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For the better part of the last half-century, the world has traveled to California to experience Silicon Valley. They’ve heard from Stanford dropouts-turned-unicorn founders, toured dazzling tech campuses, spoken with shrewd venture capitalists, and discussed, ad nauseum, the region’s core DNA. They’ve come to scoop up the secret fertilizer, take it back home, and sprinkle it onto the local soil in the hopes of magically growing “Silicon Prairie,” or “Silicon Heartland,” or Silicon Fill-in-the-Blank. In reality, few places in the United States—almost none outside a handful of big coastal cities—have succeeded. Eventually, hopeful communities have abandoned their “innovation hubs” after disappointing results. But not all of them. Among the rare successes of a burgeoning tech hub, Tulsa stands out. I know because I helped lead the city’s reinvention. So, in understanding how northeast Oklahoma managed to establish a growing innovation economy, other places may finally be able to carve out a sustainable path in tech. The task isn’t simple—there are no shortcuts. But that’s because, in the end, there’s no secret ingredient. It simply comes down to whether cities can find the niche that corresponds with their strength and exploit it. No place will be able to compete with Silicon Valley’s money—but great gobs of capital sit in various locales, and yet few have become tech hubs. No place can replicate the Valley’s concentration of talent—but for all the celebrated universities, few have spawned notable clusters of innovation. That’s not what’s really important. Here’s what istruly important: Having a community think carefully about what their value add can be to the greater world of tech, and how they can lean into that specific attribute. Innovation economies grow from the bottom-up, not the top-down, and they can be tailored to fit your city. Thisis what Tulsa is doing so successfully—and it’s the reason that I’m convinced other cities can do the same. When I was recruited to Tulsa in 2019, the economy’s two pillars—oil and gas—were both on the ropes. Like many other midsized cities, there was rising alarm that Oklahomans were poised to be left behind by AI, the state’s manufacturing and service jobs gutted by automation. So, the Tulsa-based George Kaiser Family Foundation asked me to lead an effort less to make the region a mini-Silicon Valley, and more to help Tulsa find what I call its “tech niche”—its own special place in the 21st century economy. As one cowboy hat-wearing entrepreneur told me, “We don’t want to be San Francisco. We want to be the best version of ourself.” But that just raised a series of questions that most cities struggle to answer: What should the community’s tech identity be? How could we create durable jobs? Where should we deploy scarce capital? The economic development organization I founded, Tulsa Innovation Labs, led a community-wide effort to answer those questions. We looked initially at education technology and discarded it as a focus—Tulsa simply didn’t have a competitive advantage in that realm. We then looked at agriculture technology and set that aside too—the potential impact of investing in that cluster wasn’t sufficient to building a resilient tech economy. Instead, we zeroed in on four areas where we believed we could create the critical mass of activity necessary to reinvent Tulsa’s economy: virtual health, energy tech, advanced air mobility, and cyber. Having narrowed the field, we raised over $200 million in four years to invest in those clusters and put ourselves on track to create 20,000 jobs. The question today is what other older industrial economies such as St. Louis, Buffalo, and Cincinnati can learn from Tulsa’s experience. And the lesson is surprisingly simple: Rather than try to emulate Silicon Valley, they should find their own tech niche and then invest in infrastructure that fuels growth in those clusters. To do that, they need to follow four principles. First, cities should build on existing industries Every city has longstanding employers with expertise that can be transitioned to tech. Tulsa’s energy companies were facing intense disruption thanks to climate change. And although Oklahoma’s aerospace industry is largely in maintenance, repair, and overhaul—not tech—the industry’s regional facilities offered existing infrastructure and talent with valuable skills that can translate. Tulsa’s challenge was to build on top of those important assets to spark growth in emerging technologies. Second, cities need to identify their strongest opportunities in tech Cities should pick a few tech clusters that are adjacent to existing industries and show long-term growth trends, thereby building a bridge to a more vibrant economy. Given its legacy as the oil capital of the world, Tulsa’s prime opportunity was energy tech. As was advanced air mobility given the region’s strong history in aerospace and the energy industry’s use of drones to monitor pipelines. While it’s understandable that many startups want to be in Silicon Valley, others are realizing it’s wiser to build near established industries with the ready-made partners they provide and the dynamic ecosystems they can offer. Third, those searching for a niche should ensure it promises a range of jobs San Francisco is a cautionary tale because the explosion almost exclusively of high-paying positions for the most educated has increased housing prices and widened inequality. Choosing clusters that offer jobs demanding a variety of skills and education levels—jobs open to those without bachelor’s degrees—can drive inclusion. In Tulsa, we selected cyber in part because workers with skills-based credentials are essential to the industry. About a third of the 20,000 jobs Tulsa is on track to create are accessible without a bachelor’s degree. Finally, cities should select a niche that allows them to lead Midsized cities need not compete with major tech hubs. Instead, they should search for specific clusters, sub-clusters, or parts of an industry’s value chain in which they can lead. For virtual health, Tulsa’s opportunity was in remote care solutions—technologies that, for example, enable remote glucose monitoring. Virtual health also has nice synergies with cybersecurity, which keeps those remote systems safe, as well as advanced air mobility in which drones could deliver pharmaceuticals to rural parts of the region. The specific clusters that comprise your tech niche should reinforce each other. Silicon Valley is a unicorn, and for too long, it has been viewed as the model for places that can’t possibly recreate it. This myth has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with a national innovation economy that leaves out most Americans and dismisses the Heartland as “flyover country.” Places like Tulsa can thrive in the decades to come if they find the right niche. Pulling off an economic renaissance isn’t easy to do, but it’s entirely realistic. For anyone living in a place that’s being left behind by tech, know that you can write your own future if you and your neighbors work together and grow from the inside out. View the full article

