Category: Insights

How to Set up a Print Server on Linux

Miley on September 17, 2020

After years of working as a support technician, I can tell you one of the most frustrating pieces of technology out there is the printer. When they work, they are an indispensable tool in the office. When they don’t work (as it often happens), they are a never-ending point of frustration.

This is especially true when your printer is attached to a Windows machine that can cause any number of problems, without rhyme or reason. Getting that shared printer back up and running can take some time. Or you might wind up having to call in support.
To make matters worse, printer problems don’t just plague end users. This almost universal bone of contention causes problems for every level of the user, even all the way up to JavaScript developers, like those at BairesDev.

Fortunately, there’s a way for your business to avoid the headaches brought about by sharing printers from desktop machines. That solution is to deploy a Linux printer server. Once you have such a server up and running, you’ll find it will serve you without fail (so long as the hardware and your network don’t become a problem).

Outside of reliability, the fact that you’ll be using open source means the only cost for you is the hardware.

Requirements

First off, you need to have a printer that supports Linux. At one point in time, this was a challenge that caused many users to avoid the Linux print server. But that’s all in the past. Today, it’s fairly easy to have a Linux printer. To find out what printers are supported by Linux, check out the OpenPrinting site.

With your supported printer at the ready, you’ll need to make sure it’s connected to your Linux server.

You’ll also need to have a Linux server available. I’ll be demonstrating with Ubuntu Server 18.04, as that’s one of the most user-friendly Linux server distributions on the market. Do note, however, that Ubuntu Server 18.04 installs without a GUI, so you’ll be working from the command line.

Finally, you’ll need a user with sudo privileges.

And that it’s. Let’s get to work.

Installing the CUPS printer server software

The first thing to take care of is the installation of the CUPS printer server software. CUPS stands for Common Unix Printer Server and has been around for some time.

To install CUPS, log into your Ubuntu server and issue the command:

sudo apt-get install cups -y

Once the installation completes, you’ll need to start the CUPS daemon and configure it to start at boot (otherwise you’ll have to start it manually anytime the server goes down). To start the CUPS daemon, issue the command:

sudo systemctl start cups

To enable the CUPS daemon at boot, issue the command:

sudo systemctl enable cups

Configuring CUPS

With CUPS installed, it’s time to configure it. Only a few quick changes need to be made within the configuration file. To open that file for editing, issue the command:

sudo nano /etc/cups/cupsd.conf

The first change you need to make is the line:

Browsing Off

Change that to:

Browsing On

Next, you need to configure CUPS so that the web-based manager is accessible from within your Local Area Network (LAN). Look for the line:

Listen localhost:631

Change that line to:

Port 631

For our next trick, you’ll have to make sure that CUPS is listening on all network interfaces. Look for the following section:

<Location />

Order allow, deny

</Location>

Change that to:

<Location />

Order allow, deny

Allow @LOCAL

</Location>

Finally, you’ll want to add access to the CUPS web-based admin console. Look for the section:

<Location /admin>

Order allow, deny

</Location>

Change that to:

<Location /admin>

AuthType Default

Require valid-user

Order allow, deny

Allow @LOCAL

</Location>

If you do opt to make the web-based admin console available, you might want to lock it down to allow only a specific user. To do this, you would change the line:

Require valid-user

Require user @SYSTEM

Save and close the cupsd.conf file. Restart the CUPS daemon with the command:

sudo systemctl restart cups

If you opted to lock down the admin console to a specific user, you’ll want to create that user with the command:

sudo useradd -g lpadmin cupsadmin

Set the new user’s password with the command:

sudo passwd cupsadmin

With that configuration, you can point a browser to https://SERVERIP/admin (where SERVERIP is the IP address of the machine hosting CUPS). You will be prompted to log in with the cupsadmin user and the password you set above.

Share the printer via Bonjour and IPP protocols

You’ll want to make sure your printer is visible to your LAN via Bonjour (for macOS desktops) and IPP (for most other desktops). To make this work, you’ll need to install the avahi daemon with the command:

sudo apt install avahi-daemon -y

Once installed, start and enable the daemon with the commands:

sudo systemctl start avahi-daemon

sudo systemctl enable avahi-daemon

Open the firewall

If you happen to have the UFW firewall enabled on the Server, allow Bonjour and IPP printer traffic through with the command:

sudo ufw all 5353/udp

Connecting your printer

At this point, everything is ready for desktops to connect. How you connect the desktop to the printer server will depend on which desktop you are using. For example, with Pop!_OS Linux, I can go to Settings > Printers, and (as long as the necessary drivers are installed) the new printer will automatically appear (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Our printer on the CUPS printer server is now available for connection.

Conclusion

And that’s all there is to set up a reliable Linux printer server. The only hiccup you will run across is if you have entities outside of your LAN (such as third-party JavaScript development companies). To allow those groups to use the printers connected to the server, you’ll need to employ a VPN. Otherwise, your printer server is ready and should serve you without fail.

Development Insights Products

Explaining why Fintech Industry Needs Blockchain with Use Cases

Miley on September 15, 2020

Blockchain technology has emerged as one of the most popular data technologies that revolutionized the way data is stored, protected, and shared in modern organizations. This decentralized data management system uses complex cryptographic protection and stores data in decentralized blocks to prevent all kinds of tampering efforts. Blockchain follows a ‘write-only’ protocol that allows only adding data and disallows any changes, deleting or tampering data.

Since the fintech industry is highly data-driven and data security plays a key role in the fintech apps’ success, Blockchain has become widely popular for solving many data security concerns of banking and financial firms. As CTO of Cerdonis Technologies LLC, Paul Osborne pointed out, “Emerging economies with an increasing volume of banking and non-banking investment and transactions are direct beneficiaries of Blockchain.”

Here are some of the credible use cases of Blockchain in the fintech sector.

Blockchain-Powered Global Payments

The principal reason for the blockchain-powered payments to be tremendously secure is the personal cryptocurrency keys that every user can use for carrying out transactions. Moreover, Blockchain coming with a ‘write-only’ protocol doesn’t allow overwriting the transactions, and any changes brought to the transactions can only be facilitated with everyone’s consent. Any change is shared and distributed across the network in actual time to make sure that all the participants remain completely informed.

Blockchain allows registering and evaluating every transaction so that there can be no scope of tampering transaction data. No wonder, leading Fintech companies around the world are increasingly embracing Blockchain for safeguarding payment. The best thing about Blockchain is that no longer global payments involving multiple currencies need traditional money transfer solutions.

Peer to Peer (P2P) Payments

A bulk portion of the international transactions belongs to the Peer to Peer (P2P) category involving considerable amounts of transaction fees for sending and receiving money. Apart from being exposed to risks from third-party platforms, such transactions end up adding more transaction costs that individuals and small businesses need to bear.

Apart from the huge additional transaction cost that people and businesses need to bear around the world, the traditional international P2P payments also get delayed at various instances. Blockchain can offer a comprehensive and conclusive solution to all these and can ensure more streamlined transactions involving less cost. No wonder cryptocurrency-based money transfers are already becoming popular, and several players emerged in this sector, OkCoin, BitPesa, Ripple, Sentbe, etc.

Reducing the Risks of Stock Market Manipulation

Investors in various parts of the world are also relying more on advanced technologies for decision making. Blockchain is increasingly becoming a great technology choice in the equity investment segment for streamlining investments, improving efficiencies, and extending the market reach.

Apart from helping with enhanced efficiency, Blockchain is also reducing the dark manipulations that big players in the stock market often practice. Lowering transaction costs is another major benefit of using Blockchain for the stock market.

Credit Scoring and Rating

Credit scoring and rating is an integral part of the evaluation of people’s creditworthiness. These days thanks to Blockchain, Fintech companies can even carry out such evaluating processes for populations still not covered under banking credit products. While evaluating precise credit scores is crucial to safeguard banking and non-banking credits from non-payment risks, Blockchain-based credit scoring can be used to make such scoring and rating more accurate.

Maintaining Regulatory Compliance

In the financial industry, the need for regulatory compliance plays a key role, and this is where Blockchain can play a great role. FinTech companies are facilitating regulatory compliance by using the latest technologies like Blockchain. Thanks to blockchain technology and its completely tamper-proof way of safeguarding data across distributed networks, it can play a great role in helping banks and financial institutions to remain in sync with industry regulations while dealing with the regulatory complexities efficiently.

By maintaining multiple copies of transactions that constantly get evaluated, Blockchain based compliance platforms literally make it impossible for the firms to breach compliance.

Minimizing the Identity Theft

For the past several years, issues corresponding to identity theft and digital frauds are steadily increasing in the financial sector. This is why know-your-customer processes and anti-money laundering measures have become important for the banking and financial sectors. On the other hand, banks and financial firms still rely heavily on paperwork. Paper-based customer documents are finding it difficult to compete with digitally equipped banks and firms in terms of efficiency and data risk. This is where the role of Blockchain technology became important.

By implementing a blockchain-based system, the fintech companies can streamline the entire process in which the customer has to evaluate their identity just once. The entire process of identity verification can be completely tamper-proof and free of a security risk as several blocks of data across the network will store the same document, and any change will be shared and distributed across the network in real-time.

Blockchain-Based Reward and Loyalty Systems

Besides securing data and streamlining processes in fintech firms, blockchain technology can also play a crucial role in making the customer rewards and loyalty systems more streamlined. Thanks to blockchain technology, businesses can utilize a multitude of less expensive loyalty programs and customize them as per different customer needs and preferences. Most importantly, Blockchain allows tracking the impact and traction of each and every reward program separately.

Conclusion

Blockchain has started to play a key role in the scheme of things for all financial firms. From security to streamlining processes to data transfer and sharing, Blockchain’s huge positive impact in the Fintech industry is likely to continue in the years to come.

Insights

Comparing the Cheapest NBN Plan Providers

Miley on September 14, 2020

Our cyberspace has become more of our social space nowadays and people would prefer to conduct online transactions for a hassle-free service. With technology, our future is secured because of the stability that its advancements brought to our plates. Therefore, secured Internet service is a necessity in every company and household.

Technology is evidence that we can gather more knowledge and information by just clicking on our laptops and smartphones with the help of science-based expertise. It has helped and made our lives easier compared to the previous generation because of its one-click-away feature.

But for us to use the ability of the Internet to its greatest extent, we should have an Internet service provider that is reliable and steady at any hour of the day. If not, we might encounter a crummy Internet disruption that will worsen our situation and may affect our jobs negatively at the same time.

So, here is a list of brands where you can compare the cheapest NBN plans you can rely on and may become your partner in making your future better.

iiNet

The iiNet was founded by Michael Malone and Michael O’Reilly in 1993. The company became remarkable to the public because they served to administer Internet access to the public for a very cheap price of $25 a month. Together with their telecommunication service, they also provided email transactions, file transfer systems, and many more web-based interactions with people from different areas of the globe which helped them grow and create their name in the industry. iiNet receives tons of awards from various networks and leading websites because of its outstanding performance and customer service.

