Read about the new craze and get ideas for Xmas via 3D Copy and Paste!
Of recent, guns have posed a serious threat to peaceful living when in the wrong hands. But what if anyone could hastily manufacture them unsupervised, from the comfort of their homes?
Defense Distributed, Wilson’s company had been distributing downloadable weapons plans for free. This would be great if it was planned for building something useful for engineering and something practical rather than destructive. Point is, with this new device, you can literally make a 3D copy of any imaginable object – even food!
3D printing builds parts (mostly out of plastic or other synthetics) based on the central concept: a digital model e.g. a CAD drawing (Computer Assisted Drawing) This is turned into a physical three-dimensional object by adding material a layer at a time. This is where the formal name for 3D printing, Additive Manufacturing comes from. The actual printing device is no bigger than a normal Deskjet or heavy duty paper printer and is quite a marvel to watch in action.
3D printing is a fundamentally different way of producing parts compared to traditional subtractive (CNC machining) or formative (Injection moulding) manufacturing technologies.
Some of the top 3D printing brands include MakerBot, XYZprinting, Formlabs and LulzBot and are priced from as little as $200 to $4000 (for high-end small business-level) depending on the product size, material, complexity and level of detail required. The most expensive if you are into heavy-duty manufacturing would, therefore, set you back a cool $2,500,000 for the Imprimere’s Model 2156.
Since its uptake in as far back as 2010, you will now discover that a lot of the products already in use are manufactured via 3D printing. It is prevalent in the medical and dental industry and used for custom prosthetics, implants, and dental aids.
They are also used in the manufacture of high-level sporting gear that can be tailored to fit athletes perfectly. There is then, of course, the ability to ‘print’ fashion accessories which generally, would be designed to fit your specific style, colour and fabric/material.
Some of the advantages of using these machines include:
For a more comprehensive comparison of 3DPrinters available depending on what you want to do with one (hopefully not to build weapons), look at the 3D Printing index on our resources page under technology.
The bizarre-sounding copying phenomena called 3D-printing have been mulling around from the past. Recently, it has been in the limelight; specifically in the press for the wrong reasons.
In 2013, a University of Texas law student, Cody Wilson created a blueprint for a single-shot 3D-printed handgun, named ‘The Liberator’.
However, guns have posed a serious threat to peaceful living when in the wrong hands. But what if you could hastily manufacture them unsupervised, from the comfort of your home?
His company Defense Distributed, had been distributing downloadable weapons plans for free. This would be great if it was planned to enable you to build something more useful to society.
The point is, with this new device, you can literally make a 3D copy of any imaginable object – even your food!
3D printing builds parts (mostly out of plastic) based on the central concept: using a digital model like your CAD drawing (Computer Assisted Drawing).
This is then turned into a physical three-dimensional object by adding material a layer at a time. This is where the formal name for 3D printing, Additive Manufacturing arises. They are no bigger than a normal Deskjet or heavy-duty paper printer and are quite a marvel to watch in action.
3D printing is a fundamentally different way of producing parts compared to traditional subtractive (CNC machining) or formative manufacturing technologies.
Some top 3D printing brands include MakerBot, XYZprinting, Formlabs, and LulzBot. You can pick them up from as little as $200 to $4000.
These prices naturally depend on your end product size, material, complexity, and level of detail you need.
The most expensive one, if you are into heavy-duty manufacturing would set you back a cool $2,500,000. That is the price tag for Imprimere’s Model 2156.
Since its uptake in as far back as 2010, a lot of the products we use are manufactured using 3D printing. You will find its application mostly in the medical and dental industry and used for custom prosthetics, implants, and dental aids.
They are used to manufacture high-level sporting gear that is tailored to fit you perfectly. Naturally, you can also ‘print’ your own customized fashion accessories. This would give you more flexibility when it comes to your specific style, colour, and material.
For a more comprehensive comparison of 3D Printers available to you, look at the 3D Printing index on the resources page.
The latest abbreviation in the finance and crypto-world is ‘ICO’. This word, however, gives global financial authorities like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) nightmares for several reasons.
