technology

In recent years Bitcoin has taken the world by storm, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Bitcoin is now being accepted as a form of payment by a wide array of popular online casinos. You can use your Bitcoin wallet to play with live dealers and purchase other products online too. To discover how Bitcoin is being used in online casinos, simply continue reading to find out everything you need to know about Bitcoin’s use in casinos!

The Rise of Bitcoin and it’s Use in Online Casinos:

Bitcoin is the world’s first decentralized digital currency and was released in early 2009. Unlike other forms of currency which are regulated by financial institutions such as banks and governments, Bitcoin is anonymous currency which in stored in anonymous digital wallets.

In recent months online casinos, have begun to accept Bitcoin as an official form of payment. One reason why some gamblers may prefer to use Bitcoin to credit their accounts, is in the hopes of winning a jackpot of Bitcoin.

Why do players want to win Bitcoin at online casinos?

When a player receives their Bitcoin earnings, as the Bitcoins contained in a Bitcoin wallet are unmarked and can’t be easily tracked by governments and tax departments, players may be able to keep, save and spend their Bitcoin, without having to declare any of their winnings to their government. However beware that choosing not to disclose your winnings as income to your government, could still get you into trouble as different countries have different regulations when it comes to the declaration of Bitcoin.

Another reason, to try to win as much Bitcoin as you possibly can is that the earnings which you collect, willmost likely double in value over the coming years. As an example, if you purchased $100 of Bitcoin in 2010, your investment would now be worth $75 million dollars. While you may not be able to turn $100 which you collect in a Bitcoin casino today into $75 million dollars, if you were to win $100 dollars worth of Bitcoin, the same amount of Bitcoin could double or triple, in the next few years.

As an added bonus if you’re uncomfortable with the idea of giving an online casino access to personal information, which is linked to your credit card such as your full name, your address and your credit card number itself, it’s far safer using a Bitcoin to credit your account.

Where can you spend Bitcoin?

You may be curious as to where you can spend your Bitcoin earnings. The great news is that you can use Bitcoin to book overseas vacations on sites such as Expedia and use Bitcoin to purchase electronics, clothing and gifts from a wide array of well known stores. You can even use Bitcoin to purchase online gift vouchers for popular shops like Sephora and Wholefoods. Alternatively, you can use Bitcoin to purchase goods in physical stores as well as online stores.

If you are excited by the idea of being able to win Bitcoin, by playing online casino style games, it’s well worth searching for a reputable online casino which accepts Bitcoin as payment!

Today’s online casinos have evolved and developed as a result in a variety of technological advances. In order to discover how technology has changed the way which we use online casinos, simply continue reading to find out.

How Technology has Changed the Way we Play Online Casinos:

1. You can credit your accounts with online currencies such as Bitcoin 

In the past online players would have to use their credit cards, to top up their online accounts to play online casinos for money. However with the recent popularity of digital currencies, which are stored anonymously in online wallets, players around the world are now able to use cryptocurrencies to credit their accounts.

Not only can you use Bitcoin to play blackjack or other games and you can also use it to purchase tangible items in the real world such as a cup of coffee or an ice cream.

2. You’re able to win digital currency instead of traditional cash

With the rise of digital currency, such as Bitcoin which is not stored in a bank and can’t be tracked by banks or governments, online casino players can now win cyrptocurrencies, for playing their favorite online casino games.

If you’re looking to acquire Bitcoin, which is set to rise in price for the next two years, it’s well worth playing casino games as a way of acquiring Bitcoin. Which can be incredibly expensive to purchase.

Once you win your first share of Bitcoins, you’ll be able to store your winnings in an anonymous Bitcoin wallet. Which means that it’s up to you if you want to declare your earnings as income or not!

3. You can trust online casinos to follow international regulations

When online casinos first emerged, there were a lot of illegal online casinos, which weren’t properly regulated which would take customers money, without actually paying out any jackpots or winnings. However, online casinos are now automatically regulated to make sure that each game does pay out winnings and that each player has a real, legitimate chance of winning a prize. This makes it helpful if you’re location independent or traveling as well.

