The Perils of Social Media Connectivity: You Just Can't Quit

textingWe've all seen the group of teens sitting silently together at a table texting other people. If you're like me you wonder, what's the point of hanging out with friends when you're just texting someone else or updating Facebook?

But are we all that different from that group of apparently anti-social teens? Aren't we doing the same thing when we reply to a work email when out for dinner or when your entire table checks their phones for the answer to the day's trivia question? I know I've caught myself doing these things.

Hyper-connection means never missing a moment of the Kardashians. It means never missing an email, text, Tweet or status update. But is that a good thing? Are we too connected? And even if the answer is yes, is it even possible to back away from the smartphones and social media and go back to our old-fashioned, face-to-face, voice-to-voice ways?

Social Media Isn't Helping

I will admit I was a Facebook user back in the day when you had to have an ".edu" address just to get an account. It was the coolest thing since Myspace, which isn't saying much now, but back then it was a big deal. It was a novelty to be able to catch up with friends from high school, classmates at school, and co-workers at work.

Little did I know that Facebook was the gateway drug to hyper-connection.

Like pretty much everyone else on the planet, I'm hooked. But I also know I'm being overdosed. I'm happy for my friend who just had a baby, but do I need to see a new picture every day? No, Mom and Dad, I will not be your friend on Facebook even if I can hide my pictures from you. And at the end of the day, do I really need to know what 1,328 friends think about the College Football National Championship Game? Do I really have that many friends?

Of course, I can't quit now, can I? After all, Google had to go and start another social media site, Google+. Now I have LinkedIn for career networking, Facebook for friends, and Google + for ... (Why do I have Google +?) If that's not enough, there's Twitter, which I have to check 50 times a day just in case Texts From Last Night had something funny to say.

My head is spinning from being hyper-connected to things I don't even need in my life. And now they're coming at me at an even faster pace.

You're Being Left in the Dust

Have you seen the AT&T commercial where everything is "soooo 12 seconds ago." That's the industry saying that if you're not plugged in, you're falling behind.

The rollout of 4G networks by AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint has given us broadband-speed on-the-go that almost matches the speed of a home connection.

Yes, I rail against this progress. I claim that what I really need is an old-fashioned cell phone without Facebook or Twitter -- a phone that's so hard to text message on, I give up and call instead. Yes, I want to go back to the simpler days when I called to ask what you were up to or to say I was on my way home.

Even though that's what I want, it won't happen. I'm too connected. I'll use work as an excuse to Tweet and I'll admit that it's easier to text my friends to figure out plans for the night. And what would I do without those stupid games to fill up the extra time in my life? It's not like I read books anymore!

The electronics industry has drawn me in with its shiny gadgets and its lightning-fast information at my fingertips. I'll remember the days with my old-school cell phone and the conversations I once had. But if you want to reach me, you'll find me floating somewhere in the G+LinkedTwitterFace social media universe. There's no escaping it.

Motley Fool contributor Travis Hoium does not have a position in any company mentioned. You can follow Travis on Twitter at @FlushDrawFool. The Motley Fool owns shares of Google and Apple. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Google and Apple, as well as creating a bull call spread position in Apple.

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Source: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/01/21/the-perils-of-social-media-connectivity-you-just-cant-quit/

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Don't Fall Into These 6 Traps If You Want Meetings To Be Productive


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Years ago, I worked for a manager that was the poster child of buzzwords. He loved slipping “cones of precision” and “silos” and “drill down” and… well, let’s just stop there.

(Oh, he also bought one of the first Palm Pilots, so roomfuls of people often sat waiting while he laboriously entered timelines and schedules into his calendar. Yep, he was one of those.)

One of my colleagues maintained a running list of this manager’s buzzwords. If this colleague heard a new one, he pulled a small notepad out of his shirt pocket and wrote it down. Whenever he whipped out his pad two things happened: 1) the manager looked smug and proud because he thought he had just said something so insightful the supervisor wanted to capture for it for posterity, and 2) the rest of us tried not to laugh because we knew what was really going on.

Guess how productive those meetings were.