Google's John Mueller said Search is not going away, but acknowledged that AI is changing many things, requiring adjustments The post Google Affirms AI Is Not Replacing Search – Search Central Live NYC appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Over the past three months, in a small print shop in Toronto, a group of people has been hard at work making the impossible possible: a book that can be read only when you pour water over it. The “Dehydrating Book” is the first of its kind. It was printed with a special hydrochromic ink that is invisible to the naked eye and becomes visible only when it’s wet. It is 100% waterproof and ships in a pouch full of water. Why? To raise awareness about the global water crisis. [Photo: The Gas Company Inc.] The project is a close collaboration between Water for People, a global nonprofit that helps bring clean water and sanitation systems to underserved communities around the world; communications firm Edelman; and Toronto-based graphic arts studio the Gas Company. Water for People and Edelman came up with the concept. And after three months of iteration (and many sleepless nights) the Gas Company made it a reality by crafting a whopping 130 waterproof books. One of them could be yours free—if you subscribe to the Water for People newsletter and win the raffle that will ensue. [Photo: The Gas Company Inc.] The water crisis, made tangible “This book needs water. Just like millions of children in Latin America.” This is the opening line on Water for People’s website, and the sentiment behind it is literal. According to a UNICEF 2021 study, more than 1.42 billion people—including 450 million children—don’t have enough water to meet their everyday needs. That is one in five children worldwide whose ability to focus, learn, and achieve their potential is hampered by illnesses and decreased cognitive performance caused by a lack of clean drinking water. Water quality issues are so difficult to detect and monitor that the World Bank has called it “the invisible crisis.” By making a “dehydrating book,” the team wanted to make the crisis visible: When water disappears, so do opportunities like education. “The Dehydrating Book is symbolic of the current realities and obstacles of communities in Latin America,” says Mark Duey, Water for People’s CEO. “The region is currently facing a water crisis that’s holding children back.” But no such book had ever been made before. [Photo: The Gas Company Inc.] The making of a waterproof book Doug Laxdal founded the Gas Company in 1996. Since then, he has built a strong reputation for “kookie projects,” as he puts it. In 2022, his team made a completely fireproof version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to raise awareness of book burnings and bans in the U.S. (The Unburnable Book fetched $130,000 at a Sotheby’s auction, and all proceeds went to PEN America.) Laxdal recalls that when he was first asked to make an “unburnable” book, he knew exactly what to do. This time around, he wasn’t so sure. “A waterproof book is like putting metal in a microwave,” he told me on a recent video call. “You just don’t it.” After he hung up with Edelman, his only thought was: What the hell am I going to do? If you google “waterproof books” you’ll find a smattering of options, from plasticky baby books to “all-weather” notebooks, but the Dehydrating Book proved to be a whole other ball game. It had to be waterproof, and the ink had to stick to the page without washing away, and the text had to appear only when you poured water over it. A game of trial and error First on Laxdal’s to-do list was the book cover. His first instinct was to utilize plastic, but the four plastic manufacturers he reached out to weren’t interested in the project. In the end, he landed on white acrylic, also known as plexiglass, which comes in a gloss finish but in this case was sanded down to a matte surface using an orbital sander. The cover closes around the pages of the book almost like a jewelry box. Then came the pages. Laxdal experimented with a flurry of materials, including Tyvek (a type of synthetic material that’s often used to wrap buildings during construction) and polyester. The former wrinkled under water, the latter made the pages too stiff. Other options simply weren’t suitable for the kind of ink he had to use. Various test runs using pouches filled with water for a few days yielded unworkable results: Some ink either bled into the water or turned sticky, effectively gluing the book shut. The final version is made with a synthetic paper called SuperYupo (regular Yupo wasn’t good enough). The book covers are acrylic. The outside is lined with another sheet of SuperYupo that is glued to the covers using a waterproof adhesive from 3M. The pages are sewn with standard polyester thread. Laxdal’s team printed the first layer of text with a UV litho press, which uses ultraviolet light to instantly cure the ink onto the page. Laxdal likens the process to UV-cured gel nail polish, except in this case, the UV machine is almost 100 feet long. Then, they used a silkscreen press to apply enough layers of hydrochromic ink to conceal the text printed underneath. Finally, they placed the book inside a plastic pouch and dunked it in a small aquarium so the water could flow inside the pouch before it was sealed. In a live demo on Zoom, I watched as graphic designer Layla Laxdal (Doug’s daughter) poured a glass of water over an open book, and instantly, a brightly colored hummingbird appeared on the page. The story, cowritten with students from Palmira, a village in Peru’s Cascas Valley, follows a group of animals, led by a thirsty hummingbird named Lupita, who travel through Peru in search of water. A spokesperson from Edelman explains that the message behind the book is “el agua es vida,” (or “water is life”): “It’s a motto that the community lives by, and it is a powerful reminder for us readers that without water, children can’t thrive.” By the end of my interview with Laxdal, some 40 minutes later, the image that came into view during the demo had started to fade, apart from one patch in the center where the water had pooled. That patch was still bright. View the full article

