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|  | July 10th, 2012 | | Posted about 5 hours ago by  Lily Koi to Holy Kaw! | | Americans love to be lone wolves. Sadly, that's a stupid thing to do when you're running a small business. Advisory teams are a great way to add some experience to your business. But how do you start one? Open Forum has some ideas. Here's one way to build a team: Tap into free resources Two of the best places I’ve found for business owners to get advice and feedback are SCORE and the Small Business Development Centers (SBDC). SCORE Mentors can advise you on all aspects of business, and you can even get answers from Mentors 24/7 online at the SCORE website. SBDCs, located in many communities nationwide, have experts on staff ranging from consultants to business owners who can advise you for free. Find the nearest one at the SBA website. Full story at Open Forum. All the latest startup news. Photo credit: Fotolia | | | | | Posted about 22 hours ago by  Kate Rinsema to Holy Kaw! |  2 | | There’s been plenty of outrage targeted toward publishers who only allow a certain number of digital book checkouts before libraries are forced to repurchase them, but that attitude has now infiltrated the world of the printed word as well through publisher Eterna Cadencia. The idea isn’t necessarily to cheat consumers, but to make sure they fulfill their reading goals once the cover is cracked. Their first effort, The Book That Can’t Wait, is printed with disappearing ink that only lasts two months after being exposed to light and air, meaning that if you don’t get down to business, there won’t be any business to get to if you procrastinate or find a more interesting read. Their goal is to make sure people read new authors instead of pushing their premiere novels, and, hence, their careers, aside, and while it doesn’t sound very appealing to us, it did cause quite a stir in Argentina where they sold out immediately. Embedded media -- click here to see it. Full story at LA Times via Bit Rebels. Temporary books. | | | Posted about 21 hours ago by  Carlos Valerio to Conozca Más | | Levantarte a las 5:00 am después de un exquisito fin de semana es una grosería. Dejar la cama para empezar una nueva jornada es –casi– tan difícil como dejar el vientre materno. ¿Cómo sacudirte la flojera y empezar la mañana energéticamente? ¡Que se haga la luz!
El reloj biológico está sincronizado con la iluminación solar. Prende todas las luces de tu cuarto al levantarte. Recibir destellos artificiales puede engañar a tu cuerpo y hacerle creer que ya es hora de activarse.
Muévete
Ejercítate por las mañanas. Salir a correr o realizar alguna actividad física en tu habitación –si es un 'rapidín', mejor–, es más eficiente que un espresso.
La regla de los 10 minutos
Cuando apagues tu alarma, quédate despierto 10 minutos. Después de este período es muy probable que el sueño desaparezca.
Crea
Empieza tu día con una actividad que ocupe tu mente. Las tareas creativas como escribir, dibujar o diseñar, funcionan mejor que leer o ver la televisión.
Come
Dedica, por los menos, 10 minutos a tu desayuno. Saltarte la primera comida del día, desequilibra tu metabolismo y provoca que subas de peso y pierdas energía.
Realiza un plan de sueño
Programa tus horas de sueño. Desvelarte de lunes a viernes e 'hibernar' los fines de semana es una mala estrategia. Organízate y duerme de seis a ocho horas por noche.
