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Showing posts with label These. Show all posts
Showing posts with label These. Show all posts

Which of These Concepts Might Be the iPhone 5? [PICS]

The real iPhone 5 might resemble one of these lovely designs, but which one will it be? With speculation about the design of the upcoming iPhone 5 running rampant, there’s one thing we’re fairly confident will happen: Apple is expected to release the latest and greatest iPhone sometime later this year.

The announcement of the next iPhone was expected at the WWDC keynote on June 11, but that came and went without any news of Apple’s upcoming iPhone. At this point, we don’t even know if it’ll be called “iPhone 5? (the “new iPhone,” anyone?).

Those in the mobile phone space and Apple fans have attempted to figure out what direction Apple might take with the iPhone 5. Will the homescreen go retro? Maybe it will be made with LiquidMetal? Or perhaps it will have a transparent screen (highly unlikely)?

Apple is notoriously secretive surrounding the announcement of a new product, so it’s anyone’s guess as to what the iPhone 5 will look like exactly. But for now we can have fun debating which features would truly make a groundbreaking fifth-generation iPhone.

Check out this gallery to see what artists, designers and iPhone fans think the iPhone 5 might look like:

Which one of these designs do you think is most accurate? Tell us in the comments.

Photos courtesy of Gizmodo

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Are These The Best Car Interiors For 2012?

When you spend so much time inside a car, driving to and from work, school and assorted family or other errands, you definitely know what works well for you, as well as what begins to irk you after a while. When a car’s interior has that perfect balance of form and function, and everything just sort of flows, it can make all the difference in the world.Keeping tabs on the best new car interiors each year, Ward’s releases its annual listing showcasing the standout winners. For the Ward’s 10 Best Interiors for 2012, there is no ranking, meaning there’s no number one through 10. Editors began with a field of 40 nominated interiors and narrowed it down by evaluating each vehicle’s interior, focusing on ergonomics, safety, and selection of materials, overall value, and aesthetics. Editors also looked at the human-machine interface to see how well they communicated vehicle information to the driver.
Here are this year’s winners, listed in alphabetical order:
2012 Audi A7 – As a top-notch luxury car, it’s understandable that the all-new 2012 Audi A7 would boast an equally impressive interior. For WardsAuto editors, won over by the A7’s “dramatic and inviting” interior, the “four-passenger luxury liftback tilts toward the exotic and looks much more expensive than its $67,430 sticker price.” Meanwhile, our colleagues at TheCarConnection rate the A7’s interior a 10 out of 10. Read the entire review here.
2012 Chevrolet Sonic, road test, Catskills Mountains, October 2011
2012 Chevrolet Sonic, road test, Catskills Mountains, October 2011
Enlarge Photo
2012 Chevrolet Sonic – Well-equipped at $18,745, the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic that editors evaluated “proves an inexpensive car doesn’t have to look cheap.” Editors also hailed Sonic’s “new level of style” to the subcompact segment, remarking that it maximizes limited space with three cupholders between the front seats, front door bottle holders, and two gloveboxes. See why TheCarConnection gives the 2012 Chevy Aveo an overall 8 (out of 10) rating in this review.
2012 Chrysler 300 Luxury – Drew Winter, editor-in-chief of Ward’sAuto World magazine, sums up the appeal of the 2012 Chrysler 300 luxury sedan this way: “If Bentley made an affordable family car, its interior would look like the Chrysler 300 Luxury.” Wait, there’s more. Winter went on to say, “It’s smart and modern with a generous helping of over-the-top lavishness.”
2013 Dodge Dart – An all-new compact (replacing the outgoing Dodge Caliber), the 2013 Dodge Dart, says WardsAuto editors, “gives Chrysler a legitimate shot at gaining market share in the compact-car segment, and a stylish, well-conceived and heavily contented interior boosts prospects for success.” TheCarConnection finds the interior “roomy,” while other “snazzy appearance features” include optional LED ambient lighting, and 14 color and fabric combinations.
2012 Hyundai Accent – Noting that the $15,925 sticker price on the test 2012 Hyundai Accent seemed hard to believe, WardsAuto editors lauded the subcompact car’s “incredible attention to detail,” which included leather-wrapped steering wheel and other appealing interior features. Our own TheCarConnection review highlights the car’s “vast interior [which], by subcompact standards, elevates the Accent into the compact class.”

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Get Inspiration From These 4 Internet Entrepreneurs

Learn how to earn a full-time freelance writing incomeDaily emails, one-on-one training and more"Your course has taught me a lot about freelance writing. I particularly enjoy the daily emails. My income is on its way up!" - Sheila EscuroMany years of freelance writing and consulting experienceWeb content, blog content, sales letters, feature articles and moreCompetitive rates, Bulk discountsContact me today

The following is a guest post.


Web entrepreneurs face an uphill battle from the start. With millions of websites on the internet today, the competition for viewers is incredibly stiff. Many web start-ups fold within a year of launching. Despite the odds, some young entrepreneurs over the last decade have managed to take nothing and turn it into some of the biggest websites in the world.


