Google's YouTube Said to Be Hosting Videos on 'How to Hack Facebook'

Facebook's Head of Cyber Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher said he was "aware of certain videos describing different elements of the attack."

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2zGZG2g

Tencent Announces a Restructuring Plan as Challenges Rise

The reshuffle comes as Tencent Holdings, which has seen a hefty fall in market value this year, is facing fresh criticism from analysts and investors unnerved by regulatory roadblocks.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2NVrWH0

Google CEO Visits US Congress to Combat Charges of Bias Against Conservatives

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai paid a rare visit to Washington on Friday to defend the search giant against allegations that it silences conservatives online.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2QfTlA8

Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale 2018: Everything You Can Expect

The Amazon sale 2018 will give Prime members early access and gives 10 percent instant discount to SBI debit card users and cashback on Amazon Pay payments.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2NU8VVE

Flipkart Big Billion Days Sale 2018 Next Week: Everything You Can Expect

The Flipkart Big Billion Days sale 2018 starts on October 10, and will offer deals and offers on mobile phones, TVs, laptops, speakers, and more gadgets.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2QnsEK8

Microsoft Robot OS With Machine Learning, Internet of Things Integration Coming to Windows 10

Robot OS is a set of libraries and tools that are used to build complex robots and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise delivers enterprise manageability and security solutions to industry based IoT devices used in retail, manufacturing, healthcare and other industries.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2N4bM9b

With Data Breach of 50 Million Users, What's Next for Facebook?

Next up is the waiting game, as Facebook continues its investigation and users scan for notifications that their accounts were targeted by the hackers.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2y2EnpI

Facebook Data Breach: Senator Urges for US Congress to Take Action

A full investigation should be swiftly conducted and made public so that we can understand more about what happened," the US Senator Mark Warner said.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2N8HSkc

Google May Pay Apple $9 Billion to Remain Default Search Engine on iPhones

Google may be paying Apple as much as $9 billion in 2018 and $12 billion in 2019 to remain the default search engine for iPhones and iPads.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2QgqUCs

Google CEO Sundar Pichai Accepts Invitation to Meet Donald Trump, White House Says

Larry Kudlow, the head of the US National Economic Council, extended Trump's invitation while meeting with Sundar Pichai and the offer was accepted, according to the White House.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2QeIXZF

Alibaba Cloud Launches Second Data Centre in India

The new Alibaba data centre in India is located in Mumbai, and will offer product lines such as Elastic Computing, Storage, Database, Network, Application Services and Big Data Analytics.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2xKJrzJ

Google CEO Sundar Pichai to Meet US Lawmakers Amid Criticism of Bias Against Conservatives

Republicans want to question Google, the search engine of Alphabet, about whether its search algorithms are influenced by human bias.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2Qe9shW

Apple Hacker Avoids Jail Term, Gets 8-Month Probation

The now adult defendant, who was 16 at the time the hacking began, accessed Apple's internal systems and copied data and authentication keys.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2Ohw2Zr

Facebook Stories Set to Get Ads as User Base Touches 300 Million

Facebook Stories ads will support tracking metrics such as reach, brand awareness, video views, app install, conversion, traffic, and lead generation.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2N47jDj

Facebook's Brian Marcus Calls WhatsApp Co-Founder Brian Acton 'Low Class'

Facebook executive David Marcus said Brian Acton's comments on the company that made him a billionaire are "a whole new standard of low class."

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2R4kgR0

Softbank to Create $100 Billion Startup Funds Every 2-3 Years, to Spend $50 Billion Annually

The comments reflect Son's dealmaking ambitions that have shaken up the world of venture capital investing as he looks to accelerate his vision of a future driven by artificial intelligence.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2OluaPk

Amazon 4-Star Store in New York to Sell Only Top-Rated Products in New Retail Experiment

Digital price tags will line the shelves of Amazon 4-star. That will allow items' prices to fluctuate, so members of Amazon's loyalty club Prime will always pay the online price in the store.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2zze8cD

15 Creative Exercises That Are Better Than Brainstorming

We're all familiar with traditional brainstorming as a way to produce new ideas. You sit in a room with a whiteboard and work with whatever comes to mind. Maybe you play a few rounds of word association to strengthen your ideas, or pull up Google and use research to flesh them out.

But there are many alternative exercises for tackling problems and developing new ideas, both individually and in a group setting.

Ranging from structured to silly, here are 15 creative brainstorming exercises and techniques to help you get your problem-solving juices flowing.

Brainstorming Techniques

1. Storyboarding
2. Mind Mapping
3. Group Sketching
4. Word Banking
5. S.C.A.M.P.E.R.
6. S.W.O.T. Analysis
7. Six Thinking Hats
8. Zero Draft
9. Brain Netting
10. Questioning Assumptions
11. Wishing
12. Alter-Egos / Heroes
13. Forced Connections
14. Reverse Brainstorming
15. Brain-Writing

Visual Activities

1. Storyboarding

If you're trying to design a process, storyboarding can help you see where your collective understanding of a problem supports or conflicts with a proposed solution, and where more thought/research is needed. By developing a visual story to explore the problem at hand as a narrative, your team will be able to see how ideas interact and connect to form a solution.

Sticky notes are your friend. Take a few minutes to have everyone on the team write out their ideas as individual notes. These don't have to be complete thoughts -- physically pinning up quotes, pictures, user info, and the like can help you see new relationships between different components.

