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cyLinkedIn is perhaps one of the most well-known of the online social networks and is commonly used by professionals hoping to make new and fruitful contacts with other professionals in their field and the organizations and businesses associated with them. Research published in the International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments, suggests that LinkedIn users are well acquainted with and fairly happy with the technological performance of the network, but have mixed responses to its social benefits and raise concerns regarding privacy and professional authentication.

According to Eng Li Yap and Qiyun Wang of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the proliferation of online social networks has allowed communication and conversation to be carried out on an unprecedented scale across the globe. LinkedIn has almost 400 million members although fewer than 100 million are known to be active users. Nevertheless, 100 million individuals is a large network and one that has mutual benefits for those who are active. The team suggests, however, that theirs is the first examination of the network from the perspective of professional development taking into account

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lmThis article helps organizations determine whether or not their workers compensation insurance company has properly classified their buiness. It also offers a “how to” guide to determine if they are owed a refund.

What Every Employer MUST Know About Workers Compensation Insurance. Part 3 of the 6 part series on how employers handle and mishandle their workers comp programs.

A “How to” Guide

My previous article dealt with the alarming fact that a large number of organizations have had their employees improperly classified for purposes of workers compensation insurance (Workers Comp Misclassifications Can Cost Employers a Fortune). The consequence of misclassification could mean that a business unknowingly paid far more in workers compensation premiums than they should have. Just think if you found out that your company overpaid and could be entitled to a refund? How could use this “found money”? This article will serve as a “How To” guide to see if your company has overpaid and deserves a refund due to employee misclassification. How you ultimately spend the money is up to you!

What information is necessary?

The first thing you need to do in order to conduct your self audit is to gather

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vjSaturday night is fight night, with the highly anticipated rematch between Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley set to be broadcast on big screens across the nation.

As thousands of fans traipse into bars and restaurants to catch the big fight, a small army of corporate detectives will be lurking in the background, hoping to catch something else.

Paid by the promoters of the closed-circuit televised event, these sleuths will be on the lookout for bar owners who show the Pacquiao-Bradley fight without paying the commercial rate, which dwarfs the fee to watch in your living room.

Pay-per-view promoters go to great lengths to punish piracy by business owners. They have filed thousands of lawsuits against bars, restaurants, taquerias and barbershops for illegally airing boxing and Ultimate Fighting Championship matches to large audiences.

The consequences can be severe. Loren Minnis said it contributed to the downfall of his business.

After investigators found that his Lake Elsinore bar had showed a Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight without paying the commercial rate, the closed-circuit promoters sued.

Minnis said his brother, a co-owner, paid $23,000 to

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cghGeneration Y is saying “catchya ‘straya” as they head overseas to escape our country’s slowing economy and rise in unemployment, a new report shows.

Recruitment firm Robert Walters has found almost nine in 10 Millennials working in Australia and New Zealand want to head overseas to work.

Despite this, of over 400 employers surveyed, three in four said they did not offer these opportunities.

Robert Walters ANZ managing director James Nicholson said speculation of economic downturn and rising unemployment was motivating Gen Y to go international with their job prospects.

“Millennials, or Gen Y, have grown up in a borderless world with greater access to international travel, so their sights are set high to begin with,” Mr Nicholson said.

“With a lot of discussion around economic downturn locally, we are seeing a reverse trend from the post-GFC period when we were dealing with an influx of foreign workers looking for gainful employment.”

He said it was alarming organisations were not offering overseas opportunities which Gen Yers viewed as critical to career growth.

Career expectations causing conflict

The whitepaper also found that just over half of Millennials have experienced or witnessed

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cvvThe New South Wales Government has announced it will fund an upgrade of Sydney’s Circular Quay by selling off several sites, including luxury hotels.

The Shangri-La and Four Seasons hotels in the city’s CBD, the Novotel and Mercure hotels at Darling Harbour, and commercial offices at Darling Quarter are among the properties owned by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA) that will be put on the market.

The Government said it would raise $200 million to fund the construction of new state-of-the-art ferry wharves, with construction expected to begin in 2019.

Premier Mike Baird said the Government did not need to be the landlord for luxury hotels and the money raised would be put to good use.

“For those of us that looked at the wharves for a long time, we know that they’re functional but we think they can do much, much more.” Mr Baird said.

“They can provide the sort of gateway you see in global cities around the world that’s attractive, that’s inviting, that’s vibrant.”

The Government’s vision for the wharves included double-storey buildings with new retail facilities.

Finance Minister Dominic Perrottet said the SHFA assets were deemed to be not of long-term strategic importance.

