ADVANCE is a new task management & collaboration app. It was designed by Direct Amp, the makers of Direct Cart which provides one-page checkout. ADVANCE can significantly increase your team’s productivity.

Shopify is known for providing an excellent shopping experience for customers. Out of the box, Shopify presents merchants with all the tools to sell products. Behind the scenes Shopify can manage customer orders, inventory, shipping, and more. Then there’s the app store. This presents a whole extra ecosystem to shop owners. Shopify also comes with well polished themes. Store owners can have a functioning storefront with a few clicks.

To get things running further, stores may hire staff to handle daily activities. Things like tracking a customers’ request for a refund, or to change a delivery address. Developers can also join in. They can add an extra touch of personal branding to stores. Developers improve landing pages, and add new features. Finally, merchants and app support teams may need to correspond about their software.

This is why Task management & collaboration software is essential. It allows store owners to organize what projects must be done or what features have to be configured. It allows assigning tasks to staff, developers and app support personnel.

While third-party applications such as Microsoft Teams, Jira and Monday can provide tools to handle this. It requires learning complicated software and creating separate user accounts. Staff, and developers must venture outside of the merchant’s store to access the software. This can be a major burden. What happens instead is store owners turn to chat clients. Skype, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. can allow communication, but it is not a good idea. Chat applications do not properly organize tasks. Important requests and responses can easily be lost in the chat thread. It would be difficult to follow the status of a particular task.

The ADVANCE Task and Collaboration app solves this. It provides the necessary tools to manage tasks. It includes an intuitive chat application. And it does it all directly within Shopify itself. Creating new user accounts is not necessary. ADVANCE has a simple, friendly interface. Everyone can use ADVANCE to collaborate and get things done.

Try out the app: https://apps.shopify.com/advance

New this month, Direct Amp, the creators of Direct Cart which brings one page checkout to Shopify stores has released a Task management & collaboration app designed for your team.

Shopify is know for providing an excellent shopping experience for its customers. Out of the box, Shopify presents merchants with all the tools to successfully sell their products. Behind the scenes, Shopify provide store owners with tools to review customer orders, manage inventory, print shipping labels and more.

Outside of the general functionality, the Shopify app store presents a whole additional ecosystem to shop owners. Shopify also comes with a few well polished Themes so store owners can have a fully functioning storefront with a few clicks.

To get things running smoothly, stores normally hire staff to handle things like tracking customers' request to refund a purchase or change a delivery address. Sometimes developers will be contracted to add an extra touch of personal branding to stores or to build landing pages, etc. And while apps provide many great features, often a certain amount of interaction between store owners and the app support teams is necessary for an optimized installation.

This is why Task management & collaboration software is essential. It allow store owners to organize what projects must be done or what features has to be configured. They need to assign tasks to staff, developers and app support personnel.

While third-party applications such as Microsoft Teams, Jira and Monday can provide a set of tools to handle this aspect of a business. It requires learning complicated software, creating separate user accounts and getting staff, developers and app support to venture outside of the merchant's store to access the software. This can be a major burden. What normally happens instead is store owners turn to chat clients like Skype, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. to communicate with everyone involved. This is not a very good idea, because chat applications do not properly organize tasks. Important requests and responses can easily be lost in the chat thread. It would be difficult to follow the status of a particular task.

The ADVANCE Task and Collaboration app by Direct Amp solves this by providing these necessary tools to manage tasks, including an intuitive chat application directly within Shopify itself. Additional users accounts is also not necessary. It presents a simple, user friendly interface that everyone can quickly collaborate within to get things done.

Try out the app: https://apps.shopify.com/advance

The platform announced the partnerships Tuesday in an online presentation to advertisers, revealing a slate of upcoming YouTube Originals series. Comedian Hasan Minhaj hosted and celebrities including CBS' "Late Late Show" host James Corden appeared. Miley Cyrus closed the presentation with a performance.

