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Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 by Various, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . The Blue Glass Deception here THE BLUE GLASS DECEPTION. On September 26, 1871, General A.J. Pleasonton, of Philadelphia, Pa., obtained a patent for "utilizing the natural light of the sun transmitted through clear glass, and the blue or electric(!) solar rays transmitted through blue, purple, or violet colored glass, or its equivalent, in the propagation and growth of plants and animals." In his specification, of which the above constitutes one claim, he states that he has discovered "special and specific efficacy in the use of this combination of the caloric rays of the sun and the electric blue light in stimulating the glands of the body, the nervous system generally, and the secretive organs of man and animals." He also states that he finds that vegetation is vastly improved by the transmitted blue light. These alleged re-discoveries—for the General only claims to have devised the method of utilizing them—were extensively promulgated through the press early in 1871. Subsequently, in 1876, General Pleasonton published a book on the subject, the volume being appropriately bound in blue and printed in blue ink. Recently public attention has again been called to the subject by a New York daily journal. The peculiar kind of glass in question is known as "pot metal blue," that is, it is stained a bluish violet throughout, and is not clear glass covered with flashings of blue glass. It is used in greenhouses, etc., in connection with clear glass; and in General Pleasonton's grapery it appears that only every eighth row of panes was blue. Some of the results alleged to have been obtained by exposing animals and plants are as follows: Twenty grape vines, in their second year, after being set out under the blue glass, bore 1,200 lbs. of splendid fruit. A very weak Alderney bull calf was in four months developed into a strong and vigorous bull. Heifers when kept under blue glass may safely bear young when 18 months old. A weak child, weighing but 3½ lbs. at birth, weighed at the end of four months 22 lbs.—the light in this instance having come through blue curtains. Two major-generals with rheumatism were cured in three days. A young lady whose hair had come out regained her tresses; and to these must be added various other cures of severe ailments which we have not space here to recapitulate. The above are the alleged facts; and we propose to consider the supposed discovery in the light of previous investigations. With reference to the theories of electricity, etc., advanced by General Pleasonton to account for his phenomena, their absurdity is so complete that we shall waste no time over them. The important question in the matter, and the only one in which the public is interested, is whether or not blue glass is capable of producing all or any of the results imputed to its use. In order to clear the way for the examination of the investigations, the records of which we have carefully collected, let us consider first those which General Pleasonton quotes in support of his views. These are (1) Seunebier's researches, which go to show that the blue and violet rays are the most active in determining the decomposition of carbonic acid in plants, and (2) experiments of Dr. Morichini, repeated by Carpa and Ridolfi, proving that violet rays magnetized a small needle. The first statement has been totally disproved. Dr. Von Bezold, in his recent work on color, states that "the chemical processes in plants, as far as they are dependent upon light, are principally caused by the rays of medium and of lower refrangibility. The development of the green color of the chlorophyll, the decomposition of carbonic acid, as well as the formation of starch, etc., in the grains of the chlorophyll, are induced by the red, green, and orange rays." The blue, violet, and ultra violet rays, the same authority goes onto explain, influence "the rapidity of growth, compel the so-called zoöspores to move in certain directions, and alter the positions of leaves, etc." In confirmation of this, we have Sach's experiments in 1872, which show that light, transmitted through the yellow solution of potassium chromate, enables green leaves to decompose over 88 per cent. of carbonic acid; while that passed through blue ammonia copper oxide decomposes less than 8 per cent. This proves the superiority of the yellow ray to decompose carbonic acid; and this fact Professor J.W. Draper discovered a long time ago by the direct use of the spectrum. In still further confirmation, we may cite the investigations of Vogel, Pfeiffer, Selim, and Placentim. The last three have conducted researches in full knowledge of those of General Pleasonton, and their experiments show that yellow rays are more promotive of the evolution of carbon in animals and its absorption in plants than any others in the spectrum, the violet rays having least power in these respects, with the exception of the red rays in the case of animals. The absorption of carbonic acid by plants, and its evolution by animals, we hardly need add, are prime essentials to the growth and health of each. The notion that light possesses a magnetizing power on steel was upset by Niepce de St. Victor in 1861. After removing every source of error, he "found it impossible to make one sewing needle, solarized for a very long time under the rays of light concentrated by a strong lens, attract another suspended by a hair, whether the light was white or colored by being made to pass through a violet-colored glass." We can proceed further and even show that violet light is in some respects hurtful to plants. Cailletet, for example, says in 1868 that "light which was passed through a solution of iodine in carbonic disulphide prevents decomposition altogether." Baudrimont says that "no colored light permits vegetables to go through all the phases of their evolutions. Violet-colored light is positively injurious to plants; they absolutely require white light." This scientist instituted the most elaborate experiments on the subject, ranging over 11 years, from 1850 to 1861; and the result of all his labor may be summed up in the simple statement that no illumination which human ingenuity can devise is so well adapted for promoting natural processes as the pure white light provided by the Creator. So much by way of general denial of the claims of superior efficacy residing in blue light of any kind. Now we have yet to examine the peculiar variety of blue light here used. Sunlight can, by means of the prism, be split into colored rays, any one of which we may isolate, and so obtain a certain colored light. Similarly we may obtain light of a desired color by the use of a colored glass which will stop out the rays not of the hue required. So that we may obtain violet light from the spectrum or by filtering sunlight through violet glass. When, however, Dr. Von Bezold, as above, asserts that the violet rays have such and such an effect, he means the violet of the spectrum, which has its specific duty to perform in the compound light of which it is a necessary portion. But the violet light of the spectrum and filtered violet sunlight are altogether different things. The first, as our valued contributor Dr. Van der Weyde has very clearly pointed out, is "a homogeneous color containing, besides the luminous, the invisible chemical rays without any caloric rays; while the light colored by passing through violet glass is a mixture of blue rays with the red rays at the other end of the spectrum; and it contains a quantity of the chemical rays belonging to the blue and the caloric rays belonging to the red. In fact, violet glass passes a light identical with sunlight, only much reduced in power, containing but a portion of its caloric, chemical, and luminous agency: being simply deprived of its strongest rays." And this the spectroscope has clearly demonstrated. Reduced to its simplest terms, then, the necessary conclusion is that the violet glass acts purely as a shade for decreasing the intensity of the solar light. And in the simple fact that it does so serve as a shade lies the sole virtue (if any there be) of the glass. In 1856, Dr. Daubeny made experiments on the germination of seeds, and in his report is this suggestive sentence: "In a south aspect, indeed, light which had passed through the ammonia sulphate of copper (blue solution), and even darkness itself, seemed more favorable than the whole of the spectrum; but this law did not seem to extend to the case of seeds placed in a northern aspect where the total amount of light was less considerable." In our next issue, we shall review the effects of light and darkness upon the animal organization, and endeavor to account for the curing of diseases and the production of other phenomena which have been erroneously ascribed to the influence of the blue filtered sunlight. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various (2006). Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19406/pg19406-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

THE BLUE GLASS DECEPTION

The Fugitive.

Two separate groups of feelings

Darwinism, Stated by Darwin himself, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE PROVISIONAL HYPOTHESIS OF PANGENESIS THE PROVISIONAL HYPOTHESIS OF PANGENESIS. Every one would wish to explain to himself, even in an imperfect manner, how it is possible for a character possessed by some remote ancestor suddenly to reappear in the offspring; how the effects of increased or decreased use of a limb can be transmitted to the child; how the male sexual element can act not solely on the ovules, but occasionally on the mother-form; how a hybrid can be produced by the union of the cellular tissue of two plants independently of the organs of generation; how a limb can be reproduced on the exact line of amputation, with neither too much nor too little added; how the same organism may be produced by such widely different processes as budding and true seminal generation; and, lastly, how, of two allied forms, one passes in the course of its development through the most complex metamorphoses, and the other does not do so, though when mature both are alike in every detail of structure. I am aware that my view is merely a provisional hypothesis or speculation; but, until a better one be advanced, it will serve to bring together a multitude of facts which are at present left disconnected by any efficient cause. As Whewell, the historian of the inductive sciences, remarks, “Hypotheses may often be of service to science when they involve a certain portion of incompleteness, and even of error.” Under this point of view I venture to advance the hypothesis of pangenesis, which implies that every separate part of the whole organization reproduces itself. So that ovules, spermatozoa, and pollen-grains—the fertilized egg or seed, as well as buds—include and consist of a multitude of germs thrown off from each separate part or unit. FUNCTIONAL INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITS OF THE BODY. Physiologists agree that the whole organism consists of a multitude of elemental parts, which are to a great extent independent of one another. Each organ, says Claude Bernard, has its proper life, its autonomy; it can develop and reproduce itself independently of the adjoining tissues. A great German authority, Virchow, asserts still more emphatically that each system consists of an “enormous mass of minute centers of action.... Every element has its own special action, and, even though it derive its stimulus to activity from other parts, yet alone effects the actual performance of duties.... Every single epithelial and muscular fiber-cell leads a sort of parasitical existence in relation to the rest of the body.... Every single bone-corpuscle really possesses conditions of nutrition peculiar to itself.” Each element, as Sir J. Paget remarks, lives its appointed time and then dies, and is replaced after being cast off or absorbed. I presume that no physiologist doubts that, for instance, each bone-corpuscle of the finger differs from the corresponding corpuscle in the corresponding joint of the toe; and there can hardly be a doubt that even those on the corresponding sides of the body differ, though almost identical in nature. This near approach to identity is curiously shown in many diseases in which the same exact points on the right and left sides of the body are similarly affected; thus Sir J. Paget gives a drawing of a diseased pelvis, in which the bone has grown into a most complicated pattern, but “there is not one spot or line on one side which is not represented, as exactly as it would be in a mirror, on the other.” Many facts support this view of the independent life of each minute element of the body. Virchow insists that a single bone-corpuscle or a single cell in the skin may become diseased. The spur of a cock, after being inserted into the ear of an ox, lived for eight years, and acquired a weight of three hundred and ninety-six grammes (nearly fourteen ounces) and the astonishing length of twenty-four centimetres, or about nine inches; so that the head of the ox appeared to bear three horns. The tail of a pig has been grafted into the middle of its back, and reacquired sensibility. Dr. Ollier inserted a piece of periosteum from the bone of a young dog under the skin of a rabbit, and true bone was developed. A multitude of similar facts could be given. * * * * * What can be more wonderful than that characters, which have disappeared during scores, or hundreds, or even thousands of generations, should suddenly reappear perfectly developed, as in the case of pigeons and fowls, both when purely bred and especially when crossed; or as with the zebrine stripes on dun-colored horses, and other such cases? Many monstrosities come under this same head, as when rudimentary organs are redeveloped, or when an organ which we must believe was possessed by an early progenitor of the species, but of which not even a rudiment is left, suddenly reappears, as with the fifth stamen in some Scrophulariaceæ. * * * * * In every living creature we may feel assured that a host of long-lost characters lie ready to be evolved under proper conditions. How can we make intelligible, and connect with other facts, this wonderful and common capacity of reversion—this power of calling back to life long-lost characters? * * * * * Imperfect nails sometimes appear on the stumps of the amputated fingers of man; and it is an interesting fact that with the snake-like saurians, which present a series with more and more imperfect limbs, the terminations of the phalanges first disappear, “the nails becoming transferred to their proximal remnants, or even to parts which are not phalanges.” * * * * * Mr. Salter and Dr. Maxwell Masters have found pollen within the ovules of the passion-flower and of the rose. Buds may be developed in the most unnatural positions, as on the petal of a flower. Numerous analogous facts could be given. I do not know how physiologists look at such facts as the foregoing. According to the doctrine of pangenesis, the gemmules of the transposed organs become developed in the wrong place, from uniting with wrong cells or aggregates of cells during their nascent state; and this would follow from a slight modification in their elective affinities. * * * * * On any ordinary view it is unintelligible how changed conditions, whether acting on the embryo, the young or the adult, can cause inherited modifications. It is equally or even more unintelligible, on any ordinary view, how the effects of the long-continued use or disuse of a part, or of changed habits of body or mind, can be inherited. A more perplexing problem can hardly be proposed; but on our view we have only to suppose that certain cells become at last structurally modified, and that these throw off similarly modified gemmules. This may occur at any period of development, and the modification will be inherited at a corresponding period; for the modified gemmules will unite in all ordinary cases with the proper preceding cells, and will consequently be developed at the same period at which the modification first arose. With respect to mental habits or instincts, we are so profoundly ignorant of the relation between the brain and the power of thought that we do not know positively whether a fixed habit induces any change in the nervous system, though this seems highly probable; but, when such habit or other mental attribute, or insanity, is inherited, we must believe that some actual modification is transmitted; and this implies, according to our hypothesis, that gemmules derived from modified nerve-cells are transmitted to the offspring. NECESSARY ASSUMPTIONS. I have now enumerated the chief facts which every one would desire to see connected by some intelligible bond. This can be done, if we make the following assumptions, and much may be advanced in favor of the chief one. The secondary assumptions can likewise be supported by various physiological considerations. It is universally admitted that the cells or units of the body increase by self-division or proliferation, retaining the same nature, and that they ultimately become converted into the various tissues and substances of the body. But besides this means of increase I assume that the units throw off minute granules which are dispersed throughout the whole system; that these, when supplied with proper nutriment, multiply by self-division, and are ultimately developed into units like those from which they were originally derived. These granules may be called gemmules. They are collected from all parts of the system to constitute the sexual elements, and their development in the next generation forms a new being; but they are likewise capable of transmission in a dormant state to future generations and may then be developed. Their development depends on their union with other partially developed, or nascent cells which precede them in the regular course of growth. Why I use the term union will be seen when we discuss the direct action of pollen on the tissues of the mother-plant. Gemmules are supposed to be thrown off by every unit, not only during the adult state, but during each stage of development of every organism; but not necessarily during the continued existence of the same unit. Lastly, I assume that the gemmules in their dormant state have a mutual affinity for each other, leading to their aggregation into buds or into the sexual elements. Hence, it is not the reproductive organs or buds which generate new organisms, but the units of which each individual is composed. These assumptions constitute the provisional hypothesis which I have called pangenesis. * * * * * But I have further to assume that the gemmules in their undeveloped state are capable of largely multiplying themselves by self-division, like independent organisms. Delpino insists that to “admit of multiplication by fissiparity in corpuscles, analogous to seeds or buds ... is repugnant to all analogy.” But this seems a strange objection, as Thuret has seen the zoöspore of an alga divide itself, and each half germinated. Haeckel divided the segmented ovum of a siphonophora into many pieces, and these were developed. Nor does the extreme minuteness of the gemmules, which can hardly differ much in nature from the lowest and simplest organisms, render it improbable that they should grow and multiply. A great authority, Dr. Beale, says that “minute yeast-cells are capable of throwing off buds or gemmules, much less than the 1/100000 of an inch in diameter”; and these he thinks are “capable of subdivision practically ad infinitum.” A particle of small-pox matter, so minute as to be borne by the wind, must multiply itself many thousandfold in a person thus inoculated; and so with the contagious matter of scarlet fever. It has recently been ascertained that a minute portion of the mucous discharge from an animal affected with rinderpest, if placed in the blood of a healthy ox, increases so fast that in a short space of time “the whole mass of blood, weighing many pounds, is infected, and every small particle of that blood contains enough poison to give, within less than forty-eight hours, the disease to another animal.” * * * * * The gemmules derived from each part or organ must be thoroughly dispersed throughout the whole system. We know, for instance, that even a minute fragment of a leaf of a begonia will reproduce the whole plant; and that if a fresh-water worm is chopped into small pieces, each will reproduce the whole animal. Considering also the minuteness of the gemmules and the permeability of all organic tissues, the thorough dispersion of the gemmules is not surprising. That matter may be readily transferred without the aid of vessels from part to part of the body, we have a good instance in a case recorded by Sir J. Paget of a lady, whose hair lost its color at each successive attack of neuralgia and recovered it again in the course of a few days. With plants, however, and probably with compound animals, such as corals, the gemmules do not ordinarily spread from bud to bud, but are confined to the parts developed from each separate bud; and of this fact no explanation can be given. TWO OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. But we have here to encounter two objections which apply not only to the regrowth of a part, or of a bisected individual, but to fissiparous generation and budding. The first objection is that the part which is reproduced is in the same stage of development as that of the being which has been operated on or bisected; and in the case of buds, that the new beings thus produced are in the same stage as that of the budding parent. Thus a mature salamander, of which the tail has been cut off, does not reproduce a larval tail; and a crab does not reproduce a larval leg. In the case of budding it was shown in the first part of this chapter that the new being thus produced does not retrograde in development—that is, does not pass through those earlier stages which the fertilized germ has to pass through. Nevertheless, the organisms operated on or multiplying themselves by buds must, by our hypothesis, include innumerable gemmules derived from every part or unit of the earlier stages of development; and why do not such gemmules reproduce the amputated part or the whole body at a corresponding early stage of development? The second objection, which has been insisted on by Delpino, is that the tissues, for instance, of a mature salamander or crab, of which a limb has been removed, are already differentiated and have passed through their whole course of development; and how can such tissues in accordance with our hypothesis attract and combine with the gemmules of the part which is to be reproduced? In answer to these two objections we must bear in mind the evidence which has been advanced, showing that at least in a large number of cases the power of regrowth is a localized faculty, acquired for the sake of repairing special injuries to which each particular creature is liable; and, in the case of buds or fissiparous generation, for the sake of quickly multiplying the organism at a period of life when it can be supported in large numbers. These considerations lead us to believe that in all such cases a stock of nascent cells or of partially developed gemmules are retained for this special purpose either locally or throughout the body, ready to combine with the gemmules derived from the cells which come next in due succession. If this be admitted, we have a sufficient answer to the above two objections. Anyhow, pangenesis seems to throw a considerable amount of light on the wonderful power of regrowth. EFFECT OF MORBID ACTION. We have as yet spoken only of the removal of parts, when not followed by morbid action: but, when the operation is thus followed, it is certain that the deficiency is sometimes inherited. In a former chapter instances were given, as of a cow, the loss of whose horn was followed by suppuration, and her calves were destitute of a horn on the same side of their heads. But the evidence which admits of no doubt is that given by Brown-Séquard with respect to Guinea-pigs, which, after their sciatic nerves had been divided, gnawed off their own gangrenous toes, and the toes of their offspring were deficient in at least thirteen instances on the corresponding feet. The inheritance of the lost part in several of these cases is all the more remarkable as only one parent was affected; but we know that a congenital deficiency is often transmitted from one parent alone—for instance, the offspring of hornless cattle of either sex, when crossed with perfect animals, are often hornless. How, then, in accordance with our hypothesis can we account for mutilations being sometimes strongly inherited, if they are followed by diseased action? The answer probably is that all the gemmules of the mutilated or amputated part are gradually attracted to the diseased surface during the reparative process, and are there destroyed by the morbid action. TRANSMISSION LIMITED. The transmission of dormant gemmules during many successive generations is hardly in itself more improbable, as previously remarked, than the retention during many ages of rudimentary organs, or even only of a tendency to the production of a rudiment; but there is no reason to suppose that dormant gemmules can be transmitted and propagated forever. Excessively minute and numerous as they are believed to be, an infinite number, derived, during a long course of modification and descent, from each unit of each progenitor, could not be supported or nourished by the organism. But it does not seem improbable that certain gemmules, under favorable conditions, should be retained and go on multiplying for a much longer period than others. Finally, on the view here given, we certainly gain some insight into the wonderful fact that the child may depart from the type of both its parents, and resemble its grandparents, or ancestors removed by many hundreds of generations. * * * * * The child, strictly speaking, does not grow into the man, but includes germs which slowly and successively become developed and form the man. In the child, as well as in the adult, each part generates the same part. Inheritance must be looked at as merely a form of growth, like the self-division of a lowly-organized unicellular organism. Reversion depends on the transmission from the forefather to his descendants of dormant gemmules, which occasionally become developed under certain known or unknown conditions. Each animal and plant may be compared with a bed of soil full of seeds, some of which soon germinate, some lie dormant for a period, while others perish. When we hear it said that a man carries in his constitution the seeds of an inherited disease, there is much truth in the expression. No other attempt, as far as I am aware, has been made, imperfect as this confessedly is, to connect under one point of view these several grand classes of facts. An organic being is a microcosm—a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and numerous as the stars in heaven. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Charles Darwin (2022). Darwinism Stated by Darwin himself. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69147/pg69147-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

