The Wallabies have kept the same backline that played in the loss to Argentina two weeks ago but have significantly beefed up their tight forwards in the first step on their road to redemption. Headlining the changes is Taniela Tupou (christened “Tongan Thor” for his power) making his first start in the gold jersey.
With Adam Coleman and Izack Rodda starting in the second row the Wallabies will have plenty of big ball runners in tight, and the bench selections suggest that they will use them. There is an entire tight five on the bench for the men in gold, so Michael Cheika seems to think that the match will be a hugely physical battle in tight.
Cheika has also gone for three workhorse players in the back row. With Michael Hooper fit again he will reclaim the captaincy and the open side flanker role, sending David Pocock to the back of the scrum. Ned Hanigan, who was much maligned last year but has bulked up considerably since then, will play blind side.
With the same backline that struggled on the Gold Coast, Hooper’s usual role as an extra ball-runner in the midfield will be invaluable. He will also probably act as Kurtley Beale’s bodyguard off set piece play, freeing the mercurial playmaker to focus on strategy and counter-attack.
The backline will be unchanged, with Israel Folau remaining on the wing (hopefully after a lot of practice passing from left to right) and Dane Haylett-Petty at fullback. If the attack again misfires expect to see Bernard Foley injected early, possibly with a shift to fullback for Beale. Matt Toomua will be looking to cement his inside centre role.
The midfield combination of Beale, Toomua and Reece Hodge at outside centre has had an extra two weeks to practice their moves, and with all three able to act as a playmaker and kick if called on the Wallabies certainly have options in offence. Toomua and Hodge have also been solid in defence in the games they have played next to each other.
Hopefully the loss to Argentina was rock-bottom for the Wallabies, as they will need a greatly improved performance against a Springbok side that will be full of confidence after beating the All Blacks in Wellington. If not, long suffering fans will only have more agony ahead.
Victorian Education Minister James Merlino has attacked his Federal counterpart over a letter demanding an agreement be reached regarding schools funding.
Mr Merlino publically released a letter he received from Dan Tehan, the Federal Education Minister. In the letter, Mr Tehan warns Mr Merlino that the Federal Government would be unable to provide funding to private and public schools for early 2019 unless a fresh deal was agreed to before the 7th of December.
Mr Merlino called it a “clumsy and unprecedented threat”.
However, Mr Tehan has responded saying that the letter was released “for political purposes” and that Victoria was the only state that was casting doubt over negotiations regarding education funding.
He said that no other education minister has brought up a problem with the letter and that he thinks Mr Merlino “wants to play politics”.
That announcement has put funding negotiations into shambles and Mr Merlino said in a statement that because Mr Tehan was still new in the role as Education Minister he “doesn’t understand where negotiations are up to”.
He added that Mr Tehan was “essentially holding a gun to the head of states and territories” and that if he was really concerned about education he would “provide fair funding for every child” instead of inventing solutions “that pit one sector against the other”.
Tanya Plibersek, Labor’s education spokeswoman, said that the Government was using “bully boy tactics” and that “this is a new low even for Scott Morrison”.
She added that “Parents and teachers are right to be furious”.
The ability to update and manage the content of your website with ease is one that will save you an abundance of time, energy and money. Rather than spending hours fiddling around with HTML, Doscie offers a simple solution.
The free application gives users an efficient, easy-to-use content editing platform which is plugged into your browser using an embedded Javascript link. It also allows users to manage numerous versions of their site and translate material into different languages.
After being released earlier this year, Docsie has been awarded 4.6/5 stars by Softpedia Review and has received almost 100k views on Instagram. We spoke to the brain behind the start-up, Philippe Trounev.
What motivated you to start up Docsie?
We were at Websummit showcasing our other startup hanba.io and we both realized that we wanted to do something different. We wanted to create lots of microservices to empower small businesses so we came up with an idea and executed it.
What is your philosophy for your business?
To embrace challenges we face and turn them into stepping stones towards building better products and services. We like to create products and scale them, it’s fun.
Did you face any challenges getting established?
We were “established’ for about 3 years. We had two products metrics.im (which we built, but didn’t launch) and hanba.io which was about to get funded but decided to take things in a different direction and bootstrap with Docsie instead.
What have been the most rewarding aspects of creating your own business?
