 |
|
|
|||||
Some studies show that the interview process can take up to six weeks. But there are ways that might help speed up the process and get those final hiring managers to land on you as the one they offer the job to.
Category:
E-Commerce
Just under a year after the rebirth of the Kickstarter favorite Pebble smartwatch, the founder of that tech gadget is debuting the company’s next product. The Pebble Index 01 is a smart ring of sorts, but instead of focusing on health data or sleep cycles, the sole purpose of this ring is to help wearers remember thoughts that bolt out of the blue during the middle of the day. “Do you ever have flashes of insight or an idea worth remembering? This happens to me five to 10 times every day,” Eric Migicovsky, who shepherded Pebble from Y Combinator to an angel investment of $375,000 to the record-setting Kickstarter campaign, wrote in a blog post. “If I dont write down the thought immediately, it slips out of my mind. Worst of all, I remember that Ive forgotten something and spend the next 10 minutes trying to remember what it is. So I invented external memory for my brain.” While some gadget hounds might balk at the Index’s singular focus, they can’t grumble at the price or battery life. RePebble (the company’s new operating name) says people who preorder the Index 01 will pay just $75and the product will cost $99 when it ships in March 2026. As for the battery life? Forget recharging. Migicovsky said it lasts for years. When the battery does reach the end of its life, the Pebble app will alert users and ask if they want to order another ring. (There’s no charger, as Pebble believed people were more likely to misplace the charger before they needed it.) [Screenshot: Eric Migicovsky] Worn on the index finger, the ring has a button you can click with your thumb to record your thoughts to internal memory. If your phone is within range, that recording is automatically sent over and converted to text on the device. A large language model (LLM) will then select the appropriate action (which could be anything from creating a note to scheduling an appointment). And if there’s wind or loud background noises, you can listen to a raw audio playback to recapture your thought. The ring itself is water-resistant up to 1 meter and doesn’t need to be removed when showering or washing your hands. Unlike some digital assistants, it’s not listening to anything you do if you’re not pressing the button. There’s no monthly subscription fee either. “Initially, we experimented by building this as an app on Pebble, since it has a mic and Im always wearing one,” Migicovsky wrote. “But, I realized quickly that this was suboptimalit required me to use my other hand to press the button to start recording (lift-to-wake gestures and wake-words are too unreliable). This was tough to use while bicycling or carrying stuff. Then a genius electrical engineer friend of mine came up with an idea to fit everything into a tiny ring.” The Index 01 comes in three colorspolished silver, polished gold, and matte blackand in U.S. ring sizes 6 to 13. While the point of the ring is to do one thing well, Migicovsky said Pebble is leaving the door open for users to customize it and create additional functionality. Pebble was one of the first smartwatches, raising $10.3 million on Kickstarter in 2012. From 2013 to 2016, having a Pebble on your wrist gave you instant geek street cred. But in December of 2016, the company announced it would shut down, as it struggled to find a mainstream audience and competition increased. Migicovsky resurrected it earlier this year, changing the name to rePebble, after Google released the Pebble operating system (OS) as open-source software. With this new product, the company is hoping to show it has learned from its past mistakes. Pebble Time, the second watch in the Pebble’s original incarnation, was largely responsible for the company’s collapse. The company didnt market the new watch properly, basically dropping it in stores and expecting it to sell, based on the Kickstarter success. Pebble failed, for years, to hire a head of marketing, and any promotion decision the company did make was not necessarily one it stuck with. Things are a bit different this time around. RePebble has been working on the Index 01 in the background while developing its new Pebble watch, and it is using the same partner factory. There will be a wide alpha test of the product in January before rePebble launches mass production.
