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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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Résumé-Writing Tips to Help You Get Past the A.I. Gatekeepers It was inevitable: When companies made it simple to apply for a job online, applications poured in. To wade through this ever-rising tide of résumés, human resources departments are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence systems to pluck out the candidates deemed to be good fits. So while applying may be as easy as a mouse click, that résumé is much more likely to be screened out into oblivion than end up in front of a recruiter. To avoid getting caught by the résumé sifter, job seekers should understand the new systems, which have been spreading to more industries and positions. How it works So-called predictive hiring tools evaluate résumés by finding keywords related to categories like skills, experience and education, and weighting them according to the job requirements and any other factors the hiring company has specified. The system may weight applicants who have worked at certain companies more positively. It may infer how old a skill seems to be from where it appears in a job history. Artificial intelligence is used to understand what people mean to say — for example, if Carleton is a person’s name, an alma mater or a company the applicant worked for. The software systems can be less biased than human screeners because they can be programmed to ignore characteristics like age, sex, race and other protected categories. Giving yourself the best shot Making it through the automated screening can require tailoring your résumé, not just the cover letter, to each job you are applying for. Greg Moran, chief executive of OutMatch, a system that screens more than 10 million applicants a year for companies including Pepsi, Toyota and Walmart, confirmed that the following actions would help applicants avoid an automated rejection. Include in your résumé the same keywords, or similar ones, that the job posting uses for the knowledge, skills, experience and duties involved. Use the most relevant keywords in your most recent job listed. If you mention data analytics in a job 10 years ago but not in more recent work, the algorithm may give it less weight. Words like “significant,” “strong” and “mastery” in a job description can be clues that those skills will be weighted heavily, so they should be emphasized in your résumé and included on your descriptions of your more current experience. Quantify wherever possible. “Managed a team of five that increased sales by 40 percent over two years” works better than “Managed a team that significantly increased sales.” Make sure the system can “read” your résumé. In some systems, the PDF file format can make your résumé appear as a single image, so Microsoft Word may be a better choice. Fancy formatting like columns or added images can be less readable if the system is scanning left to right. Don’t try to trick the software with keywords in white text — the creators have already thought of that. Mention all your skills. The system may scan for specific experience with, for example, the programming language R or Tableau, so don’t lump them together as “experienced in data analytics.” If you are part of an underrepresented group, use terms that will let the system identify you to companies that are trying to diversify their work force. Pitfalls The artificial intelligence used by hiring systems can generate unintended harmful consequences, said Hong Qu, a race and technology fellow at Stanford. He is a creator of AI Blindspot, a set of practices that help software development teams recognize unconscious biases and structural inequalities that could affect their software’s decision-making. “The systems can still have their own forms of biases and may screen out qualified applicants,” Mr. Qu said. A company may put a priority on the résumés of software engineer applicants who went to the same universities as successful senior engineers in the industry. Applicants from women’s or historically Black colleges may be more likely to be rejected, for example, if the upper ranks of engineers in an industry are predominantly white men. “Getting the system right is more than debugging code and de-biasing training data, because the software is based on values-driven decisions with historical baggage,” Mr. Qu said. Biases engendered by the system can extend beyond screening. For example, recruiters can be subject to “automation bias,” giving an analysis more weight because it came from a computer system. Pooling candidates who have all made it through the screening for their next level of evaluation, rather than ranking them by scores bestowed by the software, can help alleviate this effect. Frequent audits are needed to understand whom the system is screening in — and out. It also needs to be designed with transparency, so humans can understand why any individual decision was made. An opaque system makes it hard to discover problems, Mr. Qu said. While the systems are becoming more widespread, they are nascent, and critics say there is little market incentive or government regulation demanding transparency. In fact, self-examination can unearth problems that may harm a company’s reputation. More than your résumé Increasingly, the one-click résumé drop-off is just the first step. More candidates are being asked to take skill and personality assessments and record answers to interview questions. OutMatch’s Mr. Moran said the additional tasks aimed to give a more complete picture to hiring managers and let applicants “tell their story.” Still, most applicants who are asked to submit extra information won’t have the chance to tell that story to a human. While percentages vary, Mr. Moran estimated that a system might typically deem 80 percent of candidates who submitted a résumé for an entry-level professional job to have the basic skills and competency to succeed in the role, leading them to be asked to complete one or more tests. Most test takers will then be asked to record a video interview. The information from the résumé, the tests and a transcript of the interview will be reviewed by artificial intelligence software. About 20 percent of those candidates will then speak to a recruiter. Asking more job seekers to do interviews does allow more candidates to demonstrate their suitability, said Michele Olivier, a career coach in Austin, Texas, but “it also means that there’s a bigger time commitment required at an earlier stage for more roles.” Previously, candidates who made it to the interview stage might have a one in 10 chance of getting the job, she said. Now, “with the new tools you may have the same time requirement” for a much slimmer chance. “Employers aren’t doing a good job of being mindful of how much they are expecting from candidates,” Ms. Olivier said. Karin Borchert the chief executive of the hiring software company Modern Hire, predicts resumes will become less important for entry-level professional jobs. Companies can evaluate qualities they are seeking, such as tenacity or problem-solving skills, through assessments and then incorporate feedback on new hires to improve those assessments, she said. Don’t neglect your other tools Mr. Moran cautioned applicants not to rely on the new systems alone to secure a job. He advises job seekers to make sure their LinkedIn profile is up to date and includes recommendations from managers and colleagues. Twitter or other public social media accounts should include “digital bread crumbs” of information highlighting skills, experience and interests. Candidates should also seek out people inside their target companies that can refer them for the position, Mr. Moran said, because those referrals can significantly lift the chance of being hired. “The more technical things get, the more you can get noticed by going old school,” he said. Source link Orbem News #Gatekeepers #RésuméWriting #tips

