DevelopmentInsightsMartech

How Can You Innovate A Routine Travel Application Development?

on February 20, 2019

Travel apps are on the boom, no divergent ways to the fact. Development companies and the clients are making a handsome revenue from it. But, bringing similar apps in the market to make money for yourself is not how you can proceed further. You will have to offer something extra, something unique, to stand a chance among the big and established players of the Google play store and apple app store.

Here are some of the top features offered by different travel apps. If you are considering travel app development, a combo of all of these won’t be a bad idea.

1. Geolocation

The basic thing any traveler checks after reaching the destination is nearby places to stay or cafes to eat or places to visit. Don’t give them any teeny weeny chance to drop your app and use some other one to get all these information they desired. For that location, geolocation feature is what you must have. The user can run any location-based search and fetch the results very quickly.

2. Weather Forecast

There are a whole bunch of people planning their entire trip without taking weather changes into consideration. A bad climate can alter the trip, like a flight delay or even worse flight getting canceled. So, include weather forecast feature into your travel app which can send weather predictions, any nearby calamity or any such events to the user.

3. Cab Booking

Right after landing, the first thing any user will be looking for is a cab. So, don’t give the user any reason to slip from your app. Give them the taxi booking feature and get them to their location.

4. Price Comparison

Your app would not be the only one they would be using, there will be 2 to 3 more to get the best out of all. So, give them that detail as well. Show them the price comparison of different flights, hotels and other things offered by different apps right on your app.

5. Offline Access

The bad network is a common problem and it can follow you anywhere. This can be a disaster for the users but not if you let them use your app even in offline mode.

6. Language Translator

Language can be a lot of trouble if not handled well. Communication in a different country can create issues but not if you avail a language translator feature in your travel app.

Something Out Of The Box

While traveling, hotel booking can cost a fortune. Those looking for low budget travel ideas, here’s one, “HolidaySwap”. This idea of a travel app is really out of the box. The app owner James Asquith holds the record for being the youngest person to visit every country of the world. The concept of this app is to provide stay at just $1 per night. He brought back the trend of barter. The users of the app can exchange their homes at distant locations. If you are staying in Australia and want a home in the US, find any US person looking to stay in Australia, and swap homes with each other. Isn’t the idea fascinating? So, something like this can help you create your own space in the app market.

Another such concept is Preparture. While visiting an entirely new nation, you might know the routes which is quite blatant. Now Preparture not only shows the routes to the locations you feed but creates a whole route itself. Say for example you are want to grab a bite at XYZ restaurant, you want to withdraw money from the ATM, you want to visit the local mall of the area. You feed all these destinations in the app and it will plan the route based on which location is near and what task you should complete first, where you should head next, and where should your journey end. It is your one-stop travel planner app.

So, I guess now you know if really want to top the app store charts, you will need something never thought before or never done before.

Author Bio

I am Pratik Kanada, founder & CEO of 360 Degree Technosoft, an iPhone and Android app development company which makes app ideas into reality by providing unique design and development services across the globe. To keep up with the trend, I have also laid steps into React native and ionic app development. I generally write blogs on mobile technology, app development, and app marketing.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratik-kanada-31793020/edit/photo-opt-out/

DevelopmentInsightsMartech

How to Manage Your Email Marketing Campaign to Improve Sales

on February 19, 2019

Email marketing is a marketing strategy that was believed to be declining due to the emergence of social networks. However, the truth is that it is still very functional. Promotional emails are an essential part of sales and larger marketing strategies used by brands and businesses.

Today, close to 70% of businesses and brands in the United States invest money and time into email marketing, according to the infographic by 99firms.

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is building huge email databases, with lots of unsorted email addresses. Such a database is usually quite challenging to successfully manage, which is why you have to take certain measures and optimize your email marketing efforts.

Here are some tips for managing your subscriber’s database and optimizing email marketing campaigns.

Segmentation

As the name suggests, segmentation means creating several emailing lists according to specific criteria, such as age, sex, geolocation, and other relevant parameters. This is essential because if you send the same message to all your subscribers, your open rates and conversions are probably not going to be very good.

On the contrary, as you can see from the infographic below, segmentation increases open rates, leads, and revenues by 39%, 24%, and 24%, respectively.

