IPhone Vs Android : Android Handily Beats The IPhone?

Android vs iPhone: users' favorite features - Ting.com

When you plan to buy a new phone there is always a battle as in which phone to buy. Whether you should go for an Android operated phone or an iPhone is a perennial doubt. However experts are of the opinion that an iPhone seems a better choice when compared with an Android phone.

I like Android phones. But when most friends and family ask me what phone to buy, I tend to recommend the iPhone over Android. Here’s why.

Android v iOS market share 2019

So let us explore some of the reasons as to why iPhone has the capacity to beat an Android operated phone.

  • The first reason as to why iPhone seems a better choice is that an iPhone is much faster when compared to Android phones. The result is that you can get a lot of features done quite fast. For example, editing 4k videos or opening of large files can be done almost in no time.
  • If you’re thinking of buying the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus or iPhone X, know that the A11 Bionic chip inside blows away anything from the Android camp. Not only did this processor pace Apple’s flagship to huge wins in synthetic benchmarks such as Geekbench 4 and 3DMark; it also ran circles around the likes of the Galaxy Note 8 and the Galaxy S8 when doing things like editing 4K video and opening large files.
  • iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 plus has better camera. Hence, you can take more colorful and vibrant photographs. Especially when the photos are taken in sunlight you can expect better results.
  • The hardware and software integration in iPhone is a lot better than that of Android operated phones. Consequently you can take quick actions from the home screen by pressing on the app for long.
  • It is true that Android has made promises to launch phones which are user friendly but it is the iPhone that has won the race. Right from its inception in 2007 the iPhone has retained its simplicity of usage. You will just have to pick it up, turn it on and press on the app to proceed with the functionalities.
  • The best thing about an iPhone is that there is automatic updation of the OS when compared to the Android phones. You can update the latest version of software on the day it is released.
  • As far as apps are considered an iPhone has the best of applications. This means if you are someone who has a fetish for apps, undoubtedly the app is the best choice.
  • iPhone is known for not having unnecessary software unlike a lot of other Android phones. Even if there are certain applications that you do not need you will be able to disable them.
  • An iPhone works excellently with Mac. You will always have easy access on your Mac to the photos that you take on your iPhone.
  • iPhone offers an extraordinary feature of family sharing. Purchases from the App store, iTunes, and iBooks can be shared among six people.
  • When you face any sort of problem with your iPhone there is no reason to worry because you can access numerous articles and blogs on Apple’s website and also live chat and schedule an appointment to solve the problem. In case of Android phones you will have to try to find solutions from various online forums.

When you have a problem with your Android phone, you can try online forums or calling your carrier. But with the iPhone, you can tap into a vast database of useful help articles on Apple’s website, get help via live chat, or you can schedule an appointment at an Apple Store Genius Bar. Google doesn’t have this kind of direct relationship with its customers. With Android, you’re on your own.

Why User Authentication is Essential for Cloud-Based Systems

Cloud-enabled workforce models to disrupt and shape future Asia Pacific workplaces: Colliers Research - The Economic TimesAs businesses move more of their services on to web-accessible, cloud-based platforms, the need for robust security grows increasingly important. One key element of this security is controlling who has access to your data and applications. To strengthen security, reduce risk and improve compliance, it is essential that only authorised users get access to a company’s system and that authentication is required before that access is granted.

Cloud authentication explained

Cloud authentication is the means of verifying that someone logging in to a cloud-based platform is the person they claim to be. It is a way of preventing stolen usernames and passwords being used to log in to the system. The user’s identity is authenticated by cross-referencing information stored on a database with information held by the user, such as PIN numbers, biometric data or the use of secret questions. If the information provided by the user is identical to that stored in the database, authentication takes place and access is granted.

Authentication isn’t just required for people. Companies may also require external machine access to carry out automated services, such as cron-jobs, remote backups, auto updates and remote system monitoring. In these instances, too, it is crucial that external apps are authorised so that hacking bots disguised as genuine apps don’t slip through the security net. Authentication in these areas can be done through the use of digital certificates and APIs.

Authentication and authorisation

Authentication Vs. Authorization | Difference between Authentication and Authorization - javatpoint

Authorisation is the granting of permissions for individuals to access different parts of a system. It is not desirable, in any organization, for every user to have the same permissions. Access to sensitive data, for example, might be restricted to only certain staff.

One of the advantages of authentication is that it helps prevent unauthorised users from accessing data they do not have the authority to see. In particular, it will stop employees who have forgotten their own passwords being able to log in using their colleagues account details and gaining access to all the areas they have permission to use.

Why authentication is so important

What Is a User Authentication Policy? - Cisco

Preventing unauthorised access to cloud-based systems is vital. Hacked companies face enormous consequences: operational downtime, significant fines, potential lawsuits, reputational damage, industrial espionage and ransom. Customers can suffer just as much as companies too, with financial information being sold on the darknet and sensitive data being leaked across the internet. Lose personal data under GDPR and you could face a fine of up to €20 million or 4% of global annual turnover.

Authentication is a process which protects web-based systems from hackers and without it, your entire system is vulnerable. Cybercriminals use seriously advanced software that can crack usernames and passwords and they also use other techniques to phish for credentials from employees. Authentication provides an extra layer of security, using information that hackers can’t use. In this way, they are prevented from getting access.

Practical authentication

Types of two-factor authentication, pros and cons: SMS, authenticator apps, YubiKey | Kaspersky official blog

One challenge for businesses that use cloud-based systems is how to balance ease of use with strict security. Strong security is essential, but it can also be a hassle for users who need a quick and convenient way to log on. There is a range of different methods which can be used, here are two of the most common.

