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Education

California expands Japanese internment education to current rights threats

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Japanese American children from the Tanforan internment camp in San Bruno board a train for a camp in Utah in 1942. Photo: Chronicle File Photo, The ChronicleThe films, plays and public broadcasts California now funds to enlighten students and the public about the horrors of Japanese American internment camps in World War II will soon be expanded to illuminate more recent examples of persecution — including the Muslim immigrants targeted by President Trump.

The legislation signed this week by Gov. Jerry Brown is just one example of actions by California’s Democratic lawmakers and policymakers to distance themselves from Trump. Some are mostly symbolic, like resolutions calling for congressional investigation and censure of the president, while others chart an independent course for the state in protecting undocumented immigrants and combatting climate change.

AB491, which takes effect in January, provides $3 million over the next three years for educational projects that link the mass lockup of Japanese Americans to ongoing “civil liberties injustices” against racial, religious or sexual minorities or immigrants.

As latter-day examples of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1942 internment order, the legislation cites Trump’s orders prohibiting U.S. entry of anyone from selected countries with mostly Muslim populations, and his campaign promise to ban Muslim immigration.

“It ties the World War II Japanese incarceration experience to what we see happening today,” said the bill’s author, Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance (Los Angeles County).

The bill itself declares that Trump’s actions “highlight the ongoing need for public educational activities so that no group or community is ever again unjustly targeted as Japanese Americans were during World War II.”

The Legislature passed AB491 before the latest revision to Trump’s travel ban with the additions of North Korea, Chad and government officials in Venezuela, prompting the Supreme Court to cancel a scheduled Oct. 10 hearing on the constitutionality of his previous order.

But the bill is only the most recent in a series of legislative swats by California’s majority Democrats against the Republican president.

In early September, the Assembly passed a Democratic-sponsored resolution, HR57, calling on Congress to censure Trump for his blame-both-sides response last month to the violent white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., which, the resolution said, showed he was “unfit to be a moral leader.” In addition to the Assembly’s full slate of Democrats, the measure had the support of two Republicans, Catharine Baker of San Ramon and Brian Maienschein of San Diego.

In March, the state Senate passed another resolution, SR23, along party lines, calling for a bipartisan commission to investigate connections between Trump’s campaign or administration and the Russian government. It also demanded that Trump shed light on any conflicts of interest he might have by releasing his tax returns.

More substantively, legislation on Brown’s desk, SB149 by Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, would bar presidential candidates from having their names on the California ballot unless they released five years of tax returns.

On a more far-reaching issue, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ threat to punish California as a “sanctuary state” for unauthorized immigrants drew a defiant response from state legislators, who passed measures further restricting local police from cooperating with federal immigration agents, prohibiting landlords from reporting tenants to immigration officers, and barring immigration officers from entering workplaces without a warrant. Those bills also await action from Brown.

State lawmakers have also approved $30 million in legal and financial aid to immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, whose protection from deportation Trump has proposed to eliminate. They have voted to ban contracts with the federal government to hold inmates in local jails or private prisons. And for good measure, they voted to name part of a state highway in Los Angeles County after former President Barack Obama.

“When the Trump administration is infringing on the rights of Californians, we’re not going to be afraid to challenge that, whether that’s through legislation or, as the attorney general (Xavier Becerra) is doing, through the courts,” said Kevin Liao, spokesman for Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount (Los Angeles County).

Becerra has filed arguments supporting the challenge to Trump’s travel ban and has also sued the administration over air quality, immigration and the proposed border wall with Mexico.

Brown, meanwhile, has responded to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord by convening his own international summit on global warming, in San Francisco next September, and promoting a worldwide alliance of government leaders committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The bill he signed Tuesday, AB491, expands an educational program that began in 1998 under legislation sponsored by then-Assemblyman Mike Honda, who was a year old in 1942 when he and his family were sent to one of the internment camps that held 120,000 Japanese Americans captive during the war.

Following a U.S. government apology and compensation payments to the internees under President Ronald Reagan, the California program offered grants from the state librarian’s office to community groups and nonprofits for presentations on the internment, the fears that gave rise to it and the civil liberties it violated.

The most recent grant recipients included producers of films, plays and museum exhibits on the internment, many of them designed for student audiences. A Los Angeles musical organization trained young students to perform in an opera, set in one of the camps. In San Francisco, the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, named for the Bay Area man who challenged Roosevelt’s internment order, had a state-funded media project on the impacts in California, where the largest number of internees lived.

AB491 will award funds to educational programs that draw connections between the internment and current threats to civil rights. The reference to Trump and Muslim immigrants — which drew some Republican opposition when it was added in a state Senate amendment — would allow, but not require, the librarian’s office to fund projects that compared the president’s current agenda to the abuses 75 years ago.

It’s not a far-fetched comparison, said Muratsuchi, the bill’s author. He noted that the children of Korematsu and of others who challenged the internment had recently signed onto legal arguments opposing Trump’s travel ban.

The idea, he said, is to make sure that “the lessons of the World War II Japanese American experience are remembered, and also applied and understood in the present context, whether we’re dealing with Muslim Americans or any other group that is being scapegoated.”

Source:-.sfchronicle.

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Education

The education system still has much to learn

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

The education system still has much to learn

There is a driven, compulsive quality to Japanese education, which emerges clearly in a report by Shukan Toyo Keizai magazine titled “Schools are breaking down.”

Technological progress has a side-effect: an economy that demands higher and higher education as the price of admission into it. Children struggle to learn, and teachers to teach, more and more. Two resulting symptoms are overworked teachers and bullied, or bullying, children.

Karōshi (death from overwork) is a familiar phenomenon in the private sector but not one commonly associated with the teaching profession. And yet 60 percent of public junior high school teachers are “borderline karōshi,” Toyo Keizai says, meaning they work at least 60 hours a week, though contracted to work only 38 hours, 45 minutes. The overtime hours, largely unpaid, are spent preparing lessons, grading assignments and tests, supervising extra-curricular activities, counseling, dealing with concerned and/or obnoxious parents, attending meetings, handling administrative chores and so on.

One teacher, in November 2011, actually did work himself to death. He was 26 and in his second year of teaching junior high school in Osaka. He was dedicated. He thought his students deserved everything he had to give, and he gave everything. He collapsed one day in his apartment. He’d suffered a stroke. It took three years for his death to be officially recognized as karōshi.

