ResidentialBusiness

Whether you're self-employed or a partner, you may be able to deduct certain expenses for the part of your home that you use for business. To deduct expenses for business use of the home, you must use part of your home as one of the following: Exclusively on a regular basis as your principal place of business for your trade or business;Exclusively on a regular basis as a place where you meet or deal with your patients, clients, or customers in the normal course of your trade or business;A separate structure that's not attached to your home, used exclusively on a regular basis in connection with your trade or business;On a regular basis for storage of inventory or product samples used in your trade or business of selling products at retail or wholesale, so long as your home is the sole fixed location of such trade or business;For rental use; orAs a daycare facility.If the exclusive use requirement applies, you can't deduct business expenses for any part of your home that you use both for personal and business purposes. For example, if you're an attorney and use the den of your home to write legal briefs and for personal purposes, you may not deduct any business use of your home expenses. Further, under the principal place of business test, you must determine that your home is the principal place of your trade or business after considering where you perform your most important business activities and where you spend most of your business activity time, in order to deduct expenses for the business use of your home. A portion of your home may qualify as your principal place of business if you use it for the administrative or management activities of your trade or business and have no other fixed location where you conduct substantial administrative or management activities for that trade or business. You also may take deductions for business storage purposes when the dwelling unit is the sole fixed location of the business or for regular use of a residence for the provision of daycare services; exclusive use isn't required in these cases. For more information, see Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home (Including Use by Daycare Providers). Deductible expenses for business use of your home include the business portion of real estate taxes, mortgage interest, rent, casualty losses, utilities, insurance, depreciation, maintenance, and repairs. In general, you may not deduct expenses for the parts of your home not used for business, for example, lawn care or painting a room not used for business. Regular method - You compute the business use of home deduction by dividing expenses of operating the home between personal and business use. You may deduct direct business expenses in full, and may allocate the indirect total expenses of the home to the percentage of the home floor space used for business. A qualified daycare provider who doesn't use his or her home exclusively for business purposes, however, must figure the percentage based on the amount of time the applicable portion of the home is used for business. Self-employed taxpayers filing Schedule C (Form 1040), Profit or Loss From Business (Sole Proprietorship) first compute this deduction on Form 8829, Expenses for Business Use of Your Home. Simplified option - While taxpayers can still figure the deduction using the regular method, many taxpayers may find the optional safe harbor method less burdensome. Revenue Procedure 2013-13 PDF allows qualifying taxpayers to use a prescribed rate of $5 per square foot of the portion of the home used for business (up to a maximum of 300 square feet) to compute the business use of home deduction. Under this safe harbor method, depreciation is treated as zero and the taxpayer claims the deduction directly on Schedule C (Form 1040). Instead of using Form 8829, the taxpayer indicates the taxpayer's election to use the safe harbor option by making two entries directly on the Schedule C for the square footage of the home and the square footage of the office. Deductions attributable to the home that are otherwise allowable without regard to business use (such as qualified residence interest, property taxes, and casualty losses) are allowed in full on Schedule A (Form 1040), Itemized Deductions. For more information, see Simplified option for home office deduction and FAQs – Simplified method for home office deduction. Regardless of the method used to compute the deduction, you may not deduct business expenses in excess of the gross income limitation. Under the regular method for computing the deduction, you may be able to carry forward some of these business expenses to the next year, subject to the gross income limitation for that year. There's no carryover provision under the safe harbor method, but you may elect into and out of the safe harbor method in any given year. In the farming business or a partner - If you're in the farming business and file Schedule F (Form 1040), Profit or Loss From Farming, or a partner and you're using actual expenses, use the "Worksheet to Figure the Deduction for Business Use of Your Home" to figure your deduction. If you're using the simplified method to figure the deduction, use the "Simplified Method Worksheet" to figure your deduction. Both worksheets are in Publication 587. Farmers claim their expenses on Schedule F (Form 1040) PDF. Partners generally claim their unreimbursed partnership expenses on Schedule E (Form 1040), Supplemental Income and Loss. Additional informationPublication 587 has detailed information on rules for the business use of your home, including how to determine whether your home office qualifies as your principal place of business. View the full article

The KBW Nasdaq Bank Index is down more than 7% year to date. Analysts blame confusion caused by President Trump's evolving tariff policies and heightened worries about an economic downturn that could hurt banks' credit quality. View the full article

Apple, Google, and Samsung are competing on multiple fronts—from phones, to health apps, to smartwatches—and that rivalry extends to AI tools as well. All of these tech giants offer AI-powered object removal features in their mobile photo editing apps, which ostensibly allow you get rid of an unwanted person, a tree, a hand, or anything else that's ruining your shot, with only a tap or two on the screen. However, just because Apple, Google, and Samsung all offer AI object removal doesn't mean the tools are of the same standard. There's been a fair bit of chatter online about how these features stack up against one another, so it feels as though a head-to-head object removal test is in order. These AI tools all work in the same way. Obviously, the tools don't know what's really behind the object being removed—but thanks to a combination of clues in the surrounding pixels and the image training built into their underlying models, they can make a reasonably good guess. How good that guess is then determines the quality of the end result. This test covers three tools: Clean Up (in Apple Photos on iOS), Magic Eraser (in Google Photos on Android), and Object Eraser (in the Samsung Gallery app on One UI). These tools all appear as options when you open images in the relevant apps. For testing purposes, I've borrowed some great photos from Taan Huyn, Tolga Ahmetler, and Marek Piwnicki. (A quick note on the comparison images: There's some variation in resolution because of how I saved them using various devices; it has nothing to do with the AI tools in question, so you can mostly ignore the sharpness of the pictures.) Which AI tool is best at removing a lamp from a photo? The original photo. Credit: Taan Huyn/Unsplash Our first photo challenge—removing the lamp in the image above—is relatively simple in some ways, but complex in others. There are some useful guidelines for the AI in terms of the wall and the window, but there are also shadows to deal with (including the shadow of the lamp on the wall behind it, which AI isn't smart enough to know it needs to remove as well). First up was Apple Clean Up. The tool did a fine job of identifying the lamp as I scribbled over it—I like the glow effect—and once the removal process was complete, the back wall was filled in nicely. Most of the window pane work looked okay too, but there were a few weird artifacts left as evidence of an object removal. Next was Google Magic Eraser. The lamp wasn't identified as a suggestion for something to erase, but selecting it was pretty straightforward and accurate in terms of the boundaries. Unfortunately, while most of the job was done well, Magic Eraser left evidence of the lampshade up at the top, like a ghost of what had been there before. Finally, I tried Samsung Object Eraser. Here the object selection process was a bit more fiddly—it's more difficult to zoom and pan in Samsung Gallery, and the automatic selection was less accurate. However, the removal job was the best of the three, with both the wall and the windows accurately filled in. Apple on the left, Google in the middle, and Samsung on the right. Credit: Lifehacker Which AI photo tool does the best job removing a person from a photo? The original photo. Credit: Tolga Ahmetler/Unsplash Our second photo challenge is removing the walking man from this street scene, and it's a tricky one—the AI has to imagine most of the white car behind our primary subject, as well as fill in the road and its markings. What's more, it's a darker scene, with the foreground in focus and the background getting increasingly blurry. With Apple Clean Up, the tool's automatic selection wanted to clear away the cars in the background rather than the man in the foreground, but selecting him was easy enough. The AI fill results were patchy, and got worse further back in the scene, with the car at the back turning into a pixelated mess. Over to Google Magic Eraser, which also wanted to erase people in the background rather than the foreground. It had some trouble picking out the man against the dark and wet street—and it then had difficulty both removing all of the man and replacing the pixels properly. It borrowed pixels from the wrong part of the image on the whole, and the tool couldn't even carry on the yellow line consistently. As for Samsung Object Eraser, again the selection process was a bit awkward, but ultimately it did a perfect job of selecting the male figure against the background. It then did really well at removal: It was the only AI to actually end up with a realistic looking car and road after the man had gone. While it's not perfect, this would probably fool most people at first glance. Apple on the left, Google in the middle, and Samsung on the right. Credit: Lifehacker Which AI photo tool is best at removing a bicycle from a photo? The original photo. Credit: Marek Piwnicki/Unsplash This third photo challenge, removing the bicycle from this scene, offers a lot of information for the AI to use in terms of the surrounding field. The barely visible fencing behind the bike adds to the difficulty, so I was interested to see if these tools would try to continue the fence, or just ignore it and go with the grass. With this one, Apple Clean Up needed a few goes to get the whole of the bicycle selected—possibly because it doesn't appear to be one single object. When that was done, Clean Up was reasonably proficient at filling in the blanks, though both the greenery and the fence it created showed inconsistencies. Google Magic Eraser also needed several attempts to get the entirety of the bike selected. It tried to fill in the fence as well as the field, and while the results weren't a disaster, there were obvious errors—some of the bike wheel spokes are still there, for example. It was maybe slightly better than Apple Clean Up, but not by much. As with the man in the street, Samsung Object Eraser was the best at making an accurate selection first time around, and better at putting something convincing in the space that was left. Both the field and the fence were filled in an accurate, realistic way, and this could easily pass as an unedited photo. Apple on the left, Google in the middle, and Samsung on the right. Credit: Lifehacker The final verdict: Samsung's tool performs bestThe first thing to say is that your mileage may vary with these sorts of tasks—as you will see if you look at similar comparison challenges from around social media and the internet at large. Every photo has different characteristics, and every AI tool has its own approach in dealing with object removal. In terms of my tests, Galaxy AI and Samsung's Object Eraser are the clear winners. The tool seems to take more time over the replacement pixels, and does some actual image generation rather than just copying and pasting pixels from elsewhere in the image—as you can see with the car on the street. That's just an AI imagining of a car, not the actual car, but it makes for a photo that looks genuine. Apple and Google did okay, and were about on a par with one another. The selections are easy to make (easier than with the Samsung, actually), and some more straightforward removal tasks are handled perfectly well. However, these AI removal features do tend to struggle with complex operations where there are fewer clues about how the background should look. Ultimately, it's unlikely that anyone's going to change their phone solely because of the AI object removal tools it offers, but it's interesting to chart the progress these three companies have made with their AI offerings. It's also worth noting that Google Photos and its Magic Eraser are available on all Android and iOS devices, which puts pressure on Apple and Samsung to keep up (or stay ahead). View the full article

