Freelance Jobs From Home – The Easy Way to Earn

Freelance jobs from home have to be the most coveted careers of all.Anyone aspiring to work for themselves, naturally wants to do work that they enjoy. But can you do what you truly love while freelancing from home? Well, that depends. What do you truly love to do?Let’s explore some of the more obscure but potentially profitable freelance jobs that you could do from the comfort of home.Freelance Technical WritingAre you knowledgeable about cars, boats, electronics, computer technology, musical instruments, toy trains? What do you know inside and out that you could write about in great detail? Can you simplify technical information so that the common person can understand it?If so, then you have what it takes to freelance from home as a technical writer. There are an abundance of opportunities in this field and companies large and small realize the benefits of hiring telecommuters to do this kind of work.Freelance CopywritingAre you a good story teller? Are you a good writer, with good grammar and exceptional spelling? Can you describe things with enthusiasm and write compelling copy that attracts interest?With the popularity of the Internet, there are thousands upon thousands of companies looking for skilled writers like you to help them promote their products and services through websites, white papers, eBooks and brochures. Copywriters are in high demand these days and your income is only limited by your enthusiasm, energy and persistence. The more you write, the more you earn and in time -the more you can charge for your services.Selling Crafts OnlineMaybe you are not a good writer or do not enjoy writing. Perhaps you are more of a crafts-person instead. There are plenty of freelance jobs from home for people who like to use their hands to create new and exciting things.Do you like to knit, sew, make crafts, paint or draw? Are you a talented photographer or web-designer? These could easily be classified as freelance jobs from home. How, you ask? eBay, Craigslist and other free to the public sites!Auction sites such as eBay, iSell, iOffer and Amazon have made it easy for craftspeople to connect with the lovers and collectors of their work -from all over the world. Auction sites are free to join and easy to sell with. Just remember, people like to see what they’re buying, so be sure to use plenty of photos and show off your items from many angles.Public access sites such as Craigslist, USads.net and USfreeAds allow service providers to advertise for free and connect with consumers willing to pay for their particular talents.You may not be able to generate enough money to quit your day job…but then again -you just might. If you love what you do and you are good at what you do, there is nothing stopping you from succeeding. In fact, most successful people are successful because they love what they do.Remember the old saying: “If you truly love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”These are but a few freelance jobs from home that can give you the freedom to do what you truly love and earn a nice living while doing it.For more tips, tools and free resources to find your perfect home business opportunity, visit my website linked below. I am confident that if you have the will to work from home, you will succeed just as I have and find the freedom and happiness you desire.

What Does a Product Manager Do?

