Instant messaging: WhatsApp with that?

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Ticks causing fever were documented as far back as ancient Egyptian times; they’re also famous for spreading Lyme disease. Australia even has something called a Paralysis Tick, which you don’t often hear mentioned in their tourism brochures. But there’s a new tick in town that’s a lot more useful to us… the blue ticks on a WhatsApp message, indicating that we’ve officially communicated with someone.

You can send images, video clips, audio files and make calls, and the company prides itself on being securely encrypted, for free. All with an interface that makes it easy for your technophobe aunt to use, partly why it’s achieved so much success over the last decade.

Other messaging options like Viber, Telegram and WeChat are all solid, but can’t beat the current messaging heavyweight champion. With 30 billion WhatsApps sent daily, it’s the most popular messaging application on the planet.

What is the protocol with WhatsApp and instant messaging? Does it have a place in business, or is it just for sexting couples or teen gossip? Is it too intrusive to be used on a professional level?

Using Direct Messages on Twitter, Facebook mails or even asking someone to get hold of you via your Instagram comments could once be seen as an encroachment on privacy, but are now all fair game to aid communication. Like it or not, shouldn’t we be able to use all the new communication tools at our disposal?

When cellphones first came out, they were nice to have, and then became an invasion of privacy. Getting hold of someone immediately suddenly became the most important thing. Was instant connection just as important when you could only get hold of people on a landline? Back then you had to plan ahead for proper correspondence.

Even further back, Pheidippides is said to have run from Marathon to Athens (250km) to deliver news of a military victory against the Persians. If only he’d had WiFi.

http://coolfidence.com/instant-messaging-whatsapp-with-that-solution-20068

Bear on the Roof

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A man wakes up one morning, in Alaska, to find a bear on his roof. So he looks in the Yellow Pages and sure enough, there’s an ad for ‘Bear Removers’. He calls the number, and the bear remover says he’ll be over in 30 minutes.

The bear remover arrives, and gets out of his van. He’s got a ladder, a baseball bat, a shotgun and a mean old pit bull.

‘What are you going to do?’ the home owner asks.

‘I’m going to put this ladder up against the roof, and then I’m going to go up there and knock the bear off the roof with this baseball bat. When the bear falls off, the pit bull is trained to grab his testicles and not let go.

The bear will then be subdued enough for me to put him in the cage in the back of the van.’

He hands the shotgun to the home owner.
‘What’s the shotgun for?’ asks the home owner.

‘If the bear knocks me off the roof, shoot the dog!’

Please read the house rules before entering

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A successful company continues to live its purpose by a set of values that are rock solid. These values make up the “how” part in the three questions. How defines the behaviour and attitude of a company’s people. There is no universal accepted set of correct core values. You discover “how” by looking within. You cannot fake values. You either have them or you don’t. Values are not open to change – they must stand the test of time.

A company typically will try to articulate about five things that it holds sacred. At Internet Solutions (IS), for example, we believe in professionalism, customer service, integrity, empowerment and fun as our core values. We strive always to be professional, both internally and externally. We endeavour to be customer focused, always acting with integrity. We attempt to empower our staff by listening and by sharing. And we try to work hard and play hard. And we always stand firm in our beliefs, never compromising what we represent, and never violating our integrity. We are very passionate about our company and what it stands for. Our intense belief in our value system and our purpose is what drives this passion.

Like many companies today, the organization I am describing here is largely a people business. It is about people sharing ideas with people, it is about people proposing solutions to people, and it is about people working together. It is about relationships. We practice professional behaviour at all times, both internally with staff, and externally with customers. And we always strive for win-win relationships.

I have learnt who works for whom in our organization. Whenever someone joins the company we have to work harder and listen more. I want all of the people who come on board to win. If they win, I win. It is that simple. And for them to win they need to be empowered. Their ideas need to be heard. And they need to make a difference. My job is to make sure that they can make a huge difference.

http://coolfidence.com/please-read-the-house-rules-before-entering-solution-20067

Going Green

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Checking out at the grocery store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment.

The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, “We didn’t have this ‘green thing’ back in my day.”

The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

The older lady said that she was right — our generation didn’t have the “green thing” in its day. She went on to explain:

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they were REALLY recycled. But we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn’t do the “green thing” back then.

We walked up stairs because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But the cashier was right. We didn’t have the “green thing” in our day.

Back then we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. And, kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day.

Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power.

We exercised by WORKING so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.

We drank from a drinking fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family’s $45,000 SUV or van, which cost more than a house did before the “green thing.”

We had one electrical outlet in each room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn’t it sad that the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the “green thing” back then?