Laptop webcams can be easily repurposed into external usb webcams. I successfully converted the camera from an MSI MS-1682 cx600x laptop.
Did you know that the average family in the U.S. spends close to $1,300 per year on their utility bills? And with the price of oil up three times since last year, that cost is set to go through the roof.
Unfortunately, a large portion of that energy is wasted, which means you might as well be burning dollar bills instead of sending them each month to the utility company.
According to the Department of Energy, the amount of energy wasted through poorly-insulated windows and doors is about as much energy as we get from the Alaskan pipeline each year. And, electricity generated by fossil fuels for a single home puts more carbon dioxide in the air than two average cars.
Most folks spend 44 percent of their energy dollars heating and cooling their homes. Lighting, cooking and other appliances eats up another 33 percent of those dollars. The refrigerator alone accounts for another 10 percent. Finally, households spend the final 14 percent of their of their energy dollars heating water.
The good news is, by using a few inexpensive techniques, you can reduce your energy bills by up to 50 percent and, at the same time, help reduce air pollution.
The “whole-house” approach means viewing your home as an energy system with interdependent parts. For example, your heating system isn’t just a furnace. For most folks, it’s a heat-delivery system that starts at the furnace and delivers heat throughout your home using a network of ducts.
Your furnace may be top-of-the-line, but if the duct system is uninsulated, and full of leaks, and your walls, attic, windows and doors are uninsulated, your energy bills will be costly.
Start by taking a tour of the interior of your home, including the basement or crawl space. Check the levels of insulation in walls, ceilings, attic, crawl space, basement and the water heater, if possible.
Check for holes and cracks around windows, doors, light fixtures, outlets and walls. Take a good look at your windows. If they’re old, do you have storm windows? If they’re new, are they double-paned or single-paned?
Do you buy appliances that are energy efficient? An easy way to tell is to check for the Department of Energy’s Energy Star Â® label.
Is your fireplace damper open? If your fireplace is not on, but the damper is open, you can draw a roomful of heat out of the house in a matter of hours.
The easiest and most cost-effective way to save money is to insulate your home, starting with the attic and crawl space or basement. Hot air rises, and if you insulate the attic, you’ll trap heat in your house in the winter. In the summer, when the hot sun beats down on your roof, the insulation will help keep your house cool by keeping out the heat.
Another easy way to save money is to weatherize your home. Warm air that leaks into your home during the summer, and out of your home during the winter, can waste a substantial portion of your energy dollars.
One of the quickest ways to save money is to caulk, seal, and weather-strip all seams, cracks, and openings to the outside.
Some of the most common source of airleaks includes dropped ceilings, recessed lights, an entrance to the attic, electrical wires, boxes and panel, plumbing utilities, water and furnace flues, all ducts, door sashes and frames, chimney penetration, warm air registers, window sashes and frames, baseboards, coves and interior trim, electrical outlets and switches, light fixtures and sill plates.
Finally, be judicious in your use of heat and air-conditioning. By seeing your thermostat as low as comfortably possible in the winter, and as high as possible in the summer, you’ll shave plenty off your energy bills.
You can save as much as 10 percent a year on your heating and cooling bills simply by using a programmable thermostat, that allows you to adjust the times you turn on the heating or air conditioning according to a pre-set schedule.
By making just a few energy-efficient adjustments, you’ll find your monthly utility bills will drop, leaving you with cash to spend elsewhere.
Learn about architectural design from author and architect Sarah Susanka. Susanka describes how to give the illusion of more space using architectural design. Varying ceiling heights and connecting along a diagonal are two architectural design techniques that appear to give more space.
Q: I have 26 years left on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage that was originally $232,000 at 5.625 percent. Does it make sense for me to refinance? When might it make sense to do so? Thank you!
A: If you can save money now (when you’re not that far into your 30-year mortgage), you should look at refinancing soon, especially if you can pay off your closing costs with the savings in less than a year.
My guess is that it won’t make much sense for you to refinance until interest rates fall below 5 percent, maybe 4.75 percent or 4.5 percent for a 30-year fixed rate loan. (Those are the interest rates you’ll get if you have enough equity in your property and if you have great credit.)
But if you do refinance, consider this your last loan for awhile. If you stay in your home until the mortgage has been paid off, you should save a tremendous amount of cash over the years.
One more thing to consider: if you’re sure you’ll live in the home for at least the next 7 years, you might want to consider buying down the interest rate on your loan.
While some lenders have raised fees to refinance a loan, the pricing structure they may have could allow you to pay up to one point (a point is 1 percent of the loan amount) to buy down the rate of your loan one-half or three-quarters of a point. That small difference may help you a lot down the line.
But you have to be committed to living in the home for a long time otherwise paying the fees to refinance and paying the points will be a waste of resources.
There are five important tips to preparing your home for sale and selling it quickly, from adding curb appeal to figuring out your minimum price. There’s a house for sale that we pass every day on the way to the office. The home’s exterior seems to be well taken care of, but the lawn isn’t [...]