“There

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xss(Salem, Ore.)— The Retirement in Reach coalition (a broad group of organizations representing approximately 900,000 Oregonians) today attacked “Wall Street financial interests” that are fighting HB 3436B. In a press conference held at the Oregon State Capitol, the coalition called on the Oregon Legislature to pass the bill to create a task force to study ways to increase retirement savings for working Oregonians.

“This is a classic battle between Main Street and Wall Street,” said Deborah Field, co-owner of Paperjam Press in Portland and Executive Team Member of the Main Street Alliance of Oregon, an organization representing more than 1,200 small businesses around the state. “We support creating low-cost, simple ways for our employees to save for retirement, and HB 3436B is the first step. Opposition to this bill has been dominated by Wall Street lobbyists and big businesses and we want to be clear: they don’t speak for us.”

HB 3436B, passed by the Oregon House of Representatives on Monday, creates the Oregon Retirement Savings Investment Task Force, which includes representatives from employers, the financial services industry, the public and the State Treasurer. The task force is charged with developing recommendations

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xcIf technology is a medium that you use to carry out your organization’s goals, having business integration is recommended. This is especially true in an industry that is driven by fierce competition. Being able to respond immediately to customer’s demands is crucial to success. Applications such as EBI, EAI, ELI, EDI and EII have proved helpful in allowing multi-tasking.

It is common for every growing organization to constantly update its technology. As we move on to the modern era, new demands call for new products and services. In order to cope in a fast-paced market, new applications are required. Hence, you install the latest software.

Though almost application is vital to your organization’s performance, it unintentionally gives birth to a gap. The gap widens every time a new application or software is introduced. This can pose threats to the organization since the gap slows down the process of productivity.

To address this issue, business integration provides not only a technical solution. It becomes a medium to sustain or even surpass your organization’s performance. With good business integration software, you are assured flexibility in properly delivering your product or service. This puts your organization on

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xperia-business-carousel-tablet-5645c9a57deb70ee4cc1b8f48d097b4aINDIO, Calif. — Dee Dee Penny, lead singer of the Dum Dum Girls, is no stranger to performing at giant summer musical events. At the first of the two-weekend Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival events last Friday, her retro-rock act played before thousands of ecstatic fans.

She was just one of an eclectic roster of female artists who galvanized Coachella audiences. Teenage provocateur Lorde dazzled amid a howling dust storm in her summer music festival debut. R&B diva Solange got a surprise assist from her superstar sister, Beyoncé Knowles. Alt-torch singer Lana Del Rey turned in a transfixing trip-hop set. And pop-rock sisters Haim were local conquering heroes as they celebrated the success of their 2013 debut, “Days Are Gone,” which embodies the Coachella spirit by contemporizing retro sounds with hipster/hippie chic.

It’s a benchmark year for Coachella. More solo female artists and all-female bands were on the lineup — 16 — than at any other time in the festival’s history.

PHOTOS: Coachella Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Yet that’s just a fraction of

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vmNew technology often challenges society’s long-standing assumptions and standards, but sometimes courts — and others — lose sight of common sense as they grapple with the changes. That’s the case in a recent decision of California’s 6th Appellate District, which found that text messages and emails between public officials are beyond the reach of the Public Records Act if they are sent on private devices rather than ones owned by public agencies.

The three-judge panel said that electronic communications between council members and the mayor of San Jose, even those regarding city business, should not be considered “public” records if they are not “used” or “retained” by the city government (the language cited comes from California’s Public Records Act, written long before smartphones existed). Accordingly, the 6th Circuit overturned the decision of the trial court judge and ruled that the city need not turn over the communications to interested members of the public, even though both sides conceded that they involved official business.

That decision hews to the narrow language of the act, but it distorts the act’s larger purpose, which is to ensure that the public can

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business-planLos Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s first proposed budget calls for hiring 140 firefighters and the start of a sweeping overhaul of the city’s 911 dispatch system, part of a bid to speed the response to hundreds of thousands of calls for help each year.

The revamped dispatch operation, outlined Monday by the mayor’s office as it presented an $8.1-billion spending plan for the coming fiscal year, would unify separate police and fire emergency call centers and gradually replace some uniformed firefighters with lower-paid civilian phone operators.

The proposal is the latest effort to address studies finding that the Los Angeles Fire Department has lagged behind national standards for dispatching rescuers to those needing emergency medical aid and suffered from repeated breakdowns of an aging computer system that manages calls. Last month, a city-funded consultant called for a series of management and technology reforms at the department, including some of the changes Garcetti is proposing.

Garcetti said his budget, the first to provide a road map for his “back to basics” agenda, would expand library hours, add building inspectors and provide for

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cvbnThe Government should dump media ownership restrictions in order to fix TV blackspots across the country, a Federal Liberal MP says.

