Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Technology. An RV can be a strong investment if you’re wise in purchasing it. The following contributed post is entitled, Things to Consider When Buying an RV.
Buying an RV is a perfect way to experience travel without having to book a hotel. RVs are more popular than ever with the Coronavirus pandemic in full swing. People are needing to escape but wanted to have the option of interacting with other people during their travels.
No doubt you are excited about making the purchase, but before you go ahead you need to know exactly what you should be looking out for to make the best purchase possible. Here is a look at what you need to bear in mind before purchasing an RV.
Visit a Lot of Dealerships
Going to several dealerships is one of the easiest ways to see exactly what is available to you. During these visits, you should review information about brands and make yourself more acquainted with exactly what you want in an RV.
Visiting many dealerships and looking at several models will also make you more aware of the layout and style of the various brands of RVs.
Create a Must-have List
After you’ve been to several dealerships you will know exactly what you want from an RV. Write down all the things that are essential to you.
Once you’ve created that list you can then decide which features you are willing to negotiate or compromise on.
In doing all of this you should have your budget in mind. You can admire all the RVs that you want, but if you don’t have enough funds to make the purchase then you will only end up being disappointed. Keep a close eye on your budget when making a list of your must-haves.
Consider Buying Your RV Used
It may have never crossed your mind that you should buy your vehicle used, but buying a used RV that is in good condition with all the features you want may be just within your budget.
Make sure that the engine is in proper condition and that things like valves, the oil pan, duramax head studs, spark plugs, and the crankshaft to name a few are in good working order.
The amenities should also be livable. Do a careful examination of the bathroom, kitchen, and sleeping areas before making your final decision.
If you check Craigslist regularly you will find people selling their RVs. You have to move fast though because if the RV is of good value it will be snapped up quickly.
You can also go on the Facebook marketplace to see what is available daily. Don’t rule out looking at an RV because it’s a few miles away. Remember, you have to look at all your options to make the right choice.
Hit the Road
Now that you know what to look for in a great RV, you are ready to make your final purchase and hit the road. When buying an RV make sure that you check out all the features you need while keeping within budget.
Finally, do not rule out buying the RV used, you may get a better deal than you thought possible.
Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Depending what type of business you’re in, case management solutions my be valuable to your operations. The following contributed post is entitled, Case Management Solutions: What are they and who needs them?
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Financial Literacy, Business and Entrepreneurship are common themes throughout the Big Words Space so let us delve into a phrase that has cropped up multiple times quite recently: Case Management Solutions. Is this something you really need to consider for your business? Let’s find out what it is all about and if it could be a beneficial solution for many organizations.
Case management solutions are applications or software systems that are designed to support a complex process and store a range of one’s data, consolidating this into a single database. Through using a system, case managers, whichever industry they may be concerned with, can regulate cases, allow for better record keeping and real-time updates, without the need for overwhelming amounts of spreadsheets and paper.
So, what are the benefits of a case management system?
As many companies move towards becoming paperless and reducing their carbon footprint, case management systems allow for a decrease in paperwork but ensuring that record-keeping is fully digital. By utilizing cloud-based storage systems, all content can be organized and managed via a single dashboard.
With many workers now working from home, along with many businesses being more global, there has never been a better time to have a remote system in place. All data can then be accessed securely by authorized persons, no matter where they are in the world.
Along with this, this is an ever-increasing need and desire to be able to access real-time and accurate information instantly. Therefore, using a case management solution with integrated cloud-based storage can be hugely beneficial to workers. In turn, this increases efficiency and accuracy across the workforce, potentially reducing the need to outsource.
Combining the efficiency and accuracy of the cloud-based data, as opposed to plentiful paperwork or individual spreadsheets, resolutions can be met much more quickly and effectively through collaboration. With access being enabled for all relevant team members, individuals are able to access the relevant information and respond appropriately and speedily, communicating via a single interface. Seamless collaboration in this way also reduces the need for emails to be sent back and forth between various team members, saving confusion and time.
With this more concise communication and audit trail, there is increased transparency – one of the many benefits of digital record-keeping. All steps and communications in the process can be accessed and monitored, with risks being identified and problem areas being addressed. Transparency speeds up any reporting process or actions that need to follow and audit trails ensure that trends are able to be analyzed easily, with metrics and analytics being able to be retried easily.