Bullying is an old story, hardly confined to Japan, seemingly impervious to decades’ worth of measures to reduce it. In fact it’s rising. In extreme forms it amounts to nothing less than torture, physical and psychological. The ubiquitous smartphone makes the latter easy. You can say anything you like about anyone you don’t like. Smearing a classmate all over the net is an easy way to vent stress you can’t cope with otherwise — partly caused, maybe, by classmates smearing you all over the net.

In 2015, there were roughly 220,000 officially recognized bullying episodes in elementary, junior high and senior high schools nationwide — the most ever, nearly double the figure for 2006. Part of the increase is due to stricter reporting requirements. Schools were too apt to turn a blind eye. They had reputations to protect. A notorious instance, the immediate cause of the heightened requirements, was the suicide in 2011 of a boy in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture. It took the school two years to admit the boy had been bullied. Over 300 children a year in Japan kill themselves — 320 in 2016. The overall suicide rate is declining, but not the under-18 suicide rate, unchanged over the past decade. School can make childhood a living hell, unknown and unknowable to adults.

Toyo Keizai fears schools are going “black.” The reference is to burakku kigyō (black companies) that overwork and underpay employees to the point of neo-slavery. In the private sector, one-third of the workforce is officially part time — which is to say, paid like part-timers, though often worked like full-timers. Public elementary junior and senior high schools seem to be moving in that direction. As of 2013, one-sixth of their teaching staffs nationwide were part time. It saves money. A 41-year-old part-time teacher in her seventh year earns ¥2.46 million a year — roughly a third of a veteran full-time teacher’s salary, and little enough, ironically, to make her eligible for limited welfare assistance. Adding insult to injury, she never knows from one year to the next whether her contract will be renewed.

What, one wonders, of the quality of education in such a cauldron as the public education system seems to be, if Toyo Keizai’s picture is anything to go by? Much is made of international rankings, specifically those of the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), and Japan doesn’t fare too badly: second among OECD advanced nations in “science literacy” in 2015, up from fourth in 2012; fifth in “mathematical literacy,” up from seventh. The weak link in the chain is literacy literacy — more literally, reading comprehension — in which Japan ranked eighth, down from fourth.

Maybe science and mathematics are enough. Who needs words when you have numbers? This or that individual, or this or that employer, might not, but civilization as a whole might. The education ministry seems to think it does. Its introduction of moral education as a formal subject, effective next April, suggests as much.

An episode that occurred in Okinawa last month will bolster the view that a moral vacuum exists, which moral education must fill. Four teenagers allegedly vandalized a memorial in a cave in which civilians were forced to commit mass suicide in the closing days of World War II.

Teens do crazy things; it’s part of growing up, and maybe too much shouldn’t be made of it. But this particular stunt suggests a blindness and deafness to tragedy that Okinawa International University professor emeritus Masaie Ishihara, for one, sees as an education problem.

“I suspect,” Ishihara told the Mainichi Shimbun, “that history, and what happened during the Battle of Okinawa, are not being passed down to younger generations in education.”

It’s hard to “pass down” the past to a present in such rapid flux. Toyo Keizai mentions yet another burden on educators. Traditionally, school was one of three “pillars” in a child’s education. The other two were family and community. Career-oriented parents and weakened community ties leave school shouldering a near-monopoly that would strain it even under ideal circumstances, which present ones are not. Schools have their hands full keeping kids technologically primed. Kindergartens are teaching computer programming. The past? Who needs it? Who has time for it?

“Who needs it?” is a good question. There’s the all-to-oft-quoted line about those who forget the past being doomed to repeat it. If George Santayana, whose line it is, meant war, his thinking is open to question. Historical memory, and the resentments it breeds, have caused at least as many wars as historical forgetfulness. North Korea seethes not because it has forgotten the Japanese occupation but because it remembers it.

What to teach, how and to whom are permanent questions, increasingly urgent as postmodern civilization careens into an unknown future. If Toyo Keizai is right about schools “breaking down,” it’s a bad time for it to be happening.

Source:-japantimes

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News Update

Toshiba, Keen to Seal $18 Billion Chips Sale, Wrestles With Last-Minute Delays

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Toshiba, Keen to Seal $18 Billion Chips Sale, Wrestles With Last-Minute Delays

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Toshiba is locked in last minute discussions over “key issues” with Bain
  • South Korea’s SK Hynix said talks were still ongoing
  • Toshiba was earlier said to be leaning towards selling the business to WD

Japan’s Toshiba is locked in last minute discussions over “key issues” with the would-be buyers of its $18 (roughly Rs. 1,14,817 crores) billion memory chip business led by US private equity firm Bain, potentially delaying a formal agreement on the sale.

Toshiba said on Wednesday it had agreed to sell the prized unit to the Bain consortium, and had been expected to formalise the sale on Thursday.

Instead, South Korea’s SK Hynix, part of the winning consortium, said talks were still ongoing. Sources familiar with the matter confirmed consortium members were still wrangling over details of their agreement and said commitment letters from all participants were still needed before the sale could be signed formally.

“There are some key issues still to be agreed upon in the content approved by Toshiba’s board,” the South Korean chipmaker said in a statement, adding that it would continue talks.

Toshiba and Bain did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Adding to uncertainty, jilted suitor and Toshiba joint venture partner Western Digital took fresh legal action overnight, filing new arbitration requests to stop Toshiba investing in a new flash memory production line without its help.

Shares in Toshiba reflected the concerns, falling more than 2 percent in late afternoon trade.

Struggling to plug a yawning balance sheet hole after a cost blow-out at its now-bankrupt US nuclear business, Toshiba has been trying to sell its chip business since late January.

Agreeing the sale of the world’s second-largest producer of NAND flash memory chips brings the group closer to the end of a tangled and fraught process.

As late as Tuesday night, sources said Toshiba was leaning towards selling the business to Western Digital.

Major unknowns
Bain has partnered with SK Hynix and brought in deep-pocketed US buyers of Toshiba chips such as Apple and Dell to bolster its bid.

But there are major unknowns, including the outcome of antitrust investigations and the battle with Western Digital.

