How To Design A Logo That Stands Out In Every Market

A logo is important for every company that cares about its image. It is essentially the face of the company and it should represent your values as a company or a brand. Some companies are virtually defined by their logos. The famous Coca-Cola logo written in cursive and the iconic Apple logo with a bite taken out of it are classic examples of such companies. So what does it take to make a logo that stands out? Here are a few things to consider when designing a logo that will stand out in every market:

Have A Clear Understanding Of Your Company’s Values

You might wonder what this has to do with a logo. Actually, if all you want is to make an outstanding logo, then you will have a very easy time. You could mix in all kinds of colors and come up with an outrageous design or even come up with a minimalist logo that is annoyingly simple. Doing either of these will get you attention, but will not necessarily help market your brand. ‘Standing out’ is just one piece of the puzzle; there are more details about a logo such as what it stands for.

For a logo to be effective, it needs to make a strong and lasting statement. This can be achieved only if you know what your company stands for. Ask yourself or your customers what gives your company a competitive edge over the others. This could be anything i.e. innovation, precision, intelligence, efficiency, wealth, youthfulness, friendliness, partnership and pooling together and many more characteristics. Pick the aspects that best describe your company and incorporate them into the logo. For example, vibrancy can be portrayed using bold colors such as red on the logo etc.

Make It Simple

One of the first things that designers are taught about creating a logo is that the logo should be very simple. You should limit the number of elements present in your logo. An example of a simple logo is the Facebook logo; a letter ‘f’ in lowercase against a blue background and that’s it. Some of the best logos are simple and uncluttered. It gives your logo a professional look and it in turn communicates the same thing about your product, service or company.

A common mistake people make is stuffing a lot of elements into your logo. This puts you at a disadvantage because people do not have the time to figure out all those minute details. A logo should be easy on the eye because of another aspect: flexibility. Your logo will be used in different sizes and formats and can even be plastered on a huge billboard. The finer details of the logo will be lost in these cases. It is better to drop them altogether.

Your Logo Should Be Timeless

Being timeless doesn’t mean you should go pull out a logo design from the 20^th century and plaster it across your merchandise. By all means, the logo should be modern and relevant to this day and age. However, you should not make a trendy logo because trends come and go. Your logo could end up looking very irrelevant when the trend fades away. You should have a modern logo with very specific colors, typefaces and overall design. An example is how Apple changed their logo from a multi-colored logo to a more professional one with less than three solid colors.

Remember that you can later tweak the minor elements of your logo to keep up with the times. A lot of people do not know this and end up stuck with the same old boring logo. Large corporations such as UPS and Burger King have changed certain elements of their logos to make them more modern. The essential parts of the logo however remain intact.

Make Your Logo Memorable

What is the benchmark for a memorable logo? A memorable logo is one that can be remembered after glancing at it. Yes, just a glance. When your logo represents something singular, it should be easy recognizable. An example of a memorable logo is Apple’s logo. If the Apple did not have a bite taken out of it, it would be very generic. The simple design tweak now makes the logo recognizable among the many images, symbols and logos depicting an apple.

A fun way to know if your logo is memorable is to do a quick exercise. Print out your logo and put it among 8 other logos and arrange them in 3 rows. Show the logos to as many people as possible but limit the time they view the logos to between 15 seconds and 30 seconds. After this, ask them to try remembering and describing as many logos as they can. If yours cannot be recalled easily, it is time to go back to the drawing board.

Avoid Using A Generic (And Boring) Logo

If you want to create a logo which will stand out in your market, you should avoid using a generic logo. For example, a lot of engineering companies have a gear in their logo. Dentist’s logos depicting a tooth are almost everywhere. When designing a logo, you should avoid looking like your competition as it reduces your logo’s visibility. The best way to get around this is to search for logos in your area of expertise and avoid duplicating logos. This brings us to the next point:

Study The Companies In Your Industry

Trying to get a competitive edge without knowing what the competition has in store is futile. When you are planning on designing a logo, you should take a deep interest in what your competitors are doing. The main area of focus should be big companies which are raking in customers and cash in that order. Analyze them to know what is working and what is not working for them. Borrowing a leaf from a profitable company when it comes to logo design gives you that competitive advantage.

Apart from studying your competitors, you should also avoid repeating their mistakes. A lot of people observe bigger companies and copy their style; but they take both the good and the bad. You should ideally delve deeper and know what is not working for them too. Learning from other people’s mistakes helps you avoid getting stuck with a poor logo design.