THE PROVISIONAL HYPOTHESIS OF PANGENESIS

What Are Dating Apps Doing to Protect Their Users?

¿Qué están haciendo las aplicaciones de citas para proteger a sus usuarios?

Que font les applications de rencontres pour protéger leurs utilisateurs ?

डेटिंग ऐप्स अपने उपयोगकर्ताओं की सुरक्षा के लिए क्या कर रहे हैं?

出会い系アプリはユーザーを保護するために何をしていますか?

O que os aplicativos de namoro estão fazendo para proteger seus usuários?

Ứng dụng hẹn hò đang làm gì để bảo vệ người dùng của họ?

约会应用程序在做什么来保护他们的用户？

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. These four areas of study have become crucial for students who want to be part of an innovative, rapidly growing industry with excellent career prospects. Fortunately, many amazing ways to get your kids involved in STEM! The are worth understanding. However, it’s not just about becoming the next tech baron or getting your stock options. It’s about developing our human potential. In short, STEM helps us tackle significant global challenges. occupational trends The states that: U.S. Department of Education If we want a nation where our future leaders, neighbors, and workers can understand and solve some of the complex challenges of today and tomorrow and meet the demands of the dynamic and evolving workforce, building students’ skills, content knowledge, and literacy in STEM fields is essential. What Are the Benefits of Learning STEM at a Young Age? Short-term benefits: Improved grades and academic performance Great Foundation for college-level coursework Essential skills: problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity Long-term benefits: Entrepreneurial mindset Choice of innovative, well-paid careers Becoming a creator, not just a consumer Tools to navigate a world run by technology and science What Are the Trademarks of a Successful STEM Education Program? The integration of topics — no field is considered in isolation but explored in how they relate to one another, with an emphasis on real-world applications Project-based-learning and inquiry-based learning approaches encourage student curiosity Creativity, trial-and-error, and even grit are shown as part of the scientific process The addition of computer science to the K12 curriculum is a big change, one that business leaders, teachers, parents, and state governors agree is worth pursuing. Read more about the . CEOs for Computer Science initiative here How Parents Can Augment Their Child’s STEM Learning When it comes to your child’s STEM education, it’s imperative to pursue available resources. Clubs Ask around your school or neighborhood for existing clubs or activities. — Provides STEM/STEAM programs featuring tecLEGO® bricks and K’Nex® Snapology — Explore the mysteries of outer space science with fun projects NASA STEM Club — Offers both virtual and in-person after-school clubs Science Explorers 2. Books Many libraries provide digital access to thousands of free technology ebooks (via or similar services) in addition to kid-friendly STEM books in their regular library. oreilly.com — This book inspires girls to see themselves in engineering and STEM. Part of the Questioneer series. Ages 3-6. Rosie Revere, Engineer — Tynker has a great series of books detailing inspirational block-coding projects. Ages 8-12+. Tynker Activity Books — Hands-on activities that you can do with household objects, part of a series from DK Publishing. Ages 8-12+. Maker Lab 3. Museums Local museums can also be a fantastic way to supplement STEM learning. San Francisco’s is a public learning laboratory exploring the world through science, art, and human perception. Exploratorium The mission of Philadelphia’s is to inspire a passion for learning about science and technology. Franklin Institute Chicago’s has a Dozin’ with the Dinos program where kids can spend the night at the museum, enjoying activities like dissecting owl pellets and learning the steps of Egyptian mummification. Field Museum 4. Zoos, Nature Centers, Aquariums, and Universities in New York has a STEM Gone Wild program for k-5 students with activities that include science experiments, data collection, hands-on activities, animal observations, and more. Prospect Park Zoo in Connecticut has a STEM Accelerator Program that includes activities in building boats, programming and coding, constructing towers, launching toy cars, solving math puzzles, and more. The Mystic Aquarium 5. Diversity in STEM Many new resources have been developed to get the most diverse range of voices in STEM, though women in general only represent about according to . 26% of technologists Women Who Code — To close the gender gap in technology, they offer a series of inspirational and educational books! Girls Who Code — An interest group aimed at inspiring young women of color to become coders. Black Girls Code — Read the inspirational stories of women working at NASA. Women@NASA — This Tynker blog series highlights women’s achievements, past and present. Women in STEM — This is the Twitter handle for Alena Analeigh, the Brown STEM Girl founder. @BrownStemGirl STEM: Majors & Degrees Regardless of their major, STEM students usually take courses in fields like biology, chemistry, calculus, statistics, and engineering. Popular STEM Majors: Mechanical Engineering Biology Software Engineering Biotechnology Computer Science Information Technology Popular STEM Degrees: Bachelor of Science Bachelor of Applied science Bachelor of Engineering Some educators have begun adding Arts to the STEM acronym to form STEAM, which emphasizes connections to visual arts, music, and creativity. For some learners, it can help inspire them to pursue technical fields — and see the beauty of mathematics. Currently, there are roughly 700,000 open computing jobs but only 80,000 computer science graduates every year. According to a recent article in , engineering is the most in-demand major in 2022. Citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median annual salary for was $119,560 in 2020 and $92,620 for . it’s estimated that Best Colleges computer hardware engineers biomedical engineers A statement from the National Science and Technology Council: Americans with a strong foundation in STEM have electrified the Nation, harnessed the power of the atom, put men on the Moon and rovers on Mars, developed the internet, designed computers that fit in your pocket, created imaging machines that reveal the inner workings of the body, and decoded the human genome. These stunning achievements have transformed the human experience, inspired generations, and fostered the strong public support for STEM education and research. In the last thirty years, we’ve seen remarkable advancements in technology, which are profoundly impacting how we live and ultimately how we educate our children. Teaching science in high school, of course, is nothing new. So what’s changed? The T in STEM, Technology, holds the clue. Computation and computer science have touched nearly every aspect of scientific innovation, including agriculture, biochemistry, astrophysics, medicine, and ecology. When students learn to understand how and why scientific or mathematical ideas apply to a situation, they’re more likely to acquire a deeper understanding of the material. That’s why, whenever possible, today’s teachers try to link scientific discoveries and innovations to their students’ everyday lives. Check out and learn more about inspiring the next generation to change the world through code. Tynker Also published here. About the Author is the Chief Growth Officer of , with 20 years of experience helping startups grow into successful businesses. Lomit has previously played a critical role in scaling growth at startups, including Roku (IPO), TrustedID (acquired by Equifax), Texture (acquired. by Apple), and IMVU (#2 top-grossing gaming app). Lomit is a public speaker, author, and advisor, with numerous accolades and awards throughout his career, including being recognized as a Mobile Hero by Liftoff. Lomit's book is part of Eric Ries' best-selling "The Lean Startup" series. Lomit Patel Tynker Lean AI