When Michael White struck out on his own after stints at DoorDash and Square, his plan was to help tech employees access the value of their equity while their companies were still private. But as White and his cofounder Gautam Gupta enabled workers to get a line of credit, they found that most people were using it to finance a home purchase. “It makes sense,” White says. “That’s a big reason people seek liquidity—or that’s one of the first things that people do if they have an exit. So it really led us to dive deeper into that and ultimately pivot.” In 2024, White and Gupta relaunched their company Multiply Mortgage as an employee benefit that helps aspiring homeowners secure a mortgage. The company is licensed to originate mortgage loans in 19 states and works with mortgage brokers in nearly every other state. Through Multiply, workers can access expert advisors and discounted mortgage interest rates—and more recently, the company has also expanded to include more comprehensive education resources about financial wellness. For now, the benefit will remain a free service for employers, owing to Multiply’s business model in which the company earns a commission on mortgage origination from all of its lender partners. (White does, however, note that the company might start charging companies down the road, “as we build out more of the value that we’re providing companies.”) Working with employers also gives Multiply a built-in pool of potential customers and lowers the steep cost of customer acquisition across the mortgage industry. Beyond that, building an AI-powered platform has enabled Multiply to reduce its labor costs while continuing to bolster crucial elements of the business; the company recently closed a $23.5 million Series A round led by Kleiner Perkins that will go toward getting its product in front of more workers and improving on its personalized services. “We’re not building a self-serve mortgage,” White says. “For as complicated and stressful as this transaction can be, having a really high level of client service can make it go a lot more smoothly. So we’re really investing heavily in our team of mortgage advisors.” In the past decade, companies have started offering workplace benefits that help support employees through various personal experiences, from fertility treatments to mental health support and menopause-related care. At the moment, many benefits managers and HR teams are daunted by the rising costs of healthcare, not to mention the overwhelming number of niche employee benefits now on the market. “If medical insurance is going to consume basically all of your budget, companies have to make some pretty hard choices in other places,” White says. Multiply’s pitch to companies like Ramp—the booming fintech startup that is one of its customers—is certainly appealing from a financial perspective, but the return-to-office movement has also created an environment in which some employers are looking for ways to lure their workers back to the office or court prospective employees. Another buzzy tech startup is currently using Multiply in part because its employees are expected to relocate to cities that are not traditional tech hubs. “They are in the process of building out those teams with engineers that wouldn’t typically live in those places,” White says. “So what we’ve seen them doing with us is including us in their recruiting materials and really highlighting how this might not have been where you were otherwise going to live—but look at the quality of life that you can have. Look at what you’re able to afford from a home perspective; you can buy a home here, and here’s a resource that you can use to make that even more attainable.” Some fully remote employers, on the other hand, are offering Multiply’s services because of the geographic range the platform promises. “The fact that we can help their employees in Michigan just as well as we can help their employees in California makes a big difference for them,” White says. Companies have also found that providing Multiply as an employee benefit has encouraged some people to consider buying a home even if they previously assumed it was out of reach—or, at a minimum, use the service to evaluate their options. “One thing that’s been really cool is how much employees are just exploring what homeownership could look like for them, evaluating how much they could afford [and] renting versus buying,” White says. “They’re able to take advantage of this resource, as well. They have unlimited access to those advisors.” For some clients, the lower interest rates they secured through Multiply—which can be discounted by up to 0.75% and save them an average of $5,100 annually—have made all the difference in terms of being able to afford home ownership. Like other players in the workplace-benefits space, White also makes the case that may be most appealing to companies and HR teams who are sifting through a dizzying array of potential offerings. Going through a divorce or buying a home can be a lengthy, emotionally taxing experience, one that inevitably bleeds into the workplace. “If you know what to expect and you know how to adequately prepare for it, you can take a lot of the stress out of the process—which is great from the company’s perspective,” White says. “If you have this big thing happening outside of work that’s stressful and distracting, then that’s going to degrade performance at work.” View the full article

