Sys Nica

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Lobbying’s top 50: Who’s spending big

*Do I have enemies? Do you have a few hours? *I'm not speaking about the little pip-squeaks of a neighborhood, I pay them no mind. Pull a gun on me? "Not in your best interest".

Fifty companies and industry groups shelled out more than $716 million to lobby the federal government and Congress last year, according to data provided to The Hill by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The eye-popping total represents nearly a quarter of all federal lobbying dollars in 2016 and a slight increase over 2015, when the 50 biggest spenders doled out $715 million.

The five biggest spenders in lobbying last year, in descending order, were the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Realtors, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the American Hospital Association and the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America.

Rounding out the top 10 were the American Medical Association, Boeing, the National Association of Broadcasters, AT&T and Business Roundtable.

Influencing the government has become a multibillion-dollar business, with companies and trade associations hiring lobbyists and attorneys to push their agenda and shape policymaking.

Anger at lobbyists and special interests was a focal point of the presidential campaign, most famously expressed in President Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington.

Trump has signed an executive order seeking to slow down the “revolving door” between administration jobs and the private sector, but few expect the deluge of lobbying to slow down under the new administration.

“Everyone across the board believe there’s going to be lots of activity in Washington,” Marc Lampkin, the managing partner of the Washington office at law and lobby firm Brownstein Hyatt -Farber Schreck, told The Hill last month.

“Corporate America has been seeking relief from the overreach of the Obama administration, so there will be activity on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue,” added Lampkin, a former aide to former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Some of the companies and groups that boosted their lobbying spending last year did so in response to major legislative and regulatory fights.

Dow Chemical, which is seeking to merge with DuPont, boosted its advocacy spending by 26 percent, to $13.6 million.

Other companies that increased their spending included Prudential Financial, which paid lobbyists $9.4 million in 2016, an 18 percent increase over 2015; AbbVie which spent 39 percent more on lobbying; and T-Mobile, which spent $8,089,900, an increase of 32 percent.

Amazon significantly expanded its footprint in Washington last year. The company spent $11.4 million on advocacy, a 20 percent increase.

Some of the increases in advocacy spending were driven by the 2016 election.

The two groups that spent the most, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Realtors, included all political spending in their lobbying reports, which includes things like campaign advertising. Most entities do not report election activities in their total.

The Chamber’s spending totaled close to $104 million, while the Realtors spent almost $65 million.

Other companies and business groups dialed back their lobbying spending last year, in part due to the lack of legislative activity on Capitol Hill.

The National Association of Manufacturers spent $16.9 million on lobbying in 2015 as it pushed for passage of a sweeping Pacific Rim trade deal negotiated by the Obama administration. With that push stalled last year, the group trimmed its lobbying spending to $8.5 million, a nearly 50 percent drop.

One industry expert told The Hill that corporations are cutting back on the amount of dues they’re paying to large trade groups and trade associations, choosing instead to target their spending.

Many companies refused to comment about their advocacy on the record.

Year-to-year comparisons between the 50 largest lobbying spenders are imprecise, because different companies and groups come off and on the list each year.

Twenty-nine of the organizations on the top 50 spenders list for 2015 cut back their lobbying budgets in 2016, while seven companies and trade associations fell off the roster entirely.

The American Petroleum Institute, Qualcomm, America’s Health Insurance Plans and George Soros’s Open Society Policy Center all slashed spending on advocacy in 2016. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which scored a win on a GMO labeling law midway through 2016, reduced its advocacy 44 percent from the year before, spending $4.7 million.

But the biggest drops on the list came from CVS Health and General Electric.

CVS’s lobbying total plummeted 60 percent, to $6 million, in part because of how the company reported its figures. Last year, CVS only included federal lobbying in its advocacy total. The year prior, the company had included both state and federal lobbying in the total, according to a company spokeswoman.

GE, which was the sixth-biggest lobbying spender during 2015, plunged to No. 53 in 2016.

Meanwhile, AARP, Bayer, T-Mobile, American Airlines, Chevron, AbbVie and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers jumped onto the list — with AbbVie, which ranked 88th in spending in 2015, hitting the No. 50 spot last year. T-Mobile climbed to No. 42 from No. 66 in 2015.