Make Your Logo Proportional

Some of the most famous logos look very simple but have actually been designed proportionately. Using a proportional logo creates a professional look which is balanced and good to look at. Logos such as those of Twitter and Apple are symmetrical. Both these logos use circles to construct a balanced image that is symmetrical and very aesthetic. Another aspect of having a proportionate logo is achieving a ‘lockup’. This is where your logo’s typeface and graphic device work together and add value to each other.

Versatility                                            

When creating a logo, you should always keep in mind that it will be used in different settings. A company logo does not only show up on official documents and publications. It will also be expected to be put on merchandise. Your logo can show up on caps, t-shirts, key chains, mugs, pens, umbrellas and so forth. The logo can also be expected to be printed in very small size or a very large size too. And nowadays when internet marketing is taking up most of the market share for advertising; you will also need to post the logo on adverts. The advertisement banners can be vertical or horizontal and your logo needs to be versatile enough to fit.

Versatility is easy to achieve when you create a simple logo which does not have too many details. Knowing that the logo will appear almost everywhere is in itself an advantage. You can focus on designing a logo which will match the textures used by the company. If it blends in easily it becomes more versatile. Furthermore, the logo should maintain its form and fulfill its purpose every time.

Right Logo Color Is Paramount

Logo design is not complete if the color palette used is not taken into consideration. Color adds a lot of meaning to a logo and communicates a lot about the company. Here are some colors and what they portray when they appear in a logo;

Red: The color red expresses aggressiveness, strength and taking action

Yellow: Yellow on the other hand gives a feeling of warmth, playfulness, happiness and also curiosity

Green: Green is usually associated with health, luxury, wealth and calmness

Black: Using black will give an air of mystery and simplicity

These are just some of the effects that color has on the perception of your brand. And depending on the product or service you are offering, people can make conclusions about them by the colors used in the logo. Another important thing about color is considering the logo’s appearance in gray scale. A good logo will still be visible and as effective in gray scale as it is in full color. This can be tackled by checking the tone used and ensuring it doesn’t make the logo too dark in gray scale.

 

How To Boost Your Creativity – 10 Tricks That Every Designer Should Learn

If you are a designer and need a little help with making your creativity even better than what it already is then this article is for you!

 

Everyone has creativity. We were born with it. It is that thing that helps us go into our imagination and play around in a fantasy world or helps us paint a picture on a canvas. Since there are so many uses for creativity, there are also many ways to boost it and make it better. These following reasons are ten great ways to boost your creativity!

 

Ways To Boost Your Creativity

 

Trick #1- Read Every Day!

 

Reading can be extremely overwhelming for some, especially when looking at a 600 page novel. Reading has the ability to open up your mind to new thoughts and ideas that you didn’t think were possible to have before. A fantasy novel could open up your mind to new-age medieval wear that didn’t exist before you decided to read. There is literally no limit to the library you could collect and the ideas that could come to your head. Don’t worry though, you don’t have to read a novel all at once just to boost your creativity, try reading just thirty minutes a day first or a chapter a day. Even taking this small step will have devastatingly amazing results.

 

A great book to read to generate new ideas is “Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll”. Carroll weaved a world full of creativity and whimsy that has kept his book on the shelves for many, many years. They are even making a movie out of his book that is set to appear in theaters this year!

 

Trick #2- Try New Things!

 

Going outside one’s comfort zone is never an easy thing. It can make you feel vulnerable and anxious. When you do the same thing over and over again, your brain begins to go on “autopilot” and the task can become dull and mundane. Since you already know what you are doing, there is no room to grow with it or take it one step further. For example, if you’re used to just staying on the computer for five hours a day to find creativity, try taking an art class at your local rec center or community college. You could meet new people, share new ideas and even find the perfect way to go about your own idea based on what you learn in this new environment. Give it a try, I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

 

Trick #3- Listen To Music Regularly

 

It is a known fact that Albert Einstein gave Mozart a lot of credit for how intelligent he turned out to be. When Einstein was a teenager, he found Mozart’s music and fell in love with the way he created his well known pieces. Music has a way of taking over your mind, body and soul and transporting you to a new location in your brain. Mozart became immortal because of his command of music and how he was able to string notes together to actually activate parts of the brain that we’re unable to access regularly. Today, music is used significantly in brain developmental studies and early childhood development.

 

In the case of childhood development, music stimulates the brain, emotions and the body all at the same time. Children needs to have all of these active throughout their early development so that they’re able to be creative, solve problems and do even something as basic as talk. Music has the power to change everything about you; you just have to give it a chance.