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When filmmaker Travis Gutiérrez Senger reflects on Asco’s legacy, he quickly notes they were more than an art group; they created a movement, one with remarkable influence on Chicano art history. “That movement continues today, and it’s very expansive,” he says. “There’s a lot of books, films and things that will be written about Asco over a period of time. And this was our contribution in some ways.” He’s referring to Asco: Without Permission, a documentary that chronicles the story of the 1970s art group founded by multidisciplinary artist Patssi Valdez, muralist Willie Herrón III, painter and performance artist Gronk and writer and photographer Harry Gamboa Jr. They met as teens, formed as young adults, and called their group “asco”—“nausea” or “disgust” in Spanish—after one of their early DIY exhibits. Their conceptual work and performance art spoke to the exclusion of Chicanos from the mainstream art world and the systemic police brutality endured by the Mexican American community in East Los Angeles. All four founding members of Asco became some of the most notable Chicano artists, later exhibiting works in revered museums around the United States. But in their early days, the group was denied access to the notable galleries and museums. They created their own avenues in the form of public performances, murals, and more to exhibit their work, their way. “To behave badly is the most ethical thing you can do,” said executive producer Gael García Bernal at the film’s South by Southwest film festival premiere earlier this month. “You’re building identity and questioning and unmasking the facade and the farce that exists.” Bernal and Diego Luna executive produced the film under their production company El Corriente del Golfo. The film has yet to find distribution. Speaking with the Associated Press, Gamboa and Valdez praised Gutiérrez Senger’s approach to their history. Both members, who appear in the documentary, saw the film for the first time with a crowd of fans and a group of young Chicano artists whose art was inspired by Asco’s early rebellion. “I felt the film really kind of captured the essence of all of us working together,” said Gamboa. Valdez says it was a special moment for her, as the only woman in the founding group, to be given equal time and understanding. “For the first time, I was given an equal voice in the group that hadn’t happened before,” she said, citing how previous stories of the group only highlighted her male collaborators. Without permission Asco emerged at the height of the Chicano civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s. It was a time of heightened political and racial tension amid the East LA walkouts, protesting education inequality, and the Chicano Moratorium, an anti-Vietnam War movement during which many Mexican Americans were victims of police brutality. Muralists and collectives popped up as Latino artists sought to process the systemic injustice taking place in their communities. “The response to such violence was to create art,” said Gamboa Jr. He wanted to alter the mainstream perception of Chicanos and present the possibilities and avenues someone can create despite societal constraints. For Valdez, being the only woman meant she was no stranger to a double dose of both racism in society and the sexism weaved within conservative Latino households, where young women were expected to keep quiet. “I couldn’t stand it. So I was able to act out these forms of censorship through the performance work in Asco,” said Valdez, who once taped herself to a public wall in a piece titled Instant Mural, a metaphor on feeling captive. One of Asco’s most known works is Spray Paint LACMA. Gamboa, Gronk and Herrón spray painted their names on the side of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art after Gamboa says he was told by a curator, “Chicanos are in gangs, they don’t make art.” “There was another era when people said, ‘Latinx art, you know, doesn’t exist. It’s not a thing. It doesn’t belong. It’s not part of American art,’” said Pilar Tompkins-Rivas, the chief curator and deputy director of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Asco’s neighborhood performance art would often draw stares, and even crowds. In Station of the Cross, the group carried a large cross to the local military recruiting office to protest the Vietnam War. In 1974, Gamboa took a photo of Gronk posed as the victim of gang violence to bring attention to the media’s sensationalist coverage of crime in East Los Angeles. In the documentary, Gamboa claims that a local news station ran the piece as an actual story. Asco’s work as a group remained in obscurity from the mainstream. It was not until 2011 when LACMA mounted Asco: Elite of the Obscure, A Retrospective, 1972-1887, the first retrospective to present the group’s performance and conceptual art. On display was an image of Valdez, taken by Gamboa, standing above the graffiti art. Life had presented Asco with its full-circle moment. “Latino history has always been erased,” said Gutiérrez Senger. “Asco: Without Permission is a story of winning a battle, not a war.” “No Movies” and Latino representation A 1974 photograph of Valdez shows the artist glammed up in a gold top, holding a golden statue of a cobra. She had won best actress at the Aztlan No Movie Awards—a fictional award show Asco created as commentary on the lack of Latino representation in Hollywood. The group was inspired by Hollywood cinema and popular culture, but knew the likelihood of starring in studio films was limited, unless they wanted to play a maid, cartel leader or gang member. “Hollywood movies, rock ’n’ roll. That’s what I was about,” said Valdez. “And that’s why I responded in the way I did with my artmaking.” Gamboa photographed Herrón, Gronk, and Valdez using cinema stock to capture the essence of their favorite films. The series was called No Movies and later inspired their satirical award show. Gutiérrez Senger was drawn to it and pays homage throughout the documentary by featuring a group of young Chicano artists—including local Los Angeles artists like Fabi Reyna and San Cha—in short films inspired by Asco’s signature DIY style. “I think it’s a necessary obligation as a Latino if you’re making films to fight very, very hard to put brown people on screen and behind the camera and to try to create films about our history,” said Gutiérrez Senger. “We have rich stories, and we have a rich history.” Asco: Without Permission includes testimonials from respected Latino artists, including actor Michael Peña and comedian Arturo Castro, who have broken into the mainstream but know the importance of preserving history. “Our history as Latinos is not in the history books. The movements that we’ve had are not in the history books,” Peña says in the documentary. Although it often feels like progression is slow, Valdez says artists need to continue to voice their opinions and “misbehave and not ask for permission.” “You do not need permission to be yourself. You do not need permission to be creative. You do not need permission to be intellectual,” said Gamboa. “And the thing is, you cannot allow yourself to be repressed or silenced and or visually curtailed from presenting works.” —By Leslie Ambriz, Associated Press View the full article