Mobile-Friendliness

Nowadays, the vast majority of people read emails on mobile devices. This entails that one of the first steps of your email marketing campaign must involve checking that messages are mobile-friendly. In other words, the entire message, including videos and images, must render perfectly on mobile devices.

If you fail to do this, the users are not going to bother zooming in and out or scrolling sideways to read the email. They will simply send it to the spam box.

Unsubscribe Option

Of course, you don’t want to lose subscribers. But leaving out the unsubscribe option is going to be considered rude and unprofessional, and your email address will most likely get quickly blacklisted. Therefore, always make sure that email users could leave your mailing lists if they are not happy with the messages you send them. If you wish to keep and increase the user base, email optimization is the way to go.

Top-Notch Content

This might sound like trivial advice, but you would be surprised how many businesses neglect this aspect of composing an email. The content of your email should be optimized in terms of length, structure, and elements. You should be aware that people prefer watching videos over reading text.

That said, you need to find a perfect balance between the two while making sure that the video does not start playing automatically. Let your customers decide if they want to see it.

Call To Action

Even if you create the best email in the world, it is not going to be quite successful unless it brings conversions, among other things. To accomplish this, you need to include a call-to-action button. The button has to be clearly visible, clickable, and contain clear instructions about what are you asking users to do – whether they should check out your latest product, subscribe to your new social media channel, etc.

Conclusion

As you evolve with your ways of reaching subscribers, you should study reports and statistics derived from each of your email campaigns. These will help you to understand better what you do properly and what you need to work on.

For more help on how to successfully optimize emails, consult the infographic below.

MartechProductsSaaS

The Significance of A Defect Management Tool in The IoT Industry

on February 13, 2019

Detection of bugs is simple and easy. However, organizing, managing and tracking them in one place is extremely difficult. Therefore, the defect management tool has a significant role to play. An effective tool has a rich-information format that clears your line of sight and consolidates and configures your activities at one place. It helps to record, manage and track all your testing efforts in a very productive user interface and provide access to all your projects at your fingertips.

Whereas, internet of things (IoT) is the network of devices such as home appliances and vehicles that encompass connectivity, actuators, sensors, software and electronics which enable these things to connect, exchange data and interact. IoT is of immense significance these days.

Therefore, we are presenting to you with some reasons why defect management tools are important in the IoT Industry.

1. It Provides Information Rich Format

Vector flat concept of process social media business and marketing. Startup, business planning and results – vector illustration

An effective defect tracking tool enables you to report and track defects using its rich information format and the interactive dashboard. The defects are spotted back and forth within the cycles and are also connected to the referenced test cases.

2. It Helps to Create Customized Defect Reports

While creating customized defect reports you can take advantage of the two-way integration with the defect management software such as JIRA. You can also utilize customized fields to make this integration more appropriate within your business context.

3. It Offers Jira Integration

A defect management tool enables you to sync your defects with the simple set up selection in JIRA. It is ideal for the team working in an agile environment. This is where business analysts and testers can coordinate with two different tracking tools. The issues or defects created on one platform can be logged on to another.

4. It Provides Flexible Reporting

It enables you to log your defects independent of test cycles and modules and use them again and again. This can only be done with its decoupled architecture. In this way, the defect is not required to be created again and again in one case or module.

In the End…

A test management tool like Kualitee can offer an in-depth picture of the sort of defects. After being recorded, these bugs can be traced in various ways. It simplifies the process in many ways through different viewing formats. It enables you to monitor the bug history at any time with various information pointers. A test management tool provides more features than any defect management software. Therefore, many companies allocating a huge chunk of invest in purchasing a test management tool.

Author Bio:

Ray Parker is an entrepreneur and internet marketer with over 9 years of experience in Search Engine Optimization, Creative Writer and Digital Marketing Consultant.

Insights

Why Your WordPress Website Might Be Slow

on February 12, 2019

WordPress powers about 30% of all websites. That means if you’re a blogger or you run a small website, there’s a good chance you’re already familiar with it.

Unfortunately, even though popular content management platforms make speed optimization a breeze, a lot of WordPress sites are still slow. It might not seem like a big deal if your site takes a few extra seconds to load, but it is. Website speed is important for user experience, SEO, and website revenue. Even a single second can make a big difference.

That’s why we’ll outline several things you should look out for if you want a fast WordPress site.