It is unclear how long that process could last, and what impact it would have on the completion of the sale.

Industry watchers also said SK Hynix’s participation could prolong antitrust reviews, particularly in China, as Beijing is trying to grow domestic players. The South Korean chipmaker plans to limit its role to financing, but it’s unclear if it hopes to gain a stake in the future.

“It’s clear to everyone that this Bain deal will have difficulty succeeding,” said Akira Minamikawa, principal analyst at IHS Markit.

The NAND flash memory chips business faces fierce price competition with Samsung Electronics, he said, and China was likely to join the race.

“To survive, Toshiba needs to shift its focus to (flash memory-backed) storage systems for servers rather than selling memory chips alone. And strong players there are Samsung and Western Digital, not (new partner) SK Hynix.”

[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Gadgets News

HTC U11 Plus With Bezel-Less Display Tipped to Be Launched in November

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

HTC U11 Plus With Bezel-Less Display Tipped to Be Launched in November

HIGHLIGHTS

  • The smartphone is said to pack 5.99-inch Quad HD+ display
  • The handset is tipped to come with Snapdragon 835 SoC
  • 4GB and 6GB RAM variants are expected to be launched

HTC recently clarified that the company is working on its next flagship smartphone despite its deal with Google, and it seems like we might have our first news about the handset already. HTC U11, which has been received well by critics and customers alike since its launch, has been tipped to get a Plus variant this November and as per the leaked information, the new handset will feature a near bezel-less display with taller-than-usual aspect ratio, much like some of the recent flagships from 2017.

As per the information leaked by Frandroid, HTC is planning to launch the U11 Plus smartphone (codenamed Ocean Master) on November 11 in China. HTC U11 Life, an Android One smartphone, has also been said to be launched during the same event. Coming back to the HTC U11 Plus, the handset is expected to pack a 5.99-inch Quad HD+ (1440×2880 pixels) display made by JDI. The smartphone has been tipped to be powered by Snapdragon 835 SoC coupled with either 4GB or 6GB of RAM.

In terms of optics, the HTC U11 Plus is expected to sport a 12-megapixel primary rear camera and an 8-megapixel front shooter to take selfies. The handset has been reported to come with 64 or 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage and feature IP68 water resistance rating as well. It is also said to support Quick Charge 3.0. Interestingly, the report says that the company’s Edge Sense feature will return with the Plus variant as well.

Finally, the company has also been said to be reviewing the pricing of its smartphones and might price the U11 Plus smartphone competitively, as per the report. Considering that the U11 was itself a very impressive phone, but with thick bezels, it seems to be very exciting news that the company will be updating the design with the Plus variant of the handset. However, as this is leaked information, it would be wise to wait for official word from the company on the matter.

[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Tech Update

Microsoft asks users not to miss Windows 10 Fall Creators update

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Next big update for Windows 10 is coming next month.

ext big update for Windows 10 is coming next month.

Microsoft wants users to keep their software up to date in order to avoid another series of deadly cyber attacks such as WannaCrypt that impacted worldwide PCs that were running an outdated Microsoft software.

Two new ransomware families like “WannaCrypt” and “Petya” targeted dated Windows operating systems and created havoc across the world, including at some places in India.

Now, with the official rollout of Windows 10 “Fall Creators” update slated for October, Microsoft wants to stay one step ahead in identifying and preventing security threats.

“If you are running Windows 10 and have the ‘Fall Creators’ update, then you are completely protected from those specific malwares,” Vineet Durani, Director, Windows and Surface Business, Microsoft India, told IANS in an interview.

The “Fall Creators” update would feature “controlled folder access” inside its Windows Defender Security Centre that would enable users to secure data through “protected” folders.

“This is an ever-changing landscape. If anybody comes and says, hey, here is a piece of technology and you are completely protected for life, that is not going to happen. That is the reason we build an update or version twice a year because we want to stay a few steps ahead of whatever is out there,” Durani noted.

Microsoft spends over $1 billion every year on cyber safety and security-related research and development.

The company advises users and organisations to install all available security updates — including the previous patch MS17-010 — and ensure that automatic updates are enabled.

Windows 10 OS includes mitigations that prevent common exploitation techniques by cyber threats.

“As India gets more digital (which is now happening at a faster pace than ever), we now have the advantage of moving fast because we do not have too much of a legacy (digital) as a country,” Durani said.

The company has also introduced security features such as Microsoft “Credential Guard” and Microsoft “Hello”.

“We have this tech called the ‘Credentials Guard’ that basically stores your credentials in the hypervisor layer — that is the layer between hardware and software. It does not come with the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) version. One has to buy it as an additional capability so that larger organisations can use it,” Durani told IANS.

“We have worked with partners like Intel and AMD to enable it. The feature is enabled on modern hardware like 5th-gen Intel processors and onwards,” the Microsoft executive added.

Windows “Hello” lets the user set up a quick biometric login instead of a password. With this feature, the user is promised enterprise-grade security without having to type in a password.

Microsoft devices such as Surface Pro 4, Surface Book and most personal computers (PCs) with fingerprint sensors are already compatible with Windows “Hello” and more devices that can recognise your face and fingerprints will be available in the near future.

According to Microsoft’s “Security Intelligence” report, financial institutions have always been popular phishing targets because of their potential for providing direct illicit access to bank accounts of the victims.

Sites that targeted financial institutions accounted for the second-largest share of both attacks and impressions during the first quarter of 2017 and accounted for the largest share of impressions in February and March this year, the report said.

Microsoft would roll out the “Fall Creators” update for Windows 10 on October 17 which will include Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) support.

Announcing the availability at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) industry show in Berlin earlier this month, Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President for Windows and Devices, said that the free update will also include a new photo app and many tweaks to the overall design and usability of Windows 10.

[“Source-hindustantimes”]

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News Update

Apple, Dell Join Bid to Buy Toshiba’s Chip Business: Bain

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Apple, Dell Join Bid to Buy Toshiba's Chip Business: Bain

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Apple and Dell have joined a bid to buy Toshiba’s memory chip business
  • Last week Bain Capital made a “revised offer” for Toshiba’s chip unit
  • Toshiba earlier sued Western Digital for trying to block sales process

US tech titans Apple and Dell have joined a bid to buy Toshiba’s memory chip business, a deal seen as key to the survival of the cash-stripped Japanese industrial conglomerate, the US investor leading the consortium has said.

