November
14, 2018

2 min read

Last week we reported that the NFL was teaming up with developer Epic Games to bring all 32 team uniforms to one of the most popular video games in the world, Fortnite. The reasoning, it seemed, was twofold: current fans would be excited about wrapping their characters in the “skins” of their favorite players, and potential fans would be exposed to a beleaguered league that needs all the new viewers it can get. They stated the outfits would be available in the game’s Battle Royale Item Shop starting Nov. 9, with no end date mentioned.

Related: Developing an App or a Game? Take a (Retro) Lesson From ‘PAC-MAN.’

The skins have now been removed from Fortnite’s online store, Epic Games announced on Monday via Twitter. But in the short time they were available — items in the store cycle in and cycle out — some unscrupulous players created sick, controversial scenarios utilizing the uniforms. Yahoo collected a rundown of what we’re talking about.

There’s Michael Vick, dog abuser, carrying a pooch.

Ohhh shit dont do him like that pic.twitter.com/uCk6SGt5RX

— Fake SportsCenter (@FakeSportsCentr) November 10, 2018

Aaron Hernandez, convicted murderer, with a gun.

Ok fortnite pic.twitter.com/1FqmZP8vrZ

— NAMING MY SON MITCH (@FlowsAndolini) November 10, 2018

Jason Pierre-Paul, who damaged multiple fingers in a Fourth of July fireworks accident, playing with sparkers.

And, finally, O.J. Simpson ready to “murder opponents.”

@StoolGametime OJ Simpson skin so I can murder these opponents and try to get away with the W! pic.twitter.com/QrR8T6v2mW

— Thankful Matt Speck (@The_Speck24) November 10, 2018

November
13, 2018

6 min read

Wish you could shed a few pounds? You’re not the only one. According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly half of all American adults surveyed said that they were trying to lose weight. (Emphasis on “trying” rather than “succeeding.”)

It seems so simple to just eat less and exercise more, right? But as all too many of us know, it ain’t that easy. We get busy, we’re exhausted, so we shove bad things in our mouths to save time, to get a quick energy boost, or, let’s face it, because a lot of bad things taste great! The planning and willpower it takes to radically change our lives in order to fit into last year’s jeans usually last as long as that Häagen-Dazs bar in our hands.

But here’s the thing: you don’t actually have to do anything radical to lose weight, says Jonathan Dugas, Ph.D., health and research consultant at Vitality Group and an endurance coach. Dugas says that we all can reap huge health benefits by making a couple of small changes in our lifestyles. Here are nine tips he offers to help you lose weight without being miserable.

1. You can’t outrun a poor diet.

Image credit:

Don Emmert | Getty Images

“The first important point is that you can’t out exercise a poor diet. While being active does mean you burn calories, being overweight or obesity is strictly a function of diet and not activity levels. As such, we try to help everyone be active for the health benefits, but eat healthily for the weight benefits. It is important to remember that weight loss really is a marathon and not a sprint. Individuals who are more overweight or obese can experience more rapid weight loss, but that is because they have more weight to lose. Managing expectations is key to staying the course and achieving one’s goals.”

2. Pick a diet. Any diet.

Image credit:

Enrique Díaz | 7cero | Getty Images

“The key to diets is that, by design, they all create an energy deficit, and to lose weight a deficit is required. So, if one adopts a diet and follows it, then they are almost certain to lose weight, although the amount of weight they lose, and whether they lose more fat than muscle mass, will vary widely. Do not be afraid to abandon a diet and try a new one if it is not working for you. Expect to do some trial and error before you find one that you feel like is a good fit for your lifestyle.”

Related: Exercise Is One Thing Most Successful People Do Everyday

3. Skip working out for now — and skip those smoothies!

Image credit:

Foment | Getty Images

“It’s not uncommon for an individual to have a wakeup call and get motived to take action. The tendency, however, is to be too ambitious and try to fix everything at once. This can be problematic. If weight loss is your goal, focus on weight loss. That means changing your dietary habits to achieve that daily and weekly calorie deficit, but it also means you do not increase your physical activity. Not only does adding more workouts just soak up bandwidth, but the increase in energy expenditure will actually drive appetite up. For most of us, we feel justified indulging after a workout because we feel like we earned it. However, a 16 oz. sports drink (~100 calories) and an energy bar (200-300 calories) is all it takes to match the 300-400 calories you just burned at the gym. And forget about the post-workout smoothie, those babies can run you in excess of 500 calories easy.”

