Diane Sawyer – ABC World News | Elle

June 25, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

With Katie Couric going to Yahoo, Barbara Walters retiring from The View, and Chelsea Handler moving over to Netflix, this has been The Year of Powerful Women Leaving TV. Then, today, ABC announced that their World News anchor, Diane Sawyer, would be stepping down, too. What gives?

Thankfully, as ABC president James Goldston asserted, Sawyer’s not leaving television entirely, or even ABC. Instead, she’ll be “stepping aside” from World News to lead “new programming tackling big issues and extraordinary interviews,” according to Goldston.

Creative Workspaces | Creatingminds.org

June 24, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Being creative in a dingy hovel with people shouting at you is probably not the best environment to encourage optimal creativity. In practice, you need a range of measures to help this fragile flower bloom.

Environments which are dirty, cramped, uncomfortable and noisy are not the best for encouraging creative thinking. If we can design our general working environment with care and concern.

A comfortable environment helps people forget about how uncomfortable they are and focus on the work at hand. Ergonomic chairs and desks. Good lighting. Clean and bright walls. Warm colors. Soft carpets. These and more help to create a sense of comfort. They also signal that our employers care about us, and hence motivate us further to extend ourselves in our work.

FAA Bans The Use Of Drones To Deliver Packages | TechCrunch

June 24, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The FAA made it plain this week that Amazon, or anyone else for that matter, won’t be able to deliver packages using a drone in the near future. In a document soliciting feedback regarding drone policy — a “Notice of Interpretation with Request for Comment ” — the FAA calls “delivering packages to people for a fee” a non-hobby or recreation-based drone activity.

As such, the FAA wants to ban it. A recent court case set the FAA back regarding its wish to ban commercial drone usage in the United States. The agency is appealing that ruling.

The real reason you’re broke | Squawkfox

June 24, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

I’d like to take a moment to be mean. I not going to be a bully-type of mean. But I do want to get a little mean with you. A friendly sort of mean. The type of mean where a good friend would take you out for a drink or coffee and chat you up in a concerned, caring way. We’re not squawking about an intervention here, but rather, some serious tough love.

Ready? Here goes … and remember I’m buying you that drink or coffee by taking the time to tell you the honest to goodness truth. I’ll stop stalling now … gulp!

Employees Who Stay In Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less| Forbes

June 23, 2014June 23, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The worst kept secret is that employees are making less on average every year. There are millions of reasons for this, but we’re going to focus on one that we can control. Staying employed at the same company for over two years on average is going to make you earn less over your lifetime by about 50% or more.

Keep in mind that 50% is a conservative number at the lowest end of the spectrum. This is assuming that your career is only going to last 10 years. The longer you work, the greater the difference will become over your lifetime.

Meet a new generation of female tech entrepreneurs |Money.cnn.com

June 23, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

At age 17, Brienne Ghafourifar achieved a world record. She became the youngest college graduate to raise $1 million in venture funding for her business.

“I usually don’t talk about that,” Ghafourifar, now 19, says with a nervous laugh, hesitating to brag about her achievement. “I usually let my brother talk about that for me.

“Immediately after graduating from Santa Clara University with a bachelor’s degree in economics, Ghafourifar founded her first startup, Entefy, with her older brother Alston. The cross-device platform aims to aggregate and house all of your disparate forms of electronic communications — texts, emails, IMs, etc. — onto one interface.

Bond Market Has $900 Billion Mom-and-Pop Problem When Rates Rise | Bloomberg

June 23, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

It’s never been easier for individuals to enter some of the most esoteric debt markets. Wall Street’s biggest firms are worried that it’ll be just as simple for them to leave.

Investors have piled more than $900 billion into taxable bond funds since the 2008 financial crisis, buying stock-like shares of mutual and exchange-traded funds to gain access to infrequently-traded markets. This flood of cash has helped cause prices to surge and yields to plunge.

Now, as the Federal Reserve discusses ending its easy-money policies, concern is mounting that the withdrawal of stimulus will lead to an exodus that’ll cause credit markets to freeze up. While new regulations have forced banks to reduce their balance-sheet risk, analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM are focusing on the problems that individual investors could cause by yanking money from funds.

There’s a bigger risk “that when the the Fed starts hiking in earnest, outflows from high-yielding and less-liquid debt will lead to a free fall in prices,” JPMorgan strategists led by Jan Loeys wrote in a June 20 report. “In extremis, this could force a closing of the primary market and have serious economic impact.”

When to Trade Less Money for Faster Payment | Businessweek

June 20, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Question: I have contracts with very large companies and they are pushing payments out to the 120-day limit. Some of them offer shorter payment cycles but I have to accept a discount on the amount owed to me. How’s a small business supposed to survive with this kind of pressure on the bottom line? Should I take these discounts for the sake of my cash flow?

Answer: Your question illustrates one of the reasons it’s so tough for small businesses supplying big companies. While larger vendors probably have at least some negotiating muscle with clients such as big box retailers or giant manufacturers, small suppliers usually don’t—unless their products are absolutely unique in the market.

Your dilemma: You need the business the big guys are offering, but that means you have to accept it on their terms—even if they don’t want to pay you for four months.

Generational Divide: 5 Ways to Work Alongside Younger Peers | Businessnewsdaily.com

June 20, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Now is the perfect time to give the office veterans a refresher on how best to co-exist with their new, younger peers, many of whom are stepping into their first real job.

While you might be quick to discount younger workers, there is a good chance they have a lot to offer your organization. Older workers who turn their backs on new, younger employees are missing out on opportunities to help mold a successful new peer and guide their organization into the next generation.

Epic Drought in California Unlikely to Ease | Scientific American

June 20, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

California will remain in the stranglehold of drought at least until September, even as a climate system in the tropical Pacific Ocean that would have brought rainfall to the parched state appears to be weakening, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s monthly climate update released yesterday.

Weather watchers had been hoping that an El Niño, which occurs when an area of the tropical Pacific Ocean warms by at least 0.5 degrees Celsius above normal, would bring moisture to the West Coast