I have always been fascinated with one’s ability to create or recreate. Software development for gives me a way to translate my imaginations into useful tangible things. The feeling I get after going through challenges to figure out how to put my ideas together, is incomparable. Full-stack development is the combination of both front-end technologies and back-end technologies to create a fully functional application. In this tutorial, we are going to combine front-end technology called React and Redux with a back-end technology called Rails to create a simple sign-up system. Note: This is an advanced topic, basic to intermediate knowledge in React Redux and Ruby on rails is a prerequisite for this tutorial. Visit this link for React tutorial , for Redux tutorial and rails tutorial . In summary, React is a declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It lets you compose complex UIs from small and isolated pieces of code called “components”. Each component may have data specific to it called or data from other components as or it may not have data at all. Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript apps. On the other hand, Rails is just a back-end technology for persisting data. state props Let us build a simple signup system with the three technologies mentioned above. In this tutorial, we will create a react API that communicates with rails API to perform sign up. Our Sign up UI will be a form with the following fields ( , and ). username email , password, image Steps for setting up Front-end Let’s start by creating a sign-up page. Create action creators and reducers to update the redux state Send user data to the back-end for persistence with Axios. Steps for setting up Back-end Create your rails API Create a DB for API Create a user table and model Migrate table Create a users_controller to handle data persistence Front-end implementation Create react app make sure you have node install and create a react project with the command below npx create-react-app signup This command will generate your basic react-app that you can start building your application on. Create the UI for sign up create a file to house your sign-up component .ie ./src/SignUp.js create a react class component inside the SignUp.js The sign-up component at this moment is going to be a basic react application that renders a form and has event handlers to track the changes in the state of each input field. React, { Component } ; { (props) { (props); .state = { : , : , : , : ,
		};
	}

	handleUsernameChange = { .setState({ : e.target.value,
		});
	}

	handleEmailChange = { .setState({ : e.target.value,
		});
	}

	handlePasswordChange = { .setState({ : e.target.value,
		});
	}

	handleAvatarChange = { .setState({ : e.target.files[ ],
		});
	}

render() { ( <h1>{message}</h1> <input
          onChange={this.handleUsernameChange}
          type="text"
          name="username"
          placeholder="Username"
          required
          />

        <input
          onChange={this.handleEmailChange}
          type="email"
          name="email"
          placeholder="Email"
          required
        />
          
        <input
          onChange={this.handlePasswordChange}
          type="password"
          name="password"
          placeholder="Password"
          required
			/>
			
        <input
          onChange={this.handleAvatarChange}
          type="file"
          accept="/images/*"
        />      
        <button type="submit">
          Create Account
        </button>
    </form>
		);
	}
}
export default Signup; import from 'react' class Signup extends Component constructor super this username '' email '' password '' picture '' ( ) => e this username ( ) => e this email ( ) => e this password ( ) => e this picture 0 return < = > form onSubmit {this.onSubmitHandler} Connect sign-up component to Redux Bind React to Redux by  issuing the command below, then import and  use the method from library to bind React component(sign-up component) to Redux connect react-redux npm i react-redux import inside the connect SignUp.js. import { connect } from 'react-redux'; with this set up we can now or after your Redux store is set up mapStateToProps mapDispatchToProps, . At this point we have to set up Redux action and Redux reducers to be able to either or In other words, read from the Redux store or send data to the Redux store. Inside the the Redux action we will dispatch a function to our reducer as we also persist data to our back-end  Rails Api with . let us install axios for enable us use axios. mapStateToProps mapDispatchToProps. axios npm i axios read more on axios from the axios documentation Let create these files inside now we implement the Redux actions as ./src/redux/action.js, ./src/redux/reducer.js, axios ; CREATE_USER = ; CREATE_USER_ERROR = ; createUser = (dispatch) => { {
		dispatch({ : CREATE_USER, ...newUser }); response = axios({ : , : , : { : newUser }, : ,
		}); { token } = response.data;
		localStorage.setItem( , token);	
	} {
		dispatch({ : CREATE_USER_ERROR });
	}
}; { createUser } import from 'axios' const 'CREATE_USER' const 'CREATE_USER_ERROR' const => newUser async try type const await method 'POST' url 'Api route for posting data to database' data user crossdomain true const 'jwt' catch type export The createUser method is going to send data to our rails API and wait for a response. I also sends data to update the Redux store. We are going to configure our API to return some data that would contain information about whether our request from the front end to sign-up a user was successful or not. Json If successful, we will login the user right after successful signup and maintain a session for the user. To maintain a session for user, we store the token generated from the back-end response(returned as part of our positive response) inside . This is handled in these lines localStorage const { token } = response.data; localStorage.setItem('jwt', token); we are storing tho token in the localstorage hash on the key 'jwt' Now we have to create our reducer for the CREATE_USER and CREATE_USER_ERROR initialState = { : , : { : , : , : , : ,
	}
}; authReducer = { (action.type) { : {
			...state.user, : , : { : action.username, : action.email, : action.password, : action.picture,
			},
		}; : { : ,
		}; : state;
	}
}; authReducer; const isLogin false user username '' email '' password '' picture '' const ( ) => state = initialState, action switch case 'CREATE_USER' return isLogin true user username email password picture case 'CREATE_USER_ERROR' return isLogin false default return export default CREATE_USER_ERROR is dispatched when a negative response is returned from our server. With this in place we almost good to go. But there would be two problems if we try to signup a user. we need to properly handle the picture attribute and set up redux-thunk middleware since we are dispatching a function in our createUser action creator. To handle our image upload, we will store our image to cloudinary and copy the path of the image in cloudinary to our database. storing images directly into the server is not recommended. you it is good to use third parties such amazon s3, cloudinary, etc... for this we will update our S to include ignUp.js handleImageUpload() and onSubmitHandler(). will be responsible for storing the image file selected to cloudinary and return the URL reference of that image. This URL reference is then sent as part of data dispatch to redux and the rails back-end. handleImageUpload() this method on the other hand will be responsible for sending data to our action creator. We shall import the action creator method, and passed data to from the form to to be update the redux store and send data to the rails API. In this app will mapped to , hence we will reference create user as . onSubmitHandler(), createUser createUser({sign up state data}) createUser newUser NewUser mapDispatchToProps= ({ : newUser
}) => dispatch createUser we destructure state data and get the URL reference, pass it as an argument to newUser, for dispatch. {username, email, password,picture}= .state newUser({username,email,password,picture}) const this //get image path, from handleImageUpload Check below for full implementation. handleImageUpload = (imageFile) => { formData = FormData();
		formData.append( , imageFile);
		formData.append( , ); response = axios({ : , : , : formData,
		}); response.data.secure_url;
	}

