The 6 Best Free Online Markdown Editors and Converters

Have you been scouring the web in search of an easy-to-use, free online Markdown editor? There are plenty of good options, but also many inferior ones as well. The problem is, you don’t know which is which until you spend the time to find out.

Need a tool that lets you write in Markdown or gives you the ability to convert a document into Markdown? Here is a list of the best Markdown editors for doing both.

The Best Free Markdown Editors for Writing

These free online Markdown editors let you either paste in your text from another location or write it directly in the editors.

1. StackEdit

What makes StackEdit such a standout editor is that it’s ideal for those just learning how to write in Markdown.

As you type your text on the left side of the editor, you can apply the formatting with a toolbar similar to what you would see in Microsoft Word. You can use simple buttons for font formatting, lists, blockquotes, and links. The Markdown side of the editor on the right changes it to the correct syntax automatically.

Notable features for StackEdit include:

• Folder organization, focused writing, and reader mode along with word, line, byte, character, and paragraph counts.
• Importing of Markdown and HTML files as well as exporting to Markdown, HTML, PDF, and Pandoc. Note that small fees may apply for certain types of file exports.
• Syncing with Google Drive, Dropbox, and GitHub along with linking to WordPress, Blogger, and Zendesk for publishing.
• Accessible file history and properties, templates, and a handy Markdown cheat sheet.

For a free online Markdown editor with a great set of features, give StackEdit a try.

2. Dillinger

Dillinger is another really nice Markdown editing option. This tool is perfect for those already familiar with writing in Markdown because there isn’t a toolbar; just a full editor.

Type your text on the left and see it display in rich text on the right. You can switch to an HTML view instead of rich text with a click of a button. The editor also lets you work in a distraction-free, full browser screen mode.

Notable features for Dillinger include:

• Document and session saving.
• Linking, saving, and importing from services like Dropbox, Bitbucket, GitHub, Google Drive, OneDrive, and more.
• Previews and exports in HTML, styled HTML, Markdown, and PDF.
• Auto-save, word and character count, and scroll sync for the editor.

If you’re familiar with Markdown and want a clean, free online editor, Dillinger is a winner.

3. Editor.md

Another Markdown editor, similar to StackEdit, is Editor.md. This open source tool also gives you an easy-to-use toolbar, with even more formatting options that are helpful for Markdown beginners.

You can format everything from fonts to headers to lists. You can also quickly insert links, images, code blocks, tables, emojis, and special characters. Use the online editor or download the application if you prefer. When using it online, you’ll simply copy and paste the rich text version you produce into your desired location.

Notable features for Editor.md include:

• A list of helpful keyboard shortcuts by hitting the Help
• HTML previews with a click.
• Full screen, focused writing without distractions.
• A search tool and a go-to line option.

For a simple Markdown editor that offers a more robust toolbar, check out Editor.md for free.

The Best Free Markdown Editors for Converting

With these free Markdown tools, you can paste in your rich text or upload your document. Then in a snap, convert it to Markdown.

4. Draft

With Draft, you can easily convert documents written in rich text to Markdown that include headers, lists, links, and other items.

Import a document from locations like Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, Box, or your computer. Drag and drop or browse to import your file. Then, just wait a few minutes and your converted Markdown document will display.

Notable features for Draft include:

• Share your document with a link that lets others help you edit it.
• Create folders to organize your documents.
• Publish to sites like WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and others.
• Adjust settings for font style, size, and color along with background color.

You can create an account with Draft for free and receive email notifications for when your documents have been converted and are ready for you. For a good Markdown tool with extra features, head to the site and try out Draft.

5. Paste to Markdown

Paste to Markdown is one of the simplest sites for converting documents to Markdown. You won’t find any extras or fancy features with this tool. But it’s quick, easy, and works.

Convert your document with Paste to Markdown:

• Copy the text from your document or another website.
• Paste the text directly onto the main page of Paste to Markdown.
• You’ll see your document in Markdown and can then copy it and paste it where you need to.

That’s it! You don’t have to click any buttons, hit any keys, or move your mouse. Once you paste the text onto the page it’s converted for you to copy and go. It doesn’t get any easier than Paste to Markdown.

6. Word to Markdown Converter

One final online Markdown tool to try is Word to Markdown Converter. As the name implies, the site currently only works with Microsoft Word documents. However, it does it well.

Convert your document with Word to Markdown Converter:

• Use the Browse button to locate your document or drag and drop it into the bottom section.
• When the new tab opens, you will see both your original and new Markdown text.
• Then, copy the Markdown text and paste it where you need it.

The simplicity of Word to Markdown Converter is like that of Paste to Markdown. There are no bonus features or actions you need to take other than grabbing your document. The only difference is that this free online tool only works with Word. So, if Word is your writing application of choice; this is your tool.

Markdown Made Easy With the Right Editor

Whether you write in it regularly or are just learning Markdown, these free online tools deliver. And if you’re interested in finding out more about what Markdown is and why you should learn it, we’ve got you covered there too.

Read the full article: The 6 Best Free Online Markdown Editors and Converters

Read Full Article

Google acquires customer service automation startup Onward

Google has acquired a small startup building tools for businesses looking to automate their customer service or sales workflows. Onward and some of its key employees including co-founders Rémi Cossart and Pramod Thammaiah as well as CTO Aaron Podolny will be joining Google. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

The startup gives businesses an AI-powered chat solution to get customers what they want while making the most efficient use of their resources through automation.

Cossart and Thammaiah pivoted the startup from a more consumer-facing product called Agent Q which was a sort of shopping virtual assistant that people could text and quickly ask for product recommendations. The team billed it as a product marriage of Magic and Consumer Reports.

Agent Q Is A Virtual Assistant That’s Focused On Helping You Shop Online

The co-founders eventually determined that there was more worth in bringing this kind of functionality to businesses who could use it as a way to automate interactions with customers in a tailored manner.

The bot service basically sought to make it easy to answer the simplest questions with answers pulled from a database while building flows that could help more detailed questions get addressed with just a few follow-ups.

Onward helps businesses automate their customer service

For these more complex customer queries, Onward created a visual bot builder to allow users to quickly build chat decision trees that could help address their customers requests while also knowing when it was time to hand things off to a human.

The service could be easily integrated with products like Salesforce, Zendesk, Shopify and HubSpot.

“Throughout this journey, we’ve remained focused on unlocking the magical experiences that are possible when computers understand the subtleties hidden in a user’s actions and messages.” a blog post on the Onward site reads. “With Google, we’ll be able to expand the reach of the technologies that power Onward.”

