Interactive Map Lets You Find Dinosaur Tracks, Extinct Volcanoes | Live Science

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Want to trace the footsteps of dinosaurs or pinpoint the exact location of extinct volcanoes? A new interactive geological map of Texas lets people browse everything from where dinos once roamed to the whereabouts of oil and gas formations.

The U.S. Geological Survey map, which can be accessed for free online, offers a unique window into the history of the ground beneath the Lone Star State. The map shows Texas at a scale of 1:250,000, and allows users to zero in on geographic layers of interest, such as specific fault lines or types of rocks.

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5 Ways to Monitor Competitor Website Traffic | Small Biz Trends

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The entire goal of SEO (search engine optimization) is to get ahead of your competitors, by whatever Google-friendly means necessary. And just like in warfare, if you want to know how to get ahead of your adversary, you need to know their strategies.

Luckily, Google and other search engines make it pretty easy for you to monitor competitor website traffic strategies by using a number of useful tools.

Identify Competitors

To begin, know your enemy. You can’t expect to get ahead of your competitors if you don’t know exactly who they are, what their mission is, and how they plan to execute it. Your biggest competitors may not be who you think they are. Search engines no longer base comparable companies on size. Just because a company is small, doesn’t mean that they won’t be dangerous to your business.

Take the time to jot down a list of your biggest challengers by searching your own top keywords in search engines. The first 10-20 most common competitors on the list are most likely your biggest threat, and those are the companies you’ll want to closely analyze in order to learn what they’re doing right for such high rankings.

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Why You Should Be Asking Your Customers for Referrals | All Business

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I have said this time and time again: you must ask for referrals if you want to grow your business. Referrals can contribute to a larger percentage of your revenue if done correctly. In fact, approximately 50 percent of my revenue is generated from referrals. Without them, I would be stuck putting in countless hours online trying to drum up fresh leads.

Referrals are easier to generate than you may think. The hardest part is getting up the courage to ask. Some people think they will offend customers by asking for more business. In reality, your customers will be more than happy to send people your way if they are satisfied with your work. As such, it is important that you develop a good relationship with your clients and develop a plan to seek referral business from each and every one of them.

If you are not yet sold on asking for referral business, here are a few facts that will hopefully convince you:

Referrals don’t cost anything.

People always know someone who can benefit from your services.

Your customers are better at marketing than you.

Referrals can lead to more referrals.

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United Flights Halted: The Malicious Work Of A Hacker Or An Old-Fashioned Computer Glitch? | Forbes

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downloadWas the world’s second-largest airline grounded for nearly an hour Tuesday morning by a hacker?

Probably not. But that was the immediate suspicion after Chicago-based United Airlines began experiencing significant problems with its flight dispatch system around 8 a.m. CT.

The Federal Aviation Administration quickly issued a ground stop, effectively shutting down the airline’s more than 700 jets (except, of course, those already in the air). The ground stop order was lifted about 40 minutes later.

Wired.com and other media outlets quickly posted online news stories about the event in which they quoted Tweets and other social media postings from passengers stuck onboard grounded United planes. Though all those early reports cautiously added that the actual cause of the dispatch system disruption remained unknown, at least to the website editors – they speculated that United’s system had been hacked into by outsiders.

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TV Is Losing Ground to the Internet Where It Really Counts | WIRED

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AS A SPATE of new shows from Netflix and Amazon prove that some of the best television being made streams rather than airs, TV will take a financial hit. PwC’s annual five-year forecast for entertainment and media released today has revised downward the growth rate for ad spending on television. Last year, PwC predicted advertising would increase 5.5 percent annually over the next five years; now PwC says that rate will slow to just 4 percent annually through 2019.

And those are just the global figures. In the United States, TV ad spending is growing by just a little more than 3 percent annually on average. By contrast, spending jumped 5 percent between 2013 and 2014, the most recent years that PwC makes available.

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Here’s How Disney is Controlling Your Mind | Page19

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5623927306_e3b611175a_bWhat does it take to be the Happiest Place on Earth? You can use a lot of words to describe it—fantastic, magical, paradisiacal—but one thing it isn’t is accidental.

Though the atmosphere might feel fanciful, at The Magic Kingdom, every sight, sound, and smell has been painstakingly calibrated and adjusted to create an atmosphere. Be Our Guest, by Theodore Kinni, goes in-depth to explain just what kinds of sugar and spice go into everything nice at Disney.

Smell

Have you ever wondered why you can smell popcorn first thing in the morning at Disneyland? Much like a real estate agent spraying fresh baked cookie smell all over a house he’s about to show, the popcorn smell is used to create a cozy and festive atmosphere.

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Doorman Raises $1.5 Million To Eliminate Missed Package Deliveries | TechCrunch

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Everyone has, at some time or another, experienced the frustration that comes from missing a delivery – that is, coming home only to find a delivery notice stuck to your door. A company called Doorman is trying to solve this problem by allowing customers to schedule their own deliveries as late as midnight, seven days a week. Now Doorman has $1.5 million in seed funding to continue to grow its business, and is also now launching its first API.

The API will allow partners to integrate Doorman’s scheduling functionality directly into their own websites and applications.

The funding was led by Doorman’s advisors, Motus Ventures, and included participation from WTI, MicroVentures, and VGO Ventures. Prior to this round, the company had raised $375,000 from smaller VCs and angel investors.

Doorman was founded by Zander Adell, a former Pixar Technical Director, who felt the frustrations of missed deliveries first-hand, he said. Though today there are a number of options for same-day deliveries from retailers like Amazon or via courier-based services like Postmates, deliveries from other online shopping destinations are still routed through package delivery companies like UPS and FedEx. With these companies, consumers have less control over the timing of a delivery’s arrival.

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  How to Make Your Office an Inviting Place to Work | Getentrepreneurial.com

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newrelic-0891The office is your space to be productive. It’s where you do most of your work, spend most of your weekday waking hours and where you need to be able to focus. The same can be said for your employees. Because of this, many business owners focus on productivity – on having the right equipment in the right spaces to ensure every task can be accomplished on time.

What about making your space more inviting? What about making it a place that you and your employees want to show up at every day, where collaboration that leads to measurable results can happen and where each person can be the best they can be to reach company goals? It all starts with making your office a little more inviting. Follow the 10 tips below to get started.

  1. Eliminate Awkward Silences

Silence happens. While many business owners see silence as a positive, a sign that progress is taking place, many others see it as a distraction. While distracting noises and loud music might be detrimental to a positive working environment, other sounds may be more beneficial. In fact, one study found that work output increased 6.3 percent by adding background noise.

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Rare Apple I computer put into recycling | BBC News

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A San Francisco recycling centre is seeking a woman who may have handed over a rare Apple I computer by mistake.

The machine was among other components and computers the woman wanted to dispose of after her husband died.

Only about 200 of the first-generation Apple computers were made.

The company recognised the value of the old computer and sold it to a private collector for about $200,000 (£131,000).

Tiny memory

The recycling centre, called Clean Bay Area, has launched a web and media campaign to track down the woman so she can receive her half of the cash they got for the machine.

It has produced a short video it is asking people to share to see if they can reach the donor.

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