‘Like penpals, but with snacks!’ Unable to travel, strangers mail each other tastes of home – The Guardian

One of the best bits of travel was always the food. Or, more specifically, the junk food the brightly coloured boxes of Pocky in a Japanese 7-Eleven, the rows of uncharted chip flavours in a foreign supermarket.

Its a delight Australians are unlikely to get to experience in 2021. But in one corner of the internet, hungry citizens are keeping the joy of international snacks alive border closures be damned.

On r/SnackExchange, Reddit users assemble to trade the sugary and salty delights of their homeland via mail. The premise is simple: first, you find someone on the board to swap with. You then post each other a box full of your countrys finest processed foods, eventually uploading photos of your haul on the board for others to see. As one user told Guardian Australia: Its like penpals, but with snacks!

First created in 2010, r/SnackExchange predates the pandemic. Its membership now totals 102,000. Most come to experience snacks they cant find at home matcha Oreos from Hong Kong, maple leaf cookies from Canada but others arrive desperately seeking the treat they ate one time on holidays and havent been able to forget.

For the Redditors who take part in snack exchanges, its a way to learn more about the world.

I didnt realise what we didnt have until we started doing the snack exchange, says Meghan Quallick, a four-time snack swapper from Sacramento, California. As well as swaps with a university student in Wales, a man in Scotland and a fellow American in Hawaii, in December 2018 she exchanged snacks with a woman in Melbourne named Alice.

Part of Quallicks motivation for swapping with an Australian was to get her hands on a specific item: Cadbury Black Forest bars. A colleague of hers had eaten the chocolate block on a trip to Australia in years past and fallen in love, but been unable to source them at home. Quallicks snack partner included 10 bars of the chocolate in her package, which she was thrilled to pass on. To get some and bring them to her was pretty exciting, Quallick said. My co-worker had tears in her eyes.

Black Forest bars arent the only sought-after Australian snack on r/snackexchange. Among our biggest hits are Shapes, Caramello Koalas, Milo, Violet Crumbles, Cheezels and Twisties. Some swappers even send packages of supermarket-bought lamingtons, tubes of chicken salt or oddities like emu jerky and eucalyptus drops. Sachets of Vegemite regularly feature. Top dog, though, is Tim Tams.

They were one of Meghans favourites, too. I dont know what it is about them, theyre just well, theyre perfect, actually, she says.

Everyone wants Tim Tams, affirms Heather Clarke, a snack swapper from Melbourne. With most Australian exchanges it tends to be heavily chocolate-based: youll see blocks of Cadbury, youll see your Cherry Ripes.

From observing posts on the board, Heather says, you get an idea of what flavours arent available abroad. Looking through other American exchanges, they didnt seem to have sweet chilli and sour cream chips, which are my favourite. So you can sort of guess [what to put in], but at the same time, the polite thing to do is ask, OK, do you have a preference for what I send?

Clarkes latest swap was with a woman in Texas. As well as the classics, she included liquorice upon request from her partner, who had heard the Australian variety is softer than its US equivalent. For shock factor, she also threw in a packet of musk sticks. My swapper went, This is the strangest thing Ive ever eaten. They taste like grandma.

Snack exchanges do come with obvious financial drawbacks. Part of the process is to agree on a budget before you swap Quallick says on average thats around the US$40-50 mark. But you should be prepared to spend twice as much on shipping than the actual snacks, Reddit moderators advise. Occasionally swappers get scammed by partners who dont deliver on their end of the deal, although there are measures in place to try to prevent this from happening.

It can be very pricey, Clarke admits. But its like a hobby, and you dont really mind spending money on your hobbies.

Often, the snack exchanges are often about more than just food.

I like getting physical mail, Im one of those people who has penpals, Clarke says. The packages are an interesting way to do that on a bigger scale. Because its not just food exchanges, its often cultural exchanges as well. You get people going, What is this? Can you tell me what this is?

Often, Redditors enclose instructions on how to best consume the snacks like the dos and donts of eating Vegemite, or a step-by-step guide to completing a Tim Tam slam. Going the extra mile is in the spirit of the community.

I really like that the community is very wholesome and nice, Quallick says. Its total strangers all over the internet but if someone is looking for a particular item but doesnt want to do a full exchange, people will reach out and post a link to where you can buy them online. Everyone seems to be very helpful.

For the moment, a snack exchange is the closest many of us will come to going overseas Quallick included. I got a passport just so I could drive up and go to Canada one day to get snacks, she says, laughing. But I probably cant do that for a couple of years now.

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'Like penpals, but with snacks!' Unable to travel, strangers mail each other tastes of home - The Guardian

Virtual Event Lessons for Healthcare and All Industries – TSNN Trade Show News

Right now, health is on everyones mind, personally and professionally. While we dont know how long this disruption will last, we do know this: the healthiest way to deliver successful events (and strong ROI) is to adapt to our changing industry and find new ways to enhance the virtual experience.

Healthcare association event leaders like the American Heart Association, the American Society of Hematology and the Radiological Society of North America have done just that, demonstrating incredible ingenuity to make their virtual events successful and engaging (note that these findings can apply to many event types and verticals!).

Try these seven strategic cures to help ensure the health of your virtual events and position your organization to not only adapt, but also lead.

Like everyone in the industry, as early as April, association staff had to juggle contingencies on hosting (or not) on-site meetings while trying to manage expectations on content and format. As it became clear that COVID was impacting not only community health, but also affecting travel and funding, planners moved quickly into contingency planning mode well before any cancellations were made.

The shift quickly revealed that mirroring the on-site event was not feasible and that the number of sessions and speakers would need to be prioritized. Developing a view on when to host the meeting also prompted discussion and debate. Finally, there was recognition that virtual was such a new medium it was critical to find a partner experienced in delivering virtual events in a COVID world, which also could provide insights on effective virtual practices.

Notably, the organizers for all three events focused on a three-pronged remedy strategy, creativity and programming to steer them through uncharted territory. Working with Freeman, all three organizers were able to rely on insights from prior events and registration trends as well as feedback on how best to focus.

Once they made those tough decisions, their strategy, creative foundation and program allowed teams to move quickly without issues.

Some experiences are a bit difficult to recreate virtually, but as it turns out, education is not one of them. In fact, all of these organizers had strong attendance and engagement with their educational sessions.

What went well? For starters, attendees enjoyed the remote flexibility, as well as being able to spread their learning out over weeks or even months instead of one jam-packed, drink-from-the-firehose week. At all three meetings, attendees also engaged throughout the day with various live streams that provided the latest developments in healthcare.

Even better, attendees werent the only ones who benefitted. After the typical in-person presentation, a speaker might receive a handful of comments. But many speakers found that after presenting virtually, they received feedback in a variety of forms from peers and colleagues far more than expected. In many cases, stalled connections were reinvigorated.

Consider these additional healing hints when planning virtual education:

Another way organizers and meeting planners can move to virtual smoothly is to have the plan as ready as possible before any formal announcements. This is especially important when it comes to relationships with exhibitors and sponsors. These partners want to know what will happen with their spend, so make sure corporate packages are ready in line with the announcement.

Exhibitors and sponsors may also seek guidance on how to increase ROI in this new environment.

For three recent healthcare events, high-performing exhibitors and sponsors shared a few key characteristics:

Communication is another important element. Exhibitors and sponsors know virtual events can generate a wealth of data, so they expect regular reporting and proactive monitoring from event organizers. Providing actionable, timely feedback on participation will help partners course-correct if needed and ultimately earn a much better ROI.

All three healthcare organizations reported a major ramp-up in registrations in the last three weeks before the event. When attendees dont need to book flights or hotels, registration urgency disappears.

While this last-minute rush may cause stress, a good marketing strategy is to ensure a detailed understanding of key audience segments and maintain momentum throughout the registration period, especially in the final weeks. However, be mindful that marketing a virtual event requires very different tactics and tools, as well as plenty of agility. Event marketers will need to pay careful attention to messaging and which channels work best. Then prepare to adapt as needed.

Even if an event team is a well-oiled machine, virtual events will require adding some different faces to the mix and increasing collaboration across departments.

The best way to make this collaboration work is to have a Joint Leadership Task Force with weekly check-ins, a structured agenda, and time set aside to discuss and address unexpected surprises. A key part of this team is the executive producer role someone (or a few knowledgeable folks) who are taking a holistic view across organizations to ensure event deliverables are being completed to scope, on a timely basis.

Smart event planners know organization is paramount, so they have the bandwidth for hurdles that inevitably pop up. In the digital world, this principle applies tenfold.

Content needs to be received, reviewed and validated prior to uploading. Build in time to develop testing, run it and validate any changes. Plans must include enough leeway to accommodate the inevitable last-minute additions of critical content or speakers. For example, when the organizations had the opportunity to add Dr. Anthony Fauci (lead of the Coronavirus Task Force and incoming Chief Medical Advisor for the Biden administration), the teams were ready to incorporate the keynote speaker because of stringent deadline practices.

Sticking to deadlines is a must for any event, but even more so with virtual because planning requires a much longer runway. If time frames arent met, you could lose out on dynamic and captivating content.

Finally, be sure to communicate deadlines early and often to exhibitors and sponsors. They have their own internal milestones to establish, so the earlier theyre informed, the better.

Virtual events will continue to evolve, incorporating more only in-person benefits (like networking) and other unique experiential elements that give live events the wow! factor. Virtual does require different timelines and strategies to deliver successfully, but it isnt going away. No matter the medium, its essential to set new expectations and keep an open mind for new possibilities.

So whats next? The hybrid model a combination of in-person and virtual experiences. And just like any event, the fundamental approach to success remains the same: Determine the strategy, understand key audiences (separating remote from in-person audience needs), set appropriate agendas for each medium, and develop the appropriate audience journeys. In the case of hybrid, those journeys would be virtual-only or onsite-only.

Remember to also leverage insights and benchmarks from prior meetings to drive the strategy. Then, consistently evaluate the data (and share findings with your partners!) to uncover whats working and whats not, so attendees, sponsors and exhibitors all receive maximum value.

Were all in this together as an industry, and we all want the same thing: Events that are enjoyable, safe, rewarding and successful. We continue to innovate, using data and event technology to help virtual events or any type of event be cost-efficient, effective and simply more memorable.

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Virtual Event Lessons for Healthcare and All Industries - TSNN Trade Show News

Raising the Bar on Student Engagement: Feedback as the Medium of Instruction – Teachers College Press

By: Linda Dale Bloomberg

Linda Dale Bloomberg holds the positions of associate director of faculty support and development, and full professor of education in the School of Education, Northcentral University, San Diego. Dr. Bloomberg received her doctorate in 2006 from Teachers College, Columbia University, where she completed the AEGIS Program in Adult and Organizational Learning. Her new book is titled Designing and Delivering Effective Online Instruction: How to Engage Adult Learners.

COVID-19 accelerated the shift to online education and increased the premium on flexible hybrid formats that can accommodate both in-person and online students. Yet, almost a year after the onset of the pandemic, many educators are still scrambling to adapt their teaching plans, tools and techniques to online and hybrid platforms; including techniques for engaging students, orchestrating effective discussions, and building community. I continue to write about how we can raise the bar on student engagement, and will be writing a series of three blog posts over the coming months to address this important issue of taking learner engagement to the next level. The first of this series focuses on Feedback as the Medium of Instruction.

Let us consider for a moment that in the online environment the primary instructional delivery mode is written, audio, or video feedback. Assignments, tasks, or activities are usually required regularly (mostly weekly) throughout a course as these are a measure of students application of knowledge. It is easy to fall into the trap of merely interacting with learners by grading assignments. But this is not sufficient! Your feedback on assignments, tasks, or activities is the way by which you teach. Therefore, your feedback should be both usable and useful! Consider implementing the following top 10 tips to optimize your teaching, support your students, and set them up for success.

Your task is to facilitate engagement and help your students learn, develop, and succeed. Before you begin teaching a course, check with each student regarding their preferred way of receiving feedback and honor their requests. For some, text feedback may be the preferred mode. Others may prefer audio or video recording or screencast. Screencast-O-Matic is an easy-to-use screen recorder, you can capture any area of your computer screen, and add narration from your microphone and video from your webcam. This free resource includes best practices for creating quality screencasts, and offers tips for editing videos. Access this tool here. Always be sure to let your students know when you are offering video, audio or screencast feedback, and how to access this as they may need to download appropriate software. Ensuring technical support minimizes stress regarding having access to feedback.

Take the time to explain how addressing your feedback will improve students ongoing progress and success. As constructive and useful as critique is, it can be difficult to work long hours on an assignment and receive a less than perfect grade and have errors pointed out. Emphasize that students should take note of all suggestions for improvement, and use the feedback that you provide for better understanding, deeper learning, and ongoing improvement. Always offer an opportunity for students to follow up with you for clarification if needed. In my new book Designing and Delivering Effective Online Instruction, I offer a template for a letter you can send your students ahead of their course, to familiarize them with your expectations regarding feedback on assignments, and to convey the message that you have high expectations and that your feedback is intended to help them improve and succeed.

Your delivery of the feedback counts! Most communication in the online environment is in written form; hence your writing skills and ability to communicate through writing is critical. With verbal communication, your message comes across not just in terms of what we say but how we say it, including tone, facial expressions, and body language. Written communication does not have the advantage of benefiting from non-verbal cues, and giving critical feedback is especially difficult. Consider carefully how your students may internalize and accept your feedback. Be sensitive to how you come across, making sure that all feedback is professional, respectful, and clear.

Students are more likely to implement feedback when their instructor is present and attentive. Students rely on your feedback to guide their learning. If they do not receive feedback consistently and often throughout their course, they may have difficulty identifying where to focus their efforts. Providing feedback as soon as possible ensures that students remain engaged and motivated. A best practice is to set 24-48 hours as a timeline to access, grade, and provide feedback, as delays may result in a student not being able to move on to the next task or assignment. A recommendation is to always abide by your institutions timeliness policy so that the expectations are clear, and that you and your students are on the same page.

