If you are a regular on bizologie, you already know of our love for Star Trek (see Starfleet Librarian costume), so when we heard about what was happening in our own backyard at the UT Texas Advanced Computing Center we were totally stoked!
"Invisibility cloaking no longer seems to be relegated to the realm of science fiction. It's happening right now in a basement laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin. There are currently several different techniques to cloak the visibility of an object, but this video explores one of the most unique and innovative methods to date.
"Dr. Andrea Alù, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Cockrell School at The University of Texas at Austin, takes us into his lab and explains plasmonic cloaking, the method he and his group have used to successfully mask the visibility of an object to the microwave spectrum."
Be sure to check out the cool Infographic introducing cloaking.
Bust out your leg warmers and remember our name! bizologie! With the help of Technorati, we're gonna live forever, learn how to fly high, and maybe even light up the sky like a flame. Just as soon as we insert this code (UBXE24GKJVX9) in a published blog post to help us with our account activation, that is.
(Please note, we take no responsibility for getting 80's musical themes stuck in your head.)
We come across all kinds of job postings through connections or just daily Internet travels and thought we'd share some of the more interesting ones with a new segment called "bizologie Classifieds". Obviously, we have an interest in special librarianship, so we'll be focusing on those types of positions including non-librarian positions in the private sector that we believe an MSIS candidate would meet the qualifications for. We'd love your participation, so if you know about an interesting job opportunity, please let us know about it via Twitter (@bizologie), on Facebook or you can email us: [email protected] or [email protected] Here are a few we think look interesting this week:
The new Sick in America poll from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NPR, and Harvard School of Public Health measures Americans’ views on costs of their medical care and the attitudes of their doctors. Interestingly, this new poll also specifically considers how sick Americans' perceptions of healthcare and provides valuable information on their experiences. It is a different perspective to ask those who have actually had a lot of medical care or who had been hospitalized overnight in the past 12 month. It is not hypothetical for these individuals.
Not surprisingly, "a large majority of the general public (87%) thinks the cost of care is a serious problem for the country. In addition, about two-thirds of the general public (65%) believes the cost of care has gotten worse over the last five years." What is frightening is that "about one in ten sick Americans (11%) report being turned away by a doctor or hospital for financial or insurance reasons" in the last 12 months. Some good news is that 51% of the surveyed American who were hospitalized "are 'very satisfied' with the quality of medical care they received while they were in the hospital."
You can get the summary, see charts and slides and read the entire report on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website.
Congratulations to bizologie's own Annette Buckley!
In July Annette takes on the role of Research Librarian for Business at The University of California Irvine. Annette recently received her MS in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, where she worked as the Graduate Research Assistant in the Business Information Center. She has a BA from Trinity University. She also has three years of experience in the luxury jewelry industry, and is a Graduate Gemologist. We are proud to have Annette on our bizologie team and UCI is lucky to have her as a member of their team. Way To Go, Annette!
I will represent the University of Texas at Austin and bizologie on the 2012 Cycling For Library tour. Karen Holt from the UT Libraries and editor of the Librarian Lifestyle blog will be accompanying me on this adventure. The un-conference offers a week and a half of library workshops, debates, and tours with a diverse group of international librarians. This unique format combines library discussions with 373 miles of bicycling from Vilnius, Lithuania to Tallinn, Estonia. Yep, that is right, we'll be biking through the Baltics and solving global library issues!
The 107 librarians participating come from 26 countries and work for national, public, academic, and special libraries. In addition to participating in discussions, all librarians are required to present on topics in their areas of expertise. Karen and I will promote the UT Libraries Human Rights Documentation Initiative and present on topics like using social media for business research and creating public programming events with artists and musicians.
Here's the route -- we cover 3 countries in just 10 days:
Vilnius
Vilnius to Trakai, bus-transport to Riga
Riga
Riga to Sigulda
Sigulda to Valmiera
Valmiera to Valka/Valga
Valka/Valga to Otepää
Otepää to Tartu
Tartu, bus-transport to Rakvere
Rakvere to Lahemaa National Park
Lahemaa National Park to Tallinn
I'm excited about this trip and the amazing opportunity. I do have to admit that I am not much of a biker and I've committed to biking around 30 miles per day. I started my own couch-to-tour training last month and now I'm up to 15 miles. Still have a ways to go, but the trip has been great inspiration to get moving!