Two factor and multifactor authentication

Is two-factor authentication (2FA) as secure as it seems? - Malwarebytes Labs | Malwarebytes Labs

To increase security, many organisations require two-factor authentication. This consists of a password plus one additional piece of information. Multifactor authentication requires a password and up to four other methods of verification.

There are four ways that a users ID can be authenticated, these are:

1. Asking for something the user knows, such as a PIN, date of birth or the answer to a secret question.

2. Using something the user has in their possession: customers may be required to get a code from a card reader or be sent a code to their smartphone.

3. Biometric data: the user may have to provide biometric data such as a fingerprint, photograph or retina scan.

4. Location data: smartphone GPS data and computer Mac addresses can also be used to verify the location of the user.

The need for strong authentication

Why You Need Advanced Authentication to Protect User Identities

The term ‘strong authentication’ is used to describe systems where authentication is robust enough to guarantee its security. What ‘robust enough’ means, however, depends upon the needs of the system, how critical its apps are, how sensitive the data it holds and the type of organisation it belongs to.

Some organisations may be adequately protected by two-factor authentication, however, for those with high-security requirements, multifactor authentication is the standard practice.

Many companies are now using smart card technology for authentication. Here, biometric data, passwords and other vital information is stored on a smart card and the card is used by inserting it into a reader and inputting a PIN. Contact less cards can also be used by tapping against an RFID reader. Lots of organizations use the same card to grant physical access to the companys premises.

Conclusion

Authentication is essential for organisations wanting to keep their systems and data secure, especially when it based in the cloud and can be accessed over the internet. To ensure your system is well protected, you should, as a minimum, use two-factor authentication. However, if you hold sensitive personal data or run critical applications online, then multifactor authentication may be the safest option.

7 Essential Features of Dedicated Server Hosting

How to Buy Dedicated Server Hosting at Kinsta

When upgrading to a hosted dedicated server, it is important to remember that not all dedicated servers are the same and neither are the hosting solutions offered by service providers. As it can be difficult to know the key features to look for when finding a provider, we‘ve put together this list of those we think are the most essential. Hopefully, they will give you a clearer insight into what to look for.

1. Operating system choices

What Operating System Is the Best Choice for Software Engineers?

One of the factors in choosing a dedicated hosting solution is the freedom to have your own choice of operating system. The applications you need for your business may require a specific type of operating system, such as a Windows Server OS or one of the different Linux distributions. In some circumstances, the software you run may only be compatible with a legacy OS version. Make sure that the provider you go with enables you to run the OS you need.

2. Server configuration

Server Configuration Services in Noida | Server Configuration Company

It’s not just the choice of operating system that is important. Another key requirement is the ability to have total control over your server so that you can configure it to meet your needs. You may, for example, need full root SSH / RDP root access.

3. Hardware choices

Microsoft's curious hardware choices for the $1,399 Surface Duo leaves it in limbo - TalkAndroid.com

As dedicated servers can be expensive, always look for a hosting provider that offers plenty of hardware options. This way, you get a hardware setup that has the capacity and performance capabilities you require, without having to pay for something that is far more powerful than you need.

Ideally, you should have a range of options over the CPU model, number of cores and speed, the size of RAM, the type of RAM (e.g., DDR3 or DDR4), hard disk capacity, hard disk type (HDD or SSD), bandwidth and RAID.

4. Control panel options

Cloud, control, panel, settings icon - Download on Iconfinder

Great control panels make it much easier to manage your server and the applications which you run on it. While vanilla control panels may be sufficient for some companies’ needs, many benefit from using cPanel & WHM (for Linux servers only) or Plesk (now for both Windows and Linux servers).

Easy to navigate and with a wide range of incredibly powerful, built-in management tools, cPanel and Plesk are industry leading control panels used by millions of businesses across the globe.

5. Security

Security Policy

If your server is hacked, your IT operations could be taken offline and your company put at a standstill. If there is a data breach, there’s also the risk of huge fines, reputational damage and customer legal action. This is why 60% of hacked companies go out of business within 6 months.

With this in mind, security should be a decisive factor when choosing a dedicated hosting provider. You should consider everything from the location and physical security of the datacentre to the range of security features your host provides as part of your package and as additional services.

You should look for next-generation firewalls, intrusion prevention, web app security, DDoS protection, and malware and virus prevention. In addition, they should also provide SSL certificates, dedicated IP addresses and spam filtering.

6. Server management

What is Server Management? Get rid of server issues

Outsourcing server management to your service provider not only makes things easier; it could also save you significantly in the long run. This service will include such things as OS updates, patching, application installation and server monitoring. Server monitoring constantly checks the health of your server and its performance to ensure it remains in top condition.

7. High availability

Four nines and beyond: A guide to high availability infrastructure

If your server runs critical applications, you cannot afford for it to go offline. The consequences could be disastrous. This is why it is essential that you choose a host that can guarantee high availability – i.e., that your server will stay online for 99.95% of the time or higher. If this is not good enough for you, here at Anteelo we can offer 100% uptime, guaranteed by SLA. This is because our N+1 datacentre model means we have a redundant backup of everything waiting to take over if a failure happens.

8. First class technical support

Technical Support - Daavlin

There may be times when your IT team needs your service provider’s technical support to carry out a task or to troubleshoot an issue. This support should be an inclusive part of your contract with the provider and, very importantly, be available 24/7 by phone, email, live chat or ticket. After all, if your dedicated server goes offline on Friday night, you don’t want to wait until Monday before it gets fixed.

Technical support differs entirely from customer support. By technical, we mean having a specialist IT team available that can provide solutions at the point of contact. They will have the necessary expertise and be actively able to deal with any problem.