Students are more likely to persist if the educational experience is personalized. As a start, address each learner by name. The way you present and organize your feedback indicates that the feedback has been thoughtfully compiled, and also models and exemplifies the quality of work that we expect of students. Be careful not to provide canned or boilerplate feedback. Not only is generic feedback unhelpful, your students will quickly realize that you are not taking the time to provide personal attention, and their motivation may suffer as a result. Determining the needs of each student depends on your careful assessment of their work. Be familiar with the course learning outcomes and the broader program learning outcomes so that your feedback is directly targeted toward improving specified competencies. Achievement also depends on the extent to which your prior feedback has been addressed. Keep this in mind to avoid a routine checklist approach to providing feedback, and ensure that you remain mindful of the individual needs and progress of each student.

To sustain motivation and engagement, feedback should incorporate a balance of support and challenge. While you should not shy away from pointing out and addressing areas in need of improvement, be sure also to affirm and acknowledge progress and accomplishments through positive and constructive feedback. Refrain from simply stating good job! Letting students know specifically what they did well is empowering, and encourages motivation, engagement, and ongoing learning. This also fosters a growth academic mindset, whereby your students will be motivated to persist because they believe they can succeed. By commending your students, you demonstrate acknowledgment and respect for their efforts, allowing them to recognize and be proud of the positive aspects of their work. Additionally, through supportive feedback, you build rapport and trust, allowing them to feel comfortable with asking questions and accepting critique.

Errors become important teachable moments, and so feedback should provide doable next steps. There is power in examples, so explain difficult or challenging concepts and ideas with practical examples. Incorporate available resources that will help learners improve, including internet sites, links to social media and audio or video material. Providing too many resources can be overwhelming, so prioritize and offer resources only as needed. Explain the reasons for why it is important to make the recommended improvements. This piece, as I refer to it in my book is, in essence, the motivation step,designed to articulate and explain why the course content is significant to progress and real-world success.

Know the features of your learning management system (LMS) and become familiar with the audio and video options. Do some tests before starting your recordings to ensure the quality of the sound. In my book,I talk about the synchronous-asynchronous balancing act, which focuses on the skills to ensure that you are providing multimodal feedback. Develop a clear plan, and dont simply add a new digital tool at the last minute. Less is more! When it comes to technology, take a gradual approach. When we learn about all the tools available, in our zeal to create the best possible experience for students, we run the risk of trying to do too much. Avoid jumping headfirst into the bells and whistles, giving yourself time to grow incrementally. As you gain more experience, you will learn which tools best fit with your teaching style and pedagogical strategy. Vary your feedback techniques and select the most appropriate method for each assignment. Speak to students as though they are sitting next to you, acknowledging good work, and suggesting necessary improvements.

Which occurs when you present too much information too quickly. Make accommodations regarding ADA compliance as necessary. Remember that equal access to education is mandated by law, and is grounded in the hope that all people will indeed have equal access to course content. Offering and ensuring equal access therefore is both an ethical and a legal responsibility. As such, you will need to address access with regard to proper accommodations for those with learning disabilities, including those with mobility impairments, ADD or ADHD, and health and medical-related impairments. Online education is a viable option for individuals with disabilities, and in addition to the convenience, online learning offers benefits in terms of flexibility that may not be as readily available in a face-to-face delivery format. Automatic closed-captioning is not perfect. Speak clearly and not too quickly to make the content as accurate as possible. If using a tool other than Zoom for recording your lecture, consider uploading your videos to YouTube to take advantage of their automatic (though not perfect) closed-captioning

Finally, to be fully transparent and authentic, and gain the trust of your students, listen to their feedback and be open to receiving and addressing it so that you can improve your own teaching practice. Being open to being the recipient of student feedback models that you value feedback too! Asking students what they think about your feedback practices or the use of a specific technology can be done via a survey or a poll such as PollEverywhere,Learning Catalytics, Mentimeter. Seeking feedback from your students in this way allows you to learn about which feedback methods work best for them, and can help effectively guide your instructional choices when you next teach the course.Remaining flexible, and making recommended adjustments as needed sets you up as a learning partner, and builds transparency, trust, motivation, and inclusivity.

Photo credit: Ann H via Pexels

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Raising the Bar on Student Engagement: Feedback as the Medium of Instruction - Teachers College Press

Editorial: Legislation aimed at public notices still a bad idea – The Coastland Times – The Coastland Times

Like a bad penny, legislation to hide public notices from the public is back in N.C. General Assembly.

House members have filed separate bills that would allow 14 counties in the Piedmont and mountains and 12 counties in Eastern North Carolina to run public notices on their websites instead of in newspapers. This has been a bad idea over the past 10 years and it is arguably a worse idea today when a public health crisis calls for greater transparency, not less.

Why are public notices important?

Public notices catalog government actions in cases of competitive bidding, rezonings, budget hearings, auctions, property transfers, delinquent tax notices, street name changes and more. They alert the public to disruptive land-use changes for things like sewer plants, asphalt plants and garbage incinerators. They tell the public in advance about proposals for traffic-clogging high-density developments and plans for wider roads or new roads. Although they cost local government a small amount of money, public notices generate revenue by compelling the collection of past-due taxes. Indeed, the possibility of having their names published in the local newspaper (and on its website) for nonpayment often incentivizes the timely payment of property taxes by an incalculable amount. Instead of eroding the publics right to know, county commissioners and city council members should be providing as much information as possible to all their constituents, including the many who have no internet access or poor service.

What role do newspapers play?

Newspapers are a community forum. That role does not change with the manner in which you receive local news important to you.

Newspapers have proved to be a lifeline of community news vital to the public during the pandemic; instead of killing the messengers, counties and cities should continue running legal notices in newspapers and help maintain this vital line of communication to the local community.

Current law ensures that public notices reach the largest possible cross-section of the community. The death of newspapers has been greatly exaggerated since the invention of the telegraph machine, radio and television. While the internet has reduced dissemination of news via a printed product, newspapers almost universally have added 24-7 web-based products that in many cases reach a larger audience than those news companies did before websites proliferated. Traffic on county websites is infinitesimally small compared to newspaper websites and print circulation. A recent study done by the North Carolina Press Association showed newspaper websites drew 4-5 times as much traffic as county websites. Keep in mind, too, that at no extra cost and without being forced to by law, newspapers are already posting public notices online and uploading them to a central statewide website http://www.ncnotices.com where the public can read notices from around the state for free.

The survey the NCPA commissioned in December 2020 found that:

The survey broadly undergirds what most people would regard as intuitive fact: The public relies on newspapers more often than any other source of information and its not even close.

What about access to these notices?

According to many studies, fully 30% of North Carolinians either live where there is no internet service, they cant afford it, or wont read online even if available (most seniors).

Rep. Warren thinks that everyone has a cell phone with capability to reach county websites, a position that is simply not supportable (there is a comparable group of seniors or those who cant afford wireless or find themselves out of service range).

Readers and viewers still look to newspapers to get community news that no other organization provides. So its a false echo for Rep. Warren and others to argue that its time now (when it wasnt time 10 years ago when he voted against earlier legislation to kill public notice) to allow counties to pull notices because newspapers may publish less frequently today.

Would this save money for our counties?

The fact is legal notice advertising is a small fraction of the budget in every county.

It is an important check and balance service that newspapers have provided to local governments for decades, and yes, they are paid for it. These notices do not subsidize the operation of small town newspapers. They keep the public informed. Removing the newspaper publication cost would scarcely be noticed on local government budget ledgers except to the extent it may reduce their leverage to collect unpaid taxes, making the repeal of the public notices pound foolish.

If our papers didnt play this role, many vulnerable taxpayers would be left in the dark about meetings of local governments that their tax dollars pay for, as well as the decisions and taxes to which those meetings might lead. Finally, legal ads sometimes more than pay for themselves, either by heading off a costly governmental controversy by drawing public attention early or bringing in cash. For instance, Moore County paid its local paper, The Pilot, $8,000 to meet a legal requirement to publish the names of delinquent taxpayers who collectively owed $1.37 million. After the ad, Moore County collected $821,000 of the outstanding debt.

This is not about cost savings for the counties. This is about hiding the business of the people and an attempt to strike back at newspapers for doing their job. We are the public watchdogs and occasionally we report on news that is not favorable to elected officials. That role will never change. This is about accountability and transparency.

As described by former Republican lawyer House member Bonner Stiller, giving local governments the choice to suspend notice publication to the public in newspapers would create havoc for free press rights every time a newspaper criticized the government.

Limiting public notice to government websites is a bad idea.

. . . because as many as one-third of North Carolinians do not have internet access, cant afford it, and would not visit government-operated websites even if they had internet access. This bill would bury public notices on a website that few, if any, citizens visit and effectively would kill the publics right to know.

These measures put local governments into private business, expanding government reach. Posting of public notices to government sites is not a healthy option for democracy. Newspapers are an independent third party responsible for printing and archiving a permanent record of these public notices. Who would be held accountable if these notices were only required to post on a government-run website?

The attempts at retribution against local newspapers are a bad idea. Contact your local legislator and county commissioners and tell them to keep the fox out of the henhouse. Tell them to keep public notices in newspapers so that the public can see them.

FOR MORE COLUMNS AND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, CHECK OUT OUR OPINION SECTION HERE.

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Editorial: Legislation aimed at public notices still a bad idea - The Coastland Times - The Coastland Times

Hayley Paige and Bridal Company Are at War Over Use of Her Name, Instagram Handle – The Fashion Law

Wedding dress designer Hayley Paige Gutman is at the center of a new lawsuit after leaving her post at her JLM Couture-owned brand. In a complaint filed on December 15, JLM Couture (JLM), the parent company to an array of bridal brands, including Hayley Paige, is accusing the designer of federal and common law trademark dilution and unfair competition, breach of contract, conversion, and breach of fiduciary duty, among other claims, and claiming exclusive rights in the Hayley Paige name and variations, thereof, on the basis of the employment agreement the parties entered into when Gutman was relatively new to the fashion industry in 2011.

According to its complaint, JLM which generated $220 million in retail sales between 2017 and 2020 claims that it enlisted Gutman to come onboard as a designer for its bridal collections in July 2011. As a result, the designer entered into an employment agreement with JLM, which is still currently in effect, as JLM exercised an option to extend the term of the agreement by at least 3 additional years in 2019.

The parties partnership has seemingly flourished since 2011, with JLM launching and Gutman designing, serving as the face of, and helping to advertise a number of successful Hayley Paige-specific brands and collections, in connection with which JLM filed for (and received) 37 domestic and international trademark registrations for the various iterations of the Hayley Paige name for its brands from Hayley Paige for using in connection with and La Petite Hayley Paige to Just Got Paiged, among others.

In addition to launching the Hayley Paige brands, in connection with which JLM began using [Gutmans name], as provided in the employment agreement, to sell and advertise clothing designed by Gutman, including by way of the then-newly-created Hayley Paige brands, JLM claims that it launched social media pages for the Hayley Paige brand, such as @misshayleypaige on Instagram, an account that Gutman assisted in maintaining in connection with the scope of her employment.

More than that, JLM claims that it obtained lucrative cross-marketing agreements and tie-ins to capitalize on Gutmans growing recognition, including on social media, such as collaborations with diamond brand Hearts of Fire, and a recurring role on TLCs show Say Yes to the Dress.

Despite the success of the [various Hayley Paige] brands, JLM alleges that things began to go downhill in November 2019 when Gutman began to take steps to not only assert control over JLM property, which has resulted in damage to JLMs business and intellectual property rights.Among the property at stake is the Hayley Paige social media accounts namely, the @misshayleypaige Instagram account which JLM argues that it has owned from the time that the accounts were created.

According to JLM, issues with Gutman began on November 2, 2019, when Gutman created a TikTok account under the misshayleypaige name. This was problematic, per JLM, not only because Gutman allegedly posted videos that did not properly represent the [Hayley Paige] brands, but because the misshayleypaige handle falls within the scope of the rights that Gutman granted JLM the exclusive world-wide right and license to use to JLM in accordance with her employment agreement.

JLM claims that in addition to the customary agreement that of the designs she created during her employment and the rights in such designs would become the property of JLM, Gutman was also required to grant it the exclusive right to use her name Hayley, Paige, Hayley Paige Gutman, Hayley Gutman, Hayley Paige, or any derivative thereof in connection with the design, manufacture, marketing and/or sale of bridal clothing, bridal accessories and related bridal and wedding items, including and all good will associated therewith for the term of the agreement, and for a period of two years, thereafter.

The exception? If JLM exercised its right to file for and obtain a federal trademark registrations for any such name, which is subject to a separate provision in her employment agreement that states that Gutman has irrevocably [sold, assigned, and transferred] all right, title, and interest to [JLM] that now exists or may exist during the term [of the parties agreement] and for a period of two years thereafter, to register [her] name or any derivative(s) thereof as trademark with the USPTO and/or other authorities in the U.S. or abroad.

The parties relationship further broke down in June 2020 when JLM alleges that in the midst of its offer to negotiate to further amend Gutmans employment agreement to increase the term thereof, and to provide Gutman with additional financial compensation, Gutman informed JLM CEO Joe Murphy that it was her position that the [@misshayleypaige] Instagram account was her personal account, which JLM says is at odds with their existing agreement.

Thereafter, JLM claims that Gutman began posting personal images in addition to bridal images to the account, as well as uploading posts promoting the goods of third parties, such as olive oil, beer, and nutritional supplements, none of which were approved by JLM, and none of which relate to the bridal industry.

This was followed by Gutman not only hijack[ing] the [@misshayleypaige] account, but [taking] steps to convert it from a JLM company account and its 1.1 million followers to her own business platform, as if she were an influencer.

