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Planning and executing a startup is one of the hardest things you can do in order to make sure you stay on course. Having an intricate plan for how you will scale your business is key to your success in many cases, and it’s a necessity to stay inspired and not lose focus. However, building the perfect plan is anything but easy these days. If you want the best possible start, it’s vital that you use the Internet to your advantage. This will in turn require quite a few different tech roles to be included in your master plan. Everything from a web designer to your customers need to be aligned with what you offer, and the better they understand your concept, the better your results will be in the beginning.

To further give you an idea about the different roles in a startup, Udemy has taken their “data” to Column Five to produce an infographic that will guide you through the different positions, if that is what you could call it. It’s evident that they have spent some time building this badboy, and the fact that they have used the animal kingdom as their form of data visualization is quite interesting. I don’t know if it makes it all clearer though, or if it just jumbles it up, but that’s all the same.

The purpose of this infographic is purely to give you a better understanding about the different roles in a startup and what might be their focus and “enemies” as you progress your startup from idea to reality. For anyone who isn’t inside the core of a newly formed company, it could be hard to understand what each role really does within the startup, but this thing should clear that right up. After having looked at it for a few minutes, I must say however that it takes a while to get used to the whole animal concept of it all. Once that hurdle is gone, it is a quite neat and interesting infographic that could really open some eyes regarding what it takes and what roles are involved with a great idea when it comes to gaining success.

Click Infographic To Enlarge

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What’s the first thing that pops into your head when you think about following someone on Twitter? Their profile, right? You want to see what the person is about, and if they posted a personal avatar of themselves as well. When you take the time to fill out your bio on Twitter and write little bits of interesting information about yourself, it gets others interested in you also. You are suddenly worth their follow.

If you don’t take that small amount of time to fill out your Twitter profile then why should someone else take the time to follow you? Twitter gives you 160 characters to write a bio, and you can use that for anything you want to say to describe yourself. My advice? Use all those characters and be interesting. Peek people’s curiosity about you. Make them want to know more. This will gain you their follow.

My recommendation for filling out your bio:

Even though people can’t see you, they want to be able to develop a friendship with the person they are following. You can help them do this by being yourself, explaining what makes you unique, what your passion is in life, why you use Twitter, and many other things that could make you stand out as different than others.

Your Twitter avatar:

Just as people want to learn about you, they also want to see you. Most people don’t want to follow an egg (the default avatar). They want to know who you are and what you look like. Take the time to put a picture of yourself up on Twitter. Show people who you are through the camera lens. Believe me, you will be surprised how many more followers you’ll get just from doing this one little thing.

Filling out and completing your Twitter bio
is just as important as how you tweet.

Most people won’t take you seriously if you don’t show them a picture of you and give them a bit of background about who you are. Your Twitter peeps want to get to know you, so show them who you are.

Image Credit: [Media Bistro]

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Not long ago, a family member gave me the Apple iPad 2 as a gift. Not having an iPhone and having never used a high-tech tablet before, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I surf the web, tweet and use Facebook all from my Blackberry daily, so it’s not as though I really needed the iPad. Nonetheless, I graciously accepted the gift.

Now a few months later, I’ve used it to play a few different apps, to look at websites on a bigger screen while traveling, and to download music and movies from time to time. But I have to say, my  favorite thing to do on it is play Words With Friends. It’s a word-building game in the form of a crossword puzzle modeled after Scrabble.

Different spaces on the board earn you more points than others, and the goal is to use up all your letters connecting real words to each other with higher scores than your opponent. Friends can search for you to begin a game once you tell them your username. If you’re into strategical thinking, have a decent vocabulary and love to best your friends in spelling or grammar, this game’s for you. The app is available on Android and iOS systems, as well as Facebook.

Admittedly, I don’t play it a lot because it can be time consuming. Games can last for hours, days, weeks and longer depending on how much attention you give a particular game, meaning when a friend makes a move, you can respond with your move at your leisure. That, in addition to a few other things, are what make me love WWF.

Here are some of my other favorite parts about Words With Friends:

• You get to show off your vocabulary and dig deep into your brain to find those words you don’t use much.
• You can test various letters together if you think they may form a word without being penalized if they don’t.
• If you place letters on blocks with “TL,” “DL,” “DW,” or “TW” on them, you can earn double or triple points for individual letters or entire words, giving you points quickly.
• It’s a game of strategy where you form words on certain blocks and connect words to each other in various directions to boost your score.
• You can play real-life friends or random strangers. I’ve selected random strangers to play before, in order to practice for when I play real friends.
• It’s unpredictable! Every time I start a game, I don’t know which letters the system will give me or when I’ll get a blank block to use as any letter in the alphabet.

