#‘but I don’t want to revolutionize the tech industry. I want to make shows’

[apotelesmaa]

I like to imagine there’s at least one huge nerd at kamiyama in their third year and they’re always studying to get the best grades like really hitting the books & taking classes outside of school but they continually get the second highest scores and they’re seething with rage about it because the only person outdoing them academically is that purple fuck who never pays attention in class, is put in detention every week for blowing shit up and brings his whimsical ass gadgets to school. & he doesn’t even care about his status as the most academically talented kid in the grade. They’re planning on going into medical school or some other STEM field and he’s going into the arts.

[influencermarketingplatform1]

How to Reach Out to Brands as an Influencer: A Step-by-Step Guide

In today’s world of social media, influencers play a critical role in marketing strategies. Collaborations between brands and influencers create opportunities for authentic connections with audiences, leading to more impactful campaigns. However, reaching out to brands can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re new to the industry.

The Role of Influencer Marketing Campaigns in Modern Business

Influencer marketing campaigns have revolutionized how businesses engage with their audience. Unlike traditional advertisements, these campaigns rely on real people to promote products in relatable and creative ways. Whether you're promoting a skincare line or a tech gadget, brands increasingly seek influencers who can connect with their audience on a personal level. This mutual collaboration benefits both parties, provided it’s handled strategically.

AI-powered tools have transformed influencer marketing by simplifying the process of finding suitable collaborations. Using an AI influencer marketing platform, influencers and brands can match based on metrics like engagement rates, audience demographics, and content style. These platforms save time and increase the likelihood of successful partnerships.

Steps to Reach Out to Brands

1. Know Your Niche

Before you start reaching out, identify your strengths and the niche you cater to. Brands are looking for influencers who align with their values and audience. For example:

- If you focus on sustainable living, target eco-friendly brands.

- A tech enthusiast? Reach out to brands in consumer electronics.

Having clarity on your niche helps you create content that resonates with your followers while attracting brands whose goals align with yours.

2. Research the Brand

Thorough research is the foundation of any good collaboration. Study the brand’s products, marketing campaigns, and tone of voice. Look at their social media profiles to understand their target audience and current partnerships. This research will help you tailor your outreach in a way that feels genuine.

3. Interact with the Brand

Engaging with a brand’s content can pave the way for stronger connections. Follow their social media pages, comment thoughtfully on posts, and share their content with your audience. This builds familiarity and shows the brand that you genuinely care about their work.

4. Craft a Clear Outreach Message

When reaching out to brands, avoid generic messages. Instead, make your pitch personal and to the point. Here’s a basic structure for your email or message:

- Subject line: Be concise, e.g., “Excited to Collaborate with [Brand Name]!”

- Introduction: Briefly introduce yourself and highlight what makes you unique.

- Highlight Alignment: Mention specific reasons why you admire the brand and why a partnership makes sense.

- Offer Value: Focus on what you can bring to the table—whether it’s creative content, access to a niche audience, or high engagement rates.

- Call to Action: Politely ask for the next steps, like setting up a call or learning more about their influencer programs.

5. Include a Media Kit

A media kit is your influencer resume. It provides brands with key information, such as:

- Your social media statistics (followers, reach, engagement rate)

- Audience demographics (age, location, interests)

- Examples of past successful collaborations or campaigns

- Professional photos and branding details

Make your media kit visually appealing yet easy to read. Tools like Canva offer free templates to help you create one.

6. Follow Up Politely

Sometimes, you won’t hear back from a brand immediately. Don’t be discouraged—brands receive numerous pitches daily. Send a polite follow-up email after 5–7 days to remind them of your proposal. Here’s an example:

- Subject: “Following Up on Collaboration with [Brand Name]”

- Message: “Hi [Name], I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to follow up on my previous message regarding a potential collaboration. I’m excited about the possibility of working together and would love to discuss further details. Thank you for your time!”

How AI Influencer Marketing Platforms Help Influencers and Brands Collaborate

AI platforms simplify the influencer-brand connection by automating many steps. For influencers, these platforms:

1. Suggest brands based on your audience metrics and past campaigns.

2. Help track outreach and follow-ups in an organized manner.

3. Provide insights into which brands are actively looking for partnerships.

Brands, on the other hand, can use these platforms to identify influencers whose audiences match their target market. This minimizes guesswork and maximizes the chances of creating meaningful campaigns.

Dos and Don’ts When Reaching Out to Brands

Dos

- Be professional: Keep your communication polished and respectful.

- Stay authentic: Focus on collaborations that align with your values and audience.

- Showcase creativity: Share examples of how you’ve partnered with similar brands.

Don’ts

- Avoid spamming: Sending multiple messages to the same brand can appear desperate.

- Don’t overpromise: Be honest about what you can deliver to avoid disappointing your partner.

- Stay away from copy-pasting: Brands can easily identify generic messages.

Why Building Long-Term Relationships Matters

Short-term collaborations may offer quick benefits, but long-term partnerships provide greater value. As brands repeatedly work with you, they gain trust in your ability to represent their message, and you can deepen your connection with their audience. Additionally, such collaborations often lead to better financial agreements and creative freedom.

Conclusion

Reaching out to brands as an influencer is both an art and a science. By knowing your audience, researching brands, and crafting personalized pitches, you can position yourself as an ideal partner for meaningful collaborations. With the help of tools like AI influencer marketing platforms, the process becomes even more efficient.

Brands value influencers who bring authenticity and creativity to their campaigns. Follow the steps outlined above, and you’ll be well on your way to creating impactful influencer marketing campaigns that leave a lasting impression.

[nimupates]

How AI is Revolutionizing Workplaces and Liberating Employees

AI is Quietly Revolutionizing the Workplace

The other day my cousin Amy told me her company started using an AI chatbot to handle basic customer service questions. She was worried this fancy robot would put her out of a job. I totally get the concern. Like, who wants to lose their job to the Terminator?! But here’s the thing—AI isn’t actually about taking away our jobs. It’s about helping humans focus on more meaningful and impactful work. As an AI expert who's obsessed with the latest innovations, I can tell you AI is revolutionizing workplaces in many helpful ways, not just taking over manual tasks. AI is Liberating Us From Tedious Repetitive Work I don’t know about you, but filling out spreadsheets makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon. Thank god companies are finally waking up and letting AI handle this soul-crushing busywork. My buddy James used to work in data entry, typing numbers in to forms day in and day out. He said he saw the same digits so often in his dreams that he went nuts. No surprise his boss recently brought in an AI system to automate 90% of his monotonous workload. Now James twiddles his thumbs half the day, but he’s not complaining. Freeing workers from repetitive tasks applies to client services roles too. My friend Sarah who works in customer support spends way less time responding to boring billing questions ever since her company introduced a customer-service chatbot named Liza. Whenever Sarah’s dealing with a client and Liza can tell it’s a simple billing FAQ, she’ll step in to politely provide the answer then hand the call back to my very relieved friend.

AI is Making Tech More Intuitive and Conversational

Speaking of chatbots, AI is making our interactions with technology way more natural by enabling conversations. I just started using an AI calendar assistant that lets me add events by talking to it casually, as if texting a friend to make plans. It feels like the future! On top of conversation, AI excels at personalization and custom recommendations so every user gets a tailored experience. For example, the streaming platform Otto learns my taste in movies then suggests new releases it knows I’ll love based on past faves. It’s like having my own AI Hollywood agent! AI is Optimizing How We Discover and Develop Talent  An amazing AI use case is transforming talent management across entire workforces. My niece Stacy interns at a major retailer that recently rolled out an AI system for identifying star employees based on key performance indicators then fast-tracking them into leadership training programs. Rather than managers manually combing through hundreds of employee profiles, they can simply consult the AI to surface up-and-comers who demonstrate qualities of great leaders, like problem-solving skills, strategic thinking, effective communication and more. It saves them tons of time while ensuring the cream rises to the top.

What Does the Future of Work Look Like With AI?

As AI takes on more rudimentary and repetitive tasks, it’s freeing up humans to focus on the types of work we do best: anything requiring strategy, judgment, creative problem solving, innovation or a human touch. The data shows automating rote work could impact certain jobs and entire industries. But the bigger picture is AI will enable more meaningful and fulfilling work. For example, less time spent on dull paperwork means doctors can focus on actually caring for patients. The bottom line is AI is a transformational workplace asset if we use it responsibly. Business leaders should thoughtfully implement AI to augment human strengths rather than fully replace jobs. Employees also need access to continual skills training to remain adaptable as needs shift. With an openness to learn and grow alongside smart AI systems, both companies and careers can thrive. I don’t know about you, but I for one welcome my helpful new AI overlords! If anyone still needs convincing that AI will improve rather than destroy jobs, grab coffee—I could chat for hours about the latest amazing innovations. I made some small additions throughout to highlight the benefits of AI in the workplace. Please let me know if you would like me to modify anything further! How AI Will Shape the Classrooms of Tomorrow: The Coming Revolution in AI and Education Read the full article

[gromyb]

DRAGGAN AI EDITING TOOL

THE END OF TRADITIONAL AND LEGACY ENVIRONMENTS AND THE BEGINING OF 'VIKI (FROM I-ROBOT)' 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE : A NEW ERA

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have revolutionized traditional tech in various ways. They have significantly enhanced automation, efficiency, and decision-making processes across industries. Machine learning algorithms enable computers to analyze large datasets and extract valuable insights, making tasks such as data analysis and pattern recognition more accurate and efficient. AI-powered virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa have become commonplace, transforming the way we interact with technology. AI has also impacted fields like healthcare, finance, and transportation, enabling advancements in medical diagnoses, fraud detection, and autonomous vehicles. Overall, AI technologies have disrupted traditional tech by offering intelligent solutions that augment human capabilities and drive innovation across multiple sectors. 

WHAT IS DRAGGAN AI EDITING TOOL?

DragGan AI is a new and innovative tool that lets you edit images with simple drag-and-drop points. It uses generative adversarial networks (GANs) to synthesize realistic images that follow your input. You can manipulate the pose, shape, expression and layout of any image with just a few clicks. Here are some of its advantages and features compared to other editing tools like Adobe Illustrator and Canva.

Image--> 1st is the one and original image that was enhanced to Image 2. The girl did not actually smile. {So Comedians don't have to make you laugh anymore, then can just us DragGan to drag and drop smiles.}

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/KamE0liLXSrDyKrMTwv7bbgZjtrJet9yOUJczvaWBgjIMsTyqbf3oZmJj9OWI-L_YWPf_z_OsqNxrAvMd4-QmG0nJ2V753V0U2XAH6p3oo1lCQ6oAVb89Y6NeWyzSGMvqw=w1280

ADVANTAGES OF DRAGGAN AI EDITING TOOL

[NOTE :  Please be aware of the links available below as .exe file is still no launched. The links will take you to a third party source site which we do not own or have any business relation.]

Easy and intuitive interface: You don’t need to learn complex Photoshop techniques or use multiple tools to edit your images. With DragGan AI, you can simply drop a point on an image and drag it to the desired location. The tool will automatically adjust the pixels and fill in any gaps to preserve realism12.

Powerful and flexible editing: You can make significant changes to your images with DragGan AI, such as rotating them in 3D, changing their dimensions, altering facial expressions, and adjusting reflections23. You can also use a masking feature to select specific parts of an image that you want to edit while leaving the rest untouched4.

Generative and creative output: Unlike Photoshop or Canva, which only manipulate existing pixels, DragGan AI uses a pre-trained GAN model to generate new pixels that match your input. This means you can create images that look realistic but do not exist in reality, such as a lion with its mouth open or a mountain twice its height4.

Features : Point-based editing: You can add one or more points on an image and drag them to change the structure and appearance of the image. For example, you can add two points at the corners of a person’s mouth and drag them further away to create a smile4.

Masking feature: You can use a brush tool to highlight the parts of an image that you want to edit while masking the rest. This allows you to focus on specific regions of interest without affecting the background or other elements4.

Animation feature: You can also animate your edits by clicking on the Start button. The tool will show you how the image changes from the original state to the final state as you drag the points. You can save your animation as a GIF file4.

HOW TO INSTALL AND USE DRAGGAN AI EDITING TOOL

At this time, it is not recommended to officially install or use the DragGAN AI editing tool. However, some developers have made efforts to install and experiment with it. In this tutorial, we will demonstrate how to install and run the DragGAN AI code using a GitHub version on an Ubuntu 22.04 server with specific hardware specifications.

