The declaration of demonetization did come as a surprise to most. Starting from the common citizens, to the richest in the nation, to even some parts of the government were in shock and awe at the Prime Minister's speech to declare INR notes of 500 and 1000 as discussed after a few hours.

The internet along with other forms of media have been biting hard on this case with long queues of restless citizens' pile in front of the bank and ATM gates. For us the stroke of midnight on the 9th of November, 2016 did not mean that Cinderella would have to run home. But instead it meant that wallets and lockers full of stacked money in high denomination notes would turn into nothing but paper!

People are analyzing the case of demonetization from all sorts of perspectives, considering the economic angle, the political angle and the social angle.

But why was this monumental decision taken in such a secrecy? How will it affect the customers, the citizens, the local businesses, the trading systems, the banks and all of India Incorporated ?! Who will analyze all this data from PAN, Voter ID and Aadhar citation, track transactions and be the watchdogs of counting numbers?

Finance Ministry hails the help of data analysts and seek to deploy new analytics systems:

The Indian Finance Ministry has been having a good many busy days especially since the demonetization declaration. Reports revealed that they are looking to employ new analytics systems in place to track and monitor all large expenses, monitor the splitting transactions as their game plan with using technology to track black money within the nation.

Finance Ministry officials stated that they could soon launch a press release which would request for proposal ie RFQ. The first stage of the process would be a tendering stage. The officials also reported that work has been going on to install such an effective analytics system for as long as 3 years now.

With the rush of transactions, the discussions are growing more and more serious. They understand and are surer ever about what is it that the system wants. So, the ministry is on a hunt for setting up a framework of the process through RFP. Until now the system had been reconciling data on the basis of piecemeal. However, implementing such an advanced system will take a lot of work. Such were the viewpoints obtained from a consultant who is aware of the plan of the Finance Ministry.

Some executives of the ministry did reveal that they have been in talks with the tech about this exercise. This new platform will more likely further push forward the part f the system that the ministry already possesses.

As per the department, they already have a system that logs in transactions of INR 5 to 10 Crore. However, the new system will track spending amount from INR 50 Lakhs. They are also looking to see if they can make a new system for flagging a real-time process as present the data processing system is not real time.

This platform, once in place will analyze data from the CBDT (Central Board of Direct Taxes), CBE (Central Board of Excise) as well as Customs to catch unscrupulous individuals whose expenses exceed their declared income.

So, it is now understood why the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley had said during his 2015-16 Budget Speech that this year technology use would be elemental to nab tax evaders.

Mr. Jaitley further stated that provisions are being taken to manage the splitting of transactions. This will help improve the achievements by the CBDT and the CBEC and they will be able to leverage the technologies to have access to each other's databases for gathering information.

Thus, it is evident that this change whether for the good or bad of the economy, is definitely a good one for analytics professionals. As a number of initiatives are being taken within and around the ministry which uses analytics technology. To identify tax those involved in tax evasion and black money. The government is prepared to receive information from multiple sources that are installed within multiple channels. If they can meaningfully and accurately analyze all these systems in a proper integrated manner, then this would reveal a significant chunk of tax evasion.

They are also taking measures in installing special fraud management analytics systems that will help prevent professional and opportunistic fraud.

Recommendations have also been made about implementing a Knowledge, Analysis and Intelligence Center for the Government to enable data sharing and ease of analysis between the CBDT and the CBEC.

How can the vast cash dependent population of the country be affected by this move?

The biggest blow of demonetization is for the working class of the society. This includes our nation's drivers, cooks, electricians, maids, plumbers and other labors. These are people who offer important services in the informal section. This population is solely dependent on cash on a monthly or a bi-monthly basis.

How will they be affected the most?

Imagine a scenario where your maid's monthly payment is due tomorrow. But you do not have adequate small value notes at home and also could not beat the long queues at the ATMs and banks. Then they will have to wait to be paid until you get some legal tendered cash in your hands. With ATMs and banks slowly losing their momentum and having shortage of small denomination notes. The problem is a bubble of disaster waiting to burst all over the nation. The whole process rides on the over-worked and very prone to human errors section of government execs and bank employees to allow a smooth transitioning.

But the disaster is even larger for those in remote rural areas with a lack of resources and knowledge. They mostly are unaware of main banking systems and do not have access to ATMs. These people heavily rent on large value cash transactions and will be crippled until new notes surface the number of people without a proper bank account was roughly estimated to be 200 to 300 million and the number will likely be higher.

Many argument that with Jan Dhan scheme and the UPI / digital payment stack would help rural India to deal with the transition. But truth is it will be a long time before the rural part of the nation becomes completely cashless.

As for those rural Indians who have a large amount of cash in the form of 500 and 1000 notes, but no official form of identification will certainly face a huge problem.

It is now the eve of 2018 and bitcoin is at the top of the mountain. The bad days seems to be gone, and although a bitcoin bubble could happen anytime, there is no arguing the cryptocurrency is here to stay. The sooner you get involved into making money from bitcoin, the better ground you will have in 5 years when it becomes an established currency worldwide.

And if the Bubble scares you, investing in bitcoin is just one of the options, but not the only one. Bubble or not you can still make tons of money from bitcoin. And bubble or not, the value will rise in the future because people are just getting involved in it.

Make you own Bitcoin Faucet

Earning Potential: $50 to $800 a month.

A bitcoin faucet is a project in which you create a website or app for users to visit. You monetize the site with ads that pay in bitcoin. The ads pay a small amount of bitcoins per page view, click or conversion.

To encourage a large amount of visitors to keep navigating the site on a daily and hourly basis, you offer to split the revenue from the ads with them, paying in Satoshi which are basically bitcoin cents. To claim their winnings the user needs to earn a certain amount of Satoshi and payments are conducted on a weekly basis.

Faucets are paying between 100,000 to 400,000 satoshi’s per hour. Some offer premium payments for seniority or tasks achievements.

Faucets began to operate with the solving of captchas, and nothing else. A very boring passive income task. New faucets are building in games were users kill aliens, feed critters or kill robots to earn satoshi, the more they advance in the game the more they earn. So this is a great idea for your own faucet.

The day were every video game player gets paid for playing is just around the corner.

Take into consideration that bitcoin faucets tend to default due to underfunding or liquidity. The owners of the faucet do not receive their payments fast enough to pay a fast growing user base. They also tend to be hot targets for hackers.

Generate Passive Income from Your Bitcoin Blog

Since bitcoin is so new compared to other targeted content there’s lots of room for new bloggers and sites. New businesses related to bitcoin spring up every day; anything from bitcoin exchanges, trading, play money sites, faucets, online shops and mining are avid for your advertorial space.

Creating a bitcoin blog and monetizing can be slow at the beginning, but constant publishing of rich content will get some advertisers interested in no less than 9 months.

You can join some affiliate programs or establish your own bitcoin shop. Bitcoin faucets, wallets and exchanges pay large commissions per referral.

Small Earnings from Bitcoin Faucets

My first advice involved creating your very own faucet. If that is a bit too hard, then try joining one and reaping off its benefits. Instead of making around $800 a month it would be more like $30 to $100 a month from a monotonous task, but it’s still money and a first step to begin building up your bank.

Take note that bitcoin faucets tend to be faulty and disappear very fast. So make sure to join some reputable ones like Robotcoin.com and BitcoinAlien.com. These are also fun because you get to play games while earning, my top most recommendation would be robotcoin.

Create a Bitcoin Product or Service Online Shop

Bitcoin is still hard to monetize into USD and other hard currencies. Not that it is extremely hard, but ads some fees and taxes to the process. Although it is still one of the cheapest ways to send money to anywhere in the world.

Buying stuff with bitcoins is a great way of making something useful out of them and helps skip the fees and tax of exchanges. Especially if you can then resell those goods and turn into hard cash.

There is a great business opportunity in selling goods paid in bitcoin at low prices or wholesale. All you need is a bitcoin merchant for your Shopify or WooCommerce shop like BitPay.com. Shopify comes with BitPay already.

Landscaping requirements originated from our needs to create an environment that is attractive, pleasing to our senses. There are a number of items in this regard. Starting from small potted plants, orchids, bonsai trees as well as exotic tropical plants, all give the landscape a fascinating look. If you live in an urban habitat then you can very well opt for orchids as an excellent way to decorate your interior landscapes. About the orchids, one can say, that, there are a variety of such plants available in the e-commerce platform. And, so far as the placement of the plants are concerned, they are placed near the balconies, rooftops of the commercial complexes.

The Phalaenopsis Orchid are used as landscape items

The Phalaenopsis Orchid is also known as the Moth Orchid. Such type of orchids is common because of their ease of production, the availability. The plants are often grown in the interiors. They stay in bloom for a significant period of time. Such orchids have different colours. From while coloured Phalaenopsis Orchid to a spotted orchid and all the varieties are equally mesmerising. As is known, that are different types of orchids, but unlike the other orchid types the Phalaenopsis Orchid can be re-potted anytime.

Advantages of using artificial orchids

The various advantages of using the artificial orchids are as follows:-

• These types of potted plants are undoubtedly the most cherished ones but the grower of these plants need to borne in mind that growing these plants require resources. For instance, light and moisture are the fundamental requirements for the growth of these plants. As a result of these, many entities, for their landscaping requirements, purchase these plants from the online or offline market. Apart from the natural flowering plants for landscaping purposes there are available artificial orchids as well.
• There is something that buyers of artificial orchids need to know about these plants.
• The natural plants require water and therefore there should be a good watering practice but for the artificial plants, watering is not required.
• The important thing is that there are different types of orchid plants grown and for each type there is required a particular environment. There are orchids which require plenty of sunshine and therefore these plants need to place at places where there is a constant source of sunlight. Artificially, manufacturers can use certain manufacturing techniques to manufacture different type of such plants. Moreover, these plants do not require sunlight.
• The pots are used to hold the plants should have a good drainage system to allow the drainage of the excess water. But the faux plants do not require pots that have drainage facility.
• The plants should be given fertilizers specially meant for them from time to time. And that is not the situation with the artificial plants.

Invest in Phalaenopsis Orchids right from your comfort zone

The plants are perfect items for interior decoration. If asked why, then the answer is that the orchids are small in size, they are attractive. There are different types of orchids. These plants are readily available from the online marketplace. Since growing an orchid can be a bit time consuming for some individuals therefore some entities can look forward to search their favourite orchids online. In an age, when the e-commerce and the web have facilitated online marketing, potential buyers can invest on the Phalaenopsis Orchids from their comfort zone.

What makes the Phalaenopsis Orchids popular?

Among the orchids, the Phalaenopsis types of orchids have thick leaves, they are elegant looking and attractive. What makes it more fascinating is that there are over 60 species of these orchids. Some are very much hybridized. There are the white as well as the dark type of such orchids. But the classic white orchid also known as the moth orchid is popular among the plant lovers.

Place the plants at places to enhance the landscape of the interiors

Whenever, you invest in these plants, it is important to take note where you place the plants. As a buyer, you require placing the plants at such places where it enhances the landscape of the place. If you want to place these plants in the bathroom by the side of the sink then it looks attractive. Most, hotels, restaurants often use these plants in their bathroom spaces to augment the landscaping there.

Kitchens, dinning spaces are other places where you can consider placing the orchids. These plants look very attractive in these places. Even gathering places can be well decorated using these plants.

Decorate reception lobbies and malls using easy to carry Phalaenopsis Orchids

So, if you look at the Phalaenopsis Orchids, these are not that heavy, easy to carry and are perfect for the interiors. These plants are ideal for decorating the interiors of reception lobbies, malls. These are considered safe to use and because of that many plant lovers use specific orchids in their collection.

About the Moth orchids

With regard to the orchids, there are a few things which are worth mentioning. The moth orchids or the type of plants that are being discussed are mostly indoor plants. They flower all throughout the year. They require re-potting occasionally.

Regarding cultivating of the natural orchids, it can be said that it is a tedious process and the cultivator needs to spend time resources so that the plants grow from the buds. For the proper growth of the plants, it is required on the part of the cultivators to ensure that the plants get the desire amount of light, temperature and water. Though watering is important for the orchids, but during the winters, the plants require less amount of water. But the plants need to be fed with the appropriate amount of fertilizers so that their growth process is not at all hindered. Therefore, cultivating is rarely opted. Many prefer to purchase faux orchids from the market.

Why choose faux orchids?

What are the issues associated with the natural orchids? The plants suffer from bugs like slugs, snails, mealy bug. So, how can individuals having the orchids as landscaping materials can protect these plants? There are several tips by which the concerned individual can get rid of the bugs. Many of these tips are available online and they can be referred in times of need. And it is yet another cause, why artificial orchids are preferred.

Advantages of using the faux orchids

The advantages of using the faux orchids are many.

Firstly, they are available in attractive colours, designs and they cater to the landscaping needs of the user. Next, such plants do not require watering or fertilizers. Instead, the users can only use a limited amount of water to cleanse the surface of leaves. These plants do not get affected by bugs, pests and other plant diseases. Since these plants are faux and so they can be placed anywhere, in the interiors as part of interior landscaping.

Remain fresh and calm using the artificial-orchids

The presence of these plants not only decorates the interiors of commercial complexes or spaces where landscaping is needed, but it also allows the individuals who are staying inside the complex to stay rejuvenated. These are thus important home improvement items. Those who like their interior spaces to remain fresh and calm and very much rejuvenated they need to use the orchids, place them in strategic locations in the commercial spaces to woo more and more customers.

If you have decided to invest in the Phalaenopsis Orchid plants then check online. There are many businesses that offer such plants. But in this context, it is important to state that if you order a customized and faux orchid plant then you may not get the delivery overnight. It will take time for the businesses. However, as a buyer of the orchids, you can choose the items that you like in the website add them in the shopping cart and then purchase them online from the comfort zone.

An online business website is incomplete without live chat support. The clients are becoming very particular about what they want and what they get from an online company. If a company falls short of meeting their needs and demands then they will leave the company and do business with one of their competitions. The clients can easily find the same product with the same specification on another website almost instantly, so the pressure on the companies increments immensely. The clients do not understand reasons, they just demand perfection and if you fail to deliver it then they can easily forget you and move on to another company.

It is really important for your company to have a decent live chat software that can woo your clients with its looks and provide exceptional support for you and your customers. Unfortunately, the free software is not able to deliver either of those things. The main problem with the free software is that it is made to give you just basic support. It is not developed to be highly efficient or constructive. They are just simply for the purpose of initiating conversations and nothing else. They are wired to give a top class performance that will make the client appreciate a company.

Even though the free live support chat software will say that it will give you high quality performance every time, but it is one thing and delivering it is another. Plus, there is a lot of free software that will not be compatible with the system. They are either compatible with Windows servers or Macs. Only the paid software can give you this facility. The paid software will have different versions and you can download them accordingly. The good thing about paid software is that the software company will have the complete system specification of the software on their website and you can easily see if it is compatible with your website or not.

Another con of free software is that it will constantly ask you to buy updates. The free software is going to run perfectly for a few days and you will have no complaints. And when you get used to the software, all the main and important features will stop working. Obviously, those features are given to you on a trial basis (which you will not be aware of before) and you will be asked to purchase them if you want to keep getting the benefits.

The best live chat software is the paid software because it is attractive, encouraging and easy to use. There will be no complications of any kind in the installation process or during the usage. Plus, this is going to be a one-time investment. You will not be bugged to purchase updates and features that are essential for the software to run. You will get everything you need all at once and can use for a long time.

Hacking or cyber fraud has become a critical concern for every eCommerce ventures, from the perspective of both businesses and customers. In this predominantly technological era, where people intend to buy anything and everything via online mediums, staying at their comfort zone, especially when holidays are around and they have bulks of items to buy for themselves and their loved ones. Considering this, if the eCommerce sites are not enough secured from cyber attacks, businesses are sure to lose a hefty proportion of their expected sales. Customers visiting the sites days will abandon them after sensing some security faults. With holidays arriving in a couple of weeks and shopping spree getting into everyone’s heads, it means this is the right time to reinforce the security systems for the eCommerce stores, irrespective of the platform they are made of to assure safer shopping experiences for customers.

There are different effectual measures that will help online merchants to stiffen the security of their stores before the holiday rush starts.

Safeguarding of Payment information

This is a useful aspect to consider to protect the confidential payment information from getting into the hands of hackers. The online merchants must ensure that the credit/debit cards details of their customers are never stored on the site’s server or database. Using different third-party payment services providers like PayPal and Authorize.net, allow the retail owners to off-load all the payment information directly. As the information goes directly from browser to the processor, there are no chances of security breaches even if a site gets hacked. Further, when the holiday mood starts, an eCommerce merchant must start deploying an updated web encryption system and ensure that their stores have high-end firewalls and antivirus applications.

Ensuring server security

The second crucial important step to reassure the security of an eCommerce store is to check whether the web hosting provider is always monitoring the server for any malware or viruses. The sites plying the services of payment gateways have to handle an enormous amount of customer data and should subsequently adhere to the PCI (Payment Card Industry) data security standards. The same is applicable for SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) authentication, needed to safeguard the communication between the shoppers and server.

Ensuring platform security

While layering security is a vital impediment to any kind of cyber attacks, e-retailers have to make sure that they are using strong passwords, layers of security as well as search queries. While sites get vulnerable to cyber crimes during festival sales because of more customer visits and large volumes of transactions, merchants need to scan their online stores’ cross-site scripting or SQL injection or any other fragility. Thus, whether it is built on Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify or any other platform, the owners need to check for its vulnerabilities independently before the shopping spree starts.

Monitoring the site for core file alterations

There are many applications that monitor the sites to detect any changes made to the core files of the platform. Whenever a core file undergoes change, an alert is sent to the admin who can take necessary actions instantly. Hence, the merchants will not only get notified of any changes made in the internal files for fraudulent purpose, but can also roll them back change.

Apart from these prior measures, eCommerce retailers need to work with an expert team that can recognise all security glitches on their sites and deploy the proven practices for them. No matter what, security is the foremost concern of buyers and for sellers holidays are the main business seasons. Thus, a site lagging behind in security and protection of data is sure to fall back in terms of revenue. Regardless of the platform used and how powerful it is, it is a prerequisite for every retailer to safeguard their sites with advanced methods for the sake of customers.

The present time is that of the technology. The internet is not just a place to access information but it has its horizon broadened to include eCommerce, marketing, communication and social networking. Digital marketing holds equal importance as that of conventional advertising. Therefore, it is imminent for business owners to hire companies that provide digital marketing services which help in increasing sales.

An effective marketing strategy developed by an experienced digital marketing company can help your business grow immensely. Here are the reasons why it is necessary for a business:

Create an impression: with a large part of the target audience being hooked to the internet, it is only imminent that businesses opt for digital marketing. As a new business owner if you wish to reach to faraway audiences, you will need the help of such techniques of promotion that help you establish your name and brand. The website created by the company is your interface with the prospective customers.

Better accessibility: with online marketing, you are able to reach out to a larger audience group. With a good interface that is easy to use, you can woo your customers into online shopping. Without a strong online presence, you would be losing these customers to your competitors.

Stay ahead of Competitors: A digital marketing company helps you stay ahead of your competitors by carving out unique solutions and marketing strategies, particularly for your niche of business. Umpteen websites for the same products and services are alive on the internet but not all have the same clientele. The difference between a successful company and a not-so-successful one is its marketing strategy.

Optimize for the Internet: an SEO company engaged for the purpose of digital marketing helps in getting better online sales through high search engine rankings. An experienced digital marketing company is aware of the fact that optimizing a website is very important to get high search engine rankings, which in turn help in getting better online traffic. Better traffic means better conversions or increased sales.

Better ROI: Business owners opting for online marketing can find better returns. This is due to the fact that investments in this form of marketing are small as compared to a full-fledged campaign. With a small investment, business owners get better returns as the expanse of online marketing is far reaching.

Marketing strategies have undergone a sea change. You need to stay abreast with the time and the ever-changing business climate to see your business grow.

One of the boons for web application development at the turn of the century has been the open source revolution. With their seeds sown in the 90's, open source technologies changed the face of web applications by reducing development timeframes, simplifying programming conundrums and eliminating tons of bugs plaguing the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle). Almost all of these technologies have had their code base in PHP, which as everyone knows is the preferred programming standard across the globe.

In this article, we showcase some of these technologies as a token of our respect to their invaluable contribution to the PHO development community. Many a PHP Development Company could have different opinions on this list and we accept them graciously.

First up, the godfather of them all; PHPNuke launched somewhere in 1999. This technology was and was the basis of a majority of the CMSs (Content Management Systems). Just a little prior to this release saw theception of phpMyAdmin that was conceivable for web-based administration of MySQL. Its later releases supported creation and dropping of databases and tables, fields, managing keys and privileges and a lot more.

A standard-based webmail package, SquirrelMail made its way to the market with integrated PHP support for IMAP and SMTP mail protocols. Wide browser compatibility using HTML 4.0 made it an instant favorite with PHP MySQL development communities across the globe. The turn of the century saw the dawn of osCommerce, an open source e-commerce solution that featured out-of-the-box installation allowing online merchants to easily set up e-tailing stores with minimum effort. Integrating the potent combination of PHP, Apache web server and MySQL database server, this technology created quite a sensation with its robust and stable architecture.

Another technology to take root around the same time was OpenX, inheriting its properties from phpAdsNew originating from Tobias Ratschiller's efforts in 1988. A free ad server designed by the web publishing community for themselves, it provided complete management tools for online advertising. Swapping of paid banners with in-house advertisements was made easy, as was the integration of third-party advertising banners. Gallery was launched in 2001; an online web-based photo album utility providing users with a sleek UI to create and maintain photo albums online. Then comes, probably one of the most popular CMSs till date; Drupal. A modular CMS, it was ideally suited for forums, blogs, and community engines with a database-driven structure supporting MySQL, MySQLi, and PostgreSQL. The year 2003 saw the launch of the WordPress, a cutting-edge personal publishing platform with capabilities far exceeding just blogging. Integrating high flexibility, WordPress supports link management, file attachments, XFN support, support for stand-alone pages, Atom and RSS feeds for both, content and comments, blogging API support, spam block, and most importantly; a flexible theme system.

The need for an open source CRM was addressed by SugarCRM. Joomla! Launched in 2005 is an award-winning online CMS with separate front end content and backend admin access, along with group-based access control. The open source e-commerce front was further bolstered by the entry of Magento, a broadly flexible e-commerce CMS with complete control in the hands of e-tailers. With the growth and acceptance of cloud computing, eyeOS announced itself to the world providing a web-based desktop with 67 apps and multiple system utilities.

The list is endless and there can be many more technologies, such as Symfony, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, etc. that can be added to this list. But nothing is more consistent with the fact that PHP has been and will always be at the crux of all the latest developments have happened and will happen for some time to come.

We are GoodCore, a web application development company that is always primed to gain expertise in the newest technologies to break the market and extend their development advantages to our clients across the world. If you need any PHP-based solution, you can hire PHP programmers from us. These individual are hand-picked for their vast repertoire of skills and talent, when it comes to developing and deploying state-of-the-art web applications in a cost-effective and timely manner. If it's a PHP solution you need, GoodCore is the answer!

Building a successful mobile app is a tough task. Chances are low for all mobile app developers to excel. New app developers who are jump starting out in the game are afraid to take the risks, as most of the new apps are left unnoticed in the market. If you see the app store, you will find that more than 50% of the apps fail in the market. This is the reason why beginners face a lot of challenges to become successful app developers.

How entrepreneurs enter the app market

There are many companies that encourage beginners to step up and try their luck in mobile app development. There is a great difference between being technically skilled and becoming successful. Not all skilled app developers are successful in mobile app industry. The biggest task for app developers is to develop a unique app and market it straight to their customers. I would like to share the top 6 mistakes entrepreneurs should avoid while developing and marketing the mobile app.

1. Building an app for multiple platforms

This is one of the common mistakes app developers do. Entrepreneurs face a very competitive space, as there are millions of apps on Google Play and Apple Store. Instead of doubling the cost of developing app for multiple platforms, one should focus on building for one platform first. By launching a mobile app on two different platforms simultaneously, you are adding more to the development time and cost.

Additionally, if you make any changes to the design and/or functionality of the app in one platform, you have to do it on both places. Hence, developers should avoid this mistake of developing for multiple platforms at the same time.

2. Incorporating too many features

Most of the mobile apps fail in the market due to very less or too many features. However, there are lots of apps that are plain and simple, and yet have a great potential to sustain in the market. Users check new apps for a short period of time. Providing too many features will drive away users, as the features may make the app look complicated.

The goal of entrepreneurs should be to keep the users glued to the app. This is possible by incorporating essential features on primary screen and rest of the features to secondary screens. This strategy not only keeps the app simple, but attracts new users too. The app users will not show much interest in overwhelming design and features, and discard the app. Hence, it is important to develop apps with this in mind.

3. Forgetting the ‘WOW’ factor

The number of mobile app users is expected to reach 80 million by the year 2018. Seeing the increasing number of mobile app users, App Stores of Android and Apple have set a bar with the design and user experience. If you give your Smartphone to a child, he/she will know how to use it. This means, the expectations of mobile users are entirely different from that of web. The user will give up on your app, if it is very difficult to use.

On the contrary, online users may not give up so easily despite of poor user experience. App developers should understand this difference and build extra-ordinary mobile apps with stunning features and functionality. As soon as the user launches the app, there should be a ‘wow’ factor to hook up the users.

4. Inflexible marketing plan

App development and app marketing are two important phases of building a successful app. However, entrepreneurs tend to show much interest in development compared to app marketing. As the App Stores are crowded with millions of apps, your app may not be discovered on app store even on the day of launch if you fail to market it properly. Entrepreneurs should think of a perfect marketing plan as the app is being developed. Apps can be marketed in multiple ways by creating a clear strategy of target audience and their preferences.

If we see social media, we understand how drastically it has changed in the recent years. Marketing goals are changing from time to time, as a result of which what is working today may not work tomorrow. Entrepreneurs should create a flexible marketing plan that accommodates current and future market situations. By being flexible with own marketing strategies, app entrepreneurs can stay ahead of others.

5. Putting all the efforts in one basket

Technology and marketing are ever evolving, which means a single strategy will not generate same results. If you see the development and marketing plan of the top 10 best mobile apps, you will see how they used technology to market their apps. The marketing channels they used earlier were entirely different from that of the channels they are using now. It means entrepreneurs should diversify their marketing efforts to ensure that they are not putting all the efforts in one basket. Focusing on one tactic for long period may diminish the returns.

My advice is to consider marketing plans as investment strategies. If you want a steady increase in popularity & profitability of the mobile app, you need a healthy mix of marketing tactics. Trying new marketing tactics and plucking the ones that are no longer effective will increase the popularity of the app.

6. Ignoring the audience and not releasing the updates

As an app entrepreneur, you should understand the fact that you are developing mobile app for other people. We all know that people have different need and preferences, and it is difficult to develop an app for everyone. It is essential to define target audience before defining the features of apps. Before developing an app check what actually users want and what type of solution they prefer.

Even after developing an app that has demand in the industry, there would be people who are unsatisfied with the features or performance of the app. The job of an app entrepreneur doesn’t end with development and marketing. The mobile app should be improved on a regular basis according to the user’s preferences. Once the bugs are fixed, an update must be released so that audiences are aware of the fixes.

Developing a great mobile app is not an easy task. There are lots of hurdles that come across while developing and marketing the app. By avoiding the above listed mistakes while developing and marketing the app you will increase the chances of creating a successful app that is covered by press and is well monetized.

Getting into the world of mobile app development is tough at first. However, with lot of hard work, dedication, commitment and skills one can expect the app to hit the market with a ‘BANG’. As a beginner, entrepreneurs should create something new and unique to have a good start in mobile app development industry. An established mobile app development company can further provide professional approach and advice to entrepreneurs and can make the whole process a lot easier for them.

The process of creating valid code can sometimes be very difficult, with some websites containing lots of functionality, so making it very time-consuming to error check every single coded element. It is possible to leave websites with un-valid code but inevitably this may mean website users can not use your website the way you intend, or potentially not see your website at all.

A large amount of web-sites both personal and corporate do have un-valid code, and it is quite common to see a homepage error free but to have subpages that are not valid; This is most common when the website contains multiple subpages potentially running content dynamically onto a page template.

It is important when working with any website to create error free source code for your templates, often errors are simple to fix, such as missing missing end tags "/>" and the correct use of "&" but an error in a template design will mean all your pages contain the same problems.

Errors like these are sometimes missed when there is little time for web-site testing or testing on multiple browsers, but do consider when a potential customer comes to your web-site they may not be using the same browser or type of computer as you, and the code that may seem OK on your PC could well read very differently on another PC, these differences do happen and are much more common if code contains errors.

Validating code is best not left until the last moment before the website goes live, doing this could leave you with hundreds of errors to fix at the same time, so do try to make testing an integral part of your coding process. Do also take extra care when creating dynamic pages that will import code from external scripts, as a general rule the more complicated the code the more likely it will cause problems, some of the best websites I have seen are often the most simple.

It is also difficult to keep on top of future changes to websites and quite common for code to be valid, only for future edits to make changes to the website that may contain errors, it is there before important with each edit to go through debugging and error checking process.

It is best practice to make all code error free no matter how slight the error, as web developers we must uphold our duty to create websites for people to view now and in the future without problems.

I do have sympathy for website managers who can not find the time to validate code because I do know it is a slow process, but I think to avoid any display problems coming from errors we owe it to internet users to provide them with validated code, and do not forget if potential customers are viewing your website it is important to show them a website that works well as well as showing them your coding skills are the best.

Not too long ago, a friend of mine was having a problem with a program that he had just finished. We were using the source debugger to find out what was causing his problem. We figured out the problem eventually, but in the course of our work, we came across some debugger commands and options that I was previously unaware of. Now I am not going to say that I know everything about the IBM source debugger but I have been using it for a good long while. I was surprised to discover something new, so I thought I'd share what I learned with you.

% INDEX Built-In Function

The% INDEX function is one of the functions that up until recently I was unaware of. It is really handy when you are manipulating multiple-occurrence data structures. It is even more useful when used in conjunction with the _QRNU_DSI_xxxx built-in value (where xxxx = the name of a multi-occurrence data structure). The command EVAL _QRNU_DSI_xxxx will return the current occurrence of a multiple-occurrence data structure. This is often a very useful thing to know during program execution and as far as I know this is the only way to get it. By using the% INDEX function you can also change the current occurrence of a multiple-occurrence data structure. See below.

d WorkMultDS1 ds occurs (30)

d StringA 10a

d StringB 25a

To find the current occurrence of the data structure without changing it:

Command: EVAL _QRNU_DSI_WorkMultDS1

Result: 1 (or whatever the current occurrence of WorkMultDS1 is)

To change the current occurrence:

Command: WorkMultDS1 =% INDEX (12)

Result: WorkMultDS1 =% INDEX (12) = 12

After issuing the above command interrogated subfields will reflect the values ​​of the twelfth occurrence of the data structure.

% SUBSTR Built-In Function

This function is really convenient when you are working with large strings. Using the EVAL function by itself will only display the first 500 characters of a field. As a side note, the easy solution to that problem is to append the type and length to the EVAL function as shown below:

This command will display the first 2000 characters of the variable Long_String_Name in character format:

Command: EVAL Long_String_Name: C 2000

This command will display the first 2000 characters of the variable Long_String_Name in hexadecimal format:

Command: EVAL Long_String_Name: X 2000

The hexadecimal display is important when displaying data that contains packaged or binary decimal data. But we are not talking about the EVAL function. The SUBSTR function will do exactly what the name poses; it will display a substring or a portion of a string value. See the examples below.

Assume that StringFldA = 'Now is the time for all good men …'

Command: EVAL% SUBSTR (StringFldA 12 4)

Result: % SUBSTR (StringFldA 12 4) = 'time'

Not unexpectedly, you can also use the% SUBSTR function to set the value of a specific portion of a string. Sometimes this is a far more helpful way to use this function. An example of this usage is shown below.

Assume that StringFldA = 'Now is the time for all good men …'

Command: EVAL% SUBSTR (StringFldA 12 4) = 'blah'

Result: % SUBSTR (StringFldA 12 4) = 'blah'

To see the complete string use the following command:

Command: EVAL StringFldA

Result: StringFldA = 'Now is the blah for all good men …'

The% SUBSTR function can also be used to set a conditional breakpoint or watch condition. As an example, the code shown below will stop the execution only when positions 12 through 15 of StringFldA are 'blah':

Command: BREAK 100 when% SUBSTR (StringFldA 12 4) = 'blah'

Or you could watch for those same positions to change by using this watch condition:

Command: WATCH% SUBSTR (StringFldA 12 4)

After issuing the command above, anytime the contents of positions 12 through 15 change, program execution stops and you are notified.

EQUATE function

More and more often I run into field names that are really long. Now do not get me wrong here, I think this is great. But I do not type so good so a 25 character field name has a much greater chance of being mis-keyed than an old 6 character one (even if the 25 character one is way more understood). So if you do not type well (or just do not like to type, like me), then use the EQUATE debug function. This function allows you to define an "alias" for a field name, expression, or command. Take the example below.

Command: EQUATE SmName This_is_a_really_long_field_name

You can then find the value of "This_is_a_really_long_field_name" by keying the command shown below:

Command: EVAL SmName

The EQUATE command can also be used to create a macro … sort of. This can be done by assigning an "alias" to a complete debug command.

Command: EQUATE SmCmd EVAL% substr (StringA, 5,5)

Now by simply keying SmCmd and pressing Enter, you can display the value of positions 5 through 9 of the StringA variable.

So the next time you start testing a program or chasing a bug, remember these, and you might save yourself some headaches.