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Re: In My View by William Davis, Do black lives matter to blacks? (July 19, Page A6). Mr. Davis cites a number of statistics regarding black-on-black crime, and then goes on to disparage the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. While some of his statistics may be accurate, most of the realities he cites are the result of decades of failed systemic and societal conditions, and were not the motivation for the genesis of BLM.

The actual beginnings of BLM occurred following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012, and following the acquittal of his shooter, George Zimmerman. Following that tragedy were many police-involved fatal shootings of young black men, including Tamir Rice, a 12-year old discovered with a toy gun in 2014; Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014; Alton Sterling, shot at close range while pinned to the ground in 2016; Philando Castile, shot at close range in 2016 after a traffic stop; to name just a few. In these examples, all of the police officers were either acquitted, or charges were not brought at all.

Mr. Davis would have one believe that activists and others who consistently alter and distort the facts in high-profile matters are bent on convincing others that law enforcement is to blame... even when it was ...proved that witnesses were lying. It is more likely that Mr. Davis is distorting the facts, since a blanket statement like this cannot logically be applied to all police-involved shootings.

In perhaps his most inflammatory perception, Mr. Davis states that Ms. Georgia Hotton (and presumably all others who do not agree with his positions) has been duped by anti-American fanatics on the extreme left whose focus is to instill hatred and blind allegiance to the destruction of the United States of America, as we know it, through lies, deceit and evil conspiracies. This is simply an outrageous and blatantly inaccurate statement, and demonstrates precisely why this country is so polarized politically.

Mr. Davis concludes by stating his version of the root causes of the black communitys negative profile, which are apparently due to gang bangers, family values and lack of cooperation with police officers. I wonder if Mr. Davis has any black friends or family members, and if he does, I wonder if he has shared these views with them in an effort to hear another side. If he has spoken to a black father or mother who has a teenage son, he would know that these parents have given the talk to their son every time he walks out the front door. That talk emphasizes demonstrating respect and cooperation toward police officers precisely because they dont want to get a phone call that their son has been shot.

Talk is cheap. Especially talk which involves no perception of the other side, including the effects of decades of systemic and psychological racism on the black community. Conversation, communication and dialogue are the only things which will improve race relations and the political mood in this country.

Christine Mitchell lives in Green Valley.

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IN MY VIEW: We have to talk about it before situation improves - Green Valley News

| | |Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017)s Dual Messenger supports two accounts in social networking apps

It is common for many smartphone users to use two SIM cards on the same phone. However, there is always difficulty in using two different WhatsApp or any other social networking accounts on the same device via the app.

While there are a few smartphones that have been launched with the support for dual WhatsApp accounts, Samsung has been offering a way for users to do that through the Secure Folder. Notably, Secure Folder is a feature that is seen on the company's flagship smartphones. Nowadays, this feature is available on many Android 7.0 Nougat devices from Samsung.

Wondering how the Secure Folder manages to run two accounts in the social networking apps? Well, the Secure Folder creates an environment that is sandboxed from the normal data. So, you can install WhatsApp, Facebook and other social networking apps inside this feature and use them with a different account.

Now, Samsung is removing the Secure Folder and coming with a direct way to use two different accounts on the social networking apps. The Galaxy J7 (2017) lineup has the Dual Messenger feature. As its name indicates, the Dual Messenger installs a separate copy of the app on the handset and will list two shortcuts for the same app in the device's app drawer.

For now, Dual Messenger supports WhatsApp, Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger and more. Apps such as Instagram that supports more than one account by default will not show up in the Dual Messenger. You just need to launch the app from the feature and log into it as you usually do. This way, you are free to see two different accounts on the social networking apps.

You can find the Dual Messenger on Galaxy J7 (2017) devices including the newly launched Galaxy J7 Max by heading on to Settings Advanced Features and enabling the feature for each app. Once you enable it, you will see two icons for the same app in the app drawer. One of the apps will have a linked chain on the icon showing that it is the second app. Interestingly, you can use both apps at the same time in the Multi Window mode.

Via: TechBulletin

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Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017)'s Dual Messenger supports two accounts in social networking apps - Gizbot

Social media's presence in the sales world is an old story by now, but the latest figures suggest its power in the space is stronger than you might think.

LinkedIn recently gave me an early look at the findings from their second annual State of Sales Report for 2017. (You can download the PDF of the report directly here.) The study surveyed 2,000 business-to-business professionals based in the U.S. about how they perceive technology is impacting sales. Some of it's to be expected: Investment in sales tools is up, cold phone calls are less effective, and the majority of people consider technology important to closing deals.

What did surprise me, though, was how much social is changing sales--especially our expectations around how salespeople should conduct relationships with customers.