“Last week Bain Capital made a revised offer” for Toshiba, which “brings in a broad list of strategic partners including Apple, Dell” and others who will invest in the business, Bain Capital said in a statement obtained by AFP on Sunday.

It was the first time Apple’s name has been officially confirmed as part of the bid, although it has reportedly also been involved in rival bids for the lucrative Toshiba segment.

The announcement came after Toshiba said last week it had picked the Bain Capital-led consortium as the leading candidate to buy its prized chip business in a deal reportedly worth some $18 billion.

The development was the latest twist in a long-running saga as Toshiba agonises between three groups of suitors for its chip business.

The Bain Capital-led group also includes the state-backed Development Bank of Japan and the public-private Innovation Network Corp. of Japan as well as South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix.

However, Toshiba has stressed that it was a “non-exclusive” agreement with Bain Capital that “does not exclude the possibility of negotiations with other consortia”.

Other suitors in the frame are a group led by Western Digital, Toshiba’s US-based chip factory partner, and Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision, better known as Foxconn.

Western Digital demanded control of the memory chip business, frustrating Toshiba’s management which prompted them to turn to the Bain Capital-led group, according to reports in the local media.

Toshiba has sued Western Digital for trying to block the sales process.

In the latest statement, Bain Capital said: “We believe this proposal represents a solution that meets the needs of all stakeholders.”

The proposal “represents the best possible outcome for Toshiba by ensuring” the memory chip business’s independence, Bain Capital said.
[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Education

‘Your child is at risk’: Will Carrigan’s parents say education is key to suicide prevention

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Will Carrigan with his nephew Eddie.

Rugby league is a big deal in the Upper Hunter in regional New South Wales. But on a recent weekend, fierce competitors put rivalry aside and came together for a common cause.

The event was the Where There’s A Will round, named in honour of the former front rower for the Scone Thoroughbreds, Will Carrigan, who took his own life on Christmas Day 2015.

Will’s parents, Pauline and Hilton Carrigan, do not want anyone to go through what they have endured.

They have turned their grief into action and are campaigning to save lives.

“Someone said to me, ‘What would have saved Will?'” Mrs Carrigan said.

Her answer: “Education.”

Rugby players stand in a rowPHOTO: Rugby League players taking part in the Where There’s A Will round. (ABC News: Jerry Rickard)

‘Don’t be us’

Will, 24, was a fun-loving larrikin, his father said.

If you or anyone you know needs help:

  • Lifeline on 13 11 14
  • Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800
  • MensLine Australia on 1300 789 978
  • Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467
  • Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36
  • Headspace on 1800 650 890

“Just an ordinary country boy that did his work, loved his sport and loved all his mates,” Mr Carrigan said.

“Took his own life. We never saw it coming.”

The couple said they could now see their son was struggling.

“How does a boy who has everything explain to someone that they’re not well, and it’s not what they want, or it’s not how they saw it going?” Mrs Carrigan said.

Will Carrigan's parents, Pauline and Hilton.PHOTO: Will Carrigan’s parents, Pauline and Hilton. (ABC News: Simon Beardsell)

After their son’s death, the Carrigans set out to learn more about youth suicide and depression.

“If I can say one thing, don’t be us,” Mrs Carrigan said.

“There’s a certain amount of guilt that came when I found out the statistics and I realised our children had been at risk for an awfully long time and we didn’t know.

“So we are doing you a favour by telling you your child is at risk.

“Don’t assume there is a typical type that commit suicide. They’re just normal, everyday children.”

Hopes program will go national

Hilton and Pauline Carrigan stand with rugby playersPHOTO: Hilton and Pauline Carrigan with some of Will’s former teammates. (ABC News: Jerry Rickard)

The Carrigans launched the Where There’s A Will charity with the aim of improving children’s mental health through education, starting at school but involving the whole community.

“I realised that you could actually immunise a child for their future, that you could teach them resilience and give them a cup half-full [mentality] in simple terms that prepares them for the knockbacks that they are going to take,” Mrs Carrigan said.

With funding from the charity, school teachers have undergone special training. Positive education programs have been introduced into more than 20 schools in the Hunter Valley.

Kim Wilson, a Year 1 teacher at St Mary’s Primary in Scone, said she was already seeing results.

“In two terms of doing this the language has changed, the kids are expressing their feelings, and they can say why they are happy and why they are sad,” Ms Wilson said.

Where There’s A Will is also running “mental health first aid” programs for adults in the community to help them identify children who are struggling.

Media player: “Space” to play, “M” to mute, “left” and “right” to seek.

VIDEO: A message from the sons of the Upper Hunter to their fathers. Video by the Where There’s A Will charity. (ABC News)

Simon Murray, who heads the Positive Education Schools Association, said he was convinced what was happening in the Upper Hunter could lead to change across Australia.

“We will get data and evidence and publish that and this could become an exemplar for other regional centres and cities,” he said.

“This is a terribly important initiative for the rest of this country and I just hope the policy makers, the bureaucrats and the politicians, are actually noticing what’s happening.”

Mrs Carrigan said the hard work by Where There’s A Will and its supporters was paying off.

“We know that two boys who were contemplating suicide reached out for help and both came from that fact that they had been involved in [positive education] programs within the last six weeks,” she said.

“We lost our son, we won’t get him back. It’s our duty to make sure that other people don’t have to go through this and that’s the bottom line.”

‘Makes you pretty proud’

Hilton and Pauline Carrigan with Todd Greenberg.PHOTO: NRL CEO Todd Greenberg is proud the sporting community came together for Where There’s A Will. (ABC News: Jerry Rickard)

Back at the rugby league, Will’s former teammates said what happened to their friend had changed them all.

“It’s a big thing and I think it’s great what Pauline and the foundation are doing,” Tom Hagen said.

“Just getting word out into the community, just get a bit of awareness into people that it’s alright to talk and they don’t have to fight all their battles alone.”

NRL CEO Todd Greenberg attended the Where There’s a Will round.

“Makes you pretty proud as a leader of a sport to be here today and actually see this community come together for such an important cause,” he said.

