July 2016 – Affordable Blog

The 50 best computer science schools in the world

A computer science degree from a top university can help graduates land their dream job at companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook.

But which computer science courses are the best ones to try and to get onto if you want to impress employers?

Using the QS World University Rankings, we took a look at the universities with the top computer science and information systems courses.

The guide is one of the most reputable sources that students turn to when deciding which universities to apply to, and employers are also likely to refer to it when deciding which candidates to hire.

It is based on academic reputation, employer reputation, and research impact. The full methodology can be read here. We looked at the overall scores, which are out of 100.

http://www.techinsider.io/best-computer-science-schools-in-the-world-2016-6

What Every Designer Must Know About Copyrights

If Apple can amass nearly $200 billion in cash and still face lawsuit after lawsuit claiming copyright violation, it’s safe to say no “little guy” is immune.

Instead, today’s artists and designers have no choice but to study the concepts of copyright in addition to those of design. It’s for this reason we’ve outlined some of the key principles for avoiding legal confrontations both in court and online—so that artists can focus on what they do best: mastering the art of design, not the art of rights or liabilities.

In itself, just using royalty-free graphics is certainly a strategy for avoiding drama. However, the best protection ultimately comes from pairing these resources with a working knowledge of the best practices surrounding copyright law.

An Introduction to Copyright for Designers
As a very general rule, you own the sole rights to works of art that you create. Just as strangers don’t have the right to enter your home and randomly take possession of your paintings, they are generally prohibited from taking possession of your digital artwork by posting it to websites, using it to advertise their products, or selling it as their own—even if they’ve reworked it first by adding their own adjustments and modifications.

Of course, the reverse also holds true. Use the product of someone else’s work in a project without permission, and they’ll have the right to claim damages from you.

This applies not just to actual artwork, but to the mere “likeness” of artwork—meaning you can still face litigation for tracing someone else’s work and adding your own spin, regardless of whether or not you’ve drawn a profit from doing so.

This is part of the allure behind using royalty-free graphics for your design projects, as you’re free to use them in virtually any way you choose after you’ve downloaded them.

Options for Protecting Your Design Work
Many artists find it isn’t necessary to register the copyrights of their design work, as works of art are automatically protected by copyright from the moment they’re created. Registering a copyright just makes that creation and ownership easier to prove—and litigate—as it generates a public record.

You can register a piece of artwork through an attorney or through the U.S. Copyright Office for as low as $35. However, you’ll want to save yourself the postage by ignoring any advice to beat the system with what’s often called a “poor man’s copyright.” Mailing yourself a copy of your work by way of certified mail isn’t likely to hold up in court, regardless of how tightly you seal your envelope.

Finding Resources With No Strings Attached
Using images from our library isn’t nearly as complex. Members can download unlimited graphics, photos, templates, and more and use them worry-free without expiration dates or limitations on print runs.

Every graphic in our library comes with the right to keep using it forever, whether it was downloaded as a part of our unlimited subscription plan or a trial—regardless of your current membership status.

http://blog.graphicstock.com/social-media/every-designer-must-know-understanding-copyrights/?utm_source=GSAnnualOnboardTrigger122015Day07_CopyrightBlog&utm_medium=internal&utm_campaign=(direct)&omhide=true

The Benefits of Working with Pre-Built Websites

You constantly search for ways to improve your performance and your deliverables. You keep up with the latest web design trends, and you are always on the lookout for tools that are a step ahead of those you currently use.

A perfect website-building tool may not exist, but there are a few, albeit a precious few, that come close. Be Theme is one. It can cause your productivity to soar, and your deliverables will always be first class, and always on time.

Be’s professionally-designed pre-built websites offer some key website design advantages:

They give you a head start on your projects; since some of the critical design work has already been done.
They are far superior to wireframes and mockups for demonstrating early-stage website building progress, or for giving your client a preview of a home page or a key landing page.
UX patterns are already embedded in these pre-built websites, saving you, and your client, a ton of time during the design/review process.
No coding is needed. You don’t have to learn or relearn code, nor do you have to rely on developers.

BeTheme’s many design features together with its pre-built websites, is a winning combination – for everyone involved.

What Pre-Built Websites Are All About

These pre-built website examples will give you a good idea of how, with a little customizing, you can quickly and easily create homepages and landing pages that will capture and engage users, and websites your clients will love.

