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How to avoid common mistakes while publishing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

2018-11-08T17:19:00.000-08:00

As Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are building up momentum we’ve noticed the same mistakes happen again and again when publishing AMPs. Here is a list of steps you should take to avoid breaking your AMPs and ensure a great AMP experience to your readers.

1. Publish only valid AMP files

One of the great things about AMP is that the runtime includes a built-in validator. The validator checks if your AMP file contains valid AMP HTML. If your page contains invalid AMP, it will not load correctly and third-party platforms might choose not to show your AMP page. This makes it a good idea to validate a representative subset of your AMP pages to make sure that all different variants are valid.

Run the validator by adding “#development=1" to an AMP URL, for example:

https://ampexample.com#development=1

You can view the validation result in the Javascript console of your browser:

2. Include correct metadata

Adding metadata to your AMP files enables third-party sites to better display your AMP pages. For example, the Google Top Stories Carousel with AMPcurrently supports the Article and Video metadata categories and uses these for rendering article previews:

3. Ensure your AMPs are discoverable

Third-party integrations, such as the Google Top Stories Carousel with AMP, discover your AMPs via the canonical version of your page. To make this possible, link from your AMP HTML files to their canonical version (this is usually the desktop version):

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.ampproject.org/article.html" />

…and (important!) link to your AMP files from your canonical version (and any alternate):

<link rel=”amphtml” href=”http://example.ampproject.org/article.amp.html" />

Otherwise third-party integrations may not be able to discover your AMPs.

4. Allow Crawlers to access your AMP Files

If you want your AMPs to show up in third-party platforms, make sure to allow their crawlers to access them. This means in particular:

Don’t exclude crawlers via your robots.txt file:



User-agent: *


Disallow: /amp/                            <= don't!

Don’t add a robots noindex meta tag to your AMP HTML files:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />   <= don't!

Don’t include noindex as X-Robots-Tag HTTP header for your AMP files:

$ curl -I http://www.example.com/amp.html



HTTP/1.1 200 OK


Date: Tue, 25 May 2010 21:42:43 GMT


(…)


X-Robots-Tag: noindex                      <= don't!


(…)

5. Test that your AMPs load correctly via the Google AMP Cache

The Google AMP Cache stores valid AMP pages and provides consistently fast access to them. The Google Top Stories Carousel with AMP, for example, uses the Google AMP Cache to display articles. The cache stores images and fonts in addition to documents. This makes it important to test that your AMPs work correctly when loaded via the Google AMP Cache.

Loading your AMP pages via the Google AMP Cache is easy. The Google AMP Cache URL is composed based on whether the source URL is available via HTTP or HTTPS:

HTTP: https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/AMP_URL_WITHOUT_SCHEME

HTTPS: https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/AMP_URL_WITHOUT_SCHEME

where AMP_URL_WITHOUT_SCHEME is the location of your AMP file minus http(s)://. For example, the AMP Cache URL for https://ampbyexample.com is:

https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/ampbyexample.com

When loading your AMP pages via the Google AMP Cache, check via your browser’s developer tools if all external resources can be loaded successfully, including all of the following:

images

videos

amp-analytics endpoints

amp-pixel endpoints

custom fonts

iframes

6. Serve everyone the same version of your AMPs

If you want your AMPs to show up in third-party platforms, you need to make sure to serve the same AMP version to users and crawlers. Avoid redirecting users on non-mobile devices to a different version of your website. This can lead to scenarios were users can see your AMP pages, but third-party crawlers cannot. The best approach is to always serve your AMPs and never redirect to non-AMPs.

The Best of Motorola, Moto G5S Plus

2018-11-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

Motorola Moto G5S Plus smartphone was launched in August 2017. The phone comes with a 5.50-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 1080 pixels by 1920 pixels. Motorola Moto G5S Plus price in India starts from Rs. 15,990.

The Motorola Moto G5S Plus is powered by 2GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor and it comes with 4GB of RAM. The phone packs 64GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 128GB via a microSD card. As far as the cameras are concerned, the Motorola Moto G5S Plus packs a 13-megapixel primary camera on the rear and a 8-megapixel front shooter for selfies.

The Motorola Moto G5S Plus runs Android 7.1 and is powered by a 3000mAh non removable battery. It measures 153.50 x 76.20 x 9.50 (height x width x thickness) and weigh 168.00 grams.

The Motorola Moto G5S Plus is a dual SIM (GSM and GSM) smartphone that accepts Nano-SIM and Nano-SIM. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, USB OTG, 3G and 4G (with support for Band 40 used by some LTE networks in India). Sensors on the phone include Proximity sensor, Accelerometer, Ambient light sensor and Gyroscope.
About Motorola

Motorola Mobility was established in 2011 following the split of Motorola into two companies, with Motorola Solutions catering to the enterprise segment. Acquired soon after by Google, Motorola Mobility was sold to Lenovo in 2014. Motorola made its first Android smartphone in 2009, and its first Android tablet in 2011.