After the game the local sports club was jam-packed for the auctioning of the players’ jerseys, with all proceeds going to the charity.

The last jersey to go was number 14, Will Carrigan’s.

“I think a lot of people in the room will know what it stands for,” Mr Greenberg told those gathered.

“I encourage you to bid strongly for it. I’m going to put the first one up for the NRL at $3,000.”

The bidding was fierce but the final offer of $13,500 was made by Mr Greenberg. And he’s sending the jersey home.

“This jersey could take pride of place in the rugby league museum, in a lot of places, but it belongs with the Carrigan family,” he said.

[“Source-abc”]

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Blogging

A Trail For All Cities: The Journey Of Trell From An Instagram Handle To A Visual Blogging Platform With Over 30K Users

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Image result for A Trail For All Cities: The Journey Of Trell From An Instagram Handle To A Visual Blogging Platform With Over 30K Users

“What you seek is seeking you.” For Pulkit Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO Trell, a visual blogging app which started its journey from Instagram, that search started around three years back in Mumbai.

It was the time of Mumbai’s most famous festival Ganesh Chaturthi and Pulkit was looking for a good pandal to go to. He reminisces, “I had been in Mumbai for four years but I never got the chance to see good Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations apart from the famous ones. I didn’t know how it was celebrated in the local streets. Even on the Internet, almost everyone talked about those four-five famous pandals which everyone knows of.”

So Pulkit resorted to a local Mumbai friend who took him to those unheard of pandals which no one apart from a local would know of! For him, those culturally rich pandals on myriad themes like Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Bollywood stars’ whereabouts, splendid Tamil architecture, Ramayana skits, were a revelation. When he asked his friend how she knew about these hidden gems, she revealed that information about such places is only available with localities and they would not share it anywhere online unless they are into blogging. More so, blogging is difficult and tedious for people who are not into writing and do not have time to write long-form content.

And that sparked the idea of filling this gap of sharing local interesting knowledge, even for people who are not into blogging. Pulkit explains, “So we wanted to solve this problem of how we can make it easier for people to blog and make it more fun. The idea was to make blogging‘fun’, ‘visual’ and ‘intuitive’ for everyone including the teenagers so that they could use it easily to start sharing these local titbits and inspire journeys for people like us.

Thus, Trell (TRail experiences and tELL your friends) was born in November 2016. The team noticed that on Instagram there were lots of handles like Mumbai foodie were picking up quite well. They had more than 200,000 followers and getting a lot of likes and comments. So they first decided to start on Instagram to test waters, to see how people are discovering new things through such handles.

visual blogging-trell-instagram

The visual blogging platform started off first as an Instagram handle (@trellingmumbai) in Mumbai and posted about exclusive and relatively unknown things in the city. Within four months, Trell started going viral with more than 40,000 followers. For Pulkit and his co-founders Prashant Sachan, Bimal Kartheek Rebba, Arun Lodhi and Nirav Sheth, that was a validation for the fact that there is a need for something like this. The team also started hosting meet-ups like photo walks or food ones and roping in some of the really good food, travel influencers. This helped them understand how these influencers are using Instagram to their advantage.

Interacting with more than 1000 bloggers and travelers personally led them to realise their needs, restrictions of existing platforms and gaps in the ecosystem. As a result, the team discovered that writing in English is not natural to all, so most were more inclined to using visual mediums. Thus, by combining these learnings from both the consumer’s and the creator’s end, they came up with a platform.

Trell is typically a visual blogging platform where people can create these visual stories, incorporate visual tags to make it easy to share their story. The location-based storytelling platform helps people create beautiful collections of their travel stories, favourite food places, and other explorations. It helps them in discovering new experiences around them through their peers, which they can save in a self-reminding bucket list. The startup launched the Trell app in July 2017 which is now is accessible on Android, iOS and Web.

trell-visual blogging-instagram

30K Users, 80K Visual Blogging Posts, 300K Instagram Followers

Trell’s initial focus was on Instagram, where it rapidly grew to more than 100,000 followers. Today that number stands close to 300,000. Post launching the latest version of the app two months back, the visual blogging platform now claims to have amassed more than 30,000 users who are using the platform actively and have created posts related to more than 25,000 locations. As of today, Pulkit claimed that there are roughly 80,000 visual blogging posts on the platform.

visual blogging-trell-instagram

Trell reveals that people are not using it a normal blogging platform, but are rather talking about different things such as beautiful bungalows in Indiranagar (Bengaluru) or something beautiful in their community parks. The team claims the community in total has followers spread across 15 cities and reaches out to people with 5 Mn+ weekly impressions on Instagram.

Trell gives travelers and foodies an avenue to share their explorations as beautiful visual blogs called “Trails”. All trails are Google searchablewhich ensures the discovery of these visual blogs & people as they expect from a traditional blogging platform.

The startup is currently bootstrapped but in advance talks with some prominent investors for closing an angel-funding round. As per Pulkit, the funding will enable Trell to focus on enhancing the app experience and fuel user-base growth going ahead.

Trell Makes To ‘Top 20’ For The Worldwide Mobile UX Awards

As far as monetisation is concerned, Trell started monetising from its Instagram handle. And the same avenues are being leveraged on the platform as well. For instance, though the Instagram handle, it was able to get some of the advertisers to advertise on the handle or basically do influencer marketing. The startup also held various competitions and meetups for various brands.

In addition, Trell is also focusing on the data about the users and how to personalise it. So on the platform, it has an action button called Tryout. If someone likes some post about a place, one can tap on Tryout. It bookmarks the post by adding it to a self-reminding bucket-list. So whenever he/she is around that place, it will remind him/her that the place is in his/her bucket list. This is something the startup can again leverage for advertising. Also, the startup will explore in-app native advertisements and revenue through promoted places and business claims.

trell-visual blogging-instagram

Along the way, Trell also got selected in StartupBootcamp’16 – (Europe’s Largest Accelerator) as “Top 10 promising startups worldwide”, Nasscomm’s 10K Program and FBStart’17 for the same. It is also the only Indian Startup which recently got featured in ‘Top 20′ for the Worldwide Mobile UX Awards which includes other heavyweights like Crunchbase, Wattpad, EventBrite etc recently got awarded for offering the best user-experience in Social and Communications category.

trell-visual blogging-instagram

The Other Visual Discoverers

Pulkit states that Trell is not trying to compete with Instagram or any other social network because Trell doesn’t see itself as a social network. “We see ourselves as an interest-based network wherein people are coming and blogging about stuff they have been already doing,” he says. He points out that there will be very less non-useful content on Trell and more of interest based content on Trell. This contention is based on the feedback from the users also; who Pulkit claims do not compare it with Instagram or any other platform. Specifically, because Instagram is about your highlights of the living moment, whereas Trell is about the things that you explore on the basis of your interest.

However visual discovery is a growing space and Instagram and Pinterest remain one of the big contenders in this space. Another Bengaluru-based startup galleri5 also focuses on the same themes, enables users to find amazing photos of things they love, such as amazing places to travel to, interesting activities to try out, tempting culinary dishes to experiment and any other thing that might inspire someone. Hence Trell is not the only Indian startup surfing the visual discovery space. Meanwhile, in the discovery space, there are many others like Little Black Book.

Trell’s focus meanwhile is on how it can grow the community further. In that respect, the 10 member team is now trying to grow the community in Bengaluru specifically locals and travellers by organising meet-ups and competitions. As of now, most of the content on the platform is currently related to Bengaluru, then Mumbai, and then pan India.

The team believes that with increasing penetration of AI and IoT in this space, will help people further to ease the problem of visual discovery.

“The visual discovery space will become very interesting. If you see, right now even a class four or five student has a cell phone in his hands. He/she might not be able to write but is able to click photographs. There is the incredible potential that has got unlocked because of visuals and mobile. And on the other hand, there are still things going the traditional way. For instance, blogging, which is still desktop based. We see an interesting evolution that visual discovery will bring and we definitely want to be a part of it.”

Editor’s Note

As per Pulkit, the visual blogging platform has its sights set on the huge potential of the O2O Indian market with the total size of $92.5 Bn. With major expenditure in O2O space (~80%)  for brands being on marketing/advertising and data analytics, Trell aims to leverage this opportunity. However that being visual discovery and blogging is a vast space full of big contenders. Today, over 2 Bn photos are uploaded online every single day, with almost 90% of content being user-generated.

Instagram, Pinterest are some of the heavy-weight and heavily funded players in this space. By focusing on the mobile platform, Trell has its fundamentals in place for growth as the number of smartphone users increases. Smartphones which are projected to reach over 500 Mn customers in India by 2018 is going to see an app explosion soon. Last year, Indians downloaded 6.2 Bn apps through Google Play, up from 3.6 Bn in 2015, according to a recent report by App Annie. That marks the first time India seized the top spot for Android-app downloads, toppling longtime leader US. Trell’s timing is ripe but how far can even the visual blogging platform rise out of the shadow of its own more popular Instagram account to leverage this boom will be interesting to watch out.

[“Source-inc42”]

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Tech Update

Sony’s big idea: Get fans to make its next hit

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Sony Future Lab testers gather around to try out the latest Concept N prototype. Andrew Eggers for Sony

A tiny San Francisco art gallery isn’t where you’d normally find a group of hardware beta testers, much less for a major consumer-electronics company. But on August 26th, 2017, Sony held an event for exactly that at The Laundry, a small and intimate exhibition space in the city’s Mission District that’s so hidden, you have to walk through a cafe in order to get in.

Nevertheless, at around 5 p.m. on a Thursday, the place was filled to the brim. That’s because this was the fourth and final meetup for participants of “Program N,” a project where volunteers tested a hands-free open-ear audio device (called, appropriately enough, Concept N) for Sony for almost a year.

It’s a project within Sony’s Future Lab, a special research and development arm that comes up with new and innovative approaches to hardware. One of those approaches? Instead of developing products secretly, these prototypes would be open to the public for feedback.

Future Lab came about in early 2016, and the key difference between it and other R&D groups within Sony is transparency. “We had never disclosed concepts and technologies under development,” said Naoya Okamoto, a program director for Future Lab. “But [with Future Lab] we opened up for the first time.”

Makoto Murata, the project team lead for Program N,
shows the Concept N prototype on the screen.To be clear, these aren’t consumer-ready products. Not all Sony projects are eligible for the Future Lab treatment, and very rarely are they anything more than just concept prototypes, which rarely ever make the transition over to store shelves. Instead, Okamoto said that Sony hopes to use the feedback to accelerate its R&D activities in general. “It’s a very rare case, sort of an experiment, for us to share our prototype devices under development with the public,” he added. “And to let people use it at their leisure and away from our premises.” It was a big risk.

Yet, it’s a risk that Sony might be forced to make. Even though Sony was once the mainstream electronics brand of choice, it’s waned quite a bit in recent years. Its Xperia brand of phones has failed to capture the market the same way that Samsung and Apple has, and its Vaio brand of PCs proved so unsuccessful it had to sell it off a few years ago. Sony’s unfortunate insistence on proprietary media formats like Memory Sticks and Minidiscs didn’t help it either.

Sony’s Future Lab made its first public debut at SXSW last year, where it introduced a series of different concept prototypes for the first time. One was a projector that transformed any surface into a touchscreen interface (this would later be known as Concept T), an “aim-able” projector wand that could make it seem as if sound was coming from whatever area it was pointing at, and an advanced haptic controller that provided surprisingly realistic touch feedback.

From left to right: Kengo Yoshii (engineer), Angie Park (UX researcher)
and Makoto Murata (project lead)But the product that got most of the buzz was Concept N, the aforementioned audio device. It’s essentially a wearable neckband equipped with four microphones and acts as a hands-free way to interact with your phone, like asking for directions or finding out the local weather. It even has a built-in camera to which you can command to take photos.

The best thing about the N, however, is that it can play back audio in your ears without the use of intrusive earbuds. Instead, it uses innovative speaker placement to beam audio around your head. And if you want better audio quality, Sony also made a pair of unique open-ear earbuds to use with it. Rather than sticking in your ear canal, these earbuds clamp over, behind and onto the inside of your ear, so that you can still pay attention to your environment while listening to your favorite tunes.

