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Net Neutrality is no more after today's vote by the FCC. Net Neutrality was the principle and standard that internet service providers must provide service to all web users equally. This made it so the companies that provide internet service and the government cannot limit access to internet services. The internet connection in the U.S. was regulated by Net Neutrality standards and companies could not limit access to websites that they may not like, such as a competitor or a website that doesn't support their desired message. It made it so average blogs had the possibility of having the same exposure and usage as any other major corporate site. Imagine, Amazon was once a small website that was created by a guy who wanted to share books. 

Let's face it, the internet is owned by corporations and corporations are driven by making a profit and blocking competitors. Now that the standard is removed by the FCC, businesses who control internet access will be able to manipulate the websites that people can access. Some examples of companies that already limited access in the past are Comcast and Verizon. Comcast secretly throttled peer-to-peer downloads until they were court ordered to stop and Verizon limited access to Facebook FaceTime because it competed with their own service. 

These examples are just the tip of an iceberg that could wash away fair and equal internet access as Net Neutrality standards are not enforced and removed by the FCC. Without these standards, the internet service providers (ISPs) will be able to pick and choose what sites and users get the best access to the net. Click here for a list of cases and violations that ISPs were making before Title II Net Neutrality standards were implemented in 2015.     

The history of regulating the net starts in 1966 when the FTC and FCC began investigating and regulating AT&T as a monopoly that was providing both telecommunication services and information services to their customers. The telecommunication services is proactively regulated by the FCC while information service standards are enforced by the FTC. For a more in-depth history of the development of Net Neutrality click here. 

​The battle on how to regulate the net and who should be doing it is still going on. The FCC changed Title II protections on December 14th. Here is their projected plan.  Although the meeting was open to the public the FCC building is not open access and any visitors must check in and be screened by the FCC on 12th Street at the main entrance. For more information check out the FCC site directly.  Do not be fooled by the title of the proposal to "Restore Internet Freedom". Although treating internet service providers like utility companies that must provide equal services to all may seem like a burden to those companies, the regulation truly helps the average user and other companies that use the service or provide competing services. The companies that run these services are driven by profits, not rights and liberties for all equally. 

What does this mean for your business... lots. Businesses must communicate with customers. There are a multitude of ways to communicate and as stipulated earlier ISPs have previously tried to block other providers services like FaceTime or Skype to dominate the market and control data sharing. This makes it hard for companies to compete and can rise prices for the average user and business. Say for example, your internet service is provided by Verizon but instead of making calls to clients, you only FaceTime. Verizon may not like this type of competition because now instead of paying for their phone services you are only using your data and have stopped using landline calling. This type of thing has already been called out and stopped but if Title II does not stand then companies are likely to try these sneaky tactics again if they can.  Keep an eye on your bills and accounts over the next couple of months and report any over charges or usage problems. 

Tuition free college education initiatives are not just in New York. San Francisco approved a transfer tax on properties selling for more than $5 million to fund an education program that allows all city residents to attend the City College of San Francisco tuition-free at $46 a credit, no matter what their income level. The tax would also provide the college with nearly $5.4 million annually and would offer full-time low-income (125,000 annual) students, who have lived in the city of San Francisco for at least a year, $250 per semester for books. The souring costs of living in San Francisco requires a six figure income and the need for higher education is essential.

The National Conference of State Legislators created a list of the States that offer tuition assistance programs or have bills that could offer free tuition programs. Tennessee already offers tuition free programs and so do other colleges throughout the U.S. The fine print of these deals is what applying students must be aware of before they sign the doted line.

Berea College in Kentucky offers free tuition and requires students to work on campus for 10 hours a week while earning only 4.65-6.80 to pay for room, boards and books. The Webb Institute in New York is an engineering school with 1 course of study that offers free tuition for a duel bachelors degree in naval architecture and marine engineering. 

Then there is the Airforce, Coast Guard, Merchant Marine, Military and Naval Academies throughout the U.S. that offer free tuition but require post graduate service and other requirements.

Throughout the U.S. there are programs that help students pay for college but they all come with requirements and restrictions. Even the NY Excelsior Program will require students to stay in NY and work for 4 years after graduating. Students can leave the state for graduate studies but the free tuition agreements with SUNY and CUNY schools will only remain free if the student returns to NY after their graduate studies and work for 4 years in the State. 

Higher education is changing, colleges and universities must be able to afford students an opportunity to attend to stay open, focus studies and programs so resources are not wasted and help students gain employment after graduation. The requirements that come with "Free" tuition or tuition assistance keep all parties focused on their main objectives: educate students for practical industry employment based on a students passions and skills.  

Some of the most helpful programs for students are the ones that integrate higher education and industry application at the high school level. Although dual enrollment offerings vary widely by state, research has shown that program participants are more likely to persist in post-secondary education and accumulate more college credits than comparison students. Some programs even offer enough courses to allow students to earn an associate’s degree upon high school completion.

Career and technical education (CTE) programs are offered in every state with the purpose of aligning secondary and post-secondary education which leads to industry recognized credentials. In NY, the Boces program provides this mixed industrial and higher education credits.

The benefits of a well prepared workforce are causing some businesses get directly involved with creating opportunities for students to gain credentials through industry partnerships. IBM’s Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools (P-TECH) and Toyota’s Advanced Manufacturing Technician program (AMT) are just 2 of them.

P-TECH, a public school, that combines four years of high school with the two years of college (grades 9-14). The school collaborates IBM Corporation, the New York City Department of Education, the City University of New York and New York City College of Technology to give students a high school diploma, as well as, a no-cost associates degree in a technology field of their choosing.


Toyota’s (AMT) program is a partnership with Kentucky’s Bluegrass Community College that combines classroom instruction with on-site training at a local Toyota manufacturing facility, resulting in an associate’s degree in Applied Science. Students receive paid work experience along with an intensive high-tech curriculum, general education skills, and workplace culture and behavior.

Fujio Masuoka, an engineer at Toshiba invented the technology behind its chip business, known as flash memory after joining the company in 1971. That innovation would become one of the critical building blocks of the modern electronics industry. Toshiba’s microchips, a type known as NAND flash memory, are seen as a more valuable asset than TV screens. Japan — despite having pioneered liquid crystal displays — has lost most of its market share in screens to South Korea and China.


Flash memory chips have become an essential part of smartphones and other gadgets and have proved a profitable technology for Toshiba, one of industrial Japan’s stalwarts in their postwar rise as a global industrial giant. Unfortunately, Toshiba is financially struggling after losses associated with Westinghouse Electric, its troubled nuclear power arm that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in may 2017 after writing off 6 Billion in February. Toshiba announced that it hoped a sale of its microchip business, its crown jewel, could alleviate the uncertainty of their financial security.


The chip sale is still in the very early stages and their are many predictions on who could purchase the technology. One of the better-known suitors is Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn, the assembler of Apple iPhones and other electronics. Other potential investors include the American microchip makers Western Digital and Broadcom, and SK Hynix of South Korea. Most potential buyers are foreign to Japan.


For Foxconn, an investment in Toshiba would be the second recent foray into the often politically fraught world of corporate Japan. Last year the company acquired control of Sharp, the maker of flat-screen television displays, for $3.5 billion. In doing so it overcame a rival bid from an investment fund backed by the Japanese government. In an effort to keep the development of such innovative technologies within Japan, in the past, smaller companies have teamed with the Japanese government to invest in tech companies with dicey financials.

Japanese politicians and industry leaders have fretted over Chinese investors’ buying advanced chip production technology; semiconductors and memory are a major priority of China’s industrial policy because they can fabricate the technology at a lesser cost and go after market share, which would hurt other international tech industry players. Such a move could drive down pricing for memory, a boon for Apple and low-cost Chinese smartphone makers. It would propel China forward in its long push to become internationally competitive in semiconductors.


A global bidding war would at any rate be good for Toshiba, especially since bids are ranging between 2 and 3 trillion Yen. Although the company still has a relatively strong position, competition in NAND chips could create the possibility of oversupply and put more pressure on Toshiba’s ability to put in effect next-generation technologies.

Although tech development requires collaboration the divide in politics causes developers, manufactures and their homeland governments to keep international companies at bay. However, some of the biggest tech companies consistently drive to become global giants that break boundaries and contract deals that expand their company reach in the international market, not just a product. 

When creating a business and a product it is essential to keep the global market in mind and use it for positive benefit, our world reach is forever expanding.

New York will be the first state to make tuition at public colleges and universities free for students under a state budget approved by lawmakers on April 9, 2017. A $153 billion state budget proposal that passed the state Senate late Sunday after being endorsed by the Assembly a day earlier includes the tuition plan that will be phased in over three years. State residents making up to $100,000 annually in the fall of 2017, increasing to $110,000 in 2018, and reaching $125,000 in 2019 will qualify. 

Cuomo's office says some 940,000 families will be covered under the program. The initiative also includes $19 million for a new tuition award program for students at private colleges. New York’s tuition-free degree program, known as, The Excelsior Scholarship, requires participating students to be enrolled at a SUNY or CUNY two- or four-year college full-time.

The Excelsior Scholarship program will ensure that students statewide, regardless of their socio-economic status, have the opportunity to receive a quality education and gain the skills they need to succeed in our global economy.

"A college education is not a luxury – it is an absolute necessity for any chance at economic mobility, and with these first-in-the-nation Excelsior Scholarships, we’re providing the opportunity for New Yorkers to succeed, no matter what zip code they come from and without the anchor of student debt weighing them down," Governor Cuomo said. "New York is making a major investment in our greatest asset – our people – and supporting the dreams and ambitions of those who want a better life and are willing to work hard for it. I am honored to have the support of Senator Sanders, who led the way on making college affordability a right, and I know that together we can make this a reality with New York leading the way once again."

By leveraging New York State’s generous aid programs like the Tuition Assistance Program or TAP, which provides nearly $1 billion in grants to college students statewide the initiative will start. Under the program, eligible students would still receive TAP and any applicable federal grants. Additional state funds would cover the remaining tuition costs for incoming or existing eligible students.

With an average annual tuition ranging from $6,470-$6,330 at SUNY and CUNY for a bachelor’s degree and $4,350-$4,800 for an associate’s degree, the more time a student spends in college, the higher the level of debt. By mandating that students be enrolled full-time, New York’s free tuition program will work to improve graduation rates and alleviate the heavy burden of student debt by encouraging more students to graduate on time in two to four years.

Studies show a person with a bachelor’s degree, on average, will earn about 66 percent more over his or her lifetime than a person without a college degree. Those with an associate’s degree can expect to earn 24 percent more than a person with a high school diploma. Moreover, a college education is increasingly becoming a necessity, not a luxury. According to projections by the New York State Department of Labor, approximately 3.5 million jobs statewide will require an associate’s degree or higher by 2024. As the landscape of the global economy continues to shift, investing in a highly-qualified, highly-educated workforce has never been more important.

This program offers an empowering opportunity for the residents that surround CUNY and SUNY colleges throughout the state. Students will have to maintain full-time status, a passing GPA and will not receive aid for room and board. This encourages students to stay local and focus their studies at the community level. It will have a positive impact on CUNY and SUNY institutions providing increased and evolved services for their local communities.

Google continue to focus long-term investments in building incredible photo editing tools for mobile, including Google Photos and Snapseed. As a result, you can now download and create the photos you’ve imagined with seven powerful desktop plug-ins for Photoshop®, Lightroom®, or Aperture® using Google's Nik Collection for FREE.

It is comprised of seven desktop plug-ins: Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine. These offer a powerful range of photo editing capabilities -- from filter applications that improve color correction, to retouching and creative effects, to image sharpening that brings out all the hidden details, to the ability to make adjustments to the color and tonality of images.

If you purchased the Nik Collection in 2016, Google sent out automatic refunds.

The collection is compatiblewith Mac OS X 10.7 through 10.10; Windows Vista, 7, 8; and Adobe Photoshop through CC 2015 and can be downloaded here.

Only doing a little photo editing and want a free mobile option... try Canva. Custom size options or standard post sizing for social and print media.

Copyright 2017 Collaborative Creators

Learn how your clients find you using online social platforms. The importance of your social media profiles is discussed along with a breakdown of who statistically uses which platform and what types of content does well on them. It should be noted that Collaborative Creators does not advocate the use of one platform over another and believes that each one has their own utility. Successful use of a platform depends on the creators posting consistency, purpose and presentation. 

Copy Right 2016 Collaborative Creators

DISCLAIMER: Collaborative Creators does not give legal or professional advice. We discuss topics and learn together. 

As a solo entrepreneur, partnership, corporation, LLP, or LLC collaborating, learning and creating with one another facilitates business success, particularly when engaging with the same audience. Gaining industry recognition and networking are fundamental components of becoming an expert in a field. This requires being willing to reach out to your audience but also people that may seem like the "competition". These connections become strategic alliances.

Technology is ever changing, the communities that develop tech collaborate to become innovative and find reward in collectively achieving success within multiple projects. This innovation generates creations that go beyond local backyards but instead transcend through the viral world of information. It is the age of open source software and content (www.blender.org, www.github.org, https://liquidspace.com/Terms/DASH-License, www.wordpress.org). It is campaigns that promote free learning for everyone, forever, check out www.khanacademy.org. It is a time when humans crave engagement and creation so much that they spend hours making, liking and sharing cat videos and funny memes on social media.

It is essential for humanity to take hold of their use of technology and control the input it dominates in life. It requires inter-generational collaboration of industry life learning and technological learning. Although using technology for entertainment is fun and down right pleasurably distracting, the mind craves engagement that leads to self-betterment and advancement to feel purposeful and truly satisfied. That satisfaction comes from doing acts that positively affect surroundings and the future.