The following content is brought to you by Lifehacker partners. If you buy a product featured here, we may earn an affiliate commission or other compensation. Photoshop has been the industry standard in image-editing software for over 30 years, but up until now, creators have been limited to using it on their computers and tablets. The recent launch of the first Photoshop iPhone app has (finally) changed that. Now you can go to the App Store, search "Photoshop," and download the spanking-new Photoshop iPhone mobile app. It’s available for free with an impressive feature set, but if you’re a savvy Photoshop user, the $7.99 a month/$69.99 a year Photoshop Mobile and Web Plans unlocks a wider set of premium features. Adobe Photoshop Mobile and Web Plan With 100GB of cloud storage and 100 generative credits a month at Adobe Learn More Learn More at Adobe This rundown of the app’s key offerings will help you choose what’s right for you. The 'freemium' version is ideal for beginners Credit: Adobe The mobile app’s free version is an excellent entry point for mobile creators who want to build their Photoshop skills. The free toolkit includes several Photoshop editing tools, including the Spot Healing Brush, unlimited layers and masks, and a new Tap Select tool that makes it a snap to edit photos on the small screen by tapping on the object you want to highlight, instead of having to wrestle with tools. The freebie also comes with the Firefly-powered Generative Fill and Generative Expand AI tools, which let you fill in what's missing or remove unwanted elements from images in seconds. The premium plan has more tools, plus web Credit: Adobe If you have Photoshop experience, the Mobile and Web Plan unlocks full access to Photoshop for iPhone and iPad, plus Photoshop on the web. Add in 100GB storage and 100 generative credits a month, and you’re ready to create from anywhere. Additional premium mobile tools include Object Select, Magic Wand, Remove Tool and Clone Stamp, plus the handy Content-Aware Fill, which allows you to fill portions of an image with content sampled from other parts of the image. All of your mobile files will automatically sync with your go-to Creative Cloud apps and Photoshop on the web, so you can work across all your devices. Exclusive AI webtools uplevel your content Credit: Adobe If you use AI to generate content, the premium plan also comes with exclusive access to next-gen Firefly AI web tools such as Reference Image, Generate Background, and Generate Similar, which lets you generate multiple variations of the same image. Adobe’s first-ever Photoshop iPhone app makes it easy to create on your phone and is a win for all skill levels. Download the free version or subscribe to the loaded Photoshop Mobile and Web Plan for just $7.99 a month. View the full article

Google Ads is significantly increasing the negative keyword limit for Performance Max (PMax) campaigns, raising the cap from 100 to 10,000 per campaign, aligning with Search campaigns. By the numbers: Previous cap: 100 negative keywords per PMax campaign New cap: 10,000 negative keywords per PMax campaign Rollout timeline: Next few weeks for all PMax advertisers Why we care. Advertisers had expressed frustration that the previous 100-keyword limit was too restrictive, limiting control over where their ads appeared. The update provides greater flexibility while maintaining campaign effectiveness. The big picture: Google Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin says the cap ensures system flexibility while giving advertisers more control, in her update on X. She also advises using negative keywords carefully to avoid limiting conversions. What’s next: Google is working on further enhancements, including support for negative keyword lists in PMax later this year. Advertisers can also use tools like brand exclusions and account-level negative keywords for additional control. View the full article

As a freelancer belonging to a community-based platform, it’s easy to understand the benefits of working with diverse and international teams. Aside from the amazing networking opportunities that come from connecting with like-minded freelance friends and professionals, you’ll have a well-rounded understanding of the realms of remote work. In today's universal and online working space, the freelancing world continues to extend even further from a local and community sphere. You have most likely collaborated with talented professionals from different corners of the globe on remote work platforms or international client projects. This article explores how these cross-cultural encounters aren't just one-off experiences, they are valuable assets that can significantly boost your freelance growth and overall success. Learn via cultural exchangesThe digital age has transformed how we work, breaking down geographical barriers and creating unprecedented opportunities for collaboration. The rise of remote working patterns and platforms have made it possible to join teams across multiple continents. Although this is nothing new, the value and appreciation that businesses have for nurturing diversity within employees has blossomed. In fact, reports indicate that creating a culture of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) is more important than it has ever been with 88% of employers agreeing D&I agendas are a positive and essential strategy for success, for attracting top talents, and for creating a culture where everyone feels valued. Freelancers working across cultures bring unique cultural perspectives, broaden perspectives and invite new approaches into the organization. It’s therefore not a surprise that such a diversity of thought and experience can be a powerful catalyst for sparking creativity, innovation and future development. Benefit from exposure to new work stylesWhen you work with international teams, you gain exposure to different problem-solving approaches, practical tips, and creative methodologies. A designer in Tokyo might approach visual hierarchy differently than one in Paris, while a property developer in Spain might introduce you to traditional Spanish villa layouts that you hadn't encountered before at home. These exchanges aren't just about technical skills—they're opportunities to broaden your professional mindset and enhance your creative toolkit. Different regions often have distinct approaches to work and collaboration, such as: The US market often values innovation and quick iteration. American teams typically encourage direct communication and rapid prototyping, which can help you become more agile in your project approach.European markets often emphasize work-life balance and sustainable productivity. Their approach to project management typically involves longer-term planning and structured collaboration, which can teach valuable lessons about sustainable freelancing practices.Asian business cultures frequently highlight group harmony and attention to detail. Working with Asian teams can enhance your ability to consider multiple stakeholders and perfect the finer points of your deliverables.However, with the opportunity to collaborate and co-work with a diverse team, freelancers can benefit from having a wealth of different work styles to choose from. It is possible to become stale in a role that you once loved or might have done for a while and adopting, and adapting to a range of new work approaches can be inspiring. Rather than feeling as if every day is the same, paying attention to and learning a new way of doing the same role can give you an important fresh perspective and, in turn, make you more versatile and valuable as a freelancer. Embrace diversity in remote teamsSuccess in diverse teams requires more than just technical skills and you will already know that you need to be aware of cultural nuances and bias awareness. The companies that foster diversity across their remote and in-house teams are 35% more likely to outshine peers. Understanding different communication styles and business etiquette across cultures can enable you to navigate any international projects more effectively. Meanwhile, having an appreciation for different perspectives is an excellent way to foster more innovative solutions. When team members from various backgrounds share their approaches, the results often surpass what any single cultural perspective might have produced, and the phrase “two heads are better than one” comes to mind. Flexibility in working hours and communication methods shows respect for team members in different time zones while building strong professional relationships. Collaborate to boost business To maximize the benefits of diverse collaboration, you might like to actively seek out international projects and teams that challenge your usual way of working. Each new project is an opportunity to expand your professional repertoire and any amount of time you invest in understanding different business cultures and communication styles is time well spent. Likewise, take time to reflect on your cross-cultural experiences, and how different cultural mindsets at work vary across roles, people’s age or demographics, and educational background. These insights can be valuable when pitching to new clients with other benefits: Enhanced creativity and innovation emerge when different viewpoints combine to solve challenges. Your solutions become more robust and applicable to broader markets.Improved problem-solving capabilities develop as you learn to approach challenges from multiple angles, incorporating various cultural and professional perspectives.Expanded market opportunities arise as you become more adept at working across cultures, making you valuable to clients seeking global reach.Build your global networkThe global freelance community offers numerous opportunities for growth. Join international freelance platforms and professional networks where you can connect with peers from different countries. Participate in industry events and online communities to expand your professional circle beyond your local market. Share your cross-cultural experiences through content creation and networking to position yourself as a globally-minded professional. The impact of diverse collaboration extends far beyond individual projects. Your resume gains international credibility, making you more attractive to clients seeking globally-experienced professionals. Your professional network becomes more diverse and resilient, opening doors to opportunities across different markets. Your ability to work effectively across cultures becomes a valuable selling point, particularly as businesses increasingly operate globally. Therefore, taking up the chance to collaborate with overseas colleagues and gain an insight into a new culture helps to broaden your perspectives and, at the same time, enhance your professional growth. From adopting different techniques and learning novel resources or digital tools from freelancers working across the world, being introduced to other ways to approach your role is one of the most enriching ways to advance your career today and in the long-term. Equally, the experiences and insights gained from working with international teams enhance your professional capabilities and ability to contribute in innovative freelance and co-working settings. You’ll already appreciate the benefits that come from exchanging ideas and of sharing information as a member of a thriving community. The Freelancers Hub is an inspiring and diverse network to belong to, and one that is as empowering as it is supportive whatever sector you work within. View the full article