5 Ways to Get Kids Interested in Stem

Photo by on Михаил Секацкий Unsplash TikTok became popular during the global pandemic and has not stopped growing ever since: In September 2021, it surpassed the mark of 1 billion active users in a month. The increasing popularity of this application haunted other developers, and therefore many so-called clone apps appeared on the mobile market. In the spirit of experimentation, the team tried to find out if there are any chances for them to steal at least part of the TikTok audience. Apptica Three Categories of TikTok Clones Total Copycats Apps like and (the last one is a TikTok alternative for Android users) bear an uncanny resemblance to TikTok. Clash, Byte, Dubsmash Likee Some total doppelgangers may replace the app in a specific country. For example, Indian , Chinese and Russian were purposely created to become a TikTok alternative. Chingari Kuaishou Yappy Apps That Created Something Unique Instead of creating completely different video apps, TikTok clones are trying to bribe users. For example, users of some applications can earn rewards for getting likes, shares and comments. app allows users to receive rewards that can be converted into real spendable money even by watching or commenting on videos that other creators made. Cheez Also users can participate in its unique online battles like DanceOff, which became the first mobile dancing game. and applications also give users an opportunity to earn rewards, but the last app also has Instagram-like stories that last for up to 48 hours. Vigo Video Kwai app that also looks like TikTok from first sight has more emphasis on creating more high-quality content rather than gaining more followers. Firework Meaning that even if you don’t have a large audience, a great video can really make you blow up this application. Firework also offers weekly challenges with cash prizes. Also this summer a kids-friendly TikTok look-alike called was launched. This so-called Social Media for Kids is a short-form video platform that has a mission to develop healthy social media habits for children. Zigazoo It allows them to scroll the feed or participate in various challenges or activities created by different organizations that work with kids – for example, the zoos, museums and TV studios – or by professionals like teachers and musicians. TikTok Lookalikes That Have Been Banned From Stores Certain applications that almost completely copied TikTok were removed from stores. For example, an app called that was funded by Kuaishou (which is a rival of , a version of TikTok for Chinese users), was banned shortly after its release. Zynn Doyin Besides being an identical TikTok twin, Zynn was accused of stealing user content from other apps. Another app that shamelessly copied TikTok – and because of this, had a pretty short life – was Indian . By the end of the spring 2020, this app had more than 5 million downloads and a rating of 4,7 in Google Play. Mitron Despite this, It was taken down from stores in summer of the same year for alleged violation of privacy policies. Why do Such Applications Appear? The simplest reason why lots of TikTok lookalikes have been storming the mobile market for past years is a banal desire to earn – popularity, users and large sums of money. However, some applications come out as TikTok alternatives in countries where the original music app is banned – for instance, India, Uzbekistan – and other places where this social network could be potentially blocked: Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh have tried to impose a ban on TikTok earlier. There were also cases when companies developed TikTok clones to interfere with its growth. For example, Zynn project received support from Chinese company that wanted to prevent an increase in the number of subscribers. Tencent Also, many developers hoped to become TikTok alternatives if this social network was banned. And there have already been such cases: for instance, on 6th August 2020, former US President Donald Trump signed an order which stated the ban of this application in 45 days, unless it is sold by company. In June 2021, New President Joe Biden signed an executive order lifting Trump's ban on TikTok. ByteDance And recent restrictions that TikTok imposed on Russian content creators might also stimulate the outflow of users from this app to its analogs. On March 6, TikTok temporarily banned all new posts and prohibited live-streaming for users based in this country, in light of a new law on ‘fake news’ which was passed by the Russian authorities. Logically, due to this, (Russian TikTok clone) should have been gaining popularity dramatically — but for some reason this did not happen. Yappy According to , the number of downloads has increased since March 6, but decreased two days later: Apptica Can These Apps Beat TikTok in Popularity? Although some of these applications are well-made and provide functions that TikTok doesn’t have and have similar structure, there is no chance they can replace this social network – unless it is completely banned, of course. It is hard to disagree that TikTok, a true content-feeding machine, became a world phenomenon. The format of an infinite feed with tons of easily digestible personalized content created by ordinary users like you is probably the simplest concept that could possibly appear in a developer's mind. However, this simplicity makes it extremely hard to create similar applications that could be at least a little different from TikTok and bring something of their own into the mobile world. Besides this, TikTok has made itself a name that has become firmly established in our heads: we associate short looped videos only with this platform – and we even call them TikToks. This app became a non-beatable leader in shining armor made of uniqueness and worldwide fame, so its lookalikes have to put up with it.

What is the Deal With Applications That Copy TikTok?

Attracting customers to your business is crucial whether you have a 50-man team or you are handling everything yourself. But you just don't want to attract new customers; you want them to stay loyal customers for a long time. Conversion is crucial to your business's success, and knowing how to increase the chances of it happening can make a big difference. A/B testing can help you get there faster, whether you're just getting started or seeking to maintain or improve your current conversion rates. A/B testing compares two different versions of a web page to evaluate which performs better. It improves conversion rates by evaluating the outcomes with facts and statistics. You can figure out what your target audience wants by experimenting with one variable at a time, such as whether a video or an image is more appealing and results in the desired output. Well-Known A/B Testing Tools Here we a list of popular A/B testing tools to help you improve your , find solutions and engage with your ideal customers. digital marketing strategy A/B Smartly.com Knowledge-based and engineering-centric experimentation platform where multiple teams can run hundreds or thousands of simultaneous experiments without stepping on each other toes, with transparency to all stakeholders, and full visibility about possible interactions. Optimizely Optimizely is typically the preferred choice for top-of-the-line A/B testing software for larger firms. It is, nevertheless, simple to execute and suitable for even beginners and experts. With Optimizely extensive A/B testing capabilities, you can run several tests on a single page at the same time. Optimizely can be easily used and does not require . More advanced targeting, segmentation, and content personalization possibilities are also beneficial. As a bonus, you can use this tool with mobile apps and messaging platforms. prior programming experience Adobe Target Adobe Target is a business-level program that provides rule-based . It integrates easily with Google Analytics and generates reports that can be used for UX testing, personalization, and modifying marketing offers. Adobe Target is better suited for consumers who utilize the entire Adobe marketing suite since it provides smooth communication between products. A/B testing and personalization capabilities Like other A/B testing tools, the platform leads you through a three-step experimentation setup process that lets you quickly build variations, target audience groups based on your experiment hypothesis, and tweak the test's goals and settings. Omniconvert The goal of Omniconvert is to turn data into creative marketing concepts. You may run A/B split tests on your PC, tablet, or mobile device, wherever is most convenient for you. Omniconvert's ability to assign your control to the winners of your A/B testing, which helps with future testing, is a fantastic tool. In addition to A/B testing, the platform's functionalities can be used for web surveys, personalization, and traffic segmentation. One of these segmentation features is sorting by visitor behavior, geolocation, and other factors. HubSpot If you're searching for an all-in-one marketing solution and have a more significant budget, HubSpot's full suite of products might be suitable for you. It includes a CRM, a Marketing Hub (including an A/B testing tool), a Sales Hub, and a Service Hub. HubSpot has the advantage of providing a comprehensive set of capabilities in a single system, which can save you a lot of time. The HubSpot solution is excellent for businesses just getting started with A/B testing. It's also ideal for organizations to keep track of their testing results. The A/B testing tool, on the other hand, is not available for purchase separately. You'll have to pay for a professional package instead, which will cost at least $800 per month. Convert Convert enables you to build additional variations and tailored tests to meet your requirements. Its design will appeal to those who have used A/B testing and other marketing tools in the past. It creates your testing framework without writing code using its straightforward visual builder or switching to custom code for more flexibility. Convert's utility is further improved by its extensive reporting capabilities and several third-party tool integration options e g., WordPress, HubSpot, and Shopify. Developer shortcuts can also be used to choose child objects or containers. In addition to A/B testing, Convert enables multivariate testing, multipage experimentation, and detailed segmentation (e.g., you can segment customers by historical behavior or cookies). VWO Visual Website Optimizer (VWO)is a program that helps you to improve your website's performance. It is one of the most popular enterprise-level A/B testing systems. Hundreds of thousands of brands use Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) to conduct A/B testing on items, websites, and applications worldwide. With this A/B testing software package, you can A/B test anything. A/B testing can be done on every measure of your product, website, or app launch to see how it influences visitors. Visual Website Optimizer also supports split URLs and multivariate testing (VWO).In addition to testing, VWO offers VWO Insights, VWO Full Stack, VWO Deploy, VWO Plan, and VWO Engage. One of the essential features of VWO is that it allows users to develop and run tests without knowing anything about IT or coding. VWO's point-and-click visual editor will enable you to alter any component on the website, including text, background, images, and more. Additional fundamental and complex widgets and elements can also be added. Oracle Maxymiser Oracle Maxymiser is a software tool that improves Oracle's performance. Oracle Maxymiser is a testing and optimization software tool. Website testing, in-session customization, real-time behavioral targeting, and product recommendations are among its services for mobile apps and websites. Maxymiser is a robust stat engine that can help you make better judgments. You can create unified campaigns that cover all marketing platforms to boost conversions. Maxymiser has a visual editor that enables collaboration between technical and non-technical users. It simplifies executing any testing, such as A/B testing or multi-page funnel testing. Oracle Maxymiser is suitable for businesses of any size. With Maximymiser's testing and targeting features, you can determine which combination of your website's sections attracts visitors the most. A/B testing also allows you to quickly evaluate which elements work and lead to higher conversion rates. Zoho's PageSense For conversion optimization, personalization, and A/B testing, Zoho PageSense provides a one-stop-shop. This platform supports understanding your visitors' online behavior, quantifying crucial website metrics, and delivering a best-in-class website experience to visitors to convert them into customers. Zoho PageSense is suitable for businesses of all sizes, from small to large. With ZohoPageSense, you can test photographs, colors, page layouts, website elements, messages, and more. With PageSense, you can set targets, limit all CTA clicks, and create multiple features to track your website's key metrics. Make a conversion funnel to determine which pages of your website are the most likely to be abandoned. It also has funnel analysis, session recording, and form analytics built-in. It also has a study segmentation feature that can be used to filter reports and analyze visitor behavior. Finally, PageSense heatmaps show you which of your website's pages are the most popular with visitors. Kameleon Kameleoon is customization and A/B testing platform powered by artificial intelligence that helps you optimize digital experiences. You may design customized experiences based on each visitor's conversion probability, calculated in real-time based on their actions. The pricing for Kameleoon isn't published on its website, although it's fair for this level. Starting prices are mid-range, but by the time you gain access to the platform's most advanced features, you'll be paying lower-enterprise rates. This is accurate business software, but it's also built to be user-friendly and intuitive, which isn't always the case with . You'll find the difference every time you use Kameleoon, but the most pleasing element of the software's UX is how simple it is to learn for new team members. enterprise CRO solutions Freshmarketer Freshmarketer is a conversion rate optimization and automation solution from Freshworks. Freshworks also offers a complete marketing and sales solution in different software products that operate together seamlessly. As a testing solution, Freshmarketer's WYSIWYG editor and reporting interface give a visual platform for creating A/B tests and split URL tests. While it isn't the most advanced testing platform on the market, it is unquestionably one of the most user-friendly and cost-effective. For small organizations wishing to get started with conversion optimization, Freshmarketer is an excellent option. You also get some basic customization options for collecting customer feedback, like surveys and suggested messaging. Finally, you get some helpful automation features, though you'll need to use them in conjunction with Freshworks' CRM (Freshsales) or other customer relationship management software. Monetate Monetate offers a suite of marketing capabilities to retailers, including AI product recommendations, hyper-personalization, customer data management, and more. Its testing and optimization software has unique capabilities to help busy retailers improve their online platforms without affecting their customers' experience. The platform's dynamic testing system automatically transmits more traffic to winning variations, allowing you to continue testing while meeting more goals. The platform also has algorithms for decreasing flicker, minimizing loading times, and avoiding content stops while your tests are running. Unbounce Unbounce is a famous landing page builder with powerful A/B testing options that may help you find the best-performing pages on your website. The testing platform can help you convert website traffic into leads, customers, and sales. The conversion intelligence insights provided by the testing tool strengthen your abilities and instincts, guaranteeing that every campaign executes optimally. Unbounce's main aim is to help you create and optimize landing pages for your website, and they do it exceptionally well. Furthermore, the application has a simple drag-and-drop editor that allows you to construct and publish landing web pages quickly and efficiently without the need for a developer. Google Optimize Google Optimize is a free version of Optimize 360, an A/B testing tool that enables you to build and test several versions of your website. It's based on Google Analytics, which you'll have to install to utilize the program. Even though it is free, the Google Optimize tool is a fantastic option. Simple A/B testing, multivariate tests, and split-page tests may all be done with the visual editor. You’ll also have access to extensive behavioral data and the ability to target any functional audience segments discovered by . It's incredible how much a business can achieve with this free tool. Google Analytics Leadformly Several A/B testing tools fail to test some of your site's finer details, which is necessary for running tests. This is especially true for web forms, which lack the depth of data you need to figure out which fields are causing users to quit your documents and why. To address these concerns, you'll need a tool like Leadformly, which provides in-depth form analytics and A/B testing tools to guide you in improving conversion rates at the final hurdle. There aren't many conversions that can be carried out without using a form. As a result, make form optimization a top priority in your conversion rate optimization efforts. Evergage Evergage, powered by machine learning, keeps us on the subject of experimentation and customization. However, suppose you want to build the finest possible customer experiences based on user behavior and all of the data you have at your disposal. In that case, Evergage is the solution for you. With Evergage, you get a comprehensive set of A/B testing options, as well as a lot more. Evergage allows you to personalize consumer experiences across different platforms to match their exact requirements and expectations. This is one of the most advanced testing, personalization, and optimization tools available; the only question is whether you need it all in one place. Once again, it relies on machine learning to crunch the numbers, track user actions, and automate optimizations based on these patterns. Conclusion Website owners should conduct to identify which combination of elements best attracts and converts visitors into customers. Alongside, it has a host of other benefits, as previously mentioned. If you're looking for the best A/B testing software, this article will undoubtedly help you narrow down your search. A/B testing Most of the above-mentioned A/B testing services are subscription-based. Only a few tools offer a free edition, while some offer a free trial period. Some of these technologies are best suited for large organizations, while any business can use others. Make sure you choose a tool that allows you to test your required variations at a fair cost.