Unfortunately, we all have a little of that manager in us. We use the same words too often, or without noticing use irritating speech patterns, or simply fall in love with certain expressions. (I’m definitely guilty; I once carried on a passionate and all-too-public affair with “that’s neither here nor there.”) When we do, whatever we hoped to say gets lost.

See if you’re guilty of any of these:

1. The Double Name: Using a person’s name twice-- especially your own-- in the same sentence as a way to justify unusual or unacceptable behavior.

Typical usage: “What can I say? That’s just Joe being Joe.” (Or even worse, “What can I say? That’s just me being me.”)

Whenever you say a person’s name twice as a way to describe them you’re actually making an excuse for behavior you would never tolerate from someone else.

And everyone knows it.

2. The Fake Agreement: Pretending to agree while expressing the opposite point of view.

Typical usage: “I can definitely see what you’re saying, but I just don’t think we should take on that project.”

In fact, you don’t really see what I’m saying because otherwise you would agree with what I’m saying. Beginning a sentence with, “I hear you…” is like a condescending pat on the head.

Don’t try to couch a different opinion inside a warm and fuzzy Fake Agreement. If you disagree, just say so professionally.

3. The Unsupported Closure: Ending a discussion or making a decision without backup or solid justification.

Typical usage: “At the end of the day, we’re here to sell products.”

Really? I had no idea we’re supposed to sell products!

Unsupported Closure is a go-to move for people who want something a certain way and don’t feel like, or can’t, explain why. Whenever you feel an, “At the end of the day…” coming on, take a deep breath and start over, otherwise you’ll spout inane platitudes instead of objective reasons that may actually help your employees get behind your decision.

Quick note: A Fake Agreement combines nicely with an Unjustified Closure: “I hear what you’re saying, but at the end of the day revenue concerns must come first.” Win-win!

4. The False Uncertainty: Pretending you’re not sure when, in fact, you are.

Typical usage: “You know, when I think about it I’m not so sure shutting down that facility isn’t the best option after all.”

Oh yes, you’re sure; you’re just trying to create buy-in or a sense of inclusion by pretending you still have an open mind… or you’re planting seeds for something you know you will eventually do.

Never say you aren’t sure unless you are truly willing to consider other viewpoints.

5. The First Person Theoretical: Pretending to be another person in order to explore different points of view.

Typical usage: “Let’s say I’m the average customer. I walk in your store. I want to buy a shirt...and so on."

You can get away with this occasionally, but more than once a year is really irritating.

Think about it. Let’s say I’m the average reader and I know someone who uses the First Person Theoretical to pretend they’re putting themselves in someone else’s shoes. And let’s say I’m thinking it’s really irritating. In fact, let’s say I’m thinking we can just move on.

6. The Favorite Word: Using a word so often that word is all anyone hears.

Typical usage: Simply pick a word and hammer it to death.

I had a boss who never met a sentence he couldn’t find a way to shoehorn “in other words,” “in general,” and “regarding” into. Often he could cram all three into the same sentence, sometimes multiple times. I kept track one time and counted thirty-seven “in other words” in a four-minute span.

Hey, I’m not proud. I’m also not worried about him reading this since he’s probably off somewhere clubbing baby seals.

When you fall in love with a word or expression, other people not only tire of it but they hear nothing else. Whatever you hoped to get across gets lost as people think, “Oh jeez, for once could he leave out the ‘that’s neither here nor there’”?

Ask someone if you overuse a word or phrase. At first they’ll look uncomfortable and try to avoid answering. Insist.

Eventually they’ll tell you, and I promise you’ll never use that word again.

This post originally appeared at Inc.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/hFT5AyVd4Vo/dont-fall-into-these-6-traps-if-you-want-meetings-to-be-productive-2012-1

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Does Personal bankruptcy Eliminate Wage Garnishment

Michigan Bankruptcy Laws There are several notable methods for stopping wage garnishment or salary garnishment. Initial, one can repay your entire debt, second one can let the loan company take about the safety and 3rd, one can file for personal bankruptcy… The query ‘does personal bankruptcy give up wage garnishment’, has an honest answer, ‘yes’, [...]

Source: http://www.legaldebthelponline.com/2012/01/20/does-personal-bankruptcy-eliminate-wage-garnishment/

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Slashing Sovereign Debt Is Not A Path To Prosperity


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Europe is now haunted by the specter of debt. All European leaders quail before it. To exorcise the demon, they are putting their economies through the wringer.