— This post was updated at 10 a.m.

Top 50 Lobbying Spenders of 2016

Client	2016 Spending	2015 Spending	2015 Rank
U.S. Chamber of Commerce	$103,950,000	$84,730,000	1
National Association of Realtors	$64,821,111	$37,788,407	2
Blue Cross Blue Shield	$25,006,109	$23,702,049	3
American Hospital Association	$20,970,809	$20,687,935	7
Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America	$19,730,000	$18,920,000	9
American Medical Association	$19,410,000	$21,930,000	4
Boeing	$17,020,000	$21,921,000	5
National Association of Broadcasters	$16,438,000	$17,400,000	10
AT&T	$16,370,000	$16,370,000	13
Business Roundtable	$15,700,000	$19,250,000	8
Alphabet	$15,430,000	$16,660,000	12
Comcast	$14,330,000	$15,680,000	14
Southern Co.	$13,900,000	$12,860,000	18
Dow Chemical	$13,635,982	$10,820,000	26
Lockheed Martin	$13,615,811	$13,954,053	17
NCTA - The Internet and Telephone Assoc.	$13,420,000	$14,120,000	16
FedEx	$12,541,000	$12,405,835	20
Northrop Grumman	$12,050,000	$11,020,000	24
Exxon Mobil	$11,840,000	$11,980,000	21
Amazon	$11,354,000	$9,435,000	34
CTIA	$10,970,000	$10,150,000	29
General Dynamics	$10,739,944	$10,259,890	28
Verizon Communications	$10,080,000	$11,430,000	23
Altria Group	$10,060,000	$9,630,000	32
Amgen	$9,860,000	$10,525,000	27
Koch Industries	$9,840,000	$10,830,000	25
American Bankers Association	$9,831,000	$12,690,000	19
Pfizer	$9,750,000	$9,417,650	35
Prudential Financial	$9,400,000	$7,962,500	47
Biotechnology Innovation Organization	$9,230,000	$8,350,000	42
United Technologies	$9,165,000	$11,470,000	22
American Chemistry Council	$9,020,000	$10,050,000	30
Royal Dutch Shell	$8,990,000	$8,700,000	37
AARP	$8,710,000	$7,559,000	54
Microsoft	$8,710,000	$8,490,000	39
Facebook	$8,692,000	$9,850,000	31
Edison Electric Institute	$8,620,000	$8,350,000	42
Oracle	$8,620,000	$8,470,000	40
General Motors	$8,500,000	$9,120,000	36
National Association of Manufacturers	$8,490,014	$16,950,000	11
National Amusements (CBS & Viacom)	$8,441,000	$7,980,000	46
T-Mobile	$8,089,900	$6,127,000	66
Bayer	$7,990,000	$7,730,000	51
Coca-Cola	$7,930,000	$8,670,000	38
American Airlines	$7,870,000	$6,600,000	61
United Parcel Service	$7,767,848	$8,155,856	45
Chevron	$7,470,000	$7,200,000	56
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers	$7,452,500	$7,640,000	53
Securities Industry & Financial Market Assoc.	$7,400,000	$7,770,000	50
AbbVie	$7,260,000	$5,220,000	88
Data provided to The Hill by the Center for Responsive Politics,opensecrets.org

The world's first 'nano hologram'

Holograms have been a part of our imagination since the dawn of science fiction. But fiction is now starting to cross over into reality.

A team of scientists from RMIT University and the Beijing Institute of Technology have designed the 'world's thinnest' hologram. It is said the hologram is capable of being integrated into everyday products such as smartphones.

The work was led by RMIT's Min Gu led the project and claims the holographic technology can be seen without 3D goggles and is 1,000 times thinner than human hair. The academics dubbed the technology a 'nano hologram'.

At present, the constraints that hold back holographic technology lie in the limits of optical thickness. Regular holograms modulate light to project the illusion of a three-dimensional shape. But this needs to be within the parameters of the optimal thickness limit – computer-generated holograms are too large to fit atop smartphones and therefore have limited practical application.

