Hasta La Gadget!

Where would you turn for eco-friendly fashions produced by ethical businesses that actually cared where their products were coming from, who made them and how they were produced? Britain’s Ethically Clothed has the answer. Discover whose lines they carry, where you can get them and how PETA is connected.

In a new video series called “The Spectrum,” HuffPost Video’s Maria Tridas invites diverse members of the LGBTQI community to open up about their personal experiences.

In our first episode, Tridas sits down with Pidgeon Pagonis, an activist who’s intersex, to discuss their (Pidgeon’s preferred pronoun) experience and answer any questions you may have. Throughout the 25-minute conversation where Pidgeon and Tridas both open up about being intersex, they also offer guidance on how to fully embrace who you are, regardless of your chromosomal makeup.

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There are millions of apps available for Android so it’s not that hard to find apps that you might be interested in. Just fire up the Play Store and get to searching, it already does a good job of recommending the apps that you might be interested in based on your previous installs. Google is now making it much easier to find such apps by adding a dedicated Apps tab in mobile search.

The tab will only show if you search using Google on your phone. You can use it to find whether a particular service, website or company has an app by just clicking on the tab and typing their name. It’s just as simple as searching for something on Google.

The results will come up with the app you’re looking for as well as recommendations. From there it’s just one tap to open the Play Store and install it on your device, the entire process is simple and shouldn’t take more than a minute.

Google has been making efforts to drive app discovery through search, it’s most lucrative property, previous efforts including displaying apps at the top of search results as well as the ability to install apps directly from results.

The standalone Apps tab in Google search on mobile will only make it easier for users to find and install new apps on their Android device.

Google Makes It Easier To Find Apps In Search , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

While “voice activation” is being touted as the hottest development in communications and smart technology, the most effective kind has been part of families and cultures around the world for centuries.

It’s simply called – “family glue.”

This is the warm, human connection, the voices we hear at various stages throughout our lives that help ensure we keep history, memories and culture alive. And, in the process, create a lasting legacy.

While the tech chatter today marvels at Samsung’s talking refrigerator, the Amazon Echo with Alexa Voice, the popularity of Siri and the coming generation of robots that respond to the tone of your voice, family glue is as vital as ever … if not more so when there are so many potential distractions.

This kind of glue shapes who we are, what we believe, and how we will lead our lives. If we do our part well, it helps pave the way for those who follow.

From the moment of birth, there’s often that one person in a family who is the glue that provides the context for each unique life that comes after. It might start with a grandparent – then passed on to the mom or the dad, and, with time, someone from the next generation.

That person treasures what has made the family special. It is both a responsibility and a privilege.

Without that glue, family dinners would be different. No one sharing history and telling stories that bring frayed sepia photographs to life. No tales of deeds and misdeeds. No talk about a homeland or the journeys that brought earlier generations from where they were born to a place where they would build a family and a career. Nothing about the hard times, the early years … and nothing about how change has made for new opportunities.

Without that glue, there would be no chatter about family recipes while standing beside the kitchen stove and recreating favorites even though everything had always been measured by “what Grandma taught me.”

And there would be none of that talk about mistakes which meant that some went down the wrong path while others took a turn for the better.

In hearing the stories of those who came before us, we learn. And in the telling of how we learned, others can learn.

Missing those stories would leave out an essential part of learning and of life.

Interesting enough, the very same glue is also what makes businesses strong. The founders of those businesses – by their very presence, force of personality and entrepreneurial spirit – started on their route by fostering an environment that emphasized and kept kindled the values they believed would lead to success.

While it might have just been instinctive at first, they never lost sight of the importance of a reputation that built a culture to earn customers and clients and keep them coming back for more.

Even when a business is mature or the founder is no longer around, here, too, glue is personal. Story telling – so crucial to business in ensuring its future – makes real and passes on the lessons for future generations of employees and leaders.

So, whether in families or business, the message is the same: it’s the glue that gives history, memories and culture a voice and creates a legacy.

After all, as Antonio said in Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “what’s past is prologue.”

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When your team is everywhere — how do you keep it together? Working with a remote team comes with a distinct set of challenges, and yet we see many successful companies making it work. They do it with a number of helpful tools, and with a great deal of understanding.

Challenge: Distance Between Us

With the possibility of working with people across time zones — across the country or across the globe, meeting face-to-face isn’t easy.

Solution: Real-Time Chat Options

That’s where real-time chat solutions such as Skype and Google Hangouts come in handy. And even then, it may be nearly impossible to get everyone together. Sure, one person could be working, but should the other have to get up in the middle of the night for a live call? Reserve those situations for dire emergencies and turn to a tool like ClckMeeting to record those meetings and save them for later viewing.

Challenge: Presenting a Unified Business Front

Your customers don’t necessarily need to know your staff is spread out all over the world, working from the comfort of their own homes (and possibly wearing pajamas… or going pants-less in the process). So, how do you make it appear as though everyone’s working together in a central office location?

Solution: Buy a Business Address

We’re not talking anything shady or illegal — but a rather simple solution. Since people know you don’t run your business at a P.O. box, and you probably don’t want your home address floating around, opt for a real street address with the UPS store, or a virtual office solution. Virtual office solutions are available to not only provide a business address but to provide mail receipt and forwarding.

Solution: Virtual Telephone System

To further the appearance that everyone’s working from a single office location – you need a system that protects phone numbers of individual employees – but also lets your employees know it’s a business call, rather than a personal one. A cloud-based PBX (private branch exchange) lets you operate your phone system with lines and extensions, just like you would in a traditional office environment, without being tied to a physical location. You can even operate a toll-free number this way, if your business requires one. Plus, it helps avoid missed calls and can even improve call handling efficiency.

Challenge: Keeping Everyone on the Same Page

When there’s a lot going on, and you have more than one person working on a project or task, it can be difficult to keep track of who is responsible for what.

Solution: Project Management

There are a ton of project management solutions out there to help remote teams stay on task, and prevent people from duplicating efforts. Choose from Podio, Wrike, Asana, or a more advanced solution that includes customer relationship management (CRM) like Insightly. These make it easy to share files, create and manage task lists, deliverables, and even project budgets.

Solution: Chat

Sure there’s always Google Talk and Skype, but, for group communications, those tools can get a little hard to manage when conversation takes place asynchronously. Enter Slack – an Instant messaging tool that can be broken down into subjects, where people can be added to one or more conversations as needed. Plus, you can send files to everyone in the group, reducing the need for email.

Challenge: Time Tracking and Payroll

In instances where pay is tracked by the hour rather than the deliverable, it can be hard to know when someone’s actually working, and then managing the payment.

Solution: There’s an App for That

Hubstaff is a time-tracking solution with the ability to take random screenshots while someone’s logged in and working. Employees can be involved in multiple projects, and the software also shows activity levels. Plus, it integrates with many project management platforms for a smoother workflow. Managers can limit the amount of time employees can spend working and can choose whether or not to allow manual time entries. Payment for time worked can be handled directly within the app, as well.

Thanks to these and various other tools available, working with a remote team is now easier than ever before. It won’t guarantee a challenge-free experience, but they certainly make it worth enjoying the freedom that comes along with working remotely.

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