I still remember that day like yesterday. I opened Twitter and saw the news. I saw something different. Something that doesn’t happen every day. — Something that can shock anyone in the world. — Names, Social Security Numbers, Addresses, Birth Dates, Credit Records.  It even reached to the fact that they stole some driver’s license numbers. Around 147 million people’s personal information got stolen from Equifax. I couldn’t believe it in the beginning. It was labeled the worst data breach in US history. Attackers stole almost half of US population’s Social Security numbers in spring 2017, but Equifax notified people in September. Half of the US population’s! That’s crazy. “This company’s ineptitude, negligence, and lax security standards endangered the identities of half the U.S. population,” New York Attorney General Letitia James. There were lawsuits everywhere. Every consumer demanded free credit freezes, compensations, and government agencies came all over the place to look into the big incident. Fast forward to . July 22nd Equifax agreed to pay a settlement that can go up to $700 million depending on the number of compensation people claim. There’s a part of the settlement, where Equifax will provide free credit monitoring services to anyone affected for up to 10 years. And ? guess what The company will pay cash payments of up to $20,000 per person to refund any costs incurred as a result of the breach. Imagine paying around per person, for failing to take basic security measurement steps?! 20,000$ For some people, it’s not about the money for sure. It’s about making their information safe. — The breach affected 147 Million consumers! So, 147 Million people got affected by this, and I think that can break people apart and their trust for sure. For the people, it’s quite disturbing, painful, and difficult to understand. Not only because of the breach but because many of these people would not even have been customers of Equifax. makes a lot of its money from selling credit reports and other products to lenders to evaluate their potential customers. Equifax “ , actually. They gather as much information about you from lenders, aggregate it, and sell it back to them,” said Brett Horn, an industry analyst. It’s a pretty simple business model The Security Slip What’s ironic is that the security team for Equifax actually reported the vulnerability that caused the breach on , but it was never followed up to make sure it’s patched or fixed that year. It was disclosed on . March 2017 Sep 2017 “Equifax failed to take basic steps that may have prevented the breach that affected approximately 147 million consumers. “ “This settlement requires that the company take steps to improve its data security going forward, and will ensure that consumers harmed by this breach can receive help protecting themselves from identity theft and fraud.” (Joe Simons) — Federal Trade Commission Chairman. It's not only about money. Now, Equifax has agreed to do a couple of internal security measures to prevent such things to happen again. These measures will happen every two years. The first one is that they will conduct an annual internal assessment of security risks. Second point will be that they will obtain a third-party assessment as well. If you were affected by the breach, you can use the to read more about how can you make a claim against . FTC page Equifax

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Photo by Yancy Min on Unsplash If you're reading this chances are that you're already aware of what git is and you also work with any ticket-based software, like Jira. In this article, I'm going to show you how automatically prepend the ticket ID you're working on to your commit message, assuming that you're using you're branch names similar to . feature/ABC-1234-Feature-testing To achieve this, you're going to use . git hooks Git hooks According to : Git Hooks Git hooks are scripts that Git executes before or after events such as: commit, push, and receive. Git hooks are a built-in feature - no need to download anything. Git hooks are run locally. Now that you know what you need, just create a new file under folder. Name it . .git/hooks prepare-commit-msg Copy the code below and paste it into your newly created file. [ -z ]; BRANCHES_TO_IGNORE=(master develop staging ) BRANCH_NAME=$(git symbolic-ref --short HEAD)
BRANCH_IGNORED=$( | grep -c ) TRIMMED=$( | sed -E -e -e ) [ -n ] &&  ! [[ -eq 1 ]]; sed -i.bak -e #!/bin/bash # List the branches that don't apply bellow if " " $BRANCHES_TO_IGNORE then test fi # Pick the current branch name and check if it is excluded printf "%s\n" " " ${BRANCHES_TO_IGNORE[@]} "^ $" $BRANCH_NAME # Remove the unnecessary parts echo $BRANCH_NAME 's:^(\w+)\/([^-]*-[^-]*)-.*:\2:' 'y/abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz/ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ/' # If it isn't excluded, prepend the part that interests us to the given commit message if " " $BRANCH_NAME $BRANCH_IGNORED then "1s/^/ - /" $TRIMMED $1 fi After the creation of the file, you'll need to give it its proper permissions. This can be achieved by executing . chmod +x prepare-commit-msg If you want to see it in action just make a new commit and type any message you want. You should see now, given the branch name above, something like: commit 976f4354779a824e5edfd851857b26c9bcfd3e14 (feature/ABC-1234-Feature-testing)
Author: Rafael <email@example.com>
Date:   Tue Jul 23 17:35:25 2019 +0100

    ABC-1234 - This is a testing message Apply your changes globally Now that I've shown you how to improve your commit messages you'll want to apply the condition to every other repo in your machine, right? I'm going to show you how to achieve it. The first step is to create a folder that's going to contain all of your hooks. I'm using this I've created but you can use whichever you prefer. After having your own folder you execute the following command: repo git config --global init.templatedir '~/projects/git-hooks-templates' Within you should have another folder named , this is where we're going to place our git hooks. hooks Now that the folder structure is correct you can copy the file created above into the, in this example (yours might differ) directory. The command to execute after is: ~/projects/git-hooks-templates chmod a+x ~/projects/git-hooks-templates/hooks/prepare-commit-msg Now you have everything set up. Every time that you create or clone new repositories your commit messages will be appended with the ticket ID based on the branch that you're working on.

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Cell phones are a crutch in American culture and when our crutches are broken, we struggle to function as well. Since 1973, the rise of cellular phones have been the fastest growing technology phenomenon ever. 95% of Americans owned a cell phone in 2018, up 33% from 2002. When surveyed, 2 in 3 people admitted to anxiety when away from their phone. Many own multiple devices such as tablets and additional phones due to Nomophobia: the fear of being out of mobile contact or being offline. This is due to FOMO, the fear of missing out, when unplugged from the digital world. In 2018, the average lifespan of a cell phone before replacement was 2.9 years, but upgrade costs are skyrocketing. Yet, Americans throw away over 350,000 cell phones per day, so why replace expensive tech when you can repair it for less? The most common forms of phone damage are cracked or scratched screens and battery malfunctions. Simple everyday accidents can also cause critical destruction: your phone falling from your pocket, dropping your phone in water, or even knocking it off the table. Damaged screens prevent or prohibit basic use of smartphones: sending emails, using everyday apps, unlocking the screen, and taking photos. Avoid accidental structural damage by purchasing protective gear for your phone screen and battery. If your phone requires maintenance, try repairing it yourself. It’s as simple as following YouTube tutorials. However, these fixes can be complicated, so if you’re unsure, it might be best to visit a repair shop. Our smartphones are our lives. Be sure to be smart about caring for them. don’t have to derail your day, and you don’t have to waste money on constant repairs or upgrading to new models every year. Broken smartphones

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Why You Should Repair Your Broken Smartphone

Businesses are missing a bulk of customers if they have not yet represented themselves online, particularly in a country like India — where e-commerce businesses are expected to achieve world’s highest retail e-commerce CAGR between 2019 and 2023, according to worldwide e-commerce statistics & facts published by in March 2019. Statista.com But this is just the one side of the coin. Another side is that many businesses, which already own a , do not also receive the desired number of customers. Their apps do not even deliver them enough regular users or generate good revenues to keep going. In fact, many are rolled back even before their first anniversary. The only issue spotted with these apps is that they are not engaging for conversion. mobile app Still, there is no late and, apps not delivering good conversion in terms of revenue can be saved from failure. Here are the best of tips to improve mobile app conversion. Business owners and developers can apply these tips to attain a good conversion rate. mobile app 1. Do test your app thoroughly Everything begins with a good app and, a good app is one which delivers smooth experiencing to customers, from on-boarding to exploring various products to navigation to applying custom searches to filtering to checking out. Here the testing helps developers to find issues that can affect an app’s user experience and, of course, the rate of conversion. No doubt it can be expensive and pretty challenging, but if you do not do this, your customers will have the only reaction — bouncing and never coming back. Also, the app should be quickly and successfully download to devices. The final product should be tested with every targeted device / operating system. One best way to save time and money while testing an app is to use a device emulator. Another way is to use the real device cloud, which helps you test an app even without an actual device. Also, whenever there is a scope, automate the testing and save big time! 2. Use social media to the fullest The most powerful traffic driver — social media has been contributing a lot in increasing sales of products for the last couple of years. Today, almost everyone using a smartphone do also use social apps to have the latest feeds from their friends, companies, and brands. When used smartly and with the powerful content, social media apps do not only let you reach your audience so deeply but also keep them routinely tied to your business and brand. Constantly pushing updates improves engagement and the rate of conversion. Social media cannot only be used to for selling but also for triggering users downloading your app or sharing their purchases via the app on their social media accounts. This lets others know about your brands and drive them to buy from you. 3. First Impression and design No matter what your app does, what matters the most is its design. And to every user onboarding the app for the first time, the design should be impressive in the first glimpse. Even the tiny icon needs to be the attention grabber because when a user finds your app, an icon is the first thing to visually appeal him or her. A good icon has the power to put your app out of the crowd and give it a distinctive identity. So, including icon, an app needs to be unique at every design prospect. This will increase the retention rate. When it comes to creating the best design, it automatically comes with the best user interface. The design of an app increases engagement and makes it successful because users know and interact with an app just by its design, which is made of the icon, color scheme, and, UI & UX. They do not know and, they need not to know anything about the sort of coding behind an app. 4. Don’t forget to inform users App stores have turned oceans in which a single app is just like a drop of water. Your app will get lost if you just simply publish it and wait for being downloaded. No user would download the app because no user would be able to discover it. And it may happen even after you have perfectly optimized your app page, put impressive keywords-enabled content, and written catchy titles. You have to get the forced attention and, it will happen only when you try informing users that your app too exists in the market. The mediums that you can use to grab the attention of users can be ads, special offers, news, press release, blogs, etc. The more frequently you inform, the better your app would have the conversion rate. 5. Be a strict trend follower People love you when you speak like them. When you understand people, they show their trust in you. When you push the trend that people love to accept, they love you and show their credibility in your brand. Be like this and keep serving people with what they like by following the ongoing trends. This is another mantra of improving the conversion rate for your . mobile app 6. Target the right audience One of the key reasons why you are not getting enough conversions is that you may have been targeting a wrong audience group all the time. Many businesses fail to discover who their audience is and thus receive cool or no repose to their app. Do proper research about who you have to target or hire professionals to do this if you do not have ways to do such research. There are many agencies out there, which can professionally collect the data for every given condition, like the audience’s age groups or their geographical locations. The data you acquire will help you target the right audience for your app. 7. Let users personalize your app Users feel happy when they are able to use your app the way they want to use it. If you add personalization capabilities to your app, users would be able to make changes in it to make its look & feel suit them. Offering personalization also helps app owners tracking user-behavior and engagement and then making personalized recommendations. Personalization can be extended to discovering locations of users and then providing them geographically optimized content. Push notifications help the audience stay informed with personalized messages. They can also use the audience’s search history and, based on that data, personalized notifications can be delivered to increase the conversion rate. 8. Use a simple registration process Many apps want user registration before allowing for taking any action. Games and e-commerce apps compulsory require users to register themselves. But in most of the cases, users want to avoid the registrations or sign-ups because they are boring and want users to type a lot of information in forms. Long registration forms can also negatively affect the conversion rate. Many users abandon an app because it wants them to go through a long registration process or ask for too much information. 9. Don’t put too many advertisements E-commerce apps should not show up ads. Though, there is no issue in showing up internal ads directing users on other pages or products in the same app. In case of other sorts of apps, ads help them generate revenue, which is necessary for their survival. But don’t be too greedy and put a lot of ads affecting the whole user experience. Too many ads halt the conversion and may even trigger users to uninstall the apps.

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Pull stock prices from online API and perform predictions using Recurrent Neural Network & Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) with TensorFlow.js framework Machine learning is becoming increasingly popular these days and a growing number of the world’s population see it is as a magic crystal ball: predicting when and what will happen in the future. This experiment uses artificial neural networks to reveal stock market trends and demonstrates the ability of time series forecasting to predict future stock prices based on past historical data. Disclaimer: As stock markets fluctuation are dynamic and unpredictable owing to multiple factors, this experiment is 100% educational and by no means a trading prediction tool. . Explore the demo Project Walkthrough There are 4 parts to this project walkthrough: 1. Get stocks data from online API 2. Compute simple moving average for a given time window 3. Train LSTM neural network 4. Predict and compare predicted values to the actual values Get Stocks Data Before we can train the neural network and make any predictions, we will first require data. The type of data we are looking for is time series: a sequence of numbers in chronological order. A good place to fetch these data are from . This API allows us to retrieve chronological data on specific company stocks prices from the last 20 years. alphavantage.co The API yields the following fields: - open price -the highest price of that day - the lowest price of that day - closing price (this is used in this project) - volume To prepare training dataset for our neural network, we will be using closing stocks price. This also means that we will be aiming to predict the future closing price. This graph shows 20 years of Microsoft Corporation weekly closing prices. Simple Moving Average For this experiment, we are using , which means feeding data to the neural network and it learns by mapping input data to the output label. One way to prepare the training dataset is to extract the moving average from that time-series data. supervised learning is a method to identify trends direction for a certain period of time, by looking at the average of all the values within that time window. The number of prices in a time window is selected experimentally. Simple Moving Average (SMA) For example, let’s assume the closing prices for the past 5 days were 13, 15, 14, 16, 17, the SMA would be (13+15+14+16+17)/5 = 15. So the input for our training dataset is the set of prices within a single time window, and its label is the computed moving average of those prices. Let’s compute the SMA of Microsoft Corporation weekly closing prices data, with a window size of 50. { r_avgs = [], avg_prev = ; ( i = ; i <= data.length - window_size; i++){ curr_avg = , t = i + window_size; ( k = i; k < t && k <= data.length; k++){
      curr_avg += data[k][ ] / window_size;
    }
    r_avgs.push({ : data.slice(i, i + window_size), : curr_avg });
    avg_prev = curr_avg;
  } r_avgs;
} ( ) function ComputeSMA data, window_size let 0 for let 0 let 0.00 for let 'price' set avg return And this is what we get, weekly stock closing price in blue, and SMA in orange. Because SMA is the moving average of 50 weeks, it is smoother than the weekly price, which can fluctuate. This graph is a simple Moving Average of Microsoft Corporation closing prices data to actual closing prices. Training Data We can prepare the training data with weekly stock prices and the computed SMA. Given the window size is 50, this means that we will use the closing price of every 50 consecutive weeks as our training features (X), and the SMA of those 50 weeks as our training label (Y). Next, we split our data into 2 sets, training and validation set. If 70% of the data is used for training, then 30% for validation. The API returns us approximate 1000 weeks of data, so 700 for training, and 300 for validation. Train Neural Network Now that the training data is ready, it is time to create a model for time series prediction, to achieve this we will use framework. TensorFlow.js is a library for developing and training machine learning models in JavaScript, and we can deploy these machine learning capabilities in a web browser. TensorFlow.js is selected which simply connects each layer and pass the data from input to the output during the training process. In order for the model to learn time series data which are sequential, (RNN) layer is created and a number of are added to the RNN. Sequential model recurrent neural network LSTM cells The model will be trained using ( ), a popular optimisation algorithm for machine learning. which will determine the difference between predicted values and the actual values, so the model is able to learn by minimising the error during the training process. Adam research paper Root mean square error Here is a code snippet of the model described above, full code on Github. { input_layer_shape  = window_size; input_layer_neurons = ; rnn_input_layer_features = ; rnn_input_layer_timesteps = input_layer_neurons / rnn_input_layer_features; rnn_input_shape  = [rnn_input_layer_features, rnn_input_layer_timesteps]; rnn_output_neurons = ; rnn_batch_size = window_size; output_layer_shape = rnn_output_neurons; output_layer_neurons = ; model = tf.sequential(); X = inputs.slice( , .floor(trainingsize / * inputs.length)); Y = outputs.slice( , .floor(trainingsize / * outputs.length)); xs = tf.tensor2d(X, [X.length, X[ ].length]).div(tf.scalar( )); ys = tf.tensor2d(Y, [Y.length, ]).reshape([Y.length, ]).div(tf.scalar( ));