4. Eat what you make and take what you make.

Image credit:

Luis Alvarez | Getty Images

“We are surrounded by very convenient and affordable, yet calorie-dense, food options. In some situations, these make sense, for example having to catch an early flight and eating breakfast at the airport. However, preparing your own food, even if you do not choose the healthiest ingredients 100 percent of the time, will almost always result in lower intake. Therefore, opting to prepare your own meals when you can is a big win. The key is understanding that few of us can do this all the time — and that’s okay. Instead, set some weekly goals like bringing your lunch to work on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Your bank account will thank you, too.”

Related: 5 Ways Switching to Plant-Based Diet Boosts Your Productivity

5. Be social.

Image credit:

Thomas Barwick | Getty Images

“Cooking for one or two can seem like a lot more effort than just eating out. Instead, leverage the power of your social network and rotate dinners with your friends. And I don’t mean extravagant dinner parties with all the trimmings. Chances are you aren’t the only one who wants to do things a little healthier, so set out some criteria with your buddies and agree to cook for the group one night a week. All it takes is two or three of you and suddenly most weeknights can be covered, plus you get to hang with your friends.”

6. Limit, but don’t eliminate, alcohol.

Image credit:

franckreporter | Getty Images

“Enjoying a drink isn’t a crime, and it won’t wreck your health. Drinking in excess, however, can derail your weight loss efforts in a hurry because alcoholic beverages can be extremely high in calories. Limiting alcohol in any way will help. For some that means not drinking on certain days of the week, for others, it means simply stopping at one drink, or maybe giving up beer for wine. Find an approach that is comfortable for you.”

Related: 10 Healthy Habits for People Who Work Remotely

7. Don’t drink your calories when you can eat them.

Image credit:

Dmitry Ageev | Getty Images

“When given the opportunity to eat your calories instead of drinking them, always choose the former. Water is really always the best choice, but there is a long list of zero and low-calorie beverages. At around 150 calories per can, sugary beverages like sodas, sports drinks, and juice (yes, juice), are the primary offenders here. Even just two a day is like having an extra sandwich at lunch.”

8. Get professional help.

Image credit:

bymuratdeniz | Getty Images

“Consider accessing a pro. Dieticians train specifically to help people manage their weight. If you are overweight or obese, dietician services might even be covered by your health plan, but you’ll have to investigate to be sure. But even if you aren’t, consider the professional insights, support, and accountability an investment in your health and future. A typical approach is between 3-6 months, so while being healthy is a lifelong commitment, getting help from a dietician isn’t.”

Related: 11 Strategies for Eating Healthy on a Business Trip

9. Don’t be afraid to change.

Image credit:

Raquel Lonas | Getty Images

“Don’t be afraid to change course if something is not working. Getting to the right mix of habits and behaviors that fits with you almost certainly will require trial and error. To that end, be willing to change it up if you feel like something is a dead end.”

November
10, 2018

2 min read

If you’ve ever watched Entrepreneur’s original series, Elevator Pitch, then you’ve probably seen smart founders make dumb mistakes while pitching their ideas to potential investors. They might flub an answer or get tongue-tied, or they might just be a little boring. Other times, you might notice that something seemed off about a pitch, but you can’t quite put your finger on why.

Investors are gambling every time they put money into a new project or idea. Your job when pitching is to prove to them that you’re worth the risk. That means you’ll need to not only show them the possible upside of what they have to gain, but also be clear about what they could possibly expect to lose and their odds. In other words, you need to give them a holistic view of what you do, not just the one good idea.

You might have pitched an investor yourself and thought you crushed it, only to hear that the investor isn’t interested. If that’s the case, there’s a chance the pitch was missing one of 10 essential elements.

This infographic by Buffalo 7 breaks down 10 slides you should have in your next investment pitch deck. If you’re not presenting formally, though, you can still keep track of these aspects in your head and make sure you cover each one. They include:

1. The vision, where you concisely explain your idea.
2. The problem. Why is your vision necessary or helpful?
3. The opportunity. What is the market size, and how can you position yourself to earn a share of it?