Question: Is an employer required under the FRCA and ICRA to declare authorization for an Investigative Consumer Report? Answer: The request is whether the employer specifically has to tell the applicant that the reason for the authorization is for an investigative consumer report. Under both the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the California…
As marketers, it’s our job to ensure that all the interactions people have with our brands and products are as positive, useful and memorable as possible.
At Droga5, where I lead data strategy, we believe the best way of achieving this is to have a deep understanding of our clients’ target audience, and more specifically, of their needs.
Of course, these change by platform. When you need to find out why your train is delayed, you might head to Twitter. When you need to know when your local bookshop closes, you might use Google Search. Why does any of this matter? Because we know that consumer needs are far more powerful than other indicators that marketers use, such as demographics.
That’s why when I was given the chance to talk with YouTube’s Josh Lewandowski, I jumped at it. As the lead user experience (UX) researcher on the platform’s main app, he has a deep understanding of why users head to YouTube, what they expect when they get there and what that means for brands looking to grab their attention.
Josh Lewandowski: On any given day, I’m trying to answer one of two questions: What are the desires, needs and problems our users have that we should be anticipating? And once we know what those are, what’s the best way to solve for them?
To answer those questions, I’m constantly doing both qualitative and quantitative research – everything from talking to users and watching them use YouTube in their homes, to carrying out lab studies to see if people use our products the way we expect them to.
Users always act to solve some kind of need. The three most common ones we’ve seen in our research are the need for help (when you want to fix something in your house, for example) the need for entertainment (people say they turn to YouTube for entertainment just as much as they turn to TV) and the need to learn something new.1
Source: 2and2/Google, "The Values of YouTube" Study, (n of 1,006 consumers between the ages of 18-54, with 918 monthly YouTube users). Respondents were asked to choose which platforms they turn to for a range of needs, Oct. 2017.
These needs can show up in broad or specific ways. Someone might come to YouTube knowing exactly what they’re looking for – to listen to a particular version of a song, say. Others come to browse. They know roughly what they want – to catch up on the latest news, for example – but they’re not looking for one video in particular.
In fact, as our recommendation algorithms keep getting better, we’re now seeing more browsing than searching behaviour. People are choosing to do less work and let us serve them.
Something that makes YouTube unique compared to other traditional forms of media is the depth of interaction users and creators can have with one another.
One example of this is with mobile live streaming, which YouTube creators beta tested from Disneyland last year. During the stream, they were asking viewers what rides they should go on, and fans were chiming in with their recommendations.
We’re seeing this direct form of co-creation more and more now, especially with our new community tab. Creators will use this to routinely ask fans what type of content they want to see, what their favourite videos are and where they should go next.
These examples might not seem especially relevant for marketers, but I think they speak to a broader change in user behaviour: people are no longer satisfied with just passively consuming content, they also want rich interactions.
Adding interactive features such as polling, live chat and video infocards, because it has helped make video viewing a more active, engaging experience.
We originally assumed all YouTube users wanted to “lean back” and do nothing other than watch something. But our research showed that wasn’t the case. Interactive features like polling make content a lot more dynamic for those who want it. If creators think their viewers want what we call a “lean forward” experience, they can now provide one.
Assessing the quality of YouTube at scale. It’s great to see that people are watching more, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the experience has improved.
Look at website clickbait, for example. It might get you to look at more content, but it’s not a great experience. My challenge is to answer the question, “how do we really know the experience is good across the board?”
Answering that question involves looking at a few things: Can users discover YouTube’s features and experiences? Do they know how to use those features? And do those features improve their experience?
We’re really starting to focus on user satisfaction as a measure of success for product development, ads and even our algorithms. If what we're doing makes users happier, we're on the right track. And directly asking users “What’s your biggest frustration today?” and “What’s your favourite thing about YouTube?” provides more insights than we could gather from watch time alone.
1 2and2/Google, “The Values of YouTube” Study, (n of 1,006 consumers between the ages of 18-54, with 918 monthly YouTube users). Respondents were asked to choose which platforms they turn to for a range of needs, Oct. 2017.
The people of Akwa Ibom State have been told not to see or treat the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) as sectional or regional political party in the country.
The Akwa Ibom State Chairman of APGA, Mr. Joseph Out, in an interview with journalists in Uyo yesterday hinted that APGA is not an Igbo party but a national party.
He said membership of the party cuts across the country indicating that in Akwa Ibom State membership of the party is spread across the 329 wards of the state.
According to him, the need to make the clarification became necessary to correct the erroneous impression in some quarters that APGA is an Igbo party with ethnic agenda.
The state chairman of the party revealed that more than 10, 000 people have been registered since the party commences intensive registration and revalidation of its members across all the wards in the state.
APGA, he said, would field candidates in all the positions, including the governorship and senatorial positions in the state in the 2019 general election.
“APGA is not an Igbo party, it is a national party that is prepared to contest all elective positions in the state, and the membership of the party, as we speak, cuts across all the 329 ward of Akwa Ibom State.
“APGA is set to take over the state political space. We already have over 10,000 members across the 329 wards in the state.
