The Super Mario Bros. The Movie

 

What an amazing backstory for us the super fans, it’s really a turnover for people like me who didn’t really know much about the story behind the legend Mario. All it was for us was to play the game and save the day by rescuing the princess from the Boss. There are a lot of things that seem to be quite different from what we understood back in the day, maybe it was just some movie twist to make the viewers like it even better, well you got me there cox I loved it. I will dive in and see the things that we were missing. First off, the animation is a huge success with a lot of millions $$$ at the global box office, making it the highest-grossing film of 2023. Two minds are better than one, The animation was produced by Universal, Illumination and Nintendo, it took a decade for production and it turned out to be among the best.

So, Mario was a city guy with his family, I never thought of that in my wildest dream he was sucked into the mushroom land from a pipe down in a place that seems like abandoned, and he was a plumber. As a kid all it was for us was to rescue the princess from her captive and as it turns out she was about to be a bride. It’s really good to read about things, when you are into something just try to know a little about it. This is an eye-opener for me!

In the game, we all know about the power-ups, the star, the mushroom, and I think there is something that lets Mario fire out the bullets for a minute. Meanwhile, in the movie, the star seems to be a big deal and we saw just one in the hands of Bowser and in turn, it was used against him. It’s a really good animation and I had fun watching it with my kid, Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic did well as directors of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” with a production budget of $100 million which is economical according to variety.com since Pixar and Disney animated movies often cost twice as much. Want to know more about the adventure of Mario and his brother Luigi then you need to go watch the movie as soon as possible. You will see places like Kong Land and catsuit power-ups which made Mario win the fight against the Kong Land Prince/Fighter.

Ten10 great sites where you can start a blog for free.

 1. Wix (www.wix.com)                                               

👉 Best for: Non-techies who want some “regular website” functionality along with a blog.

sponsored Wix is a free website and blog builder tool that can be totally managed from the front-end. The main characteristics of this platform are that it comes with a 100% free plan that lets you launch a blog under Wix’s subdomain, plus it offers really good drag-and-drop tools you can use when working on your blog.

Every Wix plan also comes with website hosting included, so you don’t have to go elsewhere to get it, but can instead focus on arranging your layouts, picking a template, and writing some content. Wix also provides a nice collection of free and premium themes and templates for different purposes – including blogging. The design of the platform overall is very intuitive and modern, so it can be used by both beginners and advanced users alike.

To launch a Wix blog, just sign up and make a choice: you can either let the Wix ADI create a site for you based on a questionnaire or build your blog yourself – which includes selecting a template and arranging the layouts via the Wix editor. If you go with the second option, all you need to do is find a beautiful template and start customizing everything on the front-end, in a live preview mode.

You can add multiple elements to your pages, from multimedia widgets to backgrounds, menus, typography, forms, video boxes etc. When you think the site is ready, click Publish and start blogging your stories. After publishing, you can return anytime to edit the content blocks.

Go to Wix

2. WordPress (www.wordpress.org)

👉 Best for: People who want 100% control of their blog. Perfect for a serious website that you plan to work on long-term.

WordPress is an excellent choice for anyone looking to create a blog for free. As an open-source platform, it offers an immense range of customizable features. You can choose from thousands of free themes and plugins. This makes it easy to design a unique, professional-looking blog without any coding knowledge. Furthermore, its active community is always on hand to offer help and advice.

While WordPress itself is free, to make your site live on the internet, you’ll need to sign up for a web hosting account. Those are usually paid. This service stores your site’s files and makes them accessible to visitors online. It’s a necessary step to transition from creating your site on WordPress to sharing it with the world.

⚡ This is where Bluehost comes into play. It is a great solution for the web hosting needs of most WordPress sites. Not only is it affordable (from $2.75/month), but it also ensures that your site is going to be accessible and fast-loading. Bluehost guarantees nearly 100% uptime and offers good customer support. Plus it even includes a free domain for the first year. It’s the perfect blend of cost-efficiency and quality for those looking to use WordPress for a live site.

Hosting the WordPress software yourself is like being the captain of your own ship. You steer the look, functionality, and revenue generation of your site. However, every captain must know their vessel. This means a slightly more hands-on approach during setup, equipping you with a more intimate understanding of your site’s workings. Embrace the adventure! It’s part of the voyage to successful blogging.

Here’s what the WordPress interface looks like when creating a new post:

Some more reasons to make WordPress your choice among the other best free blogging sites that the market has to offer:

• WordPress offers ultimate customization, letting you craft your site to suit your individual needs.
• It’s open-source, meaning a global community contributes to its ongoing development and security.
• Thousands of free and premium themes allow you to create a professional-looking site, regardless of your design skills.
• With a vast array of plugins, you can add almost any functionality to your site.
• WordPress is SEO-friendly, helping your site rank higher in search results.
• It’s perfect for all types of sites – from blogs and ecommerce stores to portfolios and business sites.

Start with WordPress

3. LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com)

👉 Best for: Business owners and professionals who want to reach a pre-existing audience.