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efosa123 · 6 years ago

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eCompare review hey there everyone welcome to episode 941 of the Mike from Maine show the place where we do daily interviews with successful online entrepreneurs this is your host Mike Thomas and today on the show we have mark Bishop on and we're going to be talking about a powerful software that's going to allow you to create review sites with a twist on them this is something that I actually use all the time we're going to talk about some actual use cases and how you can use this to make money let's get into it here's mark we are here today with mark bishop mark welcome back to the show come on can we have five thank you I'm a little tired getting ready we're we're recording this before my product launch for we're both in the in the midst of craziness but the show must go on mark I'm taking the time out to bring you on the show even though I'm my own launch going on because you've got a really cool software coming out that I want to share with my audience I'm going to read off the headline for this ok and we can get right into it it says here a unique legal affiliate loophole generates passive income from 7 retail platforms new and unique price comparison app allows you to legally hijack commissions from the top 7 affiliate networks in the world in minutes now when I first saw this I thought to myself it's another kind of Yakama Philly excite builder which are great like they're powerful we've seen them but after taking a bigger look inside I know it's not just that so so bringing sort of this put salt up well ok I'll make you kind of hit it there my account there are a ton of store builders out there I'm actually quite rightly say to you that I'll emigrate but you know having a store there doesn't necessarily mean you're going to make money so even if you even if you target everything build an affiliate store on the back of them Amazon products Aliexpress eBay that currently you can you can fill out the store and it's great because you don't have the risk you don't have to buy it from the stock in you know I mean there's no issues with customs you you have it all there you make a commission on these affiliate products so you know from my perspective as a store builder affiliate store builder is fantastic however you know like I said it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to make money in order to to actually get something to actually purchase what we found is we have to offer them choices so we look to look at a number of sites and some of the biggest sites now on the sites are really grown in terms of popularity and revenue our price comparison sites so you know it's human nature we all do it so you jump online and you're looking for a product and you go to a site you might see that product there it might be look for any certain price being ever going to buy that one product re you're always going to open up save for other times and you're going to look around for a better deal and like I said people do it all the time we all do it so what we wanted to do and what we did with a compare is we built in a price comparison engine so essentially what happens is somebody comes to your store they're looking for I don't I say a cow or a laptop or whatever it is and they're looking for the best deal so this is a search for available they find that product on your store and what happens then is as soon as they click on it then the price comparison engine runs a comparison from seven different sites where I say seven different sites the plug-in itself API cooperates several different platforms such as Amazon Aliexpress ebay.com Walmart come others anyway it will find or it go off and it will scrape those sites if the products on there so it which results from every every platform that has updated private building and what it does is it delivers the best price in the best deal to that particular product so rather than and your customer or potential customers needing to open up them to another tab looking for the best deal its offered up right there in front of them okay that's the things going on in my head right now I don't think it to them all that this can makes complete sense to me if you think about one example with affiliate marketing if you think about what we do when we recommend products to our audience I don't bring you on my show and tell you and tell my customers to go buy from you and then they find out that there's some discount code from someone else when they can get it lower that happens if that people won't come back to me and purchase because they're going to go okay Mike's not giving us the lowest price on this that's why if I find out something like that's happening I get really angry with the vendor I'm like well I don't tell me about that because it makes me look really bad because I'm trying to provide a service to my audience and if you're doing that if you're truly trying to help people out then they will come back you enable purchase from you over and over again second thing I'm flying to southern Turkey tomorrow so we could do that where do we go to buy our plane ticket do we go from like Turkish Airlines to Pegasus Airlines to local into your Atlas jet in America you go Delta United like did I go to to open up all of those different size individually and search for this plane ticket no of course not I'm not an idiot okay way to show it one of the websites and there are a bunch of them because this model is really profitable because they know that if they can give the best price and it provides a service people will click and buy and they're going to get an affiliate commission for it so I went to the website I certify should I'm lying my wife went to the website together cousin she's probably no nobody talking about I get on to research for that my wife was there she found the best price in one open up showed all the different prices and we purchased from the lowest one the website that we purchased from they don't care they're going to get their commission I'm happy the airline's happy the website's happy we're all happy now I mean that basically is a right I mean it happens in in all in this business you know with hotels with flights and in this case you know with physical products but yeah absolutely I mean you just said you know looking for flights I mean in the UK it would be sort of something like tomorrow or booking car or something like that people don't necessarily go to direct me to the vendor directly to the you know the person selling the flights the airline or something like that then look around and look for the best deal and yeah this is essentially what we found with you compare so rather than and you shopping around for that particular product you can just go to one side and learn a price comparison and it will offer up you know the best deal the best price right there in front of your customer you kind of touched on this earlier actually make sure we're clear on it these are you're promoting stuff as an affiliate right so you're not you don't go out there and buy any product Magnus in English and Reglan used an affiliate that's right there's an awful lot of fun training products relating to ecommerce and you know if you get it right right it can be very popular you know very profitable however there's also an awful lot of risk involved you know you have to buy those products in you have to risk money and then you have to advertise those products and then you still have to hope you actually make setups and the onions or get rid of those products you've already purchased with affiliates econ what were you doing really is you just pulling in all the data all of the details the images are basically the store builder it just builds the whole thing for you so you put in a term you enter that in and then it calls all the details so all you have to do really is put your your affiliate links in your your secret Keating's whatever it is into the plug-in and then you've got that global affiliate link throughout the whole site so it really doesn't matter where a customer values the product so if you've got say a comparison running and there's four different platforms there the pop-up and you choose or your customer chooses one of them doesn't make any difference you know because you're globally that your affiliate link is globally embedded throughout so doesn't matter where the customer purchases who they purchase from more product encourages with you can pay still going to commission so I've got much more questions for you but I'm feeling that you're running out of some of them by actually showing us yeah so go ahead and when you're ready when I share your screen and show us under the bed so let's take a look okay you seen this man work yeah okay cool so I've got him running for the first early learning Pacific yeah we're looking for years over okay so he compare so he compares a package and it's made up or harm the plug-in and the theme so plugging the training tutorials so this is the plug-in itself so if we wanted products it would be a case of say let's put on there and we can set filters as well and just touch products and then to album see site so I give that power I get out that one and then up products like so I mean again this is much the same as any store builder nothing remarkable about this see analysis good so what do you now is going through right now I said it may take some time it's going to get better and pull all the different example privet to this side here and I'll show you which is perhaps the most important element of this particular product so see very store playbills so sliders everything it all comes with the plugin so the Sun let's take a look at the shop and we just were under comparison so let's say your customer is searching your store and you know maybe like this t-shirt here so I click here they can see the comparison there it goes right there there I like how it kind of is processing because it makes me as a potential customer I'm thinking okay this isn't some static thing going on you're actually processing this in real time and it's bringing up any any instant results absolutely absolutely so you know your customer comes up comes over here aren't you that this is a bunch of process there and let's say let's say clicks there and then you know straight over to whichever platform they choose they buy on asleep the store owner gets a commission so not gonna get them clicking on a bunch of different affiliate links and a bunch of different stores so they might not buy from you immediately but they might like something else later on in the day or in the week and you don't use any liquid that's also something important to mention on yes so you know when they're clicking these these different stores obviously dropping cookies there so if they let's go back to to this product here so let's say they look at this and then you think well that's quite cool you know and I'll get those as well so you're going to get Commission for whatever they buy so it's like if they click through they're going out and then you buy that maybe that as well and you get Commission all of that just thank you back here so you can see that you know it's it's a typical store builder so I've got to think yourself it's a pretty good one you might using a store builder right now but I'm pretty sure it's not going to do this so just having those you know the best price is offered up to you straight away it's going to it's going to mean that your your banks rates going to drop two people going to stick to your site it would be more inclined to actually purchase through you I mean it's a fantastic selling so like you said weekly flights Mike you know people they come onto the site and they look for the best deal now what we recommend people do is to target these sites do specific areas say you know just say for example sort of camping or hiking or something like that if you keep it really really targeted then people will find your site you know whenever they do actually find your site they're interested in a product on your arm on your store there's good chance can approach it through you is also a good chance that are going to purchase additional products come in an upsell if you like let me know let me get up for this one so that I'm still up before the day of baseball tournament okay yeah so okay we've got on we've got the couple of products that is there that we could we could share these on Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest so that will give us instant traffic so if you are just starting I am and you're looking for traffic then you can share these in an in grymps in on pages that you manage an entire line in messages anything like that site you know if you remember if greek you've got a tar pit sites so you know like camping and hiking again you know you can find a facebook group you can join that you could share these posts these products inside that group well I know thinking like if you're going to meet one of these fakes you want to make it hard to a specific niche so and if you have that on a wordpress site you're going to get just natural organic traffic you I mean I don't even try to rank for stuff sometimes and I drink every artist things and you have you get longer tail keywords and you're creating in your creative stuff that people are actually sticking on you're providing value then your your on-page time is going to increase your your rankings are going to increase your your longtail keywords are going to are going to give you more traffic of course it's not going to happen instantly overnight from the SEO but I mean like you said you can go out there you can share on Facebook you share on Twitter you can share a Pinterest there's some great software out there that can help with traffic we just released want anyone that bought our board commander software and this is a perfect example of something that you can use board commander with to to give traffic absolute absolutely yes and I'll show you this here like so most store builders will come with perhaps three platforms that you can integrate so you can see here that we've got sent so we've got Amazon we've got Aliexpress Walmart BestBuy shop calm sea discount on eBay so what you do is you put your details in OOP sorry so you put your details in for each of those of course if you're not signed up with this you know it will take you up five or seven minutes to sign up with each of them to get more on your key but I'm not going to be the same with any store builder so you spend a little bit of time doing that add all the details in there and then basically you know as I've kind of demonstrated over here it doesn't matter which store your customer purchases from you're going to get commission so it's kind of global and just get back here so dashboard so when you add in all your different party the other men or do you just click that to add them in there how hard is it adding new products um well I mean like it's just as good back here profond it so basically it's a case of dropping in phrase there send your filters and then clicking fetch products and then you just basically you just click the ones you want to add you know it really depends on how many products you add at the same time as to how long it will take to put them all in your site but once you've done that and it just it built a page like this right when you first set up a store and you know the first couple of stores first couple of niches you enter it might be something that you're interested in but essentially we're all doing this for the money so you're going to go ostomy Shay's market that you're not really too familiar with I guess so you might think you know what what products you need to add to your store but there will be people searching your store for products you don't actually have kind of included let me show you this so I'm going to put this popular code for ladies so there are a part of the code for ladies on this site I normally that would mean we just wouldn't make any money because it wouldn't be anything on your site but or you can pair down as it goes off and it cause all of the details from for certain different platforms I like that that's like that's cool so even even if you don't have them on your site if people are searching for something you can still make money from them even though it you haven't thought about it in the you haven't already thought about it yes absolutely so it pulls all of the details and they're you know I mean if your customer might like to click there and then click there you know they can buy it you still make a commission store and it still makes a commission even though the product isn't actually on your store love it okay so mark on the front end there is there anything else that you wanted to show us on the front end before we move on to the OTO s okay so with the front end I haven't got the access page open but there's also training there's this thing on the belt we got I plug it we've got a theme so you've got the plug-in pretty much does what I've just explained to you so you've got you can set everything up from here so you can add the feature list store side store here there are sliders you can customize everything let me just have a look Sophie motions just bear with me a second so you pretty much customize everything so we're all going to be entering differently she's different marketplaces so you can get the look you want from the theme we have run it there and we have a blog built-in so again for organic traffic you can either do it manually you can even pull feeds in from WordPress sites RSS or easy with articles and it's a look we've kind of looked at that and the color settings there are number of details you can set up here you get a spinning and stuff as well yeah yeah cool okay so so that's basically that's the the front end offer there I think you guys as far as like limits on the front end before we move on to the OTO so there any like limit on there anything that people should be aware of yes around Mike um so there's two licenses on the front end so that you can set in compare that case the plug-in metallic theme on either 50 sites or you can do it on 10 sites okay so the 50 side of the license is 2777 but that's for the first 4 hours so we'll be going up and it rising to retail price of $67 and the 10 license is 2574 and that will be rising to 65 okay so that's the front end offer there bring it through the OTO is I think you've got a three of them yeah so the first upgrade is you can perform basically what that allows you to do is run this on unlimited sites so you can run it on as many sites as you want on top of that there are three additional things that I know I've said that you can customize the theme to unite the asymptotes but each theme has a different set up a different structure so you know you can customize each of these themes and it will look totally different so you know kind of a different layout a different feel and additional features with the plug-in so with the additional features there is a facebook compatible theme so if you wanted to drop a store into Facebook you can do that so you can have a fully functioning store inside of Facebook there's also an email League direction with a number of triggers there's a bunch of blog images so if you are looking for organic traffic then there's a ton of images that you can use there were two free so that included with this this upgrade and I think that's pretty much it on you can pair Pro Line upgrade through is res edition on I know a lot of people probably don't see the value in developers right but you know from my my end point of view on being able to take a product so to take this door here so you built this door and you build it with you compare and it's fully loaded everything works and it makes you money so in two or three months time so you make a fun guys a month from your store you can go ahead and you can flip that light you know if you make a thousand dollars a month two or three months time you can sell that for $12,000 you can even sell a site that makes money you can sell it up to 12 times the gross monthly revenue and I've done this just gonna say this isn't some theoretical thing I know marks made-up words if I remember correctly it was like a hundred and twenty-five or 65 or 70 I like you made a lot of money from it from one site yeah I mean I've sold numerous salsa one of the sites was suddenly 7,000 but I mean in terrible selling sites with with income I've sold a total of 163 thousand dollars worth so it's kind of something that anybody can do and if you have developers rights you can you know you can perfectly legally plently size so I don't have to contact us so it's something to consider I know it's not for everybody and I know an awful lot of people will be thinking I'm never going to do that we haven't seen it is so easy like I mean you can create some your value and you can you can sell it I mean I think it's one of those things that I think I think a lot of people see value in that I see value in that so that's that's an optional upgrade guys for you if you want to get the developer right to be able to actually create sites and sell those sites you can pick up the developer license there and I think you've got one more OTO yeah so the last upsell is resell it so if you wanted to sell the whole package the whole eekum pair package essentially you can sell it you'll get 100% of everything you make so it's kind of like Evan you're a software business if you like we just set you up with a special rink you refer people through that link and you keep 100% of everything you Richard so the guys the difference between that and me then the developer is with the developer you can sell sites with this installed on it when ya HST you can go out there and actually sell the software you don't worry about setting up a site for anyone you can just go and sell them the software itself and keep all the commissions mark thank you so much for coming on the show today is there anything else anything we missed anything you wanted to mention before we wrap it up I simply probably pretty much covered it I mean this if you do have a score building you're probably thinking I do a donate this but take a look at the comparison engine take a look a comparison that sites online they're making an absolute fortune and as you know Mike's already mentioned you know everything from flights to paid sales no physical goods you know it made sense people are more they're going to be more inclined to actually post you through year it's got a it's got a body bias right and you ultimately you can make more money I mean it's kind of a simple as a thank you so much for coming on the show today and best of luck with your launch hi spike thanks wrap me up I know you're busy good luck today I hope you enjoyed the interview today with Mark if you are interested in picking up ich impaired at its lowest price you're going to want to come back tomorrow at 10 a.m. 71 more words