	onSubmitHandler = (e) => {
		e.preventDefault(); {username, email, password } = .state; { picture } = .state; { newUser, user } = .props; imgPath = .handleImageUpload(picture);
		picture = imgPath; newUser({username, email, password, picture}); (user.isLogin === ) { { history } = .props;
			history.push( );
		} { .setState(
				{ : ,
				},
			);
		}
	} async const new 'file' 'upload_preset' 'avatar' const await url 'your cloudinary api url' method 'POST' data return async const this let this const this const await this await if true const this '/' else this message 'welcome' with this in place we can and to dispatch our data to redux, and read data from the store. Check below. mapDispatchToProps() mapStateToProps() mapStateToProps = ({ : state.user,
}); mapDispatchToProps = ({ : dispatch(createUser(estate)),
});
Signup.propTypes = { : PropTypes.func.isRequired, : PropTypes.object.isRequired, : PropTypes.func.isRequired
}; connect(mapStateToProps, mapDispatchToProps)(Signup); const => state user const => dispatch newUser => estate newUser user history export default our resultant code will become like this SignUp.js React, { Component } ; { connect } ; { Link } ; PropTypes ; axios ; { createUser } ; { (props) { (props); .state = { : , : , : , : , : ,
		};
	}

	handleUsernameChange = { .setState({ : e.target.value,
		});
	}

	handleEmailChange = { .setState({ : e.target.value,
		});
	}

	handlePasswordChange = { .setState({ : e.target.value,
		});
	}

	handleAvatarChange = (e) => { .setState({ : e.target.files[ ],
		});
	}

	handleImageUpload = (imageFile) => { formData = FormData();
		formData.append( , imageFile);
		formData.append( , ); axios.defaults.headers.common.Authorization; response = axios({ : , : , : formData,
		}); response.data.secure_url;
	}

	onSubmitHandler = (e) => {
		e.preventDefault(); {
			username, email, password,
		} = .state; { picture } = .state; { newUser, user } = .props; imgPath = .handleImageUpload(picture);
		picture = imgPath; newUser({
			username, email, password, picture,
		}); (user.isLogin === ) { { history } = .props;
			history.push( );
		} { .setState(
				{ : ,
				},
			);
		}
	}

render() { { message } = .state; ( <h1>{message}</h1> <input onChange={this.handleUsernameChange} type="text" required />
			<input onChange={this.handleEmailChange} type="email" required />
			<input onChange={this.handlePasswordChange} type="password" required />
			<input onChange={this.handleAvatarChange} type="file" accept="/images/*" />
      <Link to="/login">login</Link>
			<button type="submit">Create Account</button>
		</form>
		);
	}
}
const mapStateToProps = state => ({
	user: state.user,
});
const mapDispatchToProps = dispatch => ({
	newUser: estate => dispatch(createUser(estate)),
});
Signup.propTypes = {
	newUser: PropTypes.func.isRequired,
	user: PropTypes.object.isRequired,
	history: PropTypes.object.isRequired,
};
export default connect(mapStateToProps, mapDispatchToProps)(Signup); import from 'react' import from 'react-redux' import from 'react-router-dom' import from 'prop-types' import from 'axios' import from '../../redux/actions/authAction' class Signup extends Component constructor super this username '' email '' password '' picture '' message '' ( ) => e this username ( ) => e this email ( ) => e this password async this picture 0 async const new 'file' 'upload_preset' 'avatar' delete const await url 'your cloudinary api url' method 'POST' data return async const this let this const this const await this await if true const this '/' else this message 'welcome' const this return < = > form onSubmit {this.onSubmitHandler} let us create a store and add to allows us to write action creators that return a function instead of an action. move to index.js and set it up like this. redux-thunk middleware React ; ReactDOM ; { createStore, applyMiddleware } ; { Provider } ; thunk ; rootReducer ; App ; initialState = { : { : , : { : , : , : , : ,
		},
	},
}; store = createStore(rootReducer, initialState, applyMiddleware(thunk));
ReactDOM.render( <App /> , .getElementById( ),
); import from 'react' import from 'react-dom' import from 'redux' import from 'react-redux' import from 'redux-thunk' import from './redux/reducers/index' import from './component/App' const user isLogin false newuser username '' email '' password '' picture '' const < = > Provider store {store} </ > Provider document 'root' now our front-end is ready, we can now focus on the back-end Create rails Api rails new backend --api --database=postgresql -T rails g model User username:string email:string password:string picture:string rails db:migrate Now we include and in gemfile. jwt gem rack-cors gem then we run in console. bundle install configure cors to accept request from a source of your choice. Cors setting determines which domain should your api grant access to. read more on we will configure our cors to accept request from all domain source by setting rack-cor gem origin '*'  in config/application.rb Rails.application.config.middleware.insert_before , Rack::Cors allow origins resource , , %i[get post put patch delete options head] 0 do do '*' '*' headers: :any methods: end end we are going to skip testing and also ignore validations. We are going to focus on the controller and its actions. Let create a controller for our user model rails g controller users we will new a create action to create a user, inside our users_controller.rb we create a create method with this code. = User.new(user_params) new_user.save
      token = JsonWebToken.encode(user_id: new_user.id)
      time = Time.now + hours.to_i
      render json: { : token, : time }, : :ok head(:unprocessable_entity)
    end
  end

  private

  def user_params
    params.require(:user).permit(
      :username,
      :email,
      :country,
      :password,
      :picture
    )
  end
end < class UsersController ApplicationController def create new_user if 24. token time status else create user method accept parameters and save it to database. Then get the user's id, encrypt the id with and add a time stamp to the encrypted user_id. The time stamp determines the time of expiry of the token, in this case, it expires after 24hrs. This means a user's session will be destroyed after 24hrs from sign up. jwt gem we can now set up our route inside config/route.rb resources :users, only: %i[create] Get front end to communicate with back-end run rails routes in console to view the url for your api. In this case our requests is going to be made on post backend_domain_name/users Conclusion Now we will be able to save a users information inside our rails back-end with these steps and returned a token to maintain a session. A similar result can be used for sign in just that for signing in the instead of saving we compare email and password to check if they exist then we create a token that would be used by user maintain a session. Note this token are sent as part of the response to our the front end. The session handling is then than in the front end.