You probably didn’t see this one coming. LinkedIn isn’t most people’s first choice when considering which of the free blogging sites to choose. That being said, it really does deserve some attention!

Two main reasons for this: easy to use tools, and pre-existing audience.

About that second thing – the audience – what’s great about LinkedIn’s user base is that those are highly focused users, professionals and business owners. In fact, it’s reported that more than 30 million businesses are active on LinkedIn. And they’re not just there for the sake of it. Other data indicates that 94% of B2B marketers use the platform as one of their primary lead sources.

In short, LinkedIn just works as a platform where you can get exposure. This makes it one of the overall best free blogging sites on the web.

From a technical point of view, publishing on LinkedIn is easy. Just go to your LinkedIn feed and use the “Start a post” widget at the top of the page. To convert your status into a full post, click on “Write an article on LinkedIn” to open the full-screen editing window.

This is where you can find all the editing tools that you’re used to – for text formatting, adding images, and more.

If you want to learn more about how blogging on LinkedIn works, read this in-depth guide.

Go to LinkedIn

4. Weebly (www.weebly.com)

👉 Best for: Good alternative to Wix, if you don’t like something about the platform.

Weebly is another website builder that you can use not only to blog but also to sell products or showcase your portfolio. It is somewhat similar to Wix to the extent that it provides a WYSIWYG editor with drag-and-drop elements. If you want to add a certain button, you can simply drag it to the page and customize it. The same happens with photo galleries, slideshows, and any other multimedia element.

Weebly provides sidebars, media boxes, forms, ad spaces, social media icons, newsletter subscription, and many more. Moreover, the platform comes with built-in analytics and lets you use your own customized domain (for which you need to pay).

On the free plan, you get five custom pages, a Weebly subdomain, 500MB storage, and ad spaces.

Go to Weebly

5. Medium (www.medium.com)

👉 Best for: Users who just want to write, are looking for a built-in audience, and don’t care about having their “own site.”

Medium is a multipurpose platform tackling diverse topics, where anyone with an account can write. Unlike most other free blogging sites, the big advantage of Medium is that your articles will be exposed to a wide audience since the platform is visited by 60 million readers (*) per month (and the number increases every year).

It’s super simple to use – you pretty much just sign up and start writing. But the downside is that all your content is on Medium. That is, you’re not really building your own “space” like you would with WordPress. Read this post for more on the differences between WordPress and Medium.

Go to Medium

6. Ghost (www.ghost.org)

👉 Best for: People who need something with a modern vibe. Still, be careful with the technical setup.

This is another WordPress-like blogging platform. While the Ghost software can be downloaded for free, you need paid hosting for fuel. DigitalOcean is a great service that supports Ghost: it is cheap and comes with a bunch of nice features to get you started.

The downside is that installing Ghost isn’t as straightforward as WordPress, and you might have to get your hands dirty with some server work – depending on the host you choose for your blog.

To create a post in Ghost is easy once you set up your website. The editor is simple and minimalist, and it offers a live preview of your text on the right side of the screen. On the front-end, you get a Medium vibe, so it’s nice. Near the editor screen, there is a sidebar with settings, where you can choose your preferences.

Go to Ghost

7. Blogger (www.blogger.com)

👉 Best for: People who want to write and aren’t concerned about owning their own site.

Blogger is one of the oldest free blog sites, though its popularity has dipped in recent years.

It’s a solid solution for personal blogs, but it’s not the best resource for professional use. It works just like the other hosted platforms: you need to create an account first in order to use it. After you create it (which is simple), you have to pick one of the default themes and you can start writing your thoughts down. This platform has an interface similar to a Google+ profile and the editor looks like a Word page.

Blogger delivers a bunch of themes to choose from, each providing different skins, advanced color filtering, and various minimalist gadgets (aka widgets). But nothing too fancy or any advanced design customization. In general, Blogger has simple appearance options. This keeps the focus more on your writing rather than some complex design. A nice part about this site is that it comes with ad spaces that you can place within your content pieces.

Go to Blogger

8. Tumblr (www.tumblr.com)

👉 Best for: Users who are into more short-form, image-focused content and don’t need any “regular website” functionality.

Tumblr is one of the original free blogging sites on the web. It’s just a bit ‘milder’ than the others on the list. Unlike the rest of the platforms that are mostly created for publishing purposes, this one here is more oriented to multimedia or social media-like content. The interface of Tumblr is more playful and is easy to get started with. You can simply sign up and then you’re allowed to start posting.

Just like a regular blogging platform, it provides multiple post formats for different types of content. The thing with Tumblr is that it is purely for personal use and wouldn’t put up a great solution if you have business-oriented plans. It is simplistic, offers basic customization options and, like I said earlier, has more of a social media vibe.

Despite not being built for business, it does let you display ads on your page, use affiliate links, and integrate your blog with Google Analytics.

Go to Tumblr

9. Joomla (www.joomla.org)

👉 Best for: People who are looking for a WordPress alternative that is capable of handling heavy load. Not the best platform for simple blogging.