Retain More Customers With these A/B Testing Tools

How the ZooKeeper Solves the Dining Philosophers Problem

Persuading someone to open their wallet for an unknown website or a new product can be hard. So, how do you go about it? While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to it, customer testimonials can do the job. Using customer testimonials on your website is a wise way of persuading visitors and converting them into customers. After all, 95% of the buyers say that reviews, whether negative or positive, influence their buying decisions. Wouldn’t you want to grab the slice of that action - perhaps see some customer testimonial page examples? But, you might be asking: Why are Customer Testimonials Important? Customer testimonials can be a great marketing asset, if only you learn how to use them properly. A lot of e-commerce businesses have made them an essential part of scaling their online presence. Still not convinced? Let’s get into specifics: 1. Customer Testimonials Build Trust and Credibility These testimonials have an impact on your future customers because they add legitimacy to your products or website and make people more willing to buy from you. Put simply, they have the potential to improve the conversion rate of visitors into paying customers. What we’re trying to say is - and nudge them towards making a purchase  - because they learn that other people have been happy with the website and have made the same purchase for similar reasons. customer testimonials make people more comfortable 2. Customer Testimonials Provide Social Proof Have you ever eaten at a restaurant because your friend mentioned the great food? Have you ever bought a product because your favorite actor endorsed it? That’s social proof. Social proof simply develops the case of ‘if it’s good for them, it’s good for me as well.’ Used correctly, customer testimonials can be a very efficient sales ploy. A great testimonial taps into a prospective buyer’s head and persuades them to think that ‘I also need that product because everyone else cannot be wrong.’ 3. They Boost Conversions According to a BigCommerce study, customers who interact with a review are 58% more likely to convert. The same study also pointed that 50+  reviews can generate a 4.6% increase in conversion rates. These numbers show that the more genuine and positive testimonials you can gain from your customers, the more chances there will be of conversions. 4. They Humanise Your Brand People love a good story. Their empathy and curiosity towards other humans are ingrained in their psyches. And that’s another reason why you should leverage customer testimonials. The testimonials on your website or product page can provide a human interest angle to your offerings- enabling customers to connect with, relate to, and better understand the services and products before them. You must have come across - just to reveal the human side of their business. So, as marketers, you too can achieve the same outcome by sourcing great testimonials. big brands that spend millions on advertising campaigns 5. They Tell Users About Your USP One of the reasons testimonials are a great marketing asset is testimonials can show how a product or service can solve the pain points of the customers. In other words, it informs them about the unique selling point  (USP) of your product or service and helps illustrate how you solved a recurring challenge for your existing customer. How to use Customer Testimonials Efficiently? By this stage, you must have understood the importance of customer testimonials. I am sure you’d want to leverage it as a marketing strategy and review customer . So, we got you some interesting hacks on using testimonials more efficiently. testimonial page examples 1. Consider Adding Testimonial in a Video Written testimonials are indeed effective. However, videos can convey more meaning and leave a great impact on viewers in a shorter space of time. One of the studies revealed that 79% of people have watched a video testimonial to learn about a product or service. I too am a big fan of using testimonials in a video - with faces of real people and their experiences. Just think about it - you got the audio, text, and visual - all elements in one neat package. Hearing and seeing an existing customer's genuine appreciation for your business is more appealing than you think. So, make sure to incorporate this type of testimonials. 2. Create a Dedicated Testimonials Page How about creating a dedicated page that only highlights your success stories with previous customers? A lot of online businesses are doing this by amassing a good number of positive testimonials. They are providing a hub for customers to find out what existing and previous customers have to say about the product. You can make this page as low-key or flashy as your budget and design skills allow. A great thing, these pages aren’t tough to set up. You can use plugins and theme pages that will pull through reviews to your testimonial page automatically. Even software like HubSpot CRM has created testimonial pages that oozes social proof and turn visitors into paying customers. 3. Use Testimonials in Email Campaign One super-effective strategy for encouraging prospective buyers to take action is to create a small email campaign where you show them your testimonials. This strategy has helped businesses encourage customer engagement and others gather meaningful feedback. And this one is pretty inexpensive too. You only need to churn a compelling subject line, some thought-provoking questions, and then paste the testimonials from your past customers. 4. Testimonials on Social Media Social media is indeed a great palace to add your testimonials and some social proof. The key here is to share your social channels which tap into the . audience’s pain points We recommend using social sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn for discovering user’s pain points. You can easily do this by monitoring topical discussion threads and monitoring hashtags. LinkedIn is indeed a great tool for gauging the opinions of people who’re in the same industry. 5. Add Testimonials to Home Page If you want to create a good first impression for your website visitors, you must consider adding a testimonial section to your website’s home page. Adding testimonials on the website homepage ensures that you gain your visitor’s trust from the very beginning. Considering how visitors spend a very limited time on a website, you should make that time count by displaying something that can inspire a conversion. Some glowing testimonials with verifiable details like photos, links, full names can maximize credibility. If you’re a B2B company, we’d recommend adding logos and quotes from your impressive clients. You can include their testimonials in an e carousel banner or slider at the top of your home page to increase visibility and impact. This way, the visitors will not need to scroll below to find the testimonials. Similarly, if your company has won an award or gained a decent press review, you should consider adding feature snippets from these testimonials to your homepage. 6. Testimonials on a Product Page One of the important touchpoints in your customer journey is your product or service page. While on the product page, visitors are checking out the goods, it’s great to reinforce your testimonials - and how brilliant your product is and how previous customers have been happy with the purchase. This type of customer testimonials is considered to be well-placed and well-timed testimonials. It sends a reminder to prospective customers that real people have already used your product. All in all, it’s a neat trick to reassure your customers that your product or service is legit. So, every bit of positive reassurance you give to your users will coax them to the finish line. 7. In Crowdfunding Campaigns If you’re planning to start a crowdfunding campaign for raising funds for your business, it’s a smart idea to add some testimonials from existing users or early adopters of your service. When you’re asking investors and sponsors to put their hand in the waller, you need to establish a belief, trust, and confidence in your business - and testimonials are a great way of doing that. By including from enthusiastic customers, you’ll be able to provide extra legitimacy for backing up your funding request. You can do this by presenting a case study, a video testimonial, or its pull-out quotes. real testimonials Inspiring Customer Testimonial Page Examples to Boost Conversions Slack’s Testimonial Page Slack is nailing credibility with its ‘customer stories’ page. This testimonial page highlights success stories of slack’s previous users. As you can see, they’ve used big names and company logos like trivago, influx, airwallex, and more. The testimonial page has success stories of multiple companies, and as you scroll down, you’ll also see pull quotes of what users are saying. Furthermore, what we love about this page is how it ends with the well-placed CTA button - encouraging users to take action. Key highlights of Slack’s testimonial page: Success stories of existing partners Logos and names of big companies Pull quotes of existing customers A featured customer Neatly organized design Call to action at the bottom Zoom’s Testimonial Page Zoom’s testimonial page is one of the most well-organized customer testimonial pages we’ve come across. Apart from all the use cases, Zoom ensures to bring out specific testimonials from different industries - making a strong case that their product has helped businesses from multiple sectors. Much like Slack, Zoom has also used all the big names from different industries. On their customer testimonial pages, you’ll come across names like Uber, HubSpot, Zendesk, Slack, Go Daddy, and Zapier. Key highlights of Zoom’s testimonial page: Testimonials for multiple industries Testimonials from industry leaders Well-placed case studies Logos from all major customers Impactful quotes from existing customers CTA at the bottom Zoho CRM’s Testimonial Page We found Zoho’s testimonial page to be effective at inspiring future customers. You’ll see well-placed customer success stories written in short glowing copies. Zoho further uses links to each testifying customer’s business - giving existing customers an external link, which is not just a free advertisement for their clients but also supports their SEO. Each customer testimonial is fairly short so that visitors can easily read each snippet without wasting too much time. Key highlights of Zoho CRM’s testimonial page: Incredibly simple design - single-column layout Testimonials grouped under categories (depending on the industry, company size, region, and employee numbers) Link to each testifying customer’s business Logos and names of big clients CTA - requesting visitors to get a demo Buffer Testimonial Page I loved buffer’s testimonial page - it’s probably the simplest and coolest customer testimonial page out there. Buffer - which is known to be the most useful social media management company - has an inspiring customer stories page. Each case study takes visitors to its dedicated page. The main page only features a one-sentence review from the client. Here also, you’ll come across industry-specific use cases that are efficiently featured on the page, making sure that the prospect is getting relevant information based on the industry they’re in. Key highlights of Buffer testimonial page: Expertly editors testimonial videos Written case study Mention of industry leaders Snippets from each case study and a link to the full case study Clutter-free interface FreshDesk Testimonial Page You’ll find Freshdesk’s success story page to be one of the best customer testimonial page examples. Since the company focuses on customer relations, it makes sense that they nail this page with smart use-cases, quote snippets, and neat designs. When you first look at Freshdesk’s testimonial page, you’ll come across featured brands that are placed at the top of their pages. That story is of industry leaders, which helps Freshdesk immediately build trust in new visitor’s eyes. We see some high-profile customers - legit companies - and immediately the credibility increases. Furthermore, Freshdesk organized the rest of the testimonials into multiple categories including industry, location, company size, and more. This helps Freshdesk pinpoint relevant information and makes for easy browsing. Key highlights of Freshdesk testimonial page: Neatly organized Multiple categories to pinpoint only relevant information Featured story of industry leader Case studies Lots of white space to reduce content overwhelm Final Thoughts By this stage, you must have understood why customer testimonials are important. Since we also walked you through customer testimonial page examples, you should have a fair understanding of how to ace use testimonials to full potential.

The Importance of Customer Testimonials to Inspire Future Customers

The term ‘curation’ is commonly associated with museums or libraries, not data science. However, much like the work that’s done on rare paintings or books, data curation tools make the most important data easily accessible to engineers as they build complex machine learning models. Without curation, data is difficult to find, analyze, and interpret. Data curation tools provide meaningful insights and enduring access to all your data in one place. In this article, we’ll dive into the importance of data curation for computer vision specifically, as well as review the top data curation tools on the market today. What is data curation? Data curation is the act of organizing, enhancing, and preserving data for future use. In machine learning, data curation describes the management of data throughout its lifecycle: from its collection and initially storage, to the time it is archived for future re-use. This process is all the more important for computer vision engineers, who deal with massive amounts of visual data on a daily basis. Instead of using manual methods such as writing ETL jobs to extract insights, data curation tools provide a streamlined way to access the right data whenever you need to. The importance of data curation for machine learning Under the hood, data curation tools directly influence computer vision model performance. Using data curation tools, engineers can get a better understanding of the data they’ve collected, identify the most important subsets and edge cases, and curate custom training datasets to feed back into their models. The best data curation tools enable you to: Make it easy to obtain insights on key metrics, as well as the general distribution and diversity of your datasets regardless of sensor type and format. Visualize large scale data: Quickly search, filter, and sort through the entire data lake by making all features queryable and easily accessible. Enable data discovery and retrieval: Identify the most interesting segments within your dataset, and manipulate them within the tool to create completely customized training sets. Curate diverse scenarios: The tool should fit well within your existing workflows and toolset. Seamlessly integrate: What are the best data curation tools for computer vision? With an overwhelming amount of AI products and platforms popping up year after year, how do you know which will provide the most value? Read on below to find out which data curation tool is the best fit for your computer vision project. 1. Aquarium Learning Aquarium is a data management platform that aims to make it easy to identify labeling errors and model failures. With Aquarium, users can version and combine model predictions with their ground truth. Aquarium is especially focused on curating and maintaining training datasets, catering less to raw data management use cases. This is because data exploration in Aquarium is predominantly tied to model predictions and ground truth labels. Users can access Aquarium via their cloud platform or API. However, they currently do not offer on-premise or VPC deployments, and there are no external integrations. - Aquarium supports image, 3D, audio, and text data. They also support multiple annotation types, such as classification, detection, and segmentation. Wide range of use cases - Users can manipulate evaluation thresholds and obtain interactive visualizations to obtain required samples quickly. Interactive model evaluation - Users can collaborate with each other on the Aquarium platform to build data subsets, associate them with issues, and identify new data for annotation. Collaborative features 2. FiftyOne Developed by Voxel51, FiftyOne is an open-source tool to visualize and interpret computer vision datasets. The tool is made up of three components: the Python library, the web app (GUI), and the Brain. FiftyOne does not contain any auto-tagging capabilities, and therefore works best with datasets that have previously been annotated. Furthermore, the tool only supports image and video data, and does not work for multimodal sensor datasets at this time. Unlike other tools, FiftyOne is designed to be used by individual developers rather than teams, functioning like a programming IDE. Today, the platform lacks collaborative features; for example, a single instance cannot host multiple user accounts. FiftyOne taps into TF and Pytorch dataset zoos to provide access to a variety of open datasets and open-source models. Model & dataset zoo - - Via the Brain, a separate closed-source Python package, users can quantitatively assess the uniqueness, mistakenness, and hardness of data. Advanced data analysis - FiftyOne directly integrates with popular annotation tools such as . They also have tight integrations with Jupyter and Colab Notebooks making it easy for users to run FiftyOne through Python notebooks. External integrations LabelBox , 3. Scale Nucleus Launched in late 2020 by , Nucleus is one of the newest data curation tools to hit the market. The Nucleus platform allows users to collaboratively search through image data for model failures. As of now, Nucleus only supports image data, with no support for 3D sensor fusion, video, or text data. Scale Users can access Nucleus via their cloud platform, API or Python SDK. Currently, Nucleus does not support on-premise deployability. - Users can search for visually similar images based on one or multiple base samples and associate custom tags with them. Visual similarity - Using the Nucleus SDK, users can create flexible metadata schemas. Nucleus provides smart methods to detect and create schemas using the annotation format provided. Metadata schemas - Users can create model entities and associate corresponding runs with them. Hence, models can be versioned based on runs (dataset & predictions). Model versioning 4. Clarifai Clarifai is an end-to-end solution for labeling, searching & modeling unstructured data. One of the first AI startups, they provide a platform for modeling image, video, and text data. While Clarifai’s original focus was enabling users to build custom models, they’ve recently added several data curation features including auto-tagging, visual search, and annotations. Ultimately, Clarifai is more of a modelling platform and less of a developer tool. They are best suited for relatively inexperienced teams getting started with ML use cases. - Clarifai offers a broad library of pre-built AI models, including anything from food to facial recognition. Ready-to-use model gallery - The platform supports for image, video, and text data. Wide range of data types - With the platform, users can customize or retrain existing models or create new ones from scratch. Model customization - In addition to their modelling platform, Clarifai offers fully managed annotation services through their Scribe LabelForce data labeling service. Data annotation 5. SiaSearch is a data management platform for computer vision data. Consisting of a scalable metadata catalog and query engine, SiaSearch enables developers to easily search through visual data, add metadata to frames and sequences, as well as assemble custom subsets of data for training or testing. SiaSearch With deep roots in autonomous driving, the SiaSearch platform is used by many OEMs, Tier 1s and tech companies. Aside from autonomous driving, SiaSearch also has solutions for robotics, retail, and more. - One of the only tools that can support 3D sensor fusion data, SiaSearch can analyze large volumes of unstructured sensor data, providing insights at the frame and sequence level. Specialized in sensor data - SiaSearch employs a large catalog of pre-trained extractors to automatically add frame-level, contextual metadata to raw data. Additionally, SiaSearch provides a toolbox for quick extractor development, allowing developers to integrate their own extractors. Auto-tagging capabilities - The SiaSearch platform features a unique, proprietary architecture that combines numeric and sequence-based queries to enable noticeably faster performance. Fast performance - Users can access SiaSearch via their web-based GUI or programmatic API. SiaSearch also supports cloud or on-premise deployment for enterprise users. Flexible workflows & integrations Interested in data curation? The right data curation tool can dramatically reduce the time spent on manual processes, allowing engineers to focus on what really matters - building great models. Lead image via Tobias Fischer on Unsplash Originally published by Clemens Viernickel on: https://www.siasearch.io/blog/best-data-curation-tools-for-computer-vision and has been reposted with permission.

