One of the most recent updates to the iPhone, and more specifically the operating system that is packaged with the iPhone, iOS, brought one of the most fantastic and phenomenal updates ever: an update to Maps. Maps has been used as an application that provides an easy way to find routes, and (obviously) maps about certain areas, businesses in the local vicinity, and also leaving pins on favorited locations, or pins where you have explored, and for many other reasons. However, although Maps has always been a great way to travel with, it has always been redundant to travel with, also. When you used Maps a while ago, you had to route your map, and then manually click each next button as you reached each turn or freeway exit, and the like. So, if you had to turn left on a certain street, you had to tell your phone you had done so, so it would give you the next directions. As a result, it could become very dangerous to always have your phone out, looking at it, while you are on a high-speed freeway. But, the newest update solved that, and brought a great amount of new features.

Using Maps GPS

Using Maps is as easy as it gets. Most of the time, when you are using Maps, you are using it to search for a location, and finding a way to get there. To start off, let’s search for the nearest mall, and routes to get there. Simply search a nearby mall you know about, or search the general word “mall” by tapping on the top text box, and typing in mall, and searching. Pins will drop down on the screen, and locating the mall by zooming into certain streets and locations will help you find the mall you want. Once you find the mall you desire to go to, click on the blue arrow, and scroll down, and tap on the button that says “Directions To Here.”

As a result of tapping on that particular button, a new window should show up asking where your starting location is. On default, this location is your current location; if it is anything else, simply type in the starting location into the top address bar, such as your house. Once you are ready to go, tap on route, and you should be ready to go. Well, not exactly. One of the best features that has been implemented in the new system is suggested routes, and alternative routes. If you don’t like to drive on certain streets, or roads, the system provides you with different methods to get to your destination, which may avoid a road you don’t feel like driving on that certain day, or time, or you simply don’t want to take the freeway. It’s all okay, as Maps provides you with many different routes to take. Once you find the route you want (by tapping on the certain route’s outline), click start, and you should be ready to go. Make sure you turn up your volume so you can hear the directions!

Maps for Alternative Transportation

Being treated like a twelve year old at work by a Tasmanian-devil-manager and not sure what to do about it? It is simply a well-known fact that no one likes to be micro managed. Not only do they not like to be micro managed, but tend to quit for this very reason. Unfortunately the percentage of people leaving their jobs for this reason is higher that you would imagine. Recently, an employee retention report conducted by TINYpulse, an employee engagement firm, surveyed 400 full-time U.S. employees concluded that, "supervisors can make or break employee retention."

As companies mature, their ability to manage can be significant to their bottom line as employee morale, high staff turnover and the cost of training new employees can easily reduce productivity and consequently client satisfaction.  In many cases, there is a thin line between effective managing and micro managing practices. Most managers avoid micro managing their employees. However, a decent percentage of them have yet to find effective ways to get the most of their co-workers.  They trap themselves by disempowering people's ability to do their work when they hover over them and create an unpleasant working environment. This behavior may come in the form of incessant emailing, everything having to be done a certain way (their way), desk hovering, and a need to control every part of an enterprise, no matter how small.

Superimpose the micro manager into the popular practice of Agile-SCRUM methodology and you can imagine the creative ways they can monitor everything in a team, situation, or place. Although, not always a bad thing, excessive control, can lead to burnout of managers and teams alike.  As predicted, agile project management has become increasingly popular in the last couple of decades in project planning, particularly in software development.  Agile methodology when put into practice, especially in IT, can mean releasing faster functional software than with the traditional development methods. When done right, it enables users to get some of the business benefits of the new software faster as well as enabling the software team to get rapid feedback on the software's scope and direction.

Despite its advantages, most organizations have not been able to go “all agile” at once. Rather, some experiment with their own interpretation of agile when transitioning.  A purist approach for instance, can lead to an unnecessarily high agile project failure, especially for those that rely on tight controls, rigid structures and cost-benefit analysis.  As an example, a premature and rather rapid replacement of traditional development without fully understating the implications of the changeover process or job roles within the project results in failure for many organizations.  

With the rise of the smart phone, many people who have long seen themselves as non-gamers have began to download and play to occupy themselves throughout the day. If you're a game developer who has a history of writing your code in C#, then perhaps this still emerging market is something you should consider taking advantage of. This, however, will require the familiarization with other programming languages.

One option for moving away from the C# language is to learn Java. Java is the programming used for apps on the android platform, billions of phones run on this programming language.

If you want to break into the android market, then learning Java is an absolute must.

There are both some pros and some cons to learning java. Firstly, if you already know C# or other languages and understand how they work, then java will be relatively easy to learn due to having similar, but quite simplified, syntax to C-based languages, the class library is large and standardized, but also very well written, and you might find that it will improve the performance and portability of your creations. Not to mention, learning java opens you up to the entirety of the android app and game market, a very large and still growing market that would otherwise stay closed off to you. That's too much ad and sale money to risk missing out on.

The few cons that come with learning the language is that, when coming from other languages, the syntax may take some getting used to. This is true for most languages. The other problem is that you must be careful with the specifics of how you write your code. While java can be written in a very streamlined fashion, it's also possible to write working, but bulky, code that will slow down your programs. Practice makes perfect, and the knowledge to avoid such pitfalls within the language.

If you wish to develop for the iOS on the other hand, knowledge of Objective C is required. The most compelling reason to learn Objective C is the market that it will open you up to. According to the website AndroidAuthority.com, in the article "Google play vs. Apple app store", users of iPhones and other iOS devices are much more likely to spend money on apps rather than downloading free ones.

Though learning Objective C might be a far jump from someone who currently writes in C#, it's certainly learn-able with a little bit of practice.

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It’s befuddling when you think about how many ways there are to communicate in 2013. I’d say there are too many new ways to communicate – social media, phone, Skype, instant message, text message, email, it goes on and on. But do any of them outweigh the power of a good old-fashioned face-to-face meeting? Most business executives would argue no. Nothing can replace a face-to-face meeting, at least yet.

That said, face-to-face meetings are without question the most expensive kind, given the travel costs required to make them a reality, and companies around the globe have been trying to make them more financially manageable ever since the recession set in. But recession or no, face-to-face meetings are rarely in the budget cards for small businesses. So how can entrepreneurs around the globe get more out of their virtual meetings while ensuring any physical meeting is worth the cost?