Not to be confused with Initial Public Offering (IPO) which is used by firms to raise cash through the issuing of shares to the public. An ICO (Initial Coin Offering) works like crowdfunding, but for digital currency and tokens.
We recently covered a feature on raising funds and capital for a business but missed out on one relatively new method. Many companies are using ICOs to raise capital for their businesses.
The concept of an ICO works similarly to how a company raises capital through shares in that it is all based on contrived value.
Funding raising in effect boils down to sales! If your actual product or service has nothing substantial or intrinsic to offer a client base, then it is nothing more than a scam.
Launching an ICO is quite easy, and to an extent, many tech companies are now catching onto it.
An ICO is the cryptocurrency space’s rough equivalent to an IPO in the investment world. ICOs act as fundraisers of sorts; a company looking to create a new coin, app, or service launches an ICO.
Investopedia
If you still do not believe it is possible, just listen to this testament from someone who did it after unsuccessfully knocking on the doors of conventional funders.
The alarming spurt rate of ICOs often brings with it a scourge of potential scammers. The SEC and other institutions have to step in to monitor and regulate them.
Social media platforms like Facebook and Google – which house a bounty of users (potential investors) have banned ICOs ads due to possible prey on unsuspecting investors; exposing them to con artists.
Basically, the scammers use fancy websites, laden with impressive figures and terminology to con users into buying into their coins or tokens.
Though the tokens barely even cost a cent, it adds up if they have millions of people buying in. Once they have reached a certain amount in funding – they close shop and disappear!
Create a product concept or Business Plan for the coin or what is called a Whitepaper. This describes in great detail what the coin or token aims to do; the core technologies behind it; the team and their qualifications; the product’s lifecycle/growth path etc.
Once completed and water-tight, the whitepaper would be submitted along with an application to one of the best Cryptocurrency Exchanges for review.
Naturally, you would need some initial working capital for liquidity. Some of this is raised through your savings and others through institutions (via loans etc).
You must then assure your investors of a solid return on investment (ROI) and deliver – which goes back to sales. Unless your offering is a scam, you actually need to do some work!
This assurance comes via regular updates (marketing campaigns can have a tremendous or adverse impact on the uptake and price) on milestones reached.
The updates are also necessary to keep your investors abreast with progress and might convince them to increase funding.
Growing interest and the addition of more funds create demand for the coin/ token which, in turn, drives up the price and market capitalization.
Known as “China’s Ethereum”, and backed by Microsoft, Alibaba and the Chinese government, NEO uses smart contract applications. It does so, however, with the addition of decentralized commerce, digitized assets and identification.
It enjoyed a considerable hike in token value from $0.03 to $88.20, NEO has big things coming with a 294,000% ROI.
Unlike Bitcoin, the second-most valuable cryptocurrency in the world has more functionality than just being a coin. Its ledger technology is used to build and deploy decentralized applications a.k.a. “smart contract” technology.
Ethereum’s ROI has been nothing short of jaw-dropping at 230,000%. Having sold its tokens at $0.31, an Ether token now sits at a whopping $713, second in value only to Bitcoin.
The “premier privacy-focused cryptocurrency” enables users to send and receive currency worldwide with total anonymity. It is currencies like SpectreCoin that have most government tax offices quaking in their boots.
If you had repurchased a token in November 2016, that puny $0.001 would be worth $0.64 today, or an ROI of 64,000%.
With Ark, collaboration is the name of the game. The platform’s SmartBridge is a lightning-fast ecosystem designed to integrate other cryptocurrencies into its blockchain.
Investors were eager as any to buy in, and they have made a 35,400% gain given today’s token price of $3.54.
DGD, which stands for Digix Decentralized Autonomous Organization, is a self-governing community. It gives out grants to different projects which will promote the growth of the DGX network.
At a current value of $346.88 per token, this gives them a return of 10,722%.
QTUM is an open-source value transfer platform which focuses on mobile decentralized apps or Dapps. QTUM is the world’s first proof-of-stake smart contracts platform.
They hosted a highly successful ICO in March 2017, and since that time has seen an ROI of 6,400%.