 

Trick #4- Meditate

 

Not everyone can meditate but if you’re able to clear your mind and relax for long periods of time then this is the best solution for you. When you focus intently on the movements, breathing techniques and poses you’ll come to realize that the stressful situations in your life aren’t as stressful as they appear to be. You can find awesome yoga classes at your local rec center or community college and you could even make some new friends to share ideas with! All you have to do is go outside your comfort zone, if you don’t already participate in yoga and meditation.

 

Trick #5- Solve Puzzles

 

Logic is definitely not everyone’s strong suit but it can be a big help in developing your creativity in new ways. It could even be as fun as just playing a video game! Video games are great in developing your motor skills as well as your creativity because of the puzzles and the beautiful worlds that are found in the games. You also don’t need to be a child to enjoy playing a video game; they’re great for all ages! You’d be giving your mind an opportunity to look at a scenario or problem from a different angle.

 

Trick #6- Consider ALL Of The Alternatives

This trick is as easy as taking a minute to think outside the box. Not everything in life has to be linear and straightforward, you can take the time to look at the problem from all of the angles. This basically means, don’t stop when you come up with your first idea, try coming up with multiple and find the best one out of all of them or combine them all together into one super idea! You never know what you will come up with unless you take the time and effort to do it.

 

Trick #7- Try To Solve The Problem On Your Own

It may seem like the easy way to figure out a problem is by asking for help…this is not always the case. In most cases it is better to try to figure it out on your own so that you can increase your own brain power instead of helping to increase someone else’s. When you rely on no one but yourself, you are forcing yourself to push your creativity to its limit to find the solution. No one is just going to hand you the solution of your problem, plus it will feel that much more rewarding when you finally figure it out! You have to expand your mind and get it into gear to get through any problem that life throws at you.

 

Trick # 8- Stay Positive

 

It is know that some artists made their best work in their darkest times. However, positivity is also a great tool to spur creativity on. Research has shown that thinking about love can produce powerful creative spurts and moods. Any mood boosting exercise you can think to do, exercising for example will do wonders for your art.

 

Trick #9- Daydream

 

Daydreaming causes you to go into your imagination when you’re bored or in a stressful situation. You can focus on an idea in a different way of thinking by seeing it in your head like a vision or an actual dream. However, it is important to recognize that daydreaming works the best when you’re already committed to a project. Why? Daydreaming is a way of collecting ideas in your head so it’s easy to jump from one idea to the next without a second thought.

 

Trick #10- Think About Others

 

Research has shown that being distant from others has an adverse effect on your creativity. It’s important to think about others often and draw from their strength to help get through your difficult project. One test in a study put participants in a situation where they were told that their ideas would be use by an outside source to create a story. Those who were told this came up with much more “creative” ideas than those who were not told. Even if you have no one that you’re creating the project for, it is important to think that other people will see your work as it boosts your creativity and your will to do a great job.

 

What Have We Learned?

 

Creativity is created from a multitude of different sources that humans are able to access at will by using different tricks and tips. By following this guide, I guarantee that your creativity will increase and the quality of work you produce will improve exponentially. Creativity is a key factor that helps to keep people in business, especially entrepreneurs. It’s important to know that creativity cannot be forced into action either; it must come from your own mind when it’s ready to. These tips are just ways to open your brain to the possibility of different ideas.

 

Whether you’re a designer, artist, musician or writer, these tips are able to be applied in almost any situation. You just need to have the willpower to get through the exercises and to actually apply them in reality. You must be committed to your work in order to succeed in the best way possible. Hopefully, these tips will help you in your work so that you can shine and make your dreams a reality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Best Ways To Use Images In Your Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is not what it used to be. Nowadays, everyone is posting content on the Internet through blogs and websites. According to Google, more content is created every 48 hours than all the content created before the year 2003 combined. This means that the job of making your content visible to Internet users has become an uphill task. Marketing your content needs more than just writing good content.

In this day and age, people have come up with innovative ways to promote their content. New elements of content writing have been introduced such as search engine optimization (tactics to compel search engines to display your content), using images and also social media marketing. As much as social media marketing has taken the internet by storm, another powerful strategy still reigns. Using images in your content is a powerful tool for getting you more traffic.

Are Images Really That Important?

As far as increasing traffic to your website is concerned, images will always give you the upper hand. Images are supposed to be used strategically to make your content look more attractive to readers. They can also complement your content and put emphasis on your main points. The potential that images have in driving traffic to your site is exponentially multiplied when you combine it with social media marketing. Social media updates on popular websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Digg get more shares and likes when they have an image or images.

