This Post Is Definitely Safe For Work

A couple of days ago, we wrote about a marketing campaign we were running on food sites. We were pretty pleased with it, because it checked all the boxes of a successful growth hack – the ads got us lots of eyeballs, millions of clicks, a bump up in online orders, and all at a ridiculously low cost.

The response to the campaign was largely positive. People said we were ballsy for trying this at all, and that we broke new ground for doing this in a country where food has long been a touchy topic. But there were a few things said that we simply couldn’t ignore. Some folks got offended by the campaign, felt the campaign was in poor taste, and it wasn’t something they expected from a brand of our standard. Some also said that all food is not legal, and by advertising on food websites, we are financially supporting abuse – certainly something we don’t want to do. Ever.

Over the past almost eight years now, we’ve worked really hard to build what we’ve built. And while we’ll be the first ones to admit that we aren’t even close to perfect, we can confidently say we’ve always stood for doing what’s good and what’s right. We’ve focused on instilling the right values in our people – values we live by every day – and built our own unique culture along the way. We feel honoured when we’re told that we’ve set an example for young companies in India to go take over the world, by doing what we do and proving the naysayers wrong. In short, we have a lot to live up to.

Like we said earlier, this campaign was almost textbook ‘startup’ marketing. But we’ve probably reached a stage where it’s fair to expect that even if we’re doing what we need to do, we do it in ways that are more ‘grown up’. We understand that we owe it to ourselves, and to those who’ve helped get us to where we are, to set the right examples and convey the right messages. That isn’t to say that we’ll crawl into a shell and stop doing what’s needed. There will be growth hacks and marketing campaigns, and they may or may not be everybody’s cup of tea. But we will also be more mindful of the boundaries we’re playing inside.

For a start, we’re killing the food site campaign, because we sense we crossed the fine line between marketing irreverence and cultural insensitivity. If we did, and ended up offending or disrespecting anyone in any way at all, we are sorry. That obviously wasn’t the intention, and we’ll work on doing things better in the future.

It's Kind of Games that People will Play for Years

An important part of our original product vision was also the idea of building cross platform gaming services – games that you could log into and play from any device. But later on, our thinking on this changed completely. If you continue reading, you’ll see why. In short, today we believe that the best quality can only be achieved by focusing on one platform at a time.

That’s what we were thinking when we got started back in May 2010. Our initial funding came from the founders investing their savings into the company. On top of that, we borrowed as much money as we could from Tekes, the Finnish government’s technology funding arm. Our first office was in Niittykumpu in Espoo, Finland. It was pretty far from Silicon Valley, but we had everything we needed: one 30-square-meter room, six desks we got from a recycling center, and of course a coffee maker. A bit later on, when we started to hire more people, we managed to fit 15 people to that little room. At some point there was no room for our CEO Ilkka anymore, so he had to move out.

Our first game was called Gunshine.net. It was a real-time massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Remember, our original vision was to create cross-platform gaming services, so the idea was that one day players would be able to enter the world of Gunshine via desktop web, Facebook, tablet and mobile. That said, we had to start from somewhere, and the most logical place was the platform with the widest reach. And at that time, that platform was desktop web and Facebook, so we started to build the game on top of Flash technology.

We managed to launch the private beta version of Gunshine in February 2011, and the open beta launched a few months later. We also started to plan a mobile/tablet version of the game. At its peak in the summer of 2011, Gunshine had around half a million monthly players.

Learn Everything About Anything from the Scratch

The availability of information is taken for granted these days. Not all that long ago, information was not quite so easy to find. A dated and finite amount of information could be purchased via encyclopedia for your home for a not-so-small amount of money, or it could be accessed through the public library. Even in the early days of the Internet, it was difficult to find accurate and pertinent information via search engine. Today though, anyone can learn about anything on a whim. Using the magic of Wikipedia, people can search, find and even contribute to extensive information about virtually anything. With more safeguards put in place to protect the integrity of the content, Wikipedia has proven to be a very reliable source of fast information on just about anything.

These three concerns from the early days of online living have found great solutions. With the use of the Internet as a means to organize and streamline life, it becomes important to make our tools as efficient as possible. Through the solutions mentioned above, as well as new and emerging solutions every day, we can find a solution to virtually any problem or any concern.

Being a business pro is hard work. You always have to be on your game and readily available to make moves before other people do. Luckily, with the advancement of technology, it has never been easier than it is now to keep up with all of your business doings, right from the palm of your hand with mobile applications. This content will take a look at six priceless business apps that you need to know about, if you plan to be atop of the business world. If you keep these apps handy, than you are likely to always be prepared and ready to make the most of your business.

Evernote
Evernote is one of the most popular apps available, whether you are a business pro or simply a person who wants to keep detailed notes. The options and usability of Evernote is nearly limitless when it comes practicality and reasons to use. This app will take perfectly organized notes right inside of the app. But the best part is that you can then sync your applications to your other smart devices and even access your notes from your computer. Evernote is perfect for taking notes of business conferences, keeping track of people you’ve met, reminding yourself of things to do, and much more.

DropBox
With as much information and documentation most businesses have, it’s nearly impossible to carry everything around with you at one time. Enter DropBox, a digital cloud service that will organize and keep track of all of your business documents. As long as you have a data or Wi-Fi connection, you can easily access your DropBox app and all of the contents that you have loaded to your storage. For companies with more information, you can upgrade to larger storage options. But the basic 2GB offered is a great start for free.

Mathematician jokes scarcely Raise a Chuckle from Her

If your girlfriend is a true geek, she’ll love mathematician jokes. If she rolls her eyes when you say, “A mathematician walks into a bar…” — you may want to check her geek credentials.

So these are just a few ways to tell if your girlfriend is a true geek or not. Don’t worry if she isn’t — despite what Hollywood might sometimes tell us, there is enough common ground for geeks and non-geeks to get along. But you may have to sit down and have a serious talk with your girlfriend about planning a day that you both can watch the first three Star Wars films. It’ll be essential to bringing her over to your view.

Problems are problems, regardless of their specific location. With the dawn of the Internet came a new set of problems. Many people today utilize the Internet as a way to make their lives easier. Now, there are even solutions designed to make your online solutions easier. There are several ways to make your online problems go away, and get back to living life a little easier and more streamlined. The following are examples of ways to accomplish this with the click of a mouse.

Finding Old But Important Emails

Email has not only become a common form of communication, it has become an acceptable method of sending official documents and conducting business. With so much email that is often so important, mixed with email that is frankly not important at all, accessing certain email has become a challenge. Archiving manually is a little too time consuming, but there are ways to avoid the archiving and find exactly what you need right away. Gmail is one particular online email client that offers a free email account with virtually unlimited space and no need to delete anything. Brought to you by the good folks at Google, Gmail includes a search bar that allows fast and very accurate retrieval of your email. Archiving is not the solution; effective search is the solution, and who better than Google to perfect email search?

Availability of Documents on Any Machine

Carrying around paper is so 20th century! Many people have found in the last several years that electronic documents are the way to go. There’s less and less need to print a bunch of paper that takes up too much physical space and kills too many beautiful trees. With storage devices getting smaller over the years, it’s finally reached a point where documents can be available thought carrying them on even a flash drive! The concept of “the cloud” is essentially a storage location that is not tangible, but accessible anywhere by the owner. Solutions like “Dropbox” and “Google Drive” allow for the holding and accessing of documents, music and any other digital file. So now, everything you’re working on is available wherever you are, without having to carry anything around at all.