CRM Update – May 29 : 2:28 pm

Defy Ventures offers former criminals a second shot by training them to run their own businesses.Catherine Rohr stands at the front of a drab, fluorescent-lit classroom in Midtown Manhattan. Her 27 students, who sit crammed into chair-desks, are ex-cons whose crimes include narcotics trafficking and murder. Rohr, 35, is dressed conservatively in long black pants, a button-down white shirt, fitted jacket, and high heels. Beneath her razor-straight bangs, Rohr’s kohl-rimmed eyes zero in on a man in the back of the room, leaning against the wall…

Many time management systems encourage you to waste time. Here’s a simple way to spend time more wisely.When you draw up to-do lists, set schedules, make appointments, and so forth, chances are you’re wasting most of your time.Turn out there’s a mathematical law called the Pareto Principle, which says that (in most situations) 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.The most famous example of this is the oft-repeated factoid that in sales groups 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of the team…

John has read our previous posts on ATM skimmers tacked on machines by crooks, and knows what to watch out for. If you see card slots and other components that don’t quite seem to match the rest of the machine and seem tacked on, that’s a big warning sign. So when he saw this rather sketchy-looking addition to a machine, he thought it might be a skimming device. When he called up the bank, he learned that it wasn’t: apparently, they just did kind of a crappy repair job…

Rovio Entertainment’s Angry Birds are furthering their migration in Russia with a soon-to-be-released credit card, according to a report.
The company is working with Internet Retail Solutions (Irsol) on branded MasterCard cards that will be available in that country on June 4, according to The Moscow News, which cites a report in RBK Daily. The cards will be the first Angry Birds branded product in Russia, according to the report.
The cards will initially be printed in a batch of 100,000, after which Irsol will determine if there’s demand for another printing…

Are you wondering how Pinterest could increase your blog readership?Pinterest drives more traffic to websites than YouTube, Reddit, Google Plus and LinkedIn combined according to new research.With this in mind, here are six easy steps for tapping the power of Pinterest to drive more traffic to your blog.#1: Choose the Best Blog Posts to PinYou don’t need to pin every blog post on Pinterest. You’ll get better results if you selectively pin your blog posts on subjects that already have an audience on Pinterest…

You’ve used everything you had to keep going, but it may not be enough. Norm Brodsky weighs in on what to do next.Dear Norm,I am the second-generation owner of a wholesale shade-tree nursery that has been in business for 30 years. When we were profitable, we were making more than $500,000 a year. But over the past three years, we have lost more than $300,000 a year, largely because of the downturn in the housing market. I’ve used my equity and retirement savings to keep going. As a result, 80 percent of my net worth is gone…

Marvin is experiencing a very modern problem, one that our great-grandparents would probably be unable to wrap their brains around. His new video baby monitor for his new baby doesn’t get along with his Verizon FiOS-issued wireless router. They use the same frequency. That means that when his baby goes to bed, so do his Internet speeds. There’s a potential solution to this issue: get a newer router that operates on a different frequency. Verizon has them in stock, but not for Marvin…

Gilt Groupe CEO Kevin Ryan talks about hiring, firing, and managing employees.

You can’t throw a rock in a Best Buy without cracking the monitor on an all-in-one PC, but few can match the Apple iMac on specs, style and price. The Dell XPS 27, however, looks to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s popular all-in-one — and at a (relative) bargain.
Dell has offered all-in-ones before, but the XPS 27 is a gorgeous all-in-one that deserves a look from anyone looking for the Windows equivalent of an iMac. The 27-inch widescreen display is the same resolution — “Full Quad HD” or 2,560 x 1,440 pixels — and it boasts the same all-in-one design accoutrements: a wireless keyboard and mouse, a metallic finish and a slot-loading disc drive (Blu-ray optional — something you won’t find on any Mac)…

How much tax are you going to be paying over the coming year? It’s not always the happiest news, but it’s the sort of things that it is certainly best to know in advance — rather get the bad news now than get a nasty surprise further down the line. HMRC Tax Calc is a free app for iOS from HMRC which can be used to work out how much tax you’re going to be paying from your wages each week or month as well as showing you what this means for your annual tax bill.
The app is designed for people whose tax situation is fairly simple — if you have anything other than a tax code of 810L or a National Insurance letter A, you’re going to have to look elsewhere to have your tax calculations done for you…

A food-service business that only hires attractive young women for customer-facing jobs? Gasp! Who can imagine such a thing? But that’s what Boston-based chain Marylou’s Coffee has been accused of, and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has taken notice. They’re conducting an investigation to see whether otherwise qualified uglies, oldies, and fatties are being passed over for jobs at Marylou’s.

