5 Ways to Boost the Value of Your Personal Brand

Building a personal brand and creating a more valuable ‘you’ can have a positive effect on both your personal and professional life. Think about the ways that companies do this. Highly caffeinated marketing teams sit in rooms, poring over logo design, advertising collaterals and their next tweet, so that they can present their company in an attractive, effective and appealing way.

In every message and every visual, customers need to see the brand’s identity shining through. So, why should it be any different for you?

Consumers trust individuals more than brands; the level of trust and integrity that you can get from an individual can seem lost within a massive, global conglomerate. If you want to freelance, consult or increase sales for your company then creating an investible personal brand will help you stand out.

Let’s look at 5 ways you can do this.

Authentic

No-body likes a fake. If you’re fake then you’ll get found out, similar to the bad guy at the end of every Scooby Doo episode.

Creating a brand identity based on something you’re not or on someone wildly different from yourself will be tough to maintain and almost impossible to do on a consistent basis.

Do some soul searching or ask a friend which traits you have that are attractive (we can’t be held responsible for any friend break-ups). Humor's a great trait and if you’re known for making people chuckle, it’s a very marketable attribute. People will connect with you because you’re being authentic and building a presence around the ‘real’ person that you are.

Play to your strengths and try to bring through your personality; it’ll be noticeable and people will invest in your integrity.

Research

Look at your sector, niche or area of expertise and try to identify things that you think could be done better or communicated more effectively.

For example, maybe you’re part of a complex field with lots of expertise, but the overall marketing strategy is stale and boring. It’s important to understand the tone of your niche and what people are looking for, but identify something you think you can do better at. And then do it.

What do your target audience want to hear? Demonstrate ideas in a more personable, human way if you think people are turned off by traditional, boring methods - you’ll instantly stand out because you’re providing something different.

Be Consistent

When you’ve decided on your key ideas and personal branding focus, you need to integrate it into everything you do. 71% of CEOs note that human capital is a key source of economic value, which basically means your personality can be one of your best business assets.

If you’re going heavy on humor then be consistent with it. Weave it into your email marketing, social media presence, your networking and content. You can’t always anticipate the entry-point people will use to access a brand, so you need to ensure that wherever they first encounter your personal brand, they can grasp who you are and what you’re about quickly.

Social Media

Your social media platforms play an essential part in personal brand building. Creating content is also an important element, but your social media profiles will help push and pull content towards your audience.

Make sure that on all of the platforms you use, that you're adopting your personal brand voice. You can also show that there’s more to you than selling or talking about the product you represent.

Social media gives people a chance to see the person you are. If you’ve just watched a great show on Netflix, tell people about it. The more you tweet, the more followers you’ll have. People can be attracted by shared interests and you can build relationships from there.

Connect with other influencers and network; it’s important to engage with people and see what’s going on, listen to others and start a conversation.

Monitor

So you’re moulding your personal brand and making changes, brilliant. But, in order to do that, you need to monitor the effectiveness of your personal brand.

Is your approach connecting with your audience? Are you getting lots of new traffic, making more sales? Whatever markers you’re measuring your success by, you need to monitor whether you’re making progress.

If you’re not, make some tweaks, do some more research and try and work out why your personal brand isn’t resonating the way you need.

Key Takeaway to Create Value

You’re a brand, I’m a brand, we’re all brands, so make yours a good one. Be honest and authentic about the ‘you’ that you present and people will notice.

It takes a lot of effort to build your personal brand and give yourself more value, but it can be really worthwhile in a crowded marketplace. So, stay committed, never stop learning and be prepared to adapt.

YouTube for Android Testing New Comment UI With Likes, Dislikes and Replies

HIGHLIGHTS

• It also allows users to reply to a comment through the app
• The feature is still in the testing phase
• YouTube has also launched mobile live streaming recently

YouTube is looking to revamp the way comments look on its Android app. The company is testing a new UI, which will show likes, dislikes, replies, and even lets you sort them.

A few select users are seeing a new comment UI in YouTube for Android. The new interface now supports likes and dislikes. Essentially it supports all the features that are available on the desktop, including the number of replies a comment has got, and the ability to expand those replies on a separate page.