Stay tuned for more info about Cycling For Libraries. Over at Librarian Lifestyle, Karen and I will be writing posts about the tour and of course we will cover our new obsession with bicycle fashion.
Here at bizologie we are suckers for all things map-tastic, so we can’t resist talking about one more that just crossed our radar. One of our favorite resources, LinkedIn, has come out with a map site in which you log in to your account from this page and see a nifty cloud of color-coded relationships that LinkedIn generates using your contacts.
The great thing is that it’s interactive. Zoom in and click on a node (i.e. a person) and see all of their shared connection to you. You can also assign labels to the clusters to help you remember, for example, what the green cloud means and what the orange cloud means.
So it looks good, but what does it do if it doesn’t land you a job, or tweak your resume, or pinpoint your salary range? My advice is to take a few minutes to examine the nodes that are not densely interconnected. A handful of your links in disparate clusters might have really long lines that span a couple of colors (if these were airplane flights, they’d be the ones going from New York to Hong Kong).
By investigating those nodes you might find that people you wouldn’t consider knowing one another are in fact connected. I myself discovered a couple of surprising links in my contacts between people that I know at different institutions. And from that knowledge you’ll have fodder to start interesting conversations during the next office happy hour, which could lead to all sorts of new opportunities. Cue the Kumbaya!
Clearly, we all love Pinterest. It's the fastest growing social network and shoppers spend more money via Pinterest than Facebook. But can you do more than pin recipes, shoes and interior design? Well, yes! You can do business research! Now of course, it's not the first place we'd turn for business research, but you can still learn plenty of interesting things about a company on Pinterest. You can find out about a company's culture, how they interact with their customers and what things they value. You might even pick up on future company plans. Even venture capital firms have Pinterest pages. Here are a few Pinterest pages and boards we think are good examples of using Pinterest to learn about companies and industries:
Bessemer Venture Partners: Bessemer is a large venture capital firm and you can learn a lot about them on their Pinterest page. They've got their portfolios and exits pinned, and they even have boards dedicated to portfolio companies by industry.
Pinterest is a great place to find infographics. Here's a board dedicated to Social Media & Internet Infographics:
HomeAway, a site for vacation rentals, engages their customers not only with vacation homes to stay in, but also, contests and interior design ideas:
This board is dedicated to "Brands, Businesses & Blogs"--this is a quick way to see how lots of different companies are using Pinterest:
There's even a page to help businesses succeed with their Pinterest campaigns:
LOHAS is an acronym for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. According to the LOHAS.com website, the organization "focuses on educating and building community around the central theme of healthy and sustainable lifestyles for individuals and societies." Even more importantly to bizologie, they offer business resources on the growing $290B LOHAS market. LOHAS not only shares information but also provides practical tools and techniques for people to implement into their businesses.
The website has tons of news and aggregates data on the industry. For example, they have info on green marketing, sustainability trends for 2012, fair trade, and green consumers.
The HUB by LOHAS is a business network for companies in the LOHAS industry to connect, collaborate and seek opportunities. They say it's like LinkedIn for LOHAS companies and organizations. You can see the online business directory of over 600 companies, but to get detailed info and to be able to connect you must become a member. Companies can apply online and have to be approved.
Building on this earlier post about Investopedia's great function as a business dictionary and beyond, another excellent resource for terminology is the Financial Times Lexicon. Like Investopedia FT also offers some other nice bells and whistles besides a dictionary alone. Select a term, e.g. "intellectual capital," and beneath the defintion you'll find a link to search the FT.com website for articles that feature the word or phrase. You can also save you favorite buzzwords and see their evolution in a Watchlist which you can access by registering for FT's free-level subscription.
And best of all, some enterprising employee-who-knows-java made a widget for anyone who wants to embed the FT Lexicon on their business education type website, and they even included tips for customizing it via CSS or HTML. Thank you, FT!