Now, Min and the team behind the work has developed a 25 nanometer hologram using topological insulator material. It has a lower refractive index on the surface layer, but an ultrahigh refractive index in bulk. This thin insular film can enhance the holographic image without sacrificing its compact design.

Min says that the nano hologram is "fabricated using a simple and fast direct laser writing system, which makes our design suitable for large-scale uses and mass manufacture."

Theoretically, the technology may be able to fit inside smartphones and other devices but there is still work to be done. The next step is to shrink this technology even further, so that it can become suitable for integration upon LCD and smartphone screens, effectively producing a holographic device in your pocket.

SUBSCRIBE TO WIRED

The possibilities for portable holograms are appealing for a wide range of industries, Min says. "Integrating holography into everyday electronics would make screen size irrelevant – a pop-up 3D hologram can display a wealth of data that doesn’t neatly fit on a phone or watch.

"From medical diagnostics to education, data storage, defence and cyber security, 3D holography has the potential to transform a range of industries and this research brings that revolution one critical step closer."

Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Generative Adversarial

*Awesome Link

Pdf > https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.05921.pdf

The Chinese Military's Secret Weapon against America

As Alexander de Tocqueville observed nearly two centuries ago, Americans are by nature an optimistic people. This optimism has often been a source of national strength, propelling us to seek ever greater heights.

In certain instances, however, optimism can be dangerous. One such instance is in dealing with China’s rise. Many Americans have failed to grapple with the magnitude of China’s rise, confident that Beijing will go ultimately go the way of the Soviet Union or Japan in the 1980s. Those making this case can marshall some impressive statistics to bolster their case that America remains far and away the most powerful country in the world. One of the more popular data points they use is defense spending: specifically, that America still spends about four times as much as China on its military.

But comparing the raw numbers is misleading in a number of ways. Some of these are relatively well known: for example, it is generally acknowledged that America is a global power with its military assets dispersed around the world, while China can concentrate its armed forces in Asia. Similarly, military spending fails to account for what is often called the “tyranny of distance.” That is, to project military power in Asia, the United States must cross the largest ocean in the world. By contrast, China is located in the center of the action. And, as anyone who works in Washington understands, proximity to power is a power unto itself. Being so close to the battlefield also enables China to implement an anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy by using its territory to deploy large amounts of missiles, aircraft, surveillance systems and radar. In effect, these are unsinkable aircraft carriers.

Other ways that U.S. and Chinese defense budgets fail to capture the real balance of power in Asia are less well known. One factor that many observers overlook is personnel costs. Despite having a larger military, China’s military spends far less than the United States on personnel. And, once personnel costs are taken into account, the gap between U.S. and Chinese military spending is less than the raw budget numbers suggest.

America rightly takes care of the men and women who serve in the armed services. The costs of doing so, however, are astronomical. According to the Pentagon’s own estimates, nearly half of the entire defense budget is consumed by military and civilian personnel costs. Half of the FY 2015 budget would equal out to about $298.5 billion. In other words, the Pentagon spends more on personnel than any other country—including China—spends on its entire military. Indeed, the U.S. military’s personnel costs are more than the combined defense budgets of all other NATO members.

China’s military is less transparent, making it harder to accurately gauge how much it spends on personnel. However, most experts believe that personnel costs consume about one-third of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) budget. By that figure, China’s military spent about $48.6 billion on personnel costs in 2015. The discrepancy in personnel costs between China and the United States is even greater when one considers them on a per-soldier basis. The PLA is estimated to have a total of 2.3 million people in active service, compared to just 1.4 million for the U.S. armed services. That means China spends just over $21,000 per active duty member of their military. The comparable figure for the United States is more than $214,000.

The impact this has on each country’s respective military budget is staggering. When personnel costs are removed from the U.S. side, military spending decreases from $597 billion to $298 billion. By comparison, China’s military spending drops from $145.8 billion to $97.2 billion. In other words, when personnel costs are taken out of the equation, China’s military spending goes from about a quarter of America’s to nearly a third.

Labor costs work in China’s favor in other ways as well. For instance, the PLA’s procurement costs are lowered by the fact that Chinese factory workers make lessthan a quarter of the wages of their American counterparts. Exchange rates are another subtle advantage that lowers China’s military costs. Just as a Big Mac is nearly twice as expensive in America as it is in China, Beijing can purchase much more domestic weapon systems with the same amount of money as Washington.

