Hasta La Gadget!

A new report claims that Apple is working on its own Snapchat rival. The company is said to be internally testing an app which enables iPhone owners to record video and apply filters or drawings on them in a way that’s quite similar to Snapchat. It has also been claimed in the report that this app is being designed for use with mostly one hand.

Bloomberg reports that Apple is building its own Snapchat rival and the focus is on ease of use and speed. The app will enable users to shoot, edit, and upload the videos in less than a minute. Users may also have the option to send the videos to their contacts or share them across social media.

The report also claims that the teams behind iMovie and Final Cut Pro have been tasked with creating this new app. No name has been revealed as yet but it’s claimed that Apple is looking to release this app at some point next year.

Apple is also said to be working on additional social network features for the iPhone that will improve the sharing experience with contacts system-wide. The report does caution that it’s not likely that all of the new social features that are currently being tested will make the cut.

From the looks of it, this app won’t be ready in time for the company’s event next month but if one was to speculate, it could potentially be unveiled at WWDC 2017 where the next major iOS update will be announced.

Apple Reportedly Building Its Own Snapchat Rival , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

You can never be too sure these days when it comes to online security. Two-factor authentication is a great way to ensure that the risk of your account being compromised is reduced. Since most PlayStation Network members do have their credit cards on file the risk is significant should their account be compromised. Sony has finally enabled two-factor authentication for PlayStation Network accounts.

PlayStation Network’s security troubles are not a mystery so it’s a welcome addition by Sony. This additional layer of protection for PSN accounts will certainly go a long way in keeping users safe.

Some might even say that it’s too little and definitely too late. PlayStation Network was compromised by a massive hack which led to the leak of personal details of more than 77 million PlayStation Network members. That happened five years ago.

Their argument might make sense to you when you consider the fact that rival Microsoft flipped the switch on two-factor authentication for all of its online accounts including Xbox Live a little over three years ago.

PlayStation owners have regularly criticized Sony for not following through with two-factor authentication quickly. It’s finally here now, so PlayStation and PSP owners can add this extra layer of security to their accounts starting today. This is something one should waste any time in setting up. It’s always best to be safe than sorry.

2-step verification feature for PlayStation Network accounts launches tonight, offers additional security: https://t.co/uubOFHGnxn

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) August 25, 2016

PlayStation Network Accounts Finally Get Two-Factor Authentication , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Jess Camp, Digital PR Specialist, Blue Fountain Media

Public Relations

According to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), public relations is defined as a strategic communications process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics. An “organization” can be can anything from a brand, company, or an individual. There are two forms of public relations, traditional PR and digital PR, which are differentiated by tactics, including the way these relationships are built and the channels in which they reach their audience.

Traditional PR

The media tactics that fall under the umbrella of traditional public relations are diverse, such as event coordination, crisis communications, reputation management, trade shows, sponsorship opportunities and press release distribution. The most prominent initiative of traditional PR is press outreach with special focus in traditional media outlets such as newspapers, television and radio. Professionals who work at traditional PR firms are likely to have a rolodex of media contacts they engage with often who are familiar with their clients.

Traditional PR can be very successful in terms of increasing brand awareness. However, exact metrics on audience reach are much more difficult to track. For example, broadcast and print numbers are estimations on potential audience or the average number of readers per month, making the question of “how many people actually read or saw my clients feature?” a bit hard to answer. Numbers aside, a key component of traditional PR is focusing on brand positioning within a media placement. Traditional publicists will be looking to see how their client is portrayed, how the messaging is communicated and how many times the brand is mentioned throughout the placement.

The traditional PR route also requires a bit of patience, as print publications will require a long-lead time. This means publicists need to research which topics are being covered in print magazines in which month and the corresponding publishing date. Outreach may not produce results for quite some time, which can be challenging for both publicist and client. Nonetheless, traditional PR is much more than media placements and your PR firm is likely to have diverse tactics that work best for your business.

Traditional Takeaways

Traditional public relations is still relevant in today’s highly digitized world and will be able to encompass a wide range of components attached to a PR campaign. Positive, extensive brand building will be the main role of a traditional PR and this is something that will always be worth it.

Digital PR

The tactics involved in digital public relations are relatively similar to those of traditional. Building relationships and securing placements are at the forefront of this digital arm, however, digital PR has the added benefit of impacting SEO and link building across the web. These measurable, digital tactics provide tangible results and insight.

