Category: Industry News

Posted on

News You Can Use: 9/18/2019


Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

  • The Many Ways Planned Obsolescence Is Sabotaging How We Preserve Internet History

    But one issue keeps cropping up that I think is going to become even more prevalent in the years to come: Non-functional batteries.

    Battery technology and the circuitry that connects to it varies wildly, and it creates issues that prevent gadgets from living their best lives, in a huge part due to the slow decay of lithium-ion batteries.

    A prominent example of this, of course, are AirPods, highly attractive and functional tools that will slowly become less useful over time as their batteries go through hundreds of cycles and start to lose steam. But at the same time, AirPods are just an example of what is destined to happen to basically every set of Bluetooth headphones over time: The lithium-ion batteries driving them will slowly decay and turn a once-useful product into an object that must be continually replaced because a single part, the battery, cannot be replaced.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjwmqm/the-many-ways-planned-obsolescence-is-sabotaging-how-we-preserve-internet-history

  • India’s Restaurants Rebel Against Food Delivery Apps

    The frustration goes beyond India. As food ordering and delivery increasingly move online, restaurateurs and delivery workers around the world are questioning the small share of the pie they get from powerful gatekeepers like Zomato in India, Grubhub and DoorDash in the United States, and Deliveroo in Europe.

    The apps have made it easier for people to order takeout meals, and restaurants have gotten exposure to a larger audience of diners. But the platforms also charge hefty commissions on each order and can squeeze the profit margins of culinary establishments. In the United States, some restaurants have closed, unable to keep up with the cost of working with the delivery apps.

    The revolt in India underscores how tense the relationship between restaurants and the dining apps has become. On Thursday, restaurateurs spent all day meeting with top executives of Zomato and Swiggy, but failed to settle their differences.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/technology/india-restaurants-logout-delivery-zomato.html

  • How to vastly improve your problem-solving workshops

    Key Concept: Move from ideas to experimentation quickly
  • Out-of-Office Replies: Can a Strongly Worded One Set You Free?

    Some people threaten to delete all emails upon return. Many deflect with a joke, but taking creative liberties with an OOO only works if you’re high enough on the food chain in certain industries. “Stating you’ll respond ‘if you feel inspired’ will likely be poorly received at a law firm or by your boss if you’re entry-level,” said Ms. Licht. “It comes down to anticipating who’s receiving the message.”

    Others think that working a not-so-humble brag about, say, your “tightly scheduled tour of vineyards in Burgundy” into your OOO might convince people to leave you alone, or at least want to. For some recipients, however, “that’s just too much information,” said Ann Shoket, author of “The Big Life,” a self-help resource for professionals.

    If you can’t totally excise yourself from the grind, or can’t push your work off to a colleague, Ms. Johnson recommends selecting a window of availability each day to maintain some semblance of control over a vacation. Because let’s be real, we can never truly sign off(line) anymore.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/out-of-office-replies-can-a-strongly-worded-one-set-you-free-11567174442

Posted on

News You Can Use: 9/11/2019


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  • The Case for Lowering Your Expectations

    In 2006, epidemiologists from the University of Southern Denmark set out to explore why citizens of Denmark consistently score higher than any other Western country on measures of life satisfaction. Their findings, published in the medical journal BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), zeroed in on the importance of expectations. “If expectations are unrealistically high they could be the basis of disappointment and low life satisfaction,” write the authors. “While the Danes are very satisfied, their expectations [compared to other countries] are rather low.”

    In a more recent study that included more than 18,000 participants and was published in 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from University College in London examined people’s happiness from moment to moment. They found that “momentary happiness in response to outcomes of a probabilistic reward task is not explained by current task earnings, but by the combined influence of the recent reward expectations and prediction errors arising from those expectations.” In other words: Happiness at any given moment equals reality minus expectations.

    https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-case-for-lowering-your-expectations

  • How to Communicate With Your Boss

    We recently conducted a survey of 355 people and learned that the #1 piece of information that managers want to know is the progress that’s being made on a project. As a result, you’ll want to ask yourself: Am I sharing the progress I’m making day-to-day or week-to-week? You can also ask your boss directly: “How can I give you more visibility into my work?” or “Are there any decisions or projects you wish I were more transparent about?”

    https://lifehacker.com/how-to-communicate-with-your-boss-1837407349

  • Why employees have the upper hand now more than ever before
  • You should think more about how you onboard your newest hires

    No matter how experienced your new hire is, they likely don’t want to be the center of attention of a group of strangers on day one. Starting a new job is stressful, and being immediately thrust into a round of clapping employees magnifies that stress exponentially.