5 Best Data Curation Tools for Computer Vision in 2021

As a website owner, are you always thinking about who is visiting the website? What are the visitors searching on the website? What will be the source to reach the website? To know more about the website performance, one needs to know categorized data, WooCommerce Zoho CRM Integration, sales data, and deliver real-time data. Advantages of Zoho CRM WooCommerce for your website: Easy and Simple to Use This platform is user-friendly when compared to other CRM platforms and solutions. CRM is divided into different modules like Contacts, Leads, Deals, Vendors, and manages data accurately in the database. It is easy to use and customize the platform effortlessly. The WooCommerce Zoho gives you real-time access to monitor the sales cycle, competitor profile, contact history, and more. This is an intelligent integration for the business. Migration from Spreadsheets and Other CRMs is Easier The WooCommerce Zoho CRM helps in migrating valuable data using fewer steps. You just need the data in a required format after that Zoho automatically imports files into the modules within the CRM. The migration process is easier with Zoho’s knowledge, migration checklist, CRM support, and dedicated data migration wizard. Integration with the Third-Party Applications WooCommerce Zoho CRM is an off the shelf product that is open to any business and industry for customization. The Zoho Marketplace has a great collection and you can select the best third-party plugins and extensions for your CRM based business. Many of them are free of cost and require no coding during the integration process. Omnichannel Communication It does not matter where you are; the Zoho CRM can help in connecting you with users easily. One can use various channels across CRM like Emails, Social Media, telephone, live chat, web forms, and more. Using the Zoho CRM, you can receive real-time notifications when the customers interact with the platform. This is an effective way to maintain communication with customers and analyze the channels of interaction. The sales team can track the communication to know the best medium that can target the right audience. Automation of Several Tasks Handling certain repetitively is a time-consuming task and wastes a lot of effort from the developers. Automation to certain tasks helps in cutting down the time and utilize it into increasing the conversion rate. Zoho CRM WooCommerce enables you to trigger actions and automate certain activities into your business workflow. Save time and be more productive for your business. Insights and Reports The Zoho CRM provides an in-depth analysis of the business to understand its weakness and strengths. You can track your sales cycle, create charts, customize the dashboard, target meters, KPIs based on the business targets. This will help you in making data-driven decisions to improve the conversion rate of your business. You can focus on different regions like marketing campaigns and setting organizational objectives by getting insights into the business through reports. Zoho CRM’s AI Adds Power to Your Sales The Artificial Intelligence available in Zoho helps in managing the CRM in an automated and intelligent manner. It can gather information and check the outcomes of sales activities, detect issues, add data into modules, and summarize the information required. The Zoho CRM WooCommerce is a highly informative, skilled, and interactive add-on to the platform. Transparent and Cost-Effective Method It is a great choice for small-scale and medium-scale businesses as it has no contract to take the services. There are three different plans available namely Standard, Enterprise, and Professional. These can be selected by you as per your business requirements. Zoho CRM is also flexible when it comes to payments which can be paid monthly and yearly. The best part is it does not have any hidden costs. Conclusion Getting organic traffic is the main objective for websites to increase their conversion rates. Once you have gained the right amount of traffic, you should have the right strategies to make them stay on your website. Building an E-Commerce platform is a profitable venture during this period - all you need is a trustworthy and reliable platform for development. will offer visitors simple methods to utilize your services. WooCommerce Zoho CRM integration Zoho CRM has some out-of-box tricks for the business. When you are looking for an all-in-one, affordable CRM, and feature-rich platform Zoho CRM is the best choice. In this blog, we have covered some of the essential benefits of integrating this CRM platform to improve the functionality and chances of gaining potential customers. It is high time to convert your website traffic from minimal to a maximum at this hour. Convert your viewers into a potential customer with WooCommerce Zoho CRM integration. You might need to take advice from some experts to build the right strategies and boost the performance of the website efficiently.

Convert Website Traffic into Customers with Zoho CRM Integration

Have you ever observed how a spaceship propels itself into the orbit? A massive amount of fuel is ignited sending the gargantuan spaceship into outer space. Once it enters the outer orbit, it uses a negligible amount of fuel to stay in the orbit. That’s how a startup works as well. A startup needs the maximum amount of visibility in its initial days to take off. Once it has garnered significant visibility, the visibility garnered itself is sufficient to sustain momentum and achieve growth at scale. More like a spaceship staying in orbit with negligible fuel. For startups, visibility matters. It matters now more than ever. Digital media has turned search engines and online stores into highly competitive mediums. If your startup does not enjoy good visibility there, chances are that it never will be able to break through the competition and build its customer base. That brings us to the power of search results. In 2019 alone, Google has received nearly . Of that, more than are for new phrases and terms that are completely new even to Google’s bots. 2.3 trillion searches 16-20% of searches For a startup that is gunning for high visibility, an online search is like the flag-off point. Why? Top SERPs enjoy several other benefits: It builds credibility for the top-ranking pages It maximizes brand recall value It does not cost a bomb to rank organically Now SERPs can be achieved in a zillion ways. The internet has no dearth of information on ‘how to become a master of SEO’, ‘how to nail your SEM goals’, ‘how to be a pro and SMO’, and similar stuff. It will take you a decade or more to sift through that material, implement them, and see some actual results. However, there are some proven tactics that you can give a shot without much ado. There are brands that have taken their visibility from 100 odd sessions a month to . Their secrets are now in the open for all to learn from and implement. 10,000 sessions a month and more I am presenting a fair bit of those secrets with the hope that it will help skyrocket your startup’s online visibility as well. To make your startup visible to your customer’s eyes, you must go where they are. Or, you can bring them to where you are by finding out what they are looking for. Broadly, there are four strategies that can be implemented to make this work: Search engine optimization (SEO) Paid promotion Building influence a.k.a ‘Networking’ Brand building Let’s take a deep dive into each of these four strategies. 1. Search engine optimization It takes nothing to reach there. It takes time. But, once you reach there, it delivers value for the long-term. I am referring to the top SERPs in a search engine. SEO is the strategy, or rather a group of tactics deployed to make a page rank better in search engines. It relies on keywords — the search phrases that customers use to find information about products and services. So, does it mean that creating web pages that solely have keywords in them is going to help you with SEO? definitely, not. In fact, that tactic will backfire. Instead here is what you will have to do: a) Churn out informative content Here is the sole reason why users resort to online searches: they want to find reliable information, and quickly. Online search helps with that. From Apples to Zoos, an online search can help find information about anything and everything. But, to make the information on your website appear in SERPs. You must churn out qualitative content. In the world of SEO, qualitative content always wins against quantitative content. The internet allows you to deliver information in myriad forms. It can be website content, blogs, infographics, visual imagery, or even videos. Whatever form your content is, it must have quality. By quality, I mean informative content that will answer your user’s questions, help them solve a problem, or make their lives easier in some way. When you churn out informative content, infuse it with the right keywords that users use to find information pertaining to your business. That way, your online visibility will maximize and you will also enjoy a steady stream of . online traffic to your website You can use tools like and for keywords research. To monitor the performance of your top keywords you can use . Ahrefs SEMrush SE Ranking b) Publish guest blogs on top industry publications SEO works in many ways. Publishing great content with the right set of keywords is just one part of it. You also have to build backlinks, distribute your content, and also contribute to guest blogs to win top SERPs. Let’s focus on the last bit — the contribution to . That is where there is scope to maximize your online visibility. guest blogging websites Publishing a blog on your website makes your content visible only to your patrons — your customers, stakeholders, and prospects. Whereas publishing content on third party websites like Forbes, Entrepreneur, etc. can give your startup the much-needed visibility. It helps build credibility and also makes your thoughts visible to a larger population of the audience who could be interested in what your startup is doing. In fact, it could even help you swell your customer base significantly, like how Buffer did. Buffer is a social media tool that allows users to schedule posts. Guest blogging enabled Buffer to . Of course, there was hard work involved. , co-founder of Buffer churned out more than 150 guest blogs within a span of 9 months. win more than 100,000 customers Leo Widrich c) Participate in Q&A forums or communities Official blogs and guest blogs help maximize online visibility. But, they have one downside. Most often, your blogs could have a marketing angle to them that could make them appear alien to your audience. In fact, one reason why Q&A forums like Quora and Reddit rose in popularity is that they are built on user-generated content that has the least marketing angle to it. Also, they have a huge follower base since any information found on these websites is legit and approved to be genuine, true, or considered to be expert advice. Additionally, participating in these Q&A forums can also help your business earn referral traffic. In fact, if you have access to any Search Engine Optimization tool like Ahrefs, you can leverage it to find the top-performing Quora questions relevant to your domain. Here are the steps recommended by an SEO expert: Nikola Roza Plugin Quora’s home page URL: into Ahrefs content explorer tool https://www.quora.com/ Click on “Top pages’ which would give you a list of Quora pages that are ranking the best in the Google SERP Set a filter to drill down on pages that are related to your business or keywords Chase these questions by actively answering, upvoting and inviting participation This process would help you bring in referral traffic from Quora to your website. Here is one piece of advice that will help you make the most of Q&A forums. Pick any Q&A forum of your choice, say Quora. Search the keywords that are relevant to your business. From the results that throw up, list down popular questions based on the number of followers, answers, and upvotes. Do a thorough analysis to figure out gaps in existing answers. Write a better answer that will make you rank better than others. As a best practice, plug in a related blog on your website or even the website URL to maximize visibility. 2. Paid promotion Unlike the space shuttle that I referred to at the beginning of this article, startups have one challenge. They are perennially short of time. They are always pressed to take the product or service to the market in the shortest time frame possible. Also, along with product release, they must also manage to bring in maximum customer interest and inquiries (read leads). Organic traffic takes its own sweet time to make this happen. A typical website or blog can take at least 60 days to 240 days to attain a level of the desired ranking. When instant results are expected, paid promotions can help a startup gather instant visibility. an 8:1 ROI i.e $8 for every $1 spent. Google delivers Considering the growth potential there are paid promotion avenues that a startup can explore. a) Search ads Organic traffic trickles through search phrases that customers key in into the search engine. Search ads are shortcuts to climb the SERPs. They are paid slots that ensure that the page is displayed at the top of the SERPs, along with the label ‘Ad’. Search ads take the textual form. b) Display ads Display ads are image-based adverts that are positioned in top-performing websites. These websites have content or offerings that are closely aligned with what the startup is offering. For example, if your startup is launching a smart wireless charger for gadgets, your display ads will be displayed in gadget review websites, technology websites, online stores selling gadgets, and so on. c) Run retargeting ads The benefit of paid promotion is that you can whom you want to become aware of your startup and its offering. This ensures that your marketing spending is not wasted on an audience who has little regard for your business. target a specific kind of audience For example, a SaaS product that is offering billing solutions to small and medium businesses can direct paid ads towards SMB business owners, managers, etc. It can exclude an audience who belong to a specific target audience bearing specific traits, like age, location, gender, spending habits, etc. 3. Building influence a.k.a ‘Networking They say businesses are built on the foundation of relationships. Even in the digital world where a startup has to serve its customers online, without face-to-face interactions, it is the networking prowess that can help strengthen relationships. How can a startup, a virtual entity build networks? These tactics can help: a) Hosting webinars and podcasts Webinars are virtual conferences where a handful of speakers interact with participants through video or chat. They are extremely useful for knowledge sharing and for discussing thought leadership topics. On the same line, they also act as launch pads for startups that are venturing into off-beat markets with little or no awareness. Podcasts are pre-recorded audio discussions. They usually have two participants who interact with each other on a singular topic. A podcast can be scripted or even be an impromptu one. Both webinars and podcasts offer startups a unique opportunity to present their ideas, perspectives, and also bring their startup to the world’s notice. In fact, they are the best source of knowledge gathering for founders and marketers who are short on time but high on the need for learning. Take inspiration from the best in the business. the CMO of Ahrefs shared what he learned by doing . Tim Soulo 20+ podcast interviews in 4 months b) Create customer evangelists Have you visited Pinterest? Do you know what makes Pinterest so popular? It thrives on user-generated content. It is an advanced form of (WOMM). Customer evangelism when your customers are willing to spread refer your business to their near and dear. They are already won with your product quality, customer service and brand values that they want others also to relish from it. Word of Mouth Marketing There are several benefits that customer evangelism can give your business: It is voluntary in nature and hence does not incur expenses It reaches a specific kind of audience who share the same likes, dislikes and interests as your target audience It is more effective than native advertising. c) Leverage influencers marketing Influencer marketing is often regarded as a sham and not worth it for startups. But, that is the opinion of those who have not executed proper influencer marketing strategies. Or they picked the wrong influencers who can do more harm to the brand than good. can create an instant online splash about your product or service. Take for example how Apple did it. When the Apple Mac Pro was released recently, Apple looped in leading influencers to spearhead the marketing campaign. The brand carefully chose leading brand evangelists who are popular for their YouTube videos about Apple products. That helped recreate the kind of hype that the iPhone enjoyed in 2007. Leveraging influencer marketing To help you find the right influencers for your business you can use . To name a few — and . tools for influencer marketing BuzzSumo Upfluence d) Channel partners Channel partners are largely used by a syndicate belonging to a specific industry or business. For startups, they serve a dual purpose. You can leverage channel partners to bring in more revenue and leads. Alternatively, you can also leverage them to shed a spotlight on your brand. For example, if your startup is into selling a novel product like sunglass earphones, you can leverage channel partnerships with mobile manufacturers, sportswear brands, and the likes to get an instant boost to visibility. TrialPay (acquired by Visa), an e-commerce payment platform nailed this strategy. Several key channel partnerships allowed TrialPay to sprint from in two years. zero to 10,000 clients 4. Brand building Here is a simple way to evaluate the power of your brand. The amount of extra money that your customers are willing to pay more than the price of your competitor is your brand value. The additional price indicates that your brand offers more than the ordinary. Also, a brand is not just a fancy logo with a tagline. It is a collection of experiences and expectations that customers expect from a business. These extra pieces do not come so easily. Like Rome, even a brand cannot be built overnight. You must put in conscious efforts to build a brand. Here are some ways how it can be done: a) Online customer reviews The oldest trick in the handbook for brand building is this: winning and showcasing customer reviews. Customers review has an aura of authenticity over them they exude social proof which inspires news prospects to take an informed decision. Also, online customer reviews also offer the many benefits of user-generated content, SEO friendliness being one among them. Studies by have found that 91% of 18-34-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. They do not stop with one or two reviews. They read at least 10 reviews before making a purchase decision. That makes customer reviews a critical piece in your overall brand-building effort. Bright Local Positive reviews can make your business soar high in volumes while negative reviews can stall its growth even in the early stages. b) Social media activity In the olden days, brands had billboards in most frequented places. Today, they have social media handles and product showcase pages. A business that is active on social media can with its customers. It also builds trust since the social media presence has a humane touch to it. Of course, social media will work as an effective brand-building tool only if it is managed properly. quickly create a connection Instead of managing all your social media accounts manually, make your life substantially easier by opting for . To name a few — , and . automated social media posting tools Buffer Sprout Social Hootsuite c) M.I.C.E M.I.C.E stands for Meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions. You cannot build a brand with social media firepower alone. You must meet and greet people in person. M.I.C.E helps with that. In fact, you can even become sponsors for specific events which will proper your brand identity forwards amidst a specific set of audience. For example, a tech conference exclusive to cloud computing experts. Or a hacking event for ethical hackers. When it comes to M.I.C.E, the opportunities are literally endless to build and grow a brand. d) Register on top business listings Remember the Yellow Pages from the early 90? It gave you a complete list of all individuals and businesses along with their contacts in an organized manner. Online are virtual avatars of the Yellow Pages. They help you search, find and contact individuals or businesses who can help you. business listings or directories Some of the top websites for business listings include: G2 Capterra Software Advice These websites let you list your business or even your product in specific. From your location down to minute product features, you can get your business or product listed in an organized fashion. This makes it easy for customers to find you and contact you easily. In fact, like in search engines, you can also pay for a top slot on the search results of these pages. Here is one more key reason why you should get listed in business listings. They rank higher on most search results that bring in referral traffic to your website. From Zero to One: how to level up your startup’s online visibility Peter Thiel in his book ‘Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future’ writes: “The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.” Most often that secret is hidden in plain sight. It is online visibility. Every successful business and popular brand that you know enjoys great online visibility. Of courses, startups rise to stardom and become dominant forces with online visibility. Today, in this internet-dominated era, nothing matters more than online visibility. Hopefully, the tactics I have discussed above will help you maximize your startup’s online visibility.