Another key differentiator of digital PR is the able to build connections with bloggers and influencers, who are key players in the digital space. These digital influencers often have just as much authority, if not greater reach, than traditional figures, and come with an extremely loyal following. Similar to traditional publicists, digital PR specialists will often have established relationships with bloggers in a given industry who they work with regularly and will share their content often. This can be in a blog post with followed links, impacting the client’s website’s domain authority or social shares. Digital platforms have a short-lead time and a pick up may result in a same day placement, or at most, in a few weeks.

While a digital agency may not emphasize elements of traditional PR, like event planning and trade shows, it will have its own unique set of benefits. Digital PR uses measurement tools like Moz’s Open Site Explorer and Google Analytics to track the power of a digital placement. Google Analytics allows you to track how many users on a website are clicking a link to your client’s site. You can completely track the user’s experience from first clicking the link within a placement through to the brand’s site and how they engage with the site. This information is invaluable and will impact your tactics moving forward by which initiatives should continue, discontinue or be altered.

Digital Takeaways

Digital public relations is measurable, immediate and produces easily sharable content. The realm of digital PR may be more specified than that of traditional, but it will help grow your brand online and make waves in a constantly evolving digital world.

The Right Fit

Determining whether traditional or digital PR is best for your business is a difficult question to answer. There is a great deal of overlap in tactics, for example, if you are reading a Sunday newspaper, it is very likely the same piece will run online the following week, or vice-versa.

The best way to decide which route to go is to first determine your business goals. Will the needs of your business be better executed in the traditional or digital space? Or perhaps, both?

It is not uncommon to employ both a traditional and a digital agency to completely cover your bases. If this is the way you choose to go, be sure to put your agency contacts in touch with each other so they can discuss objectives and avoid any overlap.

Author bio:

Jess Camp is a Digital PR Specialist at Blue Fountain Media who spends most of her time brainstorming story ideas and connecting with reporters. When not in her native New Jersey, you can find Jess wandering around music venues throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. Follow Jess on Twitter: @ohheyjesscamp

Advertising Week returns to NYC September 26 – 30, 2016! Our Huffington Post readers enjoy a 20% discount on Delegate and Super Delegate passes by clicking here.

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On the way back from my volunteer trip to The Orkeewska School in Africa, someone had abandoned a copy of the New York Times and left it on my seat on the airplane. If you’ve been a reader of my blog, you already know that I prefer a plant-based diet and am always on the search for gourmet vegetarian food when I travel. My life is all about looking for the next green treasure. I simply look for the signs to lead me to where I need to go. In this case, it turned out to be in the Wednesday dining section restaurant reviews.

That particular issue featured Nix, a vegetarian restaurant that had opened in the West Village this past February with an unusual name derived from an 1893 Supreme Court decision declaring tomatoes to be a vegetable and not a fruit. It also just happened to be within walking distance of where I often stay when in town. The review had my mouth watering and ready to try these innovative vegetable dishes the reviewer had described the next time I was in New York.

A few weeks later when I was back in the city, I called up some good friends and suggested we all go and give Nix a try. They agreed. As often happens with hot New York restaurants the only reservation I could get for the night I wanted was at 9:45 PM. I took it with a request to move it up if anything were to open earlier. Miraculously I got a call later that they could move it up to 8:15 PM. When we arrived and checked in we were fortunate to run into one of the owners, James Truman, the former editorial director of Condé Nast.

It’s very rare that one can find a vegetarian restaurant that is not only innovative and creative in its approach to the food served but also offered in a stylish setting. But as soon as we were escorted to a cozy corner table I was transfixed by the decor. The walls had been painted a careful clean white with simple but elegantly carved stone booths, covered with comfortable neutral cushions. This allowed the focus to be on the beautiful Joshua tree wooden lamps, which were strategically placed at regular intervals on a narrow ledge that runs behind the wall booths. That gave the whole restaurant the feeling of a being in the middle of an organic art installation from the 70s, chicly curated from a 21st-century culture master. I already felt I had been transported and had yet to taste John Frazier’s food.

John Frazier is not only a partner in the restaurant and the genius behind Dovetail and Narcisse, but he is also a Michelin-starred chef with a personal passion for cooking with vegetables. He is doing at Nix what I long for more chefs to do – taking vegetables seriously and making even the carnivores in the room feel sated and happy.