Their hard work has been recognised globally and because of their unique innovations, they gained and encouraged customers to rely on their product despite the number of competitors that thrive by promoting the same service. Furthermore, the NBN12 is their cheapest package for new customers and is perfect if you live alone or you are the only one who will be using the Internet. It will cost you $59.99 a month with an MBPS of 11.1 and has 500GB worth of data for a month partnered with a pay-as-you-go call for landline but you can add another $10 if you want to extend your calls internationally.

Belong

Belong, a successful and well-established company prioritises and meticulously ponders how they can showcase the culture and way of living of the first people who lived in Australia to their services. They did not want the inevitable change to step on their roots because the company wanted to protect and respect the place where their ancestors used to live. With that concept in mind, the company flourished and gained customers because despite the advancement they showed in the telecommunication industry, they still chose to prioritise saving the earth by using carbon-free chemicals to produce their products which helped the earth recover from the destruction humankind has made thus, this started last 2019.

They aim to never be a source of problem for their customers therefore, they have provided cheap and dependable service that will lessen an individuals’ day-to-day dilemma. The company offers 10GB worth of data for $25 a month which includes unlimited calls and texts. It is perfect for people who are always on-the-go and are travelling from place to place because they can just insert the sim on their phone and they are good to go. People can bring their work with them without missing their deadlines and forgetting their meetings since with this NBN25, their online calendars and electronic mails will always be reliable through the help of the data provided by the network.

TPG

TPG or Total Peripherals Group was founded in 1986 but later on collided with Vodafone and became TPG Telecom Limited. They have been awarded last 2014 for having the cheapest broadband bundles in the country and continuously, TPG has been receiving various recognitions from that day on. Also, they invested and created more branches in different countries such as Japan, Hongkong, the Philippines, and the United States of America. To avoid air traffic and disturbances, the company provided a subway superhighway to deliver a top-notch performance to their customers in the said countries.

TPG has various NBN broadband bundles for personal use, small enterprises, and for big companies. For personal use, their cheapest offer is NBN25 which has an MBPS of 11.2 and a phone line for an amount of $59.99 a month. On the other hand, for small enterprises, they also offer the same Internet speed for $69.99 a month. Lastly, for big companies, they do not offer NBN25 rather they have a special offer which is Dark Fibre which is the fastest Internet speed and a lag-free usage together with secured transportation of data to protect the customer’s private information. If you are interested in Dark Fibre, you can contact TPG directly and inquire about the offer.

Insights

How to Start a Gardening Business

Miley on September 11, 2020

In the life of every person there comes a moment when you need to start. A new house, a new business or a new garden, maybe even a new garden business — it always seems that you know what to do, but as soon as you go into the office or open the gate into the garden, all ideas disappear from your head, all your knowledge is mixed in a heap, and there is only one question: where to start? And how good it is when there is someone who can give you a piece of advice.

We have prepared a small “cheat sheet”, the purpose of which is to help you take the first steps into the gardening business.

Selection of varieties of vegetables and fruits

One of the most obvious and important tips for novice gardeners is the careful selection of varieties of vegetables and fruits, taking into account the climatic conditions in which they will grow. Using this advice will significantly increase the yield of cultivated plants, as well as their resistance to various diseases. Therefore, carefully read the recommendations before purchasing seeds of certain varieties of vegetables.

Planning is always a good start

Even people who have been tending their garden for many years need a plan because, during the break, you can forget how the annual crops were located in the last season. What can we say about the arrangement of the new site? Before you start planting, take a tape measure and carefully measure the area on which you intend to work. Draw up a project on paper, draw the locations of the beds and the alternation of garden crops.

Leave space for a recreation area.

What to plant

Decide what to plant, based on the characteristics of the site. If the garden is located on the sunny side, the soil is fertilized with hummus or manure, in the first year you can grow cabbage and cucumbers, in the second — carrots, celery, tomatoes, and onions, in the third — beans and peas. With this crop rotation, you will achieve the best result. In the case when it is not possible to wait for a certain time, divide the area into separate beds and plant unpretentious crops — potatoes, carrots, onions. Capricious vegetables include tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, zucchini, cucumbers and squash — they are too sensitive to temperature changes, watering, and are prone to all kinds of diseases. A little trick will allow you to economically use the sown area: before placing seedlings, plant plants with a short growing season — radishes, lettuce, onions… And planting seeds of the same crop with a difference of one to two weeks will help to harvest twice.

“Neighbours”

The main rule of a good gardener: — do not place crops of one family next to or one after another. In this case, plants are less affected by the same diseases. There are special tables of crop rotation in the beds — they determine the best predecessors and neighbors for a particular vegetable. For example, cabbage should be planted after potatoes, onions, peas (tomatoes are acceptable). Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants — after cucumbers, onions, legumes. The soil is suitable for cucumbers after peas, corn, and legumes. Onions are favorable to their predecessors: potatoes, tomatoes, peas. Table beets and carrots will grow in the garden that was previously occupied by cucumbers, potatoes, cabbage, and zucchini. Early potatoes will yield a rich harvest in soil where cabbage, cucumbers, onions, beans, or peas grew. On the same basis, “neighbors” are selected.

