Home configuration is getting retooled

Offline traditional sectors such as the renovation of the house may not seem the most likely candidate for the generation of improved technology, but Brian Javeline will beg to differ: MyOnlineToolbox He promised to reinvent how to do the business of the contractor.

MyOnlineToolbox gives builders a web-based platform to manage customers, vendors and subcontractors, to schedule work orders, create and track invoices and order materials from wherever they work may lead them.

"Contractors are rising - many people stereotyped them as careless and criticized them for not answering their phone, said Javeline, President and CEO of Pompano Beach, Florida-based ServusXchange, virtual solutions provider MyOnlineToolbox back. "Business - they move their entire area, and always in the car. They are forced to reach their business at night and on weekends.

Nationwide Investment in home improvement fell just shy of $ 153 billion in the first quarter of 2010, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Javeline says it's almost impossible to draw an accurate bead on the number of contractors in the U.S. because so many in the industry who never expressed themselves in the form of their government, rather than addressing the configuration work during the off- time from other professions, and paid cash or check.

This off-the-radar contractors are the perfect candidate for MyOnlineToolbox, Javeline said. Elements of viruses collaboration platform creates a network of skilled, reliable colleagues in different specialties such as plumbing, electrical and carpentry repairs. Members can advertise for bids and refer others to work.

Contractors can register for free MyOnlineToolbox. Premium subscription offer additional features and resources was $ 89 per month. In June, more than 1,100 contractors have signed up.

The challenge is recruiting contractors Javeline old, some slow moving their business processes online.

"Youth accepted technology in their lives, he said." They get it.

mentorships: A Selection Of History

Mentor: SocratesMentee: Plato

In the fifth century BC, the philosopher Socrates mentee expect to write everything, including the Socratic dialogues, offering the Nuggets as Plato went on to found the Academy after his drinking hemlock Mentor educators "The unexamined life is not worth living. ":. AristotleMentee: Alexander the Great

Before the killing of 336 BC, Philip II of Macedon philosopher Aristotle commanded, "Take my son and teach him Homer's poem." His son, Alexander, and then defeated the Persian army and build an empire that would include many known world.Mentor:Joseph HaydnMentee: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Haydn, "Mr Symphony," is widely believed to be guided by the young Mozart in the late 18th-century Vienna. When Mozart died young, Haydn wrote, "If only I could impress on every friend of soul music, how to emulate the work of Mozart, how profound, how musically intelligent, how very sensitive!" Mentor: Andrew CarnegieMentee: Charles M. Schwab

Schwab began as a messenger at the Carnegie Steel in the late 19th century, when he endeared himself to the tycoon with dazzling piano playing in a party. Carnegie Schwab appointed as his successor 35 years in 1897. Schwab will run on Bethlehem Steel, the second largest steel company in world.Mentor:Mary Alice DuncanMentee: Oprah

The media mogul credited fourth grade teacher for many successes. Oprah teared during the 1989 reunion of the show. "[Mrs. Duncan] often stayed after school to work with me," he says, "helped me pick up a book and let me grade papers" Mentor:. Larry SummersMentee: Sheryl Sandberg

As a professor of economics at the official Facebook (FB) chief operating and thesis advisor at Harvard, Summers helped Sandberg ground work at the World Bank and the U.S. Department of Treasury. When Summers was accused of sexism at Harvard in 2005, Sandberg jumped to his defense: "Larry is a true advocate for women throughout his career."