4. Most individuals now favor using smart phone applications to play online casino games

In the past the majority of players would access casino websites via a laptop. However, as smart phones have become more and more popular, most online casinos now offer downloadable applications, which make playing your favorite casino games on your smart phone as simple and as enjoyable a process as possible.

So you won’t have to scroll around a giant website, in order to play your favorite games. Examples of which may include poker, slot machines and roulette. As an added advantage, all of the games which you play on your smart phone or almost any digital gadget with wifi, will boast rich, high-resolution graphics.

5. You’ll find yourself playing head to head against players from across the world

As internet access has become prevalent in most parts of the world, you’re just as likely to find yourself competing in an online poker tournament with players in Russia, the Netherlands and Australia, as you are to find yourself playing against American competitors.

One of the distinct benefits of online casinos becoming so popular world wide is that the prizes offered have skyrocketed as a result!

If you have ever tried to find a new job in the corporate sector, you will know how difficult it can be to find one. Yet, did you know that crowdsourcing software made for businesses has made finding such a job a lot easier? Examples of this include job websites such as Monster, but also huge social media platforms such as LinkedIn. Indeed, thanks to the internet, the crowd – the general public – has access to thousands of jobs each and every day. And crowdsourcing software for job hunters have made it possible for businesses to quickly and easily sift through the average of 250 resumes they receive for each posting.

Crowdsourcing Software Made for Businesses Makes the Innovators Stand Out

Working in HR is a thankless task. However, crowdsourcing software has made things a lot easier for these managers. No longer do they personally have to read the hundreds of cover letters and hundreds of resumes. It is a known fact that around 75% of applicants aren’t even qualified, which shows just how much time can be wasted. Indeed, out of all the applications, only 2% will ever be asked for interview. Thanks to crowdsourcing software, however, managers can get to those 2% in a much quicker manner. And one of the things they make their software look for is innovation and creativity.

Knowledge Is Power

Crowdsourcing software is fitted with a number of parameters that applicants must meet. If used properly, the organization’s innovation team will have set those parameters, so that everybody agrees on the type of person that would be suitable for the role. Standard parameters include education and experience, although none of this demonstrates whether or not someone fits in with the company’s culture. Hence, what these systems now look for is evidence of creative thinking and ideas.

Innovators Are in Demand

It helps, of course, that most roles available today are those that specifically look for innovators. Indeed, some of the most in demand positions include computer programmer, healthcare professional, and network architect, all highly creative roles. These are sectors where the workforce is dwindling, and insufficient new talent is generated.

What these talent gaps also tell us is where stagnation is. True innovators stay on top of trends, and they try to come up with ways to resolve areas where there is stagnation. An innovator never stands still. They find opportunities and they take action. They think big and they are there to stop an organization from becoming stale.

A final thing that crowdsourcing software for HR managers looks for is people who take control of their own life. They want to see someone who is applying for a job they actually want. They stand out from the crowd by approaching the company directly and by coming up with more ideas than what is asked for on the application form. They don’t wait until an opening exists, they show where the opening should be, in other words.

Even if you know a lot about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you may still want to call in an SEO firm to help grow your own business. Safari SEO Agency UK states that having a base knowledge of SEO is unfortunately not enough, because SEO is constantly updating and changing with each and every one of Googles algorithm updates. But how do you find an SEO firm that is actually any good, when everybody seems to call themselves experts nowadays? Below are 10 top tips to look for.