Do a soil analysis

Soil acidity is an important factor, it depends on which crops will feel comfortable on your site. If the acidity is high – think about planting heather, conifers, and hydrangeas, if alkaline — think about corn, euonymus, derain, gypsophila, astilbe. Almost any plant grows well on neutral soils with proper care. Remember that the pH can be leveled out. To reduce acidity you can use ash, chalk, dolomite flour, and to normalize excessively alkaline soil, use fresh manure, peat, nitrate or ammonium sulphate.

Health of the soil

If you want to have a fertile vegetable garden with healthy and tasty fruits for many years, you need to take care of the health of the soil. Biologically active soil allows plants to grow healthy and do not need a lot of fertilizers. It is not at all necessary to spend a fortune to buy fertilizers in stores, there are ways to feed your plants with natural, organic materials. If you can, always use organic fertilizers instead of chemical or complex fertilizers. For these purposes, any decent gardener should have a compost pit. Of course, composting will require additional labor, but the result will pleasantly surprise you.

Compost

Compost boxes are an integral part of any garden. Firstly, you do not have to carry the harvested weeds and other waste somewhere far. Secondly, rotten waste is an excellent natural organic fertilizer for garden beds. To speed up the decay process, you can add special bacteria.

If you are a gardener and do your annual pruning routine, we recommend buying a garden shredder for faster composting from tree branches.

Choose good quality seeding

Some of the gardeners are already planting early seedlings, while others are just going shopping in garden centers to buy seeds for the future harvest. And often in the heat of shopping euphoria, we grab whatever comes close to hand. And in vain!

We would advise you to buy all your seeds and seedlings only in large specialized centers from well-known manufacturers and breeders with a name. A granny in a market or a salesman in a shady tent can tell you a beautiful story about huge harvests. But in fact, seedlings or seeds can be infected or weakened by hereditary diseases … While large producers are closely monitoring this.

Plant pest repellent plants

Experienced gardeners necessarily grow protective plants on the site. They scare away harmful insects from planted crops. Such plants can be divided into two types:

Disorienting pests. With their strong scent, they prevent insects from discovering plants that are attractive to them.

Deterrent. Their smell drives away pests.

The former include basil, parsley, thyme, garlic, sage.

The second group includes geranium, mustard, calendula, coriander, mint, rosemary, dill, fennel, and others.

For example, dill, familiar to everyone, perfectly protects cabbage from aphids, moths, and butterflies.

A mulch is your assistant

It is not always possible to dedicate all your time to your garden business. This is where mulching can help. It is especially good if the mulch is natural (straw, wood chips or shavings, hay, etc.). By using the mulching method, you can reduce the amount of weeding and watering. There is still free time to relax with your friends and family.

Do not force yourself

The trouble of many summer residents is the inability to correctly calculate their own strengths and needs. The desire to break the fifth bed of onions and grow a new variety, of course, is understandable, but unjustified. After all, you will have to work a lot, and the resulting harvest will be clearly superfluous.

Therefore, it is better at the beginning of the season to soberly assess the required amount of vegetables and fruits for the family and refuse all plantings in excess of this norm. Exactly, for this reason, you will have to try to predict the market and the number of goods that you will be able to sell if you want to start a successful gardening business.

Garden equipment and tools

The advice on buying high-quality gardening tools is not taken seriously by many novice gardeners. Meanwhile, saving on quality gardening tools in most cases leads to fatigue, low productivity, and injuries.

It is preferable to purchase garden tools in specialized stores, rather than from roadside sellers. In addition to tool, you may also want something like these harvest totes to carry and store your harvest in. Correct storage can help to minimize losses that might occur when harvesting vegetables.

Choose inventory with a manufacturer’s stamp.

It is important to choose a good pressure hose too since watering is one of the main activities in your garden and all your harvest depends on it. Every serious businessman needs good equipment, don’t forget that!

Bonus

Bonus advice for novice gardeners is related to watering plants — it is important not only to carry out this procedure in a timely manner but rightly. When irrigating vegetables in the garden, be careful not to get water on their leaves. An experienced gardener knows to water right at the root. Ignoring this advice can lead to the development of plant diseases.

You are not alone

There are not always a lot of friends and colleagues who can support a novice gardener or share his interests. But it doesn’t matter! Gardeners are very enthusiastic and sociable people. Social networks and the Internet are a limitless area for communication of interests, exchange of experience, and sometimes even rare seeds! Take your time and eventually, you will find your garden soul mates. Also, if you want to know more about starting a business, you can find relevant information at companyformationlatvia.com

Conclusion

A plant, like any living creature, feels an attitude towards itself. If you work just because you have to, without a soul, then the harvest won’t be as good as you want it to be. And if you put your whole soul and work in pleasure, then the plants will respond kindly to care.

Development Insights SEO

15 of the Most Effective SEO Tips for Beginners

Miley on September 11, 2020

As a beginner, you need to realize that there is no other golden opportunity to improve the website rankings in the popular search engines like Google or Yahoo other than SEO service. Of course, there are many options available to achieve better rankings, but guest post service provider helps you to design a reliable framework for your website that is 100% safe and secure!!

Important SEO tips for beginners

1. Page title and descriptions:

When it comes to any content, page titles are very important aspects to consider. It is an impression that helps you to grab the attention of the visitors. Be short and informative…!!!

2. Post blog that visitors love to read & share:

Nothing would bring vast changes to the rankings of the website other than the guest blog. You need to provide great content to drive high traffic rates and engage more audiences. With the help of guest post outreach, you can promote the brand worldwide!

