[Link] What makes Google's teams successful

Many have aspired to be at Google, for a number of factors. We all know, that Google strives to pick the best talent out there. But, merely putting great minds together is not always enough to succeed.

Google has found that it's most successful teams have certain traits in common. Find out what these are here.

[Link] Digitalization of business processes

Digitalization of business processes is bringing a paradigm shift, a different way of thinking when it comes to replicating the manual tasks into a digital format. It is more than just plain automation or inserting digital technologies into the workflow; it is about taking away manual, repetitive tasks from the workers and allowing them to focus on more important things, which cannot all be accomplished by the machines.

Read the article "Digitalization of Business Processes" to understand why digitalization is more than just automation.

[Link] Order of the Planets from the Sun

Our solar system, comprising eight "official" planets is a wonder like no other, and for centuries, mankind has been fascinated by it. It's always interesting to know about our celestial neighbors - near and far!

And, if you want to know about some of the newest discoveries, and also remember the order of the planets, read this article.

http://www.universetoday.com/72305/order-of-the-planets-from-the-sun/

[Link] Canva.com - Create beautiful designs, presentations, graphics and more...

canva.com

Canva.com is an online resource that helps you to create beautiful designs, documents, presentations, graphics and a lot more.

[Link] 7 Free and Beautiful Stock Photo sites

The Science of Memorable Presentations from Ethos3

Beautiful presentations are invariably filled with stunning images and photos.
Here are 7 sites that provide good stock photos that are readily available for use.

https://blog.slideshare.net/2015/09/28/7-sites-for-free-and-beautiful-stock-photos/?utm_source=slideshare&utm_medium=ssemail&utm_campaign=newsletter

[Link] Writing Well (Lessons from William Zinsser)

If you're interested in writing, and need some pointers, this article is quite useful.

https://blog.slideshare.net/2015/09/23/how-my-first-slideshare-went-viral/?utm_source=slideshare&utm_medium=ssemail&utm_campaign=newsletter

[Link] Adobe Flash is finally dead

And, so - Adobe Flash is finally dead, long live Adobe Flash: after powering the animations on the web for over a decade...

Read the full coverage at: Adobe Flash is finally dead.

[Link] Too many browser tabs? Here's what may help

If you're a crazy web surfer, then you may often have a zillion tabs open in your browser, and you know the pain that this causes. Browsers aren't really making it easier to manage these well enough, but here's some possible help.

Read to know how: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/1/8695555/browser-tabs

[Link] What you need to know about the Supermoon lunar Eclipse

 And, while on the subject of Supermoons and the lunar eclipse, this link tells you how it all really occurs!

Worth watching and knowing the science behind it:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/09/25/blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-super-moon-need-to-know/72790162/

[Link] Supermoon Eclipse (2015) Stunning Photos

The September 2015 Supermoon was an extra special and rare one - because it coincided with a lunar eclipse.

Supermoons are always fascinating to watch, and you can see some stunning photos captured by people here:

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/super-moon-eclipse-most-stunning-photos-could-125528677.html?nf=1

[Link] The cloud wars explained: Why nobody can catch up with Amazon

Cloud (meaning Cloud Computing) is a rage for all the technical (and, interestingly, business) folks out there. It is what powers the massive world of Amazon.com, Facebook.com, Google.com and more.

But, Amazon, with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud offerings, is way ahead. Read this to know why...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cloud-wars-explained-why-nobody-181031630.html

[Link] 10 Things That You Should Know How to do on Facebook

Even though you may be a regular user of the world's largest social network, Facebook, there may be things that you may not (yet) know. Especially, if it relates to the ever evolving settings and permissions, which are important to manage your app settings, privacy and presence in cyberspace.

Keep this handy.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-top-10-things-that-you-should-know-how-to-do-181727466.html

(PS: If you didn't know how, or that you could, download your Facebook information, check out the tips above!)

[Link] 40 Essential jQuery Plugins 2015

40 fresh essential jQuery plugins to manipulate DOM elements easily, handle events, AJAX your content, and create all the other cool features that make the web go ’round.

Visit: http://bashooka.com/coding/40-essential-jquery-plugins-2015/

[Link] 50 Top PSD Brochure Template Designs 2015

"A brochure brings the first impression of your business to customers. Usually, a visual, informative and attractive brochure can increase brand awareness in the public eye. But nowadays, with all these layouts and formats it’s pretty difficult to choose the right template for your printed catalogs or brochures. So in this post we bring you 50 Top PSD brochure template designs that won’t bore your audience."

Visit: http://bashooka.com/photoshop/50-top-psd-brochure-template-designs-2015/

[Link] 30 Brilliant Examples Of UI Cards

"Card UI is a very popular layout option for many types of data. Pinterest was the first to create a layout like this, and it is was earlier referred to as “pinterest-style layout”. Usually cards are used to group together information in a very intuitive way and permits for a very fast UX, meaning users can easily scan through a lot of content and pinpoint information that is relevant to them and make it easy for users to access and use data in an organized manner. So here are 30 brilliant examples where this design pattern is used"

Visit: http://bashooka.com/inspiration/30-brilliant-examples-of-ui-cards/

[Link] 20 Gorgeous HTML Photography Website Template Designs

This post brings you 20 Gorgeous HTML Photography website template designs that are just simple and amazing for photographers.

Visit: http://bashooka.com/html/20-gorgeous-html-photography-website-template-designs/

[Link] 10 Interesting Color Tools

No matter if you’re designing a website, creating a brochure, writing a game or just messing around in creative apps, the key to attracting your audience’s imagination is choosing the right set of colors. Here are few intersting color tools that can help in the hunt for that perfect palette.

Visit http://bashooka.com/freebie/interesting-color-tools/ for the list of the tools.