Category:
E-Commerce
Any office party can be challenging, but holiday office parties are particularly stressful. After all, the season brings a set of demandsincluding the need to be merry and bright when you may not feel that way. To survive this end-of-year event (and to use it to advance your career), here are three strategies that will work wonders. 1. Use Holiday Parties as a Chance to Get to Know New People There are good reasons to circulate broadly at your next holiday party and not to hang out with people you already know. Clustering with friends can lead to excessive drinking, and with that comes danger to your health and safety. Staying with your pals or people you work closely with also means you wont broaden your circle of colleagues and that you just might miss an opportunity to get to know someone who could influence your career. Hanging out with people you know often leads to banter about how terrible the party is and how much you dislike these holiday events. This grumbling does not become you or your pals. Instead of staying with your inner circle, use the gathering as an occasion to get to know new staffers or people you may not come in contact with during the workweek. If you do, you will be showing leadershipfor it is a mark of a leader to know how to build relationships. And by seeking out unfamiliar faces and befriending them, you will show that you have the ability to help people who may be feeling holiday anxiety or loneliness. Indeed, a study by the American Psychological Association shows that 54% of American adults feel isolated, 50% feel left out, and 50% say they lack companionship. All these signs of loneliness peak during the holidays. 2. Talk to People Who Might Be Able to Help You Advance Your Career You will find influential people at holiday parties, so seek them out. They could include your boss or the head of your department or invited guests. Approach them and have something warm to say, without feeling that you are kissing up. For example, if someone outside your department is attending, you might say, It is great that you could join us. Your opening to your boss or department head might simply be a positive statement such as This is a great party. Then, go on to say what a good year it has been for the company or the department. The point is to create a positive, upbeat message that will appeal to someone senior in your department or in your company. Another approach is to compliment this individual regarding something he or she has done. For example, you might say, I thought that was a strong speech you gave to our team last month. It raised some interesting goalsones we will have to work hard to achieve. Or you might mention that you saw your department head at a conference, and ask whether he or she enjoyed the two-day event. People at all levels like to know that they are liked and respected. So, focus your remarks on what theyve accomplished or situations in which theyve done something impressive. They will be more interested in you if you show appreciation for them. The point is also to move the discussion toward something you can offer to support the more senior person. So, for example, segue from something impressive theyve done to something you can do for them, or simply share your thinking that dovetails with something they said. There is no ideal length for this conversation. But end with some kind of action or follow-up. 3. Talk to Customers Some holiday parties are company affairs held in honor of customers. In these cases, be sure to make a fuss over them. Dont chitchat with your colleagues and ignore your firm’s customers. I attend lavish holiday parties each year that are hosted by our investment firm. These events have lots of good food and music. But the thing that I like most is when the principals of the company come over to talk to my husband and me, ask pointed questions about our family, and show they care about us. The secret to customer conversations is to be warm. So you might begin with Its a pleasure to see you or So glad you could make the party. Ask good questions. For example: Do you have family plans for the holidays? or How is the family? Beware of questions about business or questions about health. Keep your questions broad and do your best to make sure they lead to positives. You will be strengthening your companys relationship with its customers if you initiate a discussion that shows you care about them and their families.
Category:
E-Commerce
Every December, something strange happens inside companies. Decisions that were stuck for months suddenly fly through. Projects get approved. Budgets get finalized. People stop debating and finally choose. Leaders usually chalk this up to year-end energy or the holiday push. That is an easy story, but it hides what is actually going on. December forces leaders into a tighter frame. There is less time to overthink, fewer acceptable choices, and clearer expectations. In other words, the environment is designed in a way that produces commitment instead of delayeven though for complex, novel strategic bets, the calendar alone is rarely enough. This isnt holiday spirit. Its design and a great lesson in influence. If leaders learned how to design decisions the way December does, they would get clarity, alignment, and speed all year, and not just when the calendar runs out. The idea is simple. When options shrink, focus increases. When criteria are explicit, choices become easier. When time is clear, commitment accelerates. The research backs this up. The boardroom stories back this up. And anyone