Joomla is similar to WordPress.org but not as obvious when considering the free blog sites available out there. Just like WordPress, the software is free but needs hosting and a domain. As in the WordPress case, we recommend Bluehost because it is both very cheap and reliable (and it includes a free domain).

In general, Joomla has a flexible interface that can be used not only for blogs but also for more complex websites (you can choose from a variety of templates and extensions to add custom functionality).

When it comes to the ease of use, the platform provides an old-school editor, that somehow looks like Microsoft Word. It allows you to choose the font, color, size, emoticons, tables, or background. I mean, the tools in the menu make you feel like you’re in a Word window.

The Joomla editor is tabbed. The first tab is the classic texting window per se, then you need to switch tabs to select the post categories, tags, date, meta description, keywords etc.

Go to Joomla

10. Jimdo (www.jimdo.com)

👉 Best for: People who want to launch simple websites with an added blogging module.

As you would expect, Jimdo is a tool you can use to build a blog for free. The way you make your site is by giving Jimdo some quick pointers about what you’d like to build and what the blog should look like. With these answers, Jimdo will create your blog automatically based on them.

On the free plan, Jimdo lets you publish your blog under its own subdomain (.jimdosite.com). If you’d like a custom web address, you’ll need to upgrade.

What’s unique about Jimdo is that it gives you more of a “page builder” feel. The main difference is that you create your blog posts directly within your website’s main customization page, and not in a separate editor like you might with other blogging platforms. To edit content, you click on a given content box on the live site and then edit whatever you think needs work. You can do all this without having to go to a different page. You can even edit your site’s footer and logo in this way.

You’ll find even more options to tweak your blog post on the left side of the Jimdo interface. There, you can add things like the post’s date, title, category, whether it’s published or still a draft (the post’s status), a summary, and a preview image. Basically, your article is built from many individual pieces that you can edit one by one. These include things like text, pictures, and buttons, and you can decide what order they go in.

Go to Jimdo

The war over work from home: Does remote work really impact success and productivity?

 

Welcome to Forbes Edge, your insider’s guide to career and entrepreneurial success, exclusively on LinkedIn. If you work from home, you don’t want to skip our top story this week. Forbes spoke with academic researchers, corporate advisers and business executives on what existing data says about remote work’s impact on productivity, creativity and more. Then we’ll tackle some networking tips for those who are introverted, shy or just hate networking. And finally, we’ll take a look at some different résumé formats—and the pros and cons of each.

• Forbes' Future of Work newsletter will keep you up-to-speed on where the world of work is headed next. Click here to sign-up.

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Success story of the week: The war over work from home: Does remote work really impact success and productivity?

Many remote and hybrid workers can hear the rumblings of a possible return to in-office work. CEOs of major companies have made headlines in recent months for calling their workers back to the office, eliminating the option for fully remote schedules. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been unwavering in his distaste for remote work, saying that “it does not work for younger people, it doesn’t work for those who want to hustle, it doesn’t work in terms of spontaneous idea generation.”

Is he right? It’s hard to say. Workplace norms continue to shift, and collaborative software tools are constantly being updated and improved. Productivity is notoriously hard to measure for white-collar workers, and a lot of existing data comes from employee surveys or academic research that studies niche worker categories.

Brian Elliott, who previously led Slack’s Future Forum research consortium and now advises executive teams on flexible work arrangements, says many CEOs still have “executive nostalgia” about a model that worked for them years ago. “There’s still this big CEO echo chamber aspect of it,” he says.

While some data may support the complaints executives have, other research suggests it does the opposite. But it does seem clear that the hybrid arrangement is poised to win out, inexperienced workers are more vulnerable to work-from-home’s downsides, and employees really don’t want to work full-time in the office.

Success Edge: “For whatever reason, we keep making where we work the lightning rod, when how we work is the thing that is in crisis,” says Annie Dean of Atlassian. 

Productivity and culture are two of the main sticking points for many companies when considering flexible schedules. And while there is possibly truth behind the idea of in-office workers being more productive, there are assumptions that have an impact on how those workers are viewed.

UC Davis professor Kimberly Elsbach has long studied “face-time bias,” or the career advantages of people who are physically present in the office. Her 2010 study found that when people are seen in the office, even when nothing is known about the quality of their work, they are perceived as more reliable and dependable, “subjective trait characteristics” that are tied to career advancement. 

As to the question of how much “work culture” can suffer when most workers aren’t in office, software firm Atlassian ran an analysis to see how often remote workers needed to come together to feel more connected. Internal surveys showed that remote employees who got together for in-person gatherings had a 27% increase in how connected they felt; the surveys suggested three times a year was the best frequency for preventing a loss of that connectedness.

“The truth is the flexible way of working is going to stick, but it needs new management practices,” says Harvard Business School professor Raj Choudhury, such as gathering for regular offsites or figuring out how to coordinate attendance so people aren’t Zooming alone in the office. “There’s good hybrid—and there’s terrible hybrid.” 

Read the full story here.