Five Military taking Fix That would ruin

In taking hysteria grips Washington, the Pentagon's top uniformed officers joining Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned that on-the-board spending cut due to come into force on March 1 will cripple the American military and jeopardize the effectiveness of soldiers, sailors, and pilots.General Ray Odierno, chief of staff of the Army, said that cutting $ 46 billion reduction in fiscal 2013 Pentagon budget, except for the last-minute political compromise, can shorten the training to 80 percent of the army. The Navy has delayed the deployment of an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, leaving only a giant ship in the volatile region, even as tensions with Iran continue to boil. Air Force flying hour talking about the competition, leaving two-thirds of the pilots below an acceptable level of readiness. And so on.Flapdoodle. Military manufacturing a crisis to protect its wasteful, bloated, poorly designed budget. Quarantine, where orders do not think, across-the-board spending cuts, is a foolish way to force fiscal discipline. But the alternative, at least in the Pentagon. Panetta and the generals can say to Congress: We welcome your politicians backed himself into a corner and declining budgets. But let's show some big-ticket items that we can remove, rather than putting the process in a series autopilot.A destroying our colleagues at Bloomberg News pointed out that "the defense budget contains hundreds of billions of dollars for new generation aircraft carrier and stealth fighter , even Army tank says no need and combat vehicles are too heavy to maneuver in the desert or cross the bridge in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East. "Read it and weep comprehensive expose. Or read it as an implicit roadmap for how to narrow a rational way.For military advantage harried members of Congress and their staff, not to mention the president and his aides, here's five ideas to cut the basic Pentagon budget will actually increase the national defense by instilling new spirit of fiscal discipline: 1. Soil error-laden F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program. F-35 is supposed to produce a state-of-the-art stealth jet. Seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over cost estimates. With nearly $ 400 billion, the F-35 has become the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history and one that offers only marginal improvements to existing aircraft, according to Barry Blechman, co-founder of the Stimson Center, a nonprofit policy in Washington. (On Friday, the Pentagon is based on 51-plane fleet of F-35s born after the invention of broken blades in jet engines.) F-35 is "worthy of murder, especially given the technical difficulties," said Blechman. "Putting the F-35 production in the years prior to the acquisition of the first flight test of malpractice," said Frank Kendall, the Pentagon undersecretary of acquisition, in February 2012. So, um, let's do something about it, Frank.2. While we do this, how the underground parking Combat Vehicles? To wind in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army since 2017 decline in some 72,000 years. However, we are prepared to spend up to $ 32 billion to buy the new 1904 Land Combat Vehicles, tank-like replacement for Bradley Fighting Vehicle. What the Army actually improved, smaller vehicle to get a moderate-sized forces in places with high vitality. 70-ton Combat Vehicle soil is not easily transported by air or sea, raises the question of "how fast it can be used in situations of conflict," according to the report (PDF) issued in January by the Congressional Research Service.3. On the subject of gas-guzzlers Army: Even the generals admit that they do not want or need the latest version of the familiar M1 battle tank. M1 is built to tackle off against Soviet tanks in the ground war in Europe, which thankfully never happened. Congress, however, wanted to keep distributing billions gut and renovate the old M1S. It makes sense.4. The littoral Combat Ship Dock. The Navy is developing two versions of the media bothered once billed as a ship, low cost versatile coastal patrols. SKB has doubled in price, more than $ 440 million ship. The evaluators determined that the weapons are ineffective, which means it can not survive in combat.5. Excessive bureaucracy must go. "One only has to spend 10 minutes walking around the Pentagon or military bases to see over and over," said former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in September at an event organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He should know. As defense minister in 2009, he captured 20 weapons systems he thought unnecessary or too expensive, including the F-22 fighter aircraft. One place to start thinning bureaucracy: Staff Joint Chiefs of Staff. Office more than tripled the workforce, to 4244 in 2012 from 1313 in 2010, according to the Pentagon's annual report labor. (Bureaucrats means fewer memos and meetings bit Win-win-win ..) Why is it so difficult for the military budget significantly? Because lawmakers, including Republican small government, protecting businesses defend their country house Spartan cruelty. Although the Pentagon offered cut we've outlined here, Congress will almost certainly reject it. The senators and representatives are not the political courage to face the voters and tell them that the republic simply do not need guns hometown.Consider being built in their F-35. Mainly made by Lockheed Martin (LMT), the aircraft will have 1300 suppliers in 45 countries to support 133,000 jobs, according to Lockheed. "It's got a lot of political patronage," said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Defense Information Governance Centre Project in Washington. "Very, very few members of Congress want to say that this is an affordable dog and we need to get rid of it." So, instead of doing a strategic reduction in military spending could result in a leaner, more effective, the impoundment will result in fewer hours of training pilots and under-prepared army. The generals light their hair on fire, and lawmakers protect pigs. Ah, democracy.

