#almost every project i do nowadays is on the computer so the most physical difference is maybe ill leave my art tablet on the desk

[mbat]

anyone else have like, a messy/nontypical setup (as opposed to their usual one) when doing a several days long project and its kinda... everything? in a good way?

it just feels like... wow, im doing something, and it feels good that its taking up space, and itll feel physically different when its done

[yasxgamal]

Basic Information

Full name: Yasin Gamal Pronunciation: ee-ah-ceen gah-mah-l Nickname(s): Yas, E. Birthdate: November 20th, 1986 Age: 34 Zodiac: Scorpio Gender: Male Pronouns: He/him/his Romantic orientation: Panromantic Sexual orientation: Pansexual Nationality: English Ethnicity: Egyptian Current location: London, UK Living conditions: Yas' place is a one-bedroom mess. It's a good flat, spacious and in a good location, all things considered, but he's not the best at decorating. Apart from the very odd artwork or two hanging crookedly on the walls, there isn't much more to it. He keeps his space clean and tidy when he has the time to do that, but it's not a very personal place. Also probably smells like smoke most of the time -- or, air freshener if he's trying to impress you.

Background

Birthplace: London, UK Hometown: London, UK Social Class: Wealthy if you count the parents' money, Middle if you consider his own money and lifestyle currently, and his tendencies to waste it all on cigarettes. Educational achievements: A really fancy degree in Computer Sciences and Computer Engineering at the most expensive college in the UK Father: Omar Gamal Mother: Safiya Gamal Sibling(s): Samir Gamal and Aisha Gamal. Birth order: Samir, Yas, Aisha is the youngest. Pets: Ramen, the stray cat that crawls in through his window and occasionally spends weeks sleeping inside, and then disappears for months on end. Previous relationships: One big relationship in college for 3 years, a miserable breakup. Then mostly only casual things after that, none he would consider true relationships. Arrests: N/A Prison time: N/A

Occupation & Income

Current occupation: Programmer for the Time Machine project Dream occupation: Programmer for the first working Time Machine Past job(s): College Era: various internships, waiter, freelance photographer for kids' parties, freelance I.T., tech teacher for the elderly, tech teacher for children, coder and manager for a pornographic film company's website. Post-College Era: has helped coding and programming several apps and softwares independently, then a stable job at GoodCore Software Ltd. as SQA Lead. Spending habits: Yas spends a lot on cigarettes and technology, but everything else he doesn't care enough for. In debt?: No Most valuable possession: Emotionally, his own laptop or phone, and all the photos and memories stored in them, as well as his work. Legally and monetarily, though, it's the BAFTA statuette from his sister, which he now gets to keep for a year because he won a bet (it's fine, she has more than one).

Skills & Abilities

Physical strength: Average Speed: Average Intelligence: Above Average when it comes to all things technology, Average on some other subjects. Accuracy: Average Agility: Above Average Stamina: Above Average Teamwork: Great in environments where everyone is delegated a certain job and he gets to do his thing in his corner to add to the mix. When it comes to people wanting to mess with his codes, he gets a bit stubborn and difficult to deal with. Shortcomings: often lets his pride ruin things, a bit of an inflated ego when it comes to his work, bad at communicating. Languages spoken: English, Arabic Drive?: Yes Jump-start a car?: No Change a flat tyre?: Yes Ride a bicycle?: Poorly Swim?: Yes Play an instrument?: If you count the guitar lessons in his childhood (he does) Play chess?: Yes Braid hair?: No Tie a tie?: Yes Pick a lock?: No Cook?: Yes, the very bare minimum, and he hardly does it.

Physical Appearance & Characteristics

Faceclaim: Rami Malek Eye colour: Greyish green Hair colour: Black Hair type/style/length: Shaved on the sides, originally short on top but it grows out too fast and he can't be bothered to get a haircut, so it grows out curly. When it starts to become a mop and look like he has a helmet of hair on, he cuts it short again, and repeats that cycle. Glasses/contacts?: No, but they're needed. He has shit eyesight and no one ever forced him to get glasses so he never did. Don't ask him to read any signs that are far away. Dominant hand: Right Height: 5'9 / 175cm Weight: 154 lb / 70kg Build: Slim Exercise habits: Nonexistent, but he does a lot of walking Skin tone: Olive (Type IV) Tattoos: The initials of his siblings, A.S. in a simple font, on the bottom of his ribs on his right side. They all have matching ones. He continuously tells them the joke that they should get a fourth sibling with an S name, so he can get A.S.S. tattooed instead. Piercings: None Marks/scars: Several small scars around his legs and arms, from climbing around and getting into trouble as a middle child desperate for attention. A more notorious scar runs up behind his left elbow from a night in college when he got wasted with his friends and had an accident with a knife (don't ask). Clothing style: Black, a lot of black. The most colourful thing in his closet might be a dark grey jumper. Very minimalistic in the sense that he never wears patterns or colours or graphic tees, it's always just very dry and kind of bland. He probably could get into fashion if he wanted to, but he feels bad spending so much of his hard-earned money on the high-fashion stuff. Also he can frequently be spotted wearing those compression gloves/braces on his hands, for carpal tunnel syndrome Jewellery: A couple necklaces that have no emotional attachment besides "I thought they were cool so I bought them", but he's never without them, even when they mostly just hang inside his shirts. Dabbles in rings if he's feeling fancy. Allergies: None Diet: Consists of mostly snacks. He occasionally buys the healthy kind, like a couple granola bars or some fruit, but if he's going through a big project, he'll only snack. Anything easy to eat with one hand goes. He does, however, understand the value of nutrition and that he needs to fuel his body properly every once in a while; when that happens, he resorts to ordering food from some healthy restaurant nearby. It's basically a couple salads a month and then nothing but Doritos for days straight. Physical ailments: Carpal tunnel syndrome happens often enough that it's almost chronic, because he doesn't usually take breaks or stretch his wrists out like he's supposed to. Back pain from sitting all day (and bad posture) is also so present that he barely notices it anymore.

Psychology

MBTI type: INTJ Enneagram type: Type Five Moral Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Temperament: Somewhere between Phlegmatic and Melancholic? Element: Water Emotional stability: Who is she! Introvert or Extrovert? Introvert Obsession(s): Outdoing his siblings, no matter how much he loves them Compulsion(s): Working to the point of forgetting to take care of himself Phobia(s): Acrophobia and atychiphobia Addiction(s): Cigarettes/Vaping Drug use: Sometimes wrongly and terribly pops an Adderall when pulling all-nighters. Has smoked weed before, but he doesn't love the slowness of when he gets high. Alcohol use: Not very often nowadays, but the occasional blackout still happens. He's known to become a completely different person when he drinks, much more loose and fun and happy, so he does it sparingly Prone to violence?: No Prone to crying?: No Believe in love at first sight?: Yes, but doesn't think he's the type to ever experience that, since it takes a while for him to get close to people, so he believes in it as an abstract concept

Mannerisms

Accent: RP English Speech quirks: A lot of pauses between words and sentences, since he often thinks a lot before he speaks. The occasional ums and uhs and some stuttering if his mind is working faster than he can speak, too. Hobbies: Photography, playing video games, reading novels (graphic or otherwise), finding passive-aggressive memes to send into the Gamal siblings groupchat Habits: Stealing wifi, smoking and vaping, ordering delivery of everything instead of getting it himself Nervous ticks: lip chewing, tapping fingers, bouncing one knee, scratching his neck/jaw or touching his nose Drives/motivations: It's all for the glory, babey Fears: Never achieving anything grand Sense of humour?: It goes as far as memes and roasting his loved ones, but not much further than that. He's usually not comfortable enough to crack jokes, but you might get a sarcastic comment or two if you're lucky. Deep down, he can be sharp and quick-witted, but it doesn't come out often, unless he's having drinks. Do they curse often?: Hecc yes, probably as a form of rebellion against his posh parents

Favourites

Animal: Tarsier Beverage: Strong black coffee with two spoons of sugar Book: Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Colour: Green Food: Zalabya Flower: Jasmine Gem: Peridot Mode of transportation: Walking, and if not, the metro Scent: Oranges Sport: Tennis Weather: Rainy enough that he doesn't feel anyone's judgement for staying inside all day Vacation destination: Japan

Attitudes

Greatest dream: Finally being famous for his work Greatest fear: Never achieving anything big enough to make him happy, and being forever miserable because of it Most at ease when: Left by himself or enjoying someone else's company that he's truly comfortable with, probably in silence, doing his own thing Least as ease when: Forced into environments where he has to put on fancy clothes and pretend to be enjoying himself when he's not. Alternatively: when he's going on hour 32 without any sleep and he's denied more coffee Worst possible thing that could happen: Achieving greatness but realising he needs something else in order to feel fulfilled and be happy Biggest achievement: His degree and hopefully the first working Time Machine Biggest regret: He doesn't like to say he regrets things, so there's nothing he'd call a huge regret. But if he had to say something, he'd probably say it was not telling that one high school crush that he liked them.

[outofmylimitcal]

The Hating Game Pt. 1 - Calum Hood

a/n: some how this got deleted the first time around ???? but here you go College!Cal, i was gonna do frat cal but i avoid them like the plague at school so not the best idea. first part of the series and i dont know how many parts there’s going to be ,, anyway enjoy and lmk what you think!!

part 2

synopsis: natalie has held a grudge against calum since he screwed her over in first year, and cause he’s kind of a snarky asshole, but when he comes to her rescue one night will all be forgiven??

word count: 2023

warnings: swearing, drinking, and kinda smutty??? but not sex

-----

To say I was done with school would have been an understatement, all my midterms were done, and the semester had hit that lull in between when finals hadn’t started yet, but you had nothing else on your plate. Third year was so close to being done and I could almost taste graduation even if it was a year out, so far, my engineering program had smacked my ass to Pluto and back. Setting my phone down on my desk, I walked into the living room to be met with my two best friends, Charlotte who was also in engineering, and Sierra who was pre-med and hoping to get into med school after her undergrad.

“Hi yes we need to go out for our last free weekend of the semester.” I exclaimed plopping down onto the couch and startling them both up from their phones.

“Luke invited us out to that bar on Main street, all the boys will be there too.” Sierra replied letting us know her boyfriend’s plans, looking back down at her phone. At the thought of ‘all the boys’ I let out a fake gag.

“C’mon Natalie, you seriously still can’t hold a grudge against Calum for what he did in FIRST year.” Char let out, slapping me across the arm.

“I can and I will, I’m down to go, but I can’t say I’ll be pleasant towards him.” I scoffed grabbing the TV remote and aimlessly flipping through the channels.

Okay, maybe holding a grudge for two years is a little bit of an overkill, but when Calum ruined my perfect grade in a class because he thought it was going to be an easy elective and I was going to do the entire project (mind you it was worth 40% of our grade) for him because as he put it ‘it’s my major, I shouldn’t have a problem doing it alone’ do I get to hold a grudge. I mean who the fuck takes computer science as an elective, I didn’t even want to take it and it was mandatory for me. But with him not doing his part, my grade suffered, and with that went my liking for Calum. It may be petty but I’m as petty as they come, nowadays I mildly tolerate him since our friends like to hang out together but not without the fair share of sarcastic banter between us.

“Anyways, it’s 8:00 and they probably want to meet around 9:30 so we should go get ready.” I say turning off the TV and tossing the remote back onto the coffee table, standing up and booping their noses I start the walk back to my room.

“Maybe you should fuck him, that would alleviate the weird ass tension between you two.” Char yells out from the living room, followed by a burst of laughing coming from Si. I continue walking back to my room, flipping them off behind me.

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Meeting back up in the living room at a quarter after 9, my makeup was done, I’d thrown on some random band tee, and slipped on my shoes and leather jacket, twirling my house keys in my fingers as I took one last look in the mirror.

“Hurry the fuck up, I don’t wanna get stuck in the line. Again.” I yelled out to them, and as if on cue they walked into the foyer, clipping their bags closed and fixing up the last few things.

“For someone who says they hate him, y’all sure do dress very alike.” Char chirped while slipping on her own shoes.

“Hate is a very strong word Char, it’s more of a strong distaste.” I piped back giving my most sarcastic smile, unlocking the door and calling the uber. They followed me out the apartment, and down to the uber waiting outside.

“They said they’re at a table in the back, and that the line to get in wasn’t too long.” Sierra said looking down at her phone and sending a quick text back. Hopping out of the uber and saying a quick thank you to the driver, we shuffled over to the line and saw only about 5 people infront of us.

“See the line isn’t that long, no need to rush us.” Charlotte said, earning only an eyeroll from me. Showing our IDs to the bouncer, and paying the cover we walked into the bar, that kind of turns into a club on weekends, with tables moved to welcome a dance floor, and a DJ playing everything from Top 40s to rap throwbacks, it was THE place to be on weekends in the small university town. Getting here early meant getting a table, and not having to wait too long in the lineup outside. Sierra tapped Charlotte’s shoulder and pointed somewhere near the back, most likely to the table the boys had decided to residence up at. They both turned to look at me, relaying information I had already deduced from their hand motions.

“You guys go ahead, I’m gonna go get a drink first.” God knows I’m going to need it tonight. Making a bee-line to the bar and taking a seat on the stool, I got the attention of a bartender, ordering a vodka sprite. I spun around to survey the area, as I scanned the crowd of dancing people, my eyes landed on Ben, my ex-boyfriend who cheated on me, and stole all my chemistry notes in the process, leading me to fail said chem class’ midterms. He was looking real cozy with some blonde chick I recognized from one of my classes, and as he looked up, I locked eyes with him. If looks could kill Ben would be a deadman. I could feel my blood boiling as he gave me a small smile or smirk. I don’t care, I didn’t look long enough for it to register, spinning back around, taking my drink and paying the bartender with a small smile I walked away to meet my friends. Approaching the table, I could see Sierra and Luke cozied up in their own world, and Charlotte in a debate with Ashton and Michael about something to do with our last physics midterm since they were both in our program, and Calum staring off into space with his hand around his beer. Surveying the table, I saw the only spot left was next to Calum, those fuckers. Plopping down I let out a huff, placing my drink on the table. This was enough to snap Char out of her conversation.

“Yo what’s up with you?” She questioned giving me a puzzled look.

“I saw Ben when I was at the bar.” I replied twirling my straw through my drink.

“Woah wait Ben’s here?” Sierra piped from the other side of the table.

“Who the fuck is Ben?” Ashton mused looking around the table at what was transpiring. Before I could respond, Charlotte explained.

“He’s the asshole who cheated on Nat a month ago, and then stole her chem notes so she failed the last midterm.”

Wide eyes and little chirps of yikes were thrown, causing me to down my drink in response. I’m gonna need a little liquid courage to get through tonight.

“Well that’s what you get for dating a guy named Benjamin.” I turned to my right to look at Calum who just chuckled at my reaction, reaching over and grabbing his beer from his hand, I downed the entire thing too, smacking it on the table as I wiped my mouth and locked my eyes onto his look of disbelief. Correction, I’m gonna need a LOT more alcohol to get through tonight.

✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰

As the night progressed, dancing ensued, and plenty more drinks were consumed. Feeling a little more than just buzzed, but definitely not shit-faced, I couldn’t lie and say I wasn’t having fun dancing with my best friends, but every time I looked up all I could see was Ben’s shitty smirk and every time it managed to knock me down a few pegs. This time was the last straw, as I turned to my friends and motioned drinking water, finding my way back to our table, I sat down and pulled out my phone. After a few minutes of scrolling aimlessly a figure plopped down, opposite of me, expecting it to be Ben I didn’t look up.

“Awn little benny boo got you down love.” Okay, definitely not Ben, I looked up to be met with the smirk of Calum.

“Aye, fuck off Calum.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He replied leaning forward with his elbows on the table. “What if I told you I had an idea?”

“Well I’d tell you to shove it somewhere the sun doesn’t shine.”

“Damn, aren’t we snarky tonight. But just hear me out okay, Ben keeps looking at you trying to make you jealous, and even if he was an asshole you still kind of have feelings for him, right?” I nodded along, not really knowing where this conversation was going. “Well how about we dance a little too close for comfort, and hope he gets the message?”

My eyebrows furrowed as I thought about his offer in my head, Calum was attractive there’s no doubt, and if things turned out differently maybe I would have pursued something there. My mind then flashed to what Char had said earlier, and this too could be used as an opportunity to fuck with them as well.

“Say I was thinking of taking you up on your offer, we’re going to need shots first.” I cocked an eyebrow at him. Slapping his hands together, he climbed around the table, and put his hand out as if I should lead the way. Rolling my eyes at him but leading the way to the bar. Once there I could feel him pressing against me. “Guess it starts now huh?”

Moving my hair out of the way, chills ran down me as I felt his hot breath on my skin, whispering into my ear I hear him say, “Cute band tee by the way, someone could almost say you’re copying my style.”

My breath hitched at the sudden closeness, and I couldn’t get attention of the bartender faster, needing those drinks now. All I could hear was chuckle from Calum as he moved from behind me to beside me.

“Cheers.” He states as raising his shot and downing it, before taking the second one and doing the same. “C’mon let’s go dance.”

Grabbing my hand and leading me to where my friends were dancing on the dance floor, Calum spun me around, so I was in front of him and placed his hands on my hips. Looking up Sierra and Char had puzzled looks on their faces and mouths open as if about to speak, raising my hand to silence them, I melted into Calum, slowly grinding my hips to whatever song was playing. Friends who kind of hate each other can still dance with each other, right? Closing my eyes and further sinking into him, I let one hand rest on his on my hip, the other going to the back of his neck playing with the hair at the tap of his neck. Hearing him groan in response, I smirked to myself. The swaying continued, and I kept my hold on his hair, his free hand that I wasn’t holding would drift up my side, or around and to my butt making me tense and giggle anytime he hit a spot that kind of tickled. It felt weird to say that I was enjoying this, it’s been so long since I’ve just carelessly danced with a guy at a bar. Finally letting my eyes flutter open I looked dead ahead of me, already seeing Ben, eyebrows furrowed, mouth agape, before turning around and storming away from the girl he was with. Spinning myself so I was now face-to-face with Calum, I wrapped my arms around his neck leaning forward to whisper in his ear. “Looks like it worked, thanks for the help handsome.”

Kissing his cheek before coming to stand straight, I turned to Char and Sierra, letting them know I was gonna head out and that I would see them at home. Sierra yelled out a quick, “Text me when you get home.” I weaved my way out of the bar to stand outside waiting for my uber.

“Hey Nat, wait up!” I spun around to see Calum walking towards me scratching the back of my neck. “You mind if I crash at yours? I’m pretty sure Ashton’s gonna bring a girl home and my rooms next to his and the walls are too thin, and I just don’t wanna hear that and yeah.”

I studied Calum and suddenly the man that’s usually so sure of himself looked nervous? If it was any other night I would say no, and maybe it’s because my inhibitions are lowered due to all the alcohol, and I kind of do owe him for how he helped me out tonight. So before I could even stop the words coming out of my mouth I said, “Uh yeah sure, my uber’s about to be here any minute.”

✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰

if this has any typos i dont claim them

[vkstar-cornman]

Contexts

Lately I’m still feeling very reluctant about blogging and write reflections from time to time, especially the weather had made me quite ill and unproductive. The book art responding to 24/7 started off brightly, but now I am experiencing the phase I would had the same in every other project, which I start being very skeptical on whether if this is a good idea to keep developing on.

 So for clarity, for my own reference, I’ll try to explain what I will be doing to myself through inscription to boost my own confidence on this one.

 Basically, we all started from the same point, which is to go to 24/7 in Somerset House and see the works being curated together in there. ‘Sleep’ and ‘Surveillance’ were some of the strong concepts being emphasized throughout the exhibition, but I had enough of explaining what I’ve seen there because I’m pretty sure I have done it multiple times already. I will directly skip to the inspiration part. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s Synthetic Orchestration gave me an idea of doing a book with birds as the major appearance in book, her work displayed the restlessness from urban life had extended, and disrupted biosphere as well, causing birds to sing earlier and loud, a change in their communicating mechanisms.

 Birds are such fragile yet agile animals that we spot commonly in a lot of places. They have co-existed and dwell in the city with humans for long ages, and I do believe the 24/7 culture shapes their life different in many ways, emerging the traits from a sleepless routine into their nature. Besides light and sound pollution coming from either rapid industrialization or for the needs of working class, there are more physical environmental pollutions than we could imagine that are forcing birds and the other part of nature to adapt such an anxious living mode, which is almost incompatible to most of our natures, not just as human, but as a moral living creature.

 What I always found fascinating about birds, is how their life cycle works. Depending on larger or smaller breeds, there’s quite a range in life span, but what matter the most is the stages in life to them are pretty much the same. They go from eggs to hatchlings, nestlings to juvenile and lastly, subadult to fully mature. For smaller breeds, their dead bodies are usually hard to find, as instead of natural causes, they mainly died from predation due to their position in food chain. I don’t actually think there’s any part seems so magical about the life of birds, but I’m just genuinely interested in where do they go before and after at the stage where they still require parental care. Just like the type of things we face in our lives, I study it to try to find associations, because associations always makes good metaphors in communication.

  Cutting to the chase, so how is the contextualization working in this project? Some of the people look into how 24/7 culture and late capitalism keep infecting birds, or just genuinely urban wildlife in future, and the unpredictability of impact on the nature just remind me the fact that many people are yet to be delivered to this world, until the age of much more uncertainties comes. For some other family-related certain issues, I decide to dedicate this book art project to the next generation, the generation alpha, a generation fully immersed into the bestest technologies we are seeing nowadays. Some may argue that millennials and generation Zs were already those people of era that lacked the witness of how technology shifted rapidly. What separate us apart from generation alpha, is they will face contract to social media in a much younger age and also a larger extend then we did. It is good or bad? As always, for generally any topics, there are always the good side and the bad side, but only to find out which will outweigh which.

 For example, from a video I watched recently that explains a marketing strategy labelled as a creation under ‘late capitalism’, which companies like fast food chain restaurants would take their online presence onto a personification, creating a less formal and official link with netizens, which in contrast boosted their ‘relatability’ and proximity to the public, a friend-like approachable figure with certain unique personalities which could summon an entire ‘fandom’, instead of just a platform grouped with admins that give you really polite but autogenerated replies. The publication and use of hugely popularized substances in millennials and gen Zs like ‘memes’ are largely used to gather a fan base. The idea is no longer to make professional promotions and advertisements in order to attract customers, but to immerse some kind of virtual character into your life, an online presence that you actually think of as a mortal person or even an acquaintance you know from online, that marketers found best apply to the newer generations people.

 This kind of techniques start appearing in about mid 2010s, which is the age where generation alpha could either just born, already been born, or starting to explore the world and gotten exposed to internet. Saying this also mean that most of these kids will not be able to witness how these marketing strategies were used and a world before such things existed, and what happens is that it could be very difficult for them to be aware of not constantly getting instilled with such ideas and ‘advertisements’. It sounds like its merely, remotely related to how late capitalism brings 24/7 culture, sleeplessness, blablabla…. But the idea is, there will be people out there, trying to be your friend and mostly their only purpose is to make themselves hard to be gotten rid out of your heads. The world is spinning at hot speed, and each day there are people coming up with multiple ideas about advertisements or other idea-instilling mechanisms, that seems very harmless on surface, but also doesn’t make an antipathic psychological effect on general public. The true negative effects are very subconscious and unpredictable, and that’s what makes it scarier, it will probably make the next generation even less independent with a mobile device or social medias, even we together will bring more advancements in the foreseeable future.

 The questions I kept asking myself, is what will happen to them? How will they cope with many upcoming challenges? Will we altogether, be able to solve the problems together? With medical advancements, the latest two generations of people (0-20) are currently treated with the best medical welfare and medication, who are believed to potentially live until 22nd Century. With that being said, generation z and alpha’s timeline of life will be quite similar and will be sharing a lot of time working and collaborating together. What are the things we as a previous generation, a multitude of people who have slightly witnessed a bit more than the alphas do, can remind them of? What are the things generally everyone out there can advise these hatchlings who haven’t seen the world yet? Even though myself is still in an early stage of exploring how this world work under the current system, what are the things we need to fight against? What are they thing we should believe in or not?

 I guess these could be counted as my responses to the exhibition, not initially though. I will never be able to find the most fully-covered or precise answers to these questions, but I will try to explore them, and find the keys to the doors after another one. For the book, I focused mainly on the message and with my limitations on accurate measurements, I was a bit uncomfortable in trying to create a distinct format or an original prototype to the book itself. What I want to do, is illustrate the life of birds with multiple medias. What I have already done is screenprinting, drawings with unorthodox ways and digital amendments, the main idea is to create digitally configurated images with natural techniques (sunography in replacement of x-ray? Handdrawing instead of computer-generated image) . During the growing up process for the birds, they don’t face terrorisms or wars, but they face the terror of being exposed to technology and medias in an early age, which effects are quite inmost as I have mentioned.

[paytonsportfolio]

Reading Through the Screen

The excessive amount of technology that has been implemented into today's society has been an ongoing controversial topic. Whether it rots our brains or makes us ten times smarter, people across the globe deal with digital literacy every day. Technology has advanced greatly over the last few decades and has completely shaped how we live. Our daily routines revolve around technology. We look at our phones when we wake and when we go to bed. We can even track our calories burned every single day. The fact is, digital literacy dominates the people of our society’s everyday lives.  

In order to be successful in today’s mechanically driven world, you must be literate and have some experience with computers. Most of the time, whether you are working at your job or completing a project for school, you deal with digital literacy. It doesn’t matter how high or low of a paycheck you receive. You will deal with digital literacy; for example, employees at Taco Bell are required to read the upcoming order on a screen to ensure that they cook and prepare the correct order on time. On the other end of the spectrum, if you have a higher-ranking job than working at Taco Bell, like a CEO of a company, you are also required to digitally read and communicate.  

There’s also the other aspect of looking at a much younger population, children in school. The expectation of having computer and literacy skills have skyrocketed. Even at the age of eight, sometimes even younger, students are taught computer skills. When I was in grade school, it was required for me to take multiple years of typing classes. This class entails reading words and phrases off a computer screen and typing them in response. Sometimes the program will even give you paragraphs to read and type. It was very fast pace; therefore, my classmates and I had to retain the text quickly in order to do well in the class. For students that don’t have the opportunity to take this class, I think it is a setback in learning to have a relationship with the computer. After lots of repetition and practice, you get used to typing a particular way, but for the students that aren’t taking this class, it will be hard for them to type at a faster pace.  

Students most commonly use digital literacy when they are unsure of a question and search for the answer on a web browser. This can be very useful and is not only done by students. When attending a university, it is required to have a laptop or tablet to complete coursework and utilize it during class. Colleges like Cleveland State University operate their courses through computer programs. Cleveland State University uses a program called Blackboard. Blackboard uploads course materials that are a key role in a student’s success. Many grade schools and universities, mostly private institutions, supply students with iPads, encouraging them to read and do their homework outside of the classroom. Other students don’t bother with the readings and download games like “Subway Surfer” instead.  

Text messages are the most common types of digital literacy that are used daily. Nowadays, everyone has a cell phone. Texting can be used for a variety of things. It can be very beneficial. In some cases, getting a text could save a life; for example, if you have a home intruder, you must contact someone for help. Calling the police is your first option; however, you must stay quiet. Luckily, we have texting. In today’s modern world you can now text the police, specifically in situations like this. Although it is not often that you will come across one of these life-threatening situations, it goes to show you that texting isn’t all that bad. Of course, when you are texting your friends, it’s not the most formal form of communication, but you still need basic literacy skills. You can’t type a long rant without punctuation. It wouldn’t make any sense.  

Along with text messages, emails are also a source of communication that is used daily. Unlike text messages, emails are often used as a formal type of communication; for example, a student will email their professor a question about an assignment when they are not in class. You can’t email a professor like you would text a friend. It’s just unprofessional. In order for your email to look professional, you must know the format to set your email in. Normally, you start with a greeting, which addresses who you are speaking to. Following your greeting is your body, where you get your point across. Finally, you close your email with your name and a phrase like “thank you” or “sincerely.” If you don’t use these essential literacy skills, you will be unprofessional.  

Social media has a huge influence on the forever evolving English language. Slang is used and seen daily on social media, text messages, or conversations with friends. Considering how often humans use these phrases, they are essential in today's pop culture, but slang has been evolving for decades. One of the more recent phrases that was established from social media is “and I oop!” A viral video of a drag queen, Ms. Jasmine Masters, was in the middle of a rant and accidentally hit her genitalia on a chair. “And I oop” can be portrayed many ways and used in many different situations. It is most commonly used when someone sees or hears about something that catches them off guard; for example, you are walking around town and see your friend with their ex-boyfriend. For people like my friends and I, it is our first instinct to say, “and I oop!” This is just one of many examples of slang that have dramatically affected the new ways of language.  

If my generation lived twenty years ago when we didn’t have the current, advanced technology. We would be lost. How would we show our followers what we are eating for lunch every day? You can’t “D.M.” a guy that you think is cute. You would have to speak to him in person. Imagine if you had to read a physical newspaper to learn about the latest news like our grandparents did, and no, there is no such thing as facetime. You can’t video chat your friend and have them walk you through how to break up with your boyfriend over text. We take all of these things for granted because we use them daily.  

I can assume that most grandparents are like mine and always ask how to operate technology. Almost every time I visit my grandparents, I am asked a new question. “How do you make the words bigger?” “Can you download some music for me?” Of course, I always help, but what’s hard to admit is that I always tend to not understand why it’s so hard for my grandmother to operate an iPhone. Then again, could you imagine having to adapt to rotating landlines to portable telephones that can do almost everything that a computer can do? They went from having jobs that have little interaction with technology similar to what we have today to adapting to screens and operated machinery surrounding their workplace.  

Whether you believe the overpowering amount of technology that is available to people across the world is a threat to one’s brain, or if you believe being able to create an Excell spreadsheet makes you a genius, technology isn’t going anywhere. People are constantly reading and writing through a screen. Almost every aspect of life has been modified because of technology. There are new ways to communicate, learn, write, or generally do your job. It is expected to be digital literate today in order to be successful. Digital literacy is used every day in all different kinds of aspects.  

[lezatkopi1]

METAVERSE

Bridge In Gain: Video Game Metaverse launched by BIG

Metaverse is a very broad and complex technology. The world of Metaverse is a completely different world in the Computer room. This requires access via (VR), Virtual Reality or (AU) Augmented Reality. This Metaverse can be accessed through Personal Computers, Phones and Game Consoles. Metaverse is a vast space in the Digital world which has its own economy where users will be able to sell and buy goods. Metaverse has an interoperable feature that allows users to take things like clothes, cars from one place to another. . Metaverse allows users to buy virtual Lands, build them, and rent them out. This is quite an amazing technology that will revolutionize the digital world. In this article, I will discuss about the Big Metaverse platform,

BigMetaverse's goal is to build a large Decentralized Metaverse ecosystem where users will be able to explore, participate in activities, collaborate, learn and do all sorts of things together. It's like the real world but the BigMetaverse world will be limited to the Virtual world. Users will be able to connect friends all over the world, chat with them, Play Games together, and engage in shared activities. BigMetaverse will allow users to create and monetize their content. It only offers a blockchain powered platform where content creators monetize virtual products, interactive 3D models. All these activities are supported by the use of cryptocurrencies and Smart contract technology.

Content creators earn tokens by sharing their creativity with others. BigMetaverse offers a decentralized metadata registry for the Web3 ecosystem, the protocol is capable of storing, indexing, and searching metadata attached to smart contracts. Day by day many people adopt Metaverse, they start to experience VR and AR (Augmented Reality) technology.

How the Big Metaverse works

: Very good project . I'm sure this project will have a lot of interest when it launches because this project has a solid team structure and very good project trust. I am sure that when it launches, there will be a lot of interest in this project because this project has a solid and reliable team structure. This project is one of the most creative and revolutionary of all! pleasures that I would be wary of. In my opinion, one of the best projects.

Most of us already know blockchain technology as the core foundation of the crypto ecosystem. The versatile features associated with this technology have led to the popularity of cryptocurrencies attracting not only a loyal user base but also institutional investors and large corporations. But blockchain is not limited to just cryptocurrencies, it can cause a paradigm shift in almost every industry related to information storage and data protection as it has the ability to decentralize operations without relying on any authority to control data.

This project, and the team have built a strong community with great potential. Lucky project. Great project with a really cool idea! I believe in their success. The increasing popularity and adoption of cryptocurrencies by millions of users raises serious concerns about network congestion and scalability of different blockchain networks. Apart from increasing cryptocurrency trading, decentralized finance also increases the load on these networks. The promising nature of blockchain has led to the development of many new protocols including yield farming, liquidity pools, and mining platforms on an already dense blockchain.

The BigMetaverse platform will enable so many people who want to experience the magic of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). Nowadays, most of the people use the internet to carry out various forms of activities. They use it to play games, Watch Videos, read stories, play audio and much more. BigMetaverse will build a new world, a fantasy world that will allow users to do almost everything they do in the physical world in the Virtual world. BigMetaverse has a huge economy backed by Cryptocurrencies and Non-Fungible tokens (NFT), this will allow users to transact in the world of Metaverse through this digital currency. User activity is monetized, they will get monetary rewards based on their level of participation in the ecosystem.

The BIG token is the native token of the BigMetaverse ecosystem and drives the economy of the entire ecosystem and forces interaction between platform users.

Big Metaverse as a blockchain powered Virtual Reality ecosystem that offers the best fantasy world like the real world. The ecosystem allows users to play all kinds of games and earn rewards. Users will also be able to interact with each other in VR. Ecosystem aims to create a world of all possibilities in the Metaverse. You can play games, hire mercenaries to conquer criminals. Engage in business like buying Virtual land, building, renting and all kinds of commercial activities that will earn you money. It's a Digital ecosystem that lets you add real value to whatever you do in the Digital world.

BigMetaverse is a game that changes the Metaverse ecosystem that aims to take how we interact with the internet in the digital world to a higher level. Users will be able to connect friends all over the world, chat with them, Play Games together, and engage in shared activities. BigMetaverse will allow users to create and monetize their content. It only offers a blockchain powered platform where content creators monetize virtual products, interactive 3D models. All these activities are supported by the use of cryptocurrencies and Smart contract technology. It will be very big.

ABOUT BIGCOIN

Is a cryptocurrency built on the blockchain PT. Continent of Global Integration. $BIG has a total supply of 250,000,000 with a transparent system to create a more secure BIG Metaverse environment.

The following is the identity information and token distribution:

Nama: Big Metaverse Symbol: BIG Network: BSC Decimal: 9 Seed sale: 10% of $BIG tokens sold on TGE for 10 months 25% of $BIG tokens sold on TGE for 4 months Presale: 75% of $BIG tokens sold on TGE for 25% per month Public sale: $BIG tokens will be unlocked and can be sold on TGE Staking rewards: every $BIG token staked will be reserved and unlocked at strategic times Liquidity pool: $BIG token liquidity will be locked for 5 years Marketing: 10% of $BIG tokens will be reserved for marketing needs Development: The $BIG token will be reserved for the commercial development entity BIG studio which will open at a strategic time TOKENOMIK The formula we built is community based to maintain price stability in the market and metaverse ecosystem

250,000,000

Total Supply (100%)

7,500,000

Seed Sales (3%)

25,000,000

Personal Selling (10%)

37,500,000

Presale (15%)

45,000,000

Public Sales (18%)

65,500,000

Bet Prize (25%)

17,500,000

Liquidity Pool (7%)

7,500,000

Marketing (6%)

25,000,000

Development (6%)

OUR ROAD MAP We put together a systematic plan for the progress of the BIG Metaverse

1.The first step in our journey is to carefully design concepts and ideas and then proceed to form a team. After the team is formed, we carry out technology and ecosystem research followed by prototyping and making a final decision on the plan to be implemented. Then we also legalized the company, and illustrated the concept of Bridge in Gain. The preparation of game design documents and making prototypes was continued with the development of the company's website.

2.Furthermore, the conceptualized idea is designed into a 3D asset for Bridge in the Gain Metaverse and followed by the development of the system and ecosystem in it. Then, we will also develop tenant applications and player super apps for your business needs. Also in this quarter, we developed the web, and integrated it with the Unity system. After that, we also check the quality of the products made through quality assurance and proceed with Alpha Tests and Pre-release news

3.In the third quarter, we conducted a Beta Test and continued with the release of Bridge in Gain Metaverse V.1. Then, we issue tokens and issue a whitepaper. After that, BIG coins will be listed on pancake swap, coin market cap, and coinecko. In addition, we also innovate by launching BIG FIN-X Wallet as a non-cash transaction tool. Then we audit smart contracts through certificate audits followed by licenses from various exchanges such as Tokocrypto and Indodax. In addition to permits from the stock exchange, we also applied for permits to CoFTRA and Bank Indonesia.

4.Once the license is obtained, we will develop the NFT starting from Field Development, Flats and Offices. We also built our own Blockchain to make it easier for users to transact at cheaper and faster prices. Next up, coin issuance and smart contract creation. Compilation and publication of the V.2 whitepaper, then we will launch the BIG Marketplace followed by the release of Bridge on

MEET OUR TEAM

Great people behind the scenes building new worlds and ecosystems that have a stable future for you

Pandu Prabu

tech people

Sigit Wijaya

tech people

Riki Rhenaldi

tech people

Sys Wyndar

tech people

BIG METAVERSE SOFT LAUNCH

On May 23, 2022, BRIDGE IN GAIN has held a soft launch in Jakarta, Indonesia

TVG INFORMATION

Website: https://bigmetaverse.io/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/MetaverseBig

Telegram : https://t.me/BridgeInGainCommunity

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/bigmetaverse/

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/bigmetaverse/

Username: Saulnigues Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3122432

[suzanneshannon]

Immersive Content Strategy

Beyond the severe toll of the coronavirus pandemic, perhaps no other disruption has transformed user experiences quite like how the tethers to our formerly web-biased era of content have frayed. We’re transitioning to a new world of remote work and digital content. We’re also experimenting with unprecedented content channels that, not too long ago, elicited chuckles at the watercooler, like voice interfaces, digital signage, augmented reality, and virtual reality.