Aside from person to person assistance, a good hosting provider will also publish a range of helpful online resources for their customers, such as knowledge bases, tutorials, technical forums and ‘how-to’ blog posts.

Conclusion

Dedicated servers offer companies a high-performance, large storage solution for hosting their applications. However, to get the best from your dedicated server, you need to consider a number of options, such as your choice of operating system, hardware and control panel, your freedom to configure the server as required, the security, server management and technical support put in place by a provider and the guaranteed uptime offered.

SEO Basics: A Beginner’s Guide to SEO Success

Defining SEO and its best practices | Status Labs

The better your site ranks in search engine results, the more visitors you will get to your website. However, to achieve those higher rankings, you’ll need to do some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). For many business owners, this can be a technical challenge. SEO is a big subject and one which is in constant flux due to the regular changes search engines make to their ranking criteria. It is impossible, therefore, to provide a comprehensive guide in a single article. Instead, this post will provide some simple, common sense tips to prepare you for your SEO journey.

1. All three types of SEO are required

What are the different types of SEO? (Complete Guide with Examples)

There are three main types of SEO and to effectively optimise your website, you’ll need to work on all three. These are:

  • On-page optimisation – this is essentially putting the right keywords in the right places on your pages and providing high quality content for your visitors.
  • On-site optimisation  â€“ a more technical form of SEO which requires things such as fast loading times, mobile-friendly pages, a well-structured site, easy navigation, good use of internal links and search engine-friendly URLs.
  • Off-site optimisation – improving the authority of your website and its pages by getting your content linked to on other high-ranking websites.

2. Learn from your competitors

10 Important Things You Can Learn From Your Competitors

The ultimate aim of any SEO strategy is to come top of the first page of the search engine results.  According to Smart Insights, the top ranking site gets 35% of all clickthroughs. Between them, the top five sites get 65%. Those in the positions between 6 and 21 share out most of the 35% which is left, while any website that ranks lower than that is unlikely to receive any clickthroughs at all.

If you want to be at the top of the list, then analysing the websites that achieve those positions is a good way to start. This doesn’t just mean looking at the website, it means using competitive analyses tools that go much deeper and can show you the number of backlinks a site has, how fast its pages load, where its traffic comes from, what search terms it ranks well for, etc. With high-quality information like this, it can be much easier to implement the strategies that have worked well for your more successful competitors.

3. Patience and perseverance

Overcome Frustration and Set Examples for Patience and Perseverance

Patience and perseverance are two essential requirements for those doing SEO. Patience is important because the things you implement can take some time to have an effect on your rankings. It can be weeks or months before you see the benefits. So, if you change some keywords and don’t see any improvements after 48 hours, it isn’t a sign that they have not worked and need to be changed yet again, it’s the fact that they haven’t been left long enough to have an impact.

Perseverance is equally important because SEO is an ongoing process. Search engines are always tweaking their ranking criteria and not responding to those changes can result in your website losing its hard-won position. At the same time, the search engines prefer to give their users the most up-to-date information, if your web content is old or out of date, it will eventually slide down the results page. You’ll need to regularly update your pages or add fresh content.

4. Play by the rules

Why I Don't Play by the Rules - AP LIT HELP

Search engines make it very clear about the expectations they have of website owners, as can be seen in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Here you’ll find a list of things they expect a good website to do and a list of things they prohibit. The main aim of these guidelines is to ensure that users get the best experience from the search engine, for example, Google will not want to send its users to your site if there’s a chance their devices will get infected by a virus.

Another key element of the Webmaster Guidelines is the stipulation that website owners must ‘avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.’ Failure to do so can result in your site receiving a penalty or manual action from Google. If these things happen, your site will disappear from Google results completely. With a manual action, you may be able to submit your site for reconsideration after you have made the necessary changes.

5. Team up with the right partners

Is Teaming Up with a Business Partner the Right Choice for You?

The complexity of SEO often means that website owners will outsource it to a third-party agency that has the tools and resources to undertake the on-site and competitor analyses and implement the necessary changes. When you do so, you need to choose a partner you can trust not to use unscrupulous black-hat SEO methods that can result in search engine penalisation. In particular, make sure that anyone offering content outreach (writing content containing a link to your website to publish on other sites) only publishes on relevant, quality sites. Creating lots of backlinks on poor ranking sites can have a long-term, negative ranking effect and lead to a penalty.

Another partner you will need to consider is your hosting provider. From an SEO perspective, you should identify a web host that can has the resources to help your site load more quickly on your visitors devices and which offers the security tools (firewalls, intrusion prevention/detection, SSL certificates, etc.) to keep visitors safe – these are both things that can help you rank higher.

Conclusion

Undertaking SEO is essential if you want your site to rank highly but there’s a learning curve to go through and so you cannot expect to achieve everything overnight. Indeed, the process is an ongoing one and will require regular monitoring and input. Hopefully, the information provided here will have given you the preparatory guidance you need before starting your SEO journey.

Windows Shared Hosting – Is It Right for You?

Shared Hosting | Best Shared Server Hosting Plans | Cheap Shared Hosting in India - CloudOYE|Cloud Hosting Cloudoye

While it’s not suitable for hosting all types of websites, Windows web hosting can be a powerful platform and for those with smaller sites, a Windows shared hosting plan can be the ideal solution. In this post, we’ll look at whether Windows shared hosting is the right choice for you and explain what to look for when choosing a hosting package.

Is Windows shared hosting right for me?