Once you have a group of sticky notes to work from, start arranging them on the board as a progression: first this, then that. Organizing your ideas as a continuous series will help you see new connections and eliminate extraneous material that doesn't support your end goal.

2. Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a fairly common term nowadays -- in fact, many types of software provide automated mind-mapping templates so you can better organize your data. Well, it also happens to be a great way to organize your ideas.

• To create a mind map for creativity purposes, write down the task or problem you're trying to solve at the center of your idea sheet (feel free to do this on your computer, but whiteboards are ideal).
• Then, expand on this problem by surrounding it with terms that better describe what you need. If your problem is low website traffic, for example, some terms to write around this phrase might be "organic traffic," "trusted content," "SEO," and "video strategy."
• Once your mind map has this first layer, add a second layer to each of your needs describing how you might be able to solve for these individual challenges. Around "SEO," you might write "topic clusters," "dedicated SEO strategist," and "video marketing course."

Keep adding to your mind map using the steps above until you've sufficiently broken down your problem into manageable parts. It's a fantastic problem-solving technique that fosters creative answers to subjects that might otherwise seem uninspiring.

3. Group Sketching

You don't have to be an artist or a designer to benefit from sketching. Visual thinking can help to trigger and develop ideas that discussion and writing might otherwise leave unturned. Similar to brain-writing, group sketching involves participants building on each other's ideas.

Each member of your team will sketch an image related in a central way to a concept, idea or topic you want to explore further. Each sketch is then passed to someone else, who sketches another related image on the same piece of paper. This is repeated multiple times around the group. The final images are then reviewed and discussed with the aim of discovering connections that individuals hadn't spotted on their own.

Idea Sorting Techniques

4. Word Banking

If you assume "work banking" is a fancy term for "word association," well, you're right. But in a word banking session, what you do with the words you come with is much more sophisticated.

While word associations often focus on pairs of words, word banking asks you to form big groups of terms that all describe just a few themes or topics. Creating word banks in a business setting can help you dismantle a project into manageable parts -- kind of like a mind map, as described in technique #2 earlier in this article.

Then, when your work bank is complete, you can retroactively form connections between the terms you came up with, and use those connections to craft ideas that are guaranteed to include all of your most important characteristics.

5. S.C.A.M.P.E.R.

S.C.A.M.P.E.R. is essentially a process for expanding and improving upon ideas by testing and questioning them from different angles. For each letter of the mnemonic, ask yourself a related question about your project or the problem at hand:

• Substitute, e.g.: What would happen to the project if we swapped X for Y?
• Combine, e.g.: What would happen to the project if we combined X and Y?
• Adapt, e.g.: What changes would need to be made to adapt this project to a different context?
• Modify, e.g.: What could we modify to create more value on this project?
• Put to another use, e.g.: What other uses or applications might this project have?
• Eliminate, e.g.: What could we remove from the project to simplify it?
• Reverse, e.g.: How could we reorganize this project to make it more effective?

This method forces you to approach your project or problem in unexpected ways. Each question asks you to dig a little deeper into the issue and consider new possibilities.

6. S.W.O.T. Analysis

Entrepreneurs and business leaders know exactly what a SWOT analysis is. Well, it also happens to be a helpful brainstorming exercise.

S.W.O.T. stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. And when launching a company, it's your textbook starting point (literally -- there isn't a single business school textbook in the world that doesn't have a version of it).

But while a company's founder might use a SWOT analysis to create his or her business model, brainstormers can use the same diagram to better organize their ideas.

Your SWOT analysis doesn't have to be all that complicated when brainstorming. In fact, it can simply be four columns on a whiteboard during your average "shout it out" ideas meeting. When thinking of a new logo design, for instance, ask yourself what you like most about your current logo (strengths). What do you dislike about it (weaknesses)? What should it have more of (opportunities)? What other company logos should you be mindful of (threats)?

7. Six Thinking Hats

There's a whole host of problem-solving exercises and tools that help participants to put themselves into the shoes of another. This particular tool was invented by Edward de Bono, a psychologist, author, and consultant who pioneered the technique in his 1985 book Six Thinking Hats. The method involves breaking down ideas into six areas of thought:

When approaching a new problem or project, have each member of your team put on one of these different "hats" for the discussion. Each "hat" represents a unique set of priorities and perspectives that will help focus your discussion and consider the project from a wide variety of angles.

For example, if you're wearing the "Devil's Advocate" hat, it's your job to consider the project's limitations and challenges. It may feel uncomfortable at first to temporarily adopt a very narrow form of thinking, but the extremes can help teams fully explore a project or idea.

Creative Exercises and Games

8. Zero Draft

The Zero Draft is an ideation technique for individuals often used by writers and is essentially a form of focused free-writing. For marketers and agency professionals, it can help focus the first stages of a new project by establishing what you currently know and getting your initial ideas out of your brain and onto paper.

Taking your central theme or topic:

1. Write down everything you currently know about the subject.
2. Write down what you need or want to know about the subject, but don't currently know.
3. Reflect on why the subject is important.
4. Add anything else that takes your fancy -- this is a chance to get whatever's floating around in your head out into the world.

The Zero Draft method is all about getting everything you can think of relating to your topic down on paper, so don't be concerned if it looks messy and unfocused. The goal is just to get past the initial block that often plagues creative professionals in the early stages of a new project.