Source: investinblockchain.com
The prospect can be daunting for a cryptocurrency investor looking to make money off new investment opportunities while remaining cushioned from fraudulent ICOs and dodgy coins and tokens.
As there is no guarantee that any cryptocurrency or blockchain-related start-up will be genuine or successful.
You simply need to be vigilant and take steps such as getting to know the core team, poring over the whitepaper with a big magnifying glass. Naturally, you should be monitoring the progress of the token sales.
Most importantly, you must just use common sense to gauge just how feasible the project is to ensure that you’re not falling for a scam.
Likewise, in the business environment, it is a crucial requirement to be strategic (SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) for the business’ success/survival.
It is no surprise, in today’s technological advancements, that there are tools available to draw up business plans, predict(forecast) both internal and external events affecting its operations – conveniently referred to as Business Intelligence (BI). The function of a business intelligence tool is to mainly assist with forecasting. After all, if you aren’t selling anything like a ‘for-profit’ business – you are out of business!
Using a good business intelligence tool can help accelerate and improve decision-making, optimizing internal business processes, increasing operational productivity and efficiency.
This, in turn, helps generate more revenue with the same resources and can provide a significant competitive advantage over your competitors. BI tools can also help companies identify market trends and spot business problems that need serious attention.
Business intelligence is a technology-driven process for analyzing data and presenting actionable information to help executives, managers and other corporate end users make informed business decisions.
There are a few BI tools out there, but the most usable and compatible ones are what you should be looking for. Compatibility is critical because to use these tools you need to analyse raw data!
Most people use MS Excel to store large (or small) transactions and datasets for sales, stock and other accounting-related reports. This data will need to be imported or accessed directly by the tool to generate real-time graphs, forecasts and reports. A good BI tool should make accessing and processing such raw data a breeze.
As a business intelligence tool user, the one that makes the most sense to use is a Microsoft-based tool called Power BI. This is the one we recommend because it also comes free with a subscription to Office 365 Proplus package (for the latest Office apps incl. Excel) for as little as 12 USD per month.
That means you can dive in straight from MS Excel without having to add-on or pay for another subscription to a third-party software. Naturally, the free version would be essential and there are two other levels which are paid for products designed for professionals ($10 per month) and developers (priced per node).
For a Power BI consumer, the five “building blocks” are: visualizations, dashboards, reports, apps, and datasets – sometimes referred to as Power BI content. The content exists in workspaces. You can have several workspaces for different facets of the business to keep it all organized – just like in a factory or real office setting.
A typical Power BI workflow involves all these building blocks and will give the user the ability to visualise the inner workings of a business mostly from a financial viewpoint. So this would be a tool typically used by those in the financial sector – but also by account managers in businesses.
From a personal trading and investment analysis perspective, a BI tool could be the difference between reaping massive or incremental profits based on the real-time trends; following past movements of a stock or Cryptocurrency or making losses because you did not anticipate a dip or market crash. Most of the trading platforms have their own mathematically derived intelligence tools called indicators – but that’s another whole new ball game altogether. A dedicated BI tool, however, will serve you well in your immediate line of work and operations.
We count on our intelligence to survive. Your IQ level or Emotional Intelligence (EQ) can help you with strategy and sharpen your life-skills. This goes some way in preventing the same fate as Dodo!
On a more serious level, intelligence means gaining the upper hand in mostly military warfare. It is like going into war to win against the enemy.
Employing tactics by institutions such as the CIA, KGB, MI5, and Interpol, etc. would help you anticipate the next action to take to mitigate costs (casualties).
Likewise, in the business environment, it is a crucial requirement to be strategic for the business’ survival.
It is no surprise, in today’s technological advancements, that there are tools available to draw up business plans, and predict events affecting its operations. This is conveniently referred to as Business Intelligence (BI).
The function of a business intelligence tool is to mainly assist with forecasting. After all, if you aren’t selling anything like a ‘for-profit’ business – you are out of business!
Using a good business intelligence tool can help accelerate and improve decision-making. It also helps with optimizing internal business processes, increasing productivity and efficiency.