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Many schools and colleges are underperforming when it comes to sex education. Going beyond the classroom condoms-and-bananas approach, a group of students have taken it upon themselves to deliver sex ed, TikTok-style. The TikTok account @sexedforguys, which has more than 117,000 followers, started as a school project by four students at Colby College, a private liberal arts school in Maine. Launched in 2022, the account features skits tackling consent, toxic masculinity, and homophobia—essential lessons in a time when manosphere content is flooding For You Pages and Gen Z boys and men are more likely than baby boomers to believe that feminism has done more harm than good. The channel began as part of a study on privilege at elite all-boys schools, led by professor Adam Howard, chair of Colby’s education department. His research highlights how these institutions often fall short—especially when it comes to sex education. While working with student researchers, Howard asked how they could best share their findings. Their answer? TikTok. Howard told Rolling Stone that TikTok was the perfect platform for sharing his research for two reasons: First, that’s where young people are (55% of TikTok users are younger than 30). Second, it provides a much-needed counternarrative to some of the worst content on the app. “Guys could be scrolling through their TikTok and Andrew Tate will pop up, but as they scroll maybe Sex Ed for Guys will pop up and it’ll start having them think a little bit differently,” Christopher Maichin, a 20-year-old junior at Colby, told Rolling Stone. “I think the greatest part of it is that they are getting education without even knowing it. They’re watching a funny video but they’re learning about consent.” Several of the TikTok account’s videos have gone viral, including “Respecting Women Workout” (which has 11 million-plus views) and the game “That’s What’s Up!/What’s Up With That?” (which has more than 3 million views). “Setting boundaries with your partner: That’s what’s up! Backflips: That’s what’s up! Using racial and homophobic slurs: What’s up with that?” the boys say to the camera. Their video goes on to praise the 2013 Florida Gulf Coast March of Madness run, night-vision goggles, and “asking your partner about their day.” “This is unironically how we defeat the alt-right pipeline,” one user commented under the video. Another wrote: “this could actually save america.” View the full article

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. Hundreds of AI tools emerge every week. I’ve picked five new ones worth exploring. They’re free to try, easy to use, and signal new directions for useful AI. 1. Sesame: Talk with a surprisingly lifelike AI Of all the AI bots I’ve communicated with, this one sounds the most lifelike. Pick either Maya or Miles to talk with for free in Sesame’s conversational demo. Try one of these topics. You can download your conversation afterwards. It’s deleted from the company’s servers within 30 days to protect your privacy. I’ll keep an eye on this company: Sesame aims to build “an ever-present brilliant friend and conversationalist, keeping you informed and organized, helping you be a better version of yourself.” Another intriguing new AI conversationalist: I’m also intrigued by my experiments with Natura Umana’s “AI people.” Rather than one AI bot that covers everything, the NatureOS ecosystem hosts multiple conversational bots, each with a different focus. I’ve talked with Hector about well-being and Athena about fitness. The NatureOS interestingly includes hardware, so you can summon these lifelike AI characters with a quick tap of special earbuds. (See a video demo.) 2. Convergence: Assign tasks to an AI agent Ask Convergence’s AI agent to buy groceries for you, find a gift on Amazon, get you a restaurant reservation, research what people say about your company, or do any number of other tasks. This is just one of many new AI agents trained to use a Web browser for you, and none are yet fully reliable. When I tasked Convergence with making a list of LinkedIn profiles of speakers at the upcoming Perugia International Journalism festival, it got some right and many wrong. With simpler tasks your odds of success are higher. You can request up to five tasks for free per day, or pay $20/month for an unlimited number of tasks. 3. Scribe: Transcribe super accurately Until April 9, Scribe—a remarkably accurate new transcription model from ElevenLabs—is completely free. In my tests it got the names of websites right, whereas most transcription tools get those wrong. It also captured tiny speech nuances so well that I’d recommend this over other tools for anything requiring top accuracy. It works in 99 languages. 4. Google Career Dreamer: Imagine a new job Dream up potential new directions for your career with this simple, well-designed free site. You don’t have to log in, enter your name, or share any personal info. Just type in the kind of work you do and confirm whether you have certain skills and interests. Add your education if you want. The AI immediately gives you a “career identity statement” and shows you a map of jobs that might interest you. Hover over any to learn more about them. You can even open up nearby job openings in that field. You can then jump to Gemini, Google’s alternative to ChatGPT, to work on a cover letter or continue your career ideation. Gems are now free You can now create a free Gemini “Gem,” which is an AI tool customized with your specific instructions and up to 10 documents you upload. It’s Google’s answer to ChatGPT’s Custom GPTs. Try this: Create a new “Career Gem” by uploading your resume, past cover letters, career planning docs, and any other relevant materials. Provide instructions if you have a particular style, language, or approach in mind. This new trained AI assistant you’ve customized can then help you anytime you return to it to refine a cover letter, update your resume, practice for an interview, or even brainstorm career ideas. Alternative: You can use Google’s default “Career Guide” gem without uploading anything, but it’s not personalized. 