As a freelancer belonging to a community-based platform, it’s easy to understand the benefits of working with diverse and international teams. Aside from the amazing networking opportunities that come from connecting with like-minded freelance friends and professionals, you’ll have a well-rounded understanding of the realms of remote work. In today's universal and online working space, the freelancing world continues to extend even further from a local and community sphere. You have most likely collaborated with talented professionals from different corners of the globe on remote work platforms or international client projects. This article explores how these cross-cultural encounters aren't just one-off experiences, they are valuable assets that can significantly boost your freelance growth and overall success. Learn via cultural exchangesThe digital age has transformed how we work, breaking down geographical barriers and creating unprecedented opportunities for collaboration. The rise of remote working patterns and platforms have made it possible to join teams across multiple continents. Although this is nothing new, the value and appreciation that businesses have for nurturing diversity within employees has blossomed. In fact, reports indicate that creating a culture of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) is more important than it has ever been with 88% of employers agreeing D&I agendas are a positive and essential strategy for success, for attracting top talents, and for creating a culture where everyone feels valued. Freelancers working across cultures bring unique cultural perspectives, broaden perspectives and invite new approaches into the organization. It’s therefore not a surprise that such a diversity of thought and experience can be a powerful catalyst for sparking creativity, innovation and future development. Benefit from exposure to new work stylesWhen you work with international teams, you gain exposure to different problem-solving approaches, practical tips, and creative methodologies. A designer in Tokyo might approach visual hierarchy differently than one in Paris, while a property developer in Spain might introduce you to traditional Spanish villa layouts that you hadn't encountered before at home. These exchanges aren't just about technical skills—they're opportunities to broaden your professional mindset and enhance your creative toolkit. Different regions often have distinct approaches to work and collaboration, such as: The US market often values innovation and quick iteration. American teams typically encourage direct communication and rapid prototyping, which can help you become more agile in your project approach.European markets often emphasize work-life balance and sustainable productivity. Their approach to project management typically involves longer-term planning and structured collaboration, which can teach valuable lessons about sustainable freelancing practices.Asian business cultures frequently highlight group harmony and attention to detail. Working with Asian teams can enhance your ability to consider multiple stakeholders and perfect the finer points of your deliverables.However, with the opportunity to collaborate and co-work with a diverse team, freelancers can benefit from having a wealth of different work styles to choose from. It is possible to become stale in a role that you once loved or might have done for a while and adopting, and adapting to a range of new work approaches can be inspiring. Rather than feeling as if every day is the same, paying attention to and learning a new way of doing the same role can give you an important fresh perspective and, in turn, make you more versatile and valuable as a freelancer. Embrace diversity in remote teamsSuccess in diverse teams requires more than just technical skills and you will already know that you need to be aware of cultural nuances and bias awareness. The companies that foster diversity across their remote and in-house teams are 35% more likely to outshine peers. Understanding different communication styles and business etiquette across cultures can enable you to navigate any international projects more effectively. Meanwhile, having an appreciation for different perspectives is an excellent way to foster more innovative solutions. When team members from various backgrounds share their approaches, the results often surpass what any single cultural perspective might have produced, and the phrase “two heads are better than one” comes to mind. Flexibility in working hours and communication methods shows respect for team members in different time zones while building strong professional relationships. Collaborate to boost business To maximize the benefits of diverse collaboration, you might like to actively seek out international projects and teams that challenge your usual way of working. Each new project is an opportunity to expand your professional repertoire and any amount of time you invest in understanding different business cultures and communication styles is time well spent. Likewise, take time to reflect on your cross-cultural experiences, and how different cultural mindsets at work vary across roles, people’s age or demographics, and educational background. These insights can be valuable when pitching to new clients with other benefits: Enhanced creativity and innovation emerge when different viewpoints combine to solve challenges. Your solutions become more robust and applicable to broader markets.Improved problem-solving capabilities develop as you learn to approach challenges from multiple angles, incorporating various cultural and professional perspectives.Expanded market opportunities arise as you become more adept at working across cultures, making you valuable to clients seeking global reach.Build your global networkThe global freelance community offers numerous opportunities for growth. Join international freelance platforms and professional networks where you can connect with peers from different countries. Participate in industry events and online communities to expand your professional circle beyond your local market. Share your cross-cultural experiences through content creation and networking to position yourself as a globally-minded professional. The impact of diverse collaboration extends far beyond individual projects. Your resume gains international credibility, making you more attractive to clients seeking globally-experienced professionals. Your professional network becomes more diverse and resilient, opening doors to opportunities across different markets. Your ability to work effectively across cultures becomes a valuable selling point, particularly as businesses increasingly operate globally. Therefore, taking up the chance to collaborate with overseas colleagues and gain an insight into a new culture helps to broaden your perspectives and, at the same time, enhance your professional growth. From adopting different techniques and learning novel resources or digital tools from freelancers working across the world, being introduced to other ways to approach your role is one of the most enriching ways to advance your career today and in the long-term. Equally, the experiences and insights gained from working with international teams enhance your professional capabilities and ability to contribute in innovative freelance and co-working settings. You’ll already appreciate the benefits that come from exchanging ideas and of sharing information as a member of a thriving community. The Freelancers Hub is an inspiring and diverse network to belong to, and one that is as empowering as it is supportive whatever sector you work within. View the full article

Google is adding more engagement options to Performance Max campaigns, adding Message assets alongside those already available in Search campaigns. What’s new: The Message assets functionality, previously exclusive to Search ads, was spotted by digital marketer Emirhan Bayutmuş and is now available in Performance Max campaigns. This feature allows users to initiate conversations with businesses directly from ads, enhancing engagement. Google has updated their message asset help document to reflect this update. Why we care. The expansion gives advertisers another way to connect with potential customers directly through chat-based interactions, potentially improving conversion rates. What to watch. Expect further integration of conversational ad formats as Google continues to refine its AI-driven ad experiences. View the full article

Cash earnings to increase from current level of £1,000 in boost to people who sell goods online View the full article

My Boox Palma is one of the most easily lovable pieces of tech I've ever used—an e-ink reader with a phone-like form factor that isn't locked down to one specific retailer's ecosystem. It has helped me read more and waste time on social media less, but as much as I appreciate it, it can also be weird and finicky. For example, why is it so tricky to use it to listen to audiobooks? Like most people, before I got the Palma, my phone was my main driver for audiobooks, music, and podcasts—it was always with me and the apps made it super convenient. But I'd find myself pausing my book every time a notification pinged in my headphones, so I decided to shift that "content" over to my e-reader as well. Then I hit a snag: Every time I closed the protective cover that came with the device, it would go to sleep—shutting off the screen and the front light, disconnecting my Bluetooth headphones, and pausing the audio. While the Palma looks like a phone and runs on Android, it doesn't always act like a phone. And while my iPhone never gave me any problems playing audio with the screen off, doing the same on the Palma (or any other Boox device) requires some tinkering. Three settings to changeWhile it would be nice if the Palma could play audio with the screen off right out of the box—as has been the case for every phone I've used since I got my first smartphone in 2010—you'll need to change a few settings to make it happen. Keep your audio apps active in the background Credit: Screenshot by Joel Cunningham The first thing you'll need to do is adjust your settings to allow apps that play audio to continue running in the background. In the interest of preserving battery life, the Palma OS turns this setting off for every app you download from the Google Play store, but you can fix that in one of two ways. First, you can long press the icon of any app on the home screen. This will bring up a menu with a few different options. Tap Optimize. From the next pop-up menu, select the Others tab, then make sure the slider next to Stay active in the background is turned to On. "Unfreeze" your audio apps Credit: Screenshot by Joel Cunningham Next, you'll need to stop the Palma's OS from "freezing" audio-playing apps running in the background. You can make this change globally, or on a per-app basis. Freezing apps improves battery life, so keep that in mind as you make your decision. To unfreeze a single app, open Settings and scroll down to Apps and Notifications. Tap Freeze Settings, find your audio-playing apps in the list of installed programs, and turn the slider to Off. To unfreeze all your apps, from this same menu, turn the Do not freeze apps running in the background (such as audio/input method) slider to On. You can also stop the Palma from automatically freezing newly downloaded apps by turning the slider next to Automatically enable freezing after installing an app to Off. Keep your headphones connected Credit: Screenshot by Joel Cunningham The last thing you'll need to do is keep the Palma from turning off Bluetooth and disconnecting your headphones after the device goes to sleep. To do that, open Settings and scroll to Power. On the next screen, tap Bluetooth Status After Sleep and select Stay Connected from the pop-up menu. (I'd also suggest turning on Always turn Bluetooth on when the device starts up from this menu, so you won't have to manually turn Bluetooth on every time you want to connect your headphones—though, again, that will affect your overall battery life. Now that that's taken care of, here are other settings you should consider changing on any Boox device. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: What do I do about a staffer who has a history of personal drama and blurring professional boundaries who’s about to be added to the department I manage? According to a number of people I know who have worked with “Lee” over the past couple of years, while Lee is okay at their basic day-to-day job responsibilities, they are a bringer of discord on a personal level wherever they go. A year and a half ago, they were let go from a supervisory position within another organization for sexual harassment. Lee is late 30s and their former workplace had a lot of young 20-somethings just learning professional norms. Apparently, Lee often invited these coworkers out to pub trivia and other social gatherings outside of work. As their supervisor, Lee gave many of these staffers weekends off (not the norm for these positions in our industry), made some positions full-time that were traditionally part-time, and ignored or even encouraged some general bratty behavior among their workers. According to multiple colleagues I know from this organization, Lee truly mismanaged their staffers, creating long-lasting institutional problems. Eventually one of the young employees met with management, said that Lee had made some comments that made them uncomfortable, which led to realizations that the problems extended well beyond one or two ill-chosen remarks. Before Lee could be formally fired for sexual harassment (it was going to happen), they landed themselves a position within my organization, which didn’t bother to call references or check in with their former employer. I have now been informed that Lee is being moved to my department. Apparently there have been “issues” within their current one. It seems Lee invited coworkers out to socialize after hours and one of their partners (they’re in a polyamorous relationship) ended up hooking up with the partner of a coworker. The coworker and their partner initially broke up, then got back together. That staffer is understandably less than comfortable around Lee, but apparently most of the other people in that department have thrown their hands up about having Lee and their personal drama in the building. It seems Lee just keeps blurring those boundaries between work and personal life wherever they go and has a knack for stirring up drama. Rather than deal with any of these issues head-on, upper admin has decided it’s best for everyone if they simply move Lee. My department has a really good group of staffers, we work well together, and I don’t want to see things thrown into dysfunction. What should I do? Speak to upper admin and tell them Lee is chaos we don’t want? Pretty sure they don’t care and will park Lee here no matter what. Warn all my staff ahead of time, saying, “I can’t tell you what to do with your free time, but if you socialize with Lee and their friends after hours, you’ll be sorry”? Lee technically wouldn’t be supervising anyone in my department, but they would be mid-level rather than entry-level, which means that they would be senior to our younger workers. How do I handle this situation? Well, you can try pushing back on the placement of Lee in your department. Who knows, if you lay out your concerns (Lee created long-lasting institutional problems at another organization, was on the verge of being fired for harassment when they quit, and apparently caused problems in your organization as well), it’s possible that you’ll get some traction. But if that doesn’t work … then congratulations, you get to be the one who manages Lee! For now, at least. And I think it can be done if you keep an eye out for problems and are assertive about addressing them quickly and directly. If anything, you’re ahead of the game compared to their last manager, because you already know the history and you know what to watch for, and so you’re likely to spot problems faster and be able to act more swiftly. That’s a big advantage. (Speaking of which, talk to the person who’s been managing Lee and find out if there were problems beyond the dating drama so that you know exactly what you need to be watching out for.) As for the risk of your team being thrown into dysfunction, it sounds like there were two big problems with Lee at their last organization: they were a terrible and unfair manager, and they were harassing people. They’re not going to be managing people on your team, so that cuts out a huge chunk of what went wrong previously. On their history of harassment, this is a good time to review with your team what harassment is and how to report it, to make sure people feel safe doing that, and to make a point of watching things closely and checking in with people about how everything is going. I would stay away from warning your current staff not to socialize with Lee after-hours. It’s undoubtedly good advice, but it’s overstepping for a manager to do that, and it’s also not fair to Lee to come onto a new team where their manager has already warned people to avoid them. But what you can and should do is to talk to Lee when they first arrive about the culture on your team and your expectations for how everyone will conduct themselves. And then you should keep a very close eye on how they operate. If you see anything that seems off to you, address it immediately — naming what you saw, why it’s a problem, and what Lee needs to do instead. Again, you have an advantage because you know the history; with a new employee who was an unknown quantity, you’d be more likely to extend more grace over seemingly small things and potentially second-guess yourself about whether something was truly a problem or not. With Lee, you already know what you’re watching for, and you’ll know to address it right away rather than waiting and observing the way you might do otherwise. You can keep them on a short leash from the beginning, which might short-circuit problems before they grow — and will let you act decisively if it turns out you need to. Basically, embrace and use your authority to say, “Not on my watch.” View the full article

