April 8th, 2010 Olivia
© Shayan (USA)
With the economy outlook looking less than favorable, many of us started considering options that we hadn't thought of before (or at least hadn't thought about in a while). And by options, I mean the big jump. You know, the dive, the plunge, the final deed.
Many of us dream of starting a business, but never go through with it. We cite all kinds of reasons: security, benefits, retirement. However, since the end of 2008, it seems like all of those reasons shrunk in size. No one has security, your benefits are ploughed over by corporate managers or the government and retirement sounds like a pipe dream. The idea of waking up each day, walking to your computer and starting your day sounds more and more enticing.
So what's holding you back? Maybe your "why" isn't good enough. Why start your own business? Its a simple question. It starts with a word so fundamental to human nature that when we learn it as children, we can't stop saying it. So consider yours for a moment. Then weigh it. Is it enough to take a deep breath and catapult into the unknown?
Being in limbo might be the worst feeling in the world. When you can't make a decision it eats away at you. You constantly waiver back and forth between what you want and the consequences. And truthfully it is hard. The choice you make will impact your lifestyle, your fiances and your family, maybe not all in a positive way either.
I could spend this article writing out pros and cons for you, but I want to say first that this decision will feel better when made. I'm not saying rush it, but don't dwell on it forrever and give yourself an ulcer. Make up your mind and stick to it. You won't believe how much stress can leave your life once you've come to a conclusion you can really throw your whole self behind. (Note: if you make a decision you can't throw your whole self behind, it might be worth reconsidering.)
But the last thing you want is to sit on the fence the rest of your life.
What helped you to make the final decision to have a home business (or not)?
By: Merina Source
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March 16th, 2010 Olivia
Men and women have different shopping habits. Every retailer knows that. The challenge is developing an offering that recognizes these differences.
University of Michigan professor Daniel Kruger has told The Telegraph that it goes back to prehistoric times. He says men were hunters, women were foragers. As a result, women would spend hours trying to find the right outfit, present or object, because they had in the past spent ages trying to find the best quality foods. But men decided in advance what animal they wanted to kill and then went looking for it. Once it was found - and killed - they returned home.
It comes down to a simple difference: women shop, men buy.
"When gathering, women must be very adept at choosing just the right colour, texture and smell to ensure food safety and quality" Kruger said. "They also must time harvests and know when a certain depleted patch will regenerate and yield good harvest again. In modern terms, women are much more likely than men to know when a specific type of item will go on sale. Women also spend much more time choosing the perfect fabric, colour and texture."
A Wharton study found that women go for personal interaction with sales associates. Men are more likely to respond to more utilitarian aspects of the experience. For men, it's more about the availability of parking, whether the item they came for is in stock, and the length of the checkout line. For women the biggest turn off is "lack of help". Men are more likely to get annoyed when the product is out of stock.
The message for retailers is pretty clear - don't have items out of stock and make sure staff are helpful, and not in a superficial way either.
The hunter vs forager line comes up again in another interesting finding: men outspend women when it comes to online purchases. Like hunters, more men shop online and they love the quick efficient nature of the Internet which allows them to go in for the kill.
By: Bose Source
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March 8th, 2010 Olivia
© seeveeaar
Get Rich Slowly (the blog about being frugal) put in all together in a nutshell last week: What it means to be frugal.o me, the basic law of frugality is: Decide what's important to you. Give yourself permission to spend on these things. Pinch pennies on everything else.I like the balance implied in that statement. Even with the things you like, you still have to live within your means. But there's nothing wrong with buying the expensive coffee, or eating steak instead of hamburger if that's what you like. As long as your overall framework still involves being mindful of your expenses.
By: FinanceMan Source
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March 3rd, 2010 Olivia
Thank you to beranekp@Flickr of Teplice (Czech Republic) for sharing today”s photograph (original image via the BPotD Flickr Pool). Much appreciated!
Named after Count Sámuel Teleki de Szek, the genus Telekia is found natively from southeastern Europe to southern Russia. Two species comprise the genus, and this tall herbaceous perennial (to 2m), Telekia speciosa is by far the most widespread. The epithet speciosa means “showy”, yet despite the moniker, it is not the showiest. That title belongs to its narrow endemic sibling, Telekia speciosissima (”showiest”), found growing only in rocky crevices “of limestone and dolomite boulders in the Lombardy Prealps”. Telekia speciosa is not so fussy when it comes to growing environments: it is found along forest margins, where it can tolerate full sun as long as it is growing in moist soil. In Georgia (and perhaps elsewhere?), it forms part of a special vegetation type called “tall herbs” (see: Ornamental Plants in their Natural Habitats).
