It’s been a little while since Windows was thought to be cool but the Kinect may change all that. The Kinect is a voice and motion-sensing device that was originally designed as a feature for the Xbox gaming console.

A version of the device also works with Windows-operated PCs, and shortly after its launch in February, people started discovering innovative ways to use it.

Innovative Uses for the Kinect

For instance, at the Chicago Auto Show a few months ago, the chief marketing manager for Nissan North America used Kinect for Windows to generate a virtual tour of the Pathfinder’s upgraded interior. This proved particularly beneficial since the marketing manager only had the Pathfinder’s empty shell to exhibit at the Auto Show. A large screen powered by Kinect showed visitors just what they’d be viewing if they were actually sitting within the finished body of the new Pathfinder. The screen, for example, displayed the car’s dual moon roofs and many other features.

Microsoft is cooperating with companies to develop applications for the Kinect. This not only promotes ingenuity but it puts the Kinect at the center of some of the most recent innovations. One example of a company that is working closely with Microsoft in this way is Boeing. Boeing used the Kinect to make virtual tours of its jets. Another example is a hospital in Canada. They’re using the Kinect’s gesture-recognition capability to swipe through CT scans. This removes the danger of getting germs on their hands from a keyboard or mouse.

Kinect: A Solid Hit

Microsoft hit a home run when they invented the Kinect. The Xbox 360 was last year’s best-selling video game console, and they have the Kinect to thank for that. Since November of 2010 Microsoft has sold over 18 million Kinect devices.

It may seem hard to believe, but Windows and its creator might have actually found something that is not only useful, but cool, which can do nothing but good for their reputation.

These days, whenever you post an open position on the Internet, countless people reply. Many of these people are eligible candidates for the job, so you call them in for an interview. But how do you dig through them and find the truly impressive and enthusiastic people? Since the interview is in essence all you can go on, your interview questions are important.

Make sure that your interview questions solicit the data that will help you select the individual with the traits you want. If you use a cookie cutter approach to the interview, you’ll probably get uninspired, cookie cutter answers.

Ask the Right Questions

Rather then asking people what their previous positions were, ask them the way they positively impacted their positions at their previous employers. Did they create any processes that improved efficiency? Did they help their employers cut costs, if so, how?

One of the most common things to ask a candidate concerns their strengths and weaknesses. Avoid asking them to list these; most of us have predetermined answers. Instead ask them what they bring to the culture of a company, or ask them what they do to make their job more satisfying. The responses you get to these types of questions will help you to gauge the actual resourcefulness of the person you are evaluating.

Another method you could use to gauge creativity is to give them a task to perform. Something simple, for example have them write their ideas about what their ideal work environment would be like. Or they could brainstorm services and products for a company of your choosing. You could keep it light and fun; the goal is to get a snapshot of their brainstorming abilities, and creativity.

In today’s marketplace, employers have the benefit of choosing amongst many talented people. So in order to pick the very best, they need to change the types of questions they ask in job interviews.

There aren’t many people who look forward to going on business trips. They are an inconvenience and expensive for the company. Business travelers often feel hurried, which leads to insufficient sleep and poor eating habits, which exacerbates stress. Not to mention dealing with Airports and long-term parking. For this reason, many businesses choose to use videoconferencing if possible. But do you think that business travel is on its way out? Will Videoconferencing replace it completely?

The End of Business Travel?

But is this something that we should strive for in business? Is it the best thing if videoconferencing replaces face-to-face meetings altogether? Perhaps not, consider the differences between meetings that are face-to-face versus videoconferencing.

During a videoconference, participants from across the globe sign on, say their hellos, and get to the business at hand. The level of brainstorming is usually limited because people worry about the stability of their connections or succumb to the interruptions of the offices where they sit.

The Benefits of Face-to-Face Time

At in-person meetings, though, agendas have a way of falling by the wayside, and that is a good thing. Meetings may start only after a couple of minutes of personal chatter and they might end with participants swapping office stories. Again, this can be good. Often, the most effective business ideas arise from these moments of off-topic discussion.

Business Travel is Here to Stay

Humans are a social species. Due to this, it’s unlikely that business travel will disappear altogether. However, in today’s economy, many businesses just can’t afford to send their sales people away each and every time the need to meet a customer. For this reason, developments in videoconferencing are essential but the benefits of in-person meetings are so great that the savvy business owner will not abandon them for videoconferencing all together.

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How many kids grew up anticipating the day when humans would travel the globe with individual jet packs strapped to their backs? How many imagined full meals that come in pill form or teleporters? Those technologies haven’t happened. However, in the last 2 decades alone, we have seen enough new tech to fill an early 1990s science-fiction flick. With tablet computers we can transport all the computing power of a bulky desktop computer in our hands. With smartphones we can instantly send text messages to our friends and thanks to GPS, we never have to get lost while driving again.

So, why don’t we have teleporters and hovercrafts? What is preventing us from taking these leaps in technology?