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How to Develop a Signup system with React, Redux, and Rails

Does your content generate more yawns than leads? Is your content just another copy of 100 similar articles clogging up the search engines? Hopefully not, but even if you think your content has an impact, there is always room for improvement. Are sales or web traffic down? Boring content could be to blame Nobody reads boring content. Data collected by Chartbeat shows that most readers only scroll halfway through stories on Slate.com. . The takeaway? If your content doesn’t grab a reader’s attention by the fourth paragraph, it’s boring. Boring content repels readers and deters sales. The good news is you can revive bored readers by launching a highly targeted content marketing strategy. That’s about four paragraphs Content marketing isn’t supposed to be snooze-worthy Your content should inform, entertain, or inspire readers to take an action. If you’re pumping out generic content on a frantic schedule just to meet arbitrary deadlines, your readers are probably bouncing fast. A targeted content marketing strategy will slay your bounce rate and start generating leads and sales. All you need to do is create irresistible, interesting content. If you’re new to content marketing you might be wondering how to come up with interesting topics and align your content with your brand. We published a that answers these (and other) pressing questions. content marketing guide In a nutshell, you need to figure out what’s not being addressed in your industry and write about those issues in a way that adds value to your readers’ lives. For instance, say you’re a plumber. Some of your readers might be homeowners who don’t know using commercial drain cleaner can destroy their pipes. Write an article explaining why drain cleaners are bad for pipes, translate the damage into dollars, and explain how to prevent clogs in the first place. Add a twist to standard topics General topics are easy to come up with, but . For example, if you’re a dog trainer it’s easy to create a training guide titled Teach Your Dog to Sit. It sounds like a good piece of content, but it’s actually quite boring. Thousands of similar guides already exist. Unless yours stands out, you won’t capture much interest. to capture attention you need to get specific What would be interesting is a guide titled . Now you’re speaking to dog owners with stubborn, independent, and distracted dogs. You’re going to capture their attention with your title and if you can deliver on the content, they’ll be more likely to heed your call-to-action at the end. Train Your Dog to Stop in Their Tracks and Sit Without Saying a Word Share content you should be charging for One of the best ways to capture your readers’ attention is to share content you should be charging for. By sharing information you’d normally charge for, you’re not only giving readers a special deal, but you’re earning their trust at the same time. When a reader recognizes the value you’re giving away, that automatically makes your content more interesting. They may not be on the edge of their seat eager to know all the secrets to negotiating a 75% commission for affiliate products. However, since it’s free information they know should cost money, they’ll read it anyway. They might even sign up for your newsletter in hopes that you’ll share even more information. Create subheadings to make your content skimmable Statistics show that 81% of website visitors and don’t read until they find a heading that stands out. Make the most of your headings within each piece of content. Consider that your headings might be the only text some visitors read. scan articles for subheadings Create your subheadings knowing readers will skim your content. Try to make all subheadings informative, but also interesting. If any of your content is highly important, use attention-grabbing subheadings to ensure skimmers take note. A marketing agency can help make your content engaging If you’re struggling with traffic, leads, or sales, a professional content marketing campaign will help. While it’s possible to manage your own content marketing campaign, it’s easier to let the pros handle it. By working with a content marketing agency, you won’t need to create all of your own content. You’ll need to come up with basic ideas for the kind of content you’d like written, but the agency will handle all of the writing and distribution. Most of all, content marketing agencies know exactly how to write engaging content that people want to read. If you want engaging content that generates sales and leads, consider and working with professionals; it’s what all the top businesses are doing. performing an audit

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While working on a recent project, I realized that heavy processes for python like scrapping could be made easier though python's The documentation and community engaging in multiprocessing is fairly sparse, so I wanted to share some of my learnings through an example project of scrapping the . Below I wrote a bit of code that pulls all of the available pokémon while minding the API's 100 calls per 60 second limits. You'll see that the iteration is fairly slow as there are 964 pokémon the API returns. multiprocessing library. PokéAPI Before Multiprocessing I simily create three calls , , and . The first, , simply returns all the url's from the api for the next process, , to iterate over the urls and pull the information together by using to pull each URL's response data. get_number_pokemon get_pokemon get_all_pokemon get_number_pokemon get_all_pokemon get_pokemon requests req timeit time pandas pd IPython.display Image, HTML random tqdm tqdm ratelimit limits, sleep_and_retry response = req.get(url) response.status_code == : response.status_code != :
        print( , status_code, url) Exception( .format(response.status_code)) response


API_POKEMON = res = req.get(API_POKEMON.format(pokemon= ))
    number_pokemon = res.json()[ ]
    res_url = call_api(API_POKEMON.format(pokemon= .format(limit=str(number_pokemon))))
    pokemon_links_values = [link[ ] link res_url.json()[ ]] pokemon_links_values info = resolved = : resolved:
            

            res = tooManyCalls = :
                res = call_api(link) res == :
                    resolved = Exception e:
                print(e) e == :
                    tooManyCalls = tooManyCalls:
                time.sleep( ) res.status_code < :

                pokemon_info = res.json()

                info = { : pokemon_info[ ][ ], : pokemon_info[ ], : pokemon_info[ ], : pokemon_info[ ], : pokemon_info[ ], : pokemon_info[ ], : pokemon_info[ ][ ]

                }

                resolved = res.status_code == :
                time.sleep( ) :
                sleep_val = random.randint( , )
                time.sleep(sleep_val) Exception e:
        print(e) info : info list_pokemon = [] link tqdm(links_pokemon):
        
        pokemon = get_pokemon(link) pokemon != :
            list_pokemon.append(pokemon)
        time.sleep( )
        
            
    pd.set_option( , )

    df_pokemon = pd.DataFrame(list_pokemon) df_pokemon links_pokemon = get_number_pokemon()

    df_pokemon = get_all_pokemon(links_pokemon=links_pokemon)
    
