May 2013
26 posts
Top News This Morning - 5/20/13
The big news from over the weekend is that Yahoo’s board has reportedly approved the plan to buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. Tumblr’s board has reportedly agreed to the deal, too.
We think the deal is smart for both sides.
Not all Tumblr users are so optimistic.
It’ll be interesting to see how Yahoo deals with all the porn stored on Tumblr. There’s a...
OMG! This definitely got my attention!
Letting go is the Key to Successfully Find your...
Do you know anyone who lost their job, spent the next year working on their resume, job sites, trying to get work. Then, after deciding to stop looking so hard, out of the blue, came a great job offer?
Is that a miracle or pure random chance? Or, perhaps, it’s a really great strategy.
I just heard a story from a friend of mine. She knows a guy who’s been out of a job for over a year. He...
What Is Authentic Leadership?
What is authentic leadership?
It continues to surprise me how many leaders attempt to be one way at work, while their “true” personality emerges outside of work. Once a CEO reminded me, “Leadership is acting.” And it surprises me when these same leaders seem shocked or confused when their employees don’t trust them, don’t like them, and can’t really wait to work elsewhere.
Authenticity has...
Checklist for Avoiding Wellness Program Legal...
Lawsuit Avoidance Checklist for Your Wellness Program
Keep corporate wellness and employment decisions separate. Achievement on a health program shouldn’t be a basis for promotion, for example.
Use a third party, such as your insurance provider, to run your wellness program. They have more experience in designing programs, and all of the protected health information goes to them.
Have your...
Top News Today - 5/15/13
Larry Page revealed why his voice has grown softer: his vocal cords are partially paralyzed.
Google is going to do a Spotify-style music streaming service.
It’s also revamping its Maps with all new features.
Yahoo’s CFO says Yahoo will be doing more advertising to attract young people. He also says Yahoo’s sale of half of its Alibaba stake was unfortunate.
Apple’s stock...
Sunnier job market ahead: Seniors, teens will...
The summer job market is upon us, and the good news is that there are likely to be more openings. The most recent annual summer jobs survey by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that even after a sharp increase in teen employment last summer, more openings are likely this year.
A second survey, by snagajob.com, an hourly employment network, found that 19 percent of the...
8 Ways to Tell if You Have a Good Boss
You’re likely to work for plenty of bad managers in your career. If you’re lucky, you’ll also get to work for some good ones. Here are eight signs that you have a great boss:
1. Great bosses tell you where you stand. They’re clear about what you do well and where you need to improve, and they’re also clear about how you’re doing overall. You never need to...
Top News Today - 5/14/13
Nokia came out with a new flagship phone, the 925. It’s just like the 920, except its made out of aluminium.
Instagram remains unavailable on Windows Phone, so Nokia is including an app from Hipstamatic called Oggl.
Activist shareholder and hedge fund manager Dan Loeb thinks Sony should sell a minority portion of its stake in Sony Entertainment to the public through an American...
10 Eye-Opening Books Every Entrepreneur Should...
These books reveal the truth of how organizations really work, and it’s not pretty.
As anyone who reads this column knows, I’m a huge proponent of positive thinking. However, positive thinking is delusional unless it’s based upon a clear understanding of how the business world really works.
Put another way: We can’t make the world a better place unless we can first see...
Top 10 News Today 5/13/13
Bloomberg apologized for the way journalists were using its terminal clients’ proprietary data.
Some senators introduced a bill called the “Deter Cyber Theft Act.” It’s a response to hacking from China and Chinese companies.
Marissa Mayer hired one of her old Google colleagues into Yahoo, Path VP of product Dylan Casey.
In this video, Bill Gates gets emotional talking...
10 Things Every Customer Wants
Surprisingly, the best price and best value is at the bottom of the customer’s priority list. See what’s at the top.
Why does a customer buy from one vendor rather than another? According to research recently conducted by The Rain Group (detailed report here), customers tend to buy from sellers who are superlative at the following tasks:
1. Bring New Perspectives and Ideas
If...
Top Ten New Today - 5/10/13
Airline travelers leave their gadgets “on” about 30% of the time, according to a new study.
Facebook is reportedly trying to buy Israeli mapping startup Waze for $1 billion. Here’s a little analysis on why.
Now that it’s doing a lot more digital video, the WSJ would like its reporters to look better in front of the camera, please – “neat and...
Wellness Programs are Great, But Let's Put On Our...
Wellness programs are growing in popularity and many are effective at keeping employees healthier and reducing employer costs, says attorney Mark Jones, but you have to “put on your lawyer hat” to avoid legal entanglements.
Generally, wellness programs are healthcare options that employers offer to employees to reduce preventable illnesses. They offer obvious benefits to the employee—better...
Top 10 Tech News Today 5/9/13
The CEO of powerful Chinese hardware firm Huawei talked to reporters for the first time in 26 years. He says Huawei is not spying on the US.
Pegatron, which makes iPhones and iPads for Apple, is staffing up by 40% for the third quarter.
Facebook is close to buying Israeli startup Waze, an in-car navigation provider, for $800 million to $1 billion.
Sony reported net profits for the first time...
7 Reasons Why Asian Americans Are on the Rise
The U.S. officially has more Asian than Hispanic immigrants per year, according to a Pew Research Center report released Tuesday. But Asians — Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Filipino, and Vietnamese Americans, primarily — have grown not only in numbers.
The study, “The Rise of Asian Americans,” also shows that Asians in the U.S. have overtaken other groups in economic...
Top 10 Tech News Today 5/8/13
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has met with Hulu execs about potentially buying the video streaming site.
Four guys just bought a mountain for $40 million and plan to hold startup conferences there.
Michael Arrington’s VC firm CrunchFund is seeing a 20% to 30% internal rate return on its investments.
Microsoft’s VP in charge of Windows development said the new version of Windows 8 that...
Top Cities For Woman Entrepreneurs
5 Steps to Managing Outside Your Area of Expertise
If you move up high enough in management, at some point you’re going to be charged with managing work that’s outside your area of expertise—such as IT work. If you’re like a lot of people, you may be worried about how you could possibly oversee work that you couldn’t actually do yourself. How are you supposed to manage and assess work at which you are far from an...
Top 10 Tech News Today - 5/7/13
“Adobe is abandoning its Creative Suite entirely to focus efforts on Creative Cloud.”
“Foxconn, a potent symbol of the perks and perils of globalization, is taking a step that, not all that long ago, would have seemed unthinkable: it is contemplating life far, far beyond Apple.”
Nokia has a new high-end phone out called the Lumia 928. It has a fancy camera.
...
Top 10 Tech News This Morning - 5/6/13
In a blog post lots of people passed around over the weekend, established Los Angeles-based VC Mark Suster explains where he gets his proprietary deal-flow.
Samsung came out with a low-end, 4.3 inch smartphone called the Galaxy Core.
Intel subsidiary McAfee bought a Finnish firewall specialist called Stonesoft for $389 million.
YouTube is launching paid subscription channels.
...
Sanqingshan in China has been considered a sacred place and is shrouded in mists for 200 days of the year. The mist gives an otherworldly quality to the mountain
5 Tips for Meetings That People Won't Dread
Meetings get a bad rap for a reason: They’re often inefficient; veer unproductively off-track; are attended by people who don’t want to be there; and frequently end without anyone being clear on what was decided.
You can give your meetings a makeover with these five tips and eliminate some of the dread that usually accompanies them:
1. Insist on an agenda. Far too many meetings...
Top 10 Tech News This Morning - 5/3/13
A clever gadget blogger went to a Nokia event and realized it was being filmed with as-of-yet unreleased Nokia gadgets.
Facebook advertisers can now target users based on the apps they have downloaded to their phones.
Smart TVs are here. 25% of all broadband-connected households own a TV with an app platform built-in.
Horace Dediu says anyone who owns Apple stock should be ready to see it...
8 Essential Parts to a Business (And How They Work...
A small business is a system in which all parts contribute to the success or failure of the whole.
In order to build the most successful small business in the world, you must understand that a small business is a system in which all parts contribute to the success or failure of the whole.
