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Monday, April 30, 2012
TRENDING STORIES IN BUSINESS & MARKETING Winklevoss Twins Start Up a Venture Capital Firm [VIDEO] How to Leverage Applicant Tracking Systems To Land a Job Forget Emoticons -- Skype Wants You to Use 'Humoticons' ALL STORIES IN BUSINESS & MARKETING Nokia Looks to Sell Vertu Brand for $265 Million [REPORT] 5:43:56 AM Stan Schroeder Nokia is in advanced talks to sell its UK-based luxury brand Vertu to private equity group Permira, the Financial Times reports citing sources familiar with the matter. If the sale goes through, Nokia might raise some ?200 million ($265 million). Permira is a European private equity firm which advises funds with a committed capital of approximately ?20 billion. Vertu is a luxury brand which sells limited edition devices with prices as high as several hundred thousand dollars. Those $265 million won't save Nokia, but it will definitely come in handy for the Finnish giant, which recently reported a $1.8 billion loss for Q1 2012. Magazines Get Serious About Ecommerce Sunday, April 29, 2012 7:15 PM Lauren Indvik Magazine publishers are rapidly getting serious about ecommerce. Earlier this month, Time Out New York, a weekly print and digital magazine covering entertainment in New York City, began selling event tickets through its website and iOS apps. And last week, Hearst-owned Real Simple magazine released a mobile gift guide that allows users to shop directly from the app. The next day, Elle magazine launched a shoppable trend guide on Facebook that encouraged users to make purchases on advertisers' websites. These initiatives are enabling lifestyle magazines to explore new revenue streams as their mainstay moneymaker, print advertising, continues to decline. It's about time. Online retailers, as we've explored, have been encroaching on magazines' territory for years now. They've hired top magazine talent -- for instance, former Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl now directs editorial at Gilt Taste, and Esquire UK editor-in-chief Jeremy Langmead is the editor of Mr Porter -- and paired them with retail veterans to develop a new kind of online shopping experience, one that uses magazine-like editorials and photo spreads to drive visitors to purchase. At Gilt Taste, for example, a story and recipe for "perfectly tender chicken" is sidelined with links to purchase Poussin Chickens, $55.95 for a set of eight. A "how to" fashion spread features items that are two clicks from a shopping cart on Park & Bond. These sites don't come close to competing with lifestyle magazines in terms of depth and breadth of content, but they are getting there. Men could just as easily turn to Park & Bond or Mr Porter now for style advice and inspiration as Esquire or Details -- and finish their shopping in one go. Bridging the Editorial Divide It's been relatively easy for retailers to move into the content space, particularly because they haven't had to entertain illusions of editorial objectivity. Editorial has from the beginning been posited as a bonus on these sites, a complement to the shopping experience designed to inspire and entertain shoppers. Magazine publishers, on the other hand, have struggled to bridge this divide. How do you maintain readers' trust once you begin recommending products for which you receive a cut of every sale? Or, in the case of Time Out New York, if you become a retailer yourself? The trick, it appears, is to position it as a service. Vogue partnered with retailer Moda Operandi during New York Fashion Week last September to "enable" readers to pre-order fashions directly from the runway -- a partnership that came about through the magazine's close relationship with Moda's executive team. (Cofounder Lauren Santo Domingo is also a contributing editor at Vogue.) Real Simple's gift guide is positioned similarly. The app features about 50 products from a range of retailers. Instead of sending users to third-party websites to make multiple purchases -- which is what the vast majority of magazines do with the products mentioned on their websites or on their apps -- users shop and check out directly from the app in one seamless, time-efficient experience. "We're cutting the effort of having to hunt down the products" Real Simple editor-in-chief Kathleen Harris said in an interview with Mashable. "We're offering that service on top of our great editorial." Disclosures were also essential for Vogue and Real Simple, since both receive(d) cuts of every sale. Time Out New York's approach is slightly different. The weekly print-based publication has set up a ticket-selling shop as a separate entity, which users can access from a sidebar on timeout.com/newyork. All of these seem to me like promising approaches: They've been smartly positioned, offering a range of merchandise without seeming to in any way compromise editorial integrity. Now we'll have to see whether they're profitable and how they evolve -- and if they can move quickly enough into the space to outperform their retail-and-content competitors. Image courtesy of Flickr, khawkins04 Students Studying Abroad: Take Advantage of Video Job Interviews Sunday, April 29, 2012 6:26 PM Josh Tolan Josh Tolan is the CEO of Spark Hire, which combines a video job board and online interviewing platform to enrich interaction between job seekers and employers. Connect with him and Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter. Studying literature at Oxford or finance at the London School of Economics; strolling by the Siene or sunbathing on the Italian Riviera coast -- these are all possibilities for the college student studying abroad. And these opportunities will give them experiences that will change their lives and memories that will last a lifetime. But is it worth it to study abroad if it means you'll be missing out on employment opportunities back home? To put it simply, yes! Many organizations are now using video interviews to hire candidates instead of "old-fashioned" meetings, so take advantage of a remote interview. Teresa Tilles, a recruiter for Fairfax, Virg.