#ecompare review #mike from maine #mikefrommaine #mikefrommaine.com

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agritecture · 8 years ago

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5 VERTICAL FARM PROJECTS INCUBATING AT BROWN UNIVERSITY

By Sierra Clark and Amy Ng

Young people want to be farmers, but not in the traditional sense. The emergence of vertical farming, hydroponics, and the local food movement are inspiring college students across the country to think about how to grow food sustainably. At Brown University, multiple groups of students are working on indoor agriculture projects. They are all connected by the desire to do work that matters in a growing field.

Industry Research Leaves Students Skeptical of Vertical Farming

Undergraduate senior Sierra Clark first learned about vertical farms after interning for Indigo, an agriculture tech company in Boston. She grew up on a farm, so it was initially difficult to comprehend growing plants indoors without soil or sunlight. After researching more, she was inspired by the way vertical farming touted to save resources. She kept thinking how her home state of California needed a water-efficient way to grow food, given years of drought. In order to learn more, she created two courses at Brown and recruited fellow students to learn with her.

Through the first course, Research and Education on Vertical Farms, Clark and Melissa Isidor focused on the question of whether vertical farms are a sustainable way to grow food in cities. After visiting multiple farms, speaking to experts, and reading books such as The Vertical Farm and Plant Factory, they were left undecided. Because vertical farms are expensive to build and maintain, the numbers suggested they made most sense in places lacking natural resources, such as the Middle East or Northern Canada. The two students shared their findings by holding monthly Lunch & Learn talks, creating a vertical farm field guide, and putting together a talk called “The Future of Food” which brought Dickson Despommier to campus.