Server Resources

Your choice of hosting could be the first problem. If you don’t get enough server resources, it’s difficult to maintain fast speeds. It’s essential to pick a good hosting provider.

According to the website hosting experts over at the Hosting Tribunal, who prepared the informative graphic below, SiteGround offers various benefits, including a fast server and good customer support. They also offer managed WordPress hosting.

Mind that managed WordPress hosting is not a must-have if you want to host a WordPress website. However, it does have a lot of conveniences like more security, automatic updates, and more qualified technical support.

Excessive Plugins

Another common bottleneck for WordPress sites is plugins. Plugins are one of the great things about WordPress and these days you can find a plugin for just about anything. They let you create things you would otherwise need years of web development experience for.

That being said, too many plugins can bog down a website. Your server must spend resources to run plugins. If you have too many plugins active, they increase your load times. Using many form builder plugins can cause your website to load slower. That’s why choose one form builder WordPress plugin and you’ll see the difference in the performance.

If you’re experiencing performance issues, it could be because you installed too many plugins. Delete any you’re not using; you’ll be doing yourself a favor.

Hosting Environment

A third common issue is that you haven’t upgraded to PHP 7. PHP 7 is two to three times faster than the previous version. However, only a third of WordPress sites run on PHP 7.

Chances are your hosting provider supports PHP 7. Still, they won’t upgrade your site to it without your consent because they don’t know if your theme and plugins are compatible with PHP 7. If you’ve owned your WordPress site for a while and haven’t upgraded, you could still be on PHP 5.

You can use the Display PHP Version plugin to check if you’re still using the older version. If you’re not using PHP 7, contact your hosting provider’s support team. They can help you upgrade and make your site faster.

These are some common issues that trouble WordPress sites. There are a lot of other ways to improve website speed. Looking into them is always worth it.

WordPress users have numerous plugins that make speed improvements easy. If you want to make your website faster, you can find ways to optimize images, enable GZIP compression and server-side caching, and many other things.

And if you want to learn more about website speed itself, the infographic below has all the core info to get you started.

DevelopmentInsightsMartech

How Much Good Will Video Content Bring To Your SEO In 2019?

on February 11, 2019

Video content has become one of the most, if not the most, influential mediums on the internet. Long gone are the days where you would visit a website and find only text posts. Nowadays, everyone wants to get in on the craze of video content. The best part is that search engines have taken a liking to videos just as much as users have. With this in mind, you need to take some steps to ensure that your video will be at the top of searches everywhere.

1. Bring quality instead of quantity

The quality of a good video is what keeps viewers coming back. On YouTube, for example, the most viewed videos are those with the most effort put into them. You need to start with the basics. For starters, come up with a good premise for the video, the main theme can’t be any topic that comes to mind, it has to have a purpose. Good video quality shouldn’t be disregarded. In the age of 4K video streaming, you want to be ahead of the curb. Don’t forget about audio, either. The audio in your video should be crisp and easy to comprehend.

Driving more views and clicks to your site will require some quality content in your video. There’s no reason to go overboard and spend months on a single video. Quality over quantity is the name of the game, but don’t exclude quantity from the equation. If you have a particularly brilliant idea that can lead to a complex and long video, try splitting it into several parts. Viewers aren’t patient when it comes to waiting for videos so your content has to come out at least semi-regularly. This way it will constantly be searched and it will bring in traffic.

2. Don’t neglect social media

People are constantly talking about the influence of social media on the newer generations. The truth is that social media has an effect on everyone, not just the younger crowd. Hosting videos on social media platforms are possibly the best way to spread them across the internet. Sites like Twitter and Facebook are itching for those videos with attractive content. Facebook has started optimizing its model to better fit videos because they are preferable to photos. They are easy to share and the users do the job for you.

In order to maximize the number of clicks and shares you get from a video, it has to appeal to a broad audience on these social networks. Viral videos are what you should strive for. Social media sites are like marketing machines, if you put something good in, it’ll basically share itself. Major brands have begun investing in live videos as well. There’s something about their spontaneity that attracts users and they might not feel like it’s as much of a timewaster as a fixed video.

