By Samuel Phineas Upham

In the early 1900s, just after the American Civil War, New York was faced with a unique challenge. It needed to restructure itself, because it had lost significant revenue generated through Southern business interests. This restructuring was helped in large part by immigrants from Ireland, who had moved to New York to escape the potato famine.

Coupled with the city’s sizable African American population and New York had a decent-sized workforce for factories and manual labor. The problem was labor standards, which were about to get a shot in the arm. Strikes were breaking out in the wharfs and piers of New York Harbor, which was busy producing fish and other canned goods while moving stock in and out of port.

Those workers were banding together all across Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and other major cities in search of higher wages and favorable working conditions. Business interests invoked an English common law called “restraint of trade”, which functioned like a modern day non-compete agreement. They argued that the collusion of wages violated this statute because it gave groups of workers an unfavorable advantage that a single worker might not have otherwise had.

Of course today’s reader might not see the divisiveness in this argument, but it was the hot topic of the day. Newspapers ran headlines and eloquent op-eds on the topic, while business leaders argued ferociously for their right to run a business the way they saw fit.

The reason why worker’s rights prevailed had to do with the courts, which provided precedent that established how workers could collude for wages ethically and legally.

About the Author: Samuel Phineas Upham is an investor at a family office/ hedgefund, where he focuses on special situation illiquid investing. Before this position, Phin Upham was working at Morgan Stanley in the Media and Telecom group. You may contact Phin on his Samuel Phineas Upham website or Facebook.

By Wood Creek Academy

Here in the United States, we try to do our best to give every child a complete education. Hopefully, we succeed at this goal the majority of the time, but we know this isn’t always the case. Instead, what often happens is that some kids fall through the cracks, so to speak. For many of them, the answer may lie somewhere like homeschooling or private schools. However, for many children, especially, teenagers, something more drastic is called for.

You may have heard of a boarding school for troubled boys before or even boot camp for teenagers. The two types of programs differ in many ways, but their main goal is always the same. They’re there to help bring your child away from an environment that may be fostering a destructive lifestyle. It could be your household, unfortunately, but more often than not, it’s the school they go to, their neighborhood or the friends they spend time with. Once you remove these factors for a long enough period of time, the child is often just fine.

It also helps that these programs help build self-worth and teach confidence. When a child lacks either of these elements, it’s generally only a matter of time before something goes wrong in some area of their lives.

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Troubled youth programs are often the best—and sometimes, the only—way to help your child get back on the right track so they can lead long, fulfilling lives. This is where Wood Creek Academy can help.

There is a close connection between website interaction design and communication. In fact, it consists of several disciplines. This could be either non-technology or technology-related disciplines.

Among these words, visual and space make up an important part. So, here are 4 tips that will contribute to better UX Design:

1: Every Word Matters

Just a single call-to-action, instruction or a change of words can make a difference. User testing can help you find the right words. You can find out which part of your site seems confusing. You’ll have to add further instructions also. Of course, you don’t want to overload the user by explaining every little thing.

2: Think About UI Patterns

Using tried-and-tested UI patterns, one can save users the need to think too much. This is because they are familiar too. You can find UI patterns since they exist on many sites too. That said, trying to stand apart from your competition can cause your visitors frustration.

3: Consider chunking

Short-term memory can only remember 5-9 items before forgetfulness sets in. So, UX designers should limit the number of items to about 7. Chunking is another approach that one can take. Using this method, one can group similar items together. For example, if you have 32 items, you can group them into 8 groups of 4. This will make it easy on site visitors.

4: Use White Space As Much As Possible

Leaving more white space isn’t considered a good idea. Still, it adds to your design even if you think it doesn’t. First, it attracts attention. Also, it clarifies relationships as white space between groups of information. Best part: it helps in improving comprehension by making elements on the page legible

Learning is a lifelong process and when engaged with passion and curiosity, it can effectively lead to personal as well as professional enhancement. The ability to engage in personal development is one of the most sought-after characteristics that employers look for in potential employees. This is about having the right attitude towards the company and the work being performed. Even though employers might be spending a significant budget in providing training and development, they are encouraged by employees who demonstrate an ability and keenness to learn and acquire new skills by themselves.

Adaptability

Most organizations would be engaging in continuous improvement initiatives in order to stay ahead of competition. Lifelong learners contribute to these strategies as the organization benefits from the new set of skills and knowledge acquired by the employee. Employees who embrace lifelong learning are also more apt to adapt to changes and are more flexible.

Self-motivation and confidence

Personal development also pertains to the way individuals choose to innovate their work practices and improve their attitude towards work. Engaging in personal development initiatives contributes to enhancing the self-motivation and confidence of the employee and improves the way they are perceived by their colleagues and superiors.

Career Development

A boost of motivation, coupled with the acquisition of new skills and confidence could effectively contribute to bringing enhanced responsibilities. Individuals engaging in personal development are better perceived by management and could be more apt to be promoted. Learning also leads to an improved internal culture focused on the acquisition of knowledge within the organization.

Even though college might be expensive, in most cases this would constitute of a wise lifetime investment in forging a high-earning career. There are several factors to consider before reaching to this crucial decision. Some college students who have not given much thought to their selected majors might later have found that they were not able to make a career out of it. The tips below might be helpful if you are at a crossroad of choosing a major.

Personal Interest in the Field

Without a personal interest in the field that you would be going for, you might not succeed so well. Moreover, if you are interested in working in a particular field such as marketing, human resources or medical, you might consider a relevant major to help in your career.