Seeing it grow from 100 users a month in May of this year to 1000’s of happy users all across the globe. We wanted to prove to ourselves that we can scale and support amazing products and we succeeded.
What are the most recent trends in the content management landscape?
The future of content is serverless and dynamic. Look at techcrunch their site is now 100% dynamic. Static HTML sites are slowly dying and dynamically rendered serverless content is there to replace it.
What are some of the advantages of bootstrapping your own start-up as opposed to using early stage investors or venture capital?
You get to keep control and equity. I know lot’s of founders who were ousted from their own start-ups at semi early stages, had their shares diluted, idea crushed, etc. I think early stage seed capital is kind of useless in 2018, as entry barriers/cost to launching and scaling a product to a decent sized business is fairly very low especially if you write your own code.
Do you have a 5 or 10 year vision for your business?
We want to have over 100 profitable microservices, powering 1000’s of businesses globally.
Can you offer any advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?
Stop looking for a technical cofounder, learn to code, build something, try to scale it and network.
What are you currently working on?
We are working on AI powered translation microservice. There are 4 other services that we plan to release this year that focus on content localization, simplified search and AI powered dynamic A/B testing.
For the majority of last year, the business world was locked in suspense over a possible interest rate hike from the United States Federal Reserve, colloquially referred to as the Fed. That suspense was finally broken this year in March and then again in June when the interest rate went back to its highest level in a decade. Furthermore, the Fed has announced at least one more hike this year with the details to be decided later on.
Ever since the 2008 financial crisis which likely could have crashed the United States economy if not for the last minute government bailout, interest rates have been kept low as an incentive for recovery. Now that the economy has more or less recovered, interest rates have risen to pre-2008 levels (in the US – Australian interest rates are still at a record lows). As detailed in most trading courses, interest rates have a pretty major impact on the financial market, which will be detailed further below.
The basics of interest rates
If you’ve ever used a credit card before then you should already be familiar with the term interest rates. In layman’s term, interest rate is the amount that is charged to the borrower by the creditor for the use of creditor’s assets, usually expressed in terms of percentage. For example, if you purchase a 4K TV for the price of $500 and a credit card interest rate of 10%, that means you’ll have to pay an extra $50 for using your bank’s money to buy that TV.
When we’re talking the Federal Reserve interest rate, we’re talking about the federal funds rate, or the interest rates at which depository institutions, such as commercial banks, are charged for borrowing money from the Federal Reserve or other countries central banks. Central banks do this to control inflation, by raising interest rates; they’re attempting to reduce the supply of money, thereby making them more expensive while lowering them essentially increases the supply of money. This is why they’re sometimes referred to as the cost of money.
The ripple effect of interest rates
While the federal funds rate only refers to exchanges between banks and the Federal Reserve, this rate is also the number upon which prime interest rates are based on. When a company takes out a loan from a bank for the purpose of business, the prime interest rate is the rate that company is charged on. Mortgage loan rates, the annual percentage rate (APR) for commercial credit cards and other types of loans are all based on that number as well.
I mean, it’s pretty simple when you think about. If it costs banks more to borrow money from the Federal Reserve, it’s only natural for those banks to pass those costs along to the customers. For individuals like you and me, that would manifest as an increase to credit card interest rate and any other loan that might carry a variable interest rate. Even if your credit card bills stay the same, the cost of using that credit card itself increases, which means you’re going to have to spend less on other expenses, which slows down the economy as a whole.
Businesses are also impacted by this as they rely on banks for expansions and a portion of their day-to-day operations. For businesses that rely on projects, banks are essential since the bills are usually footed by the banks, which take into account the potential future cash flow from these projects and/or expansions. With higher interest rates, businesses would be forced to take less projects and make less expansions, which would inevitably slows their growth and sometimes even force them to induce cutbacks.
How rising interest rates affect the stock market
From the explanation above, it’s pretty easy to guess how the stock market could be affected by rising interest rates. Keep in mind that interest rates affect the market as a whole, pretty much every industry is connected to banks and other financial institutions. Less profit and reduced potential of future cash flows would automatically reduce investor’s faith on the company since they’re likely to see less stock appreciation. For the most part, this would lead to an decrease in a company’s stock price.
