CRM Update – Apr 03 : 1:43 pm

Just about all tough work experiences can teach you things and better prepare you for your next job. Sticking it out for a time through a difficult job can give you tools you can apply to more enjoyable experiences as you advance in your career.

The writer at TeacHer Finance describes how difficult retail jobs prepared her for a move to teaching. The lessons can apply to nearly any line of work:

* Dealing with unfair demands. It’s no fun to cope with with emotional and unreasonable customers, but the ability to calm angry people down and leave them reasonably satisfied is a priceless skill to have…

Path, which drew criticism in February over privacy breaches, upgraded the security for its mobile app on Monday.
The iOS and Android upgrade to 3.1.1, announced on Path’s blog, includes the hashing of user contact data so such information will be unintelligible to hackers, at least in theory. Such data, includes last names, phone numbers, email addresses, Twitter handles and Facebook IDs.
Path, a social network that limits users’ networks to 50 people, initiated the new security features after a developer in February revealed that the Mac OS X version of the mobile app was sending users’ entire address book to Path’s servers without telling users…

Mark McDonald of the Gartner Group recently posted a blog entitled “Warning Signs that IT is signing up for requirements that cannot be delivered through technology.”
Mr. McDonald’s blog is extremely thought provoking and accurately identifies the reason why IT is often accused of being inept, not delivering business value, and not aligned with business objectives. Combine these with the usual accusations about project over-runs, late delivery of critical functionality, poor quality, and not understanding what the business needs, and it is no wonder that IT has a bad reputation…

Becoming Wealthy May Be Simple, But It’s Not Easy [Free Money Finance] “Even though the concepts behind wealth are simple, it takes hard work to put them into practice.”Why You Shouldn’t Take a Counteroffer [US News] “Using another job offer as a bargaining chip may be tempting, but too often, it ends badly.”Why Wall Street Hates the Lazy Portfolios Strategy [Smart Money] “The more you trade at Wall Street’s casino, the richer your broker gets.”25 Things to Never Pay Full Price For [Wise Bread] “Here are 25 broad categories of items for which you should never pay full price…

Pepsi is taking Facebook-based narcissism to a new level with a campaign that gets comics to impersonate you based on your profile on the social network.
The beverage giant has linked with longtime partner Funny Or Die for a program that will choose consumers for an online taste test for Pepsi Next. Since users can’t actually taste the cola online, Pepsi has opted for the next-best thing: comedians attempting to simulate you will try the drink.
Such fans will opt in to be chosen. “We’ll analyze their Facebook persona,” says Shiv Singh, head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages…

A Colorado payday loan operation that allegedly piled on undisclosed and inflated fees — and which attempted to avoid prosecution by claiming affiliation with Native American tribes — has been sued by the Federal Trade Commission, which says the sovereign immunity laws don’t prevent investigations by the feds.

According to The Denver Post, the lender allegedly stuck borrowers with heavy undisclosed fees, often forcing them to repay more than triple what they borrowed, and threatened them with arrest when it came time to collect…

Skateboarders, meet Brick Harbor. The site launched Tuesday and is aiming to carve out a niche as a go-to digital destination for skaters. It’s part e-commerce site, part content source and part culture hub, says director of operations Chase Whitaker.
“Our main goal is just to become the voice of skateboarding for the Internet,” Whitaker told Mashable in an interview. “It’s an unbiased outlet for skateboard media.”
Brick Harbor sells gear and hardware from up-and-coming brands including Heel Bruise, Traffic and Hopps…

Studios have had nearly six years to perfect the manufacturing, packaging and selling of Blu-rays, yet they’re still having trouble getting it right. The dwindling amount of movie lovers out there who still buy their movies in physical form — rather than rent or stream them — put up with quite a few customer-unfriendly practices.

