Stepping out without a battery case on our iPhone is for many as unlikely as leaving the smartphone at home altogether, but with Apple slow to embrace wireless charging, Mophie is picking up the slack. The company has launched Charge Force today, both a range of new Juice Pack battery cases which support the main wireless charging standards, and a … Continue reading
It’s long been rumored that the iPhone 7 will be losing a big feature when Apple announces it later this year. It may prove one of the most controversial changes that the company has made to the smartphone, as people have already been up in arms about it. After all, nearly every pair of headphones uses a 3.5mm jack, so … Continue reading
Wireless phone charging has been around for years, but most consumers wouldn’t know it. The fight between different standards and a lack of support from phone makers has made the entire idea of charging your mobile wirelessly a huge mess. Mophie is h…
Nothing says summer like lying on a beach and getting stuck into a good book. But what to read? A 19th century classic, or perhaps Murakami’s latest surrealist tale? What about the fascinating story of how mobile provider EE came to be? Well, look no…
It’s often hard to convey what’s happening inside virtual reality. HTC Vive’s green screen idea attempts to do just that — and also make it more interesting to watch. I will admit: Watching someone else play in VR is typically pretty damn boring. Bu…
Growing up I was really into vinyl records that had images on them. They were called picture discs if memory serves, and I had a bunch of them with soundtracks from different Disney movies on them. If you are still into records, you can now get The Force Awakens soundtrack on a very special vinyl disc, created by Infinity Light Science for Disney Music.
It’s not exactly a picture disc, but it does have some awesome holograms on it. As the record spins, the holograms rotate around. Depending on which side of the disc you’re looking at, you can see holograms of the Millennium Falcon or a Tie Fighter on the vinyl surface of the album. You do need to be at just the right angle to see the hologram, and need a direct light source like a flashlight or the LED flash on your smartphone for optimal viewing.
The 2 LP set also includes a 16-page booklet that includes liner notes from J.J. Abrams. It’s $50(USD), which isn’t exactly cheap, but at least it’s got holograms on it. You can pre-order yours from Amazon now, and it’ll ship on June 17.
[via Nerd Approved]
KANCHANABURI, Thailand (Reuters) – Wildlife authorities in Thailand have raided a Buddhist temple where tigers are kept, taking away 40 of the animals by Tuesday and vowing to confiscate scores more in response to global pressure over wildlife trafficking.
The Buddhist temple in Kanchanaburi province west of Bangkok had more than 130 tigers and had become a tourist destination where visitors took selfies with tigers and bottle-fed cubs.
The temple promoted itself as a wildlife sanctuary, but in recent years it had been investigated for suspected links to wildlife trafficking and animal abuse.
Wildlife activists have accused the temple’s monks of illegally breeding tigers, while some visitors have said the animals can appear drugged. The temple denies the accusations.
The raid, which began on Monday, was the latest move by authorities in a tug-of-war since 2001 to bring the tigers under state control.
Adisorn Nuchdamrong, deputy director-general of the Department of National Parks, said his team was able to confiscate the tigers thanks to a warrant obtained a few hours before the operation began.
“We have a court warrant this time, unlike previous times, when we only asked for the temple’s cooperation, which did not work,” Adisorn told Reuters.
“International pressure concerning illegal wildlife trafficking is also part of why we’re acting now.”
Officials moved seven tigers from the temple on Monday and 33 on Tuesday, leaving 97 still there.
Adisorn said the department planned to remove all of the tigers and send them to state-owned sanctuaries. Officials also found also found six hornbills, which are protected birds, at a monk’s residence, he said.
Monks at the temple were not available for comment.
Previous attempts to inspect the tigers were largely blocked by the temple’s abbots but in January and February wildlife officials removed 10 tigers.
Thailand has long been a hub for the illicit trafficking of wildlife and forest products, including ivory. Exotic birds, mammals and reptiles, some of them endangered species, can often be found on sale in markets.
The government introduced new animal welfare laws in 2015 aimed at curbing animal abuse, but activists accuse authorities of not enforcing the legislation.
The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said the temple was “hell for animals”, which spent much of their lives in cement cells.
“The tigers … should be transferred to suitable sanctuaries and facilities that can offer them a better life,” the group said in its statement.
It called on tourists to stop visiting animal attractions at home or abroad.
