The 300 missing lottery millionaires | Money cnn

February 9, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Odds are that there will be a million-dollar winner in this week’s Powerball lottery who will never know they won.

About $2 billion in lottery prizes go unclaimed every year. Many of those tickets are worth between $1 and $5, but some folks never realize that they have a life-changing prize in their pocket.

More than 300 prizes worth $1 million or more went unclaimed in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available, according to Brett Jacobson. He developed an app called Lotto Lotto that alerts lottery players if they have a winning ticket. As part of the research to create the app, Jacobson requested lottery collection data from all of the state lottery commissions nationwide.

Tiny Drones Capture Gorgeous Views of Sizzling Lava Lake | Live Science

February 9, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In a new video, a man in a silvery, heat-resistant suit walks perilously close to a bubbling, churning lava lake. The scene is set with stunning aerial shots of the volcanic crater and close-ups of the glowing orange molten rock, all captured with the help of tiny recreational drones.

So You Want to Write a Business Book? Six Tips for Success | BusinessTips.com

February 6, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

There is evidently one thing that virtually all business people have in common – the desire to write a book about their particular area of expertise. When I was writing my book and would mention it, I almost always got these two comments, and in this order. About what? A reasonable question because most people knew that while my main business has long been sales and service training, I also write music, constantly innovate new behavioral embedding programs for businesses, plus for many years I business-managed glamorous celebrities.

But the second comment I received from just about everybody, unless they had already written a book, was an envious or admiring, Oh, I’ve always wanted to write a book!

Coming Next Fall: More Chip and PIN Cards in the U.S. | US News

February 5, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Americans traveling in other parts of the world are sometimes bewildered to discover that their debit or credit cards don’t work at automated kiosks that use new chip and PIN technology rather than magnetic stripes. (The technology is also referred to as EMV, which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, the three card brands that created the chip in Europe and Canada.)

EMV cards have been the standard in Canada, Europe and other parts of the world for several years now, but they’re not as widely used in the U.S. That’s likely to change next October, when liability for fraud shifts from U.S. card issuers to merchants if merchants don’t upgrade their payment terminals to properly accept chip-based cards. (Some smaller merchants may be slow to adopt the new technology if they feel it’s less expensive to assume the fraud risk than update their payment terminals.) President Barack Obama also recently signed an executive order to embed this technology in all government-issued credit and debit cards.

10 People Who Will Destroy Your Business | Entrepreneur

February 5, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

If you want to build a great business, you have to be very deliberate about whom you let into it.

Emotions and behaviors may circulate through social networks in patterns similar to what’s seen in epidemiological models of the flu virus. Every positive person you let into your life increases your chances of being positive 11 percent, estimated a study published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

“Just one sad friend was needed to double an individual’s chance of becoming unhappy,” Wired summarized about the report.

Figuring out whom to avoid and whom to let in won’t always be easy. But with a little practice, you can get really good at staying far away from people who might bring your business down. Here are 10 people (whether employees or clients) you should avoid if you’re starting a business:

5 Simple Steps to Improve Your Business Blog’s Traffic | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

February 4, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Read Other Blogs

The world of blogging involves much more than writing your thoughts down from time to time. The reality is that if you’re not doing some kind of marketing, your blog isn’t going to be that successful. However, marketing can be as simple as reading other blogs and letting the bloggers know that you’ve become part of their community. To do so, read a hand full of blogs every day, making sure to look for the newest post. When you’re done reading the post, make sure to leave a comment. Usually, there will be an option to link back to your website; take advantage of this option!

How This Helps Build Traffic

While the link in your comment will do very little for you by way of click through traffic, the main point of this is to let the other blogger know that you’re following them. After seeing you from here to there, that blogger will recognize you and want to check out your blog. From there, the blogger may love your content enough to link to it occasionally in their posts. These contextual links will lead to high click through rates and better keyword positions in search engines.

Don’t Ask the Experts: The Two Types of Hires You Need More than the “Pros” | Page19

February 4, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Even if you’ve got a team of experts on board, your business is still vulnerable to project plateaus. Hiring the right balance of initiators and sceptics will help keep innovation moving.

When it comes to recruitment, hiring for experience seems like the safest best. But in his book Making Ideas Happen, Behance founder Scott Belsky explains that pros are only a part of a professional dream team. Even if you’ve got experts on board, your business is still vulnerable to project plateau – that dread halfway point at which initial drive has dwindled, the good ideas have been spent, and your league of experts is turning the key in the ignition without moving the project forward.

Windows RT dies with a whimper | Mashable

February 4, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When Microsoft launched Windows 8 in the fall of 2012, its poster child was the Surface RT tablet. The thin, meticulously designed slate was supposed to showcase all that was good about the new touch-friendly version of Windows: dynamic live tiles, full-screen apps and lack of “chrome,” like a start button.

The device failed to attract customers, though, and Microsoft ended up losing nearly $1 billion on the tablet due to unsold inventory. A big part of what stymied the Surface was its operating system: a watered-down version of Windows called Windows RT that couldn’t run traditional desktop apps. It was Windows, just without any of the programs you actually wanted to run.

BP Slashes Spending, Braces For Oil Prices To Stay Low | Forbes

February 3, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Add BP to the list of oil companies slashing their spending in the wake of tumbling oil prices.

The company said Tuesday it was lowering its budget for exploration and production this year to $20 billion, down significantly from previous forecasts of $24 billion to $26 billion.

“We have now entered a new and challenging phase of low oil prices through the near and medium term,” said CEO Bob Dudley, adding that ”our focus must now be on resetting BP” and maintaining safe operations.