LG V30 smartphone comes with a 6 inch 1440 X 2880 touchscreen, 4GB of RAM & 64GB storage

2018-11-06T17:11:00.003-08:00

LG V30 smartphone was launched in August 2017. The phone comes with a 6.00-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 1440 pixels by 2880 pixels.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835It comes with 4GB of RAM. The phone packs 64GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 200GB via a microSD card. As far as the cameras are concerned, the LG V30 packs a 16-megapixel primary camera on the rear and a 5-megapixel front shooter for selfies.

The LG V30 runs Android 7.1.2 and is powered by a 3300mAh non removable battery. It measures 151.70 x 75.40 x 7.30 (height x width x thickness) and weigh 158.00 grams.

The LG V30 is a single SIM (GSM) . Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, NFC and Headphones. Sensors on the phone include Proximity sensor, Accelerometer and Ambient light sensor.

About LG

Founded in Seoul in 1958 as GoldStar, LG Electronics today makes home appliances, mobiles, tablets, and televisions. LG launched its first Android smartphone in 2009, and its first Android tablet in 2011. The company is known for its flagship G series of smartphones and a wide range of products including smart TVs.

LG V30

KEY SPECS
NEWS

Display

6.00-inch

Front Camera

5-megapixel

Resolution

1440x2880 pixels

RAM

4GB

OS

Android 7.1.2

Storage

64GB

Rear Camera

16-megapixel

Battery Capacity

3300mAh

Also See

LG L60 Dual (Black Blue, 4GB)

Rs.6,795
LG L60 Dual (Black Blue, 4GB) - OFFER

Rs.6,999
LG L Bello (Black Titan, 8GB) - OFFER

Rs.7,999

LG V30 detailed specifications

GENERAL

Release date	August 2017
Form factor	Touchscreen
Dimensions (mm)	151.70 x 75.40 x 7.30
Weight (g)	158.00
Battery capacity (mAh)	3300
Removable battery	No
Colours	Aurora Black, Cloud Silver, Moroccan Blue, Lavender Violet

DISPLAY

Screen size (inches)	6.00
Touchscreen	Yes
Resolution	1440x2880 pixels

HARDWARE

Processor make	Qualcomm Snapdragon 835
RAM	4GB
Internal storage	64GB
Expandable storage	Yes
Expandable storage type	microSD
Expandable storage up to (GB)	200

CAMERA

Rear camera	16-megapixel
Rear Flash	LED
Front camera	5-megapixel

SOFTWARE

Operating System

Android 7.1.2

CONNECTIVITY

Wi-Fi	Yes
Wi-Fi standards supported	802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
GPS	Yes
Bluetooth	Yes, v 5.00
NFC	Yes
Infrared	No
USB OTG	No
Headphones	Yes
FM	No
Number of SIMs	1
SIM 1
GSM/CDMA	GSM
3G	No
4G/ LTE	No
Supports 4G in India (Band 40)	No

SENSORS

Compass/ Magnetometer	No
Proximity sensor	Yes
Accelerometer	Yes
Ambient light sensor	Yes
Gyroscope	No
Barometer	No
Temperature sensor	No

Amazfit Sports Smartwatch 2 and 2S bring a mighty five days of battery life

2018-11-06T17:11:00.001-08:00

Xiaomi is looking to continue its wearable conquest with a duo of new smartwatches from sub-brand Huami, the Amazfit Watch 2s and Sports Smartwatch 2, 2017's successors to the Amazfit Pace.

Both watches have the 1.34-inch display with 320 x 300 pixel resolution and stainless steel buttons, but the 2S ups the style with a ceramic bezel, sapphire glass on top and a nice leather strap. Both, however, look a lot nicer than the Amazfit Pace.

Naturally the Sports Smartwatch 2 is where fitness types will want to look. It supports 11 different types of activity, from indoor running to open water swimming and triathlon and comes with a built-in GPS and an optical heart rate sensor.

The Watch 2S doesn't come with the GPS or heart rate skills - that one's all about style - but both watches are waterproof to 50 meters. More interestingly, the Sports Smartwatch 2 will supposedly recognize whether you're in open water or not. We've no idea how that might work, but we're more than a little intrigued to find out.

The other big sell is battery life. Huami claims these watches can run up to five days, which is even longer than the Samsung Gear S3 and Gear Sport. With GPS and continuous heart rate tracking on, it's about 35 hours.

