Showing posts with label headline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label headline. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Square rolls out new payment features

Square rolls out new payment features
 
Square rolls out new payment features. First, mobile payments service Square made it easier for merchants to accept credit cards anytime, anywhere, with just a smartphone and a tiny, plastic credit-card reader. Now, the startup led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey hopes to show them they can abandon cash registers, too.
Square already has a smartphone app that allows people to pay for items by swiping their credit card through a tiny reader that plugs into the headphone jack of a phone or iPad. Customers can sign their name on the device's touch screen, and then have a digital receipt sent to them via email or text message. About 500,000 merchants have these credit-card readers, which Square has given away for free since 2009. In return, the company takes a 2.75 percent transaction fee on sales. On Monday, Square announced new software, Square Register, to do more. The new app takes over many of the sales features that most stores use cash registers for. It lets merchants keep tabs on inventory and change prices. A menu option allows restaurants to post food options and special deals that customers can see on their smartphones, using a companion app called Square Card Case.
Card Case is available for download after paying with Square at one of a number of merchants hand-picked by Square to participate. It acts as a digital wallet and directory and stores digital receipts for everything you've purchased over Square. For merchants, it serves as a replacement for physical rewards cards some merchants give customers to thank them for repeat visits. The app also has a directory listing local Square-accepting businesses that let users buy items on their phones when they're close to a participating shop. Card Case users can also pay at stores that are using the Register app by saying their name to the sales clerk.
So far, Card Case only includes 50 hand-picked cafes, salons, flower shops, restaurants and other retailers in New York, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington. The company plans to gradually add others.
Source:yahoo

Friday, May 20, 2011

best companies to work for 2011


best companies to work for 2011
best companies to work for 2011. 100 Best Companies to Work For. And the winners are...
Fat paychecks, sweet perks, fun colleagues, and over 150,000 jobs ready to be filled -- these employers offer dream workplaces. Meet this year's top 100, network with the winners on LinkedIn, and more.
1. SAS
2. Boston Consulting Group
3. Wegmans Food Markets
4. Google
5. NetApp
6. Zappos.com
7. Camden Property Trust
8. Nugget Market
9. REI
10. Dreamworks

Thursday, May 19, 2011

End of the world theories


End of the world theories


End of the world theories. I was recently asked how I interpreted the Mayan and Hopi Indians predictions that the world, as we know it, will end on the 21st of December, 2012. Would there be global war — possibly triggering a nuclear holocaust? Would the planet's life forms finally succumb to the ecological quagmire that's been building in our soils, oceans and atmosphere? Would the current steady increase of previously unknown diseases overcome our ability to defend against them? Or will we suddenly move into a new Golden Age in which the lion lies down with the lamb and struggle, pain, and suffering are gone forever?


This is no small question. Quite the contrary, it deals with some of the larger concepts in the universe. From a metaphysical perspective, the world ends and recreates itself every instant. December 21, 2012 is certainly no exception. However, it does offer a target date that brings all the possible scenarios into vivid focus.


What we perceive from our vantage point of being in human form is only a teeny sliver of the infinite swirl of interpenetrating realities that make up the universe. To us, there is a past, present, and future. Time appears to move predictably from moment to moment forming the days and years of our lives. 2012 is a real date on our calendars and each of the possible scenarios can be seen to be advancing steadily toward it like racehorses to the finish line.

If you were to ask the "2012 End-of-the-World" question of a gifted psychic, she (or he) would gaze into several of the parallel universes making up our possible futures and report back on the one that seemed to be the most vivid. This is like a handicapper picking the favorite in a particular race. Just as in horse racing, the favorite often wins or comes close. But, not always. On any given day, one of the long shots might cross the line first while the favorite trails the field.

From a cosmic perspective, picking the winning scenario is easy. Understanding the nature of how this can be done is considerably more elusive. Infinity is impossible to grasp in finite terms. When we pose a finite question in an infinite realm, it's like trying to cram a herd of stampeding elephants into a matchbox. It won't be the lack of effort that defeats us, but the minuscule size of the container we are trying to use. Our minds are the matchbox. We are going to have to think way out of the box to begin to grasp the answer to how our world will fare on December 21, 2012.