Please note that this DragGAN AI setup has been tested on Google Cloud with a Tesla T4 GPU, 2vCPU, 7.5GB RAM, and 50GB disk space. Secure boot is disabled. If you have a different GPU, you can install the appropriate Nvidia driver for your specific GPU.

It's important to be cautious when experimenting with unofficial versions of software, as they may not be stable or fully supported. It's always recommended to use official and supported versions of software for reliable and secure usage.

For Installation on Ubuntu via github click here https://www.cloudbooklet.com/draggan-ai-editing-tool/

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/vOcIXbbT0GrdQMao9PzUNk5JSsXnBZ-gfcdtng4-mI9dDKOY1oVv9xOyIA6UeNpV98vnxxSkUF0fSAB6jFSZCnb_psL2ivz8d_lYMK3AwiDKpGKZTJgBt-Z7aAXxQXvPmA=w1280

DOWNLOAD DRAGGAN AI EDITING TOOL

DragGAN is currently being developed and is not yet ready for download. The creators have stated that it will be available in June 2023. To stay updated on its release and availability, you can sign up for their email list. By joining the mailing list, you will receive alerts and be among the first to know when the program is ready to be downloaded.

CLICK IMAGE TO SEE YOUTUBE VIDEO

A point was added on the lion’s mouth and dragged downwards to open it.

Two points were added on the car’s front and rear wheels and dragged sideways to change the angle.

Two points were added at the corners of the person’s mouth and dragged further away to create a smile.

Date: 05-27-2023 | Sources : . diphupoly.in ; 2. jagranjosh.com ; 3. ubergizmo.com ; 4. indianexpress.com ; 5. english.jagran.com ; 6. analyticsvidhya.com

GRAPHIC DESIGNING TOOLS FOR BEGINEERS

Adobe Illustrator is a professional vector graphics editor that allows users to create and edit scalable artwork. Here are some advantages:

Advanced Vector Editing

Illustrator excels at working with vector graphics, which are resolution-independent and can be scaled without losing quality. It offers precise control over shapes, paths, and anchor points, allowing for detailed editing and customization.

Extensive Toolset

Illustrator provides a comprehensive range of tools for drawing, painting, and manipulating vector artwork. These tools include the Pen tool, Shape Builder tool, Gradient tool, and many more, enabling users to create complex illustrations and designs.

Industry-standard Software

Adobe Illustrator is widely used in professional design and illustration workflows. It integrates seamlessly with other Adobe Creative Cloud applications, such as Photoshop and InDesign, allowing for a smooth design process.

Canva is a web-based design tool that has user-friendly interface and a wide range of pre-designed templates. Here are some advantages:

Easy-to-Use Interface

Canva is designed for users who may not have extensive design experience. It provides a simple drag-and-drop interface, making it easy to create professional-looking designs without much effort.

Templates and Stock Assets

Canva offers a vast library of templates for various design types, such as social media graphics, presentations, posters, and more. It also provides access to a wide range of stock photos, illustrations, icons, and fonts, making it convenient for users to find suitable assets for their designs.

Collaboration and Sharing

Canva allows users to collaborate with others on design projects by inviting team members to edit or comment on designs. It also offers easy sharing options, including direct links or downloads in various formats.

#digitalmarketing #webdevelopement #interiordesign

[sanstropfremir]

I’d love your thoughts on BTS and their current image and music if you have them and aren’t afraid of the mindless internet hoards.

Personally, I liked a lot of their older stuff, but haven’t liked anything since I think the Fake Love promotions 3+ years ago. They’d started losing their personality and soul before that album cycle, but it feels like the sanitization of their image and artistry really kicked into hyperdrive after that. Now most of what they do seems like a sterile money grab driven by the Hybe hive mind which is a shame.

ok alrighty (cracks knuckles) let's get into it.

now that i've fully given myself a headache watching the majority of the bts videography, here are three points i'm going to cover:

performative character and the lack thereof

interesting aesthetics and the lack thereof, and

the inevitable cracking of perfection

ready, set, let's begin.

1.

idol music is very clearly definited by spectacle based aesthetics. and it's had that structure for its entire existence. so i gotta hand it to hybe for this one, because they managed to revolutionize being utterly fucking average. the triumph of bts is that they're just some guys and they look like just some guys. hybe found a niche in the system and then gamed that system to the tune of one of the largest musical acts in the world. they're not marketing bts as a romantic parasocial relationship, they're marketing them as your friends. and that is just as insidious to lonely kids as a run of the mill romantic fantasy. but that's not what i'm here to talk about today.

there's a pattern i find very interesting with bts mvs and that is that i don't remember anything about them. specifically, i don't remember the stuff that's happening IN the video; not the styling, not the setpieces, if i didn't know the members i doubt i would remember them either. what i DO remember, is how expensive the production is, and specific shots. i couldn't tell you what a single member was wearing, but i sure as hell remember that first upward angle shot of jungkook and the rusted park ride in spring day. or every single time they do that birdseye shot of jin in like every video. honestly as far as i'm aware jin has only ever worn a loose fitting beige longsleeve shirt.

it took bts a long time to establish any kind of consistent visual character. and the character they did establish.... i don't know if you can call a family-friendly-style clean aesthetic 'character'. they debuted as a hip hop group to little (comparative) success, and then made a switch to doing an early version of where they're currently at right now. if you've seen any of the mvs, you know that this is a pretty significant visual change. i don't think it is inherently a bad change, since the visual branding for hiphop based groups always tips over into iffy terrritory, but it is dramatic enough and early enough that it doesn't strike me as a natural evolution. concept switch ups are common, but they usually work because the members have established a bit of character for themselves, used their performance abilities and presence to fit into a niche in the group. the idol mould is perfect for showcasing the performers; that's its function. the groups that are the most fun to watch are the ones with stage presence, the ones who know how to perform, who can act all the parts they need to play. and bts? 4/7 actual performers on a good day. in my personal opinion it's 2/7.

i'm gonna expand on what i said about jimin here (this is technically the first part of this series), because it does apply to the rest of the group on the whole:

and i think here is where we see the main crux of the difference between taemin and jimin as performers: taemin has both an artistic and an idol persona. we know and understand him to do solo work that has a separate artistic meaning to just him being an idol. even though this performance was pre-move, i would still say this applies, because he's hot off press your number, where he's acting in a story based mv. jimin on the other hand just has his idol persona. he's not known for creating the same kind of storytelling that taemin is.

bts has been very insistent on the image of the group as a single unit. despite having the size of fanbase and the revenue that would make any official solo debut a massive success, none of them have done any substantial solo work. this isn't artistically a problem, and i think it's very admirable of them to be so dedicated to the image and the legacy of the group, when that can be an uncommon trait in the industry. i do however, think it starts to become an issue when we want to discuss what the artistic visions and images of groups are. shinee taemin and solo taemin have two distinct artistic representations, and taemin himself will attest to that. it's the same with all the shinee members that have solo careers, and the same with other groups. jackson, bambam, yugyeom, and jaebeom's solo work is all very different from got7. yixing's solo work is very different from exo's. even the subunits within exo all have their own character (cbx and sc). kpop groups all ostensibly are trained under the same system, so why the disparity with bts? mostly, it's their brand of "authenticity." it's impossible to perform authentically, by the nature of performance as a medium it is unnatural, and tragically, not everyone is naturally interesting, or suited to performing: that's why the performing arts even exist in the first place. it required painstaking training to be good at performing; it is a complex set of skills and those skills are not learnt by "being authentic." being an idol is not just the singing, dancing, rapping; that's only half the work. you need to be able to act to be a compelling performer. pulling your true self and emotions out on stage every night is a fast track to burnout and psychological issues, there's plenty of evidence. the only member of bts of whom i can say for some certainty has a persona and a stage presence is jhope/hoseok, a) because he's kept up a very specific brand in the solo work that he has done, and b) he has actual dance training, not just kpop dance training. the rest of them may have the kpop dance and the kpop vocal training, but what they do not have is the ability to market themselves as compelling performers on stage. taehyung is the only other member i would hesitantly give a semblance of persona and ability to, but i think he stumbled onto that mostly by accident. and if all the pieces don't each have a distinctive colour, how can the whole machine be visually interesting?

2.

bts may never have been able to establish an aesthetic brand, but what they did establish is an intellectual one. if you talk to a fan, the schtick they give is that "it's about the lyrics." as noble as having an intellectual or cerebral message is, what does that look like? how do you portray intellectual on stage, on film? what about intellectual is interesting to watch? cerebral, by it's literal nature as a descriptor, is very difficult to communicate in visual language because it is internal. to successfully communicate cerebrality and intellect in a short form medium like music videos requires a deft hand with metaphor that can elude even an experienced designer. and honestly? i don't know whether to applaud hybe's visual team for being the most successful subtle contemporary designers i've every seen, or to decry them as worst kpop designers i've ever seen. maybe both. regardless, i don't think they're able to cross the gap.

there are exactly four mvs where i actually remember the content of the mv and not the frame it sits in, and those are dna, idol, the singularity comeback trailer with taehyung, and war of hormone. and of an eight year career......that's not very many. these four mvs have at least an inkling of interesting spectacle and character, but even then, it's still a stretch. there is absolutely nothing to write home about in the styling for dna, other than it's well colour matched. I don't even know if I should include singularity because it involves none of the other members. idol is probably their most interesting mv because it actually has alternative styling and varies (at least a little bit) from the standard hybe boom crane shot-that-shows-off-how-we-can-afford-big-studio-spaces-and-locations. the company and the group would be loathe to admit it, but war of hormone is a well designed and interesting mv for the time it was made, with a well crafted gimmick and some actual showing of character from the members. it was the start of a potential that they squashed quite quickly because it wasn't picking up in the hiphop-group-saturated market of 2014. but the rest of their mvs? remarkably uninspired styling. like it's truly impressive how boring the styling is. and like i've said, that is the triumph in their aesthetics: they all look like normal dudes (if you had professional skin + makeup techs looking after them for the last 8 years).

all of this is a carefully crafted image that's tailored to hooking an audience, especially an international one. the mvs are boring in the relative scale of kpop, but they're just different enough from a western pop mv to catch attention. and once you do sink a hook, there's a direct clickfunnel of content that bills itself on these men being "authentic" and "self-producing," which is a huge draw to international fans, because people are racist and believe that the kpop industry is a factory that produces idols like clones, where none of them know how to do anything other than sing and dance and all the music is just handed to them by companies. and they have SO much content that there's no way a new fan can get to it all in a timely manner, so they'll never have to engage with any other kpop artists' work if they don't actively seek it out. but that's another essay for another time.

3.

that brings us to current day, in which at least the last five bts releases have been in the same aesthetic vein of positive, sanitized, and pristine. i said it in one of my txt responses and i will say it again here: money scrubs the humanity from the aesthetic of living. minimalism is for rich white people. hybe and bts may have pivoted their style and brand directly into the lane of mass appeal, but when you pair that with the amount of money funding them, there's a cognitive dissonance between the message and the aesthetics in which it's portrayed. some people do like the clean cut looks, and i won't say that they don't work, but as you've likely gleaned from this response, it isn't my style and if you've been around and reading my writing for longer you'll know that my tastes runs much closer to the messy and the weird, so very little about any of bts' visuals have appeal to me. i do find the contradiction of applying the appeal of radical relatability with the aesthetics of expansive (and expensive) minimalism interesting; it's an extremely fine line that hybe is walking and eventually they are going to tip over, the porcelain mask will not hold forever. maintaining the all ages aesthetic is going to be difficult now that all of them are grown ass men. with other groups of this member age and generation there's very obviously been a shift to a more adult tone, and not necessarily explicitly. got7, mx, nu'est, btob, shinee, 2pm, and groups that have older members like a.c.e and sf9 have all made slow shifts in tone that are undeniably aimed at a maturing audience: they know their core fanbases are aging with them and they (the fans) are not as interested in the 'boy' in boy group. and most of them have telltale visual styles, enough so that i can distinguish a specific group's mv. the last year and change of mx mvs have a very distinctive character; got7 too, since easily as far back as if you do. i can always tell an a.c.e mv by its impeccable fashion and formic styling, and although shinee has always had a more experimental aesthetic edge, their sound and voices are unmistakable.

honestly, i can't predict what bts is going to do in the future, but i personally don't believe they can keep up their clean aesthetic indefinitely without some fallout. part of the fun of following bands is watching them grow musically, and the last couple of years of bts haven't felt like growth. there are fans that have already started realizing it, and there's likely to be more soon.

