Fashion, as we know, makes up an ever-changing world of what’s “in” and what isn’t. Technology has been very much “in” over the last few years, and we are seeing more and more examples of pieces of wearable tech. We explore this merge of fashion and tech in greater detail below.

The rise of wearable tech

The merging of fashion and technology has come about due to the rise in the use of wearable tech, with items such as the Jawbone for measuring fitness or the Apple Watch to measure just about everything else in our lives.

These items weren’t just designed as geeky looking gadgets; they were designed to look fashionable and to fit in with the rest of our attire, almost as though they weren’t there at all. New pieces of tech that didn’t have fashion in mind seem to fail, such as the Google Glass, which have now had its sales halted.

Wearable tech has come about due to the age of connectivity that we are now living in. Smartphones revolutionised the way that we stay connected, and now smart watches make that life even easier. Now manufacturers want to go even further with this, with ideas and patents for smart watches.

We measure life in notifications, likes, and data. This means that we no longer just want to go for a run, we want to measure the data from that run when we’ve finished. While, of course, not giving up on our sense of fashion.

The rise of e-commerce in the fashion industry

Fashion is a traditional industry, but industries that stay traditional in this day and age typically fall behind the competition. Think Blockbuster closing after the rise of new technology services like Netflix.

Fashion, traditionally, meant going into high-street stores and shopping around, but the rise of e-commerce has been slowly killing this. For the first time ever, more people shopped online in 2015 than visited physical stores, and it is likely that things will only keep going this way.

While 85% of people still don’t fully trust shopping online, they still shop online due to the ease it brings to their lives. The fashion industry has had to find new ways to keep up with the change in online shopping, and so it is unlikely that you will find a high-street store with no online presence.

The merging of fashion and tech

As well as the increase of e-commerce and online shopping, the fashion industry is finding other innovative ways to merge their world with the world of tech. For example, some places are now using intelligent dressing rooms where customers can “try on” various items of clothing without having to actually physically put the clothes on.

Other ways of merging the two industries together is through the use of virtual reality, the latest buzzword in the tech world. This takes e-commerce to the next level, and in some ways helps to restore the trust in online shopping people don’t have as they can see the things they are buying much more clearly in virtual reality.

Technology is now very much fashionable. It’s fashionable to own the latest smartphone or the newest gadget, even when items such as the iPhone 7 aren’t that different to the iPhone 6. It’s hard to say whether its technology that is now driving fashion or if it’s the other way round, but it’s safe to say that the two worlds have now very much merged, and manufacturers must keep this in mind when bringing a new product or item to the market.

Many of us look forward to the end of the calendar year as it’s a chance to relax, get some time off, and have a little party! But, it is worth remembering that Christmas is, primarily a religious festival, despite the huge commercial connotations it has taken on over recent years. So, below we look at how to handle Christmas culture each year, taking in to account various religions and cultures.

How to treat Christmas culture with sensitivity

Millions of people around the world either associate themselves with religions who don’t celebrate Christmas, such as Muslims or Hindus, or have no religious affiliation at all. As Christmas has become so widely associated with giving presents to each other or enjoying the traditional food on offer such as turkey, it is often forgotten that some will not partake in any of this.

As a Christian country in the UK, most of us celebrate Christmas. But it needs to be remembered that just as you have different skillsets and passions in the office, you too will most likely have different religions and cultures in your team.

So how can you treat the Christmas culture with sensitivity?

1. Take time to learn about other religious holidays and celebrations

Learn about the other religious holidays and celebrations within your team. Ask how they celebrate and enjoy these times, what exceptions and allowances you’ll need to make in the office and be sure the rest of the team is aware of this. This may mean things such as allowing employees days off from work for a certain holiday.

Be sure to mark your calendar with any other religious or cultural festivals that are celebrated within your office, as remembering this will go a long way in helping everyone to feel part of the same team.

2. Don’t have expectations when it comes to office parties

If you’re having a Christmas party with no focus on religion, then try to use it as an end-of-year team celebration. Much of the UK ‘Christmas culture’ revolves around eating large amounts of food, gift giving, crackers and drinking. This is still accessible to all cultures.

Some people may simply not wish to take part and celebrate a Christmas party, and accept that this isn’t a problem! Many people choose to celebrate in their own way, and Christmas parties aren’t for everyone.

Why is a form of Christmas culture good?

