v.18 n. 33 – Released August 18, 2014
This Week’s Headlines:
Events of Interest
So, you’re never first to raise your hand during meetings and you’re uncomfortable schmoozing with strangers at networking events. Does that mean you’re doomed to fail in the business world?
Not even close, shy one.
Those on the quiet side tend to be good listeners, giving them a serious edge over their more talkative, sometimes oversharing counterparts, says etiquette coach Jacqueline Whitmore, founder of The Protocol School of Palm Beach.
The turn-of-the-century Legion House is located in the heart of Sydney CBD and has operated as a women’s hostel for the last 60 years. Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp was commissioned to redevelop a larger area that includes the building, which has been converted into a zero carbon structure that received the 6-Star Green Star Office certification. Because of the building’s location, which receives almost no sun during the day, the architects decided to opt for biomass gasification technology in order to create renewable energy on site.
Legion House can use commercial paper waste generated from the adjacent office tower through shredding and compressing this waste to form paper briquettes, which can be used in the gasification plant. Surplus power created by its independent system is to be supplied to the 50-storey commercial office tower on the site.
A preview of Windows 9 will be made available in either September or October, according to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. That timeline keeps ‘Threshold’ — Windows 9’s code name — out into the public market as a finished product likely in early 2015.
The Windows 8 era isn’t merely closing, it’s racing to an end.
Last weekend I posited that as Windows 9 appears to be galloping to market, it’s a decent time to start saying goodbye to Windows 8. Now that Foley has revealed that Windows 9’s preview should be open to the public, for a good-sized chunk of the computing world Windows 8 is all but over — they will be able to quickly scoot over to the new code, provided that the preview isn’t too buggy.
The explosion of the virtual business model is rapidly gaining awareness. While the image of a virtual company tempts many entrepreneurs, they must also understand it is a model that – like any business model – involves both pros and cons.
When I started Varsity Tutors in 2007, I had no funding and no outside investors – to put it bluntly, I was a broke college student. Any dollar I saved was another dollar to put toward the growth of this company, so I opted for a virtual business model. Varsity Tutors ultimately succeeded, but it did not reach its current state without weathering its fair share of challenges associated with operating a virtual business. In retrospect, I could have avoided many pitfalls had I been able to learn from someone who had already been through it.
As a manager, I’ve always dreaded saying the words, “Can I talk to you in my office?”—probably even more than the employee who’s on the other side of the request. The phrase is eerily similar to the relationship-ending “We need to talk”—as soon as those words come out, you know the conversation isn’t going to be a good one.
So, when I used that exact phrase to begin a tough conversation with one of my employees, he instantly knew something wasn’t right. And it wasn’t; I was terminating his employment. It was my first time firing an employee—and as I delivered the news and watched him leave the building, I didn’t feel the way I thought I would. In fact, I learned three unexpected lessons that day, and it’s influenced the way I’ve managed my team ever since.
Yesterday, the 20,000 customers who use a Lansing Michigan web hosting company called Liquid Web had some big internet problems. The reason: the internet grew too big for the memory chips in the company’s Cisco routers.
Think of it as the internet’s latest growing pain. It’s a problem that networking geeks have seen coming for awhile now, but yesterday it finally struck. And it’s likely to cause more problems in the next few weeks. The bug doesn’t seem to have affected core internet providers—companies like AT&T and Verizon, which haul vast quantities of data over the internet’s backbone, “but certainly there are a number of people that were caught by this,” says Craig Labovitz, founder of network analysis company Deepfield Networks.
A captain in the Missouri highway patrol catapulted to local fame on Thursday after he and officers under his command rolled into Ferguson to take over the security for local protests.
Gov. Jay Nixon ordered Capt. Ron Johnson and the patrol to take the reins from a St. Louis County police force that had responded to protesters this week by wielding assault rifles, firing tear gas and patrolling the streets in military-style vehicles. Unrest in Ferguson began after Darren Wilson, a local police officer, shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was unarmed, on Aug. 9.
Photos taken during the six days of demonstrations — the most violent night was on Wednesday when police fired smoke grenades and tear gas into a crowd — of standoffs between police and citizens in Ferguson often seemed eerily similar to war zone photography.
Compared to other workers, entrepreneurs tend to enjoy an advantage in financial literacy. The know-how required to invest, organize, and save funds for a business often applies well to personal finance management, so these individuals run a “tighter ship” at home.
But this isn’t always the case. Business owners can lose their way financially by going to one of two extremes: Tying their personal finances too closely to their business resources, or running their personal finances quite differently from how they manage company money.
An unbalanced approach in either direction can lead to financial difficulties in the form of squeezed budgets and damaged credit. On the other hand, entrepreneurs who can strike a middle ground between these extremes enjoy greater financial security and success in their business and personal lives.
Very few pandas are born each year, but even fewer of the fragile cubs stay alive. That’s why zookeepers say it’s a “miracle” after a panda gave birth to a healthy set of triplets, who have now survived over two weeks and are reportedly doing well.
The cubs, which weighed 83 grams, 90 grams, and 122 grams, respectively, at birth, are thought to be the only living panda triplets in the world. The 12-year-old mother, Juxiao whose name means “chrysanthemum smile” gave birth to the adorable cubs on July 29 in China’s Chimelong Safari Park in the southern city of Guangzhou. The delivery took four hours, said Dong Guixin, the manager of the park.
“After nearly half a month under the care of the mother, the babies are very healthy,” China Daily reported Dong as saying.