With the foregoing in mind, JLM sets forth claims of federal trademark dilution, pointing to Gutmans confusingly similar use of the various Hayley Paige trademarks and the @misshayleypaige Instagram account since at least July of 2020, as well as her efforts to pass off [her] endorsement of third parties goods and services, as being part of, marketed, sponsored, licensed or otherwise authorized or approved by [JLM] when they are not, are eroding the distinctiveness of the [Hayley Paige] trademark and the @misshayleypaige trade name.

Beyond that, JLM claims that Gutman is engaging in false designation of origin and unfair competition by using its trademarks even if those marks include her name, as such use is likely to cause confusion in the marketplace as to the source, origin, or sponsorship of the goods being offered up and/or promoted by Gutman.

Still yet, JLM argues that Gutman is engaging in a whole host of other offenses, including breach of contract as a result of her use of the Hayley Paige trademarks, as well as her unwillingness to provide JLM with access credentials to the social media accounts, which she hijacked for her own personal use, and to promote non-JLM authorized goods and services.

On the heels of a court order last week, in which Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a temporary restraining order in JLMs favor, Gutman told the nearly 100,000 followers of her @allthatglittersonthegram account in a video published on Monday, I am mortified and devastated but I wanted to be the first to personally tell you that I am no longer posting or engaging on [the @ misshayleypaige] account until this matter is resolved in court, noting that she has resigned from her position at JLM following a year-and-a-half-long legal battle to negotiate a new contract with JLM Couture, one that has resulted in them suing me and convincing a court to grant them temporary control and access over my Instagram account, as well as my TikTok and Pinterest.

In the same video, Gutman states that she did not have a lawyer when she signed the original employment agreement, and says that if there is only one thing that viewers take away from her video it is that if anyone tells you that you dont need a lawyer to take a look at an agreement or contract, please get a lawyer.

Gutman further says in the video that it is with a heavy heart that I have resigned from my role as head designer of my labels with JLM Couture, stating that going forward, I will no longer be associated with any of their products, including the designs and dresses which bear my name.

*The case is JLM Couture, Inc. v. Gutman,1:20-cv-10575 (SDNY).

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Hayley Paige and Bridal Company Are at War Over Use of Her Name, Instagram Handle - The Fashion Law

Heres what the McLaren P1 designer has to say about Bugatti Bolide – Motor1.com UK

The McLaren P1 is a wonderful machine not only because of its near-hypercar performance numbers but also in terms of design. Frank Stephenson is responsible for its styling, who actually got inspiration from a sailfish in penning the McLaren hybrid.

But what can Stephenson say about a new track supercar from Bugatti? As you may know by now, Stephenson has been active on YouTube, uploading videos wherein he shares his thoughts about other new cars. Some were praised, like the new Ford Bronco, while others didn't pass Stephenson's critic.

42 Photos

The latest of this series of videos is about the Bugatti Bolide the track-focused supercar from the French marque that's said to be the last to use the W16 engine.

So what can the McLaren P1 designer say about the aggressively-styled race car? Well, let's just say that it turns him on. Yes, his words, not mine.

Among the many praises that Stephenson lashed out on the Bolide was mind-boggling and outstanding, mainly because he believes that its form is the performance. He absolutely loved how each of the design elements of the race car has a purpose and he thought that it's an absolute weapon on the track.

While his adoration for the Bolide was apparent on the video, Stephenson gave it an imperfect 9.9 score, just below the Honda E. Yes, that small, retro-looking Japanese electric vehicle got a perfect 10 from the P1 designer.

Though the Bolide's current form earned praises from Stephenson, there were several elements that he would rather change, such as in the headlight area, the snorkel, and the exhaust part.

Don't take out word for this. Let him explain his side by watching the video embedded on top of this page. But really, Honda E?

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Heres what the McLaren P1 designer has to say about Bugatti Bolide - Motor1.com UK

Barclays Bank refusing withdrawals to new customers – and getting away with it – FinanceFeeds

Despite it being illegal to withhold customer funds in the UK, Barclays sticks to its line and will not allow new customers to withdraw funds or make transfers, putting every possible obstacle in the way.

Every professional within every sector of the non-bank electronic trading industry is fully aware that one of the most important matters with regard to operating a legal and compliant business, as well as maintaining a good and transparent reputation is that surrounding the handling of customer funds.

Over the years, it has been made patently clear by regulatory authorities around the world that the refusal of withdrawals, and intentional obstacles which are put in place to prevent withdrawal of customer funds is absolutely not acceptable.

FX and CFD firms in major financial centers have occasionally been on the receiving end of extremely harsh regulatory censuring for preventing withdrawal, often with reputation damaging consequences and large fines.

Today, FinanceFeeds discovered that what is not allowed for most, is standard practice within Tier 1 banks, which once again are allowed to break the law with little consequence.

Barclays, one of the worlds largest Tier 1 FX liquidity providers by market share a market share that is rapidly shrinking due to the BARX single dealer platforms odious adherence to last look execution practice and continual rejection of fills which has led to non-bank market making specialists such as XTX Markets and Citadel Securities taking the pole positions, has been engaging in the illegal practice of withholding client funds on its standard retail banking accounts.

In fact, more specifically, Barclays does not allow the withdrawal of funds for new account holders, yet allows them to deposit funds when opening an account online, a practice which landed Plus500 in regulatory trouble with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), decimating the companys share price and freezing all activity.

However, Barclays are allowed to carry out this practice.

It has come to light that new retail banking customers are able to open bank accounts with Barclays via the companys website, and complete the compliance and identification requirements via uploading a photographic copy of a passport, and then using a smartphone camera to take a selfie and a video to ensure that these match.

Within seconds, a bank account is open and live, and as much money as a client wishes can be deposited.

There is no mention whatsoever in Barclays terms and conditions that once deposited, a withdrawal would not be possible, nor a transfer into any other bank account until Barclays satisfies some reactionary verification criteria, which the bank will not tell customers what that is.

Over the past week, Barclays bank branches across London have been closed, despite the information on the companys website, and despite the telephone customer services team advising clients that they can go to a branch to perform a withdrawal or transfer during the early stages of holding a bank account.

It has been made clear to FinanceFeeds that many new Barclays customers are being sent to branches only to find that the branches are closed, with notices on the doors saying that they are unable to open due to unforeseen circumstances and no information on reopening is forthcoming.

Bearing in mind that Barclays closed its entire European branch network recently, this does not bode well.

FinanceFeeds has investigated this in detail, and has also found that customer service departments of Barclays are unable to facilitate withdrawals or transfers via the telephone, and that the app is locked down in terms of making transfers to other accounts until further verification has taken place.

Users of the app will note that they will not be able to access their money, and that no withdrawals are able to take place, no transfers can take place and attempts to add new payees is met with a message that says coming soon and that clients will have to wait four days from opening an account until they can make the transfer.

FinanceFeeds is aware of a case in which a client paid 9,810 GBP into a new account which was opened online on Friday, December 18, 2020, and is still unable to access funds, unable to withdraw any funds and unable to make transfers today, four days later, with the message still displayed. Various calls to customer services result in being read the same nonsense from a script, and refusal to be transferred to anyone senior.

FinanceFeeds contacted several members of staff at Barclays to investigate this, one of which spoke at length, repeating a corporate line that this is standard procedure.

We made it clear that refusal of withdrawals is a criminal offense, and that under British law, liners of financial institutions should be able to access their money at all times, however the bank continued to hold its line that it is able to establish accounts online, accept customer deposits and then not facilitate withdrawals until further notice or until a customer receives a bank card, which could be after the holidays now.

Of course, customers in the United Kingdom are protected up to 85000 under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) if they are the victim of a bucket shop or Ponzi scheme, or if withdrawals are blocked by a nefarious financial institution, however for customers depositing more than that, a risk is being taken, plus for those depositing less, an FSCS claim may take longer than is practical to wait.

It is clear that banks in the UK can get away with whatever they like, including committing withdrawal fraud, whereas non-bank financial services firms and OTC derivatives companies have to keep a clean copybook.

One rule for one, another for others. The old boys clubs of the Prudential Regulatory Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority favoring the banks.

FinanceFeeds has full documented evidence of this, and for those in the same situation wishing to go down the class action route, we would be happy to assist.

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Barclays Bank refusing withdrawals to new customers - and getting away with it - FinanceFeeds

The Chronicle of the Horse – The Chronicle of the Horse

From South America to Europe to Hong Kong, if theres a major international three-day event taking place, Shannon Brinkman is bound to be there, shooting her signature images. Brinkman, 55, grew up riding in Jacksonville, Florida, and she fell in love with photography when she received her first camera at age 11. She studied art and photography at the University of North Florida before founding Shannon Brinkman Photography in 1991.

Brinkman, of Bywater, New Orleans, is the official photographer for many of the biggest events in the United States, and she took us through a day in her life this fall at the MARS Tryon International Three-Day Event in Mill Spring, North Carolina, as she prepared for cross-country and tackled seven hours of dressage with her team photographers.

6. a.m. None of us slept very well last night because the rain was pouring down so hard. We wake up early to study the cross-country course before dressage starts. Two of my team members [go] to the back of the cabin, return, and tell me the creek is three times the size of its normal width. I say, All right, were probably not going to be able to walk the cross-country today; lets just go see what it looks like.

I do not eat breakfast this morning. I normally eat some yogurt and cereal or an egg, but because we did not sleep, I just have a cup of coffee and some orange juice.

I have a crew of three with me, and then I have a couple more people helping with remote [cameras] on the weekend. We got a cabin, so we have a great space to work out of, and we dont have to leave the showgrounds; this is a luxury.

8 a.m. We get in a car and drive to the top of the hill and start walking down. When we get around the bend to where you can see the valley, the creek is running over rapidlywater is spilling out and flooding in some lower set areas. I run into [course designer Capt. Mark Phillips], and he tells me that if it stops raining, the course will drain well, and they will be able to run, but they will need an extra day to let it drain.

I like walking the cross-country multiple times. I especially enjoy walking the cross-country with my photographer friend, Alison Green, as she gets just as excited about cross-country as I do. We sometimes have very different ways of looking at the course, which is enjoyable and helpful for each of us.

When I look at a cross-country course, I try to look at the course from all different angles because I believe you can, of course, photograph a course from all different angles. So, my goal is to do a gallery that has some remote shots that have some skies, some blue. Essentially, some low shots, many long shots, and at least a couple side shots because riders like to see all the angles. I generally dont edit out a lot of photographs unless its blurry or something, and even then, a lot of times, were so busy that we dont even edit out all of that.

Its nice if the photographer does edit some in-camera, but I dont require that. The riders like to see the approach to the fence, the way the horse uses its body and where it takes off from a fence, and how it tucks its back legs underneath and where it pushes off. Sometimes, Ill have all of that in there, but basically, I want pictures from the front, from the side, from low, and some drama where we can see the horse and the riders face. Hopefully, somethingwith the landscape; it just depends on the course. So, if I find a pretty, scenic background, Ill try to get that in there if its a clean shot.

[The number of pictures I take] entirely depends on what is going on. Sometimes I shoot less at, say, a four-star or a five-star-cross-country day than I would at a lower level because there are more riders at the lower level. So, probably at least 2,000-4,000 images. Thats just mine personally, and generally thats because Im frequently using three cameras. I might have a remote or two set up, plus Im shooting with two other cameras with different length lenses.

9 a.m. We come back [to the cabin] because we couldnt look at the cross-country course. Luckily, I looked at it yesterday. We pack our gear for the day. For dressage, I always bring extra camera bodies, lenses, computers, hard drives, card readers, rain gear for all the cameras, monopodsIm like a walking camera store.

9:40 a.m. Start the [dressage] test rides. There are three rings and three of us photographing. My fourth person is walking around, doing candids.

[When taking dressage photos], Im looking at the way a horse moves. Some horses at the trotI might have to wait a moment if they have a high reach in the front, so I dont get the hind leg out behind them. Im looking at the expression. If the horse has its mouth open, I might not take the shot. At the canter, I generally watch the hind leg but not always. Sometimes, Im just looking at the whole movement of the horse. Its a lot about the expression. If the horse is pulling against the rider, I might wait a moment and not take that shot.

I like all the phases. [For show jumping], I love walking the course because I like to see where the rider will be looking, so I try to position myself at one or two places where I can capture the rider looking at me. Again, its kind of like cross-countrysomething from the side, something from the front, all of the drama. I look at the background. If its [somewhere] like Rebecca Farms [in Montana], maybe I can get a mountain in the back, something that gives you a sense of place.

We were always taught to photograph the knees up [on cross-country]. In the jumpers, to have the knees and the back feet on the same level when the horse is at the top of the fence. Thats because the fences are so big. If its a lower-level horse, theyre not going to jump like that unless its a one-off.

When digital cameras came into the amateurs hands, it seems like the idea of what the best moment was changed because a lot of people photograph with the front foot after the pole or the top of the fence, when the horse is coming down. I was taught that that is just not the moment. But a lot of people order those now, so I sometimes offer them too.

Sometimes though, it is nice when theyre coming down because maybe the riders face is hidden behind the horse going up, or you cant see the riders face as well until theyre coming down because maybe theyre looking down. Everybodys idea of photos is different. Im always interested in seeing what people order. Sometimes, if I see that they ordered a photo that I dont really like, I might, if I have a moment, say, Hey, I see you ordered this picture, but maybe this photo is slightly better, and Ill tell them why.

1:30-2:30 p.m. The break is later today. I have a peanut butter and honey sandwich and an apple. I eat way too much chocolate because MARS is the sponsor here and supplied their sweets.

They have the media center open, and because of COVID, I sit by the table by the front door and leave it open. Thats where I work by myself all day long. Whenever I am not photographing, I am sitting there uploading, sorting images for media. I really dont take a break.