The role of a product manager tends to vary heavily depending on product lifecycle and stage of the company. Due to this variability, there is a wide range of day-to-day activities, but ultimately a product manager is still responsible for doing whatever it takes to collaborate with multiple teams and move different conversations towards closure. Many product managers state that the skill of empathy is one of the most important for a product manager as you need to be able to understand everyone’s motives and make sure that you are collaborating and persuading people to support your decisions.To provide an example of what I do on a daily basis, below is an agenda of a typical day:8:30AM: Wake up and check major tech blogs (I work as a PM in the gaming industry) and general news to make sure I’m up to date with the competition and market. Check my Google Doc PM Task List and add/edit any items I need to complete for the day. If I have extra time, I’ll try to complete at least 20-30 minutes of any online course I happen to be taking at the time. It’s important for me to be constantly learning a subject I’m not familiar with to make sure I’m personally growing. I try my best to avoid e-mail until I get into the office or else I end up just spending my valuable morning time responding or cleaning up my inbox.9:30AM: Head into the office and grab some quick breakfast before getting ready for the daily morning standup with my dev team.10:00AM: Every day, we run a daily 15 minute team standup, which is generally a standard part of the agile development process. In this meeting, we have a dedicated Project Manager who runs each session and asks 3 key questions 1) What did you work on yesterday? 2) What will you be working on today? 3) Are there any problems hindering you from completing your work?10:15AM-1:00PM: This work chunk is generally divided by e-mails, quick meetings, and KPI updates. One of the first things I do is update all of my KPI dashboards to make sure metrics aren’t out of whack and everything is running smoothly. Right now, I’m on a fairly new product and a lot of my meetings revolve around discussions for new core features that I help to scope out as well as prioritize in our ever growing product roadmap. We’re rushing to do a global launch on the Android platform so it’s imperative that we shift around all features that can wait until later builds.1:00PM-1:30PM: Grab a quick lunch with co-workers and generally just hang out. I’m fortunate that my co-workers are also really good friends and we all get along really well.1:30PM-4:00PM: I spend some time sitting with our sales team (in gaming we call them a live-operations team that handles events and sales within our games) to discuss a new admin tool that our sales team wants our dev team to build. I sync up with the engineering manager to briefly discuss technical requirements and then spend some time wireframing (in PPT, we don’t use anything fancy like Balsamiq) the tool and passing it along to the engineering manager who gets the right dev member to start working on the tool. I also spend a lot of time pulling data to run ad-hoc analyses on recent features that went live as well as dig into why our acquisition rate has been slowly dropping recently.4:00PM-5:30PM: Meet with Product Marketing to get a sense of what our recent yields have been looking like and to decide whether or not we want to start ramping up marketing spend. We’ve been worried about rising CPI (Cost per Install) lately and wanted to test various ad creatives to see if split testing various ads might lead to lower user acquisition costs. Ultimately, we decide we want to hold off ramping marketing spend for awhile until we can isolate the source of lower yields recently (could be product, market, or marketing related).5:30PM-6:00PM: Drink with the co-workers in the office and hang out for awhile before heading home for the day.Although the list above is just one sample day in the life of a product manager, there are definitely set responsibilities that a product manager is always trying to find time to do:Strategy Planning – As a PM, I always keep a tab of short/mid/long term product feature ideas and it’s extremely important to always be thinking about whether or not these ideas make sense given recent market changes or data analyses that you’ve performed.Project Management – A good PM is very organized with gathering information from various teams and properly summarizing/documenting the most important information to be shared with appropriate stakeholders. For example, I need to maintain a clean product roadmap with estimated completion times and release dates not just for myself, but also to share with product marketing so that they have a heads up to when they should start working on new campaigns or ad creatives.Data Analysis – Data is crucial to making well-informed product decisions so PMs should be able to understand and hopefully pull the data they need to run analyses. Learning SQL and Excel are a must to run basic data analysis on the job.User Testing – It’s imperative to find time to sit down or at least speak with your users so that you can understand their problems and get feedback on what you can improve or create.

What Can Facebook Teach Product Managers About Reaching Customers?

