Most people start their email messages with the recipient’s name. Example: “Maya, I really enjoyed meeting you.” But it sounds more personal if you use it at the END of the sentence: “I really enjoyed meeting you, Maya.”
When you have something really important to convey, use their name in the MIDDLE of a sentence to make that particular point jump out. Instead of just telling Chuck that “It is crucial that you come to the meeting,” drive it home by writing, “It is crucial, Chuck, that you come to the meeting.”
A final note: It’s super warm and fuzzy to put their name as the final word in the message. Hearing their own name last is more pleasurable (and original) than “Sincerely,” “Best” or “Thanks.” Close your email with the “sweetest sound in the English language” to them–which is, of course, their own name.
Of course, don’t overdo their name – once or twice is per message is enough!
Mexico City – Mexico has found a new heroine: A 12-year-old math whiz from a state plagued by drug violence who was dubbed “The Next Steve Jobs” by a US magazine. The youngest of eight children from a modest family, Paloma Noyola was thrown under the media spotlight since Wired magazine featured the black-haired girl on its cover two weeks ago.
She has appeared in national newspapers and on cable news, redubbed “La Nina Jobs” – “The Jobs Girl” – with photographers and cameramen chasing the girl nicknamed after Apple’s late founder. This week, she travelled from her hometown of Matamoros, in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas, to the hustle and bustle of Mexico City for a mental math competition.
“I’m very happy. If you want it, you can do it,” said Noyola.
With so much attention on the girl, Tamaulipas state officials who flew in with her shielded Noyola from the press pack. She sat alone at a large table and was whisked away after the contest organised by the Tecnologico de Monterrey University ended. But she did not win the contest.
Last year, the girl whose school lies next to a dump across the US border wowed the country when she scored the maximum 921 in the national standardised exam, the best in Mexico. Her father died of lung cancer last year and her family earns an income from selling scrap metal and food in Matamoros, a city tormented for years by a turf war between the Zetas and Gulf drug cartels.
Minimally invasive education
While Noyola made the cover of Wired, it was her teacher’s radical methods that featured prominently in the magazine’s story. Sergio Juarez Correa, aged 32, saw his entire class’s Spanish and math scores dramatically improve after he implemented a new approach, allowing students to tap into their own curiosity and self-learning to solve problems.
The school is located in a “punishment zone” for education, dubbed that way because no professor wants to be there due to the high level of crime and dismal infrastructure. The school lacks basic services such as running water, drainage or a telephone line – an all-too-common problem in Mexican classrooms.
“If Paloma had the same opportunities or open doors as Steve Jobs, she probably would be a genius in this subject,” Juarez told AFP.
Two of Noyola’s classmates disappeared midway through the school year without anybody knowing why.
“The Mexican education system is like a bus with broken seats, wheels in bad shape and a broken engine that must climb a hill,” Juarez said.
The education system of Latin America’s second economy ranks last among the 34 nations of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development. President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office in December, pushed through an education reform in a country where less than half of high school students are expected to graduate.
Juarez lamented that the government’s reform lacks plans to improve school infrastructure. The Wired article noted how his school lacked computers.
We are living in a time of great transition for digital romance. A new study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, released Monday, found that 59 percent of American Internet users believe that “online dating is a good way to meet people,” a 14-point jump since 2005. Among Americans who identify themselves as “single and looking,” 38 percent say they’ve used a dating site or app to try to meet a match. But 21 percent of plugged-in Americans still think that “people who use online dating sites are desperate.” (In 2005, 29 percent of them said so.) Even 13 percent of people who date online consider themselves desperate. Though online dating has become normalized, it’s still seen as a little sad.
I’d submit that the framework of popular dating sites like Match.com and OkCupid only contribute to that notion. These sites still situate online dating as a meat market for semi-anonymous singles that’s disconnected from the rest of our online (and offline) identities. Our online dating profiles are typically not linked to our other public profiles, like Facebook and Twitter. And the sites’ matching strategies—which connect users based on questions they’ve answered about themselves—rely on a primitive idea of the interplay between digital technologies and human relationships. They assume that we can just plug our metadata into a computer, run it through an algorithm, scroll through a list of prospects sorted by the mathematical possibility that we’ll get along, and find someone. That’s just not how human relationships work—not on the Internet and not off. That’s particularly true for the 54 percent of online daters who have encountered a match they felt “seriously misrepresented themselves in their profile.”
