Monday, July 1, 2013

Liliana Greenfield-Sanders: Short Term 12 at BAM CinemaFest

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BAM CinemaFest turned five this year and I loved their line-up. My two favorites were their Friday night films: last week's Crystal Fairy by Sebastian Silva and Closing Night film Short Term 12 by Destin Cretton.

I won't lie, movies can make me emotional. I had seen the short version of "Short Term 12" when Destin was on the festival circuit with me a few years ago and it was one of the best shorts I had ever seen (check it out on ITunes.) Of course I expected the film to make me cry a little, but I applied some mascara anyway. Big mistake. Short Term 12 reduced me to such a teary-eyed mess that I considered pouring a bottle of water on myself before the lights came up to play off what had happened.

But the film wasn't all sad... quite the opposite. The rest of Short Term 12 struck the right tone of honest, charming and even funny. In attendance at the screening were cast members: Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., Kaitlyn Dever, and Keith Stanfield as well as Director, Destin Cretton.

It's a rare thing to find a movie that's so straight-forwardly good-intentioned. The performances and the story were very subtle and impressive, but it possesses a purity of heart that makes it particularly worth seeing. The team behind this film very much wanted to tell this story about a foster care facility for all the right reasons and it shows.

Keith Stanfield, whose performance was at the root of many of my crying spells, grabbed the microphone towards the end of the Q&A and told us that the movie was (for him) really about how we as human beings need to help each other. "It sounds corny as shit but its true," he said to a crowd of people eating out of the palm of his hand.

My friend Kendra turned to me and said, "tell that damn kid to stop making me cry."

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liliana-greenfieldsanders/short-term-12-at-bam-cine_b_3523131.html

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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Faisal Hoque: Growing a Small Business with 5 Essential Principles

We tend to hear about people when they are successful but not when they are struggling. This creates a distorted perception that people succeed overnight.

Behind every "overnight success" is a story of a person or a team toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends and partners supporting them. Consider the following two stories:

Overnight Delivery, Not so Overnight: On March 12th, 1973, founder of FedEx, Fred Smith secured just seven packages for the first night's run. He sent his salesmen back into the field, more than doubled his network to 25 cities, and re-launched the service a month later -- this time handling a grand total of 186 packages. Smith was so desperate for cash that he flew to Las Vegas to play the blackjack tables. He wired the27,000 he won back to FedEx. Needless to say, Smith's persistence paid off.
Rising from the Ashes: At the beginning of 2009, the creator of mega successful video game Angry Birds, Rovio (located in in Espoo, a 20-minute drive west of Helsinki) was close to bankruptcy. Angry Birds was Rovio's 52nd game. The 'overnight success' of Angry Birds took just eight years. And the founders of Rovio had been thinking about video games for long before that.

So many business founders come up with a good idea yet they are unable to scale their companies for growth. Through my own journey as an entrepreneur, I've learned that every business is unique, but there are certain key precepts to follow for success. The few that do succeed do so with unmatched focus, discipline, and unconventional thinking.

Although it takes more than just this to be a success in business, here are five essential principles that you can begin implementing right away as you begin your journey toward growing your business:

1. Timing is Everything
The timing of your product or service must be right in the marketplace. If the market isn't ready and you are way ahead of the market, then you must possess the drive and the willingness to sacrifice in order to make that product or service work.

You will need to choose to either wait for the market to catch up (requiring the resources to survive during that period, and accepting the risk of emerging competition), or you'll need to adjust your offering to something more palatable to the market's current readiness.

Smaller businesses have the advantage of being able to make choices and implement changes without the exhaustive process and conflicting points of view that slow down major corporations. You need to anticipate your market and customers' needs and constantly innovate to stay ahead. This requires leadership with agility, resilience, and a willingness to fail -- and to recognize that failure quickly enough to adapt and move forward.