This, in turn, helps generate more revenue with the same resources and can provide a significant competitive advantage over your competitors. BI tools can also help companies identify market trends and spot business problems that need serious attention.
Business intelligence is a technology-driven process for analyzing data. It presents actionable information to help executives, managers, and other corporate end-users make informed business decisions.
There are a few BI tools out there, but the most usable and compatible ones are what you should be looking for. Compatibility is critical because to use these tools you need to analyze raw data!
Most people use MS Excel to store large (or small) transactions and datasets for sales, stock, and other accounting-related reports. This data will need to be imported or accessed directly by the tool to generate real-time graphs, forecasts, and reports.
As a business intelligence tool user, the one that makes the most sense to use is a Microsoft-based tool called Power BI. This is the one we recommend. It also comes free with a subscription to Office 365 Proplus package (latest Office apps), for as little as 12 USD per month.
That means you can dive in straight from MS Excel without having to add-on or pay for another subscription to third-party software.
Naturally, the free version would only allow the basics. There are two other levels which are paid for products designed for professionals ($10 per month) and developers (per node).
For a Power BI consumer, the five “building blocks” are: visualizations, dashboards, reports, apps, and datasets.
The content exists in workspaces. You can have several workspaces for different facets of the business to keep it all organized – just like in a factory or real office setting.
A typical Power BI workflow involves all these building blocks and will give you the ability to visualise the inner workings of a business.
So this would be a tool typically used by those in the financial sector – but also by account managers in businesses.
From a personal trading and investment analysis perspective, a BI tool could be the difference between you reaping massive or tiny profits.
With it, you can follow past movements of a stock or Cryptocurrency or making losses because you did not anticipate a dip or market crash.
Most of the trading platforms have their own mathematically derived intelligence tools called indicators.
But that’s another whole new ball game altogether. A good BI tool, however, will serve you well in your immediate line of work and operations.
So, if you haven’t thought of a business intelligence tool yet, now is the time to do so.
One often hears the phrase “technology is your friend” To what extent the friendliness/support is, in being a most effective “companion” to assist you to cope with your daily activities or business plans depends on how you embrace it.
Read more via Get more organised digitally!
We often hear the phrase “technology is your friend” To what extent this friendliness is, to help you to cope with your daily activities or business plans depends on how you embrace it.
Life can be chaotic. Which so much to do it is easy to frequently miss important appointments. Delays often come from having to wait till you get to a PC to respond or not remembering contact details. The worst is having to ask someone repeatedly for their number or business cards.
If you often experience that, you are getting it all wrong and definitely need this friend!
Emails are on a progressive, disruptive path to eliminate postal services. They even facilitate and encourage the acceptance of digitally signed documents.
Most financial companies and legal institutions in many developed countries already accept digitally signed documents.
Your digital signature confirms that the information originated from you and has not been altered through encryption. This makes it legally binding.
Naturally, you need special software or Adobe Sign, to digitally sign and attach as a PDF to an email.
Thanks to emails, we can now also easily store and get in touch with our contacts. It could be in the office, lounging around a park, watching your children play; even onboard/at the underground train station.
Calendar and contacts syncing is a simple tool which is not offered entirely by all domain host providers. It works wonders along with your calendar and scheduler.
If you need a simple CRM tool to just help with email contacts and plug into an existing sales app, you can do so with a useful add-on like Outlook Customer Manager.
There are certainly advantages of decluttering your emails. This helps to alleviate the frustration of unimportant mails getting in the way of the ones you need to access frequently. For that, there is a clutter service offered by Office 365.
Additionally, to avoid retaining important attachments, and clogging up space on your mailbox, you can with a click, save large file attachments directly to your cloud storage.
With all that relevance of emails, it is critical that you source the best one – even if it costs a bit more than the (free) webmail services provided by Outlook (Hotmail), Gmail and Yahoo.
Naturally, with a paid service, you will almost be freed from the scourge of spam and malicious items embedded in documents. In some cases, they are screened even before landing in your mailbox.
Other perks like a ‘catch-all service’, data loss prevention, in place-hold (compliance features), and advanced threat protection. You can add them as essential services to give you an even more peaceful emailing experience.