Choosing a Hosting for your WordPress Website - Maxcode IT Solutions

One of the biggest mistakes made by people new to web hosting is to opt for Windows hosting on the basis that they use Windows on their home computers and are familiar with the way it works. When it comes to hosting websites, the choice isn’t dependent upon personal preference for one type of operating system over another, in this case, Linux or Windows: far more importantly, it depends on the operating system’s compatibility with the software you use to create your website. Some website software will only work with Linux and others with Windows – and while there are some, like WordPress, which can work on both, there is always one option which is more suitable.

Should I choose Windows or Linux hosting?

Microsoft helped me install Ubuntu Linux on my Windows 10 PC, and it's actually pretty good | ZDNet

Though Windows is the most popular operating system for PCs, when it comes to web hosting, Linux is the dominant force. The key reason for this is that, unlike Windows, a Linux operating system is open-source and free, as is the majority of website software that runs on it. If you are using CMS applications like Magento, Joomla or Drupal to build your site, you’ll need Linux hosting. And while WordPress, which has been used to build a third of the World’s websites, can be used on both, the huge majority of users opt for Linux hosting because WordPress is native to it and there is an abundance of online help for WordPress-Linux users.

However, you’ll need to use Windows if you intend to run Windows technologies as part of your hosting. This includes anything that needs the .NET framework, for example, anything written in ASP  or ASP.NET, or if you intend to work with Visual Basic. Similarly, you’ll need Windows hosting if you want your website to make use of Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Access or MS SQL.

Should I opt for shared hosting?

Shared vs Dedicated vs Cloud Hosting for Faster Websites

Shared hosting, whether Windows or Linux, is an entry-level solution designed for those with small websites and who have a limited need for storage, RAM and CPU resources. It’s ideal for the needs of many small businesses and is the least expensive form of hosting, making it a very cost-effective way to host a website.

Shared hosting works by hosting multiple user accounts on a single webserver and those users will be allocated a specific amount of storage space and share other resources like CPU and RAM. This is what enables the hosting to be so affordable.

Shared hosting is not without its constraints, however. As users have to share the server, they’ll have to use the operating system and server configuration provided by the host. This means users cannot optimise the server for their own purposes. At the same time, to prevent individual users hogging all the server’s resources, users might be prohibited from running resource-heavy applications, such as operating their account as an ad server or as a streaming service. Those who need additional resources should consider alternative hosting solutions such as VPS, dedicated servers or cloud hosting.

What to look for in a Windows shared hosting plan

Best free web hosting of 2021 | TechRadar

While every website will have its own needs, there are certain attributes that you should look for in your Windows shared hosting plan. At the top of the list is the ability to make use of Windows features, such as support for ASP.net and .NET core, as well as the ability to create MS-SQL databases and to import and export data to and from them. For anyone wanting to run WordPress with a Windows server, it is also vital that the package allows you to run PHP & MySQL based applications.

For ease of use, look for a plan that comes with an intuitive, user-friendly control panel to manage your hosting and website, for example, by providing you with 1-click installation. A host that will provide free migration from another service provider can also be very helpful and can ensure your migration takes place without any technical issues.

As website hosting can be technically challenging, having the support of your web host to help you out in case of any difficulties is vital. Always look for a hosting plan that comes with 24/7 technical support included. This way, regardless of the time of day, an expert will be on hand to help you resolve any issues.

Conclusion

Windows shared hosting is an affordable, entry-level solution for those wanting to host websites that require the use of Microsoft and Windows-based applications and databases. Hopefully, this post will have explained whether you need Windows hosting, whether shared hosting is the right choice and what to look for in a Windows hosting plan.

Why GPS Tracking Devices Are Getting More Popular Among Parents

GPS tracking devices industry to grow 12.2% CAGR by 2026 - GPS World

GPS tracking services has been into existence for quite some time now. The technology has been helping a lot of sectors with its advanced features. For example, GPS tracking technologies help military in their operations, the drivers while they are driving, businesses while managing their fleet, and parents to monitor their children round the clock.As GPS tracking devices have become quite popular in recent times a large number of parents have started using it to track their children 24*7.In fact, these devices have become quite popular among the parents. One of the first reason as to why GPS tracking devices have become popular among parents is that it is a reliable and easy-to-use technology. Consequently, even the ones who are new to the technology can conveniently use the device.

Secondly, these new age GPS tracking devices are compact ones. Hence, they can be conveniently used along with the children. It can either be put in their pocket or backpack as it is light weight. The best thing is that parents can check the whereabouts of their children just by logging in either through their smart phone or computers.

Moreover, there are numerous additional features in these GPS tracking devices that make them real popular among parents. For example, there are features like Safe Zone that sends alert to the parents through text messages or emails that the child has moved to the pre-determined safe zone. The benefit is that parents get a peace of mind when it comes to the safety of their children. With the help of these advanced features parents right from the comfort of their home get to know if the child has arrived or departed from their school premises or amusement parks, and so on and so forth.

Nevertheless, it is quite normal for parents to worry about the safety of their children. For example, if you are at office and your child is left at the day care you constantly worry about his or her safety. But if you have the GPS tracking device fitted with the child you will have a personal tracking system at your disposal. It will help your child stay away from potential dangers while they are in the safe zone. Another advantage of these devices is that when your children grow up and get a driver’s license even then you will be able to track their whereabouts and ensure their safety.

Why Parents And Children Need GPS Tracking Systems

The best GPS trackers for kids: 10 of the best child safety wearables

The GPS Tracker App uses the latest Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to get the precise location of people within your network. Satellites send triangulated positions to the GPS Tracker Apps providing the most accurate location. This process continually updates to provide very accurate, real-time GPS tracking.