I’m pretty sure that by now just about everyone out there has heard about Facebook. Facebook is the largest social networking platform going these days. What a lot of us may not know about is the fact Facebook employs a lot of product managers whose job it is to help customers advertise on Facebook. This job is a little bit different from the typical product manager job, but perhaps we can all learn something from them…What Makes Facebook Advertising So Popular?Let’s be frank here – Facebook is very, very popular. Facebook is the world’s largest social network – they currently have 1.3 billion users. In the U.S., 1 out of ever 6 minutes spent online was spent on Facebook. 1 out of every 5 minutes of mobile usage was spent on Facebook. Clearly the Facebook product managers have got their product development definition right and have a real winner on their hands.However, Facebook is now attempting to make their product more appealing to advertisers. Facebook first started selling ads on its site 10 years ago. Facebook is competing with Google who delivers ads that match what people are currently looking for and TV which can reach a mass audience. Facebook product managers claim that they can both reach exactly the right audience and then measure what they do once they’ve gotten the message.No, Facebook is not going to be replacing TV advertising. However, it is starting to look like there might be a role for it to help advertisers to achieve their goals. Not only is Facebook really, really big, but they also have the ability to achieve a very personal engagement with the people that the advertisers are trying to sell to.How Are Facebook Ads Created?The Facebook product managers understand that their advertiser’s customers, Facebook users, are being overwhelmed with ads already. In order for a Facebook ad to be effective, it’s going to have to be able to capture the attention of the end user when they see it. If the product managers can figure out how to do this correctly, then they’ll something else to add to their product manager resume.This kind of product creation process is very hard to do. The Facebook product managers realize it and so they bring together a lot of people in what they call “publishing garages”. These are multi-day meetings in which ideas are kicked around and the goals for an advertising campaign are hashed out. The final outcome of one of these meetings will be the ads that will be run on Facebook.In order to successfully create a product that will achieve the client’s results, the Facebook product managers create model customers in order to understand what they are looking for. Using Facebook’s immense collection of user data, they can then display the ads only for people who have shown an interest in products or topics that are similar to what is being sold. The final step is to agree with the customer on exactly what subset of Facebook’s users the new ad(s) should be matched with.What Does All Of This Mean For You?The product managers at Facebook have a real challenge on their hands. They are part of a very popular company; however, they now need to convince advertisers that spending money to advertise on Facebook is worth their time. I’m willing to bet that this was never a part of their product manager job description. As with all such new things, this can be a real challenge.The one thing that Facebook can offer to advertisers that really seems to capture their attention is the ability to target their ads. TV is a great way to reach the masses, but Facebook allows advertisers to become a lot more selective. Facebook creates ads by having their product managers assemble “publishing garages” where all of the customer’s and Facebook’s players can come together to plan out how to create just the right advertisement.As product managers we can learn from what the Facebook product managers are trying to accomplish. When we are faced with customers who are interested in our product, but who may be doubtful that it can solve their problem, we should take the time to relate it to what they do know.Facebook does this by comparing themselves to television. When it comes time to determine how our customers can use our product, we need to take the time to meet with all of the right players. Only by designing a solution that works for them will we be able to make sure that they’ll have the best product experience. Perhaps if we can do all of this, we’ll be as successful as Facebook is!

Is it Really So Difficult to Change a Lifestyle?

The contemporary lifestyle is generally not conducive to healthy living. People drink too much, eat too much, and some even smoke too much. In addition, most live in daily stress with sleep deprivation. Furthermore, many rely on caffeine and medications to keep them alert and functional. The good news is that many are aware of the need to change lifestyle for the better. The bad news is that it is difficult to change lifestyle: bad habits are easy to form, but difficult to eradicate.But is it really so difficult to change lifestyle?It is more than just willpower: you require strategies to change lifestyle.You need not only to resolve to make a change in your diet and lifestyle, but also to re-commit yourself on a regular basis with determination and perseverance. Taking the first step is diffcult, but none the less essential. The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” So, take your first step, and do it NOW, not later. Procrastination is the enemy of change.Do not allow yourself to slack. A lifelong commitment to change means lifelong healthy living.Be positive, rather than be anxious or fearful. Positive reinforcement is more conducive to changing a lifelong habit than negative emotions of anxiety and fear. Break yourself of bad food habits for healthy living. Reward yourself with a healthy alternative, such as an activity (a facial, a massage, a symphony or an opera), instead of a food item. Rewarding yourself with food usually perpetuates the sin of food craving.Always set reasonable and achievable goals for changing a behaviour or life pattern. Without goals, there will only be excuses and procrastination.Give yourself positive personal affirmations and personal messages to increase self-esteem to change lifestyle. Always, visualize your success. Seeing is believing. Visual images may make you see your own future success in your mind’s eye.Change lifestyle gradually. Tackle just one major change at a time. Do not attempt to change everything overnight: this is often a recipe for failure. Take one step at a time, and small steps at that.Expect to slip from time to time. Relapse is only natural. It is human nature to err. Consider it a learning experience; recharge yourself immediately and move on. Do not look back; otherwise, you may experience guilt and inadequacy.Get support from family and friends. Do not strive to fight against all odds all by yourself. Sharing your struggle to change lifestyle is the key to success. Keep a daily journal to record all your health and weight problems, and note how they may be connected to your lifestyle.Observe your emotional problems, if you have any, and see how they may be related to your social life or diet.If you think you need to change lifestyle, maybe you should. It is never too late to change for the better. It is your life ahead of you. Of course, on the other hand, if you don’t think you need to make any change to your current lifestyle, it is your perception and your choice too.