---

the third part is here, which is a short followup about some of bts' industry influence.

[hawkbucks]

Prompt: AU where everything is the same except Howard wasn’t Uber-rich and Tony built SI ground up, focusing on clean energy and science and tech and Bucky meets him for the first time at the expo. (Nat can be his PA?) (modern setting AU?)

“What the fuck!” Bucky exclaims as he drops the laminated badge on the table. He stares at it in disbelief, ignoring Steve’s snickering. Then, he picks it back up and holds it up to the light coming in through one of the windows, scrutinizing it like a hundred dollar bill. His name is typed neatly in the middle, a string of words underneath declaring him to be a VIP pass holder which, holy shit. General admission tickets are hard enough to come by—they’re surprisingly cheap and, by that virtue, sell out faster than Bucky can recite the Stark Industries motto, but VIP passes? Those are usually reserved for rich tech enthusiasts. Insiders. CEO’s of the damn companies that went to the Expo to do some schmoozing, grandstanding, and bragging. People who are people. Not someone like… him.

“Nat thought you would like it,” Steve says, patting him on the back and picking up the now discarded box the badge came in. “Said that it’s her apology for not being able to celebrate with us today.”

“Natasha got me this?” He waves the badge around, wide-eyed, the laminate making wobbly noises with each pass back and forth. “How the hell did she afford it?”

Steve’s genial smile fades away, replaced by furrowed brows and a small frown. “She’s… Tony Stark’s PA.”

“What? Since fuckin’ when?” Last time Bucky checked, Natasha was still working in that old record store down the street with Sam and definitely not working as the personal assistant of one of the most influential men in the world of technology. Maybe the most influential, if Bucky is allowed to be a fanboy.

“Since 2 weeks ago?” Steve tilts his head to the side like a confused puppy. “Remember when she brought you that mug? She said that she told you right after.”

Bucky ponders for a second. “She might’ve, but honestly, I was distracted by th’ mug,” he admits sheepishly. It was a very good mug, in his opinion. It had Tony Stark’s signature printed on it, along with their signature arc reactor logo (and, given the chance, Bucky could gush all day long about the arc reactor and the sheer brilliance behind it, but so far no one has been willing to sit down and listen to that).

Steve sighs. “Why am I not surprised?”

(As he scrolls through his Twitter feed before bedtime, he’s immediately hit by the memory of him fawning over Stark’s appearance in a video uploaded by Stark Industries a week ago. Natasha was visiting, humming as she listened to his adjective-filled rant.

Natasha heard him say that her boss has killer thighs and pretty lips.

He grabs one of his pillows and slams it down over his face, hoping that if he stays in that position long enough, he’d suffocate.)

“I don’t know what to wear,” he moans, throwing an arm over his eyes.

“It’s a convention,” Sam says, throwing him a sidelong look, “not a date.”

He lifts his arm up just enough to glare at Sam. Judging by Sam’s shit-eating grin, however, it’s not very effective. “Exposition,” he corrects. Blegh, he’s starting to sound like one of those pretentious technobabble YouTubers. “It’s an exposition, and I’d rather not go there lookin’ like I was thrown into a washer with my clothes and came out wearin’ whatever stuck.” He breathes in deeply. “And did you know that Nat is Stark’s PA?”

Sam laughs. “Dude, she told me that before she even went in for the interview. She was confident and, hey—” he shrugs his shoulders— “it worked.”

Bucky grunts. “Unfortunately. Or fortunately.” Without her, he wouldn’t have that pass, even if it is proving to be more of an inducer of anxiety than excitement. “Now are you goin’ to help me pick out an outfit or what?”

“Or what,” Sam snickers.

“No, no, the grey one would be better. It brings out your eyes,” Sam comments, leaning against the doorway and watching as Bucky takes off a dusty mauve long sleeve and replaces it with a dark grey button-up.

Bucky quirks an eyebrow. “What happened to not helpin’ me pick out an outfit?”

“I thought about it, and, man… I can’t let you go out looking like a hot mess ‘cause you didn’t get my advice. I’d feel bad.” Sam crosses his arms. “Especially when you’re gonna meet your crush.” He wiggles his eyebrows and deftly dodges the discarded mauve long sleeve that Bucky launches his way.

“S’not a crush,” Bucky hisses, “and the pass isn’t a guarantee that I’ll meet him.”

Sam snorts. “It’s not a crush, you say, as if I haven’t had to listen to you go on and on about how Stark’s revolutionizing clean tech or how he’s donated, like, 3 gajillion bucks to a water charity. And c’mon, Nat’s his PA. You’d be lucky if she didn’t come up with a plan to keep him near you for every damn second you’re at that expo.”

As much as Bucky hates to admit it, Sam does have a point. Nat is notorious for meddling in their love lives for her own amusement, and she has concrete and definite proof that Bucky finds a modicum of attractiveness in Stark. He covers up a pained groan with one hand. Is it too late to send the badge back?

He is horribly, painfully aware that his expression must resemble a fish out of water as he steps into the admissions line. Double-check, triple-check. He has his ID, the badge, and his debit card just in case. Plus his phone, a portable charger, and its actual charger if he’s able to find the time to sit down. A backpack is slung over his shoulders, decorated with pins of his favorite sci-fi shows and a couple superheroes.

The smile he gives to the woman checking his items in is shaky at best, but he finds himself comforted when she picks up on his nervousness and tells him that there’s nothing to worry about, go and enjoy yourself now.

He clips the badge onto his front pocket and tries not to trip over his own feet as he enters the exhibition hall.

Pym Technologies is too busy showing off some sort of shrinking-slash-enlargening formula and he’s too busy trying to desperately not let his mind wander into the gutter to notice Natasha stepping up behind him.

“James,” she says, hand clamping down on his shoulder.

He does not yelp, thank you very much, but he does whirl around quicker than what should be humanly possible and levels her with one of his frowns.

“Grey looks nice on you,” she comments, ignoring his sour face. “It makes your eyes pop.”

“Sam helped.” His gaze flickers down to the clipboard that she’s cradling in one arm, then to the official-looking nametag that she has hanging from a lanyard around her neck. “An’… thanks for the pass.”

“It’s the least I could do for one of my best friends.”

Bucky narrows his eyes as Natasha’s sparkle. That sentence is so not Natasha that his gut is telling him that either a) Natasha has been replaced with a remarkable lookalike who is still trying to get the hang of it or b) she’s about to pull something devious and amuse herself at his expense. Going off the amount of time that he’s known her for, he’s assuming it’s option b.

She looks down at her watch that Bucky is pretty sure is non-functional and says, “I have to go, but you should come by the Stark Industries presentation area at 2. We’re not due to present until 3:30, but your pass will let you in.” She winks, and Bucky knows that should really means you better come or I will hunt you down and not even Steve could save you from my fury.

Each step he takes towards the Stark Industries presentation area feels like another step towards his demise. He can’t help the pounding in his chest or the way his arms start to turn into jelly. He can’t help the sweat threatening to fall from his brow or his knees valiantly attempting to give out. He has a sneaking suspicion in the back of his mind of what Natasha has planned, and he thinks back to what Sam said earlier about how Natasha would not let a second pass where he and Stark were not in close proximity.

He doesn’t even notice that he’s arrived until an arm clad in a black sleeve collides with his chest. He looks up, startled, at a stocky man with a severe expression. “You’re not allowed back here, buddy,” the man says, a firm crease between his brows.

“Uh.” Bucky fumbles with his badge before holding it up. “My friend said that my pass would let me in.”

“Well, your friend was wrong.” The man crosses his arms. “You should get going before—”

“Let him through, Happy.” In swoops Natasha in all her glory, looking like a fiery-haired angel sent down from the heavens. “I told him to come.”

The man—Happy, which is an unfitting nickname if Bucky’s ever heard one (and he’s heard a lot)—stares at him long enough that he contemplates leaving the exposition and quite possibly the country, before grumbling something unintelligible and stepping to the side.

He steps through, shoulders hunched. He doesn’t relax until he’s face-to-face with Natasha. “M’here. Like you told me to be.”

“Color me impressed. I thought you’d ditch.”

He snorts. “And risk havin’ you hunt me down ‘til I die? No thanks.”

“Smart.” She turns around, nearly whipping him in the face with her hair. “Now follow me. I have someone I want you to meet.”

Oh, god no, he thinks as he trails behind Natasha like a duckling. Her heels clack against the polished floor. People scramble to get out of her way, and, judging by the smirk she gives him over her shoulder, she enjoys it. “Tony!” she calls out as they approach a figure with a turned back and no, no, don’t turn around, don’t turn around, do—

and Stark turns around and he has to fight down a weird sobbing noise because Stark manages to look even better in person. Fierce intelligence glitters in his eyes and there’s an ever present curl to his lips, like he’s thought of a joke that he wouldn’t mind sharing if you asked nicely. “Romanoff!” he calls back. “My favorite PA.” Stark locks eyes with Bucky and he holds that gaze for just a moment before tearing away and focusing on Natasha.

“Please, you say that to all your PA’s.” Natasha pats Bucky’s back a bit harder than necessary. “Do you remember that friend I told you about? The one who is a fan of yours? This is him. His name is James and he is very excited to be here.” She lets her hand wander down to his side and pinches him lightly. You talk to him, he can hear her say in his head, because I do not want you to go home and mope to Steve about how you couldn’t. (Is Natasha actually telepathic or has he hanged around her enough that he has adopted a mini-Natasha in his mind? He doesn’t know and at this point he’s too afraid to ask.)

“And I’m very excited to meet him,” Stark says with a wink. Bucky wonders if he died somewhere along the way, because there is no way that Tony Stark just winked at him. Stark sticks his right hand out for a handshake.

Bucky swallows down his anxious thoughts before clasping his left hand with Stark’s right and giving it one, two, three quick shakes. They withdraw, and Bucky tries not to think about the fact that he already misses the weight of Stark’s hand in his own.

“Firm grip,” Stark whistles, and Bucky feels heat rise up on his cheeks. “Stark-made?”

Bucky rolls his left arm—his prosthetic that he’s been wearing since he’s come home from the military. “Baintronics.” Even if he wanted a Stark Industries prosthetic, Baintronics was the one with the military contract.

“Least it’s not Hammer,” Stark jokes.

Bucky chuckles, and that turns into him biting down on his lower lip when Stark smiles, pleased that he was able to draw a reaction. He really doesn’t need to be blurting out something like your smile is so pretty, please let me buy you lunch or I’ve admired you ever since you were in the newspaper for making an advanced medical drone at the age of 18, you’re so smart, please let me buy you lunch or I appreciate the fact that you donate so much to clean energy coalitions, please let me buy you lunch or anything else that would end in him extending an invitation to Stark for lunch. He might be a bit hungry.

“But you know,” Stark starts, taking Bucky out of all of his lunch-related thoughts, “we are starting a round of clinical trials for a new prosthetic designed by yours truly. It’s supposed to introduce finer motor control—sew some thread through a needle kind of fine, if my prototypes are to be believed—and the touch receptors are a thousands times more sensitive. You should be able to feel the ridges on the side of a penny!” Stark beams, the corner of his eyes crinkling. “The installation, though, would be a lengthy process—hopefully not too painful, I’m trying hard not to make it that way, and we won’t be able to get you fitted with one right away, but if it sounds like something you’re interested in, I can, uh… you can sign up. I can’t guarantee that you’ll be picked, but…” Stark looks at him with something like hope glittering in his eyes. “If you want.”  

Bucky considers Stark’s offer for all of 5 seconds before going, “Yes. Yeah. I know you’re not promisin’ it, but if I do end up gettin’ it, it’d be a hell of a lot better than this weighty thing.” He rolls his left shoulder, wincing as the anchor point tugs at his skin.

Stark hums and nods, a flicker of concern crossing his face when Bucky winces. “Much better.” He turns to look at Natasha. “Mark him down, will you, Nat?”

Natasha smiles graciously, whipping a pen out from god knows where, and scribbles something down on her clipboard. “His name is down, Tony. I took the liberty of adding his number, too. Now if you excuse me, Ms. Potts has just arrived and if I remember correctly, you asked me to escort her here.” She bows out of the conversation, subtly jabbing Bucky with her pen as she does so.