A jury on Monday quickly and completely rejected a man’s claim that Disney’s Moana was stolen from his story of a young surfer in Hawaii. The Los Angeles federal jury deliberated for only about 2 ½ hours before deciding that the creators of Moana never had access to writer and animator Buck Woodall’s outlines and script for Bucky the Surfer Boy. With that question settled, the jury of six women and two men didn’t even have to consider the similarities between Bucky and Disney’s 2016 hit animated film about a questing Polynesian princess. Woodall had shared his work with a distant relative, who worked for a different company on the Disney lot, but the woman testified during the two-week trial that she never showed it to anyone at Disney. “Obviously we’re disappointed,” Woodall’s attorney Gustavo Lage said outside court. “We’re going to review our options and think about the best path forward.” In closing arguments earlier Monday, Woodall’s attorney said that a long chain of circumstantial evidence showed the two works were inseparable. “There was no Moana without Bucky,” Lage said. Defense lawyer Moez Kaba said that the evidence showed overwhelmingly that Moana was clearly the creation and “crowning achievement” of the 40-year career of John Musker and Ron Clements, the writers and directors behind 1989’s The Little Mermaid, 1992’s Aladdin, 1997’s Hercules, and 2009’s The Princess and the Frog. “They had no idea about Bucky,” Kaba said in his closing. “They had never seen it, never heard of it.” Moana earned nearly $700 million at the global box office. A judge previously ruled that Woodall’s 2020 lawsuit came too late for him to claim a piece of those receipts, and that a lawsuit he filed earlier this year over Moana 2—which earned more than $1 billion—must be decided separately. That suit remains active, though the jury’s decision does not bode well for it. Judge Consuelo B. Marshall, who is also overseeing the sequel lawsuit, said after the verdict that she agreed with the jurors’ decision about access. “We are incredibly proud of the collective work that went into the making of Moana and are pleased that the jury found it had nothing to do with Plaintiff’s works,” Disney said in a statement. Musker and Disney’s attorneys declined to comment outside the courtroom. The relatively young jury of six women and two men watched Moana in its entirety in the courtroom. They considered a story outline that Woodall created for Bucky in 2003, along with a 2008 update and a 2011 script. In the latter versions of the story, the title character, vacationing in Hawaii with his parents, befriends a group of Native Hawaiian youth and goes on a quest that includes time travel to the ancient islands and interactions with demigods to save a sacred site from a developer. Around 2004, Woodall gave the Bucky outline to the stepsister of his brother’s wife. That woman, Jenny Marchick, worked for Mandeville Films, a company that had a contract with Disney and was located on the Disney lot. He sent her follow-up materials through the years. He testified that he was stunned when he saw Moana in 2016 and saw so many of his ideas. Along with her testimony saying she didn’t show Bucky to anyone, messages shared by the defense showed she eventually ignored Woodall’s queries to her and had told him there was nothing she could do for him. Disney attorney Kaba argued there was no evidence Marchick ever worked on Moana or received any credit or compensation for it. Kaba pointed out that Marchick, now head of features development at DreamWorks Animation, worked for key Disney competitors Sony and Fox during much of the time she was allegedly making use of Woodall’s work for Disney. Woodall also submitted the script directly to Disney and had a meeting with an assistant at the Disney Channel, which Marchick arranged for him, to talk about working as an animator. But jurors agreed that this didn’t give them reason to believe that “Bucky” made its way to Musker, Clements or their collaborators. Lage, Woodall’s attorney, outlined some of the similarities of the two works in his closing. Both include teens on oceanic quests. Both have Polynesian demigods as central figures and shape-shifting characters who turn into, among other things, insects and sharks. In both, the main characters interact with animals who act as spirit helpers. Kaba said many of these elements, including Polynesian lore and basic “staples of literature,” are not copyrightable. Shape-shifting among supernatural characters, he said, appears throughout films including “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” and Hercules, which made Musker and Clements essential to the Disney renaissance of the 1990s and made Disney a global powerhouse. Animal guides go back to movies as early as 1940’s “Pinocchio” and appear in all of Musker and Clements’ previous films, he said. Kaba said Musker and Clements developed “Moana” the same way they did the other films, through their own inspiration, research, travel and creativity. The lawyer said thousands of pages of development documents showed every step of Musker and Clements’ creation, whose spark came from the paintings of Paul Gaugin and the writings of Herman Melville “You can see every single fingerprint,” Kaba said. “You can see the entire genetic makeup of ‘Moana.'” —Andrew Dalton, AP Entertainment Writer View the full article

Search has transformed. AI-powered results, featured snippets, “People Also Ask,” and Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) are redefining how — and where — visibility happens. Join Wayne Cichanski, Vice President of Search & Site Experience at iQuanti for SEO Beyond Just the Ten Blue Links! He’ll share a data-driven SEO 2.0 framework designed to help brands systematically claim high-impact search shelf-space — and convert visibility into measurable results. In this live session, you’ll learn: How to analyze and win across modern SERP features A blueprint for aligning structured data, content, and intent Real-world strategies for navigating SEO volatility Whether you’re leading digital strategy or scaling performance SEO, this session will reshape how you think about search. Save your spot today! View the full article

