Um, why am I being targeted with Australian anti-refugee ads on Facebook? | Mashable

November 14, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Those “No Way: You will not make Australia home,” campaign ads from the country’s government have made it to Facebook, and they’re targeting…Australians.

Earlier in the week, the government proposed a lifetime ban on refugees who arrive by boat. Now, some Australians are being served the same anti-immigration campaign as people in other parts of the world are seeing. Including myself.

The anti-immigration ads have been around since 2014, aiming to deter would-be asylum seekers from making their way to Australia by boat.

They’ve been translated into 16 different languages, including Tamil, Arabic and Vietnamese. The format has even been copied by far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

I have a Vietnamese background, but as someone born and raised in Australia, I’m not really sure why I’m being served the ads.

9 ways to get better at small talk | Business Insider

November 11, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In a recent article for Wired magazine, Kristen Berman and behavioral economist Dan Ariely share their experience hosting a dinner party with one key rule: “Absolutely no small talk.”

Apparently, the guests were all the happier for it — and the authors conclude in their headline that “small talk should be banned.”

Whether this sounds to you like a great idea or a terrifying prospect, the fact is that most event organizers won’t go so far as to prohibit small talk — so you’d best get good at it.

There Is A Major Climate Issue Hiding In Your Closet: Fast Fashion | Co.Exist

November 11, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

This month as world leaders meet in Morocco to discuss implementation of the Paris climate agreement, which recently entered into force as most major economies began committing to some kind of carbon emissions reduction, there is little talk about one major contributor to climate change: fast fashion.

Fashion has been largely left out of the Paris climate talks. There’s lots of chatter about the more . . . fashionable low-hanging fruit: energy efficiency, conservationism, or the ramp up of renewables. But there’s little talk about textiles and what we’re wearing.

What’s Pushing the Tech Giants to Make an $8,500 Smart Fridge? | Bloomberg

November 10, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The Note 7 isn’t the only Samsung product with problems. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is also working with the Korean company to address safety issues with its washing machines. Customers who bought certain top-load Samsung washers should use only the delicate cycle for bulky items such as sheets to reduce the risk of “impact injuries or property damage,” the CPSC warned in late September following a series of consumer complaints, including a class action contending that Samsung’s machines “explode during normal use.” The company declined to comment.

What’s bad for Samsung may be good for homegrown rival LG, which has been promoting appliances loaded with the latest technology. In September the company unveiled a fridge with a 29-inch touchscreen powered by Intel equipment and running Windows 10; an onboard computer can store recipes and send alerts about needed ingredients to a mobile app. A few weeks later, LG set up an exhibition in New York’s Rockefeller Center to show off its current slate of high-end appliances, including a Signature fridge with doors that open when you wave a foot near a floor sensor. Tap the door twice, and a glass panel goes from opaque to transparent, revealing what’s inside.

4 Reasons Why Immigrants Are Essential for Entrepreneurship | Entrepreneur

November 10, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

There are more entrepreneurs in the United States than ever before. And many of them are immigrants, whose proportion of the U.S. population is the highest in history.

According to the Migration Institute, immigrants in the United States and their U.S.-born children now number approximately 81 million people, or 26 percent of the overall U.S. population.

And many of them have started their own companies, spurred by the financial crash of 2008. That’s evidence that the long tradition of the American Dream lives on: Immigrants continue to come to this country to make their dreams come true.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, and the Future of Disaster Response | WIRED

November 10, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

DAVID MORAN WAS all set to go out that Saturday night. He thought he might hit Parliament House, Orlando’s oldest gay nightclub, or maybe make it over to Pulse, another mainstay. But after he and a friend ended their shift at the restaurant where they both worked, car trouble kept them marooned in the parking lot for an hour. So Moran went home and fell asleep watching Bob’s Burgers on Netflix instead.

He was awakened just before 5 am by the sound of his phone buzzing next to him on his bed. He fished it out from between the covers and found a text message asking if he had heard the news about Pulse. “Mass shooting,” said the message that arrived next. Now wide awake, Moran instinctively thumbed his way to Facebook.

How to Build a Strong Community | Duct Tape Marketing

November 9, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

This past month I was able to experience community in its most potent sense on two separate occasions, and I came away with an important insight about building community.

Marketers today realize that a vibrant, engaged, loyal community is perhaps the greatest asset a brand can possess and often leads to an extremely profitable enterprise – whether that’s the intent of the organization or not.

The challenge is that the kind of community described above doesn’t appear through some magic marketing trick – building a strong community around your brand is difficult, elusive, and fragile.

Born-Again Debt: What Is Re-Aging, and Is It Legal? | The Simple Dollar

November 9, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The world of credit is filled with terms that can sound quite foreign to most people who don’t work in the industry. Once such term is “re-aging.” And, if you currently have the unfortunate experience of collection accounts appearing on your credit reports, it’s a term you should definitely understand.

Re-Aging Defined

Credit problems are not allowed to haunt your credit reports forever. This is great news if you’ve made credit mistakes in your past. Thanks to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) there are very strict limitations regarding how long derogatory information is permitted to remain on your credit reports.

Be More Repulsive | marketingforhippies.com

November 9, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A simple, counter-intuitive idea for you today.

You’ve likely been told the importance of niche in marketing. Likely you’ve heard this from myself. You’ve likely heard about the importance of honing in on who you want to reach, to identify your ideal client, chosen audience or target market and maybe even to create a client avatar.

And those are all fine ideas.

But I want to suggest something you might not have considered doing before. And, until the other day, I hadn’t either.

One of the central roles of marketing is to not just get the attention of your ideal clients but also to make sure you filter out the clients for whom your work will not be a fit in the same way that a window screen allows fresh air in but keeps out the flies.

Ten Obnoxious Company Rules To Kill In 2017 | Forbes

November 7, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

I became an HR person in 1984, when many of my readers had not been born yet. I was happy to be able to set my company apart from the other employers in Chicago by killing off stupid, outdated rules and policies.

Getting rid of pointless and insulting HR practices made it easier for my company to hire and hang onto tremendous employees, many of whom are still my homies today.

That was over thirty years ago, but lots of organizations are still following the same archaic rules we abolished in 1984. They don’t realize that every policy they shove down their employees’ throats is another reason for a talented person to leave them and work for a more deserving organization.

Here are ten policies that every employer should get off its books before the champagne corks fly on January 1, 2017.

These policies should have disappeared long ago — so if your company is still following them, now is the perfect time to step into the modern age by killing them off!