Both watches support contactless payments with China's AliPay, so we assume NFC is in there, and there's 4GB of internal storage for putting music on. Note that they runs on the proprietary Amazfit operating system, too.

The Sports Smartwatch 2 and Watch 2S have only been announced for China, where they're sold for the Yuan equivalent of about $150 and $225 respectively. No word yet on an international release, but like the Amazfit Pace, we expect we'll see them made more widely available.

New Features in Android 8.0 Oreo

2018-06-04T05:48:00.001-07:00

It's official — the newest version of Google's mobile operating system is called Android 8.0 Oreo, and it will soon start rolling out to Nexus and Pixel devices. This new version has plenty of changes in store, ranging from revamped looks to under-the-hood improvements, so there's tons of cool new stuff to explore.

If you own a non-Google flagship device like the Galaxy S8 or OnePlus 5, you'll likely have to wait a few months before Android Oreo hits your own phone. But if you're curious about this new version, or if you have a Nexus or Pixel to test it out on, let's go ahead and take a look at all of the new features and functionality in Android 8.0.

1Redesigned Settings Menu

The most obvious visual change is a revamped Settings menu, which features subtle dark gray text on an all-white background. Strangely, the side navigation menu introduced in Android Nougat is gone, but all of the various menus have been reorganized to make the Settings area as simple and straightforward as possible.

2Revamped File Manager

Android's built-in file manager isn't the best on the market, but it's nice to have a way to browse files without having to install an additional app. Things are looking up, too, as the Files app in Android Oreo got a bit of a makeover. It still hasn't reached feature parity with apps like Solid Explorer and FX File Manager, but at the very least, it lets you view, delete, and open files.

3Battery-Saving Background Restrictions

Believe it or not, Android Oreo may finally fix issues with standby battery drain. Doze Mode helped quite a bit in this regard when it was introduced with Marshmallow, then improved upon with Nougat. But now, Google's tightening the reins on actions that apps can perform in the background.

Background Execution Limits being imposed in Android Oreo will ensure that apps won't run wild with background services or keep listener services (aka "broadcasts") open at all times. Even more helpful, apps can only request location updates "a few times each hour." The location restrictions will apply to all apps, regardless of if they were built for Android 8.0 or an older version, so it seems Google is really starting to crack down on rogue battery drainers.

4Snooze Individual Notifications

Perhaps my personal favorite Android Oreo feature is the ability to snooze individual notifications. When a message comes through, but you don't have time to deal with it, just swipe to the right, then tap the clock icon to snooze the notification. This will make the message go away for 15 minutes, then come right back when the time is up. You can also change the snooze length right after you've snoozed a notification.

5Fingerprint Scanner Gestures

The Pixel and Pixel XL shipped with an exclusive feature that allowed users to expand their notification tray by swiping down on the phone's fingerprint scanner. This feature has since been added to Nexus devices, but Google's taking the fingerprint-swipe gesture to a whole new level in Android Oreo.

Third-party app developers can now use an Accessibility service to monitor the fingerprint scanner for swipes — both vertical and horizontal. This means that, by requesting an extra permission, your favorite apps will get fingerprint gesture functionality. Personally, I can't wait for a browser that lets you scroll webpages by swiping the scanner vertically, or a launcher that lets you flip between home screen pages by swiping horizontally.

6Turn on Wi-Fi Automatically

People who don't have access to Wi-Fi at work or school will love this next one. When you turn off your Wi-Fi radio in Android Oreo (by disabling Wi-Fi in Settings or toggling the Quick Settings tile), everything will behave as it normally would. So you'll save battery by not having your phone scan for access points all day. But when you get back home, Oreo can use your phone's location to see that you're back around your home Wi-Fi hotspot, and it will automatically turn your Wi-Fi radio back on.

You can find this option under Network & Internet -> Wi-Fi -> Wi-Fi preferences. With the "Turn on Wi-Fi automatically" switch enabled, your phone will always kick Wi-Fi back on when you're at a location where you've connected to a Wi-Fi network in the past.

7More Granular Storage Controls

When your phone's storage is starting to fill up, you'll find that it's a lot easier to clear away non-essential files and cached data in Android Oreo. Previously, the Storage menu in Settings had a handful of basic categories that you could view to see where all of your available storage went. But now, there are specific categories for things like "Games" and "Movie & TV Apps."

When you select one of these categories, you'll see all of the apps of that type that are using up your storage space. From there, it's pretty easy to clear away cache and junk files, which is miles better than Nougat's method of lumping all types of apps into a single "Apps" category in the Storage menu.