Housing as an investment? Yes, the idea that you come back

housing should be seen as an investment (well)? For the love of five years of foreclosures, bank failures, and congressional testimony, we learned nothing? Bobcats and coyotes, after all, taking over condemned home with antifreeze-green pool. It was quite Mad Max where I come from.Don not look now, but the sector bounced back, single-family home price rose to 88 percent of U.S. cities in the fourth quarter Overview "house as a nest-egg" is making a comeback. Latest national median price for existing single-family home is approximately $ 179,000, an increase of 10 percent from the previous year, which is the largest meeting since 2005, according to the National Association of Realtors.Still, Yale professor and home-price tracker Robert Shiller says housing remains be a bad investment in the long run. He calculates (PDF) real (after inflation) in the home-price appreciation from 1890 to 1990 around zero percent. "Housing," he told Bloomberg TV, "takes care of, depreciated, he goes out of style. All of these problems. And technical progress in the housing. . So before better "he continued," So why is considered an investment? It was a hobby. It is an idea taking hold in the early 2000s. And I do not expect to come back. Not with the same spirit of "The professor then compared the idea of ​​investing in real estate investment in the car:". Buying a car, camphor, and sold in 20 years. Definitely not a good idea because people do not want our car. It is the same in our house. So not really an investment vehicle. "People in the industry will not buy analysis. "The key to the analysis of real estate investment standpoint is to understand what gives the value of real estate," said Andrew Jeffery, a director of procurement for Cirios, San Francisco shops in residential property investment. "Shiller which deviated by comparing investments home investments in the car. The house, and all the real estate, has the potential to generate cash flow. Car no. Property value comes from what the market is providing some cash flow, which are based on various factors, from the type of property and location of tenant profiles. "He wrote the current homeowners and many candidates, only to see the house as asset prices appreciate and depreciate in market conditions, ignoring their main potential to waste money. Also, Jeffery says it's important for investors to understand how to take advantage of working in housing. Think about it: you put $ 110,000 to $ 540,000 homes. If the price jumps to $ 650,000 when you're ready to sell, you effectively use debt to double your initial investment. Of course, interest payments and income protection to eat, and too many people know the pain as more than their mortgage in their home is worth. However, the mortgage tax deduction to say that thanks to alleviate risks.Jeffery leverage, someone to buy a house and rent will come a leader who will put the same amount of money in the stock market, especially when the point of entry leases include maintenance expenses and help pay off the mortgage. Going by historical data, when the owners retired, the house should be worth more than what equity gains. Plus, he said, "Do you want to have your cash flow fixed-income assets to be removed." There is, of course, a holistic way of looking at housing: as an investment that will at least hold its value as inflation increases, and dividends, home office, kids children playing in the backyard, school bus at the corner, a large salary, but nonfinancially.