Unfortunately, the age of information is fraught with misinformation. Unverified sources, studies that are bought for corporate benefit and biased information is readily shared among tribal audiences that are not necessarily cooperative collaborative communities of diverse learning. Everyone has a voice and a drum to beat, it is possible to beat our drums and lead bands of diverse scholarly information in harmony and still be profitable without scaling back our integrity.

Creators, people who have something to teach and share, need to take ownership of their intellectual property. The internet business market is not just for marketers and people who sell tangible products. It is also for people who provide educational services. There are multiple forums that educators can use to share their information, like www.academia.edu, www.udemy.com, youtube, personal websites, blogs and Amazon e-books, just to name a few. The caveat is the ability to make money when sharing educational creations. Academia allows educators to upload their content for free and it is shared freely. Udemy gives creators the option to charge for their courses or offer them for free; Youtube, websites, blogs are profitable with ads attached and a self-published Amazon book price is controlled by the creator. The more creators share their intellectual property the more likely they are to become recognized experts in their field of interest. This recognition is best propelled by collaborating with others in the same field.  

The collaboration of field experts brings a system of checks and balances in information and professional credibility. But is collaboration enough to stop viral mass information and identity theft? How do we know who to begin collaborating with and what is the standard of citation and study when creating information that can potentially be shared on a mass scale?
         
These are all questions that creators have the power to answer together and hold each other accountable. There are codes of conduct, professional ethics boards and a multitude of precedent for creators to self-regulate in different fields. It is up to us to take hold of our public professional personas, own our intellectual property and collaborate with one another to positively create for global prosperity using tech, industry expertise, and creative shared spaces. Join Collaborative Creators to take hold of your online persona, have us evaluate your creations so we can grow your community together and assert your expertise with us.      

Thank you Maialisa for the Graphic. Check out her Pixabay profile at: https://pixabay.com/en/users/Maialisa-905513/

The age of technology is changing how we engage, learn and create everyday. The need for knowledge is never ending and humans crave to evolve, prosper and progress. Unless someone is in the middle of the woods completely off-grid (something we highly recommend from time-to-time) the mind is surrounded with information that can only be processed if focused and engaged. Although passive learning does occur, the retention of it is minimal and quickly becomes fuzzy. As a result, the desire to absorb quality content increases along with the need to connect with others positively.

Historically, learning took place in homes, local school buildings and in local communities. There are still parts of the world where students travel for miles on foot and in dangerous circumstances to learn and better themselves.  

Thank you www.therichest.com for sharing this eye opening video about the dangers of traveling to get an education!

Learning does not have to be a death defying adventure! Yes, it will take time to complete the infrastructure to have e-learning all over the world but such a goal is being tackled everyday by community initiatives and corporate sponsors who strive to have technology reach all the corners of the world. All motivated with good and bad intentions.

As technology lands in laps, there are 2 choices: be overwhelmed and easily consumed... let technology control the influence it has with advertisements and entertainment or become empowered by possibility and control the tech for personal  betterment and social positive progress.

When in control of the possibilities that technology offers, learning can be taken to a whole new evolutionary level. No more with long journeys, costly tuition bills and the need to devote thousands of hours and dollars on topics that only meet general education credits. The ability to focus on niche fields of study that suit passionate goals and missions is now at fingertips. The value of standard degrees seem to have fallen to asterisks at the end of a resume after a complete review of content profiles and professional highlighted accomplishments achieved with experience. The debt associated with becoming a full-time student is a mark of shame on credit reports and "hey, can't we just google it or ask siri anyway!"

But really, education is still at the forefront of personal progress and merely relying on whoever can pay the most to show up on the top search feeds is not necessarily the best way to get information. As a result, professional backgrounds, degrees, content sources and who authors collaborate with is important. Merely giving away tons of information and intellectual property in an effort to prove merit and scholarship is not as financially beneficial. When brains are processes and retaining information it is quality over quantity that sooths the learning pallet.  

The mission of Collaborative Creators is to improve e-learning, increase profitability for mentors, tutors and coaches, as well as, revolutionize the ability of scholars to navigate and utilize the platforms and technological advancements that are available to scholars, information leaders and learners.

This is just the beginning of a  journey that encourages the production of quality self-published content that gains monetization by collaborating with e-learning giants. Work with us to change how society educates and start building your community of virtual learners.

A video, rhythm and heartfelt lyrics brings this concept to life more than any words in written post. Thank you Prince Ea for sharing this inspirational case against how society treats education. With love and passion we can change our world!     ​    

Subscribe to Prince Ea's youtube channel:
www.youtube.com/channel/UCDgUAAHgsV2fFZQm2fIWBnA

Thank You John Hain for the Image at the top of this post!
​Visit his page at www.builtforlove.com