Do your employees express their ideas and opinions? Do they come to you with ways to enhance effectiveness or new innovative marketing ideas?

If this does not sound familiar, your company may be inadvertently stifling employee creativity. A lack of creativity amongst your employees, in today’s business environment, can spell the doom for your business and may keep you one step behind the competition.

Creative employees generally come up with critical ideas for better marketing your products, improving the functionality of the company website, bettering production efficiencies, and shaving dollars off your monthly expenditures. Yet, employees won’t exercise their creativity if you do not first encourage them to do so.

One of the best ways to motivate fresh thinking is to simply listen to your employees when they share new ideas. Most employees are worried when approaching their superiors with new concepts, especially when it’s a notion that falls “outside of the box.” So make sure you give them an open forum to discuss their ideas and give them the respect to listen to them. One more way is to ask your employees, if you are struggling to think of a way to improve the company’s blog, or products, send out an email asking for ideas. Not all of your employee’s ideas will wow you, but, so as not to single anyone out, pay attention to them all.

If you dismiss employee suggestions or overlook them without listening to them, you’ll only encourage your employees to do their jobs as rapidly as possible. Instead of thinking about ways to increase the company’s performance, these individuals will be concerned only about carrying out their work and getting paid.

One more great way to inspire creativity is to compensate strong ideas. This could be financial or simply pointing out their creativity to the rest of the company.

By nature, people are creative; it’s part of being human. We all have independent thoughts and ideas. That being said, even if employees don’t convey it, many have ideas and thoughts on how to improve their jobs. Many organisations don’t encourage creativity and this is an untapped resource. So be sure to encourage creativity among your team—the rewards will surprise you.

Tired of social media? Ignoring it all together? Well, get on the bandwagon, because it’s not going away! In fact a new site recently popped up that is becoming popular: Pinterest. Pinterest is a bit different than sites like Facebook and Twitter, because it focuses purely on the interests of the users. This encourages creativity by allowing you to share your interests with others instead of just posting updates concerning your day-to-day life.

But that doesn’t explain what it is. The meaning is in the name. Pinterest is a combination of the words “pin” and “interest”. Within your account you have “pinboards,” similar to bulletin boards. You can make these public or not, and then “pin” images of stuff you have an interest in onto these and make notes about these images.

Creating Pinterest Categories

For example, you could create the category convertibles. Then you’re able to paste any images you can find online of the new Volkswagen Beetle convertible, along with a link to the page where you found them. You could also attach any photos of convertibles that you took yourself as well as add notes to these images. Then you’re able to share these pinboards with other Pinterest users.

The Social Part of Pinterest

Of course, social interaction forms the heart of Pinterest. You can decide to follow people just like you would on Facebook or Twitter. But you can also choose to follow specific collections. Say someone has a collection of old movie poster images that you find fascinating. But she also has a collection of images of her 3-year-old son which doesn’t quite interest you as much. You could decide to follow her movie posters while ignoring her toddler.

Joining Pinterest

The main challenge with Pinterest is getting an account: you have to be invited to sign up. You can request an invite straight from Pinterest when you log onto the site, however it’s uncertain just how long you will have to wait to receive an invite using this method. It is far more reliable to find friends or acquaintances that are already using Pinterest. You can then have them invite you to the site through e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.

We’ve already had a taste of mouse-free computing. Touchscreens on our smartphones and tablets allow us to search the Internet, compose e-mail messages, send texts, and stream movies, all without using a mouse. So what do you think this will lead us to down the road? How will we interact with our computers in the coming decades? After we ditch the mouse, what comes next?

Gesture sensing

Gesture sensing is something most gamers are familiar with. The PlayStation and Wii both employ this technology. By using a wireless remote you can control the game using only body movements. This technology has not been perfected or widely applied to computing but think of the possibilities. Perhaps in the foreseeable future we will boot our computer by putting on a sensor bracelet and every little gesture we make will perform a task on our computer!

Multi-touch technology

Multi-touch technology is another interactive innovation that is being utilized in a few common devices, namely, tablets, e-readers, and smartphones. This technology allows users to tap icons to open program, pinch or extend their fingers to zoom or minimize the images on their screens. Because this is a relatively new technology it’s still being refined. How do you think this will be used in the future to allow us easier navigation around our computers?

Voice recognition

Another possibility for controlling computers is vocal recognition. This technology already exists and is quickly gaining in popularity as developers work out the kinks. One of the popular common vendors is Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Vocal recognition technology has a ways to go before it is perfect, but technologies improve so rapidly these days that I don’t see it being a long time before voice-command functionality becomes standard in every devices.

While there are lots of ways computing can be improved through hands free navigation technologies. It’s likely we will not see the tried and true mouse disappear for some time.

If you have a smartphone it is probably a crucial part of your life. You use it to listen to music, read, check you mail, navigate to stores, and lastly make calls! But if your battery dies you can’t use it. And, let’s be honest, finding your charger and a free outlet in your house can be annoying and no simple task in today’s tech-savvy homes or apartments.

Now using a smartphone charge pad, charging your phone is easier.

Charge your phone wirelessly

Charge pads are mats that enable devices to be charged wirelessly. By merely setting your device on the mat it will start to charge, this virtually eradicates cord mess and searching for an outlet. You can also charge multiple devices, such as iPods and tablets, at the same time using these mats.

This may seem like magic but charge pads rely on electro-magnetic induction charging. They produce a magnetic field, which charges the battery in your smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets.

Charge pads a technology in progress

Smartphone charge pads, though, haven’t really captured the imaginations of shoppers. There are a few explanations for this: To start with, today’s charge pads aren’t cheap. In some cases, they cost nearly as much as the gadgets that consumers wish to charge.

One more reason is that they take up space. Consumers who wish to clear away the mess of cords don’t mind this, but this doesn’t benefit people trying to create more space on their desk. 

An improving wireless world

Wireless technology is always improving; so we are bound to see charge pad technology improve. Ideally they will become smaller and less costly which might make these items a must-have for modern homes.

Windows 7 has several features that make it a great improvement over earlier systems. However, like most things, if you are unaware of all these features you could be missing out.

By mastering a few simple tricks, you can get the most out of Windows 7.

• If you wish to move images to outside disks, you can now achieve this simply with Windows 7. The operating system lets you burn ISO images onto CDs or DVDs. To do this, you simply have to double-click on the ISO image, tell Windows 7 the drive that holds your blank disc, and click on the “burn” option. Windows 7 will do the rest.

• Finding and repairing problems is very simple with Windows 7. If you feel as if your OS is performing oddly pick the “troubleshooting” option from the “Control Panel”. This gives you access to a number of wizards that will help you remove clutter and tidy up your system.

• What if you have younger members of your family who insist on installing cumbersome software onto your computer? Install an excessive amount of this software, and your computer will turn into a sluggish mess. Fortunately, Windows 7 has the AppLocker feature. This feature enables you to run and install only programs with your pre-approval. For instance, you can tell AppLocker to only run programs created by reputable companies such as Microsoft. If your kids attempt to install a program from an unknown publisher, AppLocker will prevent it.

• One great feature for people who work remotely is its power efficiency service. It’s easy to get details about the amount of power your laptop is using, which may be important when you are working on a project and are far from a power source.