13 Photos That Sum up How the World Has Changed for the Worse

These 'then and now' photos sum up how life has changed, often for the worse. These days childhood, holidays, education and even exercise just aren't the same.

1. Childhood

2. Ask Google

3. Education

4. Conversation

5. Multiplayer Gaming

6. Holiday Pics

7. Pay to win gaming

8. Gifts

9. Birthdays

10. Creativity

 

11. Computers

 

12. Technology gets more compact, meanwhile...

13. Exercising

 

Source: http://blazepress.com

How to Use Your Laptop as a Wi-Fi Hotspot

Have you ever been in a situation where you have no W-Fi router, just one network cable and five people who need to use the Internet? Or maybe you have a 3G dongle that works with your laptop, but leaves your Wi-Fi-only tablet offline. Sounds familiar? It would certainly be handy to share the Internet connection amongt all users and devices without a router, right?

Or maybe this scenario will ring a bell. Many hotels offer wired Internet access for free, but charge you for Wi-Fi and/ or for using the Internet on more than one device. So should you just pay the crazy amount they ask for? Not necessarily.

You can share your laptop or desktop Internet connection via Wi-Fi to other devices, and for the most part, it's quite simple. Mac users face no trouble at all, as setting up Internet sharing in OS X is just a couple of click away, but for Windows users the process can be a little bit more labored. The built-in options don't always cut it due to the complicated setup and reliability problems.

Internet sharing on Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1

Thankfully, there are quite a few apps that let you use your machine as a Wi-Fi hotspot. Before you use any of these apps, you may want to check the steps on Microsoft's site to see Windows' built-in Internet sharing and see if you have better luck than we did. We do recommend that you skip that and use a third-party app instead, since the experience is usually much better.

We tested some popular apps that let you do this - Connectify and Virtual Router Plus. The latter didn't work very well for us. Our anti-virus flagged it as a threat and during installation it tried to make us install unwanted software.

We didn't have the same issues with Connectify. It is a reliable app for turning your computer into a Wi-Fi hotspot. Before you proceed, know that you will need a Windows PC with a Wi-Fi adapter (or built-in Wi-Fi) to make this work. If your computer does not have Wi-Fi, then you can buy one that connects via USB, such as this one.

Here are the steps to setup your Windows machine as a Wi-Fi hotspot:

1. Download Connectify and install it. The installation is pretty straightforward and when installation is complete, restart your computer.

2. After restarting the computer, check whether it is connected to the Internet. If it is, run the Connectify Hotspot app.

3. You'll see two tabs in the app - Settings and Clients. In the Settings tab, under "Create a..." click Wi-Fi Hotspot.

4. Under Internet to Share, you'll see a drop-down menu. Expand it and select the connection you want to share. We tested this app with a wired and a wireless connection and found that it worked perfectly with both.

5. Under that, you'll see some more options. Add a Wi-Fi password. Click Start Hotspot.

That's all you need to do. Now other devices will detect a Wi-Fi network labelled Connectify-me. Key in the password and you're good to go.

Connectify is a paid app, but it has a stripped down free version. You can create a hotspot with the free version, but the main limitation is that it automatically disconnects every 30 minutes and shows pop-ups asking you to buy the pro version. You'll have to re-enable the hotspot manually to start using it again.

The Pro version has more features and costs $25 (Rs. 1,550) for a year and $40 (Rs. 2,450) for a full licence. Apart from unlimited hotspot uptime, you get features such as custom hotspot naming, the ability to share Internet from 3G and 4G networks (for sharing USB Internet dongles), and advanced firewall controls (choose which devices can access Internet and personal files on your LAN).

Internet Sharing on OS X

Mac users have it a lot easier. Here's how to share your Mac's Internet connection.

1. Open System Preferences > Sharing > check Internet Sharing on the left.

2. On the right, expand the drop-down menu next to Share your connection from: and select the connection you want to share. You can share Internet connections from Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or even iPhone USB.

Typically, you'd want to select Ethernet, if you are using a wired Internet connection iMac, Mac Pro, or MacBook Pro. If you are using an external Ethernet adapter with a MacBook Air, you'll want to select USB Ethernet or Thunderbolt Ethernet, depending upon the kind of dongle you are using (usually it's USB).

3. Just below that, there's a box next to To computers using: where you should check the box next to Wi-Fi.

4. Click the Wi-Fi Options button below the box. Pick a Network Name, Security Type and enter the password twice in fields named Password and Verify. We strongly recommend you choose a password, instead of leaving the Security option has None. You can leave Channel as the default value unless you know what you are doing. Click OK.

5. If the connection is active, you'll see a green icon and text Internet Sharing: On under System Preferences.

That's all. You'll be able to use the Internet on other​ devices now by connecting to the network you specified under Network Name.

3 ways Steve Jobs made meetings productive

American businesses lose an estimated $37 billion a year due to meeting mistakes.

Steve Jobs made sure that Apple wasn’t one of those companies.

Here are three ways the iconic CEO made meetings super productive.