“Don’t forget to give her the slice of cake I saved!” Stark shouts as Natasha walks away.

“I never forget, Mr. Stark,” Natasha replies at a much quieter volume.

“She really doesn’t,” Stark comments to Bucky, shaking his head with a fond look on his face (and no, Bucky is not jealous that it isn’t directed towards him). “A true miracle worker. So, James—” and that bright smile is back on his face— “care to talk a bit longer?”

Bucky still isn’t entirely sure if this is a lucid fever dream that he’s having or not, because out of everyone that Tony can talk to, like Rumiko Fujikawa, the runner of one of the most popular tech-focused YouTube channels on the face of the planet, or Reed Richards, the founder of the ambitious Future Foundation, he chooses to talk to him. Plain James Barnes.

It’s mind-boggling.

And seeing this side of Tony Stark? Where he’s relaxed, his tie loosened with no qualms on questioning whether Anakin’s midi-chlorian count would’ve shrunk due to losing a good chunk of his body or whether his blood would simply make more to make up for it while they lounge on a couch that’s too comfortable for its own good? Well…

Bucky clears his throat, cutting Stark off mid-rant. “In Empire of Dreams, Lucas says that if Anakin didn’t get, uh, cut in half on Mustafar, he would’ve been as twice as powerful as Palpatine, so, yeah, I’d say that he lost some of his midi-chlorians.”

Stark stares at him. He looks down at his lap, unsure if he should’ve said that or if he should’ve just kept his mouth shut. “God,” Stark breathes out, “I could kiss you right now.”

Those words send a jolt of electricity down Bucky’s spine; he’s stunned into silence.

“Sorry. Sorry, that probably made you uncomfortable.” Stark waves a hand, a pink tinge appearing on his cheeks. “I’m just—I’m not used to anyone listening when I talk about this stuff, so having you respond… I don’t have a filter. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Bucky says quickly. “S’flatterin’. Never had anyone want to kiss me after a conversation about Star Wars.” Sam did want to do something to him after he forced him to sit through a marathon of the entire series, but he’s pretty sure that that want was the want to strangle him with a plastic bag as opposed to kissing him.

“Maybe you just hang out with the wrong people,” Stark teases.

“I should tell Natasha you said that.”

“Perish the thought.” Stark grabs a handful of pretzels from the bowl set out in front of them by an intern more than likely wanting to get on Stark’s good side. “Anything you’re particularly looking forward to this Expo?” he asks, popping a pretzel into his mouth.

“Pretty much just SI’s presentation,” Bucky admits, rubbing the back of his neck. “I mean, Pym’s formula sounds promisin’, but… god, I must sound like a kiss-ass right now.”

“Keep going,” Stark says around a mouthful of pretzel, “it’s doing wonders for my ego.”

Bucky laughs, shoulders becoming less stiff. “Yeah. SI. I’ve been keeping up with your progress on the miniature arc reactors. S’probably the one thing that I’m real into right now.”

Stark leans forward. “The arc reactors?” he asks, intrigued.

“Yeah. They’re small, but they have so much energy in them, you know? 8 gigajoules per second, man,” Bucky whistles. “That’s pretty damn amazin’. Could probably run Times Square for a couple of weeks.”

“More like a couple of hours,” Stark chuckles. “If you ever want to see them up close, I’m sure I can arrange something.”

Bucky can’t stop his jaw from dropping. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. We actually have the big one that powers Stark Tower on display for the people that take the tours, but you said you were interested in the minis…” Stark trails off, tapping his chin with his index finger. “Well, Nat… Nat trusts you, so I think it’s fine if I trust you. I wouldn’t mind bringing you down to show you the minis. ‘Course you’d have to sign some NDAs and go through some security, but, honestly? You seem way more excited and into this than the other people I’ve showed them to. Pretty sure they just want to brag about how the Tony Stark gave them the nickel tour as opposed to being genuinely curious about the science behind the reactors.” Stark leans back into the cushions. “You’re a breath of fresh air, James.”

“Bucky.”

“Hm?”

“You can call me Bucky. It’s what my friends call me.”

Stark throws him a pretzel which he thankfully catches. “And are we friends, Bucky?” he asks with that curl to his lips again.

Bucky barely represses a shudder at the way his nickname rolls off Stark’s tongue so casually, like it was meant to be there. “If—If you want to be.”

“Then we are.” Stark rolls his shoulders and allows himself to sink further into the couch. “I’d also have to insist on you calling me Tony, by the way. Stark is too formal. Because we’re friends.”

Bucky smiles. “Okay, Tony.”

“And, since we’re friends, why don’t you come out with us to dinner? Nothing too fancy, I promise, just some burgers and a milkshake. You up for it?”

Oh, god. He’s gonna have to pay Natasha back big time. Buy her some expensive knife that she’s been eyeing or something. Clean her apartment for a week. Grill her those steaks he makes that she likes so much. To have been given the chance to take Tony off of the pedestal that he built for him and be shown that he’s very much human, then to be given another chance to talk to Tony along with being offered a glimpse at the arc reactors, then to be invited out to dinner by the man himself… damn. “Burgers and a milkshake sounds good. Fries?”

“What meal would be complete without it?” Tony looks at his watch. “I’ve gotta head off to makeup now—they’re gonna make me look all pretty—but I’m gonna be looking for you when I present, okay? Ask Happy to bring you to the front row.” He takes his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it, and hands it to Bucky. “If you’re fine with it, can you give me your number? I need a way to contact you for the arc reactor thing.”

Bucky hopes his hands aren’t shaking as he adds himself into Tony Stark’s contact list under “Bucky :)”. He hands it back to Tony, careful not to drop it.

“Thank you,” Tony singsongs and stuffs his phone back into his pocket. “I’ll hopefully see you later, Bucky.” He mock salutes him and ff Tony goes, a woman with a black apron and a brush immediately magnetizing to his side the second he gets more than a few steps away from the couch.

As he watches Tony leave, Bucky suddenly remembers that Natasha had already put his number down.

[dannywholey22-blog]

VR/AR Applications in Business

Holograms used to be something just found in Star Wars movies, but thanks to virtual reality and augmented reality, holograms are becoming a real part of the workplace in many industries.

Imagine you are an architect and you’re in a meeting. In front of you is a three-dimensional version of the skyscraper you plan to build and on your right, is a set of notes outlining your team’s goals for the upcoming month. Around the hologram of your building are your teammates, each with their own notes on what they want to do in the project. When the meeting is over, you take off your virtual reality headset and see that you’re alone in your office. The people you were talking to are miles away.

Thanks to virtual reality, you were able to share three-dimensional images and graphs, and have a much more communicative experience with your team then if you were just talking on the phone or even seeing each other in person. Hyundai recognized the value of virtual reality and implemented a virtual reality auditorium that enables engineers around the world to work simultaneously on the same model. U.K.’s Ministry of Defense conducted its first virtual reality collaboration with personnel at various laboratories to work on the design of an aircraft engine. Other industries where virtual and augmented reality are making an impact include art modeling, healthcare, architecture, and graphic design. If a correct visual representation of a product means success for that industry, chances are that the major players in that market are thinking about or have implemented virtual reality or augmented reality into their value chain. But product design isn’t the only application for virtual reality in the workplace.

The image above shows Walmart using virtual reality to train its associates at one of its Walmart Academies in September 2018. The headsets are used to train Walmart employees in three areas; new technology, soft skills (like empathy and customer service), and compliance.

In a pilot test in the summer of 2018, 10 Walmart stores used VR for training on new Pickup Tower units in their stores. VR allowed Walmart associates to be trained before the towers were even installed. Walmart also uses virtual reality to create virtual environments where trainees can be tested on how they interact with customers. Costly, difficult, or even impossible customer scenarios to replicate have been brought to life thanks to virtual reality. Thanks to the new technology, Walmart has been able to build confidence in its associates and increase its employee retention rates substantially. The oculus VR headset above was used by Walmart to train more than 1 million associates across the United States last year.

Other companies have been using VR to train their employees for all kinds of situations. BP uses VR to train their employees for emergency situations and ExxonMobil is using VR for safety training as well. The image below shows Kentucky Fried Chicken’s VR program, which is used to train its employees on how to prepare their fried chicken. These examples show that companies are realizing that putting employees in simulated environments where they can master safety procedures has the potential to save lives and prevent injuries, which I think is extremely valuable feature that companies really haven’t had in the past.

           Virtual reality is being used for talent acquisition as well. VR lets those going through the recruiting process to experience their possible future career hands-on and in a deeply immersive way so that they can really see if the job is a good fit. By seeing the day-to-day responsibilities, potential hires can get a glimpse into what the job is actually like and decide from there where they want their career to go. If they don’t like what they see, they can make the decision then before making a life-altering decision.

           From 2012 to 2017, the number of VR companies has grown by 250%. Just to give a better picture on how valuable the VR market is, in 2014, Facebook paid $2 billion for Oculus VR, a startup that was making virtual reality video games. VR/AR is here and it’s growing, and I personally believe that we’ll be seeing more applications of VR in different areas of business in the future.

Sources:

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/vr-workplace-productivity/

https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/innovation/20180920/how-vr-is-transforming-the-way-we-train-associates

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahlandrum/2017/07/27/4-ways-virtual-reality-is-revolutionizing-the-workplace/#366691281943

https://www.inc.com/steve-kovach/facebook-buys-oculus-vr.html

https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/innovation/20180405/hundreds-more-high-tech-pickup-towers-are-headed-your-way

[mst3kproject]

814: Riding With Death

Oh, goody, another compilation movie.  Who thought these were a good idea?

The super-duper high-tech Backstory-O-Matic introduces us to our hero, Special Federal Agent Sam Casey.  He’s not very interesting but he does have one superpower, the ability to become invisible.  Rather than make any use of this, however, the spy organization Intersect assigns him to drive a truck transporting a sample of Tripolodine, a new fuel additive that could revolutionize the transportation industry.  What nobody’s told him is that Tripolodine is dangerously explosive!

Having survived that, Casey’s next assignment takes him to a racetrack in Ontario, to seek the ultra-elusive saboteur Robert Denby.  Denby also has something that blows up – an unstable metal called dutrium that goes critical when it hears a certain radio frequency.  He has smuggled this stuff into the USA by having it built into a racecar, which is exactly where you want to hide an explosive. Once again, Casey finds himself having to get out of a vehicle before an experimental substance on board blows it up. Apparently the writers could only think of one plot.

All those shots of the super-duper high-tech Backstory-O-Matic are actually from Colossus: the Forbin Project, which Joel said in Master Ninja II was his favourite movie.  I wonder what he would have said about their appearance in Riding With Death.

If you’ve ever encountered The Gemini Man outside of this MST3K episode, it was probably on a list of the fastest-cancelled tv shows in history – only five episodes made it to the air, and it most definitely did not leave legions of disappointed fans clamoring for plot threads to be tied up in a movie.  Unfortunately, they gave us a movie anyway.  Rather than film a proper one, however, they made Riding With Death out of one episode that was on TV (called Smithereens) and one that never made it (Buffalo Bill Rides Again).  The result is… well, you can kinda see why they cancelled this.

I like to say at least something nice about these movies, so I’ll start by noting that direction and photography actually aren’t bad.  The Smithereens half is quite competently shot and while dialogue scenes get a little long, the more actiony sequences are nicely edited.  Despite what Mike and the bots have to say, the part where the truck has no brakes and Agent Lawrence is desperately trying to keep the Tripolodine from exploding is tense and holds the attention.  I quite like Lawrence’s resourcefulness, using the torn-up laundry bag to suspend the Tripolodine bottle.  The Buffalo Bill Rides Again half is not as well-made – the stock footage does not blend well with the stuff shot for the actual show, and there’s a distinct lack of tension in both the race and the scene of Casey and his friend Buffalo Bill trying to get the car away from people before it explodes.

The special effects are very limited, but not awful. Besides extensive pyrotechnics, the only effect they need is Casey vanishing and reappearing when he activates his invisibility watch.  There’s nothing special to the effect they use but it works well enough. In terms of just getting stuff onto the TV screen, the people who worked on The Gemini Man were good enough at their jobs.  That’s really, really faint praise, but I’ve seen so much worse doing this blog that I feel I do want to mention it.

