It’s definitely worth a shot if your meetings run long, and follow-up is weak

Hugo is a productivity service. Yes, another one. Maybe this one is different. Hugo aims to increase productivity by making coordination and synchronization between apps and the people who use them more seamless. At its core, Hugo syncs with a user’s calendar, so all prep, meeting notes, information, and follow-up can be traced back to a singular point. It also has live editing for multiple users. No more waiting for someone to send you the meeting notes or that guy’s number — it’s all there. Hugo integrates with other popular software like Asana, Slack, Zoom, and G Suite. It’s free for up to ten users and jumps to $6 a month per user for groups up to 25; after that you gotta make a sales call. It’s definitely worth a shot if your meetings run long, and follow-up is weak.

Losers 

Facebook. It’s old news already, but whew, that was a doozy. First the whistleblower, then the six-hour shutdown of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, followed by the studies revealing the effects of Instagram on teens, Facebook took a beating. Mark Zuckerberg lost $7 billion in wealth in one day! It sounds like a lot, but remember that he was still worth $121 billion when the day ended.

Winners 

Telegram gained 70 million new users when everything went down. Telegram feels a lot like WhatsApp but has ridiculous reactive emojis — beware of those.

Other winners that day were our collective attention. We’ve since lost it again and are not likely to find it soon.

Random Tips and Hacks that will make you happy and your life easier

BlockSite — We all have our weaknesses: social media or shopping or news sites. These vices wreak havoc on our focus and productivity at work. Even if you’re not looking to achieve total abstinence, self-control might too often be having an off day. BlockSite is a Chrome extension that enables you to block sites on a schedule. Choose the sites and the times you don’t want to be able to access them, and set it and forget it. (Try visiting that site during blocked hours and you’ll get the most fun messages blocking you.)

Record Yourself in Canva — This is not just for “content creators” or influencers. Adding this feature onto the already insane package that is Canva can take your pitch deck, your work feedback, and your explanations to the next level. It’s great even if you just want a more personal touch in a message.

To access this feature, use a social-media oriented template. Choose upload from the menu along the left side, and you’ll see a button labeled “Record Yourself.” Click that and smile, you’re on camera!

Easily Send File Links — You don’t have to memorize the details of the file location so you can tell your coworker where to find it. Once you have an email open, find the file yourself. Right click, hold down, and drag the file into the email. A new window will pop up — choose “create hyperlink.” Ta-da! Email that link to your coworker or boss, and they can just click and go. No more extra downloads and searching through files folders until you find the exact right one.

Cheaters Never Prosper

Or maybe they prosper at first but then fall flat on their faces. Such is the case for Snopes, the fact-checking resource that is the self-proclaimed arbiter of truth on the Internet, as well as Ozy Media, a media company with several podcasts, TV programs, email newsletter, and a popular festival.

Quote:

“I’m sorry to all my friends, but we’re not all going back,” Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce said in an interview at the Code Conference. He’s talking about going back to the office. Salesforce built multiple buildings and headquarters for their over 56,000 employees a few years prior to the pandemic, but most of them will not return, and Benioff is okay with that. Probably because Slack, which Salesforce acquired in July for $27.7 billion, continues to gain many new users as long as people are not back at the office. Benioff expects 50%-60% of Salesforce employees to continue to work from home even once the pandemic is over.

Mute Browser Tabs — You know how some sites are prone to break out into song and dance when they’re not even displayed, and you’re groaning, scrambling to find which tab is making the noise. Fear not, you can simply mute a tab, and it’ll go silent and not make trouble in the first place (looking at you, news sites with videos that play automatically and YouTube Autoplay). For Chrome, just go to the top of the page where the tab is, right click, and the last option in the second grouping is “mute site.” Click on that. You’re welcome.

In a similar story, Ozy Media was seeking a $40 million investment from Goldman Sachs, but after a bizarre sequence of events (including one executive impersonating another executive on a conference call), it was revealed that the company has been inflating its audience numbers for years, essentially lying to advertisers and investors — with significant financial consequences. The result: The company is shutting down, leaving its many employees unemployed and with a black mark for working there, though the fraud had nothing to do with journalistic integrity (unlike Snopes).

Snopes’s CEO and cofounder David Mikkelson was found to have plagiarized over 60 articles, hiding behind pseudonyms and the like. He still is the CEO but no longer has the right to publish content. The company has since pulled all the plagiarized material and redirected readers to the original source. It seems his intent was to increase readership and drive traffic to the site with highly relevant news. The company itself is in financial trouble and recently asked its readers for money.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 883)