This excellent presentation by Marcy Phelps at the Special Libraries Association Rocky Mountain Chapter Virtual Lunch, was titled Power Networking for Introverts, but really is applicable for even the most extroverted. Making a real connection at a networking event or association meeting can be difficult for anyone. Learn some myths of networking and how you can make the most of the time you spend networking. To see the archived virtual lunch presentation, visit the Rocky Mountain Chapter.
I like how Marcy redefines networking as connecting. As librarians we are good at making connections for people and helping them find the information they need. If we think about those goals for networking, and not what we can get out of it by marketing ourselves, I think that makes it easier. Phelps also recommends putting your social network to good use too. Join groups and make recommendations on LinkedIn and use Twiter hashtags.
If you are an introvert like Marcy, fear not. She explains that you are actually better networkers, because you are much more likely to listen. If you are interested in more information about Introverts and their rise to the top, Marcy recommends the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
As the founder and president of Denver-based Phelps Research, Marcy Phelps provides business research and analysis for marketing professionals and info pros. Marcy is the author of Research on Main Street: Using the Web to Find Local Business and Market Information (Information Today, Inc., April 2011). She also blogs about turning information into insights at www.MarcyPhelps.com and publishes ResearchNOTES, a monthly email bulletin with tips and sites for web searching.This is not the first time bizologie has featured the good works of Marcy. Check out the post about her book Research on Main Street.
There’s nothing like an impending election to make our government look bad, but on occasion they get things right, like data production. Point in case the NAICS Code, which stands for North American Industry Classification Scheme. In business research NAICS Codes are a handy-dandy tool for 1) isolating industry news/reports, and 2) creating company lists based on, as the title implies, how a business is classified.
You can include the NAICS Code as piece of limiting criteria in some of our favorite databases like Business Source Complete, and ReferenceUSA. In the first screenshot shown below, the NAICS option comes up in a dropdown list in BSC.
Also because NAICS falls under the umbrella of all-things-Census, you’ll also see it featured on the Industry Statistics Sampler website. Just choose your code of interest to see downloadable report offerings for how that industry is faring.
How do you get your hands on the code you need? Visit the NAICS homepage and use the search box above the “2007 NAICS Search” button to enter a word, e.g. “sunglasses,” and you’ll receive a list of codes related to your term. The image on the right shows the extent to which you can drill down using the NAICS website. Click on a code to see even more information about how it's used to make sure you’re on the right track.
One important note is that some databases and business tools might still reference SIC (Standard Industry Classification) Codes, which were last updated in 1987, and which NAICS replaced in 1997 (FAQ). For the fine points of difference between SIC and NAICS, visit its History page. On the off-chance you need to translate between these codes, visit the Concordances page.
Last week at the Annual Conference for the Texas Library Association, we had two Directors of Career Services come and talk about ways job seekers can expand their resumes to appeal to a broader audience of hiring managers in and out of libraries. Karen Landolt, Director of the Career Design Center for the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas Austin and Tara Iagulli, Director of the Career Services Office for the School of Information at the University of Texas Austin, discussed everything from building your personal brand to reworking your resume to interviewing. They have lots of great ideas for getting your resume noticed, including what recruiters look for, as well as interview tips. Below you'll find their presentation and handout.
Mike Millard presented Salary Negotiation: Yes You Can! at the Texas Library Association 2012 conference. Mike energized the room and encouraged librarians to value their unique skill set. We have a Master's degree. Why do we undervalue our worth by not negotiating salary? Sometimes salary is non-negotiable, but after the offer you can and should begin a discussion with the hiring manager about the salary range and what the your skills and experience bring to the table.
Mike joined Austin Ventures in 2008 as Director of Research. He is responsible for securing and validating timely data to assist in the overall due diligence decision process for potential investments or acquisitions. This includes understanding management, companies and markets as well the technical, legal and financial aspects of potential business opportunities. Previously, Mike commercialized technology for AT&T Knowledge Ventures in Austin Texas. Prior to this, he worked in strategy roles at both HP and Dell, Inc.
Mike received his MBA from Western Illinois University and his BS from Illinois State University. He currently serves on the Board of Director's for Marywood Children and Family Services.
The last weekend in March, I and three of my colleagues from the UT-Austin School of Information had the distinct pleasure of volunteering as business research mentors at Austin 3-Day Startup (3DS), an educational event that gives college students ranging from freshmen to Ph.D. candidates a crash course in entrepreneurship.
