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Do the work that fulfills you. The Disruptors With Liz Farr Go PRO for members-only access to more Liz Farr. View the full article

There are two sides to every coin, and that includes freelancing. While you can enjoy flexible working hours, no commuting benefits, office-free attendance, and many other perks, you might encounter issues with burnout if you lack the right planning and strategizing methods. But there are specific approaches you can use to stop burnout before it starts or recover from it when it’s affecting your output; you can do this with a few specific apps that will help you organize your time and enhance your mood. Ready to discover which impressive apps can help with this? Nip freelancer burnout in the bud with the list of apps in this article and the top tips for success. What is burnout, and what are its early warning signs?If you’re experiencing a sense of ​​physical and mental exhaustion occurring at the same time as overworking, these might be the signs of burnout — a form of chronic or extended period of stress. Burnout symptoms, aside from mental exhaustion, include a heightened sense of self-doubt and fear of failure, feeling overwhelmed, and being emotionally drained. If you’re going through this, you might want to know how to recover from burnout. And the good news is that there are several apps and tips for success in handling burnout before it begins or managing it even when you’ve been experiencing it for some time. 5 tips for success and apps for handling burnoutSo that you can avoid experiencing burnout and the stressful feelings that come with it, this article contains multiple apps and tips you can use. Let’s go straight to those apps and tips to ensure you’re equipped to leave burnout behind. Track the time spent on each appTracking how much time you spend using each app or function on your Mac is our FIRST tip for avoiding burnout. You can do this with the Timing app, which delves into plenty of detail on your app-related activity, provides data related to the software you used, and lets you know how you used it. As time passes by when you’re using the app, Timing will reveal how you spent your time in a graph form. A unique category represents each portion of the graph, so you’ll see categories such as Office & Business, Web Browsing, Media, and more. When you navigate to the Mac menu bar, you can view the productivity percentage. It collects so much information, even within a 25-minute period, which is why you might want to use it yourself. These features can really reduce the chances of burnout by ensuring you allocate the optimum amount of time to each function without overworking. For example, you may notice that you have spent three hours on research for a blog post, indicated by the “Web Browsing” category. In that case, you’ll want to either take a break or turn your attention to a different task to avoid overworking and burnout. Manage to-do lists more effectivelyUsing to-do lists can be an effective way to manage your time as a freelancer, but when you’re juggling too many to-do lists, this can become another chore that only adds to your list of things to do. This is when BeFocused can be an ideal solution. This app is a timer that appears at the top of the Mac screen, which you can use by setting the timer and giving the task a title. One key benefit of the BeFocused app is that you can add multiple tasks and manage them all from the app (instead of creating multiple lists and managing them manually). When you complete a task in BeFocused and check it off, it’ll appear in the “Done” tab. The app is designed to keep you focused until time is up, so you’ll always know when to move on to a new task in a timely way. It means you will not overwork or exceed the optimum amount of time for each task. So, with a more efficient to-do list, you can transition smoothly between tasks without facing burnout or the added stress of managing your time ineffectively. Automate file organizationFile organization can eat into your time and affect your time management success. These issues can lead to freelancer burnout because managing files is an additional task that detracts from other high-priority projects, and multitasking like this can feel overwhelming at times. But one tip that can help is to automate file organization with a key app. Spotless handles this process automatically. The app requires you to create rules that determine what files go where. For instance, you can auto-tidy all your ZIP files and avoid completing this administrative task manually. It just requires you to set the file extension type, choose the action you’d like the app to take, and click the yellow “Create Rule” button. In terms of eliminating freelancer burnout, this app has an additional perk — it means that when you need to find a file quickly, you’ll already know where it’s located. It saves you more time that you can better use for getting started on your work and handling those fundamental tasks without feeling overwhelmed or splitting your attention to other issues. Create the optimum work environmentIf you’re already experiencing freelancer burnout symptoms or have noticed some signs of burnout in your approach to work, you’ll want to minimize its effects. A tip for this involves creating the optimum work environment that can soothe a stressed mind, which is what GetSound allows you to do. GetSound plays wellness or new-age music, such as those played at spas, but there are lots of ways you can customize it. You can adjust the environmental layers and sound features by operating the different slides in the app. The app also lets you switch locations or toggle between a range of soundscapes, which can slowly fade out after the amount of time you set. This app can reduce freelancer burnout by helping you relax and stay productive with the wellness music improving your concentration. Since you can remain calm and stress-free when completing freelancer projects with this app, you have fewer chances of feeling overwhelmed and are more likely to complete each project without getting distracted. Manage feelings of stress and overwhelming emotionsWhen you’re feeling overwhelmed or experiencing the effects of burnout, it’s important to manage these feelings effectively so your output and mood don’t deteriorate. A tip for this is to integrate mental health support methods such as being aware of your mood or understanding certain emotions. This is what UpLife can support you with. UpLife is a self-help app that is available on iOS. You work your way through bitesize lessons split into several categories, such as emotions, self-realization, and energy. You can log your mood, and as you work through the lessons, you’ll have the chance to see how your mood improves once you’ve completed the session. UpLife also minimizes the feelings that burnout brings by granting you access to an AI assistant called Lila. The AI assistant offers advice on specific things like how to build a healthy routine. With the two-pronged support available through the app, you’ll feel less stressed, be able to manage fluctuations in your mood, and beat burnout with tailored productivity-related advice. Overcoming freelancer burnout: Have you got the right apps?Freelancer burnout might affect your output, but with the right apps, you’ll be able to leave this behind and focus on completing projects efficiently. Suppose you’re not sure where to find the right apps, no sweat! You’ll be able to download all the apps listed in this article from Setapp. At Setapp, you can try the apps for free during a seven-day trial period. So whether you’re stressed or need to manage your time more effectively, make sure you download these apps today. Beat burnout with the right apps from Setapp! View the full article

There are two sides to every coin, and that includes freelancing. While you can enjoy flexible working hours, no commuting benefits, office-free attendance, and many other perks, you might encounter issues with burnout if you lack the right planning and strategizing methods. But there are specific approaches you can use to stop burnout before it starts or recover from it when it’s affecting your output; you can do this with a few specific apps that will help you organize your time and enhance your mood. Ready to discover which impressive apps can help with this? Nip freelancer burnout in the bud with the list of apps in this article and the top tips for success. What is burnout, and what are its early warning signs?If you’re experiencing a sense of ​​physical and mental exhaustion occurring at the same time as overworking, these might be the signs of burnout — a form of chronic or extended period of stress. Burnout symptoms, aside from mental exhaustion, include a heightened sense of self-doubt and fear of failure, feeling overwhelmed, and being emotionally drained. If you’re going through this, you might want to know how to recover from burnout. And the good news is that there are several apps and tips for success in handling burnout before it begins or managing it even when you’ve been experiencing it for some time. 5 tips for success and apps for handling burnoutSo that you can avoid experiencing burnout and the stressful feelings that come with it, this article contains multiple apps and tips you can use. Let’s go straight to those apps and tips to ensure you’re equipped to leave burnout behind. Track the time spent on each appTracking how much time you spend using each app or function on your Mac is our FIRST tip for avoiding burnout. You can do this with the Timing app, which delves into plenty of detail on your app-related activity, provides data related to the software you used, and lets you know how you used it. As time passes by when you’re using the app, Timing will reveal how you spent your time in a graph form. A unique category represents each portion of the graph, so you’ll see categories such as Office & Business, Web Browsing, Media, and more. When you navigate to the Mac menu bar, you can view the productivity percentage. It collects so much information, even within a 25-minute period, which is why you might want to use it yourself. These features can really reduce the chances of burnout by ensuring you allocate the optimum amount of time to each function without overworking. For example, you may notice that you have spent three hours on research for a blog post, indicated by the “Web Browsing” category. In that case, you’ll want to either take a break or turn your attention to a different task to avoid overworking and burnout. Manage to-do lists more effectivelyUsing to-do lists can be an effective way to manage your time as a freelancer, but when you’re juggling too many to-do lists, this can become another chore that only adds to your list of things to do. This is when BeFocused can be an ideal solution. This app is a timer that appears at the top of the Mac screen, which you can use by setting the timer and giving the task a title. One key benefit of the BeFocused app is that you can add multiple tasks and manage them all from the app (instead of creating multiple lists and managing them manually). When you complete a task in BeFocused and check it off, it’ll appear in the “Done” tab. The app is designed to keep you focused until time is up, so you’ll always know when to move on to a new task in a timely way. It means you will not overwork or exceed the optimum amount of time for each task. So, with a more efficient to-do list, you can transition smoothly between tasks without facing burnout or the added stress of managing your time ineffectively. Automate file organizationFile organization can eat into your time and affect your time management success. These issues can lead to freelancer burnout because managing files is an additional task that detracts from other high-priority projects, and multitasking like this can feel overwhelming at times. But one tip that can help is to automate file organization with a key app. Spotless handles this process automatically. The app requires you to create rules that determine what files go where. For instance, you can auto-tidy all your ZIP files and avoid completing this administrative task manually. It just requires you to set the file extension type, choose the action you’d like the app to take, and click the yellow “Create Rule” button. In terms of eliminating freelancer burnout, this app has an additional perk — it means that when you need to find a file quickly, you’ll already know where it’s located. It saves you more time that you can better use for getting started on your work and handling those fundamental tasks without feeling overwhelmed or splitting your attention to other issues. Create the optimum work environmentIf you’re already experiencing freelancer burnout symptoms or have noticed some signs of burnout in your approach to work, you’ll want to minimize its effects. A tip for this involves creating the optimum work environment that can soothe a stressed mind, which is what GetSound allows you to do. GetSound plays wellness or new-age music, such as those played at spas, but there are lots of ways you can customize it. You can adjust the environmental layers and sound features by operating the different slides in the app. The app also lets you switch locations or toggle between a range of soundscapes, which can slowly fade out after the amount of time you set. This app can reduce freelancer burnout by helping you relax and stay productive with the wellness music improving your concentration. Since you can remain calm and stress-free when completing freelancer projects with this app, you have fewer chances of feeling overwhelmed and are more likely to complete each project without getting distracted. Manage feelings of stress and overwhelming emotionsWhen you’re feeling overwhelmed or experiencing the effects of burnout, it’s important to manage these feelings effectively so your output and mood don’t deteriorate. A tip for this is to integrate mental health support methods such as being aware of your mood or understanding certain emotions. This is what UpLife can support you with. UpLife is a self-help app that is available on iOS. You work your way through bitesize lessons split into several categories, such as emotions, self-realization, and energy. You can log your mood, and as you work through the lessons, you’ll have the chance to see how your mood improves once you’ve completed the session. UpLife also minimizes the feelings that burnout brings by granting you access to an AI assistant called Lila. The AI assistant offers advice on specific things like how to build a healthy routine. With the two-pronged support available through the app, you’ll feel less stressed, be able to manage fluctuations in your mood, and beat burnout with tailored productivity-related advice. Overcoming freelancer burnout: Have you got the right apps?Freelancer burnout might affect your output, but with the right apps, you’ll be able to leave this behind and focus on completing projects efficiently. Suppose you’re not sure where to find the right apps, no sweat! You’ll be able to download all the apps listed in this article from Setapp. At Setapp, you can try the apps for free during a seven-day trial period. So whether you’re stressed or need to manage your time more effectively, make sure you download these apps today. Beat burnout with the right apps from Setapp! View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Smart lights were there at the beginning of the smart home tech revolution, and over the years, these clever bulbs and LED strips have gradually evolved to offer more by way of both features and form factors—so much so that you might not be aware of everything you can do with smart lights, even if you've been using them for years. If your own smart light setup is mostly limited to switching your bedside lamp off with a voice command, controlling them remotely from your phone, or perhaps changing up the colors or adding an automation or two, then you're not taking advantage of everything these lights can do for you. These are some of the best smart light tricks you can try. Sync your lights with your TVHaving your smart lights change color and flash in time to action happening on your television can really add to the experience of watching movies and shows—and a number of smart light manufacturers now offer the necessary kit and apps to easily make this happen. For Philips Hue lights, for example, you need either a syncing box or a native app, depending on your TV model. It's also something you can do with Nanoleaf lights, via a system called Screen Mirror that uses a small camera to see what's on your television. Nanoleaf Essentials Smart Multicolor HD Lightstrip $69.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Shop Now Shop Now $69.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Set up random schedulesOne of the ways that smart lights can be useful when you're away from home is giving potential robbers the idea that you haven't gone away at all. You can almost always control your smart lights remotely, as long as your home wifi is still running. If you don't want to have to remember to turn your lights on at home every evening while you're at the beach or in the mountains, Philips Hue has a randomize timings setting available when you set up an automation, which will automatically vary when the lights turn on each day. You can randomize timings in the Philips Hue app. Credit: Lifehacker Get notifications via your lightsAdd some third-party services to the mix and the list of possibilities grows even more. IFTTT (If This Then That), for example, can set up routines based on specific triggers that lead to specific actions—and smart light brands including Philips Hue and Lifx support the protocol. Because IFTTT can plug into a variety of social media, mobile, and app systems, you can have events on these platforms trigger a flash or a change in color for your lights. One idea would be to turn a desk lamp blue when the weather forecast is predicting rain. Group your lights into scenesYou can do even more with your smart lights by grouping them together and setting specific scenes you can switch between. Most platforms let you do this fairly easily, so all the lights in a certain room can be managed together, and changed over time. You could set up scenes for early morning or late at night, for example, or for movie nights or for studying—the Nanoleaf app can even creates scenes for you based on a keyword or two. Check inside your smart light companion app to see what you've got available, or explore your customization options. Wake up with a "sunrise"Ease yourself more gently into the day by having your smart lights turn on gradually in the mornings, mimicking an actual sunrise. You could even use this trick to replace your alarm clock. This works for a wide variety of smart lights, and some can even sync the feature to your local sunrise times. You can use this with any smart light connected to Google Home, for example, by saying "hey Google, wake my lights at..." and adding a time to Google Assistant. The Nanoleaf app can create Magic Scenes for you. Credit: Nanoleaf Add a motion sensorCombine a compatible smart motion sensor with your smart lights and you don't even need to go to the trouble of tapping on your phone or speaking out a voice command to activate your smart lights—they'll come on as soon as there's movement in a room. A few smart light platforms offer this functionality, including Philips Hue. You're able to set the brightness of the lights—so you're not suddenly dazzled as you stumble to the bathroom, for example—and you can have the lights turn off after a certain time as well. Philips Hue Motion Sensor $44.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Shop Now Shop Now $44.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Set up automated routinesYour smart lights are even more useful when you combine them with other devices. For example, you can set the lights to dim as a chill out mix begins to play on your smart speaker at a certain time of night. Or you can set your lights and smart thermostat to all turn off together when you leave the house. These tricks are known as routines or automations, and you can set them up in Google Home (via the Automations tab), in the Amazon Alexa app (via More > Routines), and in other smart home hub platforms (including Samsung SmartThings and Apple Homekit). View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...View the full article

