4 Ağustos 2015 Salı

Women Challenge Gender Stereotypes With #ILookLikeAnEngineer

After an engineer from California posted a photo of herself with the hashtag, women descended onto social media to contribute their photos and badass skills.

On Aug. 1, Isis Anchalee published a short essay in Medium in which she shared her experiences as a female engineer.

On Aug. 1, Isis Anchalee published a short essay in Medium in which she shared her experiences as a female engineer.

Isis Anchalee / Via medium.com

Anchalee, who works in the Northern California Bay Area, spoke of the mistreatment she has received both in the workplace—a colleague once threw dollar bills at her during work hours—and as a result of an engineering recruitment ad that features her photo, shown above.

The 22-year-old writes:

There is a significant lack of empathy and insight towards recognizing that their "playful/harmless" behavior is responsible for making others inappropriately uncomfortable. This industry's culture fosters an unconscious lack of sensitivity towards those who do not fit a certain mold. I'm sure that every other women and non-male identifying person in this field has a long list of mild to extreme personal offenses that they've just had to tolerate. I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble, fired or ruin anyone's life. I just want to make it clear that we are all humans, and there are certain patterns of behavior that no one should have to tolerate while in a professional environment.

Near the bottom of her essay, Anchalee posted this photo of herself.

Near the bottom of her essay, Anchalee posted this photo of herself.

She holds a sign that reads, "I help build enterprise software. #ILookLikeAnEngineer," followed by her Twitter handle.

Isis Anchalee / Via medium.com


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3 Ağustos 2015 Pazartesi

Don't Want To Give Up Luxury For An Apple Watch? Finally, A Way To Have Both

Class in the front, party in the back.

Nico Gerard / Via nicogerard.com

It's a familiar dilemma: You possess a $10,000 watch. But you're also fond of the new Apple Watch, with its shiny screen and gentle buzzes. And wearing two gadgets on separate wrists just seems so gauche. What to do?

Nico Gerard has you covered. Starting today, the company is taking pre-orders for a timepiece that sports a classic-looking luxury watch on one side of the band — and, on the underside, is a 38-millimeter Apple Watch.

This is not a joke.

"Before Nico Gerard, people were forced to choose," Adam Pluemer, president of the Sunnyvale, California, company, told BuzzFeed News in an interview. "You had to pick whether you were going to put on your luxury timepiece or your Apple Watch or smart device. Our oracle is to make sure our clientele is uncompromised and has the ability to do both. "

The uber-watch, known as the Pinnacle, is made in stainless steel and 18-karat gold. Prices range from $9,300 to $112,000, not including the $200 cost of joining the waiting list and the unquantifiable agony of waiting up to a year for the device to ship.

Pluemer is confident there is an underserved market for a device such as the Pinnacle given that he'd buy one himself.

"The core of the idea was the luxury watches that I did own, I didn't want to give them up for the Apple Watches," said Pluemer, whose collection includes a Breitling Navitimer, a Blancpain, and a TAG Heuer.

Wearing the Apple Watch on the inside of the wrist preserves privacy, Pluemer says, "so someone's not reading a text message across the conference-room table." Checking notifications is easier, too. "You can look really quickly at your Apple Watch and see this is an email from someone I can respond to later," Pluemer said.

But is it comfortable? Yes, Pluemer says. "The inside of the band is actually shorter than the outside of the band so it sits comfortably on the wrist."

Nico Gerard's consumers will ideally wear their two-in-one timepieces in situations like this: "The tranquil morning dew is cool and the fresh air is still. The dawn of a new day glows red with promise. You feel the warmth of the sun's rays wrap around you as the sun crests the horizon. The morning beauty fills your heart with joy. The red face of the Nico Gerard Sunrise PINNACLE lets you experience the excitement of a sunrise as this unique work of art graces your wrist."

Last fall, Pleumer was piloting a food-centered social networking platform when Apple announced the Apple Watch. The watch's sensors intrigued Pluemer, a biomedical engineer by training and a lifelong timepiece lover. So he started the watch company in November along with four other people, including his cousin, Nicolas Gerard, for whom the company is named. The Pinnacle is its first product.

Apple does not play a role in Nico Gerard's operations, Pleumer says, but has a $17,000 watch of its own.

"There's a class of user that wants a luxury timepiece, a fashion timepiece, but they also are a fan of technology," Pleumer said. "This was the solution we came up with for exactly that."

Nico Gerard / Via nicogerard.com



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Twitter Experiments With A ‘News’ Tab

Twitter wants to make its best stuff easier to find.

Starting today, some U.S. Twitter users will see a News tab appear in their Twitter apps.

The experimental feature, part of Twitter's effort to make its best content easy to find, inhabits the middle tab of the app's navigation bar and brings up a list of headlines that are trending on the platform. When you click a headline, you're taken to a story screen with an image, headline, block of text from the story, and the top tweets discussing it.

"We're experimenting with a news experience on iOS and Android as we continue to explore new ways to surface the best content to users," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement.

Between the News tab and Twitter's still-unreleased Project Lightning -- which will curate tweets from live events -- the vision for the next iteration of the company's platform is slowly coming into focus. Both of these products grab the best tweets from Twitter's raw feed and present them in more digestible formats. Think of it this way: Twitter's raw feed is turning into the product's engine. And that engine is powering mini-products with what is perhaps the best live feed of information in the world.

The News tab could lower Twitter's barrier to entry a bit, making its platform and culture more understandable to hundreds of millions perplexed by it. Instead of leading with tweets, the tab introduces people to Twitter with something everyone understands: headlines. Tweets come after.