A recent study was carried out and found that blogs with images get 94% more views than those that do not contain images. When you take a look at human psychology, the reason behind this phenomenon is clear. Human beings are conditioned to be visual beings. When presented with images or text, the human eye is drawn to images. Imagine the power you can yield when you market your content on social media using images and do the same with your blog. Nowadays, it is easy to take pictures and upload them especially with the advent of smartphones. Without further ado, here is how to best use images in your content marketing strategy:

Images for blogs

Blogs need to have images in them, period! Reading through blocks of text with no images in between is boring and tiresome to the eye. Unless you are posting medical journals or academic publications, then you should really try and incorporate images in your blog.

It is recommended that you use blog images on the header. This attracts readers and makes them curious to continue reading your content. Apart from the header, images should be spaced out throughout your content. Doing this helps you emphasize on the core points of the blog post. These images can also be used to represent your blog on social media.

Caution Before Posting Blog Images

You need to proceed with some caution when using images on your blog. First things first, your image should be relevant to your content. Writing a blog post about “affordable real estate property” and then using images of expensive beach property will give your readers the wrong idea. It is more fatal when you pull this stunt on social media. Try using images which will complement your content. Second, before posting an image, ensure it is named something that describes it. For instance, “green Volvo” is better than “IMG 33214”. It helps when the page loads slowly and assists readers to recognize what the image depicts before it loads on your page.

Images For Your Product

Product images are essential for any business which wishes to practice e-commerce. An image for your product gives your customers a clear concept of what they are about to buy. A good example of this is websites that are dedicated to selling products for multiple clients such as Amazon, Best buy, and Alibaba. Almost every product has a couple of images pinned to the description. Ideally, you should include images for every product on sale. The images should be high quality and should be consistent with other images of the product.

Product images should be about six to eight for a single product. You can add more images in the event that a product has technical parts. A product which needs to be assembled or has detachable parts can have extra images to illustrate those functions. For some items such as electronic devices (smart phones, laptops, juicers etc.), you can use 360 degree photos (3 or 4) to catch the attention of viewers. Having more people view your product increases your odds to make a sale; and that translates to images being a good content marketing strategy.

Infographics

A popular trend with promoting your content is using infographics. An infographic is a combination of text and graphics (illustrations, bar graphs, cartoons). If you have been trying other methods of content marketing without much success, you can use infographics to boost your numbers. You will have the upper hand because you take will be taking advantage of the fact that humans are visual beings. The optic nerve remains activated at almost all times to process more than 90% of the information going into the brain. Presenting your content alongside graphics makes it more appealing and easier to read.

How Infographics Can Help Skyrocket Your Traffic

You are a step ahead of text-only or text-and-images blogs. Not to imply that text is unimportant, it is actually crucial to the structure of the Internet. The problem is that a lot of content is being updated in text. And this happens every second of every hour of every day that goes by. Infographics can help you stand out against the rest and be more visible to your target audience.

Infographics capture the attention of your target audience. Humans capture images very fast and relate them to the information in the memory part of the brain. Creating an infographic which has facts about a certain topic can attract readers from your target audience. A good example is a infographic about oil prices around the world. You can combine images of political maps, barrels of oil, average oil prices etc to produce an informative and content rich infographic.

They can literally go viral. A recent study was conducted by MDG Advertising found that using graphics and visual elements alongside text can generate up to 94% more views than normal text and a combination of images and text. When such an infographic starts getting bounced around on social media, it can easily go viral. Talk about a ton of traffic for your site. Another factor that gives infographics an advantage over other types of content is their simplicity. Infographics use small amounts of text to emphasize important information. Short and easily understandable text is used. This makes it easy for viewers around the globe to understand it, even non-English speakers. The infographic can go viral worldwide!

Infographics can be easily embedded. Apart from being portable, they are also embeddable. You can add code to the infographic which enables people to integrate it into their websites. The infographic will then be linked to your site and you can add your back links as you desire. They can also be easily embedded into social media posts containing text.

Where To Find High Quality Images

Weighing all the options, it is good to spice up your content with an infographic here and there. It is also essential that you use images in your posts as well. For most bloggers, finding images of superior quality on the internet is an uphill task. You usually get yourself in the unfortunate dilemma of choosing between expensive stock photos and combing through the Internet looking for free qualities.

If your site is already stable, you can consider paying for stock photos. These services are offered by websites such as shutterstock and iStock. If it is a start-up website, you can go for free photos on Photo Pin, Wikimedia Commons, Freeimages, Compfight and Pixabay. Pixabay, Freeimages and Wikimedia Commons have millions of images, video and audio files such as podcasts. The website Pixabay has an excellent search feature while Compfight on the other hand searches for stock photos and free photos together.