We all know that the Internet can be a powerful tool for connecting people, so why do these sites still carry some stigma? Perhaps because the best connections, online and off, are made more holistically in the context of our everyday lives. This explains the success of Tinder, the hookup app that enables daters to assess photographs of other singletons in their general area, then right-swipe with their index finger when they like what they see. Tinder requires users to login through Facebook, which unfortunately only increases Mark Zuckerberg‘s creeping command over all online spaces. But it fortunately means that the dudes and ladies you’re meeting through the app are representing themselves roughly similarly to how they’re doing so on more public forms of social media. (Perhaps Zuckerberg was onto something with Facematch, the proto-Facebook that allowed Harvard students to check out potential hookups living in neighboring houses.) It helps that, in order to message someone on Tinder, you both have to “choose” each other, so you’re not inundated with missives from the creepiest users. (Pew also found that 42 percent of female online daters and 17 percent of male ones have experienced “uncomfortable or bothersome contact” on Internet dating sites.)
New findings from leading hi-tech analysts, Juniper Research, finds that more than 80% of the total enterprise and consumer owned smartphone device base will remain unprotected through 2013, despite a steadily increasing consumer awareness of mobile security products. These consumers need to know what is malware and how it will harm the security of their devices.
Juniper claims that the low level of adoption of security software can be attributed to a number of factors, including the relatively low consumer awareness about online attack on mobile devices and a widespread consumer perception that the price of security products is excessive.
The report found that nearly 1.3 billion mobile devices including smartphones, featurephones and tablets are expected to have mobile security software installed by 2018, up from around 325 million this year.
Increasing Risks for Mobile
The Mobile Security: BYOD, mCommerce, Consumer & Enterprise 2013-2018 report found that security risks are also on the rise due to an explosion of mobile malware over the last two years. It found that cyber criminals are transitioning their focus from PCs onto the mobile platform – across both enterprise and consumer segments. These findings support Trend Micro’s data showing that that there will be more than 1 million malwares in the market by the end of this year.
Nevertheless, the report asserted that steadily increasing consumer awareness, allied to far greater visibility of product adoption levels, had resulted in rapid service adoption during H2 2012, leading to higher than anticipated service revenues.
Growth in the Enterprise Segment
Juniper found that growth in the enterprise space for security products is being fuelled by a number of factors, including increases in IT budgets and greater implementation of security policies and security products; along with training for employees. However, with the trend of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) where employees bring their own computing devices to the workplace becoming increasingly common, a single policy or measure may not be sufficient and a unified perspective on mobile platform risks is critical.
Other Key Findings
Despite the prevalence of free security software, the scale of cyber-crime’s expansion in the mobile arena offers a clear opportunity for the creation of a new revenue streams for mobile security providers.
Device manufacturers and security vendors need to strike a balance between security and user-friendliness.
Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary. You can navigate to this website for more information on how your internet provider can help you secure your connection.
As more than half a million matrics in South Africa begin their exams soon, the hopes and dreams of our country rest on their shoulders. This is a huge responsibility for many teens who hope to succeed, despite tremendous adversity. Knowing they are not alone and having every South African rooting for them will help them be champions- not only today, but in the future as well.
Here are 10 practical tips all of us can follow to help our matrics:
Be patient and understanding by providing your 12th grader with silence, private space and support while he studies. Keep other children in the home quiet and away from him. Television and radio should be played softly so as not to distract the student. It is a good time to encourage silent reading in the family in support of the matric student. Family arguments should be taken outside where he can’t hear you. Worrying about family members will create an enormous amount of unnecessary anxiety and stress for him.
Have loads of healthy ”brain food” snacks around the house for him to munch on such as bananas, chocolate, fresh fruit and vegetables, watermelon, wholegrain bread and cereals, unsalted nuts, fresh water, and sugar- free chewing gum. Limit the amount of caffeine, sugar and energy drinks available to him. Provide healthy balanced meals which contain eggs, yoghurt, sweet potatoes, turkey, beef, and fish for omega 3 fatty acids. Supplement his diet with a tonic containing vitamins C, E, B6, B12, calcium, magnesium, and Alpha-lipoic Acid.