    df_pokemon.sort_values([ ],inplace= ) df_pokemon, HTML(df_pokemon.iloc[ : ].to_html(formatters={ : image_formatter}, escape= )) import as import import import as from import import from import from import ## Rate limit to help with overcalling ## pokemon api is 100 calls per 60 seconds max @sleep_and_retry @limits(calls=100, period=60) : def call_api (url) if 404 return 'Not Found' if 200 'here' raise 'API response: {}' return 'https://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/{pokemon}' : def get_number_pokemon () '' 'count' '?offset=0&limit={limit}' 'url' for in 'results' return : def get_pokemon (link= ) '' None False try while not None False try if 'Not Found' True break except as if 'too many calls' True if 60 elif 300 'Image' 'sprites' 'front_default' 'id' 'id' 'name' 'name' 'height' 'height' 'base_experience' 'base_experience' 'weight' 'weight' 'species' 'species' 'name' True elif 429 60 else 1 10 except as return finally return : def get_all_pokemon (links_pokemon=None) for in if None 0.3 'display.max_colwidth' None return : def image_formatter (im) return f'<img src=" ">' {im} : def main_pokemon_run () 'id' True return 0 4 'Image' False As you can see from the response below, the API call took roughly 9 minutes and 30 seconds at a rate of 1.69 iterations per second. We can improve this drastically by adding multiprocessing. With Multiprocessing Now with multiprocessing we can separate the function into a multiprocessing pool function. We use the built in multiprocessing function to define the number of workers needed. Since we we want to get this done as quickly as possible using the full will ensure the program runs the most optimally without taking up all over our . The ensures that this function will never be 0. Next, I use multiprocessing's built in tool to share a global memory of our returned Pokémon. get_all_pokemon cpu_count() cpu_count - 1 CPUs max(cpu_count() -1, 1) Manager While you can use the returned value of the multiprocess map, using a manager is nice way to use multiprocessing for other more complicated tasks. Check the documentation for the available multiprocessing. Manager types. Another step needed is to create a partial function. As the function passes an array to iterate over, we need to add our parameters more specifically to our function before we iterate over it. The library allows us to do this by creating a partial function to send to the pool map. I use tqdm in this example to see the progress of the pool. pool.imap get_pokemon_multiprocess functools.partial I also show in the code the same function without it. Now that the pool has ran, we need to ensure that it is both closed and joined, you'll see I do this immediately after and in the block. This is done to validate that even if there is an error, the process workers are closed and terminated. finally The join function is necessary to have the processes after pooling being joined together. This also validates that the manager is completely finished binding. requests req timeit time pandas pd IPython.display Image, HTML random tqdm tqdm ratelimit limits, sleep_and_retry multiprocessing Pool, Manager, cpu_count functools partial


API_POKEMON = response = req.get(url) response.status_code == : response.status_code != : Exception( .format(response.status_code)) response res = req.get(API_POKEMON.format(pokemon= ))
    number_pokemon = res.json()[ ]
    res_url = call_api(API_POKEMON.format(pokemon= .format(limit=str(number_pokemon))))
    pokemon_links_values = [link[ ] link res_url.json()[ ]] pokemon_links_values link = links_pokemon[process]
    info = resolved = : resolved:

              
            res = tooManyCalls = :
                res = call_api(link) res == :
                    resolved = Exception e:
                print(e) e == :
                    tooManyCalls = tooManyCalls:
                time.sleep( ) res.status_code < :

                pokemon_info = res.json()

                info = { : pokemon_info[ ][ ], :  pokemon_info[ ], : pokemon_info[ ], : pokemon_info[ ], : pokemon_info[ ], : pokemon_info[ ], : pokemon_info[ ][ ]

                }

                resolved = res.status_code == :
                print(res.status_code)
                time.sleep( ) :
                print(res.status_code)
                sleep_val = random.randint( , )
                time.sleep(sleep_val) Exception e:
        print(e) : info != :
            listManager.append(info)
            time.sleep( ) workers = max(cpu_count() , ) manager = Manager() listManager = manager.list()
    pool = Pool(workers) :

        links_pokemon = get_number_pokemon()
        part_get_clean_pokemon = partial(get_pokemon_multiprocess, listManager, links_pokemon) _ tqdm(pool.imap(part_get_clean_pokemon, list(range( , len(links_pokemon)))), total=len(links_pokemon)): pool.close()
        pool.join() :
        pool.close()
        pool.join()
        
    pokemonList = list(listManager)
    
    df_pokemon = pd.DataFrame(pokemonList)
    df_pokemon.sort_values([ ],inplace= ) df_pokemon, HTML(df_pokemon.iloc[ : ].to_html(formatters={ : image_formatter}, escape= )) import as import import import as from import import from import from import from import from import 'https://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/{pokemon}' #  To see how it ran # def infoDebugger(title): #     print(title) #     print('module name:', __name__) #     if hasattr(os, 'getppid'): #         print('parent process:', os.getppid()) #     print('process id:', os.getpid()) @sleep_and_retry @limits(calls=100, period=60) : def call_api (url) if 404 return 'Not Found' if 200 raise 'API response: {}' return # https://docs.python.org/2/library/multiprocessing.html : def get_number_pokemon () '' 'count' '?offset=0&limit={limit}' 'url' for in 'results' return : def get_pokemon_multiprocess (listManager=None, links_pokemon=None, process= ) 0 #     print('Called Pokemon', process) None False #     print(link) try while not None False try if 'Not Found' True break except as if 'too many calls' True if 60 elif 300 'Image' 'sprites' 'front_default' 'id' 'id' 'name' 'name' 'height' 'height' 'base_experience' 'base_experience' 'weight' 'weight' 'species' 'species' 'name' True elif 429 60 else 1 10 except as finally if None 0.5 return : def image_formatter (im) return f'<img src=" ">' {im} : def main_pokemon_run_multiprocessing () ## cannot be 0, so max(NUMBER,1) solves this -1 1 ## create the pool ## Need a manager to help get the values async, the values will be updated after join try #         could do this the below is visualize the rate success /etc #         pool.imap(part_get_clean_pokemon, list(range(0, len(links_pokemon)))) #         using tqdm to see progress imap works for in 0 pass finally 'id' True return 0 4 'Image' False You'll see in the below snapshot that the pooling worked successfully and improved the runtime and iteration time drastically from 9 minutes to 1 minute and iterations per second to 14.97 iterations per second. Hope this was helpful. To see the full code and check out my notebook on . github Let me know if you come up with any other useful uses for this and please share any feedback on my sample if you have any. Greyson Nevins-Archer