The simple answer is that every one of the possible scenarios you can envisage will find expression in one or more of the myriad parallel universes that manifests in every instant. And that includes the date spoken about by so many as the moment our world will come to an end. What adds weight to this date is the fact that with each passing hour more people are becoming aware of it, adding their energies to the consensus. We have already seen the power of agreement at work in events such as World Healing Day, The Harmonic Convergence and other similar moments of global focus. It was not the calendar date that created the power; it was the cohesive intent of those who took part.

Having said that, it is no mere coincidence that so many disparate cultures all around the world, that have had no known contact with one another, should focus on the same date. There is increasing evidence that the time leading up to the final solstice of 2012 does mark the presence of an energy portal that has never before been accessible to the human race. Each of us is being offered an opportunity to shift that may not again arise in thousands of years to come.

Whether December 21, 2012 actually marks an immutable cosmological event or becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy is moot. There is no question that it looms as a very significant moment. What concerns most people, is how they and their loved ones will be affected. At one end of the bell-curve of probabilities is total physical annihilation. At the opposite end is the arrival of the Golden Age we all dream about. Every other conceivable possibility lies between them. Somewhere near the center of the curve most people will find their most likely scenario in which the monumental moment will pass quietly like Y2K and their lives will appear to continue as if nothing happened at all.

December 22, 2012 will dawn as clocks continue to tick and the human race continues to move one day closer to whatever future harvest it has sown. That doesn't mean that many other people, who live their lives at the extremities of the curve, won't experience radically different events.

Imagine if you will, that you are in the center of a vast central train station. The tracks are arranged like the spokes of a giant wheel, each moving away from the center in a different direction. The trains are all scheduled to depart at the same moment on December 21, 2012. Every human being on Earth is at the station; free to board any of the trains he or she chooses. Each train is destined for a different parallel universe in which one of the innumerable possibilities is played out.

You (like everyone else) are at the station and must get on one of an almost infinite number of trains. But, like the psychic, you can only see one or two of them. Your choices appear meager — almost as if you had no choice at all and your future was determined totally by fate. Such is not the case at all — unless, of course, you allow it to be.
If you remember the station scene in the Harry Potter books (or movies) in which the wizard children were able to board the Hogwarts Express on platform 9 3/4 by walking straight through a concrete pillar, then you will begin to see how all this works. What is delightfully easy for wizards is equally impossible for muggles (non-wizards).

The Hogwarts Express is bound for the next dimension — the Golden Age of our dreams. The problem is that until you become a wizard, you have no way of finding the right platform. The world, as you know it, will definitely end on December 21, 2012, if that's what you choose. You will definitely be there when it happens, seated on one of the infinite number of trains leaving the station. Every one of us will be required to be on board.

Now that you know where you will be on the day the world ends, you get to decide which train you'd like to ride. There is still time (according to the calendars of this illusion) before the trains must leave the station. Plenty of time for you to leave your muggle world behind and become the wizard you already are. The choice, as always, is yours. 

Harold Camping and his 'doomsday' prediction

Harold Camping and his 'doomsday' prediction

The founder of Family Radio in Oakland - heard in 48 different languages around the globe - is behind the worldwide, multimillion dollar campaign letting people know that judgment day is coming on May 21, 2011.

That's right, Saturday.

89-year-old Harold Camping says that his 50-year study of the Bible is behind the claim.

So what's the end of the world look like?

"There's going to be a big earthquake that will make the one in Japan seem like a Sunday School picnic," Camping told KPIX's Mike Sugerman.


This isn't Camping's first prediction of the end. Back in 1994, Camping warned that doomsday would strike.

When nothing happened, he pronounced it an error in his math, but this time he says it'll be different.

"This day, May 21, 2011, is extremely important, as it will also be the first day of judgement, a time of horrible death and destruction, for all those left behind," Camping said.

There will be a five-month period for non-believers to get on board, he continued, because the real end of the world is set for October 21, 2011.
Source:cbsnews