Twitter Basics: How to get started with Twitter. Here are list of several excellent Twitter primers website.

Twitter is utter simplicity. This is what makes it so appealing for web-savvy companies, which can start promoting themselves and meeting their clientele with little effort. There is virtually no learning curve!
At the same time, Twitter's popularity during the past two years has spawned an intricate ecosystem of related sites, services and software that has vastly amplified its power and flexibility. There is a bit of a learning curve here because picking and mastering the right tools for your business takes time, but you'll get the hang of it.

A Few Twitter Basics
Here's how to get started with Twitter:
Create an account at twitter.com. This only takes a few minutes, but you'll want to give careful thought to the username. Depending on how you'll use Twitter, it can be your company's name, the name of your product or service, or the name of the person who will be using it the most. Regardless, you'll want to make clear that this account is associated with your firm so that it won't be confused with a personal Twitter account.
Upload a picture. Twitter's generic icon won't cut it. Find a roughly square-shaped picture that is colorful and catchy, yet clearly conveys your company identity. Keep it simple, since the image will be displayed in a small size and fine details will be lost.
Fill in your info. You want to clearly convey who you are, so spend a bit of time with your "one-line bio" and pick the best possible web address (it's good to keep it short). You will also find text fields for an email address, your location and other particulars.
Start tweeting! The only way to get the hang of Twitter is to plunge in. You are limited to 140 characters per tweet, so there's no cause for writer's block. Just tweet something! This can be seen by anyone on Twitter, and particularly by anyone who "follows" you.
Attract a following. You will soon attract Twitter followers (those who add you to their lists of favorite Twitter accounts), so make certain you don't miss new arrivals. You can configure Twitter to send you an automated email when someone starts following you.
You can follow, too. If someone follows you, you can follow right back. You'll have the ability to exchange private (or "direct") messages with those followers. Set up Twitter to email you whenever a DM comes in, and click the "direct messages" tab to see these.
Engage in conversations. Direct messages are fine, but the best exchanges take place in public view. Want to address people directly in a tweet, or respond to something they've tweeted? Type the persons' usernames preceded by "@" symbol at the beginning of your tweets, and they will soon see them in the "Replies" sections of their Twitter pages. They can respond by typing your username preceded by "@" at the beginning of their tweets.
Need more basics? Here are several excellent Twitter primers or launching pads:
Twitter in Plain English. This terrific video by Common Craft is required viewing for all new Twitter users. You can watch a small web-based version for free, or purchase a higher-quality version for sharing within your organization.
Tweeternet.This site is essential browsing for Twitter novices as well as experienced users, who will find Twitter introductions, how-to guides and much more.
Zappos on Twitter. Zappos, profiled in Chapter Two, is so bullish about Twitter that it wants everyone to learn about it. To that end, it has created a "Beginner's Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter."
Search Engine Guide. This blog has a detailed series of posts by Jennifer Laycock on how to get started with Twitter, and tap its power.
The Big Juicy Twitter Guide.How can you resist a site with that name? This multi-part primer by Caroline Middlebrook is pretty good, too.
Twitter 101. Online-community strategist Connie Bensen provides a roundup of Twitter-related resources.

Twitter Basics: How to get started with Twitter. Here are list of several excellent Twitter primers website.

Who Mines Largest Gold? Gold Production by Country. Leading Worldwide Gold Extractors

South Africa is synonymous with gold, and it is generally assumed that it is the world’s largest producer. Except that it no longer is. The nation that is responsible for roughly one-third of all gold ever mined, and which was producing 1,000 or so metric tonnes per annum of the metal in 1970, is now only mining around 270 tonnes a year.
In the second half of 2007, South Africa was overtaken by China for the first time, and China is now the world’s biggest producer. Indeed South African production has declined at some 5.6 percent per annum for the last decade. Similarly, Australia, which had been on an upward trajectory for much of the 1990s, has found its output slipping recently.
However, gold remains vital to the South African economy, still providing employment to some 160,000 people, according to South Africa’s Chamber of Mines. As to how many people further depend on gold mining—that is a rather more difficult question. It is thought that there are some 5 million dependents of 458,600 employees in all types of mining—a ratio of nearly 11 to 1. Generally the figure is muddled by multiple marriages, which means that the overall number is anywhere between 5 and 12 dependents for each miner. Realistically then, there are around 1,500,000 people who survive because of wages from the South African gold mining industry.
Unsurprisingly, similar to production figures, employment has been falling at roughly 8 percent per annum on average for the last five years. To put this into perspective, the peak was reached in 1987 when Gold in South Africa reported that 530,622 were employed. Gold is the country’s second largest export earner after platinum group metals

So exactly what was produced by which country?