It doesn’t seem to be helping. Their economies are still tumbling, and the debt continues to grow. The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has just downgraded the sovereign-debt ratings of nine eurozone countries, including France. The United Kingdom is likely to follow.

To anyone not blinded by folly, the explanation for this mass downgrade is obvious. If you deliberately aim to shrink your GDP, your debt-to-GDP ratio is bound to grow. The only way to cut your debt (other than by default) is to get your economy to grow.

Fear of debt is rooted in human nature; so the extinction of it as a policy aim seems right to the average citizen. Everyone knows what financial debt means: money owed, often borrowed. To be in debt can produce anxiety if one is uncertain whether, when the time comes, one will be able to repay what one owes.

This anxiety is readily transferred to national debt – the debt owed by a government to its creditors. How, people ask, will governments repay all of the hundreds of billions of dollars that they owe? As British Prime Minister David Cameron put it: “Government debt is the same as credit-card debt; it’s got to be paid back.”

The next step readily follows: in order to repay, or at least reduce, the national debt, the government must eliminate its budget deficit, because the excess of spending over revenue continually adds to the national debt. Indeed, if the government fails to act, the national debt will become, in today’s jargon, “unsustainable.”

Again, an analogy with household debt readily suggests itself. My death does not extinguish my debt, reasons the sensible citizen. My creditors will have the first claim on my estate – everything that I wanted to leave to my children. Similarly, a debt left unpaid too long by a government is a burden on future generations: I may enjoy the benefits of government extravagance, but my children will have to foot the bill.

That is why deficit reduction is at the center of most governments’ fiscal policy today. A government with a “credible” plan for “fiscal consolidation” supposedly is less likely to default on its debt, or leave it for the future to pay. This will, it is thought, enable the government to borrow money more cheaply than it would otherwise be able to do, in turn lowering interest rates for private borrowers, which should boost economic activity. So fiscal consolidation is the royal road to economic recovery.

This, the official doctrine of most developed countries today, contains at least five major fallacies, which pass largely unnoticed, because the narrative is so plausible.

First, governments, unlike private individuals, do not have to “repay” their debts. A government of a country with its own central bank and its own currency can simply continue to borrow by printing the money which is lent to it. This is not true of countries in the eurozone. But their governments do not have to repay their debts, either. If their (foreign) creditors put too much pressure on them, they simply default. Default is bad. But life after default goes on much as before.

Second, deliberately cutting the deficit is not the best way for a government to balance its books. Deficit reduction in a depressed economy is the road not to recovery, but to contraction, because it means cutting the national income on which the government’s revenues depend. This will make it harder, not easier, for it to cut the deficit. The British government already must borrow £112 billion ($172 billion) more than it had planned when it announced its deficit-reduction plan in June 2010.

Third, the national debt is not a net burden on future generations. Even if it gives rise to future tax liabilities (and some of it will), these will be transfers from taxpayers to bond holders. This may have disagreeable distributional consequences. But trying to reduce it now will be a net burden on future generations: income will be lowered immediately, profits will fall, pension funds will be diminished, investment projects will be canceled or postponed, and houses, hospitals, and schools will not be built. Future generations will be worse off, having been deprived of assets that they might otherwise have had.

Fourth, there is no connection between the size of national debt and the price that a government must pay to finance it. The interest rates that Japan, the United States, the UK, and Germany pay on their national debt are equally low, despite vast differences in their debt levels and fiscal policies.

Finally, low borrowing costs for governments do not automatically reduce the cost of capital for the private sector. After all, corporate borrowers do not borrow at the “risk-free” yield of, say, US Treasury bonds, and evidence shows that monetary expansion can push down the interest rate on government debt, but have hardly any effect on new bank lending to firms or households. In fact, the causality is the reverse: the reason why government interest rates in the UK and elsewhere are so low is that interest rates for private-sector loans are so high.

As with “the specter of Communism” that haunted Europe in Karl Marx’s famous manifesto, so today “[a]ll the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise” the specter of national debt. But statesmen who aim to liquidate the debt should recall another famous specter – the specter of revolution.