Many factors are responsible. Perhaps it’s because we yearn for immersive spaces that temporarily resurrect the Before Times, or maybe it’s due to the boredom and tedium of our now-cemented stuck-at-home routines. But aural user experiences slinging voice content, and immersive user experiences unlocking new forms of interacting with formerly web-bound content, are no longer figments of science fiction. They’re fast becoming a reality in the here and now.

The idea of immersive experiences is all the rage these days, and content strategists and designers are now seriously examining this still-amorphous trend. Immersive experiences embrace concepts like geolocation, digital signage, and extended reality (XR). XR encompasses augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) as well as their fusion: mixed reality (MR). Sales of immersive equipment like gaming and VR headsets have skyrocketed during the pandemic, and content strategists are increasingly attuned to the kaleidoscope of devices and interfaces users now interact with on a daily basis to acquire information.

Immersive user experiences are becoming commonplace, and, more importantly, new tools and frameworks are emerging for designers and developers looking to get their hands dirty. But that doesn’t mean our content is ready for prime time in settings unbound from the web like physical spaces, digital signage, or extended reality. Recasting your fixed web content in more immersive ways will enable more than just newfangled user experiences; it’ll prepare you for flexibility in an unpredictable future as well.

Agnostic content for immersive experiences

These days, we interact with content through a slew of devices. It’s no longer the case that we navigate information on a single desktop computer screen. In my upcoming book Voice Content and Usability (A Book Apart, coming June 2021), I draw a distinction between what I call macrocontent—the unwieldy long-form copy plastered across browser viewports—and Anil Dash’s definition of microcontent: the kind of brisk, contextless bursts of content that we find nowadays on Apple Watches, Samsung TVs, and Amazon Alexas.

Today, content also has to be ready for contextless situations—not only in truncated form when we struggle to make out tiny text on our smartwatches or scroll through new television series on Roku but also in places it’s never ended up before. As the twenty-first century continues apace, our clients and our teams are beginning to come to terms with the fact that the way copy is consumed in just a few decades will bear no resemblance whatsoever to the prosaic browsers and even smartphones of today.

What do we mean by immersive content?

Immersive experiences are those that, according to Forrester, blur “the boundaries between the human, digital, physical, and virtual realms” to facilitate smarter, more interactive user experiences. But what do we mean by immersive content? I define immersive content as content that plays in the sandbox of physical and virtual space—copy and media that are situationally or locationally aware rather than rooted in a static, unmoving computer screen.

Whether a space is real or virtual, immersive content (or spatialcontent) will be a key way in which our customers and users deal with information in the coming years. Unlike voice content, which deals with time and sound, immersive content works with space and sight. Immersive content operates not along the axis of links and page changes but rather along situational changes, as the following figure illustrates.

In this illustration, each rectangle represents different displays that appear based on situational changes such as movement in space or adjustment of perspective that result in the delivery of different content from the previous context. One of these, such as the rightmost display, can be a web-enabled content display with links to other content presented in the same display. This illustration thus demonstrates two forms of navigation: traditional link navigation and immersive situational navigation.

Acknowledging the actual or imagined surroundings of where we are as human beings will have vast implications for content strategy, omnichannel marketing, usability testing, and accessibility. Before we dig deeper, let’s define a few clear categories of immersive content:

Digital signage content. Though it may seem a misnomer, digital signage is one of the most widespread examples of immersive content already in use today. For example, you may have seen it used to display a guide of stores at a mall or to aid wayfinding in an airport. While still largely bound to flat screens, it’s an example of content in space.

Locational content. Locational content involves copy that is delivered to a user on a personal device based on their current location in the world or within an identified physical space. Most often mediated through Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) beacon technology or GPS location services, it’s an example of content at a point in space.

Augmented reality content. Unlike locational content, which doesn’t usually adjust itself seamlessly based on how users move in real-world space, AR content is now common in museums and other environments—typically as overlays that are superimposed over actual physical surroundings and adjust dynamically according to the user’s position and perspective. It’s content projected into real-world space.

Virtual reality content. Like AR content, VR content is dependent on its imagined surroundings in terms of how it displays, but it’s part of a nonexistent space that is fully immersive, an example of content projected into virtual space.

Navigable content. Long a gimmicky playground for designers and developers interested in pushing the envelope, navigable content is copy that users can move across and sift through as if it were a physical space itself: true content as space.

The following illustration depicts these types of immersive content in their typical habitats.

Why auditing immersive content is important

Alongside conversational and voice content, immersive content is a compelling example of breaking content out of the limiting box where it has long lived: the browser viewport, the computer screen, and the 8.5”x11” or broadsheet borders of print media. For centuries, our written copy has been affixed to the staid standards of whatever bookbinders, newspaper printing presses, and screen manufacturers decided. Today, however, for the first time, we’re surmounting those arbitrary barriers and situating content in contexts that challenge all the assumptions we’ve made since the era of Gutenberg—and, arguably, since clay tablets, papyrus manuscripts, and ancient scrolls.

Today, it’s never been more pressing to implement an omnichannel content strategy that centers the reality our customers increasingly live in: a world in which information can end up on any device, even if it has no tether to a clickable or scrollable setting. One of the most important elements of such a future-proof content strategy is an omnichannel content audit that evaluates your content from a variety of standpoints so you can manage and plan it effectively. These audits generally consist of several steps:

Write a questionnaire. Each content item needs to be examined from the perspective of each channel through a series of channel-relevant questions, like whether content is legible or discoverable on every conduit through which it travels.

Settle the criteria. No questionnaire is complete for a content audit without evaluation criteria that measure how the content performs and recommendation criteria that determine necessary steps to improve its efficacy.

Discuss with stakeholders. At the end of any content audit, it’s important to leaf through the results and any recommendations in a frank discussion with stakeholders, including content strategists, editors, designers, and others.

In my previous article for A List Apart, I shared the work we did on a conversational content audit for Ask GeorgiaGov, the first (but now decommissioned) Alexa skill for residents of the state of Georgia. Such a content audit is just one facet of the multifaceted omnichannel content strategy along various dimensions you’ll need to consider. Nonetheless, there are a few things all content audits share in terms of foundational evaluation criteria across all content delivery channels:

Content legibility. Is the content readable or easily consumable from a variety of vantage points and perspectives? In the case of immersive content, this can include examining verbosity tolerance (how long content can be before users zone out, a big factor in digital signage) and phantom references (like links and calls to action that make sense on the web but not on a VR headset).

Content discoverability. It’s no longer guaranteed in immersive content experiences that every piece of content can be accessed from other content items, and content loses almost all of its context when displayed unmoored from other content in digital signs or AR overlays. For discoverability’s sake, avoid relegating content to unreachable siloes, whether content is inaccessible due to physical conditions (like walls or other obstacles) or technical ones (like a finicky VR headset).

Like voice content, immersive content requires ample attention to the ways in which users approach and interact with content in physical and virtual spaces. And as I write in Voice Content and Usability, it’s also the case that cross-channel interactions can influence how we work with copy and media. After all, how often do subway and rail commuters glance up while scrolling through service advisories on their smartphones to consult a potentially more up-to-date alert on a digital sign?

Digital signage content: Content in space

Signage has long been a fixture of how we find our way through physical spaces, ever since the earliest roads crisscrossed civilizations. Today, digital signs are becoming ubiquitous across shopping centers, university campuses, and especially transit systems, with the New York City subway recently introducing countdown clocks that display service advisories on a ticker along the bottom of the screen, just below train arrival times.

Digital signs can deliver critical content at important times, such as during emergencies, without the limitations imposed by the static nature of analog signs. News tickers on digital signs, for instance, can stretch for however long they need to, though succinctness is still highly prized. But digital signage’s rich potential to deliver immersive content also presents challenges when it comes to content modeling and governance.

Are news items delivered to digital signs simply teaser or summary versions of full articles? Without a fully functional and configurable digital sign in your office, how will you preview them in context before they go live? To solve this problem for the New York City subway, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) manages all digital signage content across all signs within a central Drupal content management system (CMS), which synthesizes data such as train arrival times from real-time feeds and transit messages administered in the CMS for arbitrary delivery to any platform across the network.

How to present content items in digital signs also poses problems. As the following figure illustrates, do you overtake the entire screen at the risk of obscuring other information, do you leave it in a ticker that may be ignored, or do you use both depending on the priority or urgency of the content you’re presenting?

While some digital signs have the benefit of touch screens and occupying entire digital kiosks, many are tasked with providing key information in as little space as possible, where users don’t have the luxury of manipulating the interface to customize the content they wish to view. The New York City subway makes a deliberate choice to allow urgent alerts to spill across the entire screen, which limits the sign’s usefulness for those who simply need to know when the next train is arriving in the interest of more important information that is relevant to all passengers—and those who need captions for loudspeaker announcements.

Auditing for digital signage content

Because digital signs value brevity and efficiency, digital signage content often isn’t the main focus of what’s displayed. Digital signs on the São Paulo metro, for instance, juggle service alerts, breaking news, and health advisories. For this reason, auditing digital signage content for legibility and discoverability is key to ensuring users can interact with it gracefully, regardless of how often it appears, how highly prioritized it is, or what it covers.

When it comes to legibility, ask yourself these questions and consider the digital sign content you’re authoring based on these concerns:

Font size and typography. Many digital signs use sans-serif typefaces, which are easier to read from a distance, and many also employ uppercase for all text, especially in tickers. Consider which typefaces advance rather than obscure legibility, even when the digital sign content overtakes the entire screen.

Angles and perspective. Is your digital sign content readily readable from various angles and various vantage points? Does the reflectivity of the screen impact your content’s legibility when standing just below the sign? How does your content look when it’s displayed to a user craning their neck and peering at it askew?

Color contrast and lighting. Digital signs are no longer just fixtures of subterranean worlds; they’re above-ground and in well-lit spaces too. Color contrast and lighting strongly influence how legible your digital sign content can be.

As for discoverability, digital signs present challenges of both physical discoverability (can the sign itself be easily found and consulted?) and content discoverability (how long does a reader have to stare at the sign for the content they need to show up?):

Physical discoverability. Are signs placed in prominent locations where users will come across them? The MTA was criticized for the poor placement of many of its digital countdown clocks in the New York City subway, something that can block a user from ever accessing content they need.

Content discoverability. Because digital signs can only display so much content at once, even if there’s a large amount of copy to deliver eventually, users of digital signs may need to wait too long for their desired content to appear, or the content they seek may be too deprioritized for it to show up while they’re looking at the sign.

Both legibility and discoverability of digital sign content require thorough approaches when authoring, designing, and implementing content for digital signs.

Usability and accessibility in digital signage content

In addition to audits, in any physical environment, immersive content on digital signs requires a careful and bespoke approach to consider not only how content will be consumed on the sign itself but also all the ways in which users move around and refer to digital signage as they consult it for information. After all, our content is no longer couched in a web page or recited by a screen reader, both objects we can control ourselves; instead, it’s flashed and displayed on flat screens and kiosks in physical spaces. 

Consider how the digital sign and the content it presents appear to people who use mobility aids such as wheelchairs or walkers. Is the surrounding physical environment accessible enough so that wheelchair users can easily read and discover the content they seek on a digital sign, which may be positioned too high for a seated reader? By the same token, can colorblind and dyslexic people read the chosen typeface in the color scheme it’s rendered in? Is there an aural equivalent of the content for Blind people navigating your digital signage, in close proximity to the sign itself, serving as synchronized captions?

Locational content: Content at a point in space

Unlike digital signage content, which is copy or media displayed in a space, locational (or geolocational) content is copy or media delivered to a device—usually a phone or watch—based on a point in space (if precise location is acquired through GPS location services) or a swath of space (typically driven by Bluetooth Low Energy beacons that have certain ranges). For smartphone and smartwatch users, GPS location services can often pinpoint a relatively accurate sense of where a person is, while Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons can triangulate their position based on devices that have Bluetooth enabled.

Though BLE beacons remain a fairly finicky and untested realm of spatial technology, they’ve quickly gained traction in large shopping centers and public spaces such as airports where users agree to receive content relevant to their current location, most often in the form of push notifications that whisk users away into a separate view with more comprehensive information. But because these tiny chunks of copy are often tightly contained and contextless, teams designing for locational content need to focus on how users interact with their devices as they move through physical spaces.

Auditing for locational content

Fortunately, because locational content is often delivered to the same visual devices that we use on a regular basis—smartphones, smartwatches, and tablets—auditing for content legibility can embrace many of the same principles we employ to evaluate other content. For discoverability, some of the most important considerations include:

Locational discoverability. BLE beacons are notorious for their imprecision, though they continue to improve in quality. GPS location, too, can be an inaccurate measure of where someone is at any given time. The last thing you want your customers to experience is an incorrect triangulation of where they are leading to embarrassing mistakes and bewilderment when unexpected content travels down the wire.

Proximity. Because of the relative lack of precision when it comes to BLE beacons and GPS location services, placing content items too close together in a coordinate map may trigger too many notifications or resource deliveries to a user, thus overwhelming them, or a certain content item may inadvertently supersede another because they’re spaced too closely together.

As push notifications and location sharing become more common, locational content is rapidly becoming an important way to funnel users toward somewhat longer-form content that might otherwise go unnoticed when a customer is in a brick-and-mortar store.

Usability and accessibility in locational content

Because locational content requires users to move around physical spaces and trigger triangulation, consider how different types of users will move and also whether unforeseen issues can arise. For example, researchers in Japan found that users who walk while staring at their phones are highly disruptive to the flow and movement of those around them. Is your locational content possibly creating a situation where users bump into others, or worse, get into accidents? For instance, writing copy that’s quick and to the point or preventing notifications from being prematurely dismissed could allow users to ignore their devices until they have time to safely glance at them.

Limited mobility and cognitive disabilities can place many disabled users of locational content at a deep disadvantage. While gamification may encourage users to seek as many items of locational content as possible in a given span of time for promotional purposes, consider whether it excludes wheelchair users or people who encounter obstacles when switching between contexts rapidly. There are good use cases for locational content, but what’s compelling for some users might be confounding for others.

AR and VR content: Content projected into space

Augmented reality, once the stuff of science fiction holograms and futuristic cityscapes, is becoming more available to the masses thanks to wearable AR devices, high-performing smartphones and tablets, and innovation in machine vision capabilities, though the utopian future of true “holographic” content remains as yet unrealized. Meanwhile, virtual reality has seen incredible growth over the pandemic as homebound users—by interacting with copy and media in fictional worlds—increasingly seek escapist ways to access content normally spread across flat screens.

While AR and VR content is still in its infancy, the vast majority is currently couched in overlays that are superimposed over real-world environments or objects and can be opaque (occupying some of a device’s field of vision) or semi-transparent (creating an eerie, shimmery film on which text or media is displayed). Thanks to advancements in machine vision, these content overlays can track the motion of perceived objects in the physical or virtual world, bamboozling us into thinking these overlays are traveling in our fields of vision just like the things we see around us do.

Formerly restricted to realms like museums, expensive video games, and gimmicky prototypes, AR and VR content is now becoming much more popular among companies that are interested in more immersive experiences capable of delivering content alongside objects in real-life brick-and-mortar environments, as well as virtual or imagined landscapes, like fully immersive brand experiences that transport customers to a pop-up store in their living room.

To demonstrate this, my former team at Acquia Labs built an experimental proof of concept that examines how VR content can be administered within a CMS and a pilot project for grocery stores that explores what can happen when product information is displayed as AR content next to consumer goods in supermarket aisles. The following illustration shows, in the context of this latter experiment, how a smartphone camera interacts with a machine vision service and a Drupal CMS to acquire information to render alongside the item.

Auditing for AR and VR content

Because AR and VR content, unlike other forms of immersive content, fundamentally plays in the same sandbox as the real world (or an imaginary one), legibility and discoverability can become challenging. The potential risks for AR and VR content are in many regards a fusion of the problems found in both digital signage and locational content, encompassing both physical placement and visual perspective, especially when it comes to legibility:

Content visibility. Is the AR or VR overlay too transparent to comfortably read the copy or view the image contained therein, or is it so opaque that it obscures its surroundings? AR and VR content must coexist gracefully with its exterior, and the two must enhance rather than obfuscate each other. Does the way your content is delivered compromise a user’s feeling of immersion in the environment behind it?

Content perspective. Unless you’re limited to a smartphone or similar handheld device, many AR and VR overlays, especially in immersive headsets, don’t display content or media as an immobile rectangular box, as it defeats the purpose of the illusion and can be jarring to users as they adjust their field of vision, breaking them out of the fantasy you’re hoping to create. For this reason, your AR or VR experience must not only dictate how environments and objects are angled and lit but also how the content associated with them is perceived. Is your content readable from various angles and points in the AR view or VR world?

When it comes to discoverability of your AR and VR content, issues like accuracy in machine vision and triangulation of your user’s location and orientation become much more important:

Machine vision. Most relevantly for AR content, if your copy or media is predicated on machine vision that perceives an object by identifying it according to certain characteristics, how accurate is that prediction? Does some content go undiscovered because certain objects go undetected in your AR-enabled device?

Location accuracy. If your content relies on the user’s current location and orientation in relation to some point in space, as is common in both AR and VR content use cases, how accurately do devices dictate correct delivery at just the right time and place? Are the ranges within which content is accessible too limited, leading to flashes of content as you take a step to the left or right? Are there locations that simply can’t be reached, leading to forever-siloed copy or media?

Due to the intersection of technical considerations and design concerns, AR and VR content, like voice content and indeed other forms of immersive content, requires a concerted effort across multiple teams to ensure resources are delivered not just legibly but also discoverably.

Usability and accessibility in AR and VR content

Out of all the forms of immersive content we’ve covered so far, AR and VR content is possibly the medium that demands the most assiduously crafted solutions in accessibility testing and usability testing. Because AR and VR content, especially in headsets or wearable devices, requires motion through real or imagined space, its impact on accessibility cannot be overstated. Adding a third dimension—and arguably, a fourth: time—to our perception of content requires attention not only to how content is accessed but also all the other elements that comprise a fully immersive visual experience.

VR headsets commonly induce virtual reality motion sickness in many individuals. Poorly implemented transitions between states occurring in quick succession where content is visible and then invisible, and then visible again, can lead to epileptic seizures if not built with the utmost care. Finally, users moving quickly through spaces may inadvertently trigger vertigo in themselves or even collide with hazardous objects, resulting in potentially serious injuries. There’s a reason we aren’t wearing wearable headsets outside carefully secured environments.

Navigable content: Content as space

This is only the beginning of immersive content. Increasingly, we’re also toying with ideas that seemed harebrained even a few decades ago, like navigable content—copy and media that can be traversed as if the content itself were a navigable space. Imagine zooming in and out of tracts of text and stepping across glyphs like hopping between islands in a Super Mario game. Ambitious designers and developers are exploring this emerging concept of navigable content in exciting ways, both in and out of AR and VR. In many ways, truly navigable content is the endgame of how virtual reality presents information.