Zachary Keck

Digital Marketing Trends for 2017

The 14 top rated digital marketing techniques for 2017 according to Smart Insights readers

In this article, I'll take an in-depth look at what I see as the most significant trends in digital marketing for the year ahead. But, it's not only my view, since I have 'crowdsourced' the importance of the different trends rated by the popularity of each trend.

For all members of Smart Insights, we also have a more detailed free download of the marketing megatrends for 2017, which are 9 digital marketing and martech megatrends will help give you an edge in 2017. In the download we discuss machine learning and artificial intelligence, which for me is the biggest trend in marketing right now.Machine learning techniques apply across many of the techniques we discuss in this post including Big Data, Marketing Automation, Organic Search and Social media marketing. If you want to know more about the defition of digital marketing before starting on trends, see our post on What is Digital Marketing?

To get our readers' views on the most important trends at a top-level, we asked Smart Insights readers to give their opinion on the most important trends. We asked:

While this doesn't have a controlled sample of our free research reports like Managing Digital Marketing, it does canvas opinion widely. Note that these trends aren't necessarily the most important channel by volume of leads or sales, rather it is the tactic which will give the biggest increase in the year ahead, so it shows what is becoming more important. By asking for just one tactic, this helps shows the the top 3, 5 or 10 top-level trends.

To help the decision on which technique to choose, we expanded upon the short labels you see in the graph to help scope the response more carefully. For example, 'Big Data' is a nebulous term, but when we expanded the definition to include insight and predictive analytics, it shows the value of the specific marketing techniques for Big Data and this help explains why this is in position number two. Here is the full listing of digital marketing techniques:

Big Data (including market and customer insight and predictive analytics)
Content marketing Communities (Branded niche or vertical communities)
Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) / improving website experiences
Display (Banners on publishers, ad networks social media including retargeting and programmatic)
Internet of Things (IoT) marketing applications
Marketing Automation (incl CRM, behavioural Email marketing and web personalisation)
Mobile marketing (Mobile advertising, site development and apps)
Paid search marketing, e.g. Google AdWords Pay Per Click
Online PR (including influencer outreach)
Partnerships including affiliate and co-marketing
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO or organic search)
Social media marketing including Social CRM and Social Customer Care
Wearables (e.g. Apple Watch, activity trackers, augmented reality)

In our Digital Channel Essentials Toolkits within our members' area and our Digital Marketing Skills report we simplify digital marketing down to just 8 key techniques which are essential for businesses to manage today AND for individual marketers to develop skills. This visual shows the core techniques which will drive more leads and sales for you, but within some sectors, techniques like using AI, IoT, Wearables will be more important.

Full source > http://tinyurl.com/jqv6eng

The best way to learn new technologies is by doing. Here’s some inspiration.

*Enough of those emails. Yes, I work on multiple laptops at once - I'm alone and yes I run 4 blogs, a website and have a normal life cooking, going to clubs, traveling, dating and all the rest > Read the side bar.

I’ve recently published How I stay up-to-date as a Developer. That story was, of course, about how to get to know all these new “shiny” technologies. It was also a bit about learning but it was mostly about knowing these things exist. The question now is: What if you want to actually learn them? Again, I want to emphasize that you should not jump on the bandwagon of every new technology, first because you don’t need to, and second because this would lead you into tech-fatigue, burning out, a dysfunctional social life, depression and potential suicide (☉_☉). But suppose you decided to learn this new thing anyway, how do you do it?

Step 1 — The theory

There are 2 types of learners, the readers and the watchers.

If you’re a reader, the best way to go is usually heading to the website of the technology you wish to learn. It hasn’t been always like this, but today, most websites have great “getting started” and “documentation” sections. Some will even guide you through interactive tutorials. Books are also an excellent way of learning, and I guess they’ll always be. If you are a book person, check out Safari Books Online. Great resource.