Five Social Media Tools Fight Flu

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has officially declared an influenza epidemic this year last week, confirming what thousands of patients suffering could be expected . This does not mean that public health officials are clueless. The problem almost always works epidemiological data from a few weeks old. When you spread a fast-moving flu bug, often mutating as it goes, to cut the lag time is essential to effectively combat the flu. Flu claims 250,000 to 500,000 lives each year and undermine the productivity of labor to the tune of $ 87 billion in U.S. alone.Increasingly, health officials will be on the computer to catch the flu coders in real time. Google Flu Trends (GOOG) became a star when it accurately reported the severity of the flu season in 2009 almost two weeks before the CDC. Its method of data crunching of search queries for flu-related areas has been hailed as a significant breakthrough in the early detection of infectious diseases.The severity of the 2012-13 flu season proved favorable for further epidemiological and coders. This winter we use Twitter and Facebook (FB) to complain about cold symptoms us in record numbers, and all of the public, sought help moaning flu tracker arm themselves against the next big Flare and track the virus in the developing world where information is a virus It is very rare. "I strongly believe that our investment made in this area will return us to a multiple of the euro and the life," said Pasi Penttinen, Epidemic Intelligence Section Head at the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.Here five an interesting tool to track Penttinen said he and his team are using and / or following to speed up the flow of information in the fight against flu. He lamented that many of the tools will not work properly study the non-English world. However, he warned, the public health agencies to follow them and you should, too.Google Flu Trends: Launched in November 2008 by Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, Google Flu Trends provides " near real-time estimates "of influenza activity in 29 countries to national and regional levels. Google Flu crunches flu-related search data, compare them against the historical ground level of flu activity data provided by the national center for disease control. Then map the two sets of data, the labeling area is minimal, low, moderate, high, or extreme. Regarding the accuracy of mapping, Google said it had been "very consistent with traditional surveillance data collected by health authorities," a statement backed up by independent researchers.DIZIE:Developed by Nigel Collier, a computational linguist at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, tap DIZIE Twitter API data to analyze and map the tweets from people describing their ailments. DIZIE a global map, the emphasis on the tweets from users in 43 cities around the world, from Amsterdam to Tuscon, Ariz. "We expect that the change in the number of tweets can be used to quickly locate potential spread of disease, "explains the founder. For example, the biggest complaint in Pittsburgh right now? Gastrointenstinal, charts.MappyHealth DIZIE say this: ". STD "Similar to DIZIE, MappyHealth reviewed more than 5.2 million tweets that match one of 27 health conditions, from flu gastroenteritis generic-but-fun site with scrolling ticker that tells you swing the disease every day around the chat disease and break the 20 cities where the complaint was at the top. It was developed by three of informatics specialists, one of the founders is a student at George Washington University.HealthMap:Formed in 2006 by a team of researchers, epidemiologists, and software developers from Children's Hospital Boston, HealthMap uses online news aggregator, witness reports, expert-curated discussions, and authenticated by the official reports to map the spread of infectious disease outbreaks. It is also available as a mobile application, the prevalence Near Me. Funded in part by Google.org, HealthMap has collaborated with the Department of Health and Human Services to map seasonal and H1N1 influenza USFlu Near You: A team from Children's Hospital Boston developed a web-based tool, Flu Near You, in partnership with the American Public Health Association and the Skoll Global Threats Fund. More than 44,000 registered users agreed to complete the weekly surveys about their health conditions to develop a comprehensive database for health officials to more accurately track the community through community influenza outbreaks before , while, and then press.

In the back of arrests Engineer BP Oil Spill Probe

More than two years after the disastrous BP-Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the criminal investigation by the federal government made the first charge. They do not last.The arrest of a former engineer of BP (BP) to remove text that should keep may seem like small potatoes to the U.S. Department of Justice mighty. What hurdle rate really means, however, that the prosecutor focused on trying to cover up the scale of BP Spill in an effort to cut billions of dollars from major environmental criminal law reports Bloomberg News fine.As here, U.S. prosecutors in New Orleans said Tuesday that Kurt Mix, working on BP's internal efforts to estimate the amount of oil leaking from the well, deleted electronic messages between him and his supervisor. Mix, 50, is charged with two as obstruction of justice. "Mix eliminated electronic records related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster response, including notes on the potential amount of oil flowing from the well, after many times of the obligation to maintain such records," said FBI Special Agent Barbara O'Donnell to file an affidavit in the blast case.The on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and caused the worst offshore spill in U.S. history, Bloomberg News said. The Justice Department is investigating the incident and Spill-level estimates, O'Donnell said her affidavit.BP declined to comment on the case against Mix and he will continue to cooperate with the U.S. investigation. "BP has a clear policy requiring the evidence in this case and will be conducted in substantial and sustained efforts to preserve the evidence," said the London-based company with a statement.So what's going on here? Why is the Justice Department to go after such a low level person in charge sounded so around? The short answer is that this is how the federal government has managed to white-collar criminal investigations. Prosecutors Leaning small players in the hope that they would plead guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence and pointing fingers at people further up the corporate ladder.In this case, the Justice Department seemed to be sending a signal that more specific, in particular, has committed to level Spill and exactly what BP knew about it. (The New Orleans Times-Picayune shipping has some great detail.) BP paid about $ 8 billion in civil claims, and has recently agreed to settle with the claimants for another $ 7.8 billion. Then there are criminal penalties for violations of the Clean Water Act. Penalties can range up to $ 1,100 per barrel for non-accidental spills and up to $ 4,300 per barrel if the spiller is considered grossly negligent. BP and the government privately debating just how many millions of barrels spewing into the Gulf of Mexico (somewhere between 4 million and 5 million) and the company worth label.Mix gross negligence may have some relevant information in the question. More importantly, he can find out who else might have information relevant to the question. That at least part of the reason why he drew the short straw and criminal charges first. Much more on the way.