Through the use of case management solutions, a personalized experience can be created for individual clients or consumers. Customer profiles are more streamlined, with all of the relevant information to hand, so responding to customer queries and questions is much more efficient and straightforward, expediting business productivity.
As described in the story of my blog, I wrote for the Examiner prior to starting the Big Words Blog Site. One of the things I realized when starting my own blog was that I now had to do everything myself besides just the writing. The Examiner was a massive operation in itself, and a business that had systems in place for everything, i.e., quality assurance, technical support, and advertising/promotion/monetization of its content. Starting my own blog meant that I had to do all of that which also involved managing unforeseen challenges. Some of the major challenges involved cyberattacks, promotion of my content, and managing my social media’s ‘metadata’.
When writing for the Examiner, even if we, the writers, didn’t promote our own work, the publication did it in the form of grouping and promoting the popular pieces of the week in mass email correspondences (email blasts). I also noticed that all over the Examiner’s site there were advertisements from marketers, which is in large part how the Examiner and other publications made money. They tossed some of the ‘crumbs’ to us which was in large part driven by the clicks and views our writings generated. Through writing for the Examiner one of the biggest lessons I learned among other things, was that while much of our population wastes time on it and in some instances misuses it, social media is an important tool for writers who want to grow their audiences in modern times.
Metadata and Social Media Plugins
When I set out to create my own blog, I needed to understand the conceptual and technical aspects of doing it and thus purchased a copy of Blogging for Dummies. Unfortunately, I only got halfway through it before purchasing my webhosting services from ‘GoDaddy’, my ‘Word Press’ site, and my unique web domain name/URL (Uniform Resource Locator). When initially setting up the Big Words Blog Site, I realized that none of the social media buttons that were available on the Examiner and other websites were visible on my site. After going to back into Blogging for Dummies, I learned that these were called ‘plugins’, and there were multiple free options to choose from in the Word Press store.
I chose the Word Press Social Sharing Optimization plugin because it gave me and my readers the buttons for the social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Buffer and others. Though I didn’t understand it at the time, I also read that the information captured by these buttons – the ‘likes/shares’ were called the ‘metadata’ described above which updates in real time whenever someone likes or shares your work.
As a writer, until you’ve built up your audience in the way of a Twitter following or through subscribership, your metadata is critical in terms of knowing the popularity of your content. It also tells new visitors to your site how others have reacted to your work. Many readers click on your content and read it, but don’t necessarily comment. Ideally, you’ll get clicks, likes/shares and comments from each reader, but that’s not always the case.
My Blog’s First Cyberattack
Up until early February of 2018, I didn’t really have any significant issues with my Word Press site. Well actually, there was one instance where I temporarily broke it by continuously adding and removing one of the plugins, probably for something cosmetic. Afterwards, the site wouldn’t load, but fortunately my webhost, GoDaddy, restored its settings from the previous day as they were continuously backing it up; something I recommend for all bloggers and website owners.
My first cyberattack came on a Saturday morning (or probably the night before). I had just published my interview with Dr. Cedric Bright, and it was getting lots of clicks and views based upon support from people in his network. I woke up that Saturday morning to an unfortunate surprise. My site, which I had opened and logged into hundreds and maybe thousands of times, was now ‘redirecting’ to a site I was unfamiliar with in the United Kingdom. After contacting my webhost, GoDaddy, it was determined that some form of ‘malware’ had infiltrated my site causing it to redirect. I hadn’t significantly invested in any security measures up to that point and to make a long story short, there were numerous entry points that the malware could have entered. In the meantime, all my operations had ground to a screeching halt.
As GoDaddy set out to fix my site, days went on and I pondered whether I might have to start the Big Words Blog Site all over from scratch, which would have taken a little bit of work because all the pieces were saved in various folders. And all of the comments I received on some of my most popular pieces would have been gone, as well as all of my metadata from the previous two years. It took about almost two weeks, but GoDaddy was able to remove the malware and I could use my site again. There was yet another surprise though.
SSL Certificates and Losing My Metadata
Once my site had been salvaged, I realized something was missing – the metadata for my social media plugins. My cover page, for example, had approximately 8,500 Facebook likes/shares prior to the cyberattack and now the number was zero. When I called GoDaddy initially to inquire about why my site was redirecting, the associate kindly pointed out that Saturday morning that my site didn’t have an ‘SSL Certificate’, something I hadn’t paid attention to out of the thousands of websites I’d visited in my lifetime.