Like Henry Ford understood the relationship between the Ford Motor Car and the Ford Motor Company (which...
8 Things You Should Not Do Every Day
It’s for your own good. Cut these things out of your day and you’ll see gains in productivity—not to mention happiness
If you get decent value from making to-do lists, you’ll get huge returns—in productivity, in improved relationships, and in your personal well-being—from adding these items to your not to-do list:
Every day, make the commitment not to:
1....
April 2013
56 posts
10 Thing You Need To Know In Small Business Now
Here’s what you need to know in small business today:
President Obama’s budget could have a big impact on small businesses, including potential tax increases for those who pay pass-through taxes on their business income and a higher minimum wage.
Free lunches, a popular tech company and startup perk, are getting attention from the IRS because they may be taxable “fringe...
Check out and listen to my radio interview last...
Cascadia's Economic Orbit
9 Slightly Crazy Things That Might Make You Wildly...
Break up your routine with these secret (slightly off-the-wall) tricks to jump-starting your productivity.
The other day during a grueling seven-hour car ride, I found myself feeling the stress of fatigue, impatience, and boredom. Suddenly, my dog, Riley, yawned with an outrageously funny expression of his own boredom. The sound was remarkably human and not one I’d heard before; it made...
The Secret to Happiness at Work: Less Duration,...
A great workout often combines high intensity with a sustainable time commitment. Is the ideal professional situation similar?
As anyone who has ever gone to the gym can tell you there are two components to a workout’s difficulty: intensity (how heavy is the weight) and duration (are you lifting it five times or 20).
Might the same be true of work? Can you find the sweet spot of...
Tech Companies' Free Lunches Draw IRS's Attention
Free meals may be a “perk” that’s taxable by the IRS
There is no such thing as a free lunch, if you’re the Internal Revenue Service.
The IRS is considering whether the free meals doled out to employees at tech companies and other Silicon Valley firms hungry for talent are a fringe benefit that should be taxed, according to reports.
Meals “regularly provided by...
10 Perks Your Small Business Can Afford
Perks that make your employees happy don’t have to cost an arm and a leg—really.
A happy, engaged workforce is a high performing workforce. When you hear of companies like SAP that offers onsite putting greens or Google, which offers onsite everything, you probably think, “We have 25 employees and cannot compete on that level. And where would we put a putting green...
Insurer Feedback Delays Small Business Health Plan
The U.S. delayed a feature of the Affordable Care Act that was intended to help small businesses because of concerns raised by insurers, Health and Human Services SecretaryKathleen Sebelius said today.
Employees at small businesses were supposed to have a choice of health plans in a network of online insurance marketplaces, called exchanges, starting Oct. 1. Instead, their bosses will have to...
Top 10 Tech News This Morning - 4/24/13
Apple posted very strong earnings results, but gave weak guidance.
Tim Cook warned that Apple has no new products coming until the fall.
The iPhone business is now only growing at a single digit rate.
The market’s reaction to Apple’s earnings call was muted. First the stock popped, then it fell, now it’s flat.
Apple also announced plans to return $100 billion to...
Job Search Tip of The Day
They (whoever they are) may do things the same way, day after day, year after year merely because that is just the way they do things. If you have a better way, take a shot and present it to them (whoever them are). The worst they can tell you is that is not how we do things here, but perhaps and maybe someone (whoever that special someone is) really wants a better way.
7 Characteristics of Highly Creative People
Looking to hire for creativity? Research says you should look for these traits (but, be warned, not all of them make someone easy to work with).
Sure, it’s possible for everyone to nurture his or her creative side, but honest observation shows that fresh ideas come more easily to some people than to others. If you’re in the market for individuals to drive innovation at your...
Top 10 Tech News This Morning - 4/23/13
Google said Apple violated six of its patents with the iPhone. The U.S. International Trade Commission disagrees.
Are investors treating Tim Cook the same way they treat Steve Ballmer? Nick Wingfield points out that Microsoft has been able to grow profits and revenues under Ballmer, but the stock hasn’t moved.
You that really stupid trick teens are doing on YouTube, where they pull a...