Invite your child to exercise with you during his breaks. Walk the dog or encourage your teen to join in a family dance/sing-a long. Even playing a quick game of table tennis or swimming can help release endorphins that enhance serotonin production, which combats feelings of depression and anxiety.
Take the pressure off your child. At this stage, your child needs support, patience and understanding. He is under enough strain as it is, so nagging him while writing exams is counterproductive. Help him to problem solve and think critically if the exams are proving to be difficult. Arguing about his untidy room is pointless at this stage.
Teach your teen perseverance. Even if he fails his matric exam, it is not the ‘end of the world.’ “Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success,” says Denis Waitley. People who ultimately succeed in life have the ability to pick themselves up, create a new path, and continue with determination. Devise a plan B with your 12th grader which he is excited about if things are not going well. “It matters if you just don’t give up,”says famous scientist Stephen Hawking
Be aware of signs of depression, negative self talk, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, changes in your teen’s personality, and behaviour such as withdrawing from the family. Seek help immediately through your family doctor. Alternatively contact the South African depression and anxiety group on 0800 20 50 26 or the suicide hotline on 0800 567 567.
Sleep is vitally important for a student to be able to concentrate in an exam, so spending nights studying is not conducive to good results. Encourage your teen to get eight hours of sleep by giving him a weighted blanket, I heard that Canadian weighted blanket companies – Gotta Sleep has the best blanket in the market. If he is having trouble falling asleep, play a meditation or sleep CD that could help him to control his breathing and thoughts.
Teach your 12th grader the power of positive thinking and visualisations. We don’t know the true power of the human brainl. Positive self- talk and creativity may help him through a difficult paper.”Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts will inevitably bring about right results,” says James Allen
Provide practical support in the form of tutors, study guides, study groups, and assistance from teachers. Even at the last minute a session with a good tutor or a chat with his Maths teacher can provide your child with valuable tips.
Remember to celebrate even the smallest success with your 12th grader, looking forward with optimism and enthusiasm. “If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.”says Nora Roberts.
Good luck to you all! Recommended Resource: The IQ Answer by Dr. Frank Lawlis
Why? Because it will get lost in the shuffle of massive minutia most heavy hitters face every Monday morning. Instead, send your significant communication Sunday afternoon. (Unless it’s a complaint.) This gets their relatively undivided attention because most VIPs check their business messages before the work week begins. That’s one of the reasons he or she became a VIP!
Additionally, if relevant, it shows you’re thinking about your professional life on the weekend like all dedicated leaders do.
Josh Adler: I’m quite new to education, but completely immersed and have much to say. I thought I’d focus my crystal ball on a broad range of education industry issues, and wanted to avoid at all costs penning another “Have you heard about Khan Academy?” piece, (But now that that’s done)…
1. Practice-based learning takes centre stage
I’m now convinced, beyond any doubt, that experiential learning is the most powerful way to develop young people. You can sit through lectures, read, debate, even watch videos – but nothing is as immersive as allowing students to try their hand at something. For example, at African Leadership Academy where I work, we create elaborate ,simulated environments in which students can create and run businesses and non-profits, design products and pitch save-the-world ideas. I see more and more schools trying to bring experiential learning into their toolbox.
2. Blended learning goes experimental
If you’ve not heard yet how blended learning is the future of the classroom, you must have been asleep. According to experts, students will be watching videos at home and doing homework in class (now known as the flipped classroom). I’m not convinced either way yet, but my prediction for 2013 is that blended learning, through all sorts of trial-and-error approaches, will get experimented with in earnest. It will take years before we know what really works and in which contexts, but it’s going to be lots of fun to watch.
3. Business people enter education management
Perhaps this trend is to validate my own decisions but I think due to the excitement and investment going into education globally, people from business are going to enter the education space in droves. This isn’t new – people from business have been doing teaching gigs for ages – but that’s not what I’m talking about. I didn’t enter the space to teach. I came to help manage and grow an institution that seeks to change the future of our continent through its approach to developing the next generation. Expect to see former business execs entering education institutions at all levels in 2013. (If you’re thinking about it, and need a nudge, ping me.)