The idea behind 3DS is simple: the best way to learn entrepreneurship is to start a company. The event takes place over the course of a fast paced, caffeine-fueled weekend. In the course of about sixty hours, team members get an introduction to all of the trials and tribulations associated with starting a company (3DS board member Bart Bohn once humorously referred to this experience as “facilitated contact with reality”).
The structure of the event is simple:
Teams form Friday night, hone their ideas and start building prototypes.
Saturday, the teams take to the streets to perform primary customer validation—3DS is insistent that teams answer Rob Adam’s critical question: “If you build it, will they come?”
Saturday night into Sunday morning, the teams have time to tweak their ideas based on the feedback they received from customers (or, in some cases, start over from scratch!).
Finally, Sunday morning, 3DS participants prepare for the apex of the event—a chance to pitch their ideas to an audience of seasoned entrepreneurs and investors (This year’s mentors included start-up superstars Gary Hoover and Joshua Baer among others).
Throughout the event, 3DS teams benefit from the guidance of seasoned entrepreneurs, investors and tech wizards who volunteer as mentors. These mentors offer real-world advice and perspective on the company-formation process. They help the young entrepreneurs in training ask the right questions and identify legitimate market pain points to which they need to respond.
This semester’s 3DS-Austin mentors included a group of business research gurus from UT-Austin’s School of Information (iSchool). Myself,Becca Havens, Stephen Kuperman and Kamran Varahramyan (by way of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) spent two sleepless nights with 3DS teams helping them answer crucial research questions during the first two days of the event. The questions we fielded ranged from “how can you make money with crowdsourcing?” to “what are the business hours of every restaurant in Austin.” By the end of the 60-hour event, we had helped the majority of the teams answer some of the tough questions that all entrepreneurs face: How big is the market? Who is my competition? How do we make money with this idea? When the dust settled and the teams presented their ideas on Sunday night, our impact was evident in the clear and well-researched information in their presentations.
The success of this semester’s Austin 3DS teams validates the important role information professionals play in business and entrepreneurship. Today, we face a flood of information, all of which has to be located, retrieved, organized, visualized and preserved. This reality is especially stressful when you’re trying to start a viable business in 60 hours! Luckily, as my colleague Stephen Kuperman remarked to one team, navigating the information flood “is what we do, and we’re really good at it.”
Ryan Field is an MS candidate at the University of Texas at Austin School of Information and a research analyst intern at the Austin Technology Incubator.
As more and more companies are using social media to connect with their customers and spread the word about their products, it makes sense that as business researchers we need to keep these social sites on our radar. We wouldn't dream of not scouring the company website for insight, and now we should feel the same way about the company presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Social Media is extremely important for researching smaller private companies and start-ups because you won't find reports or news on them elsewhere.
LinkedIn - Search for the company and link to the "Insightful Statistics about Employees" section to see which employees are on LinkedIn, where they have worked before and where they went after they departed. Look to see what Groups the company belongs to.
Facebook - Look for who the company "Likes" to see find vendors, partners, suppliers, and enthusiasts. Keep an eye on the timeline for product announcements and progress reports.
YouTube - Search for the company channel to see videos. You can see who works there and sometimes their customers. A video can tell you a lot about corporate culture.
Twitter- Consumers are using Twitter as a complaint line, so watch how the company handles those issues and interacts with the customer. You can use HootSuite or TweetDeck to follow multiple companies and/or keywords of interest.
Pinterest - The fastest growing social media site right now! Search for company name under the people search or just Google company name and Pinterest. Companies can show you in images what represents their values and culture.
The Offical Board - Organizational charts of the world's 30,000 largest corporations. Find contacts at companies and see the reporting lines.
CrunchBase- Free database of technology companies, people, and investors. You can find funding information here that you won't see anywhere else.
We bizologie girls love apps that make our lives easier, more fun or more enlightened. This week at the Texas Library Association's Annual Conference, we'll be presenting "50 Apps in 50 Minutes". You can check out our presentation below. A note on pricing and availability: it's been our experience that prices for apps change often, so if you like something that's a bit out of your budget, keep an eye on it as sometimes the prices drop temporarily or even permanently. Love something that's only an iThing? We saw several notes along the way indicating that an app's owner listed Android, etc. as "coming soon". So make a note of what you like and you may see it soon on other platforms.