SSL is an acronym for ‘Secure Sockets Layer’, a global standard security technology that enables encrypted communication between a web browser and a web server. My URL (Uniform Resource Locator) was an http and not an https, where the ‘s’ designates the possession of an SSL Certificate. I was informed that I would need the SSL Certificate for my site to gain a much better standing in Google’s search algorithm. Hearing this, I bought the certificate, and my site was likewise converted to an https from an http.
Restoring My Metadata
The reason all of my social media likes and shares disappeared was because of the very thing I had just paid for, my SSL Certificate which converted my site to an https instead of http. The problem is that the Facebook plugin on my site was created under the http. When I converted to the https, Facebook no longer recognized the 8,500 likes/shares from my plugin because it was now essentially a different URL. From a technical standpoint, the “Application Programming Interface” (API) between my blogging platform and the social media sites was altered.
How was I going to get my 8,500 likes and shares back? Could I get them back? Needless to say, I was very frustrated and didn’t know how I’d solve this problem. At some point I had a ‘lightbulb moment’ and decided to simply ask Google. It turned out that I wasn’t the only blogger to encounter this quagmire, and another quick Google search led me to an article with a bunch comments which ultimately led me a company called Social Warfare. Social Warfare sold their own social media plugins and had a feature through their ‘pro package’ which allowed metadata to be retrieved when bloggers like myself unknowingly converted from an http to an https designation.
By purchasing the new Social Warfare Pro Plugins package I now had a plan for restoring my metadata. After uploading the pro plan’s Zip file, I activated the function to retrieve my data and anxiously watched as the numbers gradually ticked upwards, which they did for the most part over a series of days. All throughout my site, the Facebook likes were restored, and I was at ease for a little while until the next set of challenges emerged.
Conclusions
In closing, I think it’s worth noting that while I approached starting my blog as a personal project, you can also hire someone to do it who has all the expertise, assuming you have funds to invest in those services. That may save you some of the ups and downs I described in this piece. You may save some time, but you also won’t learn those valuable lessons. It’s essentially one of life’s many tradeoffs. I think it’s also worth noting that based upon my science training, which was technology intensive and involved learning new methods and techniques on the fly, I felt equipped to build my platform myself once I learned about the available applications and tools.
I was fortunate to be able to monetize my blogging platform in 2017 and build a business around it. I’ve learned that, as a business owner, one has to problem solve and think of creative solutions when disaster strikes without warning (which is usually how it strikes). Sometimes it is creating the solution on your own, and sometimes the solution is out there, and you only need the intellectual curiosity to find it.
The other thing is that you’re forced to learn and evolve when things go wrong unexpectedly, and it did in this instance with my blogging platform. In addition to some of these technical aspects I learned about running a blogging platform in this post (an ongoing process), I also wanted to communicate these general lessons I learned about running a business, and I hope you were able to get something out of this blogger’s tale. Look for more in the future and thank you for reading this.
If you’ve found value here and think it would benefit others, please share it and/or leave a comment. To receive all the most up to date content from the Big Words Blog Site, subscribe using the subscription box in the right-hand column in this post and throughout the site. You can follow me now on YouTube on any of my Big Discussions76 channels, the Big Words Blog Site Facebook page, and Twitter at @BWArePowerful. Lastly you can follow me on Instagram at @anwaryusef76.
A key focus of my blog is Technology. Automation has been gradually implemented into our industries and there’s more to come. Not many people think about it in their day to day lives but it’s important for all of us to consider. The following contributed post is entitled, What Automation Can – And Can’t – Do For Us.
The very concept of automation is enough to spark a dozen conversations in which the questions range from a simple “good or bad?” to more complicated ones like “what does it mean for small business?”. There is no doubt that we are in a period of increasing technological involvement in our lives, both working and domestic. Opinions differ on what this says about where our future is going; it’s definitely a complicated issue.
Deciding how to feel about this rise in automation is tricky. On the one hand, it can depersonalize a workplace and lead to redundancies. On the other, automation can streamline working processes and keep things moving. There are arguments for and against, and below we’re going to look at a few of those in order to see if we’re ready for more automation in the working world.