  model.add(tf.layers.dense({ : input_layer_neurons, : [input_layer_shape]}));
  model.add(tf.layers.reshape({ : rnn_input_shape})); lstm_cells = []; ( index = ; index < n_layers; index++) {
       lstm_cells.push(tf.layers.lstmCell({ : rnn_output_neurons}));
  }

  model.add(tf.layers.rnn({ : lstm_cells, : rnn_input_shape, : }));

  model.add(tf.layers.dense({ : output_layer_neurons, : [output_layer_shape]}));

  model.compile({ : tf.train.adam(learning_rate), : }); hist = model.fit(xs, ys,
    { : rnn_batch_size, : n_epochs, : { : (epoch, log) => {
        callback(epoch, log);
      }
    }
  }); { : model, : hist };
} async ( ) function trainModel inputs, outputs, trainingsize, window_size, n_epochs, learning_rate, n_layers, callback const const 100 const 10 const const const 20 const const const 1 const let 0 Math 100 let 0 Math 100 const 0 10 const 1 1 10 units inputShape targetShape let for let 0 units cell inputShape returnSequences false units inputShape optimizer loss 'meanSquaredError' const await batchSize epochs callbacks onEpochEnd async return model stats These are the (parameters used in the training process) available for tweaking in the : hyper-parameters frontend - Training Dataset Size (%): the amount of data used for training, and remaining data will be used for validation - Epochs: number of times the dataset is used to train the model ( ) learn more - Learning Rate: the amount of change in the weights during training in each step ( ) learn more - Hidden LSTM Layers: to increase the model complexity to learn in higher dimensional space ( ) learn more Click the Begin Training Model button… The model seems to converge at around 15 epoch. Validation Now that the model is trained, it is time to use it for predicting future values, for our case, it is the moving average. We will use the function from TFJS. model.predict The data has been split into 2 sets, training and validation set. The training set has been used for training the model, thus will be using the validation set to validate the model. Since the model has not seen the validation dataset, it will be good if the model is able to predict values that are close to the true values. So let us use the remaining data for prediction which allow us to see how closely our predicted values are compared to the actual values. This graph shows the green line which is the prediction of the validation data. Looks like the model predicted (green line) does a good job plotting closely to the actual price (blue line). This means that the model is able to predict the last 30% of the data which was unseen by the model. Other algorithms can be applied and uses the to compare 2 or more models performance. Root Mean Square Error Prediction Finally, the model has been validated and the predicted values map closely to its true values, we shall use it to predict the future. We will apply the same function and use the last 50 data points as the input, because our window size is 50. Since our training data is increment daily, we will use the past 50 days as input, to predict the 51st day. model.predict This graph shows the latest 50 days, which is the test data (blue line), and the predicted value (orange). Conclusion There are many ways to do time series prediction other than using a simple moving average. Possible future work is to implement this with more data from various sources. With TensorFlow.js, machine learning on a web browser is possible, and it is actually pretty cool. , this experiment is 100% educational and by no means a trading prediction tool. Explore the demo on Github View source code on Github Hi! I’m , currently a data scientist at Alibaba Group, a PhD student at Nanyang Technological University, and a passionate writer on and . Connect with me on . Hong Jing (Jingles) Towards Data Science Hackernoon LinkedIn This article was originally published on Towards Data Science

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What is SmartCity? At the end of the 21st century, Bob and Lucy live in a city fully controlled by artificial intelligence (AI). They get access to city services based on their digital identities. Most industries are robotized as well as everyday human life. The highest social status is gained by the citizens who research new technologies design or update the existing ones. People with a lower social status serve the needs of robots where they fail to serve themselves. And in the worst case, you need to compete for a job with robots in industries which are fully or partially automated. The original idea behind AI has never been implemented. And moreover — it has been proven that the term “artificial” became obsolete itself. Do you think Lucy and Bob look too futuristic? Well, google for some real-life . Or watch the to get an idea. SmartCity use cases Elysium movie In short, a SmartCity — is a combination of several technologies that automate many aspects of everyday life and work in a city. How is infrastructure controlled? To automate a process in a city, one needs to produce a lot of devices, cars, sensors, analytical and automation tools to integrate them into the city infrastructure. Then the whole private sector of the economy needs integrating into a system which is as unified as possible. And we have not yet mentioned the integration into the country’s economy, government, military, and global institutions. Moreover, we don’t even mention integrating cities into clusters which communicate with each other. Once the city processes are automated, we get a huge data volume coming from various devices and tools. And this data needs processing. But we won’t dive deep into the ways how this data can be processed. Instead, we’d like to discuss how this data can be stored for processing. We need a database to store the data coming from various parts of a SmartCity. Can we use a usual database for that? Let’s try to use the one, developed by the top database manufacturer and considered to suit enterprise-level needs. No wonder, a common solution won’t work because it is not decentralized enough to store considerable data volume in local shards and does not provide anti-counterfeiting data tools. Maybe NoSQL database? Will not work either. By the way, you may have probably noticed that the . NoSQL trend hasn’t been growing for several years A SmartCity has specific requirements for a database due to the nature of the phenomenon: . Because various SmartCity parts are spread all over the city and cannot rely on a single point of failure while processing data and making decisions. For example, you cannot let the emergency fire sensor wait until a central authority allows starting a water flow to stop the fire. Decentralized . The part of the system should be able to work independently, not relying on other components or relying only on minimum required elements. Fault-tolerant . This is quite obvious. Just the ability to keep and process the whole bunch of data coming from all the SmartCity parts. BigData . What if a citizen takes control over a city sensor and produces a bunch of false data which AI will use to make decisions on how to control some part of the city? Especially if the counterfeit happened before. Counterfeit protection This is probably why a software giant such as IBM works on producing the next generation of databases. Like . Such databases are neither called “relational”, nor “NoSQL”. They are called “distributed ledgers”. Also please note, that a distributed ledger does not necessarily require block-chain although most often they have one. HyperLedger Fabric Blockchain as a SmartCity software design pattern So, we know which databases are good enough for a SmartCity. But what is Blockchain and why do we need one for smart cities? Let’s go back to what we consider the history of the earliest Blockchain-related publications: “One way to establish the identity of the nodes of the DHT is to use public key cryptography.” © (Distributed k-ary System: Algorithms for Distributed Hash Tables. ALI GHODSI). is the Distributed Hash Table. Distributed Hash Tables are a bit older than Blockchain but describe the same concept. If we combine distributed hash tables with public key cryptography — we get the modern idea of Blockchain. DHT PS: Great thanks to “The General” for insights on this idea above. Also, while looking for Satoshi Nakamoto remember to read all the research articles related to distributed hash tables. Therefore we got an answer to “What Blockchain is?”. But how is this related to smart cities? A distributed ledger (the database for a smart city component) needs a way to constrain data counterfeiting. Data should be stored with a timestamp, cryptographically secure — with no ability to publish false data or modify the existing data with no track of this modification. This is like a relational database integrity constraint (primary or foreign key) but serving to another purpose — to constrain data counterfeiting. So, Blockchain is just another kind of a database constraint which prevents counterfeit. And nothing more. Even Blockchain isn’t related to decentralization in any way since decentralization is another data property which can easily exist without Blockchain. What’s next? More and more database engines will support Blockchain. More databases will be created to cover SmartCity needs. Blockchain will stop being a separate hype while becoming just an integrity constraint supported by specialized database engines. And sure thing, someone may just as well come up with another technology for counterfeit prevention which isn’t related to Blockchain in any way. Why Zfort Group? We’ve been successfully doing software development for two years now.And now we do SmartCities. Blockchain SmartCities put people first, just as we do at Zfort Group. In the future, cities will be much more than concrete buildings and dusty parks. The Internet of Things is the technology to satisfy the advanced needs of modern citizens, and our expert team is ready to help both private and public companies build awesome products people will truly love. : Originally published at https://www.zfort.com/blog/enterprise-blockchain-smartcities

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Web development seems to be a diverse & ever-changing field. New technologies and tools come up regularly, due to which app programmers and developers have to face the dilemma. They get confused between the long term and mature solutions & the new upcoming ones. Backend programmers are the ones who usually have to deal with the problem of selecting between PHP and Node.js. This has now become a common situation with the developers due to certain reasons. Earlier, Javascript (the one which underlies Node.Js) didn’t overlap with PHP. Javascript was used to build the front-end applications and on the other hand, PHP was used for developing server-side applications. Working together, these two languages developed amazing websites. Then, what happened all of a sudden? Why did the situation change? This happened since JS that was represented by an all new Node.Js began entering a server-side sphere & distracted the backend programmers from traditional PHP. In this article, we will be talking about the key features & differences between Node.js and also try to identify which technology is suitable for which purpose. Although both Node.js and PHP are able to manage any complexity of the applications, they are built around different architectures and concepts. If you are an app owner or a business owner, selecting between these programming languages for your can be a difficult situation indeed. web development project However, if you have landed on this page, then you are going to get answers to all your questions and in the end, you will be able to select one as per your business needs and requirements. In this article, we are going to discuss: A description of both the languages Comparison of the two languages on different parameters When to use which technology Overview of PHP PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), is an open-source server-side scripting language. It was developed in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. And since then there was no going back for this language. shows that almost 79% of the websites in their data are developed using PHP. Also, the ever-increasing popularity of content management systems like Drupal, WordPress, Shopify and WooCommerce portraits how PHP has covered the backend under its wings. A survey by W3Tech Overview Of Node.js Node.js is a Javascript runtime environment. Now, people who understand this, good. But, what about others? What does this mean exactly? Node.js is a runtime environment that includes everything that is needed to execute a program that is written in Javascript. Node.js initially appeared when the engineers of Javascript broadened it from something you could just keep running in the program to something you could keep running on your machine as an independent application. Presently you can do considerably more with Javascript than simply making websites interactive. Javascript now has the ability to do things that other scripting languages like Python can do. After an introduction to both the languages, let’s now move on to the detailed comparison between the two. By the time you finish this article, you would hopefully have arrived at a point on which language is suitable for your next app project. Node.js vs PHP: Development As you can see in the image, Node.js tops the list, however, both of them have their explanations. At the point at which a developer codes in PHP, the experience is significantly quicker and also more simple when compared to Node.js as there is absolutely no need to include compilers or converters. The language set up a simple connection to the SQL database & has no hosting confinements. On the other hand, Node.js is significantly complicated. The deployment of applications and frameworks in the case of Node requires a more complex preparation & server infrastructure. Node.js vs PHP: Database PHP works quite well with a MySQL database while offering support to a range of various database forms like MariaDB and PostgreSQL. The code functions admirably with databases independent of the engines used. Node.js has various libraries for getting to SQL. It likewise uses JSON to connect with another type of NoSQL databases. While even a PHP project can be configured for supporting JSON, it is more advantageous to use Javascript as you get one code for both browser and server. NodeJs Vs PHP: Hosting PHP language is supported by many hosting services as compared to Node.js which comes with less number of hosting services. This makes the deployment and integration of PHP easier than Node, which calls for a virtual server having SSH access for running applications. Node.js vs PHP: Practical application Node.js may be used in a number of places including web apps, multithreaded apps, game servers, browsers, etc. However, PHP is usually used for web-based applications. Node.js vs PHP: Performance PHP provides a stable and reliable performance when it comes it to web development, as compared to the Javascript framework. However, when both the environments are compared, you will notice that NodeJs stands out to be a lot faster than PHP, due to the following USPs: Speed friendly V8 engine Continued Server connection Callback functions which process many requests at the same time Evolution of the Environment PHP is on a continuous track of updates and development. The developers of this language always come up with new features and concepts for giving a high execution speed. Node.js too is on a constant development track. This platform also comes with one more advantage. It comprises of all the modern functionalities in one distribution, where there is no fragmentation as such. This stands to be as one of the big advantages for programmers who have to spend zero time on the complete reworking of the code. Moving further, this article would not be complete until we talk about the advantages and disadvantages of both the languages. Advantages of Node.js Easy to learn: Since Javascript stands to be one of the most popular programming languages, many of the front-end programmers have a good knowledge about it. It becomes a lot easier for them to start using the Node.js at backend. It is quite easy to learn Node.js & consume less time to work with it. Fast backend solution: A point that gets the Javascript framework points ahead of the NodeJs vs PHP war is that this framework may be used to service various concurrent events. By making use of Node.js, the developers can vary well make scalable solutions which maximize the computer memory and CPU usage as they service various requests. More Flexible: When we discuss about with Node.js, there are very limited guidelines and dependencies. There are no rules asking programmers to choose a set pattern or architecture, which gives them access to over thousands of different modules. Apart from this, there are a number of pros that are a part of Node.js, such as – Being similar to JS, it is much easier to learn Node, it is ideal when working with huge files. software app development Disadvantages of Node.js The environment is still a little immature: The usage of a complicated code structure is one of the things that makes NodeJs disappointing for individuals. It is not ideal for intensive applications: This framework is not able for handling the intensive CPU activities such 	as generation of audio and videos, editions of graphics, etc. The apps made by Node are more responsive, which makes it quite difficult to develop graphic-centric applications. Advantages of PHP Maintenance: PHP framework is usually used to make the web application development easier & maintain the code automatically. The MVC architecture 	in PHP framework helps the code to be used & maintained. This MVC architecture helps the separation of a file for each module separately. Stability: PHP is also quite stable as compared to various programming languages. It has been in existence for quite a long time. The programmers have worked on PHP to make it easy for developers to work on developing the PHP web-based apps. They have fixed the bugs and issues over the specific period of time for various versions of PHP & make it quite stable. Disadvantages of PHP Poor code manageability: PHP provides the developers the freedom to combine HTML with the 	language syntax that makes it even harder for them to extend the PHP 	apps with the new functionality. Moreover, it has become even more 	tough to manage the codes with such a big code base: something that 	Javascript frameworks hardly face. Unable to handle large number of applications: The technology is helpless to support a bunch of apps. It is highly tough to manage since it is not competent modular. It already imitates the key features of Java language. When to use Node.js? Dynamic single page applications (SPAs) Frontend technologies like Angular, JQuery, React, Angular, etc Software stacks like MEAN stack (Angular, MongoDB, etc) Well, keeping aside the technicalities, let's talk about it in terms of business: So, you must hire a for Node.js when, mobile app development company You wish to build real-time applications such as instant messengers A dynamic single page application You are using front end technologies like – React and Angular When to use PHP? You may choose PHP for: A blog or e-commerce website with CMS Goes perfectly with LAMP stack (Linux Apache, MySQL, PHP) Ease of deployment and integration Conclusion: To conclude, both Node.js and PHP are able to serve as a great server-side framework. Both of them have some pros and cons, however, the amazing thing is that both are developed by the experts in order to make web and mobile developed better. While choosing the technology, your question should not be which is better, rather it should be which one can serve your project requirements in a better way. Understanding the business and project logic, can provide you a clear idea for choosing the right technology platform for their project. Also, one more essential thing to consider here is the proficiency and skills of the programmers using that particular technology, how they make use of them & apply to the specific project. There are many leading who have a talented pool of Node.js and PHP developers. You may even contact the companies to explain them your project requirements and understand which technology suits for your project. web development companies in India