Due to the wide-ranging impact of interest rates, it’s quite likely that key indexes, such as the United States’ Dow Jones Industrial Average or the Australian ASX, which is what the general public think as the ‘market’ will go down as well. Stock ownership are seen as less desirable immediately following a rate hike but will eventually normalise down the line as long as there are no more rate hikes in the near future.
Of course, as with everything else, there are always exceptions to the rule. To wit, remember that the extra cost is passed along from the Federal Reserve to the banks and finally to both the individual customers and businesses, the banks and other financial institutions don’t actually have to contend with the extra cost. Sure, this would lead to customers borrowing less money but also keep in mind that some expenses are too essential that they can’t be negotiated.
The healthcare industry for example doesn’t really stop for anything, which means that insurance companies are less affected by rate hikes compared to other companies. Banks too compensate for less borrowing by simply charging more for lending and all things being equal shouldn’t be affected much by rate hikes. The financial industry as a whole tends to be your best bet when it comes to performance after a rate hike.
The digital age is here and now, and every company nowadays is turning to the internet and social media to peddle their wares. And why shouldn’t they? Website building and e–commerce platforms allow you to set up your online presence in mere hours; social media allows you to reach massive audiences around the world at a moment’s notice; and web content management tools allow you to track how effective your marketing campaigns are without the need for statisticians to have to do the math.
But as the saying goes, old habits die hard. As effective as online marketing methods are, they aren’t the one-size-fits-all solution. The Internet is new–fangled technology, and because of that it cannot spread your brand to every possible demographic. What if your target customers are senior citizens?
They may have a hard time finding your company if it only markets through social media. In these situations, it may be time to disconnect, break out the old pen and paper, and start marketing offline. Here are a few ways you can boost your brand without the aid of the Internet.
1. Paper beats rock
Paper is a powerful thing. It has been the primary medium for recording our history and our culture, and it has more than proven itself capable of withstanding the test of time. Paper is so resilient, in fact, that we do not see our technology rendering it completely obsolete for at least another few thousand years. Long before the Internet and mobile phones, print advertising ruled supreme as the marketing tool to have besides outright word-of-mouth. And even to this day, it still works and it still gets the job done, so print advertising is a great way to get people talking about your brand.
If you want to go down this route, you have a huge list of options to choose from, which can vary both in cost and in scale. If you’re a small business, handouts are a great place to start. Print eye-catching flyers and brochures that will point potential customers to your company, and always print a few business cards to have on hand, so you have something to give to anyone you meet who may want to get in touch with you later on (this is especially important regardless of the size of your company). If you plan to go bigger, you can call attention to your brand with larger posters and billboards. They work best if they are placed in conspicuous, high-traffic areas where they can be seen by a lot of people every day.
Regardless of which of these options you choose, the key here is to get creative. Print ads have been around for decades, so you can reasonably expect people to ignore simple advertisements. Fancy designs or good-looking ads just don’t cut it anymore – people have already seen them before. So if you really want to catch people’s attention, innovate. Get clever with your choice of words and designs. Subvert people’s expectations. Give your ads something that lets them stand out from the crowd so that people who see them are more likely to stop and take notice. One great example of this in action is a billboard advertisement for a car, which intentionally placed a typo in the wording to get people’s attention, playing on our tendency to judge the mistakes we spot.
2. Get to know people – and get them to know you
For anyone who works on a freelance or a per-commission basis, knowing someone is everything. People who work as musicians or graphic designers will very likely get most of their gigs or jobs from friends of friends of friends or some other far-reaching connection in their network. As a business owner, building networks may not have as drastic an impact as it has on the working musician, but it is still important nonetheless. Having a solid network will help you – and, in turn, your brand – to be recognised and remembered.
A great place to start building your own network is by joining industry events such as trade shows. Trade shows and fairs attract both businesses and customers alike, so there is much to take away from these events. As a business owner, you can showcase your products to gain customers and clients; you can learn new marketing strategies from larger players in the industry, which you can apply to your own business; and you can join local business organisations which gives you more opportunities to connect with other business and potential clients. In these sorts of events, your business cards become your most powerful tool to get people to remember you, so always have them at the ready.
People tend to remember faces better than names, so it’s always a good idea to put a face behind the brand so people can remember both. Besides attending trade shows, a great way to get people to associate your face with your brand is to take opportunities to speak at events. Speaking engagements will give you a chance to connect directly with your target audience, so you can use this to showcase your company and its products or services.