Multiprocessing for heavy API requests with Python and the PokéAPI

Around the world, many of us are working from home because of . Whether you're working from home or remotely, it's an uncertain time. And it is also difficult to stay focused and productive. coronavirus (Covid-19) spreads Working from home means more distractions which can lead to less productivity. To overcome this challenge, here are five ways you can keep your team productive while they are working from home. 5 Ways To Keep Your Employees Productive While Working From Home 1. Get Your Team Right Productivity Tools One of the most important ways to help employees succeed while working from home is to get them tools and software to help them stay connected and productive. These tools may include daily project assignment tools such as , productivity tracker such as , and video conferencing apps such as and . Asana Hubstaff Skype Google Hangouts Getting your teams with these new tools allows all your employees to stay updated no matter whether they are working from home or working from a remote location. These new tools might also help keep your employees more productive and connected amidst the fear of COVID-19 spread. 2. Encourage Your Employees To Have a Dedicated Work Space Your employees have never needed dedicated workspace in their homes, but now when they are regularly working from home, you should encourage them to have a dedicated workspace at home separate from a communal space. It’s true that your physical surroundings affect your productivity levels at work. Dedicated workspace can help employees to stay free from the distractions at home life. If you have a dedicated room that you can use as a workspace, try to also arrange a desk or use an existing table for work purposes. Avoid working on your bed or couch, as these places are usually reserved for relaxation and not for work time. 3. Stay Connected With Your Employees During Work Hours The biggest struggle of working from home every day is the lack of motivation, communication, and negative thoughts, employers should provide emotional support to employees. Leaders should set up regular check-ins, which helps create a workplace where people can still get things done. Managers should also be available on instant messaging apps and video conferencing apps throughout the day to help employees. Additionally encouraging your employees for self-care is also important to continue on with lives as normally as they can. And you should also tell  them to keep their work and home life separate. Make sure they don't do errands or watch videos while working from home. And once work hours are over, don’t disturb them into their chill time. 4. Don’t Forget About Team Building Activities When your employees are working from home, which is surrounded by other people, it's often not easier to stay focused on work. When you're at home no one is assigning you work, you will very quickly learn how undisciplined you are. Developing self-discipline is also important to be productive at your home, but there are a few things that can help. Creating time and space for workers for example by assigning them daily work, talking about news & updates, and other topics — just as they would have done in the office helps them feel better connected. One way to do this is to make video conferences open for all your workers to catch up. Another is to arrange a virtual team-building exercise to bridge the gap between employees. 5. Promote Small Screen Breaks and Healthy Habits We all know that sleeping enough, eating healthy, and getting exercise are good for your body and mind. As working from home you're likely staring at laptop screens and phone screens for hours and hours each day. It's unavoidable, but try to make your workers take small breaks away from the screen throughout the day. Leaders should allow workers to take walk breaks outdoors (abiding by laws and regulations in your country or region), as walking around for a few minutes helps think and work a bit better. This can be helpful if you're stuck on a business problem, coding errors, and more. Try to avoid eye strain with a white light filter on your laptop or mobile screen. Or you can use mobile apps to make your screen light-tinted slightly yellow at night. For example, you can use the free app on your laptop. f.lux I hope this article has given you some good tips on . how you can cope with this work from home life Want to read more? Be sure to follow my team on LinkedIn !  Or, contact team Syncrasy Tech for more advice on work from home during Covid-19 pandemic. Best wishes, and stay safe out there!

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Even before the world went on lockdown, the future of events was set to take flight with Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed reality trends, which are collectively called immersive experience. The market size of this combined sector is expected to hit by 2030. $30 Billion Moreover, the consumer spending on AR & VR technologies are to reach by 2020, which is more than any other industry based on its standalone capacity. $7 Billion However, creating an experience that genuinely immerses your audience is not an easy task, whether you are developing a VR game or throwing an event. Event attendees of this generation want more than just the usual experiences,. Impressing them will need a revamp of conventional performances with out of box thinking, for an exceptional event. They expect an experience that enlightens and inspires them. Immersive experiences transform an ordinary event into an unforgettable adventure and make engaging with a brand feel natural. This brings about an opportunity for brands to take a closer look at the lifestyles and interests of their communities. The most immersive experiences can be achieved by surrounding the event with engaging technological aspects. If used well, technology can be a powerful tool for event marketers catering to any industry. So here are a few ideas to ride the wave of immersive experience. 3D Mapping Projections: Due to their size and scope, 3D images can be mapped to diverse surfaces for projections and illumination. 3D mapping can create a dramatic impact on a large scale at a lower cost than many. It has the power to transform the events more mesmerizing. Artists and advertisers commonly use it give a new immersive dimension to the images and videos. To illustrate, on Montreal’s 375th anniversary, they turned the entire event more immersive with 3D projection mapping technology. They intertwined art, culture, and technology in an equally impressive proportion there. And today, it is quite a common trend across the event industry to tell the stories via this appealing technology. Until recently, a study found that 3D mapping campaigns can run for a day or week and yet failed to make an impact on marketers. The primary reason for this outcome is the lack of understanding of technology by event planners and marketers. As a result, only a few people have seen this magnificent phenomenon, and yet the potential for decision-makers who are willing to pioneer this technology is enormous. Ambient Interactivity: When you combine digital and physical interactions yet another form of immersive technology is created “Ambient Interactivity”. This form of technology offers user-friendly, natural interactivity that is well suited for event marketing. The core software technology that helps to bring this ambient interactivity is nothing but artificial intelligence. It is, in fact, a kind of intelligence with more sophisticated algorithms dubbed as ambient intelligence. Ambient interactivity is well-referred to as the interactive form developed within physical environments such as interactive windows, walls, and tables. However, it is becoming more fluid today. Today, ambient interactivity is giving scope for many sectors, such as to engage their audience. “ (Digital creative official @ Great Works) says ambient interactivity is such a powerful tool for every sort of retailers to attract the customers than any other media.” Marcus Wallander Ambient interactivity is designed primarily as a futuristic concept presentation mode that avails information sharing inside the organization. This technique demonstrates how technology can be transmitted automatically and transparently without direct human interaction. Augmented Reality Events of all sorts have taken Augmented Reality as a serious business. Eventbrite report says are largely favoring augmented Reality in the last year. However, it is not based on an abstract conception but factual data. 87% of event managers Augmented Reality has taken over the world by storm in recent years. For example, AR has allowed apps like Pokemon GO attain incredible success, that surpasses Twitter in active daily users. The launch of Pokemon GO paved the way for AR apps to launch its first real commercial into the lives of millions. And its success can make a massive impact on significant implications for big events. The success of AR is not going anywhere; if anything, it’s expanding into AR wearables, which allows event managers to design their activities thematically. This scope of AR allows event handlers to transform their venue into a tropical paradise or the top of the Eiffel tower. Virtual assistants are tailoring to your individual needs using customised programs catering exclusively for you throughout the event. Virtual Reality Virtual Reality is gaining popularity all around the globe. It got an exploding reach over multiple events as well as the commerce sectors over these years. Even with the expensive implementation process, VR can be used to conjure up new worlds for its users. VR takes us one step forward, one step ahead in time and our ways to everyday life increasingly. Snapchat gave us the real picture of the impact of VR trend that our world has by providing a unique streaming experience of Golden Globe through their spectacles. In addition, brands like Lufthansa, Huawei, Chevrolet etc. have been immersing their audience with Virtual Reality experience. Plus, industries such as events, travel, and music are largely leveraging this deeper immersive model to engage their audience in a better way, for it surpasses the limitation of augmented intelligence far higher and allows users to remotely access events via their headsets and get themselves front row seats. VR is impressive at a level unachievable by any other tech in providing immersive experience and bringing in traction amongst event handlers. Supernet Many of the technological innovations of the future are, in fact, on our doorstep. An interesting one amongst them is Supernet. By utilizing the full potential of the internet within the event industry, you can exploit an immersive experience like never before, which can be streamed to absolutely anyone anywhere. This is just scratching the surface of it; Supernet will undoubtedly see an unimaginable increase in the speed of data, which will open up new possibilities for significant events allowing attendees to upload and download terabytes of data. Importantly, Supernet will reduce the latency time and propels the data exchange speed across the network. As events are more likely to adopt immersive technologies this improvement in network speed undoubtedly helps them to perform the events uninterruptedly. For example, major corporations like Google X are investing highly in this technology via projects such as Loon. However, the Supernet will soon become the standard for the venue hosting events since network speed is an integral part of this technology. Big Data With the implementation of Supernet, mainly as a resource that has phenomenal potential. Big data can benefit immersive technologies As the network carries more data with accuracy and stability, the major problems that have been confronting the sector will reduce. If data from events is combined with the Supernet, you could paint an incredibly detailed picture of every attendee, by gearing everyone and you can get deep customer insight with predictive analytics. However, Big Data’s involvement in events will build customer profiles that have log records of the events that they have been, which events they kicked, which ones they will likely favor in the future. With this much potential, the stored data will give you a heads up on your customers better than ever. Drones and Transportation With the rise of drones, logistics will become much easier to handle in event industries. However, its scope is not limited at its mobile transportation capacity, Drones can take part in creating Interactive experiences which make for another cutting edge vertical that drone technology has contributed to the event and entertainment sector. Also, combining the fun of video gaming experience and drone technology where the users dive into the augmented world Drone interactive is a next-level immersive experience that joins the team. Many brands are working to combine both VR and drone technology to deliver a better experience. The application of Virtual Reality with drones to get accurate snaps and experience a stable live visual experience is found to be a gem that is not at all leveraged at its heights. More companies are working on developing better VR drones to provide an engaging experience for the users, and it will be utilised for event sectors as well. Artificial Intelligence I enables immersive experiences much faster with higher fidelity than ever before. AI promises to empower attendees to interact with those experiences in real-time. AI personalizes experiences and provides relevant information in real-time. With prodigious processing power AI comes with invaluable abilities beyond content creation. AI shines in learning from user interaction and reaction to predict the next demand instantaneously. With AI-powered 3D tools and spatial design, you can make it easier to bring stories around your event alive. Conclusion Speculations aside, this is an exciting time in the events industry. In the event industry, all these methods of experiences will constitute improving Immersive marketing practices and have become less of a novelty shortly. Further, it will play more integral roles in broader brand marketing campaigns. The technology of this level will undoubtedly overcome the current limitations faced by event organizers and bring in a landscape that has very different values. The future is far from certain, and yet it looks exciting with the immersive experiences waiting to unfold.