4. Education data and impact
In my recent Tech4Africa talk, I explained why I feel tech and finance have innovated faster than any other sectors – particularly social development. It’s because the activity of money and bytes are very easily measured,
enabling better decisions more frequently. Sectors such as education or social justice simply aren’t measured as easily.
However, the world of data and analytics has exploded, and I see the beginnings of this starting to touch education. We’ll be measuring many more data points in 2013, not only about learners and learning, but school facilities, teachers, home environments and other stuff. The prospects of this get me completely geeked out as an Open Data pundit, and I’m excited to work with people across the education landscape on this in the years
ahead. (again, ping me!)
This is an article by Jon Rappoport, who created a home study course in Logic for both teachers and children. This course can be easily incorporated into your home schooling curriculum in South Africa. Please contact our office for to order the product.
Here’s one of his recent articles about the absurd amount of money parents spend on university education in United States. In South Africa, can we really afford this “investment” in worthless education?
Yes, a whole lot of boys and girls are paying $150,000 for a T-shirt. Now that’s a sales job. We’re not talking about about a purse that costs three grand or a $500 bottle of bitter champagne or 10 grand for a vacation cruise that gives you a solid case of dysentery.
This is a really sublime con. And I have a solution for it. The student enrolls in what I simply call The Course.
He goes to the library once a week and checks out a stack of books. Any books. For four hours a day, five days a week, for six years, you chain him to a table in a quiet room at home.
There’s a thick notebook on the table and pencils. And the books. No computer. No phone. No videos. No music. No nothing. You walk out and close the door.
That’s it.
The rest is up to him.
During his six years, the student might read and/or write about television, space travel, the process of elephants giving birth, soldier ants, the CIA, God, the suppression of bubblegum sales during World War 2, an analysis of photographs of desert mirages, Jesus, the Rockefellers, malaria, ghosts, football, worship of idols in ancient Polynesia, the evolution of the hot dog, syphilis, leprosy, plutonium, Plato, gastric ulcers, Middle East wars, building houses out of rubber tires, the Federal Reserve, cell phone radiation…
Or he might do nothing.
It’s his choice.
Nobody teaches him anything. Nobody checks up on him. Nobody encourages him. Nobody guides him. Nobody tests him or grades him or graduates him.
“This is the first and last time I’ll be speaking to you about The Course. You’re going to start today. Good luck.”
I’ll put that up against any liberal arts curriculum in America.
And of course, it has a Zen component. Silence. Inevitable confusion. Resentment. The need for answers which never come. Frustration. Choice.
And it’s free. No T-shirt, no student loans, no government interference, no administration, no brainwashing, no social agenda, no sense of entitlement, no hype.
There’s a chance the student may actually become interested in something ON HIS OWN.
If not, so be it. He has no one to blame.
“I guess I’m not curious about what I don’t know. I’m a robot. So I’ll just go to the nearest programming center and sign up. They can make me over into whatever they need. No problem.”
In case you haven’t noticed, our society has become obsessed, at every possible level, with meddling in other people business. I’m not talking about honest prosecution of crimes. I’m talking about downright interference.
“Don’t you think you should be doing THIS?” Shouldn’t you stop doing THAT?” “Don’t you care about what your grandmother THINKS?”
The Course is meddle-free. So even if a student comes out of his six years with nothing, at least he know what’s it’s like to exist, for four hours a day, in a non-meddling space.
And his parents get the message as well.
“I just want to take Jimmy some tea and cookies while he’s studying.”
“Hold on, Martha, don’t you remember when we signed the contract, it said no interruptions? If you walk in there, they can come and shoot you. And I believe they will. They were very emphatic on that point.”
“I want to make sure he’s all right.”
“Here…let me read from their leaflet: ‘You as the parent may experience a grinding need to walk in on your precious little doofus while he’s doing The Course. Recognize this comes from your craven fear of being alone with nothing but your own thoughts. You’re assuredly deranged. Should you ignore this warning, your child will be only too happy to report you, we will take you out, and it won’t be pretty…’”
I believe The Course is an idea whose time has come.
Bonus: you can ignore the towers of absolute crap the government shovels about education.
The Course is stark and uncompromising. Beauty comes in many forms.
Jon Rappoport: The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at No More Fake News.