Understanding the difference between search bots and scrapers is crucial for SEO. Website crawlers fall into two categories: First-party bots, which you use to audit and optimize your own site. Third-party bots, which crawl your site externally – sometimes to index your content (like Googlebot) and other times to extract data (like competitor scrapers). This guide breaks down first-party crawlers that can improve your site’s technical SEO and third-party bots, exploring their impact and how to manage them effectively. First-party crawlers: Mining insights from your own website Crawlers can help you identify ways to improve your technical SEO. Enhancing your site’s technical foundation, architectural depth, and crawl efficiency is a long-term strategy for increasing search traffic. Occasionally, you may uncover major issues – such as a robots.txt file blocking all search bots on a staging site that was left active after launch. Fixing such problems can lead to immediate improvements in search visibility. Now, let’s explore some crawl-based technologies you can use. Googlebot via Search Console You don’t work in a Google data center, so you can’t launch Googlebot to crawl your own site. However, by verifying your site with Google Search Console (GSC), you can access Googlebot’s data and insights. (Follow Google’s guidance to set yourself up on the platform.) GSC is free to use and provides valuable information – especially about page indexing. There’s also data on mobile-friendliness, structured data, and Core Web Vitals: Technically, this is third-party data from Google, but only verified users can access it for their site. In practice, it functions much like the data from a crawl you run yourself. Screaming Frog SEO Spider Screaming Frog is a desktop application that runs locally on your machine to generate crawl data for your website. They also offer a log file analyzer, which is useful if you have access to server log files. For now, we’ll focus on Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider. At $259 per year, it’s highly cost-effective compared to other tools that charge this much per month. However, because it runs locally, crawling stops if you turn off your computer – it doesn’t operate in the cloud. Still, the data it provides is fast, accurate, and ideal for those who want to dive deeper into technical SEO. From the main interface, you can quickly launch your own crawls. Once completed, export Internal > All data to an Excel-readable format and get comfortable handling and pivoting the data for deeper insights. Screaming Frog also offers many other useful export options. It provides reports and exports for internal linking, redirects (including redirect chains), insecure content (mixed content), and more. The drawback is it requires more hands-on management, and you’ll need to be comfortable working with data in Excel or Google Sheets to maximize its value. Dig deeper: 4 of the best technical SEO tools Ahrefs Site Audit Ahrefs is a comprehensive cloud-based platform that includes a technical SEO crawler within its Site Audit module. To use it, set up a project, configure the crawl parameters, and launch the crawl to generate technical SEO insights. Once the crawl is complete, you’ll see an overview that includes a technical SEO health rating (0-100) and highlights key issues. You can click on these issues for more details, and a helpful button appears as you dive deeper, explaining why certain fixes are necessary. Since Ahrefs runs in the cloud, your machine’s status doesn’t affect the crawl. It continues even if your PC or Mac is turned off. Compared to Screaming Frog, Ahrefs provides more guidance, making it easier to turn crawl data into actionable SEO insights. However, it’s less cost-effective. If you don’t need its additional features, like backlink data and keyword research, it may not be worth the expense. Semrush Site Audit Next is Semrush, another powerful cloud-based platform with a built-in technical SEO crawler. Like Ahrefs, it also provides backlink analysis and keyword research tools. Semrush offers a technical SEO health rating, which improves as you fix site issues. Its crawl overview highlights errors and warnings. As you explore, you’ll find explanations of why fixes are needed and how to implement them. Both Semrush and Ahrefs have robust site audit tools, making it easy to launch crawls, analyze data, and provide recommendations to developers. While both platforms are pricier than Screaming Frog, they excel at turning crawl data into actionable insights. Semrush is slightly more cost-effective than Ahrefs, making it a solid choice for those new to technical SEO. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. Business email address Sign me up! Processing... See terms. Third-party crawlers: Bots that might visit your website Earlier, we discussed how third parties might crawl your website for various reasons. But what are these external crawlers, and how can you identify them? Googlebot As mentioned, you can use Google Search Console to access some of Googlebot’s crawl data for your site. Without Googlebot crawling your site, there would be no data to analyze. (You can learn more about Google’s common crawl bots in this Search Central documentation.) Google’s most common crawlers are: Googlebot Smartphone. Googlebot Desktop. Each uses separate rendering engines for mobile and desktop, but both contain “Googlebot/2.1” in their user-agent string. If you analyze your server logs, you can isolate Googlebot traffic to see which areas of your site it crawls most frequently. This can help identify technical SEO issues, such as pages that Google isn’t crawling as expected. To analyze log files, you can create spreadsheets to process and pivot the data from raw .txt or .csv files. If that seems complex, Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyzer is a useful tool. In most cases, you shouldn’t block Googlebot, as this can negatively affect SEO. However, if Googlebot gets stuck in highly dynamic site architecture, you may need to block specific URLs via robots.txt. Use this carefully – overuse can harm your rankings. Fake Googlebot traffic Not all traffic claiming to be Googlebot is legitimate. Many crawlers and scrapers allow users to spoof user-agent strings, meaning they can disguise themselves as Googlebot to bypass crawl restrictions. For example, Screaming Frog can be configured to impersonate Googlebot. However, many websites – especially those hosted on large cloud networks like AWS – can differentiate between real and fake Googlebot traffic. They do this by checking if the request comes from Google’s official IP ranges. If a request claims to be Googlebot but originates outside of those ranges, it’s likely fake. Other search engines In addition to Googlebot, other search engines may crawl your site. For example: Bingbot (Microsoft Bing). DuckDuckBot (DuckDuckGo). YandexBot (Yandex, a Russian search engine, though not well-documented). Baiduspider (Baidu, a popular search engine in China). In your robots.txt file, you can create wildcard rules to disallow all search bots or specify rules for particular crawlers and directories. However, keep in mind that robots.txt entries are directives, not commands – meaning they can be ignored. Unlike redirects, which prevent a server from serving a resource, robots.txt is merely a strong signal requesting bots not to crawl certain areas. Some crawlers may disregard these directives entirely. Screaming Frog’s Crawl Bot Screaming Frog typically identifies itself with a user agent like Screaming Frog SEO Spider/21.4. The “Screaming Frog SEO Spider” text is always included, followed by the version number. However, Screaming Frog allows users to customize the user-agent string, meaning crawls can appear to be from Googlebot, Chrome, or another user-agent. This makes it difficult to block Screaming Frog crawls. While you can block user agents containing “Screaming Frog SEO Spider,” an operator can simply change the string. If you suspect unauthorized crawling, you may need to identify and block the IP range instead. This requires server-side intervention from your web developer, as robots.txt cannot block IPs – especially since Screaming Frog can be configured to ignore robots.txt directives. Be cautious, though. It might be your own SEO team conducting a crawl to check for technical SEO issues. Before blocking Screaming Frog, try to determine the source of the traffic, as it could be an internal employee gathering data. Ahrefs Bot Ahrefs has a crawl bot and a site audit bot for crawling. When Ahrefs crawls the web for its own index, you’ll see traffic from AhrefsBot/7.0. When an Ahrefs user runs a site audit, traffic will come from AhrefsSiteAudit/6.1. Both bots respect robots.txt disallow rules, per Ahrefs’ documentation. If you don’t want your site to be crawled, you can block Ahrefs using robots.txt. Alternatively, your web developer can deny requests from user agents containing “AhrefsBot” or “AhrefsSiteAudit“. Semrush Bot Like Ahrefs, Semrush operates multiple crawlers with different user-agent strings. Be sure to review all available information to identify them properly. The two most common user-agent strings you’ll encounter are: SemrushBot: Semrush’s general web crawler, used to improve its index. SiteAuditBot: Used when a Semrush user initiates a site audit. Rogerbot, Dotbot, and other crawlers Moz, another widely used cloud-based SEO platform, deploys Rogerbot to crawl websites for technical insights. Moz also operates Dotbot, a general web crawler. Both can be blocked via your robots.txt file if needed. Another crawler you may encounter is MJ12Bot, used by the Majestic SEO platform. Typically, it’s nothing to worry about. Non-SEO crawl bots Not all crawlers are SEO-related. Many social platforms operate their own bots. Meta (Facebook’s parent company) runs multiple crawlers, while Twitter previously used Twitterbot – and it’s likely that X now deploys a similar, though less-documented, system. Crawlers continuously scan the web for data. Some can benefit your site, while others should be monitored through server logs. Understanding search bots, SEO crawlers and scrapers for technical SEO Managing both first-party and third-party crawlers is essential for maintaining your website’s technical SEO. Key takeaways First-party crawlers (e.g., Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Semrush) help audit and optimize your own site. Googlebot insights via Search Console provide crucial data on indexation and performance. Third-party crawlers (e.g., Bingbot, AhrefsBot, SemrushBot) crawl your site for search indexing or competitive analysis. Managing bots via robots.txt and server logs can help control unwanted crawlers and improve crawl efficiency in specific cases. Data handling skills are crucial for extracting meaningful insights from crawl reports and log files. By balancing proactive auditing with strategic bot management, you can ensure your site remains well-optimized and efficiently crawled. View the full article

Show that you value your clients – and yourself. By Martin Bissett Business Development on a Budget Go PRO for members-only access to more Martin Bissett. View the full article

Show that you value your clients – and yourself. By Martin Bissett Business Development on a Budget Go PRO for members-only access to more Martin Bissett. View the full article

