Seth's Blog Joel on Software 16 free online business classes that are actually worth your time Platform: Coursera Length/start date: Runs ten weeks, and started September 15 Time commitment/prerequisites: Six to eight hours a week, and no background in the area required. Why you should take it: Learning the basics of accounting and how to read a balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow is incredibly useful for just about anybody. The course is also designed for students with no background in the subject, and the only math requirement is knowing how to add and subtract. As the professor puts it, accounting is “the language of business.” The course is also offered by one of the most prestigious business schools in the country, and taught by one of Wharton’s senior and most highly regarded faculty members, Brian Bushee, a 13-year veteran of Wharton and former Harvard Business School professor.
Putting people first Big Data powers the modern world. What do we gain from Big Data? What do we lose? Al Jazeera America examines the role of technology and the implications of sharing personal information in the network’s first graphic novella, Terms of Service: Understanding Our Role in the World of Big Data. The new comic novella, available on Al Jazeera America’s website at is a thought provoking, entertaining field guide to help smart people understand how their personal, and often very private, data is collected and used. Co-produced by well-known cartoonist Josh Neufeld and Al Jazeera America reporter Michael Keller, Terms of Service is an entertaining feature that follows characters “Josh and Michael” as they journey through the challenges of digital privacy and other issues consumers should be aware of in the “brave new world” of technology and Big Data. Josh Neufeld is a nonfiction cartoonist living in Brooklyn.
The Danger of Financial Jargon - The New Yorker The most important mystery of ancient Egypt concerned the annual inundation of the Nile floodplain. The calendar was divided into three seasons linked to the river and the agricultural cycle it determined: akhet, or the inundation; peret, the growing season; and shemu, the harvest. The size of the harvest depended on the size of the flood: too little water, and there would be famine; too much, and there would be catastrophe; just the right amount, and the whole country would bloom and prosper. But the priests were cheating, because they had something else, too: Nilometers. The world is full of priesthoods. It’s the same when you hear money people talk about the effect of QE2 on M3, or the supply-side impact of some policy or other, or the effects of bond-yield retardation or of a scandal involving forward-settling E.T.F.s, or M.B.S.s, or subprime loans and REITs and C.D.O.s and C.D.S.s. Sometimes the language of finance really is obscure, and does hide the truth.
Feedmyapp - Your Daily Web 2.0 Sites Dose Financial Investment News - Stock Investing News - Investment News - Barrons.com ClickZ | Marketing News & Expert Advice The importance of headlines should never be overlooked, a little time spent finding the right headline can make a lot of difference. A good headline means more people will click on your article wherever they see it, it ensures that the effort you spent in writing an article doesn’t go to waste, and it can also help your content to be picked up by search engines in the weeks and months after publishing. Here are a few areas to think about when writing headlines. It should be noted though, that its not about writing sensation headlines for short-term traffic gains, it’s about ensuring that, if you write a quality article, the headline works to sell it. 1. As I mentioned in a recent post on journalism and SEO, some lamented the passing of the pun headline with the coming of the web. They were fun, and there’s nothing to stop them being used in print, but web headlines do need to be descriptive. The problem is that non-descriptive headlines don’t work so well out of context. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Social Business Design « Dachis Group Collaboratory Seriously, you may not realize it yet, but your need to deal with the greatest business disruption of the past 100 years is what inspired the outlier idea for what Forrester Research called “the most powerful technology in the market.” That historic disruption is The Empowered Consumer in this Conversation Economy. When these two are brought together, brands are at a distinct disadvantage, regardless of their size, market cap or annual revenue. The expectations of the customer have changed. “Have you been hearing what we’re hearing?” “You will respect my time and deliver a great experience, no matter where I choose to interact with you: social, digital, call center or front desk…” “…If you can do that, you have my loyalty and my business. Sprinklr technology powers the conversation economy. Brands can no longer survive by just ‘doing social.’ The conversation economy represents the new reality: What others say about you carries far more weight than anything you can say about yourself.