If you’re a watcher, jump to PluralSight or LinuxAcademy. PluralSight’s strength is the variety of topics and also the fact that, besides technology, it includes the “creative” part where you can learn Photoshop, 3D Studio Max and a lot others. LinuxAcademy, in the other hand, shines for the hands-on labs, where it actually guides you through doing stuff. It’s not limited to videos, but most of the content is about Devops tools, cloud and, of course, Linux. There’s also Egghead, WatchMeCode, Edx, Udemy, Udacity and LernVern.

Step 2 — The Action

This is finally where I wanted go. The action. You have to do in order to learn. You have to try stuff, break stuff, regret you ever tried, overcome your laziness and get s**it done. I’m not talking these useless “hello world” s**t. I’m talking about building something real and with a purpose, from the beginning to the end. You can do it!

Also, this is a magnificent way to starting an open-source project on GitHub, if you didn’t yet. When you’re interviewing, one thing that shines is what you’ve done in the past. Now you can not only say you know it. You can show it!

And now, the ultimate question: What can you do? Not everybody is creative. If that’s your case, my friends, then brace yourselves, because it’s idea give-away time! \o/

App ideas — Part 1

These are not ground-breaking ideas, they’re not necessarily new, they’re probably not making you rich, but they’re simple enough for you to be able to execute them from the ground up, on your own. These are not not projects I have seen before (at least the way I imagine them) and they’re at least somewhat better than what you usually find in App Ideas and SomebodyMakeThis.

Also, don’t forget to pick up a boilerplate if you don’t want to start from scratch. And if you set forth to implement one of these, please let me know =) The following names are fictional, pick whatever you want.

DevBoard

DevBoard is a developer oriented news aggregator website with a columns layout like Trello and TweetDeck. The users can set up their own boards picking up columns from multiple sources, like Twitter, Medium publications, Subreddits, Hackernews, Stackoverflow tags/hottest questions, GitHub trending repositories and CodePen picked pens.

You can start up small and keep adding more sources as it becomes more popular. This would be an all-in-one replacement for my article How I stay up-to-date as a Developer.

I would definitely use it.

QuestionMark

Electron is especially cool because you can use HTML/JavaScript/CSS to build cross-platform desktop applications. You can use QuestionMark as an opportunity to learn Electron and your favorite front-end stack.

QuestionMark is an Electron application for creating and taking exams and certifications. If the user chooses to create an exam, he/she can set up properties like the Title, Duration and the Number of Questions. The exam is saved locally in the hard drive as a JSON file. The user can also choose to create a question. Questions have properties like Title, a list of Alternatives and other properties like Randomize. Questions must be saved as JSON files in the “Questions” folder inside the exam folder. The user can, of course, use this app to actually take and exam. So, even though there might be 2000 questions there, when you select an the exam, if it’s only configured to use 30 questions, these questions will be randomly selected out of the available 2000.

Now, create separate repository on GitHub where users can submit pull-requests with their own exams and questions. They can also add new questions to the existing exams.

I would certainly use it for studying for my certifications.

SparkFlow

Many companies, especially those building data-centric business applications, need a Workflow module. In the past, Workflows were synonymous with BPMN, but that changed. Services like Integromat, Zapier and Microsoft Flow proved that Workflows can be made more attractive by letting go of formalities and making things simpler. However, these services became famous by appealing to the end-user through 500+ app integrations.

GitLab has made a profitable business from an open-source project by combining the love for GitHub with the fact that many enterprises won’t expose their source-code / intellectual property to a 3rd party cloud like GitHub. SparkFlow follows the same business model.

SparkFlow is an open-source Workflow App, focused on being integrated into existing products, not the end-user, with an interface inspired by Integromat but without all those App integrations. It has just 4 kinds of element:

Webhook start: This is one way of starting a flow. SparkFlow gives you a URL and you call it passing whatever data you’d like. The passed data is now bound to the flow instance and can be used in Filters to take decisions.

Timer start: This is another way of starting a flow: Every X minutes, or every day/week/month at a particular time.

Filter: Also known as decision. This, of course, allows the flow to “fork”. Whether or not the flow is going to move in a particular direction depends on the evaluation of expressions based on the flow data (e.g AppointmentType == “personal”)

API request: Instead of integrating with lots of apps, SparkFlow has only 1 active trigger. It calls an API using either basic authentication, OAuth or no auth at all. Because we’re aiming at product integration, we just need to call the target product API and the cycle is complete.