Pimp Your Space With Teenagers Bedroom Home Improvement

As your child grows up so do their tastes. They will change their clothing styles and well as their hair styles. The place they will like to spend a lot of time in, will need to take on a new look as well. A teenagers bedroom home improvement can be a lot of fun as well as a challenge. We may not like what they like, but then did our parents like what we liked when we were their age? Definitely, all the baby, toddler stuff will have to go. They are looking for their own unique look that says, this is who I am and I’m not a baby anymore. This article will give some tips for a teenagers bedroom home improvement that can bring you and your teenager closer together.Probably one of the first things you will need to do is change the color of the room. A teenagers bedroom home improvement will probably take a brighter color than you already have. The fun of it is that, you can take your teenager with you to make decisions. Make it a fun time for you and your teenager. You may want to go to lunch together as you make decisions and choices. We don’t often find special time to spend with our children, and this is a prime opportunity to get to know your teen. While you are in the paint department, you might want to look at some decals or pictures to place on the walls. They have great sport stuff available now that you just stick up on the wall and it stays in place without glue or pins. Helping your teen choose these items will make a teenagers bedroom home improvement a real bonding experience for both of you. The one thing you need to remember is that, this is their space to pimp out, so let them be themselves if it’s within reason.Another teenagers bedroom home improvement might be new carpeting. Maybe the carpeting is old or babyish and they need a new look. It could be just a new throw rug that could make the difference. You might allow them to choose a new bedding set to go with the room change. Remember that your teenagers bedroom home improvement might not be the look you would choose, but within reason, allow them to make the choices. You can add your two cents, but they ultimately have to live with the choice.If you are needing to add a desk and computer to your teenagers bedroom home improvement, you don’t have to spend a fortune. You can often find these things at a second hand store or at a garage sale. Look in the newspaper under the headings you are looking for and you might be surprised at the deals you can get. You might even be able to add a whole new bedroom set including mattress and all for very little money. A teenagers bedroom home improvement could make a huge difference in the relationship between you and your teen. Let them know you care about their needs, and that you realize they are growing up. The closer you are to your teen, the less likely they will get into trouble in the days ahead, and I don’t think you can put a price on that. Use your teenagers bedroom home improvement time together, to make a difference in the way you view each other, and love each other unconditionally.

