Category: Uncategorized Page 7 of 16

New research led by Elaine Wong at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has found that CEOs with wider faces tend to lead their companies to better financial performance than CEOs whose faces are skinnier. Can this be true? And if so, why?

The researchers say that broader faces, in men, are a result of more testosterone, and note that male hockey players with broader faces have been shown to spend more time in the penalty box for fighting, which is again supposedly linked to testosterone. So, they wondered, would CEOs with higher levels of testosterone-as shown by their facial features-be more aggressive, and would their companies benefit?

via www.bnet.com

One of the best ways for a small business to get on the map is to have the CEO and/or other key members of the executive team establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry. A perfect example of this is the fact that you are reading this story on Small Business Trends. The small business experts who contribute to this site are hoping that their insights will pique your interest and encourage you to find out more about them and their businesses.

Thought leaders have myriad online avenues in which to broadcast their expertise and, hopefully, use those broadcasts to generate business. With the advent of social media, small business owners and experts now use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube (among other social media platforms) to get the word out.

Recently, Google introduced Google+, the search engine giant’s entry into the world of social media. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Google+ has a cornucopia of features and has been catching on like wildfire.

via smallbiztrends.com

Gamification — the application of online game design techniques in non-game settings — has been quickly gaining the attention of leaders in business, education, policy and even terrorist communities. But gamification also has plenty of critics, and the debate over its future could become an epic battle in the same vein of many online game favorites. This special report includes coverage of a recent Wharton conference titled, "For the Win: Serious Gamification," in addition to interviews with conference participants who discuss the use of gamification in business, government and other arenas.

via knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

Here is what Carol Bartz thinks of the Yahoo (YHOO) board that fired her: "These people f—ed me over," she says, in her first interview since her dismissal from the CEO role late Tuesday.

Last evening, barely 24 hours after Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock called Bartz on her cell phone to tell her the news, she called from her Silicon Valley home ("There are reporters at the gate… a lot of them.") to tell Fortune, exclusively, how the ax came down.

On Tuesday, Bartz was in New York, to speak at Citigroup's (C) technology conference the next day, when she was supposed to call Bostock at 6 p.m. "I called him at 6:06," she recalls. When he got on the line, she says, he started reading a lawyer's prepared statement to dismiss her.

"I said, 'Roy, I think that's a script,'" adding, "'Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?'"

When Bostock finished reading, Bartz didn't argue—"I got it. I got it," she told the Yahoo chairman. "I thought you were classier," she added.

via postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com

British defense company BAE Systems has developed an “invisibility cloak” that can effectively hide vehicles from view in the infra-red spectrum.

The patented system — called Adaptiv — uses a matrix of hexagonal “pixels” that can change their temperature very rapidly. On-board cameras sweep the area to pick up the background scenery and display that infra-red signature on the vehicle.

This allows even moving tanks to be effectively invisible in the infra-red spectrum, or mimic other objects. “The tank skin essentially becomes a big infra red TV,” BAE Head of External Communications Mike Sweeney told Wired.co.uk. “You can display anything you want on it — including a cow — while the rest of the vehicle blends into the background.”

via www.wired.com

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• Secret Service paid hacker $75k a year, friend says – CNN.com
  Convicted TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez earned $75,000 a year working undercover for the U.S. Secret Service, informing on bank card thieves before he was arrested in 2008 for running his own multimillion-dollar card-hacking operation.
  That information is according to one of Gonzalez’s best friends and convicted accomplices, Stephen Watt.
  Watt pleaded guilty last year to creating a sniffer program that Gonzalez used to siphon millions of credit and debit card numbers from the TJX corporate network while he was working undercover for the government.
  Watt told Threat Level that Gonzalez was paid in cash, which is generally done to protect someone’s status as a confidential informant.
  The Secret Service said it would not comment on payments made to informants. Gonzalez’s attorney did not respond to a call for comment.
  “It’s a significant amount of money to pay an informant but it’s not an outrageous amount to pay if the guy was working full time and delivering good results,”
  (tags: security)
• Inside a global cybercrime ring | Reuters
  Hundreds of computer geeks, most of them students putting themselves through college, crammed into three floors of an office building in an industrial section of Ukraine’s capital Kiev, churning out code at a frenzied pace. They were creating some of the world’s most pernicious, and profitable, computer viruses.
  (tags: security)

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• FOXNews.com – States Plot to Block, Limit Health Care Reform Bill
  The proverbial ink had yet to dry on the nation's new health care reform law Tuesday before two states — Virginia and Florida — filed lawsuits and more scrambled to put up legislative barricades between themselves and the bill requiring Americans to purchase health insurance or face stiff penalties.
  The tactics, employed everywhere from Arizona to Virginia, are the strongest sign that the health care reform fight is far from over.
  Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum announced he dropped off his challenge at the court at 12:02 p.m. ET, minutes after President Obama's signing ceremony to usher in the massive overhaul. Virginia Solicitor General E. Duncan Getchell walked the six blocks from the state attorney general's office in Richmond to the U.S. District Court to file his claim that the federal law conflicts with recently passed Virginia law saying no resident shall be required to "maintain or obtain" personal coverage.
  (tags: politics health taxes states courts)

• Finally, Here’s What YouTube’s Investors Made In Sale To Google – WSJ
  We always knew that Sequoia Capital and other shareholders of YouTube made out like bandits when Google bought the video site for $1.65 billion in stock in November 2006. But we had always estimated their profits from the deal – until today, thanks to a newly unsealed court document in Viacom’s longstanding copyright infringement suit against Google and YouTube.
  According to this filing from Viacom’s lawsuit, which alleges that YouTube had knowledge of copyright infringement, Sequoia Capital received $516 million worth of Google stock on Nov. 16, 2006, representing 31% of the total price. (We estimated $495 million and a 30% stake at the time of the sale). Sequoia invested $9 million in the company in late 2005 and early 2006 (not $11.5 million as previously reported), meaning the firm made about 57 times its investment at the time of the sale.
  (tags: youtube google)

• Google Says There Are Now 30,000 Apps In Android Market – washingtonpost.com
  At the most recent Mobile World Congress, Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that the company's partners are now selling over 60,000 Android handsets on a daily basis. With that kind of growth rate, it's no wonder that the size of the Android Market is increasing in its slipstream. While Google doesn't publicly show how many apps there are in Android Market, a Google rep this morning informed me that the store now serves approx. 30,000 apps in total.
  (tags: google android mobile apps)