7 Ultimate ideas to skyrocket your Online Business

10 Promotion Ideas To Drive More Sales In 2021

Starting an online business is challenging enough but after putting in all that work to get launched, the last thing you need is your venture to fail just because people do not know about it. Luckily, there are quite a few things you can do to spread the word and reach out to your target market and in this post, we’ll look at seven of them, most of which won’t cost you a penny.

1. List your business with the major search engines

Top 10 Search Engines In The World (2021 Update)

If people are going to look for a business like yours, chances are they’ll start their search on the internet and do so using Google or Bing. These search engines have free business listings services that enable your business to be found much easier online and let you add relevant information about your business for potential customers to see. This can include physical and internet addresses, phone numbers, map locations, opening times and customer ratings. You can even upload images. The listings services are Google My Business,  Bing Places for Business and Yahoo! Local.

2. Reach out on social media

Reaching out on social media – Grass never grows on a busy street

Setting up business pages and accounts on social media platforms is now more or less a necessity for online businesses. With billions of worldwide users, it is the ideal channel to reach out and grow an audience of followers.

You can use social media for advertising, brand development, showcasing products and services, customer service, promoting events, sending offers and much more.

The challenge is to choose the most appropriate social media platforms on which to communicate. There are now so many about, it is impractical to devote time to all of them. You need to discover the places where your target market is most active and engage with them there – whether that’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat. If you are a B2B business, LinkedIn is definitely a place to promote yourself.

3. Start a blog

How to Start a Blog and Make Money - The Definitive Guide (2021)

Many businesses misunderstand blogging and tend to think that a blog is some kind of diary or journal that an individual writes. In reality, a business blog is a content marketing vehicle. The aim is to create posts that solve your customers’ problems. Doing so provides a raft of benefits, such as:

  • Improved SEO and search engine rankings
  • Increased traffic to your website (both new and returning visitors)
  • Customers perceive the company/brand as an expert in its field
  • Growth of blog subscribers enables targeted, free, email marketing
  • Improved conversion rates and increased sales

For a blog to be successful, new content needs to be posted regularly and it can take time before it has an impact. Once it does, however, it has massive marketing potential.

4. Outreach

Back to Basics: Building a Successful Outreach Campaign on Good Data and a Personal Touch | by Data@Urban | Medium

If your website is new, it is sometimes beneficial to write posts to publish on other relevant websites or blogs which already have established audiences. Doing this helps spread the word to these new audiences and often you are allowed to provide a link that they can use to find your website. You’ll need to find the most relevant websites to do this and contact them to see if they accept guest posts.

Alternatively, you could send your products to influential bloggers and they may write a review which their audience can read.

5. Create a YouTube channel

How To Create a YouTube Channel - YouTube

An alternative to writing blog posts is to create videos. Indeed, in some circumstances, videos are more helpful than written posts, for example, when showing people how to carry out practical tasks, such as putting a new hard drive in a computer.

Creating a helpful YouTube channel can help you amass a substantial online audience, many of whom will subscribe to your future posts and even share them to a wider audience on your behalf. If you mention your products in your videos and add a link to your website, there’s huge potential to improve your sales.

6. Optimise your website

Free SEO toolkit: 20+ free SEO and SEM tools to help you optimise your website — O'Brien Media Ltd

While search engine optimisation (SEO) isn’t a promotional tool in itself, its value in helping bring new customers to your website should never be overlooked. SEO is a multi-faceted task that involves making your website easier for search engines to index and making it more user-friendly and valuable for searchers. It can include everything from speeding up your site’s loading times and installing a mobile-friendly theme to having a well-structured site and the use of effective keywords in your content.

Essentially, a website that is optimised has a better chance of ranking well in search engine results. The better your site ranks, the more you will be seen in search results and the more visitors you will get.

7. Online advertising

What are the benefits of Online Advertising? Types of Online Advertising

Paid advertising is used by millions of companies and for many, it is a major source of traffic. The main form of advertising is known as pay per click (PPC), which basically means you pay a fee every time someone clicks on one of your ads. The benefits of such advertising schemes are that you have excellent control over who sees your adverts and when. You can choose people in specific demographic groups and locations and choose the times when the ads are displayed. This means you can use your advertising budget very effectively to ensure the right people are clicking through to your site.

The downside of PPC is that it can be expensive. Ad spaces are often given to the highest bidders and competition means you may have to pay quite a lot for each click. The problem arises when you have poor conversion rates – in other words, if only one percent of people who click go on to buy your product, advertising might not provide the return on investment you need. There are many places you can advertise; Google and Bing are key players, as are many social media platforms.

Conclusion

Getting the message out about your online business is essential if you want to attract visitors that will buy your products or services. The sooner you can do this after launch, the better. Hopefully, the seven methods shown here will help find the right marketing solutions for your online venture. If you are looking for hosting for your online business, visit our homepage to see our range of hosting solutions.

7 Benefits of Artificial Intelligence for Business

The Reality of Artificial Intelligence | Ivey Business Journal

One of the newest benefits of cloud computing is that it enables businesses to take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI). This rapidly developing technology offers significant development opportunities that many companies have already been quick to seize upon. In this post, we’ll look at some of the ways your company can benefit from cloud-based Artificial Intelligence.

1. Improving personalized shopping experiences

Disruption in Retail — AI, Machine Learning & Big Data | by Prannoiy Chandran | Towards Data Science

Providing customers with personalised marketing increases engagement, helps generate customer loyalty and improves sales. This is why companies are putting so much effort into it. One of the advantages of using AI is that it is able to identify patterns in customers’ browsing habits and purchasing behaviour. Using the millions of transactions stored and analysed in the cloud, AI is able to provide highly accurate offers to individual customers.