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There’s no denying that starting a company is an exciting venture, but what happens when we get our business off of the ground and start hiring team members to help us achieve our vision? That’s often when we need to really sit down and think about the best ways to use our position as a manager to empower our teams to be their best to one another and the business. Here are six ways to effectively lead the charge.
1. Be clear.
One of the most essential tools a manager has is their ability to use clarity to their advantage. Don’t just share your expectations as a demand, but take it a bit further. Be clear as to what the short and long-term goals are, what is needed, when it is needed and why it is needed. This last one is a big deal because it allows them to see the whole picture and at the same time gives them a sense of the value that they bring to the overall project. This will ultimately allow them to perform at higher standards and, perhaps, even exceed expectations.
2. Trust, but verify.
Micromanaging is suffocating in any environment, but following up and asking if any clarification is needed can be extremely helpful for those who are on the more timid side. Let team members know that you have an open-door policy and encourage them to ask questions by letting them know that you’d rather take the time to answer and guide than have any miscommunication as a result of them not speaking up out of fear.
3. Give employees room to grow.
In any “family” there will be disagreements, eye-rolls, and days when people aren’t particularly pleasant, but it’s important to always see the big picture: the person as a whole and the job they do. Train yourself to give them the benefit of the doubt. As managers, we are there to guide, lead, understand, and to step in and ask, “Are you OK? How can I help?” It can make all of the difference in the world, trust me.
4. Get them involved.
There is a big difference between the energy of someone working “for” you and someone who feels they are working “with” you. Yes, you are still the boss, but when you value your staff and show that you have appreciation for their part in achieving a shared goal, they will be more loyal to their work, their team and the company. Gratitude is paramount.
5. Help them prioritize projects.
In our business, everything is a priority, but that’s not going to help someone who has no idea what you need earliest in the day. Be respectful of the workload on their plate and let them know what to focus on first.
6. Lead by example.
Remember that you set the tone for your work environment. If you want to run a productive, passionate, friendly and loyal team, you must exemplify these traits yourself. Trust, respect, enthusiasm and dedication go both ways and energy is contagious. Showcase the traits you want your staff members to have while also making room for their own unique skills and personalities. Your clients will notice the synergy, and in the end, all of you will grow, and so will your company.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Who would have thought that an issue too hard to explain in a sound bite would become the main axis along which the American presidential election is fought? Donald Trump’s railings against China or Mexico shrewdly put a political face on that issue: globalization. Trump was smart enough to see what other politicians astoundingly missed: how the perception of globalization negatively affects the personal lives of many Americans.
Politics is the art of perception. Ed Koch, the late mayor of New York, once recalled, while campaigning on the Coney Island Boardwalk in Brooklyn, an elderly woman who approached him and implored that he “make it like it was.”
America today is richer than it has ever been and is in the healthiest economic condition of any major global economy, yet many Americans don’t see it that way. Like Ed Koch’s elderly constituent, they want it to be like it used to be. And globalization gets caught up in that “used to be.” Global economic growth is counterintuitive — people view global economics as a zero-sum game. If another country has grown wealthier, then it stands to reason that your country is now poorer.
The facts, however, suggest the opposite. China has become significantly wealthier over the past 40 years, as we all know, but so has the United States. In 1980, the United States had a gross domestic product of $2.8 trillion, while China’s was only $302 billion. By 2014 the U.S. economy had grown to $17.348 trillion, and the Chinese economy grew to $10.430 trillion. The U.S. economy, as we can see, more than doubled during that period. Of course, China’s rate of growth during the same time was much quicker, but they had much more room to grow. China needed to build steel mills and highways, and electrify their rural areas. The United States did this a long time ago. The point is that the United States did not get poorer as China grew — quite the opposite.
Compounding the illusion that global growth is a zero-sum game is the reality that some people have lost their jobs to globalization. But the operative word here is some. In the political game of perception, Donald Trump has managed, with his attacks on China, Japan, and Mexico, to make globalization the simplistic scapegoat for most of the job losses in American manufacturing. However, as reported by Bloomberg two years ago, this was not the case then, nor is it the case now.
“The U.S. had become the second-most-competitive manufacturing location among the 25 largest manufacturing exporters worldwide. While that news is welcome, most of the lost U.S. manufacturing jobs in recent decades aren’t coming back. In 1970, more than a quarter of U.S. employees worked in manufacturing. By 2010, only one in 10 did.
