iTechSpeak :::...

With the Internet, social networks have provided powerful platforms for business networking, making million dollar deals and accelerating your professional career into fast forward. Social networks can also be very scary places that produce unwanted devastating results that impact our everyday lives. Be proactive about protecting your business reputation, your children and your family. Spend a little time learning safety tips for being on MySpace and Facebook.

Introduce Your Child to Business with Hotshot Game
Forget those shoot em up, aliens and race car games. This is a fun fast paced game that gives kids skills they can use for life. Hot Shot Business is a simulation game for budding entrepreneurs, where kidscan open their own spa, skateboard factory or comic shop.

Teenagers and Young Adult Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Gazillionaire is the award-winning simulation game. Explore new worlds, build your business, and make a fortune. Gazillionaire is full of memorable characters and exotic places to visit. You'll run your own company, manage a feisty crew, and, if you're clever enough, make billions of kubars!

JA Titan
Test your skills running a business in this ultimate business simulation! As CEO, you will match wits in the competitive, technologically advanced industry of the Holo-Generator.

JA Worldwide™ (Junior Achievement) partnered with the Best Buy® Children’s Foundation to launched JA Titan. Set in the year 2035, JA Titan creates a world in which players are CEOs of their own companies. Originally conceived in the 1980s as the Management and Economic Simulation Exercise, or MESE, JA Titan is a widely recognized business simulation for high school students.

JA Titan version 3.0 incorporates the concept of charitable giving, challenges students with sub-decisions, and adds voices to the characters, among other improvements.

Cashflow Game by Robert Kiyosaki
This is a game for Tweens or Young and Mature Adults. earn how to get out of the Rat Race and onto the Fast Track where your money works for you instead of you working hard for your money. Use this game to practice real world investing with play money!

CASHFLOW® 101 is an educational board game that teaches accounting, finance, and investing at the same time - and makes learning fun.

"Move over Monopoly. A new board game that aims to teach people to be rich is gaining fans the world over." -The New York Times article on the CASHFLOW games



Adult Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Informist Business Simulation Game
Informatist is a revolutionary online multiplayer Business Simulation -- a business game with a difference. Informatist is ideal for budding entrepreneurs and veteran tycoons alike. Test your business skills against hundreds of other players running thousands of companies.

The Informatist Game will sharpen your business skills as you play to win in five different categories. Experience the ups and downs of 16 dynamic business areas. Hire employees, set salaries, set product price, manage inventory, buy and sell land, trade stock, make business deals and dominate markets by applying the right resources at the right time. Do you have what it takes to succeed against cutthroat business competition? Find out in this unique business simulation!

SimVenture
SimVenture is ideal for anyone wanting to learn about business and enterprise. The software can be used in a range of environments where people are learning about business and want to develop entrepreneurial skills.

Run your career like a business. This includes personal expenses. If you do not receive the service you pay for, tell the vendor service provider.

All cell phone service providers sincerely want to keep you as a customer. They will do whatever it takes to ensure your loyalty, month after month. This includes giving you money you are entitled to, as long as you ask for it. Your contract appears to lean more in the direction of your financial responsibilities, which makes each of us feel helpless. Get over it.

Similar to the employee hand book, there are more unwritten rules than there are written rules. As I tell my business career coaching clients "Learn the rules. Then make the rules work for you". This means you are in the driver's seat, as long as you pay attention to your monthly cell phone bill. Don't expect major money for each instance, but it can add up over a 12 month period. I received about $275 in service credits in the last 14 months, for various "no service" issues.

Every person has a different cell phone plan. Be very clear about the various services your cell phone plan covers. Write it out:

• Phone service
• Text message / SMS
  
• Email
• Internet Browsing
• Downloading services
• Unlimited plans
• Being able to call people with the same service provider, at no cost
• International vs. U.S. services (calling, email etc.)
• Minute usage draw down on accessing voice mail

1. Note the first date of the service failure
2. Keep track of all the time for the service outage
   
3. Call your cell phone service provider
4. Get the customer representative to create a help desk request and provide you with the help desk request number
5. Get the representatives name and or ID number - note it down
   
6. Call every day until the issue is resolve
7. Once the issue is resolved "ask for a pro-rated credit for the time the service(s) is down". It does not matter if it is 1 hour or 10 days. Ask for a credit. You might be surprised at the response.
   

• For 6 months 2 different people had no signal in the building where they worked. For 8 hours a day for six months they could not send or receive phone calls on their cell phone. Each month each person paid the full bill, despite not receiving full service. After I suggested they call their provider for credit, each company representative said "no problem". 1 person received a $260 credit and the other person received a $280 credit. Two different credit amounts, for the same issue, tells you each customer service representative is empowered to make "judgement calls".
• Before traveling outside the U.S., I had my phone turned for being able to send/receive emails. The international fee was $19 a month. I went on vacation for a week, but 4 months later I was still paying the $19 per month. I forgot to turn the service off. I called my service provider and they credited 3 months back to my account.
  
• How about being late with paying a bill. The cell phone company turns off outgoing call capability for whole week. Once the bill is paid for the current period outage, ask for a credit. Why? The cell phone service provider is turning your current service off, for a previous bill from a service they previously provided. Be sure to explain that logic to them. Cell phone companies make million$ just from the shear ignorance of people.
  
• My cell phone provider was upgrading a cell tower in the neighborhood where I was working at a client site. For 8 hours a day I couldn't receive or make calls and I could not send/receive email on my Blackberry phone. I called every day and once a week I called to get a credit. Each week I received a $15 credit. Each week I was also told this is a "one time" credit. I said no problem, but I repeated the process every week any way. So that was $15 X 7 = $105. That equals a little more than 1 month of free service. 7 different representatives making excellent judgement calls.