Imagining an encyclopedia that we can browse like the classic 1990s opening sequence of the BBC’s Eyewitness television episodes is no longer as far-fetched as we think. Consider, for instance, Robby Leonardi’s interactive résumé, which invites you to play a character as you learn about his career, or Bruno Simon’s ambitious portfolio, where you drive an animated truck around his website. For navigable content, the risks and rewards for user experience and accessibility remain largely unexplored, just like the hazy fringes of the infinite maps VR worlds make possible.

Conclusion

The story of immersive content is in its early stages. As newly emerging channels for content see greater adoption, requiring us to relay resources like text and media to never-before-seen destinations like digital signage, location-enabled devices, and AR and VR overlays, the demands on our content strategy and design approaches will become both fascinating and frustrating. As seemingly fantastical new interfaces continue to emerge over the horizon, we’ll need an omnichannel content strategy to guide our own journeys as creatives and to orient the voyages of our users into the immersive.

Content audits and effective content strategies aren’t just the domain of staid websites and boxy mobile or tablet interfaces—or even aurally rooted voice interfaces. They’re a key component of our increasingly digitized spaces, too, cornerstones of immersive experiences that beckon us to consume content where we are at any moment, unmoored from a workstation or a handheld. Because it lacks long-standing motifs of the web like context and clickable links, immersive content invites us to revisit our content with a fresh perspective. How will immersive content reinvent how we deliver information like the web did only a few decades ago, like voice has done in the past ten years?

Only the test of time, and the allure of immersion, will tell.

Immersive Content Strategy published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[brettanomycroft]

Help Triangle Mom Rule the Classroom!

Or, you know, the world. Whichever works.

As many of you guys know, I’ve been teaching middle and high school for the past 5 years. For three of those years, I’ve worked to build a triangle cult teaching English/Language Arts to 8th graders at a middle school with over 1100 kids (we’re the largest school in the district, and they keep cutting our teacher units!) and 76% free and reduced lunch (Title I. Don’t ask about the other 9 Titles. Seriously.).

This year, they’ve decided to move me from my long-time portable into the building like a real person, and this new-to-me room contains 18 computers that I’ve been lead to believe might work. However, I’m looking to make my classroom 1:1 this year, and with classes of upwards to 26 students (and accounting for inevitable tech issues) I am hoping to get more tech! I’ve set up a Donors Choose project, and am requesting support to purchase 10 inexpensive laptops so that my students can create digital portfolios, practice writing and typing skills, and learn how to responsibly navigate the murky depths of the interwebs. I went back and forth about reaching out to tumblr to support my IRL goals, but ultimately decided that this audience of giving, socially-aware people from all over was too important to overlook. 

Click here to go to my Donors Choose page! From now until June 21st, if you make a donation, you can type in LIFTOFF, and DonorsChoose will match your donation up to $50. 

Any and all support in funding my classroom is immensely appreciated - even if it’s a single dollar or a reblog! If giving is not an option right now, I would love if you could please spread the word <3

Donors Choose gave me a hard word limit, so here are some more details below the cut!

Why computers? Don’t you teach English? Like books and stuff?

Yes, which is why having access to technology is so important! Nowadays, English/Language Arts doesn’t just cover reading novels and teaching vocabulary - we’re out to teach our students how to read, analyze, and create all kinds of content, from novels, to blogs, to infographics, to podcasts and (yes) even tweets. With more access to technology, my kids will be able to engage and be challenged think critically about information and media on the internet. 

Additionally, our 8th grade Standardized Testing is all computer based (for better or for worse), but if kids don’t work with computers in the classroom, they end up going into the test facing a completely unrelated set of challenges: they have to work all of the tools and tricks of using the computer and typing in long responses (and no, we don’t have a typing curriculum) as well as taking the actual reading and writing test. 

Finally, with ever-increasing budget cuts (here’s looking to you, Slenderman Rick Scott), teacher access to print-based materials like student novels, text sets, and general copies and supplies, is becoming even more limited if teachers don’t pay for them out of their own pockets. By switching to computers, students can have 24/7 access to the paperless materials they need, saving time, money, and the environment.

Wait, you said you already have computers. And you want more?

Yup. This year, the room I’m moving into has 18 desktop computers. Thing is, the teacher who was in there before me... didn’t really monitor their kids to make sure the computers weren’t getting busted up. And tbh, our school-based tech guy is not always able to help in a quick and efficient manner. With 10 additional computers, I can make sure that each student can have access to a computer at any given time, even if one (or four) decide to act up.

Can’t kids just use their phones?

Yes, and no. This year, I let my students use their phones to supplement when the computer were all occupied... to mixed success. More often than not, I’d run out of computers, and end up with students who wanted to use the computers to complete their work, but didn’t have a phone or mobile data. That time ended up getting used pretty unproductively. I also have a number of students who don’t have consistent access to a computer/the internet at home. I have, and will continue, to provide paper-based alternatives, but they really want to use the technology, and I really want them to learn how to use it efficiently and responsibly.

What sort of things will they use the computers for?

Oh man, so many things. I am hoping to organize most of my lessons and assignments through OneNote. My classroom is a Personalized Learning classroom, meaning that I design a wide array of assignments and learning opportunities to meet my students learning styles, interests, and needs. For example, for one standard or skill, I’ll provide written notes with an accompanying lecture for students who learning aurally or through note-taking, find a video on the same skill for my aural/visual learners, and then provide an interactive tutorial for my kinesthetic learners. I’ll also take a single text and provide variations of it for different reading levels, and create options for alternate assignments. I do this for almost every unit, and being able to quickly stick these assignments and options in a digital binder for my students will be way more efficient for them, and me. I played around with this in some of my classes at the end of the year, and it worked out pretty dang well. 

Typing essays. Simple, I know, but most students don’t get a lot of practice typing on a physical keyboard. Still, at the end of the year, they’re expected to plan and type a 5+ paragraph text-based essay on the computer in about 2 hours. For students who don’t have experience typing and therefore type very slowly, they have to spend more time pecking at the keyboard than organizing their ideas. Seriously, I have students who hit the CAPS LOCK button every time they want to capitalize a word. But by having computer access and typing expectations from the start, all they’ll have to worrk about on test day is the test itself.

Creating a digital portfolio of essays, powerpoints, videos,  and other digital, multi-media content. Reading isn’t just reading an article in a textbook anymore, and writing isn’t just essays. I gotta train these folks up on how to do all sorts of things - creating a coherent, engaging presentation, organizing their ideas through a number of different mediums, and using their creativity for good, not evil. By the end of the year, I’d like them to have a portfolio that they can take with them to high school and beyond, and the kind of digital-era skills they’ll need to stay informed and competitive as they get older. 

If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me! Thank you so much for your support!

[extramana]

Team 21 Interview: Dungeons of Aledorn (ExtraMana Archive)

I interviewed Team21 about the development of their computer role playing game Dungeons of Aledorn which is undergoing a crowdfunding campaign through Kickstarter. You mention how ‘Betrayal at Krondor’ was an inspiration which itself had a mixture of turn based combat and first person exploration, what kind of gameplay systems are needed to develop this type of game? Well, there’s actually several quite different mechanics and we believe that this part of our game is absolutely paramount, that we decided to gradually mention all of them in our Kickstarter campaign updates. At the moment there are already two updates, that are live, that disclose with readers our various GUIs and the advantages of our exploration mode. I’d recommend to anyone interested in the game’s specifics to take a look at our campaign and the updates. What is it about the blend of turn-based combat and first person exploration that you feel makes for such an immersive gameplay experience? From the very beginning Dungeons of Aledorn was conceived with one main goal and that was to transition a classical pen and paper experience into a PC game. Most people I’ve played various games with were always trying to imagine being inside the game, seeing everything with their character´s eyes – and that´s basically why we implemented the first person exploration. The second view, during combats, is a kind of a compromise between realism and comfortable battlefield overview – of which you usually have during D&D and other similar gaming experiences. The immersion is additionally improved by the system which places everything from the exploration view to the battlefield, including the actual positions of your enemies and your party, which may differ after every reload.

How did you get started in the games industry?

To be honest, I’ve always wanted to be in the industry, but I’ve not actually decided to make my dream come; it was shortly after my university studies that I decided to make the move. Ive since undertaken numerous courses for game developers (Unity, game design, 3D Studio etc.) and at the beginning of 2012, I started to write my first GDD. After several consultations with professionals from Disney studio my GDD was ready at the end of the same year, and so, the team assembly for my project began soon after that. It is since that point that I considered myself being a part of game industry. 

 How did you meet your collaborators? 

With GDD in hand and with some general game development knowledge, I knew that I needed at least two people – a graphic designer and a programmer. I asked around my circle of friends and other acquaintances and it didn’t take too long to find a very capable friend who used to play some MMOs with me, Arbiter. After some time I met another team member, Jarda Šlajch, at one party and the basic development team was formed. But our development advance was all but quick and there were many other team members, who contributed a little to our project and then left. However, everything took a more positive direction when I met Daniel Nezmar, in June 2013. He was leading a considerably big team of experienced members, especially graphic and sound designers and all he needed was a programmer and a designer. It was clear to everyone that we should combine our strengths to finish the project and at that is how we formed TEAM21. 

Why did you pick Unity as an engine to develop on? 

The beginning of our development process, and, also former Arb (our programmer) had Unity scripting experience. Our graphic designer, Jarda, also had some experience with Unity, so it was actually sensible to play to our strengths. Even though other engines have a few neat advantages compared to ours, we still find Unity as a powerful tool, if handled correctly.  

You mention that if funded you can move the game from Unity 4 to Unity 5 what advantages will this bring? 

Unity 5 has a new physical based shading system, upgraded light mapping a several performance optimisations, which will definitely improve the general quality of our game. Especially the visuals should reach a much higher level. 

How did you come up with the game World of Nirma and what kinds of things can we expect to see there?

Nirma is actually the central and biggest island of a whole archipelago, where our game takes place. Aledorn is then a name of a human controlled county, that spreads over a significant part of Nirma. I’m not quite sure how I came to use such names – a bigger part came to me accidentally or they caught my eye during my experiments with name generators. The whole game is set in a familiar high fantasy setting that draws inspiration from a vast number of literal and game sources. Travelling our world, you can expect to encounter every thinkable classical terrain one usually finds in fantasy world setting – dark dungeons, forests, mountain passages, swamp, towns, castles and all with various climates and conditions. We’ll share more of relevant details in one of our forthcoming Kickstarter update, so be sure to check on it also.

How was the music composed for this game? 

Nowadays, most game and movie music is created within a studio on a PC, with various music “boxes”, special keyboards and so on. Our project is no exception in this case. We’re using mainly the VST instruments (virtual instruments). Our composer is a very experienced professional. Even though this is his first game project, he found it to be his element as it gives him a great freedom in his creation and expanded his knowledge about the historical music at the same time.  Don’t expect to hear a sax solo or bass guitar underlining the main theme as we’re aiming for a quality medieval-fantasy atmosphere.

What has using motion capture allowed you to do that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible? 

The motion capture is a great time saver. MC animations are usually always a bit more natural, but every skilled animator can achieve the same results – the only difference is the time demand of such techniques, which is significantly higher in terms of time. We use MC especially for typical combat animations and NPC actions within the town and during conversations.  

Can you tell us a little bit about what effect player actions can have on quest lines? 

There are three types of quests in DoA. The main story quests which will concentrate on and further expand the game’s story about the human vs. Orc conflict. The order of these quests is actually fixed, but the player will often get a chance to fulfil the quest in more than one ways. No matter the manner he does that, the main story is, apart from some world changes, always same. Secondary quests, or side quests, will be quite complex and will have several different outcomes. As an example I’ll disclose a hypothetical quest about a farmer’s disappearing sheep. You might try to follow the suspicious tracks from the vicinity of the farm or wait for the night thief to expose himself during the act or you could simply ask around for more clues. Two of these options will take you further, but here’s where it all begins to get complicated. Have you really found the mastermind behind the stealing or just some of his goons? Will you kill them or will they escape before you can act? And if you really find their boss, then you have to figure out how to deal with him. We like to make our quests complicated and to evade the classical “go and kill” cliché. The third type is the so called minor quests. They are in fact smaller side quests without the complexity of the secondary quests and are closer to typical RPG quests. They should encourage the player to explore more or to travel between various locations. They fill the loose ends of our world, where the complex quests wouldn’t make much sense. 

How does the party management work in the game, can you swap characters in and out of your party for different parts of the story for instance? 

The group may be split at almost any time and some quests or puzzles will demand on this powerful feature. The only restriction’s that all of the characters must be all within a single game area.  Character switching, as you may remember it from Betrayal at Krondor, is not possible and we don’t plan to implement it at this time either.  

Is there a level cap in the game? 

We are not really big fans of a level cap and the latest version has none. This mechanic will be decided probably in the beta testing phase – which obviously hasn’t happened yet. 

What has been the biggest challenge during this project?

The biggest challenge is surprisingly the KS campaign. Tens of interviews and forums’ administration, KS updates, creations of new graphic content and even the very preparations are very demanding. But, it’s also a great opportunity to gain a solid fan base and to get in contact with the hardcore games community – so it really pays off in the end.  

How has the communities feedback and reactions to ‘Dungeons of Aledorn’ been like so far?

The positive reactions significantly outweigh the negative, but to our surprise the total amount of reaction is lower than we’ve expected. We are sure that we’ve gained the attention of our target audience as we were Greenlit on Steam just in six days, which is a remarkable result and we can assume from it that our game is definitely attractive for many players out there.

Circa 2015.

[ebenpink]

11 things I’ve learned coaching elite and professional athletes. Lessons from our work with NFL, NBA, UFC, & Olympic champions. https://ift.tt/317t7pi

Precision Nutrition’s work coaching elite and professional athletes contributes to every innovation we bring to nutrition and fitness. Here are our 11 favorite learnings; ones you can use with any client, with any goal.

++++

At Precision Nutrition, it’s our mission to improve the lives of, and get results for, every single type of client, including our most elite ones (like NFL, NHL, NBA teams, individual pros and Olympians, top-ranked junior prospects, and more).

Interestingly, coaching elite and pro athletes has taught us a lot.

I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty cool to work with some of the most respected athletes in the world. But here’s what’s surprising: In a lot of ways, elite athletes are just like us “regular” folks.

For example: I’ve learned that certain coaching principles apply across the board, no matter who you are and what you do.

(Yep, middle-aged clients just trying to lose belly fat do have something in common with UFC legend Georges St. Pierre).

So, in this article, I’d like to share 11 of our favorite coaching lessons and stories, taken directly from our work with some of the top athletes in the world.

If you’re a health and fitness pro, these can be applied to your coaching clients, whether they’re athletes or they’re just getting started with fitness.

And, hey, if you’re just here as a sports fan — enjoy the inside scoop.

1. Shape the environment and you can get great results, even without intensive one-on-one coaching.

Coaching one-on-one is great. But sometimes it’s not possible. Like when you’re trying to improve the nutritional habits of an entire basketball team in a short period of time.

Precision Nutrition coach Brian St. Pierre has been a nutrition consultant for the San Antonio Spurs since 2014. And he’s seen the team thrive (in fact, they won the NBA championship the year he started working with them).

But when Brian started working with the Spurs, he was a bit concerned about whether he’d be able to help.

With the team’s crazy schedule, he’d have next to zero one-on-one time with each player. Would he still be able to get results?

After careful consideration, Brian realized that he could have the biggest impact by focusing his efforts, not on each individual, but on the environment they all shared.

Brian’s tactics included:

Start with a template. After meeting with the players and coaching staff, he developed a meal plan template — focussing on meat, seafood, cooked starch, cooked vegetables, salad, fruit, and nuts — for the chefs/caterers at the training facility, where players eat breakfast and lunch.

Make it tasty. He ensured that players’ favorite foods were included in the provided meals. (Brian advised the team’s coaches not to take away Tim Duncan’s beloved Cajun chicken and mashed sweet potatoes.) After all, if the players don’t like the food they’re being offered, regardless of how good it is for them, they’ll just sneak out to Chick fil A.

Keep it convenient. He gave the strength and conditioning interns some Super Shake recipes so they could whip up personalized shakes (specific to each player’s needs and personal preferences) and hand them out after training and practice. 

Make arrangements for travel. He provided healthy meal ideas for plane rides. (Sometimes coaches insisted on soda and cookies for the ride — for themselves — so Brian gave suggestions on where to hide their personal stash so the players wouldn’t be tempted.)

Have a plan for non-practice hours. He recommended meal delivery services as options for dinner. For married players with a spouse who cooks for them, he provided recipes and meal ideas to take home.

These kinds of tactics are pretty simple, and none of them require in-depth, involved one-on-one coaching. Nor do they require any player to engage in some heroic, individual project of personal change.

Whether it’s at a training camp, at home, or in the office, our environment has a huge influence on what we eat.

Shape the environment, and you shape the path toward change.

2. Skill in the gym (or on the field) does not equal skill in the kitchen.

Elite athletes put everything they’ve got into their physical performance. You might assume they bring the same passion for detail, refinement, and mastery to the food they eat.

Some do. But most don’t.

I first learned this in the early 2000s when I went to work with the U.S. National Bobsled team as nutrition consultant. The team asked me to kick off their training camp with a seminar.

Back then I had the notion that, as top-level athletes, these guys must give the same attention to their nutrition as they do to their sport. As a result, I built a full day of seminars on advanced nutrition topics and high-level supplement strategies.

I was all ready to go.

Then the group filed in late, holding bags of McDonalds.

I knew immediately I would have to change my presentation on the fly.

As I asked questions and listened, I realized these athletes still needed to learn the basics. They may have been advanced in their sport, but they were still, for the most part, nutrition beginners.

This is a good lesson for anyone doing nutrition coaching.

Imagine you’re coaching a middle-aged man who’s 50 lbs overweight and has never given nutrition a second thought. Then imagine a 25-year-old who’s 225 lb and 8% body fat training for the Olympics.

Yes, they might be very different physically. But they might also have the exact same nutritional skill level.

(In the Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification we classify clients as Level 1, Level 2, or Level 3 eaters and have different recommendations for each level. In this case, both individuals would get recommendations for Level 1 eaters.)

So don’t make too many assumptions about your clients. Talk to them, test them, and find out where they’re actually at.

3. If you can’t make it better, make it less-worse.

Recently tasked with helping NBA team the Brooklyn Nets improve their nutrition, Precision Nutrition coaches Adam Feit and Brian St. Pierre worked together to create an optimal nutritional environment at the team’s practice facility.

Seriously, they’re making that dining room a work of art. Beautiful infographics demonstrating hand-size portions and Super Shake infographics; healthy, perfectly balanced menus. Great stuff.

But after training, it’s time to compete. And that’s when the team hits the road. They travel constantly.

Adam and Brian realized the biggest obstacle to maintaining the team’s nutrition was dealing with hotel food. Especially late-night room service menus offering pizza, wings, burgers, and so on. Adam and Brian couldn’t exactly customize the menus of hundreds of hotels. But they could change the menus the players saw.

So they got ahold of the hotel menus in advance and created pared down versions of each menu — a customized version with some of the best available options.

This smaller, more selective version of the menu is what the guys would see in their rooms or get when the team sat down for dinner.