2. Automating customer interactions

10 reasons why AI-powered, automated customer service is the future - Watson Blog

Most customer interactions, such as emails, online chat, social media conversations and telephone calls, currently require human involvement.Artificial Intelligence, however, is enabling companies to automate these communications. By analysing data collected from previous communications it is possible to program computers to respond accurately to customers and deal with their enquiries. What’s more, when AI is combined with machine learning, the more the AI platforms interact, the better they become.

One example of this is AI Chatbots which, unlike humans, can interact with unlimited customers at the same time and can both respond and initiate communication – whether on a website or an app.

It is estimated, that by 2020, 85 percent of all customer interactions will be taken care of by intelligent machines that are able to replicate human functions. The days of using a call centre look like they are coming to a close.

3. Real-time Assistance

Artificial Intelligence | Solve real world complex problems - Mantra Labs

Artificial Intelligence is also useful for businesses that need to constantly communicate with high volumes of customers throughout each day. For example, in the transport industry, bus, train and airlines companies, which can have millions of passengers a day, can use AI to interact, in real-time, to send personalised travel information, such as notice of delays. Some bus companies, for example, are already tracking the location of their buses and using AI to provide travellers with real-time updates about where the bus is along its route and its estimated time of arrival. Customers receive this information on the bus company app.

4. Data mining

Difference in Data Mining Vs Machine Learning Vs Artificial Intelligence

One of the biggest advantages of using cloud-based AI is that artificial intelligence apps are able to quickly discover important and relevant findings during the processing of big data. This can provide businesses with previously undiscovered insights that can help give it an advantage in the marketplace.

5.Operational automation

How AI Can Give You Time to Think | NICE

AI is able to operate other technologies that increase automation in business. For example, AI can be used to control robots in factories or maintain ideal temperatures through intelligent heating. In Japan, human-looking robots now serve as receptionists in some of the countries’ hotels automating check-ins, booking services and dealing (in four languages) with customer enquiries. In retail, Artificial Intelligence is also being linked with RFID and cloud technology to track inventory. In China, police forces use AI to catch criminals. The country has a vast CCTV network and AI uses facial recognition to spot and track suspects so that they can be apprehended.

6.Predicting outcomes

ISM Semiannual Economic Forecast is positive for the remainder of 2021 | supplychainology.com

Another advantage of AI is that it is able to predict outcomes based on data analysis. For example, it sees patterns in customer data that can show whether the products currently on sale are likely to sell and in what volumes. It will also predict when the demand will tail off. This can be very useful in helping a company purchase the correct stock and in the correct volumes. It is predicted that, within 10 years, the days of seasonal sales will be over as AI will mean there is too little leftover stock to sell off.

This ability to predict is not just useful in retail. Artificial Intelligence is also being used in many other areas, for example, in banking where it can predict currency and stock price fluctuations or in healthcare where, remarkably, it can predict outbreaks of infections by analysing social media posts.

7.Improve the recruitment process

4 Ways AI Is Improving HR Recruitment Process | HR Blog | Central Test

It may be bad news for recruitment companies, but AI is now helping businesses automate the recruitment of new employees. It is able to quickly sift through applications, automatically rejecting those which do not meet the company’s personal specification. This not only saves time (or money spent on a recruitment agency), but it also ensures that there is no discrimination or bias in the shortlisting process. The AI programs available can even take care of the many administrative tasks of recruitment.

Conclusion

As you can see, AI systems provide businesses with a wide range of benefits, including personalised marketing, customer service, operational automation, inventory management and recruitment. And these are just a few of the many ways AI can be used. What’s remarkable, however, is that many of the AI apps, which are designed specifically for cloud-based systems, are quickly and easily deployable. Companies whose systems are in the cloud can be benefitting from them in no time at all.

Content Marketing Strategies To Drive Traffic To Your Website

Content Marketing Strategies To Drive Traffic To Your Website

Websites that have focused on content marketing have done really well for themselves. We are not the only ones saying it. Kapost statistics show that website conversion rate is 6 times more for those who have invested in content marketing as a strategy.  According to content marketing statistics for the UK in 2018, provided by the Content Marketing Institute, 86 % of respondents are using content marketing but only 7 %  of the respondents said that they are doing content marketing at the optimum levels and getting results from it. This means that there is a lot of scope for creating great content, doing content promotion and increasing your overall business.

There is no doubt that demand for content is huge but only consistent implementation of best practices can result in long-term success in the form of traffic generation.

Here are 5 ways in which you can convert your content into returning traffic and long-term customers.

Blend content that educates and content that sells

Why Education is a Powerful Content Marketing Strategy: 17 Examples

Most business owners do one of the two things very well – They either create content that is great at educating customers or they create content that is great in selling to customers. The key is to create content that does both the things well.  Doing one at the cost of the other is not an option. Too much of selling or information without any sales pitch will affect the content strategy in the long run and fail to serve any purpose.

A good example of creating content that mixes both educations and sales would be a blog that for example talks about weight loss exercises and at the same time points the prospective customers towards weight loss supplements to buy. The key here is to provide content that appeals to people who are looking for solutions to the problem of weight loss. It has to be content that appeals emotionally as well as logically to prospective customers. Make sure that none of the content looks forced and planted as if you’re trying to advertise your product.

Different types and forms of content lead to more traffic

Your content strategy should be such that you are open to publishing different forms of content and different types of content. Diversity in the type and forms of content will help you to fulfill all your online marketing needs and convert the content into serious traffic.

Here are six different types of content that you should try and publish. This will also help you find out which type works best.