A number of common names are used for this species, including showy telekia, oxeye daisy (used for many other species as well), heartleaf oxeye, and yellow oxeye.
For additional photographs, please visit Biolib.cz (Telekia speciosa) and Botany.cz (Telekia speciosa). The Kemper Center for Home Gardening also has a detailed account for gardeners interested in this species: Telekia speciosa.
To BPotD business: for those of you who belong to the Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Pool (and anyone else interested): in celebration of the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity, we”re coordinating UBC Botanical Garden”s educational programming around monthly themes. For BPotD, we are planning to do a week-long series in the respective theme every month. Please see this discussion topic for a list of the themes, as well as suggested tags to help us select images.
Lastly, for local readers, the courses and lectures listing for Jan-Jun 2010 also reflects the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity celebrations — you”re very welcome to join us!
By: Daniel Mosquin Source
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February 18th, 2010 Olivia
Webinars have been a mainstay for internal business use for a long time; but now these same businesses are expanding the use of webinars in some innovative ways.
"Nik Software" is conducting an extensive set of webinars designed to introduce their product line. At the end of each session company representatives entertain questions in a chat room.
Check these productions out, they are repeated several times daily, and see what you can learn about modifying and improving your digital photos.
Take a camera with you whenever possible, and look around, you'll find a picture somewhere.
Photo Source:www.outdooralabama.com
By: Karen Source
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February 8th, 2010 Olivia
Apple receives much of the credit for standardizing the means in which applications are purchased and downloaded through their vastly successful App Store and obviously, wishing to capitalize on this success, just about every other smartphone brand on the market followed suit with an app store of their own. The inherent problem of course is exclusivity. Many great apps exist out there but the only way to purchase them is to by using the phone/ software exclusive to the app store.
One of the hot topics at this year's Consumer Electronics Show was the concept of application download stores that would allow any device, regardless of who made it, to download software. Much in the way downloading PC software cares little for whether Dell, Sony, or HP built the actual hardware itself, this new potential app store would not discriminate between brands.
The bigger issue of course in the mobile software wars is the abundance of popular operating systems. Android, Windows Mobile, Apple, and RIM products each support a unique OS so any hope for a "Global App Store" to succeed would require applications designed to run on a wide variety of operating systems.
By: Jeff Source
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January 22nd, 2010 Olivia
© Esparta
Inc. recently ran a piece on how it is now possible to move straight from Windows XP to Windows 7 - and avoid the nightrmare that is called Vista.
I have an XP PC and and XP laptop. About six months ago I got a new laptop through my work - loaded with Vista. Vista has some bugs. But the biggest issue was simpler. After years of relatively streamlined and linear upgrades, someone at Microsoft decided to diverge, become creative, and head off in new directions. Maybe they were high on something, I don't know. The result was that computers users had to relearn much of what they did - and learn to do it differently. By most accounts, Windows 7 steps back in line.
Moving from XP to Windows 7 isn't quite as easy as upgrading straight from Vista. But the Inc. piece gives you some insight into the task.
By: Jason Source
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January 17th, 2010 Olivia
© adria.richards
Mashable had a piece just after Christmas pointing out that on Christmas Day, for the first time ever the sale of eBooks passed the sale of real books (you know, the kind made of paper) on that day.
Was it an anomaly? More likely the start of a trend.
Amazon sold just under two gajillion Kindle eReaders in the lead up to Christmas. Everyone opened their Kindles Christmas morning and when straight to Amazon.com to fill up the hard drives with e-books to read. The next day the sales were probably back to old fashioned paper books. But more and more people will end up with a Kindle (or one of the competing eReaders) and paper books are going to continue to lose market share.
The up side in my view is that books will never go out of print. You'll always be able to find a digital copy of Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus of you really want one….