2. Brand, Brand, Brand
Today's economy requires business leaders to create positive memories for customers and partners, or customers will turn to a competitor in search of a better experience. If you want to create a scalable business, you have to understand just how crucial it is to build brand equity. The emotional attachment that links customers to your product, as opposed to any other, translates into sustainable growth. Here are some basic rules to connect, shape, influence, and lead with your brand:

  • Choose your target audience - the surest road to product failure is to try to be all things to all people.
  • Connect with the public - your objective is to make your audience feel an emotional attachment to your brand.
  • Inspire and influence your audience - an inspirational brand message is far more influential than one that just highlights product feature functions.
  • Reinforce the brand image within your company - make sure employees at every level of your organization work and behave in a way that reinforces your brand image.


3. Scale Your Sales
Creating a unique product and a unique brand isn't enough. It takes repeatable sales processes to create a scalable business. It is one thing to sign up a few customers; it is another thing entirely to identify, design, and implement repeatable sales and customer delivery processes. You've created a repeatable and scalable sales model when:

  • You can add new hires at the same productivity level as yourself or your sales leader.
  • You can increase the sources of your customer leads on a consistent basis.
  • Your sales conversion rate and revenue can be consistently forecasted.
  • Your cost to acquire a new customer is significantly less than the amount you can earn from that customer over time.
  • Your customers get the right product in the right place at the right time.


A repeatable sales model builds the platform to scale. Like the search for product/market fit, it can take major experimentation/R&D to find a repeatable and scalable sales model.

4. Embrace Technology
Nearly two thirds, or 64%, of the recent Bank of America (BofA) Small Business Owner Survey respondents said they wish they took better advantage of technology innovations to help manage their business. If a small business can identify a genuine need, technology likely exists to fulfill that need both locally and globally. There are few barriers to entry in an age where anyone with wireless can cheaply and quickly access the enabling technologies needed to execute their business model. It comes down to creating the right operating blueprint that connects the dots between your business model and the application of accessible technologies.

5. De-Stress for Success
Most small business owners consider managing the ongoing success of their business to be twice as stressful as maintaining a healthy relationship with a spouse or partner, nearly three times as stressful as raising children and more than four times as stressful as managing their own personal finances, according to the same Bank of America report mentioned earlier. The survey indicates that small business owners routinely forgo physical fitness and other personal priorities to keep up with business demands. Thirty-eight percent of small business owners maintain full or part-time jobs while running their own business.

The stressors can be relentless. But if you're not happy, healthy and motivated, you can't create a business model that provides a positive market experience. You also set the tone for everyone who works with you. Nobody wants to do business with a grouchy, bitter and exhausted owner. Therefore, investing the time and effort to adequately take care of your physical and mental well-being will further increase your chances for long term success. Mental health is not just about going to the gym to let off steam. It's about achieving a state of mental calmness to see you though the relentless challenges - but that's another topic in itself!

For more by Faisal Hoque, click here.

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Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Taliban capture 9 from helicopter in Afghanistan

A taxi tries to make its way through a sandstorm that obscures the city of Kanadahar, Afghanistan, Sunday April 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

A taxi tries to make its way through a sandstorm that obscures the city of Kanadahar, Afghanistan, Sunday April 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

(AP) ? A civilian transport helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in a Taliban-controlled area of eastern Afghanistan, and the insurgents took all nine people who were on board hostage, officials said Monday.

The aircraft landed in strong winds and heavy rain on Sunday in a village in the Azra district of Logar province, southeast of Kabul and about 30 kilometers (or 20 miles) from the Pakistan border, said district governor Hamidullah Hamid.

Taliban fighters then captured all nine aboard the helicopter and took them from the area, Hamid told The Associated Press. He said the crew members and passengers are all civilian, but he did not know their identities or nationalities.

NATO confirmed the helicopter went down on Sunday, but the International Security Assistance Force did not have any other details. ISAF spokeswoman Erin Stattel said the coalition was assisting in the recovery of the aircraft. She could not say whether the aircraft had made a precautionary landing or whether the Taliban had forced it down.