A great speech will also build your credibility as a business owner (or even an employee), and in doing so you can gain the trust of your employees or your superiors. If you don’t yet have the reputation needed to be able to speak at an event, attending the event is still a great way to gain further knowledge and build connections.
Photo: Luamduan, BS
3. Set up promotions and giveaways
The previous tips all focus on making the brand known to the customers; however, what good is a brand that people know but don’t support? A couple ways to convince people to buy your products is through promotions and giveaways. Offer discounts on your products for certain demographics to encourage them to buy from you.
Set up contests and competitions featuring your products as the prizes; alternatively, you can give your products to a third party as part of their contest or giveaway promotion. Manufacture merchandise with your brand name on it – pens, stickers, notebooks, bookmarks, and more – and have them ready as giveaways to complement your showcase during events.
If you have a surplus of company merchandise, consider donating them to a non-profit organisation who may find some use in, say, pens and notebooks – doing this will advertise your brand and help your local community in the process. One tip to bear in mind is the quality of the promotional products. Although small businesses will want to keep their costs low, poor quality items that break easily, can actually tarnish your brand look instead of promote it.
4. Use what’s already there
Print advertising doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to print your advertisements yourself. Instead, you can simply take advantage of media that is already in circulation to spread awareness about your brand. Try to get advertising spots on newspapers and magazines; taking this idea further, you can utilise your connections with journalists and writers to help promote your brand through interviews with you or reviews about your products. You can also do the same with radio stations to get your brand name heard on the air waves.
5. Get creative
As we’ve mentioned before, creativity is key. Innovate. Think outside the box. Take the road less travelled. These tips are all tried and true ways to spread your brand awareness, but beyond that, you will have to rely on your intuition and what you know about your target audience in order to reach them.
Guerrilla marketing methods are proving very effective in boosting brand awareness; their unorthodox nature breaks away from common marketing tropes, which is really good at grabbing people’s attention. This may be an option you can consider.
But in all things, balance is still very important. In this day and age, a business cannot rely solely on offline marketing, the same way a business cannot rely solely on online marketing. The perfect marketing strategy uses a combination of both offline and online marketing methods. It is up to you – the marketer or the business owner – to figure out the rest.
This Sunday the Sydney Roosters and Melbourne Storm will face off in the biggest game of the NRL season (with the exception of State of Origin). Easts finished first on the ladder due to a slightly better for and against, while Melbourne are the most experienced team in NRL history in terms of grand finals played.
If defence wins premierships then the Roosters have the edge, with the best defence in the NRL this year. They will also be full of confidence after holding South Sydney (the best attacking team) to two penalty goals last week, and comfortably holding off Cronulla the week before.
The Sydney Roosters will also be very confident if the match becomes a grind, as they have an excellent second half record. Over their last four matches they have let in just 12 points in the second half, and none in the final 20 minutes when matches typically open up. They have also not conceded a try in the last 20 minutes since round 20, 2 months ago.
The Storm, on the other hand, will be relying on experience to get them over the line. Their leaders Cameron Smith and Billy Slater are each in their 7th big dance, with the rest of the team containing just 3 grand final debutants. On the other hand, the Roosters will likely have just 9 grand final caps between them (16 if Cooper Cronk plays – he would be the most experienced player on the field, but also only has one working arm).
The Roosters do have plenty of big game experience, with James Tedesco, Boyd Cordner and Latrell Mitchell all starring for the NSW Blues this year, while Blake Ferguson and Dylan Napa have played Origin before, and Jared Waerea-Hargreaves has played for New Zealand. If Cronk plays the Roosters will add his experience to their arsenal.
Both sides are great defensively as well as being loaded with attacking weapons, so the game should be both entertaining and close. If it lives up to its potential, the Roosters have the defence to get them over the line at the end – but that isn’t a confident prediction.
The art of writing an article that people both want to read and enjoy reading is rarer than many might think. Not only do you need to choose your words carefully and ensure that you use a clear, engaging style, you also have to pick a topic that people want more information about.
Good writing requires a number of core skills that you can’t pick up in a day or two. The most important one is the ability to write fluently in the language you will use for the article. This does not mean that you need to be a native speaker, but you need to be at native speaker level – after all, you are writing for an audience that has been reading in the language for their whole lives, so they will be able to tell if you aren’t fluent and the writing will feel awkward.