COUNTRY     2007 PRODUCTION (IN TONNES)
China         280.5
South Africa     269.9
Australia     246.3
United States     239.5
Peru         169.6
Russia         169.2
Indonesia     146.7
Canada         101.2
Uzbekistan     75.3
Ghana         75.1


The leading companies that have been extracting the metal on a worldwide basis are

MINING COMPANIES     2007 PRODUCTION (TONNES)
Barrick Gold         250.7
AngloGold Ashanti     170.4
Newmont Mining         165.6
Gold Fields         122.9
Freeport McMoRan     71.6


The romantic notion of gold mining is that the metal is found in glittering lumps. However, the truth is considerably less exciting, with companies forced to move enormous quantities of material to extract the mineral.
The two main types of mining are open pit and underground, with the former being more prevalent in North America and Australia and the latter predominant in South Africa. However, some mines start off as open pit when the ore is relatively easy to access before switching to underground as the mine matures.
Gold deposits have been worked for many thousands of years— with some evidence to suggest that the Egyptians were mining underground as long ago as 2000 B.C., with rivers being “plundered” for gold nuggets even earlier. In essence little has changed over the last few thousand years with underground and open pit being the major forms of mining, it is simply the scale and technology used, which are beyond all recognition.

Who Mines Largest Gold? Gold Production by Country. Leading Worldwide Gold Extractors

4 Effective Ways to Provide Positive Feedback and Encouragement for Performance Improvement from your Training Program.

The most critical way for you to be more engaged is by providing coaching—feedback, encouragement, and advice—in the post-training period.
When two people attend the same training program, the performance of the person whose manager actively provides coaching improves more and faster than the performance of the person whose manager is not actively engaged (You make a difference. Superior performers in every field agree that coaches and coaching were vital for them to reach their full potential. Business executives invariably credit mentors for helping them achieve success. Providing feedback and guidance for performance improvement are two of the most important jobs a manager has. To be effective, the training or coaching needs to be:
□ Frequent
□ Balanced
□ Specific
□ A dialogue

Frequent
Most employees want more feedback on their performance than they currently receive. Managers consistently receive low marks on providing adequate feedback. The lack of feedback is understandable. At the pace of business today, it is easy to get so busy that you don’t take the time to provide coaching and encouragement. But it is not forgivable; lack of feedback undermines employee commitment and is detrimental to performance.
If you find that you are too busy to remember to provide the feedback your employees need and want, then schedule “provide feedback” as a task on your calendar. It is at least as important as any other item on your agenda. Coaching is vital if you really want to get your money’s worth from training and development. A few minutes invested in providing feedback and encouragement on a regular basis will pay continuing returns in the form of increased commitment and performance.
Balanced
According to Ken Blanchard, author of The One-Minute Manager, the only way that most employees know they have done a good job is when no one has yelled at them lately (Blanchard & Homan, 2004, p. x).
Make it a point to “catch people doing something right” and remark on it. In particular, recognize people who make the effort to try something new—“I really liked the way you made an effort to . . .”—even if the performance itself is not yet stellar. Employees want more feedback in general, but what they really crave is positive feedback—management’s recognition of their efforts and accomplishments. Positive feedback is especially important if you want people to try new behaviors and approaches as part of a change initiative or following a training program.
To provide balanced coaching, you have to learn to give both positive as well as developmental or corrective feedback. It does not mean always giving them together in a “bad news sandwich.” Stop sticking your “but” in everybody’s feel-good moments: “I liked the way you . . . BUT. . . .”
If you don’t do so already, practice giving positive feedback, period. Recognize a great effort, an improvement, etc., and then STOP. Give negative or corrective feedback privately and on a separate occasion.

Specific
While giving someone an “Attaboy” or “Attagirl” is better than providing no feedback at all, feedback and coaching need to be specific, as well as timely, to be optimally effective. Employees are quite adept at detecting and immune to the effects of insincere, sweeping platitudes: “Fine job, whoever you are, whatever it was.”
The Center for Creative Leadership recommends providing feedback in a Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) format (Ting & Scisco, 2006):
    Situation: Describe a specific situation—a particular meeting, a specific report, client encounter, etc.
    Specify the behavior—say what you actually observed: “The way you handled the customer’s objection,” “How you organized your presentation,” etc.
    Identify the impact on you and others: “Showed me that you really took the training seriously,” “Made her feel valued and respected,” “Convince me that you are ready for greater responsibility.”
A Dialogue
Coaching at its best helps people solve their own problems, come to their own insights, and formulate their own plans. To achieve those ends, make your coaching a dialogue, rather than a lecture. Stimulate your direct reports’ thinking, encourage them to draw on their own experiences, and prompt them to explore options. Spend more time asking than telling. Pay attention to who is doing the talking and who is coming up with observations and options; both you and your direct report should be contributing to the exploration of ideas and opportunities.
Effective coaching is a dialogue, not a lecture.
Coaching and encouragement from you are so central to getting your money’s worth from training and development that they deserved to be tracked like any other critical business activity. An important practice of “total quality management” is to prominently post performance charts; consider posting the worksheet in your office to help keep this vital activity top of mind.
If the program your direct report attends uses an electronic follow-through system, you will receive requests for feedback and coaching by email. Respond to these requests promptly to sustain your direct report’s commitment and maximize the positive impact (see “Who Says So?”). Providing feedback through online systems will require only a few minutes of your time every couple of weeks, but it will create long-lived value for your direct reports, your department, and ultimately, you personally.

4 Effective Ways to Provide Positive Feedback and Encouragement for Performance Improvement from your Training Program.