The company I work for would love it.

App ideas — Part 2

My brain has a thread dedicated to spitting out App ideas. It works in such an extent that sometimes I have to meditate to make it stop ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. There are plenty where these came from. I’ll give them away in future posts, if people show interest.

Conclusion

The best way to learn is by doing. Unleash your creativity and don’t fear failure. Find some time on your schedule and start being a creator, not just a consumer. You can do it. Also, get things done. Don’t jump from one project to the other. Your brain will try to convince you that the newer idea is always better. Don’t listen to it. Focus. Delivering is a feature.

Test

Advantages and Disadvantages of Working with Multiple Screens

*I was looking for, "How to work on 2 laptops at once" as I do but this is what you get. (Keep in mind, I'm not a great written / verbal teacher, you'd have to be with me)

Two characteristics that represent most web designers are a need for productivity and a love for technology.

This desire for increased efficiency and productivity leads many designers to look to technology for methods that will improve their work flow.

One common approach for designers (and others who want to improve productivity) is to use multiple monitors. Using two or more monitors can bring a number of significant advantages to designers.

In this article we’ll present some basic pros and cons of using multiple monitors, general instructions for setting them up, as well as a showcase of workstations that feature multiple monitors.

ADVANTAGES OF HAVING MULTIPLE SCREENS:

With so many designers using multiple screens, there must be some pretty significant advantages. Of course, everyone works differently, so the key is finding the setup that works best for you.

1. INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY

The biggest advantage for anyone, designers and those in other professions, is an increase in productivity.

There have been a number of studies performed over the years that have attempted to calculate the change in productivity from using multiple monitors. According to a study done by the Jon Peddie Research, productivity increases an average of 42% when using multiple displays.

The Pfeiffer Report from 2005 (testing the impact of large monitors and/or multiple monitors) found that improved productivity could result in an ROI of several thousand dollars per year.

Likewise, a study conducted by the University of Utah and NEC found 10% increases in productivity and 20% reduction in errors (plus reduced stress) for test workers that were using multiple monitors.

Their test company also experienced over 600% ROI. From the report, “Both the 24-inch widescreen and the 20-inch dual screens were significantly more productive than the 20 inch single monitor… Overall in spreadsheet task, the dual 20-inch monitors performed the best with a slight lead over the 24-inch widescreeen” (see this slide show of the results). This study has been reported by the Wall Street Journal and many others. However, the report also found that productivity gains max out and eventually decline when size becomes too big.

2. DESIGNERS OFTEN USE MULTIPLE PROGRAMS SIMULTANEOUSLY

Most designers have some type of workflow that involves using multiple programs at any given time.

Maybe you’re flipping back and forth between Photoshop and Illustrator, or maybe it’s an HTML editor, Internet browser and FTP applicati0n.

Whatever the case may be, it’s very rare that a designer would only have one program open and would not be moving around at least periodically. Since using multiple programs is such a frequent occurrence for designers, having a second screen can make this juggling act much less painful and more productive.

3. KEEP EMAIL OR TWITTER UP ON ONE SCREEN

If you’re interested in being more connected and accessible to clients or to other professionals in your network, you may find that a second screen can make this much more feasible.

While you may be using the primary screen for the bulk of your work, you could have your email or Twitter open all the time in a second browser. While this practice is normally associated with reduced productivity, using a second screen for this purpose can help you to still stay focused on your work while allowing you to quickly scan what is coming through (and respond promptly) with a minor impact on your work.

4. WORKS WELL WITH LAPTOPS AND ALLOWS FOR FLEXIBILITY

Many designers are working from laptops and not staying at one desk all day every day. Setting up an additional monitor is easy with most laptops now.

This allows the designer to have a home office with a dual screen set up, but still allows for flexibly as it is easy to disconnect the second monitor and take the laptop wherever you need to go. Setting it up is simple, and taking the laptop somewhere else only takes a minute.

5. SHARING DATA BETWEEN APPLICATIONS CAN BE EASIER

Not only do most designers work with multiple programs at once, but sharing data is also very common, for example copying code from one application to another, or opening an image in Dreamweaver that was created in Photoshop. All these things can be streamlined with the help of a second screen. Moving from one screen to the next is often easier than using multiple applications on one screen.