3. Integration is key

When it comes to making quality content, blogs have always ruled supreme. Text posts aren’t a thing of the past just yet, they’re still going strong. With video marketing on the rise, it might be a good idea to create complementary content that connects to blog posts. There’s no reason you can’t integrate a specific video that has a similar topic on your blog. This will be key in helping your content better get across to viewers. Some subtext is given by the blog post and then the video provides the heart of the content. Readers love getting a different dimension and perspective while reading a blog post.

Bridging different topics with blogs and videos is great for spreading content as well. You can adjust your blog post to match the topic of your video so it becomes much easier to share. This way, not only do you optimize the user experience, but you also get an easier medium to share your videos in. For example, say you want to share a video game review article. Making a review video to match would not only attract more users, but it would also give attention to your video channel. Either way, you can’t lose by making both.

4. Pick the right thumbnail

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but this doesn’t really hold up on the internet. Most people will give your video a casual glance before deciding to click it, which is why it’s important that the glance shows them exactly what they want to see. There is a near-infinite number of videos online and people simply do not have the time to check each and every single one of them. The thumbnail is going to make or break the popularity of your video.

To create an engaging thumbnail, you need to think about a couple of things. First of all, it has to stand out. Make sure it doesn’t get lost in the sea of other video thumbnails. After that, you have to decide which frame of the video represents the content of the video best. It should be an impactful moment that shows the gist of the content, without being too chaotic. Alternatively, you could just add an image that isn’t actually from the video but still represents the point accurately.

5. Focus on titles

As with anything that you share on the internet, the title is an extremely important detail. It’s the main way to find your content. This might be even more important for video content since there’s no matching text that could be used to identify what the video topic is about. In order to get people to the page, your video is in, you’re going to need a proper keyword in the title. There’s nothing more important for Search Engine Optimisation than picking the right keyword. Think of what your video represents and try to find the right word or words that would describe it best.

Search engines like Google need something to start with in order to show your video as a search result. It would be ideal if your video also had an accompanying description below it. This way you can add some more details that signal what it’s about. Don’t overdo the keywords, search engines might penalize you for it.

6. The right host

Search engines really like pages that have a fast load speed. Nobody likes waiting for something to load on their website. Unfortunately, integrating things like videos on your page could potentially slow down your blog page or wherever you host your video. There is also quite a difference between hosting your video on a site like YouTube or its alternatives.

Picking the right host could mean the difference between a quick page load and a page load that search engines recognize as slow. Make sure you test out your website on page load speed test applications before going live.

Conclusion

Platforms like YouTube have made creating video content easy and affordable. No business should go without at least one interesting video on their website. It’s a huge boost to visitors and you’ll find that search engines like Google will adore you for it. Just make sure you create unique content that caters to the masses and you won’t have to worry about your website not receiving traffic.

InsightsStartups

How Well-designed Triggered Emails Help Your App Startup Stand Out of The Crowd

on February 5, 2019

#triggerwarning: If you aren’t using triggered e-mails, you’re leaving money on the table! Triggered and transactional emails are often overlooked by new companies because people tend to consider them as less important than making a good product or having a nice website and neat landing pages. However, these emails are the outer spin electrons of your marketing molecule — those emails are the everyday connection between your product and your audience. You may have to pay more attention to them, treat them gently. Good copy won’t be enough; you need a stunning design for these emails too because it’s the medium that new leads, users, or customers see first.

Credit: Shutterstock

What are triggered (and transactional) emails?

Triggered emails are a subset of a larger group of marketing emails — those which are sent based on some kind of action. It implies some level of automation and preparation. These are NOT like emails that you write to your partners or clients on the fly. The trigger could be anything. The most used and common triggers are connected to payment services and purchases. We call this little group of triggered emails _transactional emails_. These are the messages you get after you order something on Amazon: a confirmation, a receipt, shipping updates, etc. There are many different things that could trigger an email. My favorites are the Welcome emails of freemium or free-trial offering startups. This is the moment when your website visitor became interested in your product and ready to try it. The welcome email is the first “real” and “personal” communication between a company and the new customer.

The open rates of triggered emails are so high because…

They are contextually and temporally relevant to the recipients. It’s about something they did and should be close enough in time that they remember it well. If the triggered email’s subject line is well-aligned with the context (triggering event), the probability of opening the email goes sky-high. Why? It’s purely a psychological matter — we are reinforcing our own decisions about things that we’ve already expressed interest in. The timing also a helping factor here: the email comes immediately or shortly after the event that triggered it — it helps the feeling that it is connected and important. So people tend to open these emails ~70% more often than any other kind. So what prevents you from using them? Hopefully, you’re already doing some kind of automation and sending triggered emails. Now I’ll help you to get the most out of them.