You also need to have a wide vocabulary, a strong knowledge of grammatical rules and a sense of what it takes for writing to be high quality. These skills can be worked on, but you will most likely pick them up if you read widely anyway. Reading a lot of books and articles will also help you to develop your written language skills.
Steps for writing a great article
1. Choose your topic carefully
Choosing a compelling topic is essential in crafting a high quality article. That doesn’t mean that the subject choice has to be wildly popular, but it does mean that it has to be interesting to your audience. If you are writing a sports column, for example, then you will need to cover major sporting events, for example, while if you are writing a blog about digital marketing then you can go in-depth about SEO techniques.
If you need help choosing a topic, check out blogs similar to yours to find out what types of articles are popular. You should also remember that just because a topic isn’t common that doesn’t mean that it can’t be interesting – if it is relevant to your target audience then a new subject can be interesting because it is different.
2. Do your research
You need to be well informed about your subject matter if you are going to write a compelling article. If you pick a popular subject, then it will be very likely that your readers will already know something about it so you need to be better informed than they are. If you pick a more obscure (but still interesting) topic then you need to provide all the information your readers will need to understand your article.
3. Find a new angle
Nobody wants to read the same article they have already seen on ten other websites. Once you’ve chosen your subject matter and researched it thoroughly you need to find something new to say about it. You will, of course, need to provide basic background information, but you can look at the story from a new angle or provide different advice for dealing with a situation.
This is where your research comes in handy for your writing solutions. You should already know what other people are saying about your topic, so you can say something else. You might disagree with popular opinion, you might have some extra facts to discuss that aren’t often mentioned or you might be able to provide a fresh perspective on the story.
You do still need to provide the same background info that everyone else does, just in case yours is the first article that someone reads about the topic. If you are going to disagree with the prevailing opinion you will also need to provide an outline of what that opinion is, usually with a link to an example.
Obviously coming up with a fresh take is a lot easier if you choose a topic that hasn’t already been done to death. If you are doing a less common article then you don’t need to work as hard to have an original viewpoint – simply summarising the facts of the story and providing your take on it can be enough.
4. Start writing!
Plenty of people get scared off by the about of prior preparation that needs to be done before writing an article, or try to prepare too much. Once you start writing you should be able to get into a decent flow, as long as you know the basics of what you are talking about.
Even if what you write the first time around isn’t very good, you can always come back and fix it later. Getting started is the most important thing when it comes to article writing, because you will often find that it is easy to keep going. Now that you know all of the prerequisites and steps to writing a great article, why don’t you have a go? Best in Australia accepts guest posts you know!
Many jobs involve an element of manual handling, from nursing to warehouse management. At it simplest, manual handling is all about the art of correctly picking up, moving and setting back down heavy objects (or people) without causing any injury to yourself, or damage to whatever is being manoeuvred.
Manual handling injuries can happen to anyone, and it is a sobering thought that according to statistics from a 2015/16 UK Labour Force Survey around 20% of workplace injuries in the UK were a result of an incident involving handling, lifting, or carrying something. In addition, poor handling practices can exacerbate an existing injury or medical condition. Managers are responsible for the well-being of their team members, and a bad injury can render someone unable to work for a long time – sometimes even for the rest of their life.
What is a manual handling injury?
Manual handling injuries occur when too much external pressure is put on part of the body, resulting in internal damage and pain. Typically affected areas include joints, tissues, ligaments and tendons. Such an injury will be extremely painful and will often be accompanied by a throbbing, burning or aching sensation, as well as numbness or tingling. Watch out, too, for stiffness, swelling or a reduced ability to move the affected limb or limbs.
Identifying the symptoms and treating them early on is key to preventing long-term issues, such as arthritis or sciatica. Additionally, injuries are not caused by one single heavy lift. Repetitive movements can cause severe damage over time, especially if they are not being performed safely.
What’s to be done?
There is plenty that an employer can do to prevent such injuries from taking place under his or her watch. Done correctly, manual handling just becomes part and parcel of normal working life. No drama! As well as adequate and regular training in manual handling, the importance of warning signs, accessible storage solutions and protective barriers and walkway systems can make a real difference.