Quick Easy Guide to Weight Loss and Dieting for Beginners

Are you sick of being overweight? Does the reflection of the person you see in the mirror not match who you wish you were? Well, you’re not alone because obesity is one of the evils that are plaguing the modern society. Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows that it’s not as easy as just following weight loss tips, especially when they lead a hectic lifestyle that goes far beyond the standard 9-to-5 routine.However, don’t be discouraged because you’re not in this fight alone. Today, we will talk about some of our most favorite tips for weight loss and how to use them all in your day-to-day life.Best weight loss tips1. Remove distractions at the dinner tableAccording to experts, people tend who tend to eat while watching television usually end up consuming larger servings. This is one of the worst overeating habits that people hardly talk about. So, remove the television set and pay attention to what you’re eating and how much you’re eating.
When you eat slower, the stomach will have the necessary time to signal that you are full and have not eaten too much.2. Throw out the temptations one by oneTo lose weight, you must remain faithful to the weight loss regime. And to remain true to your routine, you must get rid of all temptation foods from the freezer, cabinet, and kitchen. Get rid of all fatty foods and excessive sweet substances and replace them with low-fat snacks that don’t contain a lot of calories. Sugar-free pudding and low-fat popcorn are our favorite health snacks.3. Stop the bad habitsOld habits die hard is a common saying, but what does it mean in the context of weight loss? While most of us were raised to believe that it’s not okay to waste food because there are starving children all around the world, the truth is you should not consume everything that’s on your plate, especially if you’re someone who is trying to follow the best diet to weight loss.It’s important that you listen to your body and stop eating when you’re full, eat six small meals a day instead of three big ones, and avoid the trips to KFC and McDonald’s whenever possible.4. Find an exercise buddyWhile it’s evident that a practical exercise routine should be a part of any weight loss process, it would do you good if you found yourself a workout buddy. When you work out with someone who shares the same goal as you, it’s easier to keep each other motivated, share health food recipes, spot each other at the gym, and not to forget share healthy meals together.But what do I eat to lose weight?Listen, we know that you’re excited and nervous at the same time with the thought of not getting to eat your favorite snacks. But dieting doesn’t have to be that hard. The last thing you want to do is go on a crash course diet that causes rapid weight loss but makes gaining back weight even faster.Remember, weight loss is a gradual process, and without a solid plan to guide you along the way, the end result will be less than satisfactory. Not to worry; we can tell you about some food to eat for weight loss so that you stay right on the path of your goal.Food like apples, yogurt, almonds, avocados, grapefruit, green tea, and green leafy vegetables can substitute for snacks when you’re following weight loss tips. These not only have less calorie content but also come with vital nutrients to keep us healthy.Sticking to a fixed dieting regimen, not skipping breakfast, not eating too much and frequently eating in small amounts also can help you a great deal.Can everyone follow a weight loss regime?Yes, everyone can lose weight if they have a proper exercise routine figured out and are following the best diet to weight loss. Just remember to take it slow and steady in order to adopt a lifestyle that sustainable. Permanent changes to one’s lifestyle are the only way to remain at the target weight or else its back to square one all over again.Even though our guide barely scratches the surface of the huge industry focused towards losing weight, the tips we’ve mentioned will be a good starting point towards leading a healthy lifestyle.