1. Flipboard “creates a personalized magazine out of everything being shared with you. Flip through your Facebook newsfeed, tweets from your Twitter timeline, photos from Instagram friends and much more.” Free for iPhone & iPad
2. Easybib “Create accurate MLA, APA, and Chicago style citations in seconds by scanning a book bar code or by typing the name of a book. Build and manage your works cited. Once done, email your citations and then export your citations to EasyBib.com's popular bibliography management service.” Free for iPhone & Android
3. Time Traveler’s Investment Calculator “The Time Traveler’s Investment Calculator is a simple way to go back in time and choose a hypothetical investment strategy and see how you would have done.” 99¢ for iPhone
4. Biblion “Enter the World of Tomorrow and experience the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair through the collections of The New York Public Library! Biblion: The Boundless Library is designed to take you — all but literally — into the Library's legendary stacks, opening up hidden parts of the collections and the myriad story lines they hold and preserve. In this free app you will hold documents, images, films, audio, and essays directly from the collections right in your hands.” Free for iPad
5. Business Card Reader “Import contact information from a business card directly to your iOS address book.” iPhone, Android, BlackBerry & Windows Phone, $4.99
6. SimplyPostcards “Real postcards from your iPhone” Free app with extra cost for mailing postcards
7. PaperKarma "is the easy way to take control of your paper junk mail, cut your paper waste, and help save the Earth — by taking photos! Simply pull out your phone and snap photos of the offending mail. PaperKarma will figure out what it is and how to stop it." iPhone, Android & Windows, free
8. HomeSnap "Snap a photo of any home to find out all about it." iPhone, free
9. HBOGo "Get unlimited access to over 1,400 of your favorite HBO shows, including HBO original programming, hit movies, sports, comedy and much more—now available on iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch." Free
10. Reading Rainbow Coming soon from LeVar Burton. Follow their progress on Twitter @readingrainbow
11. ColorSmart by BEHR™ Mobile "is an easy and convenient way to find, coordinate or preview a BEHR® paint color for all of your paint projects." iPhone, iPad & Android, free
12. LeafSnap "is the first in a series of electronic field guides being developed by researchers from Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution. This free mobile app uses visual recognition software to help identify tree species from photographs of their leaves." iPhone & iPad, free
13. CardStar “Lighten your wallet and move your plastic loyalty cards, reward cards and membership cards to your phone so you never miss out on a reward, discount, or deal again.” iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows, free
14. Prezi “View and present your prezis anywhere with simple, intuitive multitouch gestures.” iPad, free
15. TuneIn Radio “TuneIn is a new way to listen to the world through live local and global radio from wherever you are. Whether you want music, sports, news or current events, TuneIn offers over 50,000 stations and 120,000 shows for you to choose from. iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows, free
16. Find My iPhone “If you misplace your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac, the Find My iPhone app will let you use another iOS device to find it and protect your data. Simply install this free app on another iOS device, open it, and sign in with your Apple ID. Find My iPhone will help you locate your missing device on a map.You can then choose to display a message or play a sound, remotely lock your device, or erase your data on it. “ Free
17. Mint “Allows you to track, budget and manage your money all in one place, so you can see where you’re spending and where you can save. Open an account, add your bank, credit, loan and retirement accounts and Mint will automatically pull in and categorize your transactions. It’s safe, secure and easy to keep your personal finances organized. “ iPad, iPhone & Android, free
18. Note Taker HD “is a powerful app for writing and organizing handwritten notes, diagrams, etc., on the iPad. It can also be used to annotate PDF files. It can shrink your writing so you can easily fit a lot of text on a page. You can read the reduced-size "ink" as if you had written those letters with a very fine pen. It gives you solid functionality and control to produce the pages you need.” iPad, $4.99
19. Word Lens “Instantly translate printed words from one language to another with your built-in video camera, in real time!” iPhone, free
20. Google Goggles “Search by taking a picture. Goggles uses image recognition technology to recognize objects and return relevant search results. Identifies products, famous landmarks, storefronts, artwork, and popular images found online. “ iPhone & Android, free.