1. He kept meetings as small as possible.

In his book “Insanely Simple,” longtime Jobs collaborator Ken Segall detailed what it was like to work with him.

In one story, Jobs was about to start a weekly meeting with Apple’s ad agency.

Then Jobs spotted someone new.

“He stopped cold,” Segall writes. “His eyes locked on to the one thing in the room that didn’t look right. Pointing to Lorrie, he said, ‘Who are you?'”

Calmly, she explained that she was asked to the meeting because she was a part of related marketing projects.

Jobs heard her, and then politely told her to get out.

“I don’t think we need you in this meeting, Lorrie. Thanks,” he said.

He was similarly ruthless with himself. When Barack Obama asked him to join a small gathering of tech moguls, Jobs declined — the President invited too many people for his taste.

2. He made sure someone was responsible for each item on the agenda.

In a 2011 feature investigating Apple’s culture, Fortune reporter Adam Lashinsky detailed a few of the formal processes that Jobs used, which led Apple to become the world’s most valuable company.

At the core of Job’s mentality was the “accountability mindset” — meaning that processes were put in place so that everybody knew who was responsible for what.

As Lachinsky described:

Internal Applespeak even has a name for it, the “DRI,” or directly responsible individual. Often the DRI’s name will appear on an agenda for a meeting, so everybody knows who is responsible. “Any effective meeting at Apple will have an action list,” says a former employee. “Next to each action item will be the DRI.” A common phrase heard around Apple when someone is trying to learn the right contact on a project: “Who’s the DRI on that?”

The process works. Gloria Lin moved from the iPod team at Apple to leading the product team at Flipboard — and she brought DRIs with her.

They’re hugely helpful in a startup situation.

“In a fast-growing company with tons of activity, important things get left on the table not because people are irresponsible but just because they’re really busy,” she wrote on Quora. “When you feel like something is your baby, then you really, really care about how it’s doing.”

3. He wouldn’t let people hide behind PowerPoint.

Walter Isaacson, author of the “Steve Jobs” biography, said, “Jobs hated formal presentations, but he loved freewheeling face-to-face meetings.”

Every Wednesday afternoon, he had an agenda-less meeting with his marketing and advertising team.

Slideshows were banned because Jobs wanted his team to debate passionately and think critically, all without leaning on technology.

“I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,” Jobs told Isaacson. “People would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”

This article is published in collaboration with Business Insider UK. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

Author: Drake Baer reports on strategy, leadership, and organizational psychology at Business Insider.

Image: Apple CEO Steve Jobs gestures during his unveiling of the iPhone 4 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, in this June 7, 2010 file photo. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith.

Source: https://agenda.weforum.org

Benefits of Internet Marketing to an Organisation

There are numerous benefits of Internet Marketing to an organization. Businesses are able to use these advantages in many ways within the organization.

Reaching the Internet provides businesses with the means to reach prospective customers that they would not normally be able to reach so quickly and inexpensively. Opportunity to learn about customers’ needs and wants once they have reached these customers, the Internet offers the opportunity to learn about those customers’ needs and wants by interacting with a customer and gaining valuable feedback from them. In doing so, a company is then able to better target its goods and services to those customer needs and wants. Ordinarily, conducting market research of this nature would be a costly exercise for any company and yet here is a sales medium that allows this type of market research to be built in.

The first benefit identified that organisation have a advantage of from internet marketing is that is it cost effective – this is because using the marketing on the internet can reach a wide range of audience from one place (the World Wide Web) and businesses would not need to promote themselves over other marketing mediums that cost more than using the internet. Businesses based only online are able to make profits by saving money on promotions and also just being based online is another way of saving money as they do not need to pay for buildings (includes rent, bills etc).

Another plus that internet marketing provides businesses are that organisations are accessible 24/7 to the public. They can gain more customers by this as customers that aren’t able to go to the shops in person at a certain time can access a business website anytime.

A website can be changed anytime, so businesses are able to update their online view anytime to stay with the latest trend etc.

Internet marketing enables businesses to understand what customer wants and needs. Buy seeing individually what each customer mostly buys and they are able to send them promotion of the new products and service available that they believe they will be attracted to. Also they can do this through blogs, social networks, forums etc. Company uses this benefit and has social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and they have a forum page for comments and they email customers advertising their new products etc. they do this so that they can see what customer wants and needs and then can provide impeccable service.

Internet marketing can have images and videos of the product/service which can be similar with T.V. adverts etc but on the internet is can be seen more than 30 seconds, it be seen by customers whenever they want, it can reach a wider audience and it is very cheap to promote online. This is another internet marketing benefit for organization as they can save money, reach more customers etc. Company has banners to advertise their websites/organization; they include all their products online in images, videos, information etc (everything a customer will need) even though they are based online and customers aren’t able to touch their product, Company gave them an advantage of impeccable service where customers are able to return their products.

Internet marketing enables businesses to see and compare with other businesses and compete with them more easily. They can view how much customers they have whether they are female or male and can use this to segment their targeted audience and market their business and products in ways that suit their customers.