who has lived through a December sprint knows it. The question is not why December works. The question is why leaders tolerate the opposite for the other 11 months. What science tells us about too many choices Executives like saying they want openness. They want to consider every idea, hear every viewpoint, and keep options flexible. In reality, although valuable, this often destroys momentum. The most cited work on this comes from social psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper. Their study showed that people presented with fewer choices were far more likely to act. A small, curated set of jams led to dramatically higher purchase rates than a large display. That study has been replicated and expanded for two decades. The principle holds in various settings: When options multiply, action collapses. It is tempting to think that leaders are different because they have more experience. The evidence says otherwise. Cognitive load does not care about job titles. When executives face too many similar options, they pause, delay, or default to whatever feels safest. In large organizations, the safest option is inaction. If you want leadership teams to move, reduce the choices they must consider. Curate the field before it gets to the table. Eliminate the noise. Present two or three viable alternatives instead of 12. You will not only speed up decisions; you will improve them. Why heuristics make or break decision quality Once choices are reduced, another dynamic kicks in. With limited time or limited information, people rely on heuristics. These are not shortcuts for the unskilled. They are the mental tools that allow experts to move quickly. Studies on bounded rationality and dual-process theory show that when decisions must be made under constraint, people shift from slow, analytical processing to faster, more intuitive judgment. This is how high-pressure environments function. The problem is that most organizations leave these heuristics to chance. No criteria. No risk filters. No anchored recommendations. The result is inconsistent, political, or painfully slow decisions. If leaders want high-quality decisions, they need to supply better heuristics. Give people a clear view of what matters most. Define the nonnegotiables. Make success criteria visible and simple. Present recommended options, not loose collections of ideas. Heuristics are not the enemy of good thinking. They are the structure that allows it to happen at speed. The actual role of time pressure in executive decisions Time pressure is usually treated as a threat to decision quality. The research is more nuanced. Experiments published in academic journals show that time pressure can improve consistency and speed in certain types of tasks. In familiar or lower-risk decisions, moderate time pressure helps people filter distractions and commit. However, tackling highly complex or ambiguous problems while you’re rushed hinders performance, and studies warn that time pressure can increase risk-taking or reduce perceptual accuracy. But for the majority of decisions that leaders face, especially operational or moderately strategic choices, clear time frames increase action without sabotaging quality. There is a reason why year-end deadlines work. Not because the clock is ticking, but because the clock forces prioritization. It becomes obvious what matters and what does not. The real reason December feels productive December works because it removes the environmental factors that slow leaders down. The constraints create clarity. The deadlines force prioritization. The limited choices reduce noise. People are not more motivated in December. They are simply less confused. Leaders dont need more time or better slides. They need to design decisions the way December doeswith clearer choices, specific criteria, and no place for indecision to hide. Leadership influence is not about having the loudest voice in the room. It is about shaping the room so people can finally decide.
Category:
E-Commerce
In the tournament of pop culturean arena increasingly obsessed with charts, data, and stat linesTaylor Swift has, by most measures, already emerged the victor. In her nearly two decades in the public eye, she has become a billionaire by engineering one of the most dependable fan bases on the planet: a legion willing to buy every vinyl variant for her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, and generate such collective frenzy at her 149-date Eras Tour that it registered as seismic activity. Swift has become something like an institution, around whom various rituals and practices have formed, whether the exchanging of friendship bracelets or sharing easter eggs with fellow Swifties. In an age of fragmentation, Swift remains one of the last reliable captains of the monoculture within popular music. Her latest album rollout for The Life of a Showgirl makes clear how deliberately she continues to extend her reach, as she now angles toward new terrain and one of the largest mass audiences on the planet: football fans. As with the rest of her album rollouts, the effort for her 12th album has been planned meticulously. So it was not for nothing that she announced the record in August on New Heights, the podcast hosted by her fiancé, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Her appearance became the podcasts most viewed and listened-to episode by an order of magnitude, peaking at 1.3 million concurrent livestream viewers, compared with the podcasts previous record of 141,821. The crossover continued in her music video for her