Reclaiming Good Mental Health

What is good mental health? We are all more or less mentally healthy, and this usually varies through our lives especially as we deal with difficult life events, change and so on. Whether we call this psychological wellbeing, happiness, contentment, positive mindset, all these terms relate to good mental health.With our physical health, it’s part of our everyday discourse to be aspirational. We want to feel physically fit, energetic, strong, balanced in our weight, eating a healthy diet, supple, resilient and not prone to minor ailments. Sure we complain about our problems, and talk about how we can’t do all the things we know we ought to do. We know it’s not easy to stay physically healthy without working at it, especially if we’ve experienced health problems. We know that even if we reach the peak of physical fitness, we can’t maintain this for the rest of our lives without paying attention to it.Research tells us that good mental health is even more beneficial than good physical health. A positive mental outlook increases the rate and speed of recovery from serious, even life threatening, illness. Psychological resilience and wellbeing gives people the strength to turn problems into challenges into triumphs.Yet whenever I ask a group of people to tell me what words come into mind in relation to ‘mental health’, their responses are about mental ill-health! It’s as if the term has been hi-jacked to become totally problem-focused.In the meantime, we’re experiencing an epidemic of mental ill-health. About 1 in 4 people are experiencing some form of common mental health problem such as depression, anxiety and various stress related symptoms. GP surgeries are overwhelmed with such problems, mental health services are only able to provide support for the 1% of the population with much more severe mental health difficulties, and there’s a plethora of largely unregulated services, treatments and remedies out on the private market. A recent research study showed that the majority of long term sickness absence from work resulted from stress related conditions.The trouble with focusing on the problems and the pain, is that that’s what we become experts in. We’re looking for cures and treatments to fix the problem, instead of focusing on what makes for good mental health. We know that physical health is multi-dimensional – no-one imagines that pumping iron to build your muscles is a recipe for overall physical health, although it will certainly make you stronger for certain activities.So what are the essentials of good mental health?Connection is certainly one of the best known. Having positive close relationships is good for our mental health, as is having a wider network of friends, colleagues and acquaintances which will vary over time. Giving to others is another really important aspect of connection, improving our sense of self worth and wellbeing.Challenge is about learning and development, it’s how we grow. For children, everyday brings new challenges, yet as adults we often become increasingly fearful of change, unwilling to learn new skills or put ourselves in unfamiliar situations. So expanding our comfort zone, sometimes in small ways if we’re feeling particularly vulnerable, will help develop our self-confidence and sense of personal achievement.Composure means a sense of balance, and ability to distance ourselves from our thoughts and emotions. It means our ability to respond rather than react. This could be described as our sense of spiritual connection, which may come through a particular belief or faith, or may be found through connection with nature. A mentally healthy person will feel an inner strength of spirit, and find ways to support that.Character relates to the way in which we interpret our experiences and our responses to them. We all have our own personal story, or stories, which we may or may not tell others. We may cast ourselves as the hero, the victim or the villain, and however we do this will impact generally on our mental health. Someone who has experienced severe life trauma may have great difficulty piecing together their story at all, leaving them feeling literally fragmented. Good mental health means having a strong sense of personal values, awareness of our own strengths, skills and resources, and personal stories of learning from mistakes, survival, success and appreciation.Creativity represents the fun, childlike aspects of our mental health. As children we are naturally creative and we play. As we grow into adulthood, our creativity and playfulness is often discouraged or devalued, and this can cause great frustration, literally diminishing the capacity of our brain to function as well as it could. Exploring creative activities has often been found to have a powerful therapeutic effect, and good mental health certainly depends in part on opportunities to bring fun, playfulness and creativity into our lives.These 5 C’s of good mental health offer a framework within which we can think about our mental health in the same way as we might our physical health. It’s pretty damned hard to be a perfect specimen of physical health,but then who needs to be perfect? Just like our physical health, our mental health is a work in progress and always will be.In years gone by, many people with physical illnesses were treated cruelly because of ignorance and shame. I recall when cancer was spoken in hushed whispers as the Big C. Nowadays mental ill-health is the ‘elephant in the room’ which we need to be looking at long and hard, exposing to practical common sense and intelligent discussion.World Mental Health Day on October 10 has been a timely reminder that good mental health really is something we can aspire to for everyone. Let’s make it so!

Something To Know About Education

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”-Nelson MandelaIn a world where ignorance leads to suffering in innumerable ways, education is indeed the need of the hour. Defining education is a difficult task as education is often confused with literacy. The question that arises then is what is education? Is it a polished metropolitan approach to the profanities of urban life? Is it a rebellious voice raised against the socio-political atrocities committed upon us every day? Or is it, in plain and simple terms, the methodology that makes us realize the worth of things and their value in different aspects of life? But where the answer plays an elusive temptress, the questions become more and more baffling. Broadly speaking, education can be defined as an experience which makes us think, feel, decide or arrive at conclusions in a particular way. Therefore, a small incident like learning to walk to acquiring a degree in philosophy, both come under the broad umbrella of education. Education is that which teaches us facts and truths of life alike.Now that the more difficult task of defining education has been dealt with, let’s figure out the categories that education can be divided into. Education can be a formal and an informal one. Formal education is meted out to us in educational institutions whereas informal education is a self-didactic process which we continue to perform every moment of our lives.Which is more essential to us is debatable. Today’s urban standards of living ensure that all of us have some degree of formal education imparted to us in schools and colleges. But the problem is, degrees and certificates do not guarantee a good education. In that regard, education becomes more of a vanity than a necessity. Education should not only make us competent enough to curve a niche for ourselves in the whole wide world but it should also encourage independent thinking in us. It should be the mentor and the guide that helps us discover, learn and formulate. And as our dearest Sir Mandela points out, education should be the weapon to forge changes in a world of stagnant ideologies and redundant mediocrity. It should inspire us, encourage new thoughts and rejuvenate defunct lessons learnt from the past.Thus, it is good education that matters in the end, not the mode of acquiring it. Good education should therefore imply anything that helps us in doing all the above and has to be a conglomeration of formal and informal education. Our education should make us individuals who can dream of a better world and execute the ideas into reality and that is only possible when we have a balance of formal and informal education.

