Young people are buying real estate — just not the same kind as their parents | Business Insider

May 26, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Millennials and younger members of Gen X appear to be delaying the financial responsibility of homeownership.

But it’s hard to blame a group who watched the housing market skyrocket and plummet just as they were entering college or becoming young professionals gearing up to buy a starter home.

As the economy improved, and financial arrested development started to end, some 20- to 30-somethings have started to invest in real estate, but not in the traditional sense.

Many have turned to turnkey properties, which offer the opportunity to become a homeowner while adding another revenue stream to an investment portfolio.

11 dead, 12 missing after record floods swamp Texas and Oklahoma | Mashable

May 26, 2015June 4, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ 1 Comment

UPDATED 1:15 p.m. ET: With the addition of three fatalities in the Houston area, the death toll from the Memorial Day weekend storms in Texas and Oklahoma has now risen to 11. This figure is expected to rise based on the number of people still missing from the flash flood in Wimberley, Texas.

Authorities are still searching for 12 members of two families who went missing over the weekend when sudden, raging floodwaters swept a vacation home away in Wimberley, Texas. Those family members are now presumed to have perished in the flood, according to the emergency operations center in Hays County, Texas.

The floods have been a remarkable turn of events for a region that was still mired in drought as of three weeks ago. That drought, which had affected Texas since 2010, is now effectively over in most areas, as is a long-running drought in Oklahoma.

Lessons from the Worst Managers – and the Best | Payroll Link

May 26, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Robert Goodell is an executive coach who helps companies and individuals make the most of their human potential. During his more than 25 years in the field, he has found about 20 percent of managers are very good, another 20 percent are very bad, and the rest fall in between. He asked a group of managers to describe their best and worst bosses. Goodell distilled their responses in a series of articles issued by WJM Associates, a New York-based executive leadership organization whose faculty he serves on. Here is some of what Goodell reported:

Bad managers are “preoccupied with how they are viewed by influential stakeholders” in the organization. This trait is indicated by their tendency to:

Blame their own mistakes on others, particularly their subordinates, while also taking credit for subordinates’ good work,

Act deferentially towards superiors and demeaning towards subordinates,

Be fearful or suspicious of change until it is embraced by superiors, and

Embarrass or become offended easily.

How Do Tesla’s Home Batteries Work? | Live Science

May 22, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Last week, Tesla Motors announced an ambitious new product line: batteries to power homes or businesses.

The idea is that homes and businesses powered by solar panels could harvest and store energy during the day that could be used to run homes at night, or be used as a backup during a power outage.

“Our goal is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy,” the company’s founder, Elon Musk, said at a news conference April 30. [Creative Genius: The World’s Greatest Minds]

Although the exact technology involved in the battery, called Powerwall, is a closely guarded secret, it probably isn’t based on revolutionary concepts, said Jordi Cabana, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who studies new battery materials.

“Just looking at the specs that they publicize, it doesn’t look very different — in terms of the cost — to what they’re putting in their cars,” Cabana told Live Science.

Innovator or Entrepreneur: Which One Are You? | All business

May 22, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

How many times have you listened to a friend or loved one wax poetic about the brilliant idea that came to them in the shower? Really. Think about it.

How many pitches have you heard in your life for a new product, business venture, service, or invention? Can you come up with a number?

Or, how many times have you been the one to bend the ear of a friend or your spouse about the brilliant innovation that “just came to you,” as if in a dream?

And now, how many of those ideas — from others and your own — have actually moved past the idea stage and turned into something real?

The Imbue Tea Infuser Brews Using Magnets | Small Biz Trends

May 22, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Many tea drinkers will tell you that for superior flavor, the best option is loose leaf tea.

Unfortunately, the drawback to using loose leaf is the mess involved with brewing it. This is especially true if you are away from home.

But a group of Western Washington University students have created a product they believe will make brewing loose leaf tea on the go easy and mess free.