From the graceful Seth Godin, Internet guru par-excellence…
Approximately a million web years ago, I wrote a book about web design. The Big Red Fez was an exercise in shooting fish in a barrel. There was a vast and deep inventory of bad websites, sites that were not just unattractive, but ineffective as well.
The thesis of the book is that the web is a direct marketing medium, something that can be measured and a tool that works best when the person who builds the page has a point of view. Instead of a committee deciding everything that ought to be on the page and compromising at every step, an effective website is created by someone who knows what she wants the user to do.
Josh Davis and others wanted to know if, after more than a decade, my opinion has changed. After all, we now have video, social networks, high-speed connections, mobile devices…
If anything, the quantity of bad sites has increased, and the urgency of the problem has increased as well. As the web has become more important, there’s ever more pressure to have meetings, to obey the committee and to avoid alienating any person who visits (at the expense of delighting the many, or at least, the people you care about).
Without a doubt, there are far more complex elements to be worked with, more virality, more leverage available to anyone brave enough to build something online. But I stand with a series of questions that will expose the challenges of any website (and the problems of the organization that built it):
Who is this site for?
How did they find out about it?
What does the design remind them of?
What do you want them to do when they get here?
How will they decide to do that, and what promises do you make to cause that action?
The only reason to build a website is to change someone. If you can’t tell me the change and you can’t tell me the someone, then you’re wasting your time.
If you get all of this right, if you have a clear, concise point of view, then you get the chance to focus on virality, on social, on creating forward motion. But alas, virtually all organizational sites are narcissistic and (at the same time) afraid and incomplete.
Answer your visitor when he asks, “Why am I here?”
Tired of being hounded by online retailers, indexed by search engines and possibly monitored by Big Brother governments? Jamie Carter looks at ways to thwart the online snoops.
It has brought attention to just how public our personal web browsing, online chat, file transfer, voice-over IP calls, cloud storage and e-mail really are. But is there anything we can do to stay safe from the snoops?
It’s hard to hide yourself, if someone pursuing your information is determined
Lysa Myers, Virus Hunter, intego
There are multiple ways of “digital shredding”, encrypting data and staying anonymous, but before we explore the options, it’s worth asking why you want to operate in secret. Also, if you encrypt your data, does that make you more suspicious to government snoopers?
Kevin Curran, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, reckons anyone making such arguments is living in the past. He says we’ve moved on from a time when the only people using encryption were paranoid geeks, terrorists and law enforcement agencies. Forget the Big Brother angle and think of it this way: is locking your house at night suspicious behaviour, or having a PIN code on your smartphone?
Keeping your private data secure is good practice for individuals and is becoming a necessity for businesses.
But there is no silver bullet that will keep all of your data and online behaviour safe.
“What you need to do to hide from online snoops depends in large part on what sort of snoops you want to hide from, and how valuable your information is to those snoops,” says Lysa Myers, virus hunter at security software company Intego.
Its Identity Scrubber software – aimed at frequent travellers – digitally shreds sensitive data on a Mac. “It’s quite difficult to hide yourself, if someone pursuing your information is sufficiently determined,” says Myers, who recommends we take many small steps to protect privacy rather than attempt to erase all traces of ourselves online.
Aside from letting politicians know your stance on cybercrime laws and the government’s ability to search people’s data, she recommends going through the privacy and security options already built-in to most software, including the operating system, which you’ve likely ignored so far.
“Encrypting data at rest on a local device is best practice,” agrees Curran, who says that anything held behind a firewall is likely to be encrypted.
“All data prior to be sent to a service like Dropbox should be encrypted before uploading to the cloud service,” he adds.
People with the Ultimate or Enterprise version of Windows 7 or Windows 8 can use the built-in BitLocker software to encrypt the drive, while others include TrueCrypt, DiskCryptor and CloudFrogger.
We are living in a time of great transition for digital romance. A new study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, released Monday, found that 59 percent of American Internet users believe that “online dating is a good way to meet people,” a 14-point jump since 2005. Among Americans who identify themselves as “single and looking,” 38 percent say they’ve used a dating site or app to try to meet a match. But 21 percent of plugged-in Americans still think that “people who use online dating sites are desperate.” (In 2005, 29 percent of them said so.) Even 13 percent of people who date online consider themselves desperate. Though online dating has become normalized, it’s still seen as a little sad.