Súbele al volumen
Prepara un playlist con las canciones más escandalosas que conozcas y disfruta tu buffet auditivo. | | | Posted about 13 hours ago by  mental_floss to Holy Kaw! | | 1 | | Entertainment gossip rags are all abuzz discussing the pros and cons of a possible Dwight Schrute (of The Office fame) spinoff TV series. No doubt the producers and agents involved are too blinded by dollar signs to take the time to examine the fates of previous spinoff shows based on “can’t miss” popular characters. We hereby submit 11 such shows that barely made it past the drawing board. 1. W*A*L*T*E*R  | This M*A*S*H spinoff had as complicated a broadcast history as plot backstory. Gary Burghoff, who’d played the loveable Cpl. Radar O’Reilly at the 4077, provided a bit of background for his upcoming solo series during a special guest appearance on an episode of yet another ill-fated spinoff, AfterM*A*S*H. There we learned that Radar’s (oops – he made it clear in the pilot that his name was “Walter”) farm had failed and he’d shipped his mom off to live with an aunt. He’d married a woman named Sandy who left him for another man during their honeymoon. He now lived in St. Louis with his cousin and was a rookie cop on the local police force. The first episode showed hapless, naïve Walter exhibiting typical Radar-like behavior, such as getting embarrassed when breaking up a fight at a strip club, and buying a soda for a kid he falsely accused of committing a crime. The pilot episode of W*A*L*T*E*R aired just once (on July 17th, 1984; the series was not picked up), and only in the Eastern and Central time zones thanks to CBS affiliates cutting to live coverage of the 1984 Democratic National Convention at 9:00pm. 2. Facts of Life: Next Generation The proposed Facts of Life spinoff had several working titles but never made it past the two-part Facts of Life finale entitled “The Beginning of the Beginning.” It was to be a vehicle for Lisa Whelchel, whose snooty Blair Warner character would buy the financially troubled Eastland School and become its new headmistress. Embedded media -- click here to see it. 3. The Art of Being Nick Scott Valentine was introduced as Nick Moore, Mallory’s love interest on Family Ties, during the series’ fourth season. Nick was a retro-hippie “environmental” artist who made sculptures out of garbage and whose grungy appearance and lack of scholastic ambition was a sore point with Steven, Elyse and Alex. Audience reaction to Nick was so positive that not one but three different pilots for a spinoff series were filmed in 1986. The one that made it to the air in 1987 was The Art of Being Nick and co-starred a pre-Seinfeld Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Even though the ratings were encouraging, NBC honcho Brandon Tartikoff nixed the series, preferring to keep the Nick character as a semi-regular on Family Ties. Embedded media -- click here to see it. 4. Karen This proposed Will and Grace spinoff didn’t get as far as the pilot stage, but it was all mapped out on paper. Megan Mullally would star as Karen Walker in her mansion and most of the comedy would be the interaction between her and her servants (one of which was slated to be a butler played by Martin Short). NBC got cold feet, though, after the lackluster ratings for Joey and gave Mullally a talk show instead of a sitcom. See the rest at mental_floss. All the top stories from mental_floss. | | | Posted about 17 hours ago by Carlos Valerio to Conozca Más | | Cerebro vs software, huesos vs cables, ¿vulnerabilidad vs poder? Películas como 'Terminator' y 'The Matrix' nos han enseñado que la inteligencia artificial puede revelarse y crear destrucción masiva. Aunque los expertos coinciden en que nuestra relación con las máquinas es armoniosa, existen hipótesis que especulan lo peor. "Ya existe la tecnología para construir sistemas que destruyan el mundo entero", menciona Shlomo Zilberstein, profesor de ciencias de la computación en la Universidad de Massachusetts. ¿Máquinas a nuestro servicio?
Los robots son sinónimos de sirvientes, no de asesinos. "La única forma de prevenir catástrofes, es evitando la creación de sistemas que sean peligrosos", asegura Zilberstein.
Desarrollar un programa como Skynet –la inteligencia artificial que lidera al ejército de máquinas en la saga de 'Terminator'– es posible, aunque las naciones 'nuclearmente armadas' no quieren otorgarles demasiados privilegios a las computadoras. No obstante, la posibilidad de que un sistema 'apriete el gatillo' autónomamente, está creciendo cada vez más, sobre todo en Oriente Medio.
En caso de un holocausto robótico, Zilberstein piensa que las medidas de seguridad podrían detener la amenaza; además, ningún sistema sería capaz de tomar decisiones estratégicas como Skynet. "Todos los sistemas tendrán habilidades específicas. Serán capaces de monitorear una región y quizás disparar estratégicamente, pero nunca reemplazarán al ser humano", afirma el profesor.
La inteligencia artificial supera al creador
Michael Dyer, científico de computación en la Universidad de California, muestra una postura menos optimista: "Los humanos serán sustituidos por máquinas, y la transición quizás no sea pacífica".
Según Dyer, la inteligencia artificial será tan precisa como la nuestra en los próximos cien años. "Las civilizaciones del futuro entenderán el funcionamiento de su propio cerebro, y construirán versiones sintéticas de sí mismos. ¿A quién no le gustaría evitar la muerte y pasar directamente a un cuerpo robótico?". Sin embargo, el ejército también aprovechará estos beneficios y creará militares artificiales para combatir al enemigo. En este caso, no se tendrá control alguno sobre el atacante.
Otra hipótesis sugiere que los robots buscarán su independencia y mostrarán signos de rebeldía. "Si una fábrica que produce robots, llegara a detectar que éstos no están siguiendo órdenes, emitiría una orden para cortar la energía. Pero desafortunadamente, los humanoides serían los encargados de controlar la central eléctrica, así que se negarían. Los choferes y los guardias también serían artificiales, por lo que existiría un círculo vicioso", opina el científico.