“The growth in imports from China had a role in that decline — contributing, perhaps to as much as one-quarter of the employment drop-off from 1991 to 2007, according to an analysis by David Autor and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the U.S. jobs slide began well before China’s rise as a manufacturing power. And manufacturing employment is falling almost everywhere, including in China. The phenomenon is driven by technology.”
Take for example all the people that used to make cameras and film in upstate New York; does anyone buy a Brownie camera or film anymore? Or look at companies that used to print newspapers and books that are now facing severe competition from e-readers. And then there is the U.S. automobile industry. In 2015 the United States manufactured 12,000,000 vehicles, double the quantity of the early 1950s, when there were no imports. Yet those 2015 production numbers were achieved with the same number of workers as in 1953, approximately 900,000. A key difference appears to be automation. In 2014, 58 percent of all industrial robots ordered in North America went to the automobile industry.
Rapidly declining employment in the coal industry is another example where technological change is the main factor, while climate change and now even China are being blamed. In a masterful but irrational readjustment of facts, Donald Trump once tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
The decline in employment in the coal industry is partly due to climate change, but the main culprit is innovation in energy production. Due to innovations in fracking, natural gas is not only now much more competitive for use as an energy source in manufacturing, it is also cleaner. Coal, like Kodak’s old Brownie camera, is being innovated out of business.
In 1960, Harvard professor Theodore Levitt wrote an essay in the Harvard Business Review titled “Marketing Myopia.” In the essay, Levitt refers to the destruction of buggy whip industries due to the advent of the automobile. This analogy has now entered the economic lexicon. Although Professor Levitt’s point was that if the buggy whip industry was attuned to their market they would have understood and re-adjusted to change, in terms of the employees there was a benefit in that change that does not exist today. The buggy whip employees found better jobs relatively easily in the rapidly growing automobile industry. The same could be said throughout that period in American history, when millions left the farm for the cities because they were able to find better jobs in various forms of manufacturing with relative ease. Change was not frightening then, because new industrial jobs replaced the old occupations.
The difference today isn’t globalization alone; it is that change for many people looks frightening and not positive. In the age of human capital, industrialized economies — whether it’s in the United States, Germany, Japan, or China — will rely less and less on manufacturing. The agility needed to be able to go from factory work to the gig economy, or tech, or entrepreneurialism, or services, is much more difficult than it was to go from the buggy whip factory to the automobile factory. And instead of leading by proposing realistic ideas on how the government can help with that change, Trump is playing on the fear of change. This essay also ran in Real Clear World.
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One of my closest, most ridiculously-talented friends, Jonathan, gave me the best feedback on feedback I’ve ever received. As a professional singer and actor currently crushing it on Broadway, Jonathan is barraged with pointed feedback daily: too loud, too soft, too early, too late, less jazz hands, more cowbell, etc. In the hyper-competitive entertainment industry, these opportunities for micro-improvements can mean the difference between landing a Broadway role or playing the pan flute for spare change. In many ways, Jonathan’s success hinges on his ability to hear and act upon the feedback that’s given. A big part of this involves making people more comfortable giving him more and better feedback than the next guy.
What’s his secret? Whenever Jonathan is given feedback, no matter how off-base or poorly-delivered, he always responds with “Thank you.” This response puts the person giving feedback at ease, increasing the chances they’ll give more feedback down the line while shifting Jonathan’s mental state from a place of defensiveness to one of openness and humility. This gives Jonathan an edge in an industry overrun with ego.
The role of receiving feedback is often understated in the business world. So much advice focuses on giving feedback, from when (immediately after an incident) to where (a neutral location where everyone feels at ease) to how (wedged between compliments, a la “crap sandwich”). But the receiver is the true gatekeeper of the exchange, responsible not only for what’s heard, but also for how much the other person says.
Jonathan’s strategy of always thanking the feedback giver is an easy way to improve the quality and quantity of feedback he receives. Here are a few others I’ve picked up:
Giving feedback is often difficult and uncomfortable, and the receiver has a clear choice every time they’re approached: exacerbate the discomfort and train the giver to avoid similar exchanges in the future, or reinforce the giver and make them feel valued and heard. The collective intelligence of your team or organization will almost always surpass your own, and being a thoughtful and intentional feedback receiver will allow you to be empowered, rather than encumbered, by this incredible resource.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
