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Those working from home who are feeling lonely or isolated from their colleagues can now turn to a new free software launched by a local entrepreneur.

Workjoys allows employees to participate in simple social games, such as polls and trivia quizzes, with their colleagues.

Since the launch of a closed testing phase last month, Workjoys has seen around 20 companies, including the Singapore office of multinational company Akamai and local fintech company IFIS, sign up for its services. It was made available to the public on Thursday.

The games are asynchronous, which means players do not need to be online at the same time.

This is so that employees can play the games at their own pace without compromising productivity, said Workjoys founder Joshua Koh.

For example, in one game, a player can create a piece of trivia about himself. An e-mail will then be sent to all players in the company, inviting them to click on a link and guess which colleague the trivia is about. If the correct answer is chosen, a chatroom between the guesser and the creator of the trivia will be created on Workjoys, where they can exchange messages.

Workjoys "gets teams and employees to have fun while getting to know one another a little better. This helps us to stay connected while working remotely", he said.

Mr Koh, who has previously founded four start-ups, said he started brainstorming for ways to increase employee engagement at the workplace in November.

The idea of using games as tools to build community spirit in the workplace came to him in December but work on it accelerated only in January, owing to the pandemic.

As more firms took to telecommuting as the default working arrangement, Mr Koh hired two programmers to develop the software from scratch over two months.

"People are going to work every day but they're not going to the office. This is a substitute for regular 'water-cooler chat' at the office," said Mr Koh, who is currently head of business development in Asia-Pacific for a technology company. He has been working from home for the past six weeks himself.

He added: "The pandemic has disrupted businesses and put pressure on the bonds between employees. As a community project, Workjoys aims to help them maintain their bonds while coping with the pandemic."

Interested companies can register for free at http://www.workjoys.com.

Continue reading here:
Software helps staff at home stay connected through social games - The Straits Times

The bride, Erin Hensley, with a cardboard cut-out of her father. Photo courtesy of Erin Hensley.

The Denver-based virtual wedding planning service is using video conferencing to help couples move forward with their big day.

The wedding industry, which rakes in billions of dollars each year, is structured around planning. From floral arrangements to reception playlists, every detaildown to the minuteis designed months or years in advance by professional or amateur wedding planners. But like most industries in Colorado and across the country many wedding plans have been put on hold due to the spread of the novel coronavirus. Couples who planned on exchanging vows in front of loved ones in the coming months have instead been forced to make the difficult decision to either postpone or cancel their weddings, according to Caroline Creidenberg of online wedding planning company, Wedfuly.

To help accommodate couples hoping to get married during this time of uncertainty, Wedfulywhich offers virtual, cost-effective wedding planningcollaborated with the videoconferencing software Zoom. While gatherings are still prohibited, Wedfuly is encouraging couples to utilize the video conferencing app for marriage ceremonies. This way, couples can still get married in front of loved ones like they originally planned without canceling all of their plans.

Some people dont have luxury of postponing [the wedding]but some are OK with postponing the reception, Creidenberg says. We reached out to Zoom and put together a collaboration with them and they offered their software for free up to any of our customers.

To help all couples dealing with having to cancel or modify plans, Wedfuly opened the service up to everyonenot just their current clientele. Out of wanting to help as many people as possible and utilize that collaboration and free software, we went on a bunch of Facebook community groups, posting and letting people know, Creidenberg says.

Dustin Smith and Erin Hensley were the first couple to benefit from this collaboration; their wedding was originally scheduled for March 28 on the couples property in Bennett, Colorado. It was surreal and also sad at first, Hensley says. When Hensley first realized she might have to postpone her wedding, she says she cried in her fiancs arms for an entire day. It was heartbreaking but not an unfamiliar story that weve heard during the time, Creidenberg says.

With the help of Wedfuly and the local account manager for Zoom, Smith and Hensley were hitched via a livestream on March 28 in front of 120-plus family and friends. Smiths father was there to officiate and Hensley used a cardboard cut-out of her father (pictured above) to walk her down the aislelike many during this time, her father couldnt travel to be there. The couple, however, rescheduled the reception for October so they can celebrate with everyone in person.

Now I get two weddings and get to wear my dress twice! Hensley says. It felt even more special because we overcame so many obstacles and still got our special moment.

While holding a virtual ceremony wasnt ideal for the couple, Henlsey says she would recommend the option to couples hoping to get married in the coming weeks and months. So many people we hadnt even originally invited due to finances now got to share in our big day, she says. Even if we didnt live in a world of COVID-19 its a great way to invite others to join your big day and also get a free wedding video out of it.