Apple shareholders on Tuesday are expected to reject an attempt to pressure the technology trendsetter into scrapping its corporate programs designed to diversify its workforce. The proposal drafted by the National Center for Public Policy Research — a self-described conservative think tank — urges Apple to follow a litany of high-profile companies that have retreated from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives currently in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump. It comes a month after the same group presented a similar proposal during Costco’s annual meeting, only to have it overwhelmingly rejected. A similar outcome is expected during Apple’s annual meeting despite the strident objections of critics. Just as Costco does, Apple has steadfastly stood behind diversity and inclusion efforts that its management contends good business sense. But the National Center for Public Policy Research’s proposal has attacked Apple’s diversity commitments for being out of line with recent court rulings and said the programs expose the Cupertino, California, company to an onslaught of potential lawsuits for alleged discrimination. The group estimated about 50,000 Apple employees could file cases against Apple without detailing how it arrived at that figure. “It’s clear that DEI poses litigation, reputational and financial risks to companies, and therefore financial risks to their shareholders, and therefore further risks to companies for not abiding by their fiduciary duties,” the National Center for Public Policy Research says in its proposal. The specter of potential legal trouble was magnified last week when Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a federal lawsuit against Target alleging the retailer’s recently scaled-back DEI program alienated many consumers and undercut sales to the detriment of shareholders. In its rebuttal to the anti-DEI proposal, Apple said its program is an integral part of a culture that has helped elevate the company to its current market value of $3.7 trillion — greater than any other business in the world. “We believe that how we conduct ourselves is as critical to Apple’s success as making the best products in the world,” the company said in its statement against the proposal. “We seek to conduct business ethically, honestly, and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.” In its last diversity and inclusion report issued in 2022, Apple disclosed nearly that three-fourths of its global workforce consisted of white and Asian employees. Nearly two-thirds of its employees at that juncture were men. Other major technology companies for years have reported employing mostly white and Asian men, especially in high-paid engineering jobs — a tendency that spurred the industry to pursue what have been largely unsuccessful efforts to diversify. —Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer View the full article

AI chatbots – are they killing search or just changing the game? Kevin Indig analyzed 14 studies on their impact and how businesses can adapt. The post The State Of AI Chatbots And SEO appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

French president to be followed by British PM in seeking support for US ‘backstop’ in postwar UkraineView the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Before this review, I had never heard of Brane, but now, it's all I want to hear when I play my music. The Brane X is many things, but cheap isn't one of them. But for $499, you get a multi-use premium speaker that can handle itself underwater, has Alexa voice assistant, connects through wifi for better audio, has the best bass of any wifi speaker, and can be used as a soundbar and subwoofer combo. The Brane X is a great wifi speaker for someone who values bass, would like to take their speaker outdoors, and needs a soundbar and subwoofer combo for their home theater. However, it isn't perfect and at its price, it competes with the best. The Sonos Move 2 is slightly cheaper, offers a replaceable battery with 24 hours of juice, and better treble and mids (but nowhere near the same range or bass power fo the Brane X). Brane reached out to me to review the Brane X and sent me the speaker for my honest thoughts, which is exactly what you'll get in this review. Brane X Smart Speaker $499.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Shop Now Shop Now $499.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Brane X speaker pros, cons, and specsProsBest-in-class bass and sub-bass for smart speakers Wifi streaming over Spotify and AirPlay 2 Compact and portable Powerful 98dB stereo speaker IP57 dust and waterproof Doubles as a soundbar and subwoofer combo in one with an AUX connection Companion app with EQ ConsExpensive Upper registers sound compressed at max volume when using Bluetooth No Chromecast support No speakerphone function Some features make a whirring noise No USB-C charging (only DC) SpecsBattery Life: About six hours of battery at a moderately high volume (about 12 hours at a moderate level, according to Brane). Connectivity: Wifi supports 802.11a/b/g/n/ac standards, Bluetooth version 5.1, streaming services compatible with AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, and Amazon Alexa. Inputs: Auxiliary input 3.5 mm jack for wired connections. App: Brane companion app for fine-tuning bass, customizing EQ settings, managing speaker groups, and adjusting various settings. Drivers: One 6.5" by 9" Repel-Attract-Driver (RAD) subwoofer, two 2.5" midrange drivers, two 0.75" dome tweeters. Power Output: Four Class-D digital amplifiers delivering a combined output of over 200 watts (98dB). Water Resistance: Rated IP57, making it fully waterproof and dust-protected. Size: 6.1 inches x 9.3 inches x 7 inches (H × W × D) Weight: 7.7 lbs First impressions of the Brane X speaker Credit: Daniel Oropeza I have to be honest: First impressions of the Brane X weren't good. Turning it on wasn't intuitive, since the power button doesn't provide any feedback that I pressed it properly. The same can be said about the media controls on top, but I'll get more into those details later. There is also a weird whirring sound that the speaker makes once you turn it on that made me think my speaker was defective (it goes away after a few seconds). The sound is actually an air pump equalizing the air pressure inside the speaker, which is a patent technology that Brane called Repel-Attract-Driver (RAD). RAD is what makes this speaker unique, giving it the best bass range output I've heard on any speaker. Try this frequency range test on your wifi or Bluetooth speaker and see how it performs. The Brane X didn't just play through the whole range but vibrated my entire office with its powerful bass. And because of that, I'm willing to put up with the humming sound it makes when it's turned on. Design The Brane X uses touch controls for media. Credit: Daniel Oropeza The design is, well, boring. All black is a safe option and with no color variations, it leaves me wanting to fill it with stickers to give it some personality. But that leads to my next issue: touch controls. To control the speaker you have a few options on top of the speaker, none of which provide haptic feedback. And since their touch controls, you don't really know if your command when though unless you hear the speaker. There is also no play/pause button, so I can only control it with my phone (or Alexa if using it to play music). Considering this is also an outdoor speaker with an IP57 rating that can be completely submerged underwater, physical buttons could've come in handy. The handle on the top is useful considering the speaker almost weighs eight pounds. The Brane X charger is DC, so no USB-C. Credit: Daniel Oropeza The charger is DC, so no USB-C for fast universal charging, unfortunately. The battery is marketed as 20 hours of battery life at a moderate volume, but I only got around six hours of juice at around 75% volume (which to be fair, is very loud indoors unless you're having a house party). It'll take about three hours to fully charge it once it is drained. Sound Credit: Daniel Oropeza The sound is where the Brane X blows away the competition and really shines, especially if you love bass (and I do). As I explained earlier, the RAD technology really pumps out incredible power out of this small speaker. Considering this is less than 10% the size of JBL's PartyBox Stage 320 (my favorite party speaker), it's impressive that it nearly matches its 240 W of output power (the Brane X gets to 200 W), only about a 2dB difference in volume to my favorite party speaker. I will caveat that this isn't a party speaker, and you can really hear it struggle on upper registers when getting it to its max volume. Unless I'm blasting the Brane X, though, the sound quality is pristine. Because the frequency range of the bass is so wide, you can really hear and feel the lower registers, giving it a full sound without needing to get too loud. It makes for a fun sound that is distinctive to the Brane X. I listened to MONACO by Bad Bunny and could hear the sub-bass parts of the bass clearly. The sensation of feeling the bass at this level usually means blasting the music on regular speakers or headphones, but the Brane X manages to provide that feeling without scaring my neighbors. Features of the Brane X speaker Credit: Daniel Oropeza The Brane X is a wifi speaker first, meaning it performs better than Bluetooth speakers in terms of connectivity with a wider range, better sound quality by streaming higher bitrate audio, and other features. Instead of connecting to the speaker over Bluetooth, you can play music directly into it through Spotify Connect, so you'll get a better connection and sound quality. You can also connect via AirPlay 2 and Amazon Alexa. The Amazon smart assistant performs as well as any Alexa device. The Brane app Left: Main screen. Middle: EQ. Right: The AUX Pass-Through feature to minimize delay with the TV. Credit: Daniel Oropeza My experience with the companion app was like most speaker apps: It does its simple job well, but it can disconnect on occasion and can be slow at times. The main things I used the app were to check the battery life, mess with the EQ (you get a five-band equalizer) which adjusts your changes in real time, and setting the AUX Pass-Through feature when setting it up as a soundbar. The app gives you the option to link up groups if you have more than one Brane X speaker. As I only have one speaker, I wasn't able to try this feature. The Brane X as an outdoor speaker Credit: Daniel Oropeza As I do with all of my outdoor speakers, I took it out to the court while hosting my Street FC soccer games. We played five on five on a hockey rink with walls, so the sound bounces off to give it a "surround" feel. Even then, the Brane X struggles to fill the court completely. This is by far the smallest speaker I've ever taken to my games, however, and I'm comparing the sound decibels to party speakers, which is an unfair comparison. The fact that the Brane X is even a contender here speaks volumes to its versatility. With that said, the audio did sound compressed at maximum volumes sometimes. Since it's a Bluetooth connection outdoors instead of wifi, the compression sound is more noticeable at max volume (it'll sound better indoors with a wifi connection). The Brane X comes with an IP57 rating, making it fully waterproof and dust-protected—great for an outdoor speaker. The Brane X as a soundbar The Brane X doubles as a soundbar and sub woofer combo with an AUX cable. Credit: Daniel Oropeza If you want to use the speaker as a soundbar, you'll need an AUX cable (at least the end that connects to the speaker needs to be AUX). I wish the Brane X had Google Chromecast support so it could connect wirelessly to my smart TV, but you can't have everything in life. You can still connect it with Bluetooth, but you won't be able to use the AUX Pass-Though feature on the app to get rid of the sound delay (the delay is not bad, but sticklers will notice it). You won't get eARC sound quality, but the speaker itself has a subwoofer, so the sound is surprisingly good as a soundbar and subwoofer combo. I decided to re-watch Dune to hear how well the Brane X performed as a soundbar and subwoofer combo and compared it to the speaker system on my TCL QM7 TV, which has a subwoofer speaker on the back. The Brane X really brought Dune to life compared to the television speakers. I could feel every thud of the thumpers as they hit the sand when calling the worms. The soundtrack and vibrations of the explosions really put the excellent broad frequency range the Brane X has to use. The speaker is able to handle the dynamic audio you want from a soundbar, hearing whispers and feeling explosions. Bottom line Credit: Daniel Oropeza The Brane X is a powerful wifi speaker with a subwoofer that gives it an incredible range in the sub-bass frequencies. It's the best wifi and smart speaker for bass lovers. With Spotify and AirPlay 2, most people's needs for music will be met. Its small compact size also makes it a great portable and outdoor speaker, with a waterproof IP57 rating and up to 12 hours of battery life. It can get very loud with a maximum of 98 dBs, and it doubles as a soundbar and subwoofer combo, making it great for watching movies. However, all that versatility comes at a high price of $499. If you're looking to blast the Brane X at max volume, know that playing over Bluetooth will lead to some compression being noticeable. There is no speakerphone option despite its many microphones, and you'll need to depend on the DC charger, which isn't ideal for portable speakers. The Brane X is ideal for someone looking for a wifi speaker that can do a bit of everything. A one-stop speaker that you can take to the beach, use as a soundbar, fill your living room for a party, or take on a whim to your next adventure. It definitely rivals the Sonos Move 2, and would recommend it to anyone who isn't in the Sonos ecosystem already and/or loves to feel bass in their life. View the full article