On to the bad stuff.  The biggest problem with Riding with Death is that the characters just aren’t engaging.  I suspect part of this is because we never get to meet them properly. Instead, we arrive with the plot already getting underway, and the movie is much more interested in making sure we know why Tripolodine is important than telling us who Sam Casey or Abby Lawrence are.  There are a couple of flashbacks, but they just repeat stuff from the Backstory-O-Matic. About the only personality trait given to either of them is that they’re competent and committed to their jobs, remaining calm under pressure and finding workable solutions to the problems presented to them.  This is a good characteristic for secret agents to have, but it’s all we get.  It doesn’t help that Ben Murphy and Katherine Crawford, not among the world’s more charismatic actors to begin with, don’t seem to care very much about the project.  They turn in just barely enough of a performance to get a paycheque.

Not only do we get no idea of who the characters are, the relationships between them are also left more or less mysterious.  Is Lawrence supposed to be Casey’s love interest? One tends to suspect she is, since he thinks fondly of her in his flashbacks and even today female characters in action movies are primarily love interests.  They never have a ‘moment’, though, and Murphy and Crawford have no romantic chemistry.  The scientist in Buffalo Bill Rides Again who berates the head of Intersect, Driscoll, for harassing Denby obviously feels he has a right to lecture his boss, but if it’s because they’re old friends we’re given no clue.  There is apparently a long history between Driscoll and Denby, but this is narrated at us by the angry scientist guy rather than shown.  All this stuff would be fine on TV, where backstory has to be filled in quickly to stay in the time slot and not every episode can follow something like the romantic arc. In what’s supposed to be a movie, it just leaves us with a lot of unresolved threads and stuff we’re not sure why we ought to care about.

When I watched Cosmic Princess I noted that the attempts to marry up the two disparate episodes into one story actually worked surprisingly well.  In Riding with Death, they… don’t.  The halves are connected as both feature a guest appearance by comedian Jim Stafford as Buffalo Bill, a man whose many non-talents include trucking, country and western songwriting, and racecar driving, but neither Wild West showmanship (sadly) nor tailoring human skin (fortunately).  Buffalo Bill comes across as not too bright and somebody you’d probably find annoying if you knew him in real life, but his eclectic interests and the enthusiasm with which he tackles them does give him a lot more character than Casey.  The friendship between Casey and Buffalo Bill is also the only relationship in the story that feels even halfway real, because we see it develop rather than just being told about it.

Choosing two episodes with a character in common seems like a pretty good start – that was how Cosmic Princess did it, picking two that both featured Maya!  Like Cosmic Princess, Riding With Death also does some editing and ADR to help connect the halves, but in this case it is disastrous.  Take, for example, everybody’s favourite line – you’re as elusive as Robert Denby.  If they wanted to establish the existence of Denby in the half taken from Smithereens, they should have suggested that villain Dr. Hale was talking to him on the radio or something.  That would have implied that he was also behind Hale’s scheme, making him the overall big bad of the entire movie.  In fact, this seems to be what they’re trying to get across when they have Casey’s boss tell Denby he’s going to prison with Hale.  Throwing that 'elusive' line in the way they did is jarring and mostly just emphasizes that Denby has nothing to do with what we’ve seen so far.

Even worse is what they did with the fact that Agent Lawrence wasn’t in Buffalo Bill Rides Again. The obvious thing to do with that would have been to make an excuse for her absence.  Say she’s on vacation, on another case, on maternity leave… anything would do. Instead, the editors put in random scenes of her somehow watching what’s happening via surveillance footage at Intersect.  Why did they bother?  It only draws attention to her absence, which is the very thing they were trying to paint over!  I don’t think this could have been less competent if they’d tried.

One place where Riding with Death does manage to resemble Cosmic Princess is an unfortunate one – they have one cool idea and they don’t do anything with it.  Sam Casey has the ability to become invisible for fifteen minutes a day.  Maybe in some of the episodes that did not become part of Riding with Death, this was more useful, but in this movie he doesn’t do much with it that he couldn’t have done without it.  Any half-decent secret agent in a movie can take a couple of guys with handguns or sneak into a car unseen.  James Bond or Black Widow wouldn’t have broken a sweat. Hell, even Super Dragon could probably have pulled it off, but Sam Casey relies on his invisible wristwatch.

This is especially annoying when the opening credits claim that this story was inspired by H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man.  That was a novel that explored the corrupting influence of power, and even the worst film adaptations of it generally try to do something with that theme.  Riding With Death never even touches it, or indeed any other theme besides a brush with the 70’s energy crisis.  Again, maybe other episodes did something with this, but in Riding With Death Sam Casey is never troubled by his ability to become invisible, never examines the implications of it, never feels any temptation to use it for personal gain. It’s a big part of what makes him so outstandingly dull.

The main impression I get from Riding With Death is just that nobody really put any effort into it.  The writers didn’t bother to come up with an interesting way to use their ‘invisible guy’ premise, and stuck to mindless, often action-less plots that end in something blowing up.  The actors didn’t bother trying to infuse their characters with any personality. The bad guys’ goals are never quite clear.  It’s all very lazy and dumb, but at least it makes for good MST3K.

[alwaysscreechingbasement]

Comments: “I have an idea. Maybe we shouldn’t give the CEO a raise when every time you release a product. Regardless of sales numbers. And stop giving a bonus to executives, and corporate office every time a day passes. And stop laying off developers to save money. Just to spend that same saved money. On the CEO's salary. 2. Totally stop making remakes and remasters of games. Just because someone lost in a bygone era is willing to spend top-shelf money on it. And instead, just make a sequel for the game. I like remakes/remasters too. But F***ING DAMN! Half the market is re-makes/remasters now. And more importantly, stop making remakes/remasters for games that you’re not going to make a sequel for. Regardless of how well it sells.

3. Stop spending so much money on a video game that's trying way too damn hard to be an Oscar/Emmys award-winning Movie/TV show. And worry more about making a fun experience (Give the evil eye to Sony). 4. Realize that art direction is more important than being able to see every single individual strand of hair in someone’s armpit hairs. 5. AND THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: Invest in developers to make experimental games. That would revolutionize the gaming space to make better games. And give them more space and time to work on it. I mean if you can give another few million to your CEO and CFO, and tens of millions to your executives. I think you can grab 10 million and give that to a few developer studios to make new game ideas. And for those thinking this is a silly idea. That’s literally how we got Demon souls & the Call of duty Nazi Zombie mode. 6. (This is adding on to 5) give the developers space and time to make the games they want. You want them to make new experiences. But you give them guidelines of “How to make a good game”. On top of giving them restricted deadlines, and time frames. Which makes no sense. How are they going to make something new if they’re forced to follow a set path, that is also on a timetable? 7. AND THIS RIVALS POINT5: BRING BACK OLDER IPs!!! Do you guys know that Nintendo owns the rights to about 10 Ips that they just won’t make a new game for? Like Earthbound, F-Zero, 1080, Ice Climbers, Game & Watch, Nintendo dogs, and more. The same goes for Sony and Microsoft. Hell Capcom has as much fan art and fan support for Darkstalkers as RE, and SF. Yet we don’t have any new games for it lined up. I have nearly 30 IPs I would love a sequel of. That they’re just not making new games for. Like where the hell is burnout 6!? And where hell is SSX snowboarding?! 8. Stop trying to make every new IP a multiplayer game, and or an E-sport. I and the majority of us just want to play a fun experience. Not the next game a bunch of out-of-shape sweaty Asians piled in a coffee shop LAN party. Is going to train to be the next big winners of. 9. put meaningful content in there, and really ask yourself, “Is this fun and enjoyable”. Instead of making grindy content. That consists of collecting 60 Yeti ass hairs. For god knows what reason. 10. And this is another point that is UNBELIEVABLY IMPORTANT!: STOP!! STOP WITH THE F***ING DLC!!! Just let us unlock the content! And if you are going to do DLC. Don’t paint the gun blue and call it DLC, put way more effort into it. And stop with the damn season passes! Because I think I speak for every gamer to every live when I say this, “We don’t want to spend full price, just to have to spend full price AGAIN on a video game.”. I spent $60 on it already, why do I need to spend another $60 for the rest of the content? And to make it worse. There are some games where you need to spend $1,000 just to get the full experience. 11. And finally, and this is just bringing up point 1 again. But it’s that important that I have to bring it up again. Stop overpaying the wrong people, and underpaying the right people. I hate the fact that there are countless games that didn’t come out. Because the CO-CEO didn’t get his 9TH Audi with golden Rims.”

“Counter-point: Hollow Knight was made by two people, and Kickstarter exists. I mean, he mentions PaRappa, a game also created by two people. If Hollow Knight can succeed, so can PaRappa. There's a rhythm game called Unbeatable that got funded on Kickstarter in like 15 hours, for example. There's no way a game like Project Rap Rabbit (failed spiritual successor to PaRappa) needed a million dollars just to get made. It's like they forgot that the game would continue to make money after being released. A great game will sell regardless of how much it cost to make. Make games with N64 graphics if you must, there's an audience for those too (Dusk, Gloomwood, etc.) There are times when great games don't get the recognition they deserve, and that's a shame, but that's less due to rising costs and more due to the sheer quantity of games that get released in a year. And lack of awareness. I know Shawn Layden doesn't work at PlayStation anymore, but let's pretend he did. Why not take some of those smaller games under your wing and give them that proper spotlight? When PlayStation is proud of their smaller titles... when they believe in a new IP like LittleBigPlanet so much that it becomes the mascot of the PS3 - that's when those games are given a chance to shine. He mentions Vib Ribbon. As cool as that game was, it was more of a tech demo, but still. If you're a PlayStation boss and you want to draw attention to that game.. just do it? Grease some palms, make it happen. You can't blame the industry for not letting smaller games come out on stage, when you are the industry and the stage. The average person doesn't have time to research every game ever made. As such, many people are only going to pay attention to games they see in ads. I think that's always been the case. If you want to bring down the cost of game development, all you gotta do is advertise great games that cost less to make, so that way people will play those, grow healthy standards and not see 200 hour-long open-world games as the norm. Then, it becomes a matter of who can make the best games, instead of who can waste the most money developing massive games that people barely even enjoy.“

[bestdjkit]

Calvin Harris Believes NFTs Could Revolutionize the Music Industry

"It's a whole new avenue that you can really just put out whatever you want, and that's kind of how music should be."

International dance music superstar Calvin Harris is just the latest in a revolving door of musicians and performers to board the NFT (non-fungible token) train. And he believes the space has the potential to revolutionize the music industry, according to comments made during his recent appearance on the Clubhouse-hosted Good Time Show.

Harris appeared on Good Time Show last week to promote his new NFT collection "Technofish," a collaborative series with music video director Emil Nava. Harris and Nava's NFT collection has since sold, with the final piece going for a whopping $108,888.00.

A teaser image of Calvin Harris and Emil Nava's "Technofish" NFT," which sold for over $108,000.

Harris recognized the incredible opportunities that the concept of NFTs have created for artists and performers almost instantly. 

“When I first realized the scope—I mean, I haven't really realized the scope of what an NFT can be, I don't think any of us really have," he said, according to Billboard. “I thought, 'Wow, this is a whole new tool for creativity that isn't policed by radio or streaming, or someone from the label or any of this stuff.' It's a whole new avenue that you can really just put out whatever you want, and that's kind of how music should be but it really isn't."

“The fact that smaller artists can have ownership over their music and literally just make what they want and then let the people decide, it seemed like such a great, direct way of doing it," Harris continued. "We need to make this a bigger deal, and we need everyone to do this. I think it can completely revolutionize the music industry.”

FOLLOW CALVIN HARRIS:

Facebook: facebook.com/calvinharris Twitter: twitter.com/CalvinHarris Instagram: instagram.com/calvinharris Spotify: spoti.fi/3hxLKvx

from Best DJ Kit https://edm.com/gear-tech/calvin-harris-believes-nft-could-revolutionize-music

[craigrcannon]

Employee #1: Warby Parker

A conversation with Mara Castro, Warby Parker’s first employee.

Employee #1 is a series of interviews focused on sharing the often untold stories of early employees at tech companies.

Mara Castro was the first employee at Warby Parker. She currently is the Director of Customer Experience.

Discussed: Working at a Nonprofit, Finding the Job Posting, Interviewing with the Founders, Starting Part-Time, Figuring Out Operations, Moving to New York, Going into Retail, Building the Brand, and Learning to Manage People.