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From complex databases to self-driving cars, the usage area of C and C++ languages is surprisingly wide. Even today, with a myriad of new & robust programming tools, the two coding languages from 70s cannot be replaced. So what are the common applications of C & C++ today and why we still use them? Let’s find out in this article. When is C language used? What is C++ used for? 1. Operating systems Since C language was originally designed for system level programming, it’s no surprise that it’s commonly used to build operating systems and firmware. It’s close enough to the hardware layer to manipulate low-level code but also fast and energy-efficient. These factors make it a perfect fit for OS development. Above all, any operating system has to run fast and efficiently manage system resources. For example, are all written in C. As well as Android and iOS to some extent. Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS A C developer can implement all the data structures himself, fine-tuning the smallest details of an operating system. Such increased flexibility makes C a commonly preferred option. And unlike other languages, C has no runtime dependencies. This means that a program could run directly on the hardware without requiring a memory manager, input or output layer. 2. Embedded systems programming C is the de-facto language when it comes to embedded systems engineering. Why so? C language consumes very few memory resources which makes the program run quickly. As a result, you can expect the embedded systems to perform in real time with no overhead. Mainly due to its’ high performance and ease of use. So you can compile an embedded program across various devices and platforms with little or no change at all. More so, since C code is highly portable, it is not tied to any specific microprocessor or a system. That’s why autonomous cars, smartwatches, IoT sensors and devices like coffee machines have firmware all written in C or C++. In connected systems, C lets you work directly with the memory resources and adjust every part of the code. So if you're choosing the right technology for your , consider these languages. IoT development project 3. Game & game engine development The performance is critical for a game, so the choice of a programming language is limited in this field. Since C++ is the fastest programming language for today, it turns out one of the best choices for 3D, multiplayer or other games. For instance, Counter-Strike, StarCraft: Brood War, Diablo I, World of Warcraft are all written in C++. Not to mention Xbox and PlayStation consoles which are based on C++ programming. The core of Unity game engine also used C++ development. And Unity is the most popular engine for building video games, targetting multiple OS at once. Even the most intensive game graphics can be handled with C++ software development. It lets you optimize and adjust how exactly the game memory resources and data structures will be used. As a result, you have complete control over the game development. 4. Desktop & cross-platform app development C++ can be also used to build desktop applications. All thanks to its’ superior cross-platform frameworks such as Qt. It allows you to target Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and embedded systems — all with a single codebase. So the app development with Qt turns out a great option if you want to cut the programming time & costs. Another feature-rich library SDL lets you build for Windows, Linux, Android, MacOS and iOS at the same time. By the way, Photoshop, Illustrator and Adobe Premiere are all written in C++. What are some other applications? to reduce the power consumption per user. Cloud storage systems, databases, device drivers and other types of software might use C++ development. Facebook converted some of its code from PHP to C++ language Consider also banking and other apps with high concurrency and low latency support. Or basically, anything that has to run fast with no issues. Summary Taking into account all of the above, we consider C/C++ languages good choices for: OS development Embedded systems programming Game development Database development Desktop & (using C++ framework). cross-platform development For example, in projects dealing with complex data types, software development with C++ prevents data overload or related issues. So if you’re asking: Why we still use C/C++? Here’s the short answer: C and C++ are flexible, extremely fast and efficient. And they are closer to machine code than any other language. That’s why, in some cases, these languages simply cannot be replaced. In fact, C is the second language by popularity as it closely follows Java according to Tiobe. Here’s our prediction: In the near future, C language will not leave the tech arena. Especially since the number of IoT connected devices is growing, and they heavily rely on the machine code and memory manipulation. Are you excited to see what’s coming? This article is based on the detailed market study and our 9+ years' experience in custom software development. We're Vakoms - one-stop software company for startups and industry leaders.

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Machine learning is the best method of data analysis. It also automates the creation of analytical business models. This is the reason why machine learning plays an important role in the growth of a business. Hence, your business will probably need new and highly inspired ideas to deploy machine learning solutions into your business. However, the implementation of machine learning can bring several challenges. To identify the deployment challenges of machine learning applications, businesses require to have a complete understanding of the current ML technologies and the current advancements. Here, I will be listing the challenges of machine learning implementation for startups and how to overcome them. 1. Challenges With Model Deployment To identify the model deployment challenges in the implementation of ML applications, businesses require industry experts with a deep understanding of the current AI / ML technologies. Or, hire machine learning developers to deal with the issue of lack of compatibility between the machine learning model and business workflow that impacts the deployment of ML applications. Machine learning models are commonly built using languages such as . For example, there have been lots of advances in the Facebook ability to detect faces or ability to recognize specific voice command. Specifically, business firms must ensure that they should get answers to such questions: Java , C , Python , R , and SQL Amazon’s Alexa What machine learning model needs to be updated to your business profile? What data usage pattern does your business have? What are the right development algorithms for your machine learning model? For the successful deployment of machine learning, businesses need to have a proper understanding of the data flows, algorithms, and how they can be applied to different processes. For companies with machinery & equipment, machine learning provides a platform to predict proactive measures and possible failures in the production department. The specific algorithm needs to be observed to characterize the normal operation state. 2. Ethical Challenges in Machine Learning The ethical challenges in machine learning involve the issues related to how the data is used. There have been certain instances of racial biases in the machine learning programs that are also affecting the implementation of ML technology unintentionally. Here is the example: Similarly, while talking to a customer care representative it is becoming hard for people to understand whether they are talking to a human or a machine. This simply makes the ML solution a tough technology to implement. A famous case of racism happened two years ago in which the young guys by Google facial recognition software, which had classified the two teenagers as Gorillas. mislabelling of two African-American Google has faced a lot of criticism, and people starting to wonder whether a machine intelligence could be trained to be racist on purpose. The actual reason for the mislabeling is not because of racism, but the actual cause of the error lies in the application training set. Developers need to make more transparent ML decisions with respect to ethics and user behavior. Your technical team needs to collect enough of the data with regards to ethical measures to appropriately train ML applications. It is important because different situations require different ethical approaches and system should be designed according to their goals and behaviors so that ML development technologies should benefit and empower as many people as possible. 3. Challenges Related to Data Collection and Storage Data acquisition and storage is a real challenge in the ML implementation. Just look at the example, a healthcare project was aimed to cut their costs for the treatment of patients with pneumonia. So, they have implemented machine learning to sort out the patient records to see who’s at high risk of infection and should be there in the hospital, and who is at the low infection risk from pneumonia. Still, they can’t make sense of the data records, hence, the machine learning will be of no use or perhaps even useless for them. So, what’s the right way to handle such challenges? It’s true that establishing the right data collection mechanism is perhaps the hardest part for you to manage. Users go for ML technology for predictive analytics and the first thing to do is to combat data fragmentation. For instance, in Travel tech data fragmentation is one of the main issues. Wherein hotel knows the guests' credit card details, home addresses, contact number, and other details. This data get transferred to different departments within the hotel. So, it’s not always possible for the hotel team to converge all data streams. Well, that can be harmful to the guests. A large amount of data and missing values in data can reduce prediction accuracy and that’s wrong-headed. Thanks to machine learning, the approximated & predicted values it provides are considered as “more correct” for a software algorithm. The points described here are basic and straightforward. However, you still need machine learning expert if you need to solve the method of data acquisition & storage mechanisms, set the complete infrastructure, and look for complex machine learning tasks. 4. Cost-Related Challenges Smart businesses understand the possibility to rely on data-driven decisions in their business activities. And, lots of data mean lots of storage. So, how can this stuff turn useful and how much does it cost? In many cases, the cost analysis of the options is required to make an informed decision. Let’s see the steps involved in developing a custom machine learning model and how the cost may vary for each step. : The requirement phase is all about understanding what your business needs from the model. We recommend you to have clear ideas on what you want for your business because a too vague idea will make the cost explode. Requirements You can consider data as the experience for your business model. If you train the business model with a lot of good quality experience, it will learn better how to solve our purpose. The cost for this process can be zero if your data is model ready, otherwise, it should take some investment. And, if we talk about big datasets to be managed with a cluster the cost can go on the thousands. Data: It’s always important to evaluate your business model to benchmark the cost effectively. It also takes several days to evaluate & choose the algorithm, train the business model, test it, and implement. This is the core part of your business process and it’s really not easy to decide on its cost. Model: Once your algorithm is tested and is ready for production, there are two main activities to manage: Production: Integration with your existing business setup. Updating the business model that may need to learn from newly available data or to include new features. Both are not mandatory for your business, so also here the cost may go from zero to some thousand dollars. So, the ML algorithm and deep learning development work are the main factors to look for. It’s true that performance rate depends on the client’s business objective and the cost of data predictions. Machine learning projects need time to achieve better results. Even if you are lucky and your ML algorithm matches up with the benchmarks immediately, chances are your program will work efficiently or will get completely failed. Hence, continuous monitoring can only protect your ML model from degradation, but things will improve with time. Also defining your business metrics, planning technical architecture at the earliest stage decides the success or failure of your ML venture. Final Words Hopefully, it was a really deep dive for you into the world of ML implementation for business startups. The key lies in minimizing the challenges and creating more benefits through the adoption of ML development that give your business the core capabilities of machine learning.

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At a whopping , the U.S. recruitment and staffing industry is only growing, but at what cost? $158 billion With an agency that collects a 20+ percent fee of your salary along with an to fill a position, the industry is to reduce the time to hire as well as lowering the costs associated with bringing on new talent. almost 50-day wait continuing to look for ways Welcome to the new age of health-tech. While home to the heart of country music, Nashville, Tennessee plays host to what will hopefully soon be the heart of health-tech when it comes to healthcare staffing. Headquartered in Nashville, TN, offers a solution. Relode crowd-sources technology to connect healthcare employers directly to healthcare professionals, eliminating the need for a third-party agency. Relode connects agents and their networks directly to permanent and temporary healthcare-job opportunities, rewarding those agents with financial commissions similar to a recruiter, absent agency overhead. Relode As a result, Relode says that it is saving its clients nearly 50 percent on permanent hires and ten percent or more on temporary staffing. That ultimately frees up more resources to re-invest in patient care. “ ,” said Matthew Tant, Relode’s founder and CEO. “ .” We created Relode as a healthier approach to healthcare employment It’s simple: We reward good people to assist in finding other good people for the best jobs in healthcare. This saves time and money while optimizing employment opportunities. It’s one platform that works equally well for employers, employees — and ultimately the patients they care for How It Works As a client, if you post a job, Relode activates its user network, alerting them to the newly opened role, and after recommendations pour in, Relode’s system utilizes machine learning and artificial intelligence to quickly screen candidates, allowing the client to review only the top, qualified candidates. More importantly, Relode saves clients 50% over traditional staffing agencies. “ ,” added Senator Bill Frist of Frist Cressey Ventures, a Relode investor. [This] simple yet disruptive approach, easily connects employers to the people looking for those types of jobs Additionally, giving back to the community is something the company takes to heart. Like or , Relode is extremely socially conscious, allocating a percentage of every dollar made to Mercy Ships, which has been offering free surgical care in underserved African countries. Toms Warby Parker But don't think they are strangers to the competition. In fact, Relode faces some seriously stiff competition. At one end of the spectrum, there are the many general job search and recruitment websites, such as and/or . Indeed, Monster.com, ZipRecruiter.com At the other end, there are numerous niche recruiting and talent agencies that focus specifically on the medical field. What's Wrong With The Current Market Players? For recruiting sites such as and offering lower prices to a huge audience is extremely attractive and appealing to applicants. Indeed, Monster, ZipRecruiter, However, the lack of a niche focus makes the website less appealing for highly-trained specialists. Meanwhile, medical recruiters can leverage their vast experience and personal relationships. It's Time for Professionals to Join Together From the outside, it seems that Relode’s best chance to break into the market is to leverage the existing relationships already built by medical professionals. This is certainly a compelling angle but there’s a serious challenge: many medical professionals are already working long hours and may not feel like moonlighting as recruiters. Still, with potential rewards reaching five-figure sums, even busy doctors will find it worth their time to refer their colleagues to opportunities. And so long as there remains a shortage of medical staff, there will be a lot of churn and job openings. This means hospitals are going to have to offer generous rewards and pay for expensive recruiting services. Of course, if conditions change in the future and the shortage abates, Relode could find itself in a tough position. Their model depends on hospitals being willing to pay a lot of money for quality referrals and recruits. Who knows what the medical professional will look like sixty years from now, but by 2032, the United States alone is projected to suffer from a shortage of . This will result in burdens for patients and practitioners alike, but for medical recruiting firms, it creates opportunity. roughly 122,000 doctors