In Ankara, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it was asking officials in Afghanistan to check unconfirmed news reports that some or all of the nine people aboard the helicopter were Turkish citizens.

Logar deputy police chief Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai said the helicopter is owned by a company named Khaorasan. He first identified it as an Afghan company, but later said he didn't know where it is based. Rahimzai said he didn't know what kind of cargo the aircraft was carrying, where it was headed, or whether it was working for NATO.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-22-AS-Afghanistan/id-dc5024e19c094dd0b7c215947e9db4b8

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AMD reveals G-Series X embedded chips, drops a little ARM-powered bombshell

AMD reveals G Series embedded chips, drops an ARMpowered bombshell in the process

We're no strangers to AMD's embedded processors, designed for specialist applications such as casino gaming and dashboard infotainment systems. But this latest announcement of an updated G-Series processor reveals something totally unexpected. It's not just that the chip contains four Jaguar cores of PlayStation 4 fame, or that it also includes a Radeon 8000 GPU and I/O module on a single piece of silicon -- although that's all interesting enough. The key thing is actually the "X" in the lower right corner of the logo, which signifies that this is an x86 chip of the type we'd normally expect from AMD. The question is this: Why bother even mentioning the "X" when everyone knows AMD is an x86 stalwart already? Read on and we'll explain its true significance.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/23/amd-reveals-g-series-x-embedded-chips/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Monday, April 22, 2013

How Coffee Brings The World Together : Bay Area Bites - KQED

The best coffee comes from high altitudes with a warm climate like in Huehuetenango, Guatemala.Farmers gather coffee beans in Yunnan province, China.Workers separate beans in the coffee warehouse in Girbey village in Yergachefe, Gedo zone, Ethiopia, on Friday, Dec. 7, 2007. Beyene works 8 hours a day for 6 Ethiopian birr. Every day the world consumes over 1 billion cups of coffee, generating $80 billion in annual retail sales. That makes it the most valuable traded commodity after oil. Of this, coffee growers make on average 3 cents on every $3 latte bought. Photographer: Michael Tsegaye/Bloomberg News

Workers clean coffee beans at the Los Ausoles coffee plantation in Ahuachapan, El Salvador. Global exports of green coffee beans are worth $15 billion a year.A woman rakes coffee beans that are drying at a coffee plant in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Coffee is the country's top export.Forty percent of all coffee comes from Brazil. Here, coffee plantation workers pour sun-dried coffee beans into burlap sacks in Minas Gerais.

Vietnamese farmers grow a species of coffee tree called robusta. It grows fast and produces a big crop, but the bean has a bitter taste. Pictured is a coffee shop in Hanoi, Vietnam.An Indonesian "Starbikes" vendor prepares coffee from his bicycle for street laborers in Jakarta.

Post by Dan Charles, The Salt at NPR Food (4/22/13)

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Coffee is more than a drink. For many of us ? OK, for me ? it?s woven into the fabric of every day.

It also connects us to far corners of the globe.

For instance, every Friday, a truck pulls up to the warehouse of Counter Culture Coffee, a small roaster and coffee distributor in Durham, N.C., and unloads a bunch of heavy burlap sacks.

On any random day, that truck could bring ?10 bags from a farm in El Salvador; 20 bags from a cooperative in Burundi; two bags of a special coffee from Guatemala,? says Kim Elena Ionescu, one of the coffee buyers for Counter Culture Coffee. She travels the world, visiting coffee farms and deciding which beans the company will buy.

The best coffee, she says, comes from high altitudes, but you cannot grow it in places that freeze, ?so you need that mixture of high altitude and warm climate, which makes the tropics the place to grow it.?

All across Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, people grow coffee.

In many tropical countries, especially poor ones, it?s a pillar of the economy; exports of green coffee beans, globally, are worth $15 billion a year.