Automated systems can work 24/7…
If you can successfully train a machine or code a program to do a job that is usually done by a person, then you have created a worker that never needs to eat or sleep. That means that you aren’t beholden to tight time frames that are dependent on shift workers whose performance will vary during the day as they get tired, hungry or distracted.
…but they can’t work off their own initiative
The flipside of these 24/7 workers that never eat or sleep is that they also can’t think. If a trained worker spots an anomaly in the work in front of them, they can alert someone to it. In many circumstances, they can fix the flaw themselves or devise a workaround. While much of the focus on automation looks at how it covers for human fallibility, that’s very much a two-way street and it’s why you need to have actual workers in the warehouse at all times.
Automated systems can replicate an instruction 100%…
Try, right now, to draw a perfectly straight line without a ruler. If you manage that, draw a perfect circle.
What you will notice is that you didn’t even get to step two, because a human being can’t physically do those things free-hand. There will always be a flaw. That’s what’s so exciting about smart manufacturing. It allows human vision to be made into something solid without the risk of flaws.
…but they can’t spot a logical flaw in an instruction
If you tell a machine to 3D-print a hairbrush that is 9” in length, it will do just that, and you’ll have a perfectly reasonable, nine-inch long hairbrush. If you get confused and tell the same machine to print a 9’ hairbrush, it’s going to try and print a nine-foot long hairbrush – and if it has the materials to do so, that’s what you’ll get. That’s what it’s been told to do, and the product will be flawless. Details like that, obvious to most experienced engineers, are why humans are a necessary part of the process.
Automation as a concept certainly has its upsides, and its incorporation into the world of work could solve a lot of problems. As long as this is done alongside a recognition of the essential part human ingenuity plays, it can end up being good for all of us.
Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. With so much business being conducted online, there is an increased likelihood for cyberattacks. As such you have to think about how to defend you operations against them. The following contributed post entitled, Preventing Cyberattacks At Work: What You Could Be Doing?
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It’s not always simple to protect your business from a cyberattack. Not only do you need to consider your IT security and hire the right agencies to make sure that your firewalls remain in place, you need to ensure that you train your staff properly in what to see in a cyberattack. You need to train every single person working in your business to know what to look for – and that gets tougher as technology evolves.
The more we bring in new security measures and technology, the harder it gets to ensure that the business is protected. Why? Well, as technology becomes more sophisticated, cyber hackers and attackers get more sophisticated! You need to know that you can handle training on physical theft, phishing simulations, how to recognize spam for scams – it’s vital. Your employees need to be educated in cyber security and all that comes with it so that they can alert your IT team when things crop up. So, how can you do more for your business and protect it properly?
● Offer Dedicated Training. Your business emails are a gateway for attackers and business email compromise attacks are some of the most sophisticated around. Hackers can extract information from your business when you don’t have the right phishing simulations and spam training invested in for your staff. Someone would see an email and think it’s legit, only to forward it on and further impact your business. With the right training provider, you can ensure that employees know what these scams look like, and they won’t be tricked into sending these emails. ● Put Policies In Place. Your business may be a flexible, “down with the kids” type business, but that doesn’t mean that you should allow your staff free reign over the internet. Company devices should be connected only for professional reasons, but you can still be flexible with personal devices at work. Teach your staff which files they can download and from which websites. If they know which networks are issued by you and are safe to use, they’ll be able to lower the risk of being scammed. Keep those policies in place and reestablish them as you need to. Don’t let it go, either, as you want to ensure that everyone is on the same wavelength with regard to security policies. ● Add Password Training. Your IT team may hand out passwords to staff, but that doesn’t mean that your staff shouldn’t know how to change them as needed. It should be that you all change your passwords every couple of months and they must remain case-sensitive and hard to break. ● Educate On Reporting Procedures. Lastly, train your staff to know where to report any scam issues they come across. It’s so important that they know to whom they should raise the alarm and how to ensure that the right people know straight away so that precautionary measures can be taken. Mistakes will happen – it’s human – but it’s easier to fix those mistakes if everyone knows what to do.
Two focuses of my blog are Technology and Workplace Discussions. The implementation of the technologies that we now have, have significantly changed the workplace so that remote working is increasingly the norm. The following contributed post is entitled, How Remote Work is Changing Home Safety.