This is just the start, though. Check out the infographic below to see the rest of the slides you need when pitching investors.

November
9, 2018

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Small businesses are losing business and potentially harming their reputations because of SEO spam cyberattacks. These attacks are known as search engine poisoning (SEP) attacks. As the name implies, the desired outcome (i.e., action on objective) of this attack is to poison your website results on search engine result pages (SERP).

Related: Malware Hits Everyone From Small Businesses to Big Government. What Are You Doing About It?

To understand this attack, we have to step back to the basics with SEO. SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the work that goes into your website to help you rank higher when customers search for your business online. Search engines like Google and Bing use special software that quickly reviews or “crawls” the content on websites and then serves up the most relevant sites for a particular query. When your site’s keywords are properly optimized, you’ll get more visitors, which ultimately means more potential customers and more income.

There are all sorts of tricks and tips to improve your SEO ranking — but that’s another article for another time. These SEP attacks materialize in what is known as SEO spam. It’s when an attacker injects your site with unwanted links and keywords. Hackers can insert links anywhere on your website, and depending on the tactics they employ, they can embed these links into the meta data or into your website’s content. Hackers use basic HTML anchor elements to link to other pages. Some of the more common locations might be header and footer files because they load with each request, or in specific widgets or menus. But, we see them sprinkled in titles and content in the body as well.

Perhaps the most pervasive of SEP attacks is the injection of pharmaceutical ads, but these days you can see injections for things like casinos, fashion and a wide range of other industries — including things like services to write your school papers. In all these instances, attackers find a way to inject spam keywords, often attributed to backlinks to their sites of choice.

Related: How to Protect Your Personal Brand’s Website From a Cyber Attack

For example, if a local Seattle marketing consultant’s website experienced SEO spam, it could soon stop showing up in relevant search queries, such as “Seattle marketing consultant” because search engines would instead pick up fraudulent or malicious keywords. In digital marketing, we call this “losing your ranking,” or being knocked further down in the search results for a truly relevant query. Ultimately, this form of cyber attack can cost small-business owners and entrepreneurs business because customers are no longer finding them online.

This type of attack is so effective and interesting to attackers because it’s often very difficult to detect (e.g., they are often injected in code that renders off screen) and built on an affiliate business that cares only about impressions, not conversions. What this means is that attackers make money based on the traffic (impressions) they generate for their customers. As long as they are generating traffic, they are happy. It’s such an effective attack that in a recent study we conducted of 60,000-plus infected sites, we found over 73 percent of the infected sites were affected with this malware type.

Negative impact of SEO spam

SEO spam can also hurt a business’s reputation and mislead potential customers about the content of the site. This is because negative and incorrect keywords could direct straight to the business’s website, giving off an unprofessional or even fraudulent appearance. For example, a high-end salon could have the incorrect keywords “cheap sunglasses” associated with its website. If this happens, visitors may think the site is a scam, or misinterpret what the business actually is. One of the ways that Google will punish your site is flagging it as potentially compromised:

Related: 7 Surprising Places Hackers Hide

Here are a few tips that should help small business stay ahead of SEO Spam threats:

1. Register with Google’s webmaster tools. It’s easy, and it’s free. Google is one of the largest search engines and its software is constantly crawling the web. If you register with their tools, it will alert you when it finds an issue — a full 48 hours before it flags it to the public or begins changing how your site shows up in search results. This is a great preventative step that costs nothing to enact.

2. Proactively protect your website. Websites are under attack on a daily basis, whether you deploy something on the server, application or in the cloud; you must deploy some form of a protective solution. My recommendation is to go with a cloud-based firewall, as the name implies it is a wall that helps keep attackers at bay. It actively adapts to attacks and helps keep your site spam free.

3. Deploy a monitoring service. These types of services monitor your website proactively and identify red flags or warning signs, which you would never see or recognize on your own, including monitoring for SEO spam. This is complementary to Google’s webmaster tools. Partnering with a security provider helps provide peace of mind to small-business owners knowing they have a team with expertise to help them in case anything should go wrong.

