Easily the funniest video of the week. Enjoy!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KeG_i8CWE8]
Category: Uncategorized Page 1 of 16
"I was just, 'oh, he's cute, I'll accept him,'" a 22-year-old called "Nina" recalls.
She was 18 at the time, and didn't imagine that clicking "accept" would start her on a path to four years of prostitution across the country. "Nina" is a pseudonym; CNNMoney agreed to change the names of the victims in this article to protect their privacy.
Upper middle-class and college-bound, Nina had her plans derailed in her senior year of high school after her mother was sentenced to two years in prison for financial crimes. Lonely and looking online for male attention, she started messaging back and forth with a man who said he was falling for her. They talked about trips they'd take together as a couple, and about marriage, maybe kids.
"He sold me the biggest dream in the world," she says. "I thought he really did like me and we were going to live this fairy-tale life together."
They exchanged online messages for about a month. That September, while Nina's friends went off to college, she traveled the two and half hours from home to meet her Facebook beau in person.
The fairy tale ended fast. Almost immediately after she arrived in Seattle, he dropped her off on a street where prostitutes troll for customers and told her she was going to "catch dates."
via money.cnn.com
I was floored by this article. It is hard to believe that this stuff can happen in the USA, but unfortunately, it does.
Parenting is hard. Digital parenting is harder. uKnowKids makes digital parenting easier, and keeps kids safe from bullies and bad guys online and on the mobile phone. uKnow is the world's first Parental Intelligence system for the parents of digital kids, and you can try it for free at http://uknowkids.com
By July, Facebook, Google, Tumblr and others will likely be forced to remove photos, audio recordings or other personal identifiers of children — or else face stiff fines, thanks to updates to a 15-year-old law.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA
) was enacted in 1998. In 2011, the FTC beefed up the measure, preventing sites from collecting personal information from kids such as name, location and date of birth without a parent’s consent.
This July, new amendments for kids under 13 will go into effect, approved by the FTC in December
There are also new restrictions on tracking data, with cookies or a unique identifier that follow registrants from one site to another.
via www.foxnews.com
Hot, new Washington D.C. tech accelerator known as The Fort is debuting its inaugural class of startups today. The organization grew out the efforts from early stage VC firm Fortify Ventures LLC, also known as Fortify.vc (that’s its URL, too), which had previously invested in nearly dozen D.C.-area tech companies.
Over the past 9 months, The Fort’s co-founders, Jonathon Perrelli and Carla Valdes, have been busy trying to spark innovation in the nation’s capital. They set up the fund, invested in group of startups, created the accelerator, hosted a pitch competition called “Distilled Intelligence” which handed out $25K to winners, and selected a dozen more startups for The Fort’s first program.
“D.C. is not a place where people are always working together,” says Perrelli of the group’s efforts, “but now there is this uprising. People are trying to build something here.”
via techcrunch.com
It is great to see the startup vibe growing in DC. Jonathon Perrelli and Carla Valdes are doing a nice of leading here. Well done everyone.
If you are an entrepreneur, you will find this video to be pretty funny. Have fun!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alZqXA4R2dI]
The stupor of alcohol, like the haze of the early morning, makes it harder for us to ignore those unlikely thoughts and remote associations that are such important elements of the imagination. So the next time you are in need of insight, avoid caffeine and concentration. Don’t chain yourself to your desk. Instead, set the alarm a few minutes early and wallow in your groggy thoughts. And if that doesn’t work, chug a beer.
via www.wired.com
This is an interesting article about how the brain works. Looking for inspiration? It can come at very unexpected times!
Cell phones keep us connected. They’re convenient, save us time, and could even save our lives in a true emergency. But when used irresponsibly, mobile phones can wreak havoc. And it appears that technology is blurring the line between right and wrong – for our kids, anyway.
One study from Common Sense Media reports that 1 in 3 kids use their cell phones to cheat on tests, but that 1 in 4 kids surveyed didn’t think that accessing notes during a test, texting friends with answers during a test, or using their cell to search the Internet for answers is cheating.
Check out this article at uKnowKids.com's blog. Very interesting commentary about how things are changing with the introduction of new technologies.
Every entrepreneur has met them. Big company executives with big company swagger. They ignore you. They dismiss the business problem you spent your life solving. They think they can crush you.
Then the tables turn. They push for strategic relationships. They want to give you money, frequently at irrationally high valuations. Finally they shell out enough scratch to buy you.
It is no easy task turning big company hesitation into commitment. But several key steps will help you manage this potentially make-it-or-break-it relationship. Through it all, be sure to drill into their heads every step of company progress as sales begin to multiply.
A great article that every entrepreneur should read. Good stuff.
Warren Buffett has said that when he is looking at his leaders for companies, he evaluates three categories of characteristics:
— Intelligence
— Energy
— Integrity
His fundamental belief is that if a person has 2 of these, the lack of the third can kill a business. Do the fast math on the negative side of the equation:
— Low integrity, high energy and high intelligence and you have a smart, fast-moving thief
— Low energy, high intelligence and integrity and you have a shop keeper, not an engine of growth
— Low intelligence, high energy and integrity and you have strong functionary, but not a great problem solver or visionary
via www.cbsnews.com
I 100% agree!!!!
After a very successful HubSpot Twitter chat on Tuesday (join us for the next one on January 24th at 3:30 PM EST!) about business blogging and content creation, one discussion point stood out among the rest: everyone we spoke with acknowledged the importance of business blogging for inbound marketing success, but many people said that, despite their best efforts, it's really hard to find enough time to do so on a regular basis.
It's a common refrain, and this wasn't the first time we'd heard the complaint. But over the years, we've figured out some creative ways to keep our blog fed with content even on days that are jam packed with meetings, weeks with days lost to vacations and holidays, and times when we're just plain not feelin' it.
Because we really want our readers to adopt business blogging as part of their daily (or weekly, depending on your competitive needs!) regiment, we'd like to share with you some of the tactics that can save you some significant time when creating blog content. We still recommend writing pieces that are further outside your comfort zone and really require that you set aside time for critical thinking. But for those days when you just don't have the time for it, these tactics will help you publish valuable content to your blog and keep your content creation machine chugging along at a consistent rate.
via blog.hubspot.com
Good advice here. A blog can be very valuable on the SEO front and in positioning your company as a subject matter expert. Every company should make it a part of their weekly routine to write at least one, simple blog post per week. Again, good advice.