With a delicious glass of biodynamic chilled white wine in hand, we started our feast with a yummy warm tandoor bread with two dips: house hummus and spiced eggplant with pine nuts followed by the ribbons of jicama with Fresno chili and blood oranges and baby carrots en papillote, cracked bulgar, almonds, spices. The carrots were my favorite – so far.

Even though we each ordered our own entree, it was hard not to want to share so we enjoyed the whole meal family style. Cauliflower tempura with steamed buns and house pickles, artichoke and broccoli rabe sauté with preserved tomatoes as well as the brown rice stir-fry, ramps, chanterelles and farm eggs.

For someone who doesn’t eat sugar, the dénouement was the dessert. We ordered the cantaloupe sorbet with mezcal and lime and the tandoor roasted pineapple with tamarind glaze. They were a delicious duo, but it was the roasted macadamia nuts and toasted coconut flakes with whipped aquafaba, seared with vinegar that will keep me coming back to Nix every time I am in New York. I had never experienced aquafaba before, but one mouthful and I was hooked!

If you have not heard of this delight, it’s become a new wonder ingredient in vegan cooking for creating meringues and creams without any eggs. The liquid from legumes such as chickpeas can be reduced, thickened and whipped into a froth. The result at Nix was more delicious and more decadent than any meringue or whipped cream I have ever had!

For me personal environmental health is more than simply ridding my body of toxins, it’s about nourishing my soul. It’s about attention and artistry in my surroundings, savoring creatively prepared healthy foods and experiencing that with the people that are important to me. What James Truman and John Frazier have done with Nix is a miracle in Manhattan. With great friends and great food, the stars aligned for a most memorable evening.

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Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

America has been committed to supporting the veterans of its wars since long before it had “United States of” in front of it. “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire… horrible was the stink and scent thereof,” William Bradford wrote after soldiers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony massacred a village of native Pequots. Later, the Pilgrims gave thanks to their veterans by passing a law to support wounded soldiers of the campaign. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) traces its spiritual roots to this ur-moment in 1636.

Today, citizens of the United States directly bear the burden of more than 150 years of warfare. As of May 2016, the VA was still paying benefits to one dependent of a Civil War (1861-1865) veteran, 88 dependents of Spanish-American War (1898-1902) veterans, nine dependents of veterans of the military campaign along the Mexican border early in the twentieth century, thousands of dependents of World War I (1917-1918) veterans, hundreds of thousands of World War II (1941-1945) veterans and dependents, hundreds of thousands of Korean War (1950-1953) veterans and dependents, around 1.8 million Vietnam War-era (1964-1975) veterans and dependents, and millions of veterans and dependents of the Gulf War (1990-1991) and of the ongoing War on Terror campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere (2001 to the present).

When President Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861, there were an estimated 80,000 veterans living in the United States. By 1865, the final year of the Civil War, there were so many more veterans in need of assistance that Lincoln called on Congress “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan.” Lincoln didn’t live to see the end of that war and probably couldn’t have imagined we’d still be paying the direct costs of his request in 2016. Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t live to see the end of the war he presided over either, but according to VA projections, 13,000 World War II veterans — to say nothing of their dependents — will be receiving benefits as late as 2034.

Given that the U.S. was still paying benefits to a dependent of an American Revolutionary veteran in the 1910s and to a Civil War widow as late as the 2000s, it’s anyone’s guess how long Americans will be paying the price of the dependents of all the veterans whose hearts were touched by fire in post-9/11 wars. In 150 years, will some writer be tallying up the number of widows and children still collecting on the wars, interventions, attacks, and raids in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere? Will these conflicts be as dimly remembered as the campaign against Pancho Villa along the Mexican border in the 1910s? Or will they still be fresh in the minds of Americans as a never-ending intergenerational campaign sees grandparents, parents, children, and grandchildren fighting for elusive victories in the greater Middle East?

Today, Ann Jones, author of the highly praised They Were Soldiers: How The Wounded Return from America’s Wars — The Untold Story, takes up the questions of what and how we will pay (in every sense of the word) for the veterans of our current wars in “How Veterans Are Losing the War at Home.” In an adapted version of the keynote address she recently gave to the annual convention of Veterans for Peace, Jones takes aim at schemes seeking to use veterans for corporate interests and dismantle the VA system in the name of privatized profits. Caring for veterans is a burden whose long-term costs have rarely been considered in the context of America’s penchant for ceaseless warfare, but the costs of not properly caring for them, as Jones makes perfectly clear, may be even more dire.

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