21. InClass “Organize your schedule. Share your notes. Ace your classes. “ iPad, free
22. Byook “The successful union of books and movies. A byook stages fascinating stories by incorporating images, animations and sound effects. “ iPhone & iPad, $1.99 for Sherlock Holmes
23. Instapaper Save web pages for later offline reading. iPhone & iPad, $4.99 (optimized for iPhone but may work on Android, check site’s FAQs)
24. Instagram “Pick from one of several gorgeous filtered effects or tilt-shift blur to breathe a new life into your mobile photos. “ iPhone & Android, free
25. Foodspotting “is a visual guide to good food and where to find it. It’s the leading app for finding and rating dishes, not just restaurants.” iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows, free
26. MapMyFitness “uses the built-in GPS technology of your iPhone to enable you to track your outdoor fitness activities and gets you closer to achieving your health and fitness goals. Step out your front door, hit the road or trail, and this app will effortlessly mark out your path along an interactive map and record essential metrics including duration, distance, pace, speed and elevation. Once you finish your workout, save your data and it automatically uploads to www.MapMyFitness.com where you can view your route, workout data, and a comprehensive workout history.” iPhone, Android, free
27. ShoeBox “Bring the albums, scrapbooks, and photo-filled “shoeboxes” out of the closet and into an online, shareable space where they can be organized and shared with family and friends.Photos scanned with ShoeBox are saved on both your iPhone and1000memories.com, where they can be stored and shared for free with friends and family. Connect your social media accounts to instantly share your photos through Twitter or directly onto your Facebook Timeline.” iPhone, free. Android coming soon
28. Star Walk “is a stellar augmented reality app that labels all the stars, constellations, and satellites you point your iPad at.” iPad, $4.99
29. Minds of Modern Mathematics “is a digital recreation of a 50-foot-wide wall installation that was part of the groundbreaking 1961 Mathematica exhibition sponsored by IBM and designed by the legendary design team, Charles and Ray Eames.” iPad, free
30. PicFrame “helps you combine multiple photos into amazing looking frames and share them with your friends and family via Facebook, Email, Instagram, Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr. With 60 fully adjustable frames, rounded corners, photo effects, shadows, plenty of patterns and an easy color picker you will always have a unique look.” iPhone & iPad, 99¢
31. Flixel Living Photos “Capture a moment, bring it to life with the swipe of a finger and instantly share with friends.” iPhone, free
32. Cupcake Wars Companion “Your Guide to Eating at Cupcakeries Featured on the Hit Food Network Show” iPhone $2.99
33. Hipmunk “takes the agony out of flight & hotel search. With Hipmunk you'll see all the relevant flights on a timeline, helping you visualize the right choice. Unlike every other app out there, Hipmunk doesn't just show you the cheapest flight first — the app instead sorts by "agony," which incorporates important factors like how long you'll be traveling and how many stops you'll make. Hotel results are shown on a map so that you can see exactly where you'll be staying. You can also turn on heatmaps that will show you the best areas to stay based on unique interests like food, landmarks, nightlife and more.” iPhone & Android, free
34. Silent Film Director “lets you create amazing vintage videos in minutes. You can add music, title cards, transitions, effects and more.” iPhone, free for a limited time, $1.99
35. North Shelby Library “This app allows you to connect directly to our blog, tweets, photos, videos, reading lists, and even the library staff. You can also access the library events calendar and find out what’s coming up for children, teens, and adults at North Shelby or Mt Laurel Public Library. “ iPhone, free
36. PulsePoint “empowers individuals, within covered communities, the ability to provide life-saving assistance to victims of Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA). Application users who have indicated they are trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) are notified if someone nearby is having a cardiac emergency and may require CPR. If the cardiac emergency is in a public place, the application uses sophisticated location-based services to alert citizens in the vicinity of the need for CPR. The application also directs citizen rescuers to the exact location of the closest public access Automated External Defibrillator (AED).” iPhone, free
37. Square Register “Manage and grow your business with the Square Register app and accompanying free Square credit card reader. It’s the simplest way to accept credit cards and bring new customers to your door.” iPad, free