Tens of thousands of planes take off, land, and perform touch-and-goes at the Marana Regional Airport in southern Arizona every year. Without an air traffic control tower, it’s a calculated dance that requires communication by pilots. Two small planes collided in midair over one of the runways on the outskirts of Tucson last week. One hit the ground and caught fire, sending up a plume of black smoke. The remains of two people were found in the charred wreckage. The other plane was able to land, with those occupants uninjured. The collision was the latest aviation mishap to draw attention in recent weeks. The circumstances vary widely with each case, however, and experts who study aviation accidents say they don’t see any connection between them. Chatter over the airwaves has provided some clues about what happened in Arizona. A chief flight instructor who was in the air with a student that day heard the commotion over the radio: One plane was attempting a touch-and-go when another clipped its propeller while attempting to land. Erwin Castillo, who works for IFLY Pilot Training, recalled hearing one pilot scream: “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! He just hit us.” It will be up to federal investigators to determine what caused the crash, a detailed process that will take months. While some observers suggest having a control tower may have made a difference, experts say not having a tower doesn’t mean the airport is any less safe; pilots just have a different set of communication procedures to follow. How many airports in the U.S. have control towers? Of the 5,100 public airports across the country, only about 10% have towers staffed by people who direct the flow of traffic. These are the busiest of airports, with complex operations and large volumes of commercial flights. For the airports without control towers, pilots rely on radio communications and the principle of “see and avoid” to ensure they can maneuver safely. The concept is drilled into pilots from Day 1 of their training and it’s applicable regardless of the kind of airspace they’re in, said Mike Ginter, a retired Navy aviator and senior vice president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s Air Safety Institute. He likened it to being behind the wheel of a car and practicing all the safety rules learned in driver’s ed. “You don’t have to tell the state police that you’re getting ready to drive to the supermarket to get groceries. You just go out, and you look both ways before you turn, and you turn on your turn signal and you drive,” he explained, saying there are basic tenets of safety that are ingrained in pilots. The system has worked well, considering the sheer number of planes coming and going daily from small airports and the roughly 26 million hours of flight time logged by general aviation pilots. What prompted regulation of the friendly skies? It was a summer day in 1956 when two commercial flights left Los Angeles within minutes of each other—one en route to Chicago and the other to Kansas. Flying under visual flight rules, the planes collided over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, killing all 128 people aboard. The crash site is now a National Historic Landmark. Even though U.S. air traffic had more than doubled since the end of World War II, it was this disaster that helped to fuel efforts to overhaul aviation safety. Legislation was introduced in 1958 to create an independent federal agency that would provide for the safe and efficient use of national airspace. The bill was signed within months and the first Federal Aviation Agency administrator was appointed. Responsibilities evolved, and the agency became the Federal Aviation Administration as air traffic control systems were being modernized. Are new control towers being planned? Through the FAA, airports can apply for federal grants to modernize and build air traffic control towers that are staffed by private companies and contract workers, rather than FAA staff. Nearly 180 airports nationwide are eligible for funding under the program, with most looking to upgrade existing towers—some that date back to the 1940s and others that were meant to be temporary. A review of funding awarded through the program over the past four fiscal year shows a handful of airports were awarded money specifically for site studies, environmental work and construction of new towers. That includes airports in Bend, Oregon; Boulder City, Nevada; and Mankato, Minnesota. In the case of Marana, the airport was first accepted into the program in 2019 but the coronavirus pandemic stalled efforts to get a tower built by the five-year deadline. Airport officials have said they now are on track to complete the project by 2029. Will federal job cuts affect air traffic safety? U.S. President Donald Trump issued a memo in late January to top transportation officials, ordering an immediate assessment of aviation safety following the midair collision of an Army helicopter and commercial passenger jet over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Sixty-seven people were killed. Trump raised questions about hiring practices within the FAA, suggesting previous Democratic administrations had shifted away from merit-based hiring. Some FAA jobs have been eliminated as Trump streamlines the federal workforce and looks to ferret out waste and curb spending, but less than 1% of the agency’s more than 45,000 workers were probationary employees targeted as part of the job cuts, federal officials have said. In addition, the administration has said no air traffic controllers or critical safety personnel were fired as part of the effort. But labor and industry groups say even without cuts, air traffic control towers were already understaffed. Trump has said that he would support legislation aimed at modernizing the nation’s air traffic control system. In a letter sent to members of Congress last week, the industry group Airlines for America pushed for emergency funding for critical air traffic control technology and infrastructure as well as air controller staffing and training. Associated Press writer Sejal Govindarao in Phoenix contributed to this report. —Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press View the full article

Get all the details on Plume's latest vision and strategy in our brand new interview with co-founder and acting CEO Adam Hotchkiss above. The post Interview: Effective consumer engagement is the next major goal, says Plume’s Adam Hotchkiss appeared first on Wi-Fi NOW Global. View the full article

"Photoshop" is synonymous with image editing, and for good reason. The app is an industry standard, and has been for over 30 years. But while Photoshop has been available on computers and tablets for some time now, those looking to edit images on their smartphones have had to make due with alternative programs—or simply stick to their other devices instead. That changes today. As of Tuesday, Feb. 25, Photoshop is officially on iPhone. You can go to the App Store, search "Photoshop," and see not just the usual alternatives—like Lightroom, Canva, and Facetune—but the real deal, too. Plus, the app itself is free, in addition to a number of "core imaging and design tools." According to the company, that includes the following, free of charge: Selections, layers and masks Tap Select tool Spot Healing Brush Adobe Firefly AI features, like Generative Fill and Generative Expand Integration with Adobe Express, Adobe Fresco, and Adobe Lightroom Access to "hundreds of thousands" of free Adobe Stock assets Credit: Adobe The company showed off a number of edit examples one might use the app for: using a masking tool to copy a subject from one image and paste it to another; using a "quick select brush" to isolate parts of an image from the final product; layering multiple images over one another to create a dramatic but realistic assortment of items around the subject; changing the color of one element of an image, while preserving the rest; and selecting objects to quickly remove them from the scene. Of course, Adobe is also pushing its AI features, as well—namely, Generative Fill. In one demo, a rep wants to insert an island onto an image of an ocean. They use the lasso tool to highlight where in the image they want that island to be, then use Generative Fill to create a grassy piece of land with AI. In another, Generative Fill is used to remove a background, replacing it with the sky seen in a different part of the image. Obviously, if you have previous Photoshop experience, you should be quite familiar with the tools and features of this version of the app. However, it may take you a moment to get your bearings: Based on press images and videos, this is definitely a mobile app, meaning its UI looks like many other image editing apps you might have used before. As such, it might take some trial and error before you understand where all of your usual options and features are. But based on what I see, this is the typical Photoshop experience—just distilled into mobile form. There are more features (if you pay for them)While Photoshop and its "core" features are free to download and use on iPhone, there are more features and perks if you choose to pay. Adobe now has a "Photoshop Mobile and Web plan" for customers who want more on the iOS, iPadOS, and web versions of the app. That includes: Access to Photoshop on the web Expanded access to Firefly-powered AI tools, like Generate Similar and Reference Image Access to over 20,000 fonts (or import your own) Object Select for precise selections Magic Wand for targeted adjustments Remove Tool Clone Stamp Content-Aware Fill Advanced blend modes for styling your image "Lighten" and "Darken" to lighten or darken different parts of an image This plan costs $7.99 per month, or $69.99 per year. If you already pay for Photoshop, you now have all of these perks included in your plan. View the full article

Budgeting for paid ad campaigns has long been a static process – set a monthly budget, monitor spending, and adjust incrementally as needed. This method works for industries with stable demand and predictable conversion rates but falls short in dynamic, competitive markets. Still, static budgets aren’t obsolete. In industries with long sales cycles, consistent conversion trends, or strict financial planning – like B2B SaaS and healthcare – planned budgets remain essential. The key isn’t choosing between static and dynamic budgeting; it’s knowing when and how to adjust PPC spend using data-driven signals. The role of Smart Bidding and Performance Max in budgeting Automation has changed our budgeting strategies, but it hasn’t eliminated the need for human oversight. While Google’s Smart Bidding and Performance Max (PMax) campaigns help optimize performance, they do not fully control budget allocation the way some advertisers may assume. Smart Bidding: What it does (and doesn’t do) for budgeting Smart Bidding (i.e., Target ROAS, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, and Maximize Conversion Value) uses real-time auction signals to adjust bids but does not shift budgets between campaigns. If a campaign has an insufficient budget, smart bidding won’t automatically pull spend from another campaign; this still requires manual adjustments or automated budget rules. To overcome the budget allocation limitations of Smart Bidding, use: Portfolio bidding strategies: Setting bid strategies at the campaign level lets you use a common bidding approach (e.g., Target ROAS or Target CPA) across multiple campaigns. This enables more efficient spending across campaigns with similar goals without manual adjustments. Shared budgets: Assigning a single budget across multiple campaigns ensures high-performing campaigns receive adequate funding while preventing overspending on lower-performing ones. Dig deeper: How each Google Ads bid strategy influences campaign success Performance Max: A black box for budget allocation? PMax automates asset and bid optimization across multiple Google properties (Search, Display, YouTube, Discovery, etc.), but you don’t control which channel yorur budget goes to. Google’s algorithm decides how much to allocate to each network, which can sometimes result in excessive spend on lower-performing placements like Display rather than Search. Instead of relying solely on PMax, run separate Search campaigns alongside it to ensure an adequate budget is allocated to high-intent traffic. Dig deeper: How to make search and PMax campaigns complement each other Balancing automation and control: Avoid these PPC budget pitfalls While automation streamlines bidding, it can also lead to costly mistakes. Watch out for these common budget-wasting pitfalls and learn to stay in control. Overspending on low-value traffic Smart Bidding sometimes aggressively increases bids to meet a Target ROAS or Target CPA, which can inflate CPCs without increasing conversion volume. Solution Set bid caps when using Maximize Conversion Value to prevent excessive CPC increases. Monitor search terms to ensure increased bids aren’t capturing low-intent queries. Advanced tip When setting a tCPA or tROAS, allow a 10-20% margin for flexibility to help Google’s algorithm optimize effectively. For example, if your ideal tCPA is $100, setting it to $115 gives Google room to secure conversions that may exceed your target while still delivering strong performance. Since tCPA operates as an average, not every lead will cost the same amount. Once you are consistently hitting your target, gradually lower the tCPA (or raise the tROAS) to improve budget efficiency without restricting conversions. Underfunding efficient campaigns If a campaign has a long conversion delay (i.e., B2B lead gen), Smart Bidding may incorrectly shift the budget elsewhere before enough data accumulates. Solution Extend conversion windows in Smart Bidding settings. The default is 30 days, but advertisers can adjust the window from one day up to 90 days. Manually monitor lagging conversions and adjust budgets proactively. Lack of budget control in PMax campaigns Performance Max doesn’t allow advertisers to set separate budgets for Search, YouTube, and Display. As a result, Google may (advertiser sentiment is that they do) favor low-cost clicks from Display rather than higher-intent Search traffic. Solution Run branded and high-intent non-branded Search campaigns separately to control budget spend on direct-response traffic. Use brand exclusions in PMax to prevent Google from serving brand search queries within PMax, ensuring that branded traffic remains in the dedicated Search campaign. Apply negative keywords via account-level negatives. While PMax doesn’t allow campaign-level negatives, account-level negative keyword lists can help block irrelevant or redundant queries. The maximum number of negative keywords allowed to be applied is 100. Google has stated that it created this limit because PMax isn’t meant to be a heavily restricted campaign type. By monitoring your search impression share, you can identify when branded queries are slipping into PMax instead of the dedicated Search campaign. This will allow you to adjust bid strategies and audience signals accordingly. Use audience exclusions in PMax to prevent excessive Display spend on irrelevant audiences. Advanced tip Tools like Optmyzr can help advertisers determine how their budget is allocated in PMax with the PMax Channel Distribution feature. Although we may not have much control over the allocation, we can at least be aware of it. Dig deeper: How to manage a paid media budget: Allocation, risk and scaling How to use first-party data to improve budget allocation An underutilized strategy for improving budgeting is leveraging first-party data to allocate spend toward high-value audiences. As privacy restrictions tighten and tracking capabilities decline, it’s important to shift your focus from broad automated bidding to first-party audience targeting. Use customer match to prioritize high-value audiences Instead of spending equally across all users, advertisers can upload Customer Match lists (based on past purchasers, high-LTV customers, or CRM data) and adjust budgets accordingly. Example If historical data shows that repeat customers generate a higher ROAS than new users, more budget should be allocated to remarketing campaigns targeting Customer Match audiences. Advanced tip To maximize campaign efficiency, consider using value-based bidding (VBB) to ensure your budget prioritizes high-value conversions rather than just the volume of leads. By assigning different conversion values based on customer lifetime value (LTV), using Customer Match, GA4 insights, or CRM data, you can direct more spending toward audiences that generate the highest long-term revenue. Changes to customer match lists Google recently introduced two key updates to Customer Match lists that will impact how advertisers manage audience data. As of Jan. 13, stricter policy enforcement means you must comply with Google’s advertising standards. Violations could lead to restricted access or account suspension after a seven-day warning. From April 7, the maximum membership duration for Customer Match lists will be extended to 540 days, giving you more time to engage high-value customers. To stay compliant and maximize audience targeting, be sure to regularly refresh your lists and align your data collection with Google’s updated policies. Apply GA4 data for smarter budget scaling Google Analytics 4 (GA4) provides insights into conversion paths, high-value audience segments, and multi-channel attribution. Instead of relying solely on Google Ads conversion tracking, use GA4 to determine which audience segments should receive higher budgets. Best practice Create custom lists/audiences around users with high engagement signals (repeat visits, add-to-cart actions, lead form interactions) and allocate more budget toward these users. Create custom lists/audiences around low-intent users who bounce after viewing one page. To reduce wasted ad spend, decrease your bids or exclude them. Dig deeper: How to leverage Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads for better audience targeting Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. Business email address Sign me up! Processing... See terms. Budget scaling strategies: When and how to increase PPC spend Scaling your PPC campaigns requires a structured, gradual approach. Increasing budgets too aggressively can cause Smart Bidding to overcompensate, leading to inefficient scaling and missed revenue opportunities. Incremental budget scaling Instead of doubling your budget overnight, it is better to gradually increase it by 10-20% daily. This gives Smart Bidding algorithms time to adjust without overspending or wasting budget. This will also allow us better control as we can monitor performance changes due to budget shifts more closely. Example If a campaign is hitting its conversion goals consistently, increase the budget by 15% per week while monitoring conversion trends. Cross-campaign budget reallocation Rather than increasing spend across the board, shift budget strategically between: Branded campaigns (lower-funnel, high-converting). Non-branded search campaigns (high-growth potential). Remarketing campaigns (high-value repeat customers). Dayparting for more efficient spend Instead of distributing the budget equally across all hours, allocate more to high-converting time periods. Example If the lead volume is highest between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., increase bids and budget during these hours. If your business hours are from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m., lower your bids during the hours you aren’t operating to prevent unnecessary ad expenses. Industry-specific budgeting approaches As we all know, no two industries are the same, so the approach to budgeting should also be different. Here’s how different business models should think about budget allocation: B2B lead generation Budgeting for B2B lead generation requires a long-term view. Unlike ecommerce, where purchases can happen quickly, B2B sales cycles can range from a week to over a year, depending on the contract size and decision-making process. As such, budget pacing should be planned over months. Don’t make frequent (i.e., daily or weekly) adjustments that could cause instability in the account. Because the cycle is longer, conversions often take some time to materialize, so conversion delays should be considered when evaluating Smart Bidding performance. If budgets are adjusted too soon based on incomplete data, campaigns may be underfunded before the true impact of conversions is realized. Dig deeper: Paid search for lead gen: Tips for new accounts with limited budgets Ecommerce Seasonality plays a large role in budgeting decisions for ecommerce brands. Aggressively increase budgets ahead of major sales events, like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and holiday shopping, to capitalize on higher purchase intent. Reacting to performance mid-season will likely result in missed opportunities if the budget is exhausted too early. Also, rather than spreading spend evenly across all potential buyers, prioritize high-LTV customers using Customer Match lists and past purchase data. This ensures that ad spend is directed toward audiences likely to generate repeat purchases and higher average order values (AOVs). Dig deeper: Lead gen vs. ecommerce: How to tailor your PPC strategies for success Local businesses Budget allocation for local businesses should be narrowly geo-targeted. Instead of distributing spend evenly across an entire service area (although you should have some presence in the area), analyze past geographic conversion data to determine which locations typically generate the highest return. The budget should then be allocated accordingly, ensuring that high-performing areas receive the majority of ad spend. Another important factor is setting up call tracking. Since many conversions happen over the phone rather than through online forms, integrate call-tracking data to identify which campaigns generate high-quality leads. By analyzing call duration, lead quality, and customer inquiries, you can refine budget allocation to optimize for calls that convert into sales or appointments. Dig deeper: 9 essential geotargeting tactics for Google Ads Each industry requires a different budgeting approach tailored to its sales cycles, customer behavior, and conversion patterns. Understanding these nuances ensures that your PPC budgets are allocated strategically for maximum impact, whether it’s long-term pacing for B2B, seasonal surges for ecommerce, or localized targeting for service-based businesses. A smarter approach to budgeting Budgeting for your PPC campaigns doesn’t involve choosing between static and dynamic models; it involves strategically using both. Smart Bidding and PMax improve efficiency but require human oversight. First-party data should play a bigger role in spend allocation. Budget scaling should be incremental and structured. Industry-specific needs should dictate budget pacing strategies. The best budgets are adaptable, data-driven, and aligned with long-term profitability rather than short-term spend fluctuations. Those who master this approach will gain a competitive advantage in an increasingly automated advertising landscape. View the full article

