Davemichels

The Royal Bank of Scotland is making Facebook at Work, the latest enterprise product from a company known for its consumer offerings, available to more than 100,000 employees. 

If you've never heard of Facebook at Work, don't worry. Facebook is trialing the software, which competes against Slack (a buzzy messaging client for teams), email, Microsoft's Yammer (a Skype-like messaging client) and others, on a small number of companies before making it available to everyone.

Facebook for Work takes what is good about Facebook — messaging, the News Feed, groups, and so on — and takes it to the workplace. A user signs in with a newly created account and can "follow" co-workers. This is a new take on enterprise communication apps which usually focus around dull messaging functions. 

RBS is the largest client to trial the service with over 500 employees currently using it at work every day.

Kevin Hanley, head of design at RBS, told Business Insider why the company is using Facebook at Work over more traditional technologies, such as email, and buzzy companies, such as Slack. 

"I think Facebook lets us communicate, discuss and solve problems that other solutions, such as email, simply can’t," he said. "We love the fact that Facebook at Work gives you the ability to opt-in to forums and groups you want to be part of rather than being on the receiving end of email distribution lists that you want to opt out of." 

Facebook has courted very little media attention for its Work software, choosing instead to roll it out to the people who will ultimately use it everyday. 

Business Insider asked Hanley how Facebook at Work actually works. "You would almost struggle to tell the difference between Facebook at Work and at Home," he said. "That is a very specific intent. What you would recognise as Facebook in your personal life is what you’d recognise at work." 

Facebook at Work is made up of the same features as Facebook with a News Feed, comments, likes, groups, a messaging app, and notifications. The one key difference, according to Andrew Horne, a spokesperson for RBS, is that you "follow" rather than "friend" people.

According to RBS, 90% of employees who tried Facebook at Work remain active on a monthly basis which, for a non-compulsory piece of software, is impressive. Going forward, RBS is going to roll-out Facebook at Work by encouraging users to want it, rather than forcing it on them. 

"I don’t like the word compulsory," said Hanley. "In an ideal world [Facebook at Work] becomes the de facto way of engaging and communicating. It’s critical mass rather than compulsory."  

Users who sign up for Facebook at Work experience no overlap between their personal and professional accounts, according to Hanley. "As I toggle between my personal and corporate account, it looks reassuring consistent" but there is no content being shared.

This consistency is why RBS likes Facebook at Work. Instead of the lengthy process of teaching employees how to use a new piece of software, anyone who knows how to use Facebook can figure out how to use Facebook at Work.

Some people do not already use Facebook, of course, and RBS will train anyone who wants to learn. "We will need to do some training and familiarise some of those who don’t know the tool," Hanley said. 

Using Facebook at Work also has the advantage of removing the hierarchy of email chains. "Email, in our experience, is hierarchical," said Hanley. "It tends to be used for broadcasting, for cascading information [and isn't] for discussion or feedback."

"We are surprised and delighted that, when provided with a tool which changes that dynamic, people are choosing to tap into things [they wouldn't have with email]. Facebook at Work allows people to naturally come together into groups [in] a non-hierarchical way. This is the reasons why we’re excited."  

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NOW WATCH: Facebook and Instagram won’t let you mention or post links from this competitor

Being able to store all your videos, photos, and other bulky files in the cloud is a beautiful thing. It lets you have a small (or even practically nonexistent) hard drive, and access you files from wherever you happen to be.

This Black Friday, Amazon has rolled out a monster deal on its unlimited cloud storage option. Just today, you'll be able to buy unlimited cloud storage for a year for only $5 (regularly $60). 

You'll also be able to unlimited photo storage for $1 (regularly $12), though it should be noted that if you have Amazon Prime, you already have this — you might just not know.

Amazon is a leader in the cloud storage space, so figuring out what to do with your files when the year is up isn't a major concern. And if Amazon's past behavior is any indication, the company will keep having similar deals in the future.

Get the deal here, and check out Business Insider's picks for the best Black Friday deals here.

SEE ALSO: Amazon has slashed its best gadgets to their cheapest prices ever for Black Friday

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NOW WATCH: Google's self-driving car has a huge problem

Slack, the popular workplace messaging app, is preparing for an IPO. 

Stewart Butterfield, Slack's founder and CEO, said in an interview with The Australian Business Review that the company recently kicked off an "IPO readiness" program. The idea, Butterfield said, is for Slack to have the option to go public in the future and to be prepared when the time is right.

"We’ve done our first external audit and we’ve put in place a lot of controls and security practices. There’s a lot of predictability that needs to be evident in the business, so we’re spending a lot on analysis and data infrastructure," he said in the interview. 

Butterfield noted however that the "absolute earliest" Slack could go public, if everything came together right, would be 18 months from now. 

The tech IPO market has been very slow this year, with far fewer offerings than usual. But recent high-profile IPOs of digital payments company Square and Match Group, the parent company of the popular Tinder dating app, may have sparked renewed interest in IPOs.

Atlassian, a popular-enterprise software company that competes with Slack in certain areas, also recently filed paperwork to list shares publicly — and Butterfield said in the interview that he would be paying close attention to Atlassian IPO, noting that Atlassian's sales and growth model are similar to Slack. 

Slack has experienced rapid growth since launching its service two years ago. The company now counts 1.7 million daily users on its service and is valued at $2.8 billion by a long list of private investors including Google Ventures, TK and Accel Partners.

But it could also be facing new competition from social networking giant Facebook, which wants to launch a special version of its services for businesses next year and has begun testing a workplace messaging app. 

SEE ALSO: Slack became a $2.8 billion company in less than two years — and it's showing no signs of slowing down

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NOW WATCH: A 56-year-old man filmed a conversation with his 18-year-old self, and it's going viral

Apple Watch owners check their wrists 60 to 80 times a day, according to Fortune. The figures come from research firm Wristly, which tracks smartwatch usage. 

A breakdown in usage, provided by Mobile Life Centre, shows that the majority of Watch interactions — 20% — come from time checking, followed by notifications (17%), and workout timing (4%). Apple Watch users only read one or two emails on the device per month, according to the data. 