It’s official – we’re living in the age of the remote working shift. Admittedly, this change has been bubbling away under the business surface for a while now but, with many companies having to shut shop, more of us than ever have found ourselves in home offices overnight. And, according to around 74% of firms, this is a change that’s set to stay.
After all, remote workers are famously more productive, while a reduction in office hours can mean reduced costs in everything from bills through to rental costs. The only trouble is that, as the ways in which we use our homes change, so too do the security risks we face. While theft avoidance has always been a priority of sorts, the majority of us have been relatively relaxed with safety measures. Now, home safety becomes a must as thieves from all sides take advantage of this home office phenomenon.
Here, we’re going to look at what exactly those risks look like, and how you can protect against them.
Soaring cybersecurity breaches
Perhaps the most notable security change has occurred in the cyber-sphere, where there’s been a 400% increase in attacks over the last twelve months. This isn’t altogether surprising considering that businesses are operating almost solely online right now. With malware in the right places, hackers can quite literally access entire infrastructures.
The good news is that businesses are responding with in-house cybersecurity efforts including cloud computing and end-point networks. Still, there’s nothing to stop attackers accessing your personal network. Hence, now is the time to arm yourself, not only with knowledge but also that anti-virus software that you’ve never felt the need to get around to until now.
More valuables than ever before
Many of us also now have a whole lot more valuables at home. At the very least, we’ve had to bring work computers into home offices. Not to mention that our cars are sitting on the driveway for longer. All of this means that thieves are guaranteed to get away with more.
Now could, therefore, be the ideal time for increased home security. At the very least, CCTV alarm systems could keep your vehicles safe. Meanwhile, in-house protections like floor safes can ensure that no one gets away with your all-important work valuables. That way, you can save yourself money in replacements and lost working hours!
Alongside these risks is one that proves equally problematic – complacency. After all, we’re each home a lot more now, and you may assume your presence alone is enough of a protection. Sadly, someone is home in around 266,560 of household burglaries. Separate home offices in the garden are especially problematic, as thieves who keep a close eye will be able to gain access the moment you head off for your lunch break.
To avoid this eventuality and the shock that it can bring, remember that you are not an island. Rather, you need security measures in place to keep you safe, even when your back is turned!
“It is a big mistake to think that owning a small business reduces your risks of a cyber attack. And this erroneous mindset can cause budding entrepreneurs to compromise their cybersecurity practices.”
Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. With more business being conducted in cyberspace, the need for effective cybersecurity is of the utmost importance. The following contributed post is entitled, 5 Best Cybersecurity Tips For Small Businesses.
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It is a big mistake to think that owning a small business reduces your risks of a cyber attack. And this erroneous mindset can cause budding entrepreneurs to compromise their cybersecurity practices. In fact, the United States’ Congressional Small Business Committee discovered that 71% of cyber attacks were targeted at businesses with fewer than 100 employees.
Learning Cybersecurity Basics can help you run your business smoothly despite the rampant cyber threats seen in the current season of the pandemic. With the correct SIEM management services, you can ensure that your business is on the right track where cybersecurity is concerned. As a small business, cybersecurity should be on the forefront of your mind, especially when your business isn’t as big as the huge enterprises out there. Just because your business is small, doesn’t mean that it isn’t mighty, so protection is a must. On that note, here are five of some of the best cybersecurity tips for small businesses.
A firewall may act as one of the first security layers on your business. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), all SMBs need to set up firewalls to create strong barriers between their organizational data and cyber-criminals. It’s also necessary to add an internal firewall, even if you have a standard external firewall. Ensure that your employees who are now working from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic use firewalls on their home networks. In general, firewall software can greatly improve your business’ network security.
2. Document your cybersecurity policies
Revamping your organization’s cybersecurity culture starts with documenting your cybersecurity protocols. The SBA’s portal provides tons of useful information on how small business owners can protect their online businesses. Consider taking part in the C3 voluntary program for small businesses, as it offers a detailed toolkit for the best cybersecurity protocols and practices.
3. Develop a mobile device action plan
As much as they account for a large portion of web traffic, mobile devices may also create significant security challenges. That’s if they contain personal information or gain access to corporate networks. Management needs to configure systems requiring all users to password-protect their devices. You may also want to ask your team to install security apps and to encrypt their data. These can bar cyber-criminals from breaching employees’ mobile devices when they are connected to public networks. Create a mobile device action plan by laying down reporting procedures for stolen or missing equipment.
