Guest Blogger Guidelines

Some of you have commented to me that I seem to have a number of guest posts on this blog lately and wonder about how I chose guest bloggers. It's pretty simple.

Most potential guest bloggers contact me via email. If they can suggest a topic that is in line with the theme of this blog, and demonstrate that they can write decently, we proceed.

Any guest post has to be on topic and well written. I also allow a byline of course (one link please initially), something like these examples:

Joe Brooks is a blogger and businessman who can be found at Brochure Designing. He lives in Missoula and fly fishes in his spare time.

This post courtesy of Fred Flintstone, an expert in Champagne.

Henry Higgins writes on red wine, the formerly disgraced science of Phrenology, and Clams. He lives in downtown Chicago with his 37 cats.

When the post is done it is reviewed by a small group of my colleagues - basically I pass it by them. They decide whether it is good enough to publish. Most posts get published. The link must be to a high quality site or blog.

 

Finding real food online

Restaurant reviews online etc are nothing new, but dishtIp takes this a lot further.

This is a semantic discovery platform that allows users to search by dish name, flavor, cuisine, ingredients, meal type and price yet offers users the experience of a hand-curated community based.

Want to see the 100 Top Dishes Across the USA? I knew one in the top ten and yes, I agree, it's up there.

Want to find a certain type of restaurant within one block from your phone? Dishtip will do it.

Now I've just started playing with dishtip, and have no connection to it, but it's pretty interesting and I may be giving it a good whirl on some upcoming trips. If nothing else, it's a fun tool for those of us who love food!

Promising Markets Of The Near Future

Predicting what is going to happen in the stock market is historically difficult. People have made fortunes overnight, other people have lost their retirement savings. No matter how easy it may seem to make a fortune overnight, investors should always remember that although Wall Street isn't exactly comparable to Vegas as far as the nature of the risk you're taking, it can be just as lethal.

A huge part of being successful on the stock market is being invested for the long run and being able to forecast the trajectory of future industries. We would all love to invest heavily in the Microsoft startup of the 2010s, but remember that hindsight is always 20/20. Picking a long term winner requires scrupulous research, patience, and some luck. Here are a few markets that could gain major traction this decade:

Additive manufacturing—This technology is just now hitting the market in experimental phases. Sometimes called '3D printing', it will allow companies to essentially own a factory inside their office, using mathematical blueprints to build objects layer by later. This new form of manufacturing will change the world once developers work out the kinks. Aggressive companies in this industry, such as Optomec, could make for excellent long-term investments.

Biosimilars—The bane of the biopharmaceutical industry's existence, these generic-like big molecule drug products are changing the landscape of Big Pharma and are estimated to earn over ten billion dollars annually by 2020. Investing now in a small biosimilar company with big connections could make for a windfall of cash later.

Stem cells—Many analysts though that a Democratic president in office would make stem cell treatments take off. The reality is, more time was needed to perfect the research. Amazing things are being done in this field, and the years ahead could see an incredible stem cell industry continue to flourish in hospitals and research labs across the world.

Solar energy—Renewable energy as a whole can be expected to exponentially increase in the decades ahead, and will soon power everything from vending machines to data centers worldwide. The question is how soon and in what capacity. Recent evidence suggests that Asian solar energy may be the right investment. Solar companies based in China and India especially are receiving massive infrastructure investments by their respective governments. One could even go so far as to pick a dozen or so penny stocks to invest in and see which ones take off.

Picking a stock investment that is going to pay off in major ways can be extremely difficult. In another sense, it simply involves predicting what company is going to be successful. If you've got a skill for forecasting broad trends in the world at large, you have a good opportunity to get your finger on the pulse of where Wall Street will be in the future. The industries listed above have excellent potential for meteoric future growth.

Guest post couresy of Amanda Green

Email's Inevitable Fall From Grace

As I sat down and mentally prepared to write this post, I performed an action that I've come to realize is necessary for me to fully focus when writing. I shut down my email program. After years of multitasking, I finally realized that when I see the little 'new message alert' in the bottom of my screen, I can't help but check. Since emails roll in about every three minutes during my average workday, that's literally a constant distraction.

In order to be productive in the roughly 75 percent of my job that does not consist of constructing and replying to email messages, I've got to shut out email entirely. That's a realization that's caught on around the business world. Information technology behemoth Atos even announced last year that they'd be banning internal emails among their nearly 80,000 employees, favoring chat and cloud technologies instead. CEO Thierry Breton referred to the current email culture as the "pollution of the working environment" in his comments to the press about the decision.

What would lead a major company, especially one in the computer technology business, to abandon the most common form of business communication? According to studies conducted at Atos and independently by the Radicati Group, the average corporate employee spends 2 hours and 45 minutes each day reading and writing emails. With spam comprising 81 percent of email traffic sent, and daily deals, non-work related newsletters, and Facebook updates making up a big chunk of the rest, there's a lot of sifting through junk to get to actual work related emails (even on job-specific accounts, oftentimes). Atos' Breton is likely the first of many executive directors to take a similar step toward streamlining employee productivity.

Already, we're seeing major changes in how email is used. A decade ago, we were more likely to send personal messages and letters via email, a practice that has virtually ended with the youngest computer users. In only a year, between Dec. 2009 and Dec. 2010, email use declined among teens age 12 – 17 by 59 percent!

That coincides directly with Facebook becoming available to the general public in Sep. 2009. The same demographic sends over 3,000 texts per month (over six per waking hour. While email use may still be increasing among the population aged 55 and older, that's not exactly the group that will be defining our business and technological future.

The bottom line is, even with instant email via mobile devices, the platform creates either a real or perceived break in the communication chain. With a phone call or SMS, we feel obligated to reply. In the event that we don't, it's almost required to acknowledge that by making an excuse when we next have contact with the caller, whereas in the case of email, we all have carte blanche to ignore messages. While some workers strive to clear out their inbox by Friday afternoon, others simply allow them to pile up, working from the top of a pile of tens of thousands of messages.

Neither approach is the most efficient. Email in 2012 is but one wrench in the toolbox. In plenty of circumstances, a text message, online chat, or even Facebook or Twitter post prove far quicker and more effective in garnering a reply and progress on a task.

Likewise, instead of prompting a discussion with a work group that will ultimately lead to an inbox-clogging series of 'reply to all' comments, companies will increasingly use cloud technology. When a proposal or draft is prepared, it's posted to a company cloud or service like Google Docs, where all the pertinent parties have access and can update and provide feedback in real time. There is no longer a need for multiple employees to sort through multiple email replies to compile a complete picture of a work in progress.

Email was first developed in 1971. By the mid '90s, it had grown into the primary means of communication for business. At that point, it also crossed the threshold where teenagers began to utilize the platform to communicate amongst themselves.

It's been almost another 20 years since email caught on, and the teens have abandoned it. Forward-thinking businesses are already following the lead of their future work force. Whether they look to Facebook, to Google, or simply to 'the cloud,' email's seniority will continue to be a growing casualty of the constant quest for a streamlined work flow.

Christopher Wallace, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Amsterdam Printing, has more than 20 years experience in sales and marketing. At Amsterdam, a leading provider of personalized pens, promotional pens, and other personalized items such as imprinted apparel and customized calendars, Christopher is focused on providing quality marketing materials to small, mid-size and large businesses.