CNET | Google Calendar just made it a little easier to keep your work-life balance. The scheduling platform announced new out of office and customizable working hours features -- making it easier to mark when you'll be working. Thanks to its new out of office feature, you can indicate that you'll be unavailable when creating an event. Google Calendar will make an event that looks different than normal events, and automatically declines meetings that occur during this period. You can customize your decline message, too.

CNET | Yesterday morning, the Slack messaging tool used by many work teams was down for three hours, throwing many far-flung employees into disarray. Thankfully, another quick-messaging service, Twitter, was still up, and users could turn to it to complain, commiserate and joke about the Slack communication apocalypse, which lasted from 9:30 to 12:30 ET, prime work hours. Use the phone? Email? Walk over and speak to a co-worker? What is this fresh hell? Here's a great collection of entertaining tweets.

Gizmodo | Ticketmaster disclosed a data breach reportedly caused by malware infecting a customer support system outsourced to an external company. In a statement, Ticketmaster said some of its customer data may have been accessed by an unknown intruder. Email notifications were sent to customers who purchased tickets between February and June 23, 2018, the company said. Names, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, and payment card details may have been compromised.

Ars Technica | "Believe the hype—Google's phone-call bot is every bit as impressive as promised," writes Ron Amadeo. "From the human end, Duplex's voice is absolutely stunning over the phone. It gives affirmative 'mmhmms' if you tell it to hold on a minute. One of the strangest (and most impressive) parts of Duplex is that there isn't a single 'Duplex voice.' For every call, Duplex would put on a new, distinct personality. Sometimes Duplex come across as male; sometimes female. Some voices were higher and younger sounding; some were nasally, and some even sounded cute."

TechRepublic | Want to work towards becoming a Google Docs power user? These tips will help you with file sharing, collaboration, and more.

Computerworld | We all love getting new gadgets, but what to do with the old ones? Here are 20 clever ways to put your old Android phone or tablet to good use.

Harvard Business Review | Whether it’s attending startup events, social gatherings, or happy hours, networking is a necessary part of life. But it can be extremely draining. Excessive social interaction can be physically and mentally exhausting for anyone — even extroverts. You can’t avoid networking, but there are techniques you can use to prevent and cope with networking-induced exhaustion.

Slate | Depending on whom you ask, it’s a symptom of regulations, technological limitations, financial disincentives, or good old-fashioned mulishness.

G Suite Updates | Google is introducing a new out of office option and customizable working hours to further improve your digital well-being.

G Suite Updates | Google has enabled new features in Hangouts Meet to ensure your users always find their meeting rooms configured correctly and ready for their upcoming meetings. As an admin, you can now set a preferred mic, speaker and camera to use for all meeting rooms.

G Suite Updates | Google is introducing a new report in the Admin console that shows the worldwide availability for G Suite services in previous months. This report, called the “G Suite Apps Monthly Uptime” report, adds to the information on G Suite’s current status and future availability in the G Suite apps status dashboard.

G Suite Updates | To help make Jamboard technology more accessible to educational institutions, Google is offering a new, discounted price for Jamboard, specifically for G Suite for Education domains. G Suite for Education customers in the United States are now eligible to purchase a Jamboard for a one-time cost of $5600.