4. Use complex passwords and multiple-factor authentication
Ask your employees to avoid costly password mistakes. For example, encourage your employees not to reuse their passwords but instead to use strong and unique passwords. You can also consider implementing multi-factor authentication codes such as 2FA; these will demand extra information beyond passwords when unauthorized users attempt to log in to your systems. Find out from vendors who handle sensitive information if they can help you set up multi-factor verification codes for your business accounts.
Finally, outline basic cybersecurity principles and practices for your workers to observe. Establish an effective internet usage guideline, and spell out the penalties associated with workers who violate your company’s cybersecurity principles. Management can create rules of behaviors detailing how the business protects customers’ valuable information. But it should also be about encouraging the smaller changes (something that’s probably the easiest to integrate). For example, get your team to use VPNs both on their phones (if they check work-related emails on their phones) and on their computers too.
Backup your essential business data along the line as you implement all effective cybersecurity measures. Automatic backups can safeguard your financial files, word documents, and other critical databases.
Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. In 2021 it’s critical to have a mobile marketing strategy to propel your business and your sales figures. The following guest post is entitled, 3 Mobile Marketing Strategies to Help Make Your Sales Figures Soar.
If your small business isn’t marketing to smartphone users, now is the time to start. Marketing your business to mobile phone users can bump up your brand awareness. What’s more, it can help boost your bottom line. The right marketing strategy will help mobile users find information about your products and services, which can help convert them to customers.
Take your business to the next level by adopting these mobile marketing tactics:
1. Optimize for Voice Search
Some mobile customers depend on voice search to complete everyday tasks, such as order food and find grocery stores near their area. They call on Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant and other voice-controlled personal assistants to help them with requests. If you have potential customers using voice search on their mobile phones, you’ll need to refine your marketing strategies to help your business become more visible to these people.
Not sure how to optimize your website for voice search?
Here are a few suggestions:
• Keep your business information up to date. You want to make sure that on-the-go voice search users can easily find the location and contact details of your business when they visit your area. • Add long-tail keywords into your website content phrased in the way mobile users speak instead of the way they type. When people do voice search, the words they use tend to be long-winded statements or phrases compared to typed searches. • Use your website to answer common queries. Find popular or frequently asked questions in your niche and provide answers to them in your site content.
2. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
When you use mobile marketing to reach a wide audience, you want to capitalize on it. An effective way to make this happen is to have a mobile-friendly business website.
Many companies have a website, but not all have a responsive site design that’s suitable for mobile phones. So, take this opportunity to get your website optimized for mobile users. If you need help with this, look for digital marketing agencies that include mobile site optimization in their website design and SEO packages. By having a mobile-friendly website, you can deliver a better browsing experience for your visitors and further improve your online visibility.
3. Spice up Customer Engagement with Augmented Reality
Concepts, such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), are relatively new. Some marketers don’t completely understand how they can apply these tech trends in their promotional strategy.
AR involves projecting virtual images and other elements in a real-world environment. VR, on the other hand, is an immersive and simulated experience wherein an individual wears a headset that places them in a virtual environment, such as outer space.
Although VR marketing tools can get expensive, you can use AR components to your mobile marketing campaigns. Tools, such as Blippar and ZapWorks, let you integrate AR into your campaigns.
Employ these mobile marketing tactics to help boost the bottom line of your business. Remember to personalize your mobile marketing efforts because personalization can contribute to higher sales.
Two focuses of my blog are General Education and Technology. The year of 2020 forced technology to the forefront in terms of education. In all likelihood, this trend is going to continue. The following sponsored post is entitled, What Is The Future Of Education?
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Advancements in technology and science are rapidly increasing. The speed at which these advancements are being made means that it may be difficult for the workforce to keep up. Compounded by this is the fact that there is a wealth of information at our fingertips. Knowledge and skills are becoming much more accessible at an unforeseen scale. What does all this mean for the future of education? There is no doubt that the internet and technology are changing the scope of education, and understanding what that means for yourself and society as a whole plays a critical role in how you think about curating a positive and progressive future.