Top Tips to Find a Great SEO Firm

1. They should complete a site evaluation. This means they tell you how you currently rank and whether or not your design is any good. They should also provide you with a custom work proposal based on this information.
2. They should use advanced keyword identification tools. They need to explain how they find keywords, using things like Google AdWords and more, and why they choose the ones they feel matter most.
3. They must explain where they will find backlinks, which are vital to full optimization. These links should be of high quality, because quality is more important than quantity in the eyes of Google.
4. They should be able to explain what they will charge for what and why. The quote should be very detailed and there shouldn’t be any misleading fine print.
5. They should be able to tell you how long they expect to take to see some results, and what kind of results you can expect. However, they should not be able to provide you with any guarantees, as they have no control over what other people do. A good SEO campaign usually takes between six and 18 months to show any real results.
6. They must be able to explain the techniques and strategies that they intend to use. Be wary of black hat tactics such as spam advertising or deceiving the algorithms of the search engines.
7. They should be able to provide you with targeted traffic and explain how this differs from plain traffic. Plain traffic actually gets your site ranking down. Targeted traffic is obtained through press releases, social media, and other relevant channels.
8. Their deliverables should be transparent. This means they should be happy to provide you with regular reports and updates on how they are performing and on whether or not they are meeting the targets that they had expected. These reports should be highly detailed, showing exactly where which traffic is coming from, and which strategies are proving to be the most successful.
9. They should offer monthly or quarterly reports to showcase whether you are seeing a return on investment.
10. They should guarantee their performance. This is not the same as guaranteeing results, however.

With these 10 considerations, you should be able to find an SEO agency that works properly and delivers what you need. Do your research, find reviews of the company, and ask for a portfolio. In so doing, you will make sure their work is most likely to become successful for you.

To say that GPS for car devices have transformed the manner in which we drive would be completely underestimating the situation. Whilst today’s post is based on logistics companies and the benefits they are receiving from the devices, let’s also not forget that the Average Joe driving a car is also reaping the rewards. Maps have been thrown out of the window (sometimes literally) and in their place has come a GPS device which has made travel a whole lot easier.

While the ones for the standard car tend to be quite simple and focus on directions, when it comes to using GPS devices commercially a whole host of other features enter the picture. Today we will take a look at some of these features, to highlight the true benefits what logistics firms around the country are now receiving.

The speed factor

In an ideal world, every company would love their drivers to travel at the maximum speed as possible, whilst obviously not putting anyone in danger. As we all know, we are bound by speed limits on all roads though, and if drivers do fall foul of these, fines, bans and other penalties are often dished out.

Of course, there are occasions where speeding drivers aren’t been picked up by speed detection cameras. The beauty of GPS devices is that they regularly report back on speed, and make companies aware if drivers are breaking limits. This is something that really can encourage drivers to navigate in a safe manner, and avoid any financial penalties which might be dished out to the company in the future.

Staying efficient

As we all know, speed is directly linked to efficiency.

The fact that speed is reported to companies has another benefit; it can mean that drivers can be asked to drive more efficiently. Particularly in the larger vehicles, there are “optimum” speeds to drive at, and over the course of a year the fuel savings to companies can border on the unbelievable.

Once upon a time a company may have been able to “ask” their drivers to obey their speed requirements in a bid to earn efficiency. Now, such requests will tend to be followed, particularly as all data is relayed back so quickly.

The “tracking” element of these products

It isn’t called a GPS tracker for nothing, is it? In other words, companies really are taking advantage of the fact that the devices can quickly relay location information back to a company.

This is something that means planning is a breeze, but it’s also something which can boost customer satisfaction immensely as well. Some companies are taking the location information and providing it directly to their customers, just so they can have an estimated time on when their goods are going to be delivered. Compared to years ago, where both companies and individuals may have had to make special plans to wait for a delivery, this is a huge transformation and one that’s boosting umpteen industries.

“Error 404” (CC BY 2.0) by WarmSleepy

In 2018, downtime for a website which relies on selling products or services to make a profit is borderline destructive. In this day and age, downtime for your website not only costs money, it can also negatively affect your reputation. Website errors not only affect the end-user too; the problems invariably require in-house engineers to resolve the issue, pulling them away from other key tasks as a result.

Website downtime is by no means an issue confined to e-commerce websites, but a rock-solid and consistent user experience is more important for online retailers than any other sector in terms of attracting and retaining customers. It’s all about those fine margins. Leading global marketplace Amazon recently calculated that even a one-second delay in their website’s operations could cost the company up to $1.6bn a year in sales.

Admittedly, the best way to ensure high availability for all in-datacentre and cross-datacentre websites is to incorporate a load balancer into your website’s infrastructure. Load balancing can work for online retailers where they operate using local servers in a single country or global servers in multiple locations around the world. At a local level, where online traffic to your website is shared across a number of servers within your data centre, a local load balancing application can optimise that distribution of visitors equally across all servers to improve the efficiency of your server loads and ensure swift, secure user experiences.