Building a Better Battery

As we move into a more mobile world, batteries grow in significance. They are a foundation of our technological world these days. Therefore, if we are restricted by their power, and ability to hold a charge, the technology which uses them is also limited. For example, you wouldn’t want your jet pack to loose its charge in flight. Recently, researchers at Chicago’s Northwestern University found a way to make a much more powerful lithium-ion battery than the ones we have today. We explored this more thoroughly in a blog post last week. When these batteries eventually hit the market, we will likely see a boom in technological advancements.

Improving Internet Access

Another obstacle to conquer is that not enough people have access to the Internet. The truth is, most of the globe doesn’t have access to it. This is naturally restricting advancements in technology. It goes back to the essential idea of the more minds we have working on a problem, the faster we’ll solve it.

The Business of New Tech

This might not come as a surprise, but business matters hamper technological advancements as well. For instance, patent laws, and government regulations. If these things are not clear, innovations can sit in red tape limbo for some time. To prevent this last step bottleneck of the creation process, laws should be clear and easy to comprehend.

The good news is that none of these limitations can truly stop technology from advancing. Just think ahead to the holiday season of 2020. You never know what innovations will be waiting for us.

Adobe Photoshop is an amazing tool. It lets organizations edit the images they need to create professional-looking brochures, pamphlets, and marketing materials. The problem is that Photoshop is far from inexpensive. A quick online scan will show that newer versions of this image-editing program can run higher then $600. For small business owners with limited funds, this program just is not practical. This doesn’t mean, however, that these small business owners don’t have photo-editing options. In fact, businesses can choose from a number of alternatives that are not only cheaper but are actually free.

These programs might not contain all the components that Photoshop boasts, but they have more than enough photo-editing features for most small business owners. Here are three of the best free photo-editing programs now available:

GIMP

GIMP stands for GNU image manipulation program. It is quite easy to use and contains the most used features of Photoshop. There are many different versions of GIMP and best of all it is completely free.

Paint.NET

Do you remember MSPaint? It came standard with the Windows operating system. Paint.NET is its successor and is a really powerful and free photo editor. It comes with its own special effects and an unlimited undo; this is great for people who want to experiment with the effects. The one negative of this program is it only works with Windows.

Picnik

Picnik is fast, free, and easy to use. It works on the Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems and you don’t have to download files to use it. It has some unique special effects as well, making it a very popular photo-editing program.

Business owners needn’t let Photoshop’s high price keep them from inserting professionally edited photos into their marketing materials. With only a bit of online hunting, even the most frugal of business owners will find the perfect alternative.

The more we rely on mobile devices the more we rely on one small technology. Batteries. Have you ever reached for your smartphone to look something up or to get directions and found that it has died? Well, in a few years, that might be something you don’t have to worry about.

A Better Battery on the Way?

A team of engineers at Chicago’s Northwestern University may have found a way to make a battery that lasts longer and charges itself in a few minutes, rather then overnight. This story reports on these research efforts. This is fantastic news for smartphone users worldwide.

What they are working on is a new lithium-ion battery that has more then 10 times the life of present-day batteries. Moreover, after a year of operation, which the researchers estimate to be about 150 charges, these new lithium-ion batteries would continue to be 5 times more effective then today’s lithium-ion batteries.

A Charged Battery for a Week

In the end, this new cell phone battery could stay charged for a full week, even with all the apps we use daily. And the charging time? Below 15 minutes. Which will sure make our lives easier, but more than this, this new battery technology may lead to smaller and more efficient batteries for electric cars.  This could in turn, have a dramatic impact on our reliance on fossil fuels.

Batteries Powering Technological Change

Advancements in battery technology are not something we typically pay attention to. But this one may have a massive positive impact on our lives, and not just where convenience is concerned. This new lithium-ion battery may provide the key to a greater technological shift.

When it comes to online search engines, Google is still king. Microsoft isn’t happy with this. That is why the company introduced Bing in 2009, its own search engine and a direct competitor with Google. Ever since then, Bing has gone the way of most Google-search competitors: It’s mostly an afterthought when computer users need to search the web. Most searchers still rely on Google for this task. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that Bing offers nothing for computer users. The truth is, Microsoft did a lot right with Bing, and the search engine delivers plenty of appealing features that users should not dismiss.

Taking Another Look at Bing

When you search on Bing, you will get more information relating to your search results than you’ll get from Google. Bing’s results feature a left-hand navigation panel filled with Quick Tabs that allow users to focus their searches. There’s also a center row of search results that are grouped into logical categories. This makes it easier for users to find multimedia files or quick answers.

Bing Goes Beyond Search Results

Another great thing about Bing is that it doesn’t just bring up search results. It also brings up relevant videos, music, and images. Although this is a feature of Google as well, Bing makes it more user friendly, as the categories are right beneath the search bar. Bing beats Google for travel searches as well. They use something called Farecast Technology in the Bing Travel site; it lets users find the most affordable flights quickly and easily.

Bing Video Search Shines

Bing stands apart from Google when it comes to searching for videos as well. Bing allows users to specify how long they would like videos to be, what resolution they want, and what screen size they would prefer. In addition, to get a preview of the video, users only have to hover their cursor over the video to play a portion of it without clicking on it.