Craig: So the easiest way to start is just to explain what you were doing before and go from there.

Mara: Sure. So I graduated from Texas A&M then went back to Brazil and was working with a former Formula One racecar driver, helping him set up his nonprofit. At that point I was pretty dead set on wanting to build a nonprofit that was going to do good for the world. So I started in Brazil but knew that I did want to come back to the US.

I was originally from Brazil but my father worked in oil so we lived around the world – UAE, Libya, Singapore, Venezuela – then I ended up moving back to Philly for business school and from there started working at a nonprofit called the Food Trust. So I got a lot of exposure to how nonprofits work in the US.

I loved the work that I was doing but felt like I wanted to do something more with a little bit more of a business background. I felt like I could add more value to the world instead of spending so much time fundraising and policy writing and that kind of stuff. As I was trying to look for something different, Jeff Raider, one of the co-founders of Warby Parker, put out a job description looking for an operations manager.

At that point the four founders were still in business school. It was November of 2009. Warby Parker was really just an idea. They didn’t have a website or anything but they knew that they wanted help from someone to set up customer service and operations in general.

Craig: Where was the job posting? Was it on Craigslist?

Mara: I think they had posted it in quite a few places but because my ex went to Wharton business school, it had been shared there to all of the students and he shared it with me.

Craig: Gotcha. Okay, so you email him and then you meet up. How does that go?

Mara: It was great. Jeff is one of those guys that’s just incredibly charismatic, super fun, really smart. We talked about everything that I had done before, what I was hoping to do in the future and it was just very, very natural–just casual conversation about what my experience was and then what the idea of Warby Parker was at that time.

Craig: And was the idea the same as it is now?

Mara: Yes, that’s one of the special things about Warby Parker is that from day one, they really spent a ton of time thinking through what the pillars were for the brand. They really wanted this company to be a lifestyle brand that was going to be here for the next hundred years. They wanted it to really revolutionize eyewear industry and they wanted to prove that for-profits could do good in the world. Those three main pillars are still the ones that really reign the company to this day.

Craig: Did he convince you with that in the beginning?

Mara: The pitch was really just that they’re four really smart friends with this great idea to sell glasses online, so many other companies were selling products online that never had before –you shouldn’t have to pay the price of an iPhone for glasses.

I started wearing glasses when I was maybe 12 years old and so I knew how expensive glasses were and how limited the options were. It just seemed to make a lot of sense plus, with my background of wanting to work somewhere that was going to do good in the world, it was just awesome to see how it wasn’t a marketing ploy. It was part of the brand and who they really wanted to be from day one.

Neil [Blumenthal], one of our co-founders (and current co-CEOs) was one of the first employees at Vision Spring before he went to business school and he had really set up the whole program and how that nonprofit worked. And we were just going to partner with them so that we could do work in a way that they knew how to do it best and we were just going to help them and achieve that in the best way. It just really felt very authentic, very natural so at that point, I was just like, “Okay, you guys need to hire me.”

Craig: [Laughter] Okay, so what happens next?

Mara: We were still just talking about it because they didn’t even have the glasses yet. They didn’t have a website. It was really just an idea at that point but they knew that they wanted help soon thereafter. And so we continued talking. And I think they received the glasses maybe at the end of December or January of 2009. They started doing some trunk shows with their friends and I came to a couple of them, got to see the glasses, got to meet the other co-founders, and actually did an interview call with Dave Gilboa who is currently my boss. They decided to launch in the beginning of February and I started February 1, 2010.

Craig: Did you move to NY at that point?

Mara: No. So they were still in school in Philly and school was going to go through June. So on February 1st, we were launching but not necessarily the website. It was more of launching the fulfillment process. So we were still doing trunk shows with their friends and I was helping process orders with our tech consultant, set up the whole process through NetSuite which is an ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] that we were using at the time, and really just help set up the foundation. Then we fully launched on February 15th with the website and features in GQ and Vogue

For the first two weeks in February I was part-time, 15 hours a week, just helping with anything that came up. The launch of the website kind of kicked us into crazy mode. And that’s when my role turned into a hundred hours a week and basically that’s what it’s been since then.

From that point, it was just like, “Okay, this is really going to work. Let’s figure out how to make this work in the best way. I think it was April when we decided we were going to move to New York and started prepping for that move.

Craig: And so were you handling fulfillment in the beginning?

Mara: I was helping with a little bit of everything, right. At first it was just me but then we quickly hired four other people and also I helped train all of the founders’ families everyone we knew could help, because it got really crazy really fast. I was in charge of setting up all of the training materials, managing all of the folks, setting up the culture, working with inventory, supply chain and then helped with all of the talent on HR, setting up all of the assistants as well and office management. It was a startup, right? You do what’s needed.

Craig: Right, exactly. The job description doesn’t exactly match the job. So had you guys raised money at that point?

Mara: No. So it was all from the four founders’ savings at that point.

Craig: Ok. How many styles did you launch with?

Mara: That’s a good question. It was twenty-seven plus our monocle. At that time, a few very big, bold styles which were in at the moment and then a few toned-down frames. And then, of course, the monocle.

Craig: [Laughter] I didn’t even know that was a thing. Do people actually buy it?

Mara: We do get a lot of orders for groomsmen. But, I mean, it’s not our bestseller. [Laughter]

Craig: [Laughter] I figured. Ok, so you moved to New York and then what? Had you lived in New York before?

Mara: I had not, no. I feel like everybody has a dream of living in New York so it was very exciting to move here. So we moved to New York. We worked out of Neil’s wife’s back office. She had a jewelry line that she ran out of the garment district. So it was this tiny inventory room which became one of our first showrooms. Our first showroom was actually Neil’s apartment. [Laughter]

So we moved to her back office and then from there, we moved in August to our first real office in Union Square. At that point I think we had maybe 10 employees or so on our team.

Craig: At that time were you able to get a sense if it would last or if it was just this crazy startup thing that might implode?

Mara: No, we were definitely filling a need in the market for sure. Just from customer conversations I could tell it was a thing. We always wanted to make sure that every employee (and our founders) were interacting with customers. We had phone and email initially and we responded to each and every person individually even when we got the crazy spike in March. We were all working from 7:00 to 4:00 a.m. really responding to every customer. People would reply to the 4:00 a.m. emails being like, “I get it. You’re a startup. That’s totally fine. Take your time, but would love your glasses. This is amazing. This is such a great idea. Don’t know why nobody has tried this before.”

So it definitely felt like we were filling a need in the market and that we just had to figure out the kinks of growing pains to make sure that we had enough inventory for everyone.

Craig: I imagine the actual manufacturing process is pretty time intensive–learning how it all works and figuring it all out, especially in the beginning.

Mara: Yeah, definitely. So Neil did have some experience in manufacturing glasses through Vision Spring, the nonprofit where he had worked. He knew some of it.

The way our manufacturing process works is we get the materials from either Italy or Japan. We manufacture the glasses in China and then we ship them to the US. Now we have six labs across the US. They then cut each lens specifically to each customer and then ship those glasses, the completed glasses, to the customer directly from our labs.

It is a pretty complicated process and, honestly, none of us had worked in retail before, including the four founders. Setting up the technology that was necessary to track all of that inventory, to manage our customer orders in the best way, wasn’t easy. Do you know about the Home Try-On?

Craig: Yeah, but you should explain it anyway.

Mara: Cool. So the Home Try-On program, the way it works is you select five pairs and we ship them to you to try on and then you return them and can purchase your favorite on the site. So the first lab that we ever partnered with was in New York and they used to do not only do fulfillment of the glasses but our Home Try-On program as well. The way that it would work is that they would send out the Home Try-On glasses from their lab and then everything would get returned to Neil’s apartment in Philly.

Initially, it was just me going through everything and double-checking, making sure everything was good, cleaning everything and then putting it all in boxes and just carrying it over to a UPS to send it over to our lab so that they could start the whole process again.

Craig: [Laughter] That’s insane.

Mara: [Laughter] Yeah, it was pretty insane.

Craig: Were there other bottlenecks? How established were the labs and the manufacturers that you were working with?

Mara: The way that labs usually work is that they partner with an optician at a company like LensCrafters and they fulfill the glasses but then send it to that storefront who then dispenses the glasses in person to a customer. Our process was completely new to them. They had never gone through the fulfillment process of quality checking everything and making sure it was the way we wanted it to before sending it to the customer directly. We were definitely establishing that through our company and teaching all of our labs how to do this.

Craig: Were you ever involved in those conversations? Convincing the lab, “Hey, now you do this, too.”

Mara: So the lucky thing about that is there was one person at the first lab that we partnered with that really believed in our idea. It took some convincing with him but then he was really the one that was able to get all of his lab on board. Of course, it took us a lot of work to establish all of the partnerships to set up all the processes in a way we wanted.

Craig: Cool. So back to the story, you moved to New York and things are ramping up. What happens after the summer? How does it go?

Mara: I mean, so we went through the period of just crazy explosive growth in February, March, April. Then we were moving to New York and, of course, in any startup in the beginning you have step function growth, right. With us, we didn’t do any marketing in that first full year. We really grew most through word of mouth, We were really just focused on “How can we learn as much as we can from the experiences that we are providing to our customers? What can we be doing differently?” And that’s what we were really focusing on: so building all of the technology, how to build out and manage all of our inventory, how to make sure that we were running the company in the best way. We were hiring a few more people at that point. We hired our first tech employee.

Craig: Wait, what?

Mara: Yeah, so we were only working with a consultant until the end of 2010.

Craig: [Laughter] So the whole first year was on some consultant guy’s website? That’s amazing.

Mara: Yeah, so it was on NetSuite. Our contact there made it all work. But at that point we were still answering all of our phone calls through Google Voice to our cell phones. Everybody was in one inbox in Gmail.

Craig: [Laughter]

Mara: It was pretty insane. You know the labels that you use in Gmail? We would use labels with our names. Just put a label and say, “Okay. Royce, Brian, Lee, Colleen, Mara.” And you would just assign the top 10, middle 10, things like that. And we would just make it work.

Craig: And so now are you becoming more of a manager?

Mara: In March of 2010, I was already a manager but still very much a doer because I was managing the operations team but still doing office management and talent and inventory and all of that kind of stuff as well. I think it wasn’t until much later on that I was fully able to hire for all of those different roles. It was very much just managing all of our folks within the operations team to make sure that we were just fulfilling orders and managing our customer’s experiences as best as possible.

Craig: You’ve been there for six years at this point. How’s your role changed?

Mara: A lot. I mean, it’s been an awesome journey, lots of learnings along the way. I think what’s been most exciting about Warby Parker is that we continue to grow at this crazy pace and we’re just always going through growing pains and trying to figure out what’s the next big step and how do you deal with that next big step. Going from startup mode and being very reactive to everything that gets thrown your way because you don’t really know when to expect that next big push, that next big craze. It’s been awesome to be able to have more processes in place, better systems that we can count on. We’re not just on one inbox anymore and we have a real phone system with lots of hard data which is awesome.

Craig: Okay, and how many people are you now?

Mara: So companywide, we’re over 900 people and that includes our employees from our 40 retail stores that we now have.

We started thinking we were only going to sell online but then through lots of different experiments with the showrooms we found that our customers did really like getting access to all of the glasses and getting that assistance in person and that we could also learn a lot from those interactions in person with those customers. So we started experimenting with a few stores. We launched our first store in 2013 and then have been expanding since then.

Craig: So what did you learn from customers trying on in a store vs the Home Try-On data?

Mara: First, observing them and what glasses they’re gravitating towards, how they shop. So usually, people in the past have gone through face shape but a lot of people don’t even know what their face shape is. It is a little hard for people to understand that. So do you organize by bolder and more classics? By different color styles? So we were able to see how customers interacted with those glasses and how we were setting them up in person allowed us to further understand how to couple those glasses together and how to talk about them, how to create better stories around those types of glasses.

Craig: Do you have thoughts on what your personal future ambitions are?

Mara: To be honest, I never thought I would stick around at a company for more than two years, right? Everybody jumps around every two years, nowadays especially. So it’s been six and a half years and I continue loving it as much as I did in day one. It’s just a combination of continued learning and growing and the amazing culture. That just keeps me coming back for more and I know that we do have a lot of really exciting plans for the future (we’re opening our own lab in upstate New York soon) plus this continued expansion into retail. We opened our first store in Canada this year.