It makes sense when you think about how drastically social has changed other areas of work and life. The question is, how can we use our social tools to better meet those expectations in our client relationships?

Here are some of the most interesting figures from the LinkedIn study, along with some steps you can take to incorporate these new ideas into your daily sales work.

The study noted that 94 percent of the respondents said they get "valuable insights" about customers from social networks. So if you're not immediately hitting the social networks to research potential customers, you're doing your sales relationships a disservice. Seventy-seven percent of study respondents said they won't engage with people who don't know their business. That doesn't leave much room for forgiveness if you send a cold email or go to a meeting not knowing the basics of your potential customer's business.

CREDIT: LinkedIn

LinkedIn vice president of products and marketing Justin Shriber had an even more surprising stat when we spoke over the phone. "When people send out an InMail [LinkedIn's version of email], if there's a personalized note associated with it, where [the salesperson] pulled something from the profile of the buyer or introduced another kind of information that makes email unique, the respondents are five times more likely to respond."

How do you find and choose that kind of compelling information? In my experience, that's where "e-stalking" comes in handy. Look closely at the other person's "About" section on LinkedIn to see how they describe themselves. Note how they talk about their roles, past and present. Comb through their skills and endorsements to see what technologies they regularly use. Elsewhere, note what they tweet about, who they follow, and if they share information on smaller, industry-specific social networks.

You've heard stories about recruiters scanning candidates' social-media profiles before interviews. Turns out, potential buyers use that practice, too. Over half (62 percent) of the study's respondents said they look for "an informative LinkedIn profile" when they consider talking with a specific salesperson. Meanwhile, 69 percent of Millennial buyers are more likely to connect with salespeople who have a professional online presence.

Those figures boil down to a simple conclusion: Your professional social networking is hugely important to your job.

There are always opportunities to improve that presence. Pack your LinkedIn job history with interesting details and accomplishments, and consider writing something in your summary to help people get to know you.

You probably shouldn't share photos from that crazy Halloween party on LinkedIn, but appropriate personal details can make you seem human. I have a friend who posted about his love of baseball only to discover several of his clients feel the same way. He now regularly uses ballgames to close deals.

One of the most surprising things in this study was that today's buyers appear to value trust over price, strategic counsel, or even return on investment (ROI).

CREDIT: LinkedIn

Thirty-nine percent of respondents answered that "trust in our relationship" was the most important factor for closing a deal, while only 33 percent answered "return on investment," and only 13 percent answered "price." While any good salesperson understands that it's important to win a customer's trust in order to win new business, most people might not expect 3x more buyers would care about trust than price. This is an important finding, as any business can theoretically lower their price to win new customers, while trust takes much greater effort to build and can easily be destroyed, making the salesperson's job more critical than ever.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the study found 43 percent of respondents view salespeople as "trustworthy," 31 percent say they have "high integrity," and buyers increasingly consider salespeople to be "trusted advisers."

Those facts mark a positive shift in our perception of salespeople, who too often get stereotyped as aggressive frat boys willing to sacrifice morals and integrity for a dollar.

But if you want to be seen as a trusted adviser, your behavior has to live up to the label. That's especially true on social media, where potential customers can view every click, Like, and post you make.

To that end, use common sense. If you post about "the dying publishing industry" but back that claim up with bad data, people will call you out on the error. Ranting will not make you look passionate about a topic, just arrogant and possibly stupid. And never, ever talk about your clients on social media. A friend of mine once tried to skirt this rule by anonymizing the client in the post. She ended up losing money and trust with that client and others.

The moral of the story is, transparency is great when it comes to learning about one another in a sales relationship, but use it wisely. Whatever you say online should be something you would stand behind later on.

A word of caution: Social-media activity like this should never replace a cold email or in-person meeting altogether. There's no guarantee someone will care about knowing you just because they accepted an "invitation to connect." Using social media for sales doesn't mean doing less work in your client relationships. And in fact, spending extra time each week with these tools will likely give you more relevant contacts, higher open rates, and, ultimately, a stronger presence in your customers' lives.

What tactics do you have for using social media in your sales relationships? I'd love to hear about them.

The rest is here:
Why Your Sales Strategy Needs to Become a Social-Media Strategy, Immediately - Inc.com

It's no secret that media companies have a complicated relationship with Facebook .

The social networking giant pulls in billions of advertising dollars at a time when more traditional news publishers are scrambling to boost their online ad revenues. Those same media players are also desperate for the web traffic that can come from placing their content in front of Facebook's 2 billion users though, there have also been some debate over just how much that Facebook-derived traffic is worth to publishers.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, BuzzFeed wrote about a practice in which it claims a growing number of businesses are paying Facebook to promote positive news stories from publishers as sponsored posts. As BuzzFeed points out, rather than spend marketing money on a traditional online ad campaignwhich would involve paying someone to create an ad and then paying to place it on Facebook, or another social website, or even with the publishers who so desperately need the ad dollarsbusinesses are sending more of that money to Facebook to promote content created for free by publishers.