8Picture-in-Picture Mode

Following in the footsteps of Android Nougat's split-screen mode, Android Oreo will now allow apps to be viewed in Picture-in-Picture mode. This is a special type of split-screen window that should be particularly useful for watching videos while performing other tasks, though apps will need to be updated to support the new API. So far, the feature works with VLC and YouTube, though you need YouTube Red for the latter.

9New Battery Menu

The battery menu in Android Oreo has received a makeover, but it's more than just a visual refresh. Common battery-related options such as Adaptive brightness and Battery saver are now near the top of the menu for easy access, and the battery usage graph is a bit easier to read. But the most interesting change here is a set of statistics at the bottom of the main menu, which tell you specifically how much of your battery was used by mobile network scanning and the device's display.

10Autofill Framework

You know how Chrome will auto-fill saved information such as addresses and credit card numbers when it detects a compatible field? Well, a similar feature is coming to Android Oreo, which should save you the hassle of repeatedly entering the same information on a touchscreen keyboard.

This new Autofill Framework will allow apps to create and manage their own lists of auto-fill data, then Android Oreo will populate this data into password fields when appropriate. By default, this feature uses passwords from your Google account, provided you've saved them in Chrome or with Smart Lock.

You have total control over which password list to use, and you can adjust this setting from the "Autofill service" entry in Languages & input. At the moment, no third-party apps are available, so Google's service is the only option until other apps start taking advantage of this feature. Nonetheless, Autofill should eventually make password management apps like LastPass even more useful on Android, which is a big plus for security in general.

11Rescue Party

All software has bugs, it's an unavoidable fact. But with Android Oreo, when a fatal bug comes through and your device starts crashing, the operating system will attempt to automatically fix the issue. This new feature is called Rescue Party, and it basically applies a series of escalating fixes when your phone repeatedly reboots, or when a persistent app continuously crashes. Here's hoping this marks the end of bootloops.

12Notification Channels

Using a system called Notification Channels, apps can now create categories for the various notifications they post. As an example, the Gmail app could make separate notification categories for your work and personal accounts, or for your various inbox categories.

Once an app has been updated to use the Notification Channels feature, you'll be able to control the priority and visibility of each type of notification posted by that app. Continuing with the Gmail example, you could mute work email notifications during off hours, or completely hide notifications that originate from a particular inbox category.

13Adaptive Icons

With the Pixel, Google introduced the concept of rounded home screen icons. This, combined with Android's usual freeform icons and Samsung's squircle style, means that there's now some serious fragmentation with app icons. To accommodate everybody, developers would have to include circle, square, squircle, and freeform icons in each of their apps, and that's probably asking too much.

Enter Adaptive Icons. With this new feature in Android 8.0, developers can create a single, unified app icon, and the system will do the rest. When an app offers an Adaptive Icon, Android Oreo will automatically crop and align it according to the system settings. From a user standpoint, this means that once apps get updated with Adaptive Icons, all of your home screen icons will be of matching shapes.

Adaptive Icons in action.Image via Android Developers

14Hi-Fi Bluetooth Codecs

Bluetooth has always been criticized for its lower audio quality when compared to a set of wired headphones. But as Apple told us back in September, we're now living in a wireless world, so something needs to give. Thankfully, Google has added a handful of high-quality Bluetooth codecs to Android Oreo, including Sony's LDAC, which should greatly improve audio quality with compatible Bluetooth devices.

One more thing to add on this front: Sony's one of the few manufacturers that actually contribute to Android's code base, so they deserve some props. In addition to the new codec, they've donated the framework that powers Android's hidden theme engine, among other contributions.

15Arrow Key & Tab Navigation

Now that Android apps can run on Chromebooks, it's become apparent that keyboards and touchscreen-optimized apps don't play nice together. To solve this, Google has made Android 8.0 more reliable and predictable when using arrow keys or the Tab button to navigate interfaces. This feature may sound like it's strictly for Chromebooks, but if you use an Android-based TV box or pair a Bluetooth keyboard with your phone or tablet, it'll certainly be a welcome change.

16Pixel Launcher App Drawer Improvements

One to file under the "refinement" category: The Pixel launcher will now let you swipe up from almost anywhere on your home screen to open the app drawer. So you'll no longer have to initiate the swipe from the dock at the bottom of the screen, and once you do open the app drawer, you'll notice another subtle change — the navigation buttons at the bottom of your screen are now black, which makes them easier to see on top of the white app drawer.

17Wider Color Gamut in Apps

For pro-style photo editing, it's of utmost importance that what you're seeing on your screen is exactly how the final image will look. The trouble is, some modern Android phones support a wide color gamut, but Android apps have not had this capability. So now, Android Oreo will allow apps to use wide color gamut profiles such as AdobeRGB or Pro Photo RGB on supported devices, which means that what you see in your favorite photo editor is what you'll see on other high-end displays.

