18. April 2012 by admin.

…stop subscribing to deal sites and guys stay away from slickdeals.net and newegg

A new study by ExactTarget found more than two-thirds of Americans shopping online are baited with email first – nearly twice the rate brought in from Facebook and text messages.

It makes sense why we’re partial to the email route. It’s easy enough to mark messages as spam and ignore ones we don’t feel like reading straightaway.

But for a shopaholic, email is basically the gateway drug to overspending.

When the time comes that I actually need to shop, I’ll prowl CouponSherpa.com or Retailmenot.com for discount codes first and check to see if Ebates has a cashback offer available. I rarely turn up empty-handed.

Posted in Technology, Wealth Management, Health and Wellness | Print | No Comments »

12. April 2012 by admin.

The Department of Homeland Security has enlisted a San Francisco company to help crack open the encrypted data in consoles, which it claims may hold key evidence in cases ranging from the exploitation of children to terrorism. Link

According to forensic experts, pedophiles are increasingly using gaming systems to exploit children, while terrorists are using it for communication. With this evidence, a contract was awarded on April 5 by the Naval Supply Systems Command to Obscure Technologies for the research and development of “hardware and software tools that can be used for extracting data from video game systems.”

Obscure Technologies, a small San Francisco-based company that performs computer forensics and which has just been awarded a $177,237 sole-source research contract to develop “hardware and software tools that can be used for extracting data from video game systems,” and “a collection of data (disk images; flash memory dumps; configuration settings) extracted from new video game systems and used game systems purchased on the secondary market,” according to the contract award from the U.S. Navy.

Solicitation Number:
N0024412R0024
https://www.neco.navy.mil/synopsis_file/N0024412R002…
Description: N0024412R0024_JA_Obscure-Game.docx
Contracting Office Address:
N00244 NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center San Diego Seal Beach Office 800 Seal Beach Blvd. Bldg 239 Seal Beach, CA

Posted in Patents and Portfolios, SBIR / STTR, Technology, Wealth Management, Invention, Military, Programming Code Help | Print | No Comments »

23. March 2012 by admin.

The JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act that passed in the House today contains some big changes for crowdfunding startups. It now moves on to the Senate.

Right now, it’s illegal for a startup to solicit investors on platforms like Twitter or Kickstarter. But the JOBS Act would change that. For startups raising $1 million or less, anyone can now buy up to $10,000 or 10 percent of the annual income (whichever is less) in equity

IPO filings of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 which said that any company with more than 500 shareholders has to open its financials to the SEC like a public company. But under the JOBS Act, anyone who gives $10,000 or less will not count toward this limit. The act also raises the shareholder limit from 500 to 1,000.

Startups can opt to raise as much as $2 million in this manner; but if they go the crowdfunding route, they will have to provide audited financial statements to their investors. There are some drawbacks for startups. Here are some highlights:

1. First, startups must understand that minority stockholders have certain significant rights under state law, including voting rights, the right to inspect the company’s books and records, the right to bring a derivative claim on behalf of the company, and certain protections against oppression by the controlling stockholders. Indeed, the more stockholders a startup has, the greater the likelihood that a disgruntled stockholder will cause problems, including filing lawsuits.
2. Second, having hundreds of stockholders is an administrative nightmare and will be time consuming and costly. Presumably, each stockholder will be required to execute a subscription agreement and/or stockholders’ agreement to address key issues such as transfer restrictions, rights of first refusal, and drag-along rights. There will also be administrative issues relating to voting and stock transfer issues.
3. Third, startups will likely have difficulty raising funds from VCs and other sophisticated investors if they have hundreds of unsophisticated stockholders. Needless to say, few sophisticated investors will want to sit on the board of directors of such a company due to the risks of lawsuits relating to director liability, and I would assume D&O liability insurance rates will skyrocket for these companies.

The JOBS Act also makes it easier for small companies to go public by increasing the offering threshold for companies exemepted from SEC regulation from $5 to $50 million on companies. Additional regulations will be phased in over a five-year period for companies that stay under $1 billion in revenue.

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13. March 2012 by admin.

