Age of an ideal employee

Each and every type of business is unique. The sphere of business itself defines the precious balance of experience and learning capabilities for an ideal employee.

When the business is stable experience becomes crucial, but it does not always work this way.

IT is one of the most vivid spheres of business, distinctive and with a precisely defined environment. The flow of information in IT is so intense one could easily drown in it. Otherwise, the importance of some details cannot be overestimated.

So, who would perform better in IT – younger or older workers?

It would not be fair not to mention that the older worker is definitely more experienced. That means deeper -“true” knowledge. This also means they would not be surprised by unexpected requirements and situations. Older people are more devoted to their job, usually the particular job is considered to be a part of life, and the stability in it is valuable.

Again, is that all so important?

What does the word “experience” exactly mean? A box with facts and variations. Basically, experience is a guarantee that in situation #1 you will act on scenario #1. Predictable. But is predictability so good in such a high-speed flexible environment? IT is a business where the only thing that lets you be ahead of the crowd is the ability to surprise and surpass expectations. You are on top while you shock.

Younger workers do not have scenarios ready, and this is why they are basically more creative. They aren’t afraid to imagine, to dream, to look silly. They have not learned yet what people suppose to like, so they make people like new things.

Turning back to the deeper knowledge older people have. The older generation met computer at 20 or so. Guess how old young workers were when they first saw a computer. Ten or fourteen. The numbers are even less now.

When you are young you are more curious, learn more easily and faster. But this is not the only point. The whole IT world is built on some general rules, some coder's logic. In a while, every soft- and hardware is predictable. How it should work, what and where could be, what is possible, where the boundaries are. It is a problem of tools that were not made for usual people – but it is so. If you are young, this machine logic is built in your brains. Simply, you know the true rules, you are Neo.

Now, turning to motivation, I have to admit that devotion is not always enough. Devotion as a stability is not a big help. In the end you’ll simply lose any interest. Younger people have other motivation. A career. To reach more, faster, to succeed, to prove, to take chances. This means progress.

It’s young people who generates the progress of internet technology. They are the engine. And this is the reason why younger workers are better than older in IT.

Time-saving tips

Time management is one of the most valuable skills in contemporary world. Every other year, every other technology generation gives more and more opportunities to speed up work processes and makes time pressure higher and higher.Several years ago companies expected from a successful candidate basic knowledge of MS Office. Now being an average user is not enough. Software developers include more and more time-saving functions with every application release, but users barely know of their existence.

Here I provide several time-saving functions that I use in everyday work for a long time. Haven’s you forgotten?

1. I bet you know about Macro. It is enormously simplified Visual Basic script. When you do some routine tasks and repeat several commands very often it is very wise to record a Macro. The key point with a Macro – while recording, use only keyboard. It will make your Macro more correct. The maim problem about Macro is that antivirus programs may detect it as a Trojan virus.

2. “Actions” in Adobe Photoshop. Action principle is almost the same with a Macro. It is a sequence of commands, activated on click or active keyboard shortcut. You can create wooden or glass frames; make different complex effects such as quadrant colors, foggy lenses. And if default default Photoshop actions are not enough for you - you can easily record your sequence.

3. Multi-file processing or “Batch” in Photoshop. So what you can do if you need to resize, rename and autocorrect 300 or more pictures? Even with the fastest picture editor manually it will take the whole day. Just use Batch. Select source folder, apply one or several actions, select destination folder, pick the naming option, file format, press OK and leave computer alone for 30 minutes. Here you go!

4. PDF-converting button in a toolbar will save you not only from retyping and reformatting but also from looking for an application, opening it. It is installed with PDF Transformer in most MS Office applications. You can convert PDF attachments in e-mails in mailbox, as well as convert PDF to Excel, convert PDF to Word, Text. Creating PDF-presentations from Power Point is also a one-click job. It is even faster than using a PDF Printer plug-in.

5. Dealing with a screenshot. To create a screenshot and past a piece of it into letter or word application you usually need to open an application for capturing screenshots, crop it, recognize and copy to Clipboard. But all you need is a single click. And a special tiny utility Screenshot Reader.

