6 Must Haves For A Home-Based Business | Getentrepreneurial.com

January 17, 2017January 17, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Every 12 seconds, another American launches a new home-based business. These men and women start out with a dream, but it takes more than that vision to help their companies thrive. To build a successful home-based business, you’ll need the following essentials.

A Quiet, Separate Workspace

Establishing a quiet workspace in a low-traffic area is crucial for the success of any home-based business. You’ll find you’re better able to focus on your tasks when you’re far from the sounds of playing kids and blaring TVs. A separate workspace also gives any clients who visit you the privacy they deserve. When your home office is distinct from the areas you use for relaxing with your family, you’ll find it’s easier to achieve the work-life balance you need. Once you finish for the day, simply shut the door to switch gears to family time.

Vine is shutting down, so don’t forget to export your videos today | TechCrunch

January 17, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

As first announced back in October, Twitter is about to shut down its looping video app and social network, Vine. The company had originally implied it would pull the Vine app from the app stores, but later said it would transition it to a new, low-maintenance app called Vine Camera instead. Ahead of this, Vine’s website and app were updated to allow you to export your Vines for posterity, if you couldn’t bear to lose them.

Vines can be exported until some point today from the vine.co website, or from the iOS or Android application. The Vine website currently says you can download your Vines “only until January 17, when the apps become the Vine Camera,” but the mobile app’s banner says the app will actually be updated tomorrow.

In any event, you have only hours left to grab your Vines before they’re gone.

Secondhand marketplace app Letgo raises $175 million to fuel its quest to take on Craigslist | Mashable

January 17, 2017January 17, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Secondhand marketplace app Letgo just got a big boost in its quest to become the Craigslist of the smartphone era.

The e-commerce company announced Tuesday that it has raised $175 million in its third major funding round following a year of breakneck growth.

The sum brings the startup’s total investor backing to $375 million, including money raised from a previous round and a merger with rival Wallapop last year. The company declined to reveal its resulting valuation.

Letgo aims to bring a mobile-friendly, millennial-geared touch to localized used-good listings, a space currently dominated by Craigslist.

10 Things Old Farts Won’t Tell You About Entrepreneurship (Ninth in a Series) | Peter Mehit

January 16, 2017January 23, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

9. You Define Success

“The things you own end up owning you.” So said Tyler Durden as he opened a round of Fight Club in the cellar of Lou’s bar. That statement feels right because it is. We get attached to goals, to things, and we lose ourselves.

When you’re starting out, the excitement of doing carries you along. Each new success, each milestone achieved places you closer to where you believe you want to be. The late nights, panicked preparations for demos, the sweaty palmed waits in law office lobbies, they take a toll. You think you’ve rounded the corner to easy street, things fall apart. Just when your heart is about to shatter, you catch a break.

It’s exhausting and exhilarating, but it brings your team together. You become more than friends or teammates. You become stronger than family because you live through more intense experiences in one month than most families go through in a year. This bonding continues as you struggle with one mind to achieve a kind of birth. You believe that nothing will come between you and your partners after all you’ve been through.

Continue reading “10 Things Old Farts Won’t Tell You About Entrepreneurship (Ninth in a Series) | Peter Mehit” →

High-Speed Traders Are Taking Over Bitcoin | Bloomberg

January 16, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Zhou Shuoji is not a bitcoin believer. He says the cryptocurrency will never replace its traditional forebears, and he calls most of its proponents fanatics.

But for Zhou, a 35-year-old high-speed trader in Beijing, bitcoin is also too good to resist. His computers trade it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Using lightning quick orders, they profit from tiny price discrepancies on the myriad venues where it changes hands.

“It’s the golden age to be in the bitcoin market, because it’s imperfect,” said Zhou, a former IBM technology consultant whose firm, Fintech Blockchain Group, runs a bitcoin hedge fund and venture capital fund.

The First-Timer’s Guide To Choosing A Standing Desk You Won’t End Up Hating | Fast Company

January 16, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

I’d been thinking about getting a standing desk for a long time, but I couldn’t quite take the plunge.

It wasn’t for lack of interest. I spend a lot of time at my desk, so I was anxious to figure out a new setup that didn’t leave me seated for eight hours a day. What finally pushed me to commit was when one of my time-coaching clients told me her standing desk was helping her to be more productive. When I first started to research desk models, I imagined myself ending up with two separate workstations.

But soon after I finally started to research them in earnest, I found myself a little overwhelmed with all the options on the market. Here’s how I managed to comb through everything before finally settling on a standing desk I love.

If Your Phone Keeps You Up At Night | marketingforhippies.com

January 16, 2017January 16, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Like most of us in this modern age, my phone has kept me up late more nights than I can count.

I put it down to go to sleep only to find it, mysteriously, back in my hands, lighting the room with it’s strange, modern glow.

Of course, it’s terrible for our brains and our capacity to sleep.

The first thing I did was to get an alarm clock that wasn’t my phone. And that helped. But the phone kept finding its way back into my bedroom. And then, somehow, turning on and cycling me through Facebook, email, Huffington Post and you name it.

JCPenney could close 300 stores | Business Insider

January 13, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

JCPenney could close up to 30% of its stores, or roughly 300 of its more than 1,000 locations, within the next two years, according to a Cowen & Co. report.

The department store chain has largely avoided mass store closures in recent years, but the rise of ecommerce is now forcing the company to reassess its store base, Cowen & Co. analyst Oliver Chen told Business Insider following a meeting with JCPenney management.

“They are proactively evaluating everything,” Chen said.

He predicts that in the next one to two years, the company will close 100 to 300 of its 1,014 stores.

JCPenney CEO Marvin Ellison has publicly confirmed that the company is considering closures.

Why Your Website Needs a Storyteller Instead of a Designer | Duct Tape Marketing

January 13, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Your website is the hub of your online presence – period. (Well, maybe that’s not exactly true from you right now, but it must be!)

As such, it has to do some heavy lifting and that heavy lifting must extend far beyond the interactive brochure still built today by many business owners.

Your website must tell a story. A story must be engaging and there must be a hero, a problem, a quest, a call to arms, and a promise of a happy ending.

The trouble with most sites, however, stems to some degree from how the web design industry is viewed.

A business creates a great product or service, develops the processes for marketing said product or service and then turns to a designer to create a gorgeous set of web pages to showcase it.

At some point, they determine they are going to need lots of pretty words to go with that awesome design, and then eventually they will need someone to “SEO it all.”

Of course, today the path described above is a recipe for disaster and waste.

A Useful Tool Makes Data Transfer Easier, Quicker and Safer | Lifehack

January 12, 2017January 16, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever met the situation where you find your iTunes didn’t support to transfer the non-purchased media files when you want to use iTunes to backup music, videos or other files from iPhone, iPad or iPod? Or do you find that it is so troublesome if you want to transfer files from computers to iPhone/iPad/iPod with iTunes? Under these circumstances, you may need a third-party iTunes alternative. Leawo iTransfer, a comprehensive data recovery tool, is proved capable of transferring multiple kinds of data between iOS devices, iTunes and computers within 1 click.