“An aspirant from Eket senatorial district has indicated interest to contest the governorship election in the state. From all parameters of assessment, he is a man of integrity who can conveniently win the governorship candidates in the state,” the party stated.
Otu said APGA is working hard and would surprise the state in the forthcoming election as his party would enthrone people’s oriented programmes in the state, regretting that despite the potential and huge revenue that accrue to the state, it has no standard market.
“It is frustrating that the state with all its resources from federation account and huge internally generated revenue, the state does not have a standard market.
“The people of this state depend on Aba in Abia State for their wares. If there is any restriction of movement in Abia State, business men and women in the Akwa Ibom state woul be stranded.” the APGA chairman noted.
A furious row erupted after it emerged that close to 500 Rio Tinto workers could lose their jobs at their aluminium plant on Anglesey because of a power dispute.
Metals giant Rio plans to end smelting on the island in September after failing to extend a power contract with the nearby Wylfa nuclear power station.
Rio (up 21p at 1,401p) said it had put forward 'a number of proposals' to prolong the contract and that 'we have not been successful'.
But the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which owns Wylfa, accused Rio of asking it to 'break the law' by demanding state-subsidised prices.
The Anglesey plant has been running since 1971 and has always been powered by Wylfa at below market rates.
A spokesman for the NDA said signing a new contract on non-commercial terms would clash with European Union laws against state subsidies - and that Rio had long been aware of this.
'We are not legally allowed to subsidise private companies in this way. What they are asking us to do is break the law.'
The closure of the smelter, which is 51 per cent owned by Rio and 49 per cent owned by Kaiser Aluminum, will be a blow to the economy of North Wales.
Rio is under considerable pressure to curb costs in its aluminium business worldwide after saddling itself with £25billion of debt from its acquisition of Canada's Alcan.
Yesterday Rio chief executive Tom Albanese warned there had been a 'dramatic decline' in demand for metals in the fourth quarter.
Unveiling sharp declines in iron and copper production, Albanese said Rio was not planning to tap shareholders for extra cash.
He declined to say if Rio's global aluminium operations were running at a loss, as claimed yesterday by one City analyst, saying the firm will give full earnings on February 12.
An industry source claimed Rio was sacrificing Anglesey as part of its cost- cutting efforts. The firm has already announced 14,000 job losses worldwide. Rio denied this, saying it has been looking into alternative power plants including a biomass-fired station.
Small companies will be able to raise funds by borrowing against unpaid invoices as Minister ends bans on invoice finance
Small companies will be given the right to raise funds by borrowing against unpaid invoices from big business customers from early next year, Small Business Minister Anna Soubry will announce today.
The move marks the latest effort from Whitehall to crack Britain’s late payments culture, in which big firms delay paying bills, so starving small suppliers of cash.
It will enable companies to use invoice financing to get their hands on cash from unpaid bills they have issued. Businesses apply for lending using invoices for money owed to them as security.
Soubry said: ‘By scrapping [big companies’] restrictions on invoice finance, thousands of firms across the country could benefit from faster access to hard-fought funds.
‘While invoice finance may not be right for everyone and is absolutely no excuse for late payment, I want small businesses to have the option of using it to increase cashflow.’
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A similar rule is already in effect in the US, Canada and Australia. Its introduction in the UK follows last month’s announcement by Soubry of a small business payments tsar, who will champion small firms, particularly on the issue of late payment. That, too, is being based on measures adopted in Australia.
It is estimated that the country’s five million smaller firms are owed £26.8 billion in overdue payments.
Jeff Longhurst, chief executive of the Asset Based Finance Association, said: ‘This is good news for UK businesses. Invoice finance is a key source of funding for SMEs in particular, and taking effective action against bans on the assignment of invoices will allow more businesses to unlock the funding tied up in their unpaid invoices.
‘It’s a complex area and we look forward to seeing the detailed regulations, but the Government must be congratulated.’
John Allan, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: ‘The decision to outlaw the ban on terms in contracts to prevent businesses from choosing who they want to go to for invoice financing is overwhelmingly positive for businesses around the country. Access to finance can be very challenging for small firms. Recent FSB research shows that 38 per cent of our members who applied for finance were refused in the second quarter of this year.’
Anil Stocker, co-founder and chief executive of MarketInvoice, said: ‘Business owners will know the frustration of completing a piece of work and then waiting months to get paid, so it’s important that businesses have the option to use their invoices to access funds straight away.
'The Government’s move to stop big companies preventing smaller businesses using invoices to access finance is a welcome one. There was no good reason for big businesses to hold this power over their suppliers.’
Paul Kruzycki, who in 2009 launched Ales By Mail with an £800 investment, has used MarketInvoice to manage cashflow.
When Amazon, which had been using the firm as its marketplace vendor for craft beer, announced it wanted to increase revenue from this segment to £500,000 and almost double the number of product lines it took from the company to 500, he needed to fund the growth. Kruzycki used MarketInvoice to enable him to pay a swathe of breweries regularly while facing longer payment terms from Amazon.