This weekend, because its a championship, [Tryon] requires the official photographer to send five photos a day. I take photos for the U.S. Equestrian Federation, Eventing Nation, press for Tryon, and photos for a couple of riders who need photos because of COVIDtheir photographers arent here. So, I send some photos out to those riders. I do social media posts when I have a moment, which is never a moment because its always busy.

4:30 p.m. My ring finishes. I sit in the media center, finishing up the galleries, waiting for my photographers to send me their best of the three-star and two-star so I can send that to Tryon. Then, I edit everyones photos so everything matches, and it looks like one mind did it, even if it was three different photographers. I edit the images to bring out the color, so nothing is straight out of the camera.

I know some photo outlets have editors to file photos, but I think the best way to teach people is to have them edit their own or other peoples photographs. So, everybody that helps me is currently filing photos, either their own or somebody elses. And it helps with learning, seeing, Oh, look at how this person photographs. When we have an outstanding image we are proud of, we can share and be excited and inspired.

Each time we import a card, we [file with] the show initials at the beginning, the year, my last name, the date, what discipline it is with a d or an s or an x or hi for horse inspection, and the photographers initials. We have many hard drives with one hard drive where all the images are sorted into galleries. Sometimes we dont finish, and then I take the work home and file it at home. It just depends on the day. Tomorrow we have the luxury of only having a couple hours of dressage in two rings. My ring will go all day, so we will have all the dressage filed by tomorrow because theres not as much to do as we normally do that day.

7 p.m. I love to feed my crew really good food because we work so hard. Im a little crazyI buy all organic groceries, and somebody is always present that can cook. I really appreciate having wholesome food thats not from a can at the end of the day of working so hard. [One of my photographers] Alleyn Evans cooks, and she makes potatoes with meat and greens. The greens are from turnips she grew in her garden. The meal is delicious.

My whole goal is to make the team work together and have a happy team, people who really want to go do this because its long hours, and youre dirty and tired. Its not like only shooting dressage or show jumping because you have to do all three phases, and you have to be out in the weather.

10 p.m. I try to go to bed.

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The Chronicle of the Horse - The Chronicle of the Horse

Marketing A Backbone Of Remote Working In The Pandemic – Forbes

Todays feature and last in this series celebrating marketing ingenuity in the face of the pandemic focuses on what has become for many a critical communications channel for remote workers. Here is the abridged interview with Julie Liegl, CMO of Slack.

MaryLee Sachs: When the pandemic hit in March, what happened at Slack. How did you mobilize?

Julie Liegl: It feels so long ago now. Taking myself all the way back nine months ago, or what feels like nine years ago, there were a few different areas of focus for us. First, we had to think about our employees and our offices. We can't forget that, as much as we had to think as marketers and about our customers, the first thing we had to figure out was, are we shutting down? Are we not shutting down? Are we canceling our global sales kickoff? What about the three trade shows we're supposed to go to at the end of the month?

Julie Liegl, CMO, Slack

There was definitely a lot of work as the news was unfolding and the decisions we made seem really obvious now, but back then, it was really unclear. Like, do we shut down our office? That seems very extreme. Restaurants are still open, school's still in session. I'm very thankful that I work in Silicon Valley where I think in general companies were more conservative and we did shut down before schools did, before a lot of other things did. But making sure we had the safety and then plans around how we were going to manage through that has been an ongoing focus area for us.

Secondly, we needed to think about what we were going to do for our customers and how were we going to make sure that they knew that we were there, that our service was available and ready to scale to whatever needs they had. But also that they had customer support reps and customer experience reps and all sorts of people that can help them. So I think we really went from that place of focusing on them first.

And then as a marketer, I obviously had to think about what is the opportunity beyond this? And I remember thinking at the time, This is such a scary thing. I don't want this to seem like Slack is chasing an ambulance or anything like that. But as we focused on our customers, what we saw was they were coming to us asking for help. And so this idea that we had a service that could help people be more effective as they were going through the same shift that we were going through of going from whatever businesses as usual looks like, to suddenly fully remote with no advanced planning, no advanced notice and no experience doing that. That we had a role to play there.

The future of B2B communications: Slack Connect replaces email, enabling secure collaboration with ... [+] external partners, vendors, and clients.

So we pivoted a bunch of our marketing focus to lean into that. And we did it in a way that felt authentic to Slack and didn't feel tone deaf to the situation that was going on in the world.

Sachs: What role, if any, did your sort of organization's purpose play in the ethos around how you mobilized?

Liegl: The idea of Slack is very much built as a human company, a very user customer-centric company. I think that that came to bear very much for us. We really took a human-first mindset. I don't know if you remember this, but everyone was coming out with free offers, A month of free video calls, or two months of free trials.

That was great and hugely valuable for people, but Slack already has a very robust free offering that a lot of companies use and a really great non-profit program. So we thought, Instead of just throwing it out under their discount, what do people really need? We have this world-class customer support experience, so we decided instead to offer free one-on-one consultations and lead with that. To be fair, we did not have all the answers either, but we knew how to use our service. We were trying new things every day. We were talking to other customers. So almost all the marketing that we led with at that time and the big sort of banner on our homepage was, click here to sign up for a free one-on-one consultation.

A Slack leadership Zoom meeting with (clockwise from upper left): Stewart Butterfield (CEO), ... [+] Jonathan Prince (VP, Comms), Brad Mattick (VP, Product Marketing), Tamar Yehoshua (Chief Product Officer), Ilan Frank (VP, Product), Paul Rosania (Director, Product), Jesse Hulsing (VP, Investor Relations), Julie Liegl.

The whole company ended up pitching in and signing up to take shifts. And literally there'd be messages in Slack channels. Like the person at two o'clock speaks Farsi, does anyone speak Farsi? It was really inspiring to see the way the whole company came together. But we really led with that sort of human touch thing. And it was extremely well received. We had thousands and thousands of sign-ups. And we also learned so much from doing this consultations on what the key challenges were, what questions people needed to have answered. And that then led us to build even more content, more stuff to put out in the world that there was going to help people as they went through this.

Sachs: What were the sort of two or three biggest challenges to making it all happen?

Liegl: I think the first is so obvious that it almost seems silly to say, but we were going through this too. We were human beings who had also been sent home, suddenly had kids at home, or roommates and bad wifi, and fear and anxiety, and a lot new challenges. And I'll be honest, Slack was not a company that did a lot of remote work. Certainly we have a global presence. We work with people that don't work in our office, but we were not a work-from-home culture. And suddenly everyone had to do this and we didn't have setups and desks.

Making space for people who suddenly had very different challenges and who were going through different things was really important. We had to come together as human beings and leaders first. That was just the first challenge.

Slack's Melbourne office/cafe

We had to embrace this idea that everyone's looking for answers and that none of us. That was challenge one.

Challenge two was, just as our culture wasnt about remote work, Slack as a product or service has so many applications, but we hadnt done a ton of work around why its so great for remote teams. It's funny, the team that originally built it as the company was developing, did have people in remote offices and they were using it that way, but we had not done a ton of work on that. So we had to harvest a whole bunch of new content and figure out how to repackage that. It was a shift in our positioning and messaging that we had really been leaning into. That's definitely always a challenge as a marketer and as a marketing team.

I think the third challenge was trying to figure out how tone should shift and how things should shift. Things were happening so quickly and also staying the same a lot. Even as everybody pivoted it then became, what do you stay true to? What do you stay attuned to that you know is true and core to your brand is? And how much do you respond to the shifting world outside? And don't forget, when this happened there was also the huge spotlight on racial injustice. It was not a year where one thing happened that changed everything. A lot of things happened that changed everything. And each time you felt like you kind of had it figured out, the ground would shift again.

Sachs: It was the perfect storm here for sure. When you think about going into 2021, what things have you adopted this year that you will carry forward?

Slack team developing remote applications

Liegl: I hope that we really have changed the way that we work. And obviously, I'm selfishly coming from Slack where I think Slack has a big role to play in that. I look forward to being back in an office and seeing people again and having some separation from home and life. I do not look forward to or expect to ever go into an office five days a week again. We have really leaned into and pushed the limits on how we can use our product to really change the way we work, not just to make work more fun and more productive, but really change the way that we work, and really lean into the idea of, does this need to be a meeting? Does this need to be, Zoom I love, but like, does this need to be a video call or are there other ways that we can accomplish this that are more welcoming to people with different schedules, different circumstances, different working styles? And I really hope that that stays.

My little rally cry has been like the future will be asynchronous and we still are getting the same amount, sometimes I think more work done, but being able to jump into a brainstorm when it works for you or review the materials and get all your questions answered in a dynamic natural way that isn't everybody sitting and staring at the same slides being read aloud. I think there's a lot of opportunity for people to stay on top of work, to stay involved in ways that allow them to integrate more balance into their life and have more flexibility. And I really hope that's here to stay.

Sachs: Are there any other apps or hacks that you've discovered working from home and working remotely that you think are useful to people?

Liegl: I think virtual whiteboards are huge and we're playing with those a little bit. I'm using Zoom to do more video recordings and putting them out to the team, such as recording a top of weekly mind update, and then just uploading it to Slack.

Finding ways to provide that human touch I think is really key. And then of course, obviously all the virtual event platforms that we've all been experimenting with. We had a great experience running our user conference virtually. And we used Slack in a way that we hadn't before to engage our attendees and create community there. So I guess our own products in different ways and Zoom in different ways.

Sachs: Going into 2021, what are your new priorities for marketing?

Comedian Sarah Cooper guest keynote at Slack Frontiers 2020 conference. Previously a UX designer at ... [+] Yahoo! and Google, Cooper worked with Stewart Butterfield, Slack Co-founder & CEO, and Cal Handerson, Slack Co-founder & CTO, together at Flickr.

Liegl: I don't think at the core our priorities are changing. I just think the way we get there is different. We still need to tell stories and create a brand that our customers love. We need to make our customers super successful so that they love our product and are advocates for us. We need to generate demand. We need to do all these things, but our toolkits just changed a bit.

Just like with my team, how do I inject more humanity and more connection? I think as marketers, its how do we drive more humanity and connection when there's no in-person. I think content has been king for a while. Its even more important because to get your story out there that people can consume in a way that they want and to keep that momentum going while you don't have those more in-person type experiences.

Sachs: Aside from the lack of face-to-face interaction, what else has been the most frustrating aspect of trying to market through the pandemic?

Liegl: This is maybe a strange answer, but I think in some ways a lot of positioning for a lot of different types of things coalesced. It's almost like everyone's talking about remote work instead of specific software tools, or contactless pickup in the retail world. We've coalesced around a certain set of messages. It's natural; we're all kind of chasing the same ideas. But it's made it even harder to break through. Like, what is the difference between Zoom and Slack? We're partners. We don't consider ourselves competitors, but you could start to see a world where people start to conflate them all together because they're all remote work tools. So some of the marketing is starting to sound a little similar. So how do you break through in that world and explain what makes your solution unique versus the other 55 solutions that are saying, We're going to make remote work easier? Because there are a lot of different solutions. It's very natural. Its become even it's more important than ever to be crisp on that differentiation.

Sachs: What have you put in place this year that you're likely to keep, going into the time where we can actually start getting together in person?

Liegl: First of all, I'm very much looking forward to having in-person events again, but I think they will now always have some sort of virtual component to allow that broader participation. I think that's going to be a best practice forever now. You can have the best of both and get more out of that content, more out of that stories, more out of that great marketing that you're doing.

For us, I think we also got a little scrappier during the pandemic, this idea figuring out what we can achieve in a short period of time. I hope that we keep a little bit of that grittiness as well.

We also launched Slack Connect. We did a lot of things separate from the pandemic. This was a huge new step forward on the ability to work with people outside your organization and channels. And we've been doing a ton of work on that. And I think that's another thing that's probably even more valuable in the pandemic because it's just another way to have closer relationships with your partners when you can't meet them in person.

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Marketing A Backbone Of Remote Working In The Pandemic - Forbes

A Pandemic of Discontent: The Growing Woes of Indias Food Delivery Workers – The Wire

On March 24, after India first locked down to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, Raj*, a 27-year-old food deliveryman for Swiggy in Surat, stayed home for two days. Hed heard the police were stopping his co-workers and seizing their bikes.

Rajs boss called. Dont worry, Ill speak to the police if theres trouble, Raj recalled him saying.

Raj, whose name has been changed to avoid retaliation by the company, logged on to the Swiggy app and set out on his Hero Passion Pro bike. Many streets were closed off. At one checkpoint, a knot of policemen flagged him down and yelled, Why are you out? Go home.

Raj called his boss, who said, You deal with it.

You told us to call you, and now youre telling me to talk myself, Raj said while recalling the incident last month to this reporter.

I had to handle it myself, it took two hours.

Weeks later, you deal with it became company policy. While most of us stayed home this summer, Swiggy delivery persons fetched our food and groceries.

The government called them frontline workers; companies called them heroes. Swiggy and other startups dedicated a music video to them.

But in the background, employees were being fired, delivery persons say their pay was reduced, and the company was slowly replacing human managers with algorithms and digital systems. The company sold some of the moves as a response to COVID-19 but in reality, at least some of the actions were planned and set in motion well before the pandemic, according to former and current Swiggy workers. As far back as December 2019, some Swiggy managers knew that they were soon going to be without a job.

All the problems with Swiggy began about six to eight months ago. Before, the job felt more stable and we felt good working here, Kishan, a deliveryman in Surat, said in September. Now, it feels like slave work.

Modi ji praised us on Mann ki Baat, the company also praised us, but they havent given us anything, Vikram, a deliveryman in Delhi NCR, said. We did so much during corona times, but they didnt reward us, they cut our pay.

I feel so humiliated and depressed at that moment of time, said a former fleet manager, recalling his firing after five years of working day-and-night for Swiggy, attending 250-350 phone calls a day from executives, as delivery men are known in India.