The Inclusion of Technology
As with most industries in present day society, education and technology have already started integrating. This conversation has become especially pertinent after the coronavirus pandemic quarantined millions of students around the world. The inclusion of technology is critical for education, and building an infrastructure that maintains quality education at home is no easy task. Students and educators are becoming more aware of the pitfalls of educating online. Armed with this knowledge, now is the perfect time to integrate educational design projects that can ease the transition back to school and provide valuable feedback on the ways in which technology for educational purposes and the infrastructure used to maintain it, can be improved.
A Shift In Teaching Styles
As more people study education, it becomes glaringly obvious that the way people learn can vary widely. Understanding and catering towards different learning styles has been the focus of educators for years. As technology improves and becomes more deeply integrated into our daily lives, there is a chance that much wider variability between education and learning styles can be catered to. Structuring classrooms in a way that students work at their own pace and with educational materials that focus on variable skills is becoming more and more accessible, and will likely shift the way information is dispersed and learned.
A key focus of my blog is Technology. No matter what kind of operation you’re running, you’re going to want to make sure you’re on top of your technology in 2021. The following contributed post is entitled, How To Refresh Your Technology For 2021.
Technology has done a lot to improve our lives. Its many benefits include better healthcare, improved access to information, and the ability to start a side hustle from home. Sometimes, however, you can end up in a state of “technology overload”. If this sounds familiar, then perhaps it’s time to give your technology a New Year’s refresh.
Streamline your storage
If you have files scattered across all kinds of storage media, then corral them together in two places. That’s one main offline storage location and one online storage location. These will be backups for each other. Then set up two other storage locations (one offline and one online) for your fresh files.
As you go through 2021, make a point of keeping your new storage organized. Whenever you can, go into your old storage and clean it out. Ideally, by the end of the year, you should have all the files you need and want organized over two storage locations. If you don’t get that far, that’s fine, as long as you keep making progress.
Purge your hardware
The fact that technology is getting smaller all the time makes it easier to store as well as easier to carry. That’s great for small homes and mobile lifestyles. Sadly, it also makes it easier to toss old technology in a drawer and forget about it. If your home is slowly turning into a private museum for old electronics, it’s time to do something about it.
Unearth all your hardware and everything which goes with it (e.g. cables). Then work out what equipment you really need and what you really want. Figure out what needs to stay with it to make it work (e.g. memory cards). Then get rid of everything else. Hopefully, you won’t have to bin it. Some of it may even have resale value, if not see if it can be recycled.
Update and protect the hardware you keep
In some cases, updating hardware can mean physically as well as in terms of the software. For example, you may be able to increase the memory and/or storage capacity in your main computer. Mostly, however, it tends to refer to making sure that you’re using the most recent version of your operating system and any apps you use.
If you’re on a PC with Windows 10 installed but not activated, you’ll see a prompt to activate it. Since Windows 10 is the most recent version of Windows, you may want at least to consider doing so. If, however, you’re not a Windows 10 fan, there are other ways to remove watermark.
Other operating systems and applications will tend to send occasional prompts to update. It’s generally a good idea to act on them as quickly as possible. These updates often enhance the security of your device. On that note, the end of a year is a good time to check you have the best, possible security software on each device.
Delete unused accounts and apps
In harsh terms, any account or app you use has the potential to compromise your personal data. This means that you should only keep accounts and apps where the reward justifies the risk. If you’re not using an account or an app then you’re not getting any benefit from it so close it and/or delete it.
If you’re not sure, then try deleting an account or app and see how you feel about the result. If it matters to you then you can always recreate it/reinstall it. If you have dormant or semi-dormant email addresses, try setting up a forward to an account you use regularly. Update senders with your new address as, when, and if necessary. Give it six months or so and then close the account.
As a bonus tip, be very careful about keeping valuable emails in your main email account. If you lose access to the account, then you also lose access to the email. Use the “print to PDF” function to create a couple of copies of them and store them with your other valuable files. Do this at least once a year, more often is better.
Update your passwords
Updating your passwords means more than just adding 2021 to the end of them (or updating 2020 to 2021). Cyberattacks are now a serious enough threat that you absolutely must take strong passwords seriously. In fact, you should implement two-factor authentication as much as possible.
TFA combines something you know (e.g. a password) with something you have (e.g. a one-time access-token sent to your cell). It meaningfully increases the difficulty of hacking an account. Even with TFA, however, you must still use strong passwords.