Apple markets its Watch as a time-saving devices which can be used to order an Uber, pay for an item, or check a flight time without using your phone, but it would seem that the majority of owners use it to check the time and notifications rather than using apps.

The Apple Watch's App Store has over 10,000 apps, all of which need an iPhone counterpart to work. 

Analysts predict that Apple is shipping one million Watches a month. The device starts at £299 ($349) but has models that go up to £13,500.

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NOW WATCH: This 28 year old is the most right-swiped man in New Jersey on Tinder

Slack, the $2.8 billion business messaging app, has launched its first ad campaign.

Adweek reports that a billboard campaign is launching in four US cities: Cleveland, Charlotte, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee.

The ads will also extend globally in digital and print.

The campaign, created by creative agency Redpepper, is designed to show the child-like euphoria people feel when they use Slack to become more productive at work.

Brad Morris, Slack marketing director, told Adweek: "If you run a large company, it's almost impossible to make a change that improves productivity 30 percent—so that kind of result can be transformational. We wanted the campaign to express the very real benefits of Slack to people who have never heard about us, while also addressing the aspects of working life that everyone can relate to in a playful way that was in keeping with our brand."

SEE ALSO: Domino's has launched a physical button you push to order pizza

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NOW WATCH: Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Slack and Flickr, on two beliefs that have brought him the greatest success in life

Nokia hasn't been making its own phones since early 2014 when Microsoft acquired the Devices and Services part of its business for $7.2 billion (£4.7 billion). 

Earlier this year, Nokia confirmed that it would be returning to the smartphone market in 2016 and here's a render that shows what the device could look like: 

Little is known about the C1 besides the render above. The device appears to be running Android (in the foreground) and Windows 10 Mobile (in the background). It's unclear if Nokia is making two versions of the phone — one with Android, one with Windows — or one phone that runs both. Nokia has previously made an Android phone that looked like a Windows phone. 

Business Insider has reached out to Nokia to confirm more details about the device. We will update the post when we hear back. 

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NOW WATCH: A model who uses social media for good explains what the viral 19-year-old got wrong about the internet

Credit Karma has exploded in popularity because of one core feature: it gives you two free real credit scores, and tells you the exact factors that go into them.

This means that instead of just saying your credit score is 700, it tells you how you scored on things like payment history, age of credit history, credit card utilization (how much of your credit limit you spend each month), and number credit inquiries (how man people are checking your credit).

Credit Karma also tells you how much each of these six factors it looks at affects your score, and how you rank next to your peers.

In short, Credit Karma is valuable because it provides a detailed way to understand where you are with your credit score, and the ways you can improve.

Why is your credit score useful? Because it's what determines whether you'll get approved for a new credit card, apartment lease, car or house loan, or any other type of credit.

But telling you your credit score isn't all Credit Karma does. Here's what it's like using Credit Karma, the site that wants to democratize personal finance.

SEE ALSO: How to use Robinhood, the popular app that lets you trade stocks without paying any fees

This is what the homepage of Credit Karma looks like. When you're creating an account, make sure your password is secure, especially if you plan to link your accounts to get more details by tracking your spending.

This is the basic dashboard showing the two credit scores Credit Karma gives you: TransUnion and Equifax. Credit Karma gives you access to two out of the three major credit reporting companies for free. First let's explore "Credit Factors," the most useful part of Credit Karma.

This section shows you all the factors that affect your credit score, and how well you are doing. This is the most powerful tool Credit Karma has to help you improve your credit over time.

When he was 18 years old in 1977, Peter "Stoney" Emshwiller filmed half of an interview with himself. He always planned on finishing the interview when he was older. 

As the years passed, Emshwiller avoided going back and looking at the old footage, not wanting to face his younger self until he was A) completely successful or B) completely unsuccessful. 

It wasn't until a recent health scare that Emshwiller was compelled to answer his younger self's questions. At the age of 56, about 38 years after he'd filmed half of the interview, he finally revisited the old footage.

He realized that success is not black and white, and that this was the lesson he wished to impart upon his younger, more naive self. 

Now, Emshwiller is working to complete the project, titled "Later That Same Life." He created a sizzle reel, which has been viewed almost one million times on YouTube. 

He was astounded by the number of views, but he wasn't prepared for the "trolls," he told INSIDER. However, the amount of positive feedback, he says, has balanced out the negativity and vitriol. 

He is turning his sizzle reel into a full-blown feature film. Through crowdfunding site Rockethub, and in partnership with Ovation TV and Creative Studio, he's been able to raise more than enough money to fund the feature. In fact, he's exceeded his fundraising goal by 336%. 

The feature film won't be one long interview, he told INSIDER. It will have a full narrative arc that's genuine and emotional all the way through. He says it's going to be "naked and brutally honest," but not without laughs. 

We can't wait until it's out. 

Watch Emshwiller's sizzle reel here and check out his website. 

Story and video by Ben Nigh. 

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Earlier this week, Google announced a new experiment that lets Android users "stream" a select handful of apps through mobile search without downloading them. 

Content from the nine apps that Google partnered with will now show up in mobile-search results, even if it doesn't exist on the company's website, and users will be able to click a "stream" button to get the full app experience without installing anything. 

For example, if you search for "Hotels in Chicago," Google will now be able to pull app-only content from HotelTonight, and then let you find a hotel and book it without ever downloading the actual app.

Here's how that process would look:

Google makes this possible by letting the apps run remotely on virtual machines through its cloud platform. (You'll need to be connected to Wi-Fi for the process to work.)

One of the engineers who worked on the feature — long-time Googler Lan Liu — gushed about the roll-out on Google+: "Very proud that our moonshot project came out of fantasy into reality :)"

While app-streaming might not have the same sexiness as some of Google's other moonshots, like self-driving cars or internet-bearing balloons, Liu isn't too off base: The feature could have dramatic impact for users, developers, and Google itself moving forward.

Saving users time and space ...

App-streaming could help fix some of the frustrations of mobile search.

When you search for something, you want to know that you're getting the best results as quickly as possible.

But the growing dominance of mobile means that the best content to fulfill your query might be inside an app. That's why Google has spent the last two years convincing app makers to "index" their content to allow it to be searchable by its algorithms in a process called "deep linking."

Until this week, Google could only turn up information that also lived on a website.

That meant that you were potentially missing out on the best results, like a lower-priced hotel room, because that information was locked away inside an app, like HotelTonight's, and Google didn't know about it.

Or, you were starting your search on HotelTonight or another app, and missing the opportunity to compare (while Google was missing out on your query, which it dislikes). 

But now that Google will show app-only content in search, you'll be more likely to get better results since it can talk to both the apps and the websites. And with streaming, you won't be limited to the "mobile-friendly" version of a service's website, which could lack features. Instead, you'll get the full experience as if you were really using their app, without the commitment or smartphone space required to download.

Then, only if you have a great test experience with the app and think you'll actually use it again will you have to dedicate your phone's precious megabytes to downloading it. 

Although Google will only show app-only content and stream a handful of properties like The Weather Channel or The New York Subway apps for now, it will likely bring more services on board, which could mean that you'll have to download fewer apps, and avoid space-hogs that you only planned on using once.  

Ultimately, streaming apps could save valuable space while ensuring that you're actually getting the best search results as quickly as possible. 

... Especially in emerging markets 

In the US, most of the content in apps does actually exist on the desktop web as well.

The same isn't true in emerging markets like India, however, where most people have only ever accessed the internet from their phones. Many companies there focus solely on their app presence, so there's much more app-only content. 

"Google needs to be able to provide an answer there," director of mobile search told Marketing Land's Danny Sullivan.  

App-streaming would also allow people with feature phones that can access a browser but not download apps to still get an in-app experience. 

More exposure for developers 

Although it sounds counterintuitive that it could be good for developers to have fewer people downloading their apps, these new features will likely bring them more exposure overall and get users over the first hurdle of testing out their service.

For example, if you didn't see Hotel Tonight's app-only content appearing in search results, you may never know about the service at all. And if you have to download the app before testing it, you may be more likely to use a desktop service like Kayak. 

It gives these services a way to engage with users they otherwise would not have had the chance to, so it's a win almost regardless if they get an install as a result.

Keeping Google search relevant on mobile 

Google hopes that showing app-only content in search results and letting users view the info in their mobile browser without downloading the app will help its search engine remain users' main gateway to online content in the era of smartphones.

Google recently announced that more than half of its search queries come from mobile. But that stat crashes into another one: That people spend most of their time on smartphones within specific apps — so much that app usage now represents 86% of time spent on mobile, according to analytic company Flurry.

Google wants users to keep searching for "best hotels in Chicago" or "Nikon camera" through its engine rather than starting on HotelTonight or Amazon, because that allows it to sell ads against those searches. 

If users realize that they can access in-app content through search, they're more likely to keep using Google search on their smartphones. Which, of course, protects Google's mobile-ad revenue. 

SEE ALSO: YouTube is opening its wallet to protect video creators from legal threats

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NOW WATCH: 5 clever iPhone tricks only power users know about

Popular enterprise chat app Slack experienced technical difficulties on Monday, and aimless office workers took to Twitter.

On Monday, work chat app Slack experienced a connectivity outage. Twitter, though, was up and running:

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The next time you're in a Kmart, OfficeMax, Wegman's, Safeway, or another major retail chain, take a minute to peer at the gift cards by the register.

Some might be for stock.

Since early October, California-based company Stockpile has offered physical gift cards in stores to present loved ones with $25, $50, or $100 of stock ownership.

"We're making it easy and affordable for anybody to give, get, and own stock in their favorite companies," says Avi Lele, Stockpile's cofounder and CEO.

Here's how it works: You spot a Stockpile gift card at the store (or choose a virtual version online), and buy a card that's worth $50 of Apple stock for your niece's graduation. She goes online, creates an account by entering basic information including her date of birth and Social Security number, and types in a code from the card to redeem her stock.

If Apple closes that day worth $100 a share, she'll own half a share of Apple stock, which she can watch rise and fall through Stockpile's online interface. If for some reason she decides she doesn't want Apple stock, she can select the same denomination of stock in another of the 1,000 investments Stockpile offers, including a gold or market index ETF.

If she's uninterested in having a stake in the market, she can trade it for an old-school retailer gift card that functions like cash. If she ends up extremely interested in the market, she can later start buying and selling stocks through the interface for 99 cents per trade. She doesn't pay anything for Stockpile to simply hold her investments.

A $25 physical card costs you $29.95, a $50 card costs $56.95, and a $100 card costs $107.95.

A virtual card that you buy online instead — they're available up to $1,000 — costs the value of the gift card (in this example, $50) plus a $2.99 fee and 3% of the card's value: $54.49.

"It's something that's never been done before," Lele explains. "You can walk in and buy a card for stock like any other gift card you could have purchased in the past. Our whole mission here is to make investing accessible to anyone. Right now it's too expensive, and too complicated, to give someone else stock."

Lele, his cofounder Sanj Kulkarni, and their team built their own fractional share brokerage from scratch, and worked closely with regulatory bodies FINRA and the SEC to remove and amend steps to the existing process of gifting stocks.

Traditionally, to give stock, both the gifter and recipient must have an account with the brokerage, and to open that account and buy the stock in the first place, the gifter has to fill out a stack of paperwork that takes a few days to be approved.

"Other brokerages ask for everything, hoping you might do more with them later on," Lele explains. "We do the opposite — we only ask for what we really need." Once the recipient enters her basic information, she'll be verified through the system and approved immediately, barring any issues with her identity.

Stockpile, which offered online gift cards for about a year before getting regulatory clearance to sell them in stores, doesn't share how many cards it's sold total. Lele does share that they've noticed two buying patterns they didn't expect: Instead of buying just one card at a time, people are buying them "by the fistful" — presumably because they don't have just one child or grandchild or friend to gift at a time — and they're buying them for themselves.

Federal regulations say that "closed-loop" gift cards, those that are offered and redeemed only by a single company, cannot exceed $2,000, so Stockpile capped its offerings at $1,000 per card (digital cards hold more value than physical cards) to be safe. That doesn't mean you can't buy more than one, if you intend to gift more than that.

Note though, "If we see you buy five cards and the circumstances are weird, like you're buying at 2 a.m., all of your cards are going to the same person and it happens repeatedly, or the recipient immediately sells and pulls out the money as cash, we step in because we have a responsibility as a financial institution to make sure that people aren't using them for bad purposes like money laundering," Lele says. "We have a sophisticated risk detection system in place that can discriminate between good and bad activity."

Doesn't this little gift card have the potential to cause a major tax headache? Stockpile has thought of that. The gifter's taxes are completely unaffected, as they're simply buying a gift card with prepaid value. When the recipient redeems the stock, his or her taxes are also unaffected until they sell it or receive a pro-rated dividend. The site keeps track of the activity and at the end of the year, presents the investor with a pre-printed, filled-out 1099 form that can be printed and included in his tax filings.

"It's no secret you need to get started building wealth early, but when you're young, it's hard to get started investing," Lele says. "I had to wait until I was 30. Here, you can start as a high school student. You can put yourself on the road to financial empowerment early on and build a massive amount of wealth on the way. You have time on your side."

Lele says the cards are largely given by people over age 30 to people under age 30. "Normally if you're under 18 you sign up for a custodial account with mom or dad, and they hold the keys to the account. With my kids, for example, I'd have the login and my kids barely know the accounts exist. We allow the kid to have their own separate login so they can come in any time they want to see their stuff."

Kids can log in whenever they want, but the account's custodian gets an alert about any activity. "Once you have the account, if you're a kid, you can place trades that your parents approve or decline," Lele explains. "I approve or deny, but as far as kids can tell, they're placing a trade right to the market." Stockpile's chief commercial officer Dan Schatt even sends his kids allowance through the site.

"Also, it starts a conversation," Lele, a father of two, says. "My kids have started owning Apple and Disney and Tesla, and they're starting to pick up the paper to check out their companies. I never thought they'd ever open the business section of the New York Times."

SEE ALSO:  I was earning $500,000 a year at 30: Here are the 10 best pieces of advice I can give you about money

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NOW WATCH: This woman got a prime seat at a Trump rally, and spent the whole time reading a book about racism

Google may have a wild sense of humor when it comes to the silly Easter Eggs it hides inside many of its products, but you won't find its virtual assistant joking around. 

Google Now, the company's equivalent to Apple's Siri or Microsoft's Cortana, purposely avoids having any sort of personality, search executive Amit Singhal told Time's Victor Luckerson. 

Singhal says that incorporating humor into voice assistants hints at artificial intelligence capabilities that just don't exist yet. He believes that it misleads users.

"I’m not saying personality shouldn’t come, but the science to get that right doesn’t fully exist," he says. 

He then dropped a bit of a burn on Apple's Siri, which has a reputation for providing funny responses to questions like "Do you believe in God?" or "Do you have a boyfriend?"

"You’ve seen what happens in real life," he says. "That is interesting for a day or two, but then it kind of…loses its charm, let’s say." 

Singhal says that improving natural language processing is one of the big challenges to improving Now and Now On Tap — Google's companion service for Android phones which will scan users' screens to provide even more useful info. The better the virtual assistant can understand the meaning of a complex string of words, the better it can provide helpful answers. 

To keep its search relevant in a world where people are increasingly looking for new, non-desktop ways to get information, Google sees expanding Now into more products that you use every day, like TVs or your refrigerator. 

Read the rest of the interesting Time piece here. 

SEE ALSO: A 12-year-old beat out 16,000 other people to win a Google contest — 7 years later, she’s a successful artist

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NOW WATCH: Google's self-driving car has a huge problem

Guest author Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council.

A strong remote workforce is the secret weapon of many of today's successful startups. Rather than relying only on people who live near the office—often in the most expensive markets—they hire the best talent from around the world to further their mission. 

Some companies go for an all-remote approach, which brings its own challenges. Others have team members working in a central location alongside remote workers. It can be a special challenge to manage both a remote and an in-house team.

With that in mind, I asked 11 business owners from YEC to share their own idea—from basic communication strategies to specific working processes—for managing remote workers.

Communicate Online

The biggest challenge with managing remote workers is decreased communication. This stems from the fact that they are not working in the same office and most likely have different office hours. To counter this, our team meets for 15 minutes every morning on Slack to review what we've worked on the day before, what we're tackling today and any issues that have come up along the way. Communication is key, and a "face-to-face" every morning ensures that we're all on the same page. —Jessica Oralkan, Collecteurs

Have Daily Phone Calls

In the beginning, we used all the fancy collaboration software and relied on digital communication for remote workers. This did not work for a few reasons. First, it's easy for people to feel divided when they do not connect in a real way. An "us versus them" mentality can develop. Second, nuance and gray area are lost in digital communication. Third, you can get much more done on a call than you can by messaging each other. To fix this, we started conducted a weekly phone call, which was not enough. Now we have daily phone calls that are documented and the notes are shared with the team. This prevents time and financial loss due to miscommunication and builds camaraderie through human interaction that reinforces teamwork and a shared goal. It's old-school, but it works. —Andrew Thomas, SkyBell Video Doorbell

Hold Traction Huddles

I manage a staff that is mostly one state away, with others in more remote locations. I myself am remote. We follow the Rockefeller Habits/Traction method of management for our offsite and onsite teams: We have a daily huddle for leadership followed by a daily huddle for the team. It's a video conference meeting. In the beginning, all of our staff hated it and complained. However, I believe it's been singlehandedly responsible for our triple-digit growth. Now that it has been in place for a while, the team looks forward to it in order to get their questions answered and feedback on their projects. I cannot recommend the daily huddle more highly. —Kim Walsh-Phillips, Elite Digital Group

Don't Overmanage

Remember that your remote employees are an asset, and can sometimes provide unique skill sets that internal employees cannot. Rather than being overly stringent and attempting to manage their time and efficiency on a day-to-day basis, provide them the freedom they require as remote workers. Keep in mind that these individuals aren't in the office, by nature can't commit to the same level of focus as an employee without life's distractions living just a door away. Measure their performance, and as long as they're attending daily meetings and working as effectively as others, treat your remote employees like secret weapons. Constant monitoring of time, and keeping track of their every move, will only serve to engender stress and reduce their efficacy. —Blair Thomas, EMerchantBroker

Get Everyone on the Same Chat App

There are a lot of apps out now that are easy to manage. Just put the whole team, offsite and onsite, under the same management software, and establish a chat app that all employees must be logged into at all times. That way, everyone knows where everyone else is on tasks, and the remote employees can coordinate almost as if they were there. —Matt Doyle, Excel Builders

Cultivate Time-Zone Awareness

We have two offices on opposite coasts and multiple remote workers. Whenever we bring on new people, we make sure that we're very clear with the team about where they are located and the time zone they are working in. We also have their location stored in an employee database that anyone can look up. This makes scheduling and assigning tasks much smoother since the team knows when other members will be working. —Micah Johnson, GoFanbase

Include Remote Employees in the Fun

One of our key team members works remotely, and we spent a lot of time putting together a strategy for communicating with her on work-related issues. But eventually we noticed that she was missing out on really bonding with the team during all of the casual, fun interactions that happen around the office. We started including her in team happy hours via Skype, and we've become more intentional about make sure she's included in spontaneous celebrations that happen when we get good news. It's made a big difference in how connected she feels and makes all of our work more enjoyable. —Martina Welke, Zealyst

Use A Specific Platform

We have recently begun using a continuous-feedback and information-sharing platform called WeVue. It allows the team to actively engage with each other and with the company to solve business issues and have a bit of fun. It helps us minimize the need to hold meetings while also giving people a voice into company decisions that affect them. —Chris Cancialosi, GothamCulture

Create An Internal Blog

Use a blogging tool like BlogIn to create a blog for internal use, and then encourage everyone at your company to use it to post updates and meeting notes. The single biggest helper for us in terms of communicating information has been to have one person at every meeting take notes and then post those notes online with accompanying slides or other material. That allows people who weren't there (including other in-house team members) to get involved in the conversation. At a certain point, the amount of content available on the blog may become too much to reference, so you can create a wiki or a document to refer to the most important posts that get updated. We like BlogIn because it also has integrations for Slack, plus group and wiki functionality. —Mattan Griffel, One Month

Keep Remote Workers In The Loop

Leverage technology to make remote workers feel connected and included. We use Slack to keep people informed about news, activities and events and keep them in the loop about day-to-day life at Allocadia. We also stream companywide meetings and presentations so off-site workers can participate through video. —Katherine Berry, Allocadia

Invest In Travel

Our company has two in-person retreats a year. Although it's expensive, it's one of the best culture investments we've made. It's a two-day event, although remote employees often work from the office a couple of days on either side of the retreat, and we take a deep-dive into the company strategy, financials and major milestones. But work is only 25 percent of the retreat, with the rest of the time is carved out for small-group and company-wide games, meals and hikes. The only snag is that it sometimes feels incongruous with our otherwise lean culture to fly, room and board so many people. But the intangible connectedness that comes as a result is incredibly valuable and hard to replicate digitally. —Fan Bi, Blank Label

Photo courtesy of Zendesk

On Friday, European leaders will ask the European Commission to further regulate the use of anonymous, virtual currencies like bitcoin.

Following the brutal attacks in Paris last week, European officials are seeking new ways to prevent future acts of terrorism. One way to do this, they believe, is to make it more difficult to transfer money anonymously and to use virtual currencies like bitcoin, which can allow terrorists to operate under the radars of investigators.

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Microsoft has had many successful products — Windows, Office, Azure, and Xbox, to name a few. There are, however, many projects that never took off because company executives didn't see the potential of what they had built at the time. 

In hindsight, these products were way ahead of their time and something that Microsoft should have pursued. 

Here are nearly a dozen instances in which Microsoft saw the future and passed. 

Microsoft Portrait

When did it launch? Late 1990s

What did it do? Portrait was, as Microsoft described it, a "very low bit rate video conferencing software" that came before Skype (which Microsoft later acquired for $8.5 billion) and FaceTime. 

How big is the idea now? Very. Skype is seeing three billion minutes of calls per day, according to Microsoft. 

Terraserver

When did it launch? 1997

What did it do? Terraserver was, essentially, Google Earth before Google thought of it. You could see your house, your neighbourhood, or a place you've never been before via satellite imagery. Terraserver was killed in 1999. 

How big is the idea now? Google Maps is one of the most used apps in the world, behind only Facebook, YouTube, and other Google services. The app reportedly had over 65 million downloads in 2014. 

MSN

When did it launch? 1995 

What did it do? MSN Messenger was the first social network. Almost 10 years before Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook, Microsoft customers were IMing each other, setting a status message (which would later inspire Twitter), and various other social networky things. MSN was shuttered in 2012. 

How big is the idea now? Facebook has over 1.5 billion users while Twitter has over 400 million. Chat apps, such as WhatsApp and WeChat, have 900 million and 650 million users, respectively. 

The investment banking world's infatuation with blockchain — the technology made famous by bitcoin — continues.

5 more banks have signed up the industry-wide group looking at how to use the technology in mainstream banking. They are: BNP Paribas, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, ING Bank, Macquarie Bank, and Wells Fargo & Co.

That takes the total number of banks now backing the R3 initiative to 30. R3 is a startup in its own right, headed by a former Wall Street veteran, but it has done a hell of a job bringing all the rival banks together.

R3's CEO David Rutter told us the plan is to build the "fabric" of blockchain technology for banking and build out some use cases.

The blockchain is the software that both powers and regulates cryptocurrency bitcoin. In its most basic form, it records ownership of bitcoin — money — and transactions, one person paying another.

The software uses a distributed ledger to police the network, meaning a certain proportion of the vast network must sign off on any transaction before it can go through. The replaces the need for a "trusted middleman" to sit in between parties in a transaction.

While the original blockchain underpins bitcoin, banks are keen to create a similar network that can help it do things that settlement and international payments. More way-out possible uses include registering ownership assets and securities on the network.

R3 on Thursday also unveiled the team who will be working on bringing blockchain technology to mainstream banking:

• CTO Richard Gendal Brown, formerly the executive architect for banking innovation at IBM;
• Chief engineer James Carlyle, the former chief engineer for personal and corporate banking architecture at Barclays;
• Lead platform engineer Mike Hearn, an ex-senior software engineer at Google and one of the first bitcoin users;
• Architecture consultant Ian Grigg, inventor of the Ricardian Contract and co-inventor of triple entry accounting;
• and head of research Tim Swanson, market researcher who has authored a study on bitcoin.

Rutter says in an emailed statement: "The combined strength of our technology team and the diverse global footprint of our member banks — now including five more members — clearly differentiates us and puts us in a unique and exciting position within the distributed ledger space.

"The R3 collaborative model is the best way to quickly, efficiently and cost effectively deliver these new technologies to global financial markets. We look forward to welcoming more players to our growing team as the initiative continues to develop and evolve."

Here's the full list of the dream team of banks signed up to the R3 blockchain working group:

Bank of America, Barclays, BBVA, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, CIBC, Citi, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, ING Bank, J.P. Morgan, Macquarie Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho Financial Group, Morgan Stanley, National Australia Bank, Nordea, Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland, SEB, Societe Generale, State Street, Toronto-Dominion Bank, UBS, UniCredit, and Wells Fargo.

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Karp is one of the hardest working people in entertainment. As his new web series, Baby Talk, launches, he talks about getting it all done.

Being ridiculously crazy-busy is exhausting. We all know this, it's why vacations exist. But apparently, there's a mythic level of high-functionality that only a select few tend to reach—one so intense, it's exhausting to even witness. Take Jensen Karp, for instance. (Or try taking him, anyway; Jensen has so much going on right now, he's not likely budging.)

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Major TV networks are so scared of Netflix they are actually starting to show fewer ads. Companies like Time Warner, Fox, and Viacom have begun to reverse the trend of trying to shove as many ads in your face as possible.

The reason? They want to lure back younger viewers, who are increasingly living in a cordless future full of Netflix and Hulu, according to Bloomberg.

Time Warner, in particular, is a useful case study.

On a recent earnings call, Time Warner’s CEO pledged to chop its "ad time" in half for primetime shows, starting next year, on its channel "truTV." TruTV is a channel focused on reality programming, and marketed toward the younger viewers Time Warner is most scared of losing. This explains the drastic ad cut.

If this gambit works, Time Warner will extend the strategy to other channels like TBS, TNT and CNN, executives told Bloomberg.

“We know one of the benefits of an ecosystem like Netflix is its lack of advertising,” Howard Shimmel, a chief research officer at Time Warner, told Bloomberg. “Consumers are being trained there are places they can go to avoid ads.” Once you get used to having no ads, the ones that still exist can become more and more grating.

Broad consumer opinion does seem to have shifted away from ads, not only with the continuing popularity of ad-free streaming services, but also with the rise of "ad blockers."

Ad blockers, programs for web browsers and smartphones that remove ads from websites, have been the subject of recent controversy after Apple decided to allow them on the iPhone. Media companies have argued that this software will destroy companies who rely on ad-based revenue, while advocates have said that it will force the industry to make ads less intrusive.

But whatever their effect, they are catching on, and seem to represent how much the public hates the current model of advertising.

Time Warner, and others, seem to have felt this shift in consumer thinking around ads, and want to rescue their business model before it's too late. And while not filling TV to bursting with ads might seem like a pretty obvious business strategy to entice millennials, it’s actually the exact opposite of what the big TV companies had been doing before.

Since 2009, the average “ad time” per hour on cable has gone up from 14:27 to 15:38, according to Nielsen. Broadcast TV has seen a similar bump, going from 13:25 to 14:15 minutes per hour. And cable channels have actually sped up re-runs to get two minutes more of advertising per show. 

This strategy seems set to change. Whether it will help cable companies in their war against Netflix is less certain. Beyond not having ads, Netflix and HBO actually seem to be simply better at making shows than the major networks.

SEE ALSO: This chart shows how good Netflix is at making shows compared to TV networks

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The move toward autonomous vehicle technology is continuing its forward march worldwide.

Driverless buses are expected to hit the road in Switzerland next spring, as part of a two-year trial run that will test how well the vehicles operate in real-life traffic.

The buses will have room for 9 passengers and will be the first such test of autonomous driving technology involving public transportation in Switzerland, according to The Local.

The publication reports that a startup called BestMile — launched by two graduates of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology — will operate the vehicles under the Swiss bus company, PostBus.

The grads, Anne Koymans and Raphaël Gindrat, said in a statement that their technology allows them to "control fleets of autonomous vehicles in the same way a control tower does in an airport."

PostBus could perhaps be seen as an appropriate partner for this burgeoning era of driverless public transit.

Google, Apple Tesla and many legacy automotive brands like Mercedes-Benz and Volvo are already deep into their own development in the autonomous and semi-autonomous driving space.

Mercedes-Benz earlier this year put a version of it's driverless technnology in a production-model big-rig truck, and hit the road with it.

Volvo is hard at work on it's own autonomous driving mechanisms, which are based in part on auto-braking features currently available in its vehicle lineup. Volvo's work in this area is expected to span all types of vehicles from passenger cars to big-rigs.

Transportation authorities in Switzerland say the driverless buses are not meant to replace bus drivers entirely. "We will always need drivers," PostAuto spokeswoman Valerie Gerl told the newspaper Tribune de Geneve, "we want to ... link places which aren't currently served by public transport."

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You might soon be able to bring at least one sci-fi fantasy to life by turning your entire forearm into a virtual keyboard.

Japanese electronics powerhouse NEC is working on a system called, fittingly, “ARmKeypad,” which creates a virtual keyboard using a set of glasses and a smartwatch, The Wall Street Journal reports.

NEC told the Wall Street Journal the keyboard’s main advantage is that, unlike voice-operated devices, it can be operated in noisy environments. The company sees it being useful in healthcare, manufacturing, document management, and security.

The idea of typing on whatever surface we happen to be looking at is something long promised by science fiction films but that's been slower to move into reality. And the arm is a start.

The company plans to publicly release the ARmKeypad in 2016.

See a video of the ARmKeypad below:

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Atlassian, the Australian enterprise collaboration software vendor behind popular tools like JIRA and HipChat, has filed its S-1 document with the Securities Exchange Commission to go public on the American markets.

The company, which was reportedly valued at $3.3 billion earlier this year, does not specify how much it intends to raise in its IPO, or the exchange or stock ticker it intends shares to trade with.

The filing reveals that Atlassian, whose customers include NASA and the US Department of Treasury, has been profitable for the last ten years, and revenue grew 48.5% year-on-year in fiscal 2015 to $319.5 million.

Atlassian is the latest high-profile tech company to announce plans to float shares to the public in recent weeks, after a year in which the pipeline of tech IPOs has been slower than usual.  Last month digital payments company Square and Match Group, the owner of the popular Tinder dating app, both filed prospectuses for IPOs.

With private company valuations having swelled to new highs during the past year, the upcoming batch of tech IPOs will be closely watched as an indication of whether the growing ranks of billion-dollar "unicorns" can justify their worth in the public markets. 

Like many tech companies, Atlassian employes a dual-class stock structure that ensures that its founders maintain a tight grip on the company. And as a foreign company incorporated in London, Atlassian is subject to different accounting standards than its US peers, the company notes. 

No salesforce

Atlassian earned net income of $6.78 million in fiscal 2015, which is actually down from net income of $18.98 million in fiscal year 2014.

In the S-1 form, Atlassian says that the dip is because they're reinvesting the cash in the company, in the form of research and development, as it reinvests in making its technology more cloud-friendly and attract more users. Going forward, Atlassian warns as a risk factor that this kind of R&D investment might hurt their ability to stay profitable in future quarters.

Interestingly, as recently as last week, Atlassian claimed that it had over 50,000 customers, across its whole spectrum of products, which includes Slack competitor HipChat, GitHub competitor Atlassian BitBucket, and the JIRA project management tool.

But in this filing, the company discloses that it has 48,000 customers, defined as "organizations that have at least one active and paid license or subscription for which they paid more than $10 per month." It's possible that the gap could be made up of nonprofits and other non-paying customers, as Atlassian is a big proponent of corporate philanthropy. 

It also has 5 million monthly active users, which gives the founders a long way to go towards their stated goal of 100 million. Even so, it's a large scale compared to lots of other enterprise software vendors, especially considering the company's claim that "we have 864 customers who spent at least $50,000 in fiscal 2015."

The filing also boasts that companies like Cisco Systems, Kroger and Verizon Communications, bought their first Atlassian software before the beginning of 2003, and are still using it today. 

That's especially notable when you consider that Atlassian famously doesn't employ a direct salesforce, instead relying on word-of-mouth — an approach actually cited by the company as a risk factor in a competitive marketplace.

The vast majority of Atlassian shares are owned by co-founders and co-CEOs Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes, who each own 37.7% of the company. And while Atlassian never sought a traditional venture capital round in the same way as plenty of other tech companies, Accel Partners bought in for 12.7% of the company via secondary share sales. 

Even so, the founders will keep a tight control over the company after the IPO: Thanks to a dual-class stock voting structure, of the same type used by Google and Facebook, Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar will maintain a majority voting power over the other shareholders — though the filing does not specify what their exact share of voting power will be.

The fact that Atlassian is based in Australia is something investors should be aware of. As a foreign issuer, as defined by the SEC, it's not subject to the same disclosure rules as domestic companies.

Among other things, this means that they report financials under IFRS accounting standards, rather than US GAAP and, while they report quarterly results they "will not be required to file periodic reports and financial statements with the SEC as frequently or as promptly as U.S. public companies."

The filing also reveals that they recently restructured and reincorporated in the United Kingdom, even though Atlassian's main offices have stayed in Sydney and San Francisco. 

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the underwriting of the IPO.

SEE ALSO: The founders of $3 billion Atlassian won't be happy until 100 million people use it every month

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Atlassian, which makes software for teams to work together more efficiently, just filed to go public, and there's one area that makes it stand out from the rest of the pack: its unusually low sales and marketing cost.

According to its F1 filing, Atlassian spent $67.9 million on sales and marketing in the first half of 2015. That's just 21% of its total revenue of $319.5 million. That ratio is a slight jump from the previous two years, when it spent 16% (2014) and 12.5% (2013) of its revenue on sales and marketing, respectively.

This is an unusual feat — almost an outlier — for a young software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. These companies typically spend huge amounts on sales and marketing to gain customers, reckoning that the lifetime value of those customers will make the initial sign-up costs worthwhile.

Tomasz Tunguz, a partner at VC firm Redpoint Ventures, wrote in a blog post that SaaS companies on average spend 80% to 120% of their revenue on sales and marketing during their first three years. That spend plateaus to around 50% of revenue from year 5 and forward.

Salesforce, a pioneer in the SaaS space, spent about 56% of its revenue on sales and marketing when it filed its S1 in 2003. Workday, another SaaS leader, reported 45% of its revenue on sales and marketing in its S1, while smaller players like HubSpot had a 64% ratio when it went public last year.

One of the most extreme cases, Box, had spent nearly 2x its revenue on sales and marketing in 2013, the year before it first filed to go public.

There are several  reasons for the high cost of sales and marketing in the enterprise, including long sales cycles and the difficulty of convincing some customers to move parts of their businesses to the cloud.

But Atlassian seems to be bucking the trend by mostly relying on word of mouth and simple viral marketing. It even states in its "risk factors" that maintaining this strategy is essential to the company's continued growth:

Unlike traditional enterprise software vendors, who rely on direct sales methodologies and face long sales cycles, complex customer requirements and substantial upfront sales costs, we utilize a viral marketing model to target new customers. Through this word-of-mouth marketing, we have been able to build our brand with relatively low sales and marketing costs.

"We do not have a direct salesforce and our sales model does not include traditional, quota-carrying sales personnel. Although we believe our business model can continue to scale without a large enterprise salesforce, our viral marketing model may not continue to be as successful as we anticipate and the absence of a direct sales function may impede our future growth."

Atlassian states that it has added some marketing personnel recently, but it has no plans to significantly increase spending in this area. 

"While we expect marketing costs to continue to increase in total, we do not expect to make similarly significant investments on such campaigns and we do not expect marketing expenses as a percentage of total revenues to increase for the foreseeable future," it writes.

Despite all this, Atlassian seems to have no trouble getting large customers willing to sign big checks. The S1 says Atlassian has 864 customers that spent "at least $50,000 in fiscal 2015," including Adobe, Visa, and Toyota.

SEE ALSO: Atlassian files for IPO — and it's been profitable for the last ten years

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The value of bitcoin has rocketed higher since late August, gaining more than 60% as investors around the world clamor to buy into the cryptocurrency. 

It recently hit new highs for the year.

Long-term bitcoin watchers have seen this happen before, and they know that the recent gains could just be the start of a massive rally.

The last time bitcoin's value began soaring the cryptocurrency went from below $200 in September 2013 to more than $1100 by early 2014.

Right now – after the recent gains – bitcoin is trading at around $380. That's right, after that peak last year, bitcoin crashed  – badly damaging investor interest. It took more than a year for that interest return.

So what's bringing people back? The digital currency is gaining traction both in the consumer marketplace, as a tradeable security, and with regulators. To illustrate - you can donate to the American Red Cross in bitcoin, buy a new personal computer with it, or even book a holiday. 

It isn't just digital-currency enthusiasts that are bullish. Equity research firm Wedbush expects it to rise to $600 because of the growing adoption. That target includes a "high discount rate to account for uncertainty," the firm says in a Nov. 4 research note. In other words, there's a lot of risk here but it could go much higher. 

“We’re crossing the chasm from early enthusiasts to mainstream adoption," says Adam White, a vice president of business development with bitcoin exchange Coinbase. 

As more people use bitcoin, retailers have become increasingly welcoming of it.

Companies including Dish, Microsoft, Dell and Expedia are accepting cryptocurrency as payment. 

Perhaps most crucial: payments startups and legacy players including Square, Stripe, and PayPal are integrating it into their offerings. 

Regulation is evolving

Regulators in the US and internationally are embracing bitcoin now, instead of fearing — or, worse still, thwarting — it.

"What there needs to be is greater regulatory clarity," said Jerry Brito, executive director at Washington-based advocacy group Coin Center. "It's a very different world than it was in 2013." 

Bitcoin legislation is being readied in several US states, Brito said.

In October, a consortium of startups announced the establishment of the Blockchain Alliance, a partnership between bitcoin companies and US and foreign agencies including the Department of Justice, FBI and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, among others. 

Last month, the European Court of Justice said bitcoin transactions will be exempted from a consumer tax, which could lead to even greater use of the cryptocurrency.  

Another big step, yet to come, would be the declaration of bitcoin by US regulators as a security. 

Big investors are buying in

Another factor lending greater legitimacy to bitcoin is the investment capital being poured into related startups. 

Recently, the total dollar volume backing startups in the sector crossed the $1 billion threshold. But the investors behind the money have also increased bitcoin's visibility.

The roster of bitcoin startup backers includes Wall Street investment banks; the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ; and leading credit and debit card companies including Visa, MasterCard and Capital One.

"The global banks and wire-houses have meaningfully gotten involved in the space," said Michael Sonnenshein, director of business development and sales at Grayscale Investments, which manages the Bitcoin Investment Trust, a publicly listed vehicle that tracks bitcoin. "In 2013, they were beginning to dip their toe, but primarily behind closed doors and within internal working groups."

There are still lingering issues surrounding bitcoin's validity.

To be sure, it is volatile and – because its loosely regulated – a draw for frauds and criminals. 

Some big names in the crytptocurrency community — perhaps most notably Blythe Masters, the CEO of Digital Asset Holdings — have been critical of bitcoin and say the underpinning blockchain technology is actually what's most sexy to Wall Street.

But right now, to many investors, bitcoin is hot. And it could stay that way.

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Salesforce CEO and cofounder Marc Benioff said his company spent about $3 million this year to match female employees' salaries to those of their male counterparts.

"We believe in equal rights for our employees," Benioff said at the Fortune Global Forum earlier this week.

"We looked at every single one of our female employees' salaries, and we adjusted it against all of our male employees' salaries," the CEO explained. "We can say we pay women the same as we pay men."

Benioff announced his commitment to the effort in April, and since then the company has been working toward ensuring that women and men in the company were paid 100% equally.

Cindy Robbins, Salesforce's executive vice president of Global Employee Success, wrote on the company blog in September that Salesforce was assessing the compensation of more than 17,000 employees, 30% of whom are female, and that paying equally was an ongoing process.

During a CNN interview in June, Benioff said he wished he could go back in time and make achieving women's equality at work a goal to Salesforce's founding agenda.

"Looking back 16 years, that was as big an issue as the philanthropy issue is for me now," he said at the time.

Salesforce's pay parity comes at a time in the US when women earn significantly less than men.

After comparing more than 1.4 million salary profiles of men and women working the same jobs, PayScale calculates that women earn 2.7% less — or $0.97 on the dollar — than men with similar characteristics working the same jobs. Overall, when comparing all men to all women, women earn 25.6% of what men earn, or $0.74 on the dollar.

"This [issue] is not something we're trying to own ourselves," Robbins told Forbes in September. "We want other companies to take notice of it and do something about it."

SEE ALSO: Jennifer Lawrence hit on a disturbing workplace trend in her recent open letter

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