A form of Christmas culture is a great way of getting your employees away from work and bonding in a way that a typical office day simply won’t allow. It helps to bring a new atmosphere and sense of togetherness between those that work together, ultimately improving communication and productivity for the upcoming year.

However, taking into account what we have previously said regarding the wide range of different cultures, framing your end of year “Christmas party” as an end of year “happy holidays” party could be a good idea. Although a seemingly small change, it can go a long way in staying politically correct and helping all religions and cultures to feel included.

It is likely that your end of year party will have a Christmas theme, but keep it respectful of other religions, focusing more on the fun and giving aspect rather than the religious story behind it!

While it is likely that this is how most businesses will handle it, there are numerous controversies circulating the world at the moment regarding religion, and even what you may feel is an insignificant issue can be deeply politically and religiously incorrect.

When taking time to learn about other religious holidays and celebrations, take the time to speak to members of your team to ask how they would feel about certain features and what they would like to see at an end of year party. Get this right, and it can go a long way in cementing a great company culture in your team. And, of course, don’t forget correct etiquette of how to handle yourself at a Christmas party!

We are seeing an increasing use of freelancers within the business world for a range of different jobs and tasks. While it is a fairly new phenomenon and some businesses are reluctant to outsource their work, the freelance community represents a reliable and robust group of workers that can have jobs completed efficiently and effectively. But there are, of course, bad freelancers out there, and so below we list out a guide on how to work with freelancers.

The rise in the number of freelancers

The number of freelancers is increasing rapidly, with over 55 million freelancers now existing around the world. While it isn’t possible to explain exact reasons for this rise, workers seem to be wanting to move further away from the office 9-5, and more towards freedom and remote working.

What benefits do freelancers have for a business?

Outsourcing work to a freelancer is not laziness or representative of inability within your own organisation; it is a savvy business move that can allow you to half your workload for half the cost too.

Freelancers are much more flexible than other employees; their work is their livelihood, and they can’t always rely on a steady salary every month, and so you’ll often find that a freelancer goes the extra mile for you. This may be through the quality of their work or the fact that a lot of freelancers work weekends too.

It can be great for SMEs or new startups where the employee headcount is low, and you simply just don’t have the staff who are skilled in a particular area. You can find freelancers for almost any task, whether this is copywriting, photoshopping, research, social media management or some other task that you may have in hand.

The other huge benefit for a small-time company is that cash flow is likely to be an issue during the early years. Using a freelancer will mean you only have to pay them per job rather than a full-time salary. And you’ll also find that typically freelancers charge a lot less than if you had to pay a full-time employee, simply because their overheads are lower.

What are the drawbacks of using a freelancer?

There are some drawbacks of using freelancers; you can’t be completely guaranteed of the work that you will get, particularly as you are unlikely to meet them before completing a job. Some businesses may find that they need that face-to-face contact before getting into a business relationship with a freelancer.

However, websites such as PeoplePerHour and Upwork are good freelancing platforms which are built around reviews and feedback systems. You can carefully review a freelancer’s past work history, and then you should be guaranteed the quality of the work that you expect.

Another drawback is that you may find it hard to build up a company culture if you outsource a lot of your work to freelancers. However, this will be entirely dependent on your business model and what you are after with your employees. There are many highly successful distributed companies that have built up a good company culture.

How can I get the most out of using a freelancer?

If you are worried about using a freelancer and not being able to meet them beforehand, although this could be arranged, then there are ways that you can manage the process. Be sure to be super clear in your brief, keep constant communication throughout, and offer good and detailed feedback on their work.

A freelancer won’t understand your business in the same way that you do, so you may find that the first piece of work doesn’t quite fit the tone or ethos of your company. Agree before any work is started on how the process will work if you need revisions made; some freelancers will offer free edits on work provided you aren’t asking them to make edits that weren’t made clear in the original brief.

You will find that if you do everything to improve efficiency at your end, and you do sufficient research on a freelancer beforehand, that you can build up a solid and long-term relationship with workers who will strive to produce consistently high-quality work. The longer you work with a freelancer, the more embedded they will get in your business and the better understanding they will gain from your company; meaning it’ll be as though your freelancer is almost another employee.

Apps can be both an extension to an existing service, or in some cases, such as with Uber, are the service themselves. But for products and services that exist without the need for an app, creating this extension can be either beneficial or detrimental. Below we examine whether it is worth having an app for your service.