Sure, it might not be perfect, but it was still a huge improvement. And it made it easier for the players to choose a healthier option without even thinking about it.

One of our coaching mantras at Precision Nutrition is “a little bit better”. We encourage clients to abandon all-or-nothing thinking and look for ways to make even slight improvements to each meal or each workout.

Of course, you don’t have to be an NBA champion to realize that small improvements really do add up.

4. The best meal plan is worthless if your client doesn’t like the food.

A pro tennis standout contacted PN for some help with energy levels, performance, and general nutrition. Of course, we were happy to help.

Brian St. Pierre met with the athlete, discussed goals, taste preferences and other details, and then put together some guidelines including a meal plan template complete with recipe ideas.

The problem: The athlete didn’t like any of it.

Even in the pro sports world, there are self-professed picky eaters.

That’s when we realized that all of Brian’s nutritional expertise wasn’t enough. It was time to bring in the big guns. So we sent our full-time super-chef, Jen Nickle, to help.

Jen and Brian put together a taste-test session with the tennis star. They tried out all kinds of options for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. They explored food combinations, preparation options, flavors, and so on.

Turns out, the taste-test day was fun. Jen and Brian were able to build rapport with the client and demonstrate our commitment to helping her. Best of all, Chef Jen could make food her client would really enjoy — and actually eat.

(Jen now travels with this athlete to big-time events like the U.S. Open to ensure the best nutrition during competition.)

While not everyone can afford a personal chef, customizing nutritional guidance (and meal plans, if you use them) to a client’s tastes is essential.

If your client is picky, don’t try to insist that they develop a taste for quinoa or sweet potatoes; find out what they do like and work with that.

5. You have to work the way your client works.

Health and fitness coaches: Think about online coaching for a moment. How do you get started?

Chances are you compose a nice email, and you attach an assessment form, maybe a food log for them to fill out, and maybe link to an article for them to read.

What if your client doesn’t have a computer?

In 2014, Brian St. Pierre started working with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns. Some of the guys on the team didn’t own computers. And if they did, they never used email.

And why should they? Their lives are spent on the field, in the gym, in film sessions, or enjoying some precious recovery time.

Since, nowadays, people can do almost anything on their phone that they can do on on a computer, they were usually only reachable via text.

At first, Brian admits he felt resistant. He’d been coaching using email for years. Now he had to relearn a new style of communicating and coaching.

But, using his client-centered coaching skills, Brian adapted his methods to his clients. He got over his personal bias, stopped emailing, and started texting.

Interestingly, the texting experience made Brian think more critically about what he was asking clients in the first place. He became more focused, narrowing down his assessments to the bare essentials.

Most importantly, his clients got what they needed.

How to be client-centered is one of the best lessons any coach can ever learn. As coaches, we always have to remind ourselves that it doesn’t matter what works for us.

What matters is what works for our clients.

6. Perfection is not required.

Since 2009, I’ve been helping MMA star / UFC legend Georges St-Pierre with his nutrition. Before I began putting together Georges’ eating strategy, I knew two things.

One, that he had a soft spot for McDonald’s and Subway.

Two, if you tell a client they can’t have their favorite foods, they might end up ignoring you completely.

Think about it. How well could putting my foot down and bossing around a professional fighter (and Welterweight champion of the world) possibly go?

So I gave Georges some suggested meals. These included a few main meals and a few Super Shakes each day. These would cover his nutritional bases.

Beyond that, I told him he could eat whatever he wanted if he was still hungry. I even suggested eating McDonald’s or Subway every few days. Daily, if he liked.

Georges was shocked. And delighted. He couldn’t believe his nutrition coach was basically inviting him to eat at McDonald’s.

Let’s face it: With Georges’ energy expenditure, one meal a day off-script isn’t going to tank his results. It also fit his goals: gaining muscle mass to fight competitors who were getting bigger all the time.

Of course, Georges is not your typical client, and this was not your typical eating strategy. But there is an important lesson here.

Perfection isn’t required for elite athletes — or for “regular” people.

For most people, aiming to get 80% of your meals on-point is an effective goal.

7. What works for one person won’t necessarily work for another.

Dietary trends tend to go in cycles. Ketogenic diets are among them, resurfacing now and then to grab media headlines. These can get the attention of top athletes who are looking for an edge — with varying results.

Here’s an example. For a while, there was a trainer who made a big splash putting NFL linemen on a strict ketogenic diet paired with high doses of certain supplements. Players/clients would come to his “camp” for about four weeks to learn how to eat this way.

One of these players was an offensive lineman for the Atlanta Falcons.

He heard about other NFL guys getting great results on the program, so he decided to give it a try himself. Within those four weeks, he saw immediate improvement: He got bigger, faster, stronger, leaner — all the things a lineman would want to see.

By the end of the four weeks, though, he started to feel a lot less awesome.

He was experiencing some major symptoms: everything from glucose control issues to hypoglycemia to brain fog to vertigo to anxiety and depressive moods. He even confessed to having suicidal thoughts.

But he had been so impressed by the initial results of the diet, he wanted to keep trying. He tried tinkering with it, cycling his keto days, but nothing worked.

So he called us.

We reintroduced carbs into his diet, recommending he eat 2-3 cupped handfuls of carbs at each meal (five times a day). At the same time, we decreased his fat intake a bit, which helped counter-balance the increase in carbs, calorie-wise.

Within 2-3 weeks, his blood glucose evened out, his anxiety went away, and his performance improved. Plus, the body composition changes he liked about the keto diet stayed the same: He maintained his leanness and his mass.

We found that he needs to be really consistent with his carbs in order to perform and feel his best.

That’s the thing about diets, protocols, and specific methods. Just because it works for one client doesn’t mean it’s going to work for another — even if they share the same goals, athletic ability and body type.

Plus, just because a particular approach can “work” (according to very specific metrics like body weight, for some period of time) doesn’t mean it’s going to work for every goal, indefinitely.

Individual needs should come before trends every time.

And outcome-based decision making should trump “this worked for some other guy” or “this should theoretically work for me”.

8. Bring important influencers (like family members) into the process.

For several years I provided nutrition consultation to Junior A hockey players.

(Here in Canada, Junior A is essentially one level below the NHL. These are the guys already drafted, or looking to get drafted, and become the next great NHL stars.)

While these players are already amazing athletes, they’re also young, usually teenagers. They still live with families, either their own or those they are staying with while playing for a team outside their home town.

When working with these future NHLers, I did some basic education, giving seminars and offering kitchen demos showing how to prepare basic healthy foods.

But I knew that wasn’t enough.

It didn’t matter much what I told the athletes. Because they weren’t the ones making the meals, or doing the shopping, or buying the food.

I had to get the family involved. So I would find out who prepared the meals at the homes where they were staying, then concentrate my efforts on them.

I gave them everything they needed, including:

Education about the needs of a young teenage hockey player

Cooking demos

Recipes and meal ideas

Grocery shopping guides

And more.

The more I could equip the family to cook well, the better the nutritional results would be for the athlete.

This relates to all kinds of clients, of all ages. Clients often tell us their biggest obstacle to eating better is other people: colleagues, friends, and most of all, family members such as spouses and kids.

Change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Acknowledge the other influences in your clients’ lives. Help them work with loved ones and address any roadblocks together.

9. Intense training and strict eating will mess with your body. (But that’s OK for a little while.)

Precision Nutrition offers an elite athlete testing and coaching program which includes a battery of research-based physiological tests and assessments. These are designed to help athletes optimize their nutrition.

The tests include genetic, blood chemistry, food sensitivity, and microbiome analyses. To gather these data, we send a nurse to the athlete’s house or training facility, collect samples, and analyze them.

Then an interdisciplinary team (including our sports nutrition experts, our molecular genetics experts, and our physician) review and interpret the results.

We give the athletes a really comprehensive report of the findings. And then we use the findings to personally coach the athletes for the next six months.

A few months back, we tested a dozen track and field stars — some of whom just competed at the Rio Olympic Games — from the world-renowned Altis facility in Phoenix, Arizona.

In their lead-up to the games, we found something interesting.

Every one of the athletes had suboptimal sex hormone (testosterone, estrogen) levels and white blood cell counts. We discovered a host of other, more individual, things too. But this one was most interesting for two reasons.

First, it applied to both men and women.

Second, a few years back, when doing a pre-season training camp with NFL athletes at Nike HQ, we discovered some of the same things.

Of course, the results aren’t completely surprising. High intensity training has predictable consequences. It’s hard to get adequate calories, sleep, and stress management when you’re in an intense training block.

People who are training for the Olympics or for an NFL season are OK to make that trade-off. They know it’s temporary. And for most people, this kind of physical disruption isn’t dangerous if it’s for a short time.

However, it can become dangerous if you keep going at that level.

Most elite athletes take breaks after a training season, which provides a chance to rest, recover, and normalize. Its no surprise that many NHL athletes spend most of their off-season doing little more than lifting a fishing rod.

But many “regular” exercisers don’t respect the seasonality of sport. Which means, ironically, many of them are as much at risk of damaging their bodies through undereating and under recovery as Olympians.

So keep the long game in mind.

If a client is overtraining, bring the risks to their attention. If they’re making a sacrifice for an important goal, be clear about the tradeoffs.

And always be asking: What’s the goal? How do we get you there as safely as possible? When’s it time to back off and rest?

10. Just because a food is “healthy” doesn’t mean it’s good for everyone.

One client from our elite athlete program is Mikel Thomas, a hurdler from Trinidad and Tobago. Mikel was preparing for the Rio Olympics but was having some issues with recovery.

We conducted our usual battery of tests. In reviewing the data, we noticed he had a high iron saturation, and his UIBC (Unsaturated Iron Binding Capacity) was low. Both factors pointed to an excessive iron intake.

Pretty unusual for a vegetarian.

We also did a food sensitivities test, and noticed an intolerance to chickpeas.

(Note: While food sensitivities tests aren’t 100% reliable on their own, when used in the context of a full spectrum of tests and assessments, they can help give us extra clues about what’s going on.)

When we looked at Mikel’s food log we noticed that most of his meals were based around chickpeas. Giving thought to the data as a whole, we hypothesized that this dietary staple (typical for someone from Trinidad and Tobago, especially for a vegetarian) was actually causing a negative reaction in his body.

Fortunately, when we had Mikel replace chickpeas with alternative protein and carbohydrate sources such as quinoa, his recovery got better.

The moral of this story is not that chickpeas are bad. They offer carbohydrates, some protein, and various vitamins and minerals. They are a nutritious food.

But just because a food is considered “healthy” — or even a “superfood” — doesn’t mean it’s optimal for your client. Especially if it’s over-consumed.

11. Physiological markers don’t tell the whole story.

In 2011 and 2012, as mentioned above, I participated in Nike’s NFL Football Training Camp Pro. This camp brings together 10-15 high-level NFL athletes for a week-long camp of testing, training, eating, and learning experience on Nike’s campus.

The camp included athletes like Ndamukong Suh, Kam Chancellor, Patrick Chung, Jonathan Stewart, Steven Jackson, Greg Jennings, and more. And, at the camp, I delivered nutritional seminars and education to the athletes. I also ran some physiological testing for them.

Interestingly, I tested better than all the guys there on a host of standard markers of health such as sex hormone levels (testosterone, DHEA, etc), vitamin D levels, Omega 3 levels, and more.

Yep, when it came to these health markers, I dominated the NFL stars.

But you know what I wasn’t better at?

Playing football.

This was a great reminder that while physiological markers can be useful, they don’t give us the whole picture. And that putting too much focus on any particular non-sport performance indicator can lead you down a dangerous path.

At Precision Nutrition, we’re proud to be data-driven. We like numbers and tests and metrics of all kinds. But we also know it’s not the complete picture.

You have to look at the whole person to a real sense of what’s going on.

What to do next: Some tips from Precision Nutrition

1. Don’t make assumptions.

Appearances can be deceiving. Just because someone is a star in their sport or looks the part doesn’t mean they have advanced nutrition skills.

Instead of making assumptions or guesses about where your client is at, ask questions. Listen. Observe.

Seek to understand rather than to prove yourself right.

2. Remember that in many ways, we’re all the same.

Elite athletes — they’re just like us!

Our lives may be very different but, in the end, we’re all human. We all want to enjoy our food and have some fun. We all have our favorite indulgences and the foods that make us curl up our lips in disgust.

Whether you’re working with celebrities, top athletes, busy executives or just neighborhood folks in your local gym, remember that at the end of the day, you’re coaching people.

3. Remember that in other ways, we’re all completely different.

What works for one client might not work for another. No matter how “super” the food or how “killer” the diet, there is no one-size-fits-all.

And what works for you might not work for your clients, either.

You may have spent years perfecting your intake forms, for example, but what happens when a client doesn’t have a computer? Or is constantly on the go and never has time to look at it?

Your job as a coach is to focus on understanding and supporting the needs of each client. This takes work and practice and, believe me, it is humbling sometimes.

But that’s what it takes to be a client-centered coach.

4. Screw perfection. Help your clients get a tiny bit better.

An all-or-nothing mentality won’t help your clients get anywhere, even if they’re top athletes who are used to aiming for perfection.

Looking for small ways to improve is the best way to keep moving consistently toward change.

That might mean letting a client keep her weekly supersweet Frappucino monstrosity. Or helping her choose the best option on a hotel menu. Or packing her own snacks for the plane.

You don’t need to get rid of everything a client is doing and every indulgence they have. Nor should you.

Find ways of helping them move forward, one tiny little bit at a time.

5. Seek out and celebrate your clients’ superpowers.

Whether they’re a gold medalist or they’ve never set foot in a gym, every single client possesses their own special superpowers.

One of your jobs as a coach is to help them figure out what they’re already good at and put those abilities to use.

Maybe they’re a data junkie and they can use their spreadsheet nerdiness to track their food like a pro. Or maybe they appreciate nature and will enjoy discovering local farms and farmers markets.

Maybe they lack information at the moment but have a great ability to learn. Maybe they routinely fall off the wagon — but they always, always get back on.

Help your clients recognize their own superpowers, and then put them to use.

Celebrate the good stuff. Call out progress every chance you get.

They might never be an NFL star, but you can be their cheerleader.

You can help them become their own superstar.

Want strategies to level up your coaching?

It’s no secret that master coaches develop over time, through education and consistent practice, usually under the guidance of a mentor or coach.

Precision Nutrition is the only company in the world that both works with thousands of our own nutrition coaching clients and teaches health, fitness, and wellness professionals our real-world methods for getting results.

And here’s some great news: Our next Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class kicks off on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019.

Want to achieve total confidence in your coaching skills? Get (and keep) more clients? Grow and strengthen your practice? If so, the Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification is definitely for you.

It’s designed specifically for Level 1 students and grads who realize that knowing about the science of nutrition isn’t enough.

Part master class, part grad program, part mentorship, it’s the only course in the world designed to help you master the art of coaching, meaning better results for your clients and a better practice for you.

Since we only take a limited number of professionals, and since the program sells out every time, I strongly recommend you add your name to our VIP List below. When you do, you get the chance to sign up 24 hours before everyone else. Even better, you get a huge discount off the general price of the program.

[Note: The Level 2 Master Class is only for students and grads of our Level 1 Certification. So if you haven’t yet enrolled in that program, please begin there.]

Interested? Add your name to the VIP list. You’ll save up to 37% and secure your spot 24 hours before everyone else.

We’ll be opening up spots in our next Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class on Wednesday, October 2nd.

If you want to find out more, we’ve set up the following VIP list which gives you two advantages.

Pay less than everyone else. We like to reward people who are eager to get started and ready to gain mastery in their coaching practice. So we’re offering a discount of up to 37% off the general price when you sign up for the Master Class VIP list.

Sign up 24 hours before the general public and increase your chances of getting a spot. We only open the PN Master Class twice per year. Due to high demand and a very limited number of spots, we expect it to sell out fast. But when you sign up for the Master Class VIP list, we’ll give you the opportunity to register a full 24 hours before anyone else.

If you’re ready to take the next step in becoming a world-class coach, we’re ready to share our knowledge and help you master the art of coaching.

The post 11 things I’ve learned coaching elite and professional athletes. Lessons from our work with NFL, NBA, UFC, & Olympic champions. appeared first on Precision Nutrition.

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[tylerbiard]

Some Social

So, in yet another bout of procrastination from my studies, I found a link via Facebook to an insightful article on Gen Z (or iGen), and sort of just immersed into it.  The article goes to great lengths to describe the incoming generation’s mindset and how it’s penchant for mobile phones and social media is destroying their mental health, which made me ponder my own life.

I know I’ve talked about Gen Z before, and my dealings with them, comparing them to my generation, the infamous Millennials.  I probably came off as smug.  To be sure, a lot of the things associated with Gen Z, even things that came to the fore with my generation, aren’t things I’m really enamoured by, but they aren’t the fault of Gen Z any more than they are the fault of Millennials.  I’ve actually been hearing more about Gen Z in media lately, almost as if the world has actually realized that we can’t have people born in the mid-’80s apart of the same generation as those born in the early 2010s.  I’m really just trying to not feel usurped by this upstart, now-trending generation. Gen Z encompasses people born from the late ‘90s to early 2010s, a generation that doesn’t remember 9/11 or a world without smartphones. Spooky, eh?

For me, what the article describes of the Millennial upbringing is accurate -- I did grow up with computers and the internet, but I didn’t have it around me at all hours. I remember in junior high, rushing out after school, to catch the earliest bus home so that I could chat on MSN with a friend living in Spain before he had to go to bed.  But that whole day at school?  Aside from class-designated computer time in a dedicated lab, which didn’t even occur daily, it was entirely offline.  We weren’t even able to bring our own laptops to school until 11th grade, and even then, most didn’t.  My first cellphones could only arduously send SMS via T9 technology, which limited its usefulness.  And accessing the internet with a circa 2002 Nokia?  What a joke!  This was an epoch before the endless onslaught of apps, a world without filters and Bitmoji.  Essentially, even though we largely got our first cell phones by 13 or 14, they were quite limited in capability.  What’s more is that they were strictly banned from usage during class time in junior and senior high, something that was lifted a few years after I graduated high school.  I realize this last bit is more geographically-dependent, as I’m sure many school boards throughout the world were more lax on cell phone usage circa 2008, and even with the outright ban, many still snuck it into class.

Furthermore, I didn’t really grow up with social media.  I know I’m a bit of an outlier for a Millennial, but I had Tumblr before I had Facebook, and the only social network I was apart of in high school was Flickr.  Still, I watched as peers, using Nexopia and Facebook, and migrating to early smartphones, fall prey to the now all-too-common side effects of social media and chatting.  Hell, I still dealt with it through MSN, Flickr, and such.  Our app-centric, mobile world is merely an outgrowth of this paradigm. 

Now, though, things are different.  I have an iPhone, I have multiple social media accounts, and use multiple chat services.  An onlooker could easily peg me as one fully in embrace of the 2017 “always on” lifestyle.  This is where the article really started to intrigue me.  A lot of what the article was describing vis-a-vis the Gen Z kids seemed applicable to this late Millennial.  Perhaps partly due to my not being that far removed from that generation’s eldest cohorts. Although I did grow up without iPhones and iPads and the ability to constantly be “on,” it’s now 2017, and that difference has eroded. I was surprised at the kinship I was feeling towards Gen Z and their woes mentioned in the article.  I may remember a time before all this stuff, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m living it now.