9. Brain Netting

Creative exercises and ideas meetings always go better the more people you have in the room. Unfortunately, that means remote employees might not be solicited for their input as much as they should be. Brain netting is the act of connecting with folks electronically to make sure everyone can offer their input and feedback on a project.

Brain netting doesn't just have to be a group phone call, though. Company messaging platforms like Slack are the perfect way to get everyone into a chatroom to spill their ideas. As ideas are submitted, each chatroom member can even vote for their favorites and combine the best qualities of multiple concepts.

10. Questioning Assumptions

We all carry assumptions with us -- assumptions about what is and isn't possible, about what people want, what will work, and what won't. This exercise forces us to challenge these and put everything on the table.

Draw up a list of all the assumptions you can think of about your currently project -- true or not -- and discuss the list as a group, questioning each one. Doing this at various stages in your campaign development can spark fresh ideas, as well as identify knowledge gaps.

11. Wishing

This technique encourages your team to let imaginations run wild. Ask participants to dream up the most unattainable, extreme, and impractical solutions they can think of to a given problem. Create a list of a few dozen wishes pertaining to the task at hand.

Focusing on a selection of wishes, consider and discuss the ideas in detail, with the aim of triggering new but more realistic concepts to pursue. What makes them so impossible? How can that idea be scaled down? Which features of that wish could we integrate into this other approach? You might be surprised to discover applicable, real-world solutions among your team's wildest wishes.

12. Alter-Egos / Heroes

This is a fun exercise where small groups imagine how they would go about solving a given problem if their team were led by a famous character, fictional or real. How would Cat Woman go about positioning your brand as a thought leader in virtual reality? What would Steve Jobs do to improve your latest communications package? How would Don Draper get your core messages across to millennials?

You can either chose someone you think embodies the right qualities for the job to help develop your vision, or someone at the opposite end of that scale, to explore less conventional ideas.

13. Forced Connections

This exercise involves bringing together ideas that serve very different needs or interests to form a new concept. You see this sort of thinking all the time in products like the Apple watch, the Swiss Army knife, smartphones, or even sofa beds.

To put this method into practice, bring a bag of random items to your next meeting, or draw up two lists of unrelated items on the board. Ask team members to pick two or more items and explore different ways they can be connected. This technique can produce some silly results, but it's ultimately a helpful way of getting your team out of a creative rut.

14. Reverse Brainstorming

In certain corporations and government entities, data security is the highest priority. So high, in fact, that these organizations have been known to hire hackers -- many of whom have committed internet crimes -- to hack their systems and find out where the weaknesses are.

This "reverse" approach to security, wherein you hack your own company, is considered one of the best ways to secure a server from intrusion. And for us, it's the inspiration behind this fourth brainstorming technique.

When you reverse brainstorm, you essentially work to create problems rather than solutions. 'Why on Earth would you want to do that?' You might ask. Creating problems teaches you what not to do so you're more intuitive to the needs of your project. Think of it like hacking your company to find out where the weaknesses are.

Say, for example, you want to drive awareness to a new product. As a marketer, you have many promotional channels at your disposal, but you don't know how to use them or where to start. In a reverse brainstorming session, you might come up with the following:

• Avoid hyperlinks to the product's purchase page
• Don't tweet about the product
• Criticize the features of your product

Obviously, these are all horrible ideas if your goal is to promote the product. But, take the reverse of these ideas, and you've effectively created three excellent starting points for a supportive campaign: Link to the product in a series of blog posts, develop a Twitter campaign around the product, and identify specific features of the product that prospects would be most interested in reading or hearing about.

15. Brain-Writing

In this exercise, participants simply write down a few rough ideas for solving a particular problem on a piece of paper. Each piece of paper is then passed on to someone else, who reads it silently and adds their own ideas to the page. This process is repeated until everyone has had a chance to add to each original piece of paper. The notes can then be gathered, ready for discussion.

The big advantage of brain-writing is that it makes sure everybody is given the opportunity to have their thoughts and ideas thoroughly considered by the group. This avoids the loudest or most extroverted people unintentionally dominating the sessions.

This is a modified excerpt from Creative Ideation for Digital Marketers: Theory to Practice by Dani Mansfield.

from Marketing https://ift.tt/2hjuB8T

Redmi Note 6 Pro Launched, iPhone XS and Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) in India, Mi TV Pro Models Unveiled, and More News This Week

Redmi Note 6 Pro unveiled; Samsung Galaxy A7 2018, Motorola One Power, iPhone XS, Realme 2 Pro launched in India; and new Mi TV Pro models unveiled this week.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2xLIhnU

How Flipkart and Amazon Are Making It Easier to Pay for Your Festive Season Shopping

Amazon Great Indian Sale and Flipkart Big Billion Days sale are set to go head to head, and the e-commerce marketplaces are making it easier than before to make payments online.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2QhC49T

Google Faces Belgium Lawsuit for Not Blurring Defence Site Images

Citing national security, the Belgium defence ministry said it had requested that sites such as air bases and nuclear power stations be obscured on Google's satellite mapping services.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2xJ0imL

How a 35-Year-Old Created the World's Most Valuable Startup

By nurturing a raft of successful apps, Bytedance has gathered a force of hundreds of millions of users and now poses a threat to China's largest internet operators.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2OiSFgh

Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale Dates Revealed, Here's What You Can Expect

The Amazon sale dates are October 10 to October 15, with Prime members getting early access to the Great Indian Festival deals.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2ImFxBk

Microsoft Robot OS With Machine Learning, Internet of Things Integration Coming to Windows 10

Robot OS is a set of libraries and tools that are used to build complex robots and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise delivers enterprise manageability and security solutions to industry based IoT devices used in retail, manufacturing, healthcare and other industries.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2N4bM9b

Xiaomi Wants to Enter Your Home, and No, Not With Its Smartphones

Mi Band 3, Mi Purifier 2S, and Mi Home Security Camera 360 represent the latest wave of Xiaomi’s IoT products in India.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2OsuNad

With Data Breach of 50 Million Users, What's Next for Facebook?