Content Type 1: Blogs

Content Marketing Strategies To Drive Traffic To Your Website

Blogs are probably the most common and one of the most effective means of expressing yourself on the internet. If the quality of your blog is good and you follow different strategies of getting people to your blog such as sharing content on different platforms, optimizing load time of your pages and placing related links inside the posts you can get a lot of high quality traffic to your blog. WordPress is one of the best platforms to set up a blog for your business.

Content Type 2: Infographics

As the name suggests, data presented in a graphical format with illustrations is visually very appealing compared to just bland numbers. You don’t need any technical expertise to make an infographic. You can ask a professional graphic designer to make one for you or simply use online services such as piktochart, Visual.ly and easel.ly which have free as well as premium versions available.

Content Type 3: Videos

7 Tips to Create YouTube Video Titles That Attract Views | FreewaySocial

Short videos of 2-3 minutes are a great way to speak to your audience and move them to take actions. The videos can be about your products and services or they can be also ‘take a tour’ kind of videos. Apart from putting the video on your site, you can also publish the video to platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo.

Content Type 4: Case study

How to Write an Awesome Case Study That Converts

Case studies help your customers to understand how your product or service has helped previous customers.  A case study starts with an overview of your client, the challenges faced by the client and how your service or product helped the client in getting over his problems. The case study ends with a conclusion and a call to action.

Content Type 5: Meme

How to Make a Meme That Will Make People Cry (With Laughter)

A meme is a humorous graphic that usually has a tagline written on the top or bottom of an image.  Memes are popular on social media platforms.  While memes can be created for almost anything, in marketing, you can use it to create a brand message that will communicate your brand’s humorous message. Memes can be created using online tools such as Meme generator and quick meme.

Content Type 6: Press releases/News

5 Ways to Boost Your Press Releases' Chances of Getting Picked Up | Inc.com

Publishing press releases on online PR sites about the latest updates at your end is a great way to keep your customers informed about the goings on in your business and to get out word about yourself in the market. Remember that unlike most other forms of content, a press release needs to be very to-the-point and has to provide something newsworthy. The content has to be in the form of news.

Know where you’re headed with regular content audits

Content Audit: The Step-by-Step Guide for the Ultimate Strategy

A content audit is something that you do on a website to find out how far your content strategy and your content has been successful with your audience. Simply putting content out there is not enough. You also need to know which of your content is converting to traffic and which is hitting a chord with your audience. A content audit should be conducted at least weekly, quarterly or monthly so that you know if the content is succeeding in converting visitors into leads. The audit will give you an idea about how to improve your strategy and improve your content. This is also one of the best ways to improve your content marketing.

Create adaptive content for millennials

The transition generation: Why Millennials need your data to make decisions | Aliz Blog

Millennials can be defined as people who were born in the 1980s to 1996 and reached young adulthood in the 21st century. Millennials constitute a huge section of anything that is technology or web related. This translates to them being a huge chunk of your audience.

Adaptive content is the way to attract them to your content. Adaptive content simply means content that lets people interact with it across different platforms. Just as water takes the shape of any vessel it is put into, similarly adaptive content adapts itself to the screen of the device it is being displayed on. The device could be a mobile phone, a PC screen or a laptop screen.

So for example if a reader started viewing your content on his home PC, he or she should be able  to continue the same on their mobile phone and even complete their purchase through another device without  being restricted to a particular device or platform.

Consistently Run A/B Tests

A/B Testing

A/B testing or split testing is simply testing which you perform to see which content namely content A or content B performs better and converts more. Focus

Irrespective of whether you’re into marketing or a small business owner, conducting A/B split tests will help you ascertain which headlines, call-to-actions and type of content works best for your readers. Once you understand what works best for you, you can fine-tune your marketing strategies and understand what exactly needs to go on your website.

These are the top ways to convert your content into serious traffic. Keep experimenting with different methods and keep yourself up-to-date with the latest trends in content marketing so that you can stay one step ahead of competitors.

If you are looking for high-performance hosting to help your site load faster on mobile devices, take a look at our VPS packages.

Introduction to Functional Programming

Intro to Functional Programming
What is functional programming?

In short, functional programming is a catch-all term for a way of writing code that is focused on composing pure functions, actually using the innovations in type systems made in the last few decades, and overall being awesome.

So what’s the point? All of these things help to better understand what actually happens in our code.

And, once we do that, we gain:

  • better maintainability for the codebase;
  • more safe, reliable, composable code;
  • the ability to manage complexity with abstractions that are borderline wizardry.

 

You’re a functional programmer, Harry.

As it is, functional programming is ideal for developing code for distributed systems and complex backends, but that isn’t all it can do. At Anteelo, we use it for most of our industry projects. Whether you need frontend or backend, it doesn’t matter, there is an FP language for everything nowadays.

Now that you are stoked about learning more about functional programming and have already ordered your copies of Programming Haskell on Amazon, let’s delve deeper into the details.

From lambda calculus to lambda logo in 90 years

At the heart of functional programming is lambda calculus.

What Is Lambda Calculus and Should You Care? | Rebel

Introduced by the mathematician Alonzo Church in the 1930s, lambda calculus is just a way of expressing how we compute something. If you understand this one, you will gain a lot of intuition on how functional programming looks in practice.

There are only three elements in lambda calculus: variables, functions, and applying functions to variables. Here we have to think about function as a pure/mathematical function: a way of mapping members of a set of inputs to members of a set of outputs.

Even though it is a very simple tool, we can actually compose different functions and, in that way, encode any computation possible with a regular computer. (It would get unwieldy fast for anything non-trivial though, and that’s why we don’t program in it.