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As a result of COVID-19 officially being ruled a pandemic, the eLearning economy is being used in an entirely different way. Now, the students who have faced an educational standstill due to their campuses and schools being closed can continue their educational journey from a virtual standpoint. Interestingly enough, online classes seem to be the only way to keep our students’ brains turning during this pandemic. However, it’s important to understand that eLearning isn’t new - it’s just in its prime, unfortunately to the credit of our detrimental state of human health. With this being said, it’s unlikely that online learning will fade even after we defeat this virus. In other words, students are loving their new approach to education. The latest tech trends in eLearning include virtual reality lessons to eliminate distractions and increase engagement, augmented reality to deliver a more capturing learning experience, artificial intelligence such as chatbots, and multi-category video. After being exposed to high-level EdTech, more students than ever want to remain enrolled in e-school until graduation. As previously mentioned, online learning isn’t new. 63% of those who were already attending e-school before the COVID-19 outbreak say they choose online education due to the fact that it works best with their current work/life balance. However, the rise of EdTech has made more than 40% plan to return to their alma mater to take more classes. Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic has given the eLearning market a major boost in revenue. By 2025, the eLearning market will reach $300 billion in value, and 72% of organizations believe eLearning puts them ahead of their competition. Here’s how: for every $1 a business spends on distance learning software, their productivity increases by $30. This is because students who learn online take in 5x the material per hour when being trained. In the midst of an epidemic, navigating your way through the online learning market should be easier than ever. Will you be partaking in ? the future of distance learning

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As a Microverse student for one month, I realized that my first clone webpages didn’t have a responsive layout. I was using pixels in the Navbars, percentages in one section and rem in another, I didn’t have a rule or a standard procedure. The goal was to make it look like the original webpage IN MY SCREEN. As I advanced through the course, I learned that these units made all the difference to the webpage’s response in different screen sizes. My code reviewers would tell me to adjust my webpage because it looked different when they were viewing it. When I started having these issues, I made a lot of research on the subject, but I was still a little confused about it. This article’s goal is to create a simple and direct rule to achieve the required responsiveness any developer needs in their code. Why Make Your Webpage Responsive? Right now, I am using a Lenovo Ideapad S145 to write this article, it has a screen size of 15.6” and the Hackernoon webpage looks like this: Now, I was reading an article there, when my Windows Update started (can we control it?), so I had to switch to my mobile to continue reading it. I have a Motorola G7 Plus, with a screen size of 6.2”, this is how the same webpage looks like in this device: Did you see the difference? Hackernoon’s webpage is responsive enough to change the position and appearance of each section when the screen size changes. You can see those changes by zooming in and out on your PC while looking at their webpage. Now, if those changes weren’t made it would be very difficult for me to read that article on my mobile phone, as I would need to keep scrolling left and right or zoom in to see some of the content. Check out this on Medium! great article Solutions For Our Problems To solve our problems, we have a lot of solutions. In this article, I’m going to focus on two of them: • Relative units (rem, em, and percentage); • Media queries. Relative Units vs Fixed Units When using CSS properties like font-size, width, height, margin or any other that needs a size unit, you have some options, and they are divided into two groups: relative units like rem, em and percentage ( ) and fixed units like pixels. The first group is the one we should be using, and the images below show why. more info In this image, we have a maximized window showing two boxes, I used pixels in the top one and percentage in the bottom one. Now, let’s see what happens when I shrink the screen size of my browser. Can you see the scroll bar? That happens because the top box has a fixed unit value, so its width goes on even if we shrink the window’s size. The bottom box has a percentage value, it responds to the change in the window’s size. This is the first solution on making your webpage more responsive, but we are not quite done yet, we can improve our projects even further, take a look at the next section! Media Queries Now let’s say you have a horizontal navbar in a webpage that has a 1024 px width on an 1440 px laptop, when you look at the page it is fine, you can read anything written in the navbar and it’s very easy to navigate through it: But, if I switch to my mobile (width: 375px), look at what happens when we don’t use media queries: The scroll bar is back! Also, did you see what happened to the navbar? That’s bad, isn’t it? I agree! The solution to this problem is using media queries in our CSS code to adjust our layout when  the screen size is different. You can take a look at from CSS Tricks about media queries. Now, when we add the media query, the above webpage should look like this: this article Terrific, the scroll bar is gone, as is the navbar! The thing is, now this page used that menu button (top green area, beside the light icon) which, when clicked, provides that same navbar vertically, isn’t it awesome? If you want to see the results of your work with ease, you can use Google Chrome’s Developer Tools and access the Device Toolbar where you can play with the window’s width and see how the changes are applied in each media query breakpoint. Conclusion In this article, I tried giving you the basic concepts of some of the tools needed for building a responsive webpage. But if you need a more detailed step-by-step guide, I recommend you to watch this ( ) from TutsPlus. This article shouldn’t be your only source of information, you should take a look at the links I provided and make some more research before jumping into your project. And never do it like . Happy coding! tutorial Peter Griffin

