Online Gaming Becomes a Vehicle for Friendship

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Research shows that gaming, particularly the networked type, has the power to reinforce a sense of friendship and connectedness for teens. About eight-in-ten gamers say they feel more connected to their gaming buddies.

Pew Research reports that teen gamers play with lots of different types of people, from friends they know in person (89%), to friends they know only online (54%), to others who are not friends (52%), etc. Thanks to online multiplayer titles like Battlefield or Call of Duty, more than ever teens have a great opportunity to interact and spend time with friends or to make new acquaintances through verbal communication and collaboration / gameplay.

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When Business Grows on Merit, Not Math

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“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself”

– Henry Ford

A truly great business doesn’t stem from the willingness to make money. While having financial incentive certainly helps, a more important driver is innovation, delivering real value to the world.

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Quote of the Day By Althea Gibson

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I recently came across a sarcastic tweet about asking others for help when you need it, and it clicked with me. Pride has its limits. It’s often better to seek help when you’re stuck than to take stabs in the dark and fail.

The first thing you get in this life is help from others, like the doctor who cuts your umbilical cord and gives you a nudge so you can start breathing. Receiving help from others is an important thing to remember, if you ask Althea Gibson.

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UCaaS Beats Perpetual Licensing Any Day Of The Week

Cloud-reliant software and services have enabled a paradigm shift for developers and service providers alike. Once based on the buy-once-use-forever concept, the acquisition of software and services has gravitated towards a licensing business model that has proved to be far more lucrative for every party involved, from the people who code the solution to the end users.

A recent report by Nemertes Research indicates that Unified Communications (UC) solutions, or Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), are selling much better as subscription bundles, as opposed to perpetual licensing which involves a large upfront investment. And it’s hardly a surprise.

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Research: How We Laugh Online, And The Death Of LOL

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Since emojis started flooding our Internet devices, we’ve adopted new ways of communicating. Whether we’re texting someone, sending an email, or leaving a comment on a site, we somehow can’t escape these giggly yellow faces that say so much with so little. However, there’s an even more popular form of expressing enjoyment online than emojis.

Research done by Facebook – based on a piece by Sarah Larson from The New Yorker – reveals that ‘haha’ is by far the most widely used form of expressing laughter online, followed by emojis (particularly those with tears of joy), ‘hehe,’ and finally ‘lol.’ Here are some numbers extracted by Moira Burke and the Core Data Science team:

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Why Was Google ‘Bought’ By Alphabet?

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The Internet went up in flames a few hours ago when Google announced a major shift in its organizational structure: the creation of a parent company called ‘Alphabet’ with the purpose of better managing the many branches spawned by Google in various fields (like the driverless car project). Alphabet will have one CEO and one President, while the subsidiaries (Google among them) will each have their own CEOs.

Co-founder Larry Page wrote in a blog post on Monday that Alphabet is merely an effort to make Google and all the projects that emerged from it over the years “cleaner and more accountable.” Parent company Alphabet will not be a consumer brand, Page said. In fact, the purpose of creating it was to allow each separate company to evolve individually and pursue its own branding. So, let’s answer some of the most pressing questions regarding Google’s surprising decision.

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Quote of the Day by Arnold Palmer

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When something looks like it cannot be done, it generally cannot be done. But it’s not because it’s impossible. Rather, it’s because it will probably not even be attempted.

Had this been the case all the time, we’d probably still be living in caves and hunting with spears. But, because of our drive for new knowledge, key members of our species broke their comfort zone to invent the future. Think aeroplanes, smartphones, cloud computing, 3D printing, etc. All these seemed impossible before those select few innovators made them a reality.

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What Are The Most Important Steps In Starting a Startup? [Infographic]

Everyone has that one great idea at one point in life. Envisioning a product for the future is one of the best things you can do with your daydreaming time, but the real challenge is getting it done. For a product that hopes to change the world, you might have to consider creating your own startup.

We hear about startups in the news all the time. In fact, they are mentioned so often these days that it seems everyone’s doing it. But in reality only a handful of entrepreneurs go through the motions like they’re supposed to. For instance, did you know that writing down every detail as it hits your head can turn out to be crucial for the success of the product? How about re-launching more than once? These practices, as well as many others, are vital to building a successful institution that can generate retention and revenue.

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New Type of Solar Panel Promises ROI in Just 2 Months

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Global energy demands are expected to soar by 2050, making it imperative that we tap newer, more efficient power sources as the planet’s fossil fuel reserves continue to run dry. The Sun is our #1 source of renewable, clean energy and researchers at Northwestern University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have invented a new way of harvesting it.

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