Your Ability to Succeed

The decision of enrolling in a particular course should be guided by your confidence that you would be able to successfully earn the degree. For instance, if you already have prior notions in marketing or business studies and have always earned good grades in similar subjects, it would be worthwhile to enrol in such a course. On the other hand, courses that seem difficult might be risky to enrol in.

Preparation for a Career

Students who already feel that they have an aptitude or a naturally talented for a particular field would need to pursue a career in it. A factor to consider, however, is that not all careers require a major. For instance, a talented sales person might not necessarily require a major in sales and marketing, however that would constitute of a plus.

We have to face the facts, everyone wants a better job.  No matter what you do, unless you are the CEO of the most profitable company in the world such as Apple, you are probably striving to better yourself in some way.  The grass always seems greener on the other side and you always want to try and better yourself and your family in terms of where you stand financially.  When you look at a work experience degree you can quickly see that it can really help you in a big way to get a new job that you desperately want.

The first way that a degree such as this can help you get a job is that the degree is really going to give your resume a major boost.  Your resume can always get an improvement and any type of added degree shows that you have been recognized for advancement or other major accomplishments in your lifetime.

Beyond the resume, the degree is also going to allow you to have a great talking point during the interview process with the potential new employer.  You can talk about the degree how you earned it and what type of experience you needed to have in order to obtain it.

A Life Experience Degree is a great addition to any resume and is far superior to fake degree offers found online.  Companies such as www.speedydegrees.com can quickly analyze your information and see if you qualify for any type of degree based on your past work and life experiences.

Article by Phin Upham

More and more studies are coming out on the importance of preschool, including a new study that focuses on the environment of the classroom and the teacher’s behavior. While learning the alphabet is very important for a 4-year-old, having a positive interaction in the classroom might be just as vital to his or her future development, Science Daily reports.

According to a new study, classrooms where teachers display “approving behavior with a positive emotional tone” help children improve self-regulation skills. Dale Farran, senior associate director of the Peabody Research Institute at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College for education and human development, told Science Daily that the research revealed two main points. First, they found a direct link between what happens in the classroom and whether children can improve self-regulation measures. The second point to take away from the study is the different experiences that affect the development of those skills. Farran told the paper that children usually lack self-regulation skills, such as the ability to control their effort or stay on task. However, pre-kindergarten children in classrooms with more positive behaviors made improvements in self-regulation skills and academically. The research also found that behavior disapproval inhibited the child’s growth of self-regulation skills.

Read the entire article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130909130944.htm

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About the Author: Phin Upham is an investor from NYC and SF. For more info visit Phin Uphan Linkedin Page.

Online technology has come a long way since the advent of the Internet.  The plethora of websites floating in cyberspace has created an entirely new industry that aims to direct high quality traffic from one website to another.  Archaic models of online marketing through keyword stuffing and superfluous have been replaced with the need for quality content and strategic marketing.

As the cliché goes, “Content is King”.  Having great content on a website that is relevant its target industry will give that site a step above the competition.  Search engine robots are hungry for new material and having fresh content on a website will keep them coming back for more which in turn will bring up its page rank and increase the flow of traffic.  Being strategic in when new content is posted and where will take a website even further.  Knowing the quirks, habits, likes and dislikes of the audience and being able to take advantage of that marketing knowledge can further improve the standing of a website.

However, these tactics only focus on serving the insatiable search engine robots and does not address the human factor.  A website should also be easy to navigate and be aesthetically pleasing.  Robots may not care about the aesthetics of a website, but a potentially new customer visiting the site will.  There are a host of companies that hopped on the cyber train very early and created websites for their businesses hoping to benefit from the additional online traffic.  Perhaps in the antiquated days of the Internet these old websites were successful, but the game has changed drastically since then.  Some of these sites were created with old content management systems that did very little if anything for search engine optimization.  For these relics, a new facelift may be just the nudge it needs to compete for better traffic generation.

In the redesign process, the developers ought to consider new web standards and navigation structures.  Friendly and marketable URLs should be used on all pages.  Use optimization tools that keep a website from having duplicate titles, tags, and content.  For blogs, fix canonicalization issues.  Name and tag website images for even better optimization.  Another thing to consider that can be easily overlooked is to properly redirect URLs from the old website that had gained good traction in ranking to the new site.

These are just a few quick tips that can improve a website’s online presence.

The story is all too common in neighborhoods and suburbs all across the country; parents wanting to go back to school but finding the funds and time just simply are not sufficient. Especially in situations where spouses are separated or divorced, being able to gather the money necessary to pay tuition costs in order to get a degree that will help earn a higher wage can seem like a perfect example of a ‘Catch-22’. Therefore, many businesses, companies, and non-profit organizations have established single mother scholarships specifically for those people who fit this profile. By providing the financial aid needed for going back to school for nursing, a master’s degree, or even a two year certificate, the options are plentiful and available for those who are willing to seek it out.

To be perfectly honest, the amount of jobs that can be enhanced or made better in terms of wages by going back to school lies in the 90-95 percent range. Just about any salary can change when one is more educated; something that high schools preach to young students that applies equally to adults as well! With adults going back to school, the social perception may be different, but the end game is the same; if not even better. By already having a job or having past experience in a field, being able to expand one’s resume with additional schooling can truly separate an application with real and tangible ambition and drive to succeed. So make a call to a community college or place of higher learning today and get on the path to success!