"This is the body that carried me through an entire pandemic and countless days grazing thru the pantry," he wrote in the caption. "I love this body, but I wanna FEEL better. No more midnight muffins…this is it!

"Songs in A Minor" featured Keys' debut single which sky-rocketed her success, "Fallin'." The song won the pianist three Grammys (song of the year, best female R&B vocal performance and best R&B song). "Songs in A Minor" took the category for best R&B album.

“YouTube has been a big part of my expression for kind of my entire career," she said. "You can really watch the evolution of who I am. It really kind of inspired me and it stated a fire that just became wild.

"I’ve just always really loved the idea of being able to create my own worlds that I feel visually represents sonically what I’m putting out there," she continued. "I could say what I wanted to say in the way that I wanted to say it. I definitely don’t take it for granted.”

From Publisher: USA TODAY

Will Smith takes off his clothes to reveal ‘dad bod’ on Instagram

The star posted the caption alongside an image of himself wearing nothing but his underwear and an unzipped top. Smith left little to the imagination – showing off his ‘dad bod’ in all its glory.

Another wrote “Why you starting to look like Uncle Phil tho?”, in reference to Will’s late on-screen uncle in Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

One man even offered to train Smith, “Will, I’m coming to train you. For free, can’t have a legend looking like this.”

Lots of fans praised Smith for his realness, “That’s the funniest, realest (sic) thing I’ve ever seen. Way to change the façade of Instagram”.

Others speculated that the reason behind the award-winning actor’s new figure may be for a film.

Smith is thought to be gearing up to begin filming Emancipation . The story sees Smith portraying Whipped Peter, an enslaved person who emancipated himself from a Southern plantation and joined the Union Army.

From Publisher: NewsComAu

Little Mix says their success is down to their ‘equal’ status with one another, as they have always had the same ‘vision’ that they must all be considered at the same level.

The girl group – which currently comprises of Jade Thirlwall, Perrie Edwards and Leigh-Anne Pinnock, with Jesy Nelson previously featuring as part of the band before her exit last year – insists their longstanding career is because they have always had the same “vision” that they must all be considered at the same level.

Jade said: “We have always had the same vision, we always wanted to be equal. Nobody wanted to outshine someone else. The moment that happens in a group dynamic, the cracks start to show, like someone has a bit more of an ego. We have always been determined to remain equal people on our team, whoever else has suggested otherwise. We have said no, we know it works better, it is healthier for us doing it that way. And it has got us where we are now.”

And the ‘Confetti’ hitmakers opened up about their experiences with the music industry, claiming they had been pushed to release certain songs or go a certain direction, which had been “a bit unsettling”.

She added: “A few times we have felt pushed into a direction or a song. Almost like a bribe, like ‘if you don’t do this song you can’t have that’. There was a point where there was a bit of that and that was a bit unsettling for us.”

The band has been subjected to cruel taunts by online trolls over the years but they don’t let it bother them now.

Speaking on the Zach Sang radio show in the United States about how they react to negative comments online, Leigh-Anne explained: “It’s a sod the trolls [mentality now]. Negative comments don’t phase us.”

From Publisher: El Paso Inc.

Little Mix Drops ‘Confetti’ Remix – Their First Song as a Trio | PEOPLE.com

“We’re serving you looks, choreo and introducing you to three very special lads. We are so proud of this one hope you all love it!” Little Mix wrote about the song on Instagram

Little Mix is back — and here to stay! — as they release their first track since Jesy Nelson’s departure in December. The group, now comprising Perrie Edwards, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jade Thirlwall, reimagines “Confetti” as a trio, as they welcome Saweetie for a fiery verse.

Cardi B’s song was a last-minute addition to DJ Khaled’s new album Khaled Khaled — and fans are loving it. The Bronx-bred rap queen was trending on Twitter Friday morning (April 30) as fans listened to her cut, “Big Paper.”

Khaled announced Cardi’s addition to the record with an updated tracklist Thursday night (April 29). “CARDI B VOCALS IS IN!! ALBUM 101% DONE!!!” he wrote on Instagram.