Read Full Article

iOS 12.1 will come with new emojis

Apple is about to release the public beta version of iOS 12.1. And before everybody freaks out, the company announced that this update will feature new emojis — best feature update ever.

In other words, Apple is releasing its own take on Unicode 11.0 emojis. Other devices and major services will soon all support the same emojis, but with a different design.

Apple already previewed some of these new emoji designs back in July for World Emoji Day. So here’s what you should expect.

Curly hair, grey hair, bald people, red hair…

As always, you’ll be able to find five skin colors in addition to yellow, and all characters come in male and female variants. The Unicode 11.0 specs said that vendors should add "curly hair" emojis. But it looks like Apple concluded "alright let's put a ’stache on that face!"

As for everything else, you’ll find a new emojis for outdoor accessories, such as luggage, compass and hiking shoes. On the food front, you’ll find bagels, salt, cupcakes, leafy greens, mango, moon cake, etc.

And when it comes to animals, there’s finally a mosquito emoji as well as new llama, swan, raccoon, kangaroo, lobster, parrot and peacock emojis.

Every time I’ve written about emojis, the number one comment has always been about red hair. It took a few years but red hair people, the Unicode consortium has finally heard you!

Read Full Article

Cover collects $16M to insure your gadgets, pets… anything

People procrastinate about buying insurance because it’s such a boring and complicated chore to compare policies. But Cover combines plans from 45 insurance companies into a single marketplace so it’s easy to find the best one for your car, home, rental, business, personal property, pets, jewelry and more. Now Cover is building powerful onboarding tricks like a driving school that earns you lower car insurance rates, and a way for Shopify merchants to sell warranties for their items.

The potential to use tech to run circles around the old insurance brokers has attracted a new $16 million Series B for Cover led by Tribe Capital’s Arjun Sethi, who led the Series A and sits on the startup’s board. The round was joined by Y Combinator, Social Capital, Exor and Samsung, and brings the company to a total of $27.1 million in funding.

“Insurance isn’t very different from being a white-collar bookie, where the house’s rake is too high and the dollars at stake are in the hundreds of billions in the U.S. alone,” says co-founder and CEO Karn Saroya. “This, all to the detriment of regular people, who view insurance as a tax. We’re here to change that perception.”

Saroya and his co-founders have deep ties. He went to high school with Anand Dhillon, is engaged to Natalie Gray and hired Ben Aneesh at the team’s previous startup, a high-end fashion marketplace called StyleKick that was eventually acqui-hired by Shopify. “We were tossing around ideas for what we wanted to do after StyleKick/Shopify, running hackathons on weekends. We built a couple different apps, but Cover — the MVP, where we just asked potential customers to take pictures of things they wanted to insure, surprised us” says Saroya. “Our customers sent us walkthroughs of their homes, pictures of their dogs and videos of themselves washing their cars. When you come across behavior that violates your expectations in consumers, that’s usually when you double-down.”

Cover co-founder and CEO Karn Saroya

So they built Cover, where you don’t have to cobble together an endless set of insurance websites or wait on hold. You download the app, pick your item, list how much you paid and where, provide some photos or video of its condition using its TensorFlow-equipped camera and Cover will check across its insurance partners and find you the best quote instantly. You can easily see what is and isn’t covered, learn how to make claims, and text with an agent if you have questions. For example, I was quickly quoted $5 per month to insure my new iPhone against damage but not loss or theft.

Cover earns between 10 to 35 percent per dollar of premium you pay. Its annualized premium already exceeds $8.5 million and is growing 30 percent per month. Thanks to its low-churn business model, easy cross-promotion of products, low training requirements for customers and no need to constantly update its existing subscriptions, Cover starts to look like a very efficient software-as-a-service business.

The big question remains whether Cover can consistently find the best rates for customers so they don’t second guess its quotes and search somewhere else. It will have to outcompete multi-insurance providers, like State Farm and Geico, as well as startups like MetroMile tackling specific insurance verticals with mobile apps. To really earn the big profits, Cover is building out its own in-house insurance plans. But that will put it under constant threat of insuring the wrong risks and ending up paying out too much.

“We built Cover because we saw an opportunity to build elegant products that could deliver on pricing and customer experience in a way that no incumbent insurance entity can,” Saroya concludes. By bringing the service to mobile and making it a seamless part of owning something, Cover could ensure you’re insured, even if insurance is the last thing you want to think about.

Read Full Article

Joomla vs. WordPress: Choosing the Right CMS for Your Site

5 Recent Data Breaches That May Have Put Your Data at Risk

Data breaches are part of the furniture of our digital lives. Barely a day goes by without another company leaking your data. And while these events are becoming more commonplace, something else changed in 2018 too.

The implementation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) means that businesses now commit to disclose any breaches within 72 hours. It can be hard to keep up with all the latest hacks, so we’ve rounded up some of the year’s most notable breaches.

1. Under Armour

Users Affected: 150 million
Data Exposed: Usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords

For many people around the world, the diet and exercise tracking app MyFitnessPal (MFP) is a daily companion on their fitness journey. So it came as little surprise when the sportswear company Under Armour acquired MFP as a part of their digital offering. In March 2018, Under Armor (UA) released a statement that MyFitnessPal had been compromised, with the usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords of the app’s 150 million users exposed.

The company acted quickly. Within four days of learning about the breach, MyFitnessPal sent an email update to all users and put together an FAQ website. They recommended that all users immediately change their passwords and that they would continue to, somewhat vaguely, “make enhancements to [their] systems to detect and prevent unauthorized access to user information.”

On the surface, it appears as though Under Armour was doing right by its users. However, while some passwords were hashed using bcrypt—a process to transform your password into an unreadable string of characters—others weren’t so lucky. Although they didn’t reveal the numbers, a portion of MFP’s substantial user-base was only protected with SHA-1, widely regarded as the weakest form of hashing.

Although the leak happened early in the year, as of September 2018, there had been no further updates on the cause of the breach, or how UA hopes to prevent future attacks. The company has also not detailed whether they will continue to use SHA-1 hashing.

2. British Airways

Users Affected: Unknown
Data Exposed: Customer’s personal and financial data

As the summer drew to a close in early September, the UK’s largest airline, British Airways (BA), said they were urgently investigating the theft of customer information. On their incident information website, the company said the theft affected “customers who made bookings or changes to their bookings […] between 22:58 BST August 21, 2018 and 21:45 BST September 5, 2018.” The stolen data included names, email address, billing address, and bank card details.

