ financial investment. Working Capital varies with the level of output.

Every small business manager is a personnel manager in the sense that work is done through people, with people and for the people. Consequently, the owner-manager should be personally capable of handling employee relations until the company becomes large enough to afford a personnel manager. Planning personnel requirement, developing sources from which new employees can be recruited, choosing (recruiting) the needed people, training and developing them into productive workers, evaluating their performance, compensating them and dealing with various personnel relationship, including industrial relation are included under personnel management.

Staffing

Staffing is a critical function of organizing and managing a successful business. All companies, whether large or small, are involved in the staffing process. All businesses run the same risk every time they hire a new employee. The staffing function is generally divided into four major categories (1) staffing needs, (2) acquisition, (3) motivation, and (4) retention.