    What to do instead: Opt for “pre-boarding.” To minimize first-day jitters (and the chance of a new hire getting cold feet after accepting your offer), send a welcome email within a couple days and perhaps have one or two key staffers send a similar email. You may also want to send along the employee handbook and a brief outline of the first week’s schedule. That way, new employees can start with confidence and a warm, but low-key, welcome.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90382574/you-should-think-more-about-how-you-onboard-your-newest-hires

Posted on

News You Can Use: 9/4/2019


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  • Why Google employees are donating to Warren and Sanders — presidential candidates who want to break up Google

    In interviews with Recode, Google employees (mostly engineers who work on everything from Android to virtual reality) who donated to Sanders and Warren said that breaking up Google could help consumers and spur more tech innovation by allowing for more competition from upstarts. Some even said they thought regulation could force Google itself to return to its startup roots, recreating the bootstrapped work culture that they say enabled the company’s initial success. (Google executives don’t exactly agree.)

    Their support for candidates who are critical of Big Tech seems to reflect a broader movement among corporate tech employees who have begun demanding more ethical behavior and policies from their companies. In the past year, many tech employees, particularly at Google, have organized and protested against their own employers over concerns related to sexual harassment policies and controversial defense contracts with the US and foreign governments. In candidates like Warren and Sanders, these employees find an outside voice who similarly views major technology companies’ growing and unprecedented power with a critical lens. And for the first time, companies like Google have become major talking points in the presidential campaign.

    https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/7/30/20694619/google-employees-warren-sanders-presidential-election-donations-break-up-tech

  • Don’t stop creating for yourself – #LevelUp

    I really enjoy Peter and I thought this video is a great cross over between career and creative. I am certainly looking for a creative spark (I don’t want to come off like a talking head).
  • Having trouble delegating? These 3 questions can help

    “You can say something, but it’s not always what the other person hears,” she says. “Asking this question ensures that what you intend for someone to do is what they understand they need to do.”

    Repeating information is standard operating procedure in mission critical jobs. “An air traffic controller gives a pilot instructions, and the pilot has to repeat it back to ensure they got it correctly,” she says. “You can use the same thing in the workplace.”

    To avoid feeling robotic or untrusting, Brownlee suggests putting it this way: “I know I threw a lot at you, and I know this has a lot of moving parts. To ensure I didn’t confuse you, would you mind repeating back what you heard?”

    “If they tell you something that is not quite right, you’ll be so glad you can course correct,” she says.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90386012/having-trouble-delegating-these-3-questions-can-help

  • As tech changes homelessness, libraries roll with the punches

    Libraries were always sources of education, but that has become more pronounced recently as they’ve shifted from being the ones that store information to those that provide free and open access to it. With the combination of how that information is used and who needs these services, this involves a transformation not just of purpose but of architecture: Becoming a place where people come and stay rather than a place people visit.

    That transformation doesn’t come equally easily to all libraries or branches. It may be that a small, underfunded library happens to be near a shelter or bus station and attracts more of the homeless than it can serve, and indeed more than intend to use the library for its “intended” purpose. Though these facilities were designed to provide short-term refuge for any and all, they’re generally not equipped or staffed to handle the volume or types of people who find their way in and stay sometimes from open to close.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/31/as-tech-changes-homelessness-libraries-roll-with-the-punches/

Posted on

News You Can Use: 7/31/2019


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  • Our 6 Must Reads for Cutting Through Conflict and Tough Conversations

    When conflict arises in the workplace, people have two tendencies: Either they’ll hide from discomfort and hope the issue dissipate, or they’ll address the conflict head-on, often without filtering the words they use. Neither response is correct, nor constructive. Avoiding problems only allows them to fester and impact more people, while hasty, non-strategic communication can turn a small fire into a blaze.

    To help clients communicate through confrontations mindfully, Mehl recommends the A-E-I-O-U Model of Managing Conflict. It’s distinguished from other strategies by assuming that both sides of any argument mean well — basically, that there are positive reasons behind each person’s actions.

    Standing for Acknowledge, Express, Identify, Outcome, and Understanding, the A-E-I-O-U method can be used to resolve a variety of standoffs: employee-to-boss, peer-to-peer, co-founder to co-founder. It’s particularly useful for early startups, Mehl says, because everyone knows each other and is learning together. No matter how old your company is or how it’s structured, employees should always feel comfortable approaching managers and communicating on a level playing field.

    https://firstround.com/review/our-6-must-reads-for-cutting-through-conflict-and-tough-conversations/

  • Work at one of these 10 companies if you want a job you actually like

    Among the top 10 are:
    Adobe
    Facebook
    Southwest Airlines
    Live Nation
    Intuit
    Costco Wholesale
    Delta
    eBay
    Microsoft
    Johnson & Johnson

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90376970/work-at-one-of-these-10-companies-if-you-want-a-job-you-like
    Adobe…? That can’t be right.