Responsive Web Design: Understand And Apply It Once And For All

A month ago it would’ve been hard to imagine how life would change in what seems overnight. Quarantines have been declared in many countries, and already around one billion people are staying at home, isolating themselves and some working remotely. The public activities have stopped, drug stores are in deficit of protection masks, and food shops are being cleaned of even primary products. It sure looks grim, but, believe it or not, things are not as bad as it sounds. It’s tough, and we need to fight the virus together — practice social distancing, isolation at home, wear face protection — among other things. But there’s a brighter side that we all can turn to, various companies that are generously stepping an extra mile to help those in needs. There are good examples, like Amazon, which has decided to hire additional 100 thousand workers and increase salaries of existing staff to deal with the crisis. Dolce & Gabbana have teamed up with Humanitas university to fund a coronavirus research project, and Giorgio Armani has donated nearly 1.5 million to four Italian hospitals and Civil protection agencies. It looks like private businesses of all interests are putting it up together to help fight the virus. In this article, I’d like to overview a few tech companies, and it doesn’t matter big or small, that are also helping in any way they can. Not only this might brighten a pretty gloomy view, but also serve as an example for other tech players who might search for an idea on how to contribute to the good cause. Tech companies that are helping to survive Covid-19 First of all, Google has gathered a COVID-19 paid-sick-leave fund, that allows any worker who shows the symptoms of the virus, or can’t continue work due to quarantine, to receive compensation for the sick time off. Moreover, it has made , an excellent video conferencing service, available for free for G-suite users, which really helps to communicate with friends or to work remotely. And thanks to Google for that, I already used it, and it’s very comfortable. 1. Google. Google Hangouts This tech giant has announced that they will for those that support their campus no matter work time. Even though some services are no longer needed as they were before, Microsoft will continue supporting its workers regardless of how many hours now they’re required — they will receive the full salary. 2. Microsoft. continue paying the hourly workers wages The use of Virtual Private Networks have boomed due to millions of people working from home, the need to reach companies intranets and secure home Internet connections have increased significantly. People at NordVPN (blogpost in Italian language) during this crisis — Italy. They will support Italian universities and academic personnel by providing them NordVPN accounts for free for six months. 3. NordVPN. decided to help European country that suffered the worst These are custom tech accessories creators, from phone cases to watch bands, but right now with every order, . Also, they released a UV tech sanitizer for phones and will give any profit coming from here to GlobalGiving’s Coronavirus Relief Fund — a lovely initiative from their side. 4. CASETify. they include ten free sanitizing wipes This is a major data intelligence platform that is used all across the globe, and they decided to offer a free supplier reports until the end of March. This will help businesses to fight coronavirus by getting a report with the relevant supplier that are picked from 400 million biggest global websites as well as Tealbook’s own supplier profiles. This will help businesses to manufacture much-needed items like protection masks, hand sanitizers, medicine and other needed material to survive the virus. 5. Tealbook. A company that takes care of guest-side technologies for hospitalities and restaurants to mentioned institutions, to help prevent people touching surfaces and spreading the virus. They will handle the setup, table sensors and tap pay activity, and found a really unique way to help combat the spread of Covid-19. 6. OneDine. is giving away free of charge Tap & Pay Touchless Payments systems Find your way to help These are just a few great examples of private tech companies taking initiatives to contribute to the global struggle against the coronavirus. Of course, there are more, such as Apple giving its retail staff that experienced the symptoms of the virus an unlimited paid-sick-leave. Or a smaller company Meero, that offered large-file transfers that are so helpful for remote work for free. In my opinion, when put together, all these example show one thing — everybody can contribute in this hard situation. In most times, even common sense helps: think about what you would need in isolation, think about what society needs to survive this virus outbreak, and don’t limit yourself. As you can see, material support such as sanitizers help, but also cybersecurity is essential, and maybe your company can help with remote work setup? Online communication and file transfers are all required for a comfortable isolation period, but so is entertainment. Boredom is an enemy too. I’d love to see more various tech companies joining this noble cause, maybe game developers sharing fun games for free, or audiobook retailers giving classics to everyone. It is my firm belief we all can help somehow, and if you’ve got a great idea don’t hesitate to leave it in the commentaries — maybe something will come out of it. Editors Note: Thank you for the timely call to action, @gershwin.aaron ! Readers are advised to regularly check out [and contribute their own stories to!] our latest, global, community-sourced coverage on the subject⁠ of covid-19 here , including links to: open source ventilator projects you can contribute to or test , advice on how to keep team members engaged during strange and distributed times , support on the subject of living in lockdown , case studies from always-remote companies like GitLab and advice from other remote work experts , and much more .