The BuzzFeed piece points to several recent examples of this practice, including one where a sponsored Facebook post pointed to a positive BBC article about mattress startup Casper. Another example comes from anonymous work chat app Blind, which says it paid Facebook to promote an article from Mashable. BuzzFeed's point being that, while those media companies likely saw a slight uptick in web traffic from those sponsored posts, the advertising dollars went to Facebook.

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BuzzFeed did not report any numbers that would indicate exactly how prevalent this type of marketing is on Facebook. (An executive at Blind told the publication anecdotally that he knows of other startups who are promoting positive stories on Facebook, calling the tactic "probably the best form of awareness building, community building, and user acquisition there is.")

Fortune reached out to Facebook for comment and will update this post as needed.

The practice is an example of just one of the ways how news publishers face an uphill battle when competing with the social networking service for online advertising dollars.

Facebook has been working to improve its relationship with publishers who may be unsure about the benefits of providing the social site with so much content. The social network launched its "Journalism Project" earlier this year, aiming to curb the amount of "fake news" articles on the platform and to figure out ways to help the news industry benefit from distributing its content via Facebook. Last week , Facebook said it is working with publishers to begin testing a paid subscription news service with a paywall, though Fortune has noted that media companies depending too heavily on Facebook for traffic and money could be placing themselves in an uncomfortable position.

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Companies Are Paying Facebook to Promote Positive Press - Fortune

Police militarization and excessive force have become increasingly pressing issues in American society. Fortunately, the Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Justice Neil Gorsuchs old stomping ground held yesterday that innocent victims of improper police procedures during dynamic drug raids have some protections. Even if the court didnt fully address the issues Cato raised in our brief, the ruling in Harte v. Board of Commissioners of Johnson County, Kansas is a step forward.

In 2011, Robert Harte and his two children visited a garden store to buy tomatoes for his 13-year old sons school project. Little did they know that Sergeant James Wingo of the Missouri State Highway Patrol was watching the store and recording the license plate numbers of the visitors, assuming that they were there to buy marijuana despite little evidence for that assumption. The Johnson County Sheriffs Office then examined the Hartes trash on two occasions, finding about an ounce of saturated plant material. Because they evidently couldnt tell the difference between tea and marijuana, they field-tested the substance, which tested positive for marijuana.

In an inspiring display, the police launched a military-style raid the Hartes home. At 7:30 in the morning, they pounded on the Hartes door, forced Mr. Harte to the ground when he answered, and searched their home for three hours. As it became increasingly clear that there was no marijuana in the house, the police started to search for any kind of criminal activity, a far greater sweep than what a warrant to search for marijuana and drug paraphernalia allows. Heaping further indignities on the family, the officers also left canine units in the house longer than necessary to give them extra training. The police apparently wanted to turn lemons into lemonade by retroactively turning an early-morning drug raid that didnt find any drugs, lest we forget into a training exercise.

After the district court granted summary judgment for the police, the Hartes appealed and Cato filed an amicus brief. We arguedthat the police violated an important Fourth Amendment rule that goes back to the roots of English common law by failing to knock and announce their presence in anything but a literal sense. They also exceeded the scope of their warrant to look for any criminal activity instead of just drugs. We urged the Tenth Circuit to reverse the district court, clarify the Fourth Amendment standard for assessing police raids, and remand for further proceedings.

The Tenth Circuit mostly agreed with Cato on the Fourth Amendment issue. Two judges on the three-judge panel found that the district court had been wrong to grant summary judgment to the police on the search and seizure issue, with Judge Carlos Lucero alluding briefly to the knock-and-announce requirement. It was a convoluted opinion that took a long time to produce because of each judge writing separately and different sets of judges coming together on different parts of the ruling. Most importantly, Judge Gregory Phillips, joined by Judge Lucero, found that what the deputies learned early on in the search dissipated any probable cause to continue searching.

Ultimately, the judges only discussed in passing the police-militarization and general-warrant concerns raised by Cato and sided with the police on the excessive-force claims. Nevertheless, the court held that what the Hartes experienced qualified as unreasonable search and seizure and also let them continue with their state-law claims soHarte v. Board of Commissionersrepresents a positive development in the jurisprudence surrounding dynamic police raids.

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When Police Misread Tea Leaves They Violate the Fourth Amendment - Cato Institute (blog)