If you were among the unfortunate victims of the attack, BA has promised that you won’t be out of pocket as a direct result of the theft. However, it’s worth noting that they haven’t said what they consider a “direct result.” In the days following the disclosure, The Register reported that an external payment script might have been to blame for the attack. The security firm RiskIQ said the attack was likely pulled off by a group known as Magecart, who were responsible for a very similar attack on Ticketmaster earlier in 2018.

Just over a year before the attack, BA was also at the center of a massive computer power failure. The failure brought the company’s IT systems to a screeching halt, grounding all planes and affecting thousands of passengers. Despite making headlines around the world, BA has said little about the cause of the unprecedented outage.

3. TypeForm

Users Affected: Unknown
Data Exposed: Survey data including personally identifiable information

If you’ve filled out an online survey in the past few years, you probably used the data collection website Typeform. Their surveys are popular with businesses as they are easy to set up and user-friendly. Typeform’s customers are businesses, not end users. So when the company discovered a breach in June 2018, they alerted their customers.

Typeform’s incident response site lacks detail and focuses on how businesses should tell customers about the disclosure. All we do know of Typeform’s breach is that it was the result of unauthorized access to a partial backup dated May 3rd, 2018. Though it’s not clear how far back that data stretches. As Typeform elected not to provide a detailed breakdown, the total number affected is also unclear.

However, the list of organizations caught up in the breach is quite extensive. British retailers Fortnum & Mason, and John Lewis were among those affected, along with the Australian bakery chain Bakers Delight. Other known victims include Airtasker, Rencore, PostShift, Revolut, Middlesex University Student’s Union, Monzo, the Tasmanian Electoral Commission, Travelodge, and the UK’s Liberal Democrats.

4. Exactis

Users Affected: 340 million
Data Exposed: Everything imaginable, minus Social Security and credit card numbers

In our modern economy, we trade our data in return for free products and online services. However, there is a growing movement against this kind of data collection. They refer disparagingly to the practice as Surveillance Capitalism. This sentiment has become even more popular in the wake of 2017’s Equifax hack and Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica Scandal. You were probably surprised that Equifax had been collecting detailed information about you behind your back. Sadly then, you won’t be too shocked to learn they weren’t the only ones.

In June, security researcher Vinny Troia used the computer search engine Shodan to uncover a database containing 340 million records. The database was left unsecured on a publicly available server by the marketing firm Exactis. While the 145.5 million records of the Equifax hack received widespread coverage, the Exactis database eclipsed that at 340 million records. However, unlike the aggregated Equifax data, the Exactis database was found by a security researcher. There is currently no evidence that it was accessed maliciously.

Exatis is a data broker, trading in our personal information—which is how they came to be in possession of nearly 214 million individuals and 110 million businesses data. According to WIRED, the records included “more than 400 variables on a vast range of specific characteristics: whether the person smokes, their religion, whether they have dogs or cats, and interests as varied as scuba diving and plus-size apparel.”

There is a silver lining here though. Despite the phenomenal amount of identifiable data, unlike Equifax, they held no financial information. However, if it turns out a malicious party did access the database, there are plenty of opportunities for social engineering.

5. Timehop

Users Affected: 21 million
Data Exposed: Names, email addresses, dates of birth, gender, country codes, and phone numbers

Our collective nostalgia for years gone by has become big business. No company has been able to capitalize on this love of the past more than Timehop. The Timehop app connects to your social networks and resurfaces your old posts to remind you of what you were doing on this day in the past. In July 2018, Timehop announced that it had interrupted a network intrusion on Independence Day.

Despite stopping the attack in just over two hours, the intruder was able to take a lot of data. Unfortunately, this included names, email addresses, dates of birth, gender, and in some cases, phone numbers of the app’s 21 million users. They were, however, able to prevent the attacker from gaining access to social media posts and private messages.

The attacker did manage to get to stored OAuth2 keys, which grant access to a user’s connected social networks. Before disclosing the breach, Timehop worked with the social networks to deactivate these keys, forcing users to re-authenticate connected accounts.

Unlike many of their contemporaries, their incident website was clearly presented. The attack was explained both in technical and straightforward terms. They even provided an easily digestible table of the combinations of accessed data and how many people were affected. Of course, this will come as little comfort to the nostalgic app’s 21 million victims.

Protect Yourself From the Next Data Breach

Services we once thought of as secure are rapidly becoming unraveled thanks in part to their poor security practices. You may even start to wonder if anywhere on the internet is safe. Especially given how many times data harvesting has exposed your personal info. If you are worried that something is amiss, you should check if your online accounts have been hacked.

The responsibility to protect you falls at the feet of the affected companies. However, there are ways to improve your cyber hygiene that’ll strengthen your defenses. Passwords are one of our biggest headache, but there is good news. You may not have to wait too much longer before we start to see exciting password alternatives hit the mainstream.

Image Credit: stevanovicigor/DepositPhotos

Read the full article: 5 Recent Data Breaches That May Have Put Your Data at Risk

Read Full Article

Apple expands Business Chat with new businesses and additional countries

Apple Business Chat launched earlier this year as a way for consumers to communicate directly with businesses on Apple’s messaging platform. Today the company announced it was expanding the program to add new businesses and support for additional countries.

When it launched in January, business partners included Discover, Hilton, Lowe’s and Wells Fargo. Today’s announcement includes the likes of Burberry, West Elm, Kimpton Hotels, and Vodafone Germany.

The program, which remains in Beta, added 15 new companies today in the US and 15 internationally including in the UK, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, Italy, Australia and France.

Since the launch, companies have been coming up with creative ways to interact directly with customers in a chat setting that many users prefer over telephone trees and staticy wait music (I know I do).

For instance, Four Seasons, which launched Business Chat in July, is expanding usage to 88 properties across the globe with the ability to chat in more than 100 languages with reported average response times of around 90 seconds.

Apple previously added features like Apple Pay to iMessage to make it easy for consumers to transact directly with business in a fully digital way. If for instance, your customer service rep helps you find the perfect item, you can purchase it right then and there with Apple Pay in a fully digital payment system without having to supply a credit card in the chat interface.

Photo: Apple

What’s more, the CSR could share a link, photo or video to let you see more information on the item you’re interested in or to help you fix a problem with an item you already own. All of this can take place in iMessage, a tool millions of iPhone and iPad owners are comfortable using with friends and family.

To interact with Business Chat, customers are given messaging as a choice in contact information. If they touch this option, the interaction opens in iMessage and customers can conduct a conversation with the brand’s CSR, just as they would with friends.

Touch Message to move to iMessage conversation. Photo: Apple

This link to customer service and sales through a chat interface also fits well with the partnership with Salesforce announced last week. Salesforce president and chief product officer, Bret Taylor described how Apple Business Chat could integrate with Salesforce’s Service Bot platform, which was introduced in 2017 to allow companies to build integrated automated and human response systems.