The Benefits of Working with Pre-Built Websites

Why Your iPhone Dies When It Still Has Juice?

You’re plugging along with 3 percent battery and that Snorlax is one block away. Then, less than a minute later your phone is dead, the Snorlax is gone, and you are miserable. There are a two reasons for this. One: you’re playing Pokémon Go and need to stop. Two: figuring out how your battery holds a charge is less science and more witchcraft.

See, your phone can’t know the precise charge of your battery. It’s impossible short of inserting a sensor into the battery itself. And since a typical lithium ion battery is essentially a tiny chemical bomb that we use to generate power, inserting a sensor into it is a bad idea. Instead, your devices anticipate how much charge is left with the help of a little math. Mark Smirniotis from Wirecutter has created a great analogy on the subject, likening a battery to a large barrel you can never see into.

It’s fascinating and breaks down the three primary reasons for battery fuckery:

Your device has trouble reading a charge because batteries are mysterious, and we can only anticipate the charge with algorithms. Sometimes those predictions are just wrong.
Your battery loses capacity as it gets older, making the math even more inaccurate.
Crystals develop in the battery, further diminishing capacity and wrecking your battery meters ability to do its job.
Wirecutter does leave out one other point. As I learned that time I had to test the fastest charging phone, not all batteries shut off at 0 percent. Many phones like to reserve a little juice to protect data in the event of a sudden shutdown or maintain internal clocks. (This is more common in phones where the battery can’t be removed). Consequently, some phones will shut down at true full battery discharge, and others will shut down early. (Laptops have this bad habit as well).

How to get extra space from your usb

Most of your digital files are probably stored up in the cloud these days, but the humble USB stick still comes in handy every now and then. It’s a simple way of getting data from one computer to another or just keeping a backup of important files. If you’re struggling to cram all your files onto one USB drive, here’s a quick trick that can free up several gigabytes of extra room.

It involves using Windows’ built-in tools to compress the data on the device. Compression levels will vary depending on file type, and it means your files might open up a fraction slower, but you can pretty much carry on using your USB drive as before.

You have to format the drive first, so if there are already files on the drive you’re using, put them somewhere else temporarily. Right-click on the USB stick in Windows File Explorer, choose Format, and then make sure NTFS is selected as the file system. Tick the Quick Format box and then click Start.

http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/how-to-get-extra-space-on-any-usb-drive-1784157164

Here is a list of the top 50 Computer Science schools in the world

Here is a list of the top 50 Computer Science schools in the world – http://www.techinsider.io/best-computer-science-schools-in-the-world-2016-6

10 Local Search Marketing Do’s and Don’ts That Can Save Your Business

With all of the marketing noise out there on the Web, it can be tough to sort fact from fiction.

With Google’s guidelines tucked safely under your belt, several local search marketing practices are no-brainers.

Just follow the steps and rest assured there is minimal risk for a Google takedown. However, it can be easy to get tripped up when practitioners:

1) Incorrectly interpret “gray areas” in the guidelines

2) Lack necessary or skill set

3) Recommend bad practices, careless of what they could cost their business or their clients

To help enterprises and their agencies avoid these missteps, it’s important to know the top-five local search ranking do’s and don’ts. Continue reading to find these critical tips based on a global body of experienced, recognized industry experts who are surveyed annually.

Even if Local SEO is new to you, or you’re trying to hire a provider and aren’t sure whether they ‘know their stuff’, knowing these 10 things should not only help you sort wheat from chaff, but could literally save your business from a costly mistake.

5 Local Search Marketing Don’ts

These five factors are widely believed to have the most negative impact on your hopes of achieving high local rankings:

1. Incorrect Business Category

When you create your Google My Business listing, you get to choose categories from Google’s category base. Picking the wrong categories can make you invisible in the local pack results.

2. Listing Detected at False Business Address

The best local business advice you may ever hear? Fire anyone who suggests you falsify your business location to Google. Google reads street level signage and has become increasingly sophisticated at understanding the difference between a legitimate address and a virtual office, P.O. Box or other fake address. Any business location you list with Google must be a genuine, real-world location of your business, even if it’s a service-area-business or home-based company.