Since the stay-at-home order was put in place in late March, three couples have been married virtually through the collaboration with Zoom. Wedfuly has 55 more virtual weddings on the books, according to Creidenberg.

In addition to offering Zooms services for free, Wedfuly also handles the coordination of the online event. Instead of using a service like Facebook Live to stream the event, Zoom can cue participants to cheer and clap while also spotlighting different screens allowing the audience to fully participate.

Even through all the sadness and uncertainty, Smith and Hensley got their happy ending. Everyone who watched, including my mom and dad, said it was so well done and they have no words to express how grateful they are too!

Victoria manages the social media accounts for both 5280 and 5280 Home and identifies opportunities for growth and engagement. She also writes and edits stories for 5280.com.

More here:
Wedfuly Collaborates With Zoom to Make Upcoming Weddings Possible - 5280 | The Denver Magazine

In a bid to lure more devs onto its companys services, AWS has pushed out AppFlow, claiming it will lower the hurdle of connecting software-as-a-service apps to analytics measures.

The new product is meant to free developers from having to manage connectors or write code in order to transfer data to a number of services for processing or storage tasks. AppFlow can run up to 100GB of data per set up connection and is marketed to those realising automatic data backup tasks, event analysis, reporting, and synchronisation between instances.

To set up a so-called flow, AWS customers can choose a data source from a selection of supported SaaS applications such as Slack, ServiceNow, Zendesk, or Salesforce. Once authenticated, those can then be connected to an Amazon S3 bucket, Amazon Redshift, Salesforce, or data warehousing product Snowflake.

Source data fields can be mapped either manually or via a .csv file to their source equivalent. AppFlow also offers transformations like masking (for example to keep some information private) and merging, which can be applied during transfer; filters to, for example, limit the data transferred to the newest additions only; and validation options to make sure fields with little information arent transmitted.

Flows are bidirectional, meaning that sources can become destinations and the other way round, if set up that way. To trigger them, users can either set a specific time, define the occurrence of certain events as starting points for an operation, or click the run button in the AppFlow user interface.

Data transfer is always encrypted, the company assures, though users who feel like their data is better off on AWS network are free to opt for sources that have AWS PrivateLink enabled, which creates and configures private endpoints so your data remains private by default. And since its an AWS service, admins are free to work with existing identity and access management policies to make sure not every change has to be sanctioned by the infra team.

Pricing depends on the number of flows run and the amount of data processed, which again depends a bit on the region the services are used in and tends to be slightly higher in the Asia Pacific areas. Users will also have to take into account the fees for data requests and storage when combining AppFlow with S3 and the cost of AWS Key Management for encrypting access tokens and transit data.

Currently, flows are restricted to 10 million per account and month, with one flow costing $0.001. Data processing costs are $0.08 per GB in most regions, except for cases where destinations arent hosted by AWS and AWS PrivateLink isnt integrated, where users will have to pay $0.136 per GB when more than 1GB is processed.

Go here to see the original:
AWS AppFlow trickles out, aiming to tighten the net around SaaS apps - DevClass

If you've been tearing through books with lockdown fervour, then we have just the thing for you. TheCity of Sydney are virtually holding our hands through iso by offering us a whole stack of new reading material, all available online, for free. You can access thousands of e-books from their digital library all you need is a library card.

If you needed a little encouragementto get stuck into that book you've been pretending to have read for a while now, take this as your sign. They're stocked with F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Jack Kerouac's On the Road and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, amongso many more.Contemporary reads like Benjamin Law's Gaysia, Khaled Hosseini's And theMountainsEchoed, Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood and Australian author Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project have also made the cut.We're not going tofurnish you with acomprehensivelist, but take our word for it: you're spoiled for choice.To access their collections, all you need to do is sign up for a free library card (if you don't already have one)at theCity of Sydney Library website.

If you'd like to read on your computer, you'll need to registerfor an Abode Reader ID first. Then, downloadthe compatible Adobe Digital Editions software onto your device, and enter your Adobe Reader ID.If you'd ratherread on your phone or tablet, downloadtheBorrowBox and Indyreads apps available for iOS and Android devices.

If only the Premier's Reading Challenge were still a thing, we'd be so ahead of the curve. Sigh.

More:
You can now download thousands of free e-books from City of Sydney libraries - Time Out Sydney

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