How do you define strength?

Most people will define strength by pointing out an individual human being who is lifting some ridiculous weight for N amount of reps. They will even tell you that currently the strongest man in the world is Zyndrunas Savickas, which is all true. But, do you define strength by sheer power, or rather by sheer courage?

Let me give you an example: look at the two pictures below. Who do you think has more strength? Is it the 300lb behemoth that is pulling this massive track, or rather the anonymous man who is standing in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks the morning after the Chinese military forcibly removed protestors from in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989?

What do you think?

Let me give another example: we are all familiar with the Arab-spring that began on December 18, 2010. Aren’t these people who decided to stand up against decades of dictatorship by ruthless, corrupt, ‘leaders’ and fight for their freedom the strongest men in the world?

This goes back to the question I asked in the beginning: how do you define strength? You can argue that strength can only be defined by sheer power, but I beg to defer. I think strength can also be defined by how courageous one can be. Standing in front of a tank in the middle of a chaotic situation shows a different type of strength. The type of strength most of us will never have the chance to reveal.

I would love to read your opinion on this one. Comments are more than welcome.

Landing a job in this tight market is very difficult. Thousands of candidats send their résumés every day, hoping to hear back. Some do, but most don’t, which is why using a tool such as resunate may actually increase your chances of landing a job that fits your experience (disclosure: I never used this tool myself. It received good reviews on some of the social media websites, so I thought of sharing it with you).

Before You Start

I am sure there are dozens of tools out there that can help you build your résumé to match almost any position, which is all fine. However, I think there is one important thing you ought to keep in mind: applying to jobs that you are under-qualified, or even over-qualified, is not going to do you any good. Most likely you will find the position to be either boring, overwhelming or both. Before you use any résumé building tools, make sure you are 100% passionate about the position. Passion should be the main drive to get the position, not money.

What is Resunate

Resunate is a tool that scores your résumé against the job description. This is how it works:

The higher the score, the more likely your résumé will pass the screening. Again, I have never used this tool before, but it looked interesting enough to share. The video below does a good job describing the service. Good luck with your search!

Dr. Irm Haleem’s book is finally out! The Essence of Islamist Extremism is a

conceptual analysis of radical Islamist rhetoric drawn from temporally and contextually varied Islamist extremist groups, challenging the popular understanding of Islamist extremism as a product of a ‘clash-of-civilizations’. Arguing that the essence of Islamist extremism can only be accurately understood by drawing a distinction between the radical Islamist explanations and justifications of violence, the author posits that despite the radical Islamist contextualization of violence within Islamic religious tenets, there is nothing conceptually or distinctly Islamic about Islamist extremism. She engages in a critical analysis of the nature of reason in radical Islamist rhetoric, asserting that the radical Islamist explanations of violence are conceptually reasoned in terms of existential Hegelian struggles for recognition (as fundamentally struggles against oppression), and the radical Islamist justifications of violence are conceptually reasoned in terms of moral consequentialism.

Why am I so thrilled about this book you ask? One good reason is because Irm is my wife. I was there throughout the process of writing this book. I watched her spend hours at Widener library (Harvard University), and later Firestone library (Princeton University) conceptualizing her ideas, reading hundreds of articles and books and devoting her entire life to finishing this masterpiece. There were many obstacles along the way, but she didn’t give up. She kept fighting. I am so proud of her!

The book itself introduces a fresh approach to the Islamist Extremism discussion. A lot have been said, some more racist than others, but no one really provided an analysis of the real big pink elephant in the room. The Essence of Islamist Extremism does just that!

Follow this link to order your copy of the Essence of Islamist Extremism  (amazon link)

The new WordPress 3.3 upgrade offers some nice features, no doubt. The team at WordPress did a great job polishing their CMS. But there was a cost, for me anyway, to this upgrade. Apparently, ALL the Google+, retweets, and Facebook sharing that my posts accumulated over the years are now gone. Vanished.  Man, I thought to myself, that sucks! Nothing I can do about, right? I wonder if anyone else suffered the same problem. hmm…

Anyway, a friend sent me this video that made me feel a little better. It features some astounding moments (hence the name…) that I am sure will make you smile. It is too bad Yahoo doesn’t offer the option to embed videos.  The most astounding moments of 2011. Enjoy!

Today was a very exciting day for all marketers around the world. Today was the day Twitter reinvented itself with a new design, updated its iPhone app AND launched (limited to a few companies) the most anticipated feature of the year: Twitter brand pages for businesses. I spent most of the day in NYC so I was late to read all this exciting news (and maybe it is better this way), but when I did get to read it I was so thrilled. Especially the last part, Twitter brand pages for businesses.

There were rumors about twitter brand pages for businesses back in April, but I must admit that I never even thought it was going to be this exciting.

I think this post summarizes everything you need to know about the new Twitter brand pages for businesses. There is no point for me to repeat it.

The feature that I think is the most exciting one is the embedded tweets feature. Giving your readers the ability to reply, follow, favorite and re-tweet without even leaving the web page is a huge advantage. I cannot wait to see how companies and bloggers are going to leverage this one. Below is an example of what I am talking about:

Just saw it now (out all day). This is SO exciting! Twitter Launches Brand Pages for Business Accounts ow.ly/7TDo4

— ItaiBoublil (@ItaiBoublil) December9, 2011

We’ve been building something new! Come see: fly.twitter.com #letsfly

— Twitter (@twitter) December8, 2011

That’s all people. It is time to hit the bed. In the meantime, enjoy the video below. It tells today’s story in less than two minutes.

