Wuzzuf Secures Egypt’s Largest Funding Round, Led By European VCs
Great job! Check out Wuzzuf, a happening online recruitment job site in Egypt. It just got funded by 2 VCs based in Sweden and the UK, check it out!
Do startup names matter?
Great read on choosing a name for your startup!
On Coffitivity and Pomodoro Cycles
Coffitivity
It’s now been more than 3 years since I started working and/or studying in random coffee shops around town, mainly Espresso House in Stockholm. I don’t mean to advertise at all but it’s really one of those places that provide a cool environment for productive or social purposes. Coffee is great, free WiFi and… wait for it… great ambient mood for creativity. Turns out, this is a thing proven by science.
During the daily Interwebz surf routine yesterday, I stumbled upon an article explaining how to simulate a fake coffee shop ambient vibe to “boost your creative juices”. As the internet is what is, my curiosity led me deeper into that topic and it turns out there’s an 88-page, really boring, academic paper that supports the fact that people are more productive and creative in coffee shops, specifically with “a moderate (70 dB) versus low (50 dB) level of ambient noise enhances performance on creative tasks”.
This was kind of amazing to me since it would explain my conscious, albeit illogical, decisions to work in coffee shops despite it being sometimes being too crowded and/or having babies screaming their lungs out.. Subconsciously, my brain was telling me that this is better than a silent environment!
If you’re already thinking “this could be a good opportu…” there’s an app for that and it’s called Coffitivity.Â
What the app does is simulate a fake “coffee shop” ambient environment through your speakers and into your head to give you that boost for whatever you’re doing. If someone had proposed that idea to me before, I would never have taken it seriously. The fact that it’s up, running and backed by science would have made me an idiot for thinking that. The name is creative, catchy and descriptive (along the same lines as Coffice ) and made me wish I had come up with this idea myself.
It’s available for iOS and Android devices.
Pomodoro Cycles
An interesting technique is the Pomodoro technique.
It’s basically a very simple time management technique that provides a work-break cycle that, quite frankly, is impossible not to like. Your work is cut out into chunks with short breaks (sounds good already?) and at the end of it, you get to take a longer break.
The idea is that you work for 25 minutes, take a 5-minute break, wash, rinse, repeat two more times and finally work for another 25 minutes and take a 15-minute (or longer) break.
Advantages of tomato-ing:
– Manage big, ugly tasks in easy-to-manage 25m chunks of time.
– Provides structure to ambiguous tasks.
– Psychological reward: Makes you sit your ass down and actually work by making you look forward to your break.
Disadvantage: makes you hungry by constantly reminding you of tomatoes (Don’t believe me?)
I Recommend:
– Trying to work in coffee shops that are half empty and not too loud, if you haven’t before. Try several times and see if that works for you before deciding.
– Trying the Pomodoro cycle with small tasks and expanding to bigger ones if it does it for you.
– If both are appealing, combine them and enjoy the results!
Hope you enjoyed the post. I wrote it in a coffee shop during 2 cycles and planning to stay here a while 🙂
Facebook is now two entirely different businesses
Very good read! Facebook is one of those intangible giants that will have a say, for better or worse, about our future.
Why doesn’t the WhatsApp web browser version work for iOS users?
iOS and Apple MAJOR FAIL
The popular international messaging app WhatsApp has unveiled a web browser-based version of its service. In a blog post, the company announced that millions of WhatsApp users will now be able to chat on browsers (and their computers!) instead of just their mobile apps.
“Millions of” being the operative word. Millions of users aren’t “all users.” According to the logos on the desktop client homepage, the web application is only compatible with WhatsApp user accounts from Android, Windows and weirdly enough, Blackberry. A WhatsApp spokesperson later told me that Nokia S60 is also in the list.
For now iPhone owners won’t have access to WhatsApp’s desktop client. The spokesperson said it’s not available on iOS because “Apple has no background multi-tasking and no proper push technology.  So it is a bad user experience on iOS.” WhatsApp told The Verge that an iOS compatible version is coming, but “the timeframe is unclear.”
Furthermore, it…
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Golden Globes 2015: See All the Winners
Here are all the nominees and winners of the 2015 Golden Globes, as posted on TIME.
Enjoy!
The Avengers: Age of Ultron (Official Trailer)
Estaba anunciado para el próximo martes, pero a veces la red nos sorprenden. Ahora se filtró el tráiler de The Avengers: Age of Ultron. El mismo que fue exhibido en la pasada Comic-Con de San Diego, asà es que si leyeron sus descripciones, ya saben lo que se viene.
Los Vengadores se reĂşnen, una iniciativa de Tony Stark sale muy mala y todo el mundo paga las consecuencias de ello. Porque una inteligencia artificial llega a la conclusiĂłn de que para salvar al mundo, los humanos deben morir. Chan, chan, chan.
vĂa Google Drive
Fotos vĂa RopeOfSillicon
6 myths of social sharing (infographic)
Very interesting facts! I always believed half of those, although I fell for the other half 🙂
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