Give Credit For An Image

Regardless of where you get your images, it is important to give proper attribution. Attribution is the act of giving credit for an image by annotating the owner. It may even be required by law if you are using royalty-free images. Most of the image sources will avail a short code which you can copy and paste to the bottom of your blog post. Not all will provide this code. It is however courteous to show attribution. Remember that you can find yourself on the other end of the stick if you post an infographic and it appears on other blogs without any credit to you.

Images are a very powerful content marketing tool and can help you build a strong web presence for your website or brand. It will take some time before you learn which type of images to use. Slowly but surely, you will be a pro at using visual objects to promote your content.

How to Know If You and Your Family Are Being Exposed to Lead

 

1. How to Test for Lead in Your Water

With the alarming rate of global warming these passing years, a lot of new and emerging diseases coming from unsanitary conditions and exposure to chemicals due to the change in climate would be a big threat to you and your family. Today even the water we drink might be contaminated with chemicals we don’t know of, and the most common substance could mix up with your water is Lead.

Where most tap water is in fact safe, but in an ever changing world where climate change would affect the water we drink anything can happen. Your water service sends you a “Consumer Confidence Report” every month and it’s legally mandatory to include lead levels in the water you drink, and or if any lead was even found. (The CDC has an instruction here for you to understanding the report in detail.) But if you’re not the person who pays the bills, you won’t get a statement, but then again there are much local information that is available online.

The Water going in the course of the lead & copper pipe are treated with anti-corrosives to reduce the volume of lead that gets sucked in as it gushes through the lead and copper pipes, and water utilities must test the water and informs to you if any lead is present.

And if you don’t have faith in the water company’s investigation, or if your water source comes from a private well, don’t worry because there are independent facilities that can examine your water for lead. Here is a list from the Environmental Protection Agency for those independent labs.

2. Lead in Your Soil

A new major source of lead contact is the lead underground that is used to be in gasoline but now is found underground. Don’t you believe that lead is gone, although the pumps these days are all providing unleaded. All of that lead must have to go somewhere, and so, any location with a lot of cars or traffic ended up building up a lot of it over time. The ground near active roads—assuming those roads were also full of activity before the 1986’s, the time where leaded gasoline was banned for public use, is a excellent place to find it, and so are homes and parks built in close proximity to them. Lead can also be found left behind by Industrial sites; especially if the factory was torn down to make your house.

 

3. Lead Dust in your Garden

Now that backyard gardens are in trend now, our home is now more vulnerable to lead dusts that can be found in the soil, even If your intention is just to grow a few veggies yourself and or for your family you still need to be careful when entering your house after a day of gardening. The indoors of the floor can still be tainted by dirt that’s been stuck in your shoes. So my advice would be is to remove your shoes and clean it before entering indoors, especially if you have little kids that crawl on the floorboards. Just Remember that your backyard isn’t the only location you may encounter these lead dusts. Additional sources tell us that it might include your workplace if your work is on construction and or metalworking. (Note: Gun ranges also have tons of lead dust.)

4. Lead Paint

During the 1970’s, there was a wide spread ban of lead paint by the federal government  in homes, unluckily if you purchased or reside in a house constructed before the banning, then it’s possible your house had been painted with lead or have some lead paint lying around somewhere in your house, and If you live in a much older house, particularly one with lots of unique “charm,” it may just be safe to assume that it was painted with lead. But fear not because some states and cities actually banned it earlier than expected. And if you think your house was painted with lead paint, worry not because there are customer test kits available for lead paint testing, and we have an excellent guide on how to use them here.

 

 

 

7 Tech Startups Wanting To Change The Way We Shop

 

One in a while we go on our way to buy things we need, well in doing so most of us go to malls and stores to go shopping. Walking down that long and winding street where the hot sun is shining brightly on your head can often times become a stressful experience right? That is why numerous amounts of people have changed to the comfort of online shopping. So, join me in my quest to look at the interesting tech startups that want to change the way we shop online.

1.     Glovo

First in our list is Glovo, We’ve all heard about online grocery services that deliver food to us, but think about the possibilities of something that’ll bring you pretty much anything you want?

With this in mind Glovo is what you need to attain this goal; it is a Spanish start-up that provides an on-demand restricted delivery program that’ll allow its users to order whatever they desired to be delivered to their door steps within the hour, amazing right?

An example of which is that for instance there’s something in town, a dress perhaps, from a far away clothing store you really want but they don’t present an online delivery service, but then again it’s an outfit that you really wanted for your night out, but then your shift ends the same time as their shops close. With this problem Glovo can help you with ease.