Top Online Masters in Finance Programs

Most universities today offer the Masters in Finance as an option within the structure of the MBA program. Schools of business usually have several areas of concentration to choose from in the second year of a two year, full time MBA course of study. At most schools the most popular major for the MBA is Finance. The list of schools below all include finance as an MBA option and in some cases offer additional graduate level options for degrees related to finance, either within the context of corporate operations or as an analytical profession. Some universities offer a Masters in Financial Mathematics for students interested in the complexities of analytics or in a PhD program that specializes in the technology of business finance. The schools listed below all have degree programs designed for career advancement in the business world.New England College of Business and Finance has been in existence since 1909 when it was founded as the New England Banking Institute. Over the years it has evolved from a finance training institution to a full fledged degree granting college accredited by the New England Association of Schools & Colleges. The Master of Finance degree includes eleven advanced courses that cover International Finance, Applied Quantitative Methods, Enterprise Risk Management, Portfolio Management and several other areas of the academic discipline. The college has a solid background in educating aspiring professionals in the banking and finance industries.Baker College offers the online MBA in Finance with a program that includes thirty three credit hours devoted to business studies and an additional twenty credit hours for classes in the finance specialization. Among the business core courses are classes in Research & Statistics for Managers, Accounting for the Contemporary Manager and Management Information Systems, so the analytic tools and IT requirements for a Masters in Finance are covered in the first section of the program. Advanced finance classes include Public Finance and International Business Finance.University of Liverpool has ventured into the international online education field with its online MBA program. Since the program was accredited by the European Foundation for Management Development it has developed a student body drawn from over 175 nations. The MBA in Finance and Accounting is delivered in modules, with each module consisting of classes that increase in complexity. The University provides e-books or printed textbooks at no charge. Finance modules include Investment Strategies, Financial Reporting, Business Finance and Advanced Managerial Accounting.Kaplan University offers an online Masters of Business Administration with specialization in Finance that can be completed in one year of full time study or two years of part time study. The curriculum includes mergers and acquisitions, international business finance, foreign exchange risk, hedging strategies, and global positioning of assets. Kaplan also offers a MBA in Entrepreneurship that delves into the creative sources and uses of capital involved in a startup.Northeastern University offers a MBA in Finance online through its School of Business. This area of concentration covers mergers and acquisitions, licensing, joint ventures, and IPOs from a management perspective. There is also a MBA in Entrepreneurship that includes some of these advanced courses. In addition Northeastern offers an online Master of Science in Finance that focuses entirely on the complexities of accounting and finance, quantitative and modeling methods, and international finance structures for global businesses.