3. Mis-matching NAP or Tracking Phone Numbers Across Data Ecosystems

Google and other search engines don’t assume you’ve entered a correct name, address and phone number (NAP). They will investigate by combing the Web, and gathering multiple mentions of these vital pieces of business data about your company. If most sources match, Google feels ‘trust’ and will reward you with firmer rankings. But, if you’ve got variants in your name, address or phone number out there, or a proliferation of indexable, mismatching call tracking numbers, Google’s lack of ‘trust’ can doom your best ranking efforts.

Take one minute to do a quick check of your local business listing health using one of the many free listing tools out there. If you discover mismatching NAP out there, it’s time to start weighing both manual and paid solution options for cleaning up your traditional listings plus all other references to your business on blogs, news sites, social media, etc.

4. Presence of Malware on Site

Nothing can drive customers (and subsequently, rankings) away from your business like Google’s warning: This Site May Harm Your Computer. An infected or hacked website represents an emergency for any business, requiring immediate resolution. Here are Google’s suggestions for recovering from this dreaded scenario.

5. Reports of Violations on your Google My Business location

Google is far from perfect at policing their own local business listings, but your customers, competitors and civic-minded marketers can lend them a helping hand in the fight against spam, reporting guideline violations directly to Google. Some spammers skate on the idea that Google is too slow or lazy to catch them, but never underestimate how a competitor may respond to any perceived guideline infraction.

5 Local Search Marketing Do’s

These five factors are believed to have the most positive impact on your local search rankings. Some of them you can directly control, while others are the luck of the draw.

1. Physical Address in City of Search

Unless you are physically located in a given city, it is highly unlikely to be included in Google’s local pack results relating to a city other than your current address. Exceptions to this could include having a very unique business model (the only vegan doughnut shop in a 100-mile radius) or being located in a very rural area (just three hotels serving a community of eight towns). You should not pin your hopes on ranking locally for any city you don’t physically occupy. Rather, go after organic rankings with content you develop for these location-less cities, or spring for paid advertising.

2. Consistency of Structured Citations

‘Structured’ citations are designated as those that exist on traditional search engines and core local business directories. Think Google My Business, Facebook Places, Bing Places, Yelp, YellowPages, Superpages and Citysearch. Experts agree that having consistent NAP (name, address, phone number) on these sources matters most. But, don’t forget the unstructured citations (mentions on blogs, online news, social media and small local directories), too.

3. Proper Google My Business Category Associations

Covered above, do not pick incorrect Google My Business categories. If you have the wrong categories, definitely take the time to research better alternatives and edit your listing. Google wants you to choose the fewest, most specific categories as possible.

4. Proximity of Address to the Point of Search

This is one of the positive factors over which you don’t have direct control, but can indirectly influence. Search engines like Google know exactly where a user is searching from and strive to show him the results nearest to his physical location. This is observable on desktop devices and even more so on mobile devices. While you can’t, of course, control where your customers are searching from, you can ensure that the content on your website makes maximum effort to prove your ‘local-ness’ to each searcher. Local landing pages are an effective approach to ensuring that each of your business’ locations is represented by a unique, high quality, accessible page on your website.

5. Quality/Authority of Structured Citations

Your local business listings (a.k.a. citations) on Google, Yelp, Facebook, YP and other major players should have more positive impact than citations you get from weak, little-known sources. While inclusion in small, hyperlocal directories can prove a genuine boon to local businesses, devoting a lot of effort to getting listed in low-quality general directories is unlikely to yield meaningful ROI.

Local SEO is an area of marketing that is still very much ruled by getting the small details right, because, in the end, they can have the greatest impact on the ultimate goal of increased visibility. By reading the fine print and carefully implementing core local search marketing decisions, you are setting your business up for lasting success.

Miriam Ellis is part of the Moz Local (https://moz.com/local) team. When she’s not writing the monthly Moz Local newsletter and answering questions in the Q&A forum, she’s helping her clients master their Local SEO strategies at her own firm Solas Web Design

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2016/07/22/10-local-search-marketing-do-s-and-don-ts-that-can-save-your-business.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

5 Steps to Creating a Killer Marketing Strategy

Not every marketing plan is a good marketing plan. There are certain qualities it needs to meet to be able to do what it is supposed to do and be considered an effective plan that will convert customers and be successful.

It is easy to tell a “potentially successful” marketing plan apart from a mediocre marketing plan. Generally, there is a framework that a killer marketing strategy would follow. This article will look a five qualities of such a plan. I’ll be using example of a fashion brand since it is easier to follow.