Next up is the waiting game, as Facebook continues its investigation and users scan for notifications that their accounts were targeted by the hackers.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2y2EnpI

Facebook Data Breach: Senator Urges for US Congress to Take Action

A full investigation should be swiftly conducted and made public so that we can understand more about what happened," the US Senator Mark Warner said.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2N8HSkc

How to Know if You Should Spend Forever Together

By HEATHER HAVRILESKY from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2NaG0XU

Chidera Eggerue Has Some Tips (and Hashtags) for Self-Love

By CEYLAN YEGINSU from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2xHZmik

Lady Bunny Is Still the Shadiest Queen Around

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2xMyYEa

Is Your Salad Habit Good for the Planet?

By JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2DHz7Or

An ‘Ancestral Memory’ Inscribed in Skin

By ASH ADAMS and EVE LYONS from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2Oopf06

Google May Pay Apple $9 Billion to Remain Default Search Engine on iPhones

Google may be paying Apple as much as $9 billion in 2018 and $12 billion in 2019 to remain the default search engine for iPhones and iPads.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2QgqUCs

Google CEO Sundar Pichai Accepts Invitation to Meet Donald Trump, White House Says

Larry Kudlow, the head of the US National Economic Council, extended Trump's invitation while meeting with Sundar Pichai and the offer was accepted, according to the White House.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2QeIXZF

Alibaba Cloud Launches Second Data Centre in India

The new Alibaba data centre in India is located in Mumbai, and will offer product lines such as Elastic Computing, Storage, Database, Network, Application Services and Big Data Analytics.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2xKJrzJ

Facebook, Google, Others Agree to Tackle Fake News Menace in EU, But Advisors Want More

A group of media advisors criticised tech companies and lobby groups for the advertising industry for failing to present more concrete measures to tackle fake news.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2NICcCt

Facebook Stories Set to Get Ads as User Base Touches 300 Million

Facebook Stories ads will support tracking metrics such as reach, brand awareness, video views, app install, conversion, traffic, and lead generation.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2N47jDj

Microsoft, Google, Others Dial Up the Competition to Counter Dominant Amazon

Amazon's rival are trying to wrest customers away from it with free or deeply discounted prices and easier migration of data.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2ImoCi6

TomTom Plans Fleet-Management Sale to Focus on Maps Battle With Google

TomTom CEO Harold Goddijn said the threat posed by Google played no role in its decision and it wants to concentrate on selling navigation, traffic and other software to carmakers.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2N43E8x

Facebook's Brian Marcus Calls WhatsApp Co-Founder Brian Acton 'Low Class'

Facebook executive David Marcus said Brian Acton's comments on the company that made him a billionaire are "a whole new standard of low class."

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2R4kgR0

Softbank to Create $100 Billion Startup Funds Every 2-3 Years, to Spend $50 Billion Annually

The comments reflect Son's dealmaking ambitions that have shaken up the world of venture capital investing as he looks to accelerate his vision of a future driven by artificial intelligence.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2OluaPk

Google Marks 20th Anniversary With a Doodle

The 20th anniversary Google doodle explores popular searches all over the world throughout the last two decades - whether it be the status of your favourite object orbiting the sun, the latest on the world's biggest events, or the meaning of love.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2InffPy

Amazon 4-Star Store in New York to Sell Only Top-Rated Products in New Retail Experiment

Digital price tags will line the shelves of Amazon 4-star. That will allow items' prices to fluctuate, so members of Amazon's loyalty club Prime will always pay the online price in the store.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2zze8cD

How Amazon Delivers Packages in One of the Most Remote Corners of India

Havelock is a small island, part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2NFxENb

Today, Be Kind to Yourself

By HAYLEY KRISCHER from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2xNFD0E

Afternoon Beers With a Former Sex Pistol

By ALEX WILLIAMS from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2xM0lOC

How to Write a Professional Resignation Letter [Samples + Template]

Telling your boss that you’re leaving the company is never an easy conversation.

But a respectful resignation letter can mean the difference between an awkward goodbye, and a chance for a long-term professional connection.

Ideally, you’ll provide a resignation letter two weeks before you leave the company. A resignation letter lets you officially announce your termination at the company, and also provides important housekeeping information, like your last day and other details about your departure.

Arming yourself with a powerful resignation letter helps you ensure a positive conversation with your boss, and a smooth transition to your next journey.

But how do you write a good resignation letter? What should you include, and exclude?

Writing a resignation letter can feel like a daunting task, so we’ve created a professional resignation letter template to get you started, and included examples for inspiration.

How to Write a Professional Resignation Letter (Template)

Below is a professional resignation letter template. Remember, your letter should be brief, and only include relevant and helpful information. Don’t focus on the advantages of your next role. Instead, take the time to reflect on any appreciation you feel for the company you’re leaving behind.

