The Levo League

Elevate To Exec

Tagged Expand:

The Unsinkable Generation: How we’re going to make 2012 the best year for women in decades.

Picture Melanie Griffith in her corner office in the final scene of the 1988 movie Working Girl. Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run” blares in the background as the camera zooms out over the towering skyscrapers and possibilities for ambitious women. This scene exemplifies the optimism and empowerment workingwomen felt in the late ‘80’s and ‘90’s. For the first time, women had faith that they could advance to high-level positions just as men could.

According to November’s Economist special report, “Closing the Gap: Women and Work,” the spirit and enthusiasm of the 1990’s working woman has today turned into frustration.

2012 hasn’t marked the progress previous generations hoped for in us: only 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. In parliaments across the world only 20% of the seats go to women— 15% to women in Congress in the United States. Women are also paid less, with the difference in income especially exaggerated in top positions where the inequality averages out around 18%. The decreased progress for working women could be attributed to the nature of economic growth; however, perhaps women could benefit from a little push to help them find their true place in the business world.

The rate of progress for female success in the working world is slowing. If one looks at this issue from an economic perspective, this decrease in growth could be explained by natural forces.

Women in the 1980’s and 90’s had a lot to gain in the working world; it was a time when women were starting to be considered for jobs that they had never previously been considered qualified for. There was a lot of room for progress to be made. Today, we have filled these initial openings for women; there is less of the “new frontier” for women to pioneer. Think of it this way: if a poor country is given one unit of capital when previously they had very little, their growth rate of capital will be huge. However, if a rich country with millions of units of capital is given that same unit of capital, its growth rate will be much smaller. Women of the 80’s were in the position of the poor country, whereas women today are somewhat closer to the richer country. Our growth rate of progress is going to be smaller and perhaps less noticeable, but that does not mean that we are not still moving forward.

If we continue exploring the analogy of the poor country and the rich country, it’s the case that the rich country can still avoid a slowing growth rate, if it changes certain parameters within the country— the savings rate or population growth rates, for example.

In just the same way, women can change some of our self-imposed parameters in order to again progress in the working world at a faster pace. I say self-imposed because I believe that women sometimes psychologically and socially trip themselves up. We need to focus on attitudes and perceptions that we can change ourselves, and that we can change now.

Women tend to under-value themselves—or if they’re not undervaluing, they’re under-representing their own understanding of themselves. Sheryl Sandberg in an oft-viewed TED talk posits that women often underestimate themselves, whereas men tend to think they’ve performed better than they actually did. Self-confidence is essential to the way people perceive each other. When someone exudes confidence, people perceive her in a better light. In her book, “Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman,” Gale Evans points out that part of getting ahead is just getting noticed in the first place. Women aren’t as comfortable with self-promotion as men are. If no one knows about a candidate’s accomplishments, they will go unnoticed. Women need to look out for themselves so that co-workers perceive them in the way they want them to. This usually means telling them – tactfully.

Ms. Evans also argues that women need to continue to raise their hands. For instance, women need to be more assertive and confident when they have an interesting idea at a morning meeting, or a dynamic question in an interview. When people don’t hear someone speak up, they often assume that that individual has nothing to say. Women should challenge themselves to make their voices heard and value themselves enough to know that their opinions matter. In addition, how much a woman values herself also comes off in the way she dresses. Wearing a too-short skirt or a too-low blouse to work is like wearing a sign that says, “Look at me, because my ideas aren’t worth hearing”. We need to help give ourselves the advantages we deserve, not disadvantage ourselves.

Planning ourselves out of success

Another interesting point Ms. Sandberg argues in her TED talk is that women have a tendency to plan out their lives (especially the part of the plan that includes having babies) very early. She reminds women not to leave before they leave—“Lean in,” she urges, as an alternative to mentally checking out of a job in preparation for leaving a job.

Women’s maternal instincts and the socialized expectations that they act self-effacing and overly humble often lead them to consider the concerns of others before their own. Although this altruistic trait is generally a wonderful quality, if it means that women aren’t trying for promotions or switching to a stronger career path, it could be standing in the way of our continued progress in the workplace. A professor of mine at Columbia noted briefly during Intermediate Macroeconomics that there is a notable lack of women in higher-level positions. He joked that when two people decide to start a family, first the man offers to quit work. Then the woman feels bad and says, “oh no, I’ll quit work”, to which the man replies “OK!” and the matter is settled. He then added that in reality, the stupider of the two should quit work, which we all thought was very funny.

Despite the light-hearted nature of my professor’s story, he does bring up a very good point: women often feel that by not giving up their career for their offspring, they are being a bad parent. However, according to a study published in the December issue of the Journal of Family Psychology, mothers who have jobs are healthier than those without employment.

There is a certain attitude in our society that it is nearly impossible to be both successful at work and at home. This is a belief that women have the power to break. A study conducted by researchers at University College London and published by The Economist indicates that maternal employment actually often improves the chances of having well-adjusted children. Yet when I type “career women happy child” into Google, links such as “don’t marry career women” and “happily childfree” are among the top hits.

Sheryl Sandberg argues that when men and women both work and split helping out at home, they face lower divorce rates and more fulfilling relationships. With all of these positive studies, women can change society’s view of the working mother into a positive, caring, and empowering image.

A nudge in the right direction

Women need to learn to help each other. Peggy Klaus, a leadership coach from Berkeley, California wrote an editorial in the New York Times, which was referenced in the Wall Street Journal, arguing that women are often their own enemies at work. She believes that one of the last remaining obstacles for women in the workplace is their mistreatment of one another.

A study by the Workplace Bullying Institute found that female bullies aim at other women more than 70% of the time, whereas male bullies are indifferent towards the sex in which they abuse. Ms. Klaus finds that there are several reasons for this behavior.

First, women are afraid that because there are so few spots at the top, another woman could come take their position. But this is a vestige of harder times for female professionals. Women hold a minority share of board seats and C-suite titles, and there’s plenty of room for growth on all levels of the professional world.

Another reason is that women sometimes bring their emotions to work and hold grudges against other women over minute differences. Sometimes women simply think that because they made it to the top by themselves, other women should too. But these behaviors, too, are vestigial—we live in a society that is far friendlier to the idea that women can add value and productivity to business than was the society of our foremothers. The begrudging sentiments are more and more obviously a distraction from more important competitions, such as who can create the most valuable revenue stream.

There seems to already be movement in the right direction—we have role models like Sheryl Sandberg, Dina Powell, Gina Bianchini, and Marissa Meyer. We have sites like The Levo League. We are setting positive examples for women. By forming bonds that suggest sisterhood and trust, women may become more likely to help one another.

2012 will be a year for increased progress for working women. We should channel the frustration expressed in 2011 to productivity and change in 2012. Women have all of the tools to help themselves and one another. It is still very much an exciting frontier for career-oriented women who are willing to challenge themselves to have it all.

Feb 17

The Unsinkable Generation: How we’re going to make 2012 the best year for women in decades.
Picture Melanie Griffith in her corner office in the final scene of the 1988 movie Working Girl. Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run” blares in the background as the camera zooms out over the towering skyscrapers and possibilities for ambitious women. This scene exemplifies the optimism and empowerment workingwomen felt in the late ‘80’s and ‘90’s. For the first time, women had faith that they could advance to high-level positions just as men could.
According to November’s Economist special report, “Closing the Gap: Women and Work,” the spirit and enthusiasm of the 1990’s working woman has today turned into frustration.
2012 hasn’t marked the progress previous generations hoped for in us: only 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. In parliaments across the world only 20% of the seats go to women— 15% to women in Congress in the United States. Women are also paid less, with the difference in income especially exaggerated in top positions where the inequality averages out around 18%. The decreased progress for working women could be attributed to the nature of economic growth; however, perhaps women could benefit from a little push to help them find their true place in the business world.
The rate of progress for female success in the working world is slowing. If one looks at this issue from an economic perspective, this decrease in growth could be explained by natural forces.
Women in the 1980’s and 90’s had a lot to gain in the working world; it was a time when women were starting to be considered for jobs that they had never previously been considered qualified for. There was a lot of room for progress to be made. Today, we have filled these initial openings for women; there is less of the “new frontier” for women to pioneer. Think of it this way: if a poor country is given one unit of capital when previously they had very little, their growth rate of capital will be huge. However, if a rich country with millions of units of capital is given that same unit of capital, its growth rate will be much smaller. Women of the 80’s were in the position of the poor country, whereas women today are somewhat closer to the richer country. Our growth rate of progress is going to be smaller and perhaps less noticeable, but that does not mean that we are not still moving forward.
If we continue exploring the analogy of the poor country and the rich country, it’s the case that the rich country can still avoid a slowing growth rate, if it changes certain parameters within the country— the savings rate or population growth rates, for example.
In just the same way, women can change some of our self-imposed parameters in order to again progress in the working world at a faster pace. I say self-imposed because I believe that women sometimes psychologically and socially trip themselves up. We need to focus on attitudes and perceptions that we can change ourselves, and that we can change now.
Women tend to under-value themselves—or if they’re not undervaluing, they’re under-representing their own understanding of themselves. Sheryl Sandberg in an oft-viewed TED talk posits that women often underestimate themselves, whereas men tend to think they’ve performed better than they actually did. Self-confidence is essential to the way people perceive each other. When someone exudes confidence, people perceive her in a better light. In her book, “Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman,” Gale Evans points out that part of getting ahead is just getting noticed in the first place. Women aren’t as comfortable with self-promotion as men are. If no one knows about a candidate’s accomplishments, they will go unnoticed. Women need to look out for themselves so that co-workers perceive them in the way they want them to. This usually means telling them – tactfully.
Ms. Evans also argues that women need to continue to raise their hands. For instance, women need to be more assertive and confident when they have an interesting idea at a morning meeting, or a dynamic question in an interview. When people don’t hear someone speak up, they often assume that that individual has nothing to say. Women should challenge themselves to make their voices heard and value themselves enough to know that their opinions matter. In addition, how much a woman values herself also comes off in the way she dresses. Wearing a too-short skirt or a too-low blouse to work is like wearing a sign that says, “Look at me, because my ideas aren’t worth hearing”. We need to help give ourselves the advantages we deserve, not disadvantage ourselves.
Planning ourselves out of success
Another interesting point Ms. Sandberg argues in her TED talk is that women have a tendency to plan out their lives (especially the part of the plan that includes having babies) very early. She reminds women not to leave before they leave—“Lean in,” she urges, as an alternative to mentally checking out of a job in preparation for leaving a job.
Women’s maternal instincts and the socialized expectations that they act self-effacing and overly humble often lead them to consider the concerns of others before their own. Although this altruistic trait is generally a wonderful quality, if it means that women aren’t trying for promotions or switching to a stronger career path, it could be standing in the way of our continued progress in the workplace. A professor of mine at Columbia noted briefly during Intermediate Macroeconomics that there is a notable lack of women in higher-level positions. He joked that when two people decide to start a family, first the man offers to quit work. Then the woman feels bad and says, “oh no, I’ll quit work”, to which the man replies “OK!” and the matter is settled. He then added that in reality, the stupider of the two should quit work, which we all thought was very funny.
Despite the light-hearted nature of my professor’s story, he does bring up a very good point: women often feel that by not giving up their career for their offspring, they are being a bad parent. However, according to a study published in the December issue of the Journal of Family Psychology, mothers who have jobs are healthier than those without employment.
There is a certain attitude in our society that it is nearly impossible to be both successful at work and at home. This is a belief that women have the power to break. A study conducted by researchers at University College London and published by The Economist indicates that maternal employment actually often improves the chances of having well-adjusted children. Yet when I type “career women happy child” into Google, links such as “don’t marry career women” and “happily childfree” are among the top hits.
Sheryl Sandberg argues that when men and women both work and split helping out at home, they face lower divorce rates and more fulfilling relationships. With all of these positive studies, women can change society’s view of the working mother into a positive, caring, and empowering image.
A nudge in the right direction
Women need to learn to help each other. Peggy Klaus, a leadership coach from Berkeley, California wrote an editorial in the New York Times, which was referenced in the Wall Street Journal, arguing that women are often their own enemies at work. She believes that one of the last remaining obstacles for women in the workplace is their mistreatment of one another.
A study by the Workplace Bullying Institute found that female bullies aim at other women more than 70% of the time, whereas male bullies are indifferent towards the sex in which they abuse. Ms. Klaus finds that there are several reasons for this behavior.
First, women are afraid that because there are so few spots at the top, another woman could come take their position. But this is a vestige of harder times for female professionals. Women hold a minority share of board seats and C-suite titles, and there’s plenty of room for growth on all levels of the professional world.
Another reason is that women sometimes bring their emotions to work and hold grudges against other women over minute differences. Sometimes women simply think that because they made it to the top by themselves, other women should too. But these behaviors, too, are vestigial—we live in a society that is far friendlier to the idea that women can add value and productivity to business than was the society of our foremothers. The begrudging sentiments are more and more obviously a distraction from more important competitions, such as who can create the most valuable revenue stream.
There seems to already be movement in the right direction—we have role models like Sheryl Sandberg, Dina Powell, Gina Bianchini, and Marissa Meyer. We have sites like The Levo League. We are setting positive examples for women. By forming bonds that suggest sisterhood and trust, women may become more likely to help one another.
2012 will be a year for increased progress for working women. We should channel the frustration expressed in 2011 to productivity and change in 2012. Women have all of the tools to help themselves and one another. It is still very much an exciting frontier for career-oriented women who are willing to challenge themselves to have it all.

My first job offer said it all: A bonus for staying for two years; and even more for staying three. I was happy to have a job. They saw a Gen Y 20-something groomed by a generation of job-hoppers.

Call it what you will—job-hopping, job-surfing, job-shopping, churning—it was the standard in the early 2000s.

But we have to wonder: Is job-hopping in a recession a good idea? Is it still de rigueur to climb the ladder laterally, sacrificing company loyalty and incurring a high amount of risk?

Leap of faith

“It can work both ways, explains career expert Laura Vanderkam, author of 2007’s Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues. “If you have a good job, you might ‘burrow in.’ But many people haven’t reached that point of having a good job, so they’re going to be less loyal.”

Despite suggestions that workers are sitting tight in favor of stability, early strategic job-hopping can help you get ahead. A 2008 study in the American Sociological Review found that the benefits of job-hopping are found in the early days of one’s career.

“If you’re in a stable, good job, you’re probably going to stick with it now,” Vanderkam agrees. “There’s less risk. But how many people in Gen Y have that job right now?”

Apparently, only the lucky ones. A 2011 article from the American Sociological Association stated that young workers with educational aspirations, career goal certainty, and job search activities during the transition to employment between 18 and 30 were more likely to be currently employed and to have higher wages. In other words, indecision and aimless job-hopping translate into less success in weathering economic turmoil.

Putting an eye to the history of job-hopping, the data can be a mine field to extrapolate meaningful data without committing logical fallacies and overlooking nuances of the business cycle. UC Berkeley’s Daniel Gross observes this in the comparison of three studies on the history of job tenure in the United States. He suggests, as does UCLA’s Sanford Jacoby in a 1984 paper on the same subject, that the passage of NIRA in 1933 and FLSA in 1938 and the establishment of the NRLB in 1934 brought new, lasting worker protections to the work force and therefore altered the tenure profile of the average American worker forever. Sanford Jacoby also points out in Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal that before the Great Depression, a firm that could keep a worker on for 5 years was rare. And for women, he says, even as late as the ‘50s, tenure of a decade was exceedingly rare.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2010 the median tenure of women 25 to 34 was just three years. This isn’t significantly different than it was in 1983. But according to a recent report from Millennial Branding, which studies Facebook statistics, the average tenure for Gen Y (18-29) is just over two years.

A number of factors are to blame. Nearly 50 percent of the 10,000 subjects in 2007 study from MonsterTrak.com and Michigan State University held moderate to high superiority beliefs about themselves—which encouraged an attitude that avoided compromise in the search for the “ideal career.” Interestingly, women scored lower on the perceived superiority scale, which might explain why they are less likely to job-hop once they reach their 30s (see stats, below).

Women also might be less motivated by money. “We tend not to judge women as much solely on the basis of what they earn,” Vanderkam says. “Men, rightly or wrongly, feel that a big junk of what they will be judged on is how much money they bring in. Those are very old ideas, but hard to move beyond.”

Or women might just be more risk-averse.

“Steady work is steady work,” says 28-year hairstylist Erin Anding, who has been at the same employer for 6.5 years. “Plus, I like my clients.”

The study also reiterated the findings that those with high career plan development, who were motivated and directed, were less intent on job-surfing and more eagerly sought by employers. In other words, if you have specific career goals, target the job you want and keep the jumping vertical.

“If you are motivated by people higher up, if you have good mentors, that’s a good sign to stay where you are,” Vanderkam says. “But if you find yourself feeling on Sunday that you really wish you didn’t have to go to work on Monday, then you should put that effort into working your network.”

Look before you leap

No one could be blamed for staying in a secure job. But the smart job-hopper would be wise to keep their eyes—and their options—open.

“Just because you’re looking doesn’t mean you’ll actually leave,” Vanderkam says. “It will give you a sense of what is available and what your skills are worth on the job market. If could even lead to getting a better deal at your current employer.”

Vanderkam also stresses a major factor in deciding when to leave. “A key question is whether you feel like you’re still growing and learning in your current job—that’s a good sign you should stay,” she says.

And make sure you’re not burning bridges. “If you quit after three months, that’s not the best plan,” Vanderkam says. “But if you put in a good solid effort at a place for two years, I do not see that working against you.”

Plus, you might return to the company, but on a higher ladder rung.

“Moving to another company is a way to show you are more valuable, even if you come back to a place you were working before,” Vanderkam explains. “It would have been much harder to move internally.”

Experts and smart job-hoppers seem to agree that any job change be smart, rather than just a hopeful reliance that the grass is greener on the other side. Otherwise, as Anding puts it, “There may be no grass at all!”

“Job-hop with a purpose. Know what you want to do with your life, and get closer to that,” Vanderkam advises. “No job is going to be perfect, especially at 24, but you want each job to get you closer.”

Feb 16

How Has Digital Technology Enhanced Our Ability to Communicate?

There I was: it was Super Bowl Sunday, I was out with friends and excited to spend time with them during the big game. Much to my dislike, I found myself actually watching the game because my friends were too occupied tweeting every two minutes. I eventually pulled up Twitter on my phone so I could follow their play-by-play tweets, since it was impossible to carry a conversation while sitting next to the Twit-addicts.

Fast-forward to Monday, when a good friend I have not talked to in months, does not return my phone call, but instead writes on my Facebook timeline: “Just got your voicemail! How’s Chicago treating you? How are things?” Sometimes catching up via the Face just does not suffice.

Now, I work in digital media. I’m usually a big fan of social media and all things digital. But these events left me craving some REAL communication— you know, an old school face-to-face conversation or a written exchange that involves more than 140 characters.

Thankfully, there are digital tools and apps out there that make it easy for us young professionals to really connect with others in our personal and professional lives. And, as a bonus we have included some great time-saving communication apps and tools below.

Don’t Be Evil, now featuring Google+

For starters: Have you met Google+? If you have not tried Google+ hangouts, you are seriously missing out. When someone you want to talk to lives on the opposite side of the equator or street (not judging—winter can be brutal) it is the next best thing to hanging out in person. If you are like many other Millennials, your closest friends and family are scattered across the U.S and you have limited free time available for individual catch up sessions on the phone. There was a point in my life when I practically lived at an advertising agency and struggled to fit in time to talk to my family and friends. Hangouts made it possible for me to talk to up to nine people at the same time—I can easily send my love to my mom, dad, brother, sister and adorable little Westie dog all at once.

Even the President uses hangouts to video chat with Americans across the country. On January 30, 2012, President Obama hosted the first Google+ Hangout from the White House where people could virtually ask him questions about the State of the Union and have a two-way conversation with him from the comfort of their own homes.

Hangouts are also extremely useful for your work life. I work in a remote office, and when we need to have a meeting with coworkers in NYC or San Francisco, Hangouts with Extras provides an exceptional videoconference platform where we can videoconference and collaborate on a project. It allows us to share computer screens, integrate Google Docs (that can be later converted to Word documents), take notes and invite people to join the hangout by calling in from their phone.

Speaking of work communication: here is a tool that everyone should have in their office: Yammer. It is a self proclaimed “enterprise social network” that makes it easier to share ideas, get feedback and collaborate with coworkers across various disciplines. It boosts the best features of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs in one secure, private network where employees can safely discuss internal projects they are working on. When I worked at a large ad agency with over a thousand employees, Yammer was an excellent tool that helped break down communication barriers across departments. We often uncovered extremely intelligent ideas and resources within our building that we did not know existed before because we sat on different floors or worked on different accounts. Yammer also allows people to start “microblogs” where people can share news, images and links—making it ridiculously easy to stay updated on the latest industry news. Hey, when my boss’s boss shares a news article, it is probably a good thing for me to read too. If your company does not have a Yammer account, you can create a free Yammer network with your company email address.

When it comes to email, as the Spice Girls wisely sang, “too much of something is bad enough.” (Maybe they weren’t referring to email, but you get the point.) Email is never ending and can require a lot of time to manage, especially when a group of 20+ people include you on a chain email that you would love to silently remove yourself from. For that reason, I’d like to shake hands with the brilliant people who created the Google lab, “smart mute” that makes it possible to silence an email chain that you no longer need to be included on. Within Gmail, pull down the “More” tab and select “mute” and voilà, replies regarding the InsertActivityHereThatYouHadZeroInterestIn will no longer flood your inbox.

Now, for a few digital gems that make it easier to communicate internationally:

Remember that time you were traveling abroad and sent SMS text messages and were later charged hefty international roaming charges? Me too. WhatsApp is a must have app because it allows you to message your friends on iPhones, Blackberries, Androids and Nokia phones in group chats internationally with no extra charges by using the same internet data plan that you use for web and email. Since WhatsApp uses your internet connection to send messages (similar to sending an email) once your friends download the application, you can chat unlimited. Just like you were sending SMS texts, you will receive messages via push notifications. One of the best features is that the app automatically loads your current contact database into its system so you do not need to waste your precious time to re-enter information.

Working on a project that requires you to read documents in another language? Thanks to Google Translate Toolkit you no longer have to search the streets of Manhattan for your own personal translator, you can now translate documents, web pages or Wikipedia articles on your computer. Google Translate instantly translates 58 different languages for free. The Google Translate app is your perfect sidekick while traveling.

Finally I saved one of my favorites for last: Word Lens. It is magical. It is the perfect translator tool for international business or personal travel. You simply point your iPhone lens at the sign or text that you would like to translate and it will automatically translate the words on your screen—you really have to see it to believe it. Major bonus—the app does not require an internet connection to translate. Word Lens is most useful when you need to translate short phrases and sentences, such as the “Do not drink the water sign” that will save you from Montezuma’s revenge.

The digital tools and apps listed above are examples of digital technology that can promote real, authentic communication within our personal and professional lives and save us time. These communication tools can be utilized to bring us together and allow us to learn from one another, no matter what language we speak. What are your favorite digital tools and apps that enhance communication?

—————————————————————————-

Brittany Thomas is a contributor to The Levo League.

Feb 13

How Has Digital Technology Enhanced Our Ability to Communicate?There I was: it was Super Bowl Sunday, I was out with friends and excited to spend time with them during the big game. Much to my dislike, I found myself actually watching the game because my friends were too occupied tweeting every two minutes. I eventually pulled up Twitter on my phone so I could follow their play-by-play tweets, since it was impossible to carry a conversation while sitting next to the Twit-addicts.Fast-forward to Monday, when a good friend I have not talked to in months, does not return my phone call, but instead writes on my Facebook timeline: “Just got your voicemail! How’s Chicago treating you? How are things?” Sometimes catching up via the Face just does not suffice.Now, I work in digital media. I’m usually a big fan of social media and all things digital. But these events left me craving some REAL communication— you know, an old school face-to-face conversation or a written exchange that involves more than 140 characters.

Thankfully, there are digital tools and apps out there that make it easy for us young professionals to really connect with others in our personal and professional lives. And, as a bonus we have included some great time-saving communication apps and tools below.
Don’t Be Evil, now featuring Google+
For starters: Have you met Google+? If you have not tried Google+ hangouts, you are seriously missing out. When someone you want to talk to lives on the opposite side of the equator or street (not judging—winter can be brutal) it is the next best thing to hanging out in person. If you are like many other Millennials, your closest friends and family are scattered across the U.S and you have limited free time available for individual catch up sessions on the phone. There was a point in my life when I practically lived at an advertising agency and struggled to fit in time to talk to my family and friends. Hangouts made it possible for me to talk to up to nine people at the same time—I can easily send my love to my mom, dad, brother, sister and adorable little Westie dog all at once.Even the President uses hangouts to video chat with Americans across the country. On January 30, 2012, President Obama hosted the first Google+ Hangout from the White House where people could virtually ask him questions about the State of the Union and have a two-way conversation with him from the comfort of their own homes.Hangouts are also extremely useful for your work life. I work in a remote office, and when we need to have a meeting with coworkers in NYC or San Francisco, Hangouts with Extras provides an exceptional videoconference platform where we can videoconference and collaborate on a project. It allows us to share computer screens, integrate Google Docs (that can be later converted to Word documents), take notes and invite people to join the hangout by calling in from their phone.Speaking of work communication: here is a tool that everyone should have in their office: Yammer. It is a self proclaimed “enterprise social network” that makes it easier to share ideas, get feedback and collaborate with coworkers across various disciplines. It boosts the best features of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs in one secure, private network where employees can safely discuss internal projects they are working on. When I worked at a large ad agency with over a thousand employees, Yammer was an excellent tool that helped break down communication barriers across departments. We often uncovered extremely intelligent ideas and resources within our building that we did not know existed before because we sat on different floors or worked on different accounts. Yammer also allows people to start “microblogs” where people can share news, images and links—making it ridiculously easy to stay updated on the latest industry news. Hey, when my boss’s boss shares a news article, it is probably a good thing for me to read too. If your company does not have a Yammer account, you can create a free Yammer network with your company email address.When it comes to email, as the Spice Girls wisely sang, “too much of something is bad enough.” (Maybe they weren’t referring to email, but you get the point.) Email is never ending and can require a lot of time to manage, especially when a group of 20+ people include you on a chain email that you would love to silently remove yourself from. For that reason, I’d like to shake hands with the brilliant people who created the Google lab, “smart mute” that makes it possible to silence an email chain that you no longer need to be included on. Within Gmail, pull down the “More” tab and select “mute” and voilà, replies regarding the InsertActivityHereThatYouHadZeroInterestIn will no longer flood your inbox.Now, for a few digital gems that make it easier to communicate internationally:Remember that time you were traveling abroad and sent SMS text messages and were later charged hefty international roaming charges? Me too. WhatsApp is a must have app because it allows you to message your friends on iPhones, Blackberries, Androids and Nokia phones in group chats internationally with no extra charges by using the same internet data plan that you use for web and email. Since WhatsApp uses your internet connection to send messages (similar to sending an email) once your friends download the application, you can chat unlimited. Just like you were sending SMS texts, you will receive messages via push notifications. One of the best features is that the app automatically loads your current contact database into its system so you do not need to waste your precious time to re-enter information. Working on a project that requires you to read documents in another language? Thanks to Google Translate Toolkit you no longer have to search the streets of Manhattan for your own personal translator, you can now translate documents, web pages or Wikipedia articles on your computer. Google Translate instantly translates 58 different languages for free. The Google Translate app is your perfect sidekick while traveling.Finally I saved one of my favorites for last: Word Lens. It is magical. It is the perfect translator tool for international business or personal travel. You simply point your iPhone lens at the sign or text that you would like to translate and it will automatically translate the words on your screen—you really have to see it to believe it. Major bonus—the app does not require an internet connection to translate. Word Lens is most useful when you need to translate short phrases and sentences, such as the “Do not drink the water sign” that will save you from Montezuma’s revenge. The digital tools and apps listed above are examples of digital technology that can promote real, authentic communication within our personal and professional lives and save us time. These communication tools can be utilized to bring us together and allow us to learn from one another, no matter what language we speak. What are your favorite digital tools and apps that enhance communication?
—————————————————————————-
Brittany Thomas is a contributor to The Levo League.

Fall In Love with Your Work Life: Uncovering Your Passion and Finding Your Dream Career.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. Since we’re all completely over being told to pair off in order to signal to the rest of the world that our lives are (somewhat) on track, we thought ‘Why don’t we just focus on actually getting our lives in order?’ In that vein, Kristen Walker helps the Levo League to take a close look at what we find important in our lives and careers.

We’ve all been told that in order to love our job and achieve lasting career happiness and success, we simply have to follow our passion. Inspiring, right? While there is obviously plenty of truth to this cliché, the advice it provides is so vague that it can often feel almost totally useless. And if you’re anything like me, it can cause more anxiety than encouragement, especially if you don’t have a clue how to take that first step in following your passion. Or — and this can feel even scarier — what happens if you don’t even know what you’re passionate about to start with? What if you want to have a career that makes you feel fulfilled, but you just don’t know what that career is yet?

Some of you may already have a clear idea of exactly what it is you want to do with your life. Maybe you’re already working in your field and embarking on the journey to your ideal career. Those of you who fall into this category — you are the lucky few! But if you’re like the majority of Gen Y-ers, you’re likely struggling to uncover what you’re truly passionate about, much less determine how to make it into a viable career.

In her book 20 Something Manifesto, Christine Hassler compares finding your life direction to eating at the Cheesecake Factory. With 167 menu options to choose from, (not including beverages, sides, and, of course, cheesecake flavors), the Cheesecake Factory’s menu can induce mild panic, even to the most decisive of us. Hassler describes her reaction the first time she perused this menu: “How was I supposed to pick just one dish? What was the best thing? As everyone else around me ordered, I became even more anxious — should I get what someone else was having? Would it be better than what I thought I wanted?” You may feel this way when trying to uncover your passions or ideal career path. There are so many options available, the idea of choosing just one is daunting!

Some of us will decide that the best way to solve the mystery of our missing passion is to try out various new activities or jobs to see which one sticks. There’s an undercurrent of romance and excitement in the belief that one day you can try something completely new and have an epiphany: This is it! This is what I’m meant to do with my life! But Jonathan Acuff refutes this concept in his book Quitter.

Acuff believes that finding your dream job “is more than a revelation or an act of discovery. I believe it’s a process of recovery. More often than not, finding out what you love doing most is about recovering an old love or an inescapable truth that has been silenced for years, even decades. When you come to your dream job, your thing, it is rarely a first encounter. It’s usually a reunion.”

So in order to help you on your path to recovering your passion, I’ve developed an interactive series of questions called “7 Steps to Uncover Your Passion and Dream Career” to help you reflect on your innate interests, talents, and strengths. Then, in the next article in this series, you’ll learn how to determine if your passion will make a sustainable and fulfilling career.

Ready to rescue your inner passion? Go to “7 Steps to Uncover Your Passion and Dream Career” now.

Feb 08

Fall In Love with Your Work Life: Uncovering Your Passion and Finding Your Dream Career.
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. Since we’re all completely over being told to pair off in order to signal to the rest of the world that our lives are (somewhat) on track, we thought ‘Why don’t we just focus on actually getting our lives in order?’ In that vein, Kristen Walker helps the Levo League to take a close look at what we find important in our lives and careers.
We’ve all been told that in order to love our job and achieve lasting career happiness and success, we simply have to follow our passion. Inspiring, right? While there is obviously plenty of truth to this cliché, the advice it provides is so vague that it can often feel almost totally useless. And if you’re anything like me, it can cause more anxiety than encouragement, especially if you don’t have a clue how to take that first step in following your passion. Or — and this can feel even scarier — what happens if you don’t even know what you’re passionate about to start with? What if you want to have a career that makes you feel fulfilled, but you just don’t know what that career is yet?
Some of you may already have a clear idea of exactly what it is you want to do with your life. Maybe you’re already working in your field and embarking on the journey to your ideal career. Those of you who fall into this category — you are the lucky few! But if you’re like the majority of Gen Y-ers, you’re likely struggling to uncover what you’re truly passionate about, much less determine how to make it into a viable career.
In her book 20 Something Manifesto, Christine Hassler compares finding your life direction to eating at the Cheesecake Factory. With 167 menu options to choose from, (not including beverages, sides, and, of course, cheesecake flavors), the Cheesecake Factory’s menu can induce mild panic, even to the most decisive of us. Hassler describes her reaction the first time she perused this menu: “How was I supposed to pick just one dish? What was the best thing? As everyone else around me ordered, I became even more anxious — should I get what someone else was having? Would it be better than what I thought I wanted?” You may feel this way when trying to uncover your passions or ideal career path. There are so many options available, the idea of choosing just one is daunting!
Some of us will decide that the best way to solve the mystery of our missing passion is to try out various new activities or jobs to see which one sticks. There’s an undercurrent of romance and excitement in the belief that one day you can try something completely new and have an epiphany: This is it! This is what I’m meant to do with my life! But Jonathan Acuff refutes this concept in his book Quitter.
Acuff believes that finding your dream job “is more than a revelation or an act of discovery. I believe it’s a process of recovery. More often than not, finding out what you love doing most is about recovering an old love or an inescapable truth that has been silenced for years, even decades. When you come to your dream job, your thing, it is rarely a first encounter. It’s usually a reunion.”
So in order to help you on your path to recovering your passion, I’ve developed an interactive series of questions called “7 Steps to Uncover Your Passion and Dream Career” to help you reflect on your innate interests, talents, and strengths. Then, in the next article in this series, you’ll learn how to determine if your passion will make a sustainable and fulfilling career.
Ready to rescue your inner passion? Go to “7 Steps to Uncover Your Passion and Dream Career” now.

Levo Lit: The Search, How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.

Here’s a blast from the past: Frances Advincula writes with a programmer’s perspective on John Battelle’s 2005 The Search, which has gained both acclaim and confusion by readers without the same technical background John Battelle writes from. Frances retells the story of Google and points to some helpful resources to remind us what life was like without it.

Author John Battelle starts off his 2005 work The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of the Internet and Transformed Our Culture by detailing the manner in which he stumbled upon the 2001 summary of Google’s Zeitgeist, a PR tool that summarizes what the world searched for. He coins the term “The Database of Intentions,” explains the value of search to our modern world, and provides us a history of search. He also tells the story of how Google was born and their journey to success, all while exposing the inner workings of search and how it makes money. Finally, he tells about the impact and implications of search in our lives, as well as its future. However, a few details maybe outdated, as the book was published in 2005.

All points of view are the original author’s; I merely summarize what he says in a somewhat more tangible and digestible format.

WHAT IS SO FASCINATING ABOUT SEARCH?

Google’s approach to search may be the closest thing we have to this “Database of Intentions”—it represents the aggregate result of all our searches, the history of every query we typed in the search box. Google search shows what we’ve searched for and where that search led, affording us insight into what we ourselves want, what we spend time and energy thinking about, and what drives us. [Author’s note: Somewhat similar to a global Facebook timeline.]

At the same time, search is not only one of the pioneers of useful web services, it is also the reason for the second wave of Internet giants (think eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, and yes, Google). Researchers also say search is the forefront of further progress in artificial intelligence. [Author’s note: we now have Siri, who definitely imitates human behavior.]

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW, REGARDLESS OF THE SEARCH ENGINE

Who: The younger you are and the higher your level of education, the more you use search.

What: The beauty of search is that we can query for anything under the sun; the possibilities are infinite. How we choose the words we type in the search box, however, is a mystery in itself.

Where: The most used search engines are Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google.
[Author’s note: Nowadays, “to Google” has been welcomed into the global lexicon as a regular verb, and Bing recently overtook Yahoo in terms of traffic]

When: We search the most in the morning and the evening.

Why: First, we search to find what we know already exists. We want to locate something, to find information on a topic. Second, we use search to discover what we think exists, but we have yet to find.

How Search Works: Every search engine has three main parts, the crawler, the index, and the runtime system. The crawler traverses the entire Web and sends every page it finds to a massive database called the index. The information is then analyzed using factors such as the number and popularity of links, language, content, etc. Afterwards, the data is sent to the runtime system, a database that is ready to serve the person who queries. The runtime system performs the ranking logic, connects the user’s query to the index, and displays the results to the user.

With this in mind, returning relevant results is no easy feat. For example, if we want to know more about Abraham Lincoln, we search for “Abraham Lincoln Biography.” However, we are not merely looking for pages with those exact keywords; a good search engine will pay attention to coherence as well. As it analyses pages, it will take into consideration if the page shows the attributes of a biography.

Similarly, search must deliver results even when we misspell a word, or be flexible enough to show relevant results for subjects that are represented by different words (“soda” versus “pop”, “tennis shoes” versus “sneakers”). Search engines also worry about striking the toss-keep balance with words such as “to,” “be,” etc. Usually, tossing them out will make the engine work faster, but what if one queries “to be or not to be”? All of a sudden, those words are crucial to the query. [Author’s note: Here’s an infographic on how Google works.]

How Search Makes Money: Most of Google’s revenue comes from paid search. Advertisers pay the search company a certain amount per click in exchange for their ads showing up when a user queries for something relevant to their offerings. There are also more innovative ways companies are cashing in on search; examples include targeting ads using a person’s online habits and demographic.

THE GOOGLE GIANT IS BORN (AND GROWS UP)

Google started as a thesis topic called BackRub by Stanford PhD student Larry Page. He set out to create a system that would take the links of entire Web, analyze, and publish them in a way where one can find out who was linking to whom (unprecedented at the time), attracting the attention of Sergey Brin, another computer science PhD student at Stanford. The two came up with PageRank, an algorithm that rewarded links from important pages and penalized those that came from obscure sites (similar to the academe’s way of judging the quality of your paper through your citations and their quality).

After its debut on the Stanford site in 1996, the founders tried to license to the major players in the industry, but were turned down by companies like Yahoo for the next eighteen months. Finally deciding to start their own company, they received their first $100,000 in funding from Andy Bechtolsheim, a founder of Sun. Thus, Google was formally incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998.

The next step was to find a business model that generated money. Google turned to advertising, pioneering their text-based ads with AdWords. Led by their founders and new CEO Eric Schmidt (formerly of Sun and Novell), Google summed up its core values in their mantra – “Don’t Be Evil.”

Google continued to grow significantly from 2001 to 2004, buying DejaNews, Blogger, Picasa, and Keyhole. Then the company released AdSense, a service that displays ads based on the contents of a page. They also started to index images and public phone-book information, partnering with companies such AT&T, Cingular, HandSpring, and AOL. After 9/11 happened, websites like cnn.com weren’t able to handle the traffic, and people turned to Google to inform them. Google was finally more than a search engine, something they took advantage of by launching Google News. Later, Google launched a new version of AdWords that copied GoTo.com’s auction and pay-per-click approach (previously, AdWords used the cost per thousand model). However, Google still included popularity on how they rank an ad, not merely how much the company paid. Although this decision actually makes Google more money, the public saw it as a “Don’t Be Evil” move, one that put the user’s interests before Google’s.

But as Google gained more admiration from the public and the press, not everyone was happy with it either. Whether it was their founder’s approach, their aloofness, their unconventional hiring process, or even their cute vibe, some were not impressed by Google.

By 2004, Google realized that to be able to compete with Yahoo and Microsoft, they had to go public. That April, Google filed their formal public offering (S1) that stated how not only would they be maintaining a high level of control, the founders would also have ten times more voting power than the rest of the shareholders, despite the fact that they would own just 30% of the shares. After an age discrimination lawsuit, an investigation due to an untimely magazine interview, a reprimand that led Google to conduct a recision offer to their employees, glitches on their auction technology, and a myriad of other PR disasters, Google finally went public on August 19, 2004. Starting at the price of $85 per share, the price quickly rose to around $100 on the first day, topping at $300 by the next summer.

Post-IPO, Google underwent a soul searching of sorts, resulting in the founders’ Tablet, a statement of what makes Google what it is. This became a guide for a reorganization that took months long. Their previous approach of giving the most resources to the top 100 projects was done away with; instead, the company segregated functionality into core groups — search, advertising, “20 percent,” and “10 percent,” with the latter two for products that are were acquisitions or unconventional.

IMPACT AND IMPLICATIONS

First, search overhauled the way businesses operated, from investors looking into new prospects to real estate firms staking out new territory. Until now, Google’s routine algorithmic updates impacts the crop of small, online stores who rely on showing up in organic search results. Google continues to do these in order to control spammers, click fraud, and other unethical operations that plague the Web to this day.

Next, search made information available and permanent. We now search for everything, including potential dates, potential hires, people we just met. Unfortunately, we might not always like what we see. For example, pre-search, unfortunate things that we may have been involved in, although public information, are somehow inconvenient to research. Now, one can merely query for your name, and voila! – the history of you, as it is published online, is available for the world to see. Of course, we cannot forget the PATRIOT Act, which allows for our private information to be intercepted and demanded by government authorities from our ISPs, Google, etc. The million dollar question then is how do be balance between our right to know and the right of a person to his privacy?

Google also had to be very careful on the precedent they set when they were entering China. They didn’t have the luxury of being a manufacturing company; brands do not suffer by being made in China. Things are different when your business is in information. Once they budge to China, what stops another country or even a corporation from making similar demands?
[Author’s note: A closer look on Google and China]

THE FUTURE OF SEARCH

Perhaps in the future, we can search for anyone in real-time, or perhaps we won’t be limited to typing in a search box. Maybe the public will even have access to a search that understands very complex, human-like demands like IBM’s WebFountain. For sure, the evolution of search will be influenced by its two major players and their difference. Yahoo will continue to focus on being a media business, whereas Google will keep its stance on being a technology business. Many say Google will eventually permeate into everything we do online, including music, documents, mail, photographs, and video. To quote directly from the book, “When it comes to search, as with the Internet itself, the most interesting stuff is yet to come.”
[Author’s note: To date, Google has launched Google Music, Google Docs, and Gmail, as well as acquired YouTube, and Picasa. As for the interesting stuff, it is my opinion that Google has indeed lived up to that sentiment with Google+, Search plus Your World, and Android.]

A COUPLE OF MEMORABLE QUOTES

“Because of their early success, they were closed-minded and a bit arrogant. Nothing deceives like success.”- Vinod Koshla, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, on advising Excite founders to buy out Lycos, and not being heeded.

“I’d rather do something interesting than something boring and get rich.” – Louis Moiner, creator of AltaVista, on leaving Compaq in 1999, having felt that AltaVista was becoming a Yahoo clone.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEARCH, PRE-GOOGLE

Archie by Alan Emtage, McGill University, 1990. The first internet-based, pre-Web search engine.

Veronica by University of Nevada students, 1993. Connected users to the document itself, versus just the machine where it is located.

WWW Wanderer by Mathey Gray of MIT, 1993. Pioneered a breadth algorithm still used today.

Web Crawler by Brian Pinkertron, University of Washington, 1994. First to index the entire contents of a webpage.

Alta Vista by Louis Monier , DEC, mid 1990s. Pioneered the use of thousands of crawlers at once.

Lycos by Dr. Michael Mauldin, Carnegie Mellon, 1994. First to use links as a way of ranking and to include a summary of the results.

Excite by six Stanford alumni, 1994. Started personalization and free email.

Yahoo by Jerry Yang and David Filo, PhD students at Stanford, 1994. Started out using a directory-type structure that organized the Web into categories. Shares stark similarities with Google (both founded by Stanford PhD students, both have the quirky culture, both have fun office complexes).

GoTo.com by Bill Gross, founder of IdeaLab, 1997. Came up with the pay-per-click model; results were fully commercial.

Frances Advincula is about to graduate with a degree in Computer Science with specialization in Software Engineering. She has spent time as a Platform Development Intern for Accenture Software. Being in an industry that is predominantly male, she is passionate about empowering women in every aspect of their lives. Someday, she looks forward to being a leading lady, just like the women The Levo League stands up for.

Feb 08

Levo Lit: The Search, How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.
Here’s a blast from the past: Frances Advincula writes with a programmer’s perspective on John Battelle’s 2005 The Search, which has gained both acclaim and confusion by readers without the same technical background John Battelle writes from. Frances retells the story of Google and points to some helpful resources to remind us what life was like without it.
Author John Battelle starts off his 2005 work The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of the Internet and Transformed Our Culture by detailing the manner in which he stumbled upon the 2001 summary of Google’s Zeitgeist, a PR tool that summarizes what the world searched for. He coins the term “The Database of Intentions,” explains the value of search to our modern world, and provides us a history of search. He also tells the story of how Google was born and their journey to success, all while exposing the inner workings of search and how it makes money. Finally, he tells about the impact and implications of search in our lives, as well as its future. However, a few details maybe outdated, as the book was published in 2005.

All points of view are the original author’s; I merely summarize what he says in a somewhat more tangible and digestible format.

WHAT IS SO FASCINATING ABOUT SEARCH?
Google’s approach to search may be the closest thing we have to this “Database of Intentions”—it represents the aggregate result of all our searches, the history of every query we typed in the search box. Google search shows what we’ve searched for and where that search led, affording us insight into what we ourselves want, what we spend time and energy thinking about, and what drives us. [Author’s note: Somewhat similar to a global Facebook timeline.]

At the same time, search is not only one of the pioneers of useful web services, it is also the reason for the second wave of Internet giants (think eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, and yes, Google). Researchers also say search is the forefront of further progress in artificial intelligence. [Author’s note: we now have Siri, who definitely imitates human behavior.]

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW, REGARDLESS OF THE SEARCH ENGINE
Who: The younger you are and the higher your level of education, the more you use search.

What: The beauty of search is that we can query for anything under the sun; the possibilities are infinite. How we choose the words we type in the search box, however, is a mystery in itself.
Where: The most used search engines are Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google. [Author’s note: Nowadays, “to Google” has been welcomed into the global lexicon as a regular verb, and Bing recently overtook Yahoo in terms of traffic]

When: We search the most in the morning and the evening.

Why: First, we search to find what we know already exists. We want to locate something, to find information on a topic. Second, we use search to discover what we think exists, but we have yet to find.
How Search Works: Every search engine has three main parts, the crawler, the index, and the runtime system. The crawler traverses the entire Web and sends every page it finds to a massive database called the index. The information is then analyzed using factors such as the number and popularity of links, language, content, etc. Afterwards, the data is sent to the runtime system, a database that is ready to serve the person who queries. The runtime system performs the ranking logic, connects the user’s query to the index, and displays the results to the user.

With this in mind, returning relevant results is no easy feat. For example, if we want to know more about Abraham Lincoln, we search for “Abraham Lincoln Biography.” However, we are not merely looking for pages with those exact keywords; a good search engine will pay attention to coherence as well. As it analyses pages, it will take into consideration if the page shows the attributes of a biography.

Similarly, search must deliver results even when we misspell a word, or be flexible enough to show relevant results for subjects that are represented by different words (“soda” versus “pop”, “tennis shoes” versus “sneakers”). Search engines also worry about striking the toss-keep balance with words such as “to,” “be,” etc. Usually, tossing them out will make the engine work faster, but what if one queries “to be or not to be”? All of a sudden, those words are crucial to the query. [Author’s note: Here’s an infographic on how Google works.]

How Search Makes Money: Most of Google’s revenue comes from paid search. Advertisers pay the search company a certain amount per click in exchange for their ads showing up when a user queries for something relevant to their offerings. There are also more innovative ways companies are cashing in on search; examples include targeting ads using a person’s online habits and demographic.
THE GOOGLE GIANT IS BORN (AND GROWS UP) Google started as a thesis topic called BackRub by Stanford PhD student Larry Page. He set out to create a system that would take the links of entire Web, analyze, and publish them in a way where one can find out who was linking to whom (unprecedented at the time), attracting the attention of Sergey Brin, another computer science PhD student at Stanford. The two came up with PageRank, an algorithm that rewarded links from important pages and penalized those that came from obscure sites (similar to the academe’s way of judging the quality of your paper through your citations and their quality). After its debut on the Stanford site in 1996, the founders tried to license to the major players in the industry, but were turned down by companies like Yahoo for the next eighteen months. Finally deciding to start their own company, they received their first $100,000 in funding from Andy Bechtolsheim, a founder of Sun. Thus, Google was formally incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998.
The next step was to find a business model that generated money. Google turned to advertising, pioneering their text-based ads with AdWords. Led by their founders and new CEO Eric Schmidt (formerly of Sun and Novell), Google summed up its core values in their mantra – “Don’t Be Evil.”
Google continued to grow significantly from 2001 to 2004, buying DejaNews, Blogger, Picasa, and Keyhole. Then the company released AdSense, a service that displays ads based on the contents of a page. They also started to index images and public phone-book information, partnering with companies such AT&T, Cingular, HandSpring, and AOL. After 9/11 happened, websites like cnn.com weren’t able to handle the traffic, and people turned to Google to inform them. Google was finally more than a search engine, something they took advantage of by launching Google News. Later, Google launched a new version of AdWords that copied GoTo.com’s auction and pay-per-click approach (previously, AdWords used the cost per thousand model). However, Google still included popularity on how they rank an ad, not merely how much the company paid. Although this decision actually makes Google more money, the public saw it as a “Don’t Be Evil” move, one that put the user’s interests before Google’s.
But as Google gained more admiration from the public and the press, not everyone was happy with it either. Whether it was their founder’s approach, their aloofness, their unconventional hiring process, or even their cute vibe, some were not impressed by Google.
By 2004, Google realized that to be able to compete with Yahoo and Microsoft, they had to go public. That April, Google filed their formal public offering (S1) that stated how not only would they be maintaining a high level of control, the founders would also have ten times more voting power than the rest of the shareholders, despite the fact that they would own just 30% of the shares. After an age discrimination lawsuit, an investigation due to an untimely magazine interview, a reprimand that led Google to conduct a recision offer to their employees, glitches on their auction technology, and a myriad of other PR disasters, Google finally went public on August 19, 2004. Starting at the price of $85 per share, the price quickly rose to around $100 on the first day, topping at $300 by the next summer.
Post-IPO, Google underwent a soul searching of sorts, resulting in the founders’ Tablet, a statement of what makes Google what it is. This became a guide for a reorganization that took months long. Their previous approach of giving the most resources to the top 100 projects was done away with; instead, the company segregated functionality into core groups — search, advertising, “20 percent,” and “10 percent,” with the latter two for products that are were acquisitions or unconventional.
IMPACT AND IMPLICATIONS
First, search overhauled the way businesses operated, from investors looking into new prospects to real estate firms staking out new territory. Until now, Google’s routine algorithmic updates impacts the crop of small, online stores who rely on showing up in organic search results. Google continues to do these in order to control spammers, click fraud, and other unethical operations that plague the Web to this day.
Next, search made information available and permanent. We now search for everything, including potential dates, potential hires, people we just met. Unfortunately, we might not always like what we see. For example, pre-search, unfortunate things that we may have been involved in, although public information, are somehow inconvenient to research. Now, one can merely query for your name, and voila! – the history of you, as it is published online, is available for the world to see. Of course, we cannot forget the PATRIOT Act, which allows for our private information to be intercepted and demanded by government authorities from our ISPs, Google, etc. The million dollar question then is how do be balance between our right to know and the right of a person to his privacy?
Google also had to be very careful on the precedent they set when they were entering China. They didn’t have the luxury of being a manufacturing company; brands do not suffer by being made in China. Things are different when your business is in information. Once they budge to China, what stops another country or even a corporation from making similar demands? [Author’s note: A closer look on Google and China]
THE FUTURE OF SEARCH Perhaps in the future, we can search for anyone in real-time, or perhaps we won’t be limited to typing in a search box. Maybe the public will even have access to a search that understands very complex, human-like demands like IBM’s WebFountain. For sure, the evolution of search will be influenced by its two major players and their difference. Yahoo will continue to focus on being a media business, whereas Google will keep its stance on being a technology business. Many say Google will eventually permeate into everything we do online, including music, documents, mail, photographs, and video. To quote directly from the book, “When it comes to search, as with the Internet itself, the most interesting stuff is yet to come.” [Author’s note: To date, Google has launched Google Music, Google Docs, and Gmail, as well as acquired YouTube, and Picasa. As for the interesting stuff, it is my opinion that Google has indeed lived up to that sentiment with Google+, Search plus Your World, and Android.]
A COUPLE OF MEMORABLE QUOTES
“Because of their early success, they were closed-minded and a bit arrogant. Nothing deceives like success.”- Vinod Koshla, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, on advising Excite founders to buy out Lycos, and not being heeded.

“I’d rather do something interesting than something boring and get rich.” – Louis Moiner, creator of AltaVista, on leaving Compaq in 1999, having felt that AltaVista was becoming a Yahoo clone.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEARCH, PRE-GOOGLE
Archie by Alan Emtage, McGill University, 1990. The first internet-based, pre-Web search engine.
Veronica by University of Nevada students, 1993. Connected users to the document itself, versus just the machine where it is located.
WWW Wanderer by Mathey Gray of MIT, 1993. Pioneered a breadth algorithm still used today.
Web Crawler by Brian Pinkertron, University of Washington, 1994. First to index the entire contents of a webpage.
Alta Vista by Louis Monier , DEC, mid 1990s. Pioneered the use of thousands of crawlers at once.
Lycos by Dr. Michael Mauldin, Carnegie Mellon, 1994. First to use links as a way of ranking and to include a summary of the results. Excite by six Stanford alumni, 1994. Started personalization and free email.
Yahoo by Jerry Yang and David Filo, PhD students at Stanford, 1994. Started out using a directory-type structure that organized the Web into categories. Shares stark similarities with Google (both founded by Stanford PhD students, both have the quirky culture, both have fun office complexes).

GoTo.com by Bill Gross, founder of IdeaLab, 1997. Came up with the pay-per-click model; results were fully commercial.

Frances Advincula is about to graduate with a degree in Computer Science with specialization in Software Engineering. She has spent time as a Platform Development Intern for Accenture Software. Being in an industry that is predominantly male, she is passionate about empowering women in every aspect of their lives. Someday, she looks forward to being a leading lady, just like the women The Levo League stands up for.

Women in the News: Tech Takeover

Usually WIN is a medium to congratulate women who’ve made huge strides in the course of the past week or to spotlight issues that affect the women of the world imminently. But in light of Facebook’s IPO last week, we at The Levo League thought we’d bring you some news items that will add depth to your experience of the events upcoming in the next few weeks, plus a recap of IP issues around yesterday’s Super Bowl.

Is Facebook Actually the New Google?

Think about it. Google has been having a rough couple of months, User Experience-wise. PaidContent has a rundown of Google’s major issues over the last quarter, but the ones I’ve noticed are 1) Google Reader is now useless, and 2) Google Plus… What is going on there?

In other words, it’s great timing for Facebook’s IPO. To put that in context, check out some basic Experian data on Facebook site usage courtesy of Heather Dougherty. Interestingly, 57% of visitors to the Book of Face (as the Economist lovingly terms it) are female. To demonstrate just how hype-y the entire IPO is, consider Reuters’ point: that Facebook is trading at 100 times earnings in a market where 12 times is average.

Paid Content: the 2012 Super Bowl

Wireless Streaming of the Super Bowl, plus Feds Seizure of hundreds of sites claiming to stream the Super Bowl live: Verizon this year offered live streaming of the Super Bowl over mobile devices. Who would ever want to watch the Super Bowl on a phone? Someone stuck in the world’s most thoughtless wedding, perhaps. Either way, VZ was the medium of choice for this behavior, as in a blast of very SOPA-like activity prosecutors shut down hundreds of sites claiming to help a viewer accomplish the same ends.

The Super Bowl and NBC: What was NBC hoping to accomplish in their mad rush to get rights to the Super Bowl this year? It appears that they wanted to showcase their inability to produce live television in an FCC-friendly way (even though it just makes us love MIA a little bit more). Or maybe they just wanted to assure a great kickoff to The Voice II. Good luck with that, NBC. We’ll always tune in on Thursday to watch 30 Rock.

Synch & the Super Bowl: No, you’re not supposed to know what “synch” means. Synch is what music industry folks call it when a film or video or advertisement uses a recording that they didn’t commission. And synchs were at an all-time high last night in the Super Bowl, as Billboard.biz reports. Combined with the Madonna l-u-v-fest, it was a really retro night. To us, that screams “comfort me with reminders of a better time”—with synchs from The Darkness, OK Go, Motley Crue, Echo & The Bunnymen, and even a very strange Ferris Bueller cameo.

Feb 06

Women in the News: Tech Takeover
Usually WIN is a medium to congratulate women who’ve made huge strides in the course of the past week or to spotlight issues that affect the women of the world imminently. But in light of Facebook’s IPO last week, we at The Levo League thought we’d bring you some news items that will add depth to your experience of the events upcoming in the next few weeks, plus a recap of IP issues around yesterday’s Super Bowl.
Is Facebook Actually the New Google?
Think about it. Google has been having a rough couple of months, User Experience-wise. PaidContent has a rundown of Google’s major issues over the last quarter, but the ones I’ve noticed are 1) Google Reader is now useless, and 2) Google Plus… What is going on there?
In other words, it’s great timing for Facebook’s IPO. To put that in context, check out some basic Experian data on Facebook site usage courtesy of Heather Dougherty. Interestingly, 57% of visitors to the Book of Face (as the Economist lovingly terms it) are female. To demonstrate just how hype-y the entire IPO is, consider Reuters’ point: that Facebook is trading at 100 times earnings in a market where 12 times is average.
Paid Content: the 2012 Super Bowl
Wireless Streaming of the Super Bowl, plus Feds Seizure of hundreds of sites claiming to stream the Super Bowl live: Verizon this year offered live streaming of the Super Bowl over mobile devices. Who would ever want to watch the Super Bowl on a phone? Someone stuck in the world’s most thoughtless wedding, perhaps. Either way, VZ was the medium of choice for this behavior, as in a blast of very SOPA-like activity prosecutors shut down hundreds of sites claiming to help a viewer accomplish the same ends.
The Super Bowl and NBC: What was NBC hoping to accomplish in their mad rush to get rights to the Super Bowl this year? It appears that they wanted to showcase their inability to produce live television in an FCC-friendly way (even though it just makes us love MIA a little bit more). Or maybe they just wanted to assure a great kickoff to The Voice II. Good luck with that, NBC. We’ll always tune in on Thursday to watch 30 Rock.
Synch & the Super Bowl: No, you’re not supposed to know what “synch” means. Synch is what music industry folks call it when a film or video or advertisement uses a recording that they didn’t commission. And synchs were at an all-time high last night in the Super Bowl, as Billboard.biz reports. Combined with the Madonna l-u-v-fest, it was a really retro night. To us, that screams “comfort me with reminders of a better time”—with synchs from The Darkness, OK Go, Motley Crue, Echo & The Bunnymen, and even a very strange Ferris Bueller cameo.

There’s nothing that inspires us more than seeing the sheer volume and variety of women’s news and inspiration around the Internet. Courtesy of Frances Advincula, here are our favorite pick-me-ups from our sister sites.

1. Winter getting to you? Recycle your grumpiness into a positive opportunity for growth. Learn how to make a good apology [Lifehack] and how to use criticism to actually improve youreself [Tiny Buddha].

2. This year, let’s not just exist, let us truly L-I-V-E! Here are reasons on why we need a bucket list [Personal Excellence], plus even more ideas for your own [Life2PointOh].

3. Take a note from the kitchens of the greats with a few lessons from gourmet food companies. [The Daily Muse]

4. Discover if the world of advertising is for you, whether you are curious about being an account executive, planner, or HR director. [I Want Her Job]

5. Here is your blueprint for earning respect and making you mark as a woman of the world. [Ms. Career Girl]

6. If you’re feeling the winter doldrums, read up on how to rest, relax, and rejuvenate! [Life After College] And if you’re going through something really difficult in your life right now, author Jenny Blake has two amazing pieces on courage and perseverance.

7. Your best investment is in yourself. A few ways to get you started… [Wisebread]. And speaking of investments, Jen Dziura does it again with her complete guide to funding your business or investing in startups, part 1 and part 2. [The Grindstone]

8. Need a dose of motivation to get through the winter? Give your office space or desk a makeover— be inspired by amazing offices all over the world [Office Envy], gather your favorite ideas here [Pinterest], and to top it all off, get some inspiration for your new business idea from Melanie Duncan [Entrepreneuress Academy].

9. No need to limit yourself when it comes to giving presentations. Stretch your creativity with über cool designs [Work Awesome], a presentation-maker that allows you to embed live twitter feeds [SlideRocket], and even a non-linear, zooming presentation maker [Prezi]. A word of caution on these tools: you will probably get addicted. The end result of this addiction will basically be that you’ll impress a lot of people.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Feb 03

Round and Around the Internet: February 3, 2012.

The Friday FYI : Planned Parenthood, Susan G Komen, and the Embroiled world of anti-abortion legislation.

In what (interestingly) was something of an Occupy Facebook-type viral meme yesterday, outrage exploded all over the internet (and presumably the real world— I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t there) over the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to cut their grants to Planned Parenthood.

Less than 1% of the Komen Foundation’s grant budget was allocated to Planned Parenthood last year. But that $700,000 was helping to provide a lifeline for the organization and the absence of the grant will be felt by the women in America most affected by inequality, poor education, and lack of access to tools and resources to escape poverty.

The abortion issue is so hard to address— not only because it’s hard not to take a strong stance on it, but also because it’s just complex. The easiest perspective belongs to Bill Clinton, when he expressed his hope that Americans keep abortion “safe, legal, and rare.”

No matter your views on abortion, however, the oversimplification of the services Planned Parenthood provides is a dangerous issue. As Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday, “Politics have no place in health care.” And the decision on the part of the Komen Foundation is eerily reminiscent of the Lowe’s Hardware chain’s decision to pull their advertisement allocation from “All American Muslim” after getting backlash from groups who find Muslims offensive. For a movement that has so much stood for open access to health care and preventative education and services for women, the pull feels like a betrayal for many who have donated to the Komen Foundation in the hope that those women most in need would benefit from the donation.

Before anyone runs off and rail for or against the Komen Foundation’s decision, take a look at the New York Times’ analysis: that state legislatures have had a serious uptick in recent abortion-related legislation, with over sixty major abortion laws enacted by states in 2011. And much of that legislation has served to limit the average American woman’s access to basic healthcare.

Regardless of your opinion on abortion, it’s hard to argue that basic healthcare services and education don’t have a positive impact on the inequality and social mobility issues that are hindering the American economic recovery. Maybe more importantly, the midst of a multi-year recession isn’t a great time to make long-term issues like education and access to health care top-of-mind for our government (viz. the sheer volume of abortion-related legislation proposed this year) when our federal government is exhibiting the level of dysfunction and pre-Presidential Election folly that we’ve seen in the past year.

Feb 03

The Friday FYI : Planned Parenthood, Susan G Komen, and the Embroiled world of anti-abortion legislation.
In what (interestingly) was something of an Occupy Facebook-type viral meme yesterday, outrage exploded all over the internet (and presumably the real world— I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t there) over the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to cut their grants to Planned Parenthood.
Less than 1% of the Komen Foundation’s grant budget was allocated to Planned Parenthood last year. But that $700,000 was helping to provide a lifeline for the organization and the absence of the grant will be felt by the women in America most affected by inequality, poor education, and lack of access to tools and resources to escape poverty.
The abortion issue is so hard to address— not only because it’s hard not to take a strong stance on it, but also because it’s just complex. The easiest perspective belongs to Bill Clinton, when he expressed his hope that Americans keep abortion “safe, legal, and rare.”
No matter your views on abortion, however, the oversimplification of the services Planned Parenthood provides is a dangerous issue. As Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday, “Politics have no place in health care.” And the decision on the part of the Komen Foundation is eerily reminiscent of the Lowe’s Hardware chain’s decision to pull their advertisement allocation from “All American Muslim” after getting backlash from groups who find Muslims offensive. For a movement that has so much stood for open access to health care and preventative education and services for women, the pull feels like a betrayal for many who have donated to the Komen Foundation in the hope that those women most in need would benefit from the donation.
Before anyone runs off and rail for or against the Komen Foundation’s decision, take a look at the New York Times’ analysis: that state legislatures have had a serious uptick in recent abortion-related legislation, with over sixty major abortion laws enacted by states in 2011. And much of that legislation has served to limit the average American woman’s access to basic healthcare.
Regardless of your opinion on abortion, it’s hard to argue that basic healthcare services and education don’t have a positive impact on the inequality and social mobility issues that are hindering the American economic recovery. Maybe more importantly, the midst of a multi-year recession isn’t a great time to make long-term issues like education and access to health care top-of-mind for our government (viz. the sheer volume of abortion-related legislation proposed this year) when our federal government is exhibiting the level of dysfunction and pre-Presidential Election folly that we’ve seen in the past year.

Feb 03

The Ms JD Corner: Our favorite picks from the Ms JD lineup.

As always, our friends over at Ms JD are producing thought-provoking and insightful pieces on what it means to be a female in law today. Here are some of the best of the week:
Now & Then: What It Means to Be a Feminist, Featuring Drucilla Stender RameyDrucilla Stender Ramey, Dean of Golden Gate University School of Law, reflects on her traditional feminist experiences “then” and her concerns and hopes regarding women advancement “now.” Tips from the Top: Sheila Wilson-FreelonVice President and Assistant General Counsel at Discover Financial Services, a Fortune 500 company, shares some words of wisdom.Too Legit to Quit: Renovating the Big Firm Model for Mr. and Ms. JDWriter in Residence Sarah Villanueva rejects the “you can’t have it all” mentality. Stipulations & Stilettos: Tales of a Young Lady Litigator: On AggressionBethany White, a sixth-year civil defense associate in Chicago, explores the never-ending hurdles unique to women litigators, particularly those in their first 10 years of practice.

Fall in Love with your Work Day: The Art of Lunch, Silicon Valley Style.

If there’s one thing we tech geeks are obsessed with— besides obsessively scanning the gadget-sphere, of course— it’s efficiency. From faster hardware to smarter software, techies are always looking to make everything in their lives run harder, better, faster, stronger. And not just because many of us are huge Daft Punk fans (There. I said it).

When you work in an industry that moves faster than you can click a mouse, you have to be efficient to stay on top of your game, which is why us geeks are really good at figuring out ways to do more with less. And, whether it’s thirty minutes or an hour, your lunch break is the perfect time to take advantage of some of those simple tech tricks to help you eat, exercise and educate yourself easily and efficiently.

Smart Food

There’s plenty of ways to use technology to get good food fast— just ask anyone who’s ever hit the jackpot on UrbanSpoon. When you’re pressed for time and money, many flash-sale site (a la LivingSocial Instant, Groupon Now, and a bevy of others) can help you scan discounts of-the-moment— no printer required. While your phone is out, there are also tons of restaurants that let you order lunch directly from your dialer.

If you don’t want to leave your desk, there are services like Seamless, GrubHub and my personal (and shamelessly self promotional) favorite, BetterWorks that will let you order online and deliver the food directly to you, often at a discount. And, if you’re more of a ‘brown bag’ kind of a gal, there’s always this lovely USB powered lunchbox and cooler that keep your food temperate with the power of your personal computer. Of course, if you want to let your full geek flag fly, you can also try to make good on the desktop microwave concept sketched out here — RFID fork not included.

Better Living Through Exercise

Nothing says efficiency quite like squeezing in a full-fledged workout during your lunch break. Now, there’s a whole range of gadgets to help you work smarter — and harder — when you’re working out at work. The Fitbit, Jawbone Up and Nike + Fuelband are all supercharged pedometers that track stats like steps, sleep, stairs and more. Beyond tracking, many of these new exercise gadgets provide supporting tools—some of them being wireless syncing back to your computer, food tracking, social challenges with friends and fellow fitness buffs and more. If you don’t want to invest in a new gadget, you can also download apps like Map My Run to your mobile phone. It’ll help you find great running routes near you, track how far you’ve run and give you pacing stats to boot — or sneaker, as the case may be.

If you’d rather stay close to your computer, there are a lot of great options out there to help you burn calories right from the comfort of your cube. Fitness Magazine’s Express Workouts app will give you easy routines right on your mobile device, and Office Yoga will help you downward dog right at your desk. Netflix members can also take advantage of streaming fitness videos like 10 Minute Solution Pilates, Fat Burning Ab Attack and The Situation Workout, for those days when you feel like adding a little GTL to your 9-5.

Of course, you can always just hook up to this elliptical desk for the ultimate in office efficiency. Or, if that’s too extreme for your company culture, you can also try stashing a mini -stepper under your desk — perfect for secretly sneaking in a workout on those lunch hours when you just can’t leave.

Pumping News Media Iron

Besides working up an appetite, or working off a few calories, lunch is also a great time to work in some reading — particularly when it comes to catching up on your blogs, news and social networks. To get a quick fix of everything at once, check out Flipboard or Pulse .me. Both apps allow you to quickly flip through a curated cache of content that’s tailored to your topics — news you care about, blogs you read, friends you follow and more. And, it doesn’t hurt that they’re both visually stunning, which makes them a tasty lunchtime treat for your eyes too.

If you’d rather browse on a big screen, you can also set up a similarly personalized feed for yourself using Google Reader. Or, you can get social with Washington Post Social Reader or Huffington Post Social Reader, both of which let you browse based on what your friends are reading and easily share the articles you like with your social networks. You can also get a quick fix of the day’s top stories through sites like Google News, Technorati and Alltop, which serve up heaping helpings of the news you need to know — or at least the news everyone else is going to be talking about today.

———————————————————————————

Mollie Vandor is a startup junkie who just can’t kick the habit. She’s currently getting her fix as Product Quality Lead at BetterWorks. Her past lives include Product and Project Management at Ranker.com in 2008. Resultingly, Mollie is fluent in ‘Engineerese,’ and developed a passion for living in the liminal space between Product and Engineering. Mollie has also served on the Product team at Cooking.com, where she worked on mobile and desktop sites for clients like Epicurious, Food Network and Calphalon. She now writes about technology, culture and the web for sites like Mashable, Lalawag and Women 2.0. And, she serves as the LA Lead for Women 2.0, where she enjoys the opportunity to showcase and support LA’s growing community of female entrepreneurs.

Stay tuned for more from Mollie— The Levo League is excited to have her contributions and can’t wait to hear your techie-lunch suggestions too!

Feb 02

Fall in Love with your Work Day: The Art of Lunch, Silicon Valley Style.
If there’s one thing we tech geeks are obsessed with— besides obsessively scanning the gadget-sphere, of course— it’s efficiency. From faster hardware to smarter software, techies are always looking to make everything in their lives run harder, better, faster, stronger. And not just because many of us are huge Daft Punk fans (There. I said it).
When you work in an industry that moves faster than you can click a mouse, you have to be efficient to stay on top of your game, which is why us geeks are really good at figuring out ways to do more with less. And, whether it’s thirty minutes or an hour, your lunch break is the perfect time to take advantage of some of those simple tech tricks to help you eat, exercise and educate yourself easily and efficiently.
Smart Food
There’s plenty of ways to use technology to get good food fast— just ask anyone who’s ever hit the jackpot on UrbanSpoon. When you’re pressed for time and money, many flash-sale site (a la LivingSocialInstant, GrouponNow, and a bevy of others) can help you scan discounts of-the-moment— no printer required. While your phone is out, there are also tons of restaurants that let you orderlunch directly from your dialer.
If you don’t want to leave your desk, there are services like Seamless, GrubHub and my personal (and shamelessly self promotional) favorite, BetterWorks that will let you order online and deliver the food directly to you, often at a discount. And, if you’re more of a ‘brown bag’ kind of a gal, there’s always this lovely USBpoweredlunchbox and cooler that keep your food temperate with the power of your personal computer. Of course, if you want to let your full geek flag fly, you can also try to make good on the desktopmicrowave concept sketched out here — RFID fork not included.
Better Living Through Exercise
Nothing says efficiency quite like squeezing in a full-fledged workout during your lunch break. Now, there’s a whole range of gadgets to help you work smarter — and harder — when you’re working out at work. The Fitbit, JawboneUp and Nike+ Fuelband are all supercharged pedometers that track stats like steps, sleep, stairs and more. Beyond tracking, many of these new exercise gadgets provide supporting tools—some of them being wireless syncing back to your computer, food tracking, social challenges with friends and fellow fitness buffs and more. If you don’t want to invest in a new gadget, you can also download apps like MapMyRun to your mobile phone. It’ll help you find great running routes near you, track how far you’ve run and give you pacing stats to boot — or sneaker, as the case may be.
If you’d rather stay close to your computer, there are a lot of great options out there to help you burn calories right from the comfort of your cube. Fitness Magazine’s ExpressWorkouts app will give you easy routines right on your mobile device, and OfficeYoga will help you downward dog right at your desk. Netflix members can also take advantage of streaming fitness videos like 10 MinuteSolutionPilates, FatBurningAbAttack and TheSituationWorkout, for those days when you feel like adding a little GTL to your 9-5.
Of course, you can always just hook up to this ellipticaldesk for the ultimate in office efficiency. Or, if that’s too extreme for your company culture, you can also try stashing a mini-stepper under your desk — perfect for secretly sneaking in a workout on those lunch hours when you just can’t leave.
Pumping News Media Iron
Besides working up an appetite, or working off a few calories, lunch is also a great time to work in some reading — particularly when it comes to catching up on your blogs, news and social networks. To get a quick fix of everything at once, check out Flipboard or Pulse.me. Both apps allow you to quickly flip through a curated cache of content that’s tailored to your topics — news you care about, blogs you read, friends you follow and more. And, it doesn’t hurt that they’re both visually stunning, which makes them a tasty lunchtime treat for your eyes too.
If you’d rather browse on a big screen, you can also set up a similarly personalized feed for yourself using GoogleReader. Or, you can get social with WashingtonPostSocialReader or HuffingtonPostSocialReader, both of which let you browse based on what your friends are reading and easily share the articles you like with your social networks. You can also get a quick fix of the day’s top stories through sites like GoogleNews, Technorati and Alltop, which serve up heaping helpings of the news you need to know — or at least the news everyone else is going to be talking about today.
———————————————————————————
Mollie Vandor is a startup junkie who just can’t kick the habit. She’s currently getting her fix as Product Quality Lead at BetterWorks. Her past lives include Product and Project Management at Ranker.com in 2008. Resultingly, Mollie is fluent in ‘Engineerese,’ and developed a passion for living in the liminal space between Product and Engineering. Mollie has also served on the Product team at Cooking.com, where she worked on mobile and desktop sites for clients like Epicurious, Food Network and Calphalon. She now writes about technology, culture and the web for sites like Mashable, Lalawag and Women 2.0. And, she serves as the LA Lead for Women 2.0, where she enjoys the opportunity to showcase and support LA’s growing community of female entrepreneurs.
Stay tuned for more from Mollie— The Levo League is excited to have her contributions and can’t wait to hear your techie-lunch suggestions too!

Feb 02

Word of the Century: Champerty

The Levo League

Posted on Friday February 17^th 2012 at 01:16pm. Its tags are listed below.

↑ Home

The Unsinkable Generation: How we’re going to make 2012 the best year for women in decades.

According to November’s Economist special report, “Closing the Gap: Women and Work,” the spirit and enthusiasm of the 1990’s working woman has today turned into frustration.

The rate of progress for female success in the working world is slowing. If one looks at this issue from an economic perspective, this decrease in growth could be explained by natural forces.

Planning ourselves out of success

A nudge in the right direction

— Permalink
— High-res photo

The Levo League

Posted on Thursday February 16^th 2012 at 05:23pm. Its tags are listed below.

↑ Home

My first job offer said it all: A bonus for staying for two years; and even more for staying three. I was happy to have a job. They saw a Gen Y 20-something groomed by a generation of job-hoppers.

Call it what you will—job-hopping, job-surfing, job-shopping, churning—it was the standard in the early 2000s.

But we have to wonder: Is job-hopping in a recession a good idea? Is it still de rigueur to climb the ladder laterally, sacrificing company loyalty and incurring a high amount of risk?

Leap of faith

“If you’re in a stable, good job, you’re probably going to stick with it now,” Vanderkam agrees. “There’s less risk. But how many people in Gen Y have that job right now?”

Or women might just be more risk-averse.

“Steady work is steady work,” says 28-year hairstylist Erin Anding, who has been at the same employer for 6.5 years. “Plus, I like my clients.”

Look before you leap

No one could be blamed for staying in a secure job. But the smart job-hopper would be wise to keep their eyes—and their options—open.

Plus, you might return to the company, but on a higher ladder rung.

— Permalink
— High-res photo

The Levo League

Posted on Monday February 13^th 2012 at 04:02pm. Its tags are listed below.

↑ Home

Don’t Be Evil, now featuring Google+

—————————————————————————-

Brittany Thomas is a contributor to The Levo League.

The Levo League

Posted on Wednesday February 8^th 2012 at 12:48pm. Its tags are listed below.

↑ Home

Fall In Love with Your Work Life: Uncovering Your Passion and Finding Your Dream Career.

Ready to rescue your inner passion? Go to “7 Steps to Uncover Your Passion and Dream Career” now.

The Levo League

Posted on Wednesday February 8^th 2012 at 11:52am. Its tags are listed below.

↑ Home

Levo Lit: The Search, How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.

All points of view are the original author’s; I merely summarize what he says in a somewhat more tangible and digestible format.

WHAT IS SO FASCINATING ABOUT SEARCH?

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW, REGARDLESS OF THE SEARCH ENGINE

Who: The younger you are and the higher your level of education, the more you use search.

What: The beauty of search is that we can query for anything under the sun; the possibilities are infinite. How we choose the words we type in the search box, however, is a mystery in itself.

When: We search the most in the morning and the evening.

IMPACT AND IMPLICATIONS

A COUPLE OF MEMORABLE QUOTES

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEARCH, PRE-GOOGLE

Archie by Alan Emtage, McGill University, 1990. The first internet-based, pre-Web search engine.

Veronica by University of Nevada students, 1993. Connected users to the document itself, versus just the machine where it is located.

WWW Wanderer by Mathey Gray of MIT, 1993. Pioneered a breadth algorithm still used today.

Web Crawler by Brian Pinkertron, University of Washington, 1994. First to index the entire contents of a webpage.

Alta Vista by Louis Monier , DEC, mid 1990s. Pioneered the use of thousands of crawlers at once.

GoTo.com by Bill Gross, founder of IdeaLab, 1997. Came up with the pay-per-click model; results were fully commercial.

The Levo League

Posted on Monday February 6^th 2012 at 09:39am. Its tags are listed below.

↑ Home

Women in the News: Tech Takeover

Is Facebook Actually the New Google?

Paid Content: the 2012 Super Bowl

— Permalink
— 13 notes

Round and Around the Internet: February 3, 2012.

Posted on Friday February 3^rd 2012 at 07:51am. Its tags are listed below.

↑ Home

Round and Around the Internet: February 3, 2012.

2. This year, let’s not just exist, let us truly L-I-V-E! Here are reasons on why we need a bucket list [Personal Excellence], plus even more ideas for your own [Life2PointOh].

3. Take a note from the kitchens of the greats with a few lessons from gourmet food companies. [The Daily Muse]

4. Discover if the world of advertising is for you, whether you are curious about being an account executive, planner, or HR director. [I Want Her Job]

5. Here is your blueprint for earning respect and making you mark as a woman of the world. [Ms. Career Girl]

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

— Permalink
— 1 note

The Levo League

Posted on Friday February 3^rd 2012 at 07:06am. Its tags are listed below.

# FYI
# Expand

↑ Home

The Friday FYI : Planned Parenthood, Susan G Komen, and the Embroiled world of anti-abortion legislation.

— Permalink

The Levo League

Posted on Friday February 3^rd 2012 at 06:29am. Its tags are listed below.

↑ Home

The Ms JD Corner: Our favorite picks from the Ms JD lineup.

As always, our friends over at Ms JD are producing thought-provoking and insightful pieces on what it means to be a female in law today. Here are some of the best of the week:

Now & Then: What It Means to Be a Feminist, Featuring Drucilla Stender Ramey
Drucilla Stender Ramey, Dean of Golden Gate University School of Law, reflects on her traditional feminist experiences “then” and her concerns and hopes regarding women advancement “now.”

Tips from the Top: Sheila Wilson-Freelon
Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at Discover Financial Services, a Fortune 500 company, shares some words of wisdom.

Too Legit to Quit: Renovating the Big Firm Model for Mr. and Ms. JD
Writer in Residence Sarah Villanueva rejects the “you can’t have it all” mentality.

Stipulations & Stilettos: Tales of a Young Lady Litigator: On Aggression
Bethany White, a sixth-year civil defense associate in Chicago, explores the never-ending hurdles unique to women litigators, particularly those in their first 10 years of practice.

— Permalink

The Levo League

Posted on Thursday February 2^nd 2012 at 12:21pm. Its tags are listed below.

↑ Home

Fall in Love with your Work Day: The Art of Lunch, Silicon Valley Style.

Smart Food

Better Living Through Exercise

Pumping News Media Iron

———————————————————————————

Stay tuned for more from Mollie— The Levo League is excited to have her contributions and can’t wait to hear your techie-lunch suggestions too!

— Permalink
— High-res photo

Word of the Century: Champerty

Posted on Thursday February 2^nd 2012 at 11:46am. Its tags are listed below.

↑ Home

Word of the Century: Champerty

Ever come across a word that feels like it was pulled from another universe? Send them in and we’ll share them with the entire Levo League!

Today’s Word of the Century comes from our legal contingent— and its origin is in Middle English.

Champerty: frivolous litigation. If it’s unfamiliar, don’t worry: it’s a term left over from the 1300s (not a great time in history, as you may recall). It used to be a crime— even in the Dark Ages— but in many instances in the US, it’s merely an insult nowadays. It refers to litigation that’s fraudulent or opportunistic. Synonyms and related terms: Barratry, vexatious litigation, and SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation). SLAPP is the best-named of all of these, obviously.

Memorable use of the word: The distinguishing feature of champerty is the support of litigation by a stranger in return for a share of the proceeds.— Lord Justice Steyn , Giles v Thompson

[Thanks, Wikipedia ! ]

— Permalink