Related: A QUESTION FOR PAUL KRUGMAN, Who Keeps Saying Our Huge Debt Mountain Is Of No Concern >

This post originally appeared at Project Syndicate.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/FXZMKbEnEjk/slashing-sovereign-debt-is-not-a-path-to-prosperity-2012-1

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The Perils of Social Media Connectivity: You Just Can't Quit

textingWe've all seen the group of teens sitting silently together at a table texting other people. If you're like me you wonder, what's the point of hanging out with friends when you're just texting someone else or updating Facebook?

But are we all that different from that group of apparently anti-social teens? Aren't we doing the same thing when we reply to a work email when out for dinner or when your entire table checks their phones for the answer to the day's trivia question? I know I've caught myself doing these things.

Hyper-connection means never missing a moment of the Kardashians. It means never missing an email, text, Tweet or status update. But is that a good thing? Are we too connected? And even if the answer is yes, is it even possible to back away from the smartphones and social media and go back to our old-fashioned, face-to-face, voice-to-voice ways?

Social Media Isn't Helping

I will admit I was a Facebook user back in the day when you had to have an ".edu" address just to get an account. It was the coolest thing since Myspace, which isn't saying much now, but back then it was a big deal. It was a novelty to be able to catch up with friends from high school, classmates at school, and co-workers at work.

Little did I know that Facebook was the gateway drug to hyper-connection.

Like pretty much everyone else on the planet, I'm hooked. But I also know I'm being overdosed. I'm happy for my friend who just had a baby, but do I need to see a new picture every day? No, Mom and Dad, I will not be your friend on Facebook even if I can hide my pictures from you. And at the end of the day, do I really need to know what 1,328 friends think about the College Football National Championship Game? Do I really have that many friends?

Of course, I can't quit now, can I? After all, Google had to go and start another social media site, Google+. Now I have LinkedIn for career networking, Facebook for friends, and Google + for ... (Why do I have Google +?) If that's not enough, there's Twitter, which I have to check 50 times a day just in case Texts From Last Night had something funny to say.

My head is spinning from being hyper-connected to things I don't even need in my life. And now they're coming at me at an even faster pace.

You're Being Left in the Dust

Have you seen the AT&T commercial where everything is "soooo 12 seconds ago." That's the industry saying that if you're not plugged in, you're falling behind.

The rollout of 4G networks by AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint has given us broadband-speed on-the-go that almost matches the speed of a home connection.

Yes, I rail against this progress. I claim that what I really need is an old-fashioned cell phone without Facebook or Twitter -- a phone that's so hard to text message on, I give up and call instead. Yes, I want to go back to the simpler days when I called to ask what you were up to or to say I was on my way home.

Even though that's what I want, it won't happen. I'm too connected. I'll use work as an excuse to Tweet and I'll admit that it's easier to text my friends to figure out plans for the night. And what would I do without those stupid games to fill up the extra time in my life? It's not like I read books anymore!

The electronics industry has drawn me in with its shiny gadgets and its lightning-fast information at my fingertips. I'll remember the days with my old-school cell phone and the conversations I once had. But if you want to reach me, you'll find me floating somewhere in the G+LinkedTwitterFace social media universe. There's no escaping it.

Motley Fool contributor Travis Hoium does not have a position in any company mentioned. You can follow Travis on Twitter at @FlushDrawFool. The Motley Fool owns shares of Google and Apple. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Google and Apple, as well as creating a bull call spread position in Apple.

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Source: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/01/21/the-perils-of-social-media-connectivity-you-just-cant-quit/

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AsiaInfo-Linkage Shares Popped: What You Need to Know

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Now what: Since we don?t have an exact price there isn't a way to know if shares have overshot the deal already. I think it's worth sticking around and finding out what the exact offer was in case shares climb further. Buyouts usually come with a pretty healthy premium and today?s 19% jump may just be the start.

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The Collapse of the Euro
Europe is only weeks away from economic collapse, insists a former IMF chief. Yet you probably haven't heard the whole story: You can protect yourself and even profit from this looming catastrophe if you move fast enough...

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Source: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/01/20/asiainfo-linkage-shares-popped-what-you-need-to-kn.aspx

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