3. Keyword research:

As a beginner, you need to perform more studies on keyword research to make the site appear on the first page of the search results.

4. Improve on-page elements:

Of course, on-page elements might be small, but you to concentrate on the elements like title, header tags, etc to have a great impact on your website’s page.

5. Identify and fix SEO issues:

Identifying and fixing any SEO issues will help you to run the website smoothly.

6. Improve page loading speed:

SEO helps you to load the page of your website much faster and make your site appear on the first page in the search results.

7. Make use of social media platform:

When you are ready to use social media platforms, you can find a massive audience reach and high traffic rates to your niche.

8. Understand the importance of Anchor Text:

With the help of anchor text, you can influence the website that you are linking to and you can grab the attention of the visitors much faster.

9. Link building:

Link building is the most imperative aspect of SEO. You need to build a link that is relevant to your niche to strike skyrocket hit on your business.

10. Make your site mobile friendly:

If you do not provide a smooth browsing experience for your site, then it may decrease your website rankings and so it is essential SEO tips for beginners to enhance the user experience.

11. Content marketing:

Content marketing is an important aspect of SEO. When you offer great content, sure visitors will help you to promote the website.

12. Stay updated:

One of the most important SEO tactics to consider for beginners is to discover and post updated content on your site to generate organic traffic rates.

13. Keep your eyes on your competitors:

It is always important to keep your eyes on your competitor’s website so that you can come to know what type of services they are providing.

14. Image optimization:

Make use of attractive images to enhance the user-experience and focus on page load speed as well.

15. Verify your external links:

External links are significant for SEO. All of these SEO tips help you to verify that your SEO tactics remain efficient and successful.

This was an introduction about SEO, but there are a lot more details to work on when you dive in. If you need professional help, you can always get in touch with SEO experts. They will provide you with detailed information or offer their services.

Insights Martech

7 Dos and Don’ts of E-book Marketing You Must Know

Miley on September 10, 2020

Which was the world’s first ebook? Most media outlets will make you believe that Michael S. Hart published the first one. This author launched Project Gutenberg and issued the Declaration of Independence digitally in 1971. But some historians trace the origins of electronically-encoded literature to the ‘60s. Other researchers argue that the complete work of Thomas Aquinas pioneered the digital book revolution. The launching of the Kindle device was a momentous breakthrough in the world of ebooks. This e-reader got modified multiple times.

The benefits of ebooks over printed ones are self-explanatory. It’s an electronic book! Was it possible for someone a century ago to imagine a pocket full of the entire English literature? Ebooks are easy to recover and cost lower than printed books. They even let you find the specific word that you’re looking for at the moment. Amazon reported that 85% of their readers do search such terms while they’re going through a book. Audiobooks offer blind people a convenient method to access their favorite literature. The process of ebook creation is effortless and straightforward. But we are presenting some carefully collected dos and don’ts of ebook marketing that you must learn.

Starting with what you should include in your practice:

FEEL PROUD

Some authors tend to underestimate the unveiling of their ebooks. Publishing a quality piece of literature online is an accomplishment. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating and talking about it. Feel proud enough to promote your ebook and create a marketing strategy for it.

PROOF-READ FOR MISTAKES

As a writer, you can produce the fairest composition imaginable. But nobody’s infallible, and even the most careful author can make a few slip-ups. That’s why proof-reading your book before final submission is highly essential. Use software like Grammarly to make sure your grammar’s fool-proof.

MARKETING AND PROMOTION

The primary factor in your marketing strategy is to build an audience. You should grow an audience first before you create an ebook; either you are a newbie to the field or have been ruling the previous marketing grounds for years. Marketing makes even the worst of the products become an immediate sensation. Your ebook deserves the smartest promotion campaign possible.

LINK BACK TO YOUR BLOG

Your ebook is probably the first interaction between you and hundreds of readers. So, always put a link to your blog/website/account in the book. Usually, this information goes in the portion called About the Author. If you don’t have an account, have some social proof.

HAVE SOCIAL PROOF

Your social presence immensely matters. Social media is a dynamic platform where you meet your future readers. Some authors ignore this strategy and don’t get as much attention as they’d hoped for with the project. Networking websites engage an unbelievable number of book-consumers.

PLAN A SEQUEL

People love continued information and entertainment. Once you’ve engaged an audience, keep feeding them fresh material. They will demand more of your writing, and you’re a person who craves penmanship. Expand your literary universe and produce more quality content for online bibliophiles.

SELL ON AMAZON

Where should I publish my first ebook? Amazon. That’s it. 83% of all book sales in the United States are happening right now on Amazon. You can try different vendors, too, which is a better approach. Amazon Kindle even lets you give away your ebook for free temporarily. That’s a neat promotional campaign right there.

Time for seven avoidable factors of marketing:

THINK YOU NEED NO EDITOR

Don’t underestimate the need for an editor to have a look at your ebook. A good writer isn’t necessarily an insightful editor. Editors are like an extra pair of professional eyes you can use for precautionary measures. Many books get flamed on Amazon for having multiple errors.

BE CARELESS ABOUT THE FORMAT

Format matters when you’re trying to promote your book. Properly formatted ebooks receive sincere appreciation for readers. It isn’t enough to make the book available in PDF only. You have to be sensitive about the Kindle and the Nook community as well.