You can, for instance, use In-Place Hold (Litigation Hold) to place user mailboxes ‘on hold’ and preserve mailbox items permanently.
This feature is especially crucial for those in the financial and legal sectors – requiring emails and its contents to be preserved for a minimum of seven years typically. Security is the central factor that has kept the postal service in business – well at least for now.
• A decent-sized mailbox – with archiving ability – 50GB is the new standard size (don’t get short-changed!).
• Should allow you to sync emails, calendars, and contacts onto multiple devices – and it must always work!
• SMTP is now the standard and preferred Email protocol. If you are still on POP3 or even IMAP – run away!
• Customizable domain (a .com or .net or any other you have bought), with the option to add more domains and email aliases. (info@ …sales@ etc).
• Sync to an active directory – to keep your user-profile and allow for ease of single sign-on or extra security features like two-factor authentication. (Prevents unauthorized people from accessing your emails by pairing to your phone via an SMS code).
• Your mailbox (since you are storing contact details or using it along with a CRM or ERP solution) must be GDPR-compatible.
Finally, a good email hosting service should provide the ability to add innovative features in the future. These include extra archiving space, advanced threat protection, and enterprise voicemail. These are characteristics of a good email solution.
Preparing to use an email solution can be effortless if you have the time. Most software suppliers like Microsoft (Office 365), have support sites with primary training material and “how-tos”.
There is a lot of banter, which is backed up by well-research papers on how Automation and Robotics (powered by AI) will replace manufacturing jobs.
Blue-collar jobs are not the only ones however, that face imminent and progressive extinction.
A recent survey report conducted by the World Economic Forum predicts futuristic trends affecting certain jobs in the modern workplace.
Robert Solow predicted decades ago, in his Solow-Swan model, a massive driving force of global growth: technology.
And the evidence is prevalent with the likes of Apple, Google, and Amazon championing stock markets with Billion-dollar market capitalizations. They also create an abundance of jobs globally.
Disruptive technological advances such as AI (Artificial Intelligence); the ubiquitous high-speed mobile Internet (5G); widespread adoption of big data analytics; cloud technology; and the recent Blockchain technology will be the drivers of this job evolution.
Based on the report, by 2022, this job evolution will be firmly in place as it has already.
In a matter of just 4 years, we could have a situation where jobs such as postal service clerks, data entry clerks, and bean-counters (accountants and auditors) would be made redundant.
Software like Microsoft’s Dynamics 365, aims to remove ‘silos’ within customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes.
The latter takes over (fully automates) back-office operations such as stock-taking and supply chain management.
Such tasks will be performed via software, reducing the need for more human supervision. Consequently, the focus would be more on managerial roles.
In the sales and customer service realm, technologies like Microsoft’s AI will provide automated insights to guide employees on improving customer experiences.
Furthermore, it may lower support costs by using virtual agents or Chatbots to eliminate in-house AI experts and those writing code. This will result in more redundancies!
On a positive note, newer and more exciting jobs such as data analysts, machine learning and AI specialists, digital transformation experts and in general information system services will be on the rise – up to 135 million globally, according to the Report.
The fields to benefit directly from new technologies would be information technology; information security; innovation; customer services and risk management (financial services).
Another group of professionals whose nature of work will be affected due to the advent of ‘disruptive technology‘ is financial middlemen. Likewise, smaller banks and money transfer institutions.
Decentralized systems were primarily put in place to eradicate exorbitant fees associated with transferring money across borders.
Cutting them out completely undoubtedly renders them redundant. It is therefore pertinent for them to innovate their products in order to open up sufficient job position.
Read more about the effect of Cryptocurrencies on the banking sector here
Recently, Malta’s finance minister whilst in a private interview during a Blockchain Conference, echoed this. He said that the advent of cryptocurrency has changed financial middlemen into traditional “photo developers”.
“I can see this, just like in photography when you could tell that […] those who process the photos will lose their jobs; a lot of financial intermediaries will be facing the chop in the not too distant future,” says Edward Scicluna.
The good news for governments will be that the trend shows that the jobs created will surpass those lost.
Read more via Food for thought…
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