Image: Pixabay.com

E-commerce brands operating from multiple data centres, often in different countries to serve visitors in their native region, can also ensure high availability and dependable website performance with a global load balancing solution. With a global infrastructure, users are funnelled to the data centre with the fastest connection time, although it’s possible to configure the system to direct users to a location-specific data centre based on their geolocation. With load balancing, it’s possible to get real-time overview of the health and efficiency of your web servers and data centres and direct your users to an active data centre. This software can issue health check requests to each server to periodically monitor their performance.

Of course, downtime for any e-commerce website doesn’t just affect sales and reputation, it can negatively impact upon a website’s prominence in search engine results pages (SERPs). Both Google and Bing take a dim view of websites that have regular site outages, which could result in your website being outranked by competitors, although you’re doing the rest of your SEO absolutely right. In fact, Google’s John Mueller recommends that if you’re aware that your website will need to be down for some time, you should use a 503 server code to make search engine bots aware that it’s only a temporary issue. That will allow you to recover your SEO rankings more easily once you’re back online.

For any online retailer, it’s essential not to just be able to quickly respond to a crisis. In fact, it’s better to have a proactive monitoring system that allows you to keep on top of issues before they evolve into potential downtime-worthy problems. The failure of even the biggest retailers such as Amazon should serve as a clear warning to other e-commerce brands that downtime can – and will – happen. Minimise your website’s performance degradation and server failures with periodic testing and load balancing to help things operate on an even keel.

(Image Credit: endomedion / 123RF Stock Photo)

Traditionally, Agile techniques have been the exclusive domain of software companies. Agile, which has been available to software manufacturers since the early 1990s, is a process that companies use to create new requirements and solutions for an application.

It breaks down product development into much smaller increments, minimizing the need for significant upfront design and planning. Thousands of companies have used it to create more efficient software solutions since its inception.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, hardware companies have come to appreciate the many benefits an agile manufacturing approach as well. The informal definition of agile manufacturing is an approach used by a company to manufacture its products. This includes the entire process, such as the training, tools, and processes a manufacturer must employ to get its products to the marketplace.

The main goal of agile manufacturing is to respond quickly to customer needs without jeopardizing quality or increasing costs.

Understanding the Four Key Elements of Agile Manufacturing

A successful agile manufacturing plan must incorporate all four of these elements:

1. Corporate partners: Companies that implement agile manufacturing attempt to leverage business relationships with other companies whenever possible. The rationale is that cooperative and short-term projects can aid with entry or adjustment to new or evolving markets.
2. Information technology (IT): The use of IT throughout the organization ensures that employees have the most recent information and can respond quickly to internal and external communication requests. This empowers them to make faster decisions regarding product design as well as ensures information distribution across several platforms.
3. Knowledge culture: Adopting agile manufacturing means the company is willing to invest in employee training. This results in employee who can rapidly adapt to changing specifications throughout the company.
4. Modular product design: This manufacturing process lends itself to modular products that allow for prompt variation and modification. Workers build modular products from a variety of pieces to ensure that this is possible. As an example, a worker incorporating modular product design would create several small pieces of the product that fit together rather than using a single type of material.

The Example of Wikispeed

Wikispeed, an auto manufacturer based in the United States, uses Agile manufacturing as a type of development technique. It just so happens that Wikispeed’s founder, Joe Justice, had been instrumental in Agile software development using Scrum since Agile first came on the scene. With this background, it was possible for Justice to implement the same techniques to manufacture a car. Wikispeed’s development process for cars dropped to just seven days. The result is a fully functioning automobile that consumes less gas than many other models.

While software and hardware development have obvious differences, the two share enough similarities for hardware manufacturers to seriously consider implementing Agile. Today’s winners in manufacturing aren’t necessarily the ones with the best product. It’s the company who can get new products to market the fastest, a goal that hardware manufacturers can reach easier by switching to the Agile process.