Some of these farms, Ionescu says, are idyllic places, high in the mountains. Taller trees often shade the coffee bushes. Such scenes ?hearken a little bit to coffee?s homeland, which is Ethiopia,? Ionescu says. ?Southwestern Ethiopia is really lush, it?s got amazingly high altitudes, it?s green, misty.?

But honestly, even though there are millions of small, idyllic coffee farms, they aren?t producing the majority of the world?s coffee.

Most coffee isn?t specialty coffee. It?s just coffee: big cans of it, or instant coffee.

Forty percent of all coffee comes from Brazil, and the typical coffee farm in Brazil looks more like a corn farm in Iowa, Ionescu says ? ?coffee plants as far as the eye can see, unbroken by any kind of tree.?

When it?s time for harvest in Brazil, big machines roll through and strip off the cherrylike coffee fruit, with its valuable bean inside.

The second-biggest producer in the world is a surprise for many people: Vietnam. ?Not a lot of people, especially in specialty coffee, talk about Vietnam,? says Ionescu.

Vietnamese farmers grow a species of coffee tree called robusta. (The scientific name is Coffea canephora.) It grows fast and produces a big crop, but the bean has a bitter taste. It?s often used in blends, especially in Europe. But high-end coffee producers like Counter Culture avoid it. They stick to another species ? arabica.

This is one big divide in the coffee business. On one side is ?commodity? coffee; on the other, small companies like Counter Culture Coffee, or even big ones like Starbucks or Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which sell coffee that?s been more carefully harvested and graded. These companies market coffee almost like wine, labeling where it came from and how it tastes.

At Green Mountain?s headquarters in Waterbury, Vt., tasters suck in mouthfuls of fresh brew, pause to reflect, then give each sample a score and talk about what their supersensitive taste buds picked up. ?Chocolate, melon, lime, subtle peach,? says one taster.

Specialty coffee like this accounts for only a small part ? probably 10 or 15 percent ? of the global coffee market.

Sometimes, these two sides of the coffee business seem to live in different worlds. But Counter Culture Coffee?s Ionescu says they sometimes come together in surprising ways.

?You know, what?s interesting to me is the large proportion of coffee growers who drink instant coffee, even on some of these idyllic hillsides in Central America,? she says.

Instead of drinking their own top-quality coffee, they export it to people who can pay more for it, such as Europeans or Americans.

Lindsey Bolger, director of coffee for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, says if you measure the amount of coffee consumed per coffee drinker, the world champions live in Nordic countries. ?Depending on which country, they?re up to eight cups of coffee per person, per day. In the U.S., we?re at maybe 2 or 2.5 cups of coffee per day,? she says.

Americans actually used to drink a lot more coffee. Per person, we drank almost twice as much during World War II.

People used to divide the coffee world neatly into producers, like Brazil, and consuming countries in Western Europe and North America.

Bolger says those clear lines are getting blurred. Brazil could soon overtake the United States to become the world?s single biggest coffee-consuming country, she says, and ?we?re seeing significant growth in consumption in regions like Southeast Asia, South Korea, Eastern Europe, India and the Gulf nations.?

The coffee experience, it seems, is more global than ever.

This is the first in a series of reports for Coffee Week. Along with our friends at Morning Edition, we?re bringing you the stories behind the coffee in your cup ? from the farms of Guatemala to the corner coffee shop.

Related Quiz at NPR:

Copyright 2013 NPR.

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Tags: coffee, Counter Culture Coffee, the salt

Category: NPR food, radio, sustainability, tea and coffee

Source: http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2013/04/22/how-coffee-brings-the-world-together/

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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

YouTube for iOS updated to support live streams, TV video queuing

YouTube for iOS

Google, we have to talk about your sense of timing. You've just streamed Coachella's first weekend on YouTube, and now you update the YouTube app for iOS to support live video? Better late than never, we suppose. Thankfully, there's a pair of extra features in the bargain, including the ability to queue multiple videos for TV viewing and a port of the Android version's uploads-only My Subscriptions feed. While it'll be awhile before we recover from missing the Tegan and Sara show, everyone can prepare for future events by upgrading at the source link.