1. Focus on the market.

Your target market should be narrowly defined. You can’t please everybody. Doing so will actually put more pressure on you and may result in losses. A fashion brand’s target market can be anyone, but it has to be narrowed. You have to first decide between genders (male or female) and then the age factor.

Everything else in your plan will be essentially based on your target audience. Other factors that need to be taken into consideration are your target audience’s likes and dislikes and purchasing power. The formula lies in choosing, dividing and then conquering.

2. Focus on the product.

This goes hand in hand with the market focus, but needs its own heading. If you’re targeting working women in their 50s then offer quality, formal and semi formal dresses. Also, explain what a certain product does. For example, if you offer shoes that help gain height, explain how they work. Such a product will further narrow down your target audience to shorter women, allowing you to market even more effectively.

3. Have measureable specifics.

Everything should be quantifiable and ideally in numbers. Include all major and minor details with proper dates since a timeline is important. A good marketing plan is driven by strategy, but the details and tactics will give it the push it needs.

The plan has to show result of each activity so that it becomes easy to measure ROI.

A fashion brand cannot have vague goals like “product quality clothes” or “make clients happy.” While, it is important to produce high-quality products and have happy clients, such goals are not quantifiable and hence should not be a part of such a plan. Instead, have solid goals like “reach $1 million sales in five years.” This again, depend on the timeline if your marketing plan is for one year or five years.

If you are starting a new business you can have both short-term and long-term marketing plans. Both these plans need to be interconnected, i.e: your short term marketing plan should help you attain your long-term goals. However, make sure your goals are attainable.

4. Accountability and responsibility.

Do not count on people to do their job, especially in groups. The truth is that groups get done very little when compared to individuals. To get better results, have a specific task for every individual and ask them to work on it.

Take care of the accountability factor and keep an eye on results to make sure all individuals are putting their best foot forward. Be sure to reward achievement and reprimand for failure to meet the desired goals.

A good marketing plan needs more than just involvement — you need to be committed to it. Everyone should know their job and be aware of the outcomes of performing or not performing their part well.

5. Revisions and reviews.

A marketing plan is really a planning process and not a plan. We live in a dynamic environment and cannot afford to have static marketing plans. A good marketing plan will do everything from setting goals to tracking performance and measuring it in quantifiable units. It requires to be reviewed regularly and revised as necessary.

The marketing group should sit together to see how their plan is working and if anything needs to change. Even if is a five-year plan, it does not mean you will sit down and talk about it at the end of the five-year period. You have to discuss the plan regularly and see if it is going as planned.

For example, in case of a fashion brand, your prices may change within a few months due to high demand or change in the prices of raw material. This would require your marketing plan to change as well since your goals will need to be revised.

Details – https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279360

10 Free Online Courses That Can Benefit Every Entrepreneur

Every entrepreneur can benefit from continued education. Whether you are just starting out and handling multiple roles within your company or an experienced business owner — enrolling in an online course is always a good way to improve your knowledge and has never been easier or more affordable.

Long gone are the days of taking evening classes at local colleges and paying tuition. You can now take excellent courses in the comfort of your own home for free.

Here are ten free online courses that every entrepreneur can benefit from.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244279

Troubling signs for companies using Twitter for marketing

The largest Twitter profiles are suffering from a “massive” decline in new followers and interactions, reports Quintly in its first semi-annual report

Companies using Twitter to market themselves are seeing a large fall in growth of followers and in the number of interactions, reports Quintly, a social media metrics company.

Follower growth fell by 40% in the first half of 2016 compared with the same period in 2015. And the number of interactions for companies with more than 10 million followers “massively declined by 58%

Twitter also picked up 14 million monthly active users in the three-month period, for a total of 255 million MAUs. That tally disappointed investors.

Twitter’s growth in new users has stalled over the past year but that’s unlikely to affect the online behavior of about 310 million active users. The changes might be due to a maturing community of users that aren’t interacting as enthusiastically as they did a year ago. However, that doesn’t explain why companies with the highest numbers of followers have the largest fall in interactions.

Social media interactions are considered the most valuable metric by marketers because they help distribute Tweets across many people’s social networks and recruit more followers. Quintly counts interactions as: retweets, favorites and replies.

Different metrics might need to be considered in the number of interactions continues to fall.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/troubling-signs-for-companies-using-twitter-for-marketing/