5. Adobe Enhance Speech: Improve audio Adobe recently upgraded its audio cleanup tool. Upload any audio recording with background noise and immediately get a clean version to download. There are new sliders for adjusting the enhancement and background noise. You can then use Adobe Podcast to edit the cleaned audio by trimming the transcript just as you would in a Google Doc. It now works for recordings in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. If you’re making a podcast, you can choose from royalty-free sound collections with intros, outros, transition sounds, and background music. It’s free to try for a month and included with existing Adobe subscriptions. This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. Perks for remote employees only Our company works mostly remotely. Employees who live locally come in one day a week. A few departments’ employees are allowed to live elsewhere in the country (this rule does not apply to all departments). Several times a year, all staff are required to come into the office for the full week. Employees who live outside the area get paid hotel rooms near the office, and expense all of their meals. Local employees, however, are required to pay for their lunch every day, as well as the additional costs of commuting for the additional days (parking is quite expensive where we work). Is there a way to make our company see how unfair this is? Or am I being unreasonable? Yeah, you’re being unreasonable! Employees traveling for work have their meals covered since eating on business trips tends to be more expensive (since you don’t have access to your own stocked kitchen). Meals and hotel rooms aren’t perks when you’re traveling for work (“perks” was the word in your email subject line to me); they’re business expenses. Some extra days in your local office but still going home each night is a very different thing than being gone for a week on a business trip. I don’t think you’re likely to get traction if you suggest that the company pay for local people’s extra commuting costs or lunches that week. (In theory it could be good for morale if your company provided lunch to everyone at least once or twice during those weeks, but it’s not outrageous that they’re not; this is just a difference in being local vs. non-local.) Related: our non-traveling employees are upset about the travel “perks” that others get 2. Being the only woman at a retreat in an AirBnB My manager, a VP, invited me to attend an upcoming director summit with five directors. While my role is more administrative, he felt my presence would be valuable. The summit is planned for the summer at a rented AirBnb with entertainment amenities like a swimming pool, game room, etc. I would need to take a five-hour road trip with one of the male directors, and the group would conduct meetings around a large kitchen table or in the living room with a projected screen. I was initially uncomfortable with the setup and expressed my concerns to my boss. He acknowledged them but emphasized that he still wanted me to attend. After discussing it with family and colleagues, opinions were split on whether this arrangement — one woman among six men at a rental property for a work event — was entirely appropriate or potentially questionable. What do you think? I don’t think it’s inappropriate, but it’s also not unreasonable if you decide that you personally feel uncomfortable with it and want to ask for separate lodgings. (I’m assuming there’s an overnight stay, given the five-hour drive.) Related: I’d be the only woman at a team-building event at my boss’s remote lake house 3. My mom says I shouldn’t leave a bad Glassdoor review for my old company I recently was terminated from a very toxic work situation, and have run out my options to legally pursue them. (The contingency lawyers basically told me I had a case but they did not feel it would be profitable enough to be worth pursuing on my behalf, and I cannot afford to retain legal representation on my own.) In place of hitting them in their wallet, where I know they would pay attention, I was at least hoping to post an honest review of the job. If I had done my due diligence in the first place, I never would have applied. I want to add my voice to the chorus of others who have proclaimed this company to be bad to work for. My issue comes because my well-meaning mother is trying to discourage me from posting anything because she is convinced that they will figure out that I posted it and come after me legally. She pointed out that I do not have the money to sue them, and I certainly do not have the money to defend myself if they try to sue me. She is also concerned that it will get linked back to me and prevent future employers from considering me. While she is right that I cannot afford to be sued, I am more dubious about her other fears. If a reputable employer is interested in what I have to offer, why should a bad relationship with a former place of employment be relevant? I have connections in the form of other employees who will and actively are giving me positive references for new opportunities. How valid are my mother’s concerns? Admittedly, she has been out of the workforce for a long time, but I frequently listen to her because she operates from a place of common sense. I have many people telling me to just do it, and many people pointing out that they have not disputed the other negative reviews so why would mine be the tipping point? I’m just truly scared of making myself undesirable to a future employer. So, how far off-base is my mother on this one? It’s incredibly unlikely that the fact that you left a negative review will somehow get linked to you in the minds of