YouTube for Android currently only shows comments in the order of the time it was posted in - and that's about it. The only thing users could do was add their own comment to the video.

However, Android Police reports that few users are seeing an improved interactive comment UI. It also has a switch that sorts the newest comments on top. The new comment interface is not yet ready for general release, and is just in its initial server-side test phase. If testing is successful, we can expect it to become the norm for all YouTube for Android users.

Just to compare, YouTube for iOS supports likes, and replies. It doesn't have the option to dislike, but does have the sorting toggle to let users choose between newest comments and top comments.

YouTube recently also announced its plans to bring live streaming to Android and iOS. For starting a live video on the smartphone, users will have to tap the big red capture button in the corner, select an image to use as a thumbnail, and then broadcast live to followers. YouTube is already testing this with few YouTube channels like AIB, and plans to do a mass rollout soon.

Google Maps update brings different colour schemes and a cleaner appearance

NEW DELHI: Google has rolled out an update to its Maps service on all major platforms including Android , iOS and Web. The update brings a cleaner and more user-friendly appearance, in addition to introducing a tweaked topography and removing the road outlines. Also, the update brings more points of interest, train stations and other spots.
New areas of interest are now highlighted with new shades to depict different districts. "The world is full of information, which means highlighting necessary info on the map without overcrowding it is a balancing act. So as part of this update, we've removed elements that aren't absolutely required (like road outlines). The result is a cleaner look that makes it easier to see helpful and actionable information like traffic and transit," said the search giant.

The updated Maps app shows points of interest in Orange colour. Users would simply need to open the app and look for areas shaded in Orange.

"We determine "areas of interest" with an algorithmic process that allows us to highlight the areas with the highest concentration of restaurants, bars and shops. In high-density areas like NYC, we use a human touch to make sure we're showing the most active areas," said Google.
Different colour schemes in Google Maps will also let users differentiate between man-made or natural features and also easily identify hospitals, schools or highways.

The search giant recently rolled out Wi-Fi only mode to its Maps app through an update. Along with this, the update also included new notifications for mass transit related delays. Few weeks ago, it also sent out updates with sharper and more seamless imagery , using photos from Landsat 8 observation satellite developed through collaboration between NASA and the United States Geological Survey.
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Google Releases Google Cast SDK for Android and iOS

At Google I/O, The new Google Cast SDK was announced at Google I/O this year with the stated goal of making development for Google Cast quicker, more reliable, and easier to maintain. Included was the introduction of full state management that helps developers implement the right abstraction between an app and Google Cast.

Google has now announced it has released the SDK for Android and iOS Senders, including an introductory video, full documentation, and reference sample apps and codelab tutorials for both platforms.

Among the new functionality for Cast announced at Google I/O in May include:

- Google Cast Remote Display APIs (Beta)
- Autoplay and Queuing APIs
- Game Manager APIs for Google Cast

Read More: https://www.youtube.com/embed/QZ6scX0NPDk

NASA Selects Five Mars Orbiter Concept Studies

NASA's Mars Exploration Program includes two active rovers and three active orbiters. Concept studies have begun for a potential future Mars orbiter mission. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS

› Full image and caption

NASA has selected five U.S. aerospace companies to conduct concept studies for a potential future Mars orbiter mission. Such a mission would continue key capabilities including telecommunications and global high-resolution imaging in support of the agency's Journey to Mars.

The companies contracted for these four-month studies are: The Boeing Company in Huntington Beach, California; Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver; Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California; Orbital ATK in Dulles, Virginia; and Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto, California.

"We're excited to continue planning for the next decade of Mars exploration," said Geoffrey Yoder, acting associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

The concept studies will address how a potential new Mars orbiter mission could best provide communications, imaging and operational capabilities. They also will assess the possibilities for supporting additional scientific instruments and functionalities, in addition to optical communications. The orbiter concept under study would take advantage of U.S. industry's technology capacities by using solar electric propulsion to provide flexible launch, mission and orbit capabilities.

The Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group, an organization designed to provide input to NASA from the Mars research science community, published a report six months ago on recommended science objectives for a Mars orbiter. These studies will provide input for assessing the feasibility of addressing these objectives. NASA also is pursuing partnership interest in contributing to this potential mission.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is managing the concept studies under the direction of the agency's Mars Exploration Program.

NASA is on an ambitious Journey to Mars that includes sending humans to the Red Planet in the 2030s. The agency's robotic spacecraft are leading the way, with two active rovers, three active orbiters, the planned launch of the InSight lander in 2018, and development of the Mars 2020 rover.

For more information about NASA's Journey to Mars, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/journeytomars


News Media Contact

Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278
guy.w.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown / Laurie Cantillo
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726 / 202-358-1077
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov / laura.l.cantillo@nasa.gov

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Google Launches Android Skilling and Certification Programme in India

In a fillip to government's Skill India initiative, technology giant Google on Monday launched its "Android Skilling and Certification" programme to help make the country a global hub of high-quality mobile developers.

The programme aims to train two million mobile developers by offering a slew of initiatives to train and certify talented students and developers in Android development.

"With nearly four million developers, India is expected to have [the] largest developer population globally by 2018. But today, only 25 percent of them are building for mobile," Caesar Sengupta, Vice President (Product Management) at Google, told reporters in New Delhi.

India is uniquely placed to innovate and shape the internet experience of billions of users "who are and will come online on the mobile platform," he added.

Google also launched an instructor-led training programme on Android fundamentals to provide an in-person training to students in universities.

In addition to all public and private universities and training institutes of the National Skill Development Corporation of India, the course will be available free of charge on NTPEL (an initiative of IITs and IISc) as part of its online "Mobile Computing" course, starting from July 18.

Google has tied up with training partners like Edureka, Koenig, Manipal Global, Simplilearn, Udacity and UpGrad who will operate as authorised Android training partners in India to help Google train the trainers and update Android courseware to prepare students for Android certification.

"By building a world-class curriculum and making it easily accessible to the students, we want to contribute to the Skill India initiative and make India the global leader in mobile app development," Sengupta added.

Google also announced the launch of its globally recognised job-oriented "Associate Android Developer Certification" exam that will help candidates get an entry-level Android developer job.

After training, the aspiring candidates can log on to the Google Developer training website and take the certification exam priced at Rs. 6,500.

"We introduced the Android Nanodegree programme in India last year with Udacity and today, we have over 11,500 students in India enrolling every month in our courses," said Peter Lubbers, Head of Google Developer Training.

Google will also open-source all Android Developer Fundamentals practicals and courseware and make these available to everyone for free.

Malware hits millions of Android phones

Up to 10 million Android smartphones have been infected by malware that generates fake clicks for adverts, say security researchers.

The software is also surreptitiously installing apps and spying on the browsing habits of victims.
The malware is currently making about $300,000 (£232,000) a month for its creators, suggests research.
The majority of phones that have been compromised by the malicious software are in China.

Remote control
A spike in the number of phones infected by the malware was noticed separately by security companies Checkpoint and Lookout. The malware family is called Shedun by Lookout but Hummingbad by Checkpoint.

In a blogpost, Checkpoint said it had obtained access to the command-and-control servers that oversee infected phones which revealed that Hummingbad was now on about 10 million devices. China, India, the Philippines and Indonesia top the list of nations with most phones infected by the software.
Hummingbad is a type of malware known as a rootkit that inserts itself deep inside a phone's operating system to help it avoid detection and to give its controllers total control over the handset.
The ability to control phones remotely has been used to click on ads to make them seem more popular than they actually are. The access has also been used to install fake versions of popular apps or spread programs the gang has been paid to promote.
"It can remain persistent even if the user performs a factory reset," wrote Kristy Edwards from Lookout in a blogpost. "It uses its root privileges to install additional apps on to the device, further increasing ad revenue for the authors and defeating uninstall attempts."
Ms Edwards said the recent spike in infections could be driven by the gang behind the malware adding more functions or using their access to phones for different purposes.
The malware gets installed on handsets by exploiting loopholes in older versions of the Android operating system known as KitKat and JellyBean. The latest version of Android is known as Marshmallow.
In a statement, Google said: ""We've long been aware of this evolving family of malware and we're constantly improving our systems that detect it. We actively block installations of infected apps to keep users and their information safe."
Google released the latest security update for Android this month and it tackled more than 108 separate vulnerabilities in the operating system. So far this year, security updates for Android have closed more than 270 bugs.