OVERSELL THE BOOK

Strictly avoid overpricing your ebook. Overselling your product when you’re unheard of is simply a lousy market. If you keep it between $2.99 and $9.99, you’ll get a 70% payment from Amazon. Selling the ebook for $10 will cut the amount in half. So, even if you’re a well-established author, be modest about the pricing.

DESIGN THE COVER BY YOURSELF

The cover helps people decide if they want to read your ebook or not. Therefore, don’t try to design the book cover if you’re not into graphic design. Let professionals handle this matter.

ASK FOR REVIEWS

Don’t ask people to review your ebook. Let your marketing strategy motivate people to do it for you. When you implore people to read your work, you sound desperate. It’s better if you share the ebook among friends, acquaintances, and intellectuals you’re in contact with for that time.

FORGET TO PREVIEW

Previewing is a personal kind of review. It helps you critically analyze your book for errors and mistakes. Always review the ebook with microscopic intensity. Pay attention to even minuscule details because they can be a bother in the future.

EXPECT TOO MUCH

Don’t risk your entire future on one thing. This book will not make you a sudden millionaire. Start working on the next project as soon as this one’s finished. Try writing at a faster pace so you can have more work done.

CONCLUSION

Analysts have valued the $18 billion global ebook market to reach $23 billion by 2025. Technological advancements in the entertainment industry haven’t beaten people’s love for books. Many readers favor old paperback versions of the books they love, but it is famous for the cheap rates, easy accessibility, and convenient portability. A small mobile device offers the capacity to carry an average school library. Therefore, becoming an author online seems like an exciting profession. Follow a few instructions, and they will polish your career as a self-published author on the internet.

Development Insights Martech Products SaaS

Text Message Archiving: One of The Best Ways to Improve Litigation Preparedness

Miley on September 9, 2020

There are several reasons why organizations should record text messages or SMS, and capture other mobile content, including voice calls and emails. The main purpose is to stay compliant with data preservation regulations imposed by the government. Archiving in advance using sophisticated tools and software can save your time and money in eDiscovery to recover data in its original form and context.

eDiscovery or electronic discovery is the process by which electronically stored information (ESI) gets requested, located, and produced with the primary intent of being used in a lawsuit as evidence. It can also be used as part of a Freedom of Information Act request or for government investigations.

Prevent Evidence Spoliation with Text Message Record

Electronic data is believed to be very specific. This is not just because it is in an intangible form and of transient quality, but also because it is accompanied with highly useful metadata. This refers to the device that was used to send the text message, the time and date sent, and the contents of the message.

Such a text message record can play a vital role in evidence. It is not viable to take screenshots of every single SMS sent. It requires archiving software to preserve document metadata and to make it available through a vast volume of organizational information.

Remember, electronic data is easily susceptible to spoliation because of its intangible nature. You cannot expect all your employees to have the same phone they do now after a year or so. In addition, there is always the risk of losing data when a particular mobile device gets damaged or messages get accidentally deleted.

You could lose vast amounts of information that could have a major impact on the outcome of your litigation case and eDiscovery process. Many organizations have improved the way they deal with eDiscovery requests by establishing best practices. You can better cope with an ESI request by investing in a tried and tested litigation preparedness archiving software.

In fact, the right kind of tool could cut down your time to respond by one-third.

Text Archiving Allows for Better Organization

There is a reason why successful lawyers come prepared with organized files. This is to reduce the risk of missing something that could be vital to the legal proceedings. Without archiving your organizational text messages, you risk leaving everything unorganized. No internal, incoming, or outgoing text messages will be captured.

However, with the right text message archiving solution, you could ensure that every text message is not only captured but indexed and made searchable. There are various software solutions that could pack the archived information into long-term storage and allow for easy access whenever you require.

You can have access to a well-indexed and searchable archive when you receive an EIS request. Depending on the software you choose, you may also gain access to the metadata of those message records in addition to the information contained within them.

This way you can easily search for all relevant records on the basis of context and retrieve whatever is required at a fraction of the time.

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How to Prevent Duplicate Medical Records with Accurate Patient Identification

Miley on September 1, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has been one of the biggest challenges the US healthcare system has faced in decades. Even before that, it had a plethora of problems – outrageous costs, archaic laws, lack of price transparency, and so on. However, one of the more prominent problems the US healthcare system has been facing is patient identification errors. These occur due to a lot of issues – duplicate medical records or overlays in the EHR systems of hospitals and health systems, human errors, poor data integrity, and so on. Duplicate records can cost up to $40 million as well for healthcare providers. Healthcare experts have been asking the question “How to prevent duplicate medical records?” for far too long. The answer is simple – ensure accurate patient identification to avoid further duplicates and overlays.

Duplicate medical records

When a single patient has multiple EHRs (electronic health records) in the EHR system of a given hospital, he/she has duplicate records in the system. A variety of reasons lead to duplicate records, most commonly, human errors. Misspelling while entering patient data, not searching for the patient record appropriately, and common names and demographic characteristics are just some of the reasons for duplicate records creation.

Duplicate medical records are especially common for hospitals and health systems that do not utilize any modern patient identification platform and instead rely on the archaic patient identification method of asking the patients questions to determine their identities. This is quite obsolete, can lead to more duplicates, and leads to medical identity theft as well, as it is an unreliable way to identify patients. RightPatient can prevent duplicate medical records, prevent medical identity theft, and ensure accurate patient identification. Leading healthcare providers who understand the importance of proper patent identification have chosen it, but more on that later.

Impact of duplicate records

Black Book Research conducted a study where they highlighted the problems associated with duplicate medical records. The most common issues created by duplicate records are patient identification errors, redundant costs, repeated medical tests, denied claims – leading to significantly increased costs for any given healthcare provider – costing billions for the US healthcare system every year. Thus, the answer to “how to prevent duplicate medical records” is searched quite frequently.

However, that is not all. Duplicate medical records not only cause patient identification errors and financial costs for healthcare providers (in the form of poor revenue cycles and denied claims), but it also causes patient safety issues. Whenever a duplicate record gets created, it means that there is no medical history, information on medications, allergies, vitals, and other medical conditions associated with it. Likewise, if the patient is being treated using a previous duplicate record, it will have incomplete data of the aforementioned information. These will lead to wrong treatments, wrong procedures, and so on – hampering patient safety in the process. The only way to prevent duplicates, reduce associated healthcare costs, and enhance patient safety is by ensuring accurate patient identification.

How to prevent duplicate medical records effectively

The majority of healthcare providers are struggling with duplicate medical records, patient identification errors, and overlays. However, leading healthcare providers have taken matters into their own hands. They have deployed a solution that mitigates the costs associated with duplicate medical records as well as preventing duplicate records creation. RightPatient answers “how to prevent duplicate medical records?”.

RightPatient is a touchless biometric patient identification platform that ensures positive patient identification by locking the medical records of the patients with their photos upon registration. Whenever the enrolled patient returns, all he/she needs to do is look at the camera – the platform matches the photos and provides the accurate EHR within seconds, ensuring accurate patient identification. It can seamlessly be integrated with major EHR systems, making it part of the workflow.

Since it is a touchless platform, RIghtPatient is ahead of the curve, ensuring hygiene and eliminating any infection control concerns associated with patient identification. In fact, this was one of the major reasons why leading healthcare providers chose RightPatient over other platforms.

It prevents the creation of duplicate records right from the start, ensuring patient data integrity, providing accurate medical records, reducing denied claims, and preventing medical identity theft.

Leading healthcare providers like Grady Health, Terrebonne General Medical Center, and University Health Care System have been using it and are ensuring patient safety by protecting millions of patient medical records and avoiding duplicates – boosting their bottom lines in the process.

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How Odoo Can Cover All Your Needs

Miley on August 27, 2020

Each business carries a large amount of data that needs to be generated on a daily basis. As technology continues to grow more complex every day, it has made it harder for business owners to find an efficient solution to keep all employees up to date on sales and purchase processes.

Having an excellent customer relations team is a major part of a successful business and that can be difficult when you need to focus on the challenges of owning your own company.

Odoo can help solve all your business problems by integrating your customer relationship management software and enterprise resource planning together to improve your business and your staff’s productivity.

Here are the top advantages of using Odoo for your company:

1. Real-time access to important data

There are a lot of complications that can happen when your system is not integrated fully. When your employees are processing a purchase without having the most updated information, you could risk leading them to making a big mistake that will cost customers a lot of money.

Having a fully integrated CRM and ERP system will always give your employees fast access to information that gets updated immediately to ensure that you won’t have to run into any problems with customers, inventory, shipments, payments, returns, order history, and more.

2. Save money by reducing IT costs

When you are using two different systems instead of one means that you are spending double the cost on everything including IT costs and hours of training your employees to use both programs.

Integrated ERP and CRM will create one platform to use for everything, which means no more expensive maintenance cost for two separate systems and wasting your money on individual platforms.

3. Get rid of unnecessary data entry

Combining ERP and CRM into one system that will have all of the information that you need can eliminate the unnecessary data entry work that has to be done twice on each system.

You can enter the data once on an integrated system and it will show on ERP database as well as CRM without accidentally duplicating it. This also applies if an account needs a custom field to be added and when the data is removed or edited from the system.

4. Allows your team to be more productive

Your CRM system is focused on sales and providing customer support and ERP is for shipping and billing information, inventory data, warehouse, and more. Both systems depend heavily on each other to avoid making any mistakes, which can slow down your employees’ productivity when they have to double check every information before confirming a purchase.

It is especially a hassle for your staff when they are in the middle of an important sale process that has to be done as quickly as possible. By integrating both systems you will improve the customer’s experience with your company by making it easier for your employees to collaborate through the platform and giving them the ability to track all operations.

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A Handbook on “Go Agile”!

Miley on August 21, 2020

Agile is a procedure by which a team can deal with a project by separating it into a few stages and including steady coordinated effort with stakeholders and consistent improvement and emphasis at each phase of the task. It starts with clients laying out how the finished result will be utilized and what issue it will resolve.

What is Scrum???

Scrum is a subset of Agile. It is a lightweight process framework for agile development, and one of the most widely used one.
It’s not a process or methodology.
Easy to understand.
Based on Empiricism which means that scrum artifacts should be transparent to everyone in the team.

Principles of Agile

To fulfil the client through right on time and continuous use of important software.
To cater to changing requirements, even late in app development.
Delivering working software frequently.
Stakeholders work with the scrum team together throughout the project so as to avoid any communication gaps.
The most efficient way of communicating information within the team is face-to-face conversation.
The progress of work is measured by working software.
Continuous attention is paid to technical excellence.
Due to the self-organizational team structure, the best architectures, designs, and ideas come up.

