Daripada Ali bin Abi Thalib r.a., "Bahawasanya kami sedang duduk bersama Rasulullah saw. di dalam masjid. Tiba-tiba datang Mus'ab bin Umair r.a. dan tiada di atas badannya kecuali hanya sehelai selendang yang bertampung dengan kulit. Tatkala Rasulullah saw.melihat kepadanya Baginda menangis dan menitiskan air mata kerana mengenangkan kemewahan Mus'ab ketika berada di Mekkah dahulu (kerana sangat dimanjakan oleh ibunya) dan kerana memandang nasib Mus'ab sekarang (ketika berada di Madinah sebagai seorang Muhajirin yang terpaksa meninggalkan segala harta benda dan kekayaan diMekkah). Kemudian Nabi Muhammad saw. bersabda, "Bagaimanakah keadaan kamu pada suatu saat nanti, pergi di waktu pagi dengan satu pakaian, dan pergi di waktu petang dengan pakaian yang lain pula. Dan bila diangkatkan satu hidangan diletakan pula satu hidangan yang lain. Dan kamu menutupi (menghias) rumah kamu sepertimana kamu memasang kelambu Ka'bah?". Maka jawab sahabat, "Wahai Rasulullah, tentunya di waktu itu kami lebih baik daripada di hari ini. Kami akan menberikan penumpuan kepada masalah ibadat sahaja dan tidak usah mencari rezeki". Lalu Nabi saw. bersabda, "Tidak! Keadaan kamu di hari ini adalah lebih baik daripada keadaan kamu di hari itu".

Minimalist Japanese Residence Making the Most of a Narrow Site: House F

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

+

Architect Kenji Ido of Ido, Kenji Architectural Studio completed House Fin, a minimalist Japanese residence located in Osaka. The house was especially envisioned for a couple in an urban narrow site, neighbored by a mixed-use area where small houses, small factories, and small office buildings coexist. The clients requested a garden in the south side of the site and decided to make a three-level building overlooking the green spaces. They aimed at a quiet, comfortable space, with plenty of natural lighting and a certain feeling of security.
The minimalist Japanese design approach can be observed throughout the interiors of this Osaka home. With walls painted in white, a feeling of space was subtly achieved. The wooden stairway, shelves and doors add a warm touch. It is truly inspiring to see how the architect managed to transform a 53 square meter surface into a perfect home for two.  [Information received via e-mail by Architect Kenji Ido; Photography by Takumi Ota]

SEE ALSO:

Minimalist Box-Shaped House by Yoshihiro Yamamoto: Danchi Hutch

10 Karakter Mulia

Ahad 1 Rabiulakhir 1435 / 2 Februari 2014 09:18

---

SAHABATKU fil Iman, Umat ini sudah lama kehilangan karakter sehingga menjadi lemah dan tidak kuat dalam menghadapi tantangan internal dan eksternal. Akhirnya, kehilangan jati diri dan kemuliaan sebagai umat yang terbaik yang Allah tampilkan di atas bumi.
Solusinya ialah mewujudkan rumah tangga, masyarakat, birokrasi dan komunitas lainnya yang pribadi-pribadinya memiliki 10 Karakter mulia :
1. Akidahnya bersih dari syirik dan khurafat.
2. Ibadahnya benar sesuai yang dicontohkan Rasulullah dan para Sahabat.
3. Akhlaknya kuat sehingga tidak luntur berinteraksi dengan masyarakat.
4. Wawasannya luas.
5. Terampil dan kreatif dalam kehidupan.
6. Fisiknya sehat dan kuat.
7. Mampu mengendalikan diri dan syahwat.
8. Semua urusannya teratur.
9. Manajemen waktunya sangat baik.
10.Memiliki tanggung jawab sosial.
Apa saja ciri-ciri setiap karakter di atas dan bagaimana cara mewujudkannya dalam diri, insya Allah kami jelaskan dalam artikel Pengaruh 10 Karakter Mulia.

Research Shows Which TV Ads Are Likely to Make Multitaskers Buy

by Thales Teixeira  |   8:00 AM January 31, 2014

• Comments (0)
•        

Over the last few years, consumers have increased, not decreased, the time they spend watching television content. This might sound like good news for advertisers, save for two important caveats. First, while attention time dedicated to TV content has been rising, this is not the case for people actually paying attention to the ads on the screen. Second, when consumers are watching TV they are increasingly dividing their attention between the TV set and other devices, particularly tablets and other mobile devices. A 2011 Nielsen Co. survey showed that as much as 40% of time watching TV is spent on such media multitasking activities, and it’s likely that this behavior has accelerated over the past three years.
While many advertisers are rightly nervous about multitasking, there could be new opportunities to benefit from this trend. My recent working paper with researchers Jura Liaukonyte and Kenneth Wilbur tries to pinpoint what, exactly, these benefits might be – and how they can be achieved.
It turns out there’s both good news and bad news when it comes to the answers: Our research found that, among multitaskers, certain types of ads are more (or less) effective in terms of driving TV viewers online. And in one of our most surprising findings, we learned that there is no single ad type can accomplish both the tasks of increasing the number of visitations to the website and the number of online purchases.
To come to these, and other, conclusions, we constructed a massive dataset of television advertising in 2010 (the year tablet sales skyrocketed). We also focused on five industries that represented $4.2 billion in U.S. TV ad expenditures and accounted for most of the e-commerce that year: Apparel, telecom, travel, pizza, and online services and content. To measure the effect of TV ads on online behavior immediately after an ad was aired, we matched TV advertising data with the website visits and online purchases of 100,000 participants on a second-by-second basis.
We also classified ads into four types:

• A direct-response ad with a product-focus, intended to showcase particular products and features
• An action-focused ad, intended to induce an action such as search, visit, or buy
• An imagery-focused ad, which makes use of stunning images and sensory stimulation
• An emotion-focused ad that engages by evoking specific feelings

The results: Among multitaskers, we found that the imagery-focus ads are the least effective of all four ad types in terms of driving online purchases. They don’t increase the number of people that visit the brand’s website and actually reduce the likelihood that TV viewers will momentarily purchase any product. Of course, imagery-focus ads are known to be among the most traditionally effective types of TV ads because they are good at engaging viewers with strong visuals. But it is precisely this effect on engagement that makes viewers pay greater attention to the TV rather than switching attention to a lower and self-paced media such as the Internet.
Among the best ads to drive multitaskers to the brand’s website are action-focus ads. It turns out those ads that urge people to go online, versus those that do not, actually accomplish their goal to a great extent. The downside is these ads are not more persuasive than other ad types at getting people to actually make a purchase. For some brands, action-focus ads can indirectly increase sales in the short term, particularly if the website is designed to complement the TV ad. This is the case of a Target ad urging people to go online. Within two minutes of the ad appearing on TV, there was a 30% spike in direct website visits by those who typed “Target.com” and indirect visits by those who used a search engine.

A significant portion of these incremental visitors made a purchase on the website during their visit.
Product- and emotion-focus ads carry similar impact, though emotion-focus ads are a bit more effective. Both types increase the number of purchases online, but also result in fewer total visits to the website. In other words, people who decide to visit the brand’s website are more inclined to purchase, but the ad itself does not increase a TV viewer’s desire to visit the website immediately. It turns out that a focus on product or brand can be persuasive when consumers eventually decide to shop, but it does not motivate multitaskers to act impulsively.
Importantly, no single ad type can accomplish both tasks of increasing the number of visitations to the website and the number of purchases.
So what does all this mean for advertisers? Well, like most things, it really depends on what product you are selling, your brand, your audience, and your strategic goals. If you sell online and have a reason to believe that you are advertising to a multitasking audience, then TV ads that were created to operate under high levels of attention, such as imagery-focus ads, will not work. This is the case for young viewers, as they multitask most of the time, and for older viewers, who multitask early in the morning and in the evening. In these cases, one should opt for action-focus ads regardless of the brand or industry.
The chart shows the impact of each type of ad on online sales for various brands studied. Brands such as Amazon and eHarmony, a dating website, have a stronger incentive to use particular types of ad content. For them, choosing the appropriate creative execution can mean the difference between higher or lower online sales. For brands in other industries, such as Papa John’s, a pizza delivery chain, the type of ad used doesn’t matter as much.

Importantly, advertisers can actually benefit from the increasing trend of consumers engaging in media multitasking by crafting more appropriate ads. Lower, or divided, attention is not necessarily bad news as long as advertisers target the most effective content to their audience, and use the TV ad as a springboard for consumers to engage with the brand online and ultimately make a pur

Eight Essential Questions for Every Corporate Innovator

by Scott Anthony  |   1:00 PM January 31, 2014

• Comments (0)
•        

One of the first, and most lasting, pieces of career advice I received came from Linda Bush, my first project manager when I was a wee pup working at McKinsey & Company. “Ask a lot of questions,” Linda advised me. “You might think you are being annoying, but it’s the only way you learn. And trust me, people will tell you when you have crossed the line.”
There’s nothing quite like asking a good question. Bush’s advice helped me in those early days to learn about technical tasks (the magic of pivot tables in Excel), the seeming banalities of the working world (the mysterious expense report), and the subtle nuances of a profession (“Why did you say that then?”). Research by Hal Gregersen and Jeffrey Dyer in fact shows that questioning is one of the behaviors that successful innovators share.
So I’ll pose a question now: What questions should corporate innovators use to increase their odds of success? There are some classics out there, such as Peter Drucker’s (“If we weren’t already doing it this way, is this the way we would start?”), Ted Levitt’s timeless contribution (“What business are we really in?”), and the question Andy Grove asked to transform Intel (“If the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?”).
Beyond those classics, consider using the following questions to help you crystalize the entire innovation process from beginning to end — by improving your ability to spot new growth opportunities, pinpoint disruptive threats, shape compelling offerings, and commercialize your ideas.
Identifying New Growth Opportunities