By: Paul Source
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January 17th, 2010 Olivia
“Comparable in force and originality to Godard or Fassbinder,” began the Village Voice”s J. Hoberman about the hypnotic hyperrealism of a certain Belgian auteur, “Chantal Akerman is arguably the most important European director of her generation.” On January 19, Criterion will release an inarguably vital Eclipse box set entitled Chantal Akerman in the Seventies, which will include “The New York Films” (La Chambre, Hotel Monterey and News From Home), her feature debut Je tu il Elle, and my personal favorite of the set-Les rendez-vous d”Anna:
Over the past four decades, Belgian director Chantal Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles) has created one of cinema”s most distinctive bodies of work-formally daring, often autobiographical films about people and places, time and space. In this collection, we present the early films that put her on the map: intensely personal, modernist investigations of cities, history, family, and sexuality, made in the 1970s in the United States and Europe and strongly influenced by the New York experimental film scene. Bold and iconoclastic, these five films pushed boundaries in their day and continue to have a profound influence on filmmakers all over the world.
During a brief visit to New York in December, Akerman gave me the pleasure and honor of a sit-down to discuss these early films. Typically, I forewarn my podcast interviewees that I edit our audio later to make us both sound clearer, removing the uh”s, hiccups, burps and spaces. I reluctantly obliged Akerman, who was against the idea, of course: “The spaces are the best part!”
We chatted about the “70s avant-garde filmmakers who inspired her during her New York residency, the strangest job she had in the “phallic city,” being Andrew Bujalski”s thesis advisor at Harvard, and why she now takes back a title she once rejected.
To listen to the podcast, click here. (26:50)
Podcast Music
INTRO: Univers Zero, “Celesta (For Chantal)”
OUTRO: Jacques Brel, “Bruxelles”
By: ahillis Source
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January 12th, 2010 Olivia
Last month, i did a blog entry . The issue there was the size of the bonuses given out in the lead up to the bankruptcy. Which raises the obvious question of whether they knew they were going down the gurgler but neglected to inform the market and helped themselves to the piggy bank.
Now The Wall Street Journal reports that criminal prosecutors are investigating whether Lehman Brothers misled investors.
"The probes are at an early stage, and it is far from certain they will lead to charges," the WSJ reports. "Gathering evidence that proves executives broke the law by inflating the values of their firms' assets is difficult. Lehman declined to comment, but in congressional testimony on Monday, Richard Fuld, Lehman's chief executive, said the firm didn't mislead investors. The U.S. attorney's office for New York's Southern District, in Manhattan, is investigating whether Lehman valued its assets at artificially high levels, say two people familiar with the matter. That office has issued subpoenas to individuals that focus on what the firm told investors and other parties about its valuations for approximately $32.6 billion in commercial-real-estate holdings, according to a person familiar with the matter. Lehman's commercial real-estate portfolio came under review by a number of firms, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Credit Suisse Group, Barclays PLC and Bank of America Corp., all of which declined to buy the portfolio. Some executives who looked at the portfolio say they believe the portfolio was being overvalued by Lehman by as much as 35%, as reported in a page-one article in The Wall Street Journal Monday. The Manhattan prosecutors are also interested in whether Lehman improperly moved $8 billion from its London operations to New York just ahead of its bankruptcy filing, a move that has drawn criticism from creditors and accountants, according to two people familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office declined to comment. The U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey is investigating whether Lehman misled New Jersey's pension fund when it provided information about its financial health in connection with a $6 billion stock offering in June. New Jersey invested $180 million in the offering. Its loss on the investment totals about $116 million. Aso, prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office for New York's Eastern District, in Brooklyn, are probing whether Lehman executives misled investors by misrepresenting the firm's condition by making upbeat comments during conference calls with analysts and investors. A spokesman for the office declined to comment."
Meanwhile, Lehman Brothers chief executive officer Richard Fuld is doing a Jeff Skilling. students of US corporate history will remember that the former Enron chief appeared before Congress and claimed that there was nothing wrong with Enron and that it was just a victim of panicking investors.
Well, now Bloomberg reports that Fuld will be telling Congress that Lehman Brothers went under because of a loss of confidence in the market. Talk about deja vu!!!
Is it any wonder that Bloomberg columnist Joe Mysak says bankers have now lost all credibility and it will take them decades to recover.
"As for the bankers, they admitted the ignorance of their actions by going to Washington and asking for a bailout. They didn't understand some of these layers upon layers of securities they had created. They didn't surrender, so much as abdicate. It will be some time before anyone listens to their like again."
By: leon Source
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