Keen On… Hacking Gender: How Women In Silicon Valley Can Become Jane Bond

Next StoryCoupons.com Files For $100M IPO On The NYSE, Trading As CoupFacebookTwitterLinkedInWomen in Silicon Valley With Nilofer Merchant

Despite incremental improvements, the gender bias issue in Silicon Valley remains an important one. Last month, in response to the furor over an interview about female hackers, Paul Graham announced a conference dedicated to female founders. But I beat Graham to it, producing a sold-out event last week at the San Francisco office of BloombergBETA entitled Hacking Gender.

One my panelists was the very successful writer, social media guru and public speaker Nilofer Merchant whose email signature line says: “Sent. By. Bond. Jane Bond, that is”. So I asked Merchant how all women in the Valley can, like her, become Jane Bond and overcome bias.

“Have grit,” she advises. And “perseverance”. What women (and men) need to understand, she says, is that “bias exists.” It’s ingrained in Silicon Valley and results in women not being seen by men. And so they don’t get jobs or investments or leadership roles.

But Merchant does see things improving. While she thinks that Graham needs to admit he’s biased, she is much more positive about Marc Andreessen’s recent confession on Twitter that only 11% of his followers are women. That’s how you hack gender, Merchant says, by acknowledging the problem, talking about it publicly and then trying to fix it.

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Should You Let Your Teen Become a Fashion Model?

Are the parent of a teenager? If you are, have you ever been asked by your teen to be a fashion model? While a large number of teens who want to be fashion models are girls, there are some boys who also wish to do so. Although your teen may wish to become a teen fashion model, the question is should you let them?



When it comes to determining whether or not you should let your teen be a teen fashion model, there are a number of important factors that you may want to take into consideration. One of those factors is where they would model. Is your teen only interested in participating in local fashion shows, like ones that may be run by local fashion designers or local fashion store owners? Or, are they interested in making it big? These are important questions that you may want to get answers to because it may actually mean the difference between a yes and a no answer.



Another factor that you may want to take into consideration is jobs. Was your teenager recently approach by a local fashion designer or fashion store owner? Did they happen to see a local advertisement asking for teen models for an upcoming local fashion show? If they did, your teen likely stands a better change of actually becoming a teen fashion model, even if it only is for a day or two. Teens who aim high as fashion models likely have a lot of drive and ambition; unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to make it as a professional teen fashion model. That is just something that you may want to keep in mind.



Another factor that you may want to take into consideration is the type of fashions that your teen would be modeling. This may be a little bit hard to determine if they havent yet lined up any appearances, but it still something that you will want to take into consideration. Teen fashions include a wide range of clothing pieces. There are swimwear pieces that are often modeled, as well as summer clothes, and so forth. If your teen is interested in participating in a local fashion show, will they screen or keep an eye on all viewers? Unfortunately, with many local fashion shows, just about anyone can enter, including possible child predators. Making money as a fashion model is a great way for you child to learn about jobs and money, but it is important that you also remember to keep their safety in mind as well.



As previously stated, if your teenager would like to become a teen model and if you are fine with them doing so, you may have better luck targeting local fashion shows. With that in mind, however, if you would like to help your child make it big, there are a number of different steps that you can take. Some of those steps may include getting professional photographs of them taken, as well as the hiring of an agent. The only thing that you need to do is be careful with who you choose to work with. With the recent interest in teen and child models, many parents are getting scammed by unsavory individuals. Do the proper research first and you shouldnt have any troubles trying to get your teen into modeling.



The above mentioned factors are just a few of the many that you may want to take into consideration, should your teenager ask about becoming a teen model. As previously mentioned, working as a teen model is a great way to prepare your child for working in the real world, but it is a decision that should be made by the whole family.

Hub Launches To Become The All-In-One Calendar And To-Do App For Your Family

Organization within families — or even within teams — has never been easy. Different people use different calendars and tools for to-do lists, which means that it’s tough to stay on the same page. Well there’s a new app called Hub that is designed to allow family members to share calendars and lists with one another.

Hub was created by the same team behind SimplyUs, one of the many couples apps that popped up during the spring and early summer of last year. But in building that app, the team realized that couples apps weren’t really sufficient for all the people involved in family decisions.

While sharing calendars and lists definitely helped facilitate communications between couples, there were other members of the family who were left out.

For instance, grandparents who take care of kids might want to share schedules with the parents. And children who are old enough, like teenagers for instance, could have their chores assigned via the app direct to their own smartphone. And there’s also the ability to add babysitters, daycare providers, and other service providers to facilitate scheduling.

With that in mind, the team built the new app to enable easier calendar and list sharing. It’s especially good for wrangling calendars from various different services and making them accessible to each other. That’s because it supports any calendar your phone does, including Google Calendar, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, and Exchange.

Users can also create multiple hubs with different participants. So there can be like a kid’s chore hub, a babysitter hub, a romantic couple hub, whatever. Hub operates on a freemium model, where free hubs get 5 event shares and 10 task shares per month.

To upgrade, pricing is $35.99 annually or $4.99 monthly for unlimited hubs and event shares and task shares. And once one person in a hub has upgraded, everyone he or she shares with gets unlimited shares in the hub.

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Google's Ingress to become a platform for other augmented reality games

Eventually, Google's Niantic Labs will have to wind down Ingress' storyline. However, that won't be the end of the developer's augmented reality efforts. Niantic tells The Verge that it's working on programming kits that would let aspiring coders build their own games with chat layers, location info and (if necessary) in-game ads. Jut don't expect to write your own title any time soon. Niantic doesn't yet know when the tools will be ready, and their availability may depend on the kind of flexibility that the team wants to offer. If the developer plays its cards right, though, Ingress fans will have a lot more to look forward to than just the beta's end or iOS support.

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Source: The Verge

Tags: alternaterealitygame, android, api, AugmentedReality, developer, gaming, google, ingress, mobilepostcross, NianticLabs Next: Lomography's Petzval lens ships to Kickstarter backers, pre-order it now for $599 .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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