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Image credit How to create your communication strategy with offline marketing for your business? By using simple and well-known techniques you could increase your profits and your brand image. What is Offline Marketing? These are all marketing actions that you will perform on traditional media or by traditional actions that do not use internet technology, also known as . traditional marketing Today, many entrepreneurs use only online marketing. You need to know that both are complementary and that you can integrate online and offline marketing strategies into your campaigns. Offline marketing is always an important aspect of any business and is an important part of the customer experience. Through innovative promotional ideas, you will attract the attention of your prospects. Traditional marketing channels are primarily the media such as radio, television, and newspapers, some of which have captivated audiences for over a century. Along with other direct and offline marketing measures such as outdoor advertising, these marketing tools are reaching powerful reach with consumers, especially those who are not web aficionados. One of the main disadvantages of offline marketing is a significant loss of circulation. Although this marketing technique is widely distributed and used for local businesses by a or any marketing agency. marketing consultant But it will not have the same impact among different consumers if it is possible to choose a channel-specific to a target group, it is however not possible to select the recipients. The same is not true online, as advertising content will only be displayed if the user matches a particular target group. I'm going to talk about 8 techniques that you can easily put in place and discover the benefits of offline marketing! 1) Paper Supports It is important to remember that your communication is also done by all kinds of paper that you use for your activity. You must be sure to develop all possible tips that can lead to an offline promotion for your business. Various media can be created for your marketing efforts. Here is a list of offline marketing activities: Business card. It will always be available in your pocket or briefcase so you can distribute it generously around you. It is important that it contains all the necessary data concerning your company as well as your e-mails and the address of your website. You can also include a catchy slogan for larger returns. I used my at the time when I went prospecting in subdivisions. I went door-to-door to offer my services and when the owners were away, I slipped a business card into the mailbox. I wrote in my hand this little phrase that intrigued the reader. "Contact me, I have a very important thing to say to you" and I guarantee you that the majority of people contacted me to know what was this important thing and it allowed me to invite them to go to the store. business cards Invoices, quotes, purchase orders, fax. Throughout your activity, you will distribute a huge amount of this kind of document. It's important that you include important business data as well as your business card. Similarly, you can put calls to action for your prospects to contact you. This call to action could be a discount, a gift, a lottery, etc. Postcards. It's a nice way to differentiate yourself from many of your competitors. I used to send some of my clients a postcard to announce an event, celebrate a birthday, or even invite them to visit our store. Simply print your postcards online at your convenience based on the event and then send it to you with a personal word written from your hand. I myself regularly received postcards from my suppliers for my birthday. Flyers and flyers. This type of offline marketing does not measure exactly the return on investment but it largely contributes to the image of your company. The flyers and flyers can be distributed on the big-surface car parks, the windows, and counters of the tradesmen around. If you want the merchant to accept your print, you offer them a discount for any purchase of products or services for your company. This is an offline advertisement that will ask you for some physical steps. Catalogs and coupons. If you have published your own catalogs you can send them to your customers or prospects by adding coupons. In case you do not have your own catalogs, you can send the catalogs of your suppliers always with these same coupons. This will allow you to highlight the new products you have on shelves or new services that you have put in place. 2) Display Marketing The branding of your business is important and you can develop it by using a display marketing that will fit your business. Here are some examples: The stickers. You can put stickers on your company vehicles or on your own vehicle with the important information you want to deliver about your business. It is not necessary to put all the coordinates of the company. A good slogan for your activity and a phone number and address of your website will be enough to have returned. Balloons, T-shirts, caps, USB sticks, etc. You will find on the internet various companies that will offer you this kind of advertising to promote your business. These are small gifts that you offer to your customers. You must target your distribution. For example, the balloons and USB keys will be offered to families because you will be sure that they will be used regularly and that your brand will be seen. It is not easy for an individual to wear a T-shirt or cap with your company brand. For my part, I offered this kind of advertising to my customer's craftsmen. They carried them regularly on the building sites and heard throughout the day. Flags, banners, displays and inflatable figures. This kind of display is always moving so it catches the eye of passersby. My business was below a busy road, so I used this type of offline marketing to catch the eye of motorists. By doing some research on the Internet you will find all the necessary materials, mats, flags and banners with your own slogans. There are also nice inflatable figures that are still moving. They can be small but also very large. In general, they are tubes of fabrics that are in perpetual motion thanks to a wind tunnel which is at their case. Guaranteed effect! 3) Offline Training. Here are some offline marketing ideas for events related to your business to create pieces of training. How to promote an offline event! It could be the anniversary of the creation of your business, the arrival of a new product, etc. These courses are designed to teach your customers and prospects to know your products. They can be declined in different forms. For example, you could organize a meeting with your salespeople and your customers within your store to implement your different products. These creative event promotion ideas are very popular with individuals. An open day with a large barbecue for your customer's craftsmen and traders to highlight the new products. Your suppliers will be happy to assist you with this task. In my case this kind of meeting allowed me to strengthen the links with my clients. Being seated together allows for discussions that we did not have in the works or at the store. It may still be home training for your clients as many other companies do. I thought of Tupperware! 4) The Classifieds Your offline marketing also goes through the classifieds on the media. It is a method of dissemination that works very well in the region. Newspapers in your area can be a great medium for posting a few ads or advertising about your business. In general, these local newspapers send you their emissary so that you regularly publish your advertisements in their papers. Sometimes the municipalities ask an advertising agency to create booklets about their activity to its inhabitants and to finance this the agency will place advertisements of companies in the sector in its booklet. Some advertising agencies use this same technique to create restaurant trivia with your advertising that seated guests will be able to read. Your local radio can also very well broadcast voice messages to attract customers to your business. 5) SMS Marketing Of all the means used to communicate with your customers, marketing SMS is one of the most effective channels.  The mobile phone is part of the everyday life of every consumer and can, therefore, become an important point of contact in your relationship with them. The goal of is to communicate with your customers or prospects on various occasions: keep them informed of a novelty, an order confirmation, or even simply wish birthday or encourage them to come to the store. SMS marketing A promotional SMS is now an indispensable channel for your relationship marketing strategy and . Sending SMS marketing is a preferred tool for companies that want to communicate quickly to a given target. This tool is now part of the communication actions preferred by marketing managers. small businesses are using more and more SMS marketing Several advantages explain this attraction: It simply has the best response rate: the reading time of an SMS after the reception is only 2 min. ROI (return on investment) very high thanks to it's very affordable: it takes between 4 and 8 cents per SMS, which is unbeatable for real-time marketing. The opening rate of a promotional SMS is 95% 3 (much higher than the opening rate of a promotional email). The use of is a good way to create a link with your customers. Because of its immediacy, you can communicate on short events (which end the same evening or the next day) in order to create an emergency effect and quickly attract your customers to point of sale on a flash offer for example. SMS marketing A quick reminder if you want to get started: Accompany your message with a mention: "on presentation of this SMS" when it is a discount to measure the return rates, and the mention "STOP PUB" if it is a commercial SMS. An SMS is about 160 characters long. However, some bundled SMS sending software can send long SMS (up to 302 characters). In a context where we seek to create links and retain, these small acts of kindness can make a difference. The event in your point of sale, appointment reminder, satisfaction surveys, stocking ... There are many other types of SMS marketing that will strengthen your proximity with your customers. 6) Social Relations It is certain that around you there is a multitude of clubs, charities, and associations. You can offer various associations or cultural organizations to offer them prizes, coupons for their annual party. It's up to you to see with them how they can talk about your business. Sponsorship or partnership is also interesting. At the time we were sponsors of the local judo team as well as a dance club. For the judo club, for modest financial participation, the references of our company were affixed to the entry of the training rooms as well as on the various means of communication of the club. We were not the only ones that allowed the club to bring in some money. For the dance club, we provided one of our vehicles for their trips, tables, and benches and in exchange, he passed one or two announcements about our company during their demonstration. It's up to you to find the right compromise that will be perfect for both parties. There are also other clubs, Rotary club and many more that would allow you to have person-to-person relationships. In general, they are influential people in the sector, contractors, hires or others. 7) Word of Mouth and Sponsorship. Here are other offline marketing ideas. Everyone knows word-of-mouth. It can be positive or negative, for you to make it active or your offline advertising. Your skills, your professionalism will be an advantage for us to talk about you. Also, remember to ask your family and friends to talk about your business around them. You can also create referrals for your customers that would bring you new the business. Let it know and it will allow you to have some feedback. 8) Establish Partnerships Create partnerships! Try to identify in your sector all the activities that are complementary or related to yours in order to try to contact the managers to create partnerships. We had trading and laying sanitary tile. We see a lot of customers doing big renovations. He passed necessarily by several trades. Bricklayer, tiler, plasterer, cooks, plumber, etc. This allowed us to have a wide range of partnerships. We could eventually refer customers who were interested in a new kitchen to one of our kitchen partners who would do the same when his customers wanted to tile their credence or floor. Also, some craftsmen sent their customers to our showroom to choose the materials that the customer wanted to put in his house. The craftsman bought the equipment and did the laying. We did the same when our customers bought sanitary, we guidance to these same artisans partners. These partnerships could be associated with word-of-mouth advertising. Here we are at the end of this article on offline marketing. You have to be creative to find consistent tips for promoting your business. Think about it and try to find out about your typical client to find his needs. So you can better develop a marketing strategy to develop your customer base. In your offline marketing have you had any other ideas other than the one I mentioned?

8 Offline Marketing Techniques to Boost Your Sales!

When a Lambda function invocation crashes due to an uncaught application error, for example, AWS may automatically retry the same request. This auto-retry happens when the function is invoked: Asynchronously by any type of requester By an , such as data streams from or event source mapping DynamoDB Kinesis Invocations that are direct (using the ) and synchronous will not trigger the auto-retry in case of an error. Invoke API endpoint AWS Services that call a Lambda function synchronously will also not trigger the auto-retry, but these services may have their own logic to retry the request regardless of Lambda’s internal one. What’s wrong with the retry behavior anyway? In some cases, it’s just pointless to retry. If the first request failed, it has zero chance of succeeding in subsequent attempts. Retrying would be a waste of resources here. Even worse, retrying could also lead to unwanted side-effects if our code is not (I recently about this, if you’d like to dig deeper). You could end up with duplicate database entries or multiples of the same business transactions, for instance, which can be a serious issue. idempotent published an article How do we avoid it? Quick observation: the retry behavior is not evil, we might want it in many cases. The purpose of this article is for those cases we would not like our functions to retry. Since AWS Lambda does not offer us a way to disable the automatic retries, there is a simple-to-implement strategy to avoid it: handling errors globally You will find demonstrations on how to use to avoid auto-retries. Personally, I find this solution cumbersome and way too complex, adding overhead not only to the implementation but also to debugging and monitoring. Step Functions Global error handling Each Lambda function has only one entry point, its handler function, which makes it easier to catch errors globally. You could either do it inside the event handler or use a middleware (such as ) to handle it. Middy The direct way would be something like this: logging my_code my_event_handler

logger = logging.getLogger()
logger.setLevel(logging.WARNING) :
        response = my_event_handler(event=event, context=context) Exception error:
        logger.exception(error)
        response = { : , : { : type(error).__name__, : str(error),
            },
        } : response import from import : def lambda_handler (event, context) try except as 'status' 500 'error' 'type' 'description' finally return We used Python in the example but the same result can be achieved in any modern programming language. A cleaner way to implement this in Python would be by using a function decorator, but not all languages will offer such a feature and that’s why we avoided it in the example. What we are doing is delegating the handling of the event to another function , while the works as (kind of) middleware to handle any exceptions. Since all possible exceptions are handled and we then respond with a valid JSON object, Lambda will not retry any request. my_event_handler lambda_handler The line is crucial here. It makes sure the error is logged for later investigation and debugging. Omitting this part is very dangerous because any and all errors will go silent, you will never even know that they happened. By logging the error, you will be able to view it on CloudWatch. logger.exception(error) Third-party monitoring services like , or should also allow you to be alerted by email, Slack or other channels whenever things go south, so you can promptly act on any issue. This is highly recommended for professional applications running in production. Dashbird DataDog Sentry Lastly, in case the response is going out to third-parties, you probably will want to omit the error details in the response object for security reasons. Deciding when to trigger auto-retry The nice part of this implementation is that we can prepare our function to decide when we want retries to occur or not. We can declare our own custom exceptions with a signature that can tell our Lambda function that a retry would come in handy in case they are raised. Here’s how we would do it: First, declare a parent exception that will act as the “retry is nice” signature: : class WorthRetryingException (Exception) pass Now, inheriting from the one above, declare exceptions that will be raised by your application in case something goes wrong: : class ExternalAPIFailed (WorthRetryingException) pass : class SomeTemporaryGlitch (WorthRetryingException) pass In your application logic, you can raise your own custom exceptions this way: :
        something() SomeError error: SomeTemporaryGlitch() error : def sometimes_it_fails (*args, **kwargs) try except as raise from Then, in our `lambda_handler`, we should change the error handling this way: (...) Exception error: isinstance(error, WorthRetryingException): error :
        logger.exception(error)
        response = { : , : { : type(error).__name__, : str(error),
            },
        }

(...) except as if raise else 'status' 500 'error' 'type' 'description' It’s a simple change that empowers our function to behave differently depending on the type of exception raised. When the error is worth retrying, will raise it, triggering the auto-retry feature within Lambda. Otherwise, it will only log the exception and respond in a nice way, supressing retries. lambda_function How about other causes of failure? Our Lambda functions can fail from causes other than application errors. Among those are timeouts, lack of memory, early exits. They will not fall into the exception handling logic above, so we need to do something else in case we want to “catch” them. Handling Timeouts Make sure you are handling well all of the IO-bound routines. In case of an external HTTP request or a Database connection, for example, add a timeout parameter to the request that is obviously lower than your function timeout. This way we already avoid some of the most common timeout causes. If a CPU-bound process may take too long to finish and cause a Lambda timeout error, there are three possible things we can do to help it: Increase the timeout (if not already set at the Lambda maximum); Increase memory configuration; Monitor the remaining time and terminate execution before a timeout; More memory allocated to your function may speed up the processing (read for more info about how to optimize CPU-intensive tasks on Lambda). this article The remaining time is available in the object, an argument provided to our along with the payload. In Python functions, for example, the object . context lambda_handler event context looks like this What we could do is run a parallel thread that checks the value of every few seconds. Before it reaches zero, this thread would raise an error (something like ). context.get_remaining_time_in_millis() AlmostTimingOutError This error should be handled by our , obviously, not to trigger an auto-retry and to properly log the occurrence of the premature halt of the execution. lambda_handler Handling memory errors and early exits These two types of errors aren’t actually possible to handle within our function. What we can do is try to avoid the errors themselves or properly deal with an auto-retry in case it happens. To avoid memory errors, benchmark your function across different scenarios and allocate memory with some comfortable margin to minimize chances it will run out of resources. In case it happens anyway, there’s a way to couple with the auto-retry we’ll discuss shortly after. Early exits, on the other hand, are difficult. They can happen for a variety of reasons. It could be something related to your application, yes, but I’m referring to things you actually can’t handle in the app code. I experienced this issue once when I was running a deep learning algorithm in Lambda that was compiled with a limitation for a specific type of CPU. It only manifested when Lambda would launch a container in a server that didn’t have this type of processor. It took me a few days to find out and solve the issue. When this type of error happens, it’s impossible to handle within our application code. Even adding a doesn’t help to prevent the Lambda function from crashing and avoid an auto-retry. global error handler Using Lambda Request ID For those cases, there’s a last resort strategy we could use, which is identifying and halting invocations that are the result of an auto-retry. We can do this by using the request ID that comes, again, with the context object. In the , this is provided in the object attribute. Python version aws_request_id The disadvantage of this implementation is that it adds cost and latency to all of your Lambda executions. You will need to store all request IDs in an external database (I would recommend ). DynamoDB At the very beginning of each invocation, you check whether the request ID already exists in the DB. If yes, it means this is a retry invocation, since Lambda will always use the same original request ID for all retry attempts. The latency added by DynamoDB would be around 10 to 50 milliseconds. If you use their cache service , latency could be lowered to single-digit milliseconds. DynamoDB is scalable, requires almost zero maintenance and is relatively cheap: $0.00065 per Write and $0.00013 per Read. In our case, we would consume one of each, totaling $0.00078 per Lambda execution - except when a retry occurs, when we would consume only one read, no write. DAX Wrapping up We have covered a few strategies and best practices to follow in order to avoid your Lambda functions from triggering an auto-retry invocation. Nevertheless, the safest approach is always to , since this would avoid any unwanted side-effects from running the same payload request multiple times. make your functions idempotent Handling errors like a Pro I thought it would be fair to state that this article was a product of our experience at , a monitoring and debugging platform for serverless applications. If you or your company are using AWS Lambda and want to track application errors in a smart way, you should definitely (it’s free up to 1M requests and does not require credit card). Dashbird.io check it out Disclosure: I work as a Developer Advocate at Dashbird.io promoting serverless best-practices in general and the company service.

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Simple Steps to Avoid the Retry Behavior from AWS Lambda

Disruption eruption In the tech sector, the idea of disruption is a kind of golden calf. If your company can achieve disruption in an industry that hasn’t already been overrun with startups, you will have a significant advantage over the competition and may even come to be associated with forward-thinking methods. But as the startup era enters its middle years, the gold rush has already taken place, for the most part. The likes of , , and have revolutionized their specific industries, and as a result, the paradigm has shifted in their favor. Uber Amazon Instacart Despite our many advances over the last ten years or so, there are still many industries in desperate need of modernization. Specifically, real estate is woefully archaic, still relying heavily on word-of-mouth and often allowing for mild to moderate deception of buyers and renters in the . hopes of making a profit Unlike more specialized industries, we all have to interact with at some point in our lives. Renters, in particular, have to interact with the machinations of real estate more often than most, scrambling for new housing when their current residence experiences rent hikes. real estate is an industry In need of repair In preparation for this article, I spoke with some friends about experiences they’ve had when searching for a new apartment or home. Despite my expectations, their stories actually shocked me. One friend told the tale of finding a beautiful apartment online, only to visit the building and find that the photos on the website were actually for a different unit. The apartment up for grabs was smaller, had an outdated bathroom, and featured a view of a nearby brick wall. An old school chum explained her experience of signing a lease on a lovely one bedroom in a nice neighborhood, only to find two months later that the building had long been struggling to combat a major pest problem. She regularly encountered mice and cockroaches in her apartment, sometimes in her food. When she complained, a maintenance worker laid down a few glue traps and called it a day. Leading real estate websites have certainly improved in recent years, but there’s minimal oversight.These sites are crowd-sourced, and that means inaccuracies and even outright falsehoods can slip through the cracks. Don’t believe me? Just spend a few minutes on and observe the number of apartments listed for $1. Craigslist Despite technological advancements that have allowed for innovation in other industries, apartment- and house-hunting remains difficult for many people who don’t have the benefit of personal connections with agents who are in-the-know. The road to redemption So what’s the solution here? One larger element of the battle would be to make sure that there’s plenty of affordable housing to go around, protecting individuals of modest incomes from spending nearly all of their earnings on rent. But this will require legislative action as well as grassroots support. In the meantime, a select few entrepreneurs have decided to focus on streamlining the process of finding appropriate housing and requiring management companies and real estate agents to be completely honest and transparent with their property postings. In New York, the belly of the beast when it comes to difficult (and astronomically expensive) real estate markets, startup has pioneered a strict new model that emphasizes responsible listings and open lines of communication. Replay Listings Basically, anyone who wants to post a property on the platform needs to be verified as a licensed real estate professional, and all media for that posting, whether it be photos or videos, needs to show the exact property-- no model apartments or similar units allowed. The result is a platform, maybe even a community, where individuals can be confident that what they see online or in the app is what they’ll actually get. “So far the response has been extremely positive for both agents and renters. Renters love it because it makes their search easier by allowing them to browse unedited videos of rental apartments. Agents love it because they’re able to instantly create and distribute content in a safe way. They often end up physically showing fewer apartments and closing more deals.” These are the words of Rodolfo Delgado, co-founder of Replay Listings. A former real estate agent himself, the idea for Replay Listings came from first-hand interactions with individuals who’d been shell-shocked by their previous experiences in the world of apartment hunting in the Big Apple. “I would meet clients at my office and show them pictures and floorplans of every available apartment that met their needs. More often than not, however, they expressed mistrust in the pictures and shared experiences they’d had in the past in which the pictures looked nothing like the actual apartment.” As you might have guessed, this atmosphere of mistrust and skepticism doesn’t make for safe and satisfying interactions. Replay Listings has chosen to combat this problem head-on, and judging by customer feedback, so far the company is winning the fight. Tech shines a light For Delgado, recent advances in technology offered a clear path to innovation and disruption. Just ten years ago, built-in phone cameras were cheap and unreliable. Even worse, the phones they were attached to often lacked sufficient internal storage to save more than a minute or so of video. Similarly, internet connections were still relatively slow and every three seconds to buffer. Even then, the video quality would often take a hit, making it look like security camera footage from the 1980s. struggled to stream video content without pausing Here in 2019, it’s a very different story. It’s not only possible to stream high-quality video from an app, but in fact, most of us expect it to happen without a hitch. Given the current state of tech, there’s really no excuse for anyone to be posting inaccurate information online, especially when it comes to real estate, as Delgado noted. “Thanks to technology, consumers have access to more and more accurate information that allows them to make informed decisions. We need the real estate industry to become even more transparent and honest, as it directly affects the well-being of everyone that’s looking for a new home.” Replay Listings has made a name for itself by featuring unedited videos of apartments and homes, most of them simple, unadorned walkthroughs. This feature alone requires robust technology solutions. Delgado explained that Replay Listings utilizes . data storage solutions offered by Amazon and Google Knowing little about data storage solutions myself, I reached out to data storage expert Rohit Gupta (who has multiple patents and more than ten years of experience in data storage to his credit) for an explanation of the advantages offered by public cloud storage options like these, and how they allow young companies like Replay Listings to host large amounts of media and data. “Public cloud storage is a good IT infrastructure choice for small to medium-sized companies for whom IT infrastructure is not their core competency. These companies can take advantage of cost, ecosystem, and performance. The public cloud ecosystem also gives companies ease of use and availability of any software or services such as machine learning algorithms, analytics, databases, streaming, microservices, containers, security, and digital payments, etc.” These public cloud storage ecosystems aren’t necessarily the be-all-end-all of data storage for businesses, but for Replay Listings and other companies like it, these services guarantee that users can access media reliably and safely. For Delgado and his team, improving the platform and keeping promises to users remains the top priority, and it’s thanks to public tech solutions like these that Replay Listings can continue to focus on its central mission. The wave of the future Despite our rapid advancement in many different industries, tech leaders need to remember that stagnation is the enemy of progress. Disruption is great, but every disruptive tech company has its honeymoon period, and every honeymoon has to end sometime. We’re seeing this more and more with the biggest names in tech, enormous corporations who swallow up smaller companies and then fail to push those brands toward further innovation. Among smaller startups, it’s more common to find an attitude that doesn’t really allow for rest and relaxation. Even a great product can stand to be improved. When I spoke with Delgado, he was eager to point out that Replay Listings has extensive plans for expansion and further updates to the platform. In addition to planned trial runs in other major American cities including Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago, he mentioned that there’s also room to implement AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) into the platform. “I’m excited to see how we can make a dent by contributing to the virtual reality and augmented reality industry as well. We’re experimenting with some features that are very promising in terms of allowing our users to experience the inside of an available apartment in new ways.” If nothing else, this serves as a reminder that cross-pollination and cooperation between individuals, between companies, and between industries is not only positive but necessary for building trust with customers and increasing transparency on a massive scale. Increased profits are a byproduct, albeit an important byproduct, of improving the world we live in.

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The Fight for Honesty in Real Estate

Facebook recently announced their new Libra cryptocurrency, a stablecoin set to launch in 2020 which will initially let users transfer money between Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp applications. However, the larger goal of Libra is to transform the global economy. In conjunction with other companies and partners that make up the Libra Association, including payments companies, technology companies, marketplaces, and venture capitalist firms, Libra has the potential to do just that. Having been for the last couple of years there is definitely a reason to doubt how decentralized Libra truly is and if it can even be considered a cryptocurrency. However, one thing is certain, given the proposed makeup of Libra it could ultimately replace all current stablecoins, and quickly. involved in the cryptocurrency industry What is Libra? Libra is a stablecoin which will let users transfer money between Facebook’s platforms Messenger and WhatsApp. Users will exchange fiat currency for Libra coins which will be stored on the Calibra wallet. Users will be able to purchase Libra using their fiat currency or at grocery and convenience stores and load Libra onto their digital wallets. A user only needs to verify themselves using a photo ID and they will be able to use Libra to transfer money between Facebook’s applications as well as pay for products and services offered by other Libra Association members such as Uber or Lyft. Calibra will initially be a digital wallet for storing Libra but Calibra it will also as a separate company to Facebook which will be dedicated to the Libra currency and their foreway into cryptocurrency. Calibra will become a wave of products and services based around the Libra coin. Users financial data is kept separate from their personal data on Facebook. The separation from Facebook also means that Facebook will not be able to use the data from Libra users for ad targeting or to sell to marketers. While one of the hallmarks of cryptocurrency is the fact that it is decentralized, Libra is in fact very centralized. Facebook has faced issues with user privacy and data leaks in the recent past so there has been skepticism about Libra. However, Libra is not controlled by just Facebook. In fact, Facebook says that you to trust Libra. don’t even need to trust them The Libra Association, headquartered in Switzerland, is a 28 member group of companies including the likes of Visa, PayPal, Andersen Horowitz, Ebay and others control Libra along with Facebook. While Facebook is the major developer and initiator behind the project, they only have 1 representative and thus 1 vote as part of the Libra council. Each member of the Libra Association paid at least $10M for their membership seat and the voting power on the future of Libra on the council. This council also controls the Libra Reserve where all of the money used to exchange for Libra coins is kept. Libra’s value as a stablecoin is maintained not just by linking it to the value of the USD or GBP but to a basket of currencies of the most popular fiat currencies including the aforementioned as well as the euro and yen. This way even if one currency loses it’s value Libra will remain stable. The Libra Association members will then be able to earn interest from money kept in the reserve after operating and technology costs are accounted for. The interest each member of the association will receive will be proportional to the initial investment each made. If Libra proves to be successful and gains widespread adoption, this could yield tremendous amounts for each member. Impact on Other Stablecoins While Libra is yet to launch, it has the potential to essentially wipe out all other stablecoins currently in existence. There have been dozens of stablecoins launched in the last year but most of the transaction volume has been from Tether (USDT). However, Tether has had its fair share of controversy as well. The Hong Kong-based company behind Tether and Bitfiniex (iFiniex Inc.) was of taking from the dollar reserve to cover funds which went missing. This has put into question whether or not USDT really has the money in the reserve to back up the coins in circulation. Given the vast userbase of Facebook (around 2.4 billion users) and the financial powerhouses associated with Libra, it is unlikely that the Libra Reserve will face similar issues. accused by the New York Attorney General’s office The purpose behind a stablecoin is to reduce the volatility which is abundant with other cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum. This instability is the reason why cryptocurrencies have not seen wide scale adoption as a payment method in other industries. Stablecoins are tied to value of a fiat currency. In the case of tether, for example, it is tied to the USD. However, despite the dominance of tether or the existence of other stablecoins like TrueUSD and DAI, stablecoins haven’t quite caught on as a means of paying for everyday items by the average user. Libra by its makeup solves this problem. Payment platforms such as Stripe and PayPal are members of the Libra association. These platforms already allow users to transfer fiat currencies easily. Libra will function more like one of these payment platforms than another cryptocurrency and will also be able to perform these transactions over the blockchain at a faster pace that most current transactions. The introduction of Libra and its ease of use will make widescale adoption easier. As more companies join the Libra association this will also increase the use-cases for Libra among association members. Any stablecoin wishing to compete with Libra will have a lot of work on its hands. Future of Cryptocurrency & Power of Facebook The hype surrounding Libra has been a catalyst which has seen cryptocurrency markets surge again as bitcoin rallied to its highest prices in over a year. Other cryptocurrencies have not managed the same surge as bitcoin but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been renewed interest in the cryptocurrency markets. The attention surrounding Libra has definitely been the cause of this and its likely that this will continue even after the launch of Libra in 2020. While Libra is a stablecoin and won’t have the price fluctuations associated with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that doesn’t mean that the other cryptocurrencies will suddenly disappear. In fact, Libra is likely to lead to more widescale adoption. Given Facebook’s reach and the potential power of Libra, it means that more and more people will begin to learn about cryptocurrencies and the fundamentals behind them, even if they only view them as a speculative device. Libra could also achieve what bitcoin couldn’t in terms of being a payment method. Transaction speeds are much faster at around 1000/s compared to bitcoin’s 7/s, meaning the Libra is likely to be better received as a payment method compared to other cryptocurrencies. This could see other cryptocurrencies be fully embraced as an alternative store of value, especially if prices continue to rise. One issue which Libra faces is that it is not truly decentralized but part of a centralized Libra Association. Given the potential reach of Libra considering the platforms involved, some may wonder if this will make Facebook too powerful. Facebook has already had issues with privacy and due to the potential reach of Libra and the power it will bring, congress is looking to slow Libra in its tracks. Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram went down for a few hours on July 3rd and caused the world distress. Imagine what could happen if they controlled a worldwide payment system which was integrated into everything we own. This is definitely something which has been raised in the US Congress and by finance ministers around the world, and they are looking to halt Facebook from moving ahead in the currently unregulated cryptocurrency industry. During the regarding the cryptocurrency on July 16 and 17 some of the concerns raised by the United States House of Representatives Financial Services Committee included their Facebook’s issues with privacy and Russian hackers and enforcement of AML laws.  Their concerns center around the fact that Facebook could hold too much power and information given their issues in the past and that Libra could ultimately threaten the power of the US dollar and other fiat currencies, let alone other stablecoins! recent hearings Conclusion The announcement of Libra has already had an impact on cryptocurrency markets but we’re likely to see more twists and turns before it’s officially launched in 2020. Facebook’s new stablecoin has the potential to replace all current stablecoins given the large userbase of Facebook and the reach of the other members of the Libra Association. That potential has even seen US lawmakers worry about the impact Libra could have on the US dollar. One thing is for certain, Libra will leave its mark on the cryptocurrency industry one way or another.

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How Facebook Stablecoin Libra Could Replace all Current Stablecoins

