Hasta La Gadget!

According to a report the other day, it was suggested that the VLC app for Windows Phone could be released early August. Given that we’re almost at the end of July as it is, we guess an early August release does make sense. Well for those wondering if the VLC team will be able to deliver it in time, fret not because the app is ready.

This is according to one of the developers, Thomas Nigro, who posted on Twitter a screenshot of the upcoming app along with the words, “I’m ready”. Unfortunately when asked if we could look forward to the app’s release this week, Nigro replied by saying that would not be the case as he would be really busy this week.

Presumably this could mean that we can either look forward to the app’ release next week or the week after, but either way we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for more information. The release of VLC for Windows Phone follows the release of the version optimized for Windows 8. The app has been in development for a long time.

It was back in 2012 that the folks behind VLC launched a Kickstarter campaign to help raise funds to help them develop a Windows 8 and Windows Phone version of the app. Almost two years later, it looks like their efforts have finally come to fruition.

VLC For Windows Phone One Step Closer To Release

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SPECIAL FROM Grandparents.com

You don’t have to go to a palm reader to learn about your future. Pay attention to the state of your mitts—your nails, skin, and fingers can indicate all kinds of conditions and issues all by themselves.

Discoloration under the nail

A brown or black streak under the nail could be acral melanoma, a skin cancer that most often strikes people with darker skin tone, says David J. Leffell, M.D., Chief, Section of Dermatologic Surgery & Cutaneous Oncology, Yale University School of Medicine and author of “Total Skin.” The first sign may be a narrow, dark stripe under the nail that usually develops on the thumb or big toe, according to the AIM at Melanoma Foundation. You should get that checked out by a dermatologist immediately. A red discoloration under the nail right in front of the cuticle under the nail could be a sign of autoimmune disease such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. See a rheumatologist.

Pale, white or blue fingertips

This could signal Raynaud’s disease, a painful circulatory condition in which your fingers, toes and tips of your nose or ears go numb when temperatures drop or when you are stressed. The small arteries that supply blood to extremities narrow, limiting blood supply. If not taken care of properly, the disease can cause tissue damage. Make sure you wear insulated gloves and socks when venturing out into the cold. In severe cases, your doctor can prescribe vasodilators, which can relieve the artery spasm. (Rheumatologists are most familiar with the disease.) Avoid over-the-counter drugs that contain pseudoephedrine, which can make spasms worse.

Scaly patches on skin

See a dermatologist if you have red, rough patches that don’t heal or come and go. Dr. Leffel explains that they might be:

• Precancerous growths (actinic keratosis). Look for a scaly, crusty, elevated lesion, usually fairly small and can be mistaken for a wart. Usually benign, some can advance to squamous cell carcinoma. See a dermatologist who can remove it or provide a topical medical cream.
• Psoriasis. This autoimmune disease creates thick red, scaly patches on the skin and pits on the nails. In mild cases, it can be dealt with by using over-the-counter moisturizers or prescription steroidal cream, which reduce redness and swelling. Severe cases may need phototherapy or oral medications.
• Eczema. This chronic disease causes red, itchy skin that may become so dry that it cracks and bleeds. There is no known cause, but it may be related to genetics or allergies. It’s important to identify your eczema triggers—which can range from soaps and detergents to pollen and humidity levels—so you can avoid them. Moisturize daily and wear soft clothing that won’t irritate your skin. Use a humidifier in dry or cold weather.

Finger lengths

Looking at your palm, measure the length of your ring and index fingers from the lowest crease on the base up to the flesh tip. Put it into a ratio formula of 2D:4D (2=index finger, 4=ring finger). Believe it or not, this ratio can tell you about several important health issues. John T. Manning, Ph.D., professor of psychology, Northumbria University, England and author of “The Finger Ratio,” discovered that a lower 2D:4D (meaning the index finger is shorter than the ring finger) is associated with an increased risk of severe knee osteoarthritis. Another British study found that men with a length of 4D greater than 2D may be at higher risk of prostate cancer. A Chinese study discovered that patients with breast cancer had significantly higher 2D:4D ratio than controls.