Though no ads currently accompany this experiment, Twitter's News tab could have significant revenue implications for the company if its implemented as a core platform feature. One of the main issues advertisers have with Twitter is that its conversational nature makes it difficult to insert ads into the stream without appearing to have barged into a discussion. The News tab could give advertisers a less conversational experience with defined topics they can plan around. Sports news, for instance, would likely be of interest to a sporting equipment advertiser.

The experiment, which is already live in Japan, is starting out with a list of pre-approved publishers that number in the double digits. Though Twitter hasn't discussed the possibility of creating an Instant-Articles-style product, the News tab could certainly set the stage for something along those lines.



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The Surprising Instagram Accounts Each Presidential Candidate's Followers Most Commonly Follow

Chris Christie’s followers most commonly follow Khloe Kardashian.

Who do the followers of the 2016 presidential candidates on Instagram follow the most in common? The answers might surprise you.

Instagram offered BuzzFeed News a look at their data results analyzing the candidates.

Take a look at the results below (or skip to the bottom for the full results!).

Followers of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush most commonly follow...

Followers of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush most commonly follow...

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

Followers of The Donald most commonly follow...

Followers of The Donald most commonly follow...

Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images


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AT&T Becomes First Provider To Offer TV And Wireless Bundling

Shortly after AT&T officially acquired DirecTV, the carrier is offering TV and mobile plans on a single bill.

Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters

The first ever TV-wireless packages are here, and they're being offered by AT&T, just weeks after the carrier officially bought DirecTV for $48.5 billion.

The novel bundling, the company says, is one way consumers are benefitting from the DirecTV acquisition, which made AT&T the largest pay-TV provider in the world.

One of the main packages offered is a $200 monthly plan, combining HD TV with unlimited talk and text and 10GB of wireless data that can be shared with up to four wireless lines and four TVs.

Other deals revolving around the signature all-in-one plan include a $300 bill credit for TV customers who add a wireless plan, and a monthly combined bill discount.

"Today is the first of many planned moves to enable our customers to enjoy a premium entertainment experience almost anywhere," said Brad Bentley, AT&T's executive vice president and chief marketing officer. "We're going to deliver more TV and entertainment choices to more screens — when and where our customers want it."

As mobile use and internet streaming continue to shift the consumption of entertainment away from the living room, the company hopes its unique bundling offers will lure people away from competitors, and add to its 26 million TV customers in the U.S.

The Federal Communications Commission, which approved the acquisition last month, expects the newly bolstered AT&T to increase competition by driving down prices and expanding offerings.

The Commission regarded the deal, which was first proposed in 2014, as serving the public interest, believing AT&T would be in a better position to challenge incumbent cable companies.

LINK: AT&T Buys DirecTV For $67 Billion In Second Major Deal To Reshape TV Industry



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31 Temmuz 2015 Cuma

Twitter Product Executives Are Leaving In A Hurry

Interim Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said his product team’s shortcomings are “unacceptable.” Now, they’re walking out the door.

Jack Dorsey is experiencing his first wave of executive departures since returning to Twitter as interim CEO earlier this month.

Dorsey lost three top product execs this week. On Tuesday, right after the company's earnings results were announced, news broke that Director of Product Management Todd Jackson and Head of Growth Christian Oestlien were on the way out.

And then, on Friday, Twitter confirmed to Re/Code that Trevor O'Brien, the product lead in charge of the company's apps, is also leaving.

The departures could be little shakers that amount to nothing, or tremors foreshadowing a larger tectonic shift.

Dorsey hasn't hid his dissatisfaction with Twitter's product efforts. He's also made clear that he's willing to rethink the social media platform's fundamentals in order to grow the service.

"Product initiatives we'd mentioned in previous earnings calls, like Instant Timelines and Logged-Out experiences, have not yet had meaningful impact on growing our audience or participation," Dorsey said during the earnings call earlier this week. "This is unacceptable and we're not happy about it."

Both Oestlien and Jackson are headed to new jobs — Oestlien to YouTube and Jackson to Dropbox. There's no word yet on what O'Brien's plans are.

The moves didn't happen overnight, but the wheels begin turning during times of uncertainty: That head hunter you turned down a few times all of a sudden gets a few minutes. One conversation turns into another. And then it's decision time.

As Dorsey sets out to remake the company, he's losing a fair deal of institutional knowledge. But for someone who's said, "I want us to question everything to make it better," that may not be a bad thing.



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Famous Silicon Valley Matchmaker's Charity Is Not Actually A Charity

Instead of charging a fee, Pari Livermore asks clients to send donations to her pet charities. Problem is, one of them was not a charity at all and donations went straight to her home address.

Pari Livermore at her home in San Rafael, California, on Oct. 30, 2007.

Darcy Padilla/The New York Times

Pari Livermore, a matchmaker to many Silicon Valley elites, has become famous for the unconventional bargain she strikes with her clients: Instead of paying her directly for her services, they instead donate to her chosen charities. Glowing profiles in the New York Times and GQ, among others, have attested to the thousands of singles who paid to attend her "Red & White" parties and to private clients who paid $10,000 a year or more for her services. She often says her introductions have led to hundreds of marriages.

Over the years, Livermore has championed a variety of charities, but at least since 2007 she has directed some clients to support an organization called Spotlight on Heroes, which she described as a charity helping underserved kids in Northern California and other causes.

But BuzzFeed News has found that Spotlight on Heroes is not in fact a charity.


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