Patrón says all the tequila it has ever made since 1989 has been free of additives. The brand is now ready to get loud and talk about it. This week, Patrón is debuting a new additive-free marketing campaign that will run across digital, print, and out-of-home advertising in key markets including New York City and Los Angeles. The additive-free copy features lines like “Our secret ingredient is that we have no secret ingredients” and “When tequila is this good, additives don’t add anything.” Since Patrón’s inception, the brand says it has only made tequila with three ingredients: 100% weber blue agave, water, and yeast. The few exceptions are for the brand’s liqueurs, including orange and coffee flavored expressions, which always include added flavoring. But even the base spirit used to make those liqueurs only feature the three core ingredients. “Consumers are not going up to bartenders and asking for a tequila and soda and expecting to get a splash of caramel coloring or a sprinkle of glycerin,” says Ned Duggan, chief marketing officer at Patrón, in an interview with Fast Company. “We think that they want to know what’s in their tequila.” Patrón’s additive-free campaign may reignite a debate that’s been swirling in the tequila industry about the use and marketing of additives. Additives are permitted if less than 1% of the weight of the tequila, without any requirement of disclosure, according to the standards set by the Tequila Regulatory Council, or CRT, a group that’s backed by tequila brands, agave producers, and distributors to monitor and certify all tequila. Common additives that are in tequila include sugars and sweeteners like fructose and aspartame, oak extract, and caramel coloring. Patrón estimates that as much as 80% of tequila brands on the shelf today use additives. [Photo: Patrón] Agave typically needs six to eight years before it is ready to harvest, but with a supply shortage and higher prices, brands have started to pull agave from the earth after just two to three years. That results in a bitter flavor, and some producers have begun to lean more heavily on additives to combat that bitterness. For aged tequilas like añejo and reposado, caramel is used to improve the consistency of the color and make it appear “older,” as if it had been aged in oak barrels for a longer period of time. Patrón says 61% of consumers prefer additive-free liquors, citing a global survey conducted by the brand’s parent company Bacardi. Retailers have taken notice too, carving out shelf space that only promotes additive-free tequilas. Some mixologists prioritize crafting additive-free tequila libations. “We recognize that people are caring more and more about what they’re putting into their bodies, and also the ingredients that are in the brands that they’re putting in their bodies,” says Duggan. Among the loudest proponents of additive-free clarity is Grover Sanschagrin, who along with his wife Scarlet, cofounded an app called Tequila Matchmaker. The couple had developed a program that would certify tequila brands as additive-free and then share that information with consumers who were curious to know what was in the liquor they were drinking. But last year, the Sanschagrin’s home was raided in Mexico, part of a pressure campaign he says was spurred by the CRT’s anger about Tequila Matchmaker’s push for transparency. The Tequila Matchmaker app still exists for tequila reviews, but provides no information about additives. The Sanschagrins also created a new U.S.-based nonprofit called the Additive Free Alliance, which is angling to set up an independent process to identify and list additive-free brands, but thus far includes no tequila producers, only one agave-based vodka and a couple of mezcal brands. “There’s a void now,” says Sanschagrin. “Every brand is basically saying they are additive-free and now there is no way to offer proof of that.” In 2023, Patrón announced an additive-free seal, a label that was designed to appear on the brand’s bottles, a bid for transparency that was blessed by the CRT at the time. But that on-packaging messaging never came to fruition. “I think we were a little bit ahead of the rest of the industry and the CRT ultimately requested that we not move forward,” says Duggan. “But that’s why it’s been so important for us to launch this campaign where regardless of whether it’s on our bottle or not, we are being forthcoming with consumers and transparent about our no additive message.” A memo circulated by the CRT last year, obtained by Fast Company, told tequila producers that because additives are permitted under the 1% level, they believe there is no such thing as an additive-free tequila. The CRT ordered distillers to stop marketing tequila as additive-free, saying it was a “false and misleading statement” that could harm the spirit’s reputation with consumers. The CRT didn’t respond to requests for comment. [Photo: Patrón] Sanschagrin welcomes the message that Patrón is sending with the new marketing campaign, both to consumers and tequila’s regulatory body. “The CRT overreached and somebody needs to check them,” he says. “I’m excited that Patrón has decided to take this on.” The additive-free movement also reflects an evolution of how tequila is produced. When tequila sales first began to boom in the U.S. in the 1980s, most were gold tequila, or mixto, a tequila made from a minimum of 51% agave and the rest from other sugars. Patrón’s launch, and other tequilas that have since entered the market, popularized the use of 100% agave and that claim became the baseline that consumers look for when buying any tequila north of $20. But the 100% agave claim became more difficult to stick to as tequila demand has soared. Tequila and mezcal sales now total $6.7 billion in annual revenue in the U.S. market, the second-most popular liquor category following vodka, according to the trade group the Distilled Spirits Council. Dave Karraker, president of PR consultancy Raptor Communications, says the 100% additive-free claim is a way that brands like Patrón can distinguish themselves from the crowd. “How do I differentiate myself from all of these players that are adding additives,” he asks. “As a marketer, you’re looking for points of differentiation to lean into, that are on trend with consumers.” View the full article