Empiricism

Transparency:- All artifacts of the process should be visible to the stakeholders and the scrum team. Due to transparency, they can inspect the current state of the project and take necessary action if needed.
Inspection:- Having regular inspections of artifacts will help the stakeholders to incorporate changes in order to achieve the goal.
Adaptation:- Improvements can be made by adjusting the process based on the inspection results.

Scrum is Iterative and Incremental

First one – Incremental

Second one – Iterative

Incremental:- This type of development is to build small increments of the entire product. Each increment adds more features to the product. After multiple increments, you will get the complete product.

Iterative:- This development is to build something, take some feedback, and then refining to make it better. This will keep happening until we receive the product of good quality.

The Scrum Team

The Product Owner.
The Development Team.
The Scrum Master.

The Product Owner

The product owner is liable for augmenting the estimation of the product and work of the development group.

Clearly describing the Product backlog items.
Responsible for managing the product backlog.
To ensure the PBI is visible and clear to all.
To ensure the requirement is understood by all to the level it is required.
Accountable for building high-value products.
Ordering of Product backlog items to achieve the best goals.
Responsible for understanding and answering all questions pertaining to the product domain.
Responsible for tracking the release progress.
Liable for making and dealing with the release plans.
Liable for making and building up the product vision.
Enhancing the estimation of work done by the development team.

The Development Team

The Development Team comprises experts who accomplish crafted by conveying a conceivably releasable Increment of “Done” product at the end of each Sprint.

Cross-functional and self-organizing.
Participates in all scrum events.
Responsible for creating the product increment.
Collaborates with the Product Owner for optimal value.
Responsible for identifying and eliminating technical debts.
Liable for creating and coordinating the sprint backlog.
Responsible for implementing good engineering practices.
Helps product owners in backlog management by explaining the technical constraints.
Answerable for learning all the functions required to convey a product increment.
Answerable for following the advancement of the sprint.

The Scrum Master

The scrum master is responsible for ensuring that Scrum is understood and enacted by all. He ensures that the scrum team adheres to Scrum practices and rules.

He is a servant- leader to the scrum team.
Responsible for building the product fast by eliminating impediments.
Goes about as a change agent that builds the productivity of the scrum team.
Mentors the development team for self-organization and cross-functionality.
Helps the product owners prioritize the work and teaches stakeholders value-based prioritization.
Facilitates Scrum events as requested or required.
Finds and teaches techniques for effective product backlog management to the product owners.
Enables workers and partners of the association to comprehend and institute Scrum and experimental product development.
Assists with streamlining the outside connection with the scrum group to amplify the value created.

Scrum Events

All occasions are time-boxed occasions, with the end goal that each occasion has a maximum duration. When a Sprint starts, its span is fixed and can’t be abbreviated or extended.

The remainder of the events may end at whatever point the explanation behind the event is accomplished, ensuring an appropriate proportion of time is spent without allowing waste at the same time.

The Sprint

The core of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of one month or less during which a “Done”, usable, and possibly releasable product Increment is made.

Sprint Planning:- A time-boxed event that occurs at the beginning of every sprint where the team determines the product backlog items they will work on during the sprint.
Daily Scrum:- It’s a brief time-boxed occasion for the development group to synchronize exercises and make an arrangement for the following 24 hours.
Sprint Review:- This is again a time-boxed event that occurs at the end of every sprint to inspect the increment and adapt the product backlog if needed.
Sprint Retrospective:- This occasion gives a chance to the team to review itself and make an arrangement for enhancements to be done in the following sprint

Scrum Artifacts

Scrum Artifacts speak to work or incentive to give transparency and chances to investigation and transformation. Artifacts have been planned with a reason that everyone has a similar comprehension of the artifact.

Product Backlog:- An arranged rundown of everything that may be required in the product which is the single wellspring of necessities for any progressions to be made to the item. The Product Owner is liable for the Product Backlog, including its content, accessibility, and ordering.
Sprint Backlog:- The arrangement of Product Backlog things chose for the Sprint alongside an arrangement for conveying the item increase and understanding the run objective.
Product Increment:- The whole of all the Product Backlog things finished during a Sprint and the estimation of the additions of every past Sprint is called item increase.
Product Backlog Refinement:- The ongoing product backlog refinement takes place within each sprint to refine items to be ready for future sprints.

Scrum Values

Commitment:- It is a team activity where you and your team are accountable to work together and confirm your team commitments. The scrum teams must be committed to progress and stick to the goal of the project.
Focus:- Once the requirements are clear and the target is set, one should be goal-oriented which motivates you for delivering faster and better.
Openness:- Colleagues ought to be open about their work, progress, what they realized and the issues they are confronting. Additionally, you ought to be available to work with partners, perceiving people to be people, and not resources, robots, or replaceable bits of equipment.
Respect:- As a piece of the Scrum group, you should regard partners, their choices, and their experience. You should regard your partners by not building anything in which individuals are not intrigued. You have to similarly regard your clients by settling their issues.
Courage:- Flexibility to change shapes the bedrock of any Scrum project and to acknowledge a change, fearlessness is required. Scrum is tied in with facing challenges and discovering an improved arrangement. The Scrum group is permitted to consider various ways to deal with the workshop the best and most proper arrangements. So as to execute new things to the undertaking, we have to disclose these new plans to the group for which you would require fearlessness.

Author bio

Radhika Sethi is a tech enthusiast with specialization in Digital Marketing. She is passionate about technology, internet marketing, big data, and writing. Currently working in Affle Enterprise, a chatbot development company. Reading novels, traveling, researching new online marketing trends are some of her areas of interest that keep her rejuvenated.