 

Your Name

Your Address

Your City, State, Zip Code

Your Phone Number

Your Email

 

Date

 

Name

Title

Organization

Address

City, State, Zip Code

 

Dear Mr./Ms. Last Name:

 

I would like to inform you that I am resigning from my position as X for Company A, effective December 21.

I appreciate the opportunities for professional development that you have provided me over the past two years. I have enjoyed my tenure at Company A, and in particular feel honored to have been apart of such a supportive team.

If I can be of any help during this transition, please let me know. I am available to help train my replacement, and will ensure all my reports are updated before my last day of work.

Thank you again for the opportunity to work at Company A. I wish you all the best and look forward to staying in touch. You can email me at X.

Sincerely,

Your Signature (hard copy letter)

Your Typed Name

 

Paragraph 1: Identify yourself.

Begin your letter by stating your position, and the company. This might seem superfluous if you work at a small company and your boss knows you well, but since the letter is your official termination, it’s important to include. Then, quickly follow this information with a simple statement of your resignation.

Also, providing an end date in the first body paragraph is helpful, since that’s one of the first questions your employer is going to have.

Paragraph 2: Reflect on the positives.

Take the time to consider how you’ve grown, or what you’ve appreciated most about your time at the company. Be as specific as possible -- perhaps the company provided professional development opportunities, or maybe you’ve appreciated the climate the company fostered, and the supportive atmosphere. It’s nice for your employer to receive a thank you for the time and resources she’s used to support your career growth.

If you’d like, you can include where you’re headed next, too. If you’re switching industries to pursue a passion, or going to graduate school, it might be appropriate to include. However, if you’re leaving the company for a competitor, you might feel it better to omit.

Paragraph 3: Offer to assist in the transition.

In the third paragraph, mention your willingness to make the transition easier. I’ve written, “I am available to help train my replacement, and will ensure all my reports are updated …” This sentence might look different for you; regardless of what you write, it’s impressive if you include specific details regarding how you’ll help.

*Paragraph 4: Outline your workload.

As an optional follow-up paragraph, briefly review the work you'll be surrendering when you officially leave the company. Although it is technically your manager's responsibility to pick this work up and determine how it will continue, it's helpful to list all the projects and tasks you've been in charge of to make the transition even easier on the company in the interim.

This is especially true if you managed any direct reports or collaborated with other departments.

*Paragraph 5: Provide personal contact information.

Lastly, I’ve written, “You can email me at X.” This is optional, but if you truly want to keep in touch with your old employer or use her as a resource, it might be a good addition.

*These two paragraphs are optional sections. Depending on your position and your relationship with the company, you might not need to include.

Resignation Letter Samples

With the above template in mind, let's take a look at a few sample resignation letters for different positions, each of them taking a slightly different but amicable tone to their resignations.

Sample 1

Focuses: Gratitude, new opportunity, contact info

Dear Mr./Ms. Last Name:

I would like to inform you that I am resigning from my position as Data Analyst for Company A, effective January 3.

I appreciate the opportunities for professional development that you have provided me over the past four years. I have enjoyed my tenure at Company A, and feel grateful to have started my career alongside such a dedicated team.

I have accepted a teaching position in Virginia. While my experience at Company A was rewarding, I’m excited to pursue my passion for teaching.

If I can be of any help during this transition, please let me know. I am willing to help out with freelance work until you find a replacement.

Thank you again for the opportunity to work at Company A. I wish you all the best and look forward to staying in touch. You can email me at X.

Sincerely,

Caroline

 

Sample 2

Focuses: Brevity, Gratitude

Dear Mr./Ms. Last Name:

Please accept this letter of resignation from my position as content creator at Company Y. My last day of employment will be June 1.

It has been a pleasure working with you and the team for the past two years. In particular, I’ve enjoyed tackling extensive copywriting projects as the business has grown. I’m very appreciative for the opportunities to develop my skills in the field, and want to thank you for all your guidance and insight. I wish your company much success.

Please let me know if you need any assistance with the transition.

Sincerely,

Caroline

 

from Marketing https://ift.tt/2Ge2BPZ

How Flipkart and Amazon Are Making It Easier to Pay for Your Festive Season Shopping

Amazon Great Indian Sale and Flipkart Big Billion Days sale are set to go head to head, and the e-commerce marketplaces are making it easier than before to make payments online.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2QhC49T

Fall Galas at Lincoln Center

By DENNY LEE from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2xYs8L3

Personal Appearance as Resistance in São Paulo

By GABRIELA PORTILHO and ELIZABETH BRISTOW from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2NKeUvY

Why This New VR Headset Could Be a Game-Changer

There are some days that make us want to escape reality. And it could be said that there's no better place to do that than a conference dedicated entirely to virtual reality (VR). 

This week saw the fifth occurrence of Oculus Connect: Facebook's annual VR conference. And while this year was a bit skimpy on flashy product announcements, it did see the debut of the latest in the company's line of VR headsets, the Oculus Quest.

A natural skeptic, I wondered what made the Quest so special. What merited its $399 price tag (as opposed to the $199 Go, an earlier wireless Oculus headset)? And why did Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg describe it as "just wonderful" during the event's opening keynote?

FB has been prototyping this for a while under the code name Project Santa Cruz. Now it’s an official consumer product.