The bots could provide a first level of service and if the customer required more personal support, there could be an option to switch to Apple Business Chat.

Apple Business Chat requires iOS 11.3 or higher.

Read Full Article

Facebook follows Twitch and YouTube with launch of Premieres, live polls and fan badges

Facebook today announced the global launch of Premieres, its new interactive video format that allows creators to pre-record a video for fans, then release it during a viewing window they choose, as more of a live event. The move follows YouTube’s introduction of a similar Premieres format just a few months ago. In addition, Facebook says it’s rolling out interactive video polls to more Pages, and making its Top Fans feature available to all Facebook Pages worldwide.

Like Twitch and YouTube, Facebook is focused on giving its creators a variety of tools to engage with their fans and viewers.

Specifically, these companies have found that allowing creators to delay the release of a pre-recorded video gives them the ability to build up excitement for a live viewing event among their community, which in turn, can increase the video’s viewership when it finally hits. This benefits the creators, platforms, and the advertisers alike, as they all want to reach as many people as possible.

Facebook video Premieres had been in testing for some time before today’s global launch, according to reports from earlier this year.

The idea had been largely popularized by the Amazon-owned video game streaming site, Twitch, as a way to capture the thrill associated with a live event, while also allowing the video creators to edit their video to give it more polish.

Facebook says that during testing, a number of outlets saw increased engagement through the use of the feature, including OWN, which tested with Oprah Winfrey’s SuperSoul Sunday; Sony, which announced the 10th season of India’s successful game show – Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?); Australia’s Broadcaster Channel 7; BuzzFeed’s Unsolved; the Buffalo Bills; and creator Jimmy Zhang.

It didn’t cite specific increases as numbers, percentages, or averages, however.

The upcoming slate of Premieres also includes an extended look at Aquaman from WB, debuting exclusively on Facebook this week.

The process of creating a Premiere involves the same video uploading tools already available, including monetization tools for ad breaks and branded content.

With Premieres, the platforms can attract a wider audience for tools that had previously only been offered to live broadcasters. For example, Twitch and YouTube creators can engage fans in chat, selling them speciality badges (emotes and Super Chat badges, respectively), along the way.

Facebook is now heading into this space, as well.

Along with the launch of Premieres, it’s rolling out Top Fans to all eligible Facebook Pages. This feature, which began testing in March, highlights the creator’s most loyal fans by displaying a badge next to their name.

For the time being, Top Fans earn the badge by being active on the Page – by watching the Page’s videos, reacting, commenting or sharing its content.

It seems likely this feature will be monetized in the future, however – similar to how fans can buy badges on Twitch and YouTube to demonstrate loyalty. But Facebook hasn’t announced any plans – and in fact, claims it has no plans to do so. (We’ll see.)

Once labeled a “Top Fan,” comments will be badged on any kind of post or video, including Premieres.

Any Page with more than 10K followers can activate Top Fans by using the video template, and then opting into Top Fans badges from the Page settings.

Video polls are arriving today, too, after tests of the feature earlier this year. Testers so far included Anderson Cooper’s Full Circle; Tastemade; and gaming creator ViruSs.

Live polls are now available to all Pages through Facebook’s Live API, live publishing tool, and soon, they’ll come to on-demand video.

These moves come at a time when video is of increasing importance to the social network. A month ago, it launched its video portal Facebook Watch worldwide, as it continues its attempts to woo video creators away from YouTube and game streamers from Twitch, to its social networking platform instead.

It also recently acquired Vidpresso’s team and tools to help make videos more interactive. At the time, it reported that its Facebook Live videos had seen 3.5 billion broadcasts to date and received 6 times as many interactions as traditional videos. Those figures are key to understanding why Facebook, and its rivals, are trying to make pre-recorded videos feel as if they’re a live event.

Read Full Article

5 Lit Social Media Apps for Teenagers

Are you looking for the hottest social media apps for teenagers? Many teenagers have found that “classic” social media sites like Facebook and Twitter aren’t as interesting as they once were.

Indeed, the concept of “social media” has branched out well beyond its original barriers. Let’s take a look at some of the hottest social media sites that teenagers enjoy.

1. Snapchat

Snapchat has exploded in popularity over the last few years, mainly thanks to its younger users. It started as a simple service that let you share self-destructing “snaps” with friends. But unlike many social media apps that have a set purpose, Snapchat evolved.

It now offers a blend of news, messaging, following public figures, and adding filters to photos. While it’s only available on Android and iOS, Snapchat packs a ton of features for teenagers to enjoy.

You can take photos as on Instagram, but a variety of lenses let you add stickers, funny faces, and more. Stories let you capture what you’re doing and share them for 24 hours. Send your friends text or picture messages, or even call them using the app.

And Snapchat’s Discover page lets you check out public events and the like so you always know what’s going on. There’s a lot to dive into, so check out our beginner’s guide to Snapchat and brush up on Snapchat tipsfor newbies to make the most of it.

Download: Snapchat for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

2. Twitch

Twitch is a live streaming platform primarily built around video games. Jump onto the homepage, and you’ll see a selection of the most popular streamers available to watch now.

Searching for your favorite games allows you to look for streamers who are playing them, or you can pick from always-popular choices like League of Legends and Fortnite.

You’ll discover popular streamers who do this full-time as well as hobbyists in various gaming niches. If you like, you can also use Twitch to live stream your own gameplay.

If you don’t care for video games, the site hosts “IRL” (in real life) streamers too. The activities include cooking, art, and more.

With communities built around streamers, the ability to sponsor your favorites, and the general “hangout” atmosphere of the site, it’s a great place to relax. And there’s no denying that Twitch has changed gaming forever.

Download: Twitch for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

3. Tumblr

Tumblr is a blogging social media website that allows you to post short updates. It gives you more room to expand than Twitter, but doesn’t require as much upkeep as a proper blog. Plus, it has more social functions than a blog.

With some HTML, you can customize your blog’s theme. Aside from running your own Tumblr page, you can follow other blogs you’re interested in to see their latest posts in your feed. Like other social sites, you can use hashtags to categorize posts and make them easier for others to find.

For further social interaction, Tumblr also lets you submit questions to others (anonymously if you like) that they can answer on their blog publicly. Check out our tips for using Tumblr for more help getting started.

It’s important to note that Tumblr has garnered controversy for having a large number of blogs devoted to adult content. Some have also criticized Tumblr for being a place where issues like depression and eating disorders are glorified and not dealt with properly, so it’s important to stay smart about who you follow.