How to know which feedback to listen to for your startup. If you’re starting a new business, launching a new idea, or doing anything at all really, you’re going to be getting a lot of feedback. People are going to tell you if they love it. And you’re inevitably going to hear some verison of: “That’s not a good idea.” The fact is, you’re probably going to hear that one a lot, and from a lot of different people. Some of them perfectly well-meaning. So, how do we determine which feedback matters the most? When we’re overwhelmed with messages about our ideas being too risky or not good enough, how do we filter out the noise and get to the feedback that really matters? How do we know whether to listen to the people saying yes, or the people saying no? I’ve dealt with this problem a lot. Over the course of my entrepreneurial journey, I’ve had more than a few ideas. Some of them were winners. Many, not so much. Some I never really got the chance to find out if they would be successful until it was too late. Some I left behind because I listened to the feedback. wrong This is the story of an idea that I wish I’d done more with, and how it taught me which feedback to listen to, and which to ignore. Looking back at this, I realize what I should have done differently (and that I potentially could have made a lot of money!) had I only known then what I’m telling you now. One weekend, my buddy Krish managed to get us a spot in a lean startup machine workshop. Normally, this would have cost us a few thousand dollars. Somehow though, he managed to get us in for free. For three days, we’d be attending this workshop and working on our own ideas for a startup. I was pretty excited for this opportunity. I'd recently read The Lean Startup, and was interested in getting more hands on with it. Inside the workshop, we divided up into groups of three to five people. Each group was tasked with coming up with a potential startup idea. Once we had one, it was time to hit the streets. Having the idea wasn’t enough. We needed proof that our idea had value, and we needed to get that by getting people to sign onto it in one form or another. We needed to hear from our potential customers. Now, a lot of the people in my group lived in the upper east side. This workshop? It was in downtown Manhattan. This was before the days of Uber. We had two options for getting there. Either we cough up the money for a expensive cab ride, or we use the subway for a much cheaper, but also much slower, commute. very This was the problem that we tackled with our startup idea. We called our solution “CabPool.” A clever twist on the phrase “carpool.” People would use an app to find others going to the same place as them and share a cab, splitting the cost. very If you’re drawing parallels between what we were thinking about and rideshare apps? Trust me, I’ve been doing that for a while, too. When it came time to test our idea, we planted ourselves in front of a Whole Foods market. The plan was simple. We’d wait to see someone hailing a cab and ask them if they’d be interested in a program like ours. We even had a little application. When someone said they were interested, we’d ask them where they were going so we could find a match for them. Sort of. For the purposes of this test, I was the person waiting for the ride, and trust me, I just so happened to be going the same direction. They’d be matched up with me, I’d hop in the cab, and off we’d go. We made small talk along the way, and then, at the end of the ride, we split the cost. The people I talked to seemed to genuinely enjoy this idea. Not surprising, right? Who doesn’t want cheaper transportation? Whether that was the idea itself or just my winning personality, you be the judge. As we did this, we got people to give us money. So, when it came time for the judges to determine which group had the best idea? We were pretty sure that we were going to win. We did not, in fact, win. The judges told us that, despite the fact that we’d made some money, our plan wasn’t a good idea. It simply wasn’t going to work. The winner of the competition had proposed an app that would let people know when a parking spot opened up and where it was. I’m sure it’s a complete surprise that a lot of people in NYC were thinking about traffic, commuting, and parking. Their group hadn’t gotten anyone to give them money, like ours had. Instead, they had gotten people to sign a letter of intent to use the app. The judges decided this was the better approach. Now, I don’t want to harp on their idea, but I do feel like it is worth pointing out that a parking spot in NYC is probably only open for about 60 seconds on a good day – according to the team whom presented their findings... By the time you check an app, find an open spot, and drive to it? That spot isn’t empty anymore. That’s probably the reason we’re not seeing this kind of app around much. Nevertheless, we took the advice of the judges. After all, they were experts on these things, right? This had only been a weekend idea for us, not a serious venture. And the judges had told us it hadn’t been good enough. Why continue on with it? Obviously, given the success of rideshare apps, we probably should have ignored them. The judges, the experts on the issue? They were the feedback we chose to listen to. They weren’t the feedback we have been listening to, though. should The customers that we had over the course of the trial had been giving us feedback too. They’d been doing it with their wallets, and they’d been doing it in a positive way. was the feedback we should have been listening to. That Our customers voted with their wallets, and we decided to listen to the people who had no financial interest in the matter. When you launch a new idea, that idea is always going to have some detractors. Those detractors might even be the experts. They might tell you that your idea isn’t a good one. That there isn’t a market for what you’re thinking of doing. That data? It really isn’t all that useful. The useful data comes from your customers, and how they choose to vote with their wallets. We had people voting yes, putting their dollars down on our idea. We didn’t listen to them. We listened to the experts instead. That was our mistake. Don’t let it be yours. When you’re starting something new, the main feedback you need to listen to is the one that comes from the customers. Are they willing to spend money on what you’re proposing? That answer matters more than any other, and is going to really tell you if your idea can work or not. When people vote with their wallets, listen to them. Do you have an idea or product that you want to turn into a full-fledged business? Click here to learn more about me and my agency, Unbounded, and how I can put my experience to work for you. Images licensed by Adobe Stock Photos. First image by fuzzbones . Second image by Семен Саливанчук

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Have You Ever Been Told Your Business Idea Sucks?

In March of this year, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, unseated Bill Gates for the position of . The feat was the result of a massive $40 billion jump in net worth — the largest ever, . richest man in the world according to Forbes With Bezos, Zuckerberg and others reaching the uppermost echelon of wealth, it’s easy to forget the days when the dot.com bubble burst, and companies like Amazon were the pariahs of the stock market. The move from the bottom to the top reflects both the fickle public sentiment of investors, and the underlying fundamental value that made Amazon what it is today. In a similar vein perhaps, the Bitcoin bubble has officially burst. Dropping nearly 80% from its highs at the end of 2017, the first and greatest cryptocurrency has come on tough times. Fundamentals are key Nevertheless, the underlying fundamental value that made Bitcoin boom and bust may someday create the next Jeff Bezos. Blockchain technology, the foundation that Bitcoin is built on, has already received in the press. substantial accolades As a distributed ledger (think of a secure database shared over thousands of different computers), blockchain technology provides unique ways to solve problems that are facing various industries, from banking to logistics. In recent developments, both and are considering blockchain solutions. But perhaps nowhere is the potential for change more clear than in the communications industry. Facebook Amazon Web Services The very nature of blockchain — secure, distributed information made accessible through private keys — provides a solution to the common speed/security problems facing communications. Below are four ways that blockchain technology will disrupt the way consumers and businesses think about and use communications systems going forward. 1. Secure Messaging One of the first issues with all technology, and particularly with communications, is security. in the cybersecurity industry have made this a ubiquitous issue for consumers and corporations alike. Recent developments According to Gordon Yilin Lu, the Deputy Chairman of Instanza Inc. and owner of SOMA Messenger, “The telecommunications industry is evolving at the speed of technology. A major concern for the media and communications industry is a responsibility to adapt to the preferences of the community. People worry about their private data being sold by the large social media platforms like Facebook. The future is about privacy and social awareness.” However, blockchain technology, like that offered by SOMA, provides an elegant solution to this apparently insurmountable problem. By decentralizing data, the technology provides a way for only intended users to access any set of data. And new messaging systems have begun to capitalize on this powerful concept. Lu continues, “Blockchain technology provides a secure solution to these communication problems faced by large platforms because information is only released with private keys. That’s why SOMA is currently integrating blockchain technology to provide encrypted messaging and a crypto wallet designed to reward users for their engagement, and at the same time protect the privacy and contribution of users.” 2. Enterprise-level Communications , a Sunnyvale-based blockchain startup, is building the world’s first decentralized cloud communication network on the blockchain. Individuals and organizations can contribute their idle resources (such as a spare server in a data center) to the network, and receive rewards based on their contribution. The company is creating a transparent sharing economy where all telecom operators and service providers around the world can share resources and serve customers. The consensus mechanism, which is a series of mathematical algorithms accepted by all participants on the blockchain-based networks, can reward participants fairly by measuring their contribution to the network. TOP Network By allowing resource and service providers around the world to join the network transparently via blockchain technology, the company is able to build in much wider coverage and higher-quality services at lower prices than any single telecom operator can achieve in the upcoming 5G era. The blockchain-powered sharing economy can decentralize the physical footprint of the network, freeing the company from passing on costly overhead to its users. Additionally, the security offered by blockchain technology is substantially more robust, and the blockchain startup is looking to build on that foundation. According to Steve Wei, CEO of TOP Network, “When it comes to data security in the communication sector, blockchain technology can raise the bar higher. On a blockchain-version Facebook, users will be more comfortable posting on their timelines as no centralized organization can control their information. Because the data decentralized in nodes across the entire network, it is virtually impossible for hackers to tamper with data or governments to censor contents.” Finally, through a decentralized cloud communication network, blockchain technology is able to create seamless integrations between applications. This greatly reduces the complexity of communication. “For example, an iMessenger user cannot interact with a WhatsApp user directly, but blockchain can break the boundary between different social communication apps. TOP Network, for instance, creates a standard communication protocol to make all the decentralized apps in its ecosystem interoperable. The interoperability realized with blockchain can facilitate Internet of Things, which requires the seamless connection of various apps and devices,” says Steve Wei. 3. Secure VoIP While communications providers and consumers are seeking security and speed, they are also pursuing cost effectiveness. Already a vastly cheaper option that customary telephony, Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, has a genuine future as a decentralized network system. Current VoIP solutions require a centralized ‘landing point’ which routes the calling party’s signal to a receiving number. Generally, a centralized system requires fees for making those connection (think of a traditional phone operator), even if the system is digitized. However, blockchain technology removes that centralized access point and replaces it with a distributed network that is shared by all the users on the network. This means that there is never a routing cost, as all routes are already established by the distributed ledger. Additionally, security is maintained via the distribution, and speed of data transfer is maximized. The has just such a solution in place, as do other companies like . These networks create viable solutions for companies to have effectively free telecommunications with equal or better security than their traditional counterparts. TOP Network ENUMER 4. CDNs Finally, blockchain technology is creating a helpful solution for content delivery networks (or CDNs). Since the internet is really just an interconnected group of servers, for data to travel globally, it must pass through CDNs. These provide a critical service for information transfer, but also represent an intrinsic cost for data transfer, as well as a weak point of security risk. Blockchain technology provides a methodology for optimizing unused bandwidth from servers all over the world and links them together into a complex nest of servers which are able to move data seamlessly throughout the world. And, because the data is all distributed and can only be accessed via private keys, such system provides maximal security for users. A number of companies have already created just such a network, built on blockchain technology, and able to move data internationally for those who use their network. For example, (Latin for a Roman foot soldier) a decentralized CDN company, has recently released just such a system. Users can sell their unused bandwidth, and also purchase bandwidth for DDoS ( ) attacks. Gladius , distributed denial of service Because blockchain technology decentralizes those points of bandwidth, any single server crash or service interruption can be almost instantly healed by rerouting through the many thousands of other nodes, or points on the network. Therefore, even from a reliability perspective, blockchain is solving CDN related issues. As these examples show, the underlying fundamentals of blockchain technology promise to create a fast, simple and secure way of communicating. Because the distributed information is both secure and accessible, the technology provides a unique solution for bringing speed and security together. The bubble/bust cycle of technology is nothing new. Because new technological innovations are exciting, investments flow in and move a market like a traditional bubble. However, with blockchain, like its dot.com predecessor, it seems the technology is here to stay.

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Four Ways Blockchain Technology Will Disrupt Telecommunications

Everyone, well, almost everyone, loves video games. So even if you are not going to be a professional game developer or just don’t know for sure, to learn a programming language through practice and creating your own video game project is an excellent idea. Furthermore, it could be a good motivation for your learning. This article is addressed to all the prospective and beginner Java students as well as everyone who thinks of creating their own Java game project and don’t know where to start and how to learn this language the best way. Is Java bad for GameDev?.. Myths and reality If you read some forums and articles about game development, especially those that have been around for a while, you might get the impression that Java is not a good choice for game development. However, this opinion is somewhat outdated and inaccurate. Video games world is highly diverse. Conventionally, you may divide games into the following categories: Such as 3D-shooters, large-scale action adventures / action RPG. This category includes AAA-level projects as well. Usually they are high-budget games designed for a mass audience such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin Creed Origins and so on. This kind of games are usually written in C++ and accompanied game engines. “Big” games. Java is a rare guest in this kind of game development due to the peculiarities of the JVM. More precisely, it can be used, for example, to create back-end parts. . One gamer treats indie projects with contempt and the other loves them with passion. Indie game means an independent game created by a small team or even one developer. Indie games There are many amateur projects among Indie, some of them don’t make money to their creators. Indie is more about original idea and gameplay, good scripts and subjective vision rather than performance and high-end graphics. Nevertheless, such Indie projects burst out the market and become megapopular. A good example of such game is Minecraft, originally created by one person, Markus Persson. As of May 2019, over 176 million copies of Minecraft had been sold. That makes it one of the best-selling video games of all time. In 2014, Microsoft bought Minecraft and Mojang, for US $ 2.5 billion. By the way, Markus Persson is a Java Developer, so he wrote his prominent brainchild in this language. So, yep, Java is really good for Indie projects. This huge market keeps growing together with the quantity and performance of smartphones. Almost everyone has played a game on their mobile device. It could have been 2048, mobile remake of an old game or a game with an original idea. Is Java good for mobile game development? The answer is a solid “ ”. The market share of Android smartphones takes 80% now. You may think about Java as of the native language for Android, so there are really many mobile games written in this programming language. Mobile games. yes Java is good for Mobile games and Indie projects development (these markets are somewhat intersected) and for the development of server part of high-loaded online games. Now is Indie growing time, so if you are interested in such games, you can try to make some during your Java learning. Conclusions. Moreover, Java is a universal language. It is used in server-side Enterprise development, in Big Data, Mobile and Web apps, Trading apps, Embedded Space and so on. Java Developer is free to switch their programming role. Hence, Java sets you free to choose maybe more than any other programming language. If you are sure in your decision to be a big games developer, then C++ and some game engines such as Unity and Unreal is your choice for learning. Can a newbie programming student create their own game? How to do it? In fact, even the simplest video game is not quite easy to write, especially for one without coding experience. Luckily, we are living in open information epoch, so we can find different step-by-step instructions and courses for different levels. In this paragraph, we will discuss three options for creating games in Java by newbies. Case 1. From scratch using step-by-step instructions. CodeGym, Games section This feature is appropriate for the early beginners. You may create your version of 3 (for now, 3 more are in development) classical games with very basics of Java knowledge. Games section on CodeGym is apart of the main course and available for free to all users, not only for CodeGym students. CodeGym Games section lets you create your own versions of the legendary video games such as Minesweeper, 2048 or Snake (Space Invaders, Moon Lander and Racer are in development). Each game is a task with two dozen subtasks and step-by-step instructions. Student gets the subtask and tips, writes code, then it checks by auto CodeGym System. If the code is working the right way, student goes to the next step. All the code is writing in CodeGym site directly or in IntelliJ IDEA via special plugin you that you can get on the CodeGym. Completing the last step you have a ready-to-use game, you may publish on the site, customize it according to your creativity and sharing with your friends. The games use the simple CodeGym game engine, which structure you can learn from . this article What should you know for coding these games? This is the level of the first Java programs: initial knowledge about classes and objects, basic primitive data types, String, loops and branches, as well as arrays and initial knowledge about the ArrayList structure. The authors of CodeGym recommend to complete the first 5 levels of the to get such knowledge. If you feel not confident enough here is that helps you to solve the tasks. If you know Java Core but never tried to make games, CodeGym Games are still interesting for you, especially the opportunity to modify and customize your standard solutions after their approving. course useful theory Payment: is free to use. CodeGym Games Case 2. For rookie to middle level Java Student who loves Minecraft If you like it is really good idea to try doing some mods (modifications) with Java. Most mods add some content to the game to alter gameplay or give the player more options in how they interact with the Minecraft world. For example you may code a new more precise bow or   something like that. Some people create . Minecraft mini-games right inside Minecraft Even if you are not a big fan of this game, it would be beneficial for every newbie to work with decompiled code, trying to understand it and change it for you. Later you may play Minecraft with your own modes. To start with modding, you should have your IDE and JDK installed as well as modding tool. is one of the most popular tools for Java modding. There are myriads of tutorials and courses of Java Minecraft modding. Forge Here are some of them: The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Modding with Java in 2019 (video) Minecraft modding tutorial 1.12 (video) Modding Tutorial 1.14 What should you know for modding Minecraft with Java? It depends on the complexity of mode you want to do. You should know at least Java Classes and Objects, the basics of Data Structures, however it would be much more useful if you have more or less solid skills of OOP using, introduction to threads and streams and Java Collections. usually you should buy your own Minecraft version. If you don’t want to learn modding by yourself, it is easy to find some paid courses on the internet. Payment: Case 3. I have solid knowledge of Java Core, I am ready for my own game project Sure this case is not about complete newbies. At this point, we will tell you what a Java novice programmer who decided to create a game project should pay attention to. Do you have an idea for an indy cross platform or mobile project? Maybe you know how to create your very own version of the popular game? Well, what should you do if you know Java Core and nothing more about game development? Writing a game with raw Java is pretty tough perspective, but there are really interesting and useful frameworks and libraries to help you with your idea coming to life. What does the game consist of? Graphics Physics (the way of objects interaction in a game) AI (it is not represented in each game, but pretty often it is) GUI Sound OpenGL is a cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. In Java you can use OpenGL functions with some libraries — , (Java OpenGL) and (Lightweight Java Game Library). They all are cross platform, free and open source. The most popular is the last one, LWJGL. It is a core technology for many other game engines and libraries. LWJGL gives you access to the OpenGL graphics library and contains everything you need to create 2D and 3D games. LWJGL also supports the powerful cross-platform API for creating music and sound effects OpenAL, and supports OpenCL, a standard for cross-platform parallel programming. Java3D JOGL LWJGL is a LWJGL framework for cross-platform games. It contains a useful that allows you to create a game physics, many graphics classes, tools for working with audio. libGDX Box 2D engine libGDX consists of several modules, so you can use it to create AI-based characters, control light behavior, sound and physics. With libGDX and box2d you can develop games for different platforms, such as Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, MacOS and Web. You don’t need to recreate the code for each of them, write it once and it would be work on every system due to cross-platform. Therefore it is a good idea to learn libGDX for beginner Java game developer. What else? Game development is not a clear programming only. If you are planning to work with your project all by yourself, you should as well: Make some pixel art, textures, sprites of characters. You need an image editor for this. For example, or . Pinta Paint.Net Design level maps. To create a map, you need a tile set. You can create it in a graphic editor.To create a map from tiles you may use  a map editor . Tiled Create texture atlases. Texture atlas is one big image that contains all our sprites. Atlas definitely speeds up the development process. You may use  free for this task. Sprite Sheet Packer Create graphical interface. Use, for example, Overlap2D There are many good tutorials of working with libGDX. Here is a link on the . official one Conclusions Whether you will be a game developer or prefer the other branch of programming later, creating your own game is definitely great for your Java learning. Coding a game, you are involved in all processes of a typical software development project from the beginning to release. You see the results of your work and may demonstrate it to your friends or even publish it somewhere (Google Play, for example). Even if you are an absolute beginner, you can try to create a video game using some web tutorials and tools such as . CodeGym Game Section You may also try to create some modes of existing games and Minecraft (Java edition) together with is extremely good for this. Forge If you know Java Core well enough, framework is a good choice to learn and use for your first game project. libGDX Good luck with your games!