“It’s just wonderful,” Zuckerberg says https://t.co/CJbZrTIAkE

— Kurt Wagner (@KurtWagner8) September 26, 2018

To find out, I decided to take it for a spin.

The Oculus Quest Experience

Whenever I try a new VR headset, I immediately have to warn the person running the demo that I historically get motion sickness from the technology.

I'm not alone (that's probably why they keep a bowl of ginger candies at the demo stations) but with the Oculus's two existing headsets, the Rift and the Go, I've had to end the demonstrations after only a few minutes.

But the gentleman running this demo, Thomas, told me that this experience might be different. "A lot of people have told me that," he said, "and then tell me they don't have that experience with the Quest."

Sure, Thomas. I'll believe that when I see it.

Oculus Quest controllers

As I put on the headset and controllers, and the game commenced, two things were immediately apparent to me: 1) how much more intuitive the hand controls felt, and 2) how much more realistic the visuals seemed.

The game was Superhot: an almost dystopian-like scenario in an airport setting, where the player has to destroy her enemies (which come in the form of opaque red, mannequin-like creatures) by punching them, or grabbing and throwing whatever nearby objects she can find at them.

Source: Oculus

It felt less like I was in a game -- and more like I could actually walk around the environment portrayed, duck for cover, and hide when my enemies where coming for me (I was sweating by the time my demo was over). Throwing virtual clay pots at my adversaries felt quite natural -- so much, Thomas told me at the end of my seven minutes, I won the game. 

The coolest part about this game in particular was how it forced me to slow down. The faster the player moves, it turns out, the faster the enemies move toward her. Not only was it actually fun for a non-gaming-enthusiast like myself, but it was also a bit of an exercise in self-moderation.

Even better: No motion sickness. 

But what was to explain for these three stark distinctions -- the ease of the controls, the natural feel of the environment and movement through the game, and the lack of motion sickness? What differentiated my Oculus Quest experience from those with the Go and Rift?

To find out, I spoke with Allison Berliner, a product marketing manager for the Oculus Quest, and Andrea Schubert, the company's product communications lead.

The Tech Behind the Experience

First of all, I had to know: Why was my motion sickness non-existent while using the Quest?

Berliner explained that it all comes down to Oculus Insight: the headset's four wide-angled sensors, which understand the user's physical environment, and where she is within that space. 

"The tracking is super accurate and super reliable," Berliner said, "and that's why it feels really comfortable."

I wondered if that had something to do with the green grid that would pop up whenever I was about to crash into a wall. It did.

As it turns out, the folks at Oculus were able to "tell" the headset and the game what that physical player environment looked like through a system called Guardian, which lets users know when they're about to step out of the game's bounds.

The Oculus boundary system. Source: Oculus

And once the Oculus Quest ships this spring, users will be able to dictate their own environments in the same way.

Then what's to explain for the natural feeling of the movement? I asked Berliner if it had something to do with the somewhat elusive concept of "six degrees of freedom" (6DOF): the ability of a single, physical body to move freely throughout a three-dimensional space.

"Exactly!" she told me. "The reason it feels really fluid and free is because you have the six degrees of freedom, which is all about the kinds of movements you can do while you're being tracked" by the VR platform.

Why the Oculus Quest Is a Game-Changer

Since the physical and emotional experience of using the Quest was so saliently different from those I had with other headsets -- no motion sickness, intuitive movement, and actual fun -- I wondered how else it might be put to use. Could this platform be a game-changer for those in marketing or non-gaming sectors?

"We're seeing a lot of interesting use cases for VR in general -- for healthcare, for education, for training," Berliner said. "I think it'll be great to see how the same partners and consumers using the Oculus Go and Oculus Rift for those other industries can do with the Oculus Quest."

The area of healthcare was of particular interest. With the ease of movement on the Oculus Quest, perhaps it could be used for things like rehabilitation or injury recovery.

It reminded me of something that a gentleman named Steve from DrashVR -- which develops educational programs and curricula in VR -- told me on day one of Oculus Connect.

"You can cram a lot more information that's 'learning by accident' or 'learning by play' when it's in VR," he said. "That's the feedback I've heard first-hand: that people can learn more from 10 minutes of VR than in a semester of classes."

So if VR for educational purposes could be that effective on earlier, less precise platforms, was their potential on the Quest even greater, especially with such freedom of movement?

"We're all really interested to see how Oculus Quest changes not only how people play games and people build games," Berliner said, "but also how people learn and communicate, and connect with each other."

Kind of like reenacting Gettysburg, without actually visiting the battlefield?

Berliner laughed. "Virtual field trips are super exciting."

But as admittedly remarkable as the Quest experience is, I did wonder if it was enough to make VR go mainstream. As Zuckerberg himself acknowledged on day one, the company is less than 1% of its way to the goal of getting one billion people in VR.

Zuck is feeling funny today. Here’s a graphic showing the progress to his projection/goal last year of getting 1 billion people into VR #oc5 pic.twitter.com/hsHmmIo0s9

— Amanda Zantal-Wiener (@Amanda_ZW) September 26, 2018

So what will make VR go mainstream? Ask Berliner, and she'll tell you -- it's offering options to all users, no matter which industries they're in.

"The combination of completing this first generation of products means that now we have a great set and a great portfolio," she said. "Anybody who wants to do something in VR should be able to find the product for them."

So there's the marketing lesson -- not just the principle of offering options for your audience, but in a way to leverage VR for your overall strategy. What does your audience want to do in VR, or where could VR enhance an already existing experience, and how can you create that experience?