PS: I might have some exciting news to share with you soon… :)

I finally had a chance to test google’s new changes to SERP with a blog post I wrote yesterday. I wanted to test how ‘fresh’ content that appears in SERP really is. I was taken aback. I typed “Pro HDR App”–the title I used for the blog post–in the search box 12 minutes after I published the post, and lo and behold, it was right there! 12 minutes!

Takeaway

This is really a no-brainer. Blog more often. Pick good keywords. Be relavant. I know it sounds simple, but to do so, as a marketer, you’ll need to develop a good content-creation strategy. Personally, I really think a good content-creation strategy is one of the hardest thing to do as a marketer. Don’t get be wrong, you can create crapy content and publish dozens of articles each week, but what do you think is going to happen? Nothing! No conversions. Low to none CTR. A total disaster to your brand. There are many ways to create a good content-creation strategy, but that’s is a topic I’ll need to cover some other time. The point I want to emphasize though is that Google’s new changes to SERP do work, and as a marketer you need to learn how to turn these changes into an advantage over your competition.

How Do You Do It

There are a few ways you can use these changes to your advantage. These are just a few examples I can think of, but feel free to add yours in the comments:

• Product launch: if you are a blogger, you can take advantage of a new product launch event (let’s say iPad 3, for example) by creating content around this event, and strategically choosing your keywords.
• Breaking news: do you have a new product you are planning to announce? Good. Now get to work and start creating content around this product.

The new iPhone 4S is known for its great camera ( 8 megapixle resolution, f/2.4 apature, improved backside illumination sensor, excellent auto white balance, advanced color accuracy, face detection, and reduced motion blur), but in order to take a picture that will include all these great features you need ‘something’ that will give you an edge. You need an app.

I was a bit skeptical before I purchased the $1.99 Pro HDR app. I didn’t want to pay money for something I either won’t use, or worse, find to be a piece of junk. The Pro HDR app ended up to be a success, and after a few tries I managed to master all of its functionalities.

 There is a Learning Curve

There are a two things you’ll need to keep in mind when using this app:

1. It is more about the photographer than it is about the app. Yes, the app will do some amazing things, but you need to keep in mind your part in the process of taking the picture. For instance, it is important to stay motionless during the two second period shot. Doing so will result with some nice photos.
2. If you are planning on taking a penalty kick during the next FIFA world-cup, you can scratch it off of your list (until you invest in a good DSLR camera that is). Instead, try to focus more on portraits, or outsides photos (sunsets, forests, etc). I found it to work the best.

Samples 

Below are two samples of before and after photos I took the other day. I really like the sharp colors of the after photos. I think the app did a great job with balancing light and exposure. Also, you’ll notice that the after photo is framed. This is one of the built-in features the app offers. 

 

Conclusion

I really think this App worth the $1.99 I paid for it. If you enjoy photography, and if you want to develop your iPhoneography skills, this app is for you. You can purchase the Pro HDR app here.

I love the Siri feature on iPhone 4S. It is easy to use, it can save time, and most importantly it is innovative. But what about having a Siri on your Mac? It would be nice to be able to add an event to iCal, or check your emails by just speaking a command to your mac, wouldn’t it? Well, apparently the smart minds at Apple thought about it, and the new Lion OS does in fact have this application built in. The video below shows how to set it up.

Use Speakable Items To Bring Siri’s Functionality To Your Mac

I finally purchased the new iPhone 4S, and I could not be happier. This meant I had to switch my T-Mobile account to an AT&T account, which I had no problem doing. I selected the plan I thought will serve me best, and just like that my two year ‘relationship’ with AT&T has begun. In the past few days I logged into my AT&T online account numerous times in order to familiarize myself with all the new rules (mainly phone usage, and data usage). I found the experience to be much more user-friendly than the T-Mobile account experience, but that’s beside the point. What caught my eyes was a plan named Rollover Minutes. A simple plan that let subscribers carry over minutes from one month to another. I thought it was only fair, especially with customers, myself included, who don’t use all of their minutes.

And then it hit me

When I was in the process of finalizing my decision about which mobile carrier to select, the one thing I kept comparing was the data-plan each of them offered. They were all pretty much the same. Shocking, I thought to myself. All are competing for the same market, but none of them offer any special, groundbreaking, incentive to pick their service over the other.

The major phone companies, Verizon and AT&T, offered pretty much the same data-plan, and phone services. What surprised me the most was that in a world where everything is controlled by data, both companies did not manage to reach some sort of a customer-incentive plan that will make customers jump and say “wow, now that’s worth it”.

And then it hit me. Why not have a plan, such as the rollover-minutes plan I mention earlier, that will allow subscribers carry over their unused data?  They can call it a Rollover-Data plan. I don’t work for AT&T, but if I were one of the company’s strategic planner, this is something I would have suggested.

If you are an AT&T customer, I’m curious to hear your thought? I added the @ATT twitter name in the title, so if you Re-tweet this post it will (hopefully) catch AT&T’s attention and maybe they can do something about it ( a one in a million chance, but hey..:-)