Happiness Makes Your Brain Work Better
A Harvard psychology researcher explains that rather than thinking of success as the source of happiness, we should think of happiness as a source of success—and one that’s more under our control than we imagine.
Entrepreneurs, in general, are strivers. We set targets, battle to meet them, and believe that getting to that point, whatever it is, will bring us increased satisfaction....
Top 10 Tech News Today - 4/22/13
UK gambling site Betfair says: hah, $1.3 billion is not enough to buy us!
Tech firms have already donated $32 million toward Chinese earthquake victims, with Apple and Samsung leading the way.
Asian gadget-makers say they are trying to lessen their reliance on Apple. “Those in the industry often jokingly refer to the company as ‘Poison Apple’ because of its hard-to-meet high...
If you are not willing to learn, no one can help...
10 Things Really Amazing Bosses Do
Are you truly an amazing boss or just a good one? See how many of these 10 traits are natural for you
Being a boss is hard. People don’t naturally wish to have one. And not everyone aspires to be one. But most people are anxious to follow a good leader, and most organizations live and die on the quality of the leaders who run them. See how you stack up with these 10 traits. I have given a...
Top 10 Tech News This Morning - 4/19/13
Private equity firm Blackstone is withdrawing its bid to buy Dell
Back in 2011, Google chairman Eric Schmidt interviewed Julian Assange for his upcoming book. The transcript of that interview is now live.
Microsoft responds to the Excel mistake that may have damaged the global economy.
IBM is in talks to sell its server unit to Lenovo.
“Having amassed a fortune by investing early in...
SEATTLE CAPITOL HILL BLOCK PARTY SCHEDULE REVEALED
Now you can pick just who you will see at this year’s Block Party: the schedule for Capitol Hill Block Party’s three days of nonstop music has been announced. Friday features well-known acts including Girl Talk, STRFKR, Dillon Francis, Chromatics, Danny Brown, and Telekinesis. On Saturday catch Pickwick, Purity Ring, A Trak, and Star Slinger. Sunday’s lineup includes The...
5 Most Destructive Phrases in Business
To be a better business leader, you need to avoid these five destructive phrases like the plague
How often have you been in a productive business meeting only to have it come to a grinding halt because of something someone said? It happens all the time. A negative comment or a pessimistic concern can not only bring down morale, it can derail an entire strategy. I am convinced that there is no...
Top 10 Tech News This Morning - 4/18/13
A Microsoft Excel error may have ruined the global economy.
“U.S.-based companies raised $6 billion from 752 venture capital deals in Q1 2013, an 11% decrease in capital and a 6% decrease in number of deals from the previous quarter.”
LinkedIn updated its iPhone and Android apps, which will soon included ads.
Kenya is investing billions of dollars trying to build Nairobi...
Job Search Tip of the Day
When answering job interview questions: 1) target/focus your background to the position/duties, 2) give measurable results, and 3) finish - relate and tie-in your example to the position/person/company. This is how you knock your answers out of the park.
What Your Favorite Color(s) Says About You
White: Symbolic of purity, innocence and naivete, white has strong connotations of youth and purity. If you are an older person, your preference for white could indicate a desire for perfection and impossible ideals, maybe an attempt to recapture lost youth and freshness. It may also symbolize a desire for simplicity or the simple life.
Red: The color of strength, health, and vitality, Red is...
Top 10 Tech News This Morning - 4/17/13
Facebook has some new talent. Apple Maps executive Richard Williamson is reportedly joining Facebook and designer/developer Loren Brichter will be helping the Facebook Home team.
Microsoft and Foxconn’s parent company, Hon Hai, have signed a worldwide patent licensing agreement for the manufacturing of tablets, TVs and smart phones. ”The parties indicate that Microsoft will receive...
Open Positions: Senior Web Developer →
barbelojobs:
Contract-to-hire position
Fast growing Seattle Area Company in the fascinating Make on Demand space is seeking a Senior Web Developer to join their Storefront team.
Located in Seattle, we are building a new B2B platform in the dynamic and growing area of print on demand applications, with…