The second course, Business Plans in Indoor Agriculture, was focused on identifying industry problems and needs. A team of four students––Clark, Davin Lewis, Amy Ng, and Zach Pockrose––interviewed 60 growers, suppliers, and academics to collect quantitative and qualitative data. They identified three major problems. First, a lack of standardization is decreasing efficiency of the industry. Many companies have individualized methods or have patented their work which makes industry “best practices” unclear to new and current farmers. Second, capital and operating costs are expensive, while margins are rather slim. Lights and labor are two major cost concerns, which ideally will be slightly alleviated as LED costs decrease in coming years. Third, there exists a huge knowledge gap. Farmers need help with business and marketing, while business people need help growing. The team is writing a business plan addressing this third concern.

Building Systems Illuminates Specific Costs For In-Home Projects

The Lunch & Learn Vertical Farming series led to two different build projects.

Clark, Ng, along with Brown Entrepreneurship graduate student Siddhant Agarwal and Rhode Island School of Design alumnus Ari Kohorn, are building a high-pressure aeroponics system in the basement of a non-profit student housing co-op. The system will use mist rather than a stream of liquid to feed plant roots. Aeroponics is more complex to build, but expedites plant growth due to increased oxygen root exposure. Like any system, aeroponics comes with its challenges such as clogged misting nozzles and the risk associated with power failure––both causes for quick plant death. The team sees the project as a fun learning opportunity that will teach them how to build systems and grow lettuce.

Basic aeroponic system set-up.

From left Sierra Clark, Sid Agarwal, Ari Kohorn. Amy Ng not shown.

Almost all materials were sourced from Amazon, Walmart and Home Depot. They chose T5 fluorescent-powered lights to reduce cost. The system will cost $1,300, and includes a reservoir and two tiers of grow units. The design eliminates a seedling site since seeds are grown directly on fleece attached to each grow unit. They plan to feed the co-op with the lettuce they grow. The students have also built smaller aeroponics systems and a hydroponics system.

Hydroponic system.

Cannabis cloning aeroponic system.

For the second build project, four students created a beautifully designed home-use hydroponics system for a course called Projects in Engineering Design. The team was comprised of four senior mechanical engineers: Cat Hebson, Carrie Manteiga, Josie Natrasevchi, and Kenny Volkmann, who were inspired to build something that could grow food year-round in a small space. This idea was originally sparked by an interest in permaculture and a Lunch & Learn talk which convinced them to use hydroponics instead of soil.

From left Kenny Volkman, Cat Hebson, Carrie Manteiga, and Jose Natrasevchi.

The team laser cut and pieced together the entire structure from scratch. The final product is tall––standing at six feet and made almost completely with wood. The system includes a hidden reservoir tank, a seedling bed and two rows of grow trays. Some neat design features include adjustable lights which can be shifted higher as plants grow, a hidden tilt that allows water to flow through the system while appearing horizontal to the viewer, and a temperature regulation system that notifies users to put in ice cubes when the reservoir water is too warm. The system cost $530 to build and requires $240 per month for energy and water.

PhD Student Project Turns Into A Business Venture

One year ago, Brown PhD Neuro-Engineering graduate, Jacob Komar, became fascinated with the idea of creating a vertical farming business. Komar and his team of three plan to be a major supplier of aeroponics growing systems through their startup Fresh Local 52. The company will sell 1,000 sq ft aeroponic turnkey farms that include an aeroponics system, hardware, and software––all of which function together but can also be purchased as separate pieces.

“Right now, people are buying from a bunch of different vendors. It will be easier and more efficient if people can buy everything from one place,” Komar says.

With four academic degrees in hardware and software, Komar believes Fresh Local 52’s greatest value add will be their control systems. “Currently, there are no turnkey farms that can aggregate data and analyze it in a meaningful way,” he says.

Another major issue with fully integrated systems, Komar found, is cost. Aeroponics systems can cost thousands of dollars, despite being relatively cheap to make. Fresh Local 52 is committed to bringing quality farm products at the lowest price possible.

About the Authors: Sierra Clark is a senior at Brown University graduating with a degree in cognitive neuroscience. Her work outside of school is focused on sustainable agriculture and nutrition. Previously she has worked for agriculture tech and digital health companies. In the future she plans on starting her own sustainable farm and offering educational services to future farmers.

Amy Ng is a senior at Brown University graduating with dual degrees in business and environmental studies. Amy is dedicated to food security and interested in providing sustainable agriculture services to undeveloped countries. They* plans to work with Sierra in closing the knowledge gap for future farmers.

*preferred pronoun

To learn more about these courses or student projects, please contact Sierra Clark at [email protected].

#Amy Ng #Sierra Clark #Brown University #Agritecture #Vertical Farming #Aeroponic #Hydroponic #entrepreneurship #student #Design #Cannabis Cloning #Brown Entrepreneurship #Indoor Agriculture #Business Plans #original content

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rafi1228 · 6 years ago

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JavaScript – Master the Fundamentals in 6 Hours

What you’ll learn

Understand the fundamental concepts in JavaScript

Learn problem-solving skills

Learn and apply the best practices

Avoid common pitfalls and mistakes other JavaScript developers make

Write solid JavaScript code

Requirements

No coding experience is required to take this course.

Description

WHAT IS JAVASCRIPT?

JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and growing faster than any other programming language. As a developer, you can use JavaScript to build web and mobile apps, real-time networking apps, command-line tools, and games.

4 REASONS TO LEARN JAVASCRIPT

JavaScript is a key tool for front-end, back-end, and full-stack developers.

The average annual salary for a JavaScript developer is $72,000.

Companies like Walmart, Netflix, and PayPal run big internal applications around JavaScript.

Having strong JavaScript knowledge will help you land your dream job.

A STEP-BY-STEP, BEGINNER-FRIENDLY COURSE

This course is your first step towards a new career in web or mobile development. Here is what you get when enroll in this course:

6 hours of HD videos

Bite-sized and easy-to-digest videos with “no fluff”

30 exercises and challenges with solutions

Expert tips to become a JavaScript wizard

No more wasted time on disconnected, out-of-date tutorials

Learn at your own pace – take your time if required

Unlimited access – watch the course as many times as you wish

30-day money-back guarantee – try it risk free! You have nothing to lose.

Certificate of completion to present to your current or future employer

WHY THIS COURSE?

There are several JavaScript courses on Udemy. So, what makes this course different? Here are 5 reasons:

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Mosh has 17 years of experience as a software engineer

He has produced 19 courses and many of them are best-selling courses

He has taught over 200,000 students in 192 countries

No fluff or unnecessary repetition – don’t waste your time on long courses

Clear, concise, and practical training – start coding right away

Learn how to think like a programmer – most, if not all, courses just teach you JavaScript features, not the art of problem solving

JavaScript interview questions – many of the exercises in the course are picked from popular interview questions

Fun and engaging – just read Mosh’s reviews and see what his students have to say

WHO IS THIS COURSE FOR?

Aspiring developers – perhaps you learned a little bit of HTML and CSS and want to take your first JavaScript programming course. This course is an ideal starting point.

Experienced developers with no degree in computer science – there are a lot of self-taught web developers out there who cannot solve basic programming problems, because they never attended a college. Don’t be one of those! This course teaches you the fundamental programming skills that every developer must know.

Anyone who wants to better understand JavaScript – chances are you’ve taken another course but didn’t understand certain topics well. You can take this course to fill the gaps and strengthen your understanding of JavaScript.

NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE NEEDED

You don’t need familiarity with JavaScript to take this course. You’ll learn everything from scratch, step-by-step. A very basic familiarity with HTML will be helpful but it is not required.

ARE YOU READY TO MAKE THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS BECOMING A WEB OR MOBILE DEVELOPER?

Stop wasting your time on disconnected tutorials or super long courses. Enroll in the course to get started. With a 30-day money-back guarantee, what do you have to lose?

