Category: Development

DevelopmentInsights

How Increasing Design Tolerance Can Cut Costs

on July 17, 2018

Product development and design are essential for ensuring that you can actually produce and sell the products you make. Oftentimes, products are designed and produced in a way to maximize quality. In order to achieve that, tight tolerances are focused on during the development process. What exactly are tight tolerances in product development? Tolerances are variables in the design, usually concerning the dimensions of a specific product.

In layman’s terms, it’s a plus or minus here and there that are allowed in product design. Tolerances influence the overall design of the products, as well as its manufacturing and quality control. In some cases, tight tolerances are absolutely necessary to ensure that the product can perform appropriately. However, strictly leveraging tight tolerances isn’t mandatory in every case. What’s more, they will only increase the production costs. Therefore, here’s how increasing design tolerance can actually cut costs.

Determine the functionality of a product

The functionality of a product determines how it will be designed and produced. In some cases, tolerances of even a single decimal can mean the difference between a functioning product and a failed one. That is only the case if product functionality depends on tight tolerances. However, materials used in the manufacturing process also play a role in determining acceptable tolerances in product design. In other words, not every part of the product needs tight tolerances, but in most cases, the entire product is based on strict requirements.

For instance, a product with a certain number of components requires a tolerance of ±0.001 because there’s a specific way component must fit together. But, a separate part is also automatically specified using the same tolerances, even if the part does not interact with the others or may not need the same tolerances. That’s why it’s important to determine the functionality of the product and which component – if any – requires a tight tolerance to function.

Consult with a manufacturer

Creating a product design eventually comes down to tolerances that are numbers on paper. You may think that those tolerances are absolutely necessary, even if that’s not the case. Tolerances are influenced by the materials used in production, how they’re made during manufacturing and the sensitivity of product features to variations in design. That’s why it’s important to have an experienced manufacturer on board that can help you determine if there’s room to increase the design tolerance or not.

For example, if you’re developing a design for electrical components, you should consult with an electronics manufacturer. That way, a manufacturer can go over your design and help you determine the acceptable increases intolerances to help you cut costs. Electronics are produced by the IPC (Association Connecting Electronics Industries) standards which allow certain tolerances in product design. Your manufacturer will know how to best implement those tolerances, without compromising the product’s functionality and quality.

Understand the costs of tight tolerances

As mentioned before, product developers and designers focus on tight tolerances in order to ensure product quality. The reality is that tight tolerances do not always influence quality, but they are always expensive to implement. You need to consider these costs before insisting on tight tolerances. For example, tight tolerances require more precise tools and higher grade materials, which cost a lot more. The tighter the tolerance is, the more it will cost you. In addition, tight tolerances require more processing, which increases the costs of the machinery used and labour.

Moreover, you need to pay for a close inspection to determine whether the tolerances are within the acceptable range. What’s more, if you cannot implement tight tolerances on your own, you may need to outsource the process, which will cost you more. In the end, you end up paying for precision that may not be required. That’s why it’s important to actually determine if tight tolerances are mandatory for your products. If you don’t need such tolerances, you should take the opportunity to implement more appropriate variables and greatly reduce the costs of product development.

Don’t relax tolerances too much

In an effort to cut costs, increasing the design tolerance is quite beneficial. However, relaxing the tolerances too much involves certain risks. For example, the product components may not fit well together if tolerances are too extreme. In addition, your customers may disapprove of increased tolerances, if you haven’t consulted with them beforehand. Also, you may need to repeat the manufacturing process and redesign your products if you’re not careful with tolerances.

That will only skyrocket your costs. Instead of focusing on tight tolerances or relaxing them too much, you should focus on implementing quality assurance and tolerance analysis. That way, you’ll be able to determine exactly which variables are acceptable for your product design. In addition, you’ll know exactly where to apply strict tolerances and, of course, how much you can increase them to cut costs.

Product design is important for the manufacturing and quality of the products. However, ensuring product quality doesn’t always rely on implementing strictly tight tolerances. Tight tolerances are only required when there are specific needs and functionality requirements. Other than that, you can consider relaxing the product design tolerance and save yourself a lot of money during the development process.

About the author:

My name is Raul, editor in chief at Technivorz blog. I have a lot to say about innovations in all aspects of digital technology and online marketing. You can reach me out on Twitter.

DevelopmentSaaS

Top 3 Machine Learning trends in 2018

on July 10, 2018

Machine Learning has been growing at an incredible pace in 2017. We’ve witnessed many breakthroughs such as AlphaGo beating the best world’s Go players, the comeback of evolution algorithms meta-learning, or WaveNet generating speech that mimics any human voice. Deep Learning research has been skyrocketing since 2012, and it’s not going to stop. Carlos Perez – Co-Founder of Intuition Machine – predicts that the number of research papers related to Deep Learning will triple or even quadruple in 2018!

 

The beginning of the third quarter of 2018 seems like a good time to take a closer look at the top Machine Learning trends in 2018.

 

Generative Models

One of the core goals for AI is to understand the world as a human does. In order to understand the world, one is required to build meaningful representations of abstract concepts. In particular, generative models are very good at this task. There’s nice intuition behind this taken from Richard Feynman who said:

 

What I cannot create, I do not understand  

 

Since their introduction in 2014, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are probably the hottest topic in unsupervised learning research, along with Variational AutoEncoders. A GAN is a generative machine learning model that consists of two neural networks: a generator and a discriminator. During training, the generator tries to generate realistic samples, while the discriminator needs to determine whether they’re fake or real. As the training proceeds, both the generator and the discriminator get better at their tasks. In the end, the generator is capable of generating data that looks like the real thing. GANs have a lot of interesting applications, such as an image to image translation, or improving the quality of low-resolution CT scans.

 

The classic problem with GANs is that they are really good at generating synthetic images in a bunch of different domains, but they struggle to model aspects of images that require the understanding of the whole, like getting the number of animal legs right.

 

Recently the father of GANs, Ian Goodfellow, has published a work on Self-Attention Generative Adversarial Networks (SAGAN). Introducing a self-attention module to the generator resulted in generating images in which fine details at every location are carefully coordinated with fine details in distant parts of the image.

 

There are already almost 4000 papers on Google scholar related to GANs this year, and there’s much more to come!

Interpretability

Many machine learning models, for example, Deep Neural Networks, are considered to be black boxes. However, the typical end-user of machine learning based system prefers solutions that are interpretable and understandable. For example, you may ask yourself if you would trust a neural network diagnosing cancer without explaining its reasoning. Would you choose an AI doctor with 85% accuracy that can explain its reasoning or an AI doctor with 90% accuracy that cannot?

 

Interpretability of machine learning models seems to be crucial for applications in healthcare or law. Last but not least, machine learning engineers benefit a lot from interpretable models, as it’s much easier to validate and improve them.

 

Again, we can borrow an intuition from Richard Feynman who said:

 

If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it

 

We can notice an increasing amount of research in the area of explaining machine learning models. One may distinguish model-agnostic methods and model-specific methods for explaining machine learning models. For example, LIME is a simple technique that uses local linear approximation via K-Lasso regression to provide model-agnostic explanations. You can find a Python implementation of LIME on GitHub. There are a lot of techniques for producing visual explanations for Convolutional Neural Networks, such as saliency maps. If you’re interested, I strongly recommend this compiled list of resources on interpretability by Michał Łopuszyński.

 

Edge Computing

The Internet of Things is going to revolutionize our world. All of these devices, such as mobile phones, beacons or Raspberry Pis, are able to provide tons of data. However, IoT alone is not smart technology. On the other hand, machine learning is fueled by data. These incentives are crucial for machine learning meeting edge computing.

 

There are several advantages for running machine learning applications on edge devices. Firstly, we can highly reduce latency when communication with the cloud is not required. It’s possible because of several reasons, such as hardware improvements, software improvements, and last but not least – compact deep learning architectures without losing a lot on accuracy (MobileNet v2). For example, MobileNet’s forward pass only takes about 20 milliseconds on the newest iPhones.

One cannot omit the importance of the existence and development of frameworks such as CoreML and TensorflowLite. Currently, it’s very easy to implement, train and evaluate a model in one of Python’s Deep Learning libraries and latter deploy it on an Android device or an iPhone.

 

Privacy has always been an important concern on the Internet, and it seems that this year this is truer than ever. Machine Learning algorithms cannot be trained without data. However, if you train a machine learning model on an edge device, your data doesn’t need to leave it.

 

And last but not least, since Deep Gradient Compression has been introduced at ICLR 2018, distributed training on many edge devices seems to be possible on 1Gbps commodity Ethernet.

Guest post by Mateusz Opala, Machine Learning Tech Lead at Netguru

DevelopmentInsights

How to Improve Your Customer Help

on June 28, 2018

The customers’ journey is an important thing to keep track of in today’s market. Customers who are happy with their journey with your brand are more loyal – and more likely to make future purchases than those who aren’t. You also have the ability to build better relationships with the customers through a positive customer experience.

Naturally, the customers’ journey doesn’t stop when they make a purchase. Offering good customer support and aftersales services is also an important thing to do. To improve customer support, here are some of the strategies you can implement right away.

Keep Track of Support Requests

One of the worst things you can do when providing customer support is not keeping track of customers’ requests properly. This usually leads to the customers having to explain their issues again, which is extremely annoying for them.

A simple IT solution is all you need to manage customer requests better. A help desk software is a great foundation and will lead to better – and more efficient – customer support. The help desk software then acts as a way to manage your customer support efforts.

The IT industry has used help desk software to provide invaluable services to their customers. Today, other industries are using the same approach to deliver the same level of user experience across their customer base.

Service-Minded Employees

The next challenge to tackle is employee development. You can’t expect to offer good customer support without employees who are serious about offering the best customer service. Training and development programs are how you reconfigure employees to have a more service-oriented mindset.

You can start by strengthening the customer service skills of key employees. The most important skills to develop are empathy and patience, good product knowledge, the ability to mitigate customers’ complaints intelligently, and good worth ethic in general.

These skills can be further supported by the good understanding of customer touchpoints and how every part of the customers’ experience can be improved. Even bad customer experience is an opportunity; through good customer service, those disappointed customers can become your most loyal ambassadors.

Focus on Interactions

The incredible solutions you deliver are important, but how you deliver them is even more important. You want to make sure that the good aftersales experience you provide is the experience the customers see and feel too.

The way to do this is by ensuring customer support is delivered in a timely and pleasant manner. You can establish policies to allow the customer support executives or officers to do just that while staying within the boundaries of SOPs.

The way executives interact with the customers’ matters too. Offer a more personalized approach, listen to what the customers really want, and don’t be afraid to admit mistakes. Admitting your mistake even before customers launch their complaints is a powerful way to ensure that the customers always have a great customer experience.

Combined, these strategies will substantially improve customer support and the overall customer journey. Add sincerity to the mix, and you have the perfect recipe for offering stunning aftersales service that keeps customers coming back for more.

DevelopmentInsights

Why You Should Invest in a Digital Kanban Board

on June 28, 2018

Digital Kanban boards are taking the tech world by storm as the software helps teams to prioritise tasks and improve efficiency in the workplace. Kanban might have started off as a physical board, but the digital version of the software is becoming very popular and it is something that you should consider investing in if you want to improve how your team works. In this article, we are going to take you through some of the reasons why you should invest in a digital Kanban board and the benefits that this piece of tech can bring to you. Keep reading if you’d like to hear more about this.

What Is Kanban Software?

Kanban software comes in many forms with many different companies giving their own take on this sort of organisational structure. With Kanban software, you input tasks onto the board when they first are confirmed. From here, tasks move across the board depending on their level of completion. This means that tasks can be prioritised, and staff efficiency levels can be monitored. Make sure to learn more about Kanban software before you invest in this piece of technology to ensure that it is right for you. You can learn all you need to know by reading Kanbanize’s guide “Kanban Software: Explore the Opportunities“.

Easy to Use

With an online Kanban board, you can create it to work for the type of project that you are completing. Every team is different and so the fact that this type of system is so easy to use makes a huge difference. When you first download the software, you can choose the type of layout that you want, and you’ll find it really easy to add new cards and move them along the board when you need to. This type of technology is a lot easier to use than a physical board that will require you have to write on cards or print them out. With an online Kanban board, you can edit the cards in a matter of seconds.

Great for Teamwork

If you have a large team then you will love this benefit of using an online Kanban board. When you put the different tasks on the board, your whole team can see it and they can grab a task and get it done. You don’t need to worry about things slipping through the cracks as Kanban doesn’t allow for this. If you invest in this software, you won’t need to inform your team of what they need to do and when it needs to be done by because they’ll already know. You’ll save yourself time on having meetings and sending out emails and you’ll be able to get your work done more quickly.

Remote Workers

One of the best things about Kanban software is that it can be used by any member of the team no matter where they are. As long as they have access to the software on their computer or their mobile phone app, they can view the board online and get started. This works really well if you have remote workers or you don’t have the main office. You could also consider getting rid of your office and having your staff work from home. They’ll be able to stay connected using the Kanban board online and you can still get your work done effectively.

Improve Efficiency

If your team struggle with getting things done on time, you’ll find that having an online Kanban board can totally change the way they work. The system works well to improve efficiency and you’ll be able to identify the weak points in the company. Perhaps someone is not getting as much work done as you’d like, maybe you could use this information to try them on another task or analyse what they did well. Making use of a Kanban board can really help you to understand how your team works and you’ll be able to get your projects done on time.

Reasonably Priced

When it comes to Kanban software, you don’t even need to fork out a lot of money to get help with your business. This piece of tech is reasonably priced and if you find a good one, you might even get a free trial to see if you could really benefit from this type of software. Don’t be afraid to have a look around at what is available online in order to really improve how your businesses flow.

Final Thoughts

If you are thinking about investing in Kanban software, then you’ll find that it is actually a really good idea. There are a lot of benefits and you will see your business start to shine as you improve the way in which your team works. The systems are easy to use, and you’ll get to grips with them reasonably fast so make sure to try it now.

Development

How to Improve Your Search Rankings Using Brand Mentions

on June 27, 2018

Brand mentions have become more important than ever. They have become an important part of SEO, and have a huge impact on search ranking. So it’s safe to say that brand mentions are redefining the way Google measures brand authority.

With everything going digital, even the style of marketing has changed and is very different from traditional marketing. When people mention your brand in the digital space, it becomes word-of-mouth marketing.

The mentioning of your brand by people basically involves them giving a shout out to your brand on digital platforms. This can be done in various forms like mentioning your brand in their social media posts, writing a review, or publishing a blog post. Some may be provoked by a milestone in your company, some by a case study of yours, or by an awesome thing that you’ve done such as redesigning your website theme and setting some trends along.

Why do you need to keep a track of these mentions?

By doing so, you can get a better idea of what people think of your brand and how they perceive it. Keeping track of your brand mentions will also give you a better idea of how you can optimize your backlink profile.

Let’s take a look at some of the best ways to improve your SEO rankings by leveraging brand mentions.

1. Write Guest Blog Posts

Guest blogging is one of the most successful and effective ways to build your brand. Guest blogging is also the best option for brand mentions. And it’s a cost-effective way to promote your brand.

The process of writing a guest blog post is quite simple and easy. You just need to get in touch with a website from your industry and ask them to publish your post. But remember to search for a website that has high domain authority.

There are many advantages of guest blogging which includes an increase in SEO, brand reputation, and traffic.

Make sure you publish your content on a high domain authority website. As this will have a direct impact on the search engine rankings of your site. This also affects the visibility of your brand and can help you find relevant audiences to showcase your expertise to.

Guest posts also help you build the reputation of your brand. And it’s a very well-known fact that having a good reputation can bring long-term benefits. Guest blogging is also an inexpensive way to increase the traffic for your website.

The case study of Groove is the best example of the power of guest blogging. The groove is a team of a handful of software experts with the goal of guiding small businesses with their clutter-free and easy to use the software.

They posted a guest post and successfully managed to reach more than 1 million people.

Image Source – Groove

2. Create Useful, Relevant, and Attractive Content

Website owners used to buy links to improve their SEO unnaturally. That’s why Google took strict action against this practice and introduced quality content as a ranking factor. Google created a new algorithm which ranks websites based on their content quality.

So you need to create content for your website which is unique, useful, and relevant to your niche. When you create content like this, Google will automatically find your content, thanks to the new algorithm, and likely improve your rankings.

When your content ranks better, it helps people find it faster and encourages them to talk about it and share it on their social platforms. This is how your brand can reach new heights.

But make sure to create content on trending yet relevant topics. But how can you figure out what is relevant and trending? You can use tools like Google Alerts. This tool will help you find out trending and relevant topics from your niche.

You can create alerts for trending topics from your niche. This actually cuts down the extra effort to research trending topics. It also allows you to opt for a content update strategy. This feature will provide you with a list of your old posts which you can update later on.

Image Source – Google Alerts

3. Provide Exceptional Customer Service

When you provide excellent customer service, it’s obvious that people will start talking about it. And they might even recommend your brand to their family and friends.

There is also good chance that people will talk about your brand on their personal blogs, vlogs, or on social media.

That can help you attract more potential customers to your website, resulting in an increase in your website traffic and conversion rate. But how will you stand out from other players and provide great customer service?

Here is a quick tip – never forget to acknowledge and thank customers who are writing positive reviews about your brand. Also, never ignore the customers who are not happy and have given negative feedback.

Always go back to the customer and discuss the problem with them. Then address the issue as soon as possible. And keep updating the customer about the progress in solving the issue via email or messages.

A perfect example is Samsung’s support page on Twitter, which is dedicated to providing great customer service. Support is available around the clock, seven days a week.

Image Source – Twitter

4. Always Track Brand Mentions

It’s important to track your online brand mentions as they can help you with reputation management opportunities and finding honest feedback. Tracking brand mentions also helps you gain a better understanding of how people are interacting with your brand.

By tracking brand mentions, you can get an idea of the satisfaction level of your customers. You can also monitor your online reputation and take the necessary steps to improve your reputation. Tracking brand mentions can also help you to develop metrics to measure and evaluate the popularity of your brand.

There is no doubt about the fact that brand mentions are very important to the business. But it’s a very time-consuming task. There are tools that can help you track your brand mentions in a much more efficient and effective way.

Tools like Google Alerts are very popular and are widely used for keeping track of brand mentions. As you grow your brand, you will get more brand mentions on social media platforms. Now you cannot be everywhere at the same time, so this tool gives you regular updates on the brand mentions you are getting.

Now you know the advantages of tracking brand mentions. So go ahead and create an account in Google Alerts and it will automatically send you an alert for any mention of your brand.

Image Source – Google Alerts

Final Thoughts

It’s not possible to improve your search rankings overnight. In fact, SEO is a long-term strategy. If you want to stand out from your competition, it’s always better to stay one step ahead. And tracking brand mentions is one of the best tactics to not only improve your SEO efforts but also monitor your brand’s reputation.

There are tools that can help you track and monitor your website’s search engine rankings. You can use tools like Keyword Tracker or PRT to quickly and easily track your rankings. You can also use these tools to monitor your progress or changes in your rankings.

Do you know of any more ways to improve search rankings using brand mentions? Please feel free to let us know in the comments section below.

Development

Internet of Things Trends for 2018

on June 20, 2018

Internet of Things (IoT) is a transformative trend making big splashes. With the booming ecosystem of 20 billion connected devices announcing its triumph and widespread adoption on the roll in major industries, it needs no introduction. The only question is what facet of it will manifest the most, and reshape modern products, workflows, and processes. Well, this year will not be the time of IoT revolution as much as it will be the year of infrastructure consolidation, increased investment, and steady growth. The driving force behind these developments comes in the form of following prominent trends.

● Poised for growth

On the broadest level, we see that the whole IoT sector is primed for dynamic growth. More and more devices are coming online with each passing day. By 2030, we could reach a threshold of 30 billion connected pieces. The consumer segment will have the largest share of IoT installed base. Moreover, a lion’s share of the market will be dominated by businesses offering wearable devices, industrial equipment, smart/automated home tech, and high-tech cars.  Retail, supply, and healthcare sector are not lagging behind. In fact, they are expected to undergo a phase of rapid growth as well.

● Increased fragmentation

On the flipside, this proliferation breeds the so-called “fragmentation frustration”. Namely, growth in the area of as-a-service (aaS) and cloud solutions has shown that fragmentation poses a tough challenge for companies. Adoption is not really frictionless and it demands a considerable investment of resources. There are also many compatibility issues because we will have to wait a bit more for device standardization and certification to really kick in. Those who struggle will likely have to rely on leading Internet of Things agencies for everything from strategizing to custom tool implementation.

● IoT and OT convergence

Traditionally, IoT and Operational Technology (OT) were separate domains. Nowadays, however, the gap is becoming narrower. Many companies are realizing the advantage of IoT and OT teams working hand in hand towards more efficient deployment of new solutions and initiatives. What is more, OT will have a profound impact on the design of IoT apps in 2018. They will be more friendly and accessible to end users, such as field workers and plant operators. The advantage is clear: operational decisions can be reached in real-time, by those who are closest to the workflow.

● Heightened security risks

Data breaches galore raise many eyebrows and for good reasons too. Undermined cybersecurity is yet another byproduct of soaring IoT growth. As they become more complex, networks also include more loopholes that have to be addressed. And this is no task for amateurs. Attack surface is bigger than ever, cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated, and the environment is largely unregulated. It is up to users to come up with tools and measures for preserving privacy and data safety. Note also that most attacks will be motivated by financial gains and seek to exploit IoT vulnerabilities.

● Mobile gains dominance

The shift towards a mobile-first internet world is old news already, but are we heading towards the mobile-only frontier? This kind of prediction might be premature, but there are signs that mobile platforms are being increasingly used as management systems for IoT devices. Both early adopters and late-comers are transitioning and the booming mobile market will only fuel this tendency. On the other hand, IoT is likely to change the way mobile apps are made. These products will work via new modes of connectivity and lean towards the native and hybrid end of the market.

● Data processing remains a challenges

Staying on top of the immense influx of data across channels is a daunting task, which lies beyond the capacity of human workers. Companies will have to step up the game and use more refined and cheaper methods of processing big data. In this day and age, trends like edge networking and hardened legacy frameworks are a necessity more than anything else because they lead to less network demand and operating costs. And to really harness value from vast data pools, businesses will seek to employ advanced (AI) analytics and machine learning tools capable of real-time data streaming.

● Conclusion

Despite noticeable growing pains and a handful of hurdles, 2018 paves a promising trajectory for gains in connectivity. From there, we can see IoT only going up and up. It is slowly becoming the backbone of consumer value and mainstay of the business growth across industry sectors. Yet, the full potential of this technology is still being realized. We will need even more powerful analytics, machine learning, and AI systems to support rapidly expanding IoT space.  One thing is for certain, though. We are witnessing the emergence of large inroads that will carry this cutting-edge technology to grow and evolve beyond imagination.

References:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2017/12/19/the-top-8-iot-trends-for-2018/#514e3ff267f7

https://www.statista.com/topics/2637/internet-of-things/

https://www.cio.com/article/3246630/internet-of-things/6-internet-of-things-trends-that-will-dominate-2018.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/01/04/the-internet-of-things-iot-will-be-massive-in-2018-here-are-the-4-predictions-from-ibm/#8a71fe8edd33

http://www.digitalaptech.com/3-ways-iot-is-changing-the-future-of-mobile-applications-development/

Development

A Road To The Future: The Who, What And Why Of Smart Roads

on June 6, 2018

In a time where it seems that everything is linked to technology: our homes, our cities and of course, ourselves, it is no surprise that there is a view to introducing such practices to something that many of us travel along every day: roads.

Smart roads, much like smart homes and smart cities, have been devised to aid commuters in making their journeys a much more interactive experience.

The plan is to revamp the way we see our highways and streets to provide live feedback on traffic, weather, and road conditions and find solutions towards harnessing and generating solar energy to help usher in the age of autonomous vehicles.

Benefits of Smart Roads

Everybody, at one point or another, has experienced the loathsome drag of sitting in traffic that stretches as far as the eye can see. We have all found ourselves coming across an unexpected delay that disrupts the journey and leads to apologetic phone calls explaining that arrival may be a little bit later than expected.

Smart roads look to eliminate such issues. There are those digital road signs which inform you of slow traffic in the next ten miles, there are those that warn to slow down due to motor accidents, but this technology is painfully outdated and there is no guarantee that everyone will pay attention when passing them.

So, what if you could receive this information directly to your vehicle way ahead of time and suggesting alternate routes without the grating whine of Google Maps telling you over and over again to turn around? Having traffic information sent directly to your dashboard will warn you ahead of time if you need to make adjustments to your route.

Another positive is the ability to generate solar energy to help light the way, as well as aid the charging of autonomous cars to reduce battery loss.

The emphasis on green, renewable energy has encouraged people to look towards alternative methods of transport such as carpooling, public transport, or cycling. This is not always possible for long commutes, though, and so there are still many cars on the road that produce carbon emissions every day, to and from destinations.

Using solar energy will allow for a reduction in such emissions. As more people adopt electric or autonomous cars, the added bonus of charging-while-driving offered by smart roads will demonstrate a reduction in harmful gases polluting the air every day.

Challenges in Transition

There are however challenges associated with making the transition from traditional roads to smart roads. Currently, the primary reason is that not enough people own cars that would benefit such adaptations.

While there has been a surge in purchases in the last four years, there are just 150,000 owners of electric cars registered in the UK. It is not yet viable for governments to implement smart roads across the country because the market share does not suggest such actions would be a sound investment.

As autonomous are not yet commercialized, the cost to undertake these changes would not be beneficial. As attractive as a self-driving car might seem to some, there are still doubts regarding their safety. The recent Uber accident has brought many people back down to earth and made them realize that even though we have the technology, a driverless future is still far from reality.

Prominent Smart Road Nations

Wanting to stay ahead of the curve and demonstrate a willingness to start thinking about the planet, there are a number of nations that are committed to working on, developing and eventually introducing smart roads across their land.

Thoughts immediately go to the likes of the USA, the home of prominent electric vehicles like Tesla, but it is not just Elon Musk and his merry band of geniuses, as well as Smart America, who are focusing on such developments. Just recently, Sweden introduced their first smart road that charges electric vehicles while driving.

The road itself is merely a pilot scheme covering a two-kilometer stretch just outside Stockholm, but should it prove successful, it shows that this technology can be effective and might even prompt more people to invest in electric cars.

Smart Roads in the United Kingdom, http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5251763
(Copyright Bill Boaden and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.)

Countries such as the UK have also been planning for smart roads for some time and have recently begun to implement these in 2017/2018 as seen above. In 2015 testing for charging-while driving began to solve the long commute issue. Another country that appears to be leading the way is China, which has been working on their first-generation smart road products that include solar panels generating energy.

New Road, New Technology

Solutions to adapting our roads from the old ways to the new may not entirely remove the potential for road damage, but they can help in other ways. Solar energy is now cheaper to develop than ever before, and using this to help power streetlights and road markings will reduce the amount of electricity needed to be produced.

Norway is working on fiber-optic technology to install under the surface that records information about passing traffic to provide real-time updates to drivers and help them understand what to expect during their journey.

Sweden’s aforementioned smart road utilizes charging strips along the roads, assisted by a robotic arm that connects to such strips while driving. It is not that the driver can sit back and relax – they are still responsible for steering – but the charging strip will help them avoid needing to stop and charge during long journeys and keep the car powered throughout.

Linking the roads themselves to vehicles through the Internet of Things will make the typical travel experience much more interactive. Traffic updates, roads that honk, renewable energy are all aspects that can be considered for inclusion.

A Road To The Future

Technology is always looking for solutions to make our lives easier. Smart roads have the potential to be just what weary commuters are looking for. Autonomous vehicles working in tandem with smart roads would allow for some extra sleep on the way to work, help towards fixing the environment and perhaps even solve congestion issues on busy highways.

While there is certain to be delays and issues with the installation of smart roads, finding the right systems that benefit both the driver and the planet will help other nations adapt and develop similar technologies for their own use. Countries such as the USA, UK, Sweden, Norway and China have already begun, should their methods prove successful, the rest of the journey could be easy riding.

Development

How Live Streaming Platforms Are Spawning New Industries

on May 8, 2018

A lot is written about the effect that the streaming era might have on television. The widespread assumption is that a growing variety of streaming options are giving birth to a generation of “cord-cutters” who will ultimately dismiss television (and perhaps movie theaters as well) entirely. The data backs up the idea. A 2017 analysis revealed that while the transition is somewhat slow (a predicted decline of 1.5% a year in cable subscriptions over the next decade), it is happening. The notion of conventional viewing entertainment may look very different in a matter of years.

What we don’t spend as much time writing or talking about however is that the emergence of “streaming” as its own portion of the Internet is also spawning new entertainment industries altogether. It allows those who enjoy television, film, gaming, etc. to have more control over what content they access, and in some cases, it even enables closer interaction with that content.

The clearest examples of this can be found in some of the newer streaming options that have become available to consumers. YouTube TV may be the first that comes to mind – a platform that essentially operates as a more comprehensive version of Sling, providing a variety of cable channels, as well as a very robust DVR system to its users. However, while YouTube TV is certainly one of the more competitive alternatives to cable, it’s also a fairly basic concept already. It’s an adaptation more than a new concept.

We can look to more niche streaming options as indications of new industries, per se. For instance, one of the most recent to come about is ESPN+. Faced with a rapid change base of consumers with a variety of different preferences, ESPN introduced this platform not as an app version of its TV network, but rather as a sort of catch-all for interesting, streamed sports content. Users signing up for the service can enjoy everything from live games to, for instance, a new exclusive program in which ex-NBA star Kobe Bryant breaks down the tactics of a recent basketball game. Again, it’s less a version of the ESPN you can get with a basic cable package (or YouTube TV or Sling for that matter), and more an alternative form of streaming sports content.

In other areas, streaming platforms are also enabling fans to take part in the action rather than simply choose what action they’re seeing. Most notably, live streaming has become a very significant part of the online betting Singapore and others in that industry. Through platforms like YouTube and Stitch, as well as those dedicated to specific sports, games, or activities (like, say, horse racing or poker), live streaming is able to create a gaming experience that’s almost as good as being in the thick of it. In this instance, not only can fans choose their content and access it live – they can use that real-time access to make informed betting decisions on the content, should they so choose.

Taking all of these developments together, we begin to see the emergence of new industries spinning would-be television content (or in some cases events that are simulated or would never have been on TV before) into specialized and/or interactive entertainment. Streaming platforms, ultimately, have the power to give each individual almost exactly what he or she wants out of viewing entertainment. And we’re starting to see things moving slowly but surely in that direction.

Development

ECommerce Website Development Steps to Help You out Developing a Successful eCommerce Site

on May 3, 2018

Time and Tide wait for none and so is the case with the increasing trend of purchases from an eCommerce website.  According to an estimation, there have been 1.66 billion people from across the globe who made the online purchases from a different eCommerce website. Based on this trend, there has been a projected growth of 4.48 trillion USD by the year of 2021. Obviously, these figures are capable enough to enchant the big names to go live to expand the reach of the customers but it is equally important to ponder over some criterion that makes your eCommerce website development a successful and fruitful venture be it the user experience or the overall performance of your website when it goes live.

Here are some intuitive tips that will definitely help you create a custom e-commerce website of your dream.

  • Enchanting Design responding exactly to the visitors:

The simple message that I wish to convey here is that while you are planning to create an eCommerce website, it is inevitably crucial to take care of the Responsiveness of your website be it to a mobile device, desktop, or a tablet. It has to be so mainly because, according to a survey, 62% of mobile devices users have preferred to make their purchases through Smartphone in the past few months and the same trend are still expected to grow in numbers.

Hence it is more advisable to equip your website responsive using effective CMS platforms to make your website Smartphone user-friendly in order to grab a maximum number of customers for the products or services you are offering online.

  • Checkouts:

The most successful online businesses are expected to have the complete details of the visitors visiting their websites and for it, they need to create an ideal checkout funnel with which one can access to the information of the visitors for future follow-up and/or for the communication of new products launches.

However, every customer may not prefer to register at your website or may avoid the filling up process. And hence, it would be ideal to design the Purchase Process in such a way that the customer is required to fill the necessary details and creating an account on your website (guest purchase).

  • Ideal Site Search Options to glide through the website:

It is interesting to note here that when a visitor lands on your website, he would first prefer to go to the Search Option to select the product of his/her choice. Hence, it is desirable to equip your e-commerce website with Product Search Option with automated details filling facility which will ease the comfort of the visitors. This functionality will definitely reduce the pain of their search in terms of the size of the product, color, category, price range, availability etc.

  • Strong Security Checks:

Before you boost your e-commerce website marketing strategy, this aspect is very crucial to be taken care of. Because every individual making an online purchase expects that his/her personal information relating to his debit/credit card, bank account number, and password are secured with proper encryption of the data he is submitting online. For this, your website is required to be equipped with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) which ensures the encryption of the data. This feature on your online website will help you earn the trust and loyalty of your customers.

  • Well Optimized Performance:

What if your e-commerce website does not act as it is expected to perform. It is the most common experience of major website handlers that when it takes too long to load a website, then the possibility of the switching over to another is always greater. And you need to take care of this element mainly because of the multi-tasking trend prevailing among today’s mobile devices users.

This load time issues can be eliminated by:

  • Combining the CSS files to boost the speed of the website in respect of the load time your website is taking.
  • In the same, graphics or images should be compressed to a comparatively small size as it would also help in reducing the load time.
  • Proper management of the data transportation between the website server and database server.

There is a law in economics, that as the demand increases, the price for the same goes down and I would love to add to it considering the current mindset and time that as the Demand increases the multiplicity of choices increases and every business needs to cope with this with an ideal e-commerce website that matches rightly with the expectations of an end-user.

Development

Innovation in Legal Services and the Growth of Automation

on April 13, 2018

Legal professionals have pervaded every aspect of the lives of the common man, from businesses, or writing a will to going through a divorce or buying a home. However, this traditional image of legal services is all set to change with large scale disruptions through in the introduction of innovation and the growth of automation. The rise of the Internet has made consumers go online to seek advice and guidance on legal matters that were hitherto given by experienced lawyers. Hence to stay relevant it is necessary that the legal luminaries adapt themselves to the changing times.

What has made things easy for technology to bond with the current legal setup; is the tremendous scope for innovation in this field. Legal services that have recently changed little is now being forced to come out of its comfort zone. The rise in communication technology has led lawyers to outsource legal services and upload documents to experienced agencies seamlessly and in a fully secured environment. Consumers too have gained a better insight into the legal profession through online searches giving rise to concerns about fee structures especially among low-income groups. This has led to pressures for reduction of existing charges.

These factors have led to law firms exploring the legal support services market so that new innovations and automation can streamline the legal sector.

One of the ways that automation and advanced technologies will take over the legal industry will be the manner in which the courts function, in fact, the whole legal profession. The focus now is on local jurisdiction or domestic jurisdiction and even national jurisdiction. In the modern era of globalization all that is set to change. Businesses operate in a global environment and they would want a network where they can have easy local access to arbitration or dispute resolution. This is regardless of the country they are operating from.

The key here is that courts of the future will be connected and the concept of standalone courts will slowly pass into oblivion. A somewhat similar exposure of the legal profession to international levels was witnessed with the rise of external legal support services that provided impeccable and top quality legal backup to law firms from around the world. This was when these firms realized that to improve the bottom line, there was no alternative to outsurcing.

Today, a great deal of thought is being given to use Blockchain technologies and increase operating efficiencies of the legal sector. What will be embedded into the Blockchain; will be for example smart contracts, smart laws, smart regulations. It is quite possible that the judge might have to be an expert in coding apart from being an expert in law. The point then is that if innovation and automation have to walk together, a new set of training programmes and courses have to be structured that takes all these things into account.

However, implementing these new changes requires a radical and paradigm shift in the manner in which courts and the legal profession function today. Hence, the movers and shakers of the profession have to come together and decide on the future of law, future of courts, future of arbitrations and how these issues can be addressed.

Some of the areas where legal professionals have been forced to acknowledge current realities of innovation and automation are –

  • Ranking and review information – This was previously a very difficult proposition. But today, all details about the legal profession are increasingly available and clients can before retaining them assess the quality of their work. Similarly, law firms can evaluate the worth of external agencies before deciding to outsource legal services.
  • Online service delivery – The legal profession is increasingly taking the benefit of several online digital platforms currently available to serve clients based in remote locations with the same level of efficiency as before.

Summing up, it can be said that innovations in and automation the legal sector is not about minor process improvements only. There is potential to redefine the practice of law and take it beyond international borders in keeping with the modern globalization trend prevailing in all industries around the world.

Image Credit:

Shutter Stock

Summary:

Innovation in technology is driving every business process and legal sector is no exception in this regards. After so many decades, working with piles of paperwork, researching for information in the library; legal companies have left behind their traditional models and embracing advanced automating tools.

Tags:

Legal, Automation, Blockchain, Outsourcing, Technology, Law Firms, Lawyers

Author Bio:

Alika Cooper writes about outsourcing, technology and the business. She is passionate about customers and building products that change the way people run their business. She is also a big supporter of the startup community and teach professionals how to think about and use technology in their business and does regularly for her clients at Cogneesol.com.

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