11 principle elements of a good manager

There are many perspective to view someone as a good manager. The following 11 principle elements of a good manager are listed in a management course I've attended, which I find the list is a good measurement as well as direction.

• Know yourself and seek self-improvement
• Be technically proficient and know your job well
• Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions
• Make sound and timely decisions
• Set the example and be a good role model
• Know your people and look out for their well-being
• Keep your workers informed
• Develop a sense of responsibility in your workers
• Ensure that tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished
• Train as a real team, not just a group of people
• Use the full capabilities of your organization by developing a team spirit

Good manager are made, not born. Therefore, we should develop ourselves to be better and better.

Show PageRank and Alexa ranking of websites in status bar of Firefox / SeaMonkey / IE with SearchStatus

By using the SearchStatus add-on, you can show at the status bar of your browser, the Google PageRank and Alexa popularity ranking of all the websites you are browsing.

This allows you to have a rough idea about the website's link importance and traffic importance, which is referenced by major search engines and Internet advertising services.

It could be useful to bloggers and webmasters in improving SEO for their websites. For example, you might want to get the high ranking websites to link to your own website, and SearchStatus can immediately tell you if the website you are visiting is of high ranking or not.

SearchStatus is available as add-in extension for Firefox and SeaMonkey. Beside Google PageRank and Alexa popularity ranking, it can also show the Compete.com ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank as well. It is also able to provide many Internet search related information of the website through its extensive menu items.

For Internet Explorer users, SearchStatus is included as a plug-in in the IE7Pro add-on. IE7Pro is a very famous plug-in which can be used in IE 6, IE 7 or IE 8 to enhance tremendously the IE features and usability.

Note that the last version of IE7Pro is 2.4.7, released on 16 Sep 2009. Its development and maintenance has stopped at this point.

The SearchStatus plug-in in IE7Pro is not on by default, but it is very simple to turn it on and include it in the IE's status bar.

Note that in order to gather information to produce the ranking statistic:

• Google PageRank sends your current URL and a hash of it to Google
• Alexa ranking sends your current URL domain, your local IP address and a unique constant to Alexa Web Services
• Compete ranking sends your current domain and a unique constant to Compete
• Linkscape ranking sends your current URL to Linkscape.

Click here for more information and download of SearchStatus for Firefox and SeaMonkey.

Click here for more information and download of IE7Pro for Internet Explorer.

You are welcomed to inform me if there are similar tools for other browsers such as Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc.

2nd Putrajaya International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta 2010

Preceding to the great success of the 1st Putrajaya International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta last year, here come the 2nd event with more colourful and attractive balloons to fly up in Putrajaya.

Theme: 1World, 1Malaysia, 1Fiesta
Date: 18-21 March 2010
Time: 7am - 9pm
Venue: Precinct 2 (adjacent to the Monument Alaf Baru), Putrajaya, Malaysia

Activities include:

• Balloon fun fly
• Photographing sessions
• Para motor showcase
• Children colouring contest
• Remote control flying aircraft display
• Paper airplane contest
• Tethered balloon display
• Kite flying exhibition
• Night glow (fireworks display)
• Sphere rides and Waterball rides
• Inflatables / bouncing world
• Lake Cruise by Cruise Tasik Putrajaya
• Auto show
• Bazaar
• and more...
  

Click here to visit the official website of the 2nd Putrajaya International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta 2010.