Curved nails

Soft nails that curve likes spoons can be a sign of iron-deficiency anemia, says Dr.Leffell. The condition, called koilonychias, can be due to such malnutrition, gastrointestinal blood loss, worms, gastrointestinal malignancy, or celiac disease. See your internist who can check your iron levels.

Clubbed fingertips

In clubbing, the nail beds soften, the nails curve down and the ends of the fingers look big and bulbous. This is often due to a decrease in available oxygen in the body and could signal chronic lung disease and lung cancer. “We see it often in longtime smokers,” says Dr. Leffell. See a pulmonologist for a screening.

Swollen fingers and hands

Relatively harmless factors, like too much salt in your diet, hormone cycles, and dehydration, can lead to swollen fingers. But swelling and stiffness can be caused by other more serious issues, such as hypothyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis, low albumen or protein, mixed connective tissue disease, and systemic sclerosis. See an internist or rheumatologist for diagnosis.

Read more from Grandparents.com:
5 things that hurt your feet — and how to fix them
5 tricks for staying healthy when your grandkids are sick
Heathy things you can do in bed

My older son has a weekend job restocking supermarket shelves. No one calls him by his name; they summon him by yelling “stock!” He walks around with a clipboard, checking to see what’s run out and is constantly scrambling to replace the diet Raspberry Snapple. He’s still new at the job and though he knows he is allowed to help himself to as much as fountain soda as he wants, no one told him the rules for eating lunch. The day before, he had texted us, asking us to bring him something to eat.

Can one of you please come here and feed me!!!

My husband told him to go to the lunch counter and order a sandwich.

I don’t feel comfortable doing that I work for them I can’t just have them make me a sandwich.

My husband said he could, as long as he paid for it.

Maybe I’ll just have a muffin.

Eventually, my husband drove over, ordered a turkey club and gave him half.

My older son has another job during the week interning at a bank. He doesn’t have any days off and works harder than I ever did in high school. I had part-time jobs, babysitting and clerking, and spent summers working as a sailing instructor at a sleep away camp and as a salesgirl at Laura Ashley, where I was deemed too fat to appear in the fashion show, but was allowed to sell dresses and give out fabric samples. I never had two jobs simultaneously and my hardest job involved sitting and typing as a temp at Nabisco, where we got free Oreos at lunch. I never came home sweaty or collapsed at the end of the day on the couch, as my older son does.

I had started broiling peaches and mixing up a brown sugar pecan crumble at 9 on a Sunday morning because we’d run out of cereal and my son had gone to work without breakfast that morning. I would use up my ripe peaches and make a glazed peach and brown sugar pecan crumble and bring some to my son in a little Tupperware container. I would be that kind of mom.

Okay, fine, I wanted to see him at his new job.

I love ripe peaches. But there’s a thin line between ripe and rotten and when I blithely bought a bag of eight peaches at the farmer’s market on Tuesday, I’d forgotten that my husband was going to be away part of the week. Plus, my younger son isn’t wild about peaches. By the time I opened that bag on Sunday morning, the peaches were soft and bruised. I knew cooking them and dousing them with brown sugar and butter would save them, especially if I mixed them up with the pecan crumble I had learned from Kathleen Sanderson, an awesome and funny cooking instructor who teaches at Kings Cooking Studio. Kathleen was the first person to teach me how to make brisket in 1999 and her recipes always work exactly as she says they will. In class, she had showed us how to make grilled peaches and pecan crumble. All I had on hand was a can of mixed nuts—there were some pecans in there but not enough for the recipe, so I used the whole variety of nuts: almonds, walnuts, cashews, pistachios and peanuts.

The crumble takes almost no time: The hardest part is melting the butter and chopping the nuts in a blender. Then you mix it all up with the sugar, cinnamon, salt and flour – this is the fun part: mixing it together with your hands. For the lazy among us, crumbles are perfect. They are more forgiving than pies. There is no rolling or pressing or cutting around the edges as you sweat to make everything fit precisely. Crumbles accept whatever you have to offer.