prospective employers. How would they know? The idea that it would prevent future employers from considering you is a non-issue. Where it could be an issue if your old employer figures it was you and it causes them to give you a more negative reference than they’d give you otherwise — but it doesn’t sound like you were expecting a good reference from them anyway, so I’m not sure that needs to be a real worry. (For the record, though, you may run into employers who want a reference from this company even if you’re offering up different ones, so you shouldn’t rely on “well, I just won’t give them as a reference” — but it sounds like this reference wouldn’t be great regardless of whether you leave them a bad review or not.) Moreover, you sent me the review you’re considering posting and it’s not the sort of thing that would obviously have to be from one specific person: you talk in general terms about the company culture and management, not about specific experiences unique to you. I don’t see how they’d tie it to you, unless you repeatedly raised the same issues in very loud and specific terms while you were there and no one else ever complained about those things (which, from your review, definitely sounds like it was not the case). There’s also nothing legally actionable here; it’s legal to share your opinions [and here’s Glassdoor’s own page on avoiding defamation, which explains what’s considered an opinion (i.e., not defamatory) versus “verifiable facts” (potentially defamatory if knowingly false)].. I mean, people can sue anyone for anything, but it’s incredibly unlikely that a company would feel moved to take any legal action on this. Your mom is being overly cautious. That said, Glassdoor has a bad track record on privacy so it’s always smart to use a burner email if you post there. 4. Is it normal for managers not to know how much their employees earn? A few years ago I was a line manager and hiring manager for new employees joining my team, so I knew what the salary range for the positions being filled was, had negotiating power over said range, had the final say on who we’d extend an offer to, and would communicate to HR how much we’d be offering to the candidate. I also used the knowledge of my direct reports’ compensation to fight for salary increases to improve employee retention and to make sure everyone was being paid fairly for their role, their contributions, and their job experience. I always thought this was fairly standard, but I’ve discovered that my last two line managers had no idea how much I or anyone else on my team were being paid, nor did they care to ask because the final offer to employees were decided by the CEO, as they’re the ones who have the final say on things like budgets for the company and how much they spend on new talent. My last line manager tried arguing that my salary was private information and wasn’t relevant for him to do his job, but I argued back that, without this knowledge, he had no idea if we were being paid fairly, and as the person who oversees our day-to-day work, he’s the best person to know our worth and make sure that our compensation matches our contributions to the company. I eventually left that job because not only did I find out I was being underpaid for the industry, my colleague and peer received a significant raise that wasn’t extended to me. Is this normal? Are line managers usually not told how much their direct reports are being paid? Is this not important information they should have so they can advocate for their team with senior leadership? That’s what I thought at first, but now I’m wondering if I was the outlier and line managers are usually not privy to this information due to data privacy reasons. No, managers generally know how much people on their teams are being paid, for all the reasons you say. You also need to be able to spot inequities (Persephone is making more than Cordelia, but Cordelia does a better job) and retention risks (we’re currently underpaying Cordelia for the market and risk losing her over it) and actually talk to your employees about their salaries, which is a normal thing people bring up with their managers. There are places where managers don’t have this information, but unless they’re very low-level managers, it’s usually the sign of a culture with weak management (including that managers there aren’t well-trained or supported, which can trickle down to the people working under them in all sorts of ways). View the full article

A new survey released by GoDaddy reveals that domain names play a critical role in shaping consumer trust and online shopping behavior. The GoDaddy Consumer Pulse survey, conducted in March with 1,500 U.S. consumers, found that 80% of respondents have avoided visiting or purchasing from a website because it had an oddly spelled domain name. This reaction was most prevalent among younger consumers. According to the findings, 85% of Gen Z and 82% of Millennials reported skipping a business due to its domain’s spelling, while 76% of Gen X and Boomers said the same. The survey was released in March in recognition of the domain name’s 40th anniversary and explored what consumers consider red and green flags when it comes to online business names. One key insight: spelling and length matter. “Businesses that don’t take time to choose the right domain name inadvertently put themselves three steps behind,” said Trip Briscoe, a domain name expert at GoDaddy. “It’s worth investing in a quality domain that is spelled correctly and exactly matches your business’s name. It’s the difference between a potential customer finding you effortlessly or getting lost in the vastness of the internet.” What Makes a Domain Memorable Consumers cited specific traits that made domain names more appealing. Topping the list were full words spelled correctly (43%), short domains with two words or less (40%), and domains that are easy to pronounce (38%). Additionally, 23% of consumers said they found unique domain extensions like .AI or .shop memorable, while 19% were drawn to humorous domains that rhyme or use puns. In contrast, several features were identified as red flags. These included misspelled words (56%), domain names that don’t match a business’s name (55%), and domains that contain hyphens or numbers (20%). Another 20% of respondents said they distrusted free