2. Everywalk

Next is Everywalk, a Manchester-based tech start up that has decided that the worlds ready for an era of online shopping. Everywalk permits users to construct their very own unique high street in an offer to create some peace amongst the mounting number of online shops and bazaars.

You can attach all your much loved retailers into your ‘high street’ so that they’re all prearranged into a setting to be easily identified. The site recommends up a variety of leading and self-regulating brands and makes it really simple to find new products right there.

3. Gousto

One more built for handiness, Gousto was shaped when its creators Timo Schmidt and James Carter realized that people weren’t taking enough nutritious meals all through the week due to various reasons.

The brilliant idea that Gousto came up with is to give its patrons a healthy and balanced recipe of a dish each week and then send alongside all of the ingredients needed to make the dish to your door step so that you wouldn’t have any excuse not to make it. The business is all about adoptability and sustainability using fresh and organic produce, so you’ll know that it’s nothing but fresh ingredients used and is going to be marvelous dish.

4. “Of A Kind”

The concept of this store is being like a mix of Tumblr and online shopping but better, the persons responsible for this online store, Of a Kind, trust the best way to bond with your customers is to share to your buyers the story behind what you purchase. The site gives a thorough background behind each item being sold, conveying to the customers a bit of story about the group who made the merchandise.

5. ThirdLove

Now here’s something for the ladies, Thirdlove is an original new approach to bra searching and fitting. The procedure is pretty straightforward and can all be done by your iphone or android without having to go away from your house. Just take 2 pictures wearing a fitting tank top and the app will determine your ideal bra size, neat huh?

6. OakLabs

And finally on our list is the interactive Oak Fitting Room, it is a go-getting app and is eager to alter the way we go shopping online.

With the use of a touch screen mirror, patrons can interact to decide their inclination and order. Soon to set a launch at the Polo Ralph Lauren in New York City, clients will be able to become accustomed and amend their order even as they enter the fitting room.

 

PSA: Quitting Apps on Your iPhone Will Not Improve Battery

Most iPhone users love to quit their applications with the hope that they can improve its battery life. The reason for this is really simple: most of the applications running in your phone’s background are either frozen in RAM or it is not running at all. This means that when they are in the background, the applications are not using any battery. You should take note that forcing to quit an application will only be necessary when glitch occurs. What kills your battery is not the app features itself, applications which are abusing the Background App Refresh, location services, and notifications are the ones responsible. This is the reason why you should conduct a monthly audit of your phone so that you can clear up all those unnecessary applications and notifications.

Here are a few of the ways on what and how you should do a monthly audit of your iPhone.

 

Private Settings

 

If you are the kind of person who normally taps the “okay” sign everytime a request from a certain app asks permission, it is best that you should do a thorough investigation on your private settings. In this section, you will be able to see location services, calendars, contacts, and many more. When you tap either of the sections mentioned, you will see all the applications that have asked permission from you to access these services. It is always noteworthy that you should go through these sections so that you will guarantee that only certain apps will have access to your contacts, calendars, or location services.

 

Most of these are pretty much self-explanatory. However, you should never forget to go through these sections every month since there are times that access to your location can really suck down the battery life of your iPhone.

 

Notifications

 

Never forget to check your notifications. Push notifications are not only annoying when you are using your iPhone; it is also one of the most common battery killers. If you have not gone through all those notification, now is the best time to clean it out. There are even times when you have already gone through your notifications and there are still remaining apps which have snuck in there without you knowing it.

 

Background Applications

 

Aside from your notifications and private settings, you should also audit your background applications in a monthly basis just to make sure. If you are on iOS 7, it is always best that you should check out or go through the applications that want to run in your background. When applications in your iPhone are running in the background, it will normally have to suck a lot of your phone’s battery life. Make sure that when an app is running on your background, you have a beneficial reason on why it is running.

 

Storage

 

You should also clear out the app disk space of your iPhone, especially when it comes to those applications you no longer need. Once you feel that your iPhone is running slow, you should probably check this section because you are definitely running out of space.

 

The Rock and Roll Neighborhood Playlist

Each person has their own favorite music genre. Popular music genres include blues, jazz, rock, country, hip hop, pop, R&B, rock and Electronic. The younger generations may really favor the Electronic Dance Music and hip hop amongst others, but older generations are perhaps loyal fans to rock and roll and disco music. Rock music itself usually refers to a band complete with a guitar, bass, and drum setup, and it was really popular during the 1970s and the 1980s.