6. USING SKYPE WHILE STILL HAVING ACCESS TO OTHER DATA

Some designers use Skype for video conferencing with clients or colleagues.

If this is the case for you, a second screen can make it easier to have a video conference and still have normal access to your screen to look at other things during the conference.

Most video conferences will involve looking at websites, mockups, or something else that will need to be seen at some point during the conference.

7. FOR EASIER COMPARISON

There are a lot of aspects of a designer’s job that involve attention to detail.

Some of these areas require comparison, such as comparing different versions of a design, testing in multiple browsers, and working from one image or design to another.

In these situations it’s easier, quicker, and generally more effective to compare side-by-side using two screens rather than flipping back and forth constantly.

8. IT’S VERY EASY

Extending your computer to a second screen is actually very easy, although to many people it sounds like it would be more difficult or involved than it really is. If you’ve been wanting to try a dual screen set up but have been putting it off, there’s really no reason not to give it a shot.

More advanced set ups can obviously get more complicated, but a second screen is not difficult in most situations.

DISADVANTAGES OF HAVING MULTIPLE SCREENS:

With all the advantages of having multiple screens, it’s only fair to also look at the potential disadvantages of having more than one screen. Although there are not many of them, they should be considered.

1. MORE POTENTIAL FOR DISTRACTIONS

Probably the biggest disadvantage to having more than one screen is the added risk of distractions.

It’s easy enough to get distracted when you’re working with just one screen, and even more so when you add to it. I mentioned the possibility of using the second screen to keep your email or Twitter open all the time.

While this is potentially a good thing for communication purposes, without some resistance to distraction it could also be a productivity killer. It really depends on your workflow and your own personal preferences.

2. POTENTIAL LACK OF RESOURCES

From a technical perspective, a disadvantage is that the resources of the video card are divided between each display. Depending on your system and what programs you are running, you may notice a difference in performance.

3. LACK OF DESK SPACE

Unfortunately, the amount of available space of a desk can easily be a hindrance when it comes to getting set up for maximum efficiency.

Fortunately, flat panel and LCD monitors take up only a fraction of the space required by monitors of the past. If space is your primary concern, see if you can rearrange your desk to make it feasible, or you could even purchase a larger desk if that is within your control.

4. COST

If you currently only have a traditional set up, you’ll need to get an additional monitor.

While the cost has come down considerably, it is still a barrier in some situations, especially for those who are uncertain if they would even prefer working with a second screen.

5. TOO MUCH SPACE

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horor calls it The Large Display Paradox. When using very large monitors you may wind up spending too much time resizing and arranging windows.

This is an issue that you won’t encounter on smaller displays where you tend to work with one maximized window at a time.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

Adding a second monitor is pretty straightforward, and we’ll provide some instructions here.

Adding a third (and more) gets a little more tricky and will depend on your setup (see the resources section towards the end of this post).

For adding a second monitor, if you’re working from a desktop computer, you will need a video card that provides ports for two monitors (or you’ll need to buy a second video card). For laptops you will need one port for a monitor (and the laptop screen is the other), which is included on almost all laptops from the past several years. iMacs have a port for a second monitor built-in.

Full > https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-working-with-multiple-screens/

The Technology of Making Money!

*Never think about money, think about what prosperous things you naturally love to do. Do them and the money will come to you.
"Study, work, plot & play'.
Coffee break.

Are We Clear?

snthinkers.blogspot.com

The New Blog

*My last 2 cents about such matters within this blog, "People cry so much about money yet I don't find many that are willing to sacrifice a little time to promote themselves and their talents.
To each his or her own.

"For the Thinkers" created in 5 minutes.

Take a peek > https://snthinkers.blogspot.com/

Fork in the road

*In order to clear up quite a few things, it seems there will have to be a fork in the road.
In order to satisfy those interested in the strictly tech, there will be one blog. For those that are interested in increasing the capabilities of the mind, there will be another blog and I'll do the framework this week.
I apologize yet I see all things as one. The world of technology and everything else have symbiotic relationships. Nothing stands alone.