To further illustrate the concept, I refer you to this video of an absolute madman implementing lambda calculus in Python.

In 1950-60s, people began to encode this notion into programming languages. A good example is LISP, a kind of functional language designed by John McCarthy that keeps the overall incomprehensibility of lambda calculus while actually enabling you to do some things.

Example implementation of A* search algorithm in Racket (a dialect of LISP).

But that was only the beginning. One thing led to another, and, as we introduced such languages as ML and Miranda, the numerous permutations explored adding readability and a great type system. As a result, the 1980s saw the arrival of something beautiful – Haskell, a programming language so great that it was destined to evade mainstream for the next 30 years.

The same A* algorithm in Haskell.

We’ll return to Haskell later.

What else?

Ok, I hope I gave the intuition about how pure functions and chaining pure functions would look. What else is there?

  • Immutability. This follows from pure functions. If the function has an input and gives an output, and doesn’t maintain any state, there can be no mutable data structures. Forget i++. This is for the better. Mutable data structures are a sword that looms over the developer’s head, waiting to fall at any moment. Immutability also helps when the underlying code needs to be thread-safe and therefore is a huge boon in writing concurrent/parallel code.
  • All kinds of ways to handle functions. Anonymous functions, partially applied functions, and higher-order functions – these you can get in all modern programming languages. The main benefit is when we go higher up the abstraction ladder. We can introduce various kinds of design patterns such as functors, monads, and whatever-kinds-of-morphisms that we port right from category theory, one of the most powerful tools of mathematics, because… get it? Our code is a composition of mathematical functions.

There is a chance you stopped at immutability and thought: how can we accomplish anything without maintaining a global state? Isn’t it extremely awkward? Nope. We just pass the relevant state through the functions.

While it may seem unwieldy at first (and that is more because it is a new style of programming, not because of inherent complexity), functional programming abstractions help us to do it easily, For example, we can use special constructions such as state monad to pass state from function to function.

As you can see, functional programming concepts synergize well with each other. In the end, we have a self-consistent paradigm that is wonderful for anything where you would want to include an element of it.

Functional programming languages will make your business rich beyond belief

I’ve been holding back on the greatest thing, though.

Did you know that a lot of smart people are doing Haskell & Co nowadays? Functional programming is a great way to gather/meet unappreciated talent that hasn’t yet been devoured by the corporate clutches of FAANG.

We know this from experience. Our engineers are badass, and not only on our team page.

So if there is a project you want to kick off, and you want to kick it off with a team that will rock your socks off, I will list a few functional programming languages with which to attract next-level developers.

Haskell

Haskell was developed back in times far, far away when the FP community faced the situation of there being too many goddamn functional programming languages with similar properties. Turns out when you bring a lot of smart people together, something can happen. But more about that in our Haskell history post.

Since then, Haskell has established itself in certain fields, such as:

  • Finance
  • Biotech
  • Blockchain
  • Compilers & DSLs

Many large companies have projects of various sizes that use Haskell.

Haskell is a combination of various ideas that, brought together, have created a being of utter (expressive) power:

  • Purity. There’s a clear boundary between pure code (composed of pure functions) and impure code (input/output).
  • Static typing. Types are checked at compile-time, not at run-time. This prevents a lot of run-time crashes in exchange for having to actually deal with types, which some find difficult.
  • Laziness. Expressions are evaluated only when the value of the expression is needed in contrast to strict evaluation where the expression is evaluated when it is bound to the variable.
  • Immutability. The data structures are immutable.

It’s one of our favourite languages, and for a reason. Haskell, when used correctly, delivers. And what it delivers is precise and effective code that is easy to maintain.

Want to go functional, but would love to spoil it with a couple of classes here and there?

Scala is the right choice for that. For some reason favoured by people that wrote Apache Spark, it can be useful for big data processing, services, and other places where functional programming is amazing.

An additional bonus of Scala is that it compiles to JVM. If that is something you need as a manager to introduce functional programming to a Java codebase, go you!

Once you start writing purely functional Scala that does not interact with JVM, there are not a lot of reasons to just switch to Haskell though as the support is much better.

OCaml

If Haskell is a bit niche, OCaml is super niche with one of the main things holding it above water being local developer support in France.

But perhaps not anymore. For example, similarly to other programming languages listed, it has seen use in blockchain, particularly, Tezos. And they have their reasons.

OCaml is one of those languages that blurs the boundary between functional programming and object-oriented languages. Therefore, using OCaml over Haskell might be more intuitive for a newly functional programmer. OCaml is less obsessed with purity, and the people who write in it are a bit more practical: you might survive the attack of your fellow developers if you just try to wing it in OCaml.

Elixir

Did you know that the world’s best web framework is written in a functional programming language? Productive. Reliable. Fast. Yeah.

Elixir is a functional, general-purpose programming language that runs on BEAM, the Erlang VM. It is known for its role in creating low-latency and fault-tolerant distributed systems. Furthermore, it is great at creating stuff that scales according to the needs of the network. Elixir is extremely well used at companies like WhatsApp and Netflix that handle a lot of data and need to do it fast. You can’t miss this one if you are doing something similar.

Anteelo for your projects

You know, I cannot end without a pitch. Functional programming is excellent for extensive systems and structures. However, not every business can devote enough resources to execute such complicated work. Anteelo understands the struggle and aims to deliver the best service possible to ensure smooth and reliable programming projects for your company.

Our developer team provides development services in different languages. We not only write code but also carry out projects from their starting ideas to their last stages. This means that we can also do research, design, and other connected services for you. Although we offer a versatile coding language scope, I have to warn that we mainly use Haskell.

 

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