4 Strategies to Skyrocket Your Startups Online Visibility

The world as we knew it before will never be the same. The is reshaping everything from how we work and shop to how we exercise and socialize. There was a great post that got a lot of traffic where Emma shared and named remote work, automation, and telemedicine as the key trends shaping our new normal. pandemic by Emma Rose Bienvenu her 7 predictions for a Post-Coronavirus World Here are . 10 more trends that are reshaping the present and will likely have a long-lasting and evolving impact on the post-COVID-19 world Although no one can be 100% certain of all the ways this pandemic will affect our in the long-term, using predictive analytics, we can make deductions with a high rate of confidence based on current patterns. economy 1. Retail is going contactless and will rely on self-service tech Appointment shopping, contactless checkout and self-service — these are the key elements that preserve social distancing that most retailers are planning to implement as they reopen. Even once the spread of the virus slows drastically, many people will likely still be concerned about going to physical stores for some time. tech Retail brands will be exploring different contactless technologies, meanwhile, strengthening their online presence and building omnichannel experiences. Thus physical stores will be reinvented — they will no longer be the centerpiece of a retail business, but rather an extension of the omnichannel experience. There will also be changes to store layouts, some of which may be permanent. Experiential retail will most likely evolve with less focus on drawing in large groups for high-touch experiences. Digital shelves will take precedence, allowing retailers to refocus efforts on shopper safety. The economic losses caused by closures of physical stores and the need to recover sales will push brands to be more creative, leading to the creation of lots of inspiring and out-of-the box new initiatives and campaigns. 2. New class of unicorns, acceleration of innovations, startup boom and power shifts toward investors New startups, brands, and innovations will emerge, targeting post-COVID-19 behavioral shifts. Most likely there will be a new class of unicorns that will include either existing companies that will do a quick pivot and identify a new much more attractive business model or completely new companies that were founded during or right after COVID-19. There is already a big trend for the spontaneous entrepreneurship market. ****As the pandemic quickly turned the economy and our daily lives upside down, creative entrepreneurs began to develop solutions. For example, Greg Isenberg, Head of Product at WeWork, recently developed a website for online hairdresser classes. Hair salons are closed in most countries, thus a new market has developed full of people who are willing to pay for such lessons. Meanwhile, economic power is shifting toward investors as the available pool of capital diminishes. VCs and portfolio companies will have diminished access to capital and will consequently expect startups to show higher revenues, greater margins and faster paybacks. 3. AI-based fraud detection is bound to grow and save billions During the epidemic, US residents have received countless fraudulent calls, some even losing thousands of dollars on scammers pretending to be medical or government representatives. Swindlers were taking advantage of the global health crisis. As the influx of fraudsters grows, society is increasingly calling for effective anti-fraud tools. AI-based fraud detection tools are already being actively used by insurance companies and financial institutions, however, the need for fact checking is growing in other sectors as well. The unprecedented combination of the confusing global health crisis we’re currently experiencing alongside global connectivity thanks to the internet, has made way for a wave of false facts and content being shared about COVID-19. Inaccurate information and news about COVID-19 are distributed through instant messengers and emails. There is a growing trend and demand for AI to fight misinformation. While the international community advises each of us to be conscious of information forwarding, the facts are that some fake messages contain true data, so some users simply do not notice false themes. Be careful! 4. We’ll become more digitized with virtual activities for at-home experiences This category is obviously on the rise now and there is a high chance it will stay popular after the pandemic since we’ve now had the chance to experience certain conveniences widespread digitization can bring and how many more opportunities it might open. This includes virtual events, virtual tours, guides, digital experiences and virtual travel. It would be worth mentioning the recent success of Universal Pictures when they offered to release new movies for home rental instead of waiting for movie theaters to reopen. Their Trolls World Tour at-home digital premiere was a big hit and became the biggest debut for a digital release. Notably, as the tourism sector also suffers huge losses, organizations have had to figure out how to move online. Zoos, theaters, museums and other cultural venues have started offering free virtual zoo tours and shows. Other examples include virtual experiences and activities from Airbnb, San Diego Zoo, California Science Center, American Museum of Natural History and others. 5. Shifting to supporting local and small businesses and choosing more direct-to-consumer brands As small businesses have gotten affected the most by COVID-19, many people have jumped in to support them. The pandemic has instilled in many consumers a greater interest in shopping local. People want to support their favorite coffee shops, breweries or dress boutiques — so that they don’t go out of business. As a result, it seems that there will be greater interest in buying from local brands and supporting smaller businesses in the future, even post Covid-19. The crisis has made more people realize how much they appreciate mom-and-pop shops and a stronger connection based on shared values with the direct-to-consumer brands. 6. Brands will be more conscientious and will double down on sustainability Given the current environment, it’s no surprise that retailers and brands have overall minimized their sustainability programs for financial reasons. However, interestingly, we are now observing a new trend of consumers choosing more and more brands that are sustainable or conscientious. As a result, many brands and retailers are now looking for options to reduce their carbon footprint as ecommerce and delivery continue to grow. sustainable packaging Retailers will find ways to limit waste throughout the supply chain optimization as consumers grow more concerned about sustainability. The supply chain will become increasingly transparent as consumers demand more information on where their products come from and how they’re produced. 7. Increasing demand of customized content and micro-learning There is a booming demand for e-learning, specifically for learning new hobbies or skills during the quarantine. People want to apply their newly freed up time to learn something new in a short period of time that doesn’t require applying for a degree or enrolling in a full-year course. The Edtech market is growing in size and value. Mini-MOOKs, or micro-courses, are direct in their content delivery and short enough that you can learn something while standing in line, waiting for a cup of coffee, or on the way to work. These courses are being used to get continuing credits credits, improve professional qualifications and for onboarding at various organizations. There was already an increasing demand for micro-learning before COVID-19 outbreak where the market was growing by 46% every year, but in the last few months we’ve seen it accelerate. 8. Estate planning and life insurance go digital Young families often do not pay enough attention and time to estate planning or life insurance. More and more people are interested in simplified solutions, e.g. services and applications, to help with planning and to avoid being taken by surprise down the line. Coronavirus has become a catalyst for more people to think about their future. According to Google, requests for “probate” have risen sharply since March 8. Demand for applications that allow people to make wills and take out life insurance has grown 2–3 times in just this past month. 9. De-urbanization occurs in the US as remote workers move to less expensive regions We have already seen this as many people have moved back to their hometowns to ride this out. The question is whether they’ll ever return. Even more people are considering moving from urban areas to rural areas for budgetary reasons and because they’re not limited by their office location anymore. In some cases, people have discovered that it is much more pleasant to live outside of urban areas. This pandemic could stall or reverse America’s urbanization. There might be a new term coined soon “the great coronavirus migration”. 10. The increasing need for anti-racism tools for the web and teaching kids to be safe online The online space has always been full of bullying threats and was not a safe space for children, but as with many other trends, COVID-19 had accelerated it and increased the need for anti-racism tools for the web and to teach kids to be safe online. The coronavirus origin in China has led to an increase in internet hate and real cases of aggression against Asians. The common panic about the pandemic is only contributing to the escalation of anti-Chinese sentiment. It’s not a secret that the growth of racial hatred occurs because aggressors are little aware of the problem and ethical standards. Society needs tools to counter racism on the Internet, just as much as in real life, of course. As for kids, the parents are concerned that quarantined children spend much more time online. Experts emphasize that it is an important period to teach children proper communication to avoid long-term harm to their health and social skills.