Who this course is for:

Anyone who wants to become a web developer

Existing developers who need to strengthen their understanding of JavaScript

Created by Mosh Hamedani Last updated 6/2018 English English

Size: 2.67 GB

Download Now

https://ift.tt/2B816Tx.

The post JavaScript Basics for Beginners appeared first on Free Course Lab.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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networkingdefinition · 6 years ago

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equitiesstocks · 6 years ago

Text

Top 500 Keywords (Long Term)

Official Website: Top 500 Keywords (Long Term)

1 google 248,089,152

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healthyheatthings · 5 years ago

Video

youtube

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#IFTTT #YouTube

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deniscollins · 6 years ago

Text

Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force

If you were an Amazon executive would you: (1) spend $700 million to retrain 100,000 workers, about a third of its American workers, to do more high-tech tasks, moving a large swath of workers up one or two rungs on the skills ladder, such as turning warehouse floor workers into IT technicians and low-level coders into data scientists, or (2) dismiss those workers and hire on the open market? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

As automation technology has leapt ahead, workers increasingly worry about losing their jobs to robots and algorithms. Economists dismiss those concerns, by and large, arguing that workers can grab higher-skilled jobs with better wages.

Amazon may soon find out who is right.

The e-commerce giant said Thursday that it planned to spend $700 million to retrain about a third of its American workers to do more high-tech tasks, an acknowledgment that advances in technology are remaking jobs in nearly every industry — and that workers will need to adapt or risk being left behind.

Amazon said the program amounted to one of the world’s largest employee-retraining efforts. It will apply across the company, from corporate employees to warehouse workers, retraining about 100,000 by 2025. Amazon has about 300,000 employees in the United States.

The investment is a large-scale experiment in whether companies can remake their existing work forces to fit a fast-changing technological world. While government programs have tried to turn factory workers and coal miners into computer coders and data scientists, few of those efforts have succeeded. Corporate attempts have been limited.

But with unemployment low and workers scarce, companies like Amazon feel pressure to look internally to fill their labor needs. Their efforts could help answer a more fundamental question: Will automation be a solution for the great challenges of the 21st-century economy — low wages, rising inequality and anemic overall growth — or make those problems worse?

“The scale and pace of the changes in the work force are unprecedented,” said Susan Lund, an economist at the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. “They can’t hire off the street everyone they need. They have no choice but to retrain their own workers.”

Amazon already faces fierce criticism from politicians on the right and left, including President Trump and Democratic presidential candidates like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. They have held up the company as a symbol of tech industry excess, saying Amazon avoids paying taxes, devalues workers and squashes smaller businesses.

And the fear that robots are taking jobs, and that automation will lead to mass unemployment, has grabbed the popular imagination. Magazine covers warn of a robot apocalypse. Andrew Yang, a former tech entrepreneur, is running for president partly on a platform of offering a universal income to offset jobs lost to automation. The McKinsey Global Institute predicts that up to one-third of the American work force will have to switch to new occupations by 2030.

The prevailing view among economists and technologists is that for the next few years, digital technology, from clever software to warehouse robots, will mainly change jobs rather than destroy them. Tasks become automated, so people spend less time on routine work.

So far, there is little evidence of widespread displacement. Amazon and other companies have hired hundreds of thousands of workers for their warehouses. Manufacturers have added jobs after decades of cuts. The unemployment rate is near a 50-year low, and companies are digging deep into the labor market to find workers — easing education requirements, waiving drug tests and hiring people with criminal records.

Many economists fret that there has not been enough automation. Productivity — the amount of value that employees create, on average, in an hour of work — has been rising slowly. That has helped drag down both economic growth and wages. When workers aren’t more productive, it is harder for companies to pay them more.

Amazon’s announcement on Thursday could be a sign that the strong labor market is finally pushing companies to make investments in both workers and technology to increase productivity.

Big companies, including Walmart and AT&T, have announced their own training programs in recent years. Companies are also raising wages — last year, Amazon committed to paying a minimum wage of $15 per hour — giving them more of an incentive to ensure that those workers are productive.

“A tight labor market really enables workers to be able to demand more,” said J. W. Mason, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank. “When they have to pay higher wages, when they have to struggle to find workers, then they take the steps they need to make sure those workers are worth the money.”

Ardine Williams, Amazon’s vice president of people operations, said the company had more than 20,000 open positions in the United States. In November, Amazon selected Northern Virginia as the site of a second headquarters, after company executives said they needed to look beyond Seattle, its longtime home, to fill its need for talent.

Automation already plays a central role at Amazon’s huge warehouses. Devices tell workers which direction to walk to pick up a package from a shelf. And there are signs that technology is at least easing the company’s voracious appetite for warehouse workers: Last holiday season, it hired fewer temporary workers than in the previous year, and last quarter, its head count was up 12 percent, the lowest rise in years.

Amazon isn’t trying to turn warehouse pickers into software engineers. Rather, its new program aims to move a large swath of workers up one or two rungs on the skills ladder, turning warehouse floor workers into IT technicians and low-level coders into data scientists.

Ms. Williams said the retraining initiative was built on existing education programs at the company. Software engineering classes will be available for corporate employees without technical backgrounds, she said.

“When automation comes in, it changes the nature of work, but there are still pieces of work that will be done by people,” Ms. Williams said in an interview. “You have the opportunity to up-skill that population so they can, for example, work with the robots.”

Amazon’s announcement met with some skepticism from experts, They noted that American companies had long spent less on training than their European counterparts — and that when they did offer training, it was usually for college-educated, white-collar workers.

Amazon’s most prominent retraining program has had only modest adoption internally. In 2012, Amazon started a program called Career Choice to provide up to $12,000 in tuition and other costs for hourly employees to get certificates or associate degrees in high-demand fields like health care. Even though hundreds of thousands of people have worked at Amazon’s warehouses since the program started, only about 25,000 have participated.

Even if the retraining effort succeeds, some workers are bound to lose out. Not every one of them will be able to find a better job.

A report that the McKinsey Global Institute published on Thursday analyzed the impact of automation and the clustering of skilled workers in geographic hubs. The research paper concluded that 25 cities and high-growth hubs could generate 60 percent of the job growth in the United States through 2030. The 54 trailing cities and rural areas, where one-fourth of Americans live, could have no growth in jobs.

Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who recently wrote a report on automation and the work force, said increased training would, like higher wages, benefit workers. But he cautioned that there was no guarantee those policies would last when the economy cooled.

And he said that if Amazon did expect large job cuts in the future, offering training now would be a savvy public relations move.

“A less benign view of it is you’re pushing a lot of stuff out publicly at a moment where you know there’s going to be a real serious human accounting in the coming years,” Mr. Muro said. “It’s also good marketing now at a time when you’re beginning to contemplate major staffing changes.”

#Retraining #Amazon

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fmservers · 7 years ago

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Kindred’s robots help retailers handle fulfillment centers — and take on Amazon

Since taking the reins as chief executive of Kindred at the beginning of the year, Jim Liefer has been focused on commercializing his company’s autonomous robots. But unlike forward-projecting use-cases for robots that may (or may not) one day take over for human beings in a wide swath of functions, Kindred’s current robots are purpose-built for the floor of retail fulfillment centers. That puts Kindred in the middle of an interesting business question: Given rising consumer expectations associated with online ordering, can anyone match or beat Amazon when it comes to speed, accuracy and efficiency?

With a background in operations at Walmart and One Kings Lane, Liefer asserts that his company’s core IP represents a significant advancement in retail operations. That’s because while industrial robots have worked well on manufacturing floors, robots have historically underperformed in e-commerce fulfillment centers, which require systems to handle objects of various shapes and sizes. Kindred’s approach is also notable because of its low-risk model that doesn’t require customers to make major capital investments. Instead of paying for the robot hardware, clients such as Gap pay based on the robots being able to successfully pick and sort items in a warehouse.