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Suddenly become a home worker? Then you might be wondering how to do it right. At Heroku, more than half our team works remotely from home offices, cafes, and co-working spaces. Many of the questions you have right now are ones that we’ve been thinking about for years. So, here are four tips from the Heroku team on how to make distributed work effective, fulfilling, and fun. 1. Ritual matters If you work in an office, each day has a similar cadence. You leave home, commute, maybe grab a coffee, greet the same people on the way to your desk, and ease yourself into the day. When you work from home, ritual is just as important. Maybe more so. Up until now, your home has been a place where you hang out with friends and family, do chores, sleep. To be productive, you’ll need a way to signal to yourself that, for a few hours, home is also where you focus on work. There’s the obvious stuff. Shower, get dressed. But perhaps less obvious is the need to demarcate your day and your space. It might be tempting to review a pull request over breakfast but you’ll quickly burn out unless you stick to predictable working hours. Start and end your work at the times you would if you were in the office. Get up and take breaks. Eat lunch away from your screen. Similarly, you need a dedicated space for work. If you don’t have the luxury of a dedicated desk, then choose a spot that you can clear during your work hours and that is free of distractions; or as free from distractions as possible. If you can work behind a closed door, all the better to signal “I’m working” to yourself and anyone else at home. So, tip number 1 is to build a ritual that bookends your working day. 2. Be intentional about communication In an office setting, much communication is unintentional. Think about it. Simply being sat at a desk in an office is a form of communication. You’re saying, “I’m working, I’m here, I’m productive”. Then there are the quick chats in the kitchen in which big decisions are made or the meetings where someone’s raised eyebrow says a whole lot more than their words. Communication in a distributed team takes more work but, done well, can lead to deeper understanding. Let’s get the basics out of the way first. You need to communicate availability to your colleagues. Say “hi” when you start work, use Slack statuses to indicate when you want to focus, wave a cheery “goodbye” when you leave for the day. The harder part is understanding each other, staying informed, and collaborating. That requires a change in communication pace and culture. Remote communication is lower bandwidth than in person communication. Yet your brain, pattern matching monster that it is, will fill in the gaps. Rather than make assumptions, ask questions. Heroku’s Engineering Chief of Staff, Francis Lacoste, , ask questions from a place of curiosity, and work on recognising our biases and assumptions. says that remote communication requires that we learn to listen If something seems stupid, assume you misunderstood then ask questions until you understand what the other person intended. When you have something to say, think about how to avoid ambiguity. Tip number two is to be intentional in how you communicate. 3. Get comfortable with asynchronous work If an office is a monolith then a successful distributed team is like a set of microservices. You don’t need to know when your colleagues do their work or even how they do it. The important thing is the output and the expectations set. This is not something you can control alone. Really, it’s largely down to the culture led by your manager. But a successful remote team balances leaving people to get on with their work versus explicit times of synchronous communication. Officer workers complain about meetings but for remote workers they’re a rare opportunity for high bandwidth communication. Need help working something out? Have a video call with a colleague. Want to keep the team up to date with important news? Schedule a weekly call. No successful distributed team lead is hovering over their reports’ virtual shoulders. Tip three is to accept that the work is what’s important. How and when it happens, within explicitly set expectations, is irrelevant. 4. Go out of your way to be a team One downside of distributed working is that you could spend eight hours at your desk doing nothing other than work. All those little social interactions –– signing the card for Karen from accounting, catching up over the latest Better Call Saul episode, politely refusing Nigel’s overbaked cake –– happen less easily. Not only does that make loneliness more of a problem but it’s harder for a team to bond. Rather than leave it to chance, in a remote environment you must go out of your way to interact with your team. Schedule time for a coffee over a video chat. Sounds weird? Well, it’s not really about the coffee. It’s a chance to switch off for a few minutes and chat casually with a colleague. If you have a daily stand-up, extend the Friday edition by ten minutes so everyone can chat about their weekend plans. Okay, sure, right now their weekend plans are largely going to be variations on “having a quiet one indoors” but it’s the opportunity to be human with each other that is important. Tip four is to make sure that it’s not all just about work. Take time to hang out with your colleagues, even if it is by video chat. Working from home is great, if you get it right You’re used to working and you’re used to being at home. So, combining the two should be easy, right? In our experience at Heroku, it turns out that it takes effort to work from home in a way that looks after your wellbeing while also helping you to be productive. Effective distributed working is also a joint effort. While you must make adjustments on your side, as someone working from home, a company’s leadership must instill a culture and set processes that set remote workers up for success. Many people working from home for the first time right now are not doing so through choice. Both managers and team members have been thrown into a situation they weren’t expecting. That makes support from leadership, and a company-wide understanding of both the challenges and triumphs of distributed working, even more important. You can read more from the Heroku team, including this Francis Lacoste, this regardless of whether someone is in our San Francisco office or their home office, and this where five Heroku colleagues discuss what’s worked and what hasn’t worked for them. AMA with our in-house remote work expert blog post on how we bring the Heroku team together episode of our Code[ish] podcast In this unusual time, working from home is probably just one of the many changes you’re getting used to. However, rather than being an uncomfortable change, working from home can be an opportunity to get more done and spend less time commuting.

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Ten Years of WFH Lessons

COVID19 has (hopefully) shown us just how dangerous the unseen can be. It’s also made us much more aware of the potential effects of a cough, a handshake, an itchy nose, and even a ten pound note or a pound coin and their ability to spread viruses and other nasty things. There was even a rush to disinfect cash in Asia after the initial outbreak of COVID19. Some banknotes last up to fifteen years, and research shows are passed between up around 600 people every 3 years. In recent years, use of digital currency has boomed - we’ve seen the rise of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum, then a much needed, mature step toward stable cryptocurrencies backed by assets in a real bank - or backed by other cryptocurrencies or materials like gold, and now we’ve even seen full-fledged bills to introduce Central Bank Digital Currencies - also known as CBDCs. This week the Coronavirus Stimulus Bill in the US introduced the idea of infrastructure for a central bank issued digital currency, likely an indirect response to China doing the exact same thing, but ahead of the curve. Coronavirus seems to be speeding up what was thought to be on track anyway, but in a more distant future. In China, laws are already being drafted so it can begin issuance of its digital currency. Though China is largely a cashless society anyway with nearly 50% of all payments being done by mobile. The only people who seem to be still using cash are in rural China - which the government aims to focus on adjusting in the coming year. Sweden also aims to go completely cashless in as little as four years. Though there is currently no talk of a digital currency issued by the state - cash is no longer king in Sweden either. Programmable Money - “If This Then That” At its core, cryptocurrency offers the potential for programmable money. It allows rules to be implemented into transactions through smart contracts. This is best looked at through the popular phrase “If this, then that” - two parties pre determine terms and if/when requirements are met, the contract will be executed automatically. This is particularly useful in insurance policies or financial transactions that require an escrow. Code can now control money for the first time, and this allows much easier creation of new financial tools and levers. So not only is our society becoming cashless, but also programmable too - less administrative tasks, less errors, and most importantly increased flexibility, security and control over our money. The coming decade should see a rapid migration towards these concepts, and the countries experimenting the most with them will have the ability to do things with money that boggle the mind and streamline human life significantly.

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