World’s First Farm to Use Solar Power and Seawater Opens in Australia | Ecowatch

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Sundrop Farms, a tomato production facility that is the first agricultural system of its kind in the world, celebrated its grand opening in Port Augusta, South Australia, Thursday.

Instead of soil, pesticides, fossil fuels and groundwater, Sundrop Farms uses only solar power and desalinated seawater to grow tomatoes across 49 acres. The water is pumped into the facility from the Spencer Gulf about 1.2 miles away where it is desalinated to water the farm’s 180,000 tomato plants.

“The farm’s solar power is generated by 23,000 mirrors that reflect sunlight towards a 115-meter (377-foot) high receiver tower. On a sunny day, up to 39 megawatts of energy can be produced—enough to power the desalination plant and supply the greenhouse’s electricity needs,” NewsScientist explained.

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LinkedIn plots a place on the economic graph, launches Salary to chart what we earn | TechCrunch

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LinkedIn — the professionally-oriented social networking platform that’s being acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion — has made a play to build what it refers to as “the economic graph“, a concept that combines your profile with LinkedIn’s own analytics and data trove to chart the connections between you, your career, your industry and the wider economy. Today, it’s launching a new product that fits in squarely with that strategy.

LinkedIn Salary, a new portal and tracker to collect and analyse salaries globally, will let users find how much a particular job earns (salary, bonus, and equity data), with the ability to drill down using parameters like years of experience, location, and education level.

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World Series Game 7 ticket prices spike to a record | Money CNN

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What’s it worth to see your team try for the first championship of your lifetime? Cubs and Indians fans are driving ticket prices for Game 7 of the World Series tonight to record levels.

The average price paid for a Game 7 ticket in Cleveland has hit $2,700, according to resale service TicketIQ. That’s higher than any other baseball game, edging out the $2,600 that fans paid to see Game 3 at Wrigley last Friday. That was the first World Series game there since 1945.

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5 Items Your Books Need to Balance Before a Capital Raise | Getentrepreneurial.com

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Unless you are an accountant, the last thing on your mind is probably bookkeeping.  However, whether you like bookkeeping or not, it is important to the health of your business.  This is especially true if you are looking for a business loan, as you will need to ensure that the following 5 items are balanced before you can receive a capital raise.  So if you are thinking about how to get a working capital loan, then you need to read this article.

1.  Taxes Payable

We must pay our fair share, but the tax laws exist for the benefit of small business owners.  I realize some of you are doing a double take after reading the previous sentence, but it is true.  The tax code helps small business owners to offset the investments they have made in their business in the form of tax credits.

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Is it Time to Modify Your LLC Operating Agreement? | Small Biz Trends

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I recently wrote about the importance of creating an Operating Agreement for LLC’s (Limited Liability Companies). While no state actually requires an LLC to have an Operating Agreement, it’s an essential document for managing the company in the years ahead. The Operating Agreement is much like corporate bylaws: it sets the rules for how the company will be governed; it spells out how decisions are to be made and everyone’s roles and responsibilities. By doing so, it can help prevent conflict and misunderstandings among owners.

Whether you hastily drew up your Operating Agreement when you first launched your business, or you carefully reflected on every word with a lawyer, the fact is that any business evolves over its lifetime and situations will change. You need to make sure that your original Operating Agreement is continually updated to reflect these changes.

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It’s officially legal to grow medicinal marijuana in Australia | Mashable

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The benefits of medicinal marijuana have been extolled by United States residents for a while, and now it’s Australia’s turn.

After passing legislation in February, this Sunday saw the Narcotic Drugs Amendment Bill 2016 come into being. This means people or organisations in Australia are now able to apply for a license to cultivate and manufacture medical cannabis in Australia.

How does one apply? (We hear you asking.) Well don’t get too excited, recreational weed-smokers. The Office of Drug Control will accept applications for cannabis cultivation from people deemed “fit and proper.”

Interested people and businesses will have to pass a security test set by the office, and show the proposed location they’d be growing medicinal marijuana in, to ensure it’s not shady (metaphorically, and perhaps literally).

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Apple should buy Netflix | Business Insider

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Last week, Apple finally revealed its grand plan to conquer your TV: a new Apple TV app that brings all your shows and movies together in one place and serves you recommendations.

The idea makes sense. Apple thinks apps are the future of TV, and that eventually you will have separate subscriptions to Netflix, HBO, Showtime, Hulu, and so on — maybe you already do.

In that world, it will be annoying to have to navigate a bunch of different interfaces and menus. So Apple will do it for you with a new app called TV, which not only works on your Apple TV, but also on your iPhone or iPad.

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Clothing Keeps Getting Cheaper, and Factory Workers Are Paying the Price | Bloomberg

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In April 2013, when the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh crumbled and killed more than a thousand garment workers, Western clothing executives were chastened. They were the ones, after all, who’d been pressuring Bangladesh’s apparel factories to cheaply reproduce runway trends for consumers in the U.S. and Europe who’d grown used to $10 dresses. Following the accident, H&M, Zara, Walmart, Gap, and other major brands announced they’d fund and oversee factory inspections in Bangladesh, demanding improvements from facilities that fell short and cutting off business with those that didn’t get better. Bangladesh, with the help of the United Nations’ International Labour Organization (ILO), created its own inspection program and vowed to shut down unsafe facilities. Better vigilance, everyone figured, would be central to preventing similar accidents from happening again.

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4 Lessons About Handling Stressed Customers That I Learned From Being a Mover | Entrepreneur

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A recent study on easing anxiety for stressed-out customers looked at “high-emotion services” (the purchase of a new home or car, computer repair or airline travel, for example) that elicit intense feelings even before the product is purchased or the service begins. The problem the researchers found? These types of companies often fail to sufficiently address emotional triggers in their business models.

Certain product and service providers, it seems, make enduring impressions on distressed customers. If you’re such a provider and you can’t adequately respond to those buyers’ concerns and feelings, your customers will remember (and share) that your service left them feeling overwhelmed, helpless, neglected or, even worse, frightened. Those notions don’t exactly add up to top customer satisfaction scores.

So, what can you do?

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