Riddle me this: What exactly is Trello? Despite counting myself as a heavy-duty power user of the product for well over a decade now, it’s a question I’ve long struggled to answer. Technically, Trello has always seemed to fall into that group of apps folks like to frame as “project management tools”—products like Asana, ClickUp, and Notion that do a pinch of everything and are as much note makers, info savers, and life managers as they are project organizers. But Trello in particular has always been a bit of a chameleon. Personally, I’ve used it for everything from storing story ideas to mapping out my weekly newsletters and even organizing my home workouts. Part of what makes the app so powerful is its versatility. With a flexible series of boards, columns, and cards acting as its core interface, you can shape it into serving practically any purpose imaginable for yourself or your company. It seems, though, that that very same versatility may have morphed into a challenge for the product. This week, Atlassian—the business-tech behemoth that bought Trello for $425 million in 2017 and brought it into its sprawling software empire—is announcing Trello’s biggest pivot to date. It’s essentially a total reinvention, despite the fact that on the surface, not all that much actually seems to be changing. So, here it is: As of this spring, Trello will no longer be a “project management tool”—or whatever else you want to call it. It’ll be a personal tasks app, presented as being the best all-around hub for juggling all of your important to-do items, no matter where they may originate. Notably, too, it’ll now be aimed at individual users, not teams, which marks a pretty big shift from its original focus. But in an appropriately Trello-y twist, the service’s trademark versatility isn’t going anywhere—for the most part. And in spite of the official new framing and all the added elements that come with it, it’s still up to you to decide how you want to use Trello and what you want it to be. Outside of a small subset of early beta testers, most Trello users will see its new touches sometime in April. That’s when Trello’s next era will truly begin. The Trello tale—from inception to reinventionI’ve been spending much of this month living with the still-under-wraps new version of Trello, and I’ll share some detailed thoughts and impressions about what it’s all about in a moment. First, though, before we can wrap our heads around Trello’s present and its future, we need to take a swift trip back to its past. Trello first entered the world as a concept nearly 14 years ago, in September of 2011—the brainchild of Michael Pryor and Joel Spolsky. (Pryor stuck around to lead its development post-Atlassian-acquisition until mid-2022.) From the get-go, the pair described the app as “a totally horizontal product”—meaning, in the words of co-founder Spolsky at the time, “it can be used by people from all walks of life”: Some people saw Trello and said, “Oh, it’s Kanban boards. For developing software the agile way.” Yeah, it’s that, but it’s also for planning a wedding, for making a list of potential vacation spots to share with your family, for keeping track of applicants to open job positions, and for a billion other things. In fact, Trello is for anything where you want to maintain a list of lists with a group of people. That versatility and the tough-to-pin-down quality that comes with it was a key part of Trello’s foundation, in other words. It may have initially been inspired by the engineer-adored idea of Post-It Notes arranged into columns on a whiteboard, but it was always meant to be everything to everyone, without any guardrails or specific definitions for exactly how it should be used. Trello’s board-centric interface has long been the service’s calling card. [Image: Trello]Over time, that underlying elasticity never wavered. But Trello began to be positioned as more of a team-oriented tool—that whole “project management” thing. In the context of its ultimate home within Atlassian, a company known for collaboration software, that focus made sense—even if Trello did always overlap somewhat awkwardly with the organization’s homegrown Jira offering. By 2021, Atlassian had introduced a whole series of new views that promised to transform the Trello experience and make it even more well-suited for multiuer productivity. You could switch away from the standard Trello boards and view your data instead in a spreadsheet-like “Team Table View,” for instance, or flip over to a “Timeline View” that put all your info into a year-long spectrum. You could even opt for a location-centric “Map View” built specifically with sales and service teams in mind. And that’s exactly where Gaurav Kataria, Atlassian’s head of product for Trello since 2020 and a former Google Cloud executive, sees the service as starting to lose its way. “Typically, everything tries to become the one tool to manage everything, like one tool to rule them all—and typically, they tend come to become more complex,” Kataria says. “It has happened to every tool in the industry, Trello included.” Kataria and his team decided it was time to step back and really think about what made Trello special, why people appreciated it, and where it should fit into our personal productivity puzzles. Meet the Trello task transformationOfficially, today’s Trello announcement is about a fresh set of features coming into the service—features that aim to make it easier to capture and organize all types of task-oriented info. But beyond the surface, the announcement is really more about redefining what Trello is for and how Atlassian, at least, wants it to be seen—even if you still have the power to shape it into something broader. “We are taking a step back and staying that rather than trying to be that one tool, which is the project management tool for the whole team that can handle all levels of complexity and dependency and reporting, how about we focus on making the individual user more productive,” Kataria says. “Rather than being everything for everyone, let’s be really useful to the one user that’s using the product.” The team behind Trello determined that the best way to do that was to shed Trello’s murky “project management” moniker and frame the app as an all-purpose to-do hub that pulls in info from all sorts of other services and makes it exceptionally easy to organize. (The service will still offer its same generous free plan, which includes unlimited cards and up to 10 boards for individual users—along with its existing premium and enterprise-level plans for companies that want to provide the service to larger groups of workers.) The centerpiece of that strategy is a new Inbox feature that exists as a sidebar to the left of every Trello board you’re viewing. The idea is that it’s a landing pad of sorts for any type of task you’re thinking about—a place for all that stuff to show up in Trello without any real effort and then be ready for you to drag wherever you see fit. The new Trello Inbox is a landing pad for all your incoming tasks. [Image: Trello]“Today, if suddenly, a new idea pops into your head, you might have to first decide which board it goes into, which list it goes into, and does it go into the middle of the list or the top of the list—so there’s a little cognitive burden that you have to go through before you add something to Trello,” Kataria says. “We want to remove that cognitive burden.” To that end, Inbox offers four integrations to start: Email—where you can forward any message to a special address to have it instantly added into your Inbox Slack—where you can use the inbox emoji reaction (📥) or the native Slack save-for-later feature to save any message into your Trello Inbox Jira—where you can click a new native menu command to pull any issues from a project into your Inbox And Siri—where you can simply ask your iOS device to add something into Trello to get it into that same Inbox view The Trello Inbox integrates with email, Slack, Jira, and Siri to start. [Image: Trello]Android support is on hold for the moment because of Google’s awkward Assistant-Gemini transition and the current lack of support for third-party integrations with Gemini—but Kataria tells me the team is watching the situation closely and plans to add in support as soon as it becomes possible. And in the meantime, a button on the Trello Android widget can serve as an only slightly more complex way to achieve the same end result. Atlassian plans to add support for some Microsoft-specific integrations next, but beyond that, it’s relying on the fact that almost every external service generates notifications of some sort—typically via either Slack or email—and so it can tap into those notifications easily via its existing integrations without requiring any additional connections or data access. “We don’t need to build a native integration with every tool under the sun,” Kataria explains. As part of its tasks-centric transition, the service is also adding in the ability to check off a card and mark it as done from any board view—something Kataria says has been the company’s longest standing feature request. By default, when you mark a card as done, it stays in place and just gains a checkmark indication on its cover. But thanks to Trello’s powerful automation system—the feature formerly known as Butler, for any of my fellow Trello long-timers—you can take total control of that process and set the system up to work any way you like. You might create an automation rule that instantly archives any card when it’s marked as done, for instance, or that moves it to a special list where finished cards are stored. The power is entirely in your hands, which feels like a thoughtful blending of the traditional Trello philosophy and its newly reshaped purpose. “The user is still very much in control,” Kataria says. All of that aside, what makes the setup especially interesting is the way Trello is integrating AI into all of this in a similarly thoughtful and actually useful way. Trello’s finer task touchesRather than cramming in the standard and often silly “write/rewrite text for me” or “make a list for me”-style generative-AI options, Trello is opting to lean on AI solely to transform whatever you add into your Inbox into a simple, task-like summary—with a succinct title for the associated card, a single-paragraph overview of the info in its description field, and then the full text and a link back to the original item for further reference. Trello’s AI is all about making info easier to manage—not writing or organizing it for you. [Image: Trello]It works brilliantly well, in my experience, and makes me wish every app offered something similar. And, suffice it to say, I don’t at all find myself missing the option to have the service write stuff or attempt to organize stuff for me—and then, in all likelihood, having to waste my time redoing and fixing what it did. That seems to be exactly the experience the Trello team is aiming to create. “The reason people use Trello is because it reflects their mind,” Kataria says. “We want to remain really true to that spirit—that Trello is about how people see the world, not about how they follow a certain workflow or process.” (If you want, you can still add cards directly to a specific board like before, by the way—and as of this week, doing so will incorporate the same AI formatting magic present in the new Inbox approach.) Ultimately, Inbox is just another list in Trello. But it lives in that special sidebar that makes it easy to access as a single starting point for any incoming items—until and unless you decide to sort and file them into a board. Inbox and its AI elements also go hand in hand with another new task-oriented Trello addition known as Planner. Trello’s Planner is an integrated calendar that connects to Google Calendar (with support for Microsoft Outlook on the way soon) and lets you drag and drop tasks from your Inbox—or any Trello board—directly into that day-to-day view. That way, you can see all your tasks alongside your agenda and plan out your hours accordingly, with the full perspective of everything on your plate. You can drag cards from your Inbox or any board directly into the new Trello Planner. [Image: Trello]It’s a step forward from the tacked-on calendar elements Trello previously provided, and it ties back into the newfound goal of making Trello all about the individual rather than the team. “All the previous calendar views are the legacy of trying to solve project management use cases,” Kataria says. “With the Planner, we’re really thinking about planning your day, planning your week, where you’re only looking at your calendar.” The approach actually reminds me a lot of Akiflow, a calendar and tasks app I wrote about last fall and have been personally using ever since—only, for better or for worse, Akiflow is solely a calendar and tasks app. Trello, in contrast, has the advantage (or maybe distraction) of all the board elements and the broader organizational opportunities they offer. Speaking of which, for now, at least, all of Trello’s “legacy” elements and potential use cases will continue to be supported. Kataria hinted that certain elements—like those team-centric “Timeline” and “Table” views—may be phased out eventually, over time (and will certainly be de-emphasized in the meantime). But the general goal seems to be to keep allowing everyone to use Trello in whatever way they see fit, even if personal task management is now the main purpose being presented. Some actions around more complex team-oriented project management uses will now lead to gentle nudges to move over to Jira for such purposes—a move that’s frankly surprising Atlassian has managed to resist up until now. But everything from automations to the rich ecosystem of third-party Power-Up add-ons will remain, just with the added emphasis on Trello being the place for personal productivity. “It’s [still] a project, but a project that’s born out of your own mind,” Kataria says. “Trello is so well-loved as a tool that people bend it in different ways to make it whatever they want it to become.” Card-mirroring is one of the smaller but still significant touches coming into the new Trello. [Image: Trello]Only time will tell, of course, if the world embraces the service’s new task-centric framing or if people keep treating it as the versatile productivity power-tool it’s known to be. Either way, its creators seem content with knowing they’re shifting the focus to individuals over teams and presenting their best vision for how Trello can help. “We are really thinking about how the world is going to change over the next decade and how we can make every individual more productive,” Kataria says. Be the first to learn about all sorts of interesting new productivity treasures with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence—a single eye-opening new discovery in your inbox every Wednesday! View the full article

The intense red color of classic lipstick traditionally comes from an unlikely source: crushed bugs that live on cactus plants in South America. It takes tens of thousands of the ground-up insects to make just a pound of the vivid red dye. The red coloring, called carmine, also shows up in food—from red velvet cupcakes to sausages, gummy candies, and some versions of strawberry yogurt. In the cosmetics industry, major brands started moving away from carmine in the 2010s because of ethical concerns. A growing number of consumers wanted vegan makeup. (Crushing bugs also creates an allergen because of other bug parts that end up in the dye.) But because synthetic dyes don’t perform as well, carmine is still found in some high-end products, from shades of MAC lipstick and NARS blush to Chanel nail polish. Now, a biotech startup called Debut has developed a new alternative: an exact replica of carmine that’s made from fermentation rather than bugs. [Photo: Debut] The molecule was incredibly difficult to replicate. “It’s a really unique color . . . it’s a very complicated [chemical] structure,” says Joshua Britton, Debut’s CEO and founder. Academic scientists took 15 years to understand it, he says, “and it took us three to four years to work out how to make it.” The company discovered two new classes of enzymes that were the missing pieces of the manufacturing process, and found a way to keep the cost of the whole system relatively affordable. The resulting product is the same as the original color, minus the allergen and gross-out factor. There’s strong demand for a product like this in the beauty industry. Carmine is a “perfect ingredient,” Britton says. It’s stable when it interacts with other ingredients, long-lasting, and vibrant in a way that other dyes aren’t. When Spanish explorers arrived in South America in the 1500s, carmine quickly became a major trade item. In Europe, red dye was difficult and expensive to make, and red clothing was mostly reserved for royalty (or, say, the Pope). In Peru, carmine had been used to dye fabric for at least two centuries, and the explorers realized that it far outperformed European dyes. Carmine started to show up in everything from oil paintings to British military uniforms. By the late 19th century, as the cosmetics industry was scaling up, carmine was a natural choice of ingredient for red, pink, and peach products. Right now, making the biotech version costs more than standard carmine, unsurprisingly. “The traditional bug version is at the moment cheaper, and that’s because there are 70,000 bugs hand picked off the leaf of a cactus dissolved in acid, and that’s the process,” says Britton. But the new tech is still at a pilot stage, and the company is now working with a larger company to scale up production and bring the cost down. Fermenting the product is also far more efficient than extracting it from bugs. “We typically don’t invest in molecules where we don’t think we can get down to cost parity,” he says. The cosmetics industry is a good initial fit, he says, since only small amounts of color are needed. (A pound of Debut’s carmine could color 6,500 tubes of lipstick.) The company is already working with a handful of beauty brands in its labs to develop new formulations for products. The food and pharmaceutical industries, which are also looking for alternatives to carmine, will come next, after the company works with the Food and Drug Administration for approvals and to figure out how the product will be labeled. Another factor is helping drive demand: the FDA recently banned Red No. 3, a common food dye, because of potential health risks. Food brands will have to phase out that dye over the next two years—and biotech carmine could be a viable choice. View the full article