Got any hints or tips?
It might seem obvious, but the most effective way to avoid a manual handling injury is to do less… manual handling. Think about ways in which you can reduce the need to lift heavy objects. For example, if you know that something heavy is about to be delivered, arrange to have it taken straight to its final location, rather than simply dumping it anywhere and then needing to move it again. If you find yourself lifting lots of boxes at once, can they be broken down into separate loads to be taken one at a time? Can you fashion some handles or find a trolley or ramp to help you move an awkwardly shaped item? Don’t forget to factor rest breaks into your working schedule. If your business is moving heavy objects regularly, investing in machinery to help the process could reap rewards time and time again in terms of avoiding injuries and reducing lost working hours.
What can my boss do to help?
Top of the list is supplying decent manual handling training, appropriate for the level of work being done, for all employees and contractors. This must be renewed regularly too. Just as important is an honest risk assessment of the health of anyone expected to lift and carry heavy or awkward objects in their line of work. Does anyone need to be excused from these kinds of duties, or allocated lighter tasks? Is the first-aid box fully stocked and can people access it quickly? Does everyone know how to call for professional medical help if required?
The premises must also be assessed and designed to allow for easier manual handling. For example, storage facilities must have accessible shelves, units and loading bays as appropriate, all marked out to ensure people’s safety. Machinery must be routinely serviced and stored in a designated area to prevent accidents from occurring during their use. Lighting, flooring and exits must be damage-free and designed for maximum visibility, accessibility and navigation.
An emergency board meeting at the ABC, for which Mr Milne was not present, decided to request that he step away from his position. It was later revealed that Mr Milne had totally resigned rather than just stood aside pending an inquiry, putting an end to the chaos that has overtaken the ABC for the last week.
The scandal began when Fairfax media reported it has obtained email correspondence from Justin Milne wherein he suggested that an ABC journalist be sacked because they had upset the Government with their reporting. In the email, Mr Milne spoke of the need to “save the ABC” in the light of some kind of Government reprisal.
The board is expected to meet again to decide on who will serve as acting chairman.
In a clip from an ABC interview scheduled to air tonight, Mr Milne strongly denied that there had been any political interference from Canberra regarding who the corporation should and shouldn’t sack. He said that “Nobody from the government has ever rung me”.
However, Mr Milne acknowledged the “firestorm” that the situation has created and said that while the board only expected him to stand aside pending an inquiry; he thought it was best for the ABC if he fully resigned.
Upon being questioned outside a speaking engagement at the UN General Assembly in New York, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull insisted that he had never given any instruction to the ABC or Justin Milne regarding staff that should be let go. He did, however, point out that he had expressed in the past he was disappointed with the ABC’s reporting and implied it had fallen victim to a measure of political bias.
Last weekend saw two shock results, with Collingwood convincingly beating Richmond (who were by far the best team all year) and West Coast absolutely demolishing Melbourne. This sets up a finals rematch between the Magpies and Eagles at the MCG, after West Coast took the honours in the first week of the finals in Perth.
Richmond were the defending premiers and convincing minor premiers, and looked on track to coast to another premiership until they ran into Collingwood. The Magpies were physical, fast and accurate in their best game of the season so far. The main concern will be whether they have played their grand final already – although they have an extra day of rest over West Coast, and don’t need to travel from Perth to Melbourne this week.
West Coast, despite finishing in second place on the ladder, have flown slightly under the radar all season. Melbourne went to Perth full of confidence, after consecutive victories over veterans Geelong and Hawthorn, and were sent home in disgrace after being spanked like a red headed stepchild. Even now Collingwood are slight favourites to take out the premiership, despite being comfortably beaten by West Coast in the first week.
The Eagles are disadvantaged by a day less rest, by having to travel from Perth to Melbourne in the lead up to the match and by needing to stay away from home for the match. On the other hand they have already beaten Collingwood twice this year, once at the MCG, and have had to play a game less over the finals series. They are also coming off the most comprehensive victory in the AFL finals for a long time.
This match should be close, but given that we haven’t had a particularly close match in the AFL finals so far I think don’t think it will. In a closer game the advantages Collingwood gain from playing at home will come into play more and could get them over the line, but West Coast are the better team and if they show their class they will win comfortably.