Download: Tumblr for Android | iOS (Free)

4. Discord

Another video game-related tool that has expanded beyond its original purpose, Discord allows you to chat with friends and other users. It’s quite similar to Slack: after you join a Discord server, you can talk with others in the various channels for both text and voice chat.

The developers of Discord created it as a simple solution for voice chat in video games, as apps like Skype are fairly resource-heavy. If you’re a gamer, Discord is a great way to connect with fellow players. You’ll find official Discord servers available for many of the biggest games.

For non-gamers, Discord is still valuable as a communication platform. Many online personalities (such as YouTubers) have their own Discord servers for fans to chat on. You’ll just need to find the right communities for you.

Download: Discord for Android | iOS (Free)

5. TikTok

The newest app on this list, TikTok is a social network based around music videos. It launched in late 2016, and exploded in popularity in 2018. You can watch videos from other users and shoot your own 60-second clips using all sorts of different background music.

If you love music, enjoy shooting videos, or just want to be part of one of the hottest social platforms, this is the app for you. While not exactly the same, it’s also a good replacement if you miss Vine.

Download: TikTok for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

What New Social Media Apps Will You Join?

In this article we have covered a handful of social media apps for teenagers that are way more exciting than Facebook. Whether you want to use these apps to connect in different ways or just make sure you’re on the coolest apps around today, these are the platforms to check out.

For more on social media use amongst teenagers, read our investigation into why kids love Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube.

Read the full article: 5 Lit Social Media Apps for Teenagers

Read Full Article

SoftBank leads $35M investment in sports engagement startup Heed

Heed, a startup looking to create new ways for sports leagues and clubs to engage with fans, is announcing that it has raised $35 million led by SoftBank Group International.

As laid out for me by CEO Danna Rabin, the company sits at the intersection of sports and IoT — which makes sense, since it was founded by Internet of Things company AGT International and talent agency Endeavor.

“Our primary mission is to connect the young audience with sports leagues and clubs,” Rabin said. “[Those] audiences are consuming less broadcast TV, consuming less of anything linearly. Sports clubs and brands are having more and more issues connecting with and reengaging those younger audiences.”

To create that connection, Heed places sensors around the match or game venue, even potentially on players’ clothing and equipment.

For example, the team let me make a couple punches using gloves with sensors inside, which were created for the mixed martial arts league UFC. Afterwards, I could see the measured force of each of my swings. (I didn’t really have any points of comparison, but I think it’s safe to say that my numbers weren’t too impressive.)

Rabin emphasized that Heed’s real focus isn’t on building fancy hardware, but rather on the artificial intelligence it uses to take that data (which can also be drawn from video and audio footage of the match) and transform it into a general narrative that can be viewed on the Heed smartphone app.

Pointing to the UFC glove, Rabin said, “We extract, only from this sensor, 70 different data points. What’s happening is, the fusion of these data points is what creates the stories.”

Put another way, the goal is to replace the generic commentary that you often get in sports coverage and live games with unique details about how the game or match is unfolding. Those aren’t just numbers like how hard someone is punching, but also inferences about a player’s emotional state based on the data.

“One of our core promises is that it’s not editorial driven,” Rabin added. “The AI is selecting what’s interesting in a match. Of course, we have a creative team that designs the formats, the visuals, how the packaging should look like, but that’s incorporated into the technology, which is automatically selecting the moments and creating the experiences with no human interpretation.”

So does Heed aim to be a technology provider or a sports media company of its own? Well, Rabin said it didn’t make sense to simply provide the tech to individual leagues or teams.

“A specific club does not have the breadth of technologies to keep evolving,” she said. Plus, she argued that the audience isn’t looking for just a one-off site with stories about one team, but an all-around destination where they can “get a bit of everything.”

In addition to the UFC, Heed is also working with EuroLeague (the European basketball league), various soccer clubs and Professional Bull Riding. In the latter case, it’s not just creating content, but actually working with the organization to create a more automated and objective form of judging.

“By leveraging AI and IoT, HEED has developed a unique platform that is changing the way fans watch and interact with sports,” said Softbank President and CFO Alok Sama. “HEED is taking a traditionally static experience and providing fans with deeper insights into the physical and emotional aspects of the sporting event by gathering and analyzing large, complex data in real time.”

Read Full Article

The Freewrite Traveler offers distraction-free writing for the road

If you’ve ever tried to write something long – a thesis, a book, or a manifesto outlining your disappointment in the modern technocracy and your plan to foment violent revolution – you know that distractions can slow you down or even stop the creative process. That’s why the folks at Astrohaus created the Freewrite, a distraction-free typewriter, and it’s always why they are launching the Traveler, a laptop-like word processor that’s designed for writing and nothing else.

The product, which I saw last week, consists of a hearty, full-sized keyboard and an e-ink screen. There are multiple “documents” you can open and close and the system autosaves and syncs to services like Dropbox automatically. The laptop costs $279 on Indiegogo and will have a retail price of $599.

The goal of the Freewrite Traveler is to give you a place to write. You pull it out of your bad, open it, and start typing. That’s it. There are no Tweets, Facebook sharing systems, or games. It lasts for four weeks on one charge – a bold claim but not impossible – and there are some improvements to the editing functions including virtual arrow keys that let you move up and down in a document as you write. There are also hotkeys to bring up ancillary information like outlines, research, or notes.

If the Traveler is anything like the original Freewrite then you can expect some truly rugged hardware. I tested an early model and the entire thing was built like a tank or, more correctly, like a Leica. Because it is aimed at the artistic wanderer, the entire thing weighs two pounds and is about as big as the collected stories of Raymond Carver.

Is it for you? Well, if you liked the original Freewrite or even missed the bandwagon when it first launched, you might really enjoy the Traveler. Because it is small and light it could easily become a second writing device for your more creative work that you pull out in times of pensive creativity. It is not a true word processor replacement, however, and it is a “first-thought-best-thought” kind of tool, allowing you to get words down without much fuss. I wouldn’t recommend it for research-intensive writing but you could easily sketch out almost any kind of document on the Traveler and then edit it on a real laptop.

There aren’t many physical tools to support distraction-free writing. Some folks, myself included, have used the infamous AlphaSmart, a crazy old word processor used by students or simply set up laptops without a Wi-Fi connection. The Freewrite Traveler takes all of that to the next level by offering the simplest, clearest, and most distraction-free system available. Given it’s 50% off right now on Indiegogo it might be the right time to take the plunge.

