We released Zulip Server 1.9.1 today. This is a bug fix release, containing a few dozen cherry-picked changes since 1.9.0.

It usually requires a special kind of person to succeed in customer service. These individuals are in constant contact with customers, which makes them symbols of how a business performs. Good customer service employees are eager to help; bad ones are eager for the day to be over.

Great design is no longer just about how a product looks and feels, but how a company understands and listens to its customers, how it hires and organizes its teams, and how it anticipates and accounts for change. No one is more aware of this than Irene Au, Design Partner at Khosla Ventures.

Look to the skies, or just our Apps Marketplace, to learn about all the great new integrations.

This year alone, it’s predicted that holiday retail sales will top $1.10 trillion. It’s a pivotal time for companies: bright and jolly marketing campaigns go out in a flurry and sales teams put on the pressure to get their numbers to an all-time high. But, while the increase in marketing efforts inevitably leads to more customers, it also means customer support teams find themselves spread thin.

2018 has been the year of artificial intelligence (AI). What was until recently just an emerging trend, has now established itself to the extent that it is already hard to imagine a work life without AI-driven applications. Chatbots—one of the more popular applications of AI —have become ubiquitous, and every SaaS company has jumped on to the AI and machine learning (ML) bandwagon.

A few years ago, I thought design meant how good something looks. Whether it’s the streaming app that I use to binge watch my favorite TV shows, or the E-commerce website where I get the best deals, how good the interface looks seemed to drive my choices. But today I can tell you—I’ve never been more wrong. As I interacted with more and more products for my day-to-day tasks, I realized that aesthetics isn’t the only factor contributing to the end user experience.

The lack of end-to-end encryption in Skype has long been a concern for security conscious business users. However, in August 2018 Microsoft announced the availability of Private Conversations, offering users the ability to protect chats, calls and file sharing with end-to-end encryption built on the Signal protocol.

If you really set your mind to it, you can do it. Get to the very top. Beat out all the others. That’s how I did it. I just wanted it more, worked hard, and eventually all my dreams came true. I won’t say it’s easy, but it’s up to you!

It’s the whisper on every store owner’s lips, and the shout rising from every eager shopaholic across the country: the Black Friday weekend is coming. November 23rd is fast approaching, with Cyber Monday hot on its heels. Last year consumers spent $19 billion over the Black Friday weekend. And on Cyber Monday alone online spending reached a record breaking $6.59 billion.