10 Predictions for a Post-COVID World: Contactless retail, New unicorns and Other

Two weeks back, Zoho Corporation sued Freshworks for copying its trade secrets. I wrote a report on comparing the two businesses during my MBA as part of a course requirement. In the wake of recent developments, I believe it will be an interesting read: attaching below, a version of the essay. Disclaimer: I worked at Freshworks for fourteen months before pursuing MBA The Indian software industry used to be known for its offshore service operations of companies in the West. During the last few years, the trend has been changing. Two companies are building software products to the world from the capital of the southern state of Tamilnadu. and , are very similar companies, in their business strategy and problem-solving approach. They differ in aspirations and vision. Freshworks Zoho Freshworks is a relatively new age internet start-up focussed on aggressive growth. It engages in guerrilla marketing, often going head to head with one of the industry leaders like SalesForce, which is more than ten times its size. Zoho portrays itself as a neighbourhood company from southern Tamilnadu with big ideas and empathy for small businesses. This essay studies the companies from a strategic perspective, compares their choices and attempts to identify their essence. In the last few decades, India has become a global powerhouse of the IT services industry. Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Cognizant and Accenture recruit in large numbers from the engineering colleges around the country. They take advantage of the prevalent labour arbitrage, offer software services for Fortune X companies in the West. The Indian economy has prospered due to the growth of the software services industry. Tata Consultancy Services has an amassing 8.37 trillion INR in market capitalization as of June 2019, which is a little higher than 8.36 trillion INR market capitalization of Reliance Industries. The explosion of data coupled with the availability of high-power computing enabled businesses to move to the Cloud. Migration to Cloud is a painstaking process for engineers in a company; therefore, they were outsourced to eastern countries like India. Indian software service companies, during its long affiliation with western clients, developed expertise in Cloud computing. It forms the base for software as a service (SaaS) products. Traditional software products came with licence or purchase options often priced at exorbitant rates. Office essential software was purchased at negotiated terms, but during the brink of the millennium, things changed. The dotcom bubble period saw many businesses opening in silicon-valley without a strong vision or knowledge. Later, when the bubble was burst, only a few, invested firms survived. Companies started after the dotcom bust emphasized on investing in their productivity tools. As the cost of acquiring a new customer started rising, companies began listening to their customers. A new category of products called Customer Relationship Management (CRM) was born. CRM consists of all the steps in the sales cycle from lead generation, approaching a client, documenting the interactions, follow-up and eventually closing the account. Sales associates who work with multiple clients were facing problems of keeping track of their customer interactions, and often these details were handled in excel sheets. Salesforce, the world’s leading SaaS player today, started developing and selling CRM software that is hosted on the Cloud. Businesses need not have dedicated servers, network monitors in their office space. The property can be used to grow their business. This revolutionary idea in Cloud computing gave birth to the SaaS marketplace. While IT services in India were still growing in the early 1990s, a young Princeton PhD Sridhar Vembu started his career at Qualcomm in the United States. He says that . He started AdventNet Inc headquartered in Chennai, Tamilnadu in 1996. AdeventNet started selling software for telecom operators in the Bay Area. AdventNet Inc was later renamed after its successful CRM product, Zoho, as Zoho Corporation. he could not find a single product in the US that was manufactured in India, while products from China, Taiwan were common Girish Mathrubootham, a product manager at Zoho Corporation, faced a problem with his . He approached the shipping company’s customer service and months went by without any viable solution. He realized that their customer service software was ancient and broken. Later on the hackernews website, he saw frustrated comments from customers of the software about its high price. He quit his job at Zoho and started developing Freshdesk, a support desk software. Freshdesk, launched in 2010, was rebranded into Freshworks in 2017 after adding an array of SaaS products to its portfolio. television getting broken in transit in 2009 Freshworks has raised $400 million and has surpassed $200 million in annual recurring revenue. After the advent of Cloud computing, starting a business became very easy. Registering an office space and running the company from the comfort of the laptop became very common. However, only a handful of companies become big. Everyday tools that businesses need vary based on their scale of operations and the complexity of the sector. Traditional SaaS companies develop the software by understanding the problem of big enterprises—the software becomes heavy, comes with many features, and eventually, the price is very high. A small business might not need many of these features. For example, let us assume a help desk software is required for a company operating on the scale of Amazon. The software should be able to withstand the complexities of a global e-commerce giant. It will need support to be available in hundreds of languages, process queries from tens of channels. Whereas, a small boutique shop in the corner street, running their business through a Facebook page might not need the sophisticated features of the support software used by Amazon. They would also not be able to afford it. This is where Zoho and Freshworks operate - focusing on small and medium scale businesses who seek affordable software to run their business hassle-free. IT service management (ITSM) is another problem faced by companies of small and medium-size. As the companies grow, they accumulate assets in the form of laptops, monitors and other accessories. They should be protected and audited frequently for any mishap or misuse. ITSM software helps them manage assets in the company. Affordability issues can be viewed in two ways. Firstly, the high price paid to the software that is financially not viable to most businesses. Secondly, the licensing deal. Many companies work on very thin , and they cannot afford to pay for licensing fees for a lifetime. Monthly, yearly flexible subscription plans will benefit these companies. and offer them a free trial for the first month. The free trial helps the customers to audit the software for their needs and if they deem fit, proceed to purchase. bottom-line Zoho Freshworks : Editor's Note On Freshworks' request, we'd like to clarify that they offer a 14-day trial. Prof. Saral Mukherjee says, “strategy is all about closing doors”. At any moment, a business will face multiple opportunities to choose. The strategy of the company depends on the occasions they say no to—hence closed doors. Let us analyze the strategy of the two firms. Both Freshworks and Zoho are privately owned companies. Zoho was bootstrapped from Sridhar Vembu’s own money, and he has refused to take any investor funding. He says that investor funding will force the company to focus on high growth, and the company might lose focus on its values and objectives. He further says, “Beyond money, there is also a mission and purpose in life.” Zoho is a family owned business that has not prioritised aggressive growth. Yet, three of the five billionaires (in dollar terms) from Tamil Nadu are namely Sridhar Vembu, Sekar Vembu and Radha Vembu. Freshworks is a VC friendly company. Accel Partners, Tiger Global, CapitalG and Sequoia are some of the investors in Freshworks. The focus of Freshworks is to grow and grow faster. The company has delivered 61% average annual growth over the years. Zoho has said no to the conventional marketing techniques. It has positioned itself as a company that brings out products from rural Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh. shows Sridhar Vembu walking in the paddy fields of Tenkasi. He talks about how a world-class software product is made in the fields of southern-rural Tamilnadu. , aired during the GST rollout, discusses the Zoho software that integrates the GST feature into the auditing module. Sridhar Vembu localizes his positioning. An Advertisement seen recently Another Zoho ad Freshworks is an aspirational company. Even though they started their relationship with small business customers, they wanted to grow big. Salesforce, one of the market leaders of the SaaS industry, conducts a conference every year called Dreamforce in San Francisco, California. . Last year, . Freshworks’ positioning is its user interface and affordability. It targets customers who are annoyed with high priced, less user-friendly products. Freshworks advertises its products on the shuttle buses running between the conference venue and train stations it went a step further to trend #FailsForce in a blimp around the conference venue #Failsforce campaign. Credits: Bizjournals Zoho primarily drives its recruitment through campus and hires at entry-level. . Engineering students in Chennai look up at Zoho as the place to start their career. The attrition rate of Zoho is high as SaaS companies are coming up in the urban part of Chennai with competitive salaries. Around 20% of the employees come via Zoho University route Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham studied at SASTRA University. More than half of the workforce in Freshworks are SASTRA alumnus. Freshworks is strategically a poster brand for aspiring software engineers in Chennai. Amazon, Cisco and Paypal are the only sizable multinational companies in the city. Freshworks, which has been enjoying the soft spot from the press, is the place to be for Chennai software engineers. Freshworks also poaches talent from Zoho corporation and top technology companies. Girish Mathrubootham and his co-founder Shan Krishnasamy were Zoho employees. Spotting  ex-Googlers, Amazonians is very common in Freshworks office. Everyone in Zoho joins with the position ‘Member Technical Staff’. All the managers start with ‘Member Leadership Staff’ designation. The promoted ones get to be Team Leaders. All Team Leaders report to one of Sridhar, Sekar, Manikandan or Radha Vembu. Zoho has a flat hierarchy. CEO Sridhar Vembu sits with other engineers in an open workspace. Sridhar Vembu at his desk in Zoho Office. Credits: Tech in Asia Freshworks follow traditional multilevel reporting system which ranges from an entry-level software engineer, business development executive, customer support executive to CxOs who report to CEO Girish Mathrubootham. Variety is a key area where both companies differ. Freshworks, initially named the same as its first product Freshdesk, at the time of writing the essay, . Over half of them were launched within the last two years. Freshworks focuses on building capability on its core product Freshdesk and  expanding it to the other products in the portfolio. For example, help desk software such as Freshdesk has incidents reported as tickets. A support agent will be assigned a ticket with a Service Level Agreement. Once it is resolved, feedback is taken from the customer to improve their experience. Freshservice, ITSM tool treats all the service incidents as tickets with IT experts as agents. Freshsales, CRM software operates all the prospects as a ticket, sales representatives as agents. Likewise, Freshrelease tracks engineering tasks as tickets and respective engineers as agents. It may appear from the outset, Freshworks has multiple successful products. But, all of them have one common identity as a workflow tool. It has been tested and mastered and is quite successful too. had ten products in its portfolio Freshworks Universe If we see Zoho’s product portfolio, it tells a different story. AdventNet started with , a tool for telecom operators. Once it became successful, Zoho Office Suite was simply with the existing consumers. In 2007, , IT operations and Service Management software was launched. Since the majority of Zoho’s customers are small businesses, it has multiple products supporting mail operations, financial accounting, customer relationship management, help desk, IT support, security, operations management. It also has a separate suite of products to support the Internet of Things (IoT) for small and medium businesses. The critical success of Zoho platform lies with the product which seamlessly integrates the data across the above mentioned Zoho products. With over forty five products, Zoho aspires to create one unified experience for its customers. Combining all the products, it has created , one subscription plan to use products to empower sales, operations, support, HR, marketing and operations. Zoho is focused on portraying itself as a one-stop solution provider for small businesses, whereas Freshworks aspires to be a multi-successful-product brand. WebNMS upsold ManageEngine Zoho Flow Zoho One Zoho Universe The closed doors discussed above will lead us to understand the functioning system and strategies of Zoho and Freshworks. Traditional SaaS companies focus on Fortune 500 clients. The deal size of the sales is enormous. Consider , which operates at a high level and upper mid-level customer segment. They will typically hire a sales executive in their California office with around 100,000 USD salary. With an average deal size of 5000 USD, the sales executive is expected to close at least 20 deals every year to meet the cost to the company. The large deals will take lot of time to follow-up and close the account. Whereas, Zoho or Freshworks, operating from Chennai office can hire a fresh out of college grad for around 35000 INR per month. They target small businesses with relatively small deal sizes ( ) but work on a high-volume basis. Zendesk as low as 50 USD The start-up ecosystem has made it easy to start a business. Therefore, there is plenty of demand. Traditional SaaS companies, based out of the United States, cannot operate in this space due to the high cost incurred with employee compensation to the company. A considerable segment of small and mid-size businesses is available for grab, taking advantage of labour arbitrage — the key benefit of IT service companies, Zoho and Freshworks are building world-class software products from India. Even though their business strategy is the same, Freshworks and Zoho have two different souls. Freshworks is burning cash of its investors in aggressively expanding the operations. 60% annual growth rate is a voluntary standard for the company. and will be the first Indian product company if he manages to do that. Girish is looking to list Freshworks in NASDAQ stock exchange Sridhar Vembu is not interested in raising money. His business is self sustainable. With an entirely bootstrapped company, he believes that he has the freedom to choose the way the company operates. Zoho believes in the public good. “ “, says Sridhar Vembu. We are a state-of-the-art tech company with a very old-fashioned approach to company building. Zoho has said no to aggressive growth, focuses on its strengths and moves slowly. It has got an array of products, but there is no strategic focus on moving up the pyramid. Zoho is a risk-averse company; they serve small businesses and operate at volume. Freshworks is a fast growing company aspiring to be a market leader. When Freshdesk was started, they acquired customers quickly with prompt service and delivering delightful moments. If they diversify their portfolio and replicate the same success, they will become one of the market leader. They are also trying to expand into high-end customers. This is a fundamental shift to its core strength of labour arbitrage-business model. From the analysis and the current market scenario, it is understood that Freshworks is undergoing a transition in their strategy.

The Essence of The Zoho vs. Freshworks [Deep Dive]

While the dark web has become synonymous with nefarious acts, there are positive encounters that take place there too. It's not all hackers and shared login credentials. If anything, its users put forth an extreme focus on privacy and also may be reliant on it if they live in an area where censorship is an issue -- these are positive reasons for use. That said, criminal acts still take place there. Most recently, . 73.2 million user records were placed for sale About 30 million come from the dating app Zoosk, while 15 million are from the printing service Chatbooks. The rest come from a variety of sites, including the newspaper (1 million), South Korean fashion and furniture sites (8 million total) and the Chronicle of Higher Education (3 million). ( ) Star Tribune source These numbers matter. To put in perspective, There's a real need to protect consumers, business owners and others from online attacks. 60% of small and medium businesses close their doors six months after experiencing a cyber attack. It's no easy feat when trying to get to the source of mass hacking events and other criminal acts. Unlike the public version of the web, it's not as easy to detect where crimes originate, who is involved and how they're continuing to communicate. Social Links ( : ), an open source intelligence (OSINT) software vendor, just launched , a new tool for law enforcement and governing agencies around the world. It's a standalone analogue of the Social Links SaaS service and the new solution accumulates the experience of hundreds of law enforcement agencies around the world, including the majority of European countries. Disclaimer The author is a consultant for Social Links Social Links BOX One of the things that sets them apart from their competitors, is that there is no need for the cloud. In order for law enforcement and government agencies to be truly privatized, they need to ensure that their data collection stays in-house and in a closed loop - a must-have. “We have been listening to our customers’ ongoing needs and created the Social Links BOX based on those who require the storage of all data in a closed loop, explains Ivan Shkvarun, co-founder, Social Links. “Our partners need to automate their open-source investigations, but they cannot use cloud services. Our standalone product solves this problem: now all the power of our tools and all the methodological developments are at their disposal.” is a growing field and competitors are working diligently to set themselves apart -- including a priority on privacy, access and, of course, competitive pricing (although you can expect a costly service for the type of access needed). Digital forensics Open sources frequently change their formats, operating rules and interfaces. Using a platform, like Social Links, allows clients have the ability to constantly monitor these changes and make necessary adjustments. The ability to change at a similar pace is essential and will allow digital forensics to maintain a valuable place at the table. ( : ) Disclaimer The author is a consultant for Social Links