There’s just so much more that we can do. Our brand awareness in New York, in California, is pretty high but throughout the rest of the country and potentially rest of the world, there’s a huge opportunity there. It really feels like we’re still just getting started. And there are so many more opportunities for the company and so many more opportunities for me to continue to learn and develop myself and continue to add value to the growing organization. So that keeps me around.

Craig: What does that mean? How do you want to continue to develop yourself?

Mara: I mean… I have about a 150 people on my team. I’ve never managed a 150 people before. Actually, Warby Parker was the first experience that I had managing anyone. So continuing to grow my team and scale my team, making sure that we’re investing in our employees in the best way while we continue to learn how to scale the organization in the best way, and the way that I do that is making sure that I’m a better leader every day.

I just continue to expose myself to other companies that have gone through this growth before, have done what we have done before, continue to read a lot of books, just developing myself in any way possible.

Craig: Most people in the world have not managed 150 people. And, I mean, you’re easy to have a conversation with but I imagine there are other things that aren’t your strong suit, right? So what did you have to learn along the way?

Mara: Everything.

Craig: [Laughter] Okay. How about–what was counterintuitive for you?

Mara: I don’t know. Let’s see. That’s a really good question. So I am very much a planner and I like to be very organized in everything that I do. I think in the beginning it was a lot more stressful to not be able to have everything planned out. You just have to roll with the punches and you just have to figure things out as they get thrown at you. And so eventually you then get used to that culture and then you have to break out of that and go into process mode and make sure that you have really great processes in place so everybody in the organization is empowered to take action in a way that’s consistent throughout the entire organization.

A lot of what I learned is around lean, Six Sigma thinking and how to implement it into daily practices. You have to realize that everything isn’t going to be exactly the way you want it and how you would do it. But if you are able to have enough processes in place and enough structure in place with enough guiding posts like strategic objectives and milestone metrics and core values, then you empower everyone to take action, to make decisions and learn on their own. Then you can then help them learn through the great decisions or bad ones and, of course, correct from there.

That’s been more of the learning challenge. As you grow into a leader and, of course, as the team continues to grow, making sure that those ideas seep through to all of the layers of the organization.

Craig: Yeah, each person on a hundred-person team is not as effective or easy to evaluate as each person on a ten person team, right? So you’re not 10X more productive and managing that process does make a lot of sense. As your ambitions scale, do you feel that you have founder-type ambitions in you at some point?

Mara: Potentially? I mean, I’ve learned so much here and I feel like if I did want to, that I would be able to start a company myself. Nothing planned for the moment but potentially, one day.

Craig: Anyway, so the founders were all dudes, right?

Mara: Yep.

Craig: So you were obviously the first female hire. What’s that dynamic like?

Mara: I don’t know. I think it’s just hard to really put myself in those shoes just because in every experience I have had even before Warby, I haven’t had that much of an issue with being the only woman in the workplace and having to just work that much harder to speak up or to assert myself or something like that. Once we moved to New York, the two other guys became board members and stepped out of day to day operations and it was really only the two co-CEOs that stayed on board. And so maybe that’s why it didn’t feel very daunting.

Craig: Interesting. Ok, let’s move on then. What books are you reading right now? Are you a business book person?

Mara: Yes, most recently I’ve been reading a couple of HBRs business books which are compilations of great articles – HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself and HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Managing People – and my personal favorite which I’m having my entire team read right now is How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Craig: Cool. So we usually ask people about lessons learned. Maybe you could break that up into first employee learnings and general learnings?

Mara: Sure. So learnings from early days, first. I think that the most successful people that I’ve seen in startup settings are people that have no ego. They just know that shit needs to get done. You really just need to put your head down and figure things out and just make it work. So hauling boxes to UPS or cleaning glasses or when we got a batch of bad glasses, going through them and realizing that they were all bad and counting them up and then sending them back. So you just need to make the time and you just need to do it and you need to figure out how to do it in the best way. But working at a startup is really hard and it’s more than a hundred hours a week. It’s all consuming and you just have to be ready for it.

I think that those are sort of just my general learnings from startup life. It’s not for everyone. And I guess in terms of growing into the position that I am today and moving forward, I think part of the learnings that I’ve taken away from the last six and a half years in terms of hiring for your team, is that you need to focus more on the behaviors that you’re hiring for.

We really believe in hiring passionate, curious, proactive people rather than people that have the specific skills or experience that maybe you’re hoping to get because in the end, if the person doesn’t fit into at least those three behaviors at Warby Parker, they’re just not going to be successful. And we are a company that moves quickly and we want to be able to depend on everyone to be a problem solver and to think in a proactive manner. You can always teach the other things. I can always give somebody exposure to going to a conference or sitting down with somebody from a different company that has done these specific roles before. But you really do need to hire for behaviors and if you make a mistake, it’s better to call it quits sooner rather than later.

Craig: And what about hiring people that aren’t like you?

Mara: It’s also a very much of a learning process and you have to learn how to manage to everyone’s personality. You have to understand what you’re hiring that person for and then how to manage them in the best way to use those skills that you really hired them for and then supplement what they don’t have.

Craig: Last question. Would you consider yourself a good manipulator of people?

Mara: That is a really bad way of putting it.

Craig: [Laughter]

Mara: You mean like influencing people?

Craig: No. I mean, you can call it whatever you want but I think “manipulation” is unfairly cast in a negative light and is different. I think it’s actually one of the strongest skill sets someone can have. I think “influence” might work toward a similar output but the input is different . Anyway, I look around and there are certain people that are obviously good at it and certain people that aren’t great and certain people where you’re like, “I don’t know if you’re really good or terrible.”

Mara: So, honestly, I’ve learned how to be better in the last six years. I know initially the whole political games in an organization killed me. It really killed me to think you had to speak in a way or you had to manipulate people to get your job done. But through the advice of a colleague I read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie and learned that it’s not necessarily about manipulating people to get your job done, but how to influence others in a way that everyone wins in the end.

It’s hard, but a lot of practice has helped me get better. I think I can still get better, but I’ve definitely made a lot of strides in the last few years. I feel like it’s something that people just have to continue working on…

Craig: Well, I mean, perhaps this is obvious but these things, these interviews, are like therapy sessions for me as I’m figuring shit out.

Mara: [Laughter]

Craig: [Laughter] But really, that challenge of figuring out how steer a group of people that you may not completely vibe with is fascinating to me. Anyway, this has been super fun. Thanks so much for your time.

Mara: This was a lot of fun.

Craig: Totally. Thanks Mara!

[sneha-321]

Do you know that there are around 12 to 24 million eCommerce sites across the globe? And more and more are being created every single day. eCommerce sites have opened countless opportunities for startups by enabling businesses to have an excellent customer base. 

 What does stat say? 

 Ecommerce sales opportunities are increasing rapidly. According to a survey, eCommerce accounted for $ 2.3 trillion in sales in 2017, which is estimated to get double to $ 4.5 trillion by 2021.

 As a result, developing an e-commerce store becomes the need of the hour to reflect an ideal mix between aesthetics and functionality. But which platform would be the best?

 There are many popular eCommerce platforms available, but Shopify is a preferred option for startups who prefer simplicity and rich features as well as quality and efficiency.

 If you're not a tech-savvy and want to spruce up a marketplace like eBay or Amazon, Shopify can be the best bet. Through this article, I will describe the top reasons why Shopify is best for startups.  

 So, without wasting any more time, let’s dig in!

What Exactly is Shopify?

 Shopify is the most prominent eCommerce platform where you are looking for everything you need or your eCommerce store while having the most straightforward requirements to use.

 It gives you a set of useful features that make your eCommerce website function up to par and effectively increase it to a higher level. 

 The eCommerce platform serves as a complete bundle for your eCommerce website. It lets you build different pages with an inbuilt online editor that are sold in multiple places through the integration of local language support and customize online stores. 

 The Shopify platform empowers more than 500,000 businesses in 175 countries across the globe. Without any doubt, it is a one-stop-shop for eCommerce merchants who are willing to leverage their online store. 

What Makes Shopify an Ideal eCommerce Platform for Startups?

 Business owners using Shopify do not have to worry about server maintenance, hosting their shopping carts, and presenting their brand to potential customers.

 Shopify's supporting apps that are available to its users help business owners manage their entire eCommerce chain from stock management to customer contact management.

 The humble journey born out of the need to design an eCommerce platform that is not rigid for business owners' needs is what makes Shopify stand out as an eCommerce solution for startups.

 There are plenty of reasons why Shopify is the best eCommerce platform for startups. Let's take an in-depth look at why startups would benefit a lot from using Shopify.

 #1: Easy to set up and use

 Do you know that more than 1.2 million people are using the Shopify backend platform worldwide? Indeed, Shopify is a top-rated eCommerce platform as it reduces the burden and complexities of building a shopping website from scratch. 

 You can create a Shopify account without any hassle and use the available toolset to set up an online store without any technical background quickly. 

 No matter where you start, as a novice user or already a retail store owner, Shopify can help turn your retail store details into an online store, making it easy for your customers to shop online. It can provide a great shopping experience.

 Once your store setting is complete, it is ready to go live and start selling. At this stage, many businesspersons who suffer from nerve-cracking challenges from store management typically take this as an essential factor while choosing an eCommerce platform. You can also contact ecommerce development companies in India to get the best-in-class solutions for your business.

 #2 Comes with Customizable Designs

 We cannot deny that any online store's visual appearance and design are essential values for any business owner. If a shop is shabby and tedious, the business will soon end up with empty shopping carts.

 Startups looking to build an online store on Shopify have the freedom to choose from several ready-made templates and themes. If you want more themes after a while, you can still hire eCommerce developers to optimize it for less, as Shopify will have already provided you with the necessary tools and won't start from scratch.

 Over 500,000+ online stores are successfully hosted on Shopify and provide solutions that they cannot find anywhere else. There is no such reason that your business shouldn’t feature on Shopify regardless of the products or services you provide.

 #3 Reliable and Secure

Shopify is a global hosted service, meaning they have people monitoring their network 24/7 for any attack, and they can help you deal with any problem. 

It provides the best service in terms of security as well as integration between payment providers. With the built-in speed checker, it enables users to complete payments at nominal loading times.

 Besides, their add-ons have a certain standard, and you will not risk giving Trojans or viruses. You can also opt for SSL or PCI compliance to accept credit cards and store sensitive information without knowing how it works. 

 Other sources also present it. However, they cannot offer you this level of security and reliability for the same price. Other companies will charge you more.

 #4: No Hosting issue

 If you want to start your business online, web hosting can be a real challenge. Shopping cart hosting demands certain technical support levels and much more free time, which some startups are particularly short of.

 Shopify is a cloud-based setup and hosted solution where you don't have to think about servers or databases. You can easily access your store from anywhere with admin login details and an internet connectivity without any kind of setup.

 The most important thing is that it supports you in handling payment gateway, making your work easy and seamless.

 #5  Multi-payment Gateway Integration

Maintaining a valid payment process is an essential step for eCommerce stores to get paid by customers. Shopify offers a variety of payment methods. In addition to being integrated with a lot of payment gateways, it provides its own as well

Its payment gateway has no transaction fees and offers low credit card fees. You do not need a merchant account to use this gateway.

 If your customers can't find their preferred payment methods in your store, they'll likely leave their cart and leave you. Even if they go to another option and continue to check out, they are likely to be dissatisfied and might come back to your store.

 Shopify offers more than one hundred payment options, including almost all widely accepted payments, including PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Stripe, and many other third-party payment integrations.

 If you don't want to lose your audience or create an excellent experience for them, then Shopify is the best bet for you.

 #6 App Integrations

 Shopify has a whole community of experts and designers who have created applications that startups can add to their eCommerce options.

 The platform has splendid customization capabilities as it can be integrated with apps with great ease. It means that the seller can easily add some additional functionality to their store and increase its value to a greater extent.

 Even as Shopify works on adding more appropriate features to enhance the user experience and may not be the right solution in the market, its App Store gives it an upper hand over its rivals.

 The value added from the App Store makes it more reliable and more compatible than other eCommerce solutions available in the market. A large variety of applications are available on Shopify and which help to increase the functionality of Shopify.

 #7 Huge Collection of Themes 

 One of the amazing functionality of Shopify is that it provides thousands of ready-to-use themes for its users. You have the facility to browse multiple themes with different style, design, functionality, and pricing at Shopify Theme Store. You can  choose the best theme for your online store.