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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Major Dell shareholder favors recent buyout offers

(AP) ? Dell's largest independent shareholder is leaning toward supporting one of the two bidders trying to scuttle the slumping personal computer maker's proposed $24.4 billion sale to a group including CEO Michael Dell.

Southeastern Asset Management expressed its preliminary support for the alternative offers in a letter sent Tuesday to the four-person committee overseeing the negotiations. The development doesn't come as surprise, given that Southeastern has been the most vocal opponent to Dell Inc.'s plan to sell itself to Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners for $13.65 per share.

That price struck Southeastern as too low. The Memphis, Tenn., investment firm tried to prove its thesis Tuesday by noting that Dell Inc. has spent $3.4 billion during the past two years buying back the company's stock at an average price of $15.25 per share.

"The same board that was confident with Dell buying its shares for $15.25 is now attempting to convince all shareholders that Dell's business is in such dire straits that they should take $13.65 and exit their investments," Southeastern's top executives, O. Mason Hawkins and G. Stanley Cates, wrote in the letter. "We believe the Board's sudden rush to sell is triggered by one thing: Mr. Dell's desire to buy.

The backlash to the board's deal with Michael Dell emboldened buyout specialist Blackstone Group and billionaire investor Carl Icahn to submit separate proposals offering a slightly higher price. Blackstone is proposing to buy most of Dell Inc.'s stock for $14.25 per share while Icahn is willing to pay $15 per share for up to 58 percent of the shares.

Dell's stock dipped a penny Tuesday to close at $14.19.

Unlike the deal with Michael Dell, a portion of the company's stock will remain publicly traded if Blackstone or Icahn prevail. That would allow current shareholders such as Southeastern to share in some of the future gains if Dell Inc. successfully executes on a plan calling for the company to lessen its dependence on the shrinking PC market and diversify into more profitable sectors such as selling data storage services and business software.

The deal with Michael Dell and Silver Lake would end Dell Inc.'s 25-year history as a public company, allowing a potential turnaround to be worked out away from the scrutiny and pressure of Wall Street.

With an 8.4 percent stake, Southeastern is Dell's second-largest shareholder after Michael Dell, who still owns 14 percent of the company that he founded as a college student in 1984.

That makes Southeastern a potentially influential player in Dell Inc.'s fate. Michael Dell is contributing $4.5 billion in cash and stock to the deal he worked out with Silver Lake because that agreement will leave him in control of the Round Rock, Texas, company.

It's unclear if Blackstone or Icahn will negotiate a similar arrangement with Michael Dell, who has said he is willing to work with the alternative bidders.

If Michael Dell remains exclusively aligned with Silver Lake, Blackstone and Icahn would either have to line up even more financing to pay for their proposed deals or find other ways to replace the cash and stock that Michael Dell could contribute. One way to do that would be to persuade Southeastern and other existing Dell shareholders to contribute some of their stock.

Southeastern didn't delve into that possibility in its Tuesday letter. But the firm called the Blackstone and Icahn bids better deals than the one worked out with Michael Dell.

"We view these proposals as superior primarily because each offers shareholders the opportunity to remain owners of Dell while also offering a higher cash price to owners who choose to exit their investment," Hawkins and Cates wrote. They urged Dell's special committee to negotiate with the alternative bidders in "good faith."

In a statement, the Dell committee said it's still backing the deal with Michael Dell and Silver Lake while it assess the alternate proposals. Both Blackstone and Icahn are reviewing Dell Inc.'s books before taking the next step in their bids.

"Our goal was, and remains, to ensure that whatever transaction is consummated is the best possible outcome for Dell's shareholders," the board committee said.

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Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-04-09-US-Dell-Acquisition/id-b056b538467a47a8934db789173505fd

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