How having an app will add value to your service

With over two billion people using smartphones worldwide, the app market is huge. It can be worth capitalising on, and having an app can allow you to reach out to a new audience that you may not have been able to target otherwise.

It is necessary to have a mobile-friendly website nowadays, but a dedicated app can offer a lot more to customers than a browser version, and no matter how mobile-friendly a website is, it still isn’t as easy to navigate as the app equivalent.

Your app will allow you to create a direct marketing channel to your customers, provide value and can increase your brand image, connectivity and customer engagement. You can create more features for your users to get involved with, and can even generate revenue through the app to cover the cost of the development of it.

Apps like OpenTable allow you to book a restaurant with a few clicks of a button, rather than having to call the restaurant yourself. Other apps, like HelloFresh, are useful for helping the accessibility and delivery of products and services.

Having a mobile app can help you to stand out from the competition, especially if your competitors do not have one. It can be a forward thinking approach, and almost any product or service can be turned into an app in some way.

How apps could be detrimental to your service

However, despite the amount of people that use apps, it does not mean that you should automatically have one created for your service. The first thing to consider is whether you truly need an app.

If not, then the high cost of development for the app is most probably not worth it. They can take a long time and a lot of money to develop, and you’ll need one version for iOS and one for Android. Some place the cost of developing an app at around $10,000, while others put it more at around $20,000 depending on the number of features that are going to be used. Can your service really suffer these costly setbacks?

It can also be costly and timely to continue to maintain your app, and according to some articles, places like the Apple Store take around 30% of your revenue for each app purchased; another setback if you’re relying on paid downloads as part of your profits.

Further costs will need to be considered when marketing your app, as you’ll need to show your customers that you have a presence on the app stores. Once you have tallied up all of these additional costs, will you still be able to make a profit from the app?

For some businesses and services, an app quite simply is not needed. An example is the PlayStation App, which numerous people complain about. The features you can actually use are extremely limited, and the service that is being offered on the PlayStation cannot really be extended in any useful way through an app, except for the messaging service.

What’s the solution?

Carefully consider your business aims and objectives. Who are you trying to reach and what do you want them to do? Is an app totally necessary, or just an after-thought (and a costly one at that!).

Think:

• Will having an app solve an existing problem of yours?
• Will it enhance a customer’s user experience to a good degree?
• Can you both afford and justify the costs of developing the app?
• Will the return on investment for the app be worth it?
• Are there already apps on the market doing what you want to do, and if so, can you offer a better alternative?

Consider the above steps carefully with proper market research, and once you have done this you should be in a much better position to decide whether or not it is worth having an app for your service.

A hackathon is an event which will usually span several days, and revolves around teams of people attempting to bring their projects to life in a short space of time, usually a new piece of technology. They are fast-moving, quick-paced events that aim to have one or more successful projects, businesses and ideas alive by the end of the hackathon. While this sounds like a great way to ‘hack’ your way to quick success, are hackathons really worth your time?

The benefits of a hackathon

Fast-moving

A hackathon is designed to be fast-moving, getting you from A to B as quick as possible, with B being a completed project or design. This means that any unnecessary meetings, slow communication processes and days of to-ing and fro-ing are dropped. Instead, it is replaced by a team of engineers who just, put simply, what to get stuff done.

They’re relaxed, fun and informative

Hackathon events are not scary events that can only be attended by expert engineers; they’re fun and relaxed, but still offer you a real chance to learn something new and be a part of a cool, potentially world-changing, project. You can learn quickly in a few days what might take months of lectures or courses.

A creative environment

You can be as creative as you like when you’re at a hackathon. The idea is to tackle and solve problems in a short-space of time; you might not have enough hours to use conventional methods! This allows you to try new things, be a little unconventional and maybe even end up creating a new solution in the process.

Community

A hackathon provides a great community environment where you gel with your team to produce what can be real, meaningful projects. With the sleepless nights, free food and chill out times that hackathons normally involve, you’ll create some great bonds with new people.

But are hackathons worth your time?

Fast-moving

While the fast-moving nature that was touched on earlier can be a positive, it also has its drawbacks as well. Sometimes faster does not necessarily mean better, especially if you are working on a new project or idea.

The race to the finish line can mean you overlook certain aspects, skimp on quality and end up with a less-than-successful project, especially considering no hugely impactful piece of software or technology was ever developed in just two or three days.

It can cost you valuable time

If you are an already established business or project and are looking to ‘hack’ your way to more growth, hackathons could even end up costing you valuable time that you could have spent with output on your usual work.

It can be difficult to tackle large problems

We’ve already mentioned that you cannot create a hugely impactful piece of software in just a few days, and this is because you do not have enough time to understand and approach large problems.

You may be given just a few days to ‘hack’, what can be complex problems shortened down into small paragraphs for the team to understand, process and then come up with a solution. For many problems, this quite simply is not enough time.

There is no guarantee of working software or technology

While the idea of a hackathon is to ‘hack’ your way to success in just a short few days, there is no guarantee that there will be working technology at the end of it. While, of course, teams can continue to work on the project once the hackathon has finished, if results cannot be promised then it be hard to get commitment from everyone involved.

What’s the solution?

Hackathons can be extremely useful, valuable events that produce some good results. The best way to make hackathons worth your time would be to:

• Take the task as seriously as your own work
• Commit to delivery and follow through with the project
• Be open to learning from other attendees and experts

Follow these steps above, and the few days of fast-paced action can be extremely useful in helping you to build a new project or scale the one that you already have.

If you are an online business, then fast internet and loading speeds are the absolute bedrock for the stability and profitability of your company. While the digital world is getting bigger and better, and we can use our browsers now for almost anything, this increase in the scope of the internet can lead to slow loading, lagging or even crashing. Below we explore how you can speed up your load times without needing to spend money on faster broadband speeds.

Update your browser

Google Chrome is the most used browser on the internet (having recently overtaken Internet Explorer), but pretty much all browsers work the same way with similar features. One of the first things that you can do to speed up your browser is check for any updates; your browser will not always update automatically, so this step often gets overlooked.

Not updating your browser could mean that you are running on an older, slower version, or one that is having bug issues. To find out if your browser has been updated, simply type in “update [name of your browser]” into the browser you use and follow the steps provided.

Disable any toolbars, extensions or plugins

Toolbars, extensions, and plugins are like add-ons or apps for your browser, and some have many useful functions and purposes. However, it may be that you have accidentally installed some that you do not need, or that you no longer use, and deleting or disabling these can help to speed up your browser.

You can usually view your toolbars, extensions and plugins from the settings menu in your browser of choice.

Clear history, cache, and cookies

Another useful way to speed up your internet browsing is to clear your history, cache, and cookies.

Cache: your internet cache is locally stored image and content files from websites that you have visited. This is useful as the next time you visit that webpage, the content and files will load quickly. However, as your cache builds, it will take longer for websites to source through your growing stock of locally stored content.

Cookies: cookies are also locally saved files, but on you as the user, such as usernames and passwords.

History: this is your browsing history, keeping a record of every site you have visited.

Clearing these three saved pieces of data and information can help your browser to run faster. However, it can also cause inconveniences, such as with you having to enter your user name and password again.

Sit nearer the router

This one is not always practical for everyone, but the further away you are from your internet router, the slower your internet is going to be, especially if the signal has to travel through solid objects like walls. If possible, consider moving closer to the router.

Use minimal tabs

There will be points while you are working that you need several tabs open, and modern browsers are designed to support this. However, the more tabs you have open, the slower your browser will be, especially if each page is rich in content, audio or visual files.

If possible, aim to have the absolute minimal number of tabs open; perhaps by working your way through each tab individually and closing it once you are done with it.

Extensions

Although we talked earlier about disabling any unnecessary or un-used extensions and plugins, there are some useful add-ons available that can help with the speed of your browser. Extensions such as Google’s Data Saver work by running some internet traffic through Google’s servers, thereby reducing the downloads per page and helping to speed up slower pages.

Turning off prefetching and automatic loading

Modern browsers attempt to predict where you will head next on your webpages, and while this can be extremely useful, it can also slow down your browser, especially if it gets its predictions wrong!

We’d only recommend this for really slow browsers, and if you feel that yours is one of these, simply type “turn off prefetching in [name of your browser]” into your search engine and follow the steps that are listed.

Minimise the other tasks that you are doing

If you have multiple documents, applications, and e-mails open on your desktop, regardless of whether it is on a browser or not, it is going to slow down the processing speeds of your computer, and therefore, your internet. Keep your computer running as little tasks as possible, so that when you need to use the internet, it can run at full power.