Successive governments spent almost $1 billion switching televisions from analog to digital, but the Federal member for Hume, Angus Taylor, says many regional people have been left worse off.

“There are tens of thousands and perhaps more Australians across regional areas who are suffering from poor TV coverage, and I think it’s time for the Government to fix it,” he told ABC Rural.

He has managed to secure funding for a new tower in Crookwell in regional NSW, where locals say reception is hopeless.

“If you’re watching something like the Antique Roads Show and the fella’s explaining some technical thing about something, the sound goes and it’s very annoying,” local resident Bryan Kennedy explained.

Ron Cummins has lobbied for a new tower for the past three years. He said the offer of government subsidies during the digital switchover did not help.

“If you weren’t on a full-time pension, then you had to pay for the installation of the VAST system. And that could work up to $650 to $900 for the black box and satellite

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bvnThe South Australian Government’s lobbying efforts for federal transport funding have switched focus onto tram and rail projects, and away from roads, following the departure of Tony Abbott from the prime ministership.

Acting Premier John Rau said the State Government would make new submissions to Infrastructure Australia to significantly expand Adelaide’s tram network and complete the electrification of the Gawler railway line.

“Mr Abbott as prime minister wasn’t very interested in rail,” he said.

“The fact that we now appear to have a different attitude in Canberra is very welcome and that means we shift our emphasis now from road projects that we’ve got sitting there, over to rail projects.”

Mr Rau said he had been encouraged by comments from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and recently appointed Minister for Cities and the Built Environment, Jamie Briggs.

The tram network expansion plan was unveiled in 2013 and would see new lines branching out to destinations including Semaphore, Blair Athol, Mitcham, Magill and the airport.

But Mr Rau said he was happy to consider alternatives.

“If the Commonwealth’s happy to talk about going up O’Connell Street, so are we,” he said.

The full electrification of the Gawler rail line was

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Business-Hands-PCCorporations are tracking your movements via mobile devices almost before you leave your front door, and while it seems a bit like Big Brother, small businesses are at risk of getting left behind unless they also embrace social media.

Perth entrepreneurs Paul Trappitt and Todd Sainsbury decided to develop a social media platform to make it easier for small businesses to engage with social media, after noticing they were lagging behind.

The pair took the leap from setting up businesses with wifi to providing an integrated system that enables customers to log in with social media, which they said would give a better experience for customers and allow business owners to build customer profiles.

“We saw a gap in the market, in the tech knowledge for the business owner, why haven’t these business owners of these cafes had good wifi or an online presence? Is it because they don’t understand how it works?” Mr Sainsbury asked.

“Small businesses are trying to survive. People don’t have the disposable cash they used to, so businesses have to compete more for customers.

“Before, when you went into

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cnnTelecommunications firms Vocus and M2 are planning to merge to create a $3 billion company that can better compete with industry giants Telstra and Optus.

The boards of the two firms are unanimously recommending an all share merger deal that will see M2 shareholders receive 1.625 Vocus shares for every M2 share they own.

If shareholders agree, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) gives its blessing, the deal would create the fourth biggest integrated telecommunications company in Australia.

ACCC approval appears highly likely given comments this morning from its chairman Rod Sims, distinguishing this deal from an earlier observation about telecommunications takeovers.

“The comment around reluctance about more mergers was certainly about a four to three [player shrinking] and therefore is not relevant to this transaction,” he told Fairfax Media.

“So obviously if it was Telstra, Optus or TPG acquiring M2 I would say that it fits straight under what I was talking about and would be something we would have strong concerns about.

“Having said that, I’m going to be neutral and say we’re going to look at it … with an open mind.”

Top 100 company

The two firms say the combined entity would

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The New South Wales Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) has put controversial ride-sharing giant Uber on notice, issuing 40 suspension notices against offending drivers.

RMS Director of Safety and Compliance Peter Wells said ride-sharing services were illegal and the Government was cracking down on those allowing their vehicles to be used.

“Taxi and hire car services in NSW must be provided by an operator accredited by Roads and Maritime, in a licensed and insured vehicle which is driven by an authorised driver,” Mr Wells said.

“Thousands of dollars in fines have already been issued to drivers offering illegal ride-sharing activities and compliance actions will continue.

“If drivers continue to offer illegal ride sharing services – they will continue to risk registration suspensions and fines.”

Mr Wells said 40 drivers have already been issued with suspension notices.

“The vehicle suspensions will take effect from midnight 30 September and will be in place for three months.

“The suspension notices have been issued to registered owners of vehicles found to be operating a privately registered vehicle for business purposes.