New Funding:

Contact Names and Numbers:

Presentation – Attached for your review is the DoD presentation that was delivered by Nicole Fox

DoD SBIR/STTR webinar  Download Preserntation

Posted in Patents and Portfolios, SBIR / STTR, Technology, Wealth Management, Military, Invention | Print | No Comments »

28. February 2012 by admin.

Is Internet Access an inalienable right for individuals and organizations? Does net access come with responsibilities similar to driving a car, which failure to abide by can result in limiting or denying access entirely? The UN and other countries have called Internet access a basic human right. Is Internet Access a basic human right or a privilege to be earned and maintained by good behavior?

When we were young, a simple lock gave all the protection we needed and passwords were required only to enter childhood forts. Today’s connected world creates new safety risks for kids. But you can change that. Kids need security professionals, like you, to volunteer to teach them how to stay safe online and how to use the Internet in ways that won’t jeopardize their privacy or damage their reputations. A few hours of your time could mean a lifetime of safety to a child.

In the absence of personal relationships, we have no choice but to substitute confidence for trust, compliance for trustworthiness. This progression has enabled society to scale to unprecedented complexity, but has also permitted massive global failures. In a world completely reliant on technology, a cataclysmic disaster is waiting to happen. As menacing computer malfunctions pop up around the world, some with deadly results, the protagonist realizes that there isn’t much time if he hopes to prevent an international catastrophe.

Posted in Marketing, Military, Social Network, Wealth Management, Invention, Programming Code Help, Managing Business, Pain Relief, Health and Wellness, Kewler Favorites | Print | No Comments »

28. February 2012 by admin.

create an interesting chart based on Finnish male IQ tests.  Interesting source

 Source->Abstract

Posted in Wealth Management, Social Network, Health and Wellness, Kewler Favorites | Print | No Comments »

24. February 2012 by admin.

• There’s no place for your product: “Investors are fond of debating which they care about more: the market or the entrepreneur. The reality is, great entrepreneurs find great markets. Many startups never achieve the elusive product-market fit. Some companies, like Facebook and Zynga, find product-market fit right out of the gate. Or at least they appear to. Others, like Intuit, go along for years until they crack the code.”

• Your product sucks: ”Many potentially great companies fail because they deliver bad products. No one sets out to build a bad product. So how do they end up getting built? You can still suffer from product blindness—using your product so much that you work around the difficulties, the friction that prevents mass adoption. Just consider file sharing company Dropbox. There were other file sharing products before Dropbox, but Dropbox kept the product simple and made it easy to use.”

• You don’t have vision or chops: “There’s the romantic notion of starting something—of being your own boss, running your own show, and building what you want to build. But being a successful entrepreneur means being a visionary—and being able to execute your way to making that vision a reality.
”

• You burn too much money on sales and marketing early on: ”For every venture dollar invested, I estimate that more than two-thirds goes into sales and marketing costs and only a third into product development—sometimes less. Spending on sales and marketing too early means no return if customers or users don’t bite. Once you up the burn, it’s hard to go back. So make sure you have product-market fit before ramping sales and marketing.

• Only your friends use your product: “So you’ve got a great market and a killer product. A few people have heard of it—the only problem is, they’re all friends of yours. Like the tree falling in the empty forest, thousands of great products have gone unused because no one knew they existed. They’re not just unknown—they’re invisible. How do you get the word out in a crowded market without incinerating cash? Build the best product and generate a lot of buzz around your brand.”

• You don’t know how to use others to build scale: “Lots of companies can get a few users or sell a few products. Few can do that at scale, in a repeatable, efficient way. Today’s startups use highly leveraged approaches—freemium, word of mouth, partner strategies, and viral acquisition to drive highly leverage growth. You should too.
”

• No one can understand what you’re saying: “Communication can make or break a startup. As I heard an investor once ask an entrepreneur, ‘if you can’t communicate your pitch effectively to us, why should we think you’ll be able to communicate effectively to your team?’ His words stuck in my mind and he was right. Words matter.” 
Speaker training is a good idea. “One time an entrepreneur gave a pitch and looked down at the conference table the whole time. Didn’t make eye contact. It was painful.”

• Your pitch is too long. “It’s bad when people realize they’re running out of time but they just start speaking faster instead of bumping up a level. They try to fit more in. It all gets lost in details. It’s awkward for everyone and really hurts the pitch.”