Read Full Article

The Best Travel Routers for Your Next Vacation

Google Home Mini? More like Google Home Minty

Hey, did you hear? There’s a big Google event coming up next week. There’s gonna be a big new phone and, no doubt, some additions to the Home line. In the meantime, here’s a mint (officially “Aqua”) Google Home Mini.

The new color scheme is arriving on October 29, for the usual $49 price point. The timing of all of this is a bit odd, given the platform the company has next week. That said, this is probably just Google’s way of showing the world that it’s got too much to pack into the Pixel event.

If the hue looks familiar, it’s probably because it’s surfaced in leaks of the upcoming Pixel 3. Aesthetic consistency among its hardware line has become an increasing focus for Google in recent years.

It’s a quick way to remind everyone about its big event, the day that Microsoft is fighting for mindshare with its own big launch. It also appears to be a sign that the Home Mini, which was a focus at last year’s show, won’t be getting much of a refresh next week.

Read Full Article

How to Stream Kodi on a Chromecast

Apple adds student ID cards into Apple Wallet to access buildings, buy food and more

The education market has long been one of the cornerstones of growth for Apple’s hardware business, and today the company is leveraging its popularity in it, specifically among college-aged students, to build out a newer effort. Today, Apple started to integrate university student ID cards — used to access buildings, pay for food or books, and any other transactional campus services — into Wallet, its contactless payment system on the Apple Watch and the iPhone. The first schools to come online are Duke University, the University of Alabama and the University of Oklahoma.

Apple had actually announced the service back in June, during WWDC, earmarking the three schools going live today. It said that Johns Hopkins University, Santa Clara University and Temple University will start using the service by the end of this year.

The expansion comes at a time when Apple is riding on a growth high for its mobile wallet. iPhone and Watch owners have been shown to be enthusiastic users of their devices for making purchases (thrice as more avid, it seems, than Android users), and on the back of that, Apple Pay — which is now live in 24 markets — has laid claim to being the most popular mobile contactless payment in use today, with some 1 billion transactions in the last quarter alone, up three-fold from a year before.

Many of those transactions are specifically related to Apple Pay, made using more traditional payment cards such as American Express or Visa credit cards, and at traditional retail locations — Apple says it expects 60 percent of all US retail locations to support Apple Pay by the end of this year, including over 70 of the top 100 retail chains.

But Apple has also been pursuing a second wave of growth to make Wallet useful, by encouraging people to upload and use the myriad cards they have for various other services, such as loyalty cards and passes for city transport systems. Twelve US metro areas already use Apple Pay, and there is ground being gained internationally too in markets like the UK, China and Japan.

Adding in university student cards falls within that scope, Apple says.

“iPhone and Apple Watch have brought us into a new era of mobility, helping to transform everyday experiences,” said Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services, said in a statement. “When we launched Apple Pay, we embarked on a goal to replace the physical wallet. By adding transit, loyalty cards and contactless ticketing we have expanded the capabilities of Wallet beyond payments, and we’re now thrilled to be working with campuses on adding contactless student ID cards to bring customers even more easy, convenient and secure experiences.”

Apple Pay may not appear to massively profit Apple in a direct way — as it’s been pointed out by others, the percentages on payment transactions are tiny — but what it does give the company indirectly is another tie into how people use their phones and watches, making the devices more valuable to their owners, and those users more tied into the Apple ecosystem.

At colleges (and other schools), we’ve seen an increasing use of student ID cards not just as a way to identify yourself, but to access services and buildings, and also to pay for things, and use of contactless versions of these has been on the rise. Part of the reason for this is safety: having one card for everything means students need to carry less valuables, and if they lose it or it’s stolen, the card can be more easily replaced. At the same time, watches and phones are not items they’re leaving behind, so further consolidating, and making those cards more secure by way of Apple’s device locks, makes sense.

What we don’t know is if Apple is getting a commission (even a tiny one) on the payment transactions made via these student cards. We have asked the company and will update as we learn more.

Educational institutions aren’t the only not-strictly-retail locations that are being put into Wallet. Apple’s been adding sports venues to let attendees use Wallet to carry their tickets, and to then buy food and other concessions once you get in. (See how Apple uses one non-commissioned transaction to lead you into using it for one that might be?)

Today, Apple is estimated to account for between 14 percent and 17 percent of the K-12 education market in the US, and with the likes of Google and Microsoft also pushing hard for growth both here and in higher education, you can see how adding in more services like this could help Apple expand its piece of the pie.

Read Full Article

The 7 Best Portable Bluetooth Speakers

Twitter widens its view of bad actors to fight election fiddlers

Twitter has announced more changes to its rules to try to make it harder for people to use its platform to spread politically charged disinformation and thereby erode democratic processes.

In an update on its “elections integrity work” yesterday, the company flagged several new changes to the Twitter Rules which it said are intended to provide “clearer guidance” on behaviors it’s cracking down on.

In the problem area of “spam and fake accounts”, Twitter says it’s responding to feedback that, to date, it’s been too conservative in how it thinks about spammers on its platform, and only taking account of “common spam tactics like selling fake goods”. So it’s expanding its net to try to catch more types of “inauthentic activity” — by taking into account more factors when determining whether an account is fake.

“As platform manipulation tactics continue to evolve, we are updating and expanding our rules to better reflect how we identify fake accounts, and what types of inauthentic activity violate our guidelines,” Twitter writes. “We now may remove fake accounts engaged in a variety of emergent, malicious behaviors.”

Some of the factors it says it will now also take into account when making a ‘spammer or not’ judgement are:

•         Use of stock or stolen avatar photos
•         Use of stolen or copied profile bios
•         Use of intentionally misleading profile information, including profile location

Kremlin-backed online disinformation agents have been known to use stolen photos for avatars and also to claim accounts are US based, despite spambots being operated out of Russia. So it’s pretty clear why Twitter is cracking down on fake profiles pics and location claims.

Less clear: Why it took so long for Twitter’s spam detection systems to be able to take account of these suspicious signals. But, well, progress is still progress.

(Intentionally satirical ‘Twitter fakes’ (aka parody accounts) should not be caught in this net, as Twitter has had a longstanding policy of requiring parody and fan accounts to be directly labeled as such in their Twitter bios.)

Pulling the threads of spambots

In another major-sounding policy change, the company says it’s targeting what it dubs “attributed activity” — so that when/if it “reliably” identifies an entity behind a rule-breaking account it can apply the same penalty actions against any additional accounts associated with that entity, regardless of whether the accounts themselves were breaking its rules or not.

This is potentially a very important change, given that spambot operators often create accounts long before they make active malicious use of them, leaving these spammer-in-waiting accounts entirely dormant, or doing something totally innocuous, sometimes for years before they get deployed for an active spam or disinformation operation.