  • Have you accidentally offended someone? Here’s advice for you and them
  • Everybody Hates the Key Card. Will Your Phone Replace It?

    The number of hotels in the United States that have digital keys available rose from 6 percent in 2016 to 17 percent last year, according to a survey by the American Hotel & Lodging Association. Marriott International, Hilton, MGM Resorts and Disney hotels are among the brands offering loyalty members the option of using digital keys at some properties.

    Some, including Hilton and Marriott, only allow a single phone to receive a key during a stay, and other guests in the room receive card keys. Like the card keys, the digital keys can be used to access elevators, fitness centers, parking garages and other common areas. Some mobile keys require the user to touch a button on their phone screen to unlock the door, while others require that the phone be held up to the lock.

    Digital keys are hugely popular with travelers in some areas, like Silicon Valley, but overall, only about 10 percent of all hotel guests use them, Mr. Aznar estimated.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/travel/hotel-security-mobile-keys.html

  • In major switch, DoorDash announces that customers’ tips will now go to workers

    Just as things were calming down, a July 21 first-person New York Times article about working for various delivery services, including DoorDash, went viral. While the Times article didn’t break any news about the payment system, it thrust the issue back into the spotlight, prompting a new round of outrage.

    Xu had long defended the practice of using customer tips to pay drivers, with DoorDash chipping in only as a way of “making Dashers whole when a customer left no tip,” as he described it on Twitter. “But it’s clear from recent feedback that we didn’t strike the right balance,” he wrote.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90380942/in-major-switch-doordash-announces-that-customers-tips-will-now-go-to-workers

Posted on

News You Can Use: 7/24/2019


Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

  • Amazon Offers Sellers a Leg Up, With a Catch

    Amazon.com Inc. is offering independent merchants on its platform marketing support, product reviews and prominent display. The catch? Amazon gains the right to purchase a merchant’s brand at any time for a fixed price, often $10,000.

    The program—which allows brand rights to be bought for a fixed price on 60 days’ notice, according to a contract seen by The Wall Street Journal—is part of a push by Amazon to obtain a stable of exclusive brands for the platform. It is the first selling program that allows Amazon to obtain direct control over independent brands that sell on its website, according to merchants familiar with Amazon programs.

    Also:

    The contract sets the price at $10,000, but says designs, patents and trade secrets will remain with the seller after the sale. Sellers in the program may sell the same product elsewhere under a different brand name and keep rights to brands they haven’t entered in the Accelerator program.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-offers-sellers-a-leg-up-with-a-catch-11563452450

  • Most of the Google Walkout Organizers Have Left the Company

    The employee resignations highlight growing hostility between Google and its most outspoken employees, who have grown increasingly organized and strident in their demands for significant changes to Google’s approach to issues including sexual harassment claims, military contracts, censored search in China, and equitable treatment of contract workers, who now outnumber full-time employees. That tension presents a challenge to Google’s open company culture, which encouraged employees to debate and dissent on internal forums, but established strong social norms around secrecy. Google evangelized this culture, elements of which have been adopted by other Silicon Valley firms, and the company’s response to employee activism is being closely watched.

    https://www.wired.com/story/most-google-walkout-organizers-left-company/

  • The biggest threat to America? Americans.
  • ‘The climate has changed’: Agencies are finding more young employees report burnout

    Burnout among millennials has been a major talking point this year. At the same time, agency sources say there has been a cultural shift in the way the industry approaches mental health and burnout. Agencies have employed new policies, like no answering emails after 7 p.m. or no Slack on weekends, to combat the burnout. It makes sense to do so, as 32% of agency employees are worried about their mental health, per Digiday+ research.

    “Fifteen years ago, [agencies] dismissed the idea of burnout,” said Jean Freeman, president and CEO of independent shop Zambezi. “The climate has changed, which is for the better, and now we’re paying attention to physical and mental health. If you pay attention to your staff, you can see it.”

    https://digiday.com/marketing/burnout-is-contagious-why-agencies-need-to-listen-when-younger-employees-self-diagnose/

  • The 5G Health Hazard That Isn’t

    According to experts on the biological effects of electromagnetic radiation, radio waves become safer at higher frequencies, not more dangerous. (Extremely high-frequency energies, such as X-rays, behave differently and do pose a health risk.)

    In his research, Dr. Curry looked at studies on how radio waves affect tissues isolated in the lab, and misinterpreted the results as applying to cells deep inside the human body. His analysis failed to recognize the protective effect of human skin. At higher radio frequencies, the skin acts as a barrier, shielding the internal organs, including the brain, from exposure. Human skin blocks the even higher frequencies of sunlight.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/science/5g-cellphones-wireless-cancer.html