6. Excel surprises again. You can automate many tasks even without Macro and Visual Basic. How often do you use auto-change and sorting? Did you know it supports standard request language? For example, it can replace the line “*http://www.” with “ www.” With only this 2 functions you can unify and sort items, remove duplicates in any list. Removing of duplicate lines is done by Advanced filter.

7. When you read text in another language it is much quicker when you see the translation on-mouse-over. At least two dictionary software support this function. Translate it and ABBYY Lingvo 12. Simply hold a cursor over an unfamiliar word.

8. What do you know about Nero beside how to record or erase the CD? Nero can do multi-copying of the CD or DVD. Just insert blank CDs in time.

9. Looking a little deeper, you will find an outstanding cover designer in Nero Pack. Even complete beginner can create with it professionally-looking cover design in a couple of minutes.

10. Use File managers. Sorting, multi-renaming, compressing, copying, moving, transferring files via FTP, access to Control panel can be done much faster than you used to do. Your life will be much easier with programs like Total Commander.

The purpose of this article is not to teach how to do things. It’s a simple reminding of what can be possibly done by the software you use many times a day. When you know that the function exists, learning “how” is the matter of several minutes. And that is what “Help” for.

Good luck!

FlexiCapture 8.0 -- form recognition software

In April, 16 ABBYY, a developer of data capture and digital image processing software, announced FlexiCapture 8.0 Professional, a dynamic data capture application that intelligently automates data extraction from any type of paper form without manual pre-sorting or keying. FlexiCapture 8.0 extracts data from structured forms, semi-structured forms, unstructured documents and any combination of several document types, and efficiently provides precise data for input into databases and a variety of business systems and processes. An cost-effective yet powerful desktop solution, ABBYY FlexiCapture 8.0 Professional is designed to meet organizational and departmental paper-processing needs in a variety of industries including banking, insurance, education, healthcare, accounting, legal, and many more. This means you can fix invoice processing from paper to digital format for a whole bank, or handle check recognition once and for a long time.

One of the interesting things about new Flexicapture software is that you will not find Flexicapture 7 or Flexicapture 6 – neither any other previous version. Software-predecessor name is a FormReader which contained a single module named Flexicapture. FormReader is a well-known software for recognition of structured forms, espscially in Russia where it is works in many banks, tax departments, legal organizations. But as long as product technology made a great step forward the name became a subject to change. Flexicapture is naturally more flexible than a Form reader – and more precise in flexible form recognition. This new product deserves highest expert recognition and – no doubt – it will be gained at the moment of the release.

FlexiCapture 8.0 provides simple and intuitive, but powerful design tools which allow creating flexible document descriptions, FlexiLayouts, and new forms. Document descriptions let the system to automatically identify any multi-page document type, even unstructured documents and attachments, in a stream of documents and capture the relevant data and text. A FlexiLayout applies logical and linguistic principles to accurately identify data fields despite their varied locations on different semi-structured documents.

FlexiCapture 8.0 uses Intelligent Document Classification technology to automate the sorting of mixed batches of documents. As a result, customers save time and money by reducing the needs for creating, printing and inserting sort pages manually and manual keying.

FlexiCapture 8.0 provides an intuitive interface that guides operators through each processing step but saves the opportunities for customization. After scanning or importing images, FlexiCapture classifies the incoming pages by document type. Then data is automatically located, extracted and validated using rules, set of hypoteses or database. Extracted data is verified and exported to external databases, files, or business applications and document management systems. Unstructured documents may be saved as searchable PDF/PDF-A files which is an useful option for archiving purposes.

ABBYY FlexiCapture 8.0 delivers execution of a full range of data-capture capabilities from a single workstation and multi-processor environments and background processing. When processing volume is increased, users can easily scale up by adding additional CPUs. In addition, when used in a local network, FlexiCapture 8.0 allows project batches be split or shared between stations to maximize efficiency. Using industry-standard scripting languages, FlexiCapture can be seamlessly integrated with any type of image sources, backend systems, or databases.

ABBYY FlexiCapture 8.0 Professional is scheduled to be available in summer 2007. For more information, please visit www.ABBYY.com or wait an updete in Digital Experience.