Despite all these differences, when you are inviting the whole neighborhood to come for a small party that you are throwing, you can always turn into this cool rock and roll playlist to keep all of your guests happy regardless of what their ages may be:

Start With Popular Tunes From Eagles and The Beatles

Being a huge fan to them might be a different thing, but everyone sure is familiar with the songs from Eagles and The Beatles which are both in the easy listening rock category. You can play The Beatles’ most popular songs of all time which includes “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, “Hey Jude”, “Yellow Submarine” as well as “Twist and Shout” but do not forget to put in some Eagles’ touch with “Hotel California” or “Take It Easy”. They both are party pleasers and people will not mind listening to them even though the age difference will affect your guest’s personal preferences.

Mix It Up With More Modern Rock and Roll Bands

Even though rock is not exactly the most trendy category of music in the world for the past several years, but there are actually still some rock and roll bands that will be able to entertain the younger generations while still embracing the older ones. One of the most popular rock bands would be Paramore, and they have a wide range of award-winning and really pumping up songs such as “That’s What You Get”, “The Only Exception”, “Crushcrushcrush” as well as “Decode” which was the movie Twilight’s original soundtrack in 2008. If you have even younger generations who have not yet reached their puberty in 2008, there is also a band called the Vampire Weekend which is worth checking out.

Amp Up With Hard Rock Noises

After getting the light touches of modern and somewhat softer rock songs, it comes the time to liven up the mood once more with hard rock songs coming from Metallica, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and Guns N’ Roses. These bands are still sought after as their songs still outlive and are familiar to even the younger generations by virtue of their parents. Although Metallica’s songs like “Enter Sandman” and “Master of Puppets” were not released later in the 1980s, classic AC/DC and Led Zeppelin songs like “Highway to Hell” and “Stairway To Heaven” will bring up the energy to sing and scream along, until most of your guests just run out of energy.

End With Romantic Slow Rock Songs

Just in time when everyone has already used up their energy for eating, chatting, joking, singing along, or whatever it is that they may do: put your best ballad rock songs playlist on the speaker. Beautiful tunes like Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing” and Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” or “Tears In Heaven” will nicely tone down the mood, and everyone can just sit back and relax while drinking beers and watching the stars to light up the sky. As time gets late, it may also be the perfect time to light up a bonfire and roast some marshmallows while the little children go back home to sleep.

 

Prepare for a Raise by Keeping a Daily Work Journal

For most people, their early teenage years included writing a diary about everything that had happened in a day every night before going to bed. As the year progresses, the habit of keeping track of the things that happened every day became outdated and even embarrassing. However unbeknownst to a lot of people, keeping a daily work journal can actually be one of the most useful things that you can do to your career and professional development. You can always do it manually with a physical notebook, or you can also write it in form of a spreadsheet consisting of columns which you can separate further into dates, events, lessons, achievements, and probably mistakes.

“Why is it important?” you may ask, and to answer that question here are three reasons why keeping a daily work journal and reflect on your career can actually help you get a raise:

Reevaluate Your Company’s Milestones

Reevaluating your workplace milestones will help you to do a lot of wonders which usually can be very difficult or painstaking, such as convincing your boss to give you a raise. Once you keep track of all the developments and achievements that your company made, you will be able to extend the reflection further to the roles that you have played which help the company to achieve the aforesaid milestones, and also the overall value that you have brought to the company. Keeping a daily work journal will let you record the details of a specific event so that you will be able to also learn about the contributions and the value that you have brought to make that happen. This will definitely be helpful when the time comes for you to ask your boss for a raise or a promotion, because it will be impossible for someone to remember the details of so many events especially when you have worked for quite a long time.

Take Note of Your Own Development

There are a lot of things which you can reflect on your career, and keeping a daily work journal will actually help you in the process. First and foremost, keeping a daily work journal will help you to conduct regular self assessment and evaluation to see what you have accomplished so far and which areas you can improve in with regards to your job. By paying attention to your own career development, you will also be able to know your strengths and weaknesses therefore as a result you will be able to come up with a strategy to do better and better each day. Taking note of your own development is also essential for bringing up important requests such as a raise or a promotion. In addition to giving valuable contributions to your company, you can as well prove that in terms of personal quality and skills, you have developed into an individual that is worthy and capable of filling a specific position or getting a certain amount of salary. You can also include your career goals, in which you can always measure yourself how far you have gone from the starting point and how far it is to achieve what your intended objectives from the start.