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Code a Java Game with (almost) Zero Coding Skills

One of my mentors in artificial intelligence( AI) always says that with modern machine learning technologies you can find almost any answer but the hard thing is to ask the right questions. That principle certainly applies to crypto-assets. As a new financial asset class, crypto-tokens are, more often than not, evaluated using traditional metrics based on price and volume but we can do so much more. In a data-rich universe where blockchains and exchange data generates billions of data points, we can certainly find all sorts of fascinating patterns and factors that explain behaviors in crypto-assets. The hard thing is to know what to look for. Who would you describe Ethereum? Based on the price? As a blockchain? Based on the decentralized applications(DApps) built on top of it? Understanding the behavior of crypto-assets starts by asking the right questions. A lot of our questions about crypto-assets are targeted to determine relationships with price movements (what else 😉 ) but the analysis could go so far beyond that. Very often, non-obvious correlations provide the greatest insights. A Lesson from Planes and War During World War II, the Pentagon assembled a team of the country’s most renown mathematicians in order to develop statistical models that could assist the allied troops during the war. The talent was astonishing. Frederick Mosteller, who would later found Harvard’s statistics department, was there. So was Leonard Jimmie Savage, the pioneer of decision theory and great advocate of the field that came to be called Bayesian statistics. Norbert Wiener, the MIT mathematician and the creator of cybernetics and Milton Friedman, future Nobel prize winner in economics were also part of the group. One of the first assignments of the group consisted of estimating the level of extra protection that should be added to US planes in order to survive the battles with the German air force. Like good statisticians, the team collected the damage caused to planes returning from encounters with the Nazis. For each plane, the mathematicians computed the number o bullet holes across different parts of the plane (doors, wings, motor, etc). The group then proceeded to make recommendations about which areas of the planes should have additional protection. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the recommendations focused on the areas with that had more bullet holes assuming that those were the areas targeted by the German planes. There was one exception in the group, a young statistician named who recommended to focus the extra protection in the areas that hadn’t shown any damage in the inventoried planes. Why? very simply, the young mathematician argued that the input data set( planes) only included planes that have survived the battles with the Germans. Although severe, the damage suffered by those planes was not catastrophic enough that they couldn’t return to base. therefore, he concluded that the planes that didn’t return were likely to have suffered impacts in other areas. Very clever huh? Abraham Wald What Wald’s story teaches us is that, no matter how sophisticated the mechanism for analyzing data, asking the wrong questions will get us nowhere. When comes to an unknown universe such as crypto-assets, that premise holds truer than ever. A Poor-Man’s Methodology for Asking the Right Questions About Crypto-Assets We know the price and “semi-fake” volume of any crypto-assets but what other factors do we need in order to understand the behavior of this new asset class? If we use price as the driving factor for most of our questions, then it is key to understand the types of relationships we can extrapolate between prices and other factors. At a high level, there are some characteristics about the relationships between two variables that are important. · When we see a factor that fluctuates similarly to price, we tend to assume that it can be use as a predictor or price movements. While many factors might have obvious correlations, that seldom means that there is a causal relationship between the two. Let’s take a time in the market in which the prices of gold and Bitcoin are both trending upwards. While the correlation might be useful to make headlines on CNBC or Bloomberg, it might be far from explaining a causal relationship between the two. A very simple explanation could be that higher levels of volatility in US equities is causing investors to move some of their positions to Gold while a deacceleration in the Chinese economy is increasing investments in Bitcoin. If the causal factors change, then the “apparent” correlation will disappear. Correlation vs. Causality: · When we think about relationships between price and other factors we visualize them as linear correlations that “co-move” together. However, some of the most fascinating patterns in financial asset investments are based polynomial, exponential and many other non-linear representations. For instance, a movement in the price of Bitcoin could be attribute to the expiration of many future contracts a few months down the road and an increase optimism in the guidance of tech companies during earnings season. Linear vs. Non-Linear: · We are constantly tempted to find a one-to-one correlation between a given factor and price. However, many price movements can be explained by complex linear and non-linear combinations of different factors that are far from obvious to the human eye. For instance, a price fluctuation in Bitcoin can be a combination of an increase in new investors joining the network and the fact that the price is moving in areas closer to the position of a large number of investors. Uni-Factor vs. Multi-Factor: Now that we understand the types of relationships we can extrapolate between price and other factors, we can start thinking about the type of relevant questions we can ask in order to understand the behavior of a crypto-asset. In our analysis, we believe that most of the relevant questions about crypto-assets can be grouped in five main categories: Financial Financial questions attempt to describe the financial behavior of an asset. Some non-trivial questions in this area: · Are investors making money or loosing money? · How up or down are investors in their respective positions? · Is the number of large transactions increasing or decreasing? · Is trading happen within new investor or historical investors? · ….. Network Crypto-assets operate in networks which dynamics are incredibly relevant to price movements. Relationships in crypto-networks describe growth patterns as well as unexpected movements of crypto-assets. Some relevant questions in this area: · How many addresses are capitulating? · Are new addresses joining the network? · …. Ownership Understanding counterparties has been an elusive goal of all financial asset classes but blockchains bring a unique dimension to this problem. For the first time in the history of finance, the behavior of individual investors is recorded in public ledgers. Some relevant questions related to ownership could be: · Is a crypto-asset over-concentrated? · Are large investors buying or selling? · Are minority investors buying or selling? · Are investors long-term or active-traders? · …. Behavioral Complementing the previous point, crypto-assets offer a wide canvas to understand the psychology of investors. While we can’t predict patterns for individual investors, there is enough information to extrapolate relevant trends at the token level. Some interesting question in this area: · Are token holders overly confident? · Do they follow trends? · Are they averse to loss and unlikely to liquidate their positions? · ….. Macro-Economic Regardless of the non-obvious correlations, crypto-assets are part of the broader financial markets and is influenced by marco-economic factors as other asset classes. Understanding the relationship between crypto-asset and macro-economic factors can generate questions such as the following: · Is money moving from Chinese equities into Bitcoin? · Are there visible correlations between micro-cap stocks such as the Rusell 2000 index and crypto-assets. · …. Understanding and predicting the behavior of crypto-assets is a fascinating and data-intensive exercise. As you start digging deeper into the behavior of crypto-assets you will confront a puzzling fact: asking the right questions is more important than getting the right answers.

Asking the Right Questions About Crypto Assets 

Full-stack development has been in the limelight in recent years. There has been a lot of talks surrounding the future scope of full-stack developers and how this position could change the business game for companies all across the globe. The rising demand for seamless technology has enabled developers to work on both back-end, front-end and many other related fields. Full-stack developers offer ample of benefits to organizations. They are well versed with different technologies and are capable of solving glitches across several streams of app and web development. Companies are explicitly hiring full-stack developers, who can create apps from scratch, and actively participate throughout the development journey of the application. Many people refer full-stack developers as “jack of all trades” and believe that they play a crucial role in today’s technological space. Contrarily, others continue to argue that it’s sort of a bygone technology with obsolete positions. But it wouldn’t be fair to make a decision based on assumptions and baseless claims, so let’s have a look at factual information which will explain the current status of full-stack developers. Role of a Full-Stack Developer A full-stack developer is a programmer who has the basic knowledge for all layers of an application. Each layer is made using a different technology needed to complete the development of an application, which is often termed as “stack”. Presentation Layer It is the front-end of an application, which contains every component that is accessible to the end-user. The is usually built by using programming languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and various JavaScript libraries such as Foundation, AngularJS, Backbone, Ember.js and React JS. presentation layer Logic Layer In an application, the is the back-end which involves all kinds of development that is not visible to the end-user. It can be accessed only if permitted by the developer. It revolves around core logic which is responsible for carrying out tasks in an application. Whether it is a simple click or an automatic pop-up, almost every task is defined from the back-end. Developers who work with back-end technology use programming languages like Java, PHP, .Net, Ruby and Python. logic layer Data Layer Often is also known as the “sub-group of the logic layer”. It deals with how data is created, modified, read, managed and deleted using databases like SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL. data layer Rising Demand For Full-Stack Developers Full-stack development has been here for a long time, so what's all this buzz about now? In the past, programmers who used to create software applications from beginning to the end were plainly known as “developers”. However, with the rising complexity in the nature of applications, intense code with versatile functionality and the need for packing everything good in one application has taken up the game of development much higher. With this continuous evolution, developers also had to learn a gamut of new technologies and adapt to them. One might think that this means developers had to learn how to build every component of an application from scratch, but as new technologies were introduced, so were numerous ready-made components and framework designed to simplify the process of software development. This gave rise to full-stack development and a significant boom to the software development industry. Businesses these days understand the value of full-stack development and thus, are constantly looking out for experienced and knowledgeable professionals who can fill in the position of a full-stack developer. For many companies, full-stack developers are an invaluable asset for their business. Full-stack development is growing widely popular as it is becoming a much sought-after technical role for many companies. Full-stack developers have a good command over multiple programming languages and can work with different frameworks as and when required according to the desired output. This versatility of diverse coding skills is what makes . full-stack developers so preferable Full-Stack Developer Is One Of The Most High-Paying Tech Jobs The average annual salary for a full-stack developer is nearly about $110,737 per year. Beginners are offered $58,000 per year, while experienced professionals can land up an annual package worth up to $188,253 per year. With the right skills and a solid background in the tech industry, you can also bag a high-paying job in the field of full-stack development. One of the reasons why companies are willing to pay such a high salary to full-stack developers is that they can now hire just one individual as a full-stack developer instead of hiring 2-3 average developers. This saves time, reduces cost and is highly efficient. Growth Opportunities The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates full-stack development employment to increase from 135,000 to over 853,000 by the year 2024. Further, to back up the argument, Indeed recently reported that the job of a full-stack developer stands strong at number 2 position according to their scores. For aspirants who are planning to enter into the tech industry and land up a good job, the role of a full-stack developer might just be the ideal option for them. Considering there is a wide scope of opportunities for full-stack developers, professionals can work across several verticals, ranging from startups to giant tech organizations to public agencies and industries. Full-stack developers offer the perfect blend of front-end and back-end skills that are needed to create and manage an application. Whether it is laying out the foundational unit for a web application or handling the back-end server management or deploying frequent and better updates on the client-side, a full-stack developer can handle all the tasks without any hassle. Pros and Cons of Full-Stack Developers It’s clear that there is a huge demand of full-stack developers and companies are gladly offering high salaries to those who are qualified, but what may not be clear is the pros and cons of full-stack developers as compared to developers who specialize in a particular programming language. Identifying if it’s the right job for you Technology is progressing rapidly and companies are using a whole set of different technologies now, as compared to the ones they used to prefer a decade back. Now, because full-stack developers are required to have a wide range of skills, they gradually adapt to fast-paced technologies and become quick learners. They can stay at the forefront of changing technology and use any technology that is in demand at the moment. Full-stack developers have a good command over all the layers of an application, this enables them to create a functional prototype without any help from the outside. Startups and small scale organizations value the versatility that full-stack developers bring. Organizations can reduce their overhead and keep it minimal, as full-stack developers are well versed with several technologies and are able to jump from one part of the product to another. But it is impossible for even full-stack developers to learn and be an expert in every technology that comes forth. According to Gladwell's 10,000 Hour Rule, it takes about 20 hours of work per week for 10 years or 10,000 hours of intensely focused practice to become an expert of world-level in any field. If you do the calculation, you would realize that full-stack development is no cakewalk. Full-stack developers have to adjust and make certain compromises as they can not embrace every other technology that launches in the market. For full stack developers working on Mac operating system, things sometimes get challenging compared to the Linux counterpart. Locating library folder or a file path is one of the few factors that slow down overall process. Yes, are that offers versatility but it still is nowhere flexible as Linux or even Windows. there file manager for mac OS Takeaway Full-stack developer is an in-demand tech job in 2019 and there’s no doubt about it. Companies value their full-stack developers and consider them a valuable asset to the organization. Though they are highly versatile and are paid good salaries, they are also needed to stay abreast with the changing technologies and adapt quickly. If you love constant changes and accept challenging tasks that come your way, full-stack development might be the best career path for you.