standout single The Fate of Ophelia, which included a series of sports-related gestures that would register only to her ever-attentive fans. She catches a football; she mimics Kelces touchdown celebration; and the numbers 13 (for her December 13 birthday) and 87 (his jersey number) glide into frame. Together they total 100: a tidy metaphor for the merging of sports and pop culture. Swift is now taking keen advantage of this convergence, plugging her own romance-led narrative into an arguably more durable mass spectacle: NFL football. Kelces domain remains one of the last functioning monocultures in Americabesides Swiftthat’s capable of reaching tens of millions of homes at once. Its an opportunity Swift has no interest in wasting. The pop star attended her first Chiefs game on September 24, 2023, right around the time her relationship with Kelce became public knowledge. Immediately after, she received attention from corners of sports media that had scarcely covered her before. The NFL itself was wise to take full advantage of the moment, briefly updating its Instagram bio to read: Taylor was here. The alliance helped score a 20% surge in sponsorships, as well as more than a 50% increase in 12- to 17-year-old girls tuning in to games. Much has been made of these gains for the NFL, but curiously, little attention has been paid to what the league has done for Swift. Entering this sphere has given her access to a new (previously Swift-averse) vertical: male, suburban, middle-American, multigenerational households that tend to organize their week around Sunday broadcasts. Her regular high-profile appearances at Chiefs games have boosted her own social media followers and Spotify music streams. Immediately after her first game appearance, Swifts Spotify monthly listeners increased by 2.25%, and she gained a 1.12% follower increase on Instagramand most significantly, a 5.37% jump on TikTok. Streaming analytics database Streams Charts tracked a 3,000% spike in Swift listenership after her New Heights appearance, with a large influx of first-time male listeners. If I’m Taylor Swift, and I want to take over the world, then how better for me to break into the 49% of the population than through sport, which is traditionally a masculine bastion, says David Rowe, professor emeritus at Western Sydney University in Australia and author of Sport, Culture, and the Media: The Unruly Trinity. As this happens, it highlights the growing overlap between sports and music, fueled by the same data-driven logic that now governs modern fandom. With music listeners adopting the analytics-driven habits of sports fans, and NFL teams embracing social-media storytelling to court younger audiences, both worlds are collapsing into a single superfandom-driven entertainment economy. That shift has primed sports fans to receive Swift differently, and her visible integration into this masculine stronghold has turned her relationship with Kelce into an opportunity to capture an audience that once dismissed her. Music borrows the sports playbook Sports and music have a large range of formal similarities that have long gone underappreciated. Each are shapers of identity, with their range of rituals; sets of language, chants, and symbols; and paraphernalia and merchandiseall of which enhance a sense of community and belonging. Something that I think the music industry has tried to adopt over time from the sports industry is the ability to rally people around fandom, because of a deep connection to it, and it being part of who they are, says Tatiana Cirisano, VP of music strategy at entertainment analysis firm MIDiA Research. “In a lot of ways, I think sports has done a better job of taking advantage of fandom than music has. Both sports and Swift, in particular, inspire a highly emotional investment that can easily be monetized. You can connect them in strategic and organized ways, as part of a total entertainment package. And by having this convergence, you help connect across the gender divide, Rowe says. Swift and Kelces relationship, he adds, is a sublime marriage in more ways than one. Swift is hardly the only pop star moving strategically into the sports arena. For years, artists have performed during the Super Bowl halftime show for free because the exposure is worth more than the check. And in 2025, Beyoncé has become a familiar presence at Formula One races, her fandom for the Grand Prix becoming all the more visible; Tems joined San Diego FC as a club partner through her company, The Leading Vibe; and high-profile musicians including Ed Sheeran, ASAP Rocky, Jay-Z, and Drake, have all taken stakes in professional teams to solidify their alliance with the sports world. For these artists, sports offers a constant visibility that the music industry rarely facilitates. Seasons are long; games recur weekly; and broadcasts, stadium screens, and league-affiliated podcasts create more touchpoints than a standard album ccle. Sports organizations also sit on vast amounts of audience data and are largely considered brand-safe, giving entertainers a controlled environment in which to expand their reach. Data makes music into sports The similarities between sports and music are only continuing to blur in the age of algorithms and datafication. While analytics were once top-down, now theyve become accessible to everyonewhich is why theyve become so central in music fandoms today. Now, thanks to real-time streaming dashboards, chart-tracking accounts, and analytics sites that update hourly, everyday listeners can see these numbers in a way that was