By July, the company fired at least 1,450 employees, including managers.

During the pandemic, according to company messages seen by this reporter, Swiggy cut the base pay, or the minimum delivery fee per order, of riders to Rs 15, down by 57%, and implemented other pay cuts. Delivery men The Wire spoke to pointed out that their earnings nosedived even as fuel prices hit historic highs. Just two years ago, they were making Rs 40,000 ($543) or more a month if they worked enough hours. Attracted by the high pay, many said theyd left steady, non-gig jobs to join Swiggy. Now, after the cuts, Swiggy no longer made much financial sense for some but they have few options in a poor job market.

Today, in an average month, delivery persons The Wire spoke to said they make around Rs 20,000.

In 2018, Swiggy job ads on Aasaanjobs.com, an online jobs portal, promised up to Rs 40,000 per month; the same jobs today promise up to Rs 18,000 per month.

Swiggy, however, disputes these pay cuts. When contacted, a company spokesperson said its riders earn more today than before COVID-19, but did not provide The Wire with specific data. The spokesperson also emphasised that the base pay is only one component of the delivery fee and most delivery partners make more than Rs 15 per order.

Nevertheless, hundreds of riders in several cities across India like Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi logged out of their apps and went on strike. But there were no managers left to hear them.

Theres nobody to escalate your demands to, said Rikta Krishnaswamy, a coordinator for Delhi-NCR at All India Gig Workers Union, or AIGWU. You keep getting messages but theres no way to communicate back.

In September, the company sent bouncers, or threat managers, to discourage the strikers in Delhi, according to Krishnaswamy, who was there. The company also blocked the accounts of some delivery persons at strikes, multiple sources said. Other news outlets have also reported similar claims from strikers across India.

Also read: COVID-19 Adds to the Woes of Indias Underpaid and Overworked Care Workers

When asked, a Swiggy spokesperson maintained that no account suspension was done for individuals at a peaceful protest, nor had the company sent any threat managers to discourage strikers.

The company did an end-run around the strikers in Delhi by hiring third-party manpower agencies like Rapido and Shadowfax to replace the drivers at premium cost until the men could strike no more, Krishnaswamy said.

In February, Swiggys valuation hit $3.3 billion. Although the company, like all delivery startups, has never turned a profit, it is flush with cash. It got $113 million from South African internet giant Naspers in February and $43 million in April from other venture capital firms.

Like all technology startups, Swiggy invests in distilling human interactions and relationships into automatable data sets. The company wants to replace human intuition-based systems with more intelligent systems, said Dale Vaz, Swiggys head of engineering and data science and a US-educated Amazonian who helped launch Amazon India, on an industry podcast in March. Last year, Vaz spoke of a worker in a Swiggy kitchen assembly line whose job is to look at food and say whether it is fish or chicken before sending it out to the customer. When a human has to do hundreds of orders an hour, he will make more mistakes than a computer, Vaz said. We talk about humans being a 3-sigma machine, we may get things wrong three times out of 1,000, Vaz said.

No one asked Vaz why he was calling a human being a machine.

This is a history of frontline gig-work for a multi-billion dollar unicorn during the pandemic. It is based on interviews between September and December with about 20 riders, employees and experts. The interviews have mostly been translated from Hindi. The executives are not identified to protect them from retaliation by the company.

Not all gig work is equal. Ask the people who deliver your food. Some are full-time Swiggy riders, others are part time a shift at Swiggy, another maybe delivering parcels for Amazon.

Three out of four gig workers have high school or even basic college degrees, according to preliminary results from a comprehensive survey of Indian gig workers by WageIndicator Foundation, a Netherlands-based labour data tracker. About 78% of them feel overqualified for the job. They are predominantly young men, and many The Wire spoke to were working jobs paying around Rs 20,000 a month before joining Swiggy.

Food delivery may be hardest kind of gig work. Delivery agents work long shifts in pollution on motorcycles. They have to log on and be continuously present in their area. They cannot simultaneously work for competing platforms, the way Ola or Uber drivers do. In order to earn incentives, which increase their pay, they need to be logged on for part-time or full-time shifts that can stretch to more than 10 hours. All this sounds like full-time work, but its not. They are called independent self-employed persons by the companies.

Photo: PTI

The workers have to deliver in a set number of minutes using a route computed by algorithms. Theyre tracked using GPS and more recently, using Bluetooth beacons in restaurants in one city. They need to keep uploading selfies showing theyre dressed correctly, theyre wearing a mask, theyve picked up food, theyve reached, theyre properly attired, theyve left the location. They have to request hangry consumers for five-star ratings, which determines their earnings.

Lately, their temperatures are being recorded.

Its like your phone is an ankle monitor, Krishnaswamy of AIGWU said.

Swiggy and its competitor Zomato are the most unfair gigwork companies in India, according to Fairwork, a project based out of Oxford University.

Raj did not mind how hard it was though, because the pay was good. When he was little, he used to dream that he would get a good job, in a good line, with a good salary. His grandfather and father were wrestlers in Surat. When his father injured his leg and became disabled, Raj went to work at Sari World in the market at 15. After 10 years, he became a supervisor. But competition was tough and his shop wasnt doing well, so when Swiggy launched in 2018, Raj joined.

I remember my first order the customer ordered two green sandwiches from Bombay Greens, he recalled. That day was tough he did not know how to use the app, how to navigate the map, how to check in at the touch points, like the customers home, where he had to confirm hed reached. But he learned quickly, and if there were problems he could call his friends or the fleet managers.

The money was good, Raj says, until February 2020. Working full-time seven days a week, Raj was making Rs 9,000 ($122) a week including bonuses, called incentives. After subtracting fuel and bike maintenance costs, he was making more delivering food than in his supervisor job. In November 2019, he got married and supports his wife, parents and two younger siblings who were in college till recently

A screenshot of the incentives and earnings being offered a particular week.

Shafiq, a deliveryman in Surat, said the bonuses, targets and level-ups in the app used to make him feel like he was playing a real-life video game.

In 2019, Swiggy lost Rs 2,367 crore ($46.5 million), partly due to high operational costs as the company expanded to 500 cities.

In September 2019, employees say that Swiggy decided to remove fleet managers, who worked out of Swiggy hubs and were the points of contact for delivery agents. The plan, they say, was to replace some managers with digital systems.

Fleet managers are crucial for operations, said Noopur Raval, a research fellow at New York Universitys AI Now Institute who has studied food delivery work. For example, Bangalore had more than 25 fleet managers overseeing zones in the city, she said. There are many languages spoken in the city, its streets are chaotic and the ground situation changes rapidly.

Somebody on the northern outskirts or suburbs might not have any idea of what to do [to resolve a situation] in the southern part, and it would take them a minimum of one hour to even get there if something went wrong, Raval said.

In December 2019, Nikhil*, a former Swiggy senior fleet manager in a major Indian city, heard that he and 53 others would lose their jobs by mid-March.

For five years, Nikhil handled one hub with 11 assistants and around 2,900 delivery executives. His team worked shifts from 7 am to 4 am Nikhil would be there for 9 to 10 hours. They would call executives, ask about delays, track them using GPS to ensure orders get delivered. They knew most of their executives personally.

When a delivery person had an issue, like with payments or if hes had an accident, he would talk to a manager, whod pull up details on his laptop and resolve the issue quickly.

Also read: What Should Be an Acceptable Employment Rate for India?

Nikhil said he could never really turn off as he oversaw the operation. On weekends, hed receive 350 calls a day. He took pride in his job and achievement as his hub was the top performing months on end. When higher ups wanted to learn how the system works, theyd come to his hub, he recalled.

In January 2020, the bots began taking over, Nikhil said. Swiggy launched its digital system, called Remote Operations Control centralised call centres staffed by anonymous operatives.

Where managers like Nikhil used to interact personally with the delivery executives, this process is now digitised and automated. If, say, an order within 4 km has been picked but not delivered in around 30 minutes, the system now notes it and informs a human in Remote Operations Control, who calls the executive to warn him.

All errors made by the riders are noted by algorithms, which flash automated messages to warn them:

This is to notify you that more than 30% of orders delivered by you in the Week were delayed by more than 10 minutes ID is permanently deactivated after 3rd notice

Or, 1st WARNING: It is observed that lately you are raising high no. of fake tickets. Next time, make sure to raise a ticket only in case of genuine issues. If not, your ID will be at risk of deactivation.

The warnings may be followed by a call from Control, and if there isnt improvement, the drivers ID is blocked.

Remote management is possible because Swiggy has long been collecting data from its delivery persons. Their GPS pings, their speed, satellite data maybe even drone-based surveillance in the future has allowed Swiggy to map city streets in greater detail than Google Maps, according to a Swiggy webinar. In a pilot, the company has placed Bluetooth beacons inside stores that can detect whether an executive is within five metres. In comparison, GPS has a 50-metre resolution. Using the Bluetooth system, Swiggy can detect whether an executive is across the street, or inside a restaurant as he claims, according to the engineer on the webinar. Such innovations allow bots to track workers in near real time, leaving little room for human fallibility.

A Swiggy spokesperson said that the Bluetooth beacons are not meant to track delivery partners but to act as an additional signal for location accuracy to allow for better customer communications.

Data is the new oil at this point, Vaz of Swiggy AI said last year at an event. Data is going to be the proprietary asset a company has. At this point, we are just at the game of saying, Lets just gather data. And once you gather that corpus of data, which you then have enough of content, then we can monetise that.

But despite all the talk of AI and data, Swiggys system is still mostly digital. The difference, according to Rituparna Chakravarty, who runs TeamLease, a manpower agency, is that when a workflow is digitised, humans in call centres execute simple, bite-sized tasks rather like bots. The setup is one step away from full automation, where humans are entirely eliminated.

Now, when an executive faces a problem while delivering, he informs a chatbot on his app. Then, he waits for a call from an anonymous voice from Remote Operations Control. The voice is polite, but it is not allowed to identify itself or say where its calling from.

Photo: PTI

Sahil, a delivery executive, in Bangalore got an order in September at 10 pm. When he got to the restaurant, the item was not available. He waited for a call from Control for 1.5 hours. The customer kept calling me like it was my issue to resolve, when it wasnt, he recalled.

Finally, the order was rejected and cancelled. After all this, they paid me cancellation charges of Rs 10, he said. The partner support in the app sometimes does not connect at all, when it should be immediate.

Around March, Swiggy launched an online form, hosted on Google, where executives can enter their grievances. Nikhil, the fleet manager, was instructed to tell his executives not to call him anymore. Everything had to go through the form. As not all delivery persons know English, the more experienced riders help co-workers fill the form and act as intermediaries with the company. They arent paid for the additional managerial role.

Irshad, a deliveryman in Surat, said that he now needs to write down if he makes any route deviations due to road closures, which could trigger a warning. His weekly day off is wasted filling the Google Form to dispute warnings or recover payments, he said.

The Google Form system distills the interaction between delivery workers and fleet managers into a codable spreadsheet, which means the system is on its way to being automated in the future.

A Swiggy spokesperson said that at our scale of operations, its humanly impossible to manually run most of our operations and hence technology (AI) plays a crucial role.

March came and went without the expected layoffs in Nikhils city, he recalled. Maybe the system wasnt ready, he said. The lockdown began. The streets were unpredictable. Delivery executives The Wire spoke to said they got little support from the company during COVID-19.

Police stopped riders in the initial weeks. In Surat, they seized delivery man Faizals bike and he paid Rs 2,000 to retrieve it. He asked Swiggy to reimburse him. A voice called him and said, Work if you want or go home, Faizal recalled.

During the lockdown, Faizal would deliver food to doctors at hospitals. Some refused to collect at the gate and hed have to go inside, he said. I must also look out for my own safety during these times and would like to stay away from hospital wards where people are being treated for COVID, he said. Who will take the responsibility if I get the virus? Definitely not Swiggy!

In April, a bike rear-ended former Swiggy executive Irshads vehicle. His bike slipped and he fell, hurting his left hand. Thinking it minor, he continued working for two hours before he realised the pain wasnt abating. He logged off, went to the hospital and got it X-rayed. There was a hairline fracture. A friend took him to the hub. Irshad said that when he joined Swiggy in 2018, he was promised paid leave if he got injured on the job. But during the pandemic, Swiggy was only giving paid leave to virus-infected employees, and the fleet manager (they were still around) said it did not apply as Irshad didnt have COVID-19.

Independent self-employed persons, as delivery executives are called, dont get paid leave.

There was a programme, called Swiggy Smiles, where executives could earn paid leave, or vouchers, through points, but it was abruptly discontinued this year. If a delivery man stays logged off for too long, his ID is blocked an algorithmic way of firing a human. Multiple executives said that the way to avoid being fired is to request unpaid leave through Google Form ahead of time almost as if they are employees on the companys payroll.

When contacted, a Swiggy spokesperson said, We received feedback that they would prefer the rewards to be directly included in their payouts. Hence the amount has been re-invested in the form of easy-to-achieve incentives for a larger set of partners.

Swiggy, however, did not clarify which, and by how much, incentives have increased. All delivery persons across India The Wire spoke to said the company cut incentives during the pandemic.

On May 18, Sriharsha Majety, Swiggys co-founder, sent a company-wide email announcing job cuts. The company began chalking out a path to profitability last December, he wrote. We had mentioned we will be focusing on being efficient everywhere including employee costs

The letter implied the cuts and changes were out of Swiggys hands and caused by the pandemic. A key focus would be to identify and significantly reduce every single indirect cost like hubs, office infrastructure, etc., Majety wrote. Weve all done some of the greatest work of our time at Swiggy over the last few weeks working remotely, and thats reason enough to believe this can be done. He said the company was working to improve the unit economics that is, cost per delivery.

Majety said thered be layoff benefits, such as a months extra salary for each year a person has worked.

