How Creating A Culture Around Coffee Can Boost Millennial Engagement At Work | Forbes

September 16, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Coffee. It’s the drink we reach for when we need to get excited on Monday mornings or to help us through that Wednesday afternoon slump. Americans love coffee, with more than half of adults drink at least one cup per day. Millennials are avid coffee drinkers too, particularly with espresso-based drinks. According to one study, gourmet coffee beverage consumption among 25-39 year olds jumped from 19% to 41% between 2008 to 2016. The availability of these types of drinks has dramatically increased, as Starbucks has opened over 19,000 stores worldwide since 2000.

This change in coffee consumption started a shift in workplace coffee options. “Office coffee services have traditionally been the worst of the worst,” according to Jesse Kahn, national sales manager for Counter Culture Coffee, “and there’s been a lot of growth in companies recognizing the need for a better coffee experience.” Companies like Mars Drinks, for example, are working to provide higher quality coffee options.

So you think you can fake your own death? | Elizabeth Greenwood | Pulse | LinkedIn

September 16, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Faking your death—both as a concept and as an act people attempt with surprising frequency — first occurred to me over dinner with a friend at a cheap Vietnamese restaurant. I had just enrolled in a graduate program, and had taken out a brand new batch of student loans to heap upon a hefty debt from college.

As I bitched about the financial mess I’d gotten myself into, and how I feared I might never get out of it, I fantasized about finding a sun-bleached country with a rickety government and no extradition policy and just slipping through the cracks, disappearing without a trace.

“Or you could fake your own death,” my friend offered.

That conversation sent me on a years-long quest tracking down people who have faked their own deaths and interviewing experts in the art of disappearance. Along the way I picked up a few Dos and Don’ts. Whatever your motive and wherever you plant your umbrella, here are some considerations for planning your untimely demise.

Europe demands YouTube pay more to artists | Money CNN

September 15, 2016September 14, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Europe has opened a new battlefront in its war against big U.S. tech, announcing draft rules that could force YouTube and others to pay more money to the music industry.

The European Commission, which administers EU law, has proposed a new Europe-wide copyright law on Wednesday, saying it wants to strengthen the rights of artists and make sure they receive a fair share of the profits made on their work.

If approved, the new rules will force streaming services such as YouTube and Dailymotion to beef up their copyright protection measures by filtering out copyrighted content or paying for its use.

That’s a huge step up from the current measures that only require these services to act when notified about a copyright infringement.

The Top Trends in Franchising Business Today | Getentrepreneurial.com

September 15, 2016September 14, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When broken down, franchising simply represents methods of distributing products and services. For some time now, entrepreneurship has been the career path for many victims of downsizing and corporate layoffs. Despite the uncertain job market and the unstable economy improving considerably in recent years, business ownership remains a standard means of employment.

Franchising has become a major priority for people who seek the freedom of owning a business without undergoing the struggle of creating a concept from the ground. For that reason, franchising will continue to be a relevant part of the economy. Studies show that when done right, it can be a powerful business model for quick growth. Franchisees win through economies of scale, a defined system, mentorship, and support. As more entrepreneurs look at franchising as a viable path to success, it is vital to understand the emerging trends and how one can take advantage of them.

5 Benefits of Having a Website for Your Small Business | Small Biz Trends

September 15, 2016September 14, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Last week at SmallBizTrends I shared the statistic that 47 percent of small business owners still weren’t using social media because they didn’t feel it was important to their business. That post spurred a lot of strong comments, both on site here and on Facebook. Eventually the conversation went from whether SMBs should invest in social media to whether they even need a Website or an Internet presence at all.

I really wish we could stop having this conversation.

You probably know some businesses who are doing phenomenally well without a website. I do, too. But I often wonder how much better they could be doing if they took the time to invest in one. And when I say “website,” I don’t mean an electronic version of that brochure they’ve been handing out for the past 10 years. I mean a legitimate, well-thought-out site that is designed to inform, engage and convert their audience.

Even newspaper ads aren’t declining as fast as desktop ads | Mashable

September 14, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The next two years will not be kind to the now rapidly declining desktop ad industry, according to a new report from a leading prognosticator.

Zenith, owned by French media buying firm Publicis Media, predicts that spending on smartphone ads will eclipse their desktop counterparts much sooner than anticipated — possibly as soon as next year — as people do more of their web browsing on smaller devices.

While not much healthier in the long term, beleaguered newspapers and magazines are expected to fare better in the next two years, losing only $9.6 billion and $4.4 billion respectively compared to desktop’s projected $10.7 billion loss.

By 2018, the forecast says, mobile will account for as much as 60 percent of all internet advertising.

Americans ditching big restaurant chains and eating local | Business Insider

September 14, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Americans are downsizing their meal (location) choices.

Lagging sales at major restaurant chains have recently set off worries for the industry and the economy at large. According to Michelle Meyer, a US economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, it may be less about personal economic situations or the election, and more about consumers’ taste preferences.

Using data from millions of Bank of America debit and credit cards, Meyer noted that the weakness in restaurant spending isn’t as alarming as other people make it seem.

Refugees Wanted: Meet The Companies Creating Jobs For The Displaced | Co.Exist

September 14, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When Charly Ngoma arrived in Arizona as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, he’d never eaten a burrito before. Three months later, he had a job at Chipotle. Now—after a year and a half, and two promotions—he’s general manager at one of the restaurant’s locations in Phoenix.

“Everything I saw my first day was new,” he says. “I didn’t know even the name of the ingredients they use in English. I was just writing down everything.”

One reason for his success was his own motivation and hard work. But Chipotle also partners with the International Rescue Committee, or IRC, to recruit refugees. Without the partnership, it’s unlikely he would have even heard of the job.

How Chromebooks Are About to Totally Transform Laptop Design | WIRED

September 13, 2016September 12, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

GOOGLE’S FIRST CHROMEBOOK was the kind of laptop you’d design if you didn’t give a damn about laptop design. It was thick, heavy, rubbery, boring, and black. Black keys, black body, black trackpad, black everything. Everything about the Cr-48 was designed to communicate that this device was still an experiment. Even the name, a reference to an unstable isotope of the element Chromium, was a hint at the chaos raging inside this black box. “The hardware exists,” Sundar Pichai told a crowd of reporters at the Cr-48’s launch event in December of 2010, “only to test the software.”

Moments later, Eric Schmidt took the stage and preached about how the “network computer” tech-heads had been predicting for decades was finally ready to change the world. “We finally have a product,” Schmidt said, “which is strong enough, technical enough, scalable enough, and fast enough that you can build actually powerful products on it.” Apparently already sensing the skeptical feedback Chrome OS would get, he gestured toward the audience and told them “it does, in fact, work.”

Private Prisons Have a Problem: Not Enough Inmates | Bloomberg

September 13, 2016September 12, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

With overall violent crime rates falling nationally and fewer people getting sentenced to long stretches behind bars, private prison companies see a potentially catastrophic decline in demand for their services. Their response: diversify into everything from halfway houses to neighborhood check-in centers for drug offenders.

Over the past three decades, entrepreneurs and investors piled into the private prison industry, convinced that the thorny job of incarcerating criminals could be a lucrative growth business. No longer. Curtailment of harsh mandatory-minimum sentences and other changes in criminal justice policies have combined to reduce federal and state prison head counts to 1.56 million as of year end 2014, a 3 percent falloff.