-based Balfour Beatty Construction asserts, "Companies recruit at colleges all over the United States for positions everywhere. Students and companies are so computer-savvy and it makes sense, especially if students have to pay their way to an interview or are overseas for a semester but hoping to join the workforce when they return home." Here are some things to consider when you're interviewing remotely. Would you ever do a remote interview while abroad? Let us know in the comments. Advantages As Tilles says, "It is often cheaper to record our interviews rather than fly the candidates in, put them up in hotels, add car rentals and meals. And vice versa, if candidates have to incur the expense to attend an interview/career fair, this is often easier on the wallet." Another advantage of a video interview is that it makes it possible for both parties (the interviewer and the interviewee) to accommodate their schedules. The company decides what questions to ask the job seekers and puts them in the interview package. And when it's convenient for the applicant, he or she can open up the video interview module, record responses and submit them. Are They Effective? While meeting an employer in-person is the most effective way to make a first impression, video interviews are an adequate way to interface because it still promotes face-time. "It truly feels like an on-site interview, you can see the person, see their body language and see their professionalism," says Tilles. Jennifer Flaa, the CEO of media training company Vettanna ToGo, agrees. She says that although video interviews are a new addition to the hiring process, the fundamentals of interviewing are the same. Poor body language and careless presentation can ruin a video interview as easily as they can derail a face-to-face conversation. According to Flaa, you need to be yourself because you still want to project an authentic representation of you, a potential employee. "Being self-conscious is your number one enemy," she explains. "It makes you nervous and it makes you act fake. Think about the questions, think about the other person, or imagine you are talking to a good friend who is nodding and agreeing with everything you say." Candidates Can Breathe Easy Even while abroad, jobseekers can have faith they won't be forgotten about. By utilizing key features such as recording answers to screening questions and creating a profile video, candidates can provide interested companies with a concrete and accessible video they can easily share and keep in place for future open positions. The Wave of the Future? "We just started a $1 billion project in Utah and interviewed students from George Mason University here in Fairfax a few months ago," says Tilles. "They met with our on-site human resources director and our company president, then we continued the interview via recordings with the vice president in Utah. He hired two students who interviewed this way and they start this summer." If you're debating giving up the undeniable opportunities you have to enrich your life by studying abroad so that you won't be the last one in your class to be hired, end your internal argument and go. After all, can you think of a better way to job hunt then turning on your laptop while sitting at a café in Paris, eating a croissant in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower? Social Media Job Listings Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we've selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting! Community & Marketing Manager at Dashlane in New York Internet Marketing Intern at Vertex Innovations in Littleton, Colo. Social Media Manager at 180la in Los Angeles Image courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL 7 Easy Ways to Speed Up Your Business Computers Sunday, April 29, 2012 12:50 PM Chris Cope Chris Cope is CEO of SlimWare Utilities. The company is founded on the premise that cloud computing and crowd-sourced applications will revolutionize the performance of personal computing. Few activities are more frustrating than staring at your old computer, helplessly willing it to move faster. In business, and especially when it comes to small businesses, a slow computer will not help your bottom line. Equally draining are the costs of constant visits from IT consultants and technicians. While age is a commonly cited cause of slow PC performance, there are usually additional reasons. Many users have no idea that their computers are bogged down with unneeded applications, adware, cookies, and massive amounts of background processes. Left unaddressed, these issues hinder PC performance, decrease productivity, and increase the amount of time spent dealing with IT problems. So what can be done? Here are seven things. 