Mark Zuckerberg   


Mark Zuckerberg, at the age of 27, is one of the youngest web billionaires in the world thanks to his social networking site, Facebook. Zuckerberg started Facebook when he was still in college, with some of his classmates.    Zuckerberg first launched what would become Facebook on Harvard’s network over the course of a weekend, but the website overloaded the school’s servers. He continued to work on the site and spread it to other schools, including Yale and Cornell.


Zuckerberg got his first investor, opened Facebook’s first office and launched the public website in 2004. In 2011, his fortune was estimated at $17.5 billion.


Simon Nixon   


Simon Nixon, with Duncan Cameron, established the Moneysupermarket Group in 1993 while Nixon was a student at Nottingham University. The group’s website, launched in 1999, specializes in financial services, giving consumers access to information about a wide array of financial products, including loans and credit cards.


Nixon dropped out of school but managed to build the group into a leading online financial information provider. As of 2011, his estimated worth was $570 million.


Ariana Huffington


Ariana Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, is a web news and blogging pioneer. The website was launched in May 2005 as a place for liberal commentary and an alternative news source.


The constant aggregate of news stories from around the world and the commentary flow drew millions of users and Huffington sold the Post to AOL Inc. for $315 million in 2011. Prior to the sale, Huffington’s net worth was already estimated at $115 million dollars.


Larry Page and Sergey Brin


You may not be familiar with the names, but you know the product. Larry Page is one of the co-founders of search giant, Google. While at Stanford in 1995, Page met fellow student, Sergey Brin and the two would form Google Inc. just a year later in 1996.


Page and Brin’s first investor, Andy Bechtolshei, gave them $100,000 and the pair used the money to lay the groundwork for Google as it is today. In 1999, the two entrepreneurs found themselves flooded with investor offers and finally took a $25 million investment from the Kliener, Perkins, Caufield and Sequoia Capital firm.


As of 2010, Page and Brin’s net worth was estimated at $15 billion each. Google has been valued at over $175 billion in recent years, with annual profits exceeding $800 million.

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Do You Make These 8 Personal Development Mistakes?

Most people suck at improving themselves. Even when they’re trying their hardest to become a better person, they wind up running on the dreaded personal development hamster wheel – hours of effort, zero results.

It’s not because they’re stupid. It’s not because they’re lazy. It’s definitely not because it’s not possible. It’s because they’re making the mistakes that most people make when they’re trying to change their life for the better. That’s why there’s so many people reading self-help blogs, self-help books, and taking self-help classes and yet so few people making a meaningful and lasting difference.


So here’s a list of the eight most common (and most damaging) mistakes that people make in personal development.

Are you guilty of any of these?


  • Are You Fixing Your Weaknesses?
    Don’t you just hate being bad at things? It makes you feel dumb playing tennis when you’ve only ever played against Wii characters. You feel small when someone mentions James K. Polk and expects you to know he was the 11th American president (not that anyone would ever expect that).

    So it’s natural to focus the majority of your personal development time on fixing your weaknesses. That’s all well and good, but you get a much better return on that time if you focus on improving your strengths.

    Think of it like this. The vast majority of any successes you have in life will be because of your strengths. Your career security will be based on the strengths you bring to the table. You’ve probably heard of the 80/20 rule (80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts). That’s what I recommend here:

    Focus the majority of your personal development efforts on your top 20% of skills, strengths, and talents. For the rest of the 80% do what you can to avoid them, delegate them to someone else, or create a system to avoid doing them. If a weakness is preventing you from hitting your goals, then get just good enough so that you can continue to focus on becoming an expert at what you’re good at.


  • Do You Want to Become “Better”?
    Why do you focus on personal development? Well, to be a “better” person. To have a “better” life. To have “better” skills.

    ...What does “better” mean?

    Every sane person on earth wants to be “better” in a bunch of ways. That’s a good thing – we’re ambitious. But “better” is a vague goal. We all know the thing about vague goals – vague goals produce vague results. Or in other words, vague goals don’t produce real results.

    Your personal development path must have a purpose. There has to be a reason you’re working on whatever it is you want to improve. That’s the only way anything will actually ever happen. Change “better” to something like “know how to build a website so I can share my advice.” That’s how personal development actually happens in the real world.


  • Are You Learning Awesome Theories?
    Theories are awesome and a lot of them are amazing. Seriously.

    An investment strategy can sky rocket your wealth. A lifestyle design philosophy can get you out of the cubicle. A productivity system can help you get a whole heck of a lot more done.

    But theories are also like crack or girl scout cookies – they’re addictive.

    Once you’re exposed to a compelling theory or philosophy about something, it’s hard not to try to learn everything about it. Then it’s hard not to look for all the other competing theories or philosophies and learn everything about them. Then it’s hard to not look for comparisons to figure out which one’s best.