The peaches were more work because I had to cut off the brown parts. Then they took a mere four minutes to broil (two minutes on each side).

“It’s really delicious,” my husband said.

“This is pretty good, for peaches,” my younger son said. His friend, who will grow up to be a successful young man because he made his own bed two mornings in a row, left his dirty sheets on top of the washing machine and put his dirty dishes in the dishwasher without being asked, ate the peaches silently and happily.

My older son was going to be so excited. I couldn’t wait to bring the peaches over. I texted him and said I was coming by.

“No. Do. Not.”

He ate the peach crumble when he finished his shift, then tumbled into bed.

Today is his birthday. He’s turning 18 and is applying to college in a few weeks. My days of making him snacks and lunch are coming to a close. Perhaps they’ve already closed. I hope he always finds ways to give new life to old fruit.

Hot Peaches with Nut Crumble
(4-8 servings, depending upon how many peaches you use)

Hot Peaches

Ingredients:
4-8 peaches, split and pitted (You can also use nectarines, pineapples or apricots.)
1-2 tablespoons butter
2-3 tablespoons brown sugar

If you are grilling fruit, turn grill on. If you are broiling peaches, turn the broiler on and cover a cookie sheet with tin foil.

Lay peach halves on a clean work surface. Brush with butter. Place peach halves cut side down on grill or if you are broiling, lay peach slices, cut side down, on cookie sheet. Broil/grill peaches 2 minutes until golden brown. Turn over and cook for 2 more minutes (4 minutes altogether). Sprinkle peaches with brown sugar and let melt slightly.

While the peaches are in the oven, assemble your crumble.

Brown Sugar Nut Crumble

Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup chopped nuts (pecans are ideal, but a combination of nuts is fine)
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons sweet butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line sheet pan with parchment. Combine flour, nuts, sugars, cinnamon and salt. Mix well. Add butter and rub the mixture into coarse crumbs (use your hands!). Scatter crumbs onto sheet pan and bake 25-30 minutes. Let cool a few minutes before adding to peaches.Add vanilla ice cream for an extra thrill.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Wednesday called for faster implementation of the state’s medical marijuana law, which passed last month but won’t take effect for another year and a half.

In a letter to the state Health Department, Cuomo cited the deaths of two children from complications of seizure disorders who could have been treated with medical cannabis. The Huffington Post reported last week that the death of 9-year-old Anna Conte prompted drug reform advocates to demand that Cuomo find a way to speed access to medical marijuana for patients with chronic conditions.

“The deaths … were tragic reminders of the urgent help children with epilepsy desperately need,” Cuomo wrote. “The children struggling with this condition deserve every consideration we can make that will potentially ease their pain and suffering.”

Conte’s mother, Wendy Conte, applauded the governor’s effort in a statement Wednesday, saying she hopes he will continue to focus on the issue. “We know that this medicine is readily available,” Conte said. “There is simply no reason, or excuse for why another child, like Anna, must die.”

Conte, who repeatedly lobbied state legislators on behalf of her daughter, is widely credited for New York’s medical marijuana law. The measure faced years of resistance from both Cuomo and conservative state lawmakers, and the legislation is one of the strictest medical marijuana laws in the U.S. The law allows patients to ingest cannabis in the form of edibles, tinctures or vapor, but they can’t smoke it — a restriction drug reformers argued will alienate lower-income patients.

Strains of medical marijuana that are high in cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive ingredient that doesn’t cause users to feel high, have proven extremely effective in treating rare conditions like Anna Conte’s. Children in states that allow the treatment, including Colorado and California, ingest the drug in pills or as a liquid tincture and in some cases have seen remarkable results. A 10-year-old boy HuffPost profiled in January used to suffer from thousands of debilitating seizures every day. He’s been seizure-free since beginning his medical marijuana regimen more than a year ago.