Timing and context matters when sending triggered emails

It’s true. Let’s examine closely my favorite triggered email scenario, the Welcome emails. You sign up to try a shiny new tool that will help you conquer the world by reducing your time doing some horrible busywork, let’s say ……….. (pick your least favorite task, I don’t want to insult anyone). The minute you enter the app you get a welcome email (it’s often coming from the CEO of the company). How does this email look? Boring. Why? Because most of the marketers think that a plain text email will look personal. Also, there is a legend that the plain text message will land in the Primary tab (which only applies to Gmail) or easily avoid the spam folder in other email clients. Does it really serve to get into the Personal inbox — the holy Primary tab — with your Welcome message? Do you want it to be read immediately? While you are thinking about the best way and time to send out the welcome email or any other triggered message, please remember this piece of advice: immediate messages could be nice, but please do not distract people from your own context with the connected triggered email. The worst case scenario coming from an old e-commerce tale, a webshop marketer had the idea to up-sell things in a triggered email followed by the initial webshop order offering a 20% coupon code. Timing was the only problem. They sent this email before the checkout had closed. The visitors of the webshop who had seen the incoming email and had opened it before the end of checkout easily applied the 20% code and bought their very first item for 20% percent less price… That was not good for the revenue of course. Timing is important but sadly, good timing alone is not enough.

The design is the delicacy you’ve been searching for

Delivery to the Personal inbox may not be the best for marketing and product related emails. People tend to delete messages that are sent to their Personal sanctuary, but then turn out to be marketing material. In the previous example, the Welcome message is surely marketing material, but everyone will see it. Then why does everyone try to deceive their leads and fresh customers with plain text designs? Your message might be better placed in the Updates or Promotions tab (in Gmail) or to the “Other” folder, however, it has to be exceptional to stand out amongst the others. You need a hilarious copy and/or stunning design. The branded design is a must-have, but a nice design or image that drives interest is clearly the first step. If the visuals are on brand, it leverages optical continuity, while any additional creative and eye-catching thing would do the job to pin down the reader of the email and entice them to read further. A well-designed layout, a flashy image, a funny GIF — all of these could serve your goals.

Inspiring ideas of well-designed triggered emails

Let’s start with Asana and a traditional Welcome email, my favorite type. They decided to have a simple layout, with a simple picture and a really compelling button (CTA). While they help in the onboarding, they redirect the readers to their mobile apps, with the same sort of app download Block that a wide variety of companies could use at the bottom of their messages. While I promised not to show any triggering event that is connected to payment or purchase, don’t think that you’ll get away without seeing some e-commerce examples. There are numerous opportunities to send triggered emails in the e-commerce world. Check out this example from Debenhams. They send this remarketing email when looking at one of their products without buying. Why? To help you remember them when you make the final choice. As you can see, this email is not the average, nearly plain-text, triggered an email. They sent a comprehensive email with a complex layout structure and different content blocks for different little goals. You may think, that the hardest part in an email like this is to set-up the automation, but in fact, the most time-consuming part was the email design itself.

Wrap-up

Fortunately, there are tools like Chamaileon.io that you can use for designing emails and templates, quickly and easily. With a drag-n-drop editor and ability to tweak complex elements, an email design like the above can be done in hours. To identify the right events you can use as triggers, I suggest talking with your colleagues and holding a brainstorming meeting.

Insights

Tips for Boosting Output through Technology

on January 30, 2019

In theory, in order to increase one aspect of your output, you would have to sacrifice something else. We’re either talking about more time, more money or more resources. Well, one of the ways to get a productivity boost without making a sacrifice of any sort is to get more efficient tools. Nowadays, these tools (either software or hardware) are either free, inexpensive or give an amazing ROI. Here are five such ideas.

To-do list apps

The first thing you need to understand is the importance of making a to-do list, on paper or in-app. No matter how focused or dedicated you are, it’s impossible for you to keep track of absolutely everything and there are some things that must, eventually, slip your mind. With the help of a to-do list, this can easily be avoided. The reason why it’s better to do this on an app than on paper is a simple efficiency. No waste of paper, no fear of forgetting the list (who leaves their home without a phone?) and an extremely easy way to alter it. This also helps you avoid difficult handwriting, crossing items off the list with a pen and much, much more.

