(CNNMoney.com) — For the first time in more than two years, the number of Americans filing for their first week of unemployment benefits fell below 400,000 last week — a ray of hope in the one of the longest job droughts in U.S. history.
The number of initial claims fell to 388,000 in the week ended Dec. 25, down 34,000 from the week before, the Labor Department said Thursday.
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(www.openforum.com) – According to Newton’s First Law of Motion, the tendency of a body in motion is to keep moving; the tendency of a body at rest is to sit still. In other words, it’s a lot less work to keep moving once you have some momentum, than it is to start moving from a dead stop.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re running a marathon or running a business – momentum is key. If we can take small steps to execute our big, bold business objectives every day in 2011, it will be infinitely easier to stay focused, make great strides, and blast through the roadblocks that inevitably come up.
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(mashable.com) – The small business professional’s workday can be both tedious and mundane when it comes to necessary daily, weekly and monthly tasks that feel more like chores than accomplishments.
Presentations for meetings or keynotes can take hours, if not days, to perfect. Building dynamic accounting reports is a labor of love (or heartbreak), and everyone dreads monthly must-complete expense reports.
While there’s no escaping these unfortunate tasks, newer web and mobile applications, like Prezi, inDinero and Expensify, make the time spent doing them much less arduous, and in the end, you might be infinitely more pleased with the results.
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The designer is a visually literate person, just as an editor is expected by training and inclination to be versed in language and literature, but to call the former an artist by occupation is as absurd as to refer to the latter as a poet.
— Douglas Martin
(Alison Doyle on About.com) – This is a good time of year, and you should do it at least annually, to check and revamp your resume. It’s important to take the time to write a resume that reflects why you’re a top tier candidate who should be selected for an interview. That means your position descriptions should be as quantified as possible – numbers, percentages, achievements – concrete evidence of what you have accomplished.
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With more than 85 million members in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is a professional social network worth using, understanding and optimizing.
After you’ve covered the basics of setting up your LinkedIn presence, features including recommendations, applications, LinkedIn Answers, and the Resume Builder can add value to your profile. Many of these highly useful features, though, are often overlooked or underused by newcomers.
We spoke with four LinkedIn aficionados to get their top advice on making the best use of these tools. Read on for their thoughts and let us know which tips you’d add for optimizing LinkedIn profiles in the comments below.
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To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.
— John Dewey
Photo Flash Technology Creates After Image Visible When Eyes Are Closed
(AdAge.com) — BMW Germany is literally getting into consumers’ heads, by burning its logo onto the insides of their eyes. Using pioneering new “flash projection” technology, BMW is testing a cinema spot in Germany that does not feature a visible logo. Instead, a bright photo flash occurs during the ad, and a few moments later the audience is asked to close its eyes. At this point, the audience sees an after-image of the brand that has been created by the flash. The letters “BMW” appear before them, in the same way that you might see a bright spot if you had been looking at the sun and then closed your eyes.
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(mashable.com) – Facebook users are showing off some serious creativity by taking advantage of the new profile page photo layout.
French artist Alexandre Oudin (below) has been identified as the creator of the craze, and more and more designs are now emerging. People have been playing around with their profile pics since Facebook first launched, but the new redesign allows for some inspired fun including clever animations, typography and photography magic.
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Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.
— Tate Linden
(Scott Young on scotthyoung.com) – As a species, our incubation period is getting longer.
Just a few hundred years ago, finishing twelve years of education was uncommon. Today it’s difficult to get a job above minimum wage without a high-school diploma.
Teenagers were once miniature adults. Fifteen year-old girls got married. Sixteen year-old boys went to work. Today teenagers are older children. I know many people that aren’t financially independent well into their twenties.
This increase incubation is probably because, as the world becomes more specialized and complex, we need more time to learn things. Also as science and technology accelerate, we need more time to specialize. There are people who need to study principles of chemistry to get jobs today that hadn’t even been discovered 100 years ago.
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(CareerBuilder.com) — You dry cleaned your suit. You’ve got a dozen copies of your résumé, just in case. You arrived early — but not too early. You silenced your cell phone. You made small talk with the receptionist, and you’re pretty sure the two of you will be best friends one day. Now, you’re about to confidently head into an interview for a job you’re dying to land.
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(yahoo.com) – The results are in for National Geographic’s annual photo contest. The Grand Prize winner, chosen from more than 16,000 entries, is Aaron Lim Boon Teck of Singapore, who captured trekkers watching a volcanic eruption as the sun rose and the moon set. Photo galleries of all the winners and finalists in the contest’s three categories — Nature, People and Places — are online at the magazine’s website now.
See more here!
Happiness… it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
-Vincent Van Gogh
(Jenny Torres on talentzoo.com) – Attention all young creatives, not-so-young creatives, and creatives who are young at heart: Leo Burnett has recently published a new book titled HumanKind. Written by chief executive officer Tom Bernardin and global chief creative officer Mark Tutssel, this book is about people, purpose, and creating acts, not ads. HumanKind gives the reader an inside look into how their creative teams approach popular brands. Read the full article here!
It’s cold out there! So here are some wonderfully wintery photos to remind us of the beauty of winter. Stay warm!
Design is the search for a magical balance between business and art; art and craft; intuition and reason; concept and detail; playfulness and formality; client and designer; designer and printer; and printer and public.
— Valerie Pettis
(gigaom.com) – Engineers aren’t just flocking to Facebook for a potential blockbuster IPO payout — apparently the social network is also a great place to work. Glassdoor.com announced that Facebook is debuting at the top of its third-annual list of 50 best places to work, beating out last year’s No. 1, Southwest Airlines. Technology rivals Apple (#20) and Google (#30) are further back in the pack along with Adobe (#39), Salesforce.com (#41) and Intel s (#45.)
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