The EEOC is interviewing management and going over applications on file…

If you’ve never asked your customers what they want, then you really don’t know. And that’s a problem.Do you know what your customers really want?Harvard Business Review recently published an interesting article about three myths marketers believe when it comes identifying what customers want:”Most consumers want to have relationships with your brand.”"Interactions build relationships.”"The more interaction the better.”In each case, authors Karen Freeman, Patrick Spenner, and Anna Bird, who were involved with studies involving a total of 7,000 consumers, point out some basic fallacies…

Editors Note: The Following is a guest post by Jaffer Ali, CEO of the media company, Vidsense and PulseTV.com.
If you build it, they will come.
–Field of Dreams
There are few quotations and memes that have been more corrosive to sound business principles than the above quote from Field of Dreams. The Internet has been festooned with one business after the other chasing extreme growth trajectories that never developed a business model.
Fueled by venture capitalists with MBA degrees in tow, growth became a categorical imperative…

The ad network delivers more relevant ads across all platforms by learning from consumer intent expressed over public social media channels.

Name: Meddik
Big Idea: Meddik is a search platform that anonymizes and categorizes people based on their medical issues and then presents relevant data — feedback about treatments or devices, for example — that has been voted up by similarly afflicted users.
Why It’s Working: The level of anecdotal information and resources found on Meddik means that those suffering from illness or prolonged conditions can benefit from a wealth of helpful, crowdsourced advice.

While in medical school, Tim Soo felt as though the profession he was studying to join wasn’t allowing patients to really become knowledgeable about the intricacies of their illnesses…

Surprise: They secretly despise that employee-of-the-month award. Find out what else your staff hates–and what to offer instead.You care about your employees. You have their best interests at heart.So you put programs or practices in place to reward them or make their work lives better. Your intentions are good.But your efforts may not have the effect you intend.Here are four programs to eliminate and replace with something your employees will appreciate a lot more:Employee of the MonthWhen you announce your latest Employee of the Month, one employee “wins…

While it wasn’t so bad as say, an entire engine falling on a house a la Donnie Darko, a Toronto neighborhood was sprinkled with falling parts from an Air Canada Boeing 777 on Monday. Cars were hit but no passengers or people on the ground were harmed by the reportedly hot chunks of blackened metal raining from the sky.

The Toronto Star says the flight was carrying 318 passengers to Narita, Japan, when one of the two engines shut down. The plane then made an emergency landing at Pearson International Airport about an hour and a half after takeoff…

Accompanying the launch of its flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S3, Samsung has launched an online music streaming service called Music Hub.
It’s an all-in-one assault on all the major online music selling formats, offers streaming, radio recommendations, storing your own music in the cloud and a music store.
The Music Hub Store is free and offers a 19-million-song catalog provided by 7digital. Users can buy songs and albums as well as listen to 30-second previews of all songs. Music is stored in the cloud and automatically appears on all your devices, but it can also be stored on your devices for offline listening…

The leadership expert sits down with Inc. editor-at-large Bo Burlingham to talk about what makes great companies tick.Over the course of nearly 25 years and four best-selling books, Jim Collins has set out to systematically unlock the mystery of what makes great companies tick. In his most recent book, Great by Choice, Collins and his co-author, Morten T. Hansen, examine companies that have turned in exceptional performance—10 times the industry average—despite operating in turbulent environments marked by constant surprises…

Give this kid an “A.” Eli Cirino, a 16-year-old high school student submitted the video above for extra credit for his 10th grade chemistry class. The reaction is probably far beyond what he expected.
The They Might Be Giants-like “Good Chemistry” explains chemical bonds via a boy-girl love story, which Cirino wrote, performed and filmed. The animation was created using construction paper. The video got a boost when Cirino’s father submitted it on Reddit. Tuesday morning, it was up to 250,000 views on YouTube…

You started off with good intentions, creating a neat image library where all your digital photos are properly organized in sensibly-named folders. But the organization probably didn’t last. It’s all too easy to drag and drop images to other folders, resave them in other formats or resolutions, maybe rework them with minor edits, and before you know it your hard drive is cluttered with a host of duplicate (or very similar) images.
Locating these files manually can be tricky, but fortunately there are some very capable tools around which can do most of the hard work for you…

A five-step assignment to convey your interest in your team, and spur a sense of belonging.I recently spoke with a CEO about his workforce. He felt his team wasn’t very motivated and asked me what would prove more effective: rewards or threats? Before I could answer, I asked some questions: What did his workers like? How did they spend their spare time? Did they all eat lunch together or separately? He couldn’t answer any of these questions, which told me exactly what was wrong.This executive needs to know who works for him…

In 1940, a war-weary Britain was on the verge of capitulation. Here’s how Churchill turned it around–and what it means for you.In 1940, when Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain, the nation was in a state of severe crisis. Not only had its military suffered several setbacks in World War II, but the Prime Minister’s war Cabinet, deeply demoralized, was pushing Churchill to reach out to Italy’s Benito Mussolini to help orchestrate a truce with Hitler.Churchill knew that Hitler could not be trusted and that negotiating with him would effectively constitute surrender…