domains associated with platforms like Google Sites or Wix. Typing Still Matters Despite the prevalence of clicks and swipes in modern browsing, many consumers still manually type domain names into their browsers. Half of those surveyed said they regularly type in a business’s domain name when shopping online, while 27% do so only if they remember the name. The remaining 23% said they rely on search engines, bookmarks, emails, or social media links to navigate to a business website. Generational trends were also highlighted. Gen Z and Millennials were more likely to type in domain names directly and less likely to depend on alternative browsing methods. Only 16% of Gen Z and 18% of Millennials said they don’t type in domain names, compared to 28% of Gen X and Boomers. Why Domain Names Matter for Business GoDaddy’s findings suggest that businesses, particularly new or growing ones, need to give careful consideration to their domain names. According to the survey, 74% of consumers are more comfortable when a domain name matches the brand name exactly. Additionally, younger consumers were more likely to report halting their online shopping due to a poorly chosen domain. Thirty-nine percent of Gen Z and 35% of Millennials admitted they have stopped shopping at a company online because of the website’s domain name, compared to just 15% of Gen X and Boomers. Unique and funny domains also appealed more to younger shoppers. Thirty-four percent of Gen Z and 30% of Millennials said they found unique extensions memorable, while 25% of Gen Z and 24% of Millennials found rhyming or punny domains especially noteworthy. Among Gen X and Boomers, only 17% and 15%, respectively, reported the same. GoDaddy advises that businesses prioritize domain availability when naming a company, whether launching a new venture or expanding online. As the survey shows, a well-chosen domain name can make or break a customer’s decision to engage. Image: Envato This article, "GoDaddy Survey Reveals Misspelled Domain Names Turn Consumers Away" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

A new survey released by GoDaddy reveals that domain names play a critical role in shaping consumer trust and online shopping behavior. The GoDaddy Consumer Pulse survey, conducted in March with 1,500 U.S. consumers, found that 80% of respondents have avoided visiting or purchasing from a website because it had an oddly spelled domain name. This reaction was most prevalent among younger consumers. According to the findings, 85% of Gen Z and 82% of Millennials reported skipping a business due to its domain’s spelling, while 76% of Gen X and Boomers said the same. The survey was released in March in recognition of the domain name’s 40th anniversary and explored what consumers consider red and green flags when it comes to online business names. One key insight: spelling and length matter. “Businesses that don’t take time to choose the right domain name inadvertently put themselves three steps behind,” said Trip Briscoe, a domain name expert at GoDaddy. “It’s worth investing in a quality domain that is spelled correctly and exactly matches your business’s name. It’s the difference between a potential customer finding you effortlessly or getting lost in the vastness of the internet.” What Makes a Domain Memorable Consumers cited specific traits that made domain names more appealing. Topping the list were full words spelled correctly (43%), short domains with two words or less (40%), and domains that are easy to pronounce (38%). Additionally, 23% of consumers said they found unique domain extensions like .AI or .shop memorable, while 19% were drawn to humorous domains that rhyme or use puns. In contrast, several features were identified as red flags. These included misspelled words (56%), domain names that don’t match a business’s name (55%), and domains that contain hyphens or numbers (20%). Another 20% of respondents said they distrusted free domains associated with platforms like Google Sites or Wix. Typing Still Matters Despite the prevalence of clicks and swipes in modern browsing, many consumers still manually type domain names into their browsers. Half of those surveyed said they regularly type in a business’s domain name when shopping online, while 27% do so only if they remember the name. The remaining 23% said they rely on search engines, bookmarks, emails, or social media links to navigate to a business website. Generational trends were also highlighted. Gen Z and Millennials were more likely to type in domain names directly and less likely to depend on alternative browsing methods. Only 16% of Gen Z and 18% of Millennials said they don’t type in domain names, compared to 28% of Gen X and Boomers. Why Domain Names Matter for Business GoDaddy’s findings suggest that businesses, particularly new or growing ones, need to give careful consideration to their domain names. According to the survey, 74% of consumers are more comfortable when a domain name matches the brand name exactly. Additionally, younger consumers were more likely to report halting their online shopping due to a poorly chosen domain. Thirty-nine percent of Gen Z and 35% of Millennials admitted they have stopped shopping at a company online because of the website’s domain name, compared to just 15% of Gen X and Boomers. Unique and funny domains also appealed more to younger shoppers. Thirty-four percent of Gen Z and 30% of Millennials said they found unique extensions memorable, while 25% of Gen Z and 24% of Millennials found rhyming or punny domains especially noteworthy. Among Gen X and Boomers, only 17% and 15%, respectively, reported the same. GoDaddy advises that businesses prioritize domain availability when naming a company, whether launching a new venture or expanding online. As the survey shows, a well-chosen domain name can make or break a customer’s decision to engage. Image: Envato This article, "GoDaddy Survey Reveals Misspelled Domain Names Turn Consumers Away" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Google’s Danny Sullivan shared what small independent sites can do to improve their rankings. The post Google’s SEO Tips For Better Rankings – Search Central Live NYC appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Former special counsel Robert Mueller was once a partner at the legal groupView the full article