WhatsApp Feature Enhancement 03/2015 - Search Conversation

Okay, so looks like the more you use WhatsApp, the more you think it can be made better for improving user experience. Well, okay, maybe that's my view, and some others may hopefully agree too.

We already mentioned about "Having a Private Group" and "Easily restoring messages", for organizing messages. While the folks may still be thinking about this (hopefully!), this might still not make it convenient enough, given the increasing volume of messages one can be subjected to, especially, if you subscribe to groups.

So, this brings up the question: How come there's no search option/feature in WhatsApp? It would be so much easier, to have a search option to search by message keywords and/or by the name of the user or date.

While arguably, a bulk of messages on this popular chat app are the forwards and like, often there are meaningful messages, that you would like to go back to, or access at a point later. While this could be saved elsewhere, it would be convenient to be able to search for it, if needed.

Alternatively, or as an extension to what was described in the post on "Having a Private Group", it would also be cool to be able to tag messages in a way, to be able to find them more easily.

Anybody listening out there? (Hope so).

If you (reader) like this, do vote for it or put in your comments. May be that'll get us heard.

Disclaimer: This is not an official WhatsApp Enhancement tracker/publisher, but since it was hard to get in touch with the WhatsApp guys, I just put this down by myself. Maybe someone will help to take this to them. Cheers.

[Infographic] Top 10 Programming Languages to Know in 2014

The world is being shaped by technology, more so, in the recent decade - and what many tend to forget is, what "powers" these technologies. Under the hood, if you may. Here's a cool infographic about the top 10 programming languages that can help you do creative, and useful stuff in technology.

WhatsApp Feature Enhancement 02/2015 - Restoring Messages

So, there's no doubt that WhatsApp is THE most popular messaging app these days. And, while it does do a good job, there are some things which potentially can be added or done better.

One might assume, that everyone today has a smartphone, and that they have WhatsApp and are happy about it. Well, hopefully, that's true for a lot - but it's not so for a lot many too. And, it does take time to move stuff from an old generation phone to a new generation one, as I recently discovered.


Easier option to restore messages:
Recently around May/June this year, I migrated from an older phone (alright, i'll admit it was an old Nokia E63!) to an Android-based phone. Unfortunately, the experience wasn't great, and I was unable to move the backup of my WhatsApp conversations from the old to the new phone. I realized, this was because:

a. The format of the chat backups was changed from the MsgStore.bak to msgstore-yyyy-mm-dd.n.db.crypt format, and
b. There was no option to point WhatsApp (on the new phone) to pick up the old backup files, unless it automatically detected it.

To make it convenient for users, and in future to prevent such issues, it would help if the WhatsApp installation provides an option to check if the user installing it wants to restore earlier chats, and allow the user to specify the location and format of the backup files. Auto-detection may not be the only/best way to do this, as is currently implemented.

Keep it simple, and allow backward compatibility!

Anybody listening out there? (Hope so).

If you (reader) like this, do vote for it or put in your comments. May be that'll get us heard.

Disclaimer: This is not an official WhatsApp Enhancement tracker/publisher, but since it was hard to get in touch with the WhatsApp guys, I just put this down by myself. Maybe someone will help to take this to them. Cheers.

WhatsApp Feature Enhancement 01/2015 - Private/Self Group

WhatsApp is simple and effective, and it's group chat feature is probably amongst the most widely used universally.

But, with tens of messages coming through for everyone daily, this can get a bit tedious to cope with. I guess, a better way to go back to these is what's the need of the hour.

Allowing a "Private Group" and/or with self membership
Sounds weird, maybe. But, since WhatsApp doesn't have a way to organize messages which can be easily browse later, I feel such a feature may help.

Here's a scenario:
Say, I receive a message from one of my contacts/groups, which I like, and would like to save - and keep - or even "categorize/organize/mark" it somewhere, where I can go back to it at a later point in time. Note, I do not want to share this with anyone else right away, but bcoz I may keep getting more messages (especially from the group), it becomes hard to go back and find this message again.

So, instead, if I am allowed to create a "private group", with just myself as a member, I should be able to forward this message to this group.

Interestingly, while there wasn't a concept of "private group", on my earlier phone (Nokia E63) I was able to add a contact for myself, and view the chats for this. Sadly, when I moved to a new Android phone, and version 2.12.94, WhatsApp automatically filters my own phone number from the contacts, and thus, i'm no longer able to use this "bug"/feature from the older version!

I see that WhatsApp has just introduced a feature to "mark a conversation as unread", but not sure if that serves the above purpose in entirety.

Anybody listening out there? (Hope so).
If you (reader) like this, do vote for it or put in your comments. May be that'll get us heard.

Disclaimer: This is not an official WhatsApp Enhancement tracker/publisher, but since it was hard to get in touch with the WhatsApp guys, I just put this down by myself. Maybe someone will help to take this to them. Cheers.

Hey WhatsApp! You're Missing on Social Media?

WhatsApp is a really popular messaging app, and has grown by leaps and bounds ever since it was available. It continues to be the app of choice for people to communicate, and connect, the world over. Undoubtedly, a super story, not to mention its acquisition by Facebook for $19 Billion dollars!

You'd think that these guys would be serious about being connected to their 300+ million users. Sadly (or, interestingly, if you may), it doesn't look like that!

If you look at the whatsapp website though, the link to it's facebook contact page

https://www.facebook.com/whatsapp.official takes you to a non-existent page!



And the Twitter page https://twitter.com/whatsapp does not appear to have had a tweet since Feb 25 this year (and this is almost August!)

Even the WhatsApp Blog on date today, has a latest post only dating back to January 2015!

That's quite pathetic, don't you think?

Hope the WhatsApp guys can look into this, and do something about this. Not the best approach in a social-savvy world, eh?