18Wi-Fi Aware

A new feature in Android 8.0 called Wi-Fi Aware has some promising functionality. Without needing to be on the same Wi-Fi network, devices running the new Android version will be able to discover one another, then create a private network between them that can allow the devices to share data amongst themselves.

Aside from the framework being included in Android Oreo and an API being made available to developers, there isn't much real-world use for Wi-Fi Aware just yet. From the sound of it, though, it could be used for purposes like speeding up Android Beam file transfers, or implementing a type of Apple AirPlay-like functionality with media sharing.

19Notification Badges on the Home Screen

I'm not personally a fan of this one, as Android has a robust notification system already. But former iOS users will be happy to know that Android Oreo now has support for "Unread" badges on home screen icons. Your launcher will have to support the new feature, but it can be enabled or disabled on a per-app basis from within the "Apps & Notifications" menu in Settings.

20No More 'Unknown Sources' Setting

To sideload apps on previous Android versions, all you had to do was enable "Unknown Sources" in Settings, then just open an APK. With Android 8.0, this setting is entirely gone, and now, you'll need to trust individual apps before you can install APKs they've downloaded.

In other words, when you download an APK through the Chrome browser, you'll be prompted to review your "External Sources" settings. From here, just pick Chrome from the list, then make sure the "Trust apps from this source" option is enabled. Once you've done that, you'll be able to sideload the APK you downloaded with Chrome, and the same applies when using other apps, like the Amazon App Store.

21Battery Percentage Indicator Tweaks

Previously, you could use the SystemUI Tuner menu to add a small overlay to your battery indicator that depicted the current percentage. This option is still present in a way, but now, you can only opt to display the percentage next to the battery indicator in your status bar.

22Battery & Connection Indicators in Quick Settings

This is just a minor tweak, but when you pull down your notification shade to access your Quick Settings tiles, you'll now see a set of connectivity and battery indicators at the top of the screen, next to the Settings gear. Tapping these icons does nothing, but it's nice that the information is there.

23'Powered by Android' on Boot Screen

Pixel and Nexus users will notice a new addition to the screen that appears when first booting the phone. There's now a "Powered by Android" badge at the bottom of the screen — nice touch!

24Package Installer Progress Bar

Package Installer has received a makeover in Android Oreo, featuring a slightly refined look and an actual progress bar, which replaces the indefinite app install bar that Android has used for far too long. There's also a new Cancel button at the bottom-right, which allows you to stop an installation as long as the progress isn't too close to the end of the bar.

(1) Package Installer on Android Nougat. (2) Package Installer on Android O.

25Smart Text Selection

The text selection menu in Android Oreo has also been updated. It now includes intelligent actions that can vary depending on the type of text you've selected. Select a URL, and Android 8.0 will suggest opening it in Chrome. Select a phone number, and the Dialer app will appear. An address, and Maps will pop-in, and so on.

(1) Text selection dialog on Android Nougat. (2) Text selection dialog on Android O.

26Overlay Sticky Notification

Taking another step towards increased security, Google has added a sticky notification to alert you whenever an application is running an overlay in Android Oreo. The screen overlay permission was added in Android Nougat, so apps had to ask permission to draw over other apps. In Android 8.0, not only will the permission be required, but you'll also be alerted with a notification that doesn't go away until the overlay has.

Image by iWizardB/Reddit

27New Emojis

Most of the above-listed changes have been around since the first developer preview build of Android 8.0. But one major change that came in more recently is a set of revamped emojis. Google has finally ditched the blob-shaped smilies in favor of more traditional rounded ones, and most emojis now have a gradient applied to them.

Image by Jeremy Burge/Twitter

We'll keep digging into Android Oreo to see what else we can find, but it's already obvious that Google has put a ton of work into this release. Let us know if you find anything interesting, and give us some feedback on your favorite Android 8.0 features in the comment section below.

Does Black Hat SEO Really Work?

2018-06-04T05:45:00.001-07:00

In the field of search engine optimization (SEO), there are three kinds of techniques webmasters may follow in order to help attain good page rankings: white hat, gray hat, and black hat SEO. While we all know that white hat SEO deals more on the quality and relevance of content on the site, and gray hat techniques focus more on methods that stand in between the white hat and the black hat. Black hat SEO meanwhile is not actually recommended since while it can produce positive results instantly, it can eventually put your site on peril because of the violations you would be incurring by following their techniques. But as to your site’s performance metrics, does black hat SEO really work?