If this all sounds like fun, give the game a try, but don’t blame me if it ends up occupying your days quickly. It tends to have that effect, especially in the beginning. Happy wording.

Image Credits: [App Advice] [iPad Apps Reviewer] [Digital Trends]

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How would you like to dine at a restaurant built right at the base of a waterfall? I don’t mean you’d be sitting a safe distance away from the waterfall, I mean… your table, your feet, and your entire experience (including the sounds) would all revolve around the rushing water. That would create a memory to last a lifetime.

There is a restaurant in the world where you can have this actual experience. It’s at the Villa Escudero resort in the Quezon province of the Philippines. At this restaurant, not only are visitors encouraged to try traditional Filipino menu items, they are also invited to take off their shoes and shirts to get as close to the waterfall as possible.

I bet this would be a fun place to work too. I imagine each time there is a strong wind, water sprays on everyone. Since I know the weather in the Philippines is typically pretty hot, I’m sure it’s really refreshing to sit close to the water too. As you can see in the pictures, the waterfall is relatively small, and the resort is hacienda-style. Yup, staying at the Villa Escudero and visiting this restaurant is definitely going on my bucket list. What a great reason to finally travel to the Philippines.

Via: [Oddity Central]

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This infographic asks the question, “Are jerks the future of the Internet?” Most of the sites where I’ve seen this posted elaborate with a story about jerk behavior that they’ve experienced in social media. I feel like I’m living in the twilight zone a little bit right now because I’ve had a completely different experience in social media.

It’s true that I get the occasional troll comment on one of my 2,180 articles, but it doesn’t happen very often. A year ago when I wrote 10 Reasons Not To Block Someone On Twitter, I got a few nasty tweets, but those were just from people who were playing a game and trying to see if I would block them. I get that.

I have over 62,000 followers on Twitter, and 99.999% of the tweets I have ever gotten have been kind and fun. Maybe I’m just following the best people on Twitter, or maybe I just don’t invite negativity into my life, I don’t know. However, to answer the question on this infographic, no, I don’t think jerks are the future of the Internet. I still wanted to show you this infographic though because the information on here about cyberbullying is really fascinating. It’s a topic that definitely deserves attention, and I want to write more about it in the future. [Infographic created by Online Counseling]

Click Here For Enlarged Image

Via: [Geekosystem]

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In the beginning, there will be a tsunami of people who will invest in Facebook when the IPO is launched. People have started to look closely at Facebook as a business, if that is even possible. They thoroughly check and read up on pretty much everything. It’s good to know what you put your money into, and that is something that is going to be the main focus for the next few months for investors I take it. However, one thing they seem to forget is to look into the numbers when it comes to fanatic Facebook users. These are the people who log into Facebook an obscene amount of times each day and totally get lost in all their likes, pokes and status updates. They are the ones who drive Facebook forward.

So just how crazy have we all become when it comes to Facebook and what has Facebook done for us more than strip away all of our free time? For some people, work has even been degraded to second place on the priority list, even when they are at the office. This question could best be answered by Daniel Koren and his 10 cloned buddies who’ve formed the Koren Ensamble. Daniel, who is a musician, has put together what could possibly become the new Facebook theme song.

It depicts the ultimate madness that is slowly infecting us all when we use this highly addicting social networking service. If you have ever wondered just how nuts we are all becoming, and if you want to know exactly why that is, just have a listen to this song and you’ll definitely understand. I think all the pokes, likes and updates are starting to affect me since I think this thing is truly amusing. I like how he harmonized the melody in this short but intense little jingle. Let the madness roam free! After all, we only live once, and it’s time to let the crazy take control over us for just a day or so. Well on second thought, maybe cutting down on our Facebook usage is a better idea.

Via: [Neatorama]

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Do you eat tofu? I don’t. Do you even know what tofu is? I wrote a whole article about a year ago called Do You Really Know What Tofu Is, but even after that, I’m not sure what it is. All I know is that I’m not going to put it in my mouth.

All kidding aside, we know that tofu is better for the environment than a lot of other options when it comes to animals, food and waste. Now in addition to eating tofu, you can get your bras and panties made out of it. According to Medina Magazine, the company Faeries Dance has “developed a textile made from discarded soybean casing. During the production it is combined with organic cotton, and processed using a close-loop system that minimizes waste…” These soybean casings would normally be thrown away during tofu manufacturing, so creating fabric from it will definitely reduce waste.