• Your pitch doesn’t play on emotions. “Many entrepreneurs get in front of people with access to capital but failed to convince their audience to invest. A huge part of pitching comes down to psychology and emotion. Investors are primarily motivated by two things: greed and fear.”

• You make excuses: ”Time and again I hear someone say they have a great idea for a company but they just don’t want to give up their current job to pursue their idea. Other times people have great ideas, but aren’t sure how to get going. Starting a company is hard. Yet dozens of people, when I asked why they decided to start something new, gave me the same answer: ‘I realized if I didn’t do it now, I’d never be able to do it’.”

• You lack focus: “When I got my first check (actually, it was a wire transfer) from a venture investor some ten years ago, he gave me one piece of advice. ‘Focus wins.’ The advice is as sound today as it was when he gave it to me. In a startup, you could be doing any one of a thousand things. But focus tells you which one thing to do to win.”

• There’s a lot of drama: ”A lot of startups fail because they suffer from drag. They go after small markets, build the wrong product, the founders don’t get along, or they make it too hard for users or customers to use their products. These issues create what I refer to as startup drag. Entrepreneurs have to be eternal optimists but with sufficient pragmatism to make their optimism reality. Get too much drag and it’s easy to lose the optimism and confidence that breeds success.”

• “This is the last money we’ll ever need”: “Don’t say that. It just sounds naive. But most early stage companies need more money. Investors are in the business of investing money. They want to hear how you’re going to win, how you’re going to be the market leader, not how you won’t need their money.”

Posted in Wealth Management, Social Network, Nonprofit, Marketing, Managing Business | Print | No Comments »

23. February 2012 by admin.

Watching superbowl social media lessons…

Any marketer can use these lessons

#awarenessinc

Taulbee Jackson

Linked-in groups can be email blasted - didn’t know that they were the ONLY social network to allow this.

If you like the superbowl follow our stream, follow our brand.

Less known brand… Talk about benefits of liking your page (in order to get social likes)

What were people focusing on>

Twitter example of typical conversation on twitter:

What to wear to super bowl village tomorrow night?

Reply from super bowl village: Check the weather by texting WEATHER to SB2012 for updates courtesy of @WISH_TV

Superbowl had 50 dedicated suberbowl social media contributors.

Content is king - once again

Content calendars (creating a content calendar should contain contents completion date) New Product release shouold be on the content calendar. Social media on the next day and for 5 more days. Response time (real-time workflow) batch of groundswell will dictate calendar. Put non-social marketing email

What f it was held in Vegas?

Back to Edgerank….

Slideshare directly links to saleslforce. Didn’t know that.

Measurement:

Share and retweet are same thing

favorite of tweets is a like

clickthru is defined as a link that goes to somewhere else. - DIFFERENT domain or different area or place

Channel Type check audit trails.

Same cost as buying a superbowl spot

30 sec tv spot is ~ 3.2M -3.5M

This is an owned media (no renting eyeballs)

http://info.awarenessnetworks.com/Free-Trial-14-Day.html

Posted in Wealth Management, Social Network, Facebook, Marketing, Managing Business | Print | 1 Comment »

22. February 2012 by admin.

In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.

His book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.

When segmented sleep was the norm

• “He knew this, even in the horror with which he started from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it were, the witness of his dream.” Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1840)
• “Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning.” Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote (1615)
• “And at the wakening of your first sleepe You shall have a hott drinke made, And at the wakening of your next sleepe Your sorrowes will have a slake.” Early English ballad, Old Robin of Portingale
• The Tiv tribe in Nigeria employ the terms “first sleep” and “second sleep” to refer to specific periods of the night

Source: Roger Ekirch

We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

Posted in Physical Therapy, Massage, Wealth Management, Health and Wellness, Pain Relief | Print | No Comments »

18. January 2012 by admin.

• The rise of late stage private equity (including secondary markets) provides all the liquidity of an IPO without the regulation;
• The high cost of compliance and new regulations has closed the IPO market to many smaller companies; and,
• Despite the trend, companies with strong fundamentals and real businesses still have access to public markets

Posted in Wealth Management, Invention, Managing Business, Kewler Favorites | Print | No Comments »