Jail sentence for YouTube pranksters | BBC News

May 16, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Four members of the controversial Trollstation YouTube channel have been jailed in connection with fake robberies and kidnappings.

The group were involved in a fake robbery at London’s National Portrait Gallery and a fake kidnapping at Tate Britain in July 2015.

The channel, with 718,000 subscribers, has built a reputation for filming staged pranks around the city.

A fifth member was imprisoned in March following a bomb hoax.

“The hoaxes may have seemed harmless to them, but they caused genuine distress to a number of members of the public, who should be able to go about their daily business without being put in fear in this way.

Helping Your Best Employees Leave You | Inc.com

May 16, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

One of the things I am most proud of as the 20 year owner of my executive sales firm Corporate Rain International is how many employees and associates have left me to take a leadership role at other companies or to start their own ventures. While I see a multitude of articles written about holding on to great employees, I never see an article about celebrating an employee assuming greater leadership and greater personal growth by leaving.

There should be more discussion of this, particularly in the small business universe. I believe in supporting employee growth and fulfillment even to the point of their leaving your company. I see this as a fundamental step in creating good through-branded culture.

8 Reasons Great Employees Quit (Even Though They Like The Job) | Life Hack

May 13, 2016May 13, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

There are many reasons why people change jobs. These days, it is uncommon for someone to get a job and stick with it for the rest of their life. There are many opportunities and our lives are filled with diversity and flexibility. However, there are often patterns to why people decide to move on from what seemingly is ideal employment — and it isn’t just about the money or the location.

Here are eight common reasons why someone might quit their job.

How Women Are Leading The Charge In Changing Healthcare | Forbes

May 13, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Just one in seven mental health patients are getting effective care, according to Lyra Health’s Dena Bravata. Could a Match.com-style doctor matching service change that statistic?

“You might prefer someone who’s near your office or speaks Swahili or whatever your preferences are,” Bravata said at the Forbes Women’s Summit, speaking on the New Frontiers in Healthcare panel. You should be able to find that, and her company will help you do it.

Lyra was just one of several healthcare companies touted during the panel as a new look at personalized medicine–one of several helmed by women.

“We’re transforming from a passive patient to an empowered patient,” MedImmune head Bahija Jallal said by way of introduction. And in the new world of patient empowerment, that could mean anything from finding your own doctor to taking on decades of standard healthcare practice.

The You You Never Knew: 7 Surprising Things You Didn’t Know About Yourself | Page19

May 12, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In just three lines of verse, Walt Whitman touches on a critical aspect of what it is to be human: knowing that not only is each one of us a world to ourselves, but that within those worlds lies a bevy of opportunities for surprise.

But when was the last time you actually surprised yourself? After all, it’s easy to get caught up in comforting confirmation biases and pleasant patterns that support what you already know. For this reason, reading self-help books that interest you might not help you learn anything new at all. Alternatively, you could go around and quiz the people in your life about what they’ve observed about you. Unfortunately, this might be less enjoyable for them than it is for you.

Why Balancing Skippable and Non-Skippable Ads Creates Better Brand Awareness | Adweek

May 12, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Around-up report from eMarketer, specializing in mobile advertising, recently landed in my inbox. On page three, a table of completion rates for U.S. digital pre-roll caught my eye. It claimed that, on average, completion rates for pre-roll ads on smartphones was 77 percent, rising slightly to 79 percent on tablet.

By themselves these stats seem pretty unremarkable—depending on the creative, 70 percent to 80 percent completion rate is a fairly standard result for a non-skippable pre-roll campaign. But there’s the catch: unremarkable for a non-skippable campaign.

The vast majority of brands and advertisers understand the difference between a non-skippable pre-roll, which obliges a user to watch an ad before viewing video content, or a skippable format, which allows the user to decide whether or not to watch the ad. What is perhaps less well understood is the difference in performance across KPIs that these two buying options will deliver. A non-skippable pre-roll can achieve the highs of 80 percent completion pretty easily (after all, how many people abandon watching a video because of a 15-second ad?) whereas a very successful skippable pre-roll would be looking at a 40 percent completion rate.

uBeam: Ex-engineers doubt it can work | Business Insider

May 12, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The idea was audacious from the start.

In 2011, Meredith Perry and Nora Dweck took the stage at a high-profile tech conference and demonstrated how you can charge your phone wirelessly by beaming ultrasonic rays at it.

Since then, the company has amassed over $23 million in venture funding to get rid of the power cord altogether.

The only problem? The company likely won’t be able to deliver on the promise, according to some of its former engineers.

Microsoft Abandons Controversial Windows Feature that Shared your Wi-Fi Password | Money CNN

May 11, 2016May 11, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

One of Windows 10’s most controversial features is getting kicked to the curb.

Microsoft announced that it will kill off Wi-Fi Sense in an upcoming Windows 10 update. The feature made a lot of folks uneasy because it shared your Wi-Fi password with all of your Facebook friends’ computers, as well as those belonging to your Skype and Outlook.com contacts.

That’s not what undid Wi-Fi Sense, though. Microsoft said it took a lot of manpower to maintain, and customers just weren’t taking advantage of it.

The State of Small Business: Michigan | Business News Daily

May 11, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

As part of our yearlong project “The State of Small Business,” Business News Daily plans to report on the small business environment in every state in America. In this installment, we asked a few of Michigan’s nearly one million small business owners about the challenges and opportunities of operating in their state. Here’s what they had to say.

It’s no secret that Michigan’s economy took a big hit after the 2008 financial crisis, with the damage centering on the automotive industry in Detroit. But entrepreneurs now report the state is coming back strong. Where prospects once seemed dismal, small businesses are now optimistic for the future.