I recognize I spend too much time on social media, on chat apps, and to a lesser extent, my computer.  It does make me feel much lonelier than when I spend time in the physical world with friends and family, even if too much of that is exhaustive.  It does produce an environment where it’s inevitable to compare yourself to others, and resent others for how much fun they’re projecting on Instagram and Facebook, even if it’s really just a veneer.  Things like read receipts, last active information, and so forth just further aid at digging in the dagger.  It also produces an environment where you’re more likely to just stay in and send Snaps to friends than go out with them, which goes against human nature, as a social species.  It’s obviously extremely toxic and yet most can’t stop the vicious cycle. 

I’ve had my issues with Facebook in particular, and regularly contemplate deleting it, especially now that you can have a Messenger account independent of Facebook.  I’ve deactivated, I’ve deleted the app; now, I’m merely abstaining from posting to it and have moved the mobile app to a more hidden locale on my phone.  But honestly, it’s a problem I have with pretty much all social media, at least social media that is more personal.  I’m more ok with Twitter; it’s mostly just news and memes, not a detailed look into personal lives.  Tumblr is similar, due to its more anonymous nature, although when it was a more active platform, I had the same issues with it.

I recognize that I’m happier when I interact more with the physical world and I really don’t like spending so much time online.  But for me, there’s two major impediments to either significantly curtailing usage, or doing a total blackout, and I recognize it as a detriment to my health.

The first is school, which is obviously not actually related to social media, and so it isn’t an obvious reason for why I can’t stop spending time online.  But, because of how post-secondary is set up now, a lot of stuff occurs online, be it through e-mail, or eClass, where you gain access to readings and slides, not to mention being a place to take notes.  I’ve stopped typing notes, except in special cases, though I still end up using a computer to access other essential stuff for my courses.  And in doing so, it is all too tempting to look one tab over to Twitter, or see a new notification on Facebook, and then you go down that rabbit hole, and bam, you’ve lost 30 minutes of productivity.  I’m beginning to intentionally keep my laptop browser’s tabs all school related now, though I sometimes still get tempted to open new tabs, or tabs sometimes remain open from downtime.  The other, ancillary thing to being on campus is that I’m out, which means I have my phone on me, which means it’s always just there.  I may turn my phone to ‘do not disturb’, but the addictive qualities of smartphones just means I will still manually check for new notifications every now and again.  To entirely remove the distraction of my iPhone, personally, it can’t be present, which is why when I do homework at home, I make sure my phone is nowhere nearby.  Perhaps I should start leaving the phone at home.

The other impediment is more obvious to those who are aware of my background as a photographer.  Since DeviantArt and Blogger, through Flickr, Facebook, et al, and onto Instagram, social networks have been utterly vital for 21st century creatives to push their work to the wider public.  So, although it can be fun to just use social for everyday stuff, I use it as a more serious avenue, and feel it as a necessary evil nowadays.  How am I supposed to share and connect with other artists in 2017 if I do a social media blackout?  A blackout may solve the previous impediment, but not this one.  Having an Instagram is now so essential to share content as a creative.

I could do away with the smartphone, and only use social media and the internet when I’m connected to a computer proper, and essentially live a 2005 existence with the 2017 internet.  I’ve contemplated swapping the iPhone for a flip phone, and I swear it’s only partly over 2000s nostalgia.  I honestly am not hating that idea.  A problem arises from something I’ve belaboured before -- my disdain for the mobile-centric nature of social networks nowadays.    Sure, you can browse and explore Instagram from Chrome on your PC or iMac, but you can’t DM, you can’t view Stories, and most importantly, you can’t upload without tricking your browser into thinking it’s an iPad. Of all the social I use for more serious use today, Instagram is by far the most pivotal, due to its visual nature and strong engagement.  I’ve connected with a lot of amazing photographers, artists, and friends through it.  Even if mobile phones are to blame for teen suicide now being higher than teen homicide, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re at the zeitgeist for connecting in 2017, and app developers know that kids are using their phones far more than their computers and correspondingly create experiences that are mobile-centric.  It helps coding for a mobile interface is easier than a traditional desktop interface, too. 

As things continue, it seems like crucial connections will be increasingly on platforms that couldn’t give a rats ass about desktop interfaces, and so I realize a mobile device is still necessary, unfortunately.  Perhaps I could swap my iPhone for an iPod Touch, or migrate my SIM card to a “dumbphone” and keep the iPhone as a Wi-Fi only device (basically turning it into an iPod Touch).  I could also just get an iPad.  I actually sort of like that idea, but many mobile apps, like Instagram and Snapchat, don’t have a proper version for this mobile device.  I could just get an Android tablet, which doesn’t have the same differentiation that iOS has between phones and tablets, but I’ve had issues with Android, such that, at the risk of sounding like a Cupertino cliche, I’d rather have an iPad if I got a tablet.

Regardless, something needs to change. The current reality is too connected for my well-being.  My productivity is way down, too.  I’m too distracted.  What I find most ironic is that I was planning on watching The Social Network tonight, and instead, got engrossed in a random article, which inspired me to write an essay for the first time in eons with Starboy as my backdrop.  The result was still the same, however -- I again thwarted plans to further push through studies. 

What a world we live in.

[logintocourses]

What is an IoT Devices

It is so good to see that so many of you are keeping up with the trends of technology today. So let us dig deeper into these IoT devices that Mark the beginning of every IoT ecosystem and look at the best ones in use today in different domains. But before we start don't let me quickly run you along the outlines of today's session so that you have a clear idea on the topics that I'd be covering. So first I'll be telling you

how you can identify any object to be an IoT device.

Then I'll tell you what IoT Devices can do for you and cite some of the major use cases on it 

and then I'll tell you how IoT devices are shipping the entire world and code some leading examples

then I'll tell you how secure The device in iot 

finally, I'll be telling you all the important things that you need to know to build an iot device.

So without putting it off any further, let us begin our session today. 

What is an IoT Devices

What is an IoT Devices How you Can Identify an IoT Device

Now these devices that play the role of things in IoT are what make the smartest systems possible today be just a smart Appliance or an entire Smart City. It could be complete Computing devices designed keeping the portability in mind or tiny electronic components operating on minimal device software for data transfer and Activity without any Computing abilities at all and there are also objects that are not made up of any electronic Hardware at all and can still become the things in iot by having these smart things attached to them in summer the other way. So what I'm basically saying is that even we humans can become a thing in the internet of things. But again, that is a contextual top and you'll understand why as we move on with the session today. So for now we can just say that any device however puny or powerless with the ability to receive or send data allowing it to communicate over networks can be called a thing or an iot. Ice also, it should be serving a purpose like either collecting some information or delivering some outcome.

Also Visit the Related Post : Advance IoT Architecture | Basic Elements of Internet of Things Architecture

Now that is the least any iot enabled device or thing in iot will require today, even though the bigger devices have diverse features and can be more powerful. It is a miniaturizing of computer hardware that has truly given the Internet of Things its Edge in the market today. It is made it possible for these iot devices to even function and microscopic levels in the remotest corners of our world. And as also Borden focus on more Target oriented features specific to their goals, Plus with devices running on incredibly low power levels and operating with such minimal resources. The things in iot come with the promise of implementing Solutions in the most cost effective way possible without compromising on the system's accuracy. This is because at the smallest levels these things are embedded with just enough technology for them to communicate over the internet and other networks to get the data analyzed stored and processed over that Network or over the cloud rather than physically housing. All those Technologies on themselves.

What is an IoT Devices How you Can Identify an IoT Device

Also such low power levels are perfect for the lead. Our chips sensors and other low energy components that is devices used for the operation. But like I said, there are substantial equipped to connect wirelessly for exchanging data and Performing actions based on them. Also such low energy modes of connectivity make it easy for these things to operate just about anywhere while letting us control and monitor them remotely for almost any part of the world. So it is as if the British technology Pioneer Kevin Ashton who coined the phrase internet of things back in the 1999 somehow knew of these potentials that I would have brings out. Devices today

What can IoT Things Do for You

so let us move on now. Let us see what things can do for you. 

Home Automation IoT System 

So one of the most popular implementation of these things and their applications have been in the sector of home automation today, the use of Internet of Things in this industry has got the world closer to achieving a dream home powered by the smartest systems using these iot devices and these systems have been built such that all its devices can intercommunicate to allow owners a customized access. 

To all aspects of your home like your lights your logs or the inside environment or security cameras or even your total energy consumption with the brand specific IOD platforms and clouds behind them. These iot devices are now capable of exhibiting ambient intelligence and also stay connected to the internet for driving real-time operations. So let us get into some examples of IoT devices used in most Smart Homes today, and we must begin with the tune able smart Lighting systems like Philips Hue smart home lighting or the tp-link. Color Smart WiFi that can be easily controlled using your smart phones with the option of creating custom lighting automatons from anywhere in the world by just being connected to the internet with smart lights like these you could turn them on or off anytime and tune the color and the brightness of Lights in your home's remotely no matter wherever you are moving on.

Home Automation IoT System

Did you know that locks and keys are getting old fashion nowadays. It's not a joke. Smart locks are a part of almost every smart home today and the August smart clock third generation is one of the newest and the phones on the market today. What makes it Stand Out Among its peers is that it comes with Bluetooth support so that you won't need to worry, even if your internet is down somehow with a device like this that attaches to your existing that bolts you will always know if your door is completely closed and locked with its doors and Technology. It'll even remind you to lock your doors when you leaving or tell you if they were properly closed or not based on the location of your phone, you can even create secure virtual or temporary keys for your neighbors and guess just in case now the next iot device is Nest learning thermostat it is one of the best examples of an iot device today as a part of your home automation system this intelligent device Lawns your schedules and preferences over the first couple of weeks too smart in the cooling and heating systems in your home and then regulate your home temperature automatically to save electricity by 20% among a ton of other features.

Visit the related post : Top 7 IoT Projects With Raspberry Pi For Beginners

So to reduce your energy bills, it uses sensors and your phone's location to realize the whether the time or the environment inside and when nobody's home it will shift into energy saving. Mode apart from the thermostat Nest also provide smart cameras with smoke and carbon monoxide alarms to better manage your home's atmosphere and Security Plus it lets you manage and monitor each of them through its dedicated app or even build your own Revenue channels upon them. There is also one more device that I think is worth the mention in the home automation systems of today. It's mostly just a doorbell for your front doors. Only a lot smarter the video dogus by ring is a modest name for all the things that it can do. It's like Always home as it lets you answer your door from just about anywhere it will in fact, even a lot you of motion within 30 feet of your door and stream its live footage onto your phone. And if somebody rings a bell you can let them know that you're not home and even have a word with them with its right Vision the wide-angle high-definition recordings get simultaneously saved were Cloud for your use anytime. Now before I tell you what else iot devices can do for you virtual or home assistance like the Amazon Alexa the Google Assistant Siri and Jibo are also attending application of the internet of things and have made it big in the home automation systems of today.

Fitness IoT Devices

Now, other than making your Home Smart iot devices are also capable of intelligent Lee tracking your health and fitness and as far as Fitness goes the Fitbit tracker or the Apple watch and other such smart watches have been a revolutionary success and along with your Fitness aspects. They also solve your day to day Health Care needs like checking your heart rate and perspiration levels and tracking your body temperature to predict a cold or a flu on the Are you will be amazed to know how the other iot devices are saving more lives and making Health Care better like the Philips Healthcare is medication dispensing service or the hero smart pills dispenser are the most successful use cases today and exemplify the potential of iot in the healthcare sector.

Fitness IoT Devices

 It is the perfect reminder for your medications and is a convenient measure for the elderly and the sick alike with the option to remotely manage it with your smartphone. You could also monitor the medication of your near and dear ones and be notified upon running low on any Medication at all plus you could also get info on the right medication for common health hazards. And now with how integral smart phones and internet have become in our lives Health and Fitness Solutions using iot will only get more and more prominent in the recent years to come.

How IoT Device Serving the World

So apart from the personal benefits that you can get as a consumer or user iot also aims to impact the greater good the talk of smart cities is prevalent these days where the waste management system is more efficient. You shall in the environment is checked and even the outdoor lighting and traffic signals are equipped with motion sensors to ensure energy conservation by turning on only upon detecting traffic updates and its route or upon sensing pedestrians and Vehicles nearby. Now, let us look at some of the other sectors of service and Civic amenities that these iot devices are powering to up the efficiencies of our world today. One of the most visible Smart Systems in place is in the domain of transport and Automotive today and along with more and more connected car platforms today there has Also been a lot of hype around smart and self-driving Vehicles hitting the lines of Transport very soon plus with the maps providing real-time Intel and the modern vehicles housing numerous sensors in them. You could always tell which way to go or what parts need to be looked at. Like say tracking the Fulton's option altitude and maintenance issues of flights in real time without waiting for it to land every time can help in anticipating problems to schedule maintenance prior to its arrival. So that deal is and mishaps are minimized in the aviation industry.

Overview and Top Features of IoT | What are the Features of IoT

Smart Agriculture IoT Device

another major area of Application for iot devices isn't the field of Agriculture or sector that is often neglected. Despite. Its utmost importance can now be brought up to speed with iot with several cheap and minimal sensors that monitor the best climate and soil quality for the right kind of crops or other smart devices that ensure the efficiency of automated irrigation systems, even the gardens in your home or the trees in smart cities or even the plant life and vegetation in agroforestry or wildlife habitats could be kept in check the most Innovative iot devices to they include the smart watering system Blossom, which can create optimal wanting she Duels for all the plants in your home based on real-time weather data and forecasts and will regulate all your sprinkles accordingly and allows you complete control over them through Bluetooth or the internet and also the clean grows carbon nanotube probe is one of the best iot devices for farmers and gardeners all around the world today with sensors to monitor the intake of nutrients in the crops to better manage farming resources and improve the quality of their fields farmers can now order Maturity rate and the color of props for better yields and faster. It's a production.

Smart Agriculture IoT Device

Retail and Supply Chain Using IoT Devices

now. It might be a little ironical of me to talk about one of the very first Industries to be made smart on such a late note in today's session, but I really just wanted to save the best for last and believe me the sector of retail and Logistics is where the internal things promises the most astounding results with iot devices already being extensively used in shopping restaurants hospitality industries and many other businesses to control the supply chain effectively. And obtain valuable insights based on them and manage their logical or merchandising expenses in the best possible ways. Now the Q hop is one of the leading examples of internal things being used in the retail today typically designed to bring in seamless autonomous check out Technologies to all retail verticals by digitizing the checkouts through RFID tags that only unlock after its payment is processed. The sole purpose behind it was to allow users to sell check out in stores. Although it is mainly used for security reasons today to inhibit Petty thefts. Doors, but guess what that was before the Inception of Amazon go earlier this year.

Retail and Supply Chain Using IoT Devices

Now the technology inside this convenience store will really seem like it was pulled out from the future somewhere. Although it is so new that there are only three locations with this feature has six toes so far. So operate and are managed by the online retailer Amazon. These stores can give you a shopping experience unlike any you've ever had before with the idea essentially being grab-and-go. These stores will just need your Amazon go apps for you to enter and then employees. Eurovision machine learning and Sensor Fusion to automatically add items that you pick instantly on to your virtual card will also remove them of just as promptly if you keep them back now once you've grabbed all the things on your shopping list and are ready to exit all you need to do is just walk right out of the store. Yes, no more lining up in busy cues of the usually limited checkout counters to wait your turn for the purchase. You can exit the store without even having to pull out any cash or a card and you will find the amount for all the things that Walk out with the beaded simultaneously from the balance in your Amazon account such a smart system could also check the inventory regularly to notify retailers on the need for restocking and even helps to manage the supply chain and a better way.

Logistics IoT Example

Now, there are also other promising areas in logistic that iot devices have started to unpack like in the case of shipping cargo or Fleet Management smart Bluetooth. Low energy tags are attached to the items being moved for remotely tracking the exact locations speed of transport and storage conditions. For instance. The things dot IO is a simple iot platform that provides a dedicated cloud-based dashboard for better Logistics by enabling access to real-time and reliable inputs from it's connected smart sensors and paired location trackers irrespective of wherever they might be so although use cases and the respective iot devices are things.

Logistics IoT Example

 We just went over our only a select few of the countless applications of the internet of things that can drive almost any sector today and these iot devices could be things themselves or even attached to someone or something to make it a thing in iot. Like even a person with a heart rate monitor could be a thing in iot as it collects and provides information that can act as inputs to other Smart Systems to operate on so the Baseline for anything to become an iot device could be laid out as any object with a unique IP address for communication over networks and the ability to gather and transmit data or receive data and perform tasks based on it and the Ameri technology in these devices are what interact with either the internal States or the external environment. To capture all data and drive decisions made up on them. 

Is Your (IoT) Things Really Yours

Now with the internet of things being such a large community of different devices the challenges of iot devices mainly start with communication as the protocols and languages used by each of them vary.

IoT Device Security

Hugely due to the lack of common standards for all of them yet and this lack of a uniform and secure standard across all iot devices, which is great security risks making them highly unreliable for most important. Missions are into operations today. Also without customers being assured of the privacy and security of the data. There is just no reason for them to risk using or adopting such insecure Solutions. Do you really understand what the role of security and iot devices is today. Well, let me tell you about a major Cyber attack that happened back in October of 2016 a large distributed denial of service attack dubbed Mirai affected DNS servers on the east coast of the United States which disrupted Services all across the world upon further investigations.

IoT Device Security

 This issue was tracked back to the hackers that infiltrated smart networks through the iot devices being used in them like the routers or the camera. So that brings about the situation. We're in our devices and data are all remotely connected and stowed upon these networks and its security gets compromised. We might even not know it over the first few days or weeks and it might be just too late by the time we do realize now the way in for these hackers were undoubtedly a result of poor practice at some end like say the use of default passwords rather than changing. Hence, the adoption of better practices and the reinforcement of proper authentication Network segmentation's encryption and cryptography can still make the things and its systems quite secure given that we start making sure of building them up securely from our end as well plus the issue of overall connectivity is also a feat that our world is still driving to achieve but hasn't been able to accomplish it. 

How to Build an IoT Device

That brings us to the last topic for today. So let me tell you the important things that you should know to build an iot device. So building an iot product or device or solution must be done thinking about the relevant purposes that it can serve and the ways in which they can be prepared to work for at least the next couple of decades along with the option and space for quick improvisations and upgrades and just like we saw in all our examples today. 

Hardware of IoT Device

You must have understood the two important categories that iot devices are mainly made up of the first is the hardware as And the underlying room is to aggregate the hardware in the most minimal way. You can without compromising on the primary features that you want your device to use. Now. These features are mostly due to Bluetooth low energy sensors or beacons connected to the internet or a customized product with probably a combination of these on a circuit board made up of a semiconductor like Silicon and may also house or the components like transistors resistors receivers transmitters actuators and integrated circuit or a microchip. So the most devices like a smartphone or a result of such combinations on a little more complex level with proper casing and with the second most important aspect of these devices.