A spirited High-Def Digest post run downs the numerous ways in which Blu is doing movie collectors wrong. Here are 10 that stood out to us:

1. Retail exclusives…

Amazon is testing a service that lets tablet users buy subscriptions and individual items via apps, according to a report.
Bloomberg quotes Maria Ly, co-founder of Skimble, which sells physical fitness programs, in the report.
Ly told the news service that she’s been involved in Amazon’s pilot program for about a month. “We really wanted to attack the Kindle Fire market, but also have access to the payment methods that support our business,” Ly told Bloomberg. “It’s still kind of in its early stages,” Ly said of the services being tested…

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Computers and Electronics

Best Buy: [Computers] 21.5″ Lenovo L2262 LED Monitor $129.99, free shipAmazon: [Computers] Logitech K400 Wireless Touch Keyboard $29…

Convio, a leading provider of engagement solutions that helps non-profits fundraise and do more for their missions, announced today the results of its 2012 Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study. The annual study focuses on non-profits’ website traffic and registration, email file growth, online revenue and advocacy.
This year’s study analyzes data compiled from more than 700 non-profit organizations in the United States and Canada. It also looks at 19 different non-profit sectors, including animal welfare, disaster and international relief, disease and health services, and human and social services…

Millionaire tax? Forget it. Higher Brackets? Meh. The most dangerous tax for business owners is one nobody talks about.I generally hate the first few weeks in April because, as a business owner, I need to break out my checkbook and submit what I consider a pretty hefty payment to Uncle Sam, not only to square up on last year’s taxes, but for my first quarter deposit as well. You know what I’m talking about.I’m wondering whether my bill will be even larger next year at this time, as someone in Washington decides that I’m still not paying my fair share…

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Groupon‘s restatement of its fourth-quarter results, according to a report.
The Wall Street Journal, citing a “person familiar with the matter,” reports that the SEC’s probe into the company is at a “preliminary stage” and the agency hasn’t determined whether to move forward with a formal investigation. The SEC probed Groupon twice before the company’s IPO on Nov. 4.
The news prompted a nearly 17% drop in Groupon’s stock price Monday afternoon to $15…

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.
Pinterest Co-Founder Leaves the Company
Pinterest co-founder Paul Sciarra has left the company to pursue a career at Andreessen Horowitz.
“From marking milestones in hundreds of new pins to millions, the company has grown, the product has evolved, and I’ve changed too along the way…

If you use email as a marketing tool, but don’t have a ton of money to invest in design and analytics, BrandMyMail offers a way to send out professional-looking messages as well as capture open stats and click rates.
The service, which lets you create a slick email template with simple drag-and-drop modules, has been around for a while for Gmail users. Using a simple web interface, you can build an email template that includes your latest tweets, your Facebook updates and YouTube videos…

In my view, the most powerful quality practice available to the software industry today is inspection of requirements documentation. A peer review is an activity in which someone other than the author of a work product examines that product to find defects and improvement opportunities. An inspection is a type of formal, rigorous team peer review that can discover more subtle problems than individual reviewers might spot on their own. Removing errors in the requirements saves many times the cost of the inspection because of the rapidly escalating cost of remedying defects that are found later in the project…

A survey of UAE’s residents has revealed that nearly 46% of the people are most likely to unintentionally, pack-away goods from their hotel room! The survey was conducted by LivingSocial—one of the leading online group-buying brands that is slowly expanding itself across the Middle East. Among most taken-away items, home batteries from remote controls emerged as the favorite. This is a bit shocking, considering that travelers from the UAE are counted upon as the best guests at any hotel. Other packed-away hotel items included towels and bathrobes…

Social media is important to over 80% of businesses based on one of the more interesting findings from Social Media Examiner’s 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report How Marketers Are Using Social Media To Grow Their Businesses.
This finding is consistent with other research that shows businesses are continuing to increase social media marketing spend. Yet despite this support, marketers still have a difficult time proving social media’s contribution to the bottom line.
At a top level, social media’s biggest benefits according to Social Media Examiner’s research were increased exposure, increased traffic and marketplace insights…

Are you wondering how your peers are using social media?Wondering if you should focus on Google+ or Pinterest?In our fourth annual social media study, more than 3800 marketers reveal where they focus their social media activities, how much time they invest and what the rewards are.Here’s a PreviewWatch this quick video overview: To understand how marketers are using social media, Social Media Examiner conducted its fourth annual 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. We set out to uncover the “who, what, where, when and why” of social media marketing with this report…

A large majority of active Android devices run Android 2.3 or Gingerbread, while the latest version of Android, 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich, is still used on a relatively small number of devices.
According to new data about the number of active devices running different versions of the Android platform, various Gingerbread iterations are used on 63.7% of devices. Android 2.2 or Froyo is used on 23.1% of devices, and Ice Cream Sandwich is used only on 2.9% of devices.
In a way, the picture looks better than ever, as Android has at times been much more fragmented than it is now…