These are a few reasons why Bing shouldn’t be overlooked. Google might be the current king of search engines, but Bing has a lot to offer surfers of the Web.

Cloud computing has certainly caught on. People can access data that’s stored in the cloud—databases located far away from their own computer drives. They can store their favorite songs, access powerful word-processing software, and send their business proposals to the cloud. This saves a lot of computer memory, as everything that’s kept in the cloud isn’t stored on a personal computer. The outcome is a faster computing experience, as less programs gum up the running speed of home computers.

Not All Clouds are the Same

However, not all clouds are the same. There’s the public cloud, the one with which we are most familiar. But then there’s the hybrid cloud as well. As its name indicates, the hybrid cloud is a combination of two different types of clouds, the public cloud and a private cloud.

The hybrid cloud generally works like this: A company provides some resources in-house. For example, it may store latest consumer data on its private in-house cloud. It might also store employee records, new marketing campaigns, and current proposals to new clients on its in-house storage. That same business, however, might store older, archived data on a public cloud service. This frees up space on the business’ servers, and permits its in-house computers to function more efficiently.

The Hybrid Cloud Approach Makes Sense

Taking a hybrid cloud approach to data storage permits businesses to take advantage of the space-saving benefits of the public cloud without also exposing their sensitive current data to third-party providers. Put simply, the hybrid cloud provides businesses with protection, cost-savings, and efficiency.

Because of this it’s no surprise that the hybrid cloud is so widely used. Businesses these days have too much data to store on their own servers but they don’t want the security risk that can come with the public cloud. Utilizing the hybrid cloud they are able to keep space in their systems free while safeguarding their data.

Thanks to improved technology, an increasing number of employees are able to complete most or all of their work from home. Smartphones, tablet computers, teleconferencing, and WiFi-equipped bookstores and coffee shops have made this achievable. This presents a big advantage for employers: the more employees that work from home, the less money companies have to spend. Many companies, for instance, don’t have assigned computers and desks for each of their workers because a lot of their workforce is working remotely. In addition, employees working remotely are frequently more productive; they are not wasting time and energy driving to work every day. And they’re not exchanging office gossip in front of the water cooler when in the office.

Remote Worker Challenges

Remote workers and contractors do present at least one considerable challenge to employers: It can be hard for employers to effectively monitor the hours that their workers are putting in. How do employers know, after all, if their remote employees are pounding away at their keyboards or playing Angry Birds on their smartphones all day?

One good way to keep track of the amount of work being completed by remote workers is to set reasonable goals that they need to hit. This puts the emphasis on the end result and keeps the manager from worrying about it, as long as the goals are being met. This also gives the employee freedom to work within the hours they are most productive.

Setting Remote Worker Deadlines

Employers might tell their remote workers that they have to turn in a specified amount of work every Wednesday and Friday. This will make sure that remote employees are doing their work. Employers might also schedule regular updates by phone, video chat, or through instant messaging, during which workers can explain how far along they are with certain tasks. Some employers may opt to require that their remote workers spend at least one day a week, or two days a month, on site. This gives these workers face time with their managers, something that helps everyone stay focused on upcoming deadlines and goals.

Off-Site Not a Permanent Condition

Employers need to remember, as well, that remote workers don’t have to stay that way. If employers see that their off-site employees are not meeting deadlines or are delivering sub-par work, they can require that these workers return to the office on a full-time basis. Trust remains the key component of a remote working relationship. Organisations must place some trust in their workers that they will finish their jobs on time. Workers must demonstrate that they are worthy of this trust by hitting their deadlines, delivering quality work, and replying quickly to phone calls or email messages.

You are a busy person; you really are always focusing on several projects and trying to hit deadlines.  It’s hard enough to find the time to fit a trip to the gym in, let alone play games on your smartphone. You would like smartphone apps that will conserve time, not waste it, but you don’t have time to hunt for them. Well, you are in luck; below is a list of 5 smartphone apps that can actually make your like simplier.

Top 5 Business Apps

1. WhosHere: This app allows you to find freelance contractors in your area swiftly. Say you need to complete a project due tomorrow in Chicago and you are flying today. You can search for freelancers with the app then send a free text or call to the people who respond to your search.
2. Locale: It is embarrassing when your phone goes off in the middle of a movie, but what about during a board meeting? This never has to happen again if you use Locale. It permits you to select specific phone settings determined by location. So when you enter your office or the library your phone automatically goes to vibrate.
3. WaveSecure: One of the risks of traveling frequently is the chance of loosing your phone. This app will let you lock your phone and backup the data stored on it remotely, as well as track its location through the SIM card. Talk about peace of mind.
4. Bump: If you’re in sales you need to collect contact details quickly. With Bump all you have to do is touch two phones together to exchange information, no more post-tradeshow data entry.
5. Scan2PDF Mobile: Need to scan receipts for your expense report, or proposals for your boss to examine? This app lets you do that using your smartphone’s camera, change them into color PDFs, then e-mail them to your computer’s desktop.
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