Before we come with an answer to that question, let us first review the common techniques which fall under black hat SEO:

Cloaking

Page cloaking is among the common practice among webmasters who want to earn high page rankings in a short period of time. In cloaking, you use an automated script that shows a different web page to a search engine spider (Googlebot) from that of a human user. In the black hat perspective, cloaking increases the page views of an unpopular site at a faster rate, hence increasing its ranking in search engines. Cloakers give fake pages to bots or spiders, these pages filled up with keywords making them search-engine friendly, while at the same time providing the real web page to actual users.

Invisible text

Another black hat technique is the use of invisible text. This is the use of hard to read texts (either the fonts are too small or of the same color as the background) which are actually links that when clicked accidentally, redirects the visitor to another site (usually ad sites). Invisible texts are effective for pay-per-click ads, however they do tend to trick users who may not want to visit the ad in the first place.

Doorway pages

Some SEO firms prefer practicing the use of doorway pages in order to achieve high site rankings. There are sites which open on pages with no content, but it will redirect you to the actual destination page.

Spam

Spam are worthless web pages with nothing on them; they are created for the sole purpose of attaining high rankings in the search engines. They pose to contain the information you are looking for, but rather show up to be pages filled with a myriad of advertisements which you may find annoying.

Keyword stuffing

In keyword stuffing, the webpage is filled with keywords, even paragraphs containing keywords that don’t make any sense. Like the other methods, keyword stuffing is meant to improve the site’s rankings since the use of keywords are SEO friendly.

Actually, these techniques do bring about drastic changes in your site once you apply them. The main goal of these methods is to increase your site’s page ranking in search engines and search results in keyword-based inquiries. As stated earlier, there are SEO companies who prefer to use some of these techniques mainly because they are easier and bring in the results faster. Hence, if you are desperate enough to change the current status of your site, then these techniques can actually help you.

It doesn’t really matter which technique you use in improving your website; the white, gray and black hat methods provide you with almost the same results. However, search engines do have their own rules and regulations which you have to conform with. Google as well as other search engines have set up these conditions to maintain justice and fair play amidst the competition of different sites found in the internet. Also, black hat methods in a way trick human users by not providing them with the things that they are asking for, or giving them things which they don’t need.

Using these techniques can easily end the life of your site, since search engines have imposed penalties to those caught doing these practices. These penalties range from suspension of the site to actual termination of the site. Given so, it is better to stay away from these techniques since despite providing you with instant results, in the long run they can damage your business and put all your efforts into waste.

Author bio:
Beatrice Howell, writer and editor for Phdify.com
A high qualification, experience in students newspapers, Beatrice works with dissertations, essays, articles, reviews, summaries and other students work, help in university selection and preparation to entry exams.

Convert videos into still pics with Google's 3 new experimental photo apps

2018-06-04T05:44:00.002-07:00

Google has introduced three photography apps, which are part of a new series that it has dubbed as photography "appsperiments".

"We're launching the first instalment of a series of photography appsperiments: Usable and useful mobile photography experiences built on experimental technology. Our 'appsperimental' approach was inspired in part by 'Motion Stills'," the company wrote in a research blog late on Monday.

"'Motion Stills' is an app developed by researchers that converts short videos into cinemagraphs and time lapses using experimental stabilisation and rendering technologies," Google added.

The new photography applications are "Storyboard" (available on Android only), "Selfissimo!" (available on iOS and Android) and "Scrubbies" (available on iOS only).

The "Storyboard" app takes video clips and automatically pulls out six frames that it lays out in a comic book-style template.

"Selfissimo!" is an automated selfie photographer that snaps a black and white photograph each time the user poses.

"Scrubbies" lets the user easily manipulate the speed and direction of video playback to produce video loops that highlight actions, capture funny faces and replay moments.

The tech giant has also urged users to try out the new apps and provide feedback via the in-app feedback links.

Google to introduce built-in ad blocker in Chrome browser in Feb

2018-05-04T17:15:00.001-07:00

Search engine giant Google will introduce a built-in ad blocker in the Chrome browser to block "annoying" advertisements from February 15.

"This date does not appear to be tied to a specific Chrome version. Chrome 64 is currently scheduled to arrive on January 23 and Chrome 65 is slated to launch on March 6, suggesting Google will be turning on its browser's ad blocker remotely and possibly gradually for select users," Venture Beat reported late on Tuesday.

Earlier this year, the search engine giant joined the "Coalition for Better Ads" -- a group that offers specific standards for how the industry should improve ads for consumers.

The coalition announced the "Better Ads Experience Programme" which provides guidelines for companies using the "Better Ads Standards" to improve the experience of users with online ads.

This will essentially stop the ads that are deemed annoying or intrusive.

However, all ads from sites where even one advertisement displayed do not meet those standards, even if the rest are technically in compliance, will be blocked.