Leadership might be hard to define, but it’s easy to recognize. That doesn’t mean leaders are passive, resting on inherent abilities. True, some are born leaders and others learn how to become effective leaders. Both take work, and leadership assessment tools can help you on your journey. Leaders know that to lead they must keep up their leadership skills. But leadership isn’t only about inspiring others, it’s about knowing oneself. There are personality types, and there are leadership skills: it’s not one size fits all. As with anything, complacency is poison. Fuel for leadership is constant curiosity and regular assessment. As to the latter, there are many ways for a person to assess their leadership qualities and, by so doing, strengthen their weaknesses and buttress their strengths. No leadership theory is better than another. From a transformational leader to a servant leader or a front-line, postmodern, contrarian or metamodern leader, the types are nearly as varied as the people who take leadership positions. But each has its own unique impact on your performance, as all have their strengths and weakness. Why It’s Good to Test Your Leadership Skills with Assessment Tools Leadership is multifaceted, and so are the tools to assess and work on improving those skills. Leadership assessment tools provide practical steps that you can apply to measure your leadership and then work towards boosting relevant skills. Related: How Team Leaders Use ProjectManager But the use of leadership assessment tools goes beyond the fact that they’re helpful. Just as you bring a car to the service station to make sure all its parts are working as they should, so it is important to test your leadership skills against a baseline and see where you stand and how you can reach higher. There are no perfect leaders. Everyone has leadership traits that are their strengths and deficits that expose their weaknesses. But not everyone is aware of these pluses and minuses in their leadership makeup. That’s why a periodic test of leadership skills is like checking the oil on your leadership and seeing if you need another quart and where. Research from the Experts There’s also the bigger picture. Testing your leadership skills is key to business success. Research by the Center for Creative Leadership found that “65 percent of companies with mature succession management programs were effective at driving improved business results through leadership skills versus 6 percent of companies with no succession process.” The report goes on to opine that “one could argue that many of the failures in the financial and real estate sectors in recent years are at least in part attributable to ineffective leadership.” The research also reports that 86 percent of the companies surveyed that had a leadership development program were able to quickly respond to changes in market conditions. If your organization has no leadership development program, then it’s up to you to take the initiative by using leadership assessment tools to make sure you’re more effective. The Best Leadership Assessment Tools While more structured programs and leadership training options can prove helpful, Henry Mintzberg, professor of management at McGill University, is quoted in an interview with the Harvard Business Journal as saying, “You don’t become a manager in a classroom and you certainly don’t become a leader in a classroom. Leadership is earned on the basis of people who choose to follow you. It’s not granted or anointed by some holy water granted in a school.” That might be true, and Mintzberg correctly believes that “experience is critically important,” but without a means to gauge one’s ability to lead across several metrics, leadership lacks direction. Don’t blindly approach leadership. Here are some tools you can use to either start or continue fine-tuning your leadership adventure. 1. Meyers-Briggs Officially called the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, this popular personality test is a good place to start on your leadership journey. It’s important to know what type of personality you have as there are many different leadership styles, and this will help you determine the best one for you. The Meyers-Briggs questionnaire builds on Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung’s psychological types in a format that applies more directly to people’s lives. There are 16 distinctive personality types built from four principal psychological functions: sensation, intuition, feeling and thinking, one of which is dominant. It’s recommended to have the test administered by a certified consultant, counselor, coach or therapist. They are trained to deliver the test more accurately as well as provide feedback and context to your score. However, there are ample sites online that offer free, similar tests based on the Meyers-Briggs. While there has been criticism of Meyers-Briggs as unscientific as a horoscope, it’s fun and can offer insight, at least as a starting point. 2. Emotional Intelligence Assessment There are multiple intelligences, according to Howard Gardner, a professor of education at Harvard University. He was referring to the eight different ways people can learn, from linguistic to spatial. But there is also our capacity for understanding, which is usually measured by IQ. But that’s a very broad brush with which to paint a person. It ignores the emotional quotient or our ability to recognize their own feelings and those of others. Leaders are people who feel just as any other, but they can’t allow themselves to be driven by those emotions. They must also be able to correctly identify the emotional makeup of those they’re leading. Work is stressful and stress is expressed emotionally, so leaders must know what to do when emotions spike or wane. Related: Critical Soft Skills for Project Managers The Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP) in collaboration with the Harvard Business School research has determined that emotional intelligence (EQ) is twice as important as IQ and technical skills for successful leadership. The IHHP has a free EQ quiz to see where you are emotionally. 3. Korn Ferry 360 The Korn Ferry 360 Assessment is a widely-used, popular leadership assessment tool designed to provide leaders with a comprehensive view of their performance. This leadership assessment tool evaluates the individual’s working abilities and leadership skills based on feedback from various sources, resulting in a holistic perspective beyond self-assessment. For example, it uses multi-rater feedback and collects from sources such as peers, superiors, subordinates or even customers. This multi-perspective approach helps minimize bias for a more accurate picture of a leader’s strengths and weaknesses. Although Korn Ferry 360 is based on a core framework, it’s also a customizable assessment tool that can be tweaked to align with an organization’s specific leadership competencies. Organizations often use this tool when they are committed to building a strong leadership pipeline. 4. Hogan Assessments Hogan Assessments uses data-based personality insights to achieve organizational success. This leadership assessment tool uses a series of personality-based evaluations to help improve leadership development, talent selection and succession planning. Key Hogan Assessments include the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), the Hogan Development Survey (HDS) and the Hogan Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI). The scientific and data-driven approach that this assessment tool offers means they are incredibly effective at predicting job performance. Specifically designed to focus on workplace behavior, this leadership assessment tool focuses on personality traits that are directly linked to relevant job success. Not only can these assessments offer a data-driven approach to cultivating strong leaders, but they also help from a talent management perspective. They help choose stronger candidates for each role, resulting in better team morale and collaboration. 5. CliftonStrengths CliftonStrengths is a web-based assessment of what you naturally do best and how to develop your strongest talents and use the results to optimize your professional life. For $49.99, you get a complete profile of who you really are and how to maximize your potential. First, is the hour-long assessment, which features 177 paired questions in which you choose the one that best describes you. This determines your patterns of behavior, thoughts and feelings to uncover your talents. The results will expose your greatest talents and how to explain them. This in turn helps you identify opportunities that best match these abilities. This is one more way to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Unlike others that are free, you often get what you pay for. Putting a price tag on this service means you’re going to get a more in-depth summary and can hold the organization accountable for providing detailed findings. Improve Your Leadership With ProjectManager Leadership is many things, as noted above, but any leader will tell you that they can’t do it alone. Leaders need their team, but they also need tools so they and their team can be at their best. ProjectManager is that tool: we’re an award-winning software that empowers leaders so they can complete projects smoothly and successfully. There’s a fine line separating leadership and micromanagement. Leaders have to lead, but they don’t want to get in the way of their teams. ProjectManager gives leaders the tools to direct their teams and track their progress while giving them the freedom to work better together. Schedule Work Efficiently Teams can’t work until they’ve been scheduled and assigned. ProjectManager has an online Gantt chart that organizes tasks into a timeline, then leaders can assign the tasks to teams. Once assigned, the teams have collaborative tools to work more productively, while providing the transparency leaders want to monitor and track their progress, such as progress bars on the Gantt that are automatically updated when status reports are uploaded. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Gantt_Manufacturing_Wide_Zoom-175_Focus-on-Tasklist_Spreadsheet.jpgPlan projects and schedule work with online Gantt charts. Communicate What Needs to Be Done Leaders can be forgiven for hovering over their team’s shoulders. They want the work done right. ProjectManager has the tools to give teams the directions that will set them on the right course, so there are no misunderstandings. Once a task has been assigned, team members are alerted by email. But more than that, you can add comments and unlimited files and photos to show exactly what has to be done. Plus, they can manage that work how they want, in either a task list, kanban board or calendar view. /wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Manufacturing-overlay-CTA-TAsk.jpgProjectManager lets teams and leaders manage work how they want. Learn more! Lead Better with Accurate Progress Updates But are you giving teams enough rope to hang themselves? Not with ProjectManager. You’re always updated on progress with a real-time dashboard that tracks tasks progress as it happens. For more details, there are one-click reports that can be filtered, so you always know how your team is performing. ProjectManager is a tool that fosters leadership. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Dashboard_Construction_Wide_Zoom-150.jpgData is power. Get real-time information for better leadership decisions. Leadership is a process. There’s no endpoint. One can always learn to develop and expand their ability to lead a team to success. ProjectManager is a cloud-based project management software that gives leaders the features to further motivate their teams by giving them the tools they need to succeed. From a real-time dashboard to keep you current on the team’s progress to kanban boards to visualize workflow, everyone wins. Be a real leader and take our free 30-day trial today. The post 5 Leadership Assessment Tools You Need to Try in 2025 appeared first on ProjectManager. View the full article

Every once in a while, you come across a beautiful app that makes you smile whenever you use it. Tinker is one of those apps for me. It allows you to create beautiful analog clock widgets for your iPhone, and its attention to detail is remarkable. It has a few curated designs to get you started, but you can also bring in your own clock faces and customize every aspect of the widget. The best part—it works with StandBy mode. In addition to your calendar, the iPhone's StandBy mode lets you view photos, live activities, or a clock when the iPhone is charging in landscape mode, essentially turning it into a convincing substitute for a real alarm clock. Tinker adds far more options for the analog clock widget, and for me, the result is a lot nicer than the clock widgets Apple supplies. I quite like the design language of Tinker, too, which reminds me of the skeuomorphic designs that iOS had embraced until 2014, when iOS 7 moved in a different direction. Tinker's app icons mimic the gears in a watch, and the buttons have a neat brushed metal look. All of this will appeal to the kind of person who enjoys analog watches in this digital age. Once you start creating your own watch face in the app, you'll be able to customize four aspects of it—the background, the hour hand, the minute hand, and the center piece. While you're doing that, you'll notice another neat detail—the watch face accurately shows you the current time even while you're customizing the widget. Credit: Pranay Parab There are a few templates available to get you started, and the app directs you to a Discord server if you want even more assets. You're also free to download assets from the internet and add them on your own. This gives you a lot of customizability. Once you've found or created a watch face, you can easily add it as a widget on your iPhone's home screen. Press and hold an empty part of the home screen and tap the Edit button in the top-left corner. Select Add Widget and search for Tinker. You'll be able to select any of your saved watch faces and add it to the home screen. Similarly, once you're in StandBy mode, you can tap and hold the clock widget and replace it with one of Tinker's watch faces instead. The app is free for up to two watch faces, and has a one-time $4 unlock to remove that limit. I really don't know why Apple still stubbornly refuses to let you use your own watch faces on the Apple Watch, but if it ever decides to change its mind, Tinker is exactly the kind of app that I'd use to customize mine. I don't care too much about adding complications to my watch face, but I do care a lot about how the watch face looks. With Tinker, I've already found a few designs that I'd like to use on the Apple Watch over the included options. Here's hoping Apple caves and lets you use your own watch faces with Tinker some day. View the full article