So if Twitter is able to link an active disinformation campaign with spambots lurking in waiting to carry out the next operation it could successfully disrupt the long term planning of election fiddlers. Which would be great news.

Albeit, the devil will be in the detail of how Twitter enforces this new policy — such as how high a bar it’s setting itself with the word “reliably”.

Obviously there’s a risk that, if defined too loosely, Twitter could shut innocent newbs off its platform by incorrectly connecting them to a previously identified bad actor. Which it clearly won’t want to do.

The hope is that behind the scenes Twitter has got better at spotting patterns of behavior it can reliably associate with spammers — and will thus be able to put this new policy to good use.

There’s certainly good external research being done in this area. For example, recent work by Duo Security has yielded an open source methodology for identifying account automation on Twitter.

The team also dug into botnet architectures — and were able to spot a cryptocurrency scam botnet which Twitter had previously been recommending other users follow. So, again hopefully, the company has been taking close note of such research, and better botnet analysis underpins this policy change.

There’s also more on this front: “We are expanding our enforcement approach to include accounts that deliberately mimic or are intended to replace accounts we have previously suspended for violating our rules,” Twitter also writes.

This additional element is also notable. It essentially means Twitter has given itself a policy allowing it to act against entire malicious ideologies — i.e. against groups of people trying to spread the same sort of disinformation, not just any a single identified bad actor connected to a number of accounts.

To use the example of the fake news peddler behind InfoWars, Alex Jones, who Twitter finally permanently banned last month, Twitter’s new policy suggests any attempts by followers of Jones to create ‘in the style of’ copycat InfoWars accounts on its platform, i.e. to try to indirectly return Jones’ disinformation to Twitter, would — or, well, could — face the same enforcement action it has already meted out to Jones’ own accounts.

Though Twitter does have a reputation for inconsistently applying its own policies. So it remains to be seen how it will, in fact, act.

And how enthusiastic it will be about slapping down disinformation ideologies — given its longstanding position as a free speech champion, and in the face of criticism that it is ‘censoring’ certain viewpoints.

Hacked materials

Another change being announced by Twitter now is a clampdown on the distribution of hacked materials via its platform.

Leaking hacked emails of political officials at key moments during an election cycle has been a key tactic for democracy fiddlers in recent years — such as the leak of emails sent by top officials in the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 US presidential election.

Or  the last minute email leak in France during the presidential election last year.

Twitter notes that its rules already prohibit the distribution of hacked material which contains “private information or trade secrets, or could put people in harm’s way” — but says it’s now expanding “the criteria for when we will take action on accounts which claim responsibility for a hack, which includes threats and public incentives to hack specific people and accounts”.

So it seems, generally, to be broadening its policy to cover a wider support ecosystem around election hackers — or hacking more generally.

Twitter’s platform does frequently host hackers — who use anonymous Twitter accounts to crow about their hacks and/or direct attack threats at other users…

Feds cant touch us. NCA cant touch us. KEK we the big bois running around the internet with our 1337 bootnet! Come catch us we are untouchable! Living on TOR nodes and Open DNS. Smoking that good stuff with our bois at radware.

— APOPHIS SQUAD (@apophissquadv2) July 18, 2018

Presumably Twitter will be shutting that kind of hacker activity down in future.

Though it’s unclear what the new policy might mean for a hacktivist group like Anonymous (which is very active on Twitter).

Twitter’s new policy might also have repercussions for Wikileaks — which was directly involved in the spreading of the DNC leaked emails, for example, yet nonetheless has not previously been penalized by Twitter. (And thus remains on its platform so far.)

One also wonders how Twitter might respond to a future tweet from, say, US president Trump encouraging the hacking of a political opponent….

Safe to say, this policy could get pretty murky and tricky for Twitter.

“Commentary about a hack or hacked materials, such as news articles discussing a hack, are generally not considered a violation of this policy,” it also writes, giving itself a bit of wiggle room on how it will apply (or not apply) the policy.

Daily spam decline

In the same blog post, Twitter gives an update on detection and enforcement actions related to its stated mission of improving “conversational health” and information integrity on its platform — including reiterating the action it took against Iran-based disinformation accounts in August.

It also notes that it removed ~50 accounts that had been misrepresenting themselves as members of various state Republican parties that same month and using Twitter to share “media regarding elections and political issues with misleading or incorrect party affiliation information”.

“We continue to partner closely with the RNC, DNC, and state election institutions to improve how we handle these issues,” it adds. 

On the automated detections front — where Twitter announced a fresh squeeze just three months ago — it reports that in the first half of September it challenged an average of 9.4 million accounts per week. (Though it does not specify how many of those challenges turned out to be bona fide spammers, or at least went unchallenged).

It also reports a continued decline in the average number of spam-related reports from users — down from an average of ~17,000 daily in May, to ~16,000 daily in September.

This summer it introduced a new registration process for developers requesting access to its APIs — intended to prevent the registration of what it describes as “spammy and low quality apps”.

Now it says it’s suspending, on average, ~30,000 applications per month as a result of efforts “to make it more difficult for these kinds of apps to operate in the first place”.

Elsewhere, Twitter also says it’s working on new proprietary systems to identify and remove “ban evaders at speed and scale”, as part of ongoing efforts to improve “proactive enforcements against common policy violations”.

In the blog, the company flags a number of product changes it has made this year too, including a recent change it announced two weeks ago which brings back the chronological timeline (via a setting users can toggle) — and which it now says it has rolled out.

“We recently updated the timeline personalization setting to allow people to select a strictly reverse-chronological experience, without recommended content and recaps. This ensures you have more control of how you experience what’s happening on our service,” it writes, saying this is also intended to help people “stay informed”.

Though, given that a chronological timeline remains not the default on Twitter, with algorithmically surfaced ‘interesting tweets’ instead being most actively pushed at users, it seems unlikely this change will have a major impact on mitigating any disinformation campaigns.

Those in the know (that they can change settings) being able to stay more informed is not how election fiddling will be defeated.

US midterm focus

Twitter also says it’s continuing to roll out new features to show more context around accounts — giving the example of the launch of election labels earlier this year, as a beta for candidates in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Though it’s clearly got lots of work to do on that front — given all the other elections continuously taking place in the rest of the world.

With an eye on the security of the US midterms as a first focus, Twitter says it will send election candidates a message prompt to ensure they have two-factor authentication enabled on their account to boost security.

“We are offering electoral institutions increased support via an elections-specific support portal, which is designed to ensure we receive and review critical feedback about emerging issues as quickly as possible. We will continue to expand this program ahead of the elections and will provide information about the feedback we receive in the near future,” it adds, again showing that its initial candidate support efforts are US-focused.