Project management tools

Managing a project is difficult enough even without all the various technical issues that you have to deal with, time and time again. With adequate software on your side, it’s fairly easy to see how a project management tool could help you assign tasks, share information, make public announcements and even exchange files within the team. Even though diagnostics shouldn’t be the main objective, keep in mind that with a reliable project management tool available for all types of servers, you’ll also be able to keep track of all changes made on the project. Should a mistake happen somewhere, it’ll be easy to trace back to it. Moreover, even though casting blame shouldn’t really be your thing, going for a project management tool can at least help avoid unjust accusations.

Dual monitors

Source – Pexels

Previous two items on this list were software-based, which is why it’s now important that we mention at least one hardware solution to the issue of productivity. The first thing that comes to mind is the concept of dual monitors and the ways in which this can improve your productivity. For designers, writers and, overall, content creators, this can allow more insight into what they’re currently doing, as well as the ability to look at resources while working. For programmers, the advantages are even greater. Furthermore, this is a one-time investment, unlike software subscriptions that you might be forced to make every month. In other words, getting an additional Samsung monitor for your office is a course of action that will, beyond doubt, yield a great ROI.

Noise-canceling earbuds

Source – Pexels

The problem with noise lies in the fact that it’s often just impossible to ignore it. If there’s a visual distraction in the office, you can just not look at it but if there’s something making noise and you can hear it from where you sit, there’s not much you can do. Make no mistake, in the office, there’s always something making noise, even if it’s just people typing, breathing or walking by. Most likely, on the other hand, you’ll also hear appliances humming, coworkers chit-chatting, while it’s not unlikely that the outside noises, like traffic, might also end up being an issue. Fortunately, all of this is avoidable with the use of noise-canceling earbuds.

Time-tracking apps

Finally, when it comes to the issue of productivity, time is one of the most misused resources there is. One way to improve this is with the help of time-tracking apps. Sometimes, these tools will use the alert system to help you stay on track. At other times, they will provide you with a better analysis of how you use your free time. The latter allows you to deal with this situation in whatever way you see fit. Either way, your productivity is bound to experience a serious boost.

Conclusion

Boosting output through technology is not only possible but it is also simpler and more frugal to achieve than you might have expected. With just a couple of apps and peripherals, you can make a massive difference in both your performance and job satisfaction. In other words, this is a competitive edge that’s so easily obtainable that it would be outright negligent not to do so.

Insights

Designers Trend: 6 Must Have Bathroom Accessories

on January 29, 2019

While the bathroom may be the most ignored area in the house when it comes to style, design, and maintenance. It’s also one of the most used rooms not only inside the house but in most places.

You may think that the bathroom is the simplest and least expensive area to revamp and refresh, but in fact, it’s one of the most challenging areas to update. Your bathroom may not be the most attractive area inside your house, but there’s no doubt it’s the most used room by your guests and family, at least more than the regular small storage unit.

If you’re planning to do an overhaul of your bathroom but don’t have enough time and budget, you don’t have to worry as there are a lot of simple and cost-effective ways to make the ideal bath for your household. Here’s the list of essential accessories you can install for your bathroom.

Update Shower Curtain and Liner

If you have old accessories and you’re planning to do a little update on your bathroom, then purchasing new ones should be included in your list. If you think your shower and tub is unattractive because it’s old, you can install an opaque type of curtain for quick concealment.

However, if you have a presentable and alluring shower, consider installing a sheer curtain to make it more elegant-looking and to add brightness to your bathroom.

Bathroom Art

While you spend most of your time in your bathroom, there’s no need to stare at blank walls anymore. Just by adding a little artwork would significantly improve the overall look of your bathroom. Not only the appearance but the ambiance.

You will learn to adorn such arts such as treated canvas prints. You can also install oversized processed canvas prints as these are water resistant and cost-effective. Also, you can do customized printing as some of these art printers can laminate such arts for water resistance.