“We had a round of discussions about how people were using their smartphones and devices,” said Kengo Yoshii, a Sony engineer who gave a presentation at the San Francisco meetup. “Was there a way to create an experience that allowed us to communicate and have access to information while still being able to engage and be an active participant in life?” Based on questions like these, Concept N was born.

Concept N as seen at the SXSW festival in 2016.Makoto Murata, the project team lead for Program N, said that the team tested the product internally, but only received positive feedback. “We didn’t believe it,” he said. “To solve this problem, we [decided to] open the innovation up. Co-creation is the best way.”

“We found we need to share the actual, real voice of the customers,” Okamoto added.

So in September of 2016, Sony started to accept applicants for Program N. However, there were a few caveats. It was open only to people living in San Francisco and the Bay Area — Okamoto said this was specifically done to attract participants with an “innovative mindset” — and participation was by invitation only. What’s more, in order to sign up, applicants had to cough up $100 of their own money as a non-refundable fee.

To kick the program off, Future Lab held a sales pitch event in the offices of Wired Magazine, which also served as the first user initiation meeting. “It was a very diverse crowd,” said Erik Hartley, a Program N participant who attended the event based on a friend recommendation.

“It wasn’t just a bunch of tech people,” he added. “They were bike messengers, photographers, professors, and people from all different backgrounds. The people really brought me into it, moreso than the device itself.” Still, he didn’t make the decision to sign up until he tried it for himself. “The headphones sold me on it. This is something I want to spend a bit of money on.”

He wasn’t the only one. According to Okamoto, by the end of the program, Sony had about 300 participants testing Concept N.

And if you think this is just a glorified focus group, think again. Aside from paying their own money for the hardware, Program N participants were invited to attend several meetups throughout the year, where they interacted with Sony engineers directly. Future Lab also attended the Silicon Valley Bike Festival and Bike To Work Day SF in order to talk to cyclists and bike commuters about how N could improve their experience. Sony also flew out engineers and designers from Tokyo to San Francisco for the sole purpose of in-person feedback. This feedback would then shape future updates.

“The first version of N didn’t have a calling function,” said Okamoto, adding that most people in Tokyo don’t use headsets to make calls, so it was an afterthought. Understandably, it was the most highly requested feature right from the start, and was the very first update they made to the product.

Makoto Murata and Kengo Yoshii next to three Project N participants:
Erik Hartley, Qianhe, and Brian Mikol .In addition to bug fixes, Sony introduced more features over time. Some of the more interesting ones include a personalized radio service that read the latest news to you, turn-by-turn directions, a local neighborhood guide that would recommend nearby attractions and NBA scores.

A particularly amusing addition was Lost Dog, an augmented reality game where you try to help a ghost dog reunite with its owner. “They put enough thought into it, where it worked exactly where people would be walking their dogs in San Francisco,” said Hartley. It’s an app that would only work in the city, he added, and yet Sony had actually hired actors to do voices for the game.

“They gave us dedicated support,” said Hartley. “There were actual engineers responding to us on a regular basis. For Sony to go out and crowd source this research and development, I’ve not seen that from other companies before. I’d love to see other companies do that.”

Eventually, the work that Sony was doing with Program N got noticed by Sony’s mobile communications department. “We saw what they were doing, and thought there might be something there for us,” said Don Mesa, the Vice President of Marketing for Sony Mobile Communications in North America. “We saw a connection between smartphones and the ear, and started to work behind the scenes on it.”

A Future Labs participant trying out the Xperia Open-Ear prototype.The result is the Xperia Ear Open-Style, which we just got a sneak peek of at this year’s IFA. Instead of using a neckband, it consists of two separate earbuds that you clamp onto your ears, similar to how the Concept N earbuds work. And unlike Concept N, which uses its own voice assistant protocol — the N assistants’ names are Nigel and Anna — the Xperia version will be compatible with your phone’s existing AI, be it Siri or Google Assistant.

But perhaps more importantly, unlike Concept N, the Xperia Ear Open-Style will eventually be a product that consumers can buy.

At the fourth and final meetup, users got together to talk about what they liked and didn’t like about the headset. Most seemed to really love the open-ear concept, and the ability to listen to music while also being engaged with the world around them. “For the first time it actually allowed me to relax at work,” said Hartley. “Because I could listen to music and function at work at the same time.”

“I had all kinds of voice interfaces at home. Amazon Echo, Google Home, Cortana,” said Qianhe, a senior researcher working in health and wearables. “But I didn’t have any voice interface that I can use in a wearable device […] N is the only device out there like this with a voice interface.”

A mockup of what Sony wants its Xperia Open-Ear earbuds to look like, as seen at IFA 2017.Thomas Harp, a cyclist, said he loves being able to listen to the environment while listening to music. “I’m typically riding around with a single headphone, but now I can get a stereo effect,” he said. “I use it everyday.”

Of course, there were complaints too. Most of the people in attendance agreed that the four to five hour battery life of the hardware was far too short, while others said the voice recognition could be better. In particular, one user said that he wanted the N dictionary to recognize more words.

Svante Rodegard, a user who was in the program from the start, said that he joined because he was a Sony fan. “There was a time when Sony had the coolest products around,” he said. “Ah, I thought. Sony is trying to get back on top with the cool products. That’s what brought me into this gathering.” More users chimed in at this point, and reminisced about their memories with the Walkman and the Minidisc player. One user by the name of Deborah said she “grew up in a Sony home.”

“When I was growing up, Walkmans were a big deal,” said Hartley. “Later in my life, I bought a Sony CD Mavica Camera. I had that for three years! It was only 1 megapixel but I liked it because I could have my pictures on my computer almost instantly.”

Future Lab participants gather at The Laundry for the fourth and final meetup for Project N.As of September 2017, Program N has officially ended, as its legacy continues with the Xperia Open-Ear concept over at Sony Mobile Communications. As for other Future Lab devices, Sony is now gathering applicants for the Concept T projector, though since it’s regarded as a B2B device, it’s a program that will be tested with developers and manufacturers rather than end-users.

As N drew to a close, Okamoto reflected on lessons learned during Future Lab’s first public-facing project. Unsurprisingly, he said he found real user feedback incredibly valuable, and that having over 300 participants in the program is far better than the usual small-scale test Sony does internally.