Despite being a popular talking point, people aren’t (yet?) abandoning Google Search and using ChatGPT search or other AI chatbots. In fact, the number of Google searches increased year over year, and Google Search handles 373 times more searches than ChatGPT, according to a new analysis by SparkToro co-founder Rand Fishkin. Why we care. Many search marketers, users, and analysts have speculated that AI tools are reducing Google’s dominance in search. However, this research finds no evidence that vast numbers of searchers are abandoning Google for ChatGPT and other AI search engines and chatbot experiences. By the numbers. Even if all ChatGPT’s 1 billion messages per day were search-related, its total share of the search market would be less than 1%. (ChatGPT used search to answer 46% of queries, and only 30% of ChatGPT prompts fell into “traditional” search-like behavior, according to a Semrush study.) Google saw more than 5 trillion searches in 2024, or about 14 billion per day, giving it a 93.57% market share. ChatGPT saw an estimated 37.5 million search-like prompts per day, giving it a 0.25% market share. That’s less than Microsoft Bing (4.10%), Yahoo (1.35%), and DuckDuckGo (0.73%). Google saw ~373 times as many searches as ChatGPT in 2024. More Google searches. The number of Google searches grew 21.64% in 2024, compared to 2023, based on Datos data. This data seems to confirm what Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai said about AI Overviews increasing search usage (“we are seeing an increase in search usage among people who use the new AI Overviews…”). But. Just because people are searching more doesn’t necessarily mean Google is sending as many clicks or as much traffic to websites. As a reminder, an estimated 60% of Google searches ended without a click in 2024. That means more than 3 trillion searches in 2024 ended without a click. Dig deeper. Survey: 54% of people look through more search results vs. 5 years ago The report. New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT. View the full article

US president says extra levies in response to Ontario’s decision to increase cost of power exports to USView the full article

Old 401(k)s are a little like the old clothes in the back of your closet. You know you should do something about them, but there they sit, mostly out of sight and mind. And so it is with your old 401(k). If deciding what to do with an old (k) plan has been on your to-do list for a while, here are the key steps you should take to get it done. Step 1: Check your account value. If your balance in your former employer’s 401(k) plan is over $7,000, you can leave the money behind in the old plan or roll the assets into an IRA or your new employer’s 401(k). But if your balance falls below that $7,000 threshold, some of the decision-making may be out of your hands. Step 2: Determine whether to stay within the 401(k) confines. Assuming your balance is over $7,000, your next task is to decide whether to roll the money into an IRA or keep it inside a 401(k). I often recommend rolling over the assets from a former 401(k) into a no-fee IRA with a top-notch mutual fund company or discount broker. But some people value the extra creditor protections that can accompany 401(k) assets versus IRA assets, while others may prize 401(k)-specific investment options. Step 3: Assess the quality of your 401(k) options. If you think you will be better off leaving your money inside a 401(k) rather than rolling it over to an IRA, the next job is to conduct some research on your own 401(k) options. Even if you do decide to stay with a 401(k), you may need to decide whether you’re better off staying put in your former employer’s plan or that of your new employer. Step 4: Find the right IRA provider. If a rollover to an IRA is the way to go, the next step is to identify the right brokerage firm or mutual fund company. Look for a firm that offers a breadth of high-quality investment options with no additional layers of fees for IRA investors. Target-date funds are an elegant, low-maintenance, and underutilized option. Step 5: Decide whether to convert your traditional 401(k) assets to Roth. If you decide to roll Roth 401(k) contributions to an IRA or your current employer’s 401(k), your new account will be Roth, too, meaning that you won’t owe tax on qualified withdrawals. If you have traditional 401(k) assets, a rollover is also a good time to consider whether to convert those assets to a Roth account at the same time. Step 6: Execute. If you’ve decided to roll over your assets to an IRA, fill out the paperwork or online form to open the IRA. You’ll then request a direct rollover from your 401(k) plan to the new IRA provider. The process may be a bit more cumbersome if you’re rolling over to your current employer’s 401(k). In both cases, make sure your 401(k) provider makes the check payable to the provider and sends it directly to them, rather than to you. If the check is made out to you, 20% of the balance will be withheld for income tax. You’ll then have 60 days to get that money deposited into an IRA or another 401(k); if that deadline comes and goes, the distribution will count as a withdrawal and you’ll owe ordinary income tax and a 10% early withdrawal penalty if you’re not 55 or older. Step 7: Determine what to invest in. If you’ve decided to roll over your assets from an old 401(k) to another 401(k) or IRA, you’ll also have to determine how you’ll allocate those assets. If all of your retirement assets were in your old 401(k), a sturdy target-date fund is a one-stop, low-maintenance choice that you can hold into retirement. If your old 401(k) is just one of several accounts geared toward retirement, a rollover can be an ideal time to check up on how all the pieces fit together—and where you have holes. This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance Christine Benz of Morningstar View the full article

Progressive firms are the key to the future of the profession. The Disruptors With Liz Farr Go PRO for members-only access to more Liz Farr. View the full article

Progressive firms are the key to the future of the profession. The Disruptors With Liz Farr Go PRO for members-only access to more Liz Farr. View the full article