Berliner encouraged leaning into the narrative -- and Oculus's own credo -- of breaking down distance barriers. Put the user somewhere they want to be, she emphasized, especially when they can't get there without your help.

"It comes down to our vision of defying distance. There are moments when you just can't be [somewhere]," she said. "That's where virtual reality can play such a huge role."

from Marketing https://ift.tt/2xLIVlc

It’s Bad Enough That My Mom Died. Now My Dad Is Dating Her Nurse?

By PHILIP GALANES from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2OgZ0sy

Google Faces Belgium Lawsuit for Not Blurring Defence Site Images

Citing national security, the Belgium defence ministry said it had requested that sites such as air bases and nuclear power stations be obscured on Google's satellite mapping services.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2xJ0imL

How a 35-Year-Old Created the World's Most Valuable Startup

By nurturing a raft of successful apps, Bytedance has gathered a force of hundreds of millions of users and now poses a threat to China's largest internet operators.

from RSS Feeds | INTERNET - RSS Feed - NDTV Gadgets360.com https://ift.tt/2OiSFgh

The Straightforward Guide to Twitter Analytics

When it launched in 2014, Twitter Analytics marked a solid (if long overdue) move toward greater transparency and measurement abilities for all its users.

Since then, Twitter has continued to make upgrades to the tool, having created a standalone analytics app called Engage in 2016 and launching analytics for Twitter Moments.

Though users now have more insight into their Twitter account metrics, you might not be using this data to its full potential.

Perhaps you've poked around the Twitter Analytics homepage and figured out you can track impressions and metrics by promoted or organic activity ... and that's about it. The good news is there's much more you can discover in your Tweet activity dashboard -- you've just need to know where to look.

Beyond the basic metrics, here are some incredibly important things you can discover about your Twitter account and audience using Tweet Analytics.

How to Use Twitter Analytics

You can access Twitter Analytics by tapping your profile and selecting "Analytics" from the dropdown menu:

1. See Which Content Resonates With Your Audience

Understanding which types of content and topics your audience members most enjoy can help drive your social marketing and content strategy. What's the point in sharing content no one cares about or enjoys?

On the "Tweets" tab, you can see Impressions, Engagements and Engagement Rate (Engagements divided by Impressions) for each tweet, for paid and organic posts. Engagements include all activity on the tweet: retweets, follows, replies, favorites, and all clicks on the tweet, link, hashtag, etc.

For a more granular view of the volume of each type of engagement, you can click on the specific tweet:

Understanding which content items get the most engagement on Twitter is huge. If you can even commit 10 minutes a week to recording your top five or ten tweets by engagement so you can start seeing trends over time -- and then applying those insights to future tweets -- you'll be able to better connect with your audience.

2. Understand How People Interact With Your Tweets Over Time

This is a really common question among social media marketers and brands: What made my tweet take off?

Some tools can analyze your Twitter followers and recommend the best day of the week for you to tweet. There's also research out there showing when people are most likely to be active on Twitter. But of course, the best way to get to know your own audience is from your own account data.

On the Tweets dashboard, you can customize the date range you want to analyze to see when you published your highest-performing tweets:

Twitter used to allow you to view a tweet's engagement over the course of a day, and I personally think it was a mistake to remove that feature. I hope they bring it back in an update soon so users can analyze the best time of day to tweet from their account.

3. Get to Know Your Followers

Twitter's audience data in the "Followers" tab contains a ton of valuable and useful insights. This is where you can really get to know the people who follow you.

You'll find answers to questions like: Are your audience members more likely to be male or female? Which countries and cities are the majority from? What are their top interests? You can also see who your followers follow as well as your follower's top five most unique interests. Answering these questions can help you better identify what content to create and share on Twitter -- and when to share it.

You can also compare your Twitter followers to different segments -- for example, to all Twitter users total:

4. See Whether Your Follower Base Is Growing (or Shrinking)

I'd call myself a Twitter power user now, but it wasn't always so. For several years, I slowly grew my following up to about 8,000 followers. In the past few years that I've really focused on my Twitter presence, I've picked up another 704,000.

Now, Twitter allows you to track your follower growth. Twitter Analytics shows you how many followers you had on any given day with the interactive timeline pictured below. Hovering over various points on the timeline will show you the exact follow count on that day. It dates back to the day your account was started.

If you're seeing blips in your follower count over time, it's important to revisit your activity in those periods and see if you can learn from it. How often were you posting then -- and what were you posting about? Were you taking the time to reply to folks, too? Answering questions like these can help you explain these blips -- and avoid the same mistakes in the future.

5. Determine If Your Twitter Ads Are Worth the Money

I've been experimenting recently with paid promotions on Twitter. After reviewing my own data in Twitter Analytics, I realized my ads weren't as effective as I thought they would be.

In the Tweets tab, right at the top, there's a chart that gives an overview of your paid and organic tweet performance. Like other Twitter Analytics charts, this one is interactive, so hovering over specific parts will show you more precise numbers, as in the example below. Keep in mind that the data only goes back 91 days, so take advantage of the ability to export it regularly. You can make comparisons over longer periods of time in another program.

I'm not spending a ton on paid promotions -- around $100 a day when I use them -- but at a glance, I can see that compared to organic posts, they're not having a huge effect. If I were running specific promotions, I'd be interested in the Conversions information available in Twitter Analytics. But for getting more impressions on my content, it doesn’t seem worth it because I could get that exposure for free by just tweeting a few extra times per day.