unimaginable a decade ago. says Nicole Santero, a fan culture researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Sports betting, Cirisano says, has infiltrated pop culture, too. Now fans are betting on who they think will win the Grammys, she says. (Due to the August 30 cutoff date, Swifts latest album, released in October, is ineligible for the upcoming Grammys. At press time, Kalshi betters were 40% behind Bad Bunnys Debí Tirar Más Fotos to win album of the year.) This fairly recent fan focus on data and analytics was pioneered in the early 2010s by K-pop artists and fandom, who have increasingly inspired Western pop acts, Swift included. K-pop showed that being a fan can feel a lot like being part of a team, UNLV’s Santero says. Instead of just listening to music, fans get pulled into a whole system where their actions matter. When a group has a new album or song, it isnt just a release; its almost like game day. Fans make streaming schedules, coordinate worldwide voting pushes, and keep track of charts the way sports fans keep track of stats. Unlike sports, music once had no victor. Now, with a keener focus on metrics and statistics, a quantifiable winner emerges. Swift continually smashes records, consistently beating out her rivals. Fandom in sport and in music has always been defined by what you don’t like as well, says Rowe of Western Sydney University. “Its structured into sport. You have the enemy, the other teams. And there has always existed a similar dynamic in popular music: Beatles versus the Rolling Stones, Blur versus Oasis, East Coast versus West Coast rap, among many others. Tribalism and anti-fandom has only increased in this age. Its a rivalry Swift has always made a fine point of in her music, whether her references to Katy Perry in 2014s “Bad Blood” or Charli XCX in Life of a Showgirls “Actually Romantic.” Whats new about this moment, and which has heightened the convergence between sports and music, is a necessary cross-pollination across forms. We’re at this point where the competition for attention has reached an all-time high. And if you’re an artist, you’re no longer just competing with other artists; you’re competing with the latest show on Netflix or a sports broadcast, says Cirisano of MIDiA Research. Football fans open their minds Swifts efforts to grow her audience through her visibility within sports are coinciding with sports leagues embracing the methods by which the rest of culture is building its audienceshareable content. [The NFL] was once defined by traditional broadcasts and highlight reels, but its now transformed into a full-fledged digital entertainment machine, Santero says. Teams now treat social media platforms like their own storytelling studios. They share a ton of micd-up moments, behind-the-scenes footage, and even meme-able posts that feel designed for TikTok and Instagram. This crossover has opened the door for sports fans to meet Swift halfway, priming them to receive her differently as she moves into their territory. Alex Folck, a die-hard Denver Broncos fan and former Swift hater, admits hes changed his tune since Swifts game and New Heights appearances. I learned how weird she is, and it made me like her a lot. Her authenticity doesnt feel forced, Folck says. Swift has charmed many previously Swift-skeptical men with her bashful, self-deprecating, andwhat they interpret asauthentically unguarded demeanor during her sports-related appearances. On camera, she seems relaxed and unrehearsed. If theres one thing male sports fans want to see in their spaces, its more of me, she joked on New Heights. That attitude has persuaded several male fans to reconsider her. Writer Kasey Symons, a lecturer of communication at Deakin University in Australia, believes its a little more calculated: Swift is incredibly smart regarding her positioning and understanding her place in culture as a woman, no matter if that is pop music or sport, she says. And she is incredibly aware of her impact in sport, and will be strategic about how she uses it. That strategy is resonating with fans like Folck. I definitely had a negative opinion of her beforehand, so I think seeing her in an NFL context had a positive effect, he says. Part of his change in attitude stems from the sense that she looks like shes genuinely really into it when she attends games. His preferences are emblematic of a familiar American male demographic: indifferent to pop music and deeply invested in sports. I follow games like the news, he says. Last year, he and his friends even threw a Swift-themed Super Bowl party. Sports and music fans are now beginning to converge around Swift in ways that upend familiar gendered assumptions about each fandom. Women are joining fantasy football leagues at much higher rates, often choosing Swift-referential team names. Men, meanwhile, are placing Swift-themed bets: If the Chiefs win, rival fans must write elaborate essays about Swift and her music. Folck himself was subjected to this ritual after the Chiefs beat his team for the 16th consecutive time; he has since produced 200 pages on Swift this way. With men finally on boardbegrudgingly or notSwift is inching closer to total media ubiquity, and football fans are inching toward masculinity (Taylors version). Guys still rolling their eyes at Taylor Swift are the same dudes who can’t enjoy an appletini or an ice cream cone, Folck says. Once the performative barriers come down, there’s plenty to enjoy that used to feel off-limits.
Category:
E-Commerce
Sites : [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] next »