The next day, 18 managers were fired in Nikhils city and hundreds were fired across India and hubs were shut down, according to multiple sources.

Earlier there was decent support provided by fleet managers, Faizal, an executive in Surat, said. But I dont know what happened, the fleet managers are no more and we have no support.

A WhatsApp group where DEs look to sort out their payment troubles.

In June, Nikhil was invited to a video call with his boss and the HR manager. They requested him to join Quess, a third-party workforce management company and work at Remote Operations Control. Nikhil declined politely. He felt the role was beneath his skill level, and knew the Quess job would be temporary as Swiggy aims to fully automate operations. He worried that if he moved off Swiggys payroll and was later fired, he would not qualify for layoff benefits.

The next morning, he was locked out of the operating system. He lost his job. So did all managers, except the few who moved to Quess, Nikhil said.

He said has not received the promised layoff benefits from Swiggy. When The Wire reached out to the company, a Swiggy spokesperson disputed that any laid-off employee would not receive benefits and added that all employees that transition out of the system are given tenure benefits as per the policy.

In June, the food delivery business began to recover as India started winding back some of its lockdown rules.

Still, on July 28, Swiggy fired 350 additional employees, again blaming COVID-19. A Swiggy spokesperson at the time said that orders were still half of pre-COVID-19 levels in July so we had to, unfortunately, go ahead with the final realignment exercise.

AIGWUs Krishaswamy believes the company saw the COVID pandemic as an opportunity for distraction while it terminated jobs and cut the pay of the lowest-paid, most disenfranchised workers.

Nikhil agreed, and put it more colourfully, quoting a Hindi proverb: A branch was about to break when a bird thought, Ill sit on that branch for a while, Im tired. And as soon as it sat, the branch broke. Its like that these people needed a reason and COVID was there for their assistance.

Since the beginning of the year, Swiggy has drastically cut payments to delivery persons, according to riders The Wire spoke to. They said they now earn around Rs 20,000 during an average month, not including bonuses tied to festivals like Diwali or cricket. After fuel and bike maintenance costs of Rs 3,000 a month, the take-home pay is meagre. Many men The Wire spoke to earned more in their old jobs before they joined Swiggy in 2018, attracted by potential payouts of up to Rs 40,000.

Also read: Labour Laws Perform a Redistributive Function. Diluting Them Has Serious Consequences.

There have been multiple cuts. A route optimisation algorithm developed and piloted before COVID-19 increasingly clubs deliveries together, but a two-for-one delivery pays less than two separate orders, said Asif, an executive.

The scheme benefits them more than it does for us, he said. Suppose a normal order would pay us Rs 35 and now with the multi-order scheme, they group two orders together and pay us between Rs 10 and Rs 18 for the second order.

Swiggy, however, says that order batching is beneficial to executives because it saves them time it eliminates the wait time between two separate orders, and a rider does not have to go back to the restaurant to pick up a second order.

As noted above, a company spokesperson disputed the pay cuts and said its riders earn more today than before COVID-19 but did not provide data to back up this assertion.Swiggys payments are on par with industry average, the spokesperson said.

Riders The Wire spoke to said if they leave Swiggy, they can only move to Zomato, which has also been called out for its dismal work conditions by Oxford Universitys Fairwork project. Jobs are scarce.

Read more:

A Pandemic of Discontent: The Growing Woes of Indias Food Delivery Workers - The Wire

5 Best WooCommerce Tips for Higher Conversions – News & Features

Successful WooCommerce stores are generally alike; struggling WooCommerce stores are always unsuccessful in their own ways.

Regardless of the niche, effective WooCommerce vendors typically have responsive customer support, quick loading times, and affordable prices along with outstanding products.

While every vendor is obviously different, taking some basic steps to optimize your site and streamline your workflow will have a positive impact on almost every WooCommerce store.

Similarly, installing a few top WooCommerce extensions will open up opportunities that arent available in the vanilla version.

In this article, well cover some of the most powerful ways to improve your WooCommerce store to attract more traffic and generate more sales.

Professional WooCommerce hosting can be expensive, but budget-friendly hosting options may not meet your performance needs. If you get a sudden boost in traffic during a sale or product launch, for example, an unreliable hosting service could lead to long load times and prevent users from accessing your site quickly.

SiteGround, A2 Hosting, and other top hosting services offer reliable speeds and the ability to respond to any changes in traffic. Alternatively, you can also invest in a Virtual Private Server, or VPS, if youre willing to put a little more money toward your stores success.

While dependable hosting wont make any sales for you on its own, it will improve your sites performance and help you avoid losing any sales to long loading times or any other slowdowns.

Its more difficult to visualize what youre buying when you shop online, so high-resolution images will go a long way toward giving your audience a better idea of how your products will look and feel. Excellent images make your site appear more professional and will give visitors more confidence in the quality of your products.

However, upgrading to high-resolution images will also lead to much larger files. You dont want to sacrifice loading times for the sake of your product images, so make sure to compress all images on your site in order to minimize the size of each file. This is especially important if your product pages contain more than one photo.

The simplest way to compress your images is to either download an image compressor online or use a web-based service like TinyPNG.

Of course, compressing those images manually takes time, and youll need to run every new image through the compressor before uploading it to your site. Thats not an issue if you only have ten or twenty photos, but it isnt a particularly elegant or scalable solution.

Instead, vendors with lots of images should consider using a WordPress plugin like ShortPixel or Smush. Along with a built-in image compressor, it also supports automatic image resizing and various other quality-of-life tools.

Furthermore, Smush enables lazy loading, which stops offscreen images from loading until the user scrolls down to see them. This strategy minimizes loading times and ensures that elements near the top of the page will load before anything else.

Your WordPress database is constantly growing as you add new elements to your site. The database stores a variety of data points including login credentials, posts, themes, comments, settings, and more. If youre using WooCommerce, you might also be storing product-related information such as categories, tags, and the product pages themselves.

Since your database grows larger over time, its important to keep it optimized in order to keep your site running at full speed. WP-Optimize and other database optimization plugins make it easy to stay on top of your database and minimize loading times.

In addition to optimizing databases, WP-Optimize can also compress your sites images and cache your pages for even better load times. Research indicates that over half of all mobile users will leave a site if it fails to load in just three seconds. With that in mind, even a small improvement in speed could have a significant effect on your sales.

While large images, cluttered databases, and poor hosting can be detrimental to your sites speed, the physical distance between your visitors and your server can also contribute to poor loading times. Content delivery networks help vendors get around this problem by providing a network of servers distributed across a wide range of locations.

With a content delivery network, your sites content will be cached on servers around the globe. Cloudflare, one of the most popular content delivery networks, has servers in more than 200 cities in over 100 countries. Their network will ensure that your visitors are never too far from the nearest server.

Furthermore, access to the Cloudflare content delivery network is completely free. You can pay for additional features such as image optimization, DDoS alerts, and 24/7 customer support, but those arent necessary to use the CDN itself.

With that being said, there are far too many content delivery networks to cover in a single article, so you should take some time to compare the top providers before committing to a paid subscription.

A content delivery network can reduce loading times by caching copies of your site on various servers, but it cant match the performance of a site thats been cached locally. Caching your site on a users device will make the site load even more quickly the next time they visit and mitigate the effects of a weak connection.

Unsurprisingly, there are many reliable caching plugins available for WordPress and WooCommerce users. Comet Cache, WP Rocket, and WP Super Cache are just a few of the best providers and most popular caching plugins.

Improving your WooCommerce performance takes time, but optimizing your site will have an immediate impact on traffic, sales, and the average length of each visit. These are just a few of the most effective ways to improve the site experience for your users and turn more first-time visitors into loyal customers.

See the rest here:

5 Best WooCommerce Tips for Higher Conversions - News & Features

One couple is giving sneakerheads a new marketplace to flip kicks – Kulture Hub

Adena and Chad Jones, founders of Another Lane, didnt just see a hole in the sneaker marketplace. They saw a glaring lack of sincerity.

Another Lane is a sneaker resale marketplace bringing originality and genuine connections back to the sneaker industry.

For Adena and Chad, the former with extensive experience in media and the latter a sneakerhead to his core, the connections between collectors and buyers have been missing for quite some time. And thus it is Another Lanes mission to bring fairness and honesty back to the forefront of what it means to love sneakers.

Chad ponders an old adage he learned. You can tell a lot about a person by the shoes that they wear. He sits on it.

The truth is Im more focused on the people in this thing than the sneakers. Scrape everything away, especially with this pandemic, and what do you have? The people in your network and your relationships. Nothing else matters.

Adena and Chad Jones believe there is an authenticity lacking in the sneaker community and marketplace. The relationship between sneakerheads (collectors and buyers) should not be so torn, but the transactional nature of the industry leaves a barren landscape bereft of love and inspiration.

I think that a lot of these brands have gotten away from the true nature of the sneaker community and what it was here for. To bridge gaps, to unite people.

Organic connections fuel the greatest sneakers at our disposal. Check inside your closet. Chances are the hottest and most unique pair of kicks you have was based upon a genuine and inspired connection between two parties.

Chad Jones sees that connections are forced, and there is no honest nostalgic emotion crafted by brands to motivate collectors to seek out retro products or reimagined sneakers. And when the collectors feel slighted, other collectors and buyers lose out.

With this in mind, Another Lane has tailored itself to be just as much for collectors as it is for buyers.

The sneaker industry is a two-sided marketplace, and both sides, working together like a sea anemone and a clownfish, must work together in a symbiotic relationship to prosper. Another Lane and its sneaker marketplace thus nurtures both sides.

The buyers feed the market in most industries, often leading the sellers to engage in a dog-eat-dog sneakerhead style of fight for the power grab.

But collectors are buyers and sellers at the same time, and the work that goes into finding a collection of kicks, gathering them, and flipping them, means a lot more when it comes from an impassioned place.

Chad, as a sneaker connoisseur and collector himself, has seen both the good and the bad in the sneaker industry. And Adena, as Chads partner, has witnessed it as well.

We noticed a hole that people like Chad werent taken care of, and that there was an opportunity to serve them. And when you nurture that side of the equation, it almost seems like a waterfall moment that buyers will be nurtured also.

Chad and Adena noticed that there was a glaring lack of respect and appreciation out there for the collectors and sellers hard work.

Credit for transactions, accolades, and even the hefty payload often goes to the consignment shop, while the person who did all the work is left by the wayside.

The sneakerhead who travels for years finding shoes, builds honest and beautiful connections with like-minded shoe-lovers. In some cases, they get their enjoyment out of the journey and, in an altruistic sense, want to share that collection with another sneakerhead.

There has been a glaring lack of fun and creativity within trading sneakers in recent years. For fans of collecting, sharing, and treating sneakers like the unique and hot commodity they are, it is demoralizing.

But Chad and Adena linked up with a common love for sneaker value and a plan to help change the culture.

Now, with each other, they can finally put their mission to fruition.

With a nurturing and appreciative disposition, Another Lane sets itself up to earn sneaker collectors undivided attention, respect, and admiration.

Another Lane sets collectors up with editorial content surrounding their stories. As well as digital marketing, photos, studios, and even help with uploading their collections.

Its an arduous thing. And it can be overwhelming. So were here for them.

Adena has worked at ESPN and Bleacher Report before, exploring stories around NBA players. With her experience, she is an expert storyteller in digital media.

And then there is Chad, a lifelong lover of sneakers and collector who can relate to others within the industry perhaps better than anyone.

As Chad mentioned previously, Another Lane is focused more on the people behind the sneakers than the product itself.

What inspired them to make this collection, gain knowledge from the package, or end up buying it?

It is within those stories of the sneaker marketplace, within the fine lines of business transactions that are often swept under the rug, that beauty is found.

Also, it is there that Another Lane sets itself apart from the pack in restoring authenticity and inspiration to the culture.

Another Lane had its public launch on December 15, and is encouraging sneaker lovers to apply and sign up to be members on the site.

Memberships are complimentary and no seller fees are taken off of sales. Adena emphasized that Another Lane is looking for the impassioned public to join their community, because it is about them.

What will start as a site predicated towards its members, will expand into a community that feeds itself and helps everyone thrive.

Another Lane is for the culture. Join here.

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One couple is giving sneakerheads a new marketplace to flip kicks - Kulture Hub

Leavemark Promotion Keeps Loved Ones Connected Over the Digital Holidays – Conway Daily Sun

PORTLAND, Maine, Nov. 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- This holiday season, Leavemark,the first ever ad-free data storage and social media hybrid app, is offering the first 50,000 individuals who register between November 24th and November 30th a1-year upgradeto their25 GB premium plan,for free!

Leavemark is helping keep users connected as many may not be able to share a table for Thanksgiving or get together for Christmas.

This upgraded planincludes enhanced uploading capabilities and over 10 times the data storage of their free plan. This premium plan upgrade is a $50 value and will remain free through the end of November to the first 50,000 subscribers. Leavemark also offers two other plans with 100 GB and 250 GB if users want to increase their storage capabilities in the future.

"As we know, this holiday season will be unlike any other we've experienced before," saidJason Morgese, Founder and CEO of Leavemark. "With that in mind, we wanted to offer a promotion that will help families to celebrate and share moments during the holidays, even though they may not be physically together. Our goal is to provide a new and positive social media experience and we hope people will use this opportunity to not only try us out, but to make their holidays special."

The app is available on both iOSand Android, the platform allows users to store and share information instantly, in the future, or by GPS location through its one-of-a-kind Time and Space Capsule features.

"Leavemark was designed to keep loved ones connected and has been extremely helpful to its users during this unprecedented time," added Morgese "We've created a social media experience that gets back to the basics of what social media was originally intended for - saving and sharing life's best moments with our family members, in a safe and private way."