 As both free and paid options are available there, so you can also make your choice based on cost parameters.

Source

 Besides, Shopify categorizes its themes so that you can find suitable themes without any hassle. It offers themes for a wide range of industries, from art and photography, clothing and fashion, jewelry and accessories, electronics, food and beverage, health and beauty, to toys and games, and many more.

 Urbana Sacs is an elegantly handcrafted store powered by Shopify using the Brooklyn template. It is a reliable, mobile-friendly, and customizable Shopify theme used by over 1 million online businesses worldwide.

 By using Urbana, you can create a dynamic product grid, show multiple product images on the homepage without messing it up, and easily feature videos from Youtube.

Bottom Lines

 Above are the seven most agreed qualities that make Shopify the best eCommerce platform for startups. Shopify becomes the best option for startups and young entrepreneurs as it offers a significantly lower price. 

 If you are thinking of starting your business, Shopify is an ideal option. So, keeping all the above benefits of Shopify in mind, you can hire developers in India for ecommerce development and other solutions to revolutionize your online business.

I hope the article proves to be fruitful for you.

Original source

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/applying-ai-to-bring-a-better-you-to-video-meetings-tech-buzz/

Applying AI to Bring a 'Better You' to Video Meetings | Tech Buzz

Last week had presentations from three of the significant processor companies, each planning to revolutionize the PC market. This revolution was an immense change from just a couple of years ago when everyone and their brother seemed to think that PCs were dead.

One of the few positive impacts from this pandemic is that PCs have nearly sold out everywhere, resulting in unprecedented demand for a class of products that had gone into decline as a result of insufficient marketing.

Let’s talk about improvements in how we appear on videoconferences this week, and we’ll close with my product of the week — the updated Ooler water-cooled mattress pad that’s been helping me sleep during this pandemic.

The Cause of the PC Decline

There is a common segment that I understand is in most college marketing programs and was undoubtedly in mine, which talks about the problem with marketing. That problem is that operational executives don’t understand it and will cut marketing costs to save money, not realizing that the lagging impact will be sharply reduced sales.

My lesson happened far earlier than in college, when I was a child speaking with my grandfather who was a CEO in the petrochemical industry. He told me the story of a train trip where William Wrigley Jr., the founder and CEO of the Wrigley Company (of chewing gum and candy fame), was riding with a young intern.

The Intern asked why Wrigley spent so much on marketing, given that his company was the segment leader, and sales were impressively high. Wrigley replied by asking “since the train was already traveling at 60 mph, why don’t they stop shoveling in coal because the train is going fast enough?” The answer is that the train will eventually run out of steam and stop, and that is exactly what happens in business.

Ironically, Wrigley, which was dominant when I was a child, is almost unknown today because the company stopped marketing. That’s what happened to the PC market.

In the 1990s, we had tech TV shows. The companies had commercials and were marketing heavily, ergo buyers were far more likely to prioritize buying a new PC. When the PC companies cut back on marketing to focus on price competition, the shows died, demand dwindled, and the result was a declining market which now has been revitalized by the pandemic.

However, without demand generation, this good news will turn bad because we’ve now saturated the market with new laptops — meaning it could be 5 to 8 years before the majority of folks want to replace them — unless the PC firms go back to creating and marketing compelling offers.

This problem isn’t an easy fix because, thanks to streaming, folks aren’t watching TV commercials as much as they used to, and Google and Facebook have made marketing and advertising far more difficult in terms of large-scale awareness. Although they have made it a ton easier to target, so done right this problem could be mitigated.

Last week, Qualcomm, Intel, and Nvidia may have showcased the way to do this by focusing much of their new offerings on making you look better; and looking better, because it’s connected to status, could be an excellent foundation for driving demand.

Qualcomm, Intel and Nvidia: Making You Feel Pretty

There is a song from the musical West Side Story called I Feel Pretty that’s running through my head right now. The fact is that people tend to judge us by our appearance, and for a lot of folks on calls, that appearance has degraded sharply this year. Wrinkled clothing, no makeup, partial beards, the hair on men down to their shoulders, and work locations that are sloppy, dingy, dark and unattractive are all everyday experiences in large Microsoft Teams and Zoom events (these two offerings are trending to become new standards).

Also, because of where the camera is situated on monitors and laptops, we never seem to be looking at the people to whom we are speaking. (In-screen cameras are on the way and will arrive on smartphones shortly, but haven’t been announced yet for PCs yet.)

These appearance degradations subtly or overtly devalue what colleagues think of us — from vendors, to co-workers, to managers and executives. This is undoubtedly changing our promotion and raise opportunities for the worse, and making us look unprofessional. While we don’t necessarily need to feel as pretty as Julie Andrews did in that linked song, our appearance does reflect on our confidence; and knowing we look our best should improve not only how others perceive our competence, but our own confidence as well.

All three vendors showcased technology that would improve how people see you. Nvidia seemed to go the farthest but has not yet focused all of their technology on the problem.

The 8cx platform from Qualcomm has a unique AI feature that adjusts your eyes in real time, so to the remote participant it appears that you are looking directly at them. It’s critically important to look people in the eye. I trained in negotiation, and one of the rules is that you want to look people in the eye to be taken as sincere; if you aren’t doing that, you appear untrustworthy. Our current camera placement makes it almost impossible to look someone in the eye, and athat subtly makes people mistrust you as a result.

Qualcomm also had sound improvements that should make it easier for the parties to understand each other. It’s interesting to note that Qualcomm’s approach is focused on helping you hear better, while the others are focused on helping others better hear you.

Intel, with its Tiger Lake and Evo platforms, is integrating artificial backgrounds into their solution, along with vastly improved noise cancellation which eliminates the annoying sounds that tend to drift into meetings from home offices. This combination should make you appear more professional during these meetings; and as the technology advances, may convince buyers to cycle their PCs faster and thus help prevent another sharp decline in future sales.

Nvidia had a similar approach to Intel with its powerful GeForce RTX 30 launch. The company packaged its solution under a Broadcast app designed to not only help with video calls, but to assist podcasts, and capabilities that allow your camera to track you better so that your head stays in the center of the frame — which should help manifest professionalism during video conference calls.

But where Nvidia potentially took it to the next level is Omniverse Machinima, where you can use game assets to create a movie and automatically animate digital avatars. If this technology were applied, which I expect it eventually will be, you could create 3D scans of yourself dressed for business, and then use your camera to sync them with your body. Then you’d never again have to dress, put on makeup, or even get out of bed for a meeting — while still appearing well dressed and groomed.

Personal Presentation the New Battleground

I do not doubt that Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm will not only continue to advance their technologies to make you look better on video calls, but they will emulate each other’s tech features to create parity.

For now, on paper, Nvidia is out in front. But this is anyone’s race, and since appearance is essential to all of us, this could be a race that returns faster churn to the PC market to create an arms race on virtual physical improvements. It also suggests that, once this matures, there will be a ton of folks who you’ll be unable to talk into coming back to the office because their actual appearance will have significantly drifted from what you’ve seen on the screen.

Lastly, a related aside: Video dating will increasingly lead to in-person disappointment. Though, I think it would be fun to create a 3D avatar of my 23-pound Maine Coon cat and have him virtually attend meetings with my voice. At my age, I’m more interested in having fun than getting that next promotion.

I’ve made the chiliPAD and its follow-on the Ooler (around US$699 for one person, $1,399 to 1,499 for two) my product of the week a few times now. But one of the problems has been the pad, which tends to stain and is hard to clean. It also didn’t breathe well, resulting in it being hot when the Ooler wasn’t on.

Well, the folks at Chili Technology just did a partial refresh and sent me the new pad. It is incredible in that while it still has one side similar to the old pad, if you flip it, the other side resists stains and breaths far better. So if you, like me, tend to be hot at night, it’s more effective at lowering how warm you feel.

OOLER Sleep System

One of the things I like about the Ooler (costs about $200 more than the chiliPAD) over the chiliPAD is that you can set a script where it’s cool at night but toasty in the morning, so you wake up to being warm rather than an alarm.

I like to sleep with the window open at night, and, even on a warm night, the Ooler makes this possible. It uses water as the heat transfer mechanism, similar to how race drivers and astronauts cool their suits. I should point out that you need to use distilled water, or the minerals in the water will build up in the system and cause it to fail.

The new pad is an excellent improvement to the Ooler, so I thought I’d refresh it as my product of the week. Oh, and as a side note, it is kind of cool that my gaming systems and my bed are both water-cooled.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.

Rob Enderle has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2003. His areas of interest include AI, autonomous driving, drones, personal technology, emerging technology, regulation, litigation, M&E, and technology in politics. He has an MBA in human resources, marketing and computer science. He is also a certified management accountant. Enderle currently is president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group, a consultancy that serves the technology industry. He formerly served as a senior research fellow at Giga Information Group and Forrester. Email Rob.

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments); if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '535191343593734'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); <!--//<![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=502379303161829"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));//]]>//-->

[preciousmetals0]

Invest Smarter in 2020 With Our Experts’ Insights

Invest Smarter in 2020 With Our Experts’ Insights:

We have a new name for this daily publication — Smart Profits Daily.

We hope you like the new look!

As part of the redesign, we decided to move our Market Insights video series to Mondays in order to preview what’s to come in the week ahead.

That means we can now bring you our expert analysis before important market events happen … not after they’re already old news.

You can catch Market Insights every Monday. If you haven’t yet, make sure you subscribe to the Smart Profits Daily YouTube channel.

Next week, Ian King and Jeff Yastine will share their thoughts on how the crisis in Iran will shake up the global financial markets. They have a lot to talk about, so don’t miss this special edition of Market Insights.

And in case you didn’t get a chance to read all of this week’s content, you can check it out below now:

Our Big 2020 Outlook: Why You Should Stay Bullish As 2020 rolls around, it’s time to prepare your portfolio.

That’s why we decided to move your weekly Market Insights videos to Mondays! This way, you’ll get a jump-start on the week (and year) ahead.

In this week’s Market Insights, experts Jeff Yastine and Ian King tell you exactly what you should pay attention to in the new year — from election shake-ups to corrections and the coming jobs report.

And how, despite the noise, it still pays to be bullish going into the new year.

3 Must-Own Stocks for the New Drone Economy Before Amazon could jump-start e-commerce in 1995, it needed internet browser software first.

Before Apple’s iPhone could revolutionize social media in 2007, faster 4G wireless connection speeds were a necessity.

Before Netflix could change our video viewing habits, cloud storage had to come first.

The first fortunes in America’s drone economy will be made the same way — by building the infrastructure that today’s tech biggies and hundreds of startups will use in the new era.

Rare Signal Alert — Grab 490% Gains in 2 Months Analysts track how many “participation awards” are handed out in the stock market. Each stock trading above its 200-day moving average increases the value of the popular market breadth indicator.

It doesn’t matter if the stock is 0.1% above its moving average or 20% above. Just participating in the trend pushes the indicator higher.

When too many stocks receive these participation awards, the stock market actually turns down.

In today’s article, I’ll explain why that happens.

I’ll also show you how you can trade a market pullback to grab a 490% gain in less than two months.

3 Beaten-Down Stocks to Buy in 2020

The “Dogs of the Dow” is an investment strategy.

It says to buy the 10 highest-dividend-paying stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average each year.

Over the past decade, the 10-stock Dogs thesis returned 10.7% per year.

That’s decent performance. But you could do better by investing in the S&P 500 Index.

In the spirit of the Dogs, I want to present another idea to you.

It’s another way to find some beaten-down stocks as we head into the new year…

Invest in the Next Apple ASAP — Here’s How Every $1,000 invested in Apple at the beginning of the 2010s turned into roughly $10,000 on New Year’s Eve this week.

It’s hard to see this kind of massive growth because our brains aren’t programmed to think exponentially.

There’s a famous 13th-century story that best explains exponential growth and why it’s hard to fathom.

Here’s how it applies to this new decade’s biggest tech trends…

Thank you for reading Smart Profits Daily this week. We’re looking forward to helping you become a smarter and wealthier investor in 2020.

Regards,

Jay Goldberg

Assistant Managing Editor, Banyan Hill Publishing

P.S. There’s a radical new technology that could transform the internet completely. And in Ian King’s special presentation, you’ll get all the details … including how you could ride this mega trend to HUGE gains. Click here to watch it now.