But cannabis remains illegal under federal law, with classifies the drug alongside heroin and LSD as having no medicinal value. As a result, states are adopting laws similar to New York’s that specifically target children with seizure disorders and other crippling ailments that may be helped by marijuana. Action has included even conservative states like Georgia, which is exploring using medical marijuana in clinical trials, and Florida, which passed a limited-access cannabis law earlier this month.

As Capital New York noted Wednesday, despite Cuomo’s efforts, there may not be much the governor can do to speed implementation of the law. Cultivating the marijuana plants for patients may take up to 10 months.

Some may not have that much time. “We have a moral obligation to ensure that this medicine is available to those who are critically ill now,” Kate Hintz, whose child suffers from a severe seizure disorder, said in a statement. “We cannot sit and wait for more deaths to occur before this is made a priority.”

This blog was co-authored with Prof Vijay Govindarajan, the Coxe Distinguished Professor at the Tuck School at Dartmouth and the author of NYT and WSJ Best Seller, Reverse Innovation.

In a diversified group, some business units perform better than the rest. This dynamics keeps changing, either due to the industry context or the leaders’ acumen. The performance of a unit influences the attention it gets from the CEOs and boards. The perception plays a significant role too. Initially, the CEOs try and give equal attention to all the business heads. Slowly, the equation changes and the unit that yields maximum profitability, attracts supreme ‘Executive Sponsorship’. Besides, its leadership relishes ‘Level III (highest)‘ coverage on CEO’s radar. These leaders consistently exceed the performance threshold and in return, elicit even greater expectations. In this virtuous cycle, an interesting ‘connect’ establishes between CEO’s expectations and his attention towards that unit.

Few leaders fail to raise the bar and eventually fall out from CEO’s radar. Over time, the CEO’s outlook on such businesses tends to get influenced by the personality of leaders, who lead them rather than the actual business context. This impacts the resources, talent provisioning and the budget for strategic growth initiatives. You can well imagine the future of such businesses and their leaders in due course of time. Sometimes, the leader gets the blame for creating the mess and is superseded by a new incumbent and occasionally, the CEO may decide to exit that space, considering lack of potential. Both the scenarios are avoidable and unwarranted, especially if the situation is misconstrued.

Kevin was foreseeing a similar scenario, when he called to bounce off his concerns. It was a late Friday evening when he asked for a reflective conversation. His unit was undergoing business restructuring and he started off with following expressions:-

• I don’t get an encouraging response for my unit’s growth plans; even the stakeholders’ attention is lukewarm.
• Although I am entrusted with this new unit, the management doesn’t seem to have many expectations from this unit.
• I see my business unit to be an important revenue churner but no one else shares my strategic vision.
• I’d like to turn this around, create value and get my unit back on CEO’s radar as one of the primary revenue drivers.
• How do I secure greater sponsorship in terms of budget, talent and mindshare?

We could sense Kevin’s ambition of making a difference but the problem was that he did not know where to begin from. Such situations are not unusual. Business leaders do face ‘Ups and Downs’ and often struggle in maintaining the growth trajectory. We engaged with Kevin creatively, to enable him explore the appropriate answers through a series of reflective business iterations. The outcome seemed to address three proverbial questions:-

• How to craft vision that makes people sit up and take note of?
• How to create viable scenarios and seek executive sponsorship?
• How to build conviction among stakeholders and elicit support in delivering intended outcomes?

The structured conversations with Kevin brought him tremendous clarity on appreciating the situation, identifying the hurdles, planning few early steps to draw stakeholders’ interest; creating and presenting viable scenarios and finally getting a ‘go-ahead’ for the key business pursuits. Of course, he put up a strong governance mechanism to stay afloat on CEO’s radar. The Kevin’s pursuits started yielding results in terms of his unit’s growth and a steady increase in the customer base. More importantly, he started getting invites for the key leadership meetings, focused on strategic agendas. He had altered the prism of perception w.r.t to the expectation and promise pertaining to his business unit. Kevin had arrived.