Some of Leavemark'skey features will come in handy for the holidays. Users can build a private archive to share holiday moments with their family, send time capsule messages that open on Thanksgiving or Christmas morning, create their family tree, post to their newsfeed, or use direct messaging to stay connected.

To learn more about Leavemark or to download click here for iOSor Android.

AboutLeavemark

Leavemark is THE place to stay connected and share life's best with family and friends.Whether you want to share exciting moments, save important memories, or send messages into the future, we've got you covered. As an ad-free social media platform, we will never monetize your data or push you unsolicited content.How will you leave your mark?

Theappis available for download for iOSand Androiddevices.

PR Contact: Megan Cuellar259619@email4pr.com(949) 777-2468

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Leavemark Promotion Keeps Loved Ones Connected Over the Digital Holidays - Conway Daily Sun

How to Stream Live on Twitch From Your PlayStation 5 – Gaming INTEL

The PlayStation 5 makes it easier than ever to put your first Twitch stream live and share gameplay with others online.

Looking to become a Twitch streamer and stream live to an online following? Look no further than the PlayStation 5, which comes fully prepared to help you accomplish this task.

All you need is a console, an internet connection, and something to stream to be well on your way to becoming the next big Twitch streamer. In fact, it's never been easier to go live on Twitch from a PlayStation device than right now.

Live-streaming is a huge market that's only grown bigger than ever during the events of 2020. With more people staying indoors, the industry is booming, meaning that it's the perfect time to get involved.

To go live on Twitch via your PlayStation 5, follow these steps to get your stream going in no time:

Just like that, you're live on Twitch! To stop your broadcast, just hit Create, Broadcast, and Stop Broadcast at any time.

Don't forget that you can head into your settings from your Dashboard before streaming to adjust your video quality options. This can be done in the Capture and Broadcasts section of your menu.

You can stream in a range of qualities but bear in mind that uploading higher resolution footage may require faster internet speeds.

YouTube streaming is also available for those gamers who prefer the platform. Whatever your preference, be sure to make sure you've got the best internet connection on the PS5 before you start your stream.

It's also important to ensure your PS5 is actually running at 4K, 120 FPS to make your gameplay stand out.

Right now, there are likely hundreds to thousands of new Twitch streamers making their debut from the PS5. But with the PS5 out of stock worldwide, it's hard for many users to get started.

Here's when the PS5 will be back in stock for those who missed out.

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How to Stream Live on Twitch From Your PlayStation 5 - Gaming INTEL

Getting more out of Microsoft 365: Recording Teams meetings with Microsoft Stream – OnMSFT

How to use Microsoft Stream in Teams and Microsoft 365

Today, well be explaining how you can use Stream to your advantage for both work, education, and more in various scenarios.

When you use Teams, there might come a time when you want to record a meeting using Microsoft Stream. Well, as we continue our series on getting more out of Microsoft 365, today well be explaining how you can use Stream to your advantage for both work, education, and more in various scenarios.

Before getting into anything, just what is Microsoft Stream? Well, a bit like YouTube, Stream is a service where you can upload, view, and share videos within your organization or your school. It is limited to internal users only and can be used to share recordings, meetings, presentations, and more. We previously explained how Stream works here, and how you can set it up, so give it a read if youre just getting started.

The number one use for Stream is to record meetings in Teams. You can do this in Teams by clicking the ( . . . ) More Options, and then chooseStart Recording. Youll get notified about the recording, and when finished, you can revisit the same menu and choose Stop Recording. From there, youll get an email linking you to Stream where you can download the video, or view it. The recording will also show up in the chat, or in the channel, too and you can click the link to view it online in Stream.

Once you visit Microsoft Stream, you can download the meeting recording by clicking theDiscovertab followed byvideos. All meeting recordings and videos will appear here, and you can sort by date to find the most recent. If you click the video it will begin playing, but you also can save it by clicking the ( . . . ) and then choosingdownload video.

Keep in mind that through the end of 2020, meetings that are recorded will be saved in Stream. However, heading into 2021, Microsoft will be moving recordings over to OneDrive and SharePoint.

Other than viewing recorded Teams meetings, Stream also lets you upload your own videos, too. This is useful if you have a guide, a lesson, or a pre-recorded brief of a meeting that you want to share internally with your coworkers or students.

To do this, click the + Create sign on the top of the webpage in Microsoft Stream. Then, choose to Upload Video.A bit like YouTube, youll then get a pop-up box asking you to fill out certain information such as the video name, description, the language. You also can set permissions, too to share it with certain people, only. When finished, you can click Publish. The video will then show up in Stream, for anyone in your organization or anyone you give access to, to view.

Uploading videos to Stream is one thing, but did you know that you can also create a channel in Stream and then add it to Teams? Doing so helps make it easier to discover the content youre uploading for your coworkers or students. Heres what you need to know.

First off, theres creating a channel. Like YouTube, a channel lets you create a hub for your videos. You can create a channel in just a few simple steps. To create a new channel, click on the+ Create sign on the top of the webpage. Then, chooseChannel. You can then enter a Channel name and description. If you want, you also can choose who has access to the new Channel, though in most cases its best to leave it as a companywide channel.You also can upload a channel image, if need be. Be sure to save the link for the channel, for future reference. You always can go back to your Channel by clicking My Content and thenChannels.

Once a channel is made, you can add it to Teams in a few steps. First off, click theAdd a tab button (its a + ) next to your channel in Teams, along the top. Then, from the list, chooseStream. Add the name to the tab name field, and then copy and paste in the link to either a video or theStream channel.

Using Stream is just the start for Microsoft 365. Weve covered lots of other topics, too. Weve detailed how you can reduce your fatigure at work with Teams, how you can chat in Teams, and a lot more. Let us know if you have your own tips in the comments below. And, be sure to check out our dedicated hub for more news stories, guides, how-tos, and more.

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Getting more out of Microsoft 365: Recording Teams meetings with Microsoft Stream - OnMSFT

A poster from realme appeared hinting at the launch of smart TV in Malaysia – TechNave

realme is bringing a new product category into the Malaysian market! After uploading a teaser poster for the realme Watch S two days ago, the brandcontinues to upload another one hinting that their smart TV will soon make an appearance in the local market as well.

realme has already expanded their product catalog earlier with smart TVs in another country but has never brought them to Malaysia. This time, it looks like they have finally made up their mind to do so with the new poster shared on the official realme Malaysia Facebook page. The poster comes with the words "Watch The TV" and the use of the brand's slogan "Leap To Next" on top.

For now, it is unclear which previously launched model they are going to release here. There is also a possibility that realme could launch a new one for us. Let's stay tuned for more information from realme these few days!

Let us know what you think about realme smart TV coming to Malaysia on our Facebook page. Stay tuned to TechNave.com for more local tech updates.

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A poster from realme appeared hinting at the launch of smart TV in Malaysia - TechNave

YouTube Millionaires: 17-Year-Old LexiVee03 Is Already A Career YouTuber – Tubefilter

Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each creator has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments here.

LexiVee03is a lot of things: high school student, college student (yes, at the same time), gamer, low-key sneakerheadand, for the past three years, a career content creator. When she launched herYouTubechannel in 2017, she was just 14, but she already knew it was going to be more than a hobby.

Like many Gen Zers, Lexi had grown up watching YouTube. In middle school, shed entertained herself by filming videos she never planned to upload. As she got older, though, the idea of making content shecould show the world became increasingly appealingand increasingly plausible.

Lexis also one more thing: a planner. Right off the bat, she established her channels upload scheduleand a thesis. I decided up front what my vision and purpose would be in creating, and made sure it was clear to my viewers. I wanted to chronicle my life and my interests, she says. I create content that I love and would want to watch myself.

Her channel tipped over 1,000 subscribers in December 2017, after she posted a video about her sneaker collection. Since then, shes regularly published updated collection videos, along with dozens of personal vlogs, challenges (especially 24-hour challenges, as theyre a fan favorite), and day-in-the-life snapshots, plus content on Instagram, where she has 334K followers, and TikTok, where she has 287K.

Among Lexis future plans are more content, more merch, and creating her own business. But for now, shes mainly focused on sticking to her upload schedule while getting through the last semester of high schooland, above all, nottaking myself too seriously.

Check out our chat with this new Millionaire below.

LexiVee03:It feels awesomea feeling of accomplishment! It is a dream come true and a blessing from God. I would like to thank my subscribers for their support and for sticking with me. I truly love each and every one of them, and I never forget that I would not be where I am without their love and support.

LexiVee03:I was born and raised in Huntsville, Ala. I started YouTube when I was nine years old, making fake videos that I never uploaded. I would make the videos to entertain myself and just have fun. It was my favorite thing to do! I think Ive always had a passion to entertain and be a positive influence to kids and teens.

LexiVee03:I started my channel in October of 2017 and put out my first video within a week! I intentionally set out to be a content creator, and to create a relatable space where people could come and have a laugh and be entertained.

LexiVee03:The pandemic has definitely had an effect on the content that I had planned for my channel, especially during the lockdown period in my state. The main difference in the beginning of the pandemic was me being unable to go out and film content with my friends. I quickly adapted to produce content in the safety of my home, but tried to still make it interesting and entertaining to my subscribers. I am always trying to think of new things and expand into other niches. I do pay attention to whats trending on YouTube, and I put my own spin on it to make it relatable to my viewers.

LexiVee03:Balance is super hard, especially because I am a high school senior and a dual-enrolled college student. I do have a content production schedule, posting two times a week, but unfortunately that has had to slip sometimes because school comes first! A typical day consists of me waking up and getting ready to attend school in person. My college classes are both virtual, so I attend those online. Right after school, I am doing homework and studying. If I have time, I will spend some doing my YouTube stuff (planning, filming, editing, responding to emails, and working on sponsored content). I do my best to get some relaxation time in and may play a few games of Among Us with my friends and watch YouTube or Netflix. I end up going to bed pretty late, which is not good.

LexiVee03:For me personally, I decided up front what my vision and purpose would be in creating, and made sure it was clear to my viewers. I wanted to chronicle my life and my interests, and I created entertaining content around that. I create content that I love and would want to watch myself. If you dont like your content, its likely your viewers will not like it either.

Consistency was also a key factor in my growth! My parents were instrumental in that. I decided early on that I had to be consistent and committed to uploading at least once a week, and Ive been able to hold myself to that goal since then. I think my subscribers really enjoy my challenges and vlogs. I am a low-key sneakerhead, and I love retro Jordans. The video that brought me my first 1,000 subscribers was of my sneaker collection. I continue to do updated collection videos, and it seems like my viewers still enjoy them because they do well. Twenty-four-hour challenges have also gained a lot of popularity on my channel, and I have seen a lot of growth from those. I try to do a 24-hour challenge every month or two, because I know that is what attracted many of my current subscribers.

I definitely pay attention to my analytics and comments, and adjust my content depending on how my viewers react. I wouldnt be where I am without them, so if they dont like my content, I try to switch it up to what they want to see! If something does well, I expand on it, and they seem to respond very well to that as well.

LexiVee03:Being myselfthere is only one Lexi! Being myself and not conforming to the norm is important to me, and I think my subscribers enjoy and really appreciate that. I am a normal teenager just like them, with normal problems and insecurities.

LexiVee03:I love creating content! My favorite part is the freedom I have on YouTube to really just do whatever I want, all while being my silly self! YouTube is my favorite platform to create content on because my videos can be as long or short as I want, and I can switch the content up and still maintain my subscriber base. I enjoy the freedom to just kinda talk to my subscribers about anything thats on my mind. Theyre like my family, and were there for each other. I am working on being more consistent on Instagram and TikTok. I like how I can express myself in different ways on each platform, so I try to use each in different ways to communicate with my subscribers and followers.

LexiVee03:I definitely want to expand my brand beyond YouTube and create a business, but with school keeping me so busy right now, I am not able to commit all the time I would like to focus on that. Ill get there, though! I just approved merch samples, and I have new merch coming soon! I have released merch in the past, but I am super excited to release a new collection of my merch this winter! Stay tuned!

LexiVee03:My immediate plans for my channel is to be more engaging and committed to my viewers and be more consistent with my uploads. I want to use my platform to positively influence and entertain my viewersits something that I am truly passionate about. Finding the right balance without taking myself too seriously is important to me. I just want to have fun and be my normal silly self!

Lexi is repped by Charley Button at Select Management.Header image courtesyDokk Savage Photography.

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YouTube Millionaires: 17-Year-Old LexiVee03 Is Already A Career YouTuber - Tubefilter

Visioneer 7800 Tag That Photo Scanner Review – PCMag

Visioneers 7800 Tag That Photo Scanner ($99.99) is an entry-level photo scanner and software bundle designed primarily for family and home-based offices with infrequent and low-volume scanning needs, especially those who mostly scan photos and graphics. A direct competitor with the Editors Choice Canon CanoScan LiDE 400 ($89.99), the LiDE 300 ($69.99), and a few other entry-level models, the 7800 stands out with a one-year subscription to Tag That Photo, a face recognition, tagging, and database application for scanning and cataloging your images of people. The 7800 reproduces photos, graphics, and text documents accurately and attractively, as one would expect from a Visioneer scanner, though its top resolution is significantly lower than those of several competing models. Despite some limitations, the Visioneer 7800 is a highly capable flatbed scanner well worth consideration for digitizing your familys photos, graphics, and short business documents.

With its lid closed, the Visioneer 7800 measures 1.8 by 11.2 by 15.8 inches (HWD) and weighs just under 4 pounds, which puts it in the same ballpark as other entry-level color scanners. The Canon LiDE 400 mentioned above is, at 1.7 by 9.9 by 14.5 inches (HWD) and 3.6 pounds, somewhat leaner, as is its less costly sibling, the LiDE 300. Then, too, there are Epsons five-year-old Perfection V19 and Perfection V39 (another PCMag favorite) color flatbed models; they list for $70 and $100, respectively, and are nearly identical in weight and girth to Canons LiDE machines.