Perhaps the biggest lesson Okamoto took away from Program N, however, was that it changed the way the engineers thought about the hardware. “The engineers and R&D group, are usually separated from actual, real users,” he said. “Normally we are working in our lab, far from the real world.”

But when Sony had the engineers who made the prototype meet with testers face to face, Okamoto said that this changed their mindset. “They found the reality. The communications changed their minds. It was a more realistic way of seeing the user’s daily life.”

A Future Labs participant testing the latest Project N iteration.As valuable as this open and transparent way of R&D was, however, Sony said it won’t be using this approach with everything that the company makes — instead, it’ll plan an “appropriate program for each concept.” That’s understandable, of course, as doing this sort of project just for one product already requires a lot of resources and time.

But if there’s anything that this program shows, it’s that listening to users — some of whom are still very passionate about the Sony brand — can be very beneficial to a company that’s getting increasingly left behind in the consumer electronics wars. Even if the Xperia Open-Ear concept doesn’t become successful, Sony would have learned a few lessons from the back-and-forth process of talking to users directly; lessons that it could use with other products in the future.

Still, it’s not clear if doing this will actually give Sony its cool back. That vision of the company’s history might be long past rescue. Future Lab could end up like the Aibo; another failed Sony experiment.

But as long as Sony is still surviving, it’s trying its hardest to stick around. “The next concept prototypes are under way,” said Yoshii as he ended his presentation at the meetup. Later that evening, he announced that he had moved from Tokyo to San Francisco, to work closer with the Future Lab team in the US. “We hope that we can continue our relationship,” he told the crowd. “We hope to co-create our future together.” And, perhaps, Sony’s future too.

Images: Andrew Eggers for Sony (Neckband on screen); Crowd shot; Man with glasses looking down); Nicole Lee (Three Sony employees; Panel group; Side profile of man wearing prototype); Nathan Ingraham (Neckband on pedestal); Edgar Alvarez (Earbuds in case)

[“Source-engadget”]

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Online Marketing

Using Online Marketing And Events To Generate Leads For Your Business

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Seminar

Targeted leads are obviously highly sought after, and very lucrative to any business; they are prospective customers who have shown an interest in the product or service which you offer. Finding new highly targeted leads is something that a lot of businesses find difficult, with many businesses hiring experts to help them with their lead generation.

For most businesses, this is probably the best way to go about it, and there are websites such as CubeReviews who help rank lead providers, to make sure you get the ROI you’re looking for with the leads your experts provide.

While hiring an expert to help with your lead generation is often the best bet for a most businesses – due to the time involved when you don’t already have connections in the industry – it’s still possible to find leads by yourself, which is particularly good news for small businesses who perhaps don’t have a budget to pay an expert for help.

Finding the leads yourself has its own benefits too; for example, a lead generation company might sell the same leads to multiple clients, while any leads you find by yourself are entirely yours to sell to, you know that the same lead hasn’t been offered to one of your competitors, which gives you an edge, and a better chance of converting that lead into a sale.

So, where do you start when you’re looking to generate more leads for your business? Well, keep reading to find out! I’ve listed a few fantastic methods of generating leads for your business, all of which you can do by yourself, without the help of a lead generation agency.

Events

Hosting events is a great way to find potential leads. Whatever business you’re in, you more than likely have some information of value which you can share with potential customers for no fee. For example, if you sell insurance, you could provide a seminar on how to get the best deal from your insurance provider, or what pitfalls to look out for when looking for new insurance, or even what type of insurance isn’t as worthwhile as others.

Events such as seminars work well for a number of reasons, first and foremost, everybody who attends is already interested in the service or product which you are providing. Secondly, you get to communicate with a number of potential clients at the same time. Finally, you get to demonstrate your expertise on the subject, and give a personal touch to your business – people will have a face to the business, and be able to ask questions in person. Most people prefer to do business with somebody who they’ve actually met and spoken with, rather than a faceless business on the internet.

Online Marketing

Most people search for businesses; service providers, and products, online. Long gone are the days where people open up the Yellow Pages catalogue to find a plumber. Yet, you would be surprised to learn just how many small businesses don’t have an active website! If you run a small business and don’t have a website (or even if you do have a website, but it’s been neglected) now is the time to make a change!

Creating a website isn’t expensive or particularly difficult, thanks to software such as WordPress, it’s very easy to get a basic website online where you can provide potential customers with information about your business, your contact details, examples of your work, and even provide informational blog posts to show off your expertise.

A wise man once said “build it, and they will come”, unfortunately that’s not the case for a website. You need to be proactive if you want to get visitors and leads coming through your website. This can be done in a number of ways. If your budget allows, you can use Pay-per-click advertising with a platform such as Google AdWords. You decide your target audience, set a budget, and let Google do the rest.

However, the cheapest and most long-term source of bringing in that vital traffic to your website, is by providing quality content for your target audience. This can be done via a blog. Whatever business you’re in, you can create blog posts that provide value and insight to your audience, bring in visitors who are looking for information related to the service you provide, and demonstrate your knowledge in the area, and, therefore, potentially turn them into a lead or a customer.

Social Media

Another great tool for generating leads is social media. Most people have a Facebook account, but there are other great platforms such as Instagram, which require very little effort to maintain, and can provide you with a huge following of prospective leads.

For example, if you own a plumbing business, you could open an Instagram account (including a link to your website and information about your company in your bio – which is displayed at the top of your Instagram profile), and add several new images daily of new bathrooms, bathroom design ideas, swimming pools etc. The chances are, people looking for bathroom design ideas are likely considering having work done on their bathroom, and for that, they’re going to need a plumber!

Now, just because you are showing nice pictures on your Instagram feed, doesn’t mean that they’re going to choose you to do the job, but it does put you one step ahead of your competition, as you already have somewhat of a relationship with that lead.

This can work in a number of industries, for example, a bakery. If you post lovely pictures of custom made cakes every day, the chances are that the audience that connects and follows you, will be people who are interested in either purchasing or learning about creating a particular cake – both of which can be converted into a lead.

Generating leads can be easier than you think, all it takes is time and persistence. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Focus on one of these strategies for 6 months, devote at least 1 hour a day to it, and I can guarantee you, that at the end of those 6 months, you’ll have more leads than you thought was possible with such little time and effort each day!

[“Source-businesscomputingworld”]

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