Thursday, December 30, 2010
Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life « Learning Change
Filled with research-based techniques for expanding creativity and increasing productivity This provocative book reveals why sitting in front of a light box can increase your creativity more than listening to a Bach concerto as example. The author Shelley H. Carson, a Harvard psychologist, explains that creativity isn’t something only scientists, investors, artists, writers, and musicians enjoy, but rather all of us use our creative brains every day at home and at work and have the ability to increaseour mental functioning and creativity by understanding the seven brainsets. Explains the seven brainsets of the mind and their functions as related to creativity, productivity, and innovation, including Open, Scan, Think, Vision, Appraise, Streaming and Goal Provides quizzes, exercises, and self-tests to activate each of these seven brainsets to unlock our maximum creativity This book is a Harvard Health Publication that offers helpful suggestions that can be applied in both your personal and professional life
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fOWOts
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
My Server Got Run Over By A Cloud App
Even The Angels Are Wary
Let's hope this is the darkness before the dawn.
Amplify’d from smallbiztrends.com
Just as most sources of small business financing have slowed down in the recession, angel financing has gone through some changes, too.
Conducted by the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, The Angel Investor Market In Q1q2 2010: Where Have All The Seed Investors Gone?, surveyed angel investment during the first half of 2010. First, the good news: Angels are investing in more businesses. The number of businesses that obtained angel capital in 2010 grew three percent compared to 2009 numbers, reaching 25,200.
Now, the bad news: Although angels are investing in more companies, they’re investing less money overall. Total angel investments in the first half of 2010 dropped by 6.5 percent (to $8.5 billion) compared to the same period in 2009. At the same time, fewer angels are investing. The percentage of angels that are “latent” (meaning they haven’t made an investment) went from 36 percent in 2008 and 54 percent in 2009 to 65 percent in 2010.
More bad news: Today’s angels are focusing on later-stage companies. A mere 26 percent of angel investments in the first six months of 2010 went to startup stage investments—continuing a decline from 35 percent in 2009 and 45 percent in 2008. And that has implications for more than just startups.
In fact, even a company with a track record of success might have difficulty getting angel capital if it’s in a risky industry. Angels are focusing on industries that have proven demand even during tough times. Specifically, here’s where they’re putting their money:
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fh3uA1
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Obama Calls for Federal Internet Privacy Policy Office
Really? Please take care of your own information first. Thank you.
See this Amp at http://rww.to/ijcgZy
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Most Super Amazing Science Photos of 2010
Hard not to marvel at every photo! The text is just as compelling.
See this Amp at http://gizmo.do/htL7ur
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
5 Ways Microloans Create U.S. Jobs
Hello Philanthropists! Yes giving away half your fortunes is the bomb. I wonder if this would reduce poverty in a much more capitalistic manner...
See this Amp at http://huff.to/hHhrNp
The Hindu : News / International : Julian Assange freed on bail
Monday, December 13, 2010
Detroit To Provide Full Service To Only A Handful Of Neighborhoods
This is sad on so many levels.
Amplify’d from www.businessinsider.com
Detroit Is Halting Garbage Pickup, Police Patrols In 20% Of City: Expect Bankruptcy In 2011
Detroit has been bankrupt for years. It simply refuses to admit it. Detroit's schools are bankrupt as well. A mere 25% of students graduate from high school.
In a futile attempt to stave off the inevitable one last time, Mayor Bing's latest plan is to cutoff city services including road repairs, police patrols, street lights, and garbage collection in 20% of Detroit.
More than 20% of Detroit's 139 square miles could go without key municipal services under a new plan being developed for the city, with as few as seven neighborhoods seen as meriting the city's full resources.
Those details, outlined by Detroit planning officials this week, offer the clearest picture yet of how Mayor Dave Bing intends to execute what has become his signature program: reconfiguring Detroit to reflect its declining population and fiscal health. Yet the blueprint still leaves large legal and financial questions unresolved.
Officials bristle when their efforts are described as downsizing, saying their aim is to repurpose portions of the city, not redraw its borders. "We will not be shrinking the city," Ms. Henderson said. "We are 139 [square] miles and we'll stay that way."
Now’s the time to cast off collective bargaining agreements and introduce school choice.
The other insulating force was a conscious decision to wall off Detroit from charter schools. In 1993, Michigan’s legislature made it difficult to create new charters in Detroit by declaring that only community colleges could authorize charters for primary and secondary schools in “First-Class Districts”—defined as those with more than 100,000 students. Detroit was the only First-Class District. In 2003 the state, under pressure from the Detroit Federation of Teachers, turned down a gift of $200 million from philanthropist Robert Thompson that would have established 15 charter schools in the city. Those charters are needed today.