Hardware of IoT Device

 Software For IoT Device

So the second important category in iot devices is the software aspect on the device level the size of your software will depend on how minimal or bulky your device is. And what are the components that your housing on it on the most basic note. The device software only needs to be enough for handling the operation of your device driving components to collect data and converting them into transmitters. Fun connecting two networks driving the transmitter to send data and the receiver to receive data to and from the network and converting it to the machine understandable form for driving components to perform some task or display. Some outcomes based on the received instructions.

Software For IoT Device

 Now all this will require very minimal software unlike the software on your phones that come with entire mobile operating systems all the other important software for intelligence and smartness in these devices would be provided by the underlying Cloud infrastructure and even by the Mobile apps or web dashboards. The software aspect of iot devices is in fact what controls the hardware aspects to sense some information or perform an instruction while both aspects are the most integral parts of an iot device. You might also need to overcome a few more hurdles before you iot device is truly ready to implement smart Solutions and Power Smart Systems of our world today. These hurdles could be connectivity issues or compatibility problems or security and privacy concerns, but don't let the obstacles dishearten you in Just consult people with knowledge on the same.

Thanks a lot for visiting to my website for more go to my Youtube Channel Loginto Courses

[flipfundingstuff]

20 Most Commonly Asked Questions About Starting a Business

You know you want to start a business, but you have no idea how to get started.

Going from initial idea to full-fledged business is a lengthy process. At first, you want to do enough brainstorming and research to make sure you’ve landed on the right business idea. After you’ve locked in the idea, you need to start developing a plan for everything from your financials to your marketing and sales to your management and operations. You’ll also have some legal hoops to jump through, including registering your business and securing licenses and permits.

That’s the easy part! Once you’re ready to go, you’ll need to secure funding to cover your startup costs and build up the capital and inventory you need to open the doors and, eventually, start turning a profit.

The startling truth is that about 50% of all new businesses fail. The reasons for their failure vary, whether it’s offering a product with no market need, lacking capital, not having the right team, or not being able to compete. All of these reasons come down to one thing, though— a failure to adequately prepare before jumping in headfirst.

All of this isn’t to scare you away but rather to emphasize that getting answers to your questions now will help you keep things running smoothly in the long-run. With proper planning, new business owners can make sure that there’s a need for their idea, the funding to get it off the ground, the right talent to propel it forward, and the resources to compete with other companies.

Whether you already have a business plan or don’t even know what kind of business you want to start, here are answers to the most commonly asked questions about starting a business.

The Idea

1. What kind of business should I start?

Before asking yourself what kind of business to start, you should ask yourself what you’re passionate about. As a business owner, you’re going to have to dedicate an immense amount of energy and time to get your business off the ground, so it should be something you care about. 

After that, identify which of your interests can be transformed into a product or service that’s needed. You want to operate at the intersection of passion and demand. To get your gears turning, here are some common industries for small business:

Food and beverage

Accommodation

Health care and fitness

Arts, entertainment, and recreation

Web design and marketing

Auto repair

Pet care

Business consulting

Personal care

Cleaning and repair services

Real estate

2. Should I start my own business or buy a franchise?

According to Entrepreneur, franchises have a higher rate of success thanks to brand recognition and proven demand. If you want a higher degree of security, buying a franchise might be right for you. 

However, with a franchise, you have to pay the owner fees and royalties that eat into your profits, and you don’t get much freedom or flexibility when it comes to the direction and growth of your business. If you value flexibility and innovation, you might prefer to start your own business.

3. Will people buy what I’m selling?

The most important step to take before going all-in on your new business idea is to make sure there’s a market for the product or service you want to offer. You can do market research on your own, but it’s a good idea to at least meet with a consultant. Research your industry, your target market, your competition, and your geographic area if your business is tied to a physical location. Use this information to develop an informed idea regarding the viability of your business idea.

4. Why do so many businesses fail?

Another method for gauging the viability of your business idea is to look at why other businesses fail. Machine intelligence platform CB Insights analyzed startup data to come up with the top reasons new businesses fail, and the conclusion was clear—almost half of startups failed because there was no market need for their product or service.

The other 2 biggest reasons for startup failure included running out of cash and not assembling the right team, followed by less common reasons like being outcompeted, pricing and cost issues, having a user un-friendly product, or lacking a business model.

5. Can I run my business from home?

Many people nowadays start their businesses with the goal of being able to work from home. While the internet makes this scenario a lot easier to achieve, lacking a physical presence can make it challenging to grow your business and get the word out there. 

If you want to run your business from home, you must be comfortable using technology and working from behind a computer. You should also learn the basics of skills like digital marketing and web design. Unless you’re an expert, you’ll want to outsource those tasks, as they’ll be critical to your business’s success.

The Setup

6. Who can I talk to about starting a business?

Once you’ve got an idea or two that you think will make for a good business, it’s wise to seek counsel regarding issues like profitability, setup, and funding. Consider speaking with a business consultant or business coach as well as small business owners in your community.

The US Small Business Administration works with local partners to provide you with mentorship as you start and grow your business, so use them to search for local assistance in your area. There is also a plethora of resources for female business owners and programs for boosting minority business owners.

7. Do I need a business plan?

While you should get clear on your business idea before taking the time to create a business plan, you will need one eventually. Business plans help you develop your business idea further, as well as identify any potential issues and tweak your plan before putting it into motion. They’re also a necessary tool for communicating with other people, such as investors, lenders, partners, or employees, why they should jump on board.

8. How do I create a business plan?

Find a detailed guide to creating a business plan that you can follow. Most business plans include the following 7 parts.

Executive Summary

Business Overview

Market Analysis

Competitor Analysis

Sales and Marketing Plan

Operations and Management Plan

Financial Plan

Essentially, you will need to define your business and its goals, do a market analysis, investigate your competitors, detail your business financials and come up with financial projections, and explain exactly how you plan to achieve your business goals.

9. How do I pick a good name for my business?

The key to choosing an effective business name is to pick a name that’s both simple and unique. Names that are long and complicated can be easily forgotten and difficult to spell, making it hard for your business to gain traction by word-of-mouth and via the internet. 

On the other hand, you want a name that’s memorable, catchy, and conveys your business’s unique brand identity. Above all, you want to avoid using a name that’s already taken. Search the internet for your business name, do a trademark search at USPTO.gov, and look up the .com domain name, as you’ll want to buy that. You’ll also want to register your business name once you’ve selected one.

10.  How do I choose a business structure?

You’ll need to decide how to structure your business, and the most common options are sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, C corporation, and S corporation. The structure that’s right for you will depend on your business’s size and ownership, and the structure you choose will determine how you’re taxed. Read up on the different business structures and decide which one is the best fit.

11. How do I register my small business?

Unless you’re operating as a sole proprietor and your business name is the same as your legal name, you’ll likely want to register your small business. 

The process for registering your business will depend on the business structure you chose, but generally speaking, you’ll need to register with state agencies. Most states require you to update your registration every so often. You may also want to apply for licenses and permits depending on your business type and location.

12. Do I need a business bank account?

You should open a business bank account as early as possible if you’re starting a business. For both legal reasons and accounting purposes, you’ll want to keep your business finances separate from your personal finances. This separation protects your personal finances from your business’s liability, and it also makes doing your taxes and analyzing your business revenue easier.

The best way to keep your business finances separate is to open a business bank account and use it for all of your business transactions. This approach also makes you look more professional and helps you build a business banking relationship.

13. Do I need a business credit card?

You don’t need a business credit card, but they can be useful. Not only does a business credit card help you build business credit, but the best business credit cards offer lucrative rewards for all the money you’re spending on your business.

Business credit cards can also be useful for covering short-term cash shortages. If you need a little extra cash to make an important purchase, your business credit card is faster than a loan. It’s also likely more expensive, though, as credit card interest rates are high. For this reason, it’s important to pay off your balance in full each billing cycle if you can.

14. How do I keep track of my business finances?

Apart from keeping your business finances separate, you’ll also want a good accounting app that can help you track and organize your business finances, send out invoices, and help you do your taxes. Look for an app that allows you to connect your business bank account, offers customized invoices, and provides a tax estimator. Most accounting apps come with a free or low-cost basic plan and allow you to upgrade to more robust plans as needed.

15. How do I set business goals?

The key to setting business goals is knowing which metrics to value and pay attention to. You’ll want to create a list of KPIs, or key performance indicators, and set goals in relation to those. These metrics should be crucial to your business’s success and easy to measure and quantify. 

Common KPIs include profit margins, revenue growth, revenue concentration, and working capital. These can also be more specific to your business, such as the number of new contracts per quarter or average event attendance numbers. Make sure to set deadlines for your KPIs, which can include monthly, quarterly, and annual goals.

By choosing a few KPIs, you’ll be able to set business goals that are relevant, specific, and easy to measure. You’ll also be able to share these goals with your team and have them track their individual progress accordingly.

The Funding

16. How much money do I need to start a business?

The Small Business Administration offers a tool to help you calculate your startup costs, which will include everything from rent, inventory, and equipment to permits, employee salaries, advertising, and website costs.

Your exact startup cost will depend on the size and type of business you want to start. For example, the typical cost of starting up a microbusiness is $3,000, and most people who start home-based businesses need around $2,000 to $5,000. However, if you want to open a restaurant, retail store, or something similar, you’ll likely need significantly more money to get started.

17. How can I get funding for my business?

While some entrepreneurs prefer to self-fund, you don’t always have to have the cash in hand to start your business. There are plenty of ways to secure funding that will cover your startup costs or the ongoing costs of running your business until it’s profitable. Common methods for funding small businesses include the following.

SBA loan

Startup loan

Business line of credit

Business credit card

Business grants

Bootstrapping

Friends and family

Crowdfunding

Angel investors

Venture capital

Each funding method has its own pros and cons. For example, bootstrapping can leave you with less capital but more freedom, whereas bringing in investors provides access to a big capital boost but means losing some equity.

18. How can I get a small business loan?

Small business loans can be a good funding option for business owners who don’t want to give up control of their business but want immediate access to more capital. You’ll want to figure out which small business loans you qualify for and what the application requirements are for each one. 

You’ll need good credit, and some lenders will check both your personal credit and your business credit score. Many lenders will also want to see that you’ve already been in business for at least a year and are generating at least $50,000 or $100,000 in revenue, although there are exceptions. You’ll need to provide business and personal tax returns, bank statements, and other legal documents to apply. Most importantly, you need to make sure you can repay your loan on time before borrowing any money.

19. How can I get investors to invest in my business?

If you’ve decided you want to raise money for your business, the first step is finding investors. There are online fundraising platforms, like AngelList and StartEngine, that make it easy for business owners to connect with potential investors. You’ll also want to get out in the real world to get noticed. Startup events and conferences are great places to do this, as are startup accelerators.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of your community. Ask around, and maybe someone will be interested in investing in a local business. You can also start a crowdfunding campaign on websites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Patreon.

20. How long until my business is profitable?

It can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 or 3 years for your business to start regularly turning a profit. Most business owners should plan for at least 1 year without a profit, although franchise owners will likely generate profit more quickly.

It’s important to consider this starting stage when creating your business plan and deciding how much money you need to start your business and whether you want to resort to funding options such as loans and investors.

The post 20 Most Commonly Asked Questions About Starting a Business appeared first on Lendio.

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[rafi1228]

All in one guide to take any Unity games into multiplayer. This is the easiest way to understand and use multiplayer

What you’ll learn

Turn any Unity games into multiplayer games

know how to synchronize players

create a network

host clients

create server clients

launch magic firebolts with different colors

free for all matches

Requirements

basic programming knowledge is recommended but not needed

Description

Do you want to create online worlds like MineCraft or Clash of Clans? Do you feel like you cannot do it because multiplayer is hard to program?

Well, you were right until today. I have looked through dozens of ways to make a multiplayer game, and i came up with the easiest way to make it happen.

This course contains all you need to easily turn any Unity games into online multiplayer platforms. This course will drive you step by step on taking a shooter robots game and turn it into an online multiplayer Free For All game.

The process is fun and it feels great to accomplish such a difficult task.

Join the community now

MULTIPLAYER MADE EASY

Unity Multiplayer is the easiest way to create real time, networked games for Unity. It’s fast to implement and highly customizable. Unity-provided servers ensure that your players can find and play with each other.

EASY TO IMPLEMENT

Unity Multiplayer uses the component workflow you already know so you can implement and prototype networked features quickly.

FLEXIBLE

Low level APIs grant you access to the core of the Unity Multiplayer’s framework, so you can optimize your game for a networked environment, however you want to.

BACKED BY UNITY

Unity Matchmaker Servers makes it easy to connect your players. Unity Relay Servers brokers network traffic to ensure quality sessions between your players no matter where they are.

GET STARTED NOW

Unity Multiplayer is available to all Unity customers for development purposes at no additional charge.It is totally free to create professional multiplayer games

HANDS ON PROJECT

This course drives you step by step on how to turn a 3D shooter game into a multiplayer game where 2 to 16 players can play simultaneously controlling robots shooting fireballs at eachother, in a fun environment like MineCraft style.

MEGA BONUS

By joining this course, you automatically get for FREE all the project files, the source codes, the graphic files, 3d animations, models, and you also get the published iPhone app and Android it. Life is good!

Important: This course is part of a the world’s one and one series on Unity professional multiplayer games.

The content is so big, it couldn’t fit in one course. Here is the courses are split in key areas:

  There are so many tutorials, guides and courses out there, that it’s hard to know how to start learning how to code, game development, and even harder to know in which order you should take the courses.

We’ve decided to focus on Unity rather than other platforms because the team behind Unity has a great vision. They are always on top of things. Each time a new device comes out, they add support for it and also create special libraries for it. We believe you should focus on Unity as well. We want to make sure you do by providing you the best learning material at the best prices

For example, Oculus Rift and Samsung VR are fully operational on Unity 5.

Unity also entered the live cinematic world (animated movies, think Toy Story). The future is bright for Unity developers. (more about the future of Unity  )

There’s also been a change in the mobile app app store category ranking system which makes it harder to get app exposure for new apps. It means developers need to focus on a few apps instead of bombarding the app store with reskins. Nowadays, an app is a continuous work of art where developers need to listen to the users and keep updating the app to give them exactly what they want.

Having said that, you will maximize your learning experience if you takes the courses in the following order:

– Understand the process of making games:

Before even getting started into developing, you need to understand the whole process of making games, from A to Z. Take the “Captain Rocket” course where you get to see how a Unity project gets reused and turned into another game and gets published to iTunes app store.

course: Publish Captain Rocket* iPhone game under 2 hours, Unity 5

– Learn the basics:

The course “Begin Unity Programming” is short (about 45 minutes) and entertaining where you will learn keys Unity concepts and code using Star Wars figurines.

  Another important course is “Fundamentals of Programming“. Beware! This course goes over the hard stuff of programming. It’s explaining the mechanics used in programming, just like you would get in a computer science class in the American Ivy league Universities. It’s not for everyone, but it should be taken by EVERYONE. You need to understand what are for / while loops, what’s the difference between an int, a float or a double, and what are the principles of object oriented programming (to name a few key concept). The course comes with plenty of mind-stimulating exercises made with the new elegant language named Swift.

  – Get comfortable with using Unity’s user interface: course “Introduction to Game Development with Unity”

Unity Editor can be overwhelming at first with all its windows, sub windows and tabs. Luckily, this course guides you through it. Oh, i forgot to mention, it’s free!

– Learn how to create graphics to use in your game: “3D Pixel Art for non artist. Crossy Road Modeling. Unity 3D”

Graphic assets can be 2D illustrations, 3D graphics, sprites, voxel art (MineCraft like) or also sound effects and Unity bundles.

I recommend to start making graphic assets following the course “3D Pixel Art for non artist. Crossy Road Modeling. Unity 3D“. Why? Because it’s a course that allows anyone to make decent game graphics without having to be an artist! With the correct tools and the right guidance, you will end up making 3d pixel graphics (voxel) art just like Crossy road or MineCraft by the end of the day.

  Once you know how to create 3D assets, it’s time you learn how to make 3D characters, animate them, and import them into Unity to use them!

You will learn all of the above in the course named “3D Pixel Characters Modeling & Animations for all. Unity 3D“.

By the way, the tools used in the course are all free to use, that’s the cherry on the cake!

By the end of the course, you will be able to create and animate characters like Spiderman, Ironman and wonder woman. Make Ironman dance hip-hop is hilarious and gratifying!

  – Learn core Unity development:

At this point, you must be antsy to create a game. Contrary to most online courses, the following course allow you to create and also PUBLISH the game you’re making to the Google Play store and the iTune app store.

Take the “Unity 3D 2016 – Build, program & publish Crossy Road game” course. Learn about key concepts, must-have scripts to get a professional game like Crossy Road and get it out the door into the wilderness of the app stores! I can’t stress enough the joy of having your game out in the app store where all your friends and family are amazed by you owning a piece of the app stores! (scoring social points!)

Now that you’ve got your first game in the app store, you should learn how to make more complex games, that are using 3D animations, physics, vehicles, shooting, and character Artificial Intelligence. The perfect course for these topics is “Unity 2016 – Build , program and publish a 3D shooter game“.

  – Enhance your game development skills:

It’s time to learn specific game mechanics that will improve the player’s game experience and ultimately get more user engagement.

You need to know how to add multiplayer to your game. A game that’s using the multiplayer mechanics is a more demanded type of game because players prefer to play against / with other players rather than computer simulated AI (Artificial Intelligence).

The course “Unity Multiplayer 2016 – Build Online Shooter – code included” is the perfect way to turn the game you’ve learned how to make (the 3D shooter game) into a multiplayer game.

Contrary to most courses, you’re not wasting time on creating code to make the game, but you will be focusing on jumping straight into the multiplayer functionality. This is a must-have course and one that I am the most proud of because “multiplayer” is a hard concept and I finally got to find the simplest way so that anyone can add multiplayer to any Unity games.

– Equipping characters with weapons, gears and trinkets

The majority of multiplayer games allow players to pickup items, find treasures and get loot from bosses. Now the hard part for the game developer is to know how to pickup these items, equip these items, remove them, swap them.

And all of this needs to be done in multiplayer,… meaning, when a player equip a new item such as a sword or a helmet, all other players need to see that new state. Not so easy at all… That’s why this course is a must: “Unity 2016 – Character gear and weapon use”

– Inventory system for single player and multiplayer games:

unity-inventory-system-for-games-multiplayer-online

Now that you understand how to pickup items and equip them, you need an inventory system to keep track of which item the player owns. Many games call this a stash or a backpack.

It sounds simple to implement, but it’s tough, especially in multiplayer games. Oh, almost forgot to mention, the user interface needs to work on all screen sizes, small screens like Android phones and iPhones, as well as big TV screens for PCs. This course will teach you every single details. And yes, the code is included!

“Unity 5 – Inventory System for Professional Games”

  – Item attributes and statistics

Before you can get into player fighting, dueling and combat, you need to setup stats and attributes on each items and players.

For example, swords have a specific strength, intelligence, dexterity, mana cost and other skills.