There are numerous reports that the Google Search Console API is delayed and not showing data sooner than this past Thursday, February 20th. If you use this API for your own tools, or bring in this data through Looker Studio reports, Big Query or other tools, your reports may be delayed. More details. The delays started around last Wednesday and some are now saying some data for Thursday is slowly coming in. However, generally, data is as recent as today through the Search Console API. The web interface is not impacted, so you can get data from going to Google Search Console directly. Some are saying data for Thursday is now coming in, but others are not sure yet. Google has not comments on this issue yet. Why we care. If you are noticing weird data in your tools or reports and that data generally comes from Google Search Console’s API, this is why. I suspect the data flow will return to normal in the coming days, but if you do report and you see weirdness in those reports, this is your explanation. For more, if you need that data, access it directly through the web interface. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Last week during an interview on Air Force One, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether Elon Musk was planning to cut the Pentagon's budget when he's finished with the National Park Service and other departments. Trump responded that Musk will instead be looking at Fort Knox. I'm assuming there was a uncomfortably long pause before the reporter asked why. "To make sure the gold is there,” Trump responded. Whether the gold is actually at Fort Knox is a question Musk had posed a few days previously in this post on X: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This has led many to believe that something happened to the gold at Fort Knox. No one knows exactly what happened, but something. Those people are (probably) wrong. Of course the gold is still at Fort KnoxThe most likely (and boring) Fort Knox scenario: all 147.3 million ounces of U.S. gold are sitting there, waiting for you to dive in like Scrooge McDuck. All the bars, half of the U.S. total gold reserves, are safe in a heavily guarded, secretive vault on a Kentucky military installation, just as they've been since the 1940s. According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, there is an audit of Fort Knox every year and that “all the gold is present and accounted for.” "The only gold removed has been very small quantities used to test the purity of gold during regularly scheduled audits. Except for these samples, no gold has been transferred to or from the Depository for many years," confirms the U.S. Mint. But isn't that exactly what the U.S. Mint would say? Maybe someone has been stealing all the gold, or the government has been secretly selling the people's bullion for years! Yeah, probably not. Conspiracy theories about Fort KnoxMusk and Trump are not saying anything new—murmurs of "the gold is not really there" have been common among conspiracy theorists since the 1940s, soon after construction was completed on The United States Bullion Depository and the gold was shipped from the coasts to the heartland to protect it from theoretical invaders. Here are only some of the conspiracy theories about Fort Knox: 1952: The Daughters of the American Revolution allege that the gold has been stolen from Fort Knox. President Truman invites them to inspect the vault but they decline. 1973: Dr. Peter Beter (his actual name) published The Conspiracy Against the Dollar: The Spirit of the New Imperialism, a book that contends "powerful Americans have secretly permitted $20 billion worth of gold to be removed from Ft. Knox. According to Beter, they took it out through a secret tunnel in the vault. 2009: Online cranks assert that Fort Knox's gold bars were replaced with tungsten-filled forgeries so the real gold could be sold by the Clinton administration. 2010: Ron Paul questions whether there is gold at Fort Knox. Unknown: There are aliens there. These conspiracy theories spring from a weird mix of monetary policy disagreements that date back to the 1800s, hucksters trying to get people to invest in gold schemes, and the questions some people have about anything secret that "the government doesn't want you to know." Like everything else, the internet gives people time and space to spread and modernize ideas, but the Trump/Musk quotes are just warmed-over bullshit. And this isn't even the golden age of Fort Knox conspiracy theories. That was during the 1970s, when fear about our nation's gold was so pervasive, the Treasury Department had a brief moment of transparency. That time the press was allowed into Fort KnoxIt's not on many people's shelves in 2025, but Dr. Peter Beter's (again, really his name) The Conspiracy Against the Dollar was influential enough in the early 1970s that tabloids picked up on his claims, and soon members of Congress were getting calls from constituents, calling for proof that the Fort Knox gold reserves were still there. So in 1974, the Treasure Department sighed and said, "fine," then invited members of Congress and the press to visit Fort Knox to see for themselves. This was the first time anyone other than treasury employees had been allowed inside the vault since a limited audit was conducted in 1953. A handful of congresspeople and about 120 members of the media were escorted behind 20-ton steel doors and shown the gold bars. They picked them up. Weighed them. They even got to see the secret tunnel, an escape hatch that ends in the building, a failsafe for anyone accidentally locked in the vault. The press took pictures and shot film of all of it: Even the most skeptical congresspeople who toured the vault basically concluded "looks like the gold's there," and so, it seems, did most Americans. But for diehard conspiracy theorists (and dummies) no amount of evidence is enough. Some derided the visit as a "show audit" that proved nothing, and others concocted "the bars are filled with tungsten" theories because even if people saw it and took pictures, it's still not true. Trump's Treasury Secretary's 2017 visit to Fort KnoxTreasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently has said he would arrange an inspection for any senator who is interested in seeing the vaults. Steven Mnuchin, Trump's first treasury secretary, had a similar policy. In 2017, Mnuchin, Mitch McConnell, and other officials visited Fort Knox to review the bullion. Their visit included a viewing of the total eclipse as an added bonus. What good timing. Here's Mitch McConnell with gold bars. Adorable! Credit: US Treasury Department Apparently you can sign your name when you visit Fort Knox, as Mnuchin does here. Credit: US Treasury Department The exact purpose of Mnuchin and company's Fort Knox outing isn't clear, but I'm sure they were conducting important governmental business, not just sightseeing, and if they had noticed any missing bars, they would have alerted the proper authorities. Documents, crowns, and lots of narcotics: strange things stored at Fort KnoxWhile the gold seems to be there, alien bodies are (probably) not stored at Fort Knox, but that doesn't mean we don't put weird things down there sometimes. Back in the 1940s, with World War II ravaging Europe, the U.S. government moved the signed original Constitution of the United States, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, and drafts of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address into the vault for safe-keeping. The vault was used to store the Crown of St. Stephen, until we sent it back to Hungary in 1978. Until recently, Fort Knox was home to the U.S.'s strategic reserves of pain-killers: At one time, 68,269 pounds of opium and morphine were stored in the vault—that's a lot of narcotics! It isn't stored there any longer, and where it went is not public. Why don't you look into that, Elon Musk? Still in the vault are ten 1933 Double Eagle gold coins, a 1974-D aluminum cent, and twelve gold (22-karat) Sacagawea dollar coins that flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1999. Does the gold in Fort Knox even matter?It's cool that we have a great huge Smaug-sized treasure trove in the U.S., but does it do us any good? The gold bars stored in Fort Knox have been gathering dust since the early 1940s, and we don't do anything with them and they don't affect anything tangible. Our money hasn't been directly tied to gold since the 1930s (or 1970s; it's complicated) so in a sense it doesn't matter whether all the bars are filled with tungsten. The piles of gold serve mainly as a symbolic representation of our nation's wealth and stability—gold is very shiny, after all. Consider this: Fort Knox's gold is worth $435 billion, total. The U.S. nation debt is $36.22 trillion. So even if we were to sell it all tomorrow, it would be a drop in the bucket. Like the cash hidden under the nation's blanket, Fort Knox gold is our "if things get really bad, we still have this." It's the money in the banana stand. If Elon Musk opens the vault doors and does find nothing there, I hope he's smart enough to keep it to himself. View the full article

Nearly 40% of the federal contracts that the Trump administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save the government any money, the administration’s own data shows. The Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts that it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings. That’s usually because the total value of the contracts has already been fully obligated, which means the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased and in many cases has already done so. “It’s like confiscating used ammunition after it’s been shot when there’s nothing left in it. It doesn’t accomplish any policy objective,” said Charles Tiefer, a retired University of Baltimore law professor and expert on government contracting law. “Their terminating so many contracts pointlessly obviously doesn’t accomplish anything for saving money.” Dozens of them were for already-paid subscriptions to The Associated Press, Politico and other media services that the administration said it would discontinue. Others were for research studies that have been awarded, training that has taken place, software that has been purchased and interns that have come and gone. An administration official said it made sense to cancel contracts that are seen as potential dead weight, even if the moves do not yield any savings. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. In all, DOGE data says the 417 contracts in question had a total value of $478 million. Dozens of other canceled contracts are expected to yield little if any savings. “It’s too late for the government to change its mind on many of these contracts and walk away from its payment obligation,” said Tiefer, who served on the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tiefer said DOGE appeared to be taking a “slash and burn” approach to cutting contracts, which he said could damage the performance of government agencies. He said savings could be made instead by working with agency contracting officers and inspectors general to find efficiencies, an approach the administration has not taken. DOGE says the overall contract cancellations are expected to save more than $7 billion so far, an amount that has been questioned as inflated by independent experts. The canceled contracts were to purchase a wide range of goods and services. The Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded a contract in September to purchase and install office furniture at various branches. While the contract does not expire until later this year, federal records show the agency had already agreed to spend the maximum $567,809 with a furniture company. The U.S. Agency for International Development negotiated a $145,549 contract last year to clean the carpet at its headquarters in Washington. But the full amount had already been obligated to a firm that is owned by a Native American tribe based in Michigan. Another already-spent $249,600 contract went to a Washington, D.C., firm to help prepare the Department of Transportation for the recent transition from the Biden to the Trump administration. Some of the canceled contracts were intended to modernize and improve the way government works, which would seem to be at odds with DOGE’s cost-cutting mission. One of the largest, for instance, went to a consulting firm to help carry out a reorganization at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which led the agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The maximum $13.6 million had already been obligated to Deloitte Consulting LLP for help with the restructuring, which included closing several research offices. Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa. —Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press View the full article

Investors in cryptocurrencies are seeing red today. In the past 24 hours, the prices of most major cryptocurrencies and meme coins have plummeted. This includes crypto heavyweights like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP as well as popular meme coins like Dogecoin (DOGE) and TRUMP. Here’s what to know about the biggest losers and possible reasons behind the crash. Bitcoin drops below $90K for the first time since November Unsurprisingly, the crypto that is getting the most headlines today is Bitcoin, which as of the time of this writing currently sits at around $89,000 per coin. That’s a 7% drop in the last 24 hours alone. It also represents of few other ignominious milestones for the cryptocurrency king as of late. First, today’s decline marks the first time that Bitcoin has fallen below $90,000 since November 2024, after Donald Trump’s election victory sparked a crypto rally. Second, Bitcoin is now also down 20% since another important Trump marker: his inauguration day on January 20. On Trump’s inauguration day, Bitcoin had hit an all-time high of over $106,000. The post-election victory and post-inauguration gains were largely fueled by the belief that a Trump presidency would be good for the crypto markets in general. But it’s not just Bitcoin that is plummeting today. Other cryptocurrencies are as well. Those include (as of the time of this writing): Ethereum, which is down almost 10% in the past 24 hours (and down over 27% in the past month). XRP, which is down over 12% in the past 24 hours (and down over 31% in the past month) Solana, which is down almost 12% in the past 24 hours (and down over 46% in the past month) Dogecoin, which is down almost 11% in the past 24 hours (and down over 42% in the past month) Official Trump, which is down almost 14% in the past 24 hours (and down over 56% in the past month) But what exactly is causing today’s crypto crash? While the digital assets do tend to be highly volatile anyway, the general consensus among crypto industry watchers is that two main events could be contributing to the plunge. Trump’s tariffs lead to macroeconomic uncertainty While Trump’s election victory was hailed as the best possible outcome for the crypto industry, it now appears that Trump could be doing more harm than good for digital currency markets. That’s because since Trump was sworn in, he quickly set to initiating tariffs—or at least threatening to—against America’s major trading partners, including China, Mexico, Canada, and nearly every other country in the world. Many fear these that tariff threats may lead to an all-out trade war between America and other major economies. Indeed, as BeinCrypto points out, after Trump seemed to confirm yesterday that the tariffs on Mexico and Canada would be moving ahead, Bitcoin sank and crypto markets saw almost $1 billion in liquidations. When there is macroeconomic uncertainty—like the kind generated by potential trade wars—investors usually seek to lock in gains where they can by selling assets that have had good returns as of late. Larger anxieties about where the economy may be headed may be driving many crypto investors to take their profits now to buffer any losses in the future. The Bybit hack reminds crypto investors they are vulnerable It’s not just Trump’s actions that are rattling crypto investors. Last week, the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was hacked, leading to $1.5 billion dollars of cryptocurrencies being stolen. It is reportedly the largest crypto heist on record and is believed to have been carried out by actors in North Korea, reports CNN. Major crypto heists in the past have rattled investor confidence, and this one is no different. Heists such as this remind investors that cryptocurrencies are more readily at risk of theft than other assets, such as stocks or properties. To put the Bybit hack into greater perspective, Reuters reports that in all of 2024, there was $2.2 billion worth of crypto stolen. The ByBit hack signals that 2025 may be an even bigger year for crypto heists. View the full article