1. Speed Up Boot Time On average, more than 15% of programs that start automatically on computers are optional, which increases boot time. In addition, because these optional programs continue running in the background, they interfere with the ongoing performance of a computer. Lab testing showed that removing three resource-intensive startups decreased boot time by 41%. That's equal to a 117 second improvement. By using a built-in utility called msconfig (in Windows, type "msconfig" in the search box located in the "Start" menu) you can sort through these startups and decide which ones are necessary, and which can be removed. If you are not sure which of these items are safe to remove, there are free tools available that can identify them for you. 2. Stay on Top of Your Updates Software makers are constantly releasing new versions of a software you've already paid for. These updates can include enhanced features, and more importantly, patches against vulnerabilities. Microsoft, Adobe, Java, and others put out regular updates that contain bug fixes and help improve PC performance. In fact, vulnerabilities from using out-of-date software are one of the most common ways that malware infects a system. Software updates and patches often pop up automatically. Don't put them off, and when possible, remember to manually check for updates. 3. Keep Your PC Clean of Junk A computer can become cluttered with junk files, temp files, logs, and browser bloat very quickly. Junk like this can affect PC performance tremendously over time. This is especially true for computers using traditional hard drives (non-SSD). By committing to regular maintenance of your drives, you can save yourself from the hassle of a bogged-down system and the sluggish performance that accompanies it. Microsoft provides a free utility in Windows called "disk cleanup" that can perform some of the Windows-related cleaning. However, there are free tools that offer more options, like scheduling. 4. Get Rid of Extra Programs Programs take up space, and if they don't serve a specific purpose, they are essentially dead weight. This is also true of browser toolbars, plugins, and extensions. Here too, having a clear sense of what is not necessary, and then removing those items, is a big step in improving PC performance. 5. Defrag Unless you have already upgraded to a solid-state hard drive, defrag your disk regularly. On hard drives, as you save and delete files, the data gets placed in "sectors" on the hard drive. This causes 'fragmentation' and can increase the time it takes for the computer to find the specific item you are looking for; defragmenting files on the disk will save your computer a great deal of time seeking what it needs. 6. Keep Your Computer Safe Antivirus software is a critical component of any efficient computer system. AV software often comes pre-installed on new PCs, but it's up to the user to purchase or replace the pre-installed antivirus software. Great free alternatives such as AVG, Avast, and especially Microsoft Security Essentials are powerful substitutes if you are on a budget. Just be sure not to have two antivirus applications installed at the same time -- a common cause of computer performance issues and crashes. 7. Accept That Less is More When it comes to computer performance, one basic principle to follow is "less is more." The less time your computer wastes sorting through unused programs, unnecessary start-ups, empty space, and malware, the more efficiently it will run. If manually maintaining your PC seems like an overwhelming task, there is a range of PC optimization software that you can download, often free, that will automate all of these tasks. While the above steps will help improve PC performance, all computers eventually become obsolete. When buying a new model, follow these steps to address the same overload issues. Check what's already loaded. Although we assume that a new computer comes clean and ready to go, there are a great deal of items that are just unnecessary. Check to see what's been pre-installed. Where possible, remove anything you know you won't use. Check the antivirus software. Most PCs come some version. Make sure you are comfortable with the product that's on your machine. If not, or you don't plan on paying for it, get a product you feel good about. Some good examples include, Microsoft Security Essentials, AVG, or Avast. Check your drivers. Every new model will have a series of updates that are necessary to help sync your new computer with your pre-existing hardware -- printer, scanner etc. Make sure that these connect smoothly and you will save yourself headaches and money. Backup. After you finish cleaning your computer of items you don't need and installing all of the applications you do want, take a snapshot using imaging software and store it externally, so that if the unexpected happens (think hard drive failure) and you need to start over, you have a fresh image with everything ready to go. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, iPandastudio		TOP STORIES TODAY Nokia Looks to Sell Vertu Brand for $265 Million [REPORT] Students Studying Abroad: Take Advantage of Video Job Interviews Magazines Get Serious About Ecommerce 7 Easy Ways to Speed Up Your Business Computers 51 Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed TOP TOPICS Trending 5,798 followers Business 34,799 followers Entertainment 3,229 followers Social Media 67,974 followers Apps And Software 911 followers Google 52,020 followers Tech Innovators 249 followers Startups 9,114 followers Gadgets 7,733 followers Mobile 4,698 followers
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