This course teaches you how to set these attributes up and how to use them during combat to compute what’s the damage taken or mitigated. It’s also great to create character leveling and experience gaining.

“Unity 2016 – RPG Character Stats and Item Attributes System”

– Mastering Melee and Ranged weapon mechanics

A good game needs melee weapons such as swords, knives, or axes,  and also needs ranged weapons such as guns, bows with arrows and such.

Learn the mechanics and get to apply them hands-on with the source code that comes with the course.

range-and-melee-weapons-course-unity

“Unity 5 pro multiplayer combat using melee & ranged weapons”

  – Turn your game dev into a game business:

It’s fun to make games but it’s even more fun when games bring in money. No seriously, if you plan on just making games for fun, that’s fine, but many of you would love to turn this hobby into a business so that you can keep doing what you love without having to go find another job to pay the bills.

So how can you monetize your game?

Add advertising banners and full screen ads.

The course “Unity 3D 2016 – Build, program & publish Crossy Road game” has an advanced section on how to integrate Unity ads to your game. This is a good start but it’s not enough, you need to add a video reward system where players have to watch a 30 second video advertisement to get virtual coins in return. Each time a player watches a video, you get a few cents to a couple dollars, especially if the player downloads and opens the app from the advertisement! Now, that’s what we call potentially good income! The developer from Crossy Road used this exact same system and made a couple million dollars in a week or so. Now I’m not saying this is going to happen to you, but do you really need this much money to keep you going?

Unity Game Boost: Build a Video Reward System (bring in $$$)

Another way to monetize a game is to use virtual coin systems where players can earn, buy and use coins to get virtual items and goods. The player will buy virtual coins with real money using the in-app purchase in-game store. There is a course just for that: “Unity Game Boost: Coin Management System“. The course drive you through every single step to create the virtual coin system and store/ retrieve the player’s coin amount. Then you get to create an in-game store so that player can buy virtual good with real money. The beauty of this course is that you learn how to bundle the coin system so that you can reuse it in every game you make in no time. A must-have course!

Listen to this scenario, it’s the most common one for game developers: You’ve made a decent game, you published it, you get a couple hundred downloads and then “dead silence”. You can keep praying the Gods for help or you can help yourself and add Unity Analytics to your game. Thanks to analytics, you get a report on key metrics in a nice online dashboard. You get answers to key questions. such as

Is my game to hard or too easy? Which level has the most players quit? Which character gets selected the most? How many times a level gets played?

Take the course “Unity Game Analytics”

Once you have all these questions answered, you modify your game to fit the player’s feedback, it’s time to understand how to add fun stuff using physics mechanics. The perfect course for this is “Unity Game Physics”

Remember, it takes time and experience to get to understand how to read your audience and know what they want. It’s great to get real data from your players and analyze them. Data scientists are in high demand. Some game companies are really good at this and came up with a p behavioral system that forces players to have the desire to spend money in the game. Critics like Nick Saint of Business Insider have said that Zynga’s games have essentially the same mechanics even though they have different premises and settings.

You also need to create an audience so that each time you create a new game or add a new level or feature to an existing game, you need to be able to tell people about it. That’s why you need to build an email list. The email list is platform agnostic, meaning, no matter what happens tomorrow, even if the iPhone industry dies, you still have an email list of people who love to play your game genres, and they will gladly follow you to any platforms, whether you decided to create Virtual Reality games, ebooks or movies!

The course “Unity 2016 – Email List Building – Why and How” will help you integrate the email capture system into your game and help you build your email list.

Email list building with Unity

  – The marketing side of things.

Disclaimer: Would you rather take the time to market your game or start making another game?

We all rather keep making games than marketing the games we’ve already made and that’s totally understandable. Making games is fun and gratifying. Marketing games is not sexy, nobody wants to have to bother people and tell them about your game. After all, shouldn’t your game be good enough that it speaks for itself? not in today’s world. Publishing a game is just the beginning, creating the buzz around it, baking viral mechanics into it, getting featured in magazines and media is a must. The course “Become a Mobile App Growth Hacker . Total Theory & Training” teaches you fundamentals concepts on how to use marketing even before you’ve created your game. Making a game is great, making a game that brings in revenue is great, and making a game that the whole world enjoys is even better!

  – Chat system:

Players want to interact with eachother. Online games need chat systems to allow players to send messages to eachother.

The messages need to be stored in your own private server (online or local). This course will teach you just that. Beware! This course uses advanced topics like MySQL, PHP, and Apache. The good news is that all the source codes are included so you just have to use them and customize them to make it original to your taste.

Take this course “Unity 5 Build a chat system for online multiplayer games”

  – in-game mail message system

This course goes hand in hand with the course above(chat system). If somehow one of the player is not online at the moment, other players can send in-game emails. A must-have for online multiplayers. “Unity 5 Multiplayer InGame Mail Messaging”

– Maths for Game Developers:

okay, let’s be honest, making games is sexy, learning the maths not so much. But don’t you want to understand the math behind the game mechanics?

Take this somewhat boring but necessary course: “Maths for Video Games”

  – You don’t have time or don’t want to spend too much money on graphics?

Me either.. That’s why the following course automatically generate environments, dungeons, castles, houses, weapons and entire worlds for you! Neat? very powerful stuff…

“Building 3D Voxel Art Environment Worlds with Unity 5″

“Unity 5 techniques to generate unique worlds quickly”

“Unity 5 Build a System that Generates Houses & Castles Auto”

“Build Weapons Automatically Unity . Fantasy Edition”

Once you have taken all the above courses. You are ready to make a 6-figure job as a game developer or run your own game business. You’re not alone, I’m here to help you in your journey.

Contact me anytime. Yohann of AppsFresh com

Who is the target audience?

game lovers

hobbyist

entrepreneurs, side entrepreuneurs

computer students

cool kids

graphic designers

Created by Yohann Taieb Last updated 12/2016 English English [Auto-generated]

Size: 1.14 GB

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The post Unity Multiplayer 2017 -Build Online Shooter – code included appeared first on Free Course Lab.

[insanityfantasy]

Blog for May 28, 2019

So this week, we didn’t learn any specific chapters. For Tuesday, we had a variety of fun activities with the class split off into different groups. Thursday was the day the class presented their fun little commercials and products. In class on Tuesday, what I got from the class was the importance of teamwork, precision, pacing, and getting outside of my comfort zone. A couple of activities required a very close distance between me and my partner, which made me incredibly uncomfortable but I felt like it was a needed push to getting out of my tight personal bubble. (The lifesavers one) The rest of the activities were fun and pretty cool. On Thursday, we had presentations of our different commercials which also required a ton of teamwork, an effective leader, and a decent set of persuasion and communication skills.

I decided to change the direction of the paper and decided to do a nice reflection of the progress that I made. Comparing myself to at the beginning to the end of the term and now, I have developed so much more self-awareness and I finally recognize the potential I have. In the beginning, I had a few flaws in my communication skills and I had no mercy to people who made mistakes in friendships with me. Now, I recognize the potential in people, especially because of the setback our dependency of technology caused us, which made almost all of us lose ourselves. I consider it a win-win situation because it allows me to forgive others while I will also be forgiven for my mistakes and both parties grow from them. I also now have an idea of where I should go with my potential to allow it to grow even further and make something out of it. I’m now aware of the silly mistakes I made in the past with the good friends I used to have and I now stop myself if I attempt to make one of those reoccurring mistakes. This is one of the 2 classes I decided to buy my textbook and to hold on to for a while. All of the information was very helpful, the textbook broke down concepts very well and gave great examples, so I learned so much about humans and the way we act. I’m also taking Issues in Leadership with Professor VanHorn and that utilized concepts in communication such as the communication process. The course emphasized that honesty and trustworthiness plays a huge role in good relationships between followers and leaders. My past self taking the LEV class alone would brush off the entire idea, but taking it with this course made sense and was like a nice combination that I needed. Now, I stay on top of things with my group members when I have to do projects/presentations with them, I always talk up during lectures when professors ask questions, and I learned how to connect my real life experiences with the concepts I’m learning in my classes so it has a higher chance to be remembered long term.

When I took both of those courses, I learned some things about the world we live in now. Especially after communication, I learned and recognized the daily mistakes people make nowadays that costs entire relationships and organizations. This generation specifically makes the silliest mistakes that can be fixed with proper communication, some work, and a certain amount of time invested depending on the situation. The problem with this generation is that we tend to turn to our social media posts as therapy, which can offend readers, so cyberbullying instances have risen in a short amount of time. The other problem is that people have too much pride within themselves, so people tend to put their beliefs and thoughts over others and that leads to a lot of friendships quietly diminishing quickly and often. People do not like to fight for the things they want anymore and they look for the easy way out when a situation is presented to them that makes their fight or flight reactions go off. In my Leadership course, we discussed the importance of leadership and what happens when it’s absent in situations. A lot of times, kids in our generation have no interest in leadership nor putting in the work to become an effective one. People like to simply blend into society as being a clone (physically and mentally) of one of another and the unique people are considered freakshows. It’s going to be detrimental for the future workforce as the previous generation retires, the next generation of kids will be exposed to toxic mindsets, and it will shift the quality of production, businesses, etc. It seems as if starting a business and investing in stocks is the easiest thing to do to earn money, but other jobs that require manual labor will be left hanging. Thanks to inflation, people are now only concerned about money which is good for businesses to grow, but tending to personal life issues and having meaningful relationships aren’t important anymore. Another issue this generation have that I learned is allowing their emotions to control their lives. A lot of heartbroken people tend to generalize the gender of their ex, they go to social media and make toxic posts at the peak of their emotions, and they lastly seem to struggle with either presenting, hiding, (or both) their emotions in real life situations. The worst part is that loneliness is on the rise nowadays, so a lot of teens don’t have a proper emotional support system readily available to guide them and teach them self-control. A lot of parents now stepped down in being there at every point in their children's lives (or they’re fearful), so a lot of kids have to learn how the world works through their own experiences, school, or through their peers.

When it comes to me changing, I’ve listed the main parts in my second paragraph. My own relationships improved and prospered because of my increased awareness. I still want to continue my path of becoming a neuropsychologist, which in this day of age, is not the ideal occupation since it requires work. However, my communication skills have improved and my leadership skills are in the making, and I am confident that my journey will be successful and rewarding (both for me and others). I have a better network and I can form some meaningful connections, so I can have dependents for things and I have pathways towards good jobs. I haven’t thought about it too much, but if I have my own business, I would want to open my own practice or hair store, so I’m going to push myself onto that while focusing on my degree. I decided to stand out as a person and utilize my resources to master Chinese in the future, to have skills in computer science, business, followership, critical thinking/problem solving, etc. to become a jack of all trades. Me being in my tight shell, I at first did not imagine myself leading others and being a boss, but people see it in me and I understand the importance for it, so I decided to readily work to achieve those positions. I allowed a couple of leadership opportunities slip through my fingers because of my anxiety, but I decided to let my freshman year of college be the last year I’m this version of myself. For my personal relationships, I handle conflicts so much better and they’re much more meaningful now. I actively listen to people a lot more and utilize their advice and feedback to adapt. I have been for a while, but now I stand up for myself a lot more and use logic in my arguments more. I used to be scared of doing it with adults out of pure respect, but I learned how to respectfully deliver my points and facts which only increased awareness for both parties and it improved our relationships.

Thank you so much, Professor Barber, for taking the time to lecture, break down concepts, and push through the class’s tight standards, knowing we may backtalk. This course has been one of the most important ones I’ve taken yet and I’m excited to discover more things about the world with this kind of understanding.

[fabiofernandes]

A Libertarian Guide to Internet Privacy

One thing that is always on my mind as a libertarian is Privacy. Our ancestors valued privacy much more than we do today, because privacy in the past was physical, visible and consequently tangible. Having your privacy violated in the past meant someone going through your things, following you around or simply constantly controlling and asking what you’re doing. Your physical freedom was at stake.

The idea we have today of privacy is much broader, less invasive, but not one bit less important and meaningful than it was before. The fact is we are now even more monitored, controlled, followed and spied than ever before, sometime by harmless things such online ads, but every now and then, by malicious people who are trying to fool, take advantage or steal from us, and that is when we finally notice how vulnerable we are online. Total Internet privacy is impossible, and anyone who claims to have it is lying. But anyone can increase their Internet privacy by adjusting their online behavior, because the power to be more private and decide what we share online is in our hands.

First, it is important to say that, not everyone needs the same level of Internet privacy. The way I use my internet connection may differ from yours, and where I usually connect can also change how likely I am to treats. You don’t have to use Tor all the time (which will slow your Internet) or communicate only through Signal encrypted messenger (which is useless unless your contacts are using it too). While such technologies provide a higher level of privacy, they may not be necessary for you and the kind of personal threat you are exposed to. In other words, you probably don’t need to take the same privacy precautions as a Turkish dissident, a Venezuelan protester or an NSA whistleblower.

Internet privacy is important for everyone!

If you have a smartphone, which almost everybody in the world does nowadays, even your grandmother, then privacy issues directly impact you. Without Internet privacy someone can steal your credit card or even your identity, potentially causing problems for your credit score or at the very least inconveniencing you while a replacement card is shipped. Internet privacy keeps hackers and criminals from infiltrating your online accounts and spying on your activity while using public WiFi.

On the other hand, as both citizens and users of the Internet, we all have a stake in the quality of our society. Privacy is a fundamental human right and a prerequisite for democracy. For authoritarian governments and profit-seeking companies alike, invasions of privacy are a useful means of control. If you value your freedom, then Internet privacy should matter to you.

Here are a few tips to keep improve your privacy:

1. Limit the information you share publicly

A lot of sensitive information about you is publicly available on the Internet. Some of it is a matter of public record, like court records, addresses, and voter registration. But much of it we put on the Internet voluntarily, usually via social media: photos (often location tagged), family members’ names, work history, and a variety of clues about our daily lives. In the end, without even knowing, we are putting ourselves voluntarily in danger.

Hackers can use these clues for social engineering and to answer security questions. Photos of you on social media can even be used to create deepfake videos of you. Almost all online services and Internet-connected devices have privacy settings you can update to restrict the amount of information collected and/or posted publicly online.

2. Limit the information you share privately

Online service providers can be vulnerable to data breaches, which can instantly compromise your privacy, sometimes in embarrassing ways. Even large services like Google or Facebook are not immune to data breaches. You can mitigate the privacy threat of data breaches by limiting the information you share with these services. For instance, you can use Google Chrome or Google Maps without logging into your account, or simply switching to a more privacy-friendly browser like Firefox.

If the services themselves (and their third-party partners) are overly risky for the type of life you live on, then you can switch to privacy-focused services that do not collect user data (and therefore cannot share it with third parties). I for example use ProtonMail, an e-mail account that i anonymous (not linked to your real life identity), and only collect as little user information as possible. Unlike other email service providers (like Gmail) the ProtonMail service also have no ability to read your inbox due to end-to-end encryption. When you use the free version of Gmail for example, the Google servers scan all your emails and accounts in order to offer you better suited advertising online. The same thing happens while using Facebook Messenger.

3. Strengthen your account security

Your password is your first line of defense. Make sure you use strong, unique passwords. A password manager can help you generate and store them so that you don’t have to write them down.

Your second line of defense is two-factor authentication (2FA). This is a way to secure your account with a second piece of information, usually something you have with you on your person, like a code created on an authenticator app or fob.

Avoid using public computers to access your accounts because these can be compromised by keyloggers. And if you absolutely must use a public computer, be sure to log out of your accounts.

4. Protect your devices

Most threat models should include the possibility of your device getting stolen or lost. So it’s important to also have strong passwords protecting your devices. There are apps that allow you to wipe, locate, and potentially identify the thief if your device is stolen.

Another important part of protecting your device is maintaining its software. You can help prevent attackers from installing malware on your device by keeping your apps and operating systems up to date. Software updates often include security patches for recently discovered vulnerabilities. You can also use anti-virus software.

If your device somehow is compromised with spyware, a low-tech privacy solution, ironically popularized by Mark Zuckerberg, is to cover your webcam with a piece of opaque tape

5. Practice email safety

Email is one of the easiest ways for hackers to get into your computer. So it’s important to be alert for phishing attacks, in which the attacker tries to trick you into clicking on a link, downloading an attachment, or giving up sensitive information (such as entering your username and password into a spoofed webpage).

6. Use encryption as much as possible

Encryption is the process of converting readable information into an unreadable string of characters. Without encryption, anyone monitoring the Internet could see the information being transmitted, from credit cards to chat messages. The vast majority of online services use some form of encryption to protect the data travelling to and from their servers. But only a few tech companies encrypt your information in such a way that even the company cannot decrypt it. This kind of encryption is called end-to-end encryption(E2EE). Whenever possible you should use services that offer E2EE because your privacy is protected by default.

Often, there is an E2EE alternative to less private services. For example, ProtonMail is a private alternative to Gmail. Instead of Google Drive, which can access your files, you could use Tresorit. DuckDuckGo is a private alternative to Google Search, and Brave is one example of an Internet browser that doesn’t track your browsing activity. For notes, Standard Notes is one E2EE option.

For instant messaging, you have a number of options. WhatsApp is one of the most popular chat apps, and it features E2EE. But Facebook (which owns WhatsApp) can see who you communicate with and when, and there may even be ways for Facebook to gain access to your messages if it wanted to. Facebook Messenger is not E2EE by default. WeChat offers no E2EE. For better chat security and privacy, I recommend using Wire or Signal.

For web services that are not E2EE, you should at least ensure that your Internet connection is encrypted from your device to the company’s servers. You can check that this is the case by making sure the URL of the website begins with “https”. There’s a browser plugin called HTTPS Everywhere to help you do this automatically.

7. Use a virtual private network (VPN)

A VPN encrypts your Internet connection from your device to the server owned by your VPN service provider. Using a VPN can help keep your web traffic safe from anyone monitoring the network at the local level: hackers, your Internet service provider, and surveillance agencies. A VPN will also mask your true location and IP address, allowing you to browse more privately and access geo-restricted content.

A VPN will not, however, protect your web traffic against the VPN provider. That’s why it’s important to choose a VPN service you trust that does not keep logs of your activity.

8. Use Tor

Lastly, if your lifestyle requires a very high level of Internet privacy (maybe you’re a spy), you should connect to the Internet through Tor. Tor is a technology maintained by the nonprofit Tor Project, which allows you to use the Internet anonymously. It works by bouncing your connection through multiple layers of encryption, both protecting your data and concealing its origin. Tor also allows you to access blocked websites (such as those offering E2EE services) via the dark web. However, the downside of Tor is that it is generally significantly slower compared to using a VPN.

Lastly, I want to say that just because you want privacy, it does not mean you have something to hide. Privacy, as mentioned before, is not only good for building stronger democracies but a fundamental right of the individual in our society. Creating a more private Internet is possible, but it will require a major shift in our culture and from the Internet’s current ad-based business model.

Hope you can use some of the tips here to improve you internet security against hackers and criminals and to regain your privacy. Mostly of the information was gathered in my favorite email provider ProtonMail. If you don’t have an account, go check them out, it’s free.

As always, be kind.

- F.