ThisLife: Do We Really Need More Photo-Sharing Options?

The reasons why we desperately need photo-hosting and sharing services can’t ever be disputed, that’s for sure. It’s not even about our natural desire to boast about our photographer talents all around the Web among people we know and those, who aren’t that lucky yet. Just picture the day when you’re phone suddenly deletes all photos or videos, which you’ve taken on it. It’s scary, isn’t it? Well, this is what photo-sharing services are about – to make your life simpler and calmer, at least as far as the safety of your digital masterpieces is concerned.

Logically, there have been introduced a lot of photo-hosting and sharing resources, like Tumblr or Flickr, not to mention Instagram (now owned by FB), which already have millions of users and devoted fans all over the world. Yet strangely, the new players on the market are continuously introduced to the public even now, though the current selection is more, than sufficient.

One of the mentioned services, for instance, is known to be called ThisLife and is specifically aimed at sharing photos and videos among the family members. In this respect, whereas it’s totally understandable, why the authors have launched it (to take the barely occupied market niche and earn some money), it’s still pretty hard to grasp, why ThisLife would attract the attention of millions.

It’d be, certainly, inappropriate to say that the service is 100% useless, as it features well-designed photo-album layout and the overall UI is rather convenient in usage. Yet, is it special? That’s the question. Likewise as its ancestors, ThisLife enables group sharing of photos, different view modes and the opportunity to upload versatile family videos as well. At the same time, the storage space for loads of supposedly funny stuff is limited, so you will have to pay to share more, than 1000 photos (that is use more than 5GB of space).

Moreover, there can also be a sort of hidden disadvantage both in ThisLife and the similar small or mid-sized photo-sharing services – data security. Even if you can believe in the fact that your password is never uncovered (as it happened with Dropbox users), who can guarantee that your photos won’t disappear, when the service becomes clearly unprofitable and is shut down?

Of course, we all decide for ourselves, which photo-hosting to use, and which not to. As for me, I belong to people, who prefer keeping all files at one hand, not remember numerous passwords. For those, like me, separate photo-sharing sites aren’t needed, especially if they use 4shared or any other file storage for saving and sharing data. 

Stay cool)

Andy

Ubokia & Its Reverse Sales – Possible Advantages

It’s been a tradition both in real-time and online retail industries to use the well-known working scheme in the business: a potential buyer checks the diversity of supply and selects the desirable goods. As for now, either because of the changed consumers’ preferences, or the growing competition on the market, there have already been presented fresh services with the so to say “reversed focus”.

Aiming to satisfy customers’ tastes and wishes to the fullest, an array of brand-new online retail services are offering their clients to post info about the goods they need and let the sellers contact them themselves. In this respect, one of the major rivals is recognized to be Ubokia, offering to simplify the search for a desirable product.

The essence of Ubokia is crystal clear: as a user, you get an opportunity to inform the sellers of what you wish to purchase by posting your WANTS, yet this is far not the only option to select from. It’s also possible to browse what other people’s wish to buy, or even sell something.

Moreover, the essential advantages of Ubokia lie in users’ ability to define versatile details, like the group of goods or the needed location, while browsing others’ WANTS, which makes the purchasing process even simpler.

For what it takes, Ubokia is seemingly a beneficial service for people, who are willing to purchase online, but aren’t willing to surf for the best offer for a long time. At the same time, it’s rather questionable, whether the site will become a global passion, as many of us don’t have enough time to wait, until the sellers send their offers.

As for the general outlook at the ideas, which Ubokia uses, these are, undoubtedly, advantageous both for buyers and sellers. No wonder that the similar ones have already been implemented in a large number of services, like social media sites, for instance. In particular, Facebook usually sends friend or article suggestions, whereas Twitter allows users to browse through trending topics at the site. Likewise, 4shared file storage enables you to check the top searches in various categories, so that you can find what you need easier.

Thus, all we can say now is: good luck, Ubokia, and thanks for your broad vision.

Stay cool)

Andy

United Online Buys SchoolFeed – Social Networks Prove Alive

Ok, if to be completely honest, I consider myself as one of the skeptics, who can’t wait for the moment of social networking sites’ decay. Yet, the current deals on the IT market somehow prove the pessimistic forecasts wrong.

It has already become clear that the populatity of SM monsters, like Facebook, for instance, won’t deteriorate at least in the nearest five years. Both the company’s purchases of Instagram & Glancee and the development of segmented FB apps for photos, videos, and so on, have sustained its top-position in the eyes of potential partners and users.

Moreover, it has recently become crystal clear that smaller social networks, which are likely to focus on specific audience, have also got their more or less prosperous future. In particular, the popular service SchoolFeed, offering users to browse through numerous uploaded yearbooks and find former school friends,  has been just bought by a large IT enterprise United Online (the parent company of Classmates and other services).

Why this deal is rather significant in terms of the social media perspectives is that United Online has apparently got plans for uniting the mentioned SchoolFeed with their own service Classmates to create one powerful social network out of two. Its functionality will certainly expand from simple browsing through versatile yearbooks or school alumni and will, perhaps, enable to back up the found friends’ photos somewhere else in the cloud, not just within users’ profiles.

Of course, it’s hard to predict, whether such function will really be implemented, but if it is, my personal preferences would go to 4shared. First of all, I’ve already got my account there and, secondly, because the amount of provided space and a wide range of disposible features are totally striking.

Well, we’ll see.

Stay cool)

Andy

Will HR Industry Get Smarter with Smarterer?

Since hiring the best personnel is recognized to be one of the most important factors, if you wish to succeed in your business, no matter what industry you’re working in, various HR-focused services have also become highly popular on the market.

Most of these, like Jobvite, which simplifies the hiring process using referrals, social networks and even e-mails to invite a desirable talented candidate to a job interview, are oriented on finding the very best employees for the company, so that one would invest all his/her talent, creativity and efforts to make the enterprise prosper.

Other services, on the contrary, help acknowledge all possible pros and cons of the company that is going to offer you a job, or has already done that. Considering your future employer’s intentions to use all your creativity and efforts, as it’s been mentioned above, it would be great to find out, what you will gain instead (e.g. social bonuses, vacation, flexible working schedule or else). The most famous one among these is, undoubtedly, GlassDoor that helps you find out all about the “real company face”.

Moreover, there has recently been introduced one more HR-focused service, which would be potentially advantageous both to employers and employees, as far as its authors are sure of, - Smarterer.

For what is worth, Smarterer is really unique to a considerable extent, much because it uses a somewhat different approach, moving away from resumes, social media profiles and referrals to the professional skill tests as one of the most essential aspects in hiring a person.

One the one hand, such an innovative vision might be useful for HR managers, who are constantly looking for the fastest and the simplest ways to hunt the best of the best. Nonetheless, there are also quite a lot of drawbacks in Smarterer service. To start with, the skill quizzes presuppose timing for each question, so if you need do some thinking over the right answer, your chances to fail are rather high. Besides, the quizzes contain a limited number of questions, so even if you don’t know the answers to all of them, it can’t really prove the fact that you’re not a pro in the subject. Likewise, you can always guess them, so the quiz doesn’t fully show any of your skills.

Anyhow, it would be wrong to say that Smarterer is totally useless. You can check your skills at least just for yourself. At least, I’ve even saved several of screens with my results at my account at 4shared already to boast about how good I am, perhaps, in future. Fortunately, there’s still much space from 15 free 15GB left.

Stay cool)

Andy