In the interview below, Liefer was eager to elaborate on his company’s core product, SORT. He was also happy to address the labor and throughput challenges facing Kindred’s clients as they look to thrive this holiday season. Finally, he offered his candid perspective on the ongoing debate over AI and jobs.

Gregg Schoenberg: Jim, it’s good to see you. I was interested in talking with you because Kindred is focused on the unsexy, but very important part of robot and AI technology that deals with e-commerce and gives insight into how our economy is changing. And by unsexy, I mean that your robots don’t do parkour.

Jim Liefer: Thanks, Gregg. I’ll start out by saying that sexy is in the eye of the beholder. If you came from retail operations companies like Walmart, sexy would be not having to re-engineer or re-architect my building every year to handle the next peak.

GS: Fair enough. So where has that “sexy” journey taken the company today?

JL: We’ve evolved from a research and engineering company into a customer-focused organization. Today, there are four primary components that Kindred is working on: vision capability, grasping/manipulation capability, ability to identify what’s being held onto and then placing an item somewhere.

GS: And today, your solution is being applied to retail fulfillment centers?

JL: Yes, in retail fulfillment distribution centers, but not the consumer-facing side of retail. Still, there is a tremendous amount of automation in these centers. There are sorters and power conveyance, and there are forklifts running around. But we saw gaps in those in-between moments, the need to take individual pieces from automation A to automation B. That’s where Kindred now can fill those gaps, and it’s a big market.

GS: Do you make robots or do you make cobots?

JL: We’re absolutely collaborating with the humans, but we’re not letting them get that close to the robot. We’re letting the humans do what they do best, like higher-level thinking and dealing with more ambiguity than the robot can handle.

GS: But your solution is designed with the intent that there are going to be people that interact with it?

JL: For some period of time to come, I believe that is going to be true. That’s the design of what we have now. The reason I say it that way is that even today, the aspects of how product arrives at our solution varies, and some day, there might be another mobile robot that serves our robot, that brings the product to us.

Product

GS: At the core of the solution is your autograsp technology, right?

JL: The autonomous grasp algorithm is the core of our AI technology, which is combined with vision and grasping capabilities.

GS: I’m guessing that even though that grasp technology looks simple, it’s actually a big feat of both software and hardware innovation.

JL: Yes, absolutely. The grasping technology is a combination of AI that can understand the ambiguity that it’s dealing with. But there’s also the the physical side of it. Not only do you have to be able to get to a grasp-point, but you also have to grip it correctly.

Some day, there might be another mobile robot that serves our robot, that brings the product to us.

GS: What’s the inherent challenge with getting the gripping correct?

JL: It needs to be precise enough to pick up the item you want. It also has to have enough torque to be able to hold onto the item when you’re moving it.

GS: Why is that so critical?

JL: Because you have to move at a speed that’s equivalent to a human or better in order to not lose it.

GS: What’s the installation process associated with putting a system into a facility?

JL: We literally roll them off the truck, roll them into place, plug them into 110 power and a data port, and maybe do some final provisioning of software. All in, it takes us anywhere from five to eight hours to set up a robot. So it’s definitely plug and play.

Business Model

GS: I know you don’t actually sell the solution to a customer. Can you walk me through your model?

JL: In the days when I was in a Walmart facility and I wanted to implement a new solution, I would go out to a service provider and they would tell me how many millions of dollars to plunk down. I would pay for it and then someone would come in and build it, and then they would go away and I would try to operate it.

GS: How antiquated.

JL: In our world today, they tell us their throughput need and how many products they are trying to serve with robots. We then deploy the number of robots to the customer. We have an agreement that says you need 10 robots or whatever the number is, and we deploy robots that will serve X amount of products.

GS: How does the money flow work?

JL: It’s a robots-as-a-service model, where every time we successfully grasp and stow a product or item, they pay us something.

It takes us anywhere from five to eight hours to set up a robot. So it’s definitely plug and play.

GS: A commission of sorts.

JL A commission, right. So it’s not a purchase and walk away. And there are several reasons why we think that’s compelling for the customer. One, because it’s not a capital expenditure play for them; it doesn’t have to be multiple weeks, months or even years to get onto the capital budget. It’s an operating expense play.

GS: That sounds like a key consideration.

JL: Think of it this way. When an operating expense comes into play, in many cases, a director-level person of a fulfillment center can make the choice: Am I going to hire a human to do the job, or I can hire a robot to do that job? The other is that because we’re providing a service to the customer, we’re right there alongside them. It’s not as though we gave them something and said figure it out.

GS: Aren’t you making it very easy for clients to keep the robots around? Because it’s not costing them to have the robots sit on the fulfillment center floor.

JL: Well, okay, good question. In our model, we still have a minimum for the customer, because we’re paying down the robot. We don’t want to have a robot sitting there idle.

GS: In that case, what’s the break-even on how long the robot needs to be on site with the client?

JL: It’s somewhere between a year and a year and half to get the payback to cover the cost of building the robot.

The Kindred.AI sorting robot in the lab.

GS: Does the counterparty risk become a factor? Because these machines are obviously expensive.

JL: Yes, that comes into play. At the same time, the robots themselves are quite… I want to say the word mobile. It’s relatively low-pain for us to roll them out and roll them to another customer facility that’s probably nearby. Of course, we don’t want to do that, but it’s possible to do it.

Amazon

GS: Of course not. But you’ve spent many years at Walmart, and you’re obviously very aware of the existential threat that Amazon poses to just about everybody that isn’t Amazon. Does Kindred aspire to help others thrive in a retail economy that is increasingly dominated by Amazon?

JL: Yes. It levels the playing field, because if our customer, the retailer, is able to have better throughput, get the products into the hands of the customer faster, then they have the ability to hold onto their customers. If they don’t do it, then those customers are going to go somewhere else.

Am I going to hire a human to do the job, or I can hire a robot to do that job?

GS: Looking to the future, do you want to go deeper within the apparel channel, or do you see other retail applications for your grasping technology?

JL: To recap, we figured out a very difficult problem, which is how to handle clothing in a polybag with a label on it. What seems like the most logical and reasonable place to go is to smaller items and maybe toy items or jewelry.

GS: But it has to be in a bag?

JL: It doesn’t have to be in a bag. In testing, we can pick up a pen or a pencil. We can pick up an iPhone and even general merchandise-related items like baby wipes or rubber balls.

Technology

GS: Let’s dive into your technology a little deeper. Is your tech based on reinforcement learning or deep reinforcement learning?

JL: Actually, both. The way that we’re operating the current SORT robot is that there are multiple AI algorithms that are running in concert together. So there’s the autonomous grasp algorithm, there’s a grasp verification algorithm, there’s a stow algorithm; there are multiple algorithms that are running to maintain that speed and accuracy. Then, there’s our team in the Toronto office—

GS: —That’s the team working on deploying more reinforcement learning?

JL: Yes, the reinforcement learning which would replace some of the deep learning algorithms that we have in place today.

GS: I read up on Rich Sutton, who, based on my research, is a big deal in reinforcement learning—

JL: —Yes. He’s a big deal and is a mentor to several of our people.

It’s relatively low-pain for us to roll them out and roll them to another customer facility that’s probably nearby.

GS: Sutton describes reinforcement learning as a learning system that wants something. Can you describe in lay terms how this is central to Kindred’s technology and how it is different than deep Learning?

JL: Here’s how I think of reinforcement learning versus deep Learning. Reinforcement learning is allowing the algorithm to determine all of the possible outcomes and all of the possible permutations. Think about something in a space where you want you to go from point A to point B. In reinforcement learning, that robot will achieve the goal by doing something called body babbling, which looks like it’s jittering around, looking at all the different possible solutions.

