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.

What I Learned by Spending $650,000 on My Credit Card Last Month | Entrepreneur

January 12, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

That $659,635.62 charge may seem like a lot (and it is!), but there’s a reason I’m spending that much, which is what I want to explain here: That explanation begins with what American Express calls its Centurion Card but is more popularly known as the “Black Card.”

Over the years, I’ve spent so much with Amex that the company gave me one.

Now, the Black Card has an aura of exclusivity — it’s something that mostly celebrities and mega-rich people have. Because of its pros and cons, I’ve had one three separate times, weird as that may sound.

Quantum Computing Is Real, and D-Wave Just Open-Sourced It | WIRED

January 12, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

QUANTUM COMPUTING IS real. But it’s also hard. So hard that only a few developers, usually trained in quantum physics, advanced mathematics, or most likely both, can actually work with the few quantum computers that exist. Now D-Wave, the Canadian company behind the quantum computer that Google and NASA have been testing since 2013, wants to make quantum computing a bit easier through the power of open source software.

Traditional computers store information in “bits,” which can represent either a “1” or a “0.” Quantum computing takes advantage of quantum particles in a strange state called “superposition,” meaning that the particle is spinning in two directions at once. Researchers have learned to take advantage of these particles to create what they call “qubits,” which can represent both a 1 and a 0 at the same time. By stringing qubits together, companies like D-Wave hope to create computers that are exponentially faster than today’s machines.

Portable vision testing kit puts an eye doctor in your smartphone | Newatlas

January 11, 2017January 11, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that many of us spend a good portion of our day in front of a computer or pouring over documents, chances are we don’t get our eyes checked as often as we should. Whatever the reason for this, there’s now a solution that renders most of our excuses moot: the EyeQue Personal Vision Tracker, a smartphone-enabled vision testing kit that costs less than the average monthly cellphone bill. What sets it apart from other smartphone-based eye exam kits – such as the SVOne by New York-based Smart Vision Labs, and Peek – is that it is designed for frequent consumer use.

Finding the Line Between Frugality and Deprivation | The Simple Dollar

January 11, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Frugality is a spectacular tool for immediately seeing positive financial results in your life. Whenever you find ways to get most of the same value in your life for a lower price, or you find a different avenue completely to fulfill your needs and wants without the same sticker impact, you’re managing to still enjoy life while spending less than you have before.

There’s a catch, though. At some point, you’re going to cross a line where the frugal strategy is no longer enjoyable. You’re going to give up something you care deeply about and find yourself feeling miserable about it.

The reaction to that state is usually a bad one. People who dig deep into frugality and then find themselves miserable often respond by undoing most of the frugal changes, even many changes that have little or no life impact for them. When they cross that line where they feel a sense of deprivation, that’s it. They’re done with frugality for a while.

US Health Report: Exercising More, But Mental Health Suffers | Live Science

January 11, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

How healthy are people in the U.S.? A new federal report shows that although the country has made progress in some areas, such as increasing how much exercise people get and lowering the number of teens who smoke cigarettes, it’s fallen behind in others, particularly in taking care of mental health.

The new report, published today (Jan. 11) by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), detailed the country’s progress in meeting a set of 10-year national health goals that were set in 2010 as part of an initiative called Healthy People 2020.

The initiative called for improvements in 26 different measures of public health, covering a wide range of areas including access to health care services, mental health, quality of the environment, and rates of injuries and violence