“You know I like to sound really good because one thing I’ve been really insecure about is my accent. I have a really big accent and my pronunciation and everything… So I was making sure that everything was mixed right,” she continued. “Literally, I think Khaled got the song today [April 29] at like 7 a.m. my time, so he probably got it at like 10 a.m. He got it today. And he got it mastered and everything.”

On Twitter, some listeners were skeptical that Cardi really wrote and recorded the verse in 48 hours. However, she defended the claim with receipts.

“The day Khaled did his video we sent him the hook and one verse so he [could] know I was working on it and not frontin. This is my [message] from last night my engineer sending me different mixes in the middle of the night since we had to turn it in at 7 a.m. Thursday morning,” she tweeted along with the text.

Cardi also told fans that Tyga was recording a song in another room at the studio while she was there.

“Tyga was in the other room and he came to show me some dope songs and I told him I was tired trying to finish a song for Khaled and he said wow don’t it come out on Thursday?” she wrote .

As further proof, Cardi also shared a video she took critiquing the track’s initial mix on Wednesday (April 28).

“I was letting my fans know why I got on the album soo late & unexpected wit no video & almost didn’t make it cause the beat was [sent] Tuesday night,” she added , replying to a Twitter user. “I can’t even tell my personal story without ya makin everything so catty.”

“I was able to dance and feel liberated and free and totally be my queer self,” Kiyoko says about recording the music video at a historic location for gay liberation

“I wrote this song during a challenging time when I realized, instead of being my own worst enemy, I could actually be my own best friend,” she tells PEOPLE. “So, it was about discovering and nurturing this strong friendship with myself and embracing that, which was a very emotional discovery for myself and can tend to be challenging to realize that we can comfort ourselves.”

Accompanying the track is its equally inspiring music video, which showcases Kiyoko finding herself through dance inside the historic Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. For Kiyoko, filming the video was both emotional and “extremely challenging.”

“We filmed on 16 millimeter, which was super exciting, but also another challenge since the lighting has to be perfect, the timing has to be perfect, the shot has to be perfect,” she says. “But it was super exciting to take on that challenge.”

“What was so emotional about shooting the music video is I hadn’t shot a music video in forever and I hadn’t performed; I hadn’t danced. As I was shooting the music video and directing it and putting it all together, I felt like I was discovering and experiencing what I was experiencing when I wrote the song,” she adds. “No matter what happened, if things go wrong or whatever we have to navigate, I will always have myself and I’ll be able to comfort myself no matter what happens.”

And filming the video was emotional for more than one reason. After recording the video, Kiyoko discovered that the hotel had been instrumental during the gay civil rights movement in the early 1970s, when activists interrupted a psychologist conference set to endorse electric shock therapy as a means to cure homosexuality.

“It’s kind of crazy because I realized that after we shot. It’s just so cool that I was able to be at that hotel and dance and feel liberated and free and totally be my queer self, knowing the history of that location,” says Kiyoko.

Kiyoko looks forward to a year filled with surprises as she starts a new “cinematic and experimental” era that offers both “comfort and escape.”

From Publisher: PEOPLE.com

‘Wizards of Waverly Place’: Hayley Kiyoko Calls Character Stevie Gay

Selena Gomez and Hayley Kiyoko have both come a long way since their days on Disney Channel’s Wizards of Waverly Place . The two actors both went on to pursue careers in acting and singing after the Disney show . Kiyoko recently reacted to clips of her character Stevie Nichols on Wizards of Waverly Place and her response is priceless . She joked in a TikTok that Stevie was gay.

Kiyoko appeared in four episodes of Wizards of Waverly Place in 2010, portraying trouble-maker wizard Stevie. She met Gomez’s character Alex Russo while in detention. Early on, Alex was unaware that Stevie was also a wizard. The pair shared a connection over causing mayhem and their dark sense of humor.