Detroit has hit the end of the line. It's budget deficit is between $446 million and $466 million (28% to 29%) of $1.6 billion with few ways other than drastic cuts in wages and benefits to address the problem.
The Economic Base
The deterioration of the economic base of the city has accelerated. There were an estimated 81,754 vacant housing units (22.2 percent of the total) in Detroit before the recession; that number increased to an estimated 101,737 (27.8 percent of the total) in 2008.
The average price of a residential unit sold in the January through November, 2009 period was $12,439, down from $97,847 in 2003. Remaining businesses and individuals are challenging property tax assessments on parcels that have lost value and, in some cases, cannot be sold at any price.
More than half of employed city residents work outside the city limits; the metro area has the highest unemployment rate of the 100 major metro areas in the U.S.
“We are still in a financial crisis but insolvency isn’t on the horizon or on the agenda at this time,” Mayor Dave Bing said in an e-mail from his spokesman, Dan Lijana. The total deficit this year is estimated at $280 million.
For reasons unknown, Bing just cannot do what is right. He will not come flat out and say what everyone in their right mind knows - that Detroit is fiscally and morally bankrupt and so are its schools.
Should Mayor Bing not seek bankruptcy assistance, I propose for Governor Snyder to force Detroit into bankruptcy. It is the only hope Detroit has. Mayor Bing is clearly in over his head.
Thus, forced or not, I believe Detroit will file bankruptcy in 2011, the state will accept it, and public unions will be forced to accept massive concessions in bankruptcy court.
Look for massive turmoil in the municipal bond market as a result.
See this Amp at http://read.bi/el03x2
11 Predictions for B2B Social Media in 2011 | Social Media B2B
Hmmm. I agree with some of these. Others? Looks like they substituted B2B for B2C and that's it.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/hkQiWF
Futurity.org – Nanowire heart pumps next-gen battery
There are 25,400 microns per inch. Now simply take 10 of those microns, add a little abracadabra and you've got the next-gen battery. Okay, maybe a *little* more complicated...
I do love technology!
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fB7Nhb
Friday, December 10, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
God Hates Elizabeth Edwards
Four simple words: What Would Jesus Do?
Amplify’d from www.msnbc.msn.com
A church that pickets funerals to protest what it calls American immorality says its members will be picketing the service this Saturday for Elizabeth Edwards, who died of breast cancer on Tuesday.
Signs like "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" have been raised at military funerals, and the church announced its latest action with a press release titled "God hates Elizabeth Edwards."
The church has gotten the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court, which last October heard arguments over whether it has a free speech right to picket funerals with its controversial signs.
The Supreme Court justices heard arguments in the emotion-laden case of Albert Snyder. His son died in Iraq in 2006, and members of the church protested the funeral.
The members of the small church welcome the attention the protests have brought, mocking their critics and vowing not to change their ways whatever the outcome at the Supreme Court.
"No American should ever be required to apologize for following his or her conscience," said Margie Phelps, a daughter of Fred Phelps and the lawyer arguing the case for the church.
While distancing themselves from the church's message, media organizations, including The Associated Press, have called on the court to side with church because of concerns that a victory for Snyder could erode free speech rights.
See this Amp at http://on.msnbc.com/fzMpBf
E-mail scandal topples Duke Energy's James Turner | IndyStar.com | The Indianapolis Star
Anyone this dumb deserves to "decide to leave the company"!
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/e8YdX1|topnews|text|IndyStar.com|default|s
Permission Based Dying, er, Living
I had to listen to yet another "guru" ask the group to list all the things they would do if they only had six months to live. (I came up with one. Keep doing what I'm doing now. But - I digress.)
People were writing furiously. There may have been surprises had I been able to look but I'm guessing they were mostly all about relationships or finally taking that long wanted trip to Hawaii.
Then of course the inevitable follow up. Why aren't you doing that right now?
Sigh.
I 100% believe it's because we would not be given the permission of our community to do so. Life is only precious to most people when there is a danger of dying. Otherwise it's labeled irresponsible or worse.
Consider the following situations.
Single woman with no kids decides to hike through Europe alone. High school sports star says enough is enough and doesn't join the team that desperately needs him. Highly paid married couple decides to chuck the rat race and start a bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere.
There would howls of dismay and anger. What are they thinking? Don't they see how crazy this is? Their future is at risk. Wah wah wah wah
Now preface each sentence with "After discovering s/he has a year to live...". Ah that's better.
Is this really what we want for ourselves and others? I wonder. How scary would it be to discover that by giving others permission to live fully and freely we would be able to do that ourselves?
Permission based dying or permission based living? Something to ponder in the waning days of 2010.
People were writing furiously. There may have been surprises had I been able to look but I'm guessing they were mostly all about relationships or finally taking that long wanted trip to Hawaii.
Then of course the inevitable follow up. Why aren't you doing that right now?
Sigh.
I 100% believe it's because we would not be given the permission of our community to do so. Life is only precious to most people when there is a danger of dying. Otherwise it's labeled irresponsible or worse.
Consider the following situations.
Single woman with no kids decides to hike through Europe alone. High school sports star says enough is enough and doesn't join the team that desperately needs him. Highly paid married couple decides to chuck the rat race and start a bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere.
There would howls of dismay and anger. What are they thinking? Don't they see how crazy this is? Their future is at risk. Wah wah wah wah
Now preface each sentence with "After discovering s/he has a year to live...". Ah that's better.
Is this really what we want for ourselves and others? I wonder. How scary would it be to discover that by giving others permission to live fully and freely we would be able to do that ourselves?
Permission based dying or permission based living? Something to ponder in the waning days of 2010.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/hTnEx0
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
The 7 Habits Killing Your Personal Brand
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Futurity.org – Early warnings ease market toxicity
Preventing precipitous drops in the stock market like the one on May 6 - sounds like a great idea!
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fdgla0
Monday, December 6, 2010
Work Is Measured In Moments
The biggest task is to sift through what's urgent to find what's important.
Amplify’d from www.elsua.net
Jason starts up his presentation identifying three different areas related to work, which I thought were rather interesting: Room (where does work happen for you? At the office, at home, travelling, at a customer’s, at the airport, you name it); Object (basically, what we produce) and, finally, Time (When does work happen? Early in the morning, throughout the day or in the evening, on the weekends, etc. depending on how productive we may feel at those times). With that intro he moves on to claim that at the traditional office, the physical space, we no longer get to do work, but, instead, we have work moments.
We seemed to have moved into work in chunks, being constantly exposed to interruptions that could come from various different places. Now, this is something that I could certainly relate to. Back when I used to work from a physical location it used to take about 5 hours to commute to work (Back and forth), so typically I would have to get up really early in the morning to arrive at around 9:30am at the office, and as soon as I would get in I would be getting exposed to those work moments. My boss would come in, asked me to go with him for a coffee (to catch up or just chit chat at the coffee corner, or water cooler, whatever term you would want to use…), spend a few minutes talking to him, then I would go to my desk and right as I am sitting down to start my work, colleagues would come around to talk, once again, or go for another coffee. You know, the usual stuff you do with work colleagues when you first see them at the office in the morning…
From there onwards one thing leads to the other and before you realise, it’s lunch time. My lunch time. So by the time I could go and sit down at my desk to start doing my work it would be after 1pm in the afternoon; then meetings and conference calls would kick in and before you knew it off it goes your entire work day dedicated to stuff you probably could have done without just that day. But then you go on and keep working, before you go back home, because there are a number of tasks that need to be finished and you know you can’t leave them behind, just like that. So you end up doing a whole bunch of extra hours, just because of those interruptions giving you back only a few work moments. Does that situation ring a bell? I bet it does, specially, if you are one of those knowledge workers who still gets to go the traditional office. So here is a question for you… when does work happen for you in that scenario?
So why do we keep insisting then on commuting to the office, when we all know that we are not the most productive during that time, specially with those interruptions kicking in time and time again? Why do we keep insisting on measuring knowledge workers’ performance by their sheer physical presence, as opposed to the results delivered on tasks accomplished? Why do we keep on distrusting our knowledge workforce to do their job properly, when we know that in the first place we have hired professionals who know they need to be just that: professional? When are we going to start trusting them to be more responsible for what they do on a day to day basis? Isn’t it about time we shift gears, change our corporate chips and inspire an open, collaborative work environment where knowledge workers take more control, AND responsibility, for what they do … and let them do their thing?
What’s interesting though from his presentation is to watch him talk about what he feels are the real problems; what Jason calls M&Ms (No, nothing to do with chocolate! hehe); what he refers to as “Managers and Meetings“. Apparently, manager’s job is that one of interrupting people at the wrong time; also perhaps calling up meetings when they shouldn’t. All of these are toxic, terrible, poisonous events managers do, because hardly any knowledge worker would eventually do that. According to him, and it is not the first time I have seen / read about it, meetings are very expensive to the business provoking those very same interruptions!