    Worst of all it’s hard to bring any of the theories into real action.

    It’s helpful to remember this simple concept – “everything that’s not stupid works.”

    For example, there is an infinite number of ways to lose weight – choose from a million diets, exercise programs, supplements, gyms, programs, etc. – but nothing works if you’re doing nothing but researching.

    It doesn’t matter if you have the #1 possible theory. It’s better to just find a path that’s not stupid and stick to it. (You can always improve it later). Learning theories isn’t personal development. Implementing them is.


  • Have You Never Had a Major Failure?
    Avoiding failure makes you feel successful. After all, failure is bad. Right?

    Well, kind of. No one should try to fail. That would make you weird. But if you’ve never had a major failure, then you’ve never really tried to succeed. If you’ve got your skin in the game for long enough something will go wrong. Period.

    Don’t believe me? Name one successful person who’s never failed.

    The strange paradox of it is that you cannot learn much from successes, but the bigger the failure the more you learn. In most aspects of life, people tend to look at the successes and copy them so that they can avoid the failure. The first part is good – copying previous successes is just smart. But you should expect to fail eventually. The only possible way to avoid failing is to not try in the first place.

    Work hard for those failures, because that’s the best way possible for you to grow.


  • Are You Crazy Busy?
    Everyone intends to improve themselves, but it’s just damn hard to find the time (see New Years resolutions).

    You got work, family, obligations, travel, chores, and sleep. Who has time to work on themselves?

    Yep, it’s tough.

    It’s really got to be a matter of priority. How much of a priority is it that you improve yourself, your skills, and your life? It may be obvious that that’s a top priority for you, but real world implementation may be a bit tricky. Time may only allow you to settle for reading advice, not implementing it.

    There’s two solutions:

    First, you can schedule time for whatever kind of personal development you want to focus on. Then you guard that time with your life.

    Second, if you can’t do that for whatever reason, you need to find ways to incorporate your improvement in other activities you have to do anyway.

    Truth be told, you should probably find a way to do both.


  • Did You Choose The Newest and Shiniest Version?
    It’s easier to think that the newest thing out there is the best. The newest strategy, technique, tactic, idea, book, etc.

    It’s true with a lot of things – technology and medicine being two obvious examples. It’s not true with a lot of others.

    Want to get an amazing memory? The best current memory courses are variations on methods from ancient Greece. Want to calculate crazy math problems in your head? India had that figured out about 2,500 years ago.

    We like bells, whistles, and that new car smell, but sometimes we’re missing the old and tested approaches to things. Most personal development is about subjects that are timeless – the mind, the body, the spirit, selling, finances, communication, friendship, love, etc.

    I guess the point here is no matter what you want to improve about yourself many people have gone through the same thing. Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be.


  • Is Your Personal Development for Personal Development’s Sake?
    If “personal development” doesn’t have a result, then it doesn’t count.

    By “result” I mean a tangible, objective, other-people-can-see-change kind of result. That means you have to get something from your improvement efforts.

    What’s that something.

    Well, if you truly improve yourself then you should see some of the following things come into your life:


    • More money (gasp!) – Yep, if you’re more skilled then you should command a higher income whether your self employed or work for someone else

    • More confidence – You’re more confident when you’re good at something. The more you improve, the more that should happen.

    • More influence – The more you improve in a noticeable way, the more others will value your opinion on things
    If you’re not seeing those things, maybe your personal development path isn’t quite on track. Instead, focus your personal development efforts on things that will cause real world effects.


  • Do You Love to Read?
    Loving to read is great, but dangerous.

    It’s dangerous because it takes you to another world. When you’re reading your imagination sparks and you are inspired by great possibilities. The world in your head is fantastic!

    ...then you go back to the real world.

    With your personal development, spend maximum 25% of your time reading, learning, and researching. The other 75% (or more) should be spent taking action.

    Let’s be honest, with most things we already know what we need to do, or at least where to start. Wanna be fit? Start with jogging before work and stop eating fast food. Wanna make friends? Start by joining a club or organization. Wanna be productive? Close your email.

    For something we just don’t know how to do, finding that information is simple – Google it.
    New information can inspire and motivate, but more often it can derail. So, maximum 25% reading and minimum 75% doing.
So Put Yourself Out There
Testing the quality of your personal development efforts can be one of the most powerful things that you can do today.

Making mistakes can be frustrating (especially when it comes to something personal), but identifying those mistakes allows us to improve. Most progress starts by noticing a mistake and deciding to do something differently in the future.

The worst personal development mistake didn’t make the list. The worst mistake is ignoring or refusing to do anything about failures. It’s turning a blind eye to potential learning opportunities. When that happens, people are doomed to continue running on that personal development hamster wheel.

I didn’t include it, because folks in that situation will always be stuck. On the other hand, if you’re passionately pursuing improvement and have an open mind to change, you’re almost guaranteed to succeed.

So go out there and become great.
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