• What problem is the customer struggling to solve? Steve Jobs famously said it is not the customer’s job to know what he wants. I agree. It is the innovator’s job. One of the clearest signs of an opportunity for innovation is someone demonstrating that a problem is important to her by spending time or money trying to solve it and expressing frustration (either vocally or visibly) because existing solutions fall short.
• Which customers can’t participate in a market because they lack skills, wealth, or convenient access to existing solutions? A time-tested path to disruptive growth is to compete not against fierce competitors, but against what we call nonconsumption. Making it simpler, easier, and more affordable for people to do what they historically have been trying to do is a great way to create growth. Doing so for people who are locked out of a market is what made companies like eBay, Google, and Southwest Airlines the powerhouses they are today.

Identifying the Threat of Disruption

• Where are we overshooting the market by providing features that users don’t care about and don’t want to pay for? One of the central tenets of disruptive innovation is that companies innovate faster than people’s needs change. People will always take better products, but when they can’t use or don’t want to pay for the premium features, it creates opportunities for simpler, cheaper solutions.
• If you were going to disrupt your company, how would you do it? Despite the fact that the concept has been in the public domain for close to 20 years, disruption still seems to blindside far too many companies. What is particularly punishing is that the disruptors are almost always in plain sight but tend to be discounted by the market leaders. (As late as 2008, the CEO of Blockbuster said “I’ve been frankly confused by this fascination that everybody has with Netflix….Netflix doesn’t really have or do anything that we can’t or don’t already do ourselves.”) Asking this simple question – and looking for companies that are making headway with a disruptive model – may at least inoculate you to some degree against this threat.

Designing Compelling Offerings

• Who has already solved the problem you are trying to address? You might think this question helps you drop an idea entirely, but it actually suggests the opposite. One mistake many innovators make is they think that they get extra credit just for doing something original or uniquely difficult. Innovation is something different, surely, but something different that creates value for a customer and the company. And you want to find the quickest path you can to value creation. Follow the advice of the great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” Odds are someone in the world has already solved the problem you’re seeking to address in some other context. Inspiration might come from a different industry, country, or company, but when you find it, applying that approach to your problem can short-circuit innovation development times dramatically.
• What can you do that few other companies in the world can do? The ferocious pace of entrepreneurialism makes it increasingly difficult for companies to innovate at the same speed as the market in which they participate. Speed alone is insufficient. Companies should seek to innovate better than the market in which they participate — by taking advantage of a trusted brand, unique access to a distribution channel, or proprietary technological know-how. Zeroing in on what makes you unique maximizes the chances of creating a powerful and compelling offering.

Commercializing Your Idea

• What assumption are you making that, if false, would blow your strategy up? Every idea is partially right and partially wrong. Promising ideas often fail to make it to market because the innovators cannot find out what part is wrong and make adjustments fast enough. To speed their way to market, good innovators adopt the scientific method. They clearly identify the biggest uncertainties behind their idea and rigorously design and execute experiments to test their assumptions. And like good scientists, they study unexpected outcomes as much as expected ones.
• How can you learn more affordably and efficiently? Experiments need not be complicated and expensive. A phone call to an expert can shine light on a critical operational assumption. Showing customers a rough mockup of an idea can give you an early read on their interest. Making some effort to seek simple and resource effective ways to learn may make the difference between successfully getting to market and running out of money before you ever do.

“Don’t just do something, stand there.” It’s a phrase that young medical students might hear to remind them that sometimes doing nothing (immediately) is the best course of action. The rush to take action before a root cause of a symptom is clear can cause more harm than good. While innovation should no doubt be pursued actively, taking the time to consider these and related questions can be a great way to focus activities and tilt the odds of success in your favor.

40 Small Bedrooms Ideas To Make Your Home Look Bigger

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

+

If you are looking for inspiration on how to decorate a small bedroom, prepare to be overwhelmed with fantastic ideas. After publishing these contemporary bedroom design ideas guaranteed to “rock your world”, these charming Swedish modern bedrooms and these holiday-inspiring ocean-view bedrooms, it is time to have a look at practical solutions for small homes. For today we gathered 40 photos of small bedroom interiors, each of them displaying a clever layout.

So take your time and go through each and every photo from the list below, analyzing details and slowly configuring your dream bedroom. Keep in mind that light colors are a lot more efficient than dark hues in enhancing the feeling of space. As appealing as it might seem, a super-large bed will take up a lot of space, so a good plan is to reduce the size of the bed and fill the void with practical furniture accessories. And bring in as many mirrors as you can! These being said, we invite you to feast on the display of colors and textures below! Enjoy making your bedroom as cozy and as functional as possible and when you can spare some time, drop by and tell us how your project is doing!

SEE ALSO:

Small Apartment Ideas by Tori Golub