The group has dubbed their creation Imbue, the magnetic tea infusing vessel. It’s a travel mug crafted from shatter-resistant borosilicate glass with a magnetic bamboo lid and stainless steel strainer. The magnetic Imbue tea infuser also comes with a removable natural fabric sleeve with a no-slip suede lining

The group claims the stainless steel strainer magnetically connects to the lid with ease. No need to twist the infuser into place or fumble with clamps. Once the strainer is in place, tea is brewed by flipping Imbue upside down.

Woman Billed $1,000 For Credit Card Error Gets $83 Million Verdict, But IRS Gets Last Laugh |Forbes

May 21, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Juries sometimes do strange things, and one in Missouri has ordered a company that buys up consumer debts to pay an astounding $83 million to Maria Guadalupe Mejia of Kansas City. Why, you may ask? The jury said the credit company wrongly tried to collect an erroneous $1,000 credit card bill. Credit.com has an extensive story about this shocker, the woman who sues a debt collector, and then wins $83 Million. KCUR reported the verdict and the jury finding that the defendant–Portfolio Recovery Associates LLC–was guilty of violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

That law contains many safeguards for borrowers. With the small $1,000 disputed debt, as you might imagine, most of the verdict was for allegedly bad conduct, The verdict called for $250,000 in damages plus a few dollars shy of $83 million in punitive damages. The verdict calls it malicious prosecution, the debt not being hers to begin with.

PRA Group Inc., which owns Portfolio Recovery Associates, sent an email statement to Credit.com: “This outlandish verdict defies all common sense,” wrote spokesman Michael McKeon. “We hope and expect the judge will set aside this inappropriate award, and we plan to file motions to make that request formally in the near term. Any fair reading of the facts of this case makes plain that a verdict of this size is not justice by any means, and cannot stand.”

Why Engineers are the New Salespeople | Page19

May 21, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Do you like salespeople? If you answered yes, you might be a salesperson. In The Sales Bible, Jeffrey Gitomer discusses the reputation problem faced by salespeople—and how to solve it.

Why is this? Sadly, ever since the days of snake oil, the craft has been heavily associated with lying. Years of advertising have hardened consumers and trained them to be skeptical above all else, and no one is more suspect than a salesperson. A salesperson is, first and foremost, interested in getting you to buy what they’re selling, and usually only secondarily interested in your enjoyment of or satisfaction with the product.

Recently, however, some brands have seized upon an interesting strategy for dealing with this issue: get someone else to sell the product. Though professional salespeople struggle with trust, there is one employee who still retains it: the person who engineered, developed, or created it in the first place! Let’s call these people “Product experts.”

New Ruling Is a Stark Reminder That Your Image Isn’t Yours | WIRED

May 20, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

CINDY LEE GARCIA said she’d been had. The actress claimed that she thought she was acting in an action-adventure thriller called Desert Warrior, but her performance was co-opted into five seconds of Innocence of Muslims, a 14-minute trailer mocking the Islamic prophet Mohammed that sparked an anti-American backlash in the Middle East and led to death threats for the actors involved. The inflammatory clip was first uploaded to Google-owned YouTube in June 2012, and a few months later Garcia sued Google demanding that what she called the “hateful anti-Islamic production” be taken down.

Garcia first filed a suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, but a judge refused to have it removed, even as she claimed she was receiving death threats. She then filed a suit in federal court, yielding the same response. After all, video creators own the rights to their creations, not actors. Last year, however, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals shocked First Amendment and copyright attorneys around the country when it found in Garcia’s favor, determining that her performance was “independently copyrightable.” Google removed the video.

Netflix To Roll Out A New, More Immersive Web Interface Starting In June | TechCrunch

May 20, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Netflix confirms today that it will roll out a new user interface on the web to all users worldwide beginning next month. A number of Netflix customers are already seeing the updated look-and-feel, however, according to various reports. The interface, which was previously demonstrated at CES and Mobile World Congress, brings the design of Netflix’s website more in line with what users today see on mobile phones, tablets, on gaming consoles and on other streaming media players, like Roku.

The most notable aspect to the new design is that it eliminates the slower, scrolling carousels for content discovery in favor of an updated look with larger thumbnails in each section which can be clicked on in order to expand a detail screen showing additional information about the title in question.