by Abby Jackson

Harvard Business School is often pegged
as one of the toughest business schools to get into. That may not be welcome information for applicants to the class
of 2019 hoping to receive acceptance letters.

But at least this year, the only HBS admissions essay, one of the
mandatory application components, seems pretty straightforward.
The prompt reads:

“As we review your application, what more would you like us
to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business
School MBA program?”

The simplicity may be an attempt to rectify an overly complicated
prompt from last year, Stacy Blackman, founder of Stacy Blackman Consulting
told Business Insider by email. Her firm helps clients earn
admission to top MBA programs such as Harvard’s.

Last year’s essay question read:

“It’s the first day of class at HBS. You are in Aldrich Hall
meeting your ‘section.’ This is the group of 90 classmates who
will become your close companions in the first-year MBA
classroom. Our signature case method participant-based learning
model ensures that you will get to know each other very well. The
bonds you collectively create throughout this shared experience
will be lasting. Introduce yourself.”

• Biz Carson and Alex Heath
  

When a group of Snapchat employees got locked out of their
building one Monday morning, they quickly realized their
predicament was no accident.

A top-secret Snapchat team had swooped in
overnight and taken over the office, de-activating the keycards
of the current tenants in the process. The secret newcomers
eventually allowed their colleagues back into the building and
partitioned the space, while a third group of Snapchat engineers
that was scheduled to move into the same building that
morning was left to keep working on plastic tables in a
crowded, barely renovated house.

The incident was both jarring and typical of the chaotic life at
the fast growing Los Angeles tech startup.

At Snapchat,
which recently renamed itself Snap Inc, secrecy and upheaval
come with the job. Evan Spiegel, the 26-year-old cofounder and
CEO, moves across the company’s network of Venice Beach outposts
in a black Range Rover, flanked by his security detail. New
employee orientations begin with a Fight Club-like list of
forbidden topics of discussion. And internal projects blossom out
of nowhere — and vanish suddenly — without explanation.

Matthew DeBord

I live in a four-iPhone family, with a fifth on the way, that is
ruled by a consistent theme: Everyone is always losing and
destroying their earbuds. Well, all except for me. I don’t lose or destroy mine, I just
give them to someone who has and replace them with inexpensive
SkullCandy earbuds that I buy two or three at a time to have a
reserve for when a family member comes to me with a tales of loss
or destruction.

This experience leads me to be beyond skeptical of Apple’s new
EarPod design for the iPhone 7, with its elimination of the
traditional headphone jack and connector, and the new Bluetooth
AirPods, which have already been widely ridiculed for getting
lost before they’ve even shipped.

We already know that the Apple Lightning charger design is awful.
We’re lucky to get a few months out of the Apple units before the
cords fail. Over the past few years, I think we’ve spent at least
a new iPhone on dozens of charger replacements. And that’s after
we squeeze a few extra weeks out by using electrical tape to
make a temporary repair.

by Business Insider – This weekend, as Olympian Usain Bolt attempts to win all three gold medals in sprinting, it’s not just about what happens on the track — it’s also about what he eats to fuel the finely tuned machine that is his body. In an interview with GQ, Bolt admitted that while his biggest craving is […]

Lisa Eadicicco, TIME.com

Since SMS’ conception in the 1980s, text
messaging hasn’t changed much. Sure, over the years, smartphone
messages got longer, added photos, videos, and emoji, but their
purpose-concise communication-stayed more or less static.

Lately, the technology has experienced something akin to the
Cambrian explosion, with a
broad range of new species of messaging emerging from companies
large and small around the world.

These are stretching the purpose and possibility of the lowly
‘text’ in novel directions. In the process, the trend has created
one of the most effervescent, interesting technology races in
recent memory.

Apple is the latest to rethink messages.
During its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on
June 15, the iPhone-maker announced that it will

The era of mobile apps is over and Facebook — with a touch of Snapchat — won.  The following chart, which comes to us from Anthony DiClemente at Nomura, shows how Facebook absolutely dominates the mobile app space, owning four of the top five most downloaded apps in May with only Snapchat breaking up its stranglehold on […]

Nathan McAlone

Since it launched in 2013, Product Hunt has become the go-to place to find the next big app, gadget, or service.

Here’s how it works.

A new tech product gets added, and then people vote on whether they like it or not. In this way, the site functions a bit like Reddit, though there is a heavy element of curation by Product Hunt’s team, which decides what gets featured on various pages.

This year, Product Hunt decided to hold its first annual awards for the coolest things to come out in the year, named "The Golden Kitty Awards." Starting December 9, Product Hunt invited its users to nominate and vote for the best products in a variety of categories, from best maker to most WTF product.

Now the voting has closed. To find the best of the best, we took a look at the "Tech Products of the Year" category. Here are the 11 tech products that rose to the top: