#it’s not like they needed to either? the google overview based on the first couple of results was already fine?

[lesbinewren]

not surprising but still wild that google added an ai feature to the very top of every single searches that gives incorrect information more often than not. like a beloved restaurant that randomly starts topping all of their food with cyanide one day for no reason. no you’re not allowed to ask them to not top your dish with cyanide this is the future of food

[idontmindifuforgetme]

Hi Cianna, just wanted to say I really admire your study ethic and general vibe on this blog (you inspire me to do better!)

Do you have any advice/tips for good study habits and staying focused? I find that I get some work done, but after a break I can't get back on track

Sorry for the long ask/ studyblr type of question;; what is your favourite hairstyle that you do with your hair! (I also have curly brown hair :)

Have a lovely day also <3

🌻🌻

hi! i touch on a lot of points in this other ask, but a few specific learning techniques i abide by are:

parkinson's law. parkinson's law states that work expands to fill the time. basically if you have an essay that's due in a week, it will magically take you one week to get it done, even if the task itself could've been done in one day. to counter this i just set artifical deadlines for myself--even if an essay is due in a week, my personal deadline has it due in two days.

prime your brain prior to learning. if you need to study a biology chapter, pre-skim it the night before. this is not the time to go into detail--it's the time to familiarize yourself with the overview of the topic, so you should only be making a quick scan of the chapter. another priming method is to make a concept map of topics before diving into a chapter. as you skim write down key terms haphazardly, google those you don't recognize, and draw a concept map linking them together. this is effective bc it requires you to actually put effort into connecting the topics, takes no longer than 15 minutes, and speeds up the learning process that follows. it doesn't matter if you find out you're wrong once you dive in; what's important is you're actively thinking of how these topics coexist, as opposed to mindlessly taking notes or highlighting only to forget what you learned a couple hours later. i'm also a fan of concept maps bc i get to go back and highlight stuff i'm weak in, which is always a plus.

if you like to take notes, use it as another means of active recall. don't just passively take notes as you go along. what i like to do is i read a paragraph, close the book, then try to take down notes based off memory alone. this helps me both phrase the topic in my own words and realize what my learning gaps are, rather than just passively summarize without putting effort into truly understanding/memorizing something. anything i get wrong i hammer into my brain until i can't get it wrong anymore.

take notes effectively. our brain does not learn in sentences and paragraphs. it learns in bullet points, diagrams, and figures--and that's how i like to frame my notes. first i ask myself if i actually need to take notes to begin with, or if there are online notes out there i can use to save time (which, as a stem student, there typically are). if i do decide to take notes, i never mindlessly summarize. i always condense the material into bullet points, diagrams, concept maps, or visual representations. i also like to phrase my notes as questions rather than just passive summaries, so that when i review them i'm already testing myself in a way. most people would not understand my notes bc they're either very low-yield stuff, stuff i'm weak in, or bare-bones fragments of information.

always prioritize weaknesses. if you're weaker at chapter 18 of your textbook vs chapter 1, maybe start with chapter 18. don't spend 6 hours taking notes on chapter 1 if you're already strong in chapter 1. always attack your weaknesses first.

practice practice practice!! so so important. i owe all my As to mock exams, quizzes i make myself, end-of-chapter questions etc etc. imo practice matters a lot more than passive content review.

interleaving concepts helps with retention. an example of this is i like to do biology and chemistry one day, biochemistry and organic chemistry the next day, physics and psychology the day after... i'm not just doing biology all day, every day. another thing i like to do if i'm in a massive rut is i hop between tons of different subjects on the same day, which keeps me from getting bored/helps me understand the subjects better through distinguishing their differences.

retrospective timetable. an example of this is if i find i'm pretty weak in a particular physics topic, the next few days will disproportionately focus on physics over other subjects. inversely, if i just breezed through a biology chapter, the next few days will have less biology than initially planned. i'm constantly going back and revising my study timetable based on my performance of the day, rather than relying on a rigid prospective timetable that doesn't take into account my progress.

less passive learning, more active. spaced repetition is a big one. i love anki for this bc there's an algorithm that dictates how often topics come up again based on how well you answer them. other methods include active recall, having friends quiz you, and trying to teach the topic to others (or the plushie in your bedroom haha). if you find you're struggling to simplify topics and explain them, that's a sign you don't understand them very well yourself.

[incurablehumanist]

Humanism and SPN: a match made...on Earth?

so i think it’s time i explained this blog’s whole idk theme. it’s raison d’etre, if you wanna get fancy abt it. like, it’s prolly pretty obvious (it’s literally in the name) but i still wanna break it down and make sure people really get where i’m coming from. this is also something i wanna talk abt a lot during my Great Rewatch so i think it would help to have something to refer back to when this topic inevitably comes up in future. let’s dive in, shall we?

despite Supernatural being a show about, obviously, the supernatural, I wholly believe that it is, at it’s core, a story about Humanism (the philosophy). or it’s a show based on the same foundations as Humanism (the philosophy). or it’s just very, very, Humanism (the philosophy) friendly. either way, as a humanist it gives me ALL the feels and I really, desperately want to talk about it, so that’s what i’m gonna do!

to get specific, I’m talking about modern Humanist philosophy, frequently referred to as “secular humanism”. you can find a good overview of what that means on the American Humanist Association’s website, especially their 3 Humanist Manifestos (available to read here, here, and here. the last of those is the current manifesto as accepted by the AHA, but all of them provide good context of what Humanism means as a whole). this is as opposed to Renaissance or Religious Humanism, which have notable differences, though tbh a case could be made for religious humanism bc of the whole “god is canonically real in SPN” thing. When I talk about Humanism though I’m almost always gonna be talking abt modern “secular�� Humanism. also i can literally never decide whether humanism should be capitalized or not so expect lots of waffling on that. now tbh I'm not super educated on Humanism as a philosophy beyond the manifestos and what can be found with a cursory google search, so I'm gonna be learning more abt it as I go, but i understand it enough (and have considered myself a secular humanist for long enough) to have Opinions. I’m hoping that as I examine the show through this lens i’ll both gain a better understanding of Humanism as a philosophy as well as how supernatural relates to it. no promises that anything good or coherent will come of it but I'm excited to see where it leads me! also if you too have Opinions on this topic I would absolutely looooooooove to hear them. seriously. hit me up. finally, for context, i’m gonna include some quotes about Humanism which I think best exemplify its ideology and will hopefully give people unfamiliar with it an idea of where I'm coming from/why I think SPN is such a perfect representation of it. I also highly recommend reading the manifestos on AHA's website, since they’re basically the horse’s mouth when it comes to the modern (Western) Humanism movement. beyond it’s relevance to SPN as a narrative, it’s also just a beautiful perspective on life, and it always makes me happy to read about it. like you’re about to do right now! here we go: "While there is much that we do not know, humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No deity will save us; we must save ourselves." – Humanist Manifesto II (1973) "Humanism is the light of my life and the fire in my soul. It is the deep felt conviction, in every fiber of my being that human love is a power far transcending the relentless, onward rush of our largely deterministic cosmos. All human life must seek a reason for existence within the bounds of an uncaring physical world, and it is love coupled with empathy, democracy, and a commitment to selfless service which undergirds the faith of a humanist." – Bette Chambers, former president of the AHA "Humanism is an approach to life which encourages ethical and fulfilling living on the basis of reason and humanity, and rejects superstition and religion. The most immediate impact of living as a Humanist is that we believe this life is all there is - so what we do and the choices we make really count." – Stephen Fry "Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests." – Isaac Asimov "Does religion fill a much needed gap? It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled: we have a psychological need for God -- imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant -- and the need has to be satisfied whether God really exists or not. But could it be that God clutters up a gap that we'd be better off filling with something else? Science, perhaps? Art? Human friendship? Humanism? Love of this life in the real world, giving no credence to other lives beyond the grave?" – Richard Dawkins "There is nothing new about humanism. It is the yielding to Satan's first temptation of Adam and Eve: "Ye shall be as gods." (Gen. 3:5)" – Billy Graham, Christian evangelist (lol)

[choices-and-voices]

hi sorry if this has already been asked somewhere but im was wondering if you had any tips on how to get the best experience without having to pay ?

Hi there! Don’t worry, this question hasn’t been asked before, and I am honestly super flattered that you value my opinion enough to ask it ☺️ I’m not sure how helpful my tips will be because I don’t exactly consider myself an expert in this, but here are some things that came to mind! I’ve gone into quite a bit of detail, but if you want a quicker overview, just stick to the bold headings. Also, if any of the people reading this have good tips of their own, please lmk! I’m always learning new things about how to do this too 💕

1. This one’s a bit obvious, but still – take the opportunities that the game gives you to earn free diamonds. That means watching the bonus ads every day (5 diamonds/day), playing through chapters as often as you can (including replaying old books if there are no new releases – 2 diamonds/chapter), and watching ads at the end of book chapters for an extra diamond. Obviously, all this is a bit of a balancing act – you want to be playing Choices often enough to build up your diamonds, but not so often that it takes over your life and makes you feel frustrated, because what’s the point of it if it’s not fun anymore, y’know? So I’ve always been careful not to overdo it. Even if all you do is watch the bonus ads every day, that’s 35 diamonds/week – basically, one big diamond scene a week – which is honestly not too shabby.

2. At any one time, only play 1-2 books that you’re really invested in, and try to supplement that with another 2-3 books that you’re not really invested in or are replaying just for diamonds. As tempting as it can be to rush through every good-looking book in the app all at once, that just leads to a situation where a) you’re trying to divide your free keys between waaay too many releases, and b) there are so many demands on you for diamonds, you never get to consistently spend them on anything. So I personally think it’s best to only read a couple of good books at once, and instead of marathoning them, break them up with chapters from less-good books – this builds up your diamond stash for spending on the good books. Which leads into my next point:

3. Don’t zip through books too fast – even if most of the chapters are already released, spreading them out helps you earn more diamonds for them in the meantime. I’m really lucky to have been playing Choices for so long that almost all the books were presented to me in weekly release format – if I downloaded the app for the first time today, and saw all the fully-released books on there, I feel like I would be way too overwhelmed to play. So I reckon that, even if a book isn’t technically a weekly release for you, make it a weekly release! You might decide to play all the books you’re really invested in on a particular day when you have more free time – say, a Sunday. Then, you have Monday-Saturday every week to earn diamonds for those books, and something to look forward to at the end of it all. As for what you do with those diamonds:

4. Be smart about what you spend diamonds on. There are a couple of different components to this tip – it involves things like a) figuring out which types of purchases are worth diamonds in general, b) figuring out which types of purchases you want to prioritise in certain books, and c) planning ahead before you start playing a book chapter about where you might want to spend diamonds. To address each of those things one-by-one:

a) Figure out which types of purchases are worth diamonds in general. Off the top of my head, there are 6 main types of diamond purchases in Choices: ‘friendly’ scenes with LIs (12-25 diamonds), ‘steamy’ scenes with LIs (25-30 diamonds), scenes with your whole friendship group, collectible items (e.g. the tapestry pieces in Bloodbound, the clues in Veil of Secrets, etc.), outfits, and pets. Your mileage may vary a lot on which of these are most important to you, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. But my general advice would be to i) prioritise group scenes above LI scenes, ii) prioritise ‘friendly’ LI scenes above ‘steamy’ LI scenes, iii) avoid collectibles, and iv) go for outfits and pets only if you really like the look of them. This advice is based on the fact that, firstly, I think you get a better experience of immersion in a book if you know a bit about all the characters around MC, rather than just about one LI; secondly, ‘friendly’ LI scenes tend to tell you more about the LI than ‘steamy’ scenes, which are often 80-90% copied-and-pasted erotica despite being more expensive; thirdly, collectibles are a massive drain on diamond stores, and almost always unlock quite short, generic scenes that it’s easy to find on Tumblr or YouTube; and fourthly, both outfits and pets don’t do much except appear in the story at key moments, which can be a really nice touch but is still only needed in moderation. Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, and you might find that those exceptions are sometimes book-specific. Which leads me to Part B of this point:

b) Figure out which types of purchases you want to prioritise in certain books. It’s all well and good for me to say that group scenes are usually better than LI scenes, but when I’m playing a book with an amazing LI but a pretty meh supporting cast (*cough cough* Myra Dixon carries Baby Bump on her shoulders *cough cough*), I obviously may need to adjust my spending habits slightly. Moreover, by focusing all your diamond spending on just one main thing per book – like Myra’s romance in Baby Bump, or the party’s side-quests in Blades of Light and Shadow, or the posse in Queen B – I think you end up with a much better playing experience, because you feel like you’re seeing at least one facet of the story in-depth instead of getting a patchy surface view of lots of different facets. For the most part, the purchases you prioritise in a book can mostly depend on personal taste, but there are a few books where some background knowledge might be helpful in the decision. Four things that I think are worth flagging are that i) the ‘competition books’ (America’s Most Eligible, Queen B, Hot Couture) do require regular outfit purchases to win, although winning isn’t that much better an experience than being runner-up; ii) Veil of Secrets and Nightbound are two books where it’s worth saving 30-35 diamonds for the final chapter, because your MC is forced to leave the small-town setting if you don’t; iii) Across the Void is a book that frequently invites you to spend diamonds to save characters’ lives, but their death arcs are honestly much better-written and more sensible than their survival arcs; and iv) the It Lives series is the only one where characters can die due to an accumulation of choices you make throughout the story, so maybe it’s worth keeping some diamonds in reserve for that one. Which just leaves us with one more sub-point:

c) Plan ahead before you start playing a book chapter about where you might want to spend diamonds. I want to take this opportunity to thank whichever people in the fandom maintain the Choices wiki, because oh my gosh, they are lifesavers. For the last year or so, my response whenever a new Choices chapter is released has been to wait a few hours, Google ‘[book name] choices’, open the wiki result, and skim through to check how many diamond choices are available & how much they cost. Because all the wiki includes are the possible responses to every choice presented – it doesn’t even state the wording of the choice itself – this is a relatively spoiler-free technique that helps a lot with big picture planning. For example, you might decide not to buy an early group scene because there’s a nicer-sounding LI scene later on, and come to think of it, you should replay a few more chapters of another book first to save up the diamonds for that scene. If you don’t mind encountering just a few more spoilers before you play the chapter, you can also scout out its diamond scenes in more detail by searching the relevant book or character tags on Tumblr, or by looking for a chapter stream on YouTube. You may decide that you don’t need to buy a diamond scene if you’ve already seen it played through by someone else, or alternatively, you may decide whether or not to buy a diamond scene based on how good it looks in an existing playthrough – in either case, these techniques can help you thoughtfully ration out the diamonds you have, instead of being caught off-guard whenever a diamond choice comes up.

5. On the subject of the Choices wiki, it’s also a great way to maximise your success in books without using diamonds. Whenever there’s a ‘right’ option to a choice that gives you a better outcome later in the chapter, that’s indicated in the wiki. So with a bit of pre-reading of the wiki before you play the chapter, and/or with the wiki open on a separate screen as you play, you can get the best outcome without having to buy that outfit or bonus scene that promised you ‘an advantage.’ Obviously, your mileage may vary on whether this method is actually worth it, or whether it takes all the fun out of Choices by ‘cheating’ at the gaming aspect. I personally view Choices as more of an interactive story app than a game I’m trying to beat, so I have no issue with this method, but opinions may differ and that’s okay.

6. If you’re really feeling like a lack of diamonds is limiting your playing experience, it may be best to start out with ‘cheaper’ books until you have more diamonds stored up. In this case, I’m using ‘cheaper’ to mean books where there are fewer diamond scenes, where diamond scenes are less expensive, and/or where diamond scenes don’t play as big a role in the plot. It can be hard to identify which books fit this bill, but as a general rule, it’s more likely to be the earlier-released ones or less-popular ones. Some which I’d recommend are the first few books of the Freshman series, the #LoveHacks series, the High School Story series, the Perfect Match series, Most Wanted, The Heist: Monaco, Wishful Thinking, Bachelorette Party, and The Royal Masquerade.

7. Finally, a really quick tip for making the most out of free keys – keys are used up as soon as you start a book chapter, and refresh ~every 3 hours. This means that, even if you don’t have time to play chapters every 3 hours, you should try to open the app roughly that often and just click to unlock a chapter. When you finally have time to play, you’ll have a whole lot of chapters ready to go plus another two refreshed keys, and you can power through them at whatever speed you need to fit in them into your break time or to earn diamonds for an upcoming release. Once again, this is a tip that may need to be practised in moderation, because you don’t want to be constantly interrupting your life to load up an app on your phone. But even if you just log in and unlock chapters every 6 hours, or every 12 hours, that’s still 2-4 extra chapters ready for you at the end of the day plus your two free keys.

I think that’s about all for my tips! Thanks for reading, and I hope it helped at least a bit ❤️

[meredithalden]

DATING SIMS ARE GOOD AND YOU SHOULD PLAY THEM: A MANIFESTO

hello everyone, I am here today to talk to you about the most important literary genre ever created. yes that's right. you know exactly which one I mean.

This write-up presumes that you know absolutely zero about dating sims (to be more specific: dating simulation videogames), except for the fact that they exist. If you didn’t know that, well, now you know that. If any of this is a retread, my apologies. Please feel extremely free to comment, make corrections, additions, pile on, discourse, etc.

Part 1.  JAPANESE DATING SIMS: INCEPTION

Dating sims weren't invented by Konami, but they're the ones responsible for massively popularizing it and establishing all the now-classic genre standards (or genre cliches, depending on how you look at it). Tokimeki Memorial came out in 1994 for PC.

Per Wikipedia, lightly edited for clarity: "In a typical dating sim, the player controls a male avatar surrounded by a variety of female characters. The gameplay involves conversing with these girls, attempting to increase their internal 'love meter' through correct choices of dialogue and action. The game lasts for a fixed period of in-game time, such as one month, or three years. When the game ends, the player either loses the game if they failed to properly win over any of the girls, or they 'complete' one of the girls' routes, achieving eternal love (or getting sex, depending on what type of sub-genre the game falls under). This gives the games more replay value, since the player can focus on a different girl each time, trying to get a different ending."

Tokimeki Memorial (and all of its subsequent sequels and spin-offs) take place during the 3 years of the player character's Japanese high school career, including archetypal events such as the sports festival, the cultural festival, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's day, and (at the end of the game) graduation.

A poster on the Something Awful forums made an extremely comprehensive screenshot & text-based Let's Play of Tokimeki games 1 through 3, and also one of the spin-off games, where the genders are flipped. In that spin-off, the player avatar is a high school girl, pursuing various boys. (In general, gender-flipped genre variants where you play as a girl are referred to as "Otome Games," i.e. "Games for Young Ladies").

These Tokimeki Memorial Let's Plays are archived here.

In order to understand this foundational series, you definitely do not have to read this whole archive (it's approximately 1 billion words altogether. These games are long and text-heavy), but I would recommend reading reading the summary write-ups for each game in the overview page that I linked up above, and maybe the first couple update chapters for each game, so you can get a feel for the overall vibe & conventions of the genre. Or you can probably find a bunch of video LPs on YouTube, if that's more your style! Or you can play them yourself! (I played Girl's Side 2 on a Nintendo DS emulator, and enjoyed myself a whole bunch.)

I like this particular Let's Play a lot because   A. Reading is just personally easier and faster for me than watching   B. The author is really thorough and takes the time to explain all the idiosyncratic Japanese cultural tropes and references that come up, and I think that's neat.

Part 2.  THE CONTAGION SPREADS

Any game with characters that you can "romance," or build up their "affection stats" by making various choices, owes this mechanic to dating sims.

Some examples of games from completely different genres, which nevertheless incorporate dating sim mechanics:

Every Dragon Age game, every Mass Effect game, every Knights of the Old Republic game (thanks for doing what you do, Bioware!), Fallout 4, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto 4, Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, Final Fantasy 7, the entire Persona series, The Witcher 3, indie darlings Oxenfree and Night in The Woods…

And also, there are a bunch of games that ARE straight-up dating sims, but stray from the genre-typical high school setting and genre-typical cast of beautiful hetero romanceable characters. They may also stray from the convention of having every character be "winnable."

You probably already know about Dream Daddy, where you play as a dad, and date other dads: https://kotaku.com/dream-daddy-creators-explain-why-you-can-t-smooch-all-t-1797354455

Rose of Winter is about a female mercenary warrior hired to escort 4 handsome princes: https://kotaku.com/rose-of-winter-is-a-visual-novel-about-first-love-1788036938

Katawa Shoujo is about a boy who transfers to a school for disabled children: http://www.katawa-shoujo.com/about.php

Monster Prom is about getting hot monsters to agree to be your prom date: http://monsterprom.pizza/

Part 3.  HEY YOU. YEAH YOU, BEHIND THE LAPTOP. HEY. YOU. I'M TALKING TO YOU.  

*puts on sunglasses*  Let's get...... metafictional.

I’m not going to say much about any of the following games. Just play them. Play them blind, or as close to blind as possible.

Play this:

don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story

Here is a non-spoilery review if you're curious to learn more first: https://killscreen.com/articles/review-dont-take-it-personally-babe-it-just-aint-your-story/

And then play this:

Hatoful Boyfriend

steam store link (DON'T READ ANY STEAM REVIEWS.)

Non-spoilery review here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/12/hatoful-boyfriend-review-love-pigeons-japanese-dating-sim

And then play this next one.

Be advised that it gets heavy. If you play it at night, maybe don't be alone in the house. Content warning: “This game is not suitable for children, or those who are easily disturbed.”

Doki Doki Literature Club

steam store link (DO NOT READ ANY STEAM REVIEWS. DO NOT READ ANY OTHER REVIEWS. DO NOT READ ANYTHING. DO NOT GOOGLE THIS GAME. DON'T ASK YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT IT EITHER.*)

*If you want to know why it's good, or if you want to know more about the specific nature of the content warning before deciding if this game is okay for you to play, feel free to ask me. I'll let you know whatever you need to know to make an informed decision so you can feel comfortable.

~ The End ~

Thank you for coming to my thesis defense. Everyone, be sure to tell me which dateable dads, pigeons, monsters, and fictional Japanese high school students you think are the cutest and the best and most dateable.

[rigelmejo]

Now, for fun, I just wanna compare MY past study methods to the massive immersion approach.

The massive immersion approach, stage 1 summary:

immerse 50% or more of the time.

learn kana *(or radicals if studying Chinese)

learn 1,000 kanji *(or hanzi) using SRS flashcards of Remember the Kanji, and use mnemonics if needed.

read through a grammar guide, just read through it do not worry about memorizing or understanding everything.

learn the 1,000 most common words using SRS flashcards

make (or use) sentence flashcards, in which you generally only are learning one new word/concept per card. Do this to continue increasing vocab, kanji (or hanzi) knowledge, grammar familiarity.

The study methods I used:

watch target level content from day 1 (but in english). Look up words/phrases I don’t know every once in a while. (In retrospect, I would have probably made more progress if I’d moved onto chinese-subtitles-only earlier on).

look up the radicals, get some familiarity with them and their relation to the characters. Mainly I read the writtenchinese.com “How to Read Chinese Characters: A Beginner’s Guide.” Free lists of the radicals can be found all over the place, and in most textbooks. This took a few hours.

read through a grammar guide, just aiming to get an overview of the grammar structures. This took two intense weeks of reading through it. I looked up “free chinese grammar guide” on google, and read through chinese-grammar.org. I also reference All Set Learning Chinese Grammar website on occasion, when I run into grammar that confuses me when I’m reading/watching something.

every couple weeks, I attempted: to watch a chinese show with only chinese subtitles, and to read a chinese novel with no dictionary. Ouch my brain felt fried. I did this mainly to gauge my progress, and figure out where I needed to study more.

every week, I attempted the same as above - except I allowed myself to look up whatever words I wanted. So for a show, I paused and looked up new words. For reading, I read with the aid of a Reader (Pleco Reader, Idiom, Zhongwen chrome extension etc) and looked up new words. I would do this in short bursts until I felt “drained/fried” lol.  This is the closest I did to the kind of “immersion” suggested in the massive immersion approach guide. Except I would say my immersion was “intensive” since I looked up a lot of things, and gave up within several minutes each time because the activity was so draining. 

I did attempt to learn some hanzi characters on their own. I bought the Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters (800 Characters), and Tuttle Reading and Writing Chinese (Simplified Edition). I did like both books, as they provided mnemonics to help me remember the hanzi (Also I just like reading books better than flashcards). I read through about 1/2 of each book. Even though I prefer reading, reading reference books is still a slog. I read through a chapter. Later, I’d pick up the book, take a highlighter, and would highlight hanzi I recognized on sight. So I read in bursts, until eventually the slog they were to read outweighed how much they were benefiting me. After that, I picked up most new hanzi by learning them as part of words in the following step (and when looking things up in immersion). I would, and still occasionally do, flip through the books again and highlight hanzi I recognize on sight. I hope that my highlighting gives me some at least estimate of the minimum amount of characters I’m familiar with.

learn the 1,000 most common words using SRS flashcards. I used Ben Whatley’s 1000 most common chinese words in dramas Memrise deck. I did this primarily because when I googled “how to learn to read chinese fast,” I found an article of a person who did basically what I was aiming to do, and they used this memrise deck to do it. I read the article “The Fastest Way to Learn to Read Chinese.” This article suggested learning the first 1000 most common words to help reading ability (rather than isolated characters, which are not always words on their own). Then, to move to graded readers next to start practicing reading while new vocab is built up easily with the reading material that’s at your level. Now that I’ve completed the deck, I agree with the article author’s experience. I am now able to comfortably read graded readers. It is now also much easier to watch shows with only-chinese subtitles, and read chinese novels that aren’t graded readers, and follow the gist by only looking up a few words (instead of virtually 1/2 the words or more). If your goal is to eventually be able to comprehend the main gist of target language materials made for native speakers, then learning the 1,000 most common words will give you a noticable improvement. Regardless of the language you are studying, I highly recommend doing this. (It also makes it much easier to talk to people, write, and listen to people in conversations... its still difficult, but much more doable with this solid basis of high frequency words).

The main differences between my study methods, and the massive immersion approach:

I don’t do nearly as much “immersion” where I sit down, engage with content and only look up something every several minutes. I usually either intensely study when I’m immersing by looking almost everything up, or I look up nothing and see how much I can comprehend. I plan to start doing more immersion like the massive immersion approach - immersion where I watch/read for enjoyment, and only look up things occasionally. This will be much more tolerable, now that I have a bigger base of vocabulary. I also feel this approach would be easier to do on a regular basis, since it is not as intensive.

I never did anything special to learn to ‘recognize’ the meaning of characters. I know why I didn’t - I studied japanese before, for 2ish years, and I did Remember the Kanji flashcards for it. And I hated it - cause I generally hate flashcards. I only tolerated the 1,000 word chinese deck because KNOWING 1,000 common words has a payoff that is SO worth the mind numbing hatred I have for flashcards. Now that i’ve done them, I just have to review them occasionally. 2 sucky months of flashcards, that was it. With japanese, I did months and months of flashcards... and I really never even got through more than 500 kanji. I struggled a ton with kanji. So with chinese, I decided screw it, I was going to just learn the characters IN words. Because when I took chinese in high school, that’s what our teacher had us do. Simple as that. In retrospect, I believe there is benefit in me going into Remembering the Hanzi and at LEAST reading through the book, and/or finding a nice website of hanzi mnemonics and reading through 1,000. Although I’m not sure how much benefit... as I already know 1,000 ish right now. I think the idea of having a ‘meaning’ associated with each hanzi would be helpful. That way when I run into new words, I’ve got these ‘building block’ meanings to help me remember that they combine to ‘create’ the new word. Right now I learned most words as their 2characters together (for example baohu, baozheng, baozhong). And I have no idea what bao means on its own, so I have difficulty remembering new words with ‘bao.’ But the examples I just gave, I’m better at remembering - because I know what zheng and zhong mean on their own, they help me remember ‘bao+zhong” = take care, and “bao+zheng” means guarantee. Baohu took me ages longer to remember, because it means protect, but I don’t know what bao or hu mean, so I just struggled to remember it was specifically “bao+hu.” I think if I had more building block meanings to attach to individual characters, it would help me learn new words better. If possible, I’d prefer to read through the Remember the Hanzi book, and/or a list of mnemonics for them. Then I’d like to just go through a Memrise hanzi deck (like Ben Whatley’s) just as review. I would prefer not to use a flashcard deck as the main way I learn them though. 

I did not plan to do sentence mining. I’m still unsure if I want to. If I do eventually do sentence mining, I’ll either use Spoonfed Chinese Anki deck (if it covers enough words, and if i can tolerate anki...), or Clozemaster Chinese course (since it covers 10K is words in sentence contexts). I also found a sentence deck on Memrise, but it seems messily made and it tests typing every single time - when I really only want to test meaning, so the cards slow me down by making me type full sentences over and over. 

At the moment I plan to do a majority of my study-time immersion on graded readers, and HSK 4 level webnovels. I would prefer to pick up a lot of new vocabulary by reading things that include the experience of “sentences with only one new concept/word” without making me use flashcards. The other main way I plan to pick up new words is to watch shows in chinese only, and look up new words in the subtitles every few minutes. I really... really... really hate flashcards. I can’t state that enough. Flashcard study is a huge reason I gave up studying japanese in the past - my study method was like over 50% going through 12 Memrise decks (the nukemarine Standard Guide To Japanese Literacy decks, which do work GREAT and gave me the first significant reading improvement I had in the language). I did so many flashcards though, and i hate flashcards. So I eventually dropped everything and stopped completely. Ben Whatley’s 1000 most common word deck is the ONLY deck over 500 items that I’ve ever finished. And a big reason I succeeded was being in lockdown, having nowhere to be, and my brain for once being focused enough to tolerate flashcards for a few weeks. So you can imagine how my progress went in japanese, I got through 4-5 of the 12 nukemarine decks, a few hundred items on the 10k core deck on anki, and then decided I had to stop.  With french, I learned the 300 most common, 500 most common, and 1000 most common words with lists instead. I bookmarked/printed wordlists, and read through them every few days. Reading long blocks is easier for me than short flashcards, I don’t know why. It literally... takes me an hour to get through like 20 flashcards. I am incredibly bad at focusing on them, my brain is just almost never in the mood to focus. So... while I might eventually try out sentence mining, and seeing if it helps me... for the most part it sounds wholly unappealing to me to do it through the use of flashcards.

So, in summary:

I’m adding regular immersion of shows/novels, with just a little word lookup, to my study routine. I think this is a good thing to add, in addition to my occassional intensive immersion where I look up everything.

I’m considering reading through Heisig Remember the Hanzi, and/or a mnemonics list for them. Does anyone have a link to a good mnemonics website for the hanzi? Please recommend me a good resource if you know of one. In addition, I might go through Ben Whatley’s hanzi decks just for a bit of review/exposure to the ‘meaning’ of individual characters.

I may consider using Clozemaster as a sentence mining tool in the future. I may consider sentence mining premade decks if I find any useful ones. I only plan to do this if I try it, and feel it’s helping me improve significantly.

And, unrelated to the massive immersion method comparison: I plan to complete the Ben Whatley 1000-2000 most common word Memrise deck. I also plan to just glance though the HSK 3-4 Memrise decks and study the words I don’t know yet. I like using the Memrise decks to get a measurable number I can look at of words I am sure I’m familiar with. I go through the HSK decks to ensure that I have a rough estimate of what level I’m at, in comparison to a standard measure of language proficiency.

I also plan to read through some of my textbooks, but that is a low priority, because they will contribute the least to my immediate goals. I want to read them just to patch up any gaps in knowledge I have of common characters/common words, and any gaps in knowledge I have of basic grammar up to HSK 4. I have not been struggling with grammar at all in my reading/watching, so I haven’t had the need to look at my textbooks for any more specific goal. I generally only prioritize studying my textbooks when I want to get more grammar explanations and exposure to grammar structures in sentences meant to explain them. 

[comp6841]

Lectures - Week 5 (Mixed)

Vulnerabilities

One of the most fundamental concepts in security is the idea of a vulnerability - a flaw in the design of a system which can be used to compromise (or cause an unintended usage of) the system. A large majority of bugs in programming are a result of memory corruptions which can be abused to take control - the most ubiquitous example of this is the buffer overflow; the idea that you can overwrite other data alongside a variable which can change both data and control of a program. The common case is when programmers fail to validate the length of the input when reading in a string in C. Another fairly common bug relates to the overflow of unsigned integers; failing to protect against the wraparound can have unintended consequences in control flow.

‘NOP Sled’

Richard also mentioned in the 2016 lectures the idea of a NOP sled which I found quite interesting. The idea is that due to run time differences and randomisation of the stack, the address the program will jump to (from the return address) can sometimes be difficult to predict. So to make it more likely it will jump where the attack wants, he converts a large set of memory to NOP (no operation) instructions which will just skip to the next one; then finally after the “NOP sled” his code will execute.

printf(”%s Printf Vulnerabilities”);

One of the most hilarious programming vulnerabilities related to the usage of the printf function. Basically if you have an input which is accepted from the terminal and you plug this (without parsing) into a printf, an attacker could potentially feed in an input such as “%s”. (i.e. the title) Now since you haven’t specified a 2nd argument, it will just keep reading all the variables in memory until you hit a “\0″. In fact you can abuse this even further to overwrite memory with the “%n” format string - it will overwrite an integer with the number of characters written so far.

Handling Bugs

Many of the bugs we know of today are actually reported in online databases such as the National Vulnerability Database or Common Vulnerability & Exposures (CVE) Databases. There is actually lots of pretty cool examples online in these, however most of these have been actually fixed - we call them zero day vulnerabilities if the vendor hasn’t fixed them (and if they are then abused then zero day exploits).

When working in security, it’s important to understand the potential legal consequences associated with publicly releasing damaging vulnerabilities in software. This is where responsible disclosure comes in - the idea that if you find a bug you disclose it to a software vendor first and then give them a reasonable period of time to fix it first. I think I discussed an example from Google’s Project Zero Team a couple weeks ago - however just from a quick look there was a case in March where their team released the details on a flaw in the macOS’s copy-on-write (CoW) after the 90 day period for patching. (it’s important to note they gave them reasonable time to fix it)

OWASP Top 10

This was a pretty cool website we got referred to mainly regarding the top bugs relating to web security (link); I’ll give a brief overview here:

Injection - sends invalid data to get software to produce an unintended flow of control (i.e. SQL injection)

Broken authentication - logic issues in authentication mechanisms

Sensitive data exposure - leaks in privacy of sensitive customer data

XML External Entities (XXE) - parsing XML input with links to external bodies

Broken action control - improper access checks when accessing data

Security misconfigurations - using default configs, failing to patch flaws, unnecessary services & pages, as well as unprotected files

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) - client injects Javascript into a website which is displayed to another user

Insecure deserialisation - tampering with serialization of user data

Using components with known vulnerabilities - out of date dependencies

Insufficient logging and monitoring - maintaining tabs on unusual or suspicious activity, as well as accesses to secure data

Some Common Bugs

Just a couple of the bugs that were explored in some of the 2016 lecture videos:

Signed vs unsigned integers casts - without proper checks can lead to unintended control flow

Missing parenthesis after if statement - only executes next line and not all within the indentation

Declaring array sizes wrong - buf[040] will be interpreted as base 8

Wrong comparators - accidentally programming ‘=‘ when you intended ‘==‘

A lot of the more common bugs we used to have are getting a lot easier to detect in the compilation process; GCC has a lot of checks built in. Valgrind is also a really awesome tool to make sure your not making any mistakes with memory.

WEP Vulnerability

I actually discussed this idea already in the week 1 lectures here - just for the sake of revision I will give a basic overview here. The basic idea is that WEP uses a stream cipher RC4 which XORs the message with a key; however the issue is that we know information about the structure of TCP/IP packets. Within a local network the local IPs are usually of the form A.B.C.D (i.e. 192.168.20.4 for a specific computer) where each letter represents a byte in the range 0-255. (0-255 are usually reserved and not used for computers in the network) Due to subnetting (i.e. with a subnet mask 255.255.255.0 on private network) the last byte D is usually the only one that changes - this means we effectively have 254 combinations.

Since we know where the destination address is located within the packet, an attacker can potentially record a packet and modify this last byte - they can send out all 256 possible combinations to the router (remember it’s encrypted so we can’t limit it to 254). The router will then decrypt the message and then encrypt it with the key used for communications with the attacker - and voila the system is compromised.

Hashes

Richard gave a brief overview of the basis of many of our hash functions which is the Merkle-Damgard construction. The basic idea behind it is to break the message into blocks - the size varies on the hash type and if its not a multiple of the required length then we need to apply a MD-compliant padding function. This usually occurs with Merkle-Damgard strengthening which involves encoding the length of the original message into the padding.

To start the process of hashing we utilise an initialisation vector (number specific to the algorithm) and combine it with the first message block using a certain compression function. The output of this is then combined with the 2nd message block and so forth. When we get to the end we apply a finalisation function which typically involves another compression function (sometimes the same) which will reduce the large internal state to the required hash size and provide a better mixing of the bits in the final hash sum.

Length Extension Attacks

I think after looking at the Merkle-Damgard construction it now becomes pretty obvious why using MACs of the form h(key|data) where the length of the data is known are vulnerable to length-extension attacks. All you need to be able to reverse in the above construction is the finalisation function and the extra padding (which is dependent upon the length which we’re assuming we know); then you can keep adding whatever message blocks you want to the end!

Digital Signatures

The whole idea behind these signatures is providing authentication - the simplest method of this is through asymmetric key encryption (i.e. RSA). If your given a document, you can just encrypt it with your private key - to prove to others that you indeed signed it, they can attempt to decrypt it with your public key. There is a problem with this approach however - encryption takes a lot of computation and when the documents become large it gets even worse. The answer to this is to use our newfound knowledge of hashing for data integrity - if we use a hash (’summary of the document’), we can just encrypt this with our private key as a means of signing it!

Verifying Websites

One of the hardest issues we face with the ‘interwebs’ is that it is very difficult to authenticate an entity on the other end. We’ve sort of scrambled together a solution to this for verifying websites - certificate authorities. (I could go on for ages about the problems with these being ‘single points of failure’ but alas I don’t have time)

The idea behind these bodies is that a website will register with the entity with a specific public key. The CA will then link this public key (in a “big ol’ secure database”) with the ‘identity’ of the website. To understand how it works its best to consider the example of when you access any website with HTTPS. (i.e. SSL) When you visit www.example.com, they will then provide their public key and a digital signature of key (signed by the cert authority’s private key) in the form of a X.509 certificate. The user will have access to CA’s public key as part of their browser and will then be able to verify the identity of the website. (the cert is encrypted with the CA’s private key - see above image) An attacker is unable to fake it as they don’t know the certificate authorities’ private key.

Attacking Hashed Passwords

Given there is only a limited number of potential hashes for each algorithm, there is a growing number of websites online which provide databases of plaintext and their computed hashes - these are what we refer to as hash tables. We can check a hash very quickly against all the hashes in this database - if we find a match, we either know the password or have found a collision.

Rainbow tables are a little more complex - in order to make one you need a hashing function (the same as the password) and a reduction function; the latter is used to convert the hash into text (i.e. a base64 encode and truncation). These tables are made of a number of ‘chains’ of a specified length (let’s say we choose 1,000,000) - to create a chain you start with a random seed then apply both the above functions to this seed. You then iteratively do this process another 1,000,000 times (chosen length) and store the final seed and value (only these). In order to try and determine a match to the rainbow table, you apply the same two functions to the password for the required length - however, at each step you compare the hash to the result of each of the chains in the table. If you find a match, you can reproduce the password.

Both of the attacks against password hashes described above rely on an attacker doing a large amount of work in advance, which they will hopefully be able to use in cracking many passwords in the future. (it’s basically a space-time tradeoff) An easy way we can destroy all the work they have done is through a process known as salting. Basically what you do is generate a random string which you concatenate with the password when creating a hash - you need to store this alongside the password in order to check it in future. This means an attacker can’t use pre-computed tables on your hash; they have to do all the work again for your particular salt!

Richard discussed another interesting concept called ‘key stretching’ in the lectures - it’s basically the idea that you can grab a ‘weak password hash’ and continuously hash it with a combination of the (’hash’ + ‘password’ + ‘salt’). This process of recursively hashing makes it insanely difficult for an attacker to bruteforce. This is combined with the effects of a ‘salt’ which (on its own) renders rainbow tables (’pre-computed hashes’) useless.

Signing Problems with Weak Hashes

One of the problems with using a hash which is vulnerable to second-preimage attacks is that it becomes a lot easier to sign a fake document. Consider the example of a PDF document certifying that I give you $100. If you wanted you could modify the $100 to $100,000, however this would change the resultant hash. However since it’s a PDF you could modify empty attribute fields or add whitespace such that you can modify the hash an enormous amount of times (i.e. to bruteforce the combinations). Since the hash is vulnerable to second-preimage this means that given an input x (the original signed document) we are able to find an x’ (the fake signed document) such that h(x) = h(x’).

Dr Lisa Parker (guest speaker)

I wasn’t able to make the morning lecture, although I will try and summarise my understanding of the key points from this talk:

More holistic approaches to systems improvement have better outcomes (’grassroots approach’ is just as important as targeted)

Unconscious bias is present across a wide variety of industries (i.e. judges harsher before lunch, doctors prescribing drugs for free lunch)

Codes of conduct intended to reduce corruption; pharmaceuticals try to dodge with soft bribes, advertising, funding research

Transparent reporting reduces malpractice

Enforcing checklists useful for minimising risk

OPSEC Overview (extended)

We traditionally think of OPSEC has been based in the military, however many of the principles can apply in more everyday scenarios:

Identifying critical information

Analysis of threats

Analysis of vulnerabilities

Assessment of risk

Application of appropriate OPSEC measures

A lot of the ideas behind gathering information (recon) revolve around collecting “random data”, which at first may not appear useful, however after managing to piece them together, they are. One of the quotes from Edward Snowden (I think) I found quite interesting, “In every step, in every action, in every point involved, in every point of decision, you have to stop and reflect and think, “What would be the impact if my adversary were aware of my activities?””. I think it’s quite powerful to think about this - however at the same time we don’t want to live with complete unrealistic paranoia and live as a hermit in the hills.

One of the easiest ways to improve your OPSEC is through limiting what you share online, especially with social media sites. Some of the basic tips were:

Don’t share unless you need to

Ensure it can’t be traced (unless you want people to know)

Avoid bringing attention to yourself

You can try and conceal your identity online through things like VPNs and Tor Browser. It is important that in identities you have online that you don’t provide a means to link them in any way (i.e. a common email) if you don’t want someone to be able to develop a “bigger picture” about you. For most people, I think the best advice with regards to OPSEC, is to “blend in”.

Passwords (extended)

I am really not surprised that the usage of common names, dates and pets is as common as it is with passwords. Most people just like to take the lazy approach; that is, the easiest thing for them to remember that will ‘pass the test’. Linking closely with this is the re-use of passwords for convenience - however for security this is absolutely terrible. If your password is compromised on one website and your a ‘worthy target’, then everything is compromised. 

HaveIBeenPwned is actually a pretty cool website to see if you’ve been involved in a breach of security. I entered one of my emails, which is more of a ‘throwaway one’ I use for junk-ish accounts on forums and whatnot - it listed that I had been compromised on 11 different websites. I know for a fact that I didn’t use the same password on any of those; secondly for most of them I didn’t care if they got broken.

I think offline password managers are an ‘alright way’ to ensure you have good unique passwords across all the sites you use. (be cautious as they can be a ‘single point of failure’) However when it comes to a number of my passwords which I think are very important - I’ve found just randomly generating them and memorising them works pretty well. Another way is to form long illogical sentences and then morph them with capitalisation, numbers and symbols. You want to maximise the search space for an attacker - for example if your using all 96 possible characters and you have a 16-character password then a bruteforce approach would require you to check 2^105 different combinations (worst-case).

The way websites store our passwords is also important to the overall security - they definitely shouldn’t be stored in plaintext, should use a ‘secure hash function’ (i.e. not MD5) and salted. I’m pretty sure I ranted about a mobile carrier that I had experiences with earlier in my blog, that didn’t do this. This means if the passwords were ‘inevitably’ all stolen from the server, the attacker just gets the hashes, and they can’t use rainbow tables because you hashed them all. Personally, I really like the usage of multi-factor authentication combined with a good password (provided those services don’t get compromised right?). Although, you want to avoid SMS two-factor as it’s vulnerable to SIM hijacking.

[artsyrobo-blog]

how to rank your biz on yelp

Secret Factors in Yelp Position Algorithm:

- Reviews - Completeness of profile - Age of profile - Authority of website

Actions:

1. Complete company info totally

Preferential ranking therapy is offered to organisations with complete details, plus consumers often tend to rely on services extra when info is offered concerning the business in addition to the proprietors as well as staff. Additionally, total info assists exceptionally with individual experience and creates much less work for the business proprietor by responding to usual concerns from consumers (an animal peeve of mine is when organisations do not provide their hrs of procedure). Likewise essential is to regularly update your organisation profile when anything modifications. Posting imprecise information will certainly cause unfavorable customer experiences, unfavorable testimonials, rankings fines, as well as potentially also de-listing if the offenses are fantastic adequate.

2. Categories

Every organisation can pick up to 3 categories to explain their service.The most effective method for this is to take a look at rival profiles to see which groups they picked. The procedure is extremely similar to picking categories for Google local, with the primary difference being that you can not produce personalized classifications. It is recommended to select as lots of categories as your service can reasonably fit into, but don't make use of categories that don't apply just to get to the optimum three. Unnecessary groups hurt rankings and also can even lead to nasty reviews.

3. Key words

Consist of keyword phrases from your web site's SEO strategy throughout your account, specifically in business information, background, and also owner/employee accounts (you have a SEO technique, right?). When possible, discreetly recommend to customers to include key words in reviews, along with mention details products/services.

4. Evaluations

Review BubblesYelp clearly tells you not to ask individuals for evaluations, yet the majority of companies do it anyway. Simply whatever you do, don't publish anything on your yelp profile or web site offering incentives for composing evaluations. Great ways to urge reviews are including yelp badges on your website (which link to your yelp account), or discussing in the website content how much people like your service on yelp (with an account link certainly). Also including yelp logos on business cards or placing yelp stickers on windows assist. The trick is to be subtle; nobody suches as to be pestered into creating an evaluation. Review weighting is based largely on who created the evaluation. Evaluations from energetic yelp users are weighted more than those from much less active users. Also an unfavorable evaluation from a really energetic yelp individual can press an organisation to the top of the search web page (certainly a positive testimonial from stated individual is considerably a lot more helpful, both in rankings as well as reputation).

5. Respond strategically to evaluations, both negative as well as favorable

Positive: It is a good idea to respond to positive comments for a couple of reasons. First of all, it reinforces the connection with an already pleased consumer and also enhances the chances that they will certainly bring repeat company. The suggested strategy is to send them a short private feedback thanking them. It is not a good idea to use this as a possibility to pitch to them. It is likewise suggested to good friend them as well as check packages beneath their review (beneficial, funny, trendy) to aid the evaluation avoid of the Yelp filter (much more on this listed below). Positive objection: It is important to be mindful when responding to these kinds of testimonials. If the consumer is recommending you deal with a facet of your service differently that does not make sense to you, the suggested reaction is to publicly react to them and clarify why you manage points the means you do, however thank them for their input. It is very important to remember that this sort of consumer may bring repeat company if you respond favorably to them. Merited strike: This is the most dangerous kind of review to reply to, and also calls for a great deal of treatment. Replying to this resembles responding to positive criticism, because you intend to openly reply to them, maintain a very positive tone, and most significantly excuse their bad experience (thinking that it is a genuine grievance, otherwise then adhere to directions for unjustifiable attacks). Whatsoever expenses, you have to not attack them, as this is most likely to prompt further attacks from them and also might rapidly spiral unmanageable (Yelp customers are notoriously verbose). Gratuitous assaults (trolling): It is usually recommended to overlook these type of unfavorable evaluations. The general goal of this type of behavior is to draw you right into an image-damaging discussion, which is a desperate circumstance. These type of evaluations are frequently published by rival businesses or marketing firms in an effort to siphon off customers. One dead giveaway is that these testimonials will certainly frequently commend a competitor. You can not require the elimination of non-legitimate testimonials, however you can and also ought to flag them, which enhances the possibility that the testimonial will be filteringed system.

6. Taking care of the notorious Yelp testimonial filter

The Yelp filter is the resource of lots of people's wraith, as well as from individual experience with it, I concur that it is frequently infuriating. According to Yelp, the purpose of the filter is to extract fake as well as poor quality reviews, which is an admirable goal, and also important for maintaining the quality of their website. Nonetheless, in method what frequently takes place is that companies will have all of their radiant evaluations filtered out, leaving just unfavorable ones, injuring their positions and credibility. There are also lawsuits taking place pertaining to the filter. Anyway, you can put in a level of impact over which examines get filteringed system by following some actions. To keep favorable reviews from being filteringed system, business proprietor must send out a friend demand to the consumer who left it, as well as inspect packages below the evaluation (valuable, funny, amazing). For adverse testimonials, all you can do is flag the evaluation. It is possible to contact the customer that left it and ask to take it down, but this rarely functions. Nonetheless, if the directions for replying to unfavorable evaluations are complied with as well as a positive discussion is developed with the customer, after that it might be feasible to get them to take it down, however it is not a good idea to bring this up early in the dialogue.

7. Make regular news and special deals

It is really beneficial to make regular offers and also announcements, as they will certainly show up in a deals directory for your city, which is positioned plainly on the homepage of the website. They additionally appear in inner searches along with sometimes in Google natural searches if your service is placed high sufficient. See to it to consist of search phrases plainly. It is additionally reported that making normal statements enhances positions.

8. Use Yelp badges on your business web site

As pointed out above, this is a fantastic way to motivate evaluations. Additionally, it offers good web link juice to your website, as yelp has very high domain name authority. Put Yelp badges on every page of your website.

9. Do not use yelp marketing

Yelp Optimization Overview: 10 Steps to Yelp DominationIt's very expensive, needs a lengthy commitment, has very bad tracking abilities, and does not supply several benefits over normal totally free listings. This might boost in the future, as they are obtaining horrible press and also suits over it.

For reviews, do not exclusively count on Yelp for your business. Write down the leading places you get one of the most direct exposure that enables evaluations. This may include Google, Facebook, Clutch and various other sites that are very important for your industry. Why should you take note of this today? Approximately 88% of consumers trust online reviews as if it were a personal recommendation from a good friend. They crazy part is, this stat maintains climbing as well as climbing up as people spend more time online. Your credibility is not to be taken lightly either. This is genuine bucks for your organisation which can lead to substantial amounts of sales. Sales is the lifeblood of your company and the much more raving fans you can get to become your spokes people, the even more lives you can influence.

Do you utilize Yelp? Has it helped your organisation? What do you like or dislike concerning Yelp?

[devildroids]

If you are a systems administrator in charge of keeping a mail server running then spoofing emails is probably one of your biggest headaches. Spoofing techniques used by spammers are becoming more sophisticated every day, many of them even employing artificial intelligence to exploit your mail system vulnerabilities.

I’ve been researching ways to combat and prevent spoofing emails for years because it always has been a big issue at the place where I work.

There are ways to minimize or even eliminate spoofing emails completely, but managing a mail system is complicated as I’m sure you are aware of, and our focus, in my opinion, should be in striking a happy medium.

So our focus shouldn’t be to eliminate spoofing emails completely but to mitigate and stay ahead of the game so the objective of spammers through spoofing emails is never achieved.

You might be wondering, why can’t we just focus in eliminating spoofing emails? and the answer is that you cannot eliminate spoofing emails without disrupting the normal legitimate mail flow. That’s why I said above, striking a happy medium is your best bet, otherwise, you might end up with a bigger self-created problem of legitimate emails being caught up in or rejected by the spam filters, mail server rejections, undeliverable messages, etc.

Remember, people don’t care much about your benevolent intentions of preventing a catastrophe caused by a spoofing email. they just care about their mail, so they will complain about spoofing e-mails, and they will complain even more when legitimate emails are not being delivered to their mailboxes in time or not at all, so you are always in a lose/lose situation if you are trying to go rogue in eliminating spoofing emails on your own.

But it shouldn’t be that way, you can make it a win/win situation if you play your cards correctly.

And your first card should be:

Education

Educating your mail users should be the first step combating spoofing emails. There are many ways you can approach educating your users, but simple email reminders reminding people that not all emails are created equal is a good start. Outline the characteristics of a spoofing email and train your users how to distinguish them from the regular mail flow. Most spoofing emails are very genetic and with a trained eye is easy to spot them. Some of them are not as easy but train your users that when in doubt to always consult with you before taking any action.

Most spammers sending spoofing emails are after either money or private personal information like social security numbers. So make sure the finance and HR departments have processes in place for disbursing money and handling personal private information.

That could be your first “cover my ass” plan.

The reality is that when the shit hits the fan, the first person they will go to for answers will be you, but if whoever fell for the spoofed email didn’t follow the proper procedure, then you will have something to fight back.

Of course, the objective should be to never get to that point, but if you have been working in this field long enough then you know that

Shit happens.

So after you get the education thingy going, what should be the next step?

Get to work goddamnit!

No, I’m just kidding. Before we proceed though, I can’t emphasize enough that educating your users is the most crucial step, and its a lot of work because most people don’t like hearing the IT guy talk about like its gonna be the next world war if they click on a suspicious email, so it’s hard to grab their attention, so yeah, its a lot of work to get your message across, but after awhile they’ll get it.

So let’s get into some technical stuff now.

The four technical components that will help you fight spoofing emails are:

Spam Filtering Software

SPF

DKIM

DMARC

We will go through each of this component individually.

The spam filtering software is a given. with the amount of spam hitting your mail server I wonder how it would be if you didn’t have a spam filter, right?

Most spam filters are cloud-based now with many of them using artificial intelligence and machine learning to adjust to new spamming trends quickly, so if you are not using a cloud-based spam filtering software yet, start looking into it.

SPF or Sender Policy Framework is a DNSentry that you create in your domain that prevents other domains from using your domain to send emails as you. In other words, an SPF record is designed to prevent spoofing emails.

SPF was invented in early 2000 and is considered indispensable for fighting spam nowadays. The record you add to your DNS should look like this:

“v=spf1 a:ittutorials.net -all”

In this example, only the “ittutorials.net” domain is authorized to send emails. The record will check for “ittutorials.net” IP address, including the “reverse DNS” IP to make sure the email is authentic.

If it finds anomalies in any of those things, it will reject the emails, so make sure your Reverse DNS is set up properly.

If you are not sure what Reverse DNS is, call your Internet provider and ask them, they will set it for you if don’t have it.

There is a tone of information online about SPF and how to set it up properly so hit Google if you need more info about it.

DKIM or DomainKeys Identified Mail is a cryptographic email authentication method designed to detect email spoofing. It allows the receiver to check that an email claimed to have come from a specific domain was indeed authorized by the owner of that domain. It is intended to prevent forged sender addresses in emails, a technique often used in phishing and spoofing emails.

If you are using a cloud-based spam filtering software, most likely you can get the domain keys from them to enter in your domain DNS. Microsoft Exchange 2010 or 2013 doesn’t support DKIM authentication natively, but there are third-party tools you can install to create them. be careful with that though.

And the last thing that almost put the nail in the coffin when it comes to spoofing emails, but it can be the most disruptive on legitimate email flow is DMARC.

DMARC is fairly new in the spam combating arena and is not widely adopted yet that’s why it can be disrupting. DMARC builds upon SPF and DKIM so you need to have those two records implemented first before you get to DMARC your mail server.

DMARC closes the security vulnerabilities inherent in email protocols so it could be the holy grail we’ve been waiting for to put all our spoofing emails woes to rest, but like I said, I don’t think the industry is ready for it yet, so is not widely adopted.

I tried setting up a DMARC record for the company I work for, and because DNS records sometimes can take awhile to replicate, we didn’t see the impact of it until the next day.

It was a chaos, and I sweat my shirt a couple of times

Maybe I didn’t do it right, there is a lot of legwork you have to do before implementing a DMARC record because nothing that has the characteristics of a spoof email will come through, that includes newsletters, emails from spammy looking domains, etc they will be automatically rejected at the domain level, they won’t even hit your spam filter for you to sort through.

There are policies you can set with a DMARC record to minimize the impact, but even with that, it was a chaos for us.

Check online to learn more or how to set up a DMARC record.

So there you have it, my friends, I hope this overview on how to stop spoofing emails is helpful to you.

[trinamcmichaels01]

Is Encased Car Transport with the Extra Money?

Wondering if you require to pay extra money for encased automobile delivery? Well, then this guide is just for you. Read it till completion to recognize everything clearly.

So, Does it Price Extra Money to Get Enclosed Automobile Transportation?

Yes, it does cost more cash to deliver an automobile using an enclosed container than the open carrier, and there are several factors for this, which we will certainly talk about in a bit.

But recognize this, there will go to the very least 30% to 40% distinction in cost, which indicates if open service provider costs $600, after that enclosed might cost $1000 for the exact same.

Why Enclosed Lorry Shipping Costs Extra?

First of all, you will certainly be shipping the cars and truck in an extremely protected setting. No rainfall or roadway components will obtain it unclean and even damaged. Secondly, the vehicle will certainly get far better treatment than open provider shipping, and also there's a good reason behind this.

Considering that the lorries shipped inside an enclosed carrier are of extremely high worth, the trainers are trained on just how to meticulously load, secure as well as unload them. This leads to nearly no danger of the cars and truck obtaining damaged, which sometimes happen with an open carrier.

In addition, the enclosed containers are not as extensively available as the open providers; they set you back more to acquire as well as call for more upkeep. As a result, because of the lack of supply and large expenses, the cost of auto transportation in enclosed containers is higher.

Last but not least, a confined container can not fit as lots of vehicles inside as an open carrier since it has wall surfaces and a roof. So as a result of the lower number of automobiles being moved, the auto shipping company boosts the rate to make up for the distinction as well as ensure it obtains its fair share of profit.

All of these variables contribute in the direction of the boost of vehicle transport price when delivering with enclosed service provider and also we make sure you now understand why the cost is totally justifiable.

Benefits of Enclosed Automobile Delivery:

- Ultimate Security: The container is shut from all 4 sides, corners, and also the roof covering. This indicates no dust, rainfall, or other external elements can come within, making your pricey automobile dirty. In addition, if an additional automobile when driving run across the provider, the steel walls of the container will shield your automobile from taking a hit and obtaining scraped or dented.

- Better Tools: The encased containers come with far better devices for filling, dumping and protect your vehicle. First of all, they have liftgates, which means no demand to drive the vehicle on and also off the ramp, which often can lead to damage to the bumper depending on just how low your automobile is. Second of all, the container has locks and bands in position to ensure your automobile does not relocate during transportation and remain protected in place.

- Convenient & Stress-Free: You can obtain select and also go down solution, which suggests your cars and truck will be picked up from its place and also went down to the final location. This will ensure you don't have to drive it to and also from the cars and truck shipping company's terminal. In addition, the automobile will be guaranteed throughout transportation, so also if there's some damage, the company will certainly look after it. This sort of assurance is just offered with the encased container.

Parting Words:

If you wish to relocate your premium vehicle like a timeless, sporting activities, high-end, or antique automobile in a totally secure setting, then you can not go wrong with the enclosed delivery. Do not hesitate to offer us a call to recognize even more or to obtain your auto shipping in a closed container.

Exactly how to Choose the Right Cars And Truck Transportation Company?

The process for choosing an auto shipping company is exceptionally easy if you know what you are doing. In this guide, we will certainly give you with a few crucial reminders to assist you make the best option and obtain maximum worth for your money. So ensure to read this overview till the actual end as well as follow every little thing we have actually talked about listed below. That said, allow's solve into it:

The Company Should Be Registered:

The web is swamped with scams, and also unethical automobile transportation internet sites are just one of them. These internet sites will offer also great to be real sort of offers and also when you book them as well as make the sophisticated payment, they'll disappear into slim air.

So always see to it to verify if a car transportation business is signed up or otherwise which can be done by searching for an MC or DOT number on their web site. When you have it, call FMSCA as well as ask if the business is registered by supplying their MC or DOT number.

They Have to be Adhered & Insured:

Picking a licensed car delivery firm is insufficient. You need to see to it they are additionally bound as well as guaranteed. By doing this, if anything happens during the transportation, you will not be responsible for it, but the company's insurance service provider will certainly be.

If they are insured, ask for the conditions of coverage, the total quantity, as well as previous insurance claims refining background. If every one of these points are good enough and also based on your requirements, then you can move further.

They Need To Have Competitive Rates-- But Not Too Affordable:

The automobile transport company you are taking care of must supply you competitive vehicle transport quotes. However, their rates must not be economical because after that it would just mean two points; either they are trying to scam you or they will certainly reduce corners throughout the delivery.

Both of these situations threaten, specifically the 2nd one where your auto can obtain harmed during shipping. A good car transportation provider ought to have competitive costs but ought to fall within the same array as various other quotes you've obtained.

Have To be Experienced Dealing With Your Car:

Depending upon the sort of car you are shipping and the level of security as well as handling it calls for, your cars and truck transportation business must have experience of managing it.

For instance, if you're shipping a vintage timeless automobile in an enclosed container, the car shipping company ought to recognize how to load, safeguard, deal with and unload it prior to you can employ them.

Ask them about the cars and truck you are delivering and also see if they have shipped it before or at least any various other vehicle from its classification.

Should Have Excellent Online Reviews:

This is a no-compromise variable that you need to check out. Similar to the enrollment of a firm, examines left by its customers online speak volumes regarding whether it's the real bargain or not. Inspect third celebration evaluation websites like BBB, BirdEye, Google, Facebook, and so on.

If they have scored over 4.3 out of 5, then it indicates they are mosting likely to use excellent solution. But still, read a few evaluations and see what individuals are saying about them, this will certainly additionally assist you make the best choice.

Parting Words:

When you have added several business to your checklist that are signed up, guaranteed, and experienced, request the quotes.

Next off, check for their on the internet reviews, the company with the very best reviews as well as vehicle transport quotes ought to be your best car transporter.

Is Hailstorm Damage Covered Under Insurance Policy During Car Transportation?

Delivering your lorry to a faraway area, especially with someone you've never ever satisfied before can be a little discouraging at first. However, with the appropriate business and also appropriate insurance policy in place, you do not have anything to worry about. And also if you are wondering whether your lorry is secured from hail storm damages throughout cars and truck transportation then you have actually reached the ideal location.

This short article will certainly discuss simply that and also will additionally provide you with multiple solutions to additional ensure that your car stays well secured throughout storms. So make certain to review this overview till the actual end. With that said claimed, allow's begin.

So, is Hail Storm Damages Covered by Auto Delivery Insurance?

No, there is a great chance that the hail storm damages will certainly not be covered by your car transport firm's insurance company. Since many vehicle shipping firms utilize Freight Insurance policy, it includes a set of constraints which consists of no security from Disasters.

This indicates that if there is a twister, quake, or hailstorm tornado and your lorry suffers damage from it then the Freight Insurance will not be of any usage. Nevertheless, the coverage will certainly return to your personal cars and truck insurance policy. This indicates if your car transport company recognizes your transportation and also the auto is within the jurisdiction of insurance coverage and covered from hail storm storms, then you will certainly be compensated for this.

Yet ensure to speak with your individual auto insurance company before delivering the vehicle and also tell them regarding the path and also the destination of the automobile. They could be able to help you in situation there's a Disaster during the transportation.

Here's What to Do for Better Protection:

If you intend to see to it your car remains protected also during the hail tornado after that there a couple of points you can do beforehand to raise the likelihood. Take a look at them listed below:

- Watch the Weather Prediction Beforehand: Ask your auto transportation company concerning how much time it will certainly consider the automobile to reach its destination. After that view the forecast for that period to make sure there is no rain or storm expected. This is not a sure-fire means to getting defense from hail storm tornados yet still, it'll give you some suggestion pertaining to whether to deliver the car now or wait.

- Get Enclosed Container Delivery: This is just one of the best points you can do to guarantee the safety of your vehicle. If you anticipate a hailstorm storm in the coming days or if the weather forecast has actually revealed it after that obtain encased vehicle transport for maximum safety. Given that the automobile will be safeguarded inside a steel container, no matter exactly how rough the hail storm is, it won't pass through the container so your automobile will be totally secured.

- Try Investing In Insurance Coverage: If your vehicle insurance company doesn't supply hail storm insurance coverage but you intend to get it then you can attempt asking if they use it as an additional. If they do, you can buy it just for the moment your car is being carried. This is among one of the most functional ways to ensure your vehicle will be totally protected.

Parting Words:

Although Freight Insurance does not cover hail storm tornados, some car delivery firms may have added insurance coverage available for such situations. So, attempt asking your car shipping company and see what they need to state.

If they don't supply hail storm protection, after that ask your personal auto insurer and also your policy likewise does not have it, only then attempt one of the three options stated above.

browse around here

[treetalent209]

Best Mac Apps For Travel

The Best Travel Apps for 2019

Best Free Apps For Mac

Best Mac App For Travel

Top 10 Mac Apps

Best Apps For New Macbook

Best Apps For Mac 2020

Best Free Apps For Mac

Airbnb

Jan 04, 2020  So, here’s our pick of the best offline GPS apps for your Android or iOS phone. OsmAnd Offline Travel Maps & Navigation. A product of collaboration between two open-source platforms – OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia – OsmAnd allows you to download seven map files for free for offline navigation. Depending on your usage and device memory.

Jan 03, 2020  The Best Calorie Counter Apps of 2020 Counting calories with a smartphone or tablet app is the smartest way to do it. Brad Stephenson. Freelance Contributor. Brad Stephenson is a freelance tech and geek culture writer with 12+ years' experience. He writes about Windows 10, Xbox One, and cryptocurrency. Our editorial process.

Jan 06, 2020  The 100 Best Android Apps for 2020. Not all of the Google Play store's 2.9 million apps are worth downloading. Our picks of the best Android apps in 14 categories deserve a place on your phone.

Jan 19, 2017  The 50 Best New Travel Apps for 2017 The 50 Best New Travel Apps for 2017. So we’ve combed through dozens of the latest travel apps (and a.

Feb 09, 2019  One of the questions I regularly get asked by coworkers is about my favorite Mac apps. I’ve been using a Mac since 2004, and I’ve downloaded, purchased, and demoed hundreds of apps.

Explore your world by finding deals, booking flights, knowing when to pull off the road, and getting out of town with the best travel apps.

Oct 17, 2019  The best way to navigate is to use the app to search for ideas. As of October, TripIt users can now even download the app to their Mac desktop. You don’t want to land in a foreign city for the first time without these travel apps. XE Currency Converter.

We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use.

How do you decide where to travel? Where do you research destinations? How do you find good deals on flights and accommodations? How do you find your way around a place once you arrive? The best travel apps answer all these questions.

From the time you start thinking about your next destination to the moment your feet hit the welcome mat back home, having the right Android and iPhone apps on hand can make the whole experience smoother and less stressful.

How Can Apps Make Your Trips Better?

Pack light, set a budget, make an itinerary, and make backup plans. What else is there to say about travel? Plenty. Some of the best travel apps inform you about your destination, with advice, insights, tips, and warnings for how to spend your time. Apps for driving and road trips let you know what to expect along your route, where to buy gas, and which exit to take to find a reliable ATM. Other apps keep your itinerary organized, alert you when you can get a deal on flights, or give you a way to explore your options for where to go next.

What's Not Here?

https://treetalent209.tumblr.com/post/657547245000982529/pool-maintenance-software-for-mac. We didn't see the need to include all the big-name search aggregator sites such as Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz, and Priceline, seeing as most people are already familiar with them. They help you search for and book (usually by prepaying) flights, hotels, car rentals, and sometimes packaged vacations and cruises. The same goes for hotel search aggregators, like Booking.com, Hotels.com, and Trivago. I've only included here the ones that serve a specific niche or those that are excellent but not well known.

Listed in alphabetical order, here are the best travel apps to keep on hand.

Airbnb

Airbnb started by connecting travelers with people who have rooms, apartments, homes, and other accommodations to rent. The site now offers much more for travelers, including tours, classes, workshops, and restaurant reservations. Whether you use Airbnb to find a place to sleep or for inspiration about what to do on your next trip, you're guaranteed to see big, beautiful photographs of it all.

AllTrails

AllTrails is a mobile app and website that helps you get outdoors. It has lists of trails for hiking and walking around the world with pictures, maps, and directions to trailheads. You can download trail maps offline if you sign up for the Pro version of the service for $29.99 per year. It's a great resource for quickly finding the best places to be outside when you're in an unfamiliar area.

Culture Trip

A friend of who's an avid traveler recently tipped me off to Culture Trip. It's a cross between a travel magazine and an SEO-driven website that runs articles with headlines that start The Top 10… or The Best Places to… The content is supposedly written by locals, and the real hook is that the Culture Trip app lets you save articles to Wishlists that you create. Make a Wishlist for each destination you want to visit or some theme that drives your travel (Snorkeling Spots, perhaps), and you can save Culture Trip articles there for your reference.

GasBuddy

On driving road trips, you'll be happy to have GasBuddy at hand. It helps you find gas by location and price either in real time on your phone or via its website, if you like to plan ahead. If you can save a couple of bucks by cruising a little farther down the road, GasBuddy will let you know. It's available in the US, Canada, and Australia.

Google Flights

Never turn down a second opinion. Despite all the excellent travel search sites available these days, Google Flights is one to add to your list. Use it when you need a quick check on airfare for round-trip, one-way, or multicity flights. It also lets you explore destinations based on price and dates.

Google Maps

My number one go-to travel app is Google Maps. I use it to explore destinations before I arrive and make a note of places that look interesting by adding a star or flagging them on the map. As my travel plans shape up, I use the map to put together a plan for the day by visiting places that are grouped together. You can also save your maps offline so that you won't get lost even if you don't have data on your phone.

Hopper

The mobile-only app Hopper tracks flight prices and gives you periodic updates on whether you should buy now or wait. What makes this travel app valuable is its level of detail. It doesn't just tell you to wait to buy your ticket, but gives you a date when the price will likely rise. You can book through Hopper, too, with a commission fee of a few dollars.

In areas like corporate finance, investment banking, and accounting, people are always looking for new ways to make different financial models that are easy to understand and very informative. A software used for financial modeling can be used for this purpose as it helps the users to make multi-dimensional models very easily and quickly. The most financial modeling software are very easy to. About Financial Modeling on a Mac. Financial modeling What is Financial Modeling Financial modeling is performed in Excel to forecast a company's financial performance. Overview of what is financial modeling, how & why to build a model. On a Mac is becoming more and more common, and while the PC is still recommended, it is possible to get by on an Apple device. What is financial modeling? When asked to define financial model, many people come up with long-winded descriptions using terms like forecast and cash flow and hypothetical outcomes. But the definition needs to be that complicated. A financial model is a tool (typically built in Excel) that displays possible solutions to a real-world financial problem. And financial modeling is the task of. Financial modeling software for mac.

Here's what you need to know. Voice memom app for mac. It was announced at that the beloved Voice Memos app would be making its way to Mac with the macOS Mojave update, and a few neat features are coming along with it.

Hotel Tonight

Best Mac App For Travel

Some people, myself included, panic at the notion of having to book a hotel room at the last minute. For travelers ready to fly by the seat of their pants, there's Hotel Tonight. This travel app specializing in selling off same-day hotel reservations, often at steep discounts. It has options to book in advance, too, but the best deals are same-day bookings.

iExit

Here's another travel app for driving trips. iExit tells you exactly what's near every highway exit, from gas stations to ATMs. If there's a particular restaurant chain or other service you love, you can mark it as a favorite and the app tells you if it's coming up on your route. You'll never kick yourself again for settling for a greasy spoon when better food was just around the bend.

LoungeBuddy

There's no need to be jealous of frequent travelers who have airport lounge access through their membership status or a high-flying credit card. With the LoungeBuddy app, you can find lounges in airports that let anyone in for a fee. LoungeBuddy tells you not only the fee, but also what you can expect inside, from the food and drink to whether there are showers. And if you happen to have lounge membership through other means, the app can often tell you that, too.

Rick Steves Audio Europe

Travel writer Rick Steves has an app for European travels with dozens of audio files. Some give you background information on a particular city or region while others are audio guides for navigating popular sites. I listened to some of his Rome content while viewing the Sistine Chapel and again when walking around the Roman Colosseum. If you're traveling to any of the top destinations in Europe, download this free app and consider listening to some of the segments while planning what to see and do.

Roadtrippers

Find interesting places to stop during a road trip using Roadtrippers. With this app and website, you can explore a map of the US and Canada (with some coverage for Mexico, too) that has unusual roadside attractions, museums, amusement parks, campsites, restaurants, and more. When you find a site you like, just add it to your trip, and Roadtrippers draws your route accordingly. A Roadtrippers Plus account for $29.99 per year or $6.99 per month lets you download maps offline and add unlimited stops along your route, whereas you only get five with a free account.

Roomer Travel

What should you do when you've prepaid for a hotel and your trip suddenly gets canceled? Download Roomer or go to roomertravel.com/sell. This app and website helps people sell prepaid reservations to others who can use them, usually at a lower cost. It can help you recoup money that might otherwise be lost to the travel gods. It can also save you money if you buy a reservation from someone who can't use it at a discounted rate.

TripAdvisor

Sometimes people have to go to unexpected places that they didn't choose, like for a wedding or a business trip. When I don't know anything about my destination, I turn to TripAdvisor. It's one of the most comprehensive online sources for travelers, with background information about different cities and regions, plus highlights of what to see and do. It has reviews of hotels, restaurants, and activities, written by members of the TripAdvisor community, as well as photos from their travels so you know what to expect before you arrive. TripAdvisor has relationships with various booking sites, too, which means once you finish researching hotels or restaurants, you can easily reserve them.

TripCase

TripCase is a free app that helps you organize your trip by making an itinerary for you. The itinerary can include flights, accommodations, rental cars, restaurant reservations, and more. To make an itinerary, you forward travel confirmation emails to TripCase, and the app does the rest. The next time you launch the app or log into the website, a complete chronological lineup of your trip is waiting for you. You can manually add details, too. The result is similar to what you get from TripIt (see below), but the method of collecting the information is different.

TripIt

Top 10 Mac Apps

TripIt is similar to TripCase in creating an organized itinerary for you, but TripIt builds your travel plans by sniffing out confirmation emails in your inbox and pulling out the most important information. If you don't want to give TripIt access to your email, you can use the app by forwarding emails to it instead or manually entering details, but that's not the point of the app. If you are disorganized and haphazard with your travel details, TripIt might do you a lot of good.

Uber

Uber operates around the world, and while the in-app options vary from place to place, the general concept is the same everywhere. There are a few reasons that ride-on-demand apps work so well for travelers. First, it eliminates the need to carry local currency. Second, you don't have to speak the same language as your driver to get to where you need to go. Third, there's no haggling. If you don't want to give Uber your business for one reason or another, do a little research on what other riding hailing apps operate in your destination.

Viator

When you travel to a destination that might require a little hand-holding, Viator is a great website and app to keep in mind. It specializes in tours and packages, from daily excursions to week-long adventures with transfers included. Note that the quantity and quality of the deals varies dramatically by destination.

VRBO

VRBO, which is HomeAway.com with new branding, helps you find vacation homes, apartment rentals, and other accommodations for your travels. Unlike Airbnb, where you can still find a room to let in someone's private home, VRBO focuses on private homes, including beach houses, ski cabins, private apartments, and villas. The next time you're traveling with a large group or planning a destination reunion, keep VRBO in mind.

Wanderu

Best Apps For New Macbook

Do you want to search for buses and trains with the same ease you search and compared flights? Wanderu is the app you need. This aggregator and comparison app includes methods of transportation that other sites skip, namely trains and buses. You can also use it for flights, car rentals, and hotels, but it got its start with buses and trains, and that's still what sets it apart from competitors. For journeys serviced by Amtrak, Megabus, BoltBus, and other ground services, use Wanderu for quick and reliable results.

Waze

Best Apps For Mac 2020

While Google Maps tells you about officially reported problems on the road and whether there's traffic, Waze knows the nitty-gritty details, like the location of police traps and potholes. This free community-driven app for traffic and road conditions is popular among taxi and car service drivers, although it's equally useful for everyday drivers. Beware that Waze demands your GPS information at all times, which takes a toll on your battery.

Zomato

If you live in the US, there's a good chance you've never heard of Zomato. In some countries, however, it's more popular than Yelp, and it covers the same ground as Yelp. Zomato is a crowd-sourced review site for restaurants. One reason it's better than Yelp is that its contributors regularly snap photos of menus and upload them to the restaurant review, so you get more than just flippant remarks and blurry pictures of french fries. In some regions, Zomato partners with local restaurant delivery services, so you can get take-out at your hotel or Airbnb.

More Travel Tips

The travel apps in this list will get you far, but there are additional ways to ensure a successful trip. For instance, a VPN app can help protect your network traffic on public Wi-Fi networks away from home. You may want to pack some specialty devices too; you never know what you'll want to capture or what gear you will need in the field. Be sure to read our guides below for more travel advice.

Financial software for mac small business. It's a plus when accounting software can also serve as an invoice generator.Recurring InvoicesWith this feature, you can schedule the system to automatically generate and send invoices for recurring charges, such as subscriptions. Some accounting software programs integrate with third-party payment processors; others require you to use their in-house processing services. Very few of the accounting applications we evaluated include recurring invoice functionality.Automatic Payment RemindersThis feature helps you remind customers about upcoming and past-due payments. You can choose how frequently invoices are sent – daily, weekly, monthly or annually – and indicate whether there's an end date to the billing.

7 Tips for Finding the Best Hotel Discounts

[rigelmejo]

mejo’s rough but somewhat effective guide to beginning to learn chinese:

1. get interested in a chinese drama. go do it. Now, watch it on youtube with your native language as the subs, and pick a video version that’s already hard-subbed with Chinese (so you can see both english and chinese subtitles). Alternatively, download the free chrome extension “Learn a Language with Netflix” and then find your drama of choice in netflix and pick chinese +english subs).

2. Watch the drama. Make a point to look up certain chinese words in google translate or pleco - just quick lookup where you draw the chinese character you see on screen, or type the pinyin if you catch the pronounciation. Just do this occasionally. The point is, do this to try and pay attention to the chinese more. You’re doing this to notice some (hopefully common) words, and to start training yourself to look at the chinese subtitles and to listen more carefully.

3. Ok, now you should have some interest in learning chinese properly. Your next step is to look at these two lists: 200 most common words chinese  and 625 words to know in mandarin chinese (I recommend downloading the absolutely PHENOMENAL spreadsheet mathewko28 made - its in both traditional and simplified characters). The first list is designed to help get a person communicating their basic thoughts effectively. The second list is well designed for a broad introduction to a lot of common words. Now, you do not have to memorize these lists. But I do want you to go through them. Make a note of all the words on them you ALREADY know from noticing them popping up regularly in the drama you watched. For the words you don’t know, make a conscious effort to look at them/review them a few times. You can make flashcards, read them in a list, write them down, or just glance at them repeatedly. Just please look through these lists - reviewing the words you know, and reading the new words - several times. Do this within a month or few weeks. You can memorize them if you want, but mostly just focus on seeing them OFTEN for a few weeks. Continue consuming the chinese media of your choice (a drama, youtube videos, whatever you like). Keep making an effort to look up some words in whatever chinese media you’re consuming. 

4. So now you should have been watching dramas, and looking over common words, for either a month or 2 months. Do not expect perfect memorization from yourself - you still don’t know a lot, and that’s okay. But you should be a lot more familiar with chinese then you were at the ‘I recognize absolutely nothing’ stage you started at. Now is a good time to do a few things at the same time: look up Chinese radicals and READ A FEW ARTICLES about them. Mainly, read articles about how many they are, read a table that defines those radicals, and read an article that explains how those radicals combine to create chinese characters (and often the radicals either contribute sound or meaning to the character they are in). Literally just read up on that. It should take a day or two, a week at most. You can read up on it more later if you want. But KNOWING that radicals exist, and starting to notice them within characters, is going to help you a lot later on. At this time, also look up the general rules on how to write characters (stroke order directions). If you want to learn proper stroke order for every character, you’ll need to learn that later when specifically learning characters. But for right now, recognizing radicals as chunks within a character, and knowing roughly how to properly write a character, will help you a TON with looking up characters in dictionaries (whether a physical stroke-order based one, or google translate or Pleco where you need to draw them to look them up). You should also look up a PINYIN guide article at this point. Learn what pinyin is, learn what the tones are. Learn that if two 3rd tones are together, the first one is pronounced as a second tone! Even though that change is never typed or written different in pinyin! (so ni3hao3 is pronounced ni2hao3, even though it will ALWAYS be written as ni3hao3 in pinyin.)

5. So you’re somewhere in month 2 now, or maybe month 3. You are still consuming chinese media. You have been learning a lot of common words. You have gotten better at understanding how characters are put together, and they’re now easier to look up and sometimes you even recognize their pronunciation based on a radical within the character. When you’ve been looking up characters, you should be listening to their pronunciation in Pleco or Google Translate - and trying to hear the tones. At this point... you may have noticed that while words are starting to make more sense, grammar is CONFUSING AS ALL HELL. Lets say you’re in month 3: keep looking up those common words from the common word lists, and keep looking up frequent words/phrases that show up in your dramas. Listen carefully to their pronunciation, make a mental note of the radicals that combine to form the characters. Try to make nmemonics to help you remember some words, if you have trouble remembering them. You may look up some articles on nmemonics at this stage.

6. You’re at the beginning of month 4. You know some words, some characters, and for the most part can recognize audio of the words you know. Grammar is driving you up the wall!! You don’t get it!!! Now is the time to look up a Chinese Grammar Guide. Look up whatever one on this planet you desire - who knows, you may even wish to look at multiple. But I highly recommend, sitting down and actually reading through an entire guide start to finish. Yes, I know its gonna be technical and a heavy read. Yes, I know some of it is gonna be rough to get through. Read through a guide, and reread the chapters/points you find confusing. Read through a grammar point until you understand the idea of how it works, THEN MOVE ON to the next point. Understand what you read, but if you cannot memorize it all or replicate it in your own sentences, that is fine. Absolutely fine. The main goal here is to just read through an entire grammar guide. Make yourself. It should take a few days to a couple weeks. It may be some grueling heavy focus hours of reading, just push through it. I recommend just picking one decent-to-read guide and then finishing it. You can go back and reference other grammar guides later. I read through https://www.chinese-grammar.org/ in about a week. Then later on in my studies, I used All Set Learning’s Chinese Grammar Wiki to look up points I found confusing. The whole point of chugging through a grammar guide, is to give yourself a rough overview of the way the language is structured. So that you can start noticing grammar in your chinese media moving forward. You will not understand all of it yet, but you should become familiar enough to recognize WHEN something new is happening with grammar, and now have some idea of what kind of ‘grammar point’ to look up for reference when you see a sentence and get confused.

7. You have now mega-crammed grammar. Your brain hurts. No more heavy text study for a while. Go back to consuming chinese media mainly. You can ignore the common word lists now - you may wish to go back and see how many words on those lists you KNOW now. You might be surprised. Overall though, just focus on watching some good shows. At this point, every so often risk trying to watch an ONLY-chinese video, or read an ONLY-chinese article. Yes... you will understand almost nothing. Pause the sentences you DO recognize pieces of, and look up the rest of the sentence in Google Translate/Pleco. Recognize when you see a grammar point that is familiar. Open up some chinese article/novel in Pleco EReader, or in the free app Idiom, or free chrome extension Zhongwen, and try to read through a few paragraphs using the ‘dictionary define’ feature in your chosen app to define the words you don’t know. At this point, since you have the definitions at a click of your finger, the hardest part will be the grammar. This is where you start really getting more familiar with all those grammar points you just read about. This is where you start seeing them actually being used. It’s the middle of month 4 to month 5. Do this for a few weeks. Every few days, challenge yourself to watch an all-chinese short youtube video, or to try and read a few paragraphs of all-chinese in an app where you can look up definitions. Your brain will feel fried in an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT way then chugging through a grammar guide made it feel. You will feel mighty confused. You will often reference a grammar guide just to look up specific points you noticed when reading/watching that confused you. These few weeks will be weird. But the beauty of it is, you’re learning a TON the whole time you’re feeling confused. 

8. It is now month 5 or 6. You feel FRIED from trying to just straight up CONSUME chinese media in only chinese with a dictionary/definition tool at hand. It’s been exhausting. You are currently brainstorming ANY METHOD to make this task easier. So, now its time to make this task easier! You may now go back to mostly consuming chinese media that has dual english/chinese subtitles, so you can rely on the english subtitles again while remaining exposed to the now somewhat-recognizable chinese subtitles as well. You will now only occasionally, once every week for 10 minutes or so, look at chinese media ONLY in chinese and attempt to comprehend it. You will do this short 10 minute activity mostly to gauge your progress. For the most part, just go back to dual english/chinese content, and look up the occassional new frequent word when you get curious, while every so often trying to read the now much closer-to-comprehensible chinese subtitles. If you’re like me, it’s at this point that you’ve decided... you really just need to know more characters and words. Because looking up every single freaking word was exhausting! Your new hard-study task, is to really dedicate time to learning characters and words. Find yourself either wordlists, flashcards (I use memrise decks), and/or good reference books (I have an 800 character reference book, and a 2,000+ character HSK reference book). Spend your portion of dedicated-study time working your way through these. Make measurable goals like “i will review 50 flashcards this week” or “i will read through 1 chapter of my book every X days”. Make measurable rewards if you have to (I will get myself an ice cream if i read 20 pages of this character mnemonic reference book, etc). If your goal is to pass an HSK test, now is the time to get focused on HSK specific study materials such as an HSK textbook, website, course, etc - and actually purposefully work through it. Make measurable goals, do them regularly. Make measurable progress. If you are doing it for the reasons I am, then your goal is just word and character learning. If you’re preparing for an HSK test or something similar, now is ALSO the time to really drill/practice grammar points you need for your specific test/level. Remember, if you care about audio comprehension, to study using some tool that also provides audio (my flashcards have audio).

9. If you are like me, and just learning for comprehension’s sake: After a month of casual chinese content consumption and concentrated word study, gauge your progress. Sit down and note which measurable goals you accomplished, and the reality of your progress versus your hopes (maybe acquire words slower than you thought you did, maybe some goals were unrealistic for you, maybe you ignored parts of your study plan). Make an adjusted study plan that is more likely to work for you. Gauge your progress by: once again, attempting to comprehend something only in chinese. Watch a short video in chinese, try to read an article again. See where you’ve improved. (For me, I noticed my grammar comprehension had improved significantly, along with my individual character comprehension - it was specifically 2-character words I still struggled with the most). Reiterate to yourself WHY you want to learn chinese, then restructure your goals accordingly based on your progress and where you’re lagging. For me, speaking ability is not a high priority - so I was mostly concerned with my vocabulary still being the biggest thing preventing me from comprehension. For you, it may be something else. It could even be grammar - if it is grammar, this is now probably the time to purposefully, using measurable goals, work through a grammar guide starting with ‘beginning’ points or else starting with what you’re struggling with that is preventing you from comprehension. Basically, you are noticing your progress, and coming up with the next steps of plans.

10. You are basically going to be repeating step 9 every few weeks/every month or so. Continue to casually engage with chinese media, and occasionally (once a week or so) try to comprehend only-chinese content to gauge your progress. Work on your measurable goals for the ‘focused study’ portion of your study plan. For your free time, you may do other focused study that’s not as urgent of a goal to you, or you may continue practicing with the language (consuming chinese media, talking to people in chinese once you’re at that level, listening to chinese or chinese learning podcasts, reading books at your comprehension level or graded readers, etc). For me, my step 9 was reading through about 300-500 most common characters, then measuring my progress. After I measured my progress, I was sick of looking at characters - so I switched to reading graded readers, and using most-common-word flashcards and that was my Step 10 focused-study portion. I am now doing primarily my most common word flashcards in memrise. I am to word 650 and it has made significant progress in my comprehension. I am now familiar with a lot more basic literary words, so in novels it’s getting easier for me to locate actual information from ‘then/before/after/so/therefore/but/yet’. In watching dramas, my comprehension is now considerably higher. As a challenge, I watch one of my dramas in only chinese - and look up an occasional word if I get confused by it. I did not start watching a drama in only chinese until month 8 - and I would not recommend it until you can sit through 1 episode of a drama without it taking too long (basically, i pause for only a few minutes through the show, so it still takes less than an hour to watch an episode), and until you can comprehend enough of the gist to bare only looking up words occasionally. Basically - you don’t want to pause too often, and you want to understand enough to follow along without having to pause too often. If you are not yet at that level, then continue consuming chinese-only content as the occasional challenge to gauge progress and push yourself to try things above your comprehension level. 

If you ARE comfortable comprehending enough of the gist to watch something in only-chinese and it takes a short enough amount of time for you to remain focused, then go ahead. Because I am focusing primarily on increasing vocabulary right now, I am regularly noticing how the more vocabulary i know, the easier the only-chinese drama is for me to comprehend. Learning more vocabulary is noticably making my life easier with each measurable goal I meet. I am also noticing that my ability to comprehend chinese in REAL TIME (without pausing) is not as fast as i’d like. IF I paused the show i watched, then i would comprehend much more since i’d have time to slowly read the sentences and interpret the grammar. But my goal is not to slow down and analyse sentences at the moment - my goal is to practice watching chinese in real time, and practice comprehending it in real time. Later, once I have learned 2000 words and 2000 characters, THEN I plan to focus on reading as my main media-consuming. When I focus on reading, that is when i plan to slow down and practice comprehending a sentence piece by piece and actually paying attention to sentences slowly. But for right now, since I’m mainly just practicing comprehending in real-time, I am limiting how often i pause to read over chinese subtitles to only a few times an episode.

----My Current Plan----

For now, I plan to continue focusing on working through my 1000 word list, and hopefully work through my 2000 word list. Once I get ‘sick’ of studying words primarily, I’m going to shift my goal to my Intensive Chinese series of textbooks by Zheng Peng Peng. The first book is on spoken chinese, and I want to use it to really hammer in the basics and make sure I’ve got a solid knowledge of them. The second book is a little more on radicals and a quick read. The third book is intensive reading, where i plan to use it to really hammer in knowledge of the most common 800ish characters and words. These books focus on 1000-2000 very common words, with the last book being character-reading focused. I think they will help, after i get through the flashcards, to help me really solidify my memory of the most common words (and fill in any lacking common-words my flashcards may have not mentioned or not explained thoroughly). Once done with my 2000 most common character flashcards, and these books, I feel I should have a very solid foundation. These books also cover basic grammar, so I’ll get a review on some grammar topics and build a more solid foundation on how to USE those grammar structures.

After that point, I want to go back to character study - go to my 2000+ character reference book, and study any remaining characters I haven’t learned by that point. At the same time, I’ll go through my 5000 most common chinese words deck including HSK (in memrise). I will catch that deck up to the words I already know, and start working through the remainder. So I will basically be finishing up working through the character reference book i have, and also working through the bigger most-common-word flashcard deck I have. That should be a good way to expand what I can comprehend at that point.

AFTER that, I will either: read some of my grammar books so I can read more in depth about more grammar points. OR I will start diving into practicing reading. And I will alternate between one of these goals, or the point above (2000 characters/5000 words) depending on how well I can concentrate on either task/goal. I will continue to watch chinese dramas, and watch one in all chinese, and to continue occasionally trying to read. 

[karthik-erattu]

The Better Web Hosting Service for Your Business..

If you’re a business owner in the throes of launching your own e-commerce website or upgrading your existing one, you probably know you need a better web hosting service.

To build your business sky high you need a strong platform. In this era of digitalism strong platform means a strong website which is built on an experienced and 24x7 supportive web hosting service.

There are dozens of companies to choose from, many of which provide different tiers of services.

I know, you are confused.

Which will you choose from hundreds of companies coming up with different offers. Don’t worry I made the study for you and I am introducing you the best of all web hosting service that is,

Blue host

Did you know that Blue host is home to more than 2 million websites?

That’s a lot.

Having such a vast customer base is enough evidence that they are doing something right. Their uptime is reliable, server speeds are good, and all of their hosting plans pack useful features for beginners and intermediates alike.

Blue host also has helpful 24/7 live chat and phone support, and you can safely give them a try with their 30-day money-back guarantee. Blue host has been around since 2003, so they have plenty of experience to know what makes a hosting service excellent.

Their introductory prices are affordable, customer support is easy to reach and helpful, and you get many useful features to go with your hosting plan. In addition, they provide reliable uptime and fast server speeds.

General Info & Hosting Overview

Rating: 5.0

SPEED: 688 ms

UPTIME: 99.96%

SUPPORT: 24/7 Live Chat, Phone, Email, Knowledge Base

APPS: WordPress,Joomla,Drupal, phpBB,and More Than 75+ Open Source Projects

FEATURES: Unmetered bandwidth, Unlimited Websites and Storage, Free Domain 1st Year, Free SSL Certificate and CDN, Spam Experts, Domain Privacy, 30-Day Money Back Guarantee, WordPress 1-Click Install

HOSTING PLANS: Shared, WordPress, VPS, Reseller, and Dedicated Servers

SITE TRANSFER: Single WordPress Site for Free

PRICING: Starting at $3.95/mo* (use this link)

Let’s take a more detailed look at Blue host’s strong points.

1. Blue host has The Best Uptime (99.96%)

Uptime is one of the most critical aspects when choosing a web host – after all, if your site is down, your users can’t access it. So, consistent uptime should be one of your top priorities when looking at hosting services.

After reviewing over 50 web hosts, Google benchmark for “good” uptime is 99.93%.

The good news is that Blue host easily surpasses this benchmark, comfortably keeping test site live for 99.96%.

2. Blue host has The Fastest Page Loading Speed (688 ms)

Research conducted by Google found:

“As page load time goes from 1s to 3s the probability of bounce increases 32%.”

This translates to your visitors being 32% more likely to leave your site. And it only gets worse with longer page load times.

Furthermore, Google is more geared towards mobile-first indexing. This means that your site also needs to be optimized for mobile users, or otherwise, you’re losing traffic.

Either way, a slow website almost always means less traffic and, therefore, lower sales numbers. So right after uptime, page loading time is the second most important thing that can make or break your website’s success.

Blue host offer you the best average load speed of 688 ms.

3. Blue host offer you Low Introductory Pricing ($3.95/mo)

Blue host’s pricing starts at $3.95/month, which is an introductory price from the regular $8.99/month rate.

For this price, you get pretty much everything you need for a single website.

That includes 50 GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and more. So you’d be getting a pretty good value for the price, plus their consistent uptime and page loading speeds.

4.Blue host is Packed with Security Options and Features

Since Blue host is one of the “cheapest” options on the market, we are pleased to see that they don’t cut too many corners on critical security options and features.

Already with the cheapest plan, Bluehost provides your site with a free SSL certificate. You also get access to great features like a free CDN (Cloudflare), a one-click WordPress install, multiple CMS integrations, and additional eCommerce plugins.

Higher-tier plans come with the Spam Experts add-on, domain privacy protection, and server backups. Also, you get more advanced security features such as SiteLock, which helps prevent malware attacks.

Codeguard is another form of protection, which provides daily backups so you can roll back previous versions of a site, should it get hacked.

Postini, from Google, is the final security tool worth noting. It provides spam protection for your email, so anything suspicious is prevented from getting into your inbox.

5.Blue host is Very User Friendly for Beginners

Some of the web hosts we’ve seen can be considered the best only if you’re an advanced user. But, Blue host is great for beginners, too.

Their customer portal is intuitive and clean. And the layout of the cPanel control panel makes Blue host even easier to use. Beginners can easily install and start WordPress through cPanel. All you need to do is a point and click in most cases.

If you don’t want to use WordPress, you can also begin creating a website with a website builder tool (such as Weebly or Drupal). You can then customize a template by just dragging and dropping elements on your page.

Blue host also has features for advanced users who want to use their code to create their site.

6. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Blue host offers a 30-day money-back guarantee with all of their hosting plans.

You can try out the service to see their performance for yourself and ask for a refund if you’re not completely satisfied.

7. 24/7 Customer Support

Blue host provides 24/7 customer support over live chat, phone, and an email ticketing system. On top of that, they have a vast knowledge base packed with answers to frequent questions and useful information.

8.Blue host offers Free Word Press Site Transfer

If you already have a site and want to switch to Blue host’s hosting plan, then this perk is for you.

Blue host recently started offering a free site transfer with all of their plans.

There are a couple of terms to this free service, though. First, the site needs to be a WordPress site. And secondly, you have to request the migration within the first 30 days after signing up with a hosting plan.

All you need to do is contact their customer support team and follow their directions. The migration usually takes around 1-3 business days to complete.

9. Blue host is The Official Word Press Recommended Host

Word Press is the most widely used website platform on the market – ~44% of the entire Internet is built with Word Press.

It’s safe to say that they have an authoritative word when it comes to hosting solutions. Word Press only officially recommends three hosting partners to use with a Word Press site. Blue host is one of them.

Of course, you can use almost any web hosting provider to create a Word Press site. But the fact that Blue host is one of the few officially recognized partners is encouraging.

So that’s it guys, if you are looking for a better web host service that is Blue host.

Get your Blue host service at starting price of $3.95/month here.

You can try Blue host with 30-day money-back guarantee with all of their hosting plans. If you’re not convinced you will get the money back.

What you want more, go and try it here. Blue host.

[makingmoneyonlinemethod]

Bluehost Review

Is This Web Hosting Company Worth Signing Up For?

Did you know that Bluehost is home to more than 2 million websites?

That’s a lot.

Having such a vast customer base is enough evidence that they are doing something right. Their uptime is reliable, server speeds are good, and all of their hosting plans pack useful features for beginners and intermediate alike.

 Bluehost also has helpful 24/7 live chat and phone support, and you can safely give them a try with their 30-day money-back guarantee.

However, there are a few downsides, too, like higher renewal prices and some restrictions on the cheapest plan.

We base all our reviews solely on real data like uptime, speed, and cost.

So, without further ado, let’s take a closer look at Bluehost and find out if they can provide a high-quality website hosting service that you need.

General Info & Hosting Overview

Our Rating:             Our Verdict: 5.0

 SPEED:                      641 ms (February 2020 to January 2021)

 UPTIME:                   99.96% (February 2020 to January 2021)

 SUPPORT:               24/7 Live Chat, Phone, Email, Knowledge Base

 APPS:                        WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, phpBB, and More Than 75+                                      Open Source Projects

 FEATURES:              Unmetered bandwidth, Unlimited Websites and Storage,                                        Free Domain 1st Year, Free SSL Certificate, Spam                                                Experts, Domain Privacy, 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee,                                    WordPress 1-Click Install

 HOSTING PLANS:  Shared, WordPress, VPS, Reseller, and Dedicated Servers

 ITE TRANSFER:       Single WordPress Site for Free

 PRICING:                  Starting at $2.75/mo (renews at $8.99/mo)

 Pros of Using Bluehost Hosting

Bluehost has been around since 2003, so they have plenty of experience to know what makes a hosting service excellent.

Their introductory prices are affordable, customer support is easy to reach and helpful, and you get many useful features to go with your hosting plan. In addition, they provide reliable uptime and fast server speeds.

Let’s take a more detailed look at Bluehost’s strong points.

1. Great Uptime Through 12-Months(99.96%)

Uptime is one of the most critical aspects when choosing a web host – after all, if your site is down, your users can’t access it. So, consistent uptime should be one of your top priorities when looking at hosting services.

After reviewing over 40 web hosts, our benchmark for “good” uptime is 99.93%. So ideally, we don’t want to see anything less than that.

The good news is that Bluehost easily surpasses this benchmark, comfortably keeping our test site live for 99.96% of the time during the last 12 months (February 2020 to January 2021). The total downtime was a bit less than four hours for the whole year.

Here’s the breakdown of Bluehost’s average uptime in the past 12 months:

January 2021: 100%

December 2020: 99.98%

November 2020: 100%

October 2020: 99.67%

September 2020: 100%

August 2020: 99.99%

July 2020: 99.98%

June 2020: 100%

May 2020: 99.90% (scheduled     maintenance)

April 2020: 99.99%

March 2020: 99.98%

February 2020: 100%

2. Fast Page Loading Speed (641 ms)

Research conducted by Google found:

“As page load time goes from 1s to 3s the probability of bounce increases 32%.”

This translates to your visitors being 32% more likely to leave your site. And it only gets worse with longer page load times.

Furthermore, Google is more geared towards mobile-first indexing. This means that your site also needs to be optimized for mobile users, or otherwise, you’re losing traffic.

Either way, a slow website almost always means less traffic and, therefore, lower sales numbers. So right after uptime, page loading time is the second most important thing that can make or break your website’s success.

Our test site with Bluehost has offered an average load speed of 641 ms over the past year. While it isn’t competing for the top positions, it isn’t bad either.

 3. Low Introductory Pricing ($2.75/mo)

Bluehost’s default pricing starts at $3.95/month, which is an introductory price from the regular $8.99/month rate.

However, the good news is that we’ve been able to work out a deal with Bluehost for our readers that takes the starting price down even further to $2.75/month.

For this price, you get pretty much everything you need for a single website. That includes 50 GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and more. So you’d be getting a pretty good value for the price, plus their consistent uptime and page loading speeds.

Still, the cheapest plan does have a few restrictions that we’re not entirely happy with – but more about this later on.

4. Packed with Security Options and Features

Since Bluehost is one of the “cheapest” options on the market, we are pleased to see that they don’t cut too many corners on critical security options and features.

Already with the cheapest plan, Bluehost provides your site with a free SSL certificate. You also get access to great features like a free CDN (Cloudflare), a one-click WordPress install, multiple CMS integrations, and additional eCommerce plugins.

Higher-tier plans come with the Spam Experts add-on, domain privacy protection, and server backups. Also, you get more advanced security features such as SiteLock, which helps prevent malware attacks. Codeguard is another form of protection, which provides daily backups so you can roll back previous versions of a site, should it get hacked. Postini, from Google, is the final security tool worth noting. It provides spam protection for your email, so anything suspicious is prevented from getting into your inbox.

5. Easy to Use for Beginners

Some of the web hosts we’ve seen can be considered the best only if you’re an advanced user. But, Bluehost is great for beginners, too.

Their customer portal is intuitive and clean (although, we have experienced it is a bit slow at times). And the layout of the cPanel control panel makes Bluehost even easier to use. Beginners can easily install and start WordPress through cPanel. All you need to do is point and click in most cases.

 If you don’t want to use WordPress, you can also begin creating a website with a website builder tool (such as Weebly or Drupal). You can then customize a template by just dragging and dropping elements on your page.

Bluehost also has features for advanced users who want to use their code to create their site.

6. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee with all of their hosting plans.

You can try out the service to see their performance for yourself and ask for a refund if you’re not completely satisfied. We have a few words of caution, though.

According to Bluehost’s terms, here’s what does and doesn’t fall under that guarantee:

You can only get refunds on the web hosting cost,     not any other products like domains or other add-ons.

Bluehost would deduct $15.99 if you received a     free domain name in your plan.

Bluehost does not refund any requests after 30     days.

It’s not precisely a no-questions-asked policy like we’ve seen from some hosts. So make sure you agree with these points before signing up.

7. 24/7 Customer Support

Bluehost provides 24/7 customer support over live chat, phone, and an email ticketing system. On top of that, they have a vast knowledge base packed with answers to frequent questions and useful information.

We went ahead and tested their live chat option, and the experience was pleasant.

We got answers to our questions quickly, and the representative was knowledgeable. Sure, some responses felt copy-pasted, but the follow-up questions prompted improvised and helpful answers.

 8. One Free WordPress Site Transfer

If you already have a site and want to switch to Bluehost’s hosting plan, then this perk is for you.

Bluehost only recently started offering a free site transfer with all of their plans.

There are a couple of terms to this free service, though. First, the site needs to be a WordPress site. And secondly, you have to request the migration within the first 30 days after signing up with a hosting plan.

All you need to do is contact their customer support team and follow their directions. The migration usually takes around 1-3 business days to complete.

 If you don’t have a WordPress website or have more than one then it costs $149.99. This gets you up to 5 website migrations and 20 email account migrations.

9. The Official WordPress.org Recommended Host

WordPress is the most widely used website platform on the market – ~47% of the entire Internet is built with WordPress.

It’s safe to say that they have an authoritative word when it comes to hosting solutions. WordPress only officially recommends three hosting partners to use with a WordPress site:

Bluehost

DreamHost

SiteGround

Of course, you can use almost any web hosting provider to create a WordPress site. But the fact that Bluehost is one of the few officially recognized partners is encouraging.

 Cons of Using Bluehost Hosting

 Bluehost has some great perks going for their hosting service, but there are a couple of hiccups too.

Even though we’re happy to see such low introductory prices, the renewal rates can get a bit steep.

Let’s take a closer look at these downsides.

1. Higher Renewal Rates

The best way to get the lowest possible price for hosting is to prepay for one, two, or even three years upfront. The average monthly price decreases, but you’re also committing hundreds of dollars in advance.

Rest assured, you can use the 30-day money-back guarantee to get a refund if you don’t like their service. However, once the initial plan duration is over, you can expect a steep rise in the rates.

Let’s say you commit to the cheapest plan for three years, which is $2.75/month. After the initial period, the next period’s renewal price starts at $8.99/month with a three-year commitment.

 In this case, the subsequent period is three times more expensive than the first.

2. Cheapest Plan Restrictions

Bluehost’s cheapest shared hosting plan comes with some heavy restrictions.

You can only have a single website, the storage space is limited and the only security feature you get is a free SSL certificate. So, if you have multiple sites or want more security, you have to go for at least the next pricing tier, which is twice as expensive.

Sadly, such restrictions on the cheapest plan are quite common in the web hosting industry. The companies compete over who can lure the customers in with the lowest price, only to upsell a decent hosting service at a higher price.

  Quick Facts

Money-Back: 30-day money-back guarantee.

Website Migration: Free transfer for 1 WordPress website. Other     migrations are $149.99 for up to 5 websites and 20 email accounts.

Free domain? Yes, for the first year. Then renews at $15.99 per year.

Ease of Sign-up: Easy and guided sign-up process.

Payment Methods: Major credit cards and PayPal.

Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refund on domain names. Renewal rates for     both domains and hosting are much higher than the introductory rates.

Upsells: Some     upsells during sign-up, but nothing too aggressive.

Account Activation: Instant activation in most cases. If the     information is inaccurate or there’s suspicion of fraud, activation might     get delayed.

Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: Easy-to-use cPanel

Installation of Apps and CMS (WordPress, Joomla,     etc.): Mojo Marketplace makes app installation quick     and easy.

Do We Recommend Bluehost?

Yes, we do.

Bluehost has performed slightly better in the past, but they still provide a reliable service with decent server speeds.

Also, they offer strong security options, a great money-back guarantee, plenty of user-friendly apps, and multiple tiers of hosting packages suitable for different customers. The pricing starts at $2.75/month with our special discount.

Still, Bluehost isn’t perfect, though. The hosting plans’ renewal rates will increase dramatically after the initial signup period, and the cheapest plan has some critical restrictions compared to the next tiers.

But overall, Bluehost delivers decent performance and good value for your money.

[internetandnetwork]

A Complete Guide to Identifying and Optimizing Customer Experience Touchpoints

Customer touchpoints are particular places in the buyer journey where potential, as well as existing customers, interact with your brand. Now, these touchpoints might involve direct interactions like getting a product demonstration from your sales team or indirect interactions like reading a blog published on your website.

Every customer touchpoint directly affects your overall customer experience and the way your audience perceives your brand. A bad experience at one touchpoint can quickly downgrade the user’s perception of various good experiences at other touchpoints in the past.

HOW TO IDENTIFY CUSTOMER TOUCHPOINTS?

A few of your customer touchpoints should be apparent. For example, if you have a sales or support team that interacts with your customers directly, those interactions – support chat, product tutorials, sales calls, live demos, etc. – are all customer touchpoints.

However, to discover other touchpoints, research and data are required. You can use tools such as Google Analytics to find out the channels that are sending traffic to your site. For that, you have to view your Acquisition Overview report. Moreover, it also lets you examine any particular channels closely to find out where your audience is coming from exactly. For example:

If you filter your “Organic” report by “Source,” it will show you a list of search engines that send traffic to your site, and if you filter by “Landing Page,” it’ll show you the list of web pages that the visitors see mostly.

If you go to All Traffic > Channels > Social, it will show you the list of social media platforms that send traffic to your website.

If you filter by “Referral,” you will be able to see the list of other sites that have linked to your site and are sending traffic.

Exploring all your acquisition reports will help you get a clearer idea of your external customer touchpoints.

Another great idea to find your customer touchpoints is simply asking your customers and prospects about how they got to know your brand. This is an excellent way to discover those of your touchpoints that couldn’t be revealed in your data, like getting referred by a friend or seeing your business’s advert in a magazine.

Conducting customer interviews is also an excellent way to ask your customers directly. If not, you can invite all your existing customers to take part in your survey to collect data, or you can also add this question to your signup form to obtain data when a potential customer signs up for a free trial or purchases a product.

OPTIMIZING 11 COMMON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TOUCHPOINTS

Here are the eleven most common touchpoints along with tips to optimize the customer experience at each of them.

Website

When optimizing your site’s homepage and product landing pages, you must strive to explain your products/services in the most precise way possible. It will improve the customer experience.

A lot of landing pages are built in a manner that presumes the site visitor knows the product already, and this compels them to explore your site in an attempt to identify what your product does. This builds a horrible customer experience and drives the prospects away to other websites searching for solutions.

If you face troubles in describing your product within the boundaries of your chosen landing page design, then you can consider embedding videos or adding links to blog posts or help docs to allow the visitors to access more in-depth details about your product without having to navigate away.

Another crucial thing to remember is to maintain transparency with your product pricing to make your website clear. However, if you feel you cannot provide the exact price of your offering on the website due to any reason, make sure to write a little bit of information that gives the prospects a hint of whether or not they can afford it.

Last but not least, making your website clear also means avoiding using any slangs, jargon, idioms, or any such phrases that your audience may not be familiar with. You can utilize some online tools to detect the use of such terms in your copy that may create confusion in your audience’s minds.

Blog

When writing blogs for your company’s website, you need to remember that it will draw many different types of audiences who are simply looking for information online and not just the ones looking to buy a product/service that you are offering.

Existing customers and visitors who might become your customers tomorrow, a week, a month, or years later, are all going to read your blog posts, so in order to offer a great customer experience to them, an ideal thing to do here is to provide a high-quality, original, unique, valuable, and feasible content.

Don’t make every blog a sales pitch. Posting useful content consistently that helps your readers learn what they came looking for, adds value in their day-to-day life, or enhances their ability to do something better will create an invaluable likeness for your company even if it does not lead to a conversion instantly.

While your blog posts can indeed generate instant conversions, typically, your long-form content serves as a long-term gamble. When you publish high-quality, comprehensive content about any topic online, that specific piece of content will automatically gain a lot of traction and will introduce your brand to every reader and establish trust with that group of audience.

Maybe the particular group of an audience does not require your product or service at the moment, but they might a few months or perhaps even years later. And if through your blog, you have been able to build a lot of trust with that audience successfully during the past months or years, the first product they consider will be yours.

Social Media

Many marketing blogs online will advise you to have an account on every social media platform: Imagine the volume of sales you may be losing out right now by not posting stories on Snapchat!

But the truth is that it is always better to focus on a couple of channels – specifically speaking, the ones where your target audience spends the majority of their time online and where you can maintain your presence actively.

Prospects might approach you with queries on social media sites that you do not check regularly or keep an eye on closely. Not getting your response might make the user feel ignored, and this isn’t good. Bear in mind that social media platforms are built to be “social,” and if you can’t engage with your audience on a particular platform, it’s better if you don’t create an account on it in the first place.

Email

Emails and newsletters are an excellent means to stay connected with your audience, but at the same time, it is also a customer touchpoint that you can easily get wrong. While you can publish as many blogs and social media posts as you want, sending too many emails will eventually irritate your subscribers.

The best way to prevent your audience from feeling like they are being spammed by you is to allow them to choose what they want to hear from you.

Try dividing your email subscriber list into various groups based on the types of emails you send out. Maybe some subscribers only want to receive your newsletters, while others just want to receive updates about your new blog posts or products. Once you have successfully segmented your email list, let the subscribers decide and tell the types of email(s) they would like to receive from you.

Another crucial thing to do is ensure that the receivers are able to read the emails you send them. For that, you should test your emails in multiple email readers and make sure to incorporate a “View in Browser” link in your emails so that users can still access the email even if their email reader fails to load it properly.

Paid Advertisements

When optimizing your paid advertisements to build a great customer experience, the best and most crucial thing to do is ensure that when a user clicks on one of your paid adverts, they are directed to a landing page relevant to the ad content.

For example, if you are promoting an ongoing sale on your website, your ad should direct the visitors to a landing page that either displays the products that are on sale or at least provides more information about the sale.

Never send the prospects to a page where they start doubting what they even clicked. Instead of making them dig through your site searching for what they saw in that ad, offer them a great experience by leading them to the most relevant page.

Referral Programs

A lot of brands offer affiliate programs in which they pay a small bonus or reward whenever a referral leads to a conversion or sale. While affiliate programs are undoubtedly effective in fetching new customers, they might not be the best way to make sure that you are offering a good customer experience.

Your affiliates don’t necessarily have to be your customers means they might promote your products or services without ever using them. They might aggressively advertise your offerings, misdescribe them, or direct the wrong types of audiences to your website. This can result in upset audiences, bad reviews, and an overall negative customer experience.

Therefore, when it comes to optimizing your customer experience, a referral program is usually a better option. They are different from affiliate programs and only available to your existing customers. It helps ensure that the people referring your products or services to others have used it themselves and are well aware of what it does.

To offer an even more positive customer experience with your referral program, offer a commission or reward to both the referral as well as the referred customer. This way, both of them get something. The existing customer is delighted because they got a bonus and the new customer is pleased because they got a bonus or discount on a product that they would have most probably bought anyway.

Sales Calls or Demos

A typical salesperson is not bothered about your customer experience; all they care about is making the sale at any cost. So if you really want your sales calls and demos to positively enhance the customer experience, do not create a typical sales team.

Don’t push the prospect too much to get them to schedule a call with your sales team. Don’t try to persuade prospects to get upgrades that they don’t really need only to enhance the value of the sale. Also, do not compel them to make a decision on your schedule; let them take their time to research your product entirely before they decide to purchase it.

If your sales team comprises individuals who are kind and understanding, who genuinely want to help the prospects in making the right decisions, even if that means buying a competitor’s product, you will be able to establish far more trust with them and make sure that the purchasing process is pleasant for the prospects.

However, remember that not everybody likes to talk to salespeople. For such prospects, posting pre-recorded product demos and offering a self-service free product trial will be beneficial in building a great customer experience.

Self-Service POS

If your prospects don’t need to talk to your salespeople to signup for a trial or buy a product, you can still optimize your self-service customer experience by doing these things:

Ensure that the product pricing is clearly mentioned on your website so that the prospect doesn’t get surprised at the time of payment.

Provide multiple payment options to your customers so that they can choose their preferred mode without any issues (such as credit card, debit card, UPI, PayPal, etc.).

Offer multiple shipping options to your customers, free or inexpensive options for people who are money-conscious, and priority shipping options who want their package to be delivered as soon as possible.

Make sure your billing, cancellation, or return policies are simple and straightforward. It would be best to include a “Frequently Asked Questions” section at the bottom of your product pricing page or add its link in your shopping cart so that the customer can access it easily.

You might also want to include Live Chat support at your self-service POS (point of sale) so that the customer can easily reach out to the support team in case they face any sort of problem on the website.

Customer Support

Great customer service forms a crucial part of your overall customer experience. A bad support experience can immediately downgrade a customer’s perception of your brand.

Here are a few best practices that you can employ to offer great customer service:

Allow customers to contact your support team easily: Offer multiple support options to allow the customer to choose their preferred one and do not make them dig through your site to find the contact options.

Offer self-service options: Posting product tutorials and answers to FAQs is an excellent way to offer 24/7 support and help people who prefer finding solutions by themselves.

Provide quick and thorough support: Needless to say, but customers love quick responses that help them fix their issue then and there. But thorough support beats quick support at any given time. Never ever drop the quality of your support just to provide quick responses to your customers.

Renewals

If you have successfully offered a positive customer experience throughout the buyer journey, getting renewals is no big deal. But there are a few things that you can take care of to keep your customers happy at the time of renewals.

First of all, be sure to send an email or text message reminder to your customer prior to deducting the payment amount from their account, especially if you have customers taking up annual subscriptions where they can easily forget about it.

Next, allow the customers to modify their billing address easily. Ideally, they should be able to update their payment info within their account only without having to contact the support team.

Cancellations

Every business wants their customers to stay with them till eternity, and if that had been the case, it would be so nice. But that’s far from reality. There can be many reasons why a customer might need to cancel their accounts, whether due to financial issues or changing needs. Offering a great customer experience also involves allowing the customers to opt for cancellation whenever they want easily.

Do not push the customers to contact your sales or support team for cancelation, especially if they have always opted for self-service throughout the buyer journey.

Do not compel the customers to click on a “Yes, I am sure” button on multiple screens to complete the process.

Do not make it hard for them to get a refund or make them do weird things like fill out a form and submit the hard copy, etc.

A customer canceling their account is not necessarily a customer lost forever. At times all they need is a change. They might return to your brand again.

Conclusion

If you successfully deliver a positive customer experience throughout the buyer journey, the customer will forever remember your brand positively and perceive it in a good light. Not only will they return to your brand whenever they need your product or service, but they will also recommend it to their peers, friends, and family. Keep this guide in mind and implement the measures discussed above to optimize your touchpoints and provide an incredible customer experience.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for E Global Soft Solutions. E Global Soft Solutions is a digital marketing, seo, smo, ppc and web development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : A Complete Guide to Identifying and Optimizing Customer Experience Touchpoints