En general, un poco de sabiduría y prudencia, protegerán a la humanidad de caer en las trampas armadas por los escritores hollywoodenses. Pero quizás la ambición de los empresarios y los científicos provoquen su propia destrucción. ¡Sálvanos, John Connor! FUENTE lifeslittlemysteries.com/Wikipedia | | | Posted about 14 hours ago by  Garry Tan to Y Combinator Posterous | | Google Plus, eat your heart out. Group video conferencing service to 100,000 users since launching in April. The startup’s three founders have been heads down developing screen-sharing and file transfer features, released today, with lofty plans of taking on Webex and other clunky video conference services for the enterprise. The promise of this Y Combinator company is a free tool to start conversations with anyone in the world in seconds, no registration required. If you choose to sign up, you’ll be given a permanent meeting room. Invite up to 5 friends into your room with a link (for example, Meetings.io/John), and share a side-by-side screen. Read the full article on VentureBeat | | | Posted about 14 hours ago by Garry Tan to Y Combinator Posterous | | Plivo, a telephony startup from the current Y Combinator batch, is today launching its API platform for voice and SMS applications. Despite the sound of it, Plivo is not a direct competitor with developer-friendly Twilio, but is targeting larger businesses in need of scale. ... Launched six months ago in invite-only mode, Plivo now has a dozen customers, half of which are paying. From those paying customers, it now handles 4 million minutes per month on its platform. One of its customers switched from another provider and is now saving 60% in costs, says Venky. Today, Plivo is exiting its invite-only status and making its platform available to all. For those wanting to use Plivo’s carriers, it’s available in the U.S. and Canada for now. For businesses with their own carrier relationships, Plivo can be used worldwide. Read the full article at Techcrunch | | | Posted about 9 hours ago by Garry Tan to Y Combinator Posterous | | Parallel Universe is an Israeli technology company that promises video game companies the capability to make Matrix-style games through parallel processing, allowing millions of objects to be tracked in real-time. We’re talking about the ability to create a game with thousands of players and untold number of aliens and battleships shooting nuclear missiles and green rays. Really. Founder Ron Pressler is a software engineer who has been developing simulated environments for the Israeli Air Force. He is part of this summer’s Y Combinatorclass. Spacebase, the company’s first product, is an offshoot of the military technology Pressler developed. It offers server-side, in-memory, low-latency, dynamic, concurrent and distributed spatial data-store for 2D and 3D spatial objects. Primary markets for the technology include MMO (massively multiplayer online) games, defense applications and location-based services. Read the full article on Techcrunch | | | Posted about 8 hours ago by Kate Rinsema to Holy Kaw! | | Digging up bodies, no matter how old, is always a bit eerie, but perhaps never so much as when the parts of those bodies aren’t all from the same person. Scientists were shocked to discover that two 3000-year-old “bog bodies” found beneath 11th century houses off the Scottish coast were made of six people, but that’s only the beginning of the creepiness surrounding this find. It appears they’d been buried just long enough to be preserved before being unearthed and reconstructed 300 to 600 years later. The explanations thus far for such bizarre rituals range from simply adding a head or arm that fell off the original for appearance’s sake to the bodies being representative of a larger idea, yet it’s likely we’ll never know the strange story behind these grisly reconstructions. A bolt of lightning might help, though, be it literal or figurative. Full story at National Geographic via The Mary Sue. Mysteries of archaeology. Photo credit: Mike Parker Pearson, University of Sheffield | | | Posted about 5 hours ago by Lily Koi to Holy Kaw! | | Lots of folks claim to be entrepreneurs––half the time, though, that's just code for "unemployed." What separates the real ones from the fake ones? The Sydney Morning Herald offers eight suggestions. Here are two: - All or nothing. I always hesitate when an entrepreneur is working in a few ventures, or is trying to start a venture and working in a full-time job. I tried that myself – a near full-time job while starting a venture – and it did not work. Start-up entrepreneurship requires nothing less than 100 per cent commitment. Surely if the idea is that good, the entrepreneur will put their whole focus on it.
- Sacrifices. When looking at smaller listed companies, I like founders who are willing to forgo a decent salary early on, in return for “sweat” equity in the company or bigger rewards later – and who leave all the money-wasting perks for executive fat-cats. Those who want a decent salary upfront are usually managers rather than real entrepreneurs.
Full story at Sydney Morning Herald. Top news for entrepreneurs. Photo credit: Fotolia | | | | |
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