Reflections from these conversations led us to key nuggets of wisdom for leaders facing similar situations. They need to take ownership of reversing CEO’s perception by crafting strategic agendas, developing viable business perspectives and creating collective breadth to manifest big picture. Following seven steps might help in the journey:

1. Figure out where to begin from? Wondering won’t help, taking that first step is critical to chart your business destiny.
a. Understand the big picture and see where you stand with your setup.
b. How much of contribution do you visualize towards the big picture and how do you see it happening?
c. Gauge CEO’s expectation from your unit and identify stakeholder’s role in manifesting it.
2. Map Your Business Context. Probably, you haven’t kept pace with the changing business scenario, may be some critical signals have been overlooked or your pulse on future trends is not very firm. So, get a strong grip on this by mapping the ‘Playfield‘ effectively.
a. Capture changing consumer preferences, technological breakthroughs and the regulations.
b. Identify un-served/under-served needs.
c. Explore White Spaces for innovations.
3. Tune in to Primary Stakeholder. Listening to your customers/non-customers is imperative. How often this simple aspect of listening, when ignored has led to the collapse of once reigning businesses?
a. Engage – Elicit – Embrace; listen to those unformed/semi-formed utterances.
b. Articulate and playback this understanding to stakeholders to crystallize expectations.
c. Evaluate expectations through the lens of value propositions – Products / Services / Integrated Spectrum.
d. Make assumptions to underscore the potential value propositions – test them against the prevailing scenarios, internally/externally
e. Convert these assumptions into two or three concrete hypotheses.
4. Validate your True Picture. Your picture must evolve into a shared vision. Unless, stakeholders see elements of their ambition in it, no one will ever buy into the argument.
a. Present hypotheses as viable options and let your strategic insights reveal through the conversations.
b. Capture responses as ‘Excitement, Indifference or Sabotage‘; ascertain their emotions and pay heed to subtle signals of approvals/disconnects to ensure that elusive support.
c. At this stage, listen more & defend less; focus on the words/phrases, they matter a lot.
d. Establish every single gap and bridge it effectively.
5. Create Viable Business Perspectives. Consolidate hypotheses into two/three sound business potentialities.
a. Bounce these potentialities with the relevant stakeholders – build conviction through analysis and intuition.
b. Recapture stakeholders’ discrete expectations and depict them visually.
c. Establish the linkages/disconnects, constantly align/re-align them – you have something concrete to work upon.
d. Build a federation, draw analogy from the exercise of brokering support in a coalition government.
e. Focus on interplay of disparate stakes, the nuggets of gold are hidden there; demystify them.
6. Craft Your Vision Statement. World’s best recipe, if not served well, will fail to stimulate the clients. CEOs/boards being the most significant connoisseur of your business recipes will not take note, if it fails to evoke powerful and compelling mental images, with sound business logic and aspirational stories.
a. Create an ambitious statement that emotes well with customers’ unmet/under-served needs.
b. Make sure it is part of the company’s bigger picture and catches CEO’s attention.
c. Let these statements evolve through a series of iterations with critical stakeholder as part of buy-in process.
d. Keep the customers’ relevance on forefront.
e. Simplicity is supreme sophistication; vision must be understood by rank and file.
7. Alter the Perception Prism. This is the most crucial step. The expression of ‘Business Intent‘ and all the efforts above will increase your chances of presenting a sound business case to the CEO. It is about altering the prism through which you and your unit have been viewed up till now and lift the expectations through:-
a. A Bold Proposition. Business Transformation Impact, contributing to Enterprise Thought Leadership.
b. Significant Pull in Demand. Percentage contribution to the overall yearly growth.
c. Game Changing Innovation. Technology Platform for MSME (Micro & Small and Medium Enterprise) with potential $ value.
d. Tangible shift in Customer Base. Capture X% of specified market growth.
e. Expand Global Footprint. Forays into uncharted territories with specified FTEs (Full Time Employees).

The onus of staying on CEO’s radar for a business rests with its leadership. If the leadership lets the expectations drop, be rest assured, the attention to your efforts will also go down. A day will arrive when your existence as a leader or the relevance of your unit as a viable business will be questioned. Preempt the doomsday scenario with strategic thinking and structured envisioning.