Obviously, this will vary for every user, but this panel in Twitter Analytics is a pretty simple way to see what you need to make that decision.

Just below that chart, you can click "Promoted" to see all of your paid promotions in chronological order. This shows you how many engagements and impressions each one earned, helping you pinpoint which paid promotions are working (and which ones aren't).

Free Twitter Analytics Tools

1. TweetReach
2. Klear
3. Keyhole
4. Twitonomy
5. Tweet Binder
6. RiteTag
7. Mentionmapp
8. Hashtagify

Still other third-party analytics tools can help you do a deeper dive into content properties that Twitter Analytics won't give you as much data on. Want specifics on hashtag performance? Maybe you want more information on the most influential Twitter handles in your industry. These are the metrics you'll need outside help to find.

Below are some of the most widely used Twitter analytics apps and the types of data they're best for reporting on. Although most of them have paid plans that afford you multiple features, each of these tools offer free services that can give your Twitter game a boost of intelligence.

TweetReach

User, Keyword, and Hashtag Analytics

TweetReach is a free reporting tool that allows you to see how far your tweets and hashtags have traveled and who's engaged with them. You can also get "snapshot" reports of any user, hashtag, or tweets with certain keywords in them so you can understand what's being talked about in your industry in real time.

Klear

Influencer Analytics

Klear focuses specifically on influencer marketing, tracking Twitter's most influential users and helping you determine who's making the most noise and greatest impact on certain topics of conversation. Compatible with Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter, the tool makes it easy to find, analyze, and manage your relationships with the people you want your brand to be associated with on social media.

Keyhole

Hashtag Analytics

Keyhole takes Twitter users on a deep dive into the hashtags and topics they might like to create entire social media campaigns around. Start by performing free searches for hashtags, accounts, and topics you want to track. Then, for a paid subscription, use these insights to set up monitoring programs so you can find out who's saying what about you, your event, or your market.

Twitonomy

User, Keyword, and Hashtag Analytics

Twitonomy offers a full portfolio of data about the content you tweet and the users you follow. Most of this data is completely free, and you have multiple ways to visualize and report on this information. You can track posts from specific users, get smarter insights about your own followers, and more by signing into Twitonomy through Twitter directly.

Tweet Binder

Campaign Analytics

Tweet Binder is a campaign-focused analytics tool that allows you to view activity behind any hashtag, user, or keyword for free. Under its paid plans, the product gives you both Twitter and Instagram "walls" where you can see the impact of your own campaigns, making you a smarter promoter and event marketer over time. Tweet Binder's free hashtag report, shown above, gives you an idea of just how easy it is to see the data behind various Twitter trends.

RiteTag

Hashtag Analytics

RiteTag doesn't just give you engagement metrics behind a hashtag -- it uses that data to give you real-time suggestions for which hashtag to use in each tweet you create. The platform integrates with a variety of marketing tools and social networks, allows you to create "tag sets" to refer back to, and recommends hashtags based on both text and visual media you want to post.

Mentionmapp

User, Mention, and Hashtag Analytics

Mentionmapp is one of few Twitter analytics tools that presents conversation data in "map" form. Most of the tool is free to use under the "Seeker" platform, showing you not just who's talking to whom, but who's expanding on which topics and where a topic began. The map you create stays updated to Twitter trends as they happen.

Hashtagify

Hashtag Analytics

Hashtagify, as you might've guessed from its name alone, is a hashtag analytics tool that serves up a dashboard of information related to any hashtag you search. The product works for both Twitter and Instagram, organizing its data into various visual categories so you can properly decide with hashtags and topics you should get in on. As with each tool on this list, the free version of Hashtagify offers the dashboard above and a lightweight version of the full suite of analytics -- which is available through paid plans.

Exporting Data: How to Discover Even More Trends in Twitter Analytics

Twitter Analytics is great as an interactive dashboard for accessing increasingly granular data about your Twitter account performance.

The most useful feature I've found is the ability to export data from the Twitter API as a CSV file. Even power users with a ton of account activity can fairly quickly export their Analytics data.

To export your data, select the timeframe you'd like to use, and click the "Export Data" button in the top right corner of your Twitter Analytics Dashboard.

You can then sort through your exported data using Excel in ways not possible within the platform itself. For example, I extracted the time of day of my last 2500 tweets and plotted the tweet engagement rate vs. time of day, as shown here:

What I found was that the engagement rate (i.e. the # of engagements/impressions) held steady (on average) regardless of the time of day -- possibly because I have a ton of international followers. It got me thinking that I really ought to be scheduling my content for all hours of the day, not just during business hours in my local time zone. Sure, fewer people will see my updates at 2 a.m. local time, but those who do are just as likely to engage with the content as those who see it during business hours.

There are so many other columns of data in the CSV export, including the number of favorites, retweets, link clicks, replies, URL clicks, follows, etc. So you can do this kind of customized analysis on whatever metrics you care most about.

Ultimately, the best data is your own, so make time to check out Twitter Analytics and see what you can learn and do with it. Figure out which tweets resonate and why. Then, work those insights into your social media marketing strategy for a more successful way forward.

For more ideas, download HubSpot's guide to getting more Twitter followers.

from Marketing https://ift.tt/2qrIsSj