Help To Make Better Decisions

Last but not least, keeping a daily work journal can definitely help you to make better decisions since you are able to really reflect on the advantages and disadvantages as well as the probability of something that may take place. Not only about deciding on asking for a raise or a promotion, but you can as well decide on the skills that you want to learn more, or the areas that you need to focus on. Moreover, keeping a daily work journal will also make you see your mistakes, and hence you will be reminded to not do the same mistake for the second time. Hence, you will be able to decide better from smaller things – like a task prioritization list and taking an extra programming course – to a huge and very significant thing like asking for a raise or requesting for a promotion. You will be able to always move forward, and before you realize it, you will get all the success and perhaps the raise that you have always wanted at work.

 

 

I Still Use Plain Text for Everything, and I Love It

Over the years, a lot of people have left the good old use of plain text and shift towards everything digital: to-do applications, writing application, notes applications and even mobile phone versions of productivity tools. Despite this current digital trend, a lot of people still rely on using plain text for a lot of things because of its numerous benefits that a modern app may not be able to fulfill. To save you the trouble of thinking too much about it, here are a few things that help plain text to stay popular despite of a really fierce competition level out there:

All-Encompassing

Plain text provides you a writing platform that is really similar to your little notebook that you always carry wherever you go: it allows you to write anything and everything. You can write a to do list, a poem, an essay, a list of your monthly targets, and basically everything else. Although some apps can also cater to this function, writing down in plain text does not require you to separate different types of writings into different apps or platforms. It helps you keep all of your spontaneous and brilliant ideas because you do not have to search for the correct app to write it while you are having your inspirational moments.

Flexibility

Plain text is omnipresent. It works on all types of operating system, on all types of mobile devices as well as laptops and computers and a wide range of applications can be used to read it. There will never be any file compatibility error message shown after opening your plain text file, and hence you can edit or read it flexibly whenever, wherever and with whatever. This is definitely a breath of fresh air to the often reoccurring errors and complications of apps. Not only that, there is also a possibility that you decide to use one app faithfully to do most of your tasks but one day it just decides to shut down. For that reason, a lot of people stick to using plain text because it is conveniently secure and flexible.

Simplicity

Plain text is amazingly simple in a good way. You can really quickly open a plain text app, write the things that you want to write and then close it afterwards without having to deal with tagging it or saving it into a certain format somewhere deep inside your computer memory maze. It is basically an empty sheet of paper turned into a software with the blinking text icon as your writing pen. This way you will be able to create any piece of writing that you want without having to spend a lot of time on doing so. Creating a to-do list on an application may actually take a while, because you will have to select its color label, tags, hierarchies, reminders, titles and everything.

In relation to this, a lot of people will never replace simplicity with modern features no matter how helpful it may be. A solid proof for this would be the existence of notebooks, as in the paper book which kids use to write at school or an agenda book or paper planners for that matter. The modern colorful features that apps nowadays provide can turn into a useless distraction rather than a helpful attribute in writing things down.

Victories Turns Your To-Dos into Battles, and Being Productive into Triumph

Everything is a bit more fun when you can use technology right? Our phones are with us all the time yet sometimes we utilize them to play Candy Crush more than we find ourselves using them to be productive. That’s where apps come into play helping us figure out how to live more productive lives.

Victories is an app that will turn those mundane to dos into a battle, a battle you must win. You can enter new conquests and then get them done being praised along the way for your bravery. Put everything you need to do into Victories and then check off your accomplishments as you go. It’s a great way to feel really productive and make sure you are getting the things done you need to both in your personal life and work life. It’s also a good app for students to make sure they are battling their assignments and getting them done as well.

Surrender or Make your way to Victory!

You can see the number of times you won or surrendered in the app for the week. Studies show that you are much more productive when you can actually see what you’re doing. Our competitive nature kicks in and we want to win the battle the best we can. Showing our to-dos as conquests puts a new spin on things. The best to-do apps are simple but turning them into a game makes it that much more fun, and that much more desirable to do. Who doesn’t want to fight an awesome war against laziness? The app is really simple to use and it makes it very easy to enter things in and then start getting them done immediately.

Innovative Thinking and Deadlines

Victories is an innovative to-do app and allows you to be productive. You can set deadlines and as you rack up more and more victories the app will keep track of it for you. Studies also show that most people work a lot better when they set a hard deadline for themselves. This is a way to make sure you accomplish a task in a decent amount of time. The app also helps those people who forget everything remember what they’re supposed to do. If you have a lot on your plate then you might not always remember everything, but the Victories app can make that a thing of the past. When you right it down and set reminders there’s no way you’re going to forget anything.

You have character levels and a little character on the app that should keep pushing you forward. When you rack up accomplishments you will find a sense of pride in how productive you are. While it all seems very simple, you’d be surprised what competing with yourself will accomplish. So wage war on your to-do list and feel great about getting things done with the Victories app. It’s time to get things done!