Add More Mirrors

Image Source

Mirrors are an asset in the bathroom. If you’re a homeowner and loves to have a bright ambiance in your bathroom area, then adding a simple mirror can be your solution. If your bathroom has enough space,  then consider installing floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

It won’t only brighten your area, but it can also expand the room more than a coat of white paint could. On the other hand, if you’re a practical homeowner that wants extra storage for the bathroom, consider installing a wall mirrored cabinet. Wall mirrored cabinets provide storage space while not taking up room space.

Lighting Fixture Renewal

There’s a vast variety of cost-effective lighting fixtures available in the market nowadays. Consider replacing outdated lighting fixtures as some of it tends to have dysfunctional wiring and can be defective.

Leave the electrical projects to the professionals of bathroom design service. If you’re a DIYer and know how to deal with electrical problems, then it shouldn’t be difficult to handle.

Be unique when upgrading your lighting fixtures. There are several styles, and designs for bathroom lighting trends and these include light bars and hanging pendants. A suitable choice is a LED lighting fixture as they are more energy efficient and cost-effective.

Install Innovative Storage Solutions

Image Source

Bathroom essentials need bathroom storage. Look beyond home improvement stores and consider installing extra bathroom storage for your essentials. You can install bedside tables as storage for your soap, shaver, shampoo, etc. Also, you can have a mini bookshelf in your bathroom. Reading is a good activity and having books nearby can be handy in the bathroom.

A Little Splash of Nature

The bathroom can be a place where you spend most of your time relaxing and making yourself comfortable. Consider putting a houseplant or a leafy arrangement inside your bathroom to have a nature-like ambiance in the area. It adds more warmth and can make your bathroom a bit cozy.

Takeaway

You spend time in the bathroom more than you could imagine. If you’re a homeowner, it’s always essential to take good care of your household, including your bathroom. Make your bathroom presentable like the other areas of your house. Consider the list of accessories above to make your bathroom comfortable as it can be.

DevelopmentSaaS

Serverless Computing vs. Containers – Which one to choose?

on January 28, 2019

Over the last couple of years, there has been a significant rise in the adoption of serverless computing. And the adoption of Containers is also growing at a rapid pace. And this probably brings you to the question – should you choose Serverless or Containers. This is because both these technologies have something in common.

The similarities between the two:

Serverless is a good option for microservices. Containers is perfect for microservices as well. They both have a modern architecture that can cater to your requirements in the future as well. And they both possess skills when it comes to leveraging the most strategic innovations in distributed systems, and they let you develop and deploy large-scale applications. But yes, there are slight differences in the way the deployment is made.

What is serverless? 

Serverless computing is called so because enterprises do not have to purchase servers for operating their backend code. It is not that there aren’t any servers, the servers are there, but they are managed and handled by the third-party vendors who are fully responsible for the working of the servers. When AWS Lambda and Azure Functions were launched as cloud based services for serverless computing, they instantly became a hot trend.

What are the containers?

Containers are an operating system virtualization method whereby you have everything to run and deploy an application without any hassle. It has all the elements like system settings, system libraries and all other elements to run the application. Therefore, you can use the containers to deploy any type of application. All the Container needs is hosting and they can run anywhere in a single package. It can run consistently and quickly without worrying about the deployment environment.

It is important to conduct an educative assessment between Serverless and Containers. This is because Serverless is not suitable everywhere and a wrong choice can break everything. Hence, it is important to determine what kind of architecture you need, the application it has to host and the steps to be taken for successful deployment.

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Here are some situations where you can use serverless computing.

To process real-time data streams and uploads – Serverless functions make it easy to transfer resource intensive real-time processes away from the main applications. So, it is perfectly capable of parsing and filtering incoming data streams, manage input from real-time devices, manage both intermittent and high-throughput data streams and process uploaded files.

It can manage high-volume background processes – Serverless makes it possible to move data at high volume to an analytics service. This could be very beneficial in point of sale services where serverless makes it possible to coordinate inventory, manage different databases including order and transaction databases, and even intermittent tasks like restocking.

It can manage backend tasks of mobile/web applications – Serverless takes a request from the frontend (of the website or application), retrieve the information and then hand it back to the front end. The billing for this kind of tasks will be based on the backend tasks that it does; all other times it is idle.

Containers can fill out the limitations posed by serverless computing

Serverless computing does come with its share of limitations, so you do really need something to counter that.