On the civic engagement front, Twitter says it is also actively encouraging US-based users to vote and to register to vote, as well as aiming to increase access to relevant voter registration info.

“As part of our civic engagement efforts, we are building conversation around the hashtag #BeAVoter with a custom emoji, sending U.S.-based users a prompt in their home timeline with information on how to register to vote, and drawing attention to these conversations and resources through the top US trend,” it writes. “This trend is being promoted by @TwitterGov, which will create even more access to voter registration information, including election reminders and an absentee ballot FAQ.”

Read Full Article

How to Automate Job Applications Using Google Forms

One of the most difficult parts of any job search is jumping on top of new job postings fast enough.

In a competitive job market, sometimes the early bird gets the job. Had you applied earlier, that job might have been yours. Automating your job applications with Google Forms might help to give you an edge.

Job Hunting Efficiently

There’s a lot of work that goes into job hunting. You need to get your resume up to speed. You’ve got to get a portfolio website in order.

Then there’s the job search. There are dozens of job boards online, and every day you discover a long list of new opportunities.

The following guide will walk you through automating your initial query letter so that applying to job postings doesn’t become a full-time job.

Here is the automated flow that your new system will handle for you, once it’s set up.

• You fill out a short Google form with relevant information from the job ad
• The form triggers an automation that fills out the email using the information from your form
• The automation attaches your resume and sends the form to the recruiter or HR person

Sounds like a real time saver, right? Let’s get started.

Job Query Google Form

Visit Google Forms, and start a new form by clicking on the “+” icon to create a blank form.

Since this form is just for you, it doesn’t have to be pretty. A blank form will do.

Title the form “My Job Application”, then follow these steps to set up all the fields.

1. Short answer with the description Email Recipient
2. Short answer with the description Recipient Name
3. Short answer with the description My Full Name
4. Paragraph with the description My Address
5. Short answer with the description My Phone Number
6. Short answer with the description My Email Address
7. Short answer with the description The Job Title
8. Paragraph with the description Why I’m a Good Fit
9. Paragraph with the description Relevant Experience
10. Date with the description Date of Application

Save this form with the name “My Job Application”.

At the upper right corner of the form window, click on the eye icon to preview your form. Fill out the form, and click Submit.

Go back to the editor window, click on Responses, and then click on the Google Sheets icon to create a new Google sheet with your responses.

It will ask you what to name the file. Give it any name you like.

Finally, open up the sheet and make a note of which column is assigned each data point.

For example, above column A is “Timestamp”, column B is “Email Recipient”, and so on. You’ll need this information later.

Click on File, Share, and make a note of the URL link to the spreadsheet. You’ll need this later in this article as well.

Create and Share Your Resume

With every job application you send, you’ll need to include your resume.

If you don’t have one yet, one excellent quick way to set one up is to use one of the resume templates that are available in Google Docs under Start a new document.

Or if you prefer, there are plenty of resume templates in Microsoft Word, or web services that’ll help you create an impressive CV.

Once you’ve uploaded the document or created it in Google Docs, right-click on the file and click Share.

Click on the Advanced link in the lower right corner of the window.

On the next window, click on Change beside the Private setting.

Change the privacy setting to “On – Anyone with the link“.

Now the HR person who receives your automated email will have full access to view or download your resume.

On the previous screen, remember to copy the share link to your file and save it to use later on in this process.

Now that your input form is ready, and your resume is uploaded and ready to get sent out to recruiters, you can automate your job application process!

IFTTT Form to Email

The next step is to use the Google Form as a trigger to send your job application email.

If you don’t have one yet, create an IFTTT account. When you open your account, click on the dropdown by your username and select New Applet.

Click on the this IFTTT link, search for sheets, and select Google Sheets. Log into the Google Drive account you want to use here.

On the next screen, select New row added to spreadsheet.

This will trigger your IFTTT automation every time you fill out the form and it adds a new row to your application spreadsheet.

Next, fill out the form using the URL share link that you saved when you created the Google Forms spreadsheet above.

Next, click on the that IFTTT link. Search for Gmail, and choose Send an email as the action.

Note: You don’t have to use Gmail for this step. Any other email service that’s integrated with IFTTT, like Office 365 email, will work as well. You just need to authenticate the account to your IFTTT service.

This next step is where you’re going to carefully customize the email that goes out to the recruiter or HR person.

Customize the Application Email

First, click on Add ingredient below the To address field. Then select the column from the spreadsheet that correlates with the recipient email.

You can leave the CC address and BCC address fields blank.

Next, clear the Subject field, and then click on Add ingredient.

This field will be a combination of static text and dynamic input from your form. In the field, type something like “My application for position of “.

Then click on Add ingredient. Choose the column from your spreadsheet that you used for The Job Title.

It’s time to craft the body of your email in a way that sounds natural.

Clear the Body field, and then type up your application letter. Throughout the text, insert ingredients from your spreadsheet as needed.

Here is an example of what that letter might look like once all of the ingredients from the sheet are inserted.

Dear ,
<p>My name is , and I'm very excited to be applying to the position of .</p>
<p>I have a great deal of experience in this field, including .</p>
<p>I'm a perfect fit for this role because .</p>
<p>Please don't hesitate to contact me at . Or you can email me at . I'm very much looking forward to speaking with you soon!</p>
<p>Best Regards,<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</p>

Note: Make sure to use HTML formatting tags as shown above so that paragraphs are formatted properly in the email!

At the bottom of the form, you’ll see a field for Attachment URL. This is where you should paste the link to your resume.

Click on the Create Action button, and then Finish. You’re done!

Your Automated Job Application System

You’re ready to test your new automated job application system!

Just launch the form and fill it out, but use your own address as the recipient email address. Fill out the form with all the data you normally would if you were applying for a job.

Once you submit the form, in just a minute or two you should receive a nicely formatted email that looks something like this.

To Fred Georges, Mr. Recruiter, it appears as though you’ve taken the time to craft a professional letter about the exact position he advertised for.

He doesn’t need to know that you spent barely 10 minutes filling out a few fields in a form!

If you wanted to save time, you could even remove your name and contact details from the form and use static text in IFTTT, so you can fill out even fewer fields. However, if your contact info ever changes, you’ll have to redesign the form.

Start the Job Search Now

Now that you’ve automated the application process, you can spend more time looking for those choice jobs out there!

Speaking of which, there are a number of really good job search engines on the web you may want to explore as well, to boost your odds of landing your dream job.

Read the full article: How to Automate Job Applications Using Google Forms

Read Full Article