Planning a project only gets you so far. You also have to monitor your progress and performance to track if you’re on schedule and within budget. Then there are your stakeholders whose expectations must be managed. That’s where Excel report templates come in. Project reports are tools that project managers use to extract valuable project data. Excel report templates are a great tool to determine how you’re doing and keep your stakeholders updated. Using Excel Report Templates for Project Management The great thing about Excel report templates is that they’re free to download. Below are 10 essential Excel report templates that you can use now to get valuable data on your project. These Excel report templates cover everything from status reports to risk registers for a clear view of how your project is doing. Microsoft Excel is a great tool as these Excel report templates show, but they only go so far. Excel report templates must be imputed manually and are labor-intensive. They also don’t reflect real-time data so they’re always slightly behind. Project management software is the next step to gaining greater efficiency in managing your project, but if you’re not ready for that, Excel report templates will help. Excel Report Templates for Project Management Below are Excel report templates for project management, but they’re only a small sampling of the free project management templates we have to download on our template page. There are dozens of Word and Excel templates to help you through every stage of your project’s lifecycle. We’ve culled through that pack of templates to highlight our free Excel report templates. Download one or all of them now and use them to extract the information you need to deliver a successful project. When you’re ready to take your project templates one step further, read to the end and see how project management software leaves Excel project templates in the dust. 1. Project Dashboard Template Just as the dashboard on your car helps you track speed, mileage, gas consumption and more, our free project dashboard template is a window into the progress and performance of your project. It’s made up of a variety of graphs, such as a pie graph that shows how your team is progressing on their tasks to bar charts on workload, task lengths and project costs. /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Project-Dashboard-template-UPDATE.png The free project dashboard template is a high-level view of your project. It gives project managers a glimpse into what’s going on in the project so they can make better decisions. This Excel report template makes for a great communicative tool. Numbers can end up floating around on the page if math isn’t your strong suit, but the visual elements of the free project dashboard template create a quick and easily digestible way to deliver project data to stakeholders. ProjectManager software delivers more than any template. ProjectManager is online software that isn’t static like a template but instead connects to your project plan, schedule, resources and more. Our real-time dashboard receives live data as teams update their status so you’re always seeing current and accurate project information. There’s no data to input and it’s all done automatically. Get started with ProjectManager today for free. /wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Light-mode-portfolio-dashboard-CTA.pngProjectManager’s dashboard gives you an overview of your project in real time. Learn more 2. Project Status Report Template Being able to get a snapshot of your project that shows its current state is critical for proper management. Our free project status report template lets you see the health of your project and how it’s progressing against your project plan. It can be used to communicate with stakeholders who prefer a more general synopsis of how the project is doing. /wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Status-Report-Screenshot.jpg This Excel report template is still a wealth of important information, from a summary to project health to risks and recommendations. That includes key accomplishments, what work is completed, what’s still ahead, milestones that have been reached and deliverables. There’s also a place for action items, overviews of the budget, schedule, quality and scope, and even roadblocks that need to be addressed. 3. Progress Report Template Knowing the progress of your project is one of the best ways to make sure you’re meeting scheduled milestones. Our free progress report template is a way to record the movement of your project over a specific period of time. That timeframe can be a week, a month or whatever is appropriate for your project Our free Excel report template captures the data. /wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Progress-Report-Screenshot.jpg The Excel report template provides a summary of the project status, scope, schedule, cost and risk and then goes into more detail about all the tasks executed over the timeframe. It also looks at any issues that came up over this time period and how they impacted the budget. It then notes any existing or expected accomplishments. 4. Project Task Tracking Template Keeping a project on schedule is one of the main responsibilities of a project manager. One way to accomplish this goal is with our free project task tracking template. It’s a tool that allows you to create a task list and use that to make sure each task in your project is on track to make its deadline. If not, you can reallocate resources to get it back on schedule. /wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Task-Tracking-Screenshot.jpg The Excel report template is set up to capture the task and a brief description. It outlines if it’s a dependent task and who it’s assigned to. There are also pulldown menus to note the priority, start date, planned end date and actual end date for each task. There’s a status column to note if the tasks are opened or closed and a space to add other details not collected already. Of course, tracking tasks is even easier in project management software like ProjectManager. You can create subtasks, assign work, filter for tags and update progress in real time. Managing tasks in the kanban board lets you visually monitor a task’s lifecycle and eliminate bottlenecks to keep work moving. /wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Kanban-task-card-moving-manufacturing-order-management-light-mode.pngManage tasks with sheets, kanban boards, task lists and more in ProjectManager. Try it free. 5. Cost Benefit Analysis Template This Excel report template is a bit different. You use a cost-benefit analysis template to see if the project is viable and worth funding. There are always questions to answer before initiating a project, such as whether will meet a need, provide a service and whether you can deliver on deadline and for a reasonable cost. /wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Cost-Benefit-Analysis-Screenshot.jpg The cost-benefit analysis is a way to answer those questions before investing and risking the financial solvency of the organization. It lets you examine the numbers and make a knowledgeable decision about whether to go through with the project or not. This might be one of the most important Excel report templates you’ll use and it should always be part of your research. 6. Gap Analysis Template Whether you’re managing a project or an organization, you’re always on the lookout for ways to innovate and be more efficient and effective in meeting your long-term goals. A gap analysis template is a tool that helps conduct a strategic analysis of when you are, where you want to be and, most importantly, how to get there. /wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Gap-Analysis-Screenshot.jpg Using this Excel report template is the first step to making an action plan that can help you close the gap you’ve found in your analysis. It helps you see the path to achieving those strategic long-term goals that help you grow and stay competitive. Like many Excel report templates, it also acts as a communication tool for stakeholders and employees, providing a lodestar to follow. 7. Lessons Learned Template After you’ve delivered a project, it’s important to learn from it. What worked? What didn’t work? You can then take that knowledge and apply it to future projects to manage them better. One of the most important Excel report templates you can use is this free lessons learned template. /wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Lessons-Learned-Screenshot.jpg The lessons learned template creates a space in which you can capture all the information you need from what is a win or a loss, describing what happened, the impact, how to change things to improve and then a list of action items to implement those changes. Use this Excel report template when doing a post-mortem with the project team. Get their feedback as they were on the front lines of the project and can offer a unique perspective. 8. Timesheet Template Another Excel report template is our free timesheet template. It’s a tool that not only helps with payroll but allows project managers to track the time each team member is spending on their tasks. You can track cost per hour, vacation and overtime to help stay on schedule. /wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Timesheet-Screenshot.jpg This free Excel report template captures the personal data of each team member, including the department in which they work, their supervisor and their hourly rate. Their weekly hours are then collected and totaled to show you how much time they put in and what tasks they’ve completed or are still working on. Finally, there’s a signature line for the employee and supervisor. 9. Risk Register Template All projects have risks associated with them. We think of risks as bad, but some risks are good in that they open up an unforeseen opportunity. Our free risk register template helps you plan for risks, set priorities and outline who on the team is responsible for following through. /wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Risk-Tracking-Screenshot.webp This free Excel report template is important in helping you identify and respond quickly to any issues that show up in the project. You can’t know every risk that might show up, but with the help of your team’s experience, you can outline a majority of the likely risks and have a plan in place to effectively mitigate risks or take advantage of them. 10. Change Log Template Having a change log template is key to any change management process. Project plans are important but they’re not etched in stone. When changes occur in your project, whether external or internal, you need to have this free Excel report template to capture that change and track it throughout the project or until it’s resolved. /wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Change-Log-Screenshot.jpg The free change log template has a place for everything you need to identify and track changes in your project, such as when it was first discovered and who discovered it. The more data around the change, the more you can control it and make sure it doesn’t derail your project. 11. Daily Report Template Use this free daily report template to record and communicate key activities, progress and issues that occur within a single workday. It helps teams stay updated, track productivity, and ensure accountability in projects or operations. /wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Daily-report-template.png This Excel report template streamlines the work management process. It collects the tasks collected over the day and those that are ongoing, including priority, estimated duration, who’s assigned and more. The template also tracks upcoming tasks to help keep the team prepared. 12. Budget Dashboard Template A budget dashboard is a visual representation of the financial aspects of a project. It shows key budget related metrics in easy-to-read graphs and charts. Download this free budget dashboard to help keep projects on budget. /wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Budget-dashboard-template-screenshot.png Use this Excel report template to track planned vs. actual costs, expenses and forecasts. This allows project managers to quickly assess whether a project is within its financial constraints or not. It also helps to efficiently allocate resources, highlight potential overspending or delays and make more informed decisions. 13. Task Tracker Dashboard Template An Excel report template that is useful when monitoring, managing and tracking the progress of tasks is this free task tracker dashboard template. It helps to keep project managers and their teams organized, prioritize work and help meet deadlines. /wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Task-Tracker-Dashboard-Template-600x362.png The task tracker dashboard provides a visual tool that can be tailored to meet one’s needs, whether by adding columns for priority, deadlines or task owners. It can also be customized with color to represent different statuses. 14. Balance Sheet Template A balance sheet provides a snapshot of an organization’s financial position at a specific point in time. Use this free balance sheet template for Excel to outline assets, liabilities and equity to help stakeholders assess the financial health, liquidity and solvency of the organization. /wp-content/uploads/2025/03/balance-sheet-template-screenshot-600x471.png This Excel report template simplifies financial reporting by performing essential calculations automatically. It sums current and non-current assets, liabilities and equity, for more accurate financial tracking. It also computes critical financial rations, including debt ratio, current ration, working capital, assets-to-equity ratio and debt-to-equity ratio. 15. Profit and Loss Statement Template Use this free profit and lose statement template for Excel for businesses to track financial performance over a given period of time. This Excel report template provides a clear breakdown of revenue, expenses and net income to help understand profitability and more informed decisions. /wp-content/uploads/2025/03/profit-and-loss-statement-template-600x664.png Use this profit and loss statement template to automatically sum up revenue, cost of goods sold, operating expenses and other crucial components. Because the template is automated it makes sure results for gross profit, operating income and net income are accurate. How ProjectManager Makes Reporting More Robust These Excel report templates are a good start, but if you want to cross that project finish line on time and without accruing extra costs, then you need project management software. ProjectManager is online project management software that automates reporting and delivers real-time data for more accuracy and better decision-making. Use Real-Time Dashboards The dashboard template only gives you a taste of what a dashboard can do. Our real-time dashboard automatically captures live data. You don’t have to manually input it. It also does the calculations for you and then displays the results in easy-to-read graphs and charts. This high-level view is constantly updating so it’s like a high-level status report that’s always at your fingertips. While other project management tools have dashboards, often you have to set them up. That wastes time. Our dashboard is ready to go when you are. /wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Dashboard_Construction_Wide_Zoom-150.webp Get Customizable Reports All of the Excel report templates we’ve featured for free download are static documents. Our reports can be generated quickly and each can be filtered to show only the data you want to see or share with stakeholders. There are reports on portfolio status, project status, project plan, task, timesheets, availability, workload and various others to help you see in real time how the project is progressing and performing. Excel report templates don’t take the complex data from your project and turn it into helpful and digestible information, but our software does. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Reports_Wide_Zoom-150_Project-Status-Report.jpg The dashboard and reports are all collecting data from the many features that make our software unique in the project management space. We have robust Gantt charts that schedule tasks, resources and costs. Our kanban boards help to visualize your workflow while the sheet, list and calendar views are all designed to help you work how you want. Our collaborative platform connects everyone on your team, different departments and even outside enterprises so your reports can be shared with those who need to see them. Related Excel Project Management Content While Excel is not a project management software, it can still be a very helpful for managing various aspects of your projects. That’s why we’ve created dozens of blogs, templates and guides to help you use Excel for project management. Free Manufacturing Excel Templates Free Excel Construction Templates Free Word & Excel Templates for Business Excel Spreadsheet Templates for Tracking Tasks, Costs and Time How to Create a Project Timeline in Excel (Free Template Included) How to Make a Gantt Chart In Excel Step-By-Step (Template Included) 25 Must-Have Project Management Excel Templates and Spreadsheets ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that creates efficiencies by connecting everyone in real time. With features to plan, monitor and report on projects, and manage resources and risks, we have the one tool for all your project management needs. Join teams from NASA, Siemens and Nestle, among other organizations, delivering success. Get started with ProjectManager today for free. The post 15 Essential Excel Report Templates appeared first on ProjectManager. View the full article