38. TripIt “‘automagically’ takes all your trip details and creates one truly helpful itinerary that’s there when and where you need it – on your Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, iPhone or iPad, sync'd with your calendar, and online at tripit.com.” Free
39. WolframAlpha “Across thousands of domains--with more continually added--Wolfram|Alpha uses its vast collection of algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you.” iPhone, iPad, Android, Nook $2.99, extra apps additional
40. PhotoSync “will transform your photo handling forever. It‘s the first app that makes wireless transfer of your photos/videos from or to your computer and other i-Devices - a breeze. PhotoSync also transfers to Dropbox, Picasa/Google+, Facebook, SmugMug, Flickr, Box, Zenfolio, (S)FTP, WebDAV and iDisk. You need never use a cable again! “ iPhone & iPad, $1.99
41. Spotify “access to millions of tracks from thousands of albums and artists” iPhone, Android, Windows, BlackBerry, pricing varies
43. HearPlanet “Turn your phone into an Audio Guide to the World” iPhone & Android, $3.99
44. Bump Pay “Stop writing checks or messing with cash, and settle up with friends on the spot by simply bumping phones together. From the creators of the Bump app, now you can easily send and receive money in person with anyone who has a PayPal account.” iPhone & Android, free
45. Epicurious & Allrecipes Two free recipe apps both designed for the iPad
46. Goodreads “has more than 7,000,000 members who have added more than 200,000,000 books to their shelves. Our mission is to help you find new and interesting books by showing you what your friends are reading. Browsing Goodreads is like wandering through the world's largest library. Find thousands of book reviews and peruse the bookshelves of friends and other readers. Post your own reviews and keep track of what you have read and want to read.” iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, free
47. Fast Customer “With one tap, we connect you with a customer service rep at more than 2,000 companies (and growing!) across the United States and Canada.” iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire, free
48. Google Catalogs “A new, rich, and engaging way to interact with all your favorite catalogs. Flip through pages of beautiful catalogs, discover inspiring photos and videos, save products that catch your eye, and create collages to share with your friends. “ iPad & Android Tablets, free
49. University of Texas Austin “Search for UT news, check out campus-related events, keep tabs on sports news and scores, tap into the UT directory, navigate campus maps, watch UT videos, and stay engaged with your University.” iPhone, free
50. NPR Music “Engage, explore and discover new music of all genres with the NPR Music app. Rock, Jazz & Blues, World, Classical and Hip Hop/R&B – you get music programmed by people and the quality storytelling you expect from NPR. You can read music news and reviews while listening to interviews, live concerts or exclusive streams of albums before they’re released. Multitask with the NPR Music app as your guide to new music.” iPhone & iPad, free
Whether you are looking for a job or just staying connected to your professional community, social media is extremely important to your image. Social Media is your new online resume. According to Jobvite's Social Recruiting Survey, 89% of US companies will use Social Networking for recruiting. And, 58% of these companies recruit passive candidates, so even if you aren't looking, they are! Will they find you? How can you use social media for your career advancement?
First things first, check your online reputation because others are. Google yourself and see if what comes up is appropriate. Google has tips for you if you find something that needs to be removed. Use Reppler.com to help keep your Facebook page clean and safe. It reads your posts and rates how positive you are plus gives you tips on creating a more secure page.
Of the companies surveyed by Jobvite, 87% use LinkedIn and 2/3 use two or more networks for recruiting.
LinkedIn is really only useful if you build a robust profile and make it public so people can find you. Include detail and be keyword savvy by selecting words that are used in the industry.
Photo - add a professional head shot
Headline - slogan for your personal brand
Summary - highlight your unique skills and specialties
Experience - this should read like your resume
Groups - be a joiner and contribute questions and answers, create your own group, you can edit the visibility of each group for more privacy
Public Profile - claim your public profile URL and make it public then use address on cards, blogs, email sig
Make connections - add your business cards, search by company, schools, association, add the app to your phone
Ask for Introductions - write it up and then ask your contact to pass it on
Ask for recommendations
Add your company website, blog and Twitter account
Once you have your LinkedIn info added, you can use Re.vu to make a visual resume. A cool infographic of your work experience will really grab the hiring manager's attention.