GS: So it takes longer to train a reinforcement algo?

JL: Yes, because in deep Learning, you are going to give it some sort of structure within parameters, because you sort of know what you want it to do. Then you look at body babbling, which is a much cleaner solution because the algorithm knows how to deal with all these variables because it’s explored every permutation.

GS: I saw that Kindred released a research paper last month. My top-line takeaway is that while reinforcement learning has made progress, it’s tough to train robots.

JL: I view it this way: In the last two years that I’ve been here at Kindred, I’ve seen things on a daily basis that I didn’t think were possible the week before or the month before. That’s a blanket statement, though, which is one of the reasons why I think people are anxious about AI and automation.

AI Anxiety

GS: So let’s talk about AI anxiety. Yesterday, I was on Bush Street and I watched this Cafe X robot serve coffee. Meanwhile, across the street, you’ve got this Blue Bottle that’s teeming with people, keeping its staff quite busy. Is that the future you see? Where workers are in demand, even in an era of well functioning robots that can grasp stuff?

JL: I think back to Tower Records in San Francisco in the 90s. It used to be packed. I mean, that’s where I spent every weekend. You never thought that would end, perhaps like some people at the Blue Bottle today. But there’s that flip point.

GS: I appreciate that honest comment.

JL: To me, I just think it’s inevitable, and I don’t think it’s bad. But I believe that we will embrace it, just as we embrace technology in our phones, because it will improve our lives in many ways and it will also make our lives more complicated.

GS: We’ve discussed previously, too, this idea that in the fulfillment centers where the Kindred robots are operating, there’s a labor shortage.

JL: Yes, there’s no employee there to do the job.

We can pick up an iPhone and even general merchandise-related items like baby wipes or rubber balls.

GS: And that’s because fulfillment centers are in locations that are often—

JL: —They’re clustered. They’re fighting for the same resources. Big Amazon has come in, they’re paying those workers more, so they’re siphoning all those workers away.

GS: What about temporary workers around the holidays?

JL: We said earlier that the robots are collaborative, working alongside and collaborating with the humans. Absolutely, there are places for the temporary workers to come in, and I want those humans to be fulfilled. In terms of helping our customer, it’s so painful to get even a temporary worker, give them a job that’s very mundane, have them leave and then have to hire another temporary worker.

GS: But Kindred is giving jobs to people with gamer skills, too, right?

JL: Yes, on the tele-operation side. About 85 percent of the time, our algorithm can do everything on its own. But 15 percent of the time, we have a human in the loop who steps in and assists the robot for about a second and half, and then steps back out.

GS: When you’re recruiting for these people, are you recruiting in the typical places that tech companies look?

JL: These people have a wide variety of backgrounds and skill sets. They might be gamer types, but some of them have marketing degrees and some of them have engineering backgrounds. There’s also a pool of generalists, those jack-of-all-trades kind of people.

GS: But they need to have pretty good dexterity, right?

JL: I don’t think it’s highly required. A lot of it is just point and click.

GS: Well, on that non-techy note, Jim, thanks so much for your time.

JL: Thanks very much, Gregg.

This interview has been edited for content, length and clarity.

Via Gregg Schoenberg https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

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theconservativebrief · 7 years ago

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Do I think ghosts are real? No, I’m a journalist! But do I think ghosts are real? Yes, it’s October.

When the air gets crisp and the leaves fall and everyone who sucks starts quoting the end of The Great Gatsby, it’s time to open your heart to the possibility that you don’t understand everything. You don’t even remember why leaves turn orange, probably. I know I don’t! You might buy some ghost-tracking equipment and play with it, and that would be an all right and possibly even admirable thing for you to do. Maybe better than a lot of other ways you could spend your money, hm?

I sat down with Kim Johnston, a paranormal researcher from Birmingham, Alabama, to find out what kind of money I should be prepared to spend on ghost-hunting apps and equipment this fall, and to get an expert opinion on which of the dozens of ghost-hunting apps available in the app store are rude scams that will only trick me and hurt my feelings.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

To start, could you give some background as to your experience in the paranormal field? What do you specialize in?

Kim Johnston

I have been either experiencing paranormal activity or investigating it and researching it for the last 10 years. It started when I moved into a house that I can only describe as haunted, back in 2008. So that’s where my journey into the paranormal began. I do have a day job — I’m a senior software engineer who designs and develops business web applications for an insurance company — so I tend to be pretty logical and skeptical. But there’s sometimes things that you experience that you have no other explanation for.

I write stories about local history and local hauntings, and then I also do a lot of residential cases where people call me because they’re experiencing paranormal activity and they need help.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Could you talk a little bit about the local stories you’re referring to? And when you’re helping people in their homes, what exactly does that entail?

Kim Johnston

Here in Birmingham, in the early 1800s, the Creek tribe was being pushed off the land by Andrew Jackson. There were numerous fights in the area surrounding us — battles and massacres and that sort of thing. We have that type of history here that I think causes some of our hauntings.

The city of Birmingham was also known for its pig iron back in the 1800s, when we were having the Industrial Revolution. We have mines everywhere. All the abandoned mines tend to be haunted because so many men died while mining. Sloss Furnace is located here in Birmingham and it’s one of the most haunted places in America, I would argue. It’s haunted because so many men would die, falling into the fires, or from smoke inhalation, or other industrial accidents. Those are some of the stories I’ve investigated.

“If you don’t have an EMF meter to detect these different electromagnetic waves, then there are apps that have that built in”

The first thing we do if someone thinks they’re having paranormal activity is, using an EMF (electromagnetic field) meter, I determine if there’s an electrical issue in the house. High EMF ratings have been linked to hallucinations and a feeling of paranoia, or making you feel like you’re being watched. These things can feel like they’re paranormal to the person experiencing them, but it can be just really high EMF and prolonged exposure to that. So the first thing we try to do is we try to debunk and rule out the paranormal.

If you don’t have an EMF meter to detect these different electromagnetic waves, then there are apps that have that built in. One of the apps is made by Laxton Ghosts; they’re some researchers out of Sweden. That app has several tools in it, and I find that one useful because it’s built by genuine researchers and not people who are just trying to have fun or make an app that’s kind of a joke.

A basic EMF meter, also called a K2 meter, you can find on Amazon or pretty much anywhere online. The cheapest model you can find is about $40 or so. It’s detecting electromagnetic fields, which are given off by anything electric: appliances, your power box at your house, power lines that go overhead. A TriField meter is a little more expensive. They’re about $150 or more, depending on what model you get. But that one can detect magnetic fields alone, and then electronic fields, and also radio frequencies depending on the settings you choose.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

I’m curious to hear a little more about how expensive this is as a hobby or as a research project. Other than the meters we’ve talked about, what kinds of things do you need to buy if you just want to try it out?

Kim Johnston

It can be a very budget-friendly hobby. All I started with was a flashlight and a voice recorder from Walmart that ran me about $30. Those were the two main tools I needed to get started in paranormal research. The voice recorder is used to capture electronic voice phenomena (EVPs). That’s all you need to get started. You can just go into a place that you know is haunted, or feel like might be haunted, turn your voice recorder on, and start asking questions, and see if any kind of voices show up on your recording afterward.

The next piece of equipment would be a decent camera. You can use your camera built into your phone, but if you want to do something like a night vision camera, those run about $200 for a good one from a reliable dealer. You’ll need the IR lights that help light up the room so the camera can see. I think IR lights are anywhere from $40 and up. That’s really all you would need.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Have you seen the BooBuddy teddy bear that has an EMF reader in it? I just stumbled across it this morning and really want one.

The BooBuddy bear has an EMF reader in his stomach to help detect paranormal activity. Bytown Paranormal

Kim Johnston

I have one!