ChatGPT Tasks might be the most underrated tool in SEO today. It can turn a single employee into a vast team – but only if you know how to use it. And in this article, you’re about to see the future of SEO. What is ChatGPT Tasks? ChatGPT Tasks is a tool within ChatGPT designed to automate various tasks, including those related to SEO, such as content generation, keyword research, and link building. This feature allows users to schedule tasks to run at specific times, either as one-time events or recurring actions, enhancing workflow efficiency and productivity. As of writing, it’s in beta and rolling out to users on the Plus, Pro, and Team plans. How to use ChatGPT Tasks: The basics The key to maximizing ChatGPT Tasks is to approach it strategically and leverage its capabilities fully. Start by identifying specific tasks you want to automate, such as: Creating blog post outlines. Generating meta descriptions. Researching competitor backlinks. Then, explore the tool’s features and experiment with different prompts to find the most effective workflows for your needs. ChatGPT Tasks is powerful, but it’s not a magic solution. You must carefully review and refine the output to ensure it aligns with your brand and SEO strategy. Efficiency gains: The secret to ChatGPT Tasks One of the reasons ChatGPT Tasks is so powerful is that it optimizes your time. As an SEO professional using AI, your role will shift from doing work to checking work. That means you need to maximize your efficiency. In the past, SEOs often outsourced work to overseas staff in different time zones. ChatGPT Tasks changes this. Now, you can outsource tasks to AI, ensuring they are ready for you when you start your day. Here’s how I use ChatGPT Tasks: At 7 a.m., AI sends me a batch of completed work. Beyond that, I’ve also used Tasks to generate content throughout the day. For example, I set up a content prompt that delivers product description pages to me every 30 minutes. (More on that later.) Essentially, this feature allows you to maximize “dead time” – periods when you aren’t actively working. While it doesn’t mean the tool is working around the clock, it ensures you get what you need when needed. For instance, if you ask it to send you something at 7 a.m., it likely generates it at 6:59 a.m. But I don’t need to know how it works. I just care that I get what I asked for. Dig deeper: How to use OpenAI’s Deep Research for smarter SEO strategies How to use ChatGPT for SEO tasks To use ChatGPT Tasks effectively, think of your role as an army commander. You are the SEO in charge of 1,000 other SEOs who can complete any task you assign. Your job is to plan efficiently. Here’s how: Go to ChatGPT and select GPT-4o with scheduled tasks. Ask GPT to send you a task and specify when you want to receive it. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. Business email address Sign me up! Processing... See terms. How to think in terms of tasks One challenge I initially faced was figuring out which tasks to automate. This will vary by individual, but the key is to think in terms of scale. What recurring tasks would provide the most value if they were handled automatically? Here are a few examples: Account management. Content creation. Title tag optimization. Ideating social media posts. Summarizing industry news. You should come up with more, but these examples illustrate what’s possible. Account management Here’s a sample prompt: “These are my SEO clients and their tasks: (insert list). Each day at 5 p.m., send me a list of these clients, ask what work has been completed for the month, and provide an updated task list. Also, ask me about any new tasks, and add them to the list. Then, each day at 7 a.m., send me an updated list of outstanding tasks. Your precise output will be: A morning list (7 a.m.) summarizing clients and tasks. An evening list (5 p.m.) with the same summary, plus a request for updates. The next morning, an updated list based on my responses. Do you understand?” This prompt acts as a mini account manager – and yes, it works remarkably well. Content creation Content creation is essential for SEO, and the quality of AI-generated content depends on the specificity of your prompt. Initially, I experimented with ChatGPT Tasks, and it worked superbly. Every 30 minutes, my inbox received fresh content, from landing pages to product descriptions. One limitation of Tasks is that you can’t upload a spreadsheet. However, you can provide a list of pages you want to generate content for. With a well-crafted prompt, the output is solid. Are the drafts perfect? No, but they’re good starting points. They often require refinement, but they save significant time. Now, you might wonder – why deliver content every 30 minutes? I do this to ensure GPT is creating what I want. If I received 10 product pages all at once and they were off the mark, I’d have to redo them all. With smaller, frequent deliveries, I can monitor quality and adjust as needed. Dig deeper: Automate SEO analysis with Google Sheets, GSC & ChatGPT API Page titles Many SEOs focus on page title optimization, and ChatGPT Tasks makes this process easier. I use a “dueling” method, where GPT generates multiple page title variations. I then run them through a tournament-style evaluation to select the best one based on preset criteria. Social media post ideas Generating a steady stream of fresh and engaging social media content can be time-consuming. ChatGPT Tasks can help streamline this process. Here’s an example prompt: The output of that prompt looks like this: This is just one of the many prompts I use. While I only implement about 5% of the generated ideas, they often lead to new inspiration – especially on days when I’m feeling stuck. Industry news summaries Staying on top of industry news is essential for SEO professionals. With ChatGPT Tasks, you can automate this process. Each morning at 7 a.m., I receive a curated list of SEO and AI news from my preferred sources. The future of tasks SEO workflows are rapidly evolving with AI, and ChatGPT Tasks represents a significant step forward. I suspect there’s still untapped potential. Could I schedule an entire week’s worth of SEO tasks in advance? For example, if I know I need to work on a client’s account on Wednesday at 11:30 a.m., could I schedule ChatGPT to conduct research or analyze content beforehand? Looking further ahead, it may eventually ask you what needs to be done – and then suggest the best way to execute it using Tasks. OpenAI may even develop a single model to streamline this process. While ChatGPT Tasks is still in its early days, I believe it will evolve rapidly. My advice? Start mastering it now. Dig deeper: 15 AI tools you should use for SEO View the full article

When it comes to your important data, you should always have a backup. And then a backup of that backup. Cloud storage services shouldn't be your whole strategy here, but they can help with that. Sometimes, you just don't have enough physical space to store all the photos you've taken over your life, or all your ebooks and work documents. Plus, there is the convenience factor of syncing your files between all the devices that you use, so that a document you drafted up on your iPad can instantly show up on your Mac or your Windows PC. That said, picking a cloud storage service isn't as easy as it used to be. Now that so much of our cloud usage is tied to platforms and ecosystems, your cloud service will really depend on the devices you use. Google OneIf you're all in on the Android or Google ecosystem, Google One would be the best plan for you. With every Google account, you get 15GB storage for free that's distributed between services like Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. But you can add more storage at just $.99 a month for 100GB and $2.99 for 200GB. With Google One, your Photos are backed up to Google automatically, you're able to upload and share large files on Google Drive, and you won't have to worry about running out of storage in Gmail. Google Drive's web app is solid, and there are desktop app options too. Plus, the per TB rates are quite competitive, and even cheaper than Microsoft's. The 2 TB Premium plan might be best for most users. It's $10 per month, or $100 per year, and supports family sharing (as do the cheaper plans). Plus, you get 10% back on purchases from the Google Store and Google Workspace Premium. If 2TB isn't enough, you can add additional storage all the way up to 30TB, though at a cost of up to $150/year. Microsoft 365Microsoft’s policy of stuffing every possible value-added service into a single plan is still going strong. This is why Microsoft 365 is so popular with businesses. A single plan provides you with access to the entire Office suite and Microsoft Teams for Enterprise, shared with multiple users. Every user gets 5GB OneDrive storage for free, and a Microsoft 365 subscription boosts that up to 1TB. Sadly, unlike with Google One, there are no plans in between these options. While 365's enterprise offerings are popular, the Microsoft 365 Family plan offers a similar package for individuals. This plan supports all the paid Office apps, Copilot AI, and 6TB of storage space, split across 6 accounts, making it a great deal for family users, or for splitting with your friends. It costs $12.99 per month, or $129.99 per year. If you don't want to use multiple accounts, the per TB value for a single account at $9.99/month doesn't make the most sense. In that case, it's better to look at alternatives. iDriveiDrive is a popular choice when it comes to data backups, or storing copies of whole drives on the cloud. But while it's not a pure storage solution, its file sharing and collaboration features make it competitive with the other choices on this list. The service provides a generous 10GB plan for free. A downside is there's no productivity suite built-in here, since individual files aren't really the focus with this service, but a benefit to the backup mindset is that iDrive does provide end-to-end encryption, although it needs to be enabled by the user. And if you forget your encryption key, you’ll lose access to all your files. Still, you can use iDrive to upload data from your computer, and you can share it with others. The 5TB plan will cost you $69.96 for the first year. There’s also a 10TB plan for $105 for the first year. Proton UnlimitedIf what you're looking for is security, and you don't need a lot of features, Proton might be for you. The Proton Unlimited plan gives you access to Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Docs, and gives you 500GB of storage space for either $12.99 per month or $120 per year. The 1TB Proton Duo plan will cost you $15 per month instead. When it comes to free storage, Proton only offers 1GB space for free users. That's more expensive than established cloud syncing services, but what Proton offers you is extra peace of mind. You get encrypted storage, and no one, including Proton, has access to your files. Plus, the company is based in Switzerland, so strict Swiss privacy rules and laws apply here. SyncSync offers a dependable cloud storage alternative to the big companies. It keeps things extremely simple. It's just about storing and syncing files between devices and between different platforms. There are on add-ons, no mail accounts, no document apps, nothing. Like the good-old days of Dropbox. The free plan gives you 5GB space, and you get 2TB storage for $96/year, which is around the same price as iCloud+ or Google Drive. Here, you get client-side encryption, so Sync can't access your data. Sync offers simple and lightweight apps for Mac and Windows and there are mobile clients, too. Anything you transfer to the Sync folder on your device will show up in your Sync account instantly. There are no file limits here, too. Now that Dropbox has become so bloated (more on that later), Sync offers a simpler alternative that is easy to use. pCloudpCloud is another secure cloud backup provider that has two things going for it. The first is that it offers 10GB of storage space for free—this is way more than most of its competitors. Second is that it offers lifetime cloud storage for a one-time fee. This is a good choice for users who don’t like paying a monthly fee. At time of writing, you can get 500GB space for $199 and 2TB storage space for $399. pCloud also has annual plans, but at $99 per year for 2TB storage space, it’s not something I would recommend (you can get a Google One or iCloud+ plans for the same rate). iCloud+iCloud+ is designed for users in the Apple ecosystem, which is where it makes the most sense. iCloud+ is useful not just as a storage service, but it's where users' settings and device data are backed up, too. If you're all-in on the Apple ecosystem, it might make sense to use iCloud+ as your default cloud storage provider, as it makes it easy to sync photos, videos, and documents from your Mac. iCloud+ is another service that focuses highly on privacy, offering end-to-end encryption. A free iCloud account gets you 5GB storage, and Cloud+ offers flexible plans, too, starting at $0.99 for 50GB storage. The 2TB plan for $9.99 per month or $99 per year might be the sweet spot for most users, as it comes with family sharing (the 200GB plan can be shared with family as well). Though, I wouldn't recommend iCloud+ if you're even slightly cross-platform, or you want to frequently access files from the web browser, as the Windows app and the iCloud+ website are not great, especially when compared to the rivals on this list. Why I don't recommend DropboxOne name that's missing from this list is Dropbox. In the previous decade, Dropbox became the go-to option for simple, cross-platform storage that didn't cost a king's ransom, or even anything at all. Now, a free Dropbox account can only run on three devices, is limited to 2GB data, and has lower transfer speeds compared to their paid plans. The app has also pivoted to being more business focused, with lots of support for third-party integration. Its storage plans are no longer the cheapest or the most varied. The 2TB plan costs $11.99/month while both iCloud and Google One are cheaper. The simple-to-use aspect is gone as well. The Mac app, for example, has faced so many issues with reliability that we recommend you use a third-party app instead. Combine all these issues, and it no longer makes sense to use Dropbox in a personal capacity. View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. A new study shows AI search engines way too often gets the answer wrong...View the full article

BONUS CHECKLIST: Five questions to evaluate yourself. By Martin Bissett Business Development on a Budget Go PRO for members-only access to more Martin Bissett. View the full article