Oracle

2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Regulation

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Regulation

Full Stack Developer is 2019's Popular In Demand Tech Job 

Image credit: Unsplash Why are search engine contextual ads killing online business, how are businesses across different industries responding, and what new or existing solutions can be used to stop the bidding arms race? I had the opportunity to sit down and talk about these issues in greater detail with Tatiana Buyanova, a head of business development at , the biggest affiliate network for companies involved in the travel business. Travelpayouts Your network unites dozens of companies with millions of customers. This provides you with a view of current online business trends. What are they? One of the top trends right now is the rapid development of businesses connected to experiences. In the travel industry these are tours, excursions, everything that allows you to enrich your experience from the trip and get new knowledge or emotions. This is actively moving online, and demand is huge! Another notable trend affects how companies compete for new customers. The travel market has relatively low margins, while competition is intense. This leads to the steady growth in marketing spending. For example, companies like Airbnb or Booking.com are paying more and more to attract new customers each year. Social platforms are no way better in this sense, as they use the same bidding model for advertising. Companies are forced to search for new marketing channels that may provide cost-effective customer acquisition solutions and offer low inflation of the cost over time. Affiliate marketing is one such channel that works well as there is no bidding and there is the opportunity to serve more loyal users that search engines can usually provide. The third trend we observe from our side is the fall of  so-called ‘influencer’ marketing. Not too long ago, every Instagram blogger with a few dozen subscribers could declare himself or herself an influencer, approach a brand, and ask for free services in exchange for a post. Now companies are less likely to use this channel due to its inefficiency and the complexity of the ROI calculation. In the CPA model, the business pays for a completed action, like purchase or completed form. Such an approach better suits  companies as they tend to work only with those influencers who can join their affiliate program and provide relevant high-conversion traffic to earn money. So, affiliate marketing is not just something gambling or adult projects can effectively use? Not at all. Even more so, nowadays, affiliate marketing is turning into fuel for the entire internet. It perfectly suits a performance-based approach to marketing, which businesses have been actively looking for for years. Also, as there are more and more affiliate networks to join, the process of getting up and running is simplified. Nowadays, affiliates do not have to even create a website. They can just use links, or whatever their network has to offer, and start acquiring leads and earning money with a profile on their favorite social network. For end-users, it is also good, as they cannot be sold as anonymized traffic. Instead, websites participating in different affiliate programs now aim at delivering high-quality content to explain why people should take advantage of a particular offer. There is no need to trick users as the affiliate program participant won't get paid for traffic that is never converted. How do you participate in these trends? I lead the Travelpayouts project business development team. We run a travel affiliate network, not an affiliate program. This means we work not only with the products, services, and offers of our parent company (an airfare search engine called ) but also with other companies' offers. The critical factor is that all these offers relate to the travel industry: from airplane tickets or hotels to sightseeing gigs, hotel transfers, or insurance. Aviasales So, our affiliates are content projects (websites, communities, etc.) dedicated solely to any kind of travel. This means our network unites both travel blogs and "professional" websites, say, owned by airports, or other big companies that can work with travellers like mobile networks or even banks. Is there any travel-related specifics for affiliate marketing, or does this channel work in a somewhat similar way for any industry? Yes, there are some specific points you need to know before diving into affiliate marketing as a website/community owner or a brand. First of all, travel requires a lot of effort and resources from an end customer. You need to plan everything, book tickets, stay somewhere, think about transfers, manage your finances, negotiate days off at work. And, eventually, pay a lot of money to implement everything you've planned. Everything is much more complicated than in e-commerce or another niche. Also, competition in the travel industry is very high. All these factors lead to the extension of a so-called conversion window, i.e., a time a person needs to go through the conversion funnel from the "just searching" stage to purchase. At the same time, commissions on this market are lower than in, say, e-commerce or finance. Not everyone can successfully work with traffic in such conditions. You have to be passionate about travel and run a project with a like-minded audience to persuade them to buy, therefore earning your commission. Also, you should be willing to learn something new, and experiment with your community and traffic. To boost this process, we publish lots of educational materials covering the basics and advanced affiliate marketing tactics. What should you expect when you start working with affiliate marketing? What are the common errors here? Well, first of all, as an affiliate you have to run some numbers to understand the market share, what partners you're comfortable working with, what end customers need, how marketing offers are usually delivered right now, and so on. A common mistake here is thinking that once you've got into an affiliate network like ours, you're done. Nope, nothing happens from scratch, the main job is still to be done. You need to learn new stuff about the product/service you're promoting, prepare marketing materials, think about engaging your audience while monetizing it smartly. For example, we teach our affiliates everything: what offers to promote, when it is better to use an affiliate form vs. link when to publish specific content; we even provide them with drafts of the content they can start with. As a network, we serve as a mediator, teaching affiliates how to earn, and showing advertisers best practices for brand promotion. What is your onboarding process for new partners and advertisers? We have a particular process for the introduction of a new advertiser into our network. We create an email newsletter and a blog post describing the essential products and services the company has to offer and explaining why they are worthy of attention. Such information allows our affiliates to understand why they should work with this partner, whether it suits their profile, etc. Also, we have a webinar platform which we invite our advertisers to, so that affiliates can ask their questions directly. Another thing to encourage affiliates to join the new advertiser is a dedicated marketing campaign. For example, right now, we are holding a competition among affiliates which is sponsored by several partners. They provide prizes like Mac laptops or trips and money (up to ~ $15k in total). These methods combined allow making onboarding quicker and more effective. What measurement metrics do you use to ensure everything is working correctly? Affiliate marketing is a performance-based channel, so the top metrics are revenues, conversions, bounce, and shopping cart abandonment rates. All these mean you will be into tracking, ROI calculation, A/B testing, and so on. The CPA model is much less prone to manipulation than CPC. However, there will still be attempts to trick the system. To avoid potential losses, you have to monitor unusual activity in the network, examine traffic spikes, analyze why there were a lot of orders that were later canceled, and so on. Also, to build a really successful affiliate program or network, you need to build long-lasting relationships with your affiliates. So, you should ensure they are paid regularly and are happy with all the available options. Also, you should make sure that the sales tracking is working smoothly and no data is lost (especially on purchases!) For example, we at Travelpayouts have guaranteed payments dates. This means that, even if we have not yet obtained payment from a partner, but our system has checked the conversions for a particular affiliate, he or she will still get paid on schedule anyway. Finally, based on your stats, what does a successful affiliate program participant look like nowadays? It is hard to describe the average person or project. Affiliate marketing consists of multiple pieces. Someone runs a website, another person is into mobile apps: you can't forget about communities built on top of existing platforms like social networks. All these resources have different mechanics, technologies, audience etc. The main thing all these successful affiliates have in common is an enormous passion for what they are doing: their industry. Also, it is the readiness to invest effort and resources in content creation for several months at least before the real profit pops up. According to our stats, a first-time affiliate on average can expect first payments in 50-60 days. The amount of money at the beginning is usually not that high, so to make a living from an affiliate program, you need to spend a lot of time and resources. But this is totally possible, as we have affiliates earning $3k, $5k, and even $10k monthly.

AirBnB

2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Communication

2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Future

2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Infrastructure

2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Low Code

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Future

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Infrastructure

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Communication

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Low Code

[Interview] How Affiliate Marketing Is Saving Online Business

Have you ever wondered how much money a game developer makes? After all, the gaming industry is huge - it was valued at in revenue in 2019. Almost people from all over the world play video games. Game developers should be praised for these astonishing numbers, because they were the ones who made it happen by spending countless hours on development. But do they get rewarded for their hard work? Not at all. $151.9 billion 2.5 billion The sad truth is that the only people making money in the gaming industry are the large gaming companies and the platforms that distribute the games - Steam, the App Store, and Google Play. But right now, let’s take a closer look at Steam’s numbers. According to the official numbers, there were released on Steam in 2018. That’s an average of 25 games per day! It’s obvious that there must be some tools you can use to promote your game and make it stand out, right? Nope. Steam doesn’t offer any advertisement tools. You just release the game and Steam gets its cut, that’s it. So is there any alternative? 9,050 games Source: broadbandsearch.net We’ve already seen platforms like and trying to get a cut from Steam’s monopoly but, despite being around for a while, they are not even close to its current player base. That’s why we’ve decided to look into more different approaches from a technical standpoint. For example, blockchain as the underlying technology allows to lower costs for all market participants and to offer new and interesting ways to reward players and developers alike. Right now, there are several platforms that are taking advantage of blockchain’s benefits, such as , , or . Epic Games store GOG Ultra The Abyss Robot Cache In the hope to understand if blockchain could become a real competitor to Steam, in this article we've decided to stick with the EOS-based Ultra platform, as The Abyss and Robot Cache are more limited in options since they are niche projects: one aimed to MMO games, while the other comes as a solution to resell used games, respectively, but neither of which aim to be a direct competitor to Steam. Ultra, however, claims to become an enhanced Steam. With our research skills and reaching out to their team to get some questions answered, here’s our conclusion on whether using blockchain for game distribution benefits developers or not. The lifecycle of a game To develop a game, you don’t need anything other than a computer and your own skills. Maybe you'll need help from other people; for example, you may need artwork or character designs created by an artist, but let's suppose you do everything on your own. The problem is that you still have to pay the bills (like rent and electricity) while you're developing it. The of living in the USA is $20,194 per person per year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (yes, we also suppose that you're living in the US, but this number can be lower or higher depending on where you’re from). Now, a very important metric is how long it takes to develop a game. average cost Brian Clarke, of a AAA games, Warhammer Online terrain architect, and former Disney lead artist, has gone the route of developing independent games. He released a game called The Subject that took him to develop. It takes seven months for an experienced developer, but it can be a lot slower or a bit faster, ranging from for super casual games to one year, if not more. Even for bigger teams, development can take as long as , as is the case of the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. a former developer seven months 2 months 7 years Anyway, even if you develop your game for one year, you still have to cover thousands of dollars in expenses and you don't have any income yet. It’s okay if you have some savings, otherwise you might find yourself in the situation of desperately needing a job. It may help a lot, given that an average salary in the industry is higher than , but you’ll have less time to work on your game, thus taking you even longer before getting any income from your constant work. $50,000 The game is ready... now what? To launch a game, you have to pay to add it to Steam. It requires a $100 fee that will be returned if your game makes $1,000 (that would mean that Steam already made $300 on their 30% cut). As you can remember, there's another option - publishing your game on an alternative platform. It will cost nothing to publish the game on Ultra, which is handy, given that you still haven't made any money so far. paying Source: partner.steamgames.com Nowadays, it’s easier to publish the game than it was five years ago, as Steam opened its doors to all kinds of games, even ones. This inevitably resulted in Steam being too crowded; there’s plenty of low-quality games, but Steam gets its 30% cut from all of them regardless of if they even get a chance to be bought. We’re talking about chances because there’s hardly any marketing tools available on the platform, and many games don’t get any attention at all. controversial In an titled “Your indie game will flop and you will lose money,” the founder of talks about the chances of getting any coverage on gaming websites. He had 36 years of coding experience, shipped over a dozen games, several of which made millions of dollars, got into indie development very early, knew a lot of industry people, and had a relatively high public profile. And still, almost no one covered his latest game (in terms of gaming websites). article Positech Games Cliff Ski Marketing is very expensive nowadays. It can cost you around for branding, creating trailers, building social networks, a website, and doing public promotions. Other sources that a small game requires anywhere from €10,000 up to €80,000 spent on marketing in Europe. Keep in mind that you need to pay this money out of your pocket while you’re already paying your other expenses. What if you don’t have this kind of marketing money? $50,000 say That’s why, contrary to Steam, chooses to offer effective marketing tools to promote games. It has the ad toolbox that allows to target various users that might be interested in the game. Ultra More marketing, more sales, more money, right? On Steam, payouts may take up to 30 days. According to their official : “We payout by the 30th of the month following sales. For example, we will pay you for calendar February month sales by March 30th.” A very delayed salary. At the same time, the platform gets its share faster, right after processing the payment from the user. That doesn't seem even remotely fair. FAQ Ultra comes with instant payout for sold copies. Developers receive their portion of each transaction the moment the transaction occurs. Only 10% of the revenue is reserved for refunds, but this money also gets released after two months. This also allows developers to double down on that “more marketing” and drive sales momentum at launch by reinvesting in their campaigns directly from sales – all in real time. The fact of the matter is that to get money, you have to make sales. But here comes the most interesting part; how much money can you make after all this hard work? Steam gets its cut, but that doesn’t mean you’re making money Mike Rose, the indie publisher behind the downhill biking game , that in February 2018 around 850 games launched on Steam. That’s about 40 a day. About 82% of those didn’t even make American minimum wage. The money that came out of 82% of the games that came out on Steam would not support a single person’s expenses. Descenders says According to Rose's estimates of sales on Steam, once he removes games he thinks never had a chance of selling at all, the average game on Steam will sell about 2,000 copies and make $12,500 in revenue in its first month. The average game will make $30,000 in its first year. Let’s remove the 30% that Steam takes - that leaves us with only $21,000. If we cut taxes, that leaves us with a very grim, uninspiring number. Cliff Ski, who wrote the previous flop article, has an even worse estimation. The top indie game on Steam he looked at had over 3,500 owners, its top price at $9.99, and it’s been out for 9 months. The maximum conceivable income is $20,979 to the developer. That’s the revenue for the top indie game. Don’t forget to cut those 30% (Steam doesn’t forget it too). Only $14,685 is left, minus taxes. Brian Clarke, the developer of The Subject, $5,071 as revenue in the first four months, and after all cuts there was only $2,915 left in his pocket. Not that much for 7 months of work, right? earned Source: youtube.com/channel/UCLW3-wJ5le91XDe9iGTrpzQ Recently, Steam its fee policy. It takes 30% only from the first $10 million in sales. For all sales between $10 million and $50 million, the split goes to 25%. For every sale after the initial $50 million, Steam takes just a 20% cut. As we already know, an indie game won’t make it past $10 million, right? This policy is beneficiary for AAA games only; it doesn’t make any difference for small developers. There should be a change to let smaller developers make more.  As Mike Rose said, “I do think in the next couple years there's gotta be space for [another platform].” changed Well, here it is, the Ultra platform. They only take a 15% fee, and that means that any developer will be able to make 21% more just by listing their game on Ultra instead of Steam. Also, don’t forget about all the marketing tools and the instant payout. When you get no help from Steam, why stick with it? Placing your game on Ultra seems more like a win-win deal. It rewards developers fairly, it offers the same features, and it also rewards players with Ultra Coins, the native token on the platform, for all kinds of activities. Playing and streaming, watching ads, writing game reviews - all these actions get rewarded. Ultra could achieve Steam’s player base in no time. Large partnerships are on the way and with each collaboration millions of players are going to try it. Don’t you think that its unique rewards would incentivize players to stay? The long road ahead The gaming market has grown quickly. Even the largest platform, Steam, has only of the sales revenue of the industry. At the same time, only of gamers use their Steam account for playing and that number is decreasing. There’s a lot of room to grow for any decent gaming platform, and a new platform might take its share of the market quickly. 14% 31% Source: twitter.com/Steam_Spy The most important thing is providing developers with the opportunity to receive their fair share of their hard-earned money and providing them with the tools to promote games without feeling that they work for an evil corporation that mistreats them. Let’s not demonize Steam here, as they also do their job of providing people with a platform for entertainment, but Ultra shows us that there might be an alternative for developers to earn more. Let’s hope for the best!

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive July 25th, 2019

@ElimamEmam

@rafaelcpalmeidaRafael Almeida

@brianwallaceBrian Wallace

@priyapanwarpriyapanwar

@jinglesHong Jing (Jingles)

@tanyatopaltanyatopal

@MartinSophia

@dana-kozubskaNazar

@noprofilenoprofile

@R-SharmaRia Jaya Sharma

@cyberguyesqDrew Rossow

@AshishSharma31Aashish Sharma

@byrroRenato Byrro

@faizan4itFaizan Raza

@andres-phillipsAndres Phillips

@patrickleetPatrick Lee Scott

@AlexandraKarpovaAlexandra Karpova

@johnnythecoderJohnny

@jrodthoughtsJesus Rodriguez

@sammy.exodusRomi K.

@alexlashAlex Lashkov

@noprofilenoprofile

@Elimam
Emam

@rafaelcpalmeida
Rafael Almeida

@brianwallace
Brian Wallace

@priyapanwar
priyapanwar

@jingles
Hong Jing (Jingles)

@tanyatopal
tanyatopal

@Martin
Sophia

@dana-kozubska
Nazar

@noprofile
noprofile

@R-Sharma
Ria Jaya Sharma

@cyberguyesq
Drew Rossow

@AshishSharma31
Aashish Sharma

@byrro
Renato Byrro

@faizan4it
Faizan Raza

@andres-phillips
Andres Phillips

@patrickleet
Patrick Lee Scott

@AlexandraKarpova
Alexandra Karpova

@johnnythecoder
Johnny

@jrodthoughts
Jesus Rodriguez

@sammy.exodus
Romi K.

@alexlash
Alex Lashkov

@noprofile
noprofile