A year after Kiyoko’s Wizards of Waverly Place role, she acted in the Disney Channel Original Movie, Lemonade Mouth . The actor also appeared in one episode of The Vampire Diaries in 2013. She had a recurring role as Gabi on The Fosters the following year.

Coldplay will return with their first new music since 2019 next Friday with “Higher Power,” a new single produced by Max Martin — the most successful songwriter-producer of the last 25 years.

It would not be unreasonable to expect that an album will be following sometime in the coming months as well.

The group posted on social media: “Higher Power is a song that arrived on a little keyboard and a bathroom sink at the start of 2020. It was produced by Max Martin who is a true wonder of the universe. It’s out on Friday 7 May. Love c, g, w & j.”

The announcement confirms fan rumors that have circulated since last week, when cryptic billboards around the world pointed to a mysterious website called alienradio.fm.Fans managed to decipher the letter-like symbols to uncover the song title and release date.

It was also a cost-effective one. Consider that the band was able to sidestep an expensive photo shoot by superimposing themselves onto an image owned by one of its members; that its letter-writing campaign only required the price of postage; or that its classified spent was a mere $25,000,  Variety  has learned. Even its music video consists of grainy footage shot by hand of frontman Chris Martin performing new song “Orphans” in various New York City locales and in full view of unsuspecting pedestrians. In addition, a sniping campaign targeted 30 cities in 21 countries and five continents.

Popular South Korean music act BLACKPINK has become the first K-pop group to have four songs with more than 1 billion views. The feat was achieved when the track “As If It’s Your Last” got past the coveted mark.

The group is known not just for the music but also slickly produced and choreographed music videos that have made them one of the most popular music groups in the world. Fans appreciate both the aural and visual aspect of BLACKPINK’s songs.

All this is remarkable considering BLACKPINK is a relatively new music act and have only a few releases to their name.

Earlier, BLACKPINK’s record for the most viewed video on YouTube in a single day with “How You Like That” was broken by BTS’ “Dynamite”, which clocked 86.4 million views in the first 24 hours of its premiere. “How You Like That” had garnered 86.3 million views in a day.

From Publisher: The Indian Express

Blackpink’s Rose Solo Interview: Making ‘On The Ground’ | Billboard

“We wanted to find something that spoke to me, so it felt right to be talking about what I’ve been thinking about these past couple of years,” Rosé says over Zoom, joined by her dog, Hank (who spends most of the interview snoozing next to her). “It sounded like if you would have dinner with me, have a conversation with me. It’s something I would passionately talk about and question.”

From the pressure of fan expectations to the occasionally frustrating process of finding her sound, Rosé says stepping out on her own wasn’t easy. But she wasn’t totally alone — she credits her bandmates with encouraging her to pull the trigger on her solo music and holding her hand along the way. And any worries she had about how the music might be received were quickly assuaged: “On the Ground” topped both Billboard ’s Global 200 and Global 200 Excl. U.S. charts — making her the first K-pop soloist to do so. (It also reached No. 70 on the Hot 100.)

From Publisher: Billboard

BTS, Blackpink And ‘IZ’: Excitement On The World Albums Chart

Blackpink’s recent No. 1 smash “How You Like That” is still going strong as it nears a year on the World Digital Song Sales chart, and this week is the best in some time for the electro tune. This frame, the cut returns to the top 10, vaulting from No. 12 to No. 3, an impressive jump for a cut that’s already spent so much time on the tally.

South Korean girl group Weeekly (yes, there are three e’s in the name) are still fairly new, as they only debuted less than a year ago, but the band is already making waves in the U.S. This frame, the septet starts their new single “After School” at No. 21 on the tally, scoring an important win that shows they may have a bright future in America.

As is typically the case, BTS occupy more spots on the World Digital Song Sales chart than any other act, and they’re even able to bring one of their biggest hits back to the list. “Boy With Luv,” which stands out as one of the septet’s most successful tunes, reappears at No. 23 this time around. The cut, which once topped the list, has now spent 76 nonconsecutive frames somewhere on the ranking.

Lana Del Rey has announced the follow-up album to Chemtrails Over the Country Club. Her upcoming album, Blue Banisters, is slated to arrive on July 4th, according to her posts on social media.

In March, a day after her Chemtrails Over the Country Club release date, she had teased an album called Rock Candy Sweet, which was touted to arrive on June 1st. It’s unclear if that album has been postponed or if it has been replaced with a new Blue Banisters title. The artwork the singer shared, which features her photo, appears to be the same image for both Rock Candy Sweet and Blue Banisters.

Her Rock Candy Sweet announcement came on the heels of Harper’s Bazaar article “Lana Del Rey Can’t Qualify Her Way Out of Being Held Accountable,” which was critical of the singer’s cultural appropriation.

“Just want to say thank you again for the kind articles like this one and for reminding me that my career was built on cultural appropriation and glamorizing domestic abuse,” Del Rey said at the time via Instagram Stories. “I will continue to challenge those thoughts on my next record on June 1 titled Rock Candy Sweet.”

Should the Blue Banisters LP drop on Independence Day, it would be her third album release in a year following the March release of Chemtrails Over the Country Club, and her spoken word LP, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, which arrived last July.

From publisher: Rolling Stone

Lana Del Rey Fans Want to Ban Her From PicsArt After Album Art Reveal

“Picsart has the alt girls on a chokehold,” one person wrote, comparing Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” cover to Del Rey’s “Let Me Love You Like a Woman.”

Del Rey’s “Blue Banisters” will arrive just four months after her seventh album, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” — whose cover was criticized for entirely different reasons.

“No this was not intended-these are my best friends, since you are asking today,” she wrote — although it was written as a standalone comment, not a reply to anyone in particular.

“As it happens when it comes to my amazing friends and this cover, yes, there are people of color on this record’s picture and that’s all I’ll say about that,” she wrote, adding: “My best friends are rappers, my boyfriends have been rappers.”

After dropping a brief video on Monday sporting her new blonde look, Billie Eilish has announced that she will release her second full-length album, titled “Happier Than Ever,” on July 30, and will drop a new song on Thursday morning.

“MY NEW ALBUM ‘Happier Than Ever’ OUT JULY 30TH!,” she wrote in a social media post. “This is my favorite thing i’ve ever created and i am so excited and nervous and EAGER for you to hear it. i can’t even tell you. i’ve never felt so much love for a project than i do for this one. hope you feel what i feel. alsoooo new song out thursday at 9am too!!”

Judging by titles of the songs from the album (listed below) and it’s clearly ironic title (she appears in tears on the cover), the lyrics continue the dark — at times playfully dark — vibe of her Grammy-sweeping 2019 debut full-length, “When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?” It includes her two most recent singles, “My Future” and “Therefor I Am,” although not her recent collaboration with Rosalia. Like her debut, it was written and produced with her brother and musical collaborator, Finneas.

Eilish told Stephen Colbert in February that she’d recorded a new album in lockdown, the result of her first prolonged period of not touring since her career began in earnest in 2016.

The logistics of recording an album may be easier for Eilish and her brother and musical collaborator Finneas, as they famously recorded most of their previous releases, 2019’s “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” and the “Don’t Smile at Me” EP, in the Los Angeles home they grew up in.

Eilish kept details about the album light, although Colbert asked her later in the interview if she showed off her vocal chops on the new material. “There’s a couple of moments on this album where I pull some tricks out. It’s really just about what I feel like sounds good.”

She has released four new songs in the nearly two years since “When We All Fall Asleep” dropped: “All I Ever Wanted”; the title theme from the delayed James Bond film “No Time to Die”; “My Future” and a recent duet with Spanish singer Rosalia, “Lo Vas Olvidar.”

The album arrives more than two years after her debut, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?,” which swept the 2020 Grammy Awards, with her and/or brother/collaborator Finneas winning Album of the Year, Record and Song of the Year, Best New Artist and Best Producer.