Corporate social responsibility has been a buzzword, but it has real bottom-line benefits at the same time it can have a positive impact on society. Here is how.

3 Ways Business Leaders Can Blend Profit With Purpose

See how BLEND&#x27;s localization solutions help companies localize their business assets with more than 120+ supported languages.

Localization & Translation Services | BLEND- Localization Company

Get BLEND, Ltd. (formerly: One Hour Translation) is a localization and translation services company headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel. The company was founded as One Hour Translation in 2008 by Yaron Kaufman, Lior Libman and Oren Yagev. BLEND provides machine translation and AI-based localization ...

BLEND - Wikipedia

Dial up growth, and dial in the experience. Earn primacy by making banking easier, faster, and better.

Blend — Deposit account origination you can bank on

Blend is a digital lending platform that supports and simplifies applications for mortgages, consumer loans, and deposit accounts.

Blend - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding

In celebration of Women&#x27;s History Month, we asked members of our Women&#x27;s Employee Resource Group how Blend&#x27;s theme of &quot;EmpowerHER&quot; resonated with them. We are extremely grateful for our ERG members, as well as all the women at our company helping to make a difference each and every day.

Working at Blend | Glassdoor

Founder and CEO Nima Ghamsari is accelerating efforts to transform the company, but Blend&#x27;s runway is shrinking. Founder and CEO Nima Ghamsari is accelerating efforts to transform the company, but Blend&#x27;s runway is shrinking.

Inside Blend's high stakes transformation - HousingWire

See the company profile for Blend Labs, Inc. (BLND) including business summary, industry/sector information, number of employees, business summary, corporate governance, key executives and their compensation.

Blend Labs, Inc. (BLND) Company Profile & Facts - Yahoo Finance

Blend | 47,803 followers on LinkedIn. Bringing simplicity and transparency to financial services. | Financial providers — from large banks, fintechs, and credit unions to community and independent mortgage banks — use our platform to transform consumer banking experiences and streamline ...

Blend | LinkedIn

Blend | 1,118 followers on LinkedIn. AI-native design software for commerce. Everything you need to stand out and sell more on the internet. | Everything you need to create stunning visuals for your products - in seconds! Teleport your products to professional-grade AI-generated backgrounds.

Blend

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1. HackerNoon: What is your company in 2–5 words? Aaron Lee: We offer AI-driven call & chat answering to SMB. 2. Why is now the time for your company to exist? Providing real time 24/7 customer engagement, lead qualification and conversion has been the biggest pain point for SMB as they don’t have the time nor the resources to do it. Traditional call answering services can only handle simple tasks like take a message and gather contact information. With advancements in technology, particularly AI and automation, Smith.ai evolved to leverage AI to answer calls and chat with human-in-the-loop for escalation, expanding services to integrate with CRMs, provide scheduling assistance, payment collection, and deliver enhanced customer support tailored for businesses of all sizes, especially SMBs. 3. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? AI is fast moving but at the current stage, we don’t believe it can handle 100% of the calls and chats as human conversation is nuanced and complicated. Humans can easily detect caller’s emotion but it’s challenging if AI only looks at the transcription, e.g. “That’s great” could be either positive or sarcastic. We believe having a group of highly trained agents + highly tuned AI based on each individual business (think about it as Voice GPT for your business) is the best way to achieve the business outcomes: converting callers to customers. My background is in software engineering, computer graphics with GPU and was the former CTO of The Home Depot which allowed me to work with SMB on a daily basis for years. Our team is unique as we have AI expertise, deep domain knowledge, as well as huge appreciation to the pain points that SMB are facing. 4. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? I am very excited about entrepreneurship, helping other startups succeed, and have been angel investing for a long time as a side hobby. I probably would be more active in early stage investments if I wasn’t building my startup. 5. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your metrics? We track customer engagement (number inbound/outbound calls or chats) as one of the core KPIs. Another metric we track is Quality, we treat any internal/external complaint/mistake/expectation mismatch as a concern, basically anything that is not satisfactory to our team or clients would be counted as one and we have been able to maintain a 99.7% correctness for a very long time. This metric has a direct correlation to our churn which is extremely low, which drives the flywheel of great reviews https://www.trustpilot.com/review/smith.ai and more referrals. 6. In a few sentences, what do you offer to whom? Smith.ai provides AI-driven virtual receptionist services, including call and chat answering, tailored for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Our offerings encompass 24/7 live virtual receptionists, AI voice assistants, outreach campaigns, and AI-powered web chat, all designed to enhance customer engagement and support. We serve a wide range of industries, including law firms, home services, marketing agencies, medical and wellness, and many more. 7. What’s most exciting about your traction to date? The most exciting thing about Smith.ai is we have answered tens of millions of calls and chats with extremely high accuracy and satisfaction (99.7%). The most important thing is we help our SMB clients grow by converting callers to customers with the latest AI technologies which is impossible if they were to implement on their own. 8. Where do you think your growth will be next year? Given the uncertainty in inflation and macroeconomics, we believe the trend of doing more with less by leveraging AI and outsourcing will remain front and center for our clients. The fact that we can drive instant satisfaction and revenue growth at a much lower cost would be a huge tailwind for our exponential growth next year. 9. Tell us about your first paying customer and revenue expectations over the next year. We started the company back in October 2015 and I am excited to say that the majority of them are still with us today and have increased their spend with us 10X. We recently launched our AI-first Voice Assistant and it’s a total game changer. One client said “whoever put this together is a bloody genius.” - this is the magical moment when the product is so good that wows our clients. We believe we will have a significant jump in revenue next year as we continue to deploy this technology to 30M SMB in the US. 10. What’s your biggest threat? Our biggest threat is really execution. The market is huge and demand is clear. We have clients asking us for new features on a daily basis and it’s up to us to push the envelope of AI with humans fast enough to meet their needs. Our assessment of the current AI capabilities is that they may struggle with nuanced and complex conversations, especially in emotional or context-heavy interactions. We believe our hybrid human-AI approach is the best in order to bridge the gap. For appointment booking or sales conversion, we believe human touch offers the best business outcome. This startup founder interview template is based on HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke’s ten questions for startup founders. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. 1. HackerNoon : What is your company in 2–5 words? HackerNoon Aaron Lee : We offer AI-driven call & chat answering to SMB. Aaron Lee Aaron Lee 2. Why is now the time for your company to exist? Providing real time 24/7 customer engagement, lead qualification and conversion has been the biggest pain point for SMB as they don’t have the time nor the resources to do it. Traditional call answering services can only handle simple tasks like take a message and gather contact information. With advancements in technology, particularly AI and automation, Smith.ai evolved to leverage AI to answer calls and chat with human-in-the-loop for escalation, expanding services to integrate with CRMs, provide scheduling assistance, payment collection, and deliver enhanced customer support tailored for businesses of all sizes, especially SMBs. Smith.ai 3. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? AI is fast moving but at the current stage, we don’t believe it can handle 100% of the calls and chats as human conversation is nuanced and complicated. Humans can easily detect caller’s emotion but it’s challenging if AI only looks at the transcription, e.g. “That’s great” could be either positive or sarcastic. We believe having a group of highly trained agents + highly tuned AI based on each individual business (think about it as Voice GPT for your business) is the best way to achieve the business outcomes: converting callers to customers. My background is in software engineering, computer graphics with GPU and was the former CTO of The Home Depot which allowed me to work with SMB on a daily basis for years. Our team is unique as we have AI expertise, deep domain knowledge, as well as huge appreciation to the pain points that SMB are facing. 4. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? I am very excited about entrepreneurship, helping other startups succeed, and have been angel investing for a long time as a side hobby. I probably would be more active in early stage investments if I wasn’t building my startup. 5. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your metrics? We track customer engagement (number inbound/outbound calls or chats) as one of the core KPIs. Another metric we track is Quality, we treat any internal/external complaint/mistake/expectation mismatch as a concern, basically anything that is not satisfactory to our team or clients would be counted as one and we have been able to maintain a 99.7% correctness for a very long time. This metric has a direct correlation to our churn which is extremely low, which drives the flywheel of great reviews https://www.trustpilot.com/review/smith.ai and more referrals. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/smith.ai https://www.trustpilot.com/review/smith.ai 6. In a few sentences, what do you offer to whom? Smith.ai provides AI-driven virtual receptionist services, including call and chat answering, tailored for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Our offerings encompass 24/7 live virtual receptionists, AI voice assistants, outreach campaigns, and AI-powered web chat, all designed to enhance customer engagement and support. We serve a wide range of industries, including law firms, home services, marketing agencies, medical and wellness, and many more. 7. What’s most exciting about your traction to date? The most exciting thing about Smith.ai is we have answered tens of millions of calls and chats with extremely high accuracy and satisfaction (99.7%). The most important thing is we help our SMB clients grow by converting callers to customers with the latest AI technologies which is impossible if they were to implement on their own. 8. Where do you think your growth will be next year? Given the uncertainty in inflation and macroeconomics, we believe the trend of doing more with less by leveraging AI and outsourcing will remain front and center for our clients. The fact that we can drive instant satisfaction and revenue growth at a much lower cost would be a huge tailwind for our exponential growth next year. 9. Tell us about your first paying customer and revenue expectations over the next year. We started the company back in October 2015 and I am excited to say that the majority of them are still with us today and have increased their spend with us 10X. We recently launched our AI-first Voice Assistant and it’s a total game changer. One client said “whoever put this together is a bloody genius.” - this is the magical moment when the product is so good that wows our clients. We believe we will have a significant jump in revenue next year as we continue to deploy this technology to 30M SMB in the US. 10. What’s your biggest threat? Our biggest threat is really execution. The market is huge and demand is clear. We have clients asking us for new features on a daily basis and it’s up to us to push the envelope of AI with humans fast enough to meet their needs. Our assessment of the current AI capabilities is that they may struggle with nuanced and complex conversations, especially in emotional or context-heavy interactions. We believe our hybrid human-AI approach is the best in order to bridge the gap. For appointment booking or sales conversion, we believe human touch offers the best business outcome. This startup founder interview template is based on HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke’s ten questions for startup founders. This startup founder interview template is based on HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke ’s ten questions for startup founders . HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke ten questions for startup founders Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. The link for the template is HERE.

Blending AI and Human Expertise: How Smith.ai CEO/Founder is Revolutionizing SMB Customer Engagement

The Wealthy Achilles Heel: Capital Gains Tax The emergence of cryptocurrencies has revolutionized the financial landscape. As digital currencies continue to surge in value, millions of investors worldwide have reaped significant financial rewards. However, as much as this windfall paints a rosy picture, there's a formidable adversary that looms large for cryptocurrency investors - x. capital gains ta The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and its global equivalents have been swift to classify cryptocurrencies as property rather than currency. This implications as every sale, exchange, or conversion of cryptocurrency can trigger a capital gain or loss. classification has significant tax During the previous crypto bull run, investors amassed an astounding $163 billion in . While these figures should have been cause for celebration, the ensuing capital gains tax bill was anything but. A significant portion of these gains, running into billions of dollars, ended up in the coffers of tax authorities, leaving investors with a sour aftertaste. earnings Riding the Crypto Roller Coaster: Market Volatility In addition to capital gains tax, cryptocurrency investors face another significant challenge: market volatility. Cryptocurrencies, despite their promising future, have been subject to wild price swings, creating a high-risk, high-reward investment environment. While some investors thrive in this tumultuous climate, many others yearn for stability. They crave an investment strategy that not only allows them to capitalize on their crypto gains but also safeguards their earnings from the uncertainty of the digital currency market. Diversification: The Need of the Hour that helps reduce risk by spreading investments across different types of assets. For cryptocurrency investors, this means investing their gains in non-crypto assets to offset potential losses in the volatile digital currency market. Diversification is a time-tested investment strategy Despite being a well-accepted strategy, diversification poses a dilemma for cryptocurrency investors. Converting their cryptocurrency into traditional assets would trigger capital gains tax, effectively reducing their net earnings. So, what could be the solution to these challenges? How can cryptocurrency investors defer their capital gains tax, navigate the choppy waters of market volatility, and diversify their portfolios? An ideal solution would allow investors to: Defer their capital gains tax, preserving their earnings. Diversify their portfolios to reduce their exposure to market volatility. Generate a stable, passive income that isn't subject to the whims of the crypto market. As the cryptocurrency market matures, innovative solutions to these problems are just over the horizon, bringing a wave of new opportunities for investors to secure their hard-earned gains. An Innovative Solution: Merging Crypto with Real Estate What if there was a way to bypass this fiscal hurdle while also diversifying investment portfolios? This is where Bridgecoin Capital steps in, a with a novel approach that merges the worlds of cryptocurrencies and real estate, the latter estimated at over $3 trillion. company : This author is an independent contributor publishing via our . Be it through direct compensation, media partnerships, or networking, the author has a vested interest in the company/ies mentioned in this story. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR Vested Interest Disclosure brand-as-author program The unique model by Bridgecoin Capital involves investors collateralizing their crypto assets into cash loans, thereby sidestepping the dreaded capital gains tax. Subsequently, the cash is lent into real estate deals that generate steady interest. This does not tokenize real estate assets, rather, it provides a flat rate of interest as the crypto assets are borrowed. developed A Win-Win Scenario for Crypto Investors The concept of leveraging real estate assets to defer crypto capital gains is an appealing one. It offers investors the best of both worlds: the ability to retain their hard-earned profits and the opportunity to diversify their portfolios with tangible, stable assets. It's an approach that does more than just defer taxes; it presents investors with an avenue for generating passive income, locking their returns into something more concrete than the ever-fluctuating digital currency market. Regulatory Compliance and Security with Bridgecoin Capital The solution provided by Bridgecoin Capital demands meticulous regulatory compliance. All participating customers must undergo the standard 'Know Your Customer' (KYC) procedures. The lending and lock-up structure is transparent and straightforward, ensuring a secure and stable platform for investors. Furthermore, this model guarantees the return in terms of USD, repaid at the end of the lock-up period, in addition to the Annual Percentage Yield (APY) delivered throughout the process. Conclusion The innovative solution brought forward by Bridgecoin Capital marks a promising convergence of crypto and real estate. It's much more than a deferral of capital gains tax; it's a game-changer that could revolutionize the way investors navigate the crypto space. By bridging the gap between these two disparate industries, this model offers a more secure, diverse, and lucrative future for the world of cryptocurrency investing. Don’t forget to like and share the story!

Digital Meets Tangible: The Perfect Blend for Crypto Investors to Sidestep Capital Gains Tax

Lo digital se encuentra con lo tangible: la combinación perfecta para que los criptoinversionistas eludan el impuesto a las ganancias de capital

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डिजिटल मीट्स टैंगिबल: पूंजीगत लाभ कर को दरकिनार करने के लिए क्रिप्टो निवेशकों के लिए एकदम सही मिश्रण

デジタルとタンジブルの融合: 仮想通貨投資家がキャピタルゲイン税を回避するための完璧なブレンド

O digital encontra o tangível: a combinação perfeita para os investidores em criptomoeda evitarem o imposto sobre ganhos de capital

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数字遇见有形：加密货币投资者规避资本利得税的完美结合

Considering Missive is a fully established email client and ClickUp Email is only a small part of ClickUp which is primarily a task management software, comparing the two based on email features alone might seem unfair. Yet, it makes sense if you’re already using ClickUp (and/ or Missive) and you want to: Cut down costs by using only ClickUp for work and email management Streamline your workflow with one software instead of two I came up with five questions to help you decide, based on your business needs, whether you should only use ClickUp Email or Missive. Bonus: Later in the article, I’ll be discussing , a hybrid SaaS product that bridges the gap between project management and email collaboration software. RogerRoger RogerRoger allows you to view, assign, and collaborate on both your emails and tasks in one platform which keeps everything organized, saves time, and increases productivity. 1. What features are you giving up when you shift your email management from Missive to ClickUp Email? Dynamic Variables in Email Templates Missive allows you to use when creating email responses (or templates in ClickUp). A variable can be a first name, last name, date, or any other information concerning the sender or recipient of the email. dynamic variables Missive takes it even further with its ‘default’ option which ClickUp does not have. It comes in handy if you forget to log in a relevant piece of information into Missive, for instance, a client’s first name. When building a response, you can give Missive another option to use in case your client’s first name is not available. If your default value is ‘there’, your email will now read ‘Hello there’. In ClickUp, if the first name is not available, the variable will remain blank and the email will simply read “Hello.” In ClickUp, dynamic variables are only available for automated emails. To use them, you first need to set a task to trigger an email. Common triggers include when the status of a task changes, and when a deadline arrives. You’ll then build your email template and set the values for dynamic variables like [task name], [name of assignee], and [due date]. When you manually create a template in ClickUp, you can’t use dynamic variables, you’ll have to use text placeholders and replace them when sending an email. Dynamic Variables Also Let You Create Uniform Email Signatures You can set email signatures in both Missive and ClickUp, but because it uses dynamic variables, Missive allows you to build email signature templates that can be used across your entire organization, making it easier to set up signatures for new team members. You can use dynamic variables to pull in names as well as images into your Missive email signature. ClickUp only allows you to customize signatures for every email address you use, as long as you’re on the business plan or higher. You can add multiple signatures for each email address. Centralized Inbox in Missive Missive has three features to help you organize your inbox: : Shared inbox that sorts conversations into unique piles for different teams. You can have an inbox called “Customer Service” where all support emails go. Team Inbox : Easily manage all the conversations that need your personal attention. Inbox : Can be applied to any conversation as a way to identify it for future reference. When you receive an email from someone interested in your product or service, you can label it as “Potential Client’ Labels In ClickUp, emails are primarily linked to tasks, they don’t have a (yet). centralized inbox Missive also allows you to merge conversations manually as well as define rules to merge the messages you want, it saves you a lot of time. In ClickUp, the closest you can come to merging conversations is by forwarding relevant emails to appear as comments on a task. You can also forward the conversations to a list so they appear as new tasks in ClickUp. To do this, open the task or list and locate its unique email address. Copy the email into your Gmail, Outlook, , or IMAP account. You should save the task or list name into your contacts so it’s easier to find. Office 365 Next, you need to set up filters in your email inbox so that, for example, all emails that contain the words price, pricing, or how much get forwarded to the unique list or task email you copied from ClickUp. Another stand-out Missive feature is their ability to automatically assign emails to employees using the feature that distributes conversations evenly among team members. If there are two sales employees, the first sales conversation goes to employee A, the second to employee B, the third to employee A, and so forth. Round-Robin Assignment There is no way to automatically assign emails to members in ClickUp. Powerful Automation Options in Missive If you’re on Missive’s Productive Plan or higher, you can use the Rules feature to automate your emails by setting rules that trigger action for different scenarios. If an email arrives on the weekend, send an autoresponder. If an email hasn’t been opened after 3 hours on a weekday, send a notification. Missive also allows you to schedule emails to be sent at a later date. Missive’s rules are not just based on tasks, you can build so many complex conditions that allow you to automate almost anything; sending emails on specific dates, days of the week, at specific times, as well as specific time zones. This works best for workflows that involve a lot of back-and-forth communication, particularly between team members and customers. In contrast, ClickUp automations are much more structured, they only happen within tasks and can’t be customized or nested into sub-groups. ClickUp’s email automation works best for rigid workflows involving things like help desk tickets, IT tickets, or onboarding emails. Alias Email Addresses in Missive Missive allows you to add any number of aliases for each of your email accounts, and each alias can have a unique signature. This means that you can use Missive’s free account and add all the different variations of your business’s aliases—support@yourdomain.com, hello@, info@, admin@ —which you can also get for free from your email provider. In ClickUp, you can only integrate Google, Outlook, or IMAP email accounts. To connect an alias email address, you’ll need to create an email account for your alias email address, and then add it to ClickUp—which may cost you an additional $6 per account per month. Keep in mind that you are limited to only two email accounts per workspace if you’re on the Business plan or higher in ClickUp, and any additional email accounts cost $2 per month, each. ClickUp doesn’t allow users to send emails from the mobile app, but Missive does. 2. How much can you get done with ClickUp Email? Considering all the features lacking in ClickUp Email, using it may impair your team’s collaboration. You’ll always need to manually forward emails to ClickUp, which can be a waste of time. It’s also easy for emails to fall through the cracks in ClickUp, especially when they don’t have replies (replies trigger notifications and make it easier to find your emails. If no one replies to your email in ClickUp, you’ll have to manually search through all your tasks to find the email you sent.) Additionally, you can’t merge similar conversations in ClickUp, which may lead to a messy inbox. If your customer service team receives two emails with the same request on the same day, you can easily pair them in Missive and have the same person work on both. You can't do this on ClickUp. Missive has integrations with Whatsapp, SMS, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Missive Live Chat. ClickUp communication is limited to email, comments, and ClickUp forms. ClickUp comments are only for users with access to ClickUp workspaces, and ClickUp forms only allow for one-way communication. On the contrary, ClickUp is more integrated into your daily task list and therefore better at creating tasks from email. For instance, ClickUp’s Chrome extension can track time, take screenshots, act as a notepad, add websites to tasks, and quickly convert emails to tasks. , follows a series of steps, and doesn’t have a lot of variation. ClickUp’s depends on a task to be triggered for an email to be sent. It works best if you have a structured/ sequential workflow that is very task-centric email automation An example is the process of assigning customer complaints to team members. You simply set your inbox filters to forward all the emails coming into support@yourdomain.com to a specified task or list in ClickUp. that includes more complex tasks with conditions attached. When onboarding a new client, a rules-driven workflow allows you to customize questionnaires within this process. Missive works best if you have a conversation-centric/ rules-driven workflow You can also trigger email based on different events (as opposed to changing task status in ClickUp) such as an email not being opened after 24 hours, a task nearing its deadline, or every third Friday of the month. notifications 3. ClickUp Email vs Missive: Which is Cheaper? gives you one free email account, but it’s limited to per month. ClickUp’s Free Forever Plan 100 automation actions ($9 per member per month) lets you send an unlimited number of emails, and gives you one free account per workspace. Any additional accounts will cost $2 per month per account. The ClickUp Unlimited Plan You need to be on the ($19 monthly per user) or higher to access 2 free accounts per workspace, email templates, and signatures. Just like in the Unlimited Plan, any additional accounts will cost an extra $2 per account per month. Being on the Business Plan or higher also allows you to remove a sent using ClickUp watermark attached to every email. ClickUp Business Plan ($29 per month) and (custom pricing) have custom email permissions like being able to select which users can send emails and add email accounts to ClickUp. ClickUp Business Plus ClickUp Enterprise Plans By contrast, lets you create email templates, signatures, add up to three members, and use two personal accounts per member. You can use up to two shared accounts, and add an unlimited number of aliases for free. If you’re a small team, you can get away with using just the free plan. Missive’s Free Plan With at $14 per month per user, you can add up to 5 members from your organization and link 5 shared accounts. It will cost you an extra $15 per month to add 5 extra accounts. Missive’s Starter Plan With their $18 per month , you can add up to 50 members, 5 shared accounts, and have access to Rules to help you automate your workflow. Productive Plan You can get more control over your inbox for less in Missive. If you have ten email addresses shared across five teams, and nine of the addresses are aliases, you can easily use the free plan on Missive. This is the cost breakdown you’ll be looking at in ClickUp vs the paid plans in Missive: : $63 per month, but you won’t be able to create email templates or signatures. ClickUp’s Unlimited Plan : $70 per month to add 5 team members and nine alias accounts, but you won’t have access to rules. Missive Starter Plan : $111 per month, but you won’t have dynamic variables, powerful automation rules, or be able to send emails from your mobile app. ClickUp’s Business Plan 4. Can you integrate ClickUp with Missive? Missive includes a ClickUp integration which allows you to create, assign, and update tasks within your inbox. Once you finish setting up the integration, data from the two apps will sync, giving you access to all your ClickUp workspaces, folders, team members, deadlines, and lists in Missive. ClickUp’s SOP Docs will be embedded into Missive’s sidebar, enabling you to use both tools side by side. 5. What advancements can we expect in the future from both ClickUp Email and Missive? ClickUp plans to introduce a centralized inbox that lets you view, send, reply, and organize your emails. This feature will bring ClickUp Email closer to Missive’s levels in terms of functionality. Yet, it may be a while before ClickUp Email advances its features to include a collaborative inbox, dynamic variables, alias email addresses, mobile app accessibility, and more automation options. Until then, it makes sense to integrate Missive and Clickup, especially if you deal with a high volume of emails daily. At its current capacity, ClickUp is valuable as a task management software, but it may not be ready to meet all your email collaboration needs just yet. Even when you integrate ClickUp and Missive, switching between tasks and email all day can still be a productivity killer, especially when dealing with a high volume of emails daily. But if I told you that there’s a tool that perfectly blends email collaboration and project management so you don't have to keep switching between tools? I go into more detail on below. RogerRoger Bonus: RogerRoger - Bridging the Gap Between Email Collaboration and Project Management Tools Here’s a high-level overview of some of the features that stand out in RogerRoger and make it the ideal software for both project management and email collaboration: Shared Inbox RogerRoger transforms your regular inbox into a productivity tool by allowing you to merge conversations, assign emails, and convert emails to tasks on the same page. When you open an email, you can immediately see what tasks were created from it, who was assigned the tasks, and the contact information of the client in question. RogerRoger consolidates everything into your inbox and gives you full context on your clients, tasks, emails, comments, and notes -- making it impossible to overlook any critical information. Team and Private Workspaces You can easily manage your team’s tasks using visual Kanban boards and custom workspaces in RogerRoger -- it will feel like you’re handling tasks in a regular project management tool like Trello or Monday.com. CRM to Manage Customer Information RogerRoger’s CRM allows you to centralize customer contact information so it’s easier to find. You can access your client’s information directly from your inbox or from your task workspaces which gives you full context on the projects you’re working on. The in-built CRM also logs all activities related to your clients. For instance, opening a client’s contact shows you a complete history of all their emails, tasks, comments, notes, and attachments. It saves so much time and prevents the inbox clutter that comes with forwarding emails to team members. Best of all, you can add multiple email addresses to the same contact, allowing you to instantly communicate with different departments in your client’s organization. Final Verdict: ClickUp Email vs Missive vs RogerRoger Missive is inefficient for internal collaboration because it does not prioritize tasks, and ClickUp Email is terrible for external communication because it’s primarily a project management software - RogerRoger bridges this gap by providing you with a shared inbox, private and team workspaces, powerful workflow automations, and an in-built customer relationship management (CRM) system on one platform. RogerRoger integrates email and project management capabilities into one unified workspace, but it isn't necessarily a complete replacement for stand-alone email or project management tools. While RogerRoger has strong email-to-task functionalities, shared inbox features, CRM integration, and some project management tools like Kanban boards and task delegation, it might not house every single feature that stand-alone project management software like ClickUp or task-oriented email platforms like Missive can offer. Instead, RogerRoger bridges these two types of platforms, filling in the gap where communication and task management intersect. It enhances the collaboration and productivity potential of both email and project management tools, creating a streamlined workflow. However, depending on a team's specific requirements and workflow complexity, they may still need to use a specialized project management or email tool alongside RogerRoger. This would help them leverage the best of both worlds - the advanced, specific functionalities of standalone tools and the integrated, collaborative features of RogerRoger. Learn more about in your company. how to use RogerRoger to improve productivity

ClickUp Email vs Missive: 5 Questions to Help You Decide (Plus A Hybrid that Blends the Two)

Science and poetry are blended in a happy conjunction

At some point in time, we have all encountered conversational agents -Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and others. The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past. -Tim Berners-Lee In this article, I'm going to show how to build a simple conversational agent in python using the pre-trained Blenderbot model. image credits: google photos What is a Conversational Agent According to , a conversational agent (CA), is a computer system intended to converse with a human. Wikipedia In other words, conversational agents are automated systems(mostly powered by AI) that are built to converse with humans using natural language. Common examples of conversational Agents include - , , and Siri Google Assistant Alexa Cortana What is Blenderbot? Since this tutorial is built around Blenderbot, it's only fair we get to know what it is. Blenderbot is an Open Source language generation model built by Facebook AI. It is capable of articulately expressing itself, carrying on meaningful conversations in natural language(human-readable language) when given a particular context. For example, if it's asked a question like -who is Cristiano Ronaldo, it can then carry on a conversation about who Cristiano Ronaldo is, what he does, etc. It is very similar to . Open AI's GPT3 Image Credits: Facebook AI Prerequisites You must : Have python Installed Have an IDE / Text Editor ( , , ) Visual Studio PyCharm Jupyter Notebook Internet Connection Here is the for the project. Github Repository Install Dependencies Here we are going to download two libraries that are going to be needed to make use of Blenderbot Installing Transformers We are going to make use of to download the pre-trained blenderbot model. Hugging Face #In a jupyter notebook
!pip install transformers

#In terminal
pip install transformers Installing Pytorch We are going to install the PyTorch deep learning library because Blenderbot tokenized and Torch tensors (Facebook Right😅) If you want to install your specialized version of PyTorch visit the and install your specialized version. PyTorch website Image Credits: PyTorch Below is my installed version of PyTorch #install in jupyter notebook
!pip3 install torch==1.9.1+cu111 torchvision==0.10.1+cu111 torchaudio===0.9.1 -f https://download.pytorch.org/whl/torch_stable.html

#Install in Terminal
pip3 install torch==1.9.1+cu111 torchvision==0.10.1+cu111 torchaudio===0.9.1 -f https://download.pytorch.org/whl/torch_stable.html Import Model Here we are going to import and download the pre-trained Blenderbot model from Hugging Face To begin with, we are going to import the model class and the tokenizer. from transformers import BlenderbotTokenizer, BlenderbotForConditionalGeneration Now we are going to install and setup the blenderbot model and the tokenizer #download and setup the model and tokenizer
model_name = 'facebook/blenderbot-400M-distill'
tokenizer = BlenderbotTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)
model = BlenderbotForConditionalGeneration.from_pretrained(model_name) Above we got the name of the model in Hugging face which is , the name of the model begins with the creator of the model and in this case, it's Facebook, it is then followed by the name of the model which is facebook/blenderbot-400M-distill blenderbot-400M-distill Next, we instantiated the tokenizer and the model itself on the model name. Conversing With our Model Now we are going to actually make conversation with our conversation agent. Firstly, we are going to put up an utterance, an utterance is like a sentence used to begin the conversation with the conversation agent (like hey google). #making an utterance 
utterance = "My name is gold, I like football and coding" Next, we are going to turn the utterance into a token so the model can process it. #tokenize the utterance
inputs = tokenizer(utterance, return_tensors="pt") Above we tokenized our utterance and returned the token as a PyTorch Tensor so it can be processed by the blenderbot model. Next up, we are going to generate our conversational agent's response result. #generate model results
result = model.generate(**inputs) Above we instructed the model to generate a response for our tokenized utterance. Remember our result response is still in the form of a PyTorch Tensor so now we are going to decode it back to a human-readable form (Natural Language). tokenizer.decode(result[0]) Above we instructed the tokenizer to decode the result response. Once you run the code above you'll see your agent's response. Summary Blenderderbot is a really interesting library, it is able to carry on conversations based on the given context with close similarity to normal human conversation due to the fact that, unlike other conversational agents, it's able to store responses long term, unlike others that have goldfish brains. Due to this, the model takes important information gotten during conversation and stores it in long-term memory so it can then leverage this knowledge in ongoing conversations that may continue for days, weeks, or even months. The knowledge is stored separately for each person it speaks with, which ensures that no new information learned in one conversation is used in another. Natural Language Processing Technology is growing fast and blender bot is a huge example of that.

How to Build a Conversational AI bot Using Blenderbot

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests. Hello HN folks! I am , a long-time . After 10+ years in enertech, I am now building up , my own company. Carlo Occhiena Hackernoon writer Aziona Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about? I just wrote about the Metaverse and its connection to tech and blockchain. Read the story here: https://hackernoon.com/metaverse-and-blockchain-will-have-a-parallel-future?source=rss Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about? I really like writing for Hackernoon because it allows me to write on many different topics - as long as they’re tech-related! I am enjoying this freedom at the moment. I wrote about programming, Agile methodologies, blockchain, Python, and more! I feel like the main advantage of Hackernoon over its competitors it’s the fact you may find a lot of very good and also very different stories here! Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?) I have a notepad where I track all the inspo and sources I stumble upon. And then, connecting the dot, I try to craft a story out of them. It’s like putting a lot of different ingredients in a blender and then, once in a while, let them mix up and see what is coming out. I like this approach cause it allows you to have a lot of ideas and inspiration and in the meantime to write something interesting and quite fresh. The risk otherwise is to write and same old and trite story over again. Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? I feel like the main issue is being consistent. Trying to be focused enough to develop an expertise, but at the same time have a decent variety of topics - otherwise, you’ll be just writing over yourself. But in the end, I don’t want to overcomplicate the task. It’s basically a matter of practice and exercise. Doing it over and over again until it starts happening - if not easy, then natural, at least to you. As you said, also time is quite a challenge. A lot of us Hackernoon writers have to deal with stressful tech jobs in big companies or startups. Writing then is on top of it all and it’s not too easy to always be able to carve out some time to do it decently. Keep also in mind that for non-native English writers such me (and many other Hackolytes), the task of writing is even harder, you have to double-check grammar and verbs. It’s not an easy task, definitely :) What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career? Since I just founded my startup, , I am very focused on making it grow and prosper. Aziona But other than that, my last ten years of work have been incredible and I never thought I would be able to achieve all these milestones. So now running my own company is "just" yet another challenge. Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice? I am quite basic. Sitting in front of my computer is my day-to-day job but also my pleasure. I am really enjoying what I am doing. To unwind a little I usually watch some or some videogame stream on Twitch. The Big Bang Theory But, really, if there’s something you like doing, you should never feel “guilty” about doing it. Isn’t it? :) Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it? Not really. I am addicted to sports (running, crossfit) but those are not really hobby to me. I am not the kind of guy that says, “hey, I really need to stop sitting in front of the computer”. It’s something I like a lot. I also love to study and learn new things, but this is not a hobby either and it’s again tech-related, so, I am sorry: not the right question for me :D What can the Hackernoon community expect to read from you next? I don’ really know (my last article has been published just yesterday!). I’ll see where the inspiration will lead me! I also like a lot to interact in the HN community, read other stories and such, so, I’ll just be enjoying the moment. Thanks for taking time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words? Work hard, but have fun along the way! Cheers.

Writing is Like Putting Different Ingredients in a Blender and Seeing What Comes Out, says Carlo

s = .score interval = order = Math.log([s.abs(), ].max, )
 sign = s > s < - seconds = .created_at.to_i - (sign * order + seconds / interval).round def hot self # upvotes - downvotes 69000 # originally 45000 1 10 if 0 1.75 # originally 1 elsif 0 1.75 # originally -1 else 0 end self 1134028003 7 end I created a site where people can vote and submit projects they want me to build. It had 2 ranking modes, "top scoring" and "newest" Problems with "Top" and "New" This was fine when there was only a dozen projects, but as the list grew, two problems arose: In the "top scoring view", the top few projects were monopolizing views and votes. Most people just weren't reading down the page enough to see the other ideas. In the "newest" view, an idea only had a little time to be seen before it was buried by bad ideas or even spam. Also, spammy/bad ideas were invincible to downvotes by virtue of being new. I needed a middle ground that would show the top ideas while also allowing new ideas a chance in the spotlight. 'Hot' to the rescue I found reddit's Hot algorithm, translated it from Python to Ruby, and put it on the site. It was kind of working, but it seems like it was weighing "recency" too much and not weighing the project's score enough. I think Reddit has such high voting volumes that my site's small vote counts was barely moving the needle for their algorithm. I have no idea what I'm doing I don't know much math beyond basic algebra. I was pretty mystified by this seemingly simple algorithm, but I got help from an engineer friend. I found out that if I increased , I would amplify the effect of the score on the final ranking. And if I increased , I would the importance of a project's recency. sign interval decrease I tweaked the values, eyed the effect, tweaked again, and eventually settled on a setting that resulted in a satisfying blend of the best projects from both "Top Ranked" and "Newest" Hope this is useful/interesting :) Previously published on IndieHackers .

From Reddit's "Hot" ranking algorithm  to my satisfying blend of "Top Ranked" and "New"

Using data to inform decisions is essential to product management, or anything really. And thankfully, we aren’t short of it. Any online application generates an abundance of data and it’s up to us to collect it and then make sense of it. Google Data Studio helps us understand the meaning behind data, enabling us to build beautiful visualizations and dashboards that transform data into stories. If it wasn’t already, data literacy is as much a fundamental skill as learning to read or write. Or it certainly will be. Nothing is more powerful than data democracy, where anyone in your organization can regularly make decisions informed with data. As part of enabling this, we need to be able to visualize data in a way that brings it to life and makes it more accessible. I’ve recently been learning how to do this and wanted to share some of the cool ways you can do this in Google Data Studio. Whether it’s automating some of the routine, manual analysis you might do, you will find some great use cases that help you understand how users use your digital service. This is written for you if you’re aware of Google Data Studio and might be asking yourself whether it’s worth the effort involved in learning more. You may think that if you get some out-of-the-box analysis already from some of your existing data sources (e.g. other Google products) why invest more time? What more value can you really get? Basically, I’m writing for me, 6 months ago. So, I will presume you know the basics (like connecting to a data source), but if you don’t, there’s a great tutorial . In this post, I’m going to cover some of the more advanced things you can do, like creating , using , and creating , all using a fake dataset I created based on Nike’s website. here blending data, custom calculated fields metric level filters combination charts Working through a Nike eCommerce example A common use case for a product manager is to compare a group of users who complete a certain experience as a percentage of total users. These are called . For example, let’s say you worked for Nike as a designer and wanted to understand how many users use the “design your own” trainer feature you spent ages designing, to understand how many users complete all of the customization steps. ratio metrics You would generally have fire every time a user interacts with parts of your website. You would have an event for a user entering the customization flow, events for everything in between, and then one final event for a user finishing the flow. You can create a ratio metric manually by the following calculation: Google Events ends flow / enters flow = completion rate (new ratio metric) event event In Data Studio, you can create this with the following steps: Insert a scorecard with as the metric and then create a filter that specifies the event label you’re interested in (e.g. ). Insert a second scorecard and do the same as step 1, creating a second filter with the second event label you’re interested in (e.g. ). Blend the two by clicking on both of the scorecards and clicking unique events enters flow ends flow “blend data”. If you’re a more visual learner, here is a video showing you how this works: This is really useful to get an overarching update on what you’ve recently designed. But in order to optimize this, you want to see how it trends over a period of time. You can calculate this manually each time, but having the metric that you’re trying to optimize for automatically calculate will be really useful and save you a tonne of time in the future. The best visualization for this is a combination chart. Which compares sessions where users have interacted with the feature and the completion rate (the custom metric you just created through blending data) that you’re trying to optimize for. The below video will show you each step of the way how will we achieve this. In general, it encompasses these four areas: amongst the same data source, using a (a shared dimension among each data source) which will be the Month (but could be any time dimension depending on how detailed you want the chart to be). Blending data JOIN KEY Creating two individual that only contain the of the you’re interested in This will be achieved by using metric level that filter for the event labels you’re interested in (e.g. a user entering the flow / a user finishing the flow). metrics unique events event label . filters Selecting your dimension, metric #1 (sessions), and creating a new field that is a calculation to generate metric #2. Styling the chart so it looks like a combination chart and involves two data series being shown on the left and right axis. Here’s a video that shows you how this is done: Once we have added some styling elements to it and a title, we have a finished visualization that looks like this: With the data clearly visualized like this, the data has been brought to life and you have a much clearer picture of what’s happening with this feature. You can immediately see that the trend is going downwards as the year goes on. This can help you understand if you have made product changes that have influenced the completion rate (e.g. extra steps or more complicated steps in the flow). If you wanted an even more accurate picture, you could create a Google Analytics segment that only includes sessions where users have had the opportunity to customize their trainers (as not all trainers have the option). This won’t change your completion rate but might reduce the overall sessions count. I use the Nike example because this is hopefully relatable to most people. But there are lots of other eCommerce use cases for this. For example: What percentage of people use certain filters on AirBnB? What percentage of sessions do users add your product to their basket? What percentage of users land on your checkout page and then decide not to buy something? Visualizing important metrics in a dashboard means you are better placed to optimize them and easily measure the success of anything you’re building. I hope you found this useful. I’m not a Google Data Studio expert, but I’ve spent lots of time in the last 6 months learning things. And once I’ve learned it, I’m keen to share it. If you want to see the end visualization and how it is configured, , and . here is the data studio report here is the Google Sheet which contains some fake data based on the Nike website If you found this interesting, check out some of the other things I’ve written about building apps without or kicking off projects with . writing code a kick-off document Photo by on Markus Spiske Unsplash

How To Blend Data in Google Data Studio For Better Data Analysis

Introducing the InfoSec colour wheel — blending developers with red and blue security teams.

Presentamos la rueda de colores de InfoSec — que combina desarrolladores con equipos de seguridad rojos y azules.

Usually, when adding an image to a website, the first thing you do is edit the image in an external software, such as Photoshop. Not really. But, it in a lot of cases you will be able to add effects to the image . Does the blend mode eliminate the need to use this kind of software? directly with CSS Background Blend Mode and Mix Blend Mode When using the property, you can blend the background color or image of an element. Blend modes are defined as a value and they specify of the background image with the color, or other background images, behind it. background-blend-mode how to blend or mix the colors On the other hand, the property specifies how the content of and the content of its direct parent. Elements on overlapping layers will blend with those beneath it. In this case, it’s important to mention the property — it stops the elements with mix-blend-property from blending with the backdrop. mix-blend-mode an element blends with its background isolation Background-Blend-Mode Let’s show the basic usage of the background-blend-mode by the background image with the background color. blending CSS .image-blend{ background: url(‘beach.png’); background-color: blue; background-blend-mode: multiply;} On the top, you can see the original image, while the bottom shows the image with blend mode applied to it. First, needs to be specified, and afterwards a background color that the image will be blended with. There are many blend modes available to choose from. Here, the blend mode is added to demonstrate how it will affect the image. Along with a solid background color, a can also be used for blending. a background image URL multiply background gradient Now, let’s look at how you can use background-blend-mode for . We are going to blend the following two images together: blending two images together CSS .two-images-blend { background: url(‘beach.png’), url(‘house.png’); background-color: blue; background-blend-mode: lighten;} CSS .two-images-blend { background: url(‘beach.png’), url(‘house.png’); background-blend-mode: lighten;} In this case, you can see two examples. The first one has a background color added to it, while the second has no background color. I have demonstrated two possible values for the background-blend-mode, but there are many of them: screen, overlay, darken, lighten, color-dodge, color-burn, hard-light, soft-light, difference, exclusion, hue, saturation, color and luminosity. Mix-Blend-Mode A popular usage of this effect is . When doing this, it is useful to keep in mind usage of the property. creating cut out text line-height HTML <div class=”container”> <h1 class=”header-text”>Hello world</h1></div> CSS .container { background-image: url(‘beach.png’); background-size: cover;}

.header-text { font-size: 7rem; text-transform: uppercase; color: #fff; text-align: center; background-color: darkcyan; mix-blend-mode: multiply;} Support Before using this property, make sure you check out for more details on its support for these properties. Currently, the property has a slightly better support, hopefully, mix-blend-mode will catch up soon. Can I Use background-blend-mode I have explained the basics of these two properties, now it’s up to you to play with the properties and create beautiful and interesting visuals for your website. Have you had any experience with this property? Originally published at kolosek.com on April 5, 2018.

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