So if you’d like to feel eco-sexy, this lingerie might be just what you’ve been looking for. Now, if they could only spend a bit more time on the design to make them look a little more “Victoria’s Secret” and a little less “Walmart,” these might become popular. You can see the entire collection of eco-friendly, organic clothing at Faeries Dance.

Via: [ecouterre] [prweb]

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There are a million ways you could make your home just a little bit more epic. Some people make it look like a Star Trek inspired apartment while others take a more subtle approach and just switch out the living room carpet. If you are looking to impress people, you should really put your back into it. Sure, custom making everything in the Star Trek apartment must have taken years of hard work (and to know it might be disassembled is just heart breaking), but if you want to really make people’s jaws drop when they walk into your home, you need to do something really spectacular and original.

One approach might be to create an epic floor like South Korean artist Do Ho Suh. Don’t expect it to be super easy though since it might take you years to complete it. Why? Well, because the 40 tile floor piece is created out of 180,000 plastic figurines holding up the glass floor. It’s a marvel to behold, and the intense visual is something that will stick with you for days. Trying to place 180,000 figurines as close as possible to each other is one thing, but to model them all at the same height so they can hold up the glass might just be as epic as it can possibly get.

I mean, as an artist, what are you going to create after you have shown people this art piece? They won’t possibly be impressed by yet another “ordinary” painting, will they? I guess the only way to up the ante is to create something even more time consuming. But what the heck would that be? We’re talking about 180,000 plastic figurines holding up 40 glass sheets here. I am as impressed as I can get right now. Sure, there is always someone out there that will take things just a little further, but this is certainly worthy of the word epic in every sense of the word. I wonder if Do Ho Suh was a little bit hesitant to step on those sheets of glass when he was finished with the artwork to take a picture. It’s not like you could just redo it in a couple of minutes or so.

Via: [My Modern Met]

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Categorizing and classifying: these are the sorts of things that taxonomists are good at. While the rest of us may be able to sort our clothes by brand, our plant classification skills have really gone downhill in the last 100 years. Today, our hunting and gathering takes place in the grocery store, where there are convenient little signs above the fruit, proclaiming that this apple is a McIntosh, Fuji, or Gala.

I’m someone who works outdoors, and I love knowing which plants are which. It’s rather useful to know your stinging nettles and your poison ivy, of course. It’s also helpful to know that certain berries won’t poison you and that certain fungi definitely will. I like eating wild plants, and I like using them as medicine. Like all naturalists, I have my favorite field guides. However, I may have just found a new favorite: Leafsnap. To the amateur or professional naturalist, Leapsnap is the coolest brain extension (oops, I mean – app) that you ever did see.

What is Leafsnap? It’s biometrics for plants. The same technology that can be used to scan your facial features can now scan leaves. It’s a free app that allows you to scan a leaf and help you identify the plant, and it comes to us courtesy of Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution.

Imagine walking through the woods. You see a plant. You wonder whether it’s edible, or whether it could make you itchy. You take out your phone, snap a picture, and connect to Leafsnap, which gives you options that will help you determine what your plant might be. It’s like having a really outdoor-savvy friend who lives in your pocket. An outdoor-savvy friend who doesn’t eat much or make your place messy.

Right now, the technology is limited to the plants of Washington, DC and New York. After all, there are a lot of leaves out there to catalogue. If you’re a leaf aficionado and you want to help, the Leafsnap website lists volunteer opportunities. So get snap happy and start scanning!

Image Credits: [arianna873] [wallco]

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All I can say is WOW! I looked at this picture (first one below) on Facebook and just kept staring at it, trying to figure out how they could do this on a wall…I thought it was a mural at first. I mean, those people are standing on rock outcrops…aren’t they? But then how come that guy in the middle is so much smaller than than the ones beside him? I just couldn’t figure out how they did this, so I did a little investigating.

Turns out, 3D Joe & Max, the world traveling pavement artists, actually painted over 1100 m of street to create this amazing Reebok Crossfit exercise area. A room-sized 3D takes them about four days, and Guinness gave them just one week to complete this task.

On November 17, this gigantic piece of street art won two Guinness World Records — for the longest and the largest (1160 meters square) 3D street art. Of course, once you find one amazing thing, you have to go see what else is out there. After the Guinness World Record holder below, my next favorite one is the polar bear. If you visit the gallery on their website, you can see the polar bear painting from a different angle, which is kind of cool. Check out some of their awesome works.

Check out the video of this amazing waterfall scene being made.

Image Credit: [3D Joe and Max]