This is when it gets really fascinating in the presentation itself, because he comes up forward proposing some solutions as to how we could help our businesses reduce a large chunk of those meetings, and interruptions, happening while at work so that we can continue having a go at it and do what we need to do: work. He comes to propose that instead of scheduling a meeting people could start making heavier use of both traditional and emerging collaborative, knowledge sharing and social software tools to get the job done. Now this is something that some folks may consider silly, yet, in my own experience, it’s tremendously powerful and relatively easy to achieve.
That’s exactly what Jason suggested in this TED Talk as well, when talking about what can managers do to help prevent this ever increasing lack of productivity and frustration altogether from their employees. He proposes three different solutions to start tackling a new way of getting work done:
- Ever heard of Casual Fridays? … Well, how about No Talk Thursdays? (Or whatever other day of the week)
- Cancel the next meeting! (Yes, that one! The next one you are about to start up! There is a great chance that things will continue to roll on without it, so why have it in the first place?!)
- Embrace passive methods of collaboration (Moving away from active collaboration)
So how about you? Can you, too, live in a world without meetings? At least, can you see yourself reducing the ridiculously high number of meetings we all seem to keep attending time and time again and instead start relying more and more on other passive methods of collaboration, longer periods of hard thinking and perhaps a stronger sense of being more effective and, why not, efficient altogether? At the end of the day, I guess it’s all about working smarter, not necessarily harder, and somehow I sense that social software tools will be helping us out achieve a whole lot more, with a whole lot less … effort! And that can only be a good thing, don’t you think? Specially, if it allows you to cancel your next meeting!
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/dQ8T2H
Sunday, December 5, 2010
200 Years In 4 Minutes (this is a must see video!!)
Despite only lasting 4 minutes, this remarkable video is sure to have a very long lasting impact. h/t to @amp-arif for first Amplifying it.
Amplify’d from www.talkingpointsmemo.com
Via the BBC, Hans Rosling examines the correlation between income growth and life expectancy in 200 countries over the last 200 hundred years in an amazing animation. Take a look:
See more at www.talkingpointsmemo.com
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/efWJRs
30 Best Internet Marketing and SEO Blogs You Should Follow - tripwire magazine
Friday, December 3, 2010
Julian Assange Is My Hero
I love heretics, whistleblowers and all-around rabblerousers. They air our dirty laundry so the greater public can weigh in. Many wonderful reforms and laws have addressed terrible situations that we might have never learned about otherwise. Think Norma Rae, Daniel Ellsberg, Jeffrey Wigand, Jennifer Long and Sherron Watkins.
Julian Assange then is my hero.
What Julian Assange has that these other now revered people didn't is the internet as a vehicle for distribution. Instead of simply being available in an edited version to readers of the Washington Post or the New York Times for example (which made both papers a LOT of money) documents were released for free through a channel that all of us use everyday.
I know. It's dangerous. All that information in the public domain. Gee whiz we're just not knowledgeable to understand all the ramifications of discovering that some world leaders think Kim Jong Il is a short chubby whackjob or the Afghan government is corrupt.
Oh. Wait a minute. That's news?
We are constantly demanding transparency. We tweet and post on FB and blog about people and organizations that don't meet our high standards. Here's the rub: Transparency isn't always pain free.
Ladies and gentlemen, you can't have it both ways. You either embrace it and simply brace yourself. It's impossible to go back.
Julian Assange then is my hero.
What Julian Assange has that these other now revered people didn't is the internet as a vehicle for distribution. Instead of simply being available in an edited version to readers of the Washington Post or the New York Times for example (which made both papers a LOT of money) documents were released for free through a channel that all of us use everyday.
I know. It's dangerous. All that information in the public domain. Gee whiz we're just not knowledgeable to understand all the ramifications of discovering that some world leaders think Kim Jong Il is a short chubby whackjob or the Afghan government is corrupt.
Oh. Wait a minute. That's news?
We are constantly demanding transparency. We tweet and post on FB and blog about people and organizations that don't meet our high standards. Here's the rub: Transparency isn't always pain free.
Ladies and gentlemen, you can't have it both ways. You either embrace it and simply brace yourself. It's impossible to go back.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/dSfSi2
Thursday, December 2, 2010
10 Questions to Ask When Crafting Your Mobile Policy
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