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Do you love it?

Kim Johnston

I do like it. We did have a very interesting experience using it at an old mining village. It has an EMF meter inside it, so its belly will grow red if it detects any electrical fields. We were standing out in the middle of the woods of this mining village and the bear’s belly starts glowing red. We ruled out that there was anything electrical around to cause it to do that. One of the people with us said she felt like there was a little girl holding her hand. She was holding BooBuddy in one arm and then the other felt like a little girl was holding her hand. It has recorded questions inside of it. We’ve used that some but not with a lot of luck — at least not yet. But it does seem to attract childlike spirits.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

So once an EMF meter shows you something like that, what’s next?

Kim Johnston

Next, we’ll set up the voice recorders, and we use [what’s called] a spirit box. A spirit box is an AM/FM radio that’s been “hacked” to scan through all the radio stations at a high rate of speed and create white noise. It’s really noisy and makes a lot of racket, but the theory goes that spirits can [manipulate] that white noise to [make words or sounds] and communicate with us — real-time, where we can hear them. We can ask questions, and they hopefully will respond.

Some [apps that can also do this] scan internet radio stations and others just have a bank of sounds built in. We have a [classic] radio spirit box, and we also use apps that are spirit boxes on our smartphones. My favorite spirit box app that I’m using right now is SonoX10, which is one of those apps that just has a sound bank; there’s also a SonoX12 for people on Android.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Could you talk a little bit about how you go about deciding that a research team — and therefore their app — is reliable?

Kim Johnston

I had a conversation with the creators of the Laxton Ghost app. I did a little research on them and saw that they were serious investigators — they weren’t just trying to create something for fun, and this was a serious effort to create something that was useful for paranormal research. I really kind of go by whether these people are serious in the field or if they’re just out to make a buck and fool somebody.

“Avoid anything that has a built-in feature where you can take photos while you’re in the app”

I avoid [the popular free app] Ghost Radar or anything named similarly to Ghost Radar — anything that has a built-in feature where you can take photos while you’re in the app. That kind of app will manipulate your photos to make you think you’ve caught some kind of paranormal apparition or strange-looking orb in your photos. So those are not very credible to me.

I was kind of skeptical of iOvilus, which is an app that seemingly just spits out random words. Supposedly spirits can manipulate it and give responses, make it say a word that’s relevant to what you’re asking or where you are. I do like to play with that one. Not everything it says is accurate or even applicable to where we are or what we’re doing, but sometimes it’ll do something or say something that’s dead-on. It makes me wonder.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Since you are a software developer, is working on something related to the paranormal something you’d ever get into on the technical side?

Kim Johnston

I haven’t started developing the code for it yet, but I am in the research phase [of an idea]. I want to create something that will allow a spirit to be able to interact and give yes or no responses. I have an idea of how that can be done differently than it has been done in other applications. One day, I hope to get that developed.

Kaitlyn Tiffany

My big question around the app stuff is, obviously if you’re interacting with ghosts, they’re probably pre-iPhone. Does that seem like a barrier to you?

Kim Johnston

You’re saying that the ghosts are from long ago, how would they know how to use our equipment?

Kaitlyn Tiffany

Yeah. Sorry if that’s a dumb question.

Kim Johnston

No, no, I struggled with this question in the beginning of my paranormal research too. What I would do is I would explain to the spirits when we started a session how to use all the various equipment. Some of my friends would kind of giggle at me because I felt the need to do this. Supposedly once you’ve passed on and you’re on the other side, you’re kind of all-knowing and you don’t need those explanations, but I still explain it anyway.

I do think it is a barrier at times. Our equipment can be intimidating, it can be loud, I do think that some spirits are afraid to interact with us because of that. But yeah, I don’t know, some of them figure it out really quick and we get some good interaction.

Original Source -> Ghost-hunting apps and tools that are worth your money, according to a paranormal researcher

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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ianasennus · 7 years ago

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[Udemy] JavaScript Basics for Beginners

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rwwealth-blog · 8 years ago

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What Unlikely Pairings May Teach Us About Innovation

The last few years have been inundated with major acquisitions, each creating buzz from within and beyond the business world. To name a few, in June of 2016, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn (which had already acquired online learning site Lynda.com the previous year). Fast forward to last month when Walmart announced it would buy Bonobos – a mostly-online men’s upscale clothing retailer – and Amazon announced it was set to buy Whole Foods Market.

This last acquisition particularly interested me given the somewhat recent debut of Amazon’s flagship grocery store, Amazon Go. This grocery store is unique. Sure, like all others, it sells packaged foods, produce and prepared meals. But what makes Amazon Go different is not what it has but what it lacks. There are no clerks, no tills and – most importantly – no lines. Shoppers simply scan their smartphones when they enter. When they remove an item from the shelf, it’s added to a virtual shopping cart. The customers are then charged for items automatically as they leave. In short, Amazon has an almost preternatural knack for finding pain-points in our everyday consumer experiences. Then, they work tirelessly to alleviate those pains. In the case of Amazon Go, which is currently open only to Amazon employees in Seattle, this means eliminating long lines and payment hassles.

Of course, we don’t know the strategy behind the Amazon-Whole Foods acquisition: it may seek to replicate the Amazon Go model on a larger scale; it may use its web expertise to position and sell Whole Foods products online; or – as some have suggested – it may capitalize on Whole Foods highly-prized shopping data to improve its own online grocery sales. Regardless of Amazon’s intentions, the disparity between its model and Whole Foods’ will likely strengthen the innovation behind bringing its master plan to fruition.

In a recent interview at the AICPA ENGAGE conference, Abigail Posner, Director of Strategic Planning at Google, pointed out that amazing products and services often arise from unexpected partnerships. Posner says that merely at the suggestion of two random words like chocolate and pillow, the human mind begins trying to find connections. The connection it finds may very well be the next big idea. Using the chocolate and pillow example, innovators may develop chocolate-covered melatonin for a midnight snack that improves one’s circadian rhythm.

When I asked some colleagues what their dream acquisitions would be, Posner’s theory proved true.

One of my peers suggested that, “if the Humane Society used OKCupid’s dating algorithm, people could easily match with their perfect pound pet.” Another colleague devised a clever business model by combining the forces of Etsy and Lyft. “Etsy could sponsor skill-building workshops at homeless shelters, teaching residents not only about crafting but also about entrepreneurship and managing money. Lyft could then deliver the items locally, and the homeless could pocket a living wage.”

These ideas, unsurprisingly, sprout from the modern mind. As Posner suggests, “creativity is about solving problems.” We’re problem-solvers by nature, and we’re adept at connecting seemingly disparate dots, these connections often giving rise to innovation and adaptation. Google is no longer just a search engine. Now, it creates cutting-edge consumer products, from smart home devices to driverless cars. Microsoft is no longer just software; it’s moved into mobile and gaming arenas. And by diversifying its products to include healthy snacks and beverages, PepsiCo has continued to report earnings despite an exponential downward trend in soda sales.

Although some business model adaptations are forced (think the transformation of the common candle from utilitarian source of light to scented home décor), the most thrilling innovations are disruptive and predictive; not responsive. Disruption is no longer a dirty word. Disruption is what happens when someone is brave enough to question status quo, to champion possibility over prudence, and to forge a trend that others will follow. Disruption is a catalyst for ideation, and, as Abigail Posner puts it, “ideas are the currency of transformation.”

What opportunities to innovate do you see within your own practice or organization? Reflect on this, or pose these questions to your colleagues. Organize an ideation session, and accelerate your solution from idea to reality.

Brock Faucette, Corporate Communications Manager, Association of International Certified Professional Accountants

Innovation courtesy of Shutterstock