“If a suspended vehicle is found on the road after 1 October, the vehicle is deemed unregistered and uninsured, with penalties of

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hhhThe New South Wales Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) has put controversial ride-sharing giant Uber on notice, issuing 40 suspension notices against offending drivers.

RMS Director of Safety and Compliance Peter Wells said ride-sharing services were illegal and the Government was cracking down on those allowing their vehicles to be used.

“Taxi and hire car services in NSW must be provided by an operator accredited by Roads and Maritime, in a licensed and insured vehicle which is driven by an authorised driver,” Mr Wells said.

“Thousands of dollars in fines have already been issued to drivers offering illegal ride-sharing activities and compliance actions will continue.

“If drivers continue to offer illegal ride sharing services – they will continue to risk registration suspensions and fines.”

Mr Wells said 40 drivers have already been issued with suspension notices.

“The vehicle suspensions will take effect from midnight 30 September and will be in place for three months.

“The suspension notices have been issued to registered owners of vehicles found to be operating a privately registered vehicle for business purposes.

“If a suspended vehicle is found on the road after 1 October, the vehicle is deemed unregistered and uninsured, with penalties of

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vbbJunk food, alcohol and gambling advertisements will be banned on ACTION buses under a strict new ACT Government policy.

Under the new rules, fossil fuels and weapons advertisements will also be prohibited.

Minister for Territory and Municipal Services Shane Rattenbury said buses were a government provided service and it was important that the products and messages promoted were appropriate.

He said the policy was particularly important given a significant number of ACTION passengers were school children.

“Across the board we’re looking to promote healthier food to school children and so leaving junk food advertising off the buses helps contribute to that overall objective of delivering a healthier message to our kids,” he said.

“It’s quite clear that junk food advertising is targeted at children, in many many places it’s quite pervasive and I think the buses are just another example of that and we need to make sure that kids are getting a healthier message given the level of childhood obesity we see in our community.”

Mr Rattenbury said advertising on government assets needed to be in line with community expectations.

Government following lead of community campaign

The ACT Government recently decided to divest from fossil fuels due

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werThree prominent pro-business groups have urged ACT’s Liberal Opposition to reconsider its plans to tear up light rail contracts if they win the 2016 territory election.

Earlier this year, the Canberra Liberals said they would cancel any light rail contracts signed by the current Government.

The move attracted a stern rebuke from then prime minister Tony Abbott, who said all contracts should be honoured.

But the Liberals went on to formally warn two consortia shortlisted to help construct it the light rail project that a change in government would put an end to the project.

Now the Business Council of Australia (BCA), the Australian Industry Group (AIG) and Infrastructure Partnerships Australia (IPA) have weighed in, asking the party to change its policy.

IPA chief executive Brendan Lyon said Australia needed investment to fill the infrastructure gap and grow the economy beyond the resources boom.

He said for this reason, voiding light rail contracts would damage the national interest, and cost Canberra dearly in compensation.

“Australia has a hard-won reputation as one of the world’s safest places to invest, but the axing of Victoria’s East West Link contract has already damaged that standing,” he said.

“We have no tradition of

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dfgDespite a large number of auctions over the weekend, clearance rates around the capital cities managed a small bounce back above 70 per cent.

With the spring selling season in full swing, 2,820 auctions took place last week, with almost 1,200 each in Sydney and Melbourne dominating the figures.

The rise in auctions reflects a spring surge in the number of Sydney homes listed for sale, with plenty of homes on the market in Melbourne as well.

The national average clearance rate was 71.3 per cent, up from 69.9 per cent the previous week, according to preliminary figures from CoreLogic RP Data.

Sydney (74.2 per cent) and Melbourne (73.3 per cent) continued to lead the national market, with Adelaide just under 70 per cent and Brisbane just under 60 per cent.

About half the 58 homes auctioned in Canberra sold, while few homes were up for auction in Perth and Tasmania with well under half reported as selling at auction.

Auction clearance rates in Sydney were consistently well above 80 per cent for much of the year, pulling the national rate to a peak around 80 per cent.

However, despite the auction clearance rate falling from earlier

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cvMelbourne’s free tram zone will be extended to stops near the MCG during the AFL grand final weekend.

Footy fans will benefit from the extension of the free tram zone to the MCG for four days from Wednesday.

Three stops on Wellington Parade to Clarendon Street will be free until midnight on grand final day.

Stops at Rod Laver and Hisense arenas will also be free.

Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said the State Government wanted to make it cheaper for people to enjoy the grand final weekend.

“When you put it in the context of the broader public transport budget, which is billions and billions of dollars, this is a small contribution that the Government can make to that,” she said.

“It’s about making it easier for families to get to the MCG.”

Unlike trams, commuters will still have to pay to catch the train.