Digital Forensics: An Overview and Its Impact On Law Enforcement

This article describes how can accelerate the training of deep learning models in a hybrid cloud environment when using Intel’s open source platform, powered by oneAPI. Details on the new architecture and workflow, as well as Alluxio’s performance benefits and benchmarks results will be discussed. The original article can be found on . Alluxio Analytics Zoo Alluxio's Engineering Blog 1.  Deep Learning in Hybrid Environments Architecture Evolution to Hybrid Mode Traditionally, data processing and analytics systems were designed, built, and operated with compute and storage services as one monolithic platform, residing in an on-premises data warehouse. While simple to manage and performant, this architecture with deeply coupled storage and compute is often challenging to provide applications elasticity and scale more resources for one type without scaling the other. More users are moving towards a hybrid model, combining resources from both cloud and on-premises environments. This model practices an alternative architecture to leave the data where it resides, typically in the on-premises data warehouse, but launch a separate compute layer as needed. The hybrid model allows compute and storage resources to be scaled independently, leading to numerous advantages: On-premise machines can be fully utilized by storage services because there is no competition for resources from compute services No resource contention: : There are no idle compute resources because clusters are launched on demand in the cloud No compute downtime : Long-running batch jobs or ephemeral ad-hoc queries can share the same set of data without making separate copies No data duplication Challenges to Deliver Fast I/O for Deep Learning Although the hybrid architecture provides flexibility and cost advantages, there are additional challenges for deep learning analytics when training on big data. Deep learning training involves numerous trials of different neural network models and different hyper-parameters using the same set of data. In addition, the size of training datasets has been continuously growing. There is a huge overhead cost in loading all this data for each trial when the training data is stored in a remote storage system. A common practice today to manage data across hybrid environments is to copy data to a storage service residing in the compute cluster before running deep learning jobs. Typically, users use commands like “distCP” to copy data back and forth between the on-premise and cloud environments. While this looks easy, it typically requires a manual process which is slow and error-prone. To address the I/O challenges of training deep learning models in hybrid environments and leverage Intel’s oneAPI performance optimizations, we developed and tested a new architecture/workflow integrating Alluxio in the Analytics Zoo platform, powered by oneAPI. 2. A New Architecture & Workflow with Analytics Zoo and Alluxio What is Analytics Zoo Analytics Zoo is an open source unified analytics and AI platform developed by Intel to seamlessly unite several deep learning applications into an integrated pipeline. Users can transparently scale from running sample jobs on a laptop to processing production scale big data on large clusters. It supports: Writing or inline with Spark code for distributed training and inference TensorFlow PyTorch Native deep learning (TensorFlow/Keras/PyTorch/BigDL) support in Pipelines Spark ML Directly running Ray programs on big data clusters through . RayOnSpark Plain Java/Python APIs for (TensorFlow/PyTorch/BigDL/OpenVINO) Model Inference What is Alluxio Alluxio is an open-source data orchestration layer for data analytics. It provides high performance to data analytics or machine learning systems like Analytics Zoo, serving as a distributed caching layer to prevent reading data repeatedly from remote data sources. Compared to other solutions, Alluxio provides the following advantages in a hybrid cloud environment with “zero-copy burst” capabilities to burst data processing to the cloud: : When a storage system is mounted onto Alluxio, only its metadata is initially loaded. Alluxio only caches data as an application requests for it. This on demand behavior allows burst data processing to the cloud, eliminating the need to manually copy data from an on-premise cluster to the cloud. Compute-driven data on-demand Alluxio intelligently caches data close to applications, replicates hot data, or evicts stale data based on data access patterns. Data Locality: : Alluxio can be elastically scaled along with the analytics frameworks, including container orchestrated environments. Data Elasticity : Alluxio provides data abstraction with different common APIs including the HDFS API, S3 API, POSIX API and others. Existing applications built for analytical and AI workloads can run directly on this data without any changes to the application itself Common APIs for data access Setup and Workflow The following figure is the architecture that integrates Alluxio with Analytics Zoo for fast and efficient deep learning workloads: On-premise or remote data stores are mounted onto Alluxio. Analytics Zoo application launches deep learning training jobs by running Spark jobs, loading data from Alluxio through the distributed file system interface. Initially, Alluxio has not cached any data, so it retrieves it from the mounted data store and serves it to the Analytics Zoo application while keeping a cached copy amongst its workers. This first trial will run at approximately the same speed as if the application was reading directly from the on-premise data source. In subsequent trials, Alluxio will have a cached copy, so data will be served directly from the Alluxio workers, eliminating the remote request to the on-premise data store. Note that the caching process is transparent to the user; there is no manual intervention needed to load the data into Alluxio. However, Alluxio does provide commands like “ ” to preload the working dataset to warm the cache if desired. There is also a “ ” command to reclaim the cache storage space without purging data from underlying data stores. distributedLoad free 3. Benchmark Results This section summarizes Alluxio’s performance testing and benchmark results for the integrated workflow. Environment We run experiments in a 7-node Spark cluster (1 instance as the master node and the remaining as worker nodes) deployed by AWS EMR. The benchmark workload is inception v1 training, using the ImageNet dataset stored in AWS S3 in the same region. As the baseline, the Spark cluster is directly accessing the dataset from the S3 bucket. This is compared to a setup where Alluxio is installed on the Spark cluster, with the S3 bucket mounted as its under filesystem. The following table details the specific environment configurations: Result Comparison We measured data loading performance when running an inception training on ImageNet data by using Analytics Zoo. The measured time includes training data and test data loading time. The average load time with and without Alluxio is 579 and 369 seconds, respectively. This is approximately a 1.5x speedup when Analytics Zoo uses Alluxio for loading the ImageNet training and testing data. Note that, the input data is located in S3 in the same region of the compute. (Source: Alluxio’s internal performance testing) The following figure shows that with Alluxio, variation in performance (15.9 second) is also much lower than the baseline variation (32.3 second). This indicates that Alluxio not only helps the average loading time but also makes performance more consistent. 4. Conclusion By leveraging Alluxio as a data layer on Analytics Zoo, the hybrid cloud solution provides acceleration of data loading in Analytics Zoo applications and deep learning analytics on big data systems. Our Alluxio’s internal performance benchmark testing shows this architecture is approximately a 1.5x speedup when Analytics Zoo uses Alluxio for loading the ImageNet training and testing data. Continued advancements in artificial intelligence applications have brought deep learning to the forefront of a new generation of data analytics development. There is an increasing demand from organizations to apply deep learning technologies to their big data analysis pipelines. On behalf of the entire Alluxio open source community, we encourage our readers to give this solution a try, and invite you to ask questions in our whenever you encounter any issues. community slack channel Special thanks to Intel’s Jennie Wang and Louie Tsai for their valuable Analytics Zoo’s technical consultation & support.

Alluxio Accelerates Deep Learning in Hybrid Cloud using Intel’s Analytics Zoo powered by oneAPI

As I write these words we’ve just passed one million known infected with COVID-19 and the economies of the “advanced” world are certainly going into a recession (two quarters of negative growth). In a globalised world physically connected by just over 100,000 flights per day, contagious disease populates the world in a matter of weeks. With a global mortality rate of around 10%, despite modern medicine, this is yet another global “plague”. But we as a globally connected society have new tools (such as lung ventilators) and new tricks (social distancing). This is also the most controlled and managed global recession ever, with large companies, governments, central banks, healthcare and supranational bodies discussing how to manage the shock of a formidable biological enemy. We live in the era of the Humans, or Anthropocene. A term popularized by , author of Homo Sapiens and Homo Deus, that reflects on the novel nature of a hyperconnected human world that has incredible specialization and information. Allowing it to model nature (think antivirals, vaccines) and program the future (think genetic editing and GMO crops). Yuval Noah Harari What’s happening now is at a macro level what immune systems try on viruses. An impressive array of coordinated and highly intelligent systems engulf and drag out invading agents such as toxins, viruses or even parasites. It seems as if the entirety of the body goes into action. Pain is felt, fever, diarrhoea and other nasty symptoms. But Immune systems are not perfect. They do not recognize all threats as they do not have perfect information and often cannot react to novel pathogens. Instead of prevention they often act on fighting a fire that is already raging. That’s the case for many COVID-19 patients these days. As an information society (highly connected), when facing a grave and global threat, we as a whole share pain, suffer losses and act in coordination to employ the known means to fight off and drag away from our society the virus. Again, information works well with the known but struggles to cope with the unknown. New deadly viruses (and above all highly contagious ones) demand novel approaches. Social isolation for contagion is the medicine of choice as other approaches are found. This is an extremely costly choice but brings an opportunity to act better in the next pandemic or social isolation event. Governments and companies calculate how to distribute economic pain via short term cost cuts. This impacts employees and suppliers to keep the businesses afloat during a near stoppage of demand. On the Political front, having an organised effort that keeps people at home but with sustenance prevents the shock of the dangerous pandemic that killed empires and set back human progress hundreds of years at a time. aftermaths The Economic Front Businesses that rely on human contact will suffer the biggest shock. COVID-19 is a real-world virus, not a Windows 98 virus, meaning that the tech world stays intact and the real world suffers. The viral crisis brings a paradox. On one hand, the economy of closeness suffers tremendously physically. But the economy of tech-enabled closeness thrives even more than until now. Hence, the businesses of the “FAANG” acronym (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) but also Microsoft, Zoom and many others in the tech sector will carry on their road towards global domination in sales, cash in hand and balance sheets. For the rest of the economy, while central bankers haven’t yet figured out how to stem the downfall in SMEs they have at least made sure credit keeps existing via massive interventions. Keeping interest rates extremely low by purchasing corporate debt at a tremendous scale. Meanwhile, governments in the developed world have been issuing extraordinary Lay Off conditions in which they subsidize companies to keep them from firing employees. The damage to demand in a quarantined world is nevertheless pervasive. Below is an analysis of a few sectors and how they will fare during the Physical world Viral Outbreak and subsequent lockdown: Short Term Growth Basic products E-commerce Supply chain enablers such as Postal handling companies Communications Internet Communication services Online Entertainment Medical Supplies Online Collaboration tools Online structural capabilities (the Cloud) Dietary supplements Frozen food Plant-based food Savings Support Call Centers Related: 60 Active Marketplace Investors Resilience (Somewhat Unchanged) Supply chains Agriculture and Animal Production Supermarkets Hardship (+75% Drop In Sales) General Tourism Cruise Tours General Entertainment Cinemas Zoos Airlines Gas Stations Car Industry including maintenance Toll-Roads Cafes, Restaurants, Bars Other Brick and Mortar Retail Real Estate Brokerage Construction Automotive Despite a lack of hard data at this point besides surveys, Corona March Report tells us that there will be many more losers than winners in this period. Consumers are stopping discretionary spending as they face economic hardship and a cloudy future. BCG’s Another good trend forecaster that validates the hypothesis of how staying at home with economic fear changes our buying behaviours is outlined by Kissmetrics. Neil Patel reviews data on traffic and conversion per sector. Here People are focused on researching their finances, healthcare, media and pharma. But only committing to food and healthcare whilst broadly shunning everything else. The human mind keeps up with the day’s flavour and adapts its expectations to a new reality — about which its end we can only speculate about. Maintaining the status quo is now the victory for most. Looking at previous crises, what we believe will happen after this sudden decrease is that there will also be a sudden, steep increase in demand in the sectors that were most hurt. As well as a re-price as consumers cautiously get back into the market — with many suppliers competing for buyers. Capital goods such as real estate may face a crunch due to many people having reduced means to buy or rent after a reduction in their salaries. They may be facing unemployment or at least a protracted recovery. Ongoing and delayed contracts will resume — but there could be scepticism towards new transactions. The Chinese economy after one week of reopening — as per BCG data. Services such as (national) Tourism, Air and Road Travel and those related to everyday purchases like restaurants and cafes should, however, see a steep increase. This is due to the fact that people in a long lockdown will be eager to get back to their usual small pleasures and way of life as much as possible. The Political Front Usually “plagues”, as bacterial or viral crises are called, have a decisive social impact. They break down chains of command, religions and trust. They destroy civilizations and bring about anarchy and barbarism. The likely typhus plague of Athens 426–430 BC killed king Pericles along with his whole family. This precipitated the defeat vs Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, destroyed adherence to law and social customs and belief in religion. More importantly, however, it killed off a quarter of its population due to the disruption of trade routes in the coming years and marked a high watermark for Athens as the central Greek power for good. From a city of one million, the population kept dropping to circa 20,000 people by the early 19th century — before becoming the greek capital once more and enjoying a renaissance. Like the Athenian plague, the Justinian plague of 541 CE ended Constantinople’s ambition to carry on the Roman empire. In the 14th century, the black plague carried most likely from China via the silk route and later by sea touching base in Italy first (an eerie coincidence with the COVID-19). The Black plague is estimated to have had a death toll of 100 to 200 million people being the biggest single killer in mankind’s history. This resulted in the biggest exodus from cities ever and a sink in economic and social life that would only be reverted with the Age of Discoveries. Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death depicting the havoc brought by the 14th-century pandemic Despite viruses, bacteria and parasites still being set above and beyond humans as APEX predators on planet Earth, homo sapiens (or rather Homo Deus in this Anthropocene era) are highly intelligent and above all extremely collaborative beings — that analyse and model nature to their benefit. After creating hundreds of vaccines and antivirals we have also developed a simple capability, possibility and even a unique authority. To regulate and create sustenance without movement and collaboration without physical presence. These are, it seems, our most brilliant weapons: to stay at home in social isolation. Which is the contrary of what Thucydides saw in the last days of great Athens . Where the majority isolate against this pandemic as a small part of us work overtime to solve the puzzle of its cure. This was just not possible in Classical Greece. “how crowding in Athens, along with inadequate housing and sanitation, helped the disease spread more quickly and added to the number of casualties.” Living in the Technological Now Nowadays we won’t have the downfall of old empires. We will have a setback limited in scope. NYC empty while still in voluntary lockdown A small virtual classroom in Portugal Until we leave our homes and can reflect on the momentousness of what we lived through (the months of life there will be a few lasting impacts and opportunities for digital transformation that become a priority now that we see that life can go on and we must keep our house/economy in order (Oikos/home + Nomos/law = Economy) and we have the possibility to do so in this advanced period in the extremely connected Anthropocene age: not as usual) Tech transformation of late adopters such as mini/local markets for hyperlocal deliveries Tech disruption of the last bits of office work that have not yet been “remotised” Conquest of late adopters 50+-year-olds into smartphone video communications Development and adoption of emergency structures for remote public services such as education and non-urgent health consultations Government adoption of digitized identity verification processes for citizen usage such as passport renewals, benefits applications or tax payments Increase in the number of Vegan lifestyle adoption. Coronaviruses and many other viruses have a direct link to animal consumption: HIV from Chimpanzee meat, Ebola from Bat and Chimpanzee meat, Nipah from Bat meat, MERS from camel meat, H1N1 from poultry and pork meat, etc. Full digitization of real estate transactions. Currently, in most countries, deeds are done in person although most of the underlying processes are already digital. The handshake formality is pointless. I’ve written about this before . here Remote employee management software designed to manage vacation, gym passes, transport and restaurant gift cards, mandatory insurances, email accounts, fiscal declarations and rainy day topics such as lay-offs and firings. Subscription-based video cast services (to monetize anything from cooking to gym and meditation classes), a vertical of the . Passion Economy Increase of the level of sanitary devices and sanitary readiness for future crises, from more soap, sewage and toilets in the developing world to generalization of mask usage in cold weather in the western hemisphere. Tech transformation of schools making the computer and internet for remote classrooms a right. Company and public services mandatory contingency plans for continuation under emergency statuses. Forcing of cash substitutes such as mobile and plastic card cash on sanitary grounds. Enhanced surveillance via CCTV, transactions on shops and mobile phone data on sanitary grounds. And the list goes on. There are many ideas of how to carry on that could exist already but haven’t yet been a priority. Now is the time, especially because we do not know if next year there will be another viral outbreak. Let us then enjoy the quarantine and self-isolation with more and more tools that allow us to live and work as usual as much as possible. Society needs to keep trading to keep living. This is important because the social upheaval brought about by massive economic declines that (used) to follow the big plagues was magnified by the inexistence of the modern social security and big government safety nets. The economic despair that is a staple of the pandemic aftermaths bring the kind of misery and to society that usually sticks for a long time, derail democracy, institutions, law and bring tyrants, war and put even more lives at risk. But that was then, let’s use our magnificent common wisdom as a society to be wholly different now! This post was originally published by André Lopes, Co-Founder at Altar.io.

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