Earlier, it was mentioned that Azure Functions and AWS Lambda services were hot trends when they were released, but there are limits that inhibit their full functionality. There are restrictions on memory use, size, time available for functions to run and so on. Hence, vendors take care to keep the functions small so they don’t take too much of the system’s resources. Imagine the situation wherein a small number of high demand users block everyone else out or at worst, overload the systems. That could be really bad, right?

Similarly, debugging and performance analysis are also restricted because they are too primitive. It is also difficult to use several of the monitoring tools with serverless functions because of the lack of access to the function’s container management system.

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A few areas where serverless computing loses out to containers

(1) Easy for large and complex applications

A container-based application can be large and complex and it is possible to tailor the new architecture as per the redesigned system. If you try to apply the same through a server less application, you may still be able to do it, but you would have to encounter several bottlenecks as there would be size and memory constraints.

(2) The developer gets full control

Another advantage of a container-based application is that the developer gets full power and control of the containers. The developer can debug and test with the complete set of resources at his disposal, perform in-depth monitoring, performance tuning on a microservice by microservice level. Microservices are applications that can be broken into smaller, scalable and deployable components on an independent level.

(3) Makes migration easier

It is easier to migrate your applications in containers, taking the pain out of deployment. It is also easy to move the apps between servers.

Closing Thoughts

Containers would be a good choice if flexibility during installation is more important for you, especially with software that has specific version requirement. It gives the developer control over the installed programming language and runtime version.

However, more of manual intervention is needed with Containers, when you compare this with serverless computing. This makes serverless computing a better option, especially if you want automatic detection and handling of traffic pattern changes. It is also a good option when you don’t want to be bothered about administration of the underlying infrastructure, because all you need to do is worry about the business value and the quality of code.

Choose Containers:

When flexibility is more important to you, and when you need easy migration between legacy services.

Choose Serverless:

When you prefer automatic scaling of apps, want speed of development to be accelerated and would like to lower runtime costs.

 

Author Bio:

Digital Marketing Manager with 7 years of experience. Passionate about the latest trends in Digital Marketing, Technology and App Development.

DevelopmentInsights

Bitcoin Investment: Tips for Maximizing Returns

on January 24, 2019

If there is one alternative investment that has been solidly gaining traction in recent years, it is bitcoin. A lot of people are now taking advantage of the potential of this cryptocurrency to deliver profitability. However, there are also uncertainties that could make some proceed with hesitation. That being said, the rest of this post briefly outlines some of the best things that can be done to maximize the return of your bitcoins.

Find the Right Trading Platform

One of the best ways to earn money from bitcoin is through trading. Basically, what this means is that you will buy the cryptocurrency at a low price. When the price is high, you can now sell it and earn a profit. To do this, you need the right bitcoin trading platform. Find one Stock Apps that is reliable and trusted by many, making it possible to have lots of buyers when it is time to sell.

Host an ATM

There are tons of ways to maximize profits from bitcoin, including offering complementary services. A bitcoin ATM is one of the perfect examples of the latter. They even offer an online bitcoin ATM locator, which will make it easy for users to find an ATM that is nearest their current location. Almost any existing space can be used for the ATM machine.

With the variety of the options for a bitcoin trading platform, one of the best that you should not miss is https://www.coincloudatm.com/.

Short Sell your Bitcoins

Shorting bitcoin is one thing that can work when the market is down, and you want to earn a profit. Although, it should be noted that this is a strategy that is best done only by the more experienced investors since it is quite complicated. Many exchanges are already making this possible, but a lot of novice investors may end up doing it incorrectly, which makes the risks high.

Hold on for Dear Life

It is inevitable that there will be a crash in the cryptocurrency market, especially in bitcoins. When things go south, this does not mean that you should lose hope. In one article from Forbes that tackles how crypto investors can profit from a crash, the Hold On for Dear Life strategy has been recommended. Also called HODL, this simply means that you should wait and see. You do not have to do anything in your bitcoin. Let it become idle in your chosen platform and hope for the best.

Conduct a Thorough Research

This is perhaps the most important from the points that are raised in this post. You need to be knowledgeable about the ins and outs of bitcoin to make it a profitable alternative investment. When you are armed with the right knowledge, it will be a lot easier for you to grow your cryptocurrency.

While there are lots of people who are investing in bitcoins, not all of them are fortunate enough to craft their own success stories. With this, take note of the things that have been mentioned above to increase the likelihood of maximizing returns.

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