Assignment heads up

Seniors from Professor Jennifer Leigh's seminar (MGT 439, Leadership in Action) are assigned to prepare presentations (due this thursday, Sept. 21!) on the following topics:

Information Technology Trends--Present three search tools? ease of finding information on a particular industry?s main competitors, (the companies that hold the most market share). Use S&P?s NetAdvantage, Lexis-Nexis? Company Dossier, and Mergent.

Free web advantages?Present Google and Yahoo?s tools for finding company and industry information. Pick two companies (Choose from list in Business Ethics Magazine http://www.business-ethics.com/) and two industries. (Google Finance and Yahoo Finance)

Account advantages?Present account features from Business Source Elite, Business & Management Practices and Google. We are particularly interested in the ?alert? feature. (See #3 under Criteria by which to evaluate a search tool below.)

Blogs and their advantages?Present on blog aggregators and specific blogs that would keep one professionally current?recommend three. A blog?shorthand for "Web log"?is an online collection of personal commentary and links, which can be used as a personal journal, but also as professional writing. It is the second manifestation in which we are interested. (Read ?7 Things You Should Know About Blogs? http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7006)

Social Networking and its advantages? Social bookmarking or folksonomies involve saving bookmarks one would normally make in a Web browser to a public Web site and "tagging" them with keywords. We are most interested in those of a professional nature. Compare Google Toolbar, del.icio.us, citeUlike, and BibSonomy. (Read 7 Things You Should Know About Social Networking http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7006)