Since recruiters also use Facebook and Twitter you need to make sure you have a professional presence there:
Add the Branch Out app to turn your Facebook friends into professional connections
Glassdoor has free salary information by title and company. There are also company reviews. If you sign up and provide your salary information, you get access to all the salaries and reviews. You can also see if your Facebook friends have any company connections.
If you need help reworking or updating your resume, check out these resume guidelines from the Career Design Center of the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.
We hope some of our readers will be joining us at the Texas Library Association's Annual Conference in Houston. We bizologie girls along with the Special Libraries Division of TLA will be presenting several sessions and we'd love to see you in the audience. Below you'll find descriptions and times for each program. Check back the week of the conference and we'll have our presentations posted here along with links to all the tools, apps and resources discussed at TLA. Hope to see you there!
Free Business Resources
(Net Fair I)
Wednesday 1:00 – 1:50 pm
Sometimes you actually get more than you pay for! Get links to 20+ free sites with business information covering marketing, energy, demographics, technology, and more.
April Kessler, Reference and Information Services, University of Texas at Austin
Leveraging Your Skills: Rewrite that Resumé and Market Yourself
Wednesday, 1:00 - 1:50 pm
Two career services directors discuss ways job seekers can expand their resumés to appeal to a broader audience of hiring managers in and out of libraries. Find out the practices to use and avoid during interviews.
Tara Lagulli, School of Information and Karen Landolt, Natural Sciences Career Services, University of Texas
Special Libraries Division and Reference Round Table
50 Apps / 50 Minutes (Net Fair I)
2:00 – 2:50 pm
We’ll introduce 50 apps – some for business and some for fun. All platforms, including Android and iPad will be discussed. Join us for a lively, fast-paced and fun presentation.
Laura Young, Research, Austin Ventures
Automation and Technology Round Table
Salary Negotiation: Yes You Can!
2:00 - 3:50 Pm
Find out the basics of salary negotiation from a corporate hiring manager who will tell you what employers consider during this process. Learn what to ask for and how to ask for it! A business meeting follows the program at 3:00 pm
Mike Millard, Austin Ventures
Special Libraries Division
Librarians on the Move: New Jobs for the Information Professional
4:00 - 4:50 pm
A panel of librarians offers an open Q&A with attendees. Panelists will share how they moved from libraries into new positions outside libraries. Find out what worked for them.
Claire Boetticher, Research Analyst, Exxon Mobile Tuan Nguyen, Library Sales Consultant, Mackin Educational Resources; Lindsey Schell, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, EBL--eBook Library; Beth Wagner, US EPA Region 6 Sunder Ram Library, DSI; and Laura Young, Research, Austin Ventures
Special Libraries Division and Reference Round Table
Business Reference: Using LinkedIn and Other Social Media Tools
10:00 - 10:50 Am
Find new ways to use social media tools to gather current information about companies at no cost. Learn to show your customers how to use LinkedIn, Twitter, and FaceBook for competitive intelligence.
April Kessler, Reference and Information Services, University of Texas at Austin; and Laura Young, Research, Austin Ventures
At an Austin area SCIP meeting I was inspired by the keynote speaker Dr. Jay Paap. Paap is a seasoned technology and innovation management professional and now a faculty member at Sloan Business School at MIT.
Most companies come up with an idea and then they ask CI to determine the market. Paap suggests putting this on its head. Use CI to gather information on how the market is changing to determine how companies could capitalize on that change and create a solution to solve a new problem. Paap is a proponent of using competitive intelligence early in the process of innovation. CI can "help anticipate needs by looking at leading industries and external forces affecting your customers" and "anticipate technologies by monitoring sources of disruption..."
"Innovation starts with intelligence." Competitive Intelligence can help companies manage risk by developing business cases when hard numbers are lacking. CI can be used to anticipate the drivers of innovation, adoption of new technology, competitors intentions, and it can provide inputs for project selection, execution, and review. CI "ensures that decision about innovative activities are based on the best available information."
Paap definitely understands the value of information and competitive intelligence. Seeing how CI informs innovation adds more value to the CI service and helps companies see the return on investment.