WhatsApp Payments – How to send and receive money?

2018-05-04T17:14:00.002-07:00

WhatsApp has recently launched its most awaited feature in the version 2.18.41 for Android users and 2.18.21 for iOS users. The payment option uses the UPI interface which is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India(RBI) through its payment subsidy NPCI. As of now as many as 72
banks are live on UPI.

What is WhatsApp Payment?
- WhatsApp payment is a peer to peer transfer system. Here there is no option to send money to any merchant rather to a person who is connected to WhatsApp using their cell number. Which in turn is connected to bank account and UPI. Therefore there is no need to enter VPA(Virtual Payment Address) or bank account number or IFSC code.

Prerequisite for WhatsApp payment:
- Both users should be using WhatsApp.
- Both users should be having latest version of WhatsApp in which UPI system is enabled.
- The WhatsApp number which you used to sign in WhatsApp should be same in the bank account details.

WhatsApp Payment Setup Procedure:
- Open Whatsapp
- Tap on three dots from top right corner
- Tap on the settings
- Below Notification option you will see "Payments" option, tap on it
- The next screen asks to select "Accept And Continue", tap on it
- Next tap on "Verify Via SMS"
- It will send an SMS and verify your identity
- Next you will see a list of UPI supported bank account names. It will show in a format where there will be bank name followed by last 4 digits of your bank account number
- In case you do have multiple accounts with same bank it will show multiple account numbers. Select the one which you would like to link with
- Now the App will show the Bank Account Number and its shows Setup is complete.

WhatsApp Payment- How to send Money?
- Open chat with anyone to whom you want to send money.
- Tap on the "Clip" icon from bottom right.
- It will show "Payment" option. Tap on it.
- Now you can enter the amount and can also include personal message and send it(Provided the other user also has UPI setup done on WhatsApp)
- It will ask for 4 digit PIN number for verification.
- If everything entered is correct you will receive the acknowledgment from the bank via SMS.

You can also keep track of money sent and received from the Payment history option.

Do keep in mind that this option is still hasn't been enabled for most users.

If you find this article helpful or has already setup your UPI in WhatsApp and sent or received money please share your experience below.

Cancer diagnosis can be done at home by iPhone-based ultrasound device

2018-03-30T17:31:00.004-07:00

A novel iPhone-based portable ultrasound machine that can help detect cancer easily at home has been developed by US researchers.

The device called Butterfly IQ is a scanner of the size of an electric razor that can display black-and-white imagery of the body, when paired with an iPhone.

Developed by Connecticut-based start-up Butterfly Network, the pocket sized device works by shooting sound into the body and capturing the echoes.

Usually, the sound waves are generated by a vibrating crystal. But Butterfly's machine instead uses 9,000 tiny drums etched onto a semiconductor chip, reported the MIT Technology Review on Friday.

Earlier this year, John Martin, a US-based vascular surgeon and chief medical officer at Butterfly Network, discovered a cancerous mass in his own throat while testing the device.

Martin felt an uncomfortable feeling of thickness on his throat, thus he oozed out some gel and ran the probe along with his neck.

On his smartphone, to which the device is connected, black-and gray images quickly appeared.

He found a 3 cm mass that was diagnosed as squamous-cell cancer — a form of skin cancer that develops in the cells of the outer layer of the skin.

Instead of vibrating crystals, Butterfly IQ uses "capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers", or CMUTs, tiny ultrasonic emitters layered on a semiconductor chip a little larger than a postage stamp.

"The device gives you the ability to do everything at the bedside: you can pull it out of your pocket and scan the whole body," Martin said.

The company now plans to combine the instrument with artificial-intelligence software that could help a novice position the probe, collect the right images, and interpret them.

By 2018, its software will let users automatically calculate how much blood a heart is pumping, or detect problems like aortic aneurisms, the report said.

The Butterfly IQ is the first solid-state ultrasound machine to reach the market in the US. The company plans to go on sale this year for $1,999-far less than any other model on the market.

This is why Google remove UC Browser from Google Play Store

2018-03-30T17:31:00.002-07:00

UC Browser, a mobile browser app designed by China-based UCWeb -- backed by Alibaba group, is reportedly taken down from the Google Play Store.The browser had almost 500 million downloads across the globe with over 420 million users.

The browser is quite popular in India with a user base of almost 100 million. The delisting of app has seen no response from UCWeb or Google and, therefore, is reported to be a temporary delisting. However, an email received by Android Police founder -- an online technology news portal – states that the UC Web’s affiliates are using malicious redirect ads to inflate installs. This may have prompted Google to delist the browser.

