Safe for another year or so.
One of the cornerstones of Amazon’s business has been avoiding sales taxes; because their transactions are online, you don’t have to pay Uncle Sam with every purchase. And now, thanks to some maneuvering around a proposed California law, you’ll remain off the hook for another year…
Continue reading… “Amazon staves off the tax man for another year”
YIKES!
Malware sucks. In the best-case scenario, it craps up your system with unwanted files and occasionally makes itself known in the form of a persistent pop-up window or annoying browser-based toolbar. In the worst-case scenario, malware completely takes over your desktop or laptop and ruins your life.
Your system slows it to a crawl. You can’t even boot into Windows in the time it takes you to walk to the kitchen and back. Your data gets sent off to a faraway Internet land or, worse, your actual keystrokes are recorded for some unsavory individual to see. Malware locks down you browser, making you unable to actually do any browsing without being carted off to some bogus domain. You can barely run a program in Windows without getting bombarded by fake advertisements, programs, and dancing people on your desktop.
We can’t make this stuff up…
Continue reading… “Scrub Your PC clean: remove Malware in four easy steps”
Improved City Planning is a Really Good Idea.
It’s been estimated that 50 percent of the world’s population now lives in cities, with another two billion expected to move to already overcrowded urban areas in the next twenty years. The pressures of rapid urbanization often mean that careful urban planning is difficult, and may be completely overlooked in ad-hoc situations like slums.
In the hopes of helping urban planners and designers make better decisions in the face of such constraints, researchers at MIT’s City Form Research Group have launched the Urban Network Analysis (UNA) toolbox, an open-source software that uses mathematical network analysis to describe spatial patterns of cities. Often used to study social networks like Facebook, network analysis methods can also be used to better examine urban issues like accessibility, spatial patterns, urban growth and change…
Google Takeout, the recently launched “data liberation” service that lets you export files, photos and data from Google services like Picasa and Buzz, now includes support for Google Voice.
With the update, users of Google’s Internet-telephony service Google Voice are able to export call history, voicemail messages, greetings, call recordings, phone numbers and text messages…
Continue reading… “Google now lets you export Google Voice data”
Driving ‘home’ has a different perspective.
Does getting home from a trip seem to take less time than getting there? There’s a scientific explanation for that!
NPR’s Morning Edition explains the psychological phenomenon called the “return trip effect”:
Here’s what van de Ven thinks is going on..
The idea of offering your product or a version of it for free has been a source of much debate.
Pricing is always tricky. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs don’t give it enough thought. They will often copy the pricing strategy of similar products, base their decisions on pompous statements made by “experts” or rely on broken rationale (we worked hard so we should charge $X).
Free is even trickier and with so many opinions about it, we thought it would be refreshing to take a critical approach and dive deep into why some companies are very successful at employing the model while other companies fail. We’ve looked into economics academic papers, behavioral psychology books and strategies that worked for companies to come up with the key concepts below.
Continue reading… “The complete guide to Freemium business models”
Is this what our future will look like?
John Schwartz has a nice piece in today’s New York Times on science fiction as a tool for predicting the future:
What will hit Groupon next?
A private, Chicago-based institution will be the first to put forth a deeply discounted deal on tuition via Groupon.
In an effort to bolster interest in its graduate teaching program,National Louis University will offer would-be teachers a Groupon for nearly 60% off tuition of an entry-level graduate teaching course…
Continue reading… “Groupon offers discount on University tuition”
Barbed wire comes in many formats of poke.
Over at Collectors Weekly, BB pal Ben Marks lays out the fascinating history of barbed wire through the eyes of those who collect the stuff. Yes, there are barbed wire collectors. From Collectors Weekly…
Continue reading… “Collectors of barbed wire”
After all the boozing and barbecuing on America day off from labor, take a sec to look up. What you’ll hopefully see is A supernova burning bright more than 21 million light years away.
The type 1a supernova is actually an exploding White Dwarf that scientists discovered last in the Pinwheel Galaxy, and it’s the youngest of its kind ever to be discovered…
Continue reading… “Seeing a Supernova could be the best part of Labor Day Weekend”
Negotiation is worthless. Sales is everything.
I’m a pretty good salesman, but I’m the worst negotiator. If I say, “buy my car for $10,000” and someone says “$8,000,” I’d just shrug my shoulders and say “ok”. In fact, that happened.
Some people could be good at both. But I think it’s very hard. By definition. When you’re a salesman you want the other guy to say “yes.” When you’re a negotiator you have to be willing to say “no”, regardless of what the other side says.
So although they aren’t total opposites, the goals are completely different. But big picture:
Negotiation is worthless. Sales is everything…
Continue reading… “How to sell your company”
Great lies continue to be propagated
Futurist Thomas Frey: In early 2003 I had a conversation with Dee Hock, founder and former CEO of VISA. At the time we were interested in hiring him to be the keynote speaker at our upcoming Future of Money Summit, an event that would take place in November of that year.
Continue reading… “Eight False Promises of the Internet”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.