Best Programming Languages to Learn

One of the first questions new computer science students ask is “what language should I learn?” The answer to this question is more complicated than you might assume. Different languages have different capabilities and applications. Some languages are more commonly used in enterprise settings (example: Java), while others are a staple of web apps (example: PHP).

Based on popularity and jobs availability, let’s take a look at the eight most popular languages to learn right now:

1. Java

Java is an object-oriented programming language developed in 1995 by Sun Microsystems. In less than 20 years, Java has become among the most popular programming languages in the world (ranked no.2 as per TIOBE Programming Community Index, no.1 on JobsTractor). Java is platform independent, which means that programs made for Mac OS X can be run on Windows and Linux, and vice versa. This feature is one of the reasons why Java is the go-to language for most enterprise applications.

Demand for Java engineers is exceptionally high, with Indeed.com counting 62,589 Java vacancies in its database. Most senior developer positions require a working knowledge of Java and/or C.

2. C Language

C is one of the oldest programming languages used today. It was originally developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. C is the “grandfather” of many programming languages, including Java, C#, C++, Perl and JavaScript.

C is powerful, stable, and easily available on virtually all platforms. The primary interpretation of many popular languages like Python and PHP are written in C language. This is the reason why C is one of the first languages taught to students, as it can make learning other languages far easier.

C ranks no.1 on the TIOBE index and no.13 on JobsTractor.

3. C++

C++ was originally created in 1983 to address the shortcomings of the C language. It is an intermediate-level language with object-oriented programming features. C++ powers some of the most popular desktop applications in the world, including the entire suite of Adobe software (Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.), Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, and Winamp. Demand for C++ programmers is perpetually high, with 29,225 vacancies according to Indeed. It also ranks no.4 on TIOBE index, and no. 10 on JobsTractor.

4. C#

C# (pronounced “C-Sharp”) was developed by Microsoft in 2000 as a fundamental part of its .NET framework. C# is an object-oriented, multi-paradigm programming language that combines the best of C and C++. Learning C# is a must for any programmer who wants to develop for Microsoft platforms (including Windows).

C# ranks no. 6 on TIOBE index and no. 8 on JobsTractor.

5. Objective-C

Objective-C was developed in 1983 by Tom Love and Brad Cox at Apple to address the objected-oriented deficiencies of C language. Objective C is the primary language used in Apple OS X and iOS operating systems. The surge in popularity of Macs and Apple “i’” devices (including iPad and iPhone) has created a huge demand for Objective-C programmers. A working knowledge of Objective-C will help you develop apps for iOS, which paves the way for thousands of jobs in startups as well as big tech companies (17,702 jobs, as per Indeed). As an Objective-C programmer, you can also freelance and create apps for iOS on your own.

Objective-C ranks no.3 on both JobsTractor and the TIOBE index.

6. PHP

PHP (Hypertext Processor) is a server-side scripting language that powers more than 244m websites online, including the popular publishing platforms WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. Created in 1995, PHP is one of the younger languages on this list.

PHP is relatively easy to learn and can be readily embedded within HTML pages, which has made it the go-to general purpose programming language online. The high demand for web application developers has led to a huge surfeit in PHP jobs. Mastering PHP is often the first step to becoming a full-fledged web developer.

Incidentally, PHP ranks no.2 on JobsTractor monthly job stats, and no.5 according to TIOBE index. There are also 17,627 PHP jobs online, according to Indeed.com.

7. Python

Python was created in 1991 by Guido van Rossum. This high-level programming language emphasizes readability and simplicity and is a great language for beginners to start their programming journey. Python has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in the last few years and now powers some of the most popular websites in the world, like Instagram.com, Pinterest.com, and Rdio.com through its associated web framework, Django. Google has invested especially heavily in Python development in the last decade or so, which has further added to the language’s popularity (in fact, Python founder van Rossum was a Google employee from 2005 to 2012).

Python ranks no.9 on the JobsTractor job availability list and no.8 on the TIOBE index. Indeed counts 19,533 Python jobs online.

8. Ruby

Ruby was developed in 1995 by Yukihiro Matsumoto by combining elements from Perl, Lisp, and Eiffel. It is an object-oriented, dynamic language that emphasizes simplicity and automation. Ruby powers the Ruby on Rails framework, which is used on popular websites like Yammer, Scribd, Github, Groupon, and Shopify. Many students new to programming also find Ruby comparatively easy to learn because of its simple syntax and English-like readability.

Ruby ranks no.5 on JobsTractor’s jobs list, and no.11 on the TIBOE index. Indeed counts 11,435 Ruby jobs in its database.

Conclusion

What programming language you choose to learn should be determined as much by personal tastes and requirements, as by job availability. The job market for programmers is seldom stable; languages that are in vogue today might not be so in the next few years. Objective-C, for instance, was largely ignored throughout the 1990s, but grew in popularity with the resurgence of Apple as a tech powerhouse in the 2000s. As a programmer, you will be expected to be proficient in at least one “workhorse” language like Java or C, but you can always choose to specialize in any other language that excites you intellectually.