The 7800 comes with only a power button and a USB port for connectivity and power. Most scanners nowadays have at least a few onboard buttons that allow you to initiate scans, cancel scans, toggle between monochrome and color scans, and so on, but the 7800 lacks those controls. Fortunately, the bundled Windows-only software provides a versatile set of scan configuration and destination options. More on that below.

Like most other scanners in this price range, the Visioneer 7800 connects to a single PC via a USB cable and doesn't support wireless or wired networking, mobile connectivity, mobile apps, or remote scanning. The closest you'll get is using the 7800's software to save scans in a folder that syncs with a cloud site. You can get somewhat limited and cumbersome network access by sharing the scanner through the PC it's attached to, if that computer is running a version of Windows that supports this, but this method is far from ideal.

With its maximum setting of 1,200dpi, the 7800 is a bit short on resolution. The lower-end and less expensive Epson V19 and Canon LiDE 300 both top out at 2,400dpi, while the $100 V39 and LiDE 400 each support scans up to 4,800dpi. For some documents, especially detailed photos and graphics, higher resolution is needed for better reproduction and overall quality.

In addition to Visioneers standard scanner drivers, the 7800 comes with TWAIN software that allows Windows users to scan directly into many third-party image editing and desktop publishing applications. You also get a one-year subscription to Tag That Photo (TTP). After the first year, you can choose from two plans, Personal ($64 per year), which gives you one license for the software, and Family ($89 per year), a three-license plan that lets you run it on up to three computers. Thats the only difference justifying the additional $25.

Though TTP is subscription-based software, it is not associated with any cloud site or repository for uploading, organizing, or displaying your photos. Instead, it is installed and runs locally on your Windows desktop or laptop. Only Windows 7, 8, and 10 (with the latest service packs) are supported, and only 64-bit versions; if you want to scan to an older Windows system, a Mac, or a phone or tablet, you're out of luck. (Our roundup of the best scanners for Macs can help you find an alternative.)

Tag That Photo can manage photos stored on any folder accessed through Windows File Explorer. That includes network drives and folders mirrored to cloud-based services such as OneDrive and Dropbox, as well as USB thumb drives and other external drives.

Like most modern flatbed scanners, the 7800s software allows you to scan several photos at once. The software identifies them as separate objects and automatically creates an independent file for each one, which you can then tag and archive with Tag That Photo.

Before diving in with Tag That Photo, you might want to look around at other photo management options. If, for example, you dont mind shelling out $175 or $350 up front, pCloud will give you 500GB or 2TB, respectively, for life. Over a period of 10 years, that cost comes out to $3 per month, and even lower if you keep the account longer.Google offers Google Photos as part of a Google Workplace package that also includes substantial cloud storage and a number of other apps and features for just $618 a month depending on the plan you choose.

How fast these little entry-level photo scanners scan text isnt all that relevant to people using them occasionally for personal or small-business purposes. Even so, I did time the 7800 as it scanned and saved a few test pages.

Keep in mind that with a flatbed scanner, you can scan only one letter-size page at a time. Any clocking includes the time required to place the sheet on the scanner, scan it, remove it, place the next sheet on the glass, and so on, for each page you scanhardly empirical scientific testing. Desktop document scanners with automatic document feeders (ADFs) that feed the scanner sheets automatically are much more suited for this type of testing.

In any case, using the method described above, the scanner and I achieved one-sided (simplex) scanning to image PDF format at a rate of 5.5 pages per minute. Thats the same speed as Canons LiDE 300 and LiDE 400, which I tested back in December 2018. Epsons Perfection V19 and Perfection V39 were reviewed here in mid-2015 with a different methodology and test documents, so their speed test results can't really be compared to those of todays Visioneer 7800.

As for scan qualityor, more accurately, accuracythe Visioneer managed quite well. Test photos and graphics were scanned with closely matching colors and tints, good detail, and overall strong vibrancy and bright, well-saturated colors. Occasionally, getting the best, most accurate images entailed making some minimal, uncomplicated adjustments in the interface softwares Preview mode. Sometimes the interface softwares autocorrect feature did the job well enough to avoid adjusting at all.

Though the Visioneer 7800 is not the ideal solution for scanning a lot of text documents, I scanned several text pages, as well as our individual Arial and Times New Roman font test pages. Like most of todays scanners, this one (and its accompanying software) used optical character recognition (OCR) to convert scanned images of text to searchable and editable text successfully, error-free, down to a font size of 6 points for each font sample.That beat the Canon LiDE 300 and 400 flatbeds, which could only accurately scan Times New Roman down to 10 points. Epsons Perfection V19 and V39, on the other hand, both tied the 7800 at 6 points for each font.

The 7800 doesnt ship with software for archiving documents or business cards, so I didnt run archiving tests other than seeing how Tag That Photo handled photo management.

You can perform limited document scanning with the Visioneer 7800, but its obviously better suited for photo scanning and archiving. The Tag That Photo software is well developed and handy. The big downside of using it to tag, organize, and search your photos in that first free year is that you're locked into either a $64 or $89 yearly commitment. Other photo storage services may offer better deals.

The CanoScan LiDE 400 is our Editors' Choice thanks to a higher maximum resolution and a lower price, but for Windows users who want an easy, uncomplicated scanner and software package that works right out of the box, the Visioneer 7800 with Tag That Photo is a complete, nicely integrated little bundle. Some may find it a suitable option for low-volume business scanning, but given the photo-focused software, we most strongly recommend the Visioneer 7800 Tag That Photo Scanner for scanning and organizing your family snapshots.

The Visioneer 7800 scans photos and text well, and the bundled Tag That Photo software does a great job of facial recognition and archiving, though youll have to pay an annual fee to use it after the first year.

Originally posted here:

Visioneer 7800 Tag That Photo Scanner Review - PCMag

Hospices Increasingly Supplement Bereavement Care with Phone Apps – Hospice News

Hospices are embracing digital memory sharing platforms that are emerging worldwide to help support patients and their families through the dying process. These evolving technologies have made it possible for families and friends to memorialize loved ones through videos, audio recordings and various other media forms.

Hospices are required by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to offer bereavement care to patients families for 13 months after their loved one expires. Hospice social workers, chaplains and volunteers are often roles tying patient families to these services and related services such as memorials, funerals and death doulas. Many hospices extend their grief care beyond their patient populations and offer that same support into the community at large with bereavement camps, support groups and memorial services for those experiencing the loss of a loved one.

A rising number of providers are turning to smartphone and tablet apps to enhance their bereavement services.

[The After Cloud application] came from a place of grief that we turned into positiveness, said Darren Evans, founder of After Cloud, an app that recently launched in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. It essentially gives people the ability to capture moments in any form and its designed specifically with end-of-life and palliative care in mind. People can capture real-time moments and publish them at a future date to families if they wish.

After Cloud joined the digital memory sharing space among platforms with similar capabilities of uploading photos and documents, creating videos, recording audio messages and speech-to-text features for dictating letters. Intended to capture and share moments with loved ones, the technology could be beneficial for hospice providers looking to expand complimentary bereavement services for families of deceased patients and communities at large.

Weve had tons of conversations with hospice social workers about our memorial websites and the biggest thing about them is that they really end up being a win all around because it makes things easier on the family, said Alison Johnston, co-founder and CEO of Ever Loved, a funeral planning site that creates memorial websites for individuals approaching the end of life and their families. Much like a digital cemetery a memorial websites is a place where you can come back and visit a person and you can connect with other people that care about them as well. Somebody can continue to live online and it represents who this person was, shares the impact they had with other people and helps others grieve and connect with one another.

The digital memory sharing platforms also pose an opportunity to expand advance care planning discussions with a number of apps featuring capabilities to upload and share documents virtually with loved ones. Advance care directives, living wills, life insurance policies and funeral planning information are some examples of the documentation types.

For their patients, its that youve made this part of their life as physically and emotionally at ease for them and their loved ones. We create a co-branded webpage, give them a code for patients, provide digital information leaflets and just make the platform easily accessible on smartphones, tablets and computers, said Ian Dibb, founder and CEO of the U.K.-based Once Ive Gone application. They know their loved ones will hear them and have access to all the important documentation and plans needed when youre gone. The platform is meant to be about people interacting with it to get all their affairs in order and also create a digital legacy.

Hospices have increasingly leveraged technology to ramp up grief support, with younger generations impacting the technical scope of end-of-life care. As more tech savvy generations care for aging parents and eventually come to need end-of-life care themselves, the trend toward digital memory sharing and grief support is expected to continue.

Over the last five to 10 years our audience has become so much more tech savvy and is looking to do more things digitally because its one of the ways that we can help ensure that somebodys memory lives on forever, and that people can continue to feel connected to family members and friends after they pass, Johnston told Hospice News.

Similar to hospice, a goal for digital platform providers is to break down misperceptions around death and the dying process and bring end of life to the forefront of global conversations.

Were all about normalizing the conversation of death and grief, said chief technology officer of After Cloud, Antony Hawkes. The core of the application is the concept of building up your memories in a moment through things like photos and videos that are saved in a kind of memory box shared with loved ones later through permission sharing. Their loved ones are accessing this content remotely as a pipeline to pull these loved ones together and allow them to share, comment and discuss the content. Bringing people together and reducing that stigma around death is such an interesting challenge.

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Hospices Increasingly Supplement Bereavement Care with Phone Apps - Hospice News

Federal Broadband Funding To Bring High-Speed Internet To 10000 Vermont Addresses – Vermont Public Radio

Vermont reporters provide a roundup of top news takeaways about coronavirus, new broadband access and more for Wednesday, Oct. 7.

Want VPR's daily news in podcast form? Get up to speed in under 20 minutes withThe Frequency every weekday morning. How about an email newsletter?Add our daily email briefingto your morning routine.

The latest coronavirus data:

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1. Six new cases of COVID-19

The Vermont Department of Health reported six new cases of COVID-19 Wednesday. Two of the new cases are in Chittenden County, two are in Bennington County, and there is one each in Windsor and Windham Counties.

To date, the health department has identified more than 1,800 cases of the disease in Vermont. In Addison County, 27 recent cases are linked to an outbreak at an orchard in Shoreham, which state health officials say is contained.

To the north, COVID-19 cases continue to rise in Quebec Province, with 900 new cases reported today.

Tuesday marked the highest single-day increase ever in the province, with more than 1,300 new cases reported.

Provincial health officals are urging Quebecers to limit contact with grandparents, as a growing number of cases are in people over age 65.

Health officials say parents who rely on older relatives for childcare should make alternative arrangements and refrain from family get-togethers.

While most new cases are Montrealers between the agesof 18 and 34, people over 65 make up 12-to-15% of new daily cases.

- Anna Van Dine and Karen Anderson

More from VPR: Testing, Guidance, An Outbreak In Addison County: Checking In With Health Commissioner Mark Levine

2. Remote learning presents challenges for students in special education

While some schools in Vermont have transitioned back to in-person learning, there are still many students and teachers working remotely.

Remote learning can be a challenge, especially for some students in special education. Vermont Family Network's Co-Director of Family Support Karen Price told Vermont Edition she's seen many families leave public schools to accommodate their child's needs.

We have received a number of calls where families are looking at other avenues, home schooling is suddenly one as well as alternative educational placement, hoping that will provide an environment that will be more suitable, Price said

Price said related services, such as physical and occupational therapy, have also been very challenging for families enrolled in remote learning.

Listen to the full interview.

- Emily Aiken

3. Developer aims to create senior living at former College of St. Joseph campus

A Florida developer wants to create 175 senior apartments at the former College of St Joseph in Rutland. The college closed last year.

Heartland Communities of Americaoperates faith-based senior care communities with independent living and assisted care.

Managing partner Stuart Mills says theyve entered into a sales agreement for 98 acres of the campus, and plan to invest about $50 million in the project.

"Certainly there's construction jobs that are numerous on a on a project of this size and scale. But the more important part is the long-term job creation will probably employ 80 to 90 full-time people from the area, Mills said.

The project has not begun the Act 250 process.

Listen to the full story.

- Nina Keck

4. COVID relief funds to bring high-speed internet to 10,000 Vt. addresses

The state has completed the final round of federally funded grants aimed at bringing high speed Internet to unserved areas by the end of the year. In total about 10,000 addresses will be reached.

The federal COVID relief money came to Vermont with big caveats. The funds had to go for projects related to the pandemic and the money had to be spent by the end of the year.

State Telecommunications Director Clay Purvis said the tight timeline meant that big projects such as fiber optic service planned by new community startups couldn't qualify. But he says the $12 million dollars in federal funds meet an important need.

We're going to get really good broadband to places in Vermont that I think probably would have been the last places to receive broadband if they were to get them at all, Purvis said.

For example, Purvis says a $970,000 grant to the tiny Topsham Telephone Company will reach 350 addresses.

You know that project's a big deal, because that's a really hard area to serve, Purvis said.

About 70,000 addresses in Vermont don't have access to what the federal government defines as broadband service.

- John Dillon

5. Smart Artist Vermont offers free digital skill building for artists

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the closings of theaters and other venues, it's been a challenge for performance artists to present their work. Many are turning to the Internet.

With that in mind, Thursday evening, Smart Artist Vermont is offering two back-to-back workshops on how to present online.

Topics range from production basics like lighting and sound, to the pros and cons of uploading or live-streaming content.

James Lockridge is executive director of Big Heavy World, one of the project collaborators.

Smart Artist as an organization is guided by people who are responsible to the theater community, the dance community, the music community, and director and programmer of a performing arts space. So it's as inclusive as can be. And everybody's welcome, Lockridge said.

The workshops are free.

- Betty Smith

Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or tweet us @vprnet.

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Federal Broadband Funding To Bring High-Speed Internet To 10000 Vermont Addresses - Vermont Public Radio