4. Monitor keywords: This is a great way to get cross-functional teams involved: Have your marketing teams actively monitor your traffic and keyword performance. They are often on the front lines and should be able to notice suspicious behavior like a spike in keywords in industries you don’t participate.

Security is very nuanced and constantly evolving. The online threats and issues we were dealing with just a year ago are different today. While this form of cyber attack isn’t discussed as much as phishing or malware attacks, it’s absolutely something all website owners should be aware of. Consider following the simple steps above to ensure no SEO spam is living on your website. Also, remember the value of good SEO optimization to keep new relevant visitors coming to your site.

November
7, 2018

5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently issued a stern warning: End humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels within a decade or become directly responsible for not halting irreversible climate change.

Related: #5 Ways Through Which Biotech Entrepreneurs are Going to Enhance Human Lives

Clearly we have to pay attention to climate change. And, here, one of the biggest areas we can change is the power sector; that’s because, currently, 33 percent of the world’s power comes from oil, while coal is responsible for 28 percent, and natural gas, 24 percent. Cutting out fossil fuels and switching to cleaner, renewable sources of energy could do a lot to impact climate change, but we may need to rethink some parts of our power grid.

Power grids in industrialized countries were developed to convey a steady stream of electricity to as many people as possible and provide that steady stream of energy in the most reliable way possible. While that was certainly a noble cause, the architects of this system failed to take into account that such ease of use would result in ever-increasing demand for power, which would in turn result in tons of carbon dioxide being dumped into our atmosphere every year.

In the United States alone, 35 percent of CO2 emissions comes from power generation.

Now we know better, but doing better isn’t looking as easy. Today, decades after scientists first sounded the alarm bells about climate change, alternatives to coal and oil are still costly and have poor adoption rates. Worldwide, only 3 percent of our power comes from renewable sources, 7 percent from hydroelectricity, and a measly 0.2 percent from solar.

Solar adoption is on the rise, but it can be cost prohibitive for many people. Just a few solar panels can power an entire home or office, and 1 gigawatt of solar power generation can prevent 690 metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. But even a standard system for a small house can cost an average of $13,188, while a system for a large house can be more than $20,000.

And even at those prices, there are complications and regulatory hurdles that can make the cost savings negligible, further discouraging adoption.

What Europe is doing to further blockchain’s positive impact on the environment

Already in Europe, there are multiple villages in the Netherlands where blockchain technology is being used to generate, share and store renewable energy among the homes, each of which has different combinations of energy production technology. Residents have solar panels, heat pumps and more and are governed independently of the main power grid.

So far, these power co-ops are able to produce about 90 percent of the power residents need, drastically reducing their reliance on fossil fuels.

In Europe, too, Eurelectric, the trade association of electric distribution operators for the continent, has been monitoring blockchain’s progress in modernizing the power grid and recently released a report about its findings. The report concluded that asset ownership of the power grid would remain an important task, and blockchain technology would be unlikely to change that aspect of the electric companies’ business model.

What blockchain could do

Blockchain could, however, impact the generation side of power distribution.

In fact, in 2017, a pilot program was launched using IBM’s blockchain framework to stabilize the power grid in Europe, a first step in incorporating renewable and clean energy solutions into the power grid. One of the main problems with implementing new sources of power generation is that they can be unpredictable in the volume of power they will output in a given day.

That means that on a cloudy day, a power grid would have to be able to shift from solar to an alternate source or battery backup. This is where blockchain smart grids come in handy on “dumb” existing power distribution networks — the smart grid can tell when there is a shortfall in one part and switch sources without the need for constant human intervention.

Related: 5 Industries Likely to Be Disrupted by Blockchain

In undeveloped areas of the world, blockchain smart power grids can be used to solve the “last mile” problem in universal power adoption, by pulling power from multiple nearby sources. It can also give people the power to choose where their energy is coming from. Users on smart power distribution grids can choose how much of their power to gain from renewable sources based on market availability, cost, reliability and other factors.

This is an alternative to just relying on power distribution operators to sell them whatever those operators are generating. Smart grids can also help people make the most efficient use of their resources by forecasting energy needs and storage use.

Want to learn more about the potential of blockchain smart power grid technology to move your business forward? Check out this infographic from Lition: