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The ol' 9-5 office gig: great for financial security, ideal for cornflower blue tie fanatics, and kickass for anyone looking to score sweet gym membership benefits. It can get a little dull sometimes, though — especially when you're entrapped by the same beige walls for eight hours each day Mashable's got your back. We scrounged the web for some of the coolest DIY office contraptions to help distract you from the monotony of cubicle-dwelling. They're easy, simple and only require the most basic of office supplies — so even when you're building them, it still looks like you're working GIF courtesy of Tumblr Read more...More about Office, Features, Diy, Instructables, and Gadgets

For those of us in the U.S., we are heading into the Memorial Day weekend, and the unofficial start of summer. Some of you might be taking vacations that are kicked off by the long weekend, and some of you might be making a weekend getaway … like me. No, I’m not telling you where I’m going, it’s a getaway! I can’t tell you how excited I am … I haven’t had a vacation in almost six months and I need a few days off. Let me repeat that, with periods for emphasis. I. Need. A. Few. Days. Off. There, that feels better. The question Not that long ago, over on Facebook (have you liked the SBC Page yet, btw? No? I’m crushed!) we asked some folks what they like to do over a long weekend. Here are some of the answers (thank you Brian Vickery, Melissa Connolly, Jeri Wigdahl and Ian Cleary for playing along): Note not a single person said, “Work more.” I have no doubt that some of us might do some work over the weekend, but I for one, hope to do none at all. I love my work, but I love it more when I get a periodic break from it. And by that I mean a real break, not a fake break where I’m constantly peeking at my iPhone, even though it is named Patti. A holiday So in that vein, WUL is going dark tomorrow through Monday (Memorial Day). We’ll be back on Tuesday with a new posting schedule until we figure out our blogging sweet spot … or, until the current sweet spot becomes unpalatable and we need to change things up again. Yes. A blogging holiday. Just like my friends occasionally take (and that I’ve taken in the past as well). Once in a while, it’s a smart thing to do. A new posting schedule I asked you a question earlier in the week, and some of you responded (thank you!)… and for anyone who still feels like answering, I’d love it! But the sense I get is that you care more about quality than quantity, and you don’t want the team or I to burn out from the anxiety of “having” to post to WUL. So, beginning next week, we’re going to try a new posting schedule: three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (and if any one of those days is a holiday, we’ll post before/after). We’ll try to do a weekly roundup on Mondays, a guest post on Wednesdays, and a post from me on Fridays. This way we can focus on quality content instead of posting for the sake of it, and my guest bloggers will get a bit of a reprieve from my frantic cries for posts! We’ll see how this works… maybe there will be the odd extra post here and there too, but I don’t know right now. I do know that dialing down the frequency will take some of the anxiety of publishing regularly to WUL away. That is a good thing, since I shouldn’t be anxious about a blog, and community, I love. So, to all of you also getting ready for the holiday weekend, have a safe and happy one. To those celebrating life in general – way to go! And thank you, as always, for walking the same road as WUL. We really, really appreciate you. A Question, a Holiday, and a New Posting Schedule is a post from: Waxing UnLyrical Author informationShonali BurkePresident & Grand Poobah at Shonali Burke Consulting, Inc.Head honcho of Waxing UnLyrical, Shonali Burke is President & CEO of Shonali Burke Consulting, Inc. Based in the Washington, D.C., area, she loves helping for- and non-profit clients, both small and large, turn corporate codswallop into community cool™. She also loves ABBA, bacon, cooking, dogs, and Elvis. Wouldn't you like to be in her kitchen?TwitterFacebookGoogle+LinkedInA Question, a Holiday, and a New Posting Schedule

Shazam on the iPad just got a whole lot better. The company launched a completely updated version of its tablet app Thursday, with a new discovery home screen, and an auto-tagging feature that can determine what music, television shows, and even ads are playing around you, identifying them automatically. “We have seen amazing growth and expansion in both the number of people who use Shazam on iPad as well as their level of engagement,” says Shazam Rich Riley He says that Shazam currently has more than 300 million global users accessing the app, equating to an astounding ten million queries a day. Growth over the past year has been particularly prevalent in the iPad app, which has seen triple-digit growth in the number of downloads. Read more...More about App, Shazam, Ipad, Ios, and Tech

This post is the second in the ReadWrite series Making Android Pay, in which we explore the opportunities and challenges mobile developers face trying to make money from Android apps. How do you get mobile developers to love you? Give them free tools and pad their wallets. One of the big themes for Google last week at its I/O developers conference was helping developers make more money creating apps for Android. That included a variety of tools to help them engage with their users and process transactions as well as optimization tips to monetize Android. Monetization is a big challenge for Android developers. Developers who make Android apps earn a fraction of what they make from Apple's iOS, which paid developers nearly $1 billion alone in January this year and $8 billion total as of February. Android developers can only dream of such riches. (See also How Google Is Wooing Developers to Make Apps For Android First.) Yet there is hope. Google's VP of Android product management Hugo Barra told I/O attendees last week that Google had paid more to Android developers in the past 4 months than the previous 12 months before that combined. This increase has been driven by a renewed focus by Google to give developers more tools to make money, culminating in a slurry of announcements to the Google Play Developer Console last week. "Everything from the analytics integration we have shown to you could imagine other things that Google could put together," said Ellie Powers, product manager for Google Play in an interview with ReadWrite. Powers continued: I think that is sort of the next thing. They want to have deeper insights. They want to know exactly what they should work on. And I think [with] the things that we are doing we can continue enhancing them. Developers always want more stuff. They are always really hungry and we are hearing from more and more developers. They are saying they want to invest more because you [Google] give us such great data we are able to use that to understand our users better and invest more in the Android platform. New Tools In The Google Play Developer Console Specifically, Google issued six new features to Google Play to help Android developers optimize towards monetization: App translation service: The ability to translate an app into a different language directly from Google Play Developer Console. This is an agency approach (human, not machine) that Google purposefully chose because it found the human touch of translations provided better results on the local level. Revenue graphs: A new tab in the Developer Console gives developers a summary of their app global app revenue over time. Alpha and beta testing and staged rollouts: Perhaps the biggest announcement for Android developers last week, beta and staged rollouts are unique to Android. This should encourage developers to take bigger risks knowing that they will not be rolling out a bug-laden app to 100% of its users. Optimization tips: Based on analytics from Google Play, optimization tips will point developers towards market segments that could benefit them, like launching in a new country or developing specifically for tablets, which make 1.7-times more revenue per user than do Android smartphones. Google Analytics: Mobile data on usage, time spent and a variety of cohorts as Google Analytics for Mobile is integrated straight into the Developer Console. Referral tracking: Where are your installs coming from? Did getting written about by the major tech publications give you a bump? How about that in-app advertising? Referral tracking will tell you. More Ways To Pay: Simplifying The Billing Infrastructure Overlooked in the improvements made to the Google Play Developer Console were several infrastructure tweaks to the way Google processes payments for developers. The purchase flow (from app discovery to payment) has been simplified with the new user interface in Google Play, making it eas

I was once fortunate enough to sit in a training session with Jake McKee, “The Community Guy.” We were talking about building brand communities, and he said something that stuck with me. I believe he was quoting Guy Kawasaki. “If you last three years as a community manager, you’re good. If you last four years, you’re really good. And if you last five years, you’re crazy.” I must be crazy, because I counted it up. I’ve been doing community or social media management of some sort, (albeit for a lot of different companies) for over five years. The ironic twist in this career field is the very traits that make you a good community or social media manager (empathy, an ability to connect genuinely with people online) are the same ones that make the job incredibly hard on you. Some of this may seem like a rehash of my post on the Cathryn Sloane debacle last year. But it’s worth restating: the internet is rife with incivility. There are five kinds of people who will turn up on your brand’s social profiles and community sites: Brand fans and customers with something positive to say. Unhappy customers or constituents with a legitimate gripe. Unhappy customers or constituents who are misinformed. Irrational or anarchic “crusaders on a mission” who can’t be swayed with facts or logic. Trolls or “pot stirrers” who just enjoy inciting drama. Of those five, the ones who start out with something positive to say are outnumbered 4:1. The reality is, only a certain proportion of groups 2 & 3 will be positive even if you can fix their problem or correct their misinformation. Some people are only ostensibly there to get satisfaction about a real or perceived issue. They’re really only there because they need a punching bag to vent their global frustration with the rest of their lives, and your company’s flub makes you the perfect outlet for their generalized rage. There’s a lot of anger out there, kiddos, and a “faceless” company is an easy place to direct it. It’s easy for people to forget there’s a human being behind that logo avatar. Of course, when the human being behind that avatar has an Amy’s Baking Company style epic meltdown, their human emotions become painfully clear. How about we try not to let ourselves get to that point? Taking Care of the Person Who Takes Care of the Community Community managers have a lot in common with parents. You’re the one responsible for seeing to everyone else’s needs. Remember the old saying “When mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy?” If your brand’s community manager is stressed, anxious and exhausted, your brand’s community can quickly sour. Community managers tend to be people who put their needs behind the needs of the group. However, that kind of thinking can be counterproductive. You can’t nurture your community and be a positive leader and resource if your eye is twitching from pent up defensive aggression after getting verbally battered by a crowd of pitchfork-wielding netizens for weeks. Here are a few tips for taking care of yourself: Get some rest. Community managers tend to work long hours. Sometimes, we end up addressing social media crises that erupt in a different time zone. While sometimes you just have to power through, make sure getting enough sleep is the rule, not the exception. You don’t make good decisions when you’re tired, and your emotions can be heightened. If like me, you consistently have “can’t shut off my brain” syndrome, address it with your doctor. Get some exercise. Community and social media managers spend a lot of time staring at a screen. You of all people need the healthy, mood-enhancing endorphins that exercise, especially outdoors, can provide. I have a cheap kayak. When the trolls are really getting me down, I strap it to my truck and paddle around

Facebook is a lot like crystal meth — it's highly addictive and will probably cause your teeth to fall out.* Android users are always one tap away from a snarky status update or a friend's vacation pics. SEE ALSO: 20 Things Your Most Annoying Friends Do on Facebook Facebook's Android app has come a long way from its humble beginnings. The most recent iterations are packed with features, from personal settings to page management to power sharing. Here are a few tricks we use to keep up with Facebook pals on the go. *Not clinically proven. 1. Sort your News Feed by "Most Recent" If you don't trust an algorithm to sort your updates for you, use this feature to arrange things chronologically. The setting is not apparent — likely by design. Find it by tapping the three bars on the top-left to bring up the menu. Then tap the gear to the right of "News Feed." This will let you toggle between "Top Stories" and "Most Recent." Read more...More about Mobile, Facebook, Android, Social Media, and Features

No question, social media has transformed the telecommunications industry. The days of “Can you hear me now?” are over, and the telecom giants – Sprint, Verizon, Comcast, Bell – know they need to be proactive in cultivating customers via social media. Unsurprisingly, there’s a bit of a love/hate relationship between digital media and telecom. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email. Twitter Rolls Out Two-Factor Account Authentication (SocialTimes) Twitter Wednesday launched a feature that will allow users to opt into two-factor account authentication on the service. Users who turn on the feature will receive an access code on their smartphone by SMS text message each time they attempt to log in to Twitter. They will be required to enter that code each time they seek to access their accounts. Mashable The move comes after a number of hacks of high-profile Twitter accounts, including The Onion, the Associated Press and E! Online. Jim O’Leary from Twitter’s product security team announced the new feature via a blog post, saying it is in response to accounts “occasionally” being compromised by phishing schemes or password breaches on other sites. The New York Times/Bits Blog Two-step authentication is by no means foolproof. Twitter accounts for larger brands and news outlets are often managed by several employees, but only one employee would receive the log-in code. In those cases, other employees would only be able to access the account from their usual devices, or would need to get the one-time code from the administrator — a hassle that may discourage brands from using the security feature altogether. Forbes Typing in a code sent to your phone may seem like a bit of extra work every time you want to log into your Twitter account. But the extra step only occurs when logging in from a new machine — in most cases users will never notice the new setting. And it’s a small price to pay to prevent embarrassing or false information to be broadcast to your followers. VentureBeat You can turn two-factor authentication on by going to your account settings in Twitter and selecting “require a verification code.” You’ll then have to enter a phone number. After two-factor is set up, you will have to enter the code every time you log in to Twitter. Google Trends Now Ranks Most Searched People, Places and Things in 40+ Categories, Releases Visual Trending Product (The Next Web) Google has released a new and improved version of Google Trends with new charts, updated monthly, of the most-searched people, places and things in more than 40 categories with the ability to filter by 11 countries. PR companies and their customers now have another metric to be highly aware of. Facebook Users Can Now Schedule Gifts (AllFacebook) Facebook added the ability for users to schedule Gifts up to two weeks in advance, enabling them to choose Gifts, fill out the cards and pay in advance. Sister blog Inside Facebook reported on the new feature, saying that previously recipients of Gifts would receive notifications immediately. LinkedIn Has Definitely Acqui-Hired Maybe, Omar Hamoui’s Polling Startup, Minus Hamoui Himself (TechCrunch) Fresh from closing its purchase of newsreading app Pulse, LinkedIn has made another acquisition to dive deeper into the mobile space. TechCrunch has found out, and confirmed, that the social network has aqui-hired Maybe, the social polling startup founded by Omar Hamoui — the man who set up, ran and then sold mobile ad company AdMob to Google for $750 million. This Memorial Day, Put Your Military Hero in the Spotlight with Hashtags4Heroes (AllTwitter) Celebrities and other Twitterati can reign supreme every other day, but if you have a loved one who has served (or is serving now) in the military, Hashtags4Heroes wants to help your special someone take center stage this Memorial Day. Syrian Activists’ Facebook Pages Said to be Shuttered (CNET) Just as Syria recovers from last week’s countrywide Internet outage, a number of government opposition groups are reportedly saying that their Facebook pages have been shuttered, according to Al Arabiya. One of the pages that is no longer available is the profile page of the former brigadier general of the Syrian Republican Guard, Manaf Tlass, who d

Yesterday, I wrote this article about Twitter. Nothing particularly unusual about that, as I’ve been writing about Twitter now on a near-daily basis for more than four years. But this event did represent a benchmark of sorts, as that post was the two thousandth article that I have written and published about Twitter since February 19, 2009. Two thousand is quite a number. I think I’ve probably written more articles about Twitter than anybody else, like, ever. So what have I learned in that time? continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Galaxy S4 sales have topped 10 million in "record" time, Samsung announced Thursday. Less than a month after its global release on April 27, Samsung's flagship smartphone surpassed 10 million units, according to a release. SEE ALSO: Samsung Galaxy S 4: Everything You Need To Know "The Galaxy S4 sets a new record for Samsung, generating sales quicker than any of its predecessors," the Korean electronics giant said, adding that it estimates the phone is selling at a rate of four units per second In comparison, it took 50 days for the Galaxy S3 to reach 10 million. The S2 and S waited five months and seven months, respectively, to achieve the same number. Read more...More about Smartphone, Sales, Business, Mobile, and Samsung Galaxy S4