Are you considering owning a Chick-fil-A franchise? If that’s the case, you probably have questions about the ownership process and what it entails. In this blog post, we’ll answer some of the most commonly asked questions about Chick-fil-A franchising. We’ll also provide a few tips to help you determine if owning a Chick-fil-A is the right choice for you. So, whether you’re just starting to explore franchise opportunities or you’re ready to take the next step, keep reading for helpful information about Chick-fil-A ownership. What is a Chick-fil-A Franchise? A Chick-fil-A franchise is a restaurant chain specializing in chicken sandwiches and other related menu items. Their logo is a Chick-fil-A cow standing in front of the restaurant with the words “Eat Mor Chikin” written on it. Their headquarters is located in College Park, Georgia. The first Chick-fil-A restaurant opened in 1967 in Atlanta, Georgia, and it now has over 2,800 restaurants, mostly in the US. Chick-fil-A stands out among fast-food franchises due to its unique operating model and financial structure, which includes minimal initial investment for franchisees and high revenue per store. READ MORE:Buy Your First Franchise: Secrets Revealed Chick-fil-A Franchise History The company was founded in 1946 by S. Truett Cathy. The franchise model is based on a simple formula: produce a quality product at a reasonable price and provide excellent customer service. This has helped Chick-fil-A to become one of the most successful restaurant chains in the country. In addition to its menu items, the company is also known for its Christian values and conservative stance on social issues. This has occasionally led to controversy, but it has also endeared the company to a loyal customer base. READ MORE: Chick-Fil-A Success Shows Brand’s Ability to Triumph Over PR Problems Is a Chick-fil-A Franchise Right for You? Now that you have gained some insight into Chick-fil-A and the services they provide, it’s time to determine whether owning a Chick-fil-A franchise is the right choice for you. Here are several factors to take into account: Pros: Chick-fil-A pays for nearly all startup costs, including real estate, construction, and equipment, making the initial investment significantly lower compared to other fast-food franchises. Strong brand recognition and customer loyalty. Comprehensive training and support for franchisees. High average sales per unit. Pros: Chick-fil-A is a well-established brand with a loyal customer base. They have a proven business model that is successful in both good and bad economic times. Their restaurants are generally located in high-traffic areas. Chick-fil-A offers comprehensive training and support for franchisees. They offer a unique product that is not easily replicated by their competitors. Cons: You don’t actually own or receive any equity when you own a restaurant. Chick-Fil-A owns it and you’re considered an “Operator.” This means you can’t sell your Chick-fil-A location or pass it on to anyone. Chick-Fil-A requires that franchise owners actively manage their fast food restaurants full-time, overseeing daily operations. This approach differs from many other franchises, where ownership can be more of a passive investment. A franchise owner cannot open multiple locations, which can limit your profits. How Much Do Chick-fil-A Franchises Cost? To get started with your own Chick-fil-A franchise, you’ll need to pay an initial investment of only $10,000. While the restaurant can cost anywhere between $342,990 and $1,982,225 to start, a franchisee is only responsible for the initial franchise fee. Chick-fil-A covers the rest. READ MORE: Buy Your First Franchise: Secrets Revealed How to Become a Chick-fil-A Franchisee If you’re interested in becoming a franchisee, here are the steps: Attend an informational session You’ll first need to attend an informational session to learn more about the franchising process. During this session, you’ll have the opportunity to ask any questions you may have about owning a Chick-fil-A franchise. Submit an application After participating in an informational session, you will have the opportunity to submit an online application. Once your application is evaluated, you will be contacted to arrange an interview. To get ready for your interview, it is advisable to familiarize yourself with the company’s history and values. Interview with Chick-fil-A During your interview, you will meet with a franchising representative from the Chick-fil-A corporation. They will inquire about your background, experience, and your motivations for wanting to own a Chick-fil-A franchise. Additionally, they will evaluate whether you are a suitable match for the company. This is also an excellent opportunity for you to ask any questions you may have regarding the franchising process. Be approved by the Franchise Board If you’re approved by the Franchise Board, you’ll be able to sign a franchise agreement and begin the process of opening your own restaurant. If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations! Not many people are given the opportunity to become a franchisee of a Chick-fil-A fast food restaurant. Complete training After signing your franchise agreement, you will be required to undergo a multi-week training program at Chick-fil-A’s Restaurant Support Center located in Atlanta, Georgia. This program is designed to provide you with all the essential knowledge needed to effectively operate a Chick-fil-A restaurant. READ MORE: 10 Chicken Wing Franchises for Food Entrepreneurs Open your restaurant Once you’ve completed training, you’ll be ready to open your own restaurant. You’ll be supported throughout the process by Chick-fil-A’s experienced team of franchise consultants. They’ll help you with everything from site selection to grand opening. How Profitable Is a Chick-fil-A Franchise? Chick-fil-A is one of the most profitable fast-food chains in the United States, bringing in over $11 billion in annual sales. That’s second only to McDonald’s, which generates over $40 billion in annual sales. On average, franchise owners earn $220,000 each year. Additionally, Chick-fil-A restaurants typically achieve $5.3 million in annual sales. Important Information for Prospective Chick-fil-A Franchisees If you’re considering opening a Chick-fil-A franchise, there are several additional details you should be aware of, including: The chain is closed on Sundays, as well as on Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is due to the company’s religious roots. The founder, S. Truett Cathy, was a devout Southern Baptist. The Chick-fil-A franchise operates in 47 states throughout the United States, as well as in Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, South Africa, and the UK. In addition to the initial franchise fee of $10,000, Chick-fil-A operators pay a 15% royalty fee plus an additional 50% of pretax profit. What’s more, is that they require that their franchisees not have any other active business ventures. So if you’re a serial entrepreneur, being a Chick-Fil-A operator isn’t for you. There are over 20,000 applications yearly, but only 75 to 80 get accepted to open new franchises each year (about 0.4% on the high end). So it’s clear that competition for these spots is fierce. The selection process can take anywhere from 12 to 24 months. So if you’re thinking about opening a Chick-fil-A franchise, be prepared for a long and difficult process. READ MORE: What is a Franchise? 20 Fast Food Franchise Opportunities Image: Depositphotos This article, "How to Open a Chick-fil-A Franchise" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Are you considering owning a Chick-fil-A franchise? If that’s the case, you probably have questions about the ownership process and what it entails. In this blog post, we’ll answer some of the most commonly asked questions about Chick-fil-A franchising. We’ll also provide a few tips to help you determine if owning a Chick-fil-A is the right choice for you. So, whether you’re just starting to explore franchise opportunities or you’re ready to take the next step, keep reading for helpful information about Chick-fil-A ownership. What is a Chick-fil-A Franchise? A Chick-fil-A franchise is a restaurant chain specializing in chicken sandwiches and other related menu items. Their logo is a Chick-fil-A cow standing in front of the restaurant with the words “Eat Mor Chikin” written on it. Their headquarters is located in College Park, Georgia. The first Chick-fil-A restaurant opened in 1967 in Atlanta, Georgia, and it now has over 2,800 restaurants, mostly in the US. Chick-fil-A stands out among fast-food franchises due to its unique operating model and financial structure, which includes minimal initial investment for franchisees and high revenue per store. READ MORE:Buy Your First Franchise: Secrets Revealed Chick-fil-A Franchise History The company was founded in 1946 by S. Truett Cathy. The franchise model is based on a simple formula: produce a quality product at a reasonable price and provide excellent customer service. This has helped Chick-fil-A to become one of the most successful restaurant chains in the country. In addition to its menu items, the company is also known for its Christian values and conservative stance on social issues. This has occasionally led to controversy, but it has also endeared the company to a loyal customer base. READ MORE: Chick-Fil-A Success Shows Brand’s Ability to Triumph Over PR Problems Is a Chick-fil-A Franchise Right for You? Now that you have gained some insight into Chick-fil-A and the services they provide, it’s time to determine whether owning a Chick-fil-A franchise is the right choice for you. Here are several factors to take into account: Pros: Chick-fil-A pays for nearly all startup costs, including real estate, construction, and equipment, making the initial investment significantly lower compared to other fast-food franchises. Strong brand recognition and customer loyalty. Comprehensive training and support for franchisees. High average sales per unit. Pros: Chick-fil-A is a well-established brand with a loyal customer base. They have a proven business model that is successful in both good and bad economic times. Their restaurants are generally located in high-traffic areas. Chick-fil-A offers comprehensive training and support for franchisees. They offer a unique product that is not easily replicated by their competitors. Cons: You don’t actually own or receive any equity when you own a restaurant. Chick-Fil-A owns it and you’re considered an “Operator.” This means you can’t sell your Chick-fil-A location or pass it on to anyone. Chick-Fil-A requires that franchise owners actively manage their fast food restaurants full-time, overseeing daily operations. This approach differs from many other franchises, where ownership can be more of a passive investment. A franchise owner cannot open multiple locations, which can limit your profits. How Much Do Chick-fil-A Franchises Cost? To get started with your own Chick-fil-A franchise, you’ll need to pay an initial investment of only $10,000. While the restaurant can cost anywhere between $342,990 and $1,982,225 to start, a franchisee is only responsible for the initial franchise fee. Chick-fil-A covers the rest. READ MORE: Buy Your First Franchise: Secrets Revealed How to Become a Chick-fil-A Franchisee If you’re interested in becoming a franchisee, here are the steps: Attend an informational session You’ll first need to attend an informational session to learn more about the franchising process. During this session, you’ll have the opportunity to ask any questions you may have about owning a Chick-fil-A franchise. Submit an application After participating in an informational session, you will have the opportunity to submit an online application. Once your application is evaluated, you will be contacted to arrange an interview. To get ready for your interview, it is advisable to familiarize yourself with the company’s history and values. Interview with Chick-fil-A During your interview, you will meet with a franchising representative from the Chick-fil-A corporation. They will inquire about your background, experience, and your motivations for wanting to own a Chick-fil-A franchise. Additionally, they will evaluate whether you are a suitable match for the company. This is also an excellent opportunity for you to ask any questions you may have regarding the franchising process. Be approved by the Franchise Board If you’re approved by the Franchise Board, you’ll be able to sign a franchise agreement and begin the process of opening your own restaurant. If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations! Not many people are given the opportunity to become a franchisee of a Chick-fil-A fast food restaurant. Complete training After signing your franchise agreement, you will be required to undergo a multi-week training program at Chick-fil-A’s Restaurant Support Center located in Atlanta, Georgia. This program is designed to provide you with all the essential knowledge needed to effectively operate a Chick-fil-A restaurant. READ MORE: 10 Chicken Wing Franchises for Food Entrepreneurs Open your restaurant Once you’ve completed training, you’ll be ready to open your own restaurant. You’ll be supported throughout the process by Chick-fil-A’s experienced team of franchise consultants. They’ll help you with everything from site selection to grand opening. How Profitable Is a Chick-fil-A Franchise? Chick-fil-A is one of the most profitable fast-food chains in the United States, bringing in over $11 billion in annual sales. That’s second only to McDonald’s, which generates over $40 billion in annual sales. On average, franchise owners earn $220,000 each year. Additionally, Chick-fil-A restaurants typically achieve $5.3 million in annual sales. Important Information for Prospective Chick-fil-A Franchisees If you’re considering opening a Chick-fil-A franchise, there are several additional details you should be aware of, including: The chain is closed on Sundays, as well as on Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is due to the company’s religious roots. The founder, S. Truett Cathy, was a devout Southern Baptist. The Chick-fil-A franchise operates in 47 states throughout the United States, as well as in Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, South Africa, and the UK. In addition to the initial franchise fee of $10,000, Chick-fil-A operators pay a 15% royalty fee plus an additional 50% of pretax profit. What’s more, is that they require that their franchisees not have any other active business ventures. So if you’re a serial entrepreneur, being a Chick-Fil-A operator isn’t for you. There are over 20,000 applications yearly, but only 75 to 80 get accepted to open new franchises each year (about 0.4% on the high end). So it’s clear that competition for these spots is fierce. The selection process can take anywhere from 12 to 24 months. So if you’re thinking about opening a Chick-fil-A franchise, be prepared for a long and difficult process. READ MORE: What is a Franchise? 20 Fast Food Franchise Opportunities Image: Depositphotos This article, "How to Open a Chick-fil-A Franchise" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article