The Effects of Digital on Photography and Photography Education

As working photographers how would you describe the effect of Digital in your photography career?The consensus was that the greatest benefit is that the moment you take the picture you know whether you have the image or not! On a large budget shoot it is incredible to have the client look at final takes from a shoot before they leave the studio. But also to Photojournalist, Portrait Photographer or on Weddings the benefit is immense. Other benefit were the total control of the image once in the studio, the option to become the retoucher and to not have to outsource. Any Photographer can layer any number of layers and images to create any kind of Photograph. Ten years ago that was not possible without a very large budget or with the help of a professional retoucher. The major problem we agreed on is the enormous and never ending learning curves. and the amount of time required in front of the computer. For any educators it is a difficult situation. Educators have to know and have gone through Photoshop CS to CS2 to CS3, to Adobe Lightroom, and Apple Aperture. But also may include software such as Capture Pro, iView and many other.What other comments do you have about Digital?Couple of things that people who have only shot with Digital are not aware of is the cost of shooting has been reduced to nothing. Once a camera and some memory cards have been purchased a photographer can go and shoot as much as his/her memory cards will handle. No Polaroid at $1-$2 a piece, no film cost no lab cost. It allows Photographers to have a photography project that can be very extensive without the financial worry. The quality of Digital Photography was for a long while,considering its short life, not great. Now the files you get from a $500 are incredible.For $2000 you have a professional camera of excellent quality. Digital has also created new opportunities for Photographer to offer more services.Dealing with Students and teaching Photography what do you see is the benefit of Digital Photography?The answer surprised us a bit but most agreed that the cost of taking pictures was the major benefit they could see. Most student have and will always struggle with the cost of photography, However once they have made the investment they are pretty much set. In studio shooting 4×5 Polaroids, 4×5 transparency film was extremely costly. However shooting film made students slow down. It is too common for student to fix things in post-production. The major draw back is the focus on technology and not on the “Visual” aspect of Photography.What do you think will be the most drastic change or changes we will see in the field of Photography during the next few years? The most drastic change in Photography has already happened: Digital. For a while we could say Photography and Digital Photography but the reality, however disappointing it is to many, is that photography is digital. Very little film used anymore. Manufacturers have moved on and each and every field in Photography has adapted and changed. The more interesting question is where do we go from here? Let’s look at the 2 major groups who create photography, professional photographers and consumers.Taking into consideration what digital has brought to the media; Ease of Communication, immediate delivery worldwide, a Highly technical users and consumers base. The changes will be drastic, especially when you think that digital photography is still in its infancy.The ease of communication as seen in the web conferencing industry will grow to allow pro to shoot and connect through a wireless network to the web from anywhere and present images for approval/delivery across the world. Think IPhone built in your $3000 camera and you are set. Someone is about to change way of coding images that will make raw file extremely compressed. It will become the standard. As a result Photographers will deliver RAW files, with protected metadata included and locked in the file for copyright protection, Gps location, the minute you mess with the metadata the File will self destruct. If you are a pro you like the sound of that. So on a pro level Cameras will have wireless transmitter built in, just as any phone connecting to a satellite, built audio and video for communication and extremely small raw files containing encrypted metadata protecting creator. From the consumer point of view the changes will come faster and in a greater steps.TV, computers, phones will merge into one product or service resulting in countless possibilities. With a technically advanced consumer base it is easy to imagine a screen allowing you to write an email on one side, watch a TV program in another and speak on a video/phone in another part of the screen. This technology is available today but too expensive for consumers, for how long? Will you see your children come home, turn their phone or multimedia device on, connect to a base that will automatically download photographs, TV shows and whatever it’s set to do. Your child will select the photos he she wants to post, dial on a keyboard and call across town to shows his/her shots to a friend or family member? Most definitely! The missing piece is a new language or new way of coding. To allow for smaller data transfer. This will come, without a doubt! So if you are an engineer, find a new way of coding all these information into a much smaller data size, find a new codec and you’ll be set and retire early.Does all this make photography better. Photography has become more and more affordable giving access to incredible equipment to a large group of consumers that may not do this for a living but love it and are constantly trying to learn more. Look at how many classes and workshops that have been offered over the past ten to fifteen years ago that did not exists. In a sense with more and more intelligent and dedicated amateur photographers the quality of images will get better and better as a teacher I see it on a day to day basis.czo