Crowdfunding: What’s All The Noise About? | Lydia Mehit

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Crowdfunding is the latest buzz to hit the entrepreneur community, but no one really knows how it is going to work.  What we do know is that it will allow people like you and me (non-accredited) investors to use our money to help small businesses to start or grow. The problem is that the funding entrepreneurs need to prove, start and grow their ideas into companies has been at a premium since 2008.  The question now is whether the excitement will translate into a meaningful solution.

The turn of the century already saw a slow down from the tech investing of the 90’s, but when the recession hit, bank funding ground almost to a stop.  Where could the entrepreneur go to seek funding for their idea or startup?

Continue reading “Crowdfunding: What’s All The Noise About? | Lydia Mehit” →

Get ’em When They’re Young! | OnlineDegrees.org

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Guess what?

You can become a debt slave on autopilot as part of your college education. Institutions of higher learning have partnered with banks to dole out Pell grant and student loans through debit cards that double as student identification cards.

Now you can get a degree that you can’t pay off and be nickle and dimed to death doing it.

It up to us to stop this.

Click on image at left to enlarge.

The Next Industrial Revolution « azizonomics

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And even if the risks of global trade disruptions do not materialise in the near-term, as the finite supply of oil dwindles in coming years, the costs of constantly shipping so much around and around the world may prove unsustainable.

It is my view that the reality of costlier oil is set over the coming years to spur a new industrial revolution — a very welcome side-effect of which will be increased social and industrial decentralisation. Looming on the horizon are technologies which can decentralise the means of production and the means of energy generation.

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Gold Counterfeiting Goes Viral: 10 Tungsten-Filled Gold Bars Are Discovered In Manhattan | ZeroHedge

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The Post has learned as many as 10 fake gold bars — made up mostly of relatively worthless tungsten — were sold recently to unsuspecting dealers in Manhattan’s Midtown Diamond District. The 10-oz. gold bars are hugely popular with Main Street investors, and it is not known how many of the fake gold bars were sold to dealers — or if any fake bars were purchased by the public.

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Make sure you read some of the comment thread. Some of it’s hilarious, some if will make you think. Some of it’s offensive and some of it’s NSFW. – Ed.

Dogs Reduce Stress, Make Job More Satisfying | LifesLittleMysteries.com

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It’s long been known that owning a pet can be good for your mental and physical health, but new research indicates that it can also make your office a much happier and productive place.

That’s the finding of a first-of-its kind study, which looked at the effects that man’s best friend has on employees. In that research, dogs were demonstrated to have many positive benefits in the workplace, most notably that they reduce stress and make working more satisfying.

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Brand Management Techniques | smallbusiness.chron.com

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Brand management is vital to gaining market dominance.

Brand management involves the art of crafting and maintaining a brand image in the marketplace and of managing the product lines associated with individual brands. Marketers employ a repertoire of techniques to influence consumers’ perception of and preference for their brands. Focusing on continuous brand management can help your brand to solidify a position of dominance in your chosen industry or niche.

Industry Analysis

Analyze competing brands in your industry to determine where you would like to position your brand. Map out competitors and rank each by size, service model, reputation and target market segment. Determine how many players are serving the high end of the market and how many are serving value- or cost-conscious market segments. Determine which competitors feature full-service business models and which operate lean. Rank your competitors according to their reputation in the industry by comparing customer reviews and news articles.

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British Airways New Customer Service Initiative | Airlinereporter.com

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Recently, British Airways started keeping information on some of their VIP customers and searching for their images online all in the name of service. The program, called “Know Me,” has some privacy advocates worried.

“Last year we re-committed to the ethos: To Fly. To Serve. That’s what ‘Know Me’ is all about – enabling us to recognise our customers in a way that is individual to them,” Jo Boswell, head of customer analysis at British Airways, stated. “We’re essentially trying to recreate the feeling of recognition you get in a favourite restaurant when you’re welcomed there, but in our case it will be delivered by thousands of staff to millions of customers.”

The idea is simple enough. Airline employees have iPads which contain information on high-end passengers. What kind of food they prefer, if it is the first time they have flown with a certain product and if they might have had previous issues flying on the airline. The software also allows the crew to identify a passenger by searching Google Images.

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SmartThings will let you run your world by smartphone| cnn.money.com

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Kickstarter’s latest tech darling promises to let you run your entire world from your smartphone: Control your air conditioning, lock your doors, or get an alert when your plumbing starts leaking. It’s called SmartThings, and it’s slated to start shipping in December.

SmartThings founder Alex Hawkinson got the idea for a system linking regular household items to the Internet after a power outage in his vacation home caused the basement pipes to explode. When Hawkinson showed up at the house a month later, he wished there had been a way for him to get a notification that something was up before chaos broke out.

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