Here is a snippet of the e-mail shared by Android Police founder on Reddit:

Dear Partner, We hereby emphasis again that UC Union prohibits any and all misleading/malicious advertising method(s) to procure new users when promoting UC Browser campaigns, such as by using slogan inconsistent with the Product functions, or by using inductive slogan.

DO NOT use the Malicious Promotion method(s) or STOP such behavior immediately if you are acting so.

Upon discovery a Malicious Promotion, UC Union is entitled to

(i) STOP your payment settlement, or DEDUCT your corresponding payment made to you;

(ii) compensation in recovery of the loss suffered by UC Union, including but not limited to loss of UC Union's good will, loss of users of UC Union Product(s), removal of UC Union Product(s) from Google Play or Apple Store, and any other loss as a result of your Malicious Promotion;

(iii) require you to CLARIFY the facts for elimination of the negative impact shed upon UC Union; and (iv) resort to any other legal measures if necessary.

UC Union is looking forward to cooperating and developing with you in a healthy UC Union ecosphere.

Another Twitter user named Mike Ross, who claims to works with UC Browser posted a tweet confirming that the app was taken down for a similar reason.

Mike wrote, “I work for UC Browser, I got mail today morning it said that UC Browser was temporarily removed from play store for 30 days because it used “Misleading” and “Unhealthy” methods of promotion to increase installs.”

This is not the first time UC Browser has been alleged for misleading activity. In a citing sources reports that UC Browser sends user and device identifiers such as IMSI (international mobile subscriber identity) and IMEI (international mobile equipment identity) numbers and location data to a remote server based in China.

The future of Artificial Intelligence: 6 ways it will impact everyday life

2018-03-30T17:27:00.001-07:00

Technology moves at breakneck speed, and we now have more power in our pockets than we had in our homes in the 1990s. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a fascinating concept of science fiction for decades, but many researchers think we’re finally getting close to making AI a reality. NPR notesthat in the last few years, scientists have made breakthroughs in “machine learning,” using neural networks, which mimic the processes of real neurons.

This is a type of “deep learning” that allows machines to process information for themselves on a very sophisticated level, allowing them to perform complex functions like facial recognition. Big data is speeding up the AI development process, and we may be seeing more integration of AI technology in our everyday lives relatively soon. While much of this technology is still fairly rudimentary at the moment, we can expect sophisticated AI to one day significantly impact our everyday lives. Here are 6 ways AI might affect us in the future.

1. Automated Transportation

We’re already seeing the beginnings of self-driving cars, though the vehicles are currently required to have a driver present at the wheel for safety. Despite these exciting developments, the technology isn’t perfect yet, and it will take a while for public acceptance to bring automated cars into widespread use. Google began testing a self-driving car in 2012, and since then, the U.S. Department of Transportation has released definitions of different levels of automation, with Google’s car classified as the first level down from full automation. Other transportation methods are closer to full automation, such as buses and trains.

2. Cyborg Technology

One of the main limitations of being human is simply our own bodies—and brains. Researcher Shimon Whiteson thinks that in the future, we will be able to augment ourselves with computers and enhance many of our own natural abilities. Though many of these possible cyborg enhancements would be added for convenience, others might serve a more practical purpose. Yoky Matsuka of Nest believes that AI will become useful for people with amputated limbs, as the brain will be able to communicate with a robotic limb to give the patient more control. This kind of cyborg technology would significantly reduce the limitations that amputees deal with on a daily basis.

3. Taking over dangerous jobs

Robots are already taking over some of the most hazardous jobs available, including bomb defusing. These robots aren’t quite robots yet, according to the BBC. They are technically drones, being used as the physical counterpart for defusing bombs, but requiring a human to control them, rather than using AI. Whatever their classification, they have saved thousands of lives by taking over one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. As technology improves, we will likely see more AI integration to help these machines function.

Other jobs are also being reconsidered for robot integration. Welding, well known for producing toxic substances, intense heat, and earsplitting noise, can now be outsourced to robots in most cases. Robot Worx explains that robotic welding cells are already in use, and have safety features in place to help prevent human workers from fumes and other bodily harm.

4. Solving climate change

Solving climate change might seem like a tall order from a robot, but as Stuart Russell explains, machines have more access to data than one person ever could—storing a mind-boggling number of statistics. Using big data, AI could one day identify trends and use that information to come up with solutions to the world’s biggest problems.

5. Robot as friends

Who wouldn’t want a friend like C-3PO? At this stage, most robots are still emotionless and it’s hard to picture a robot you could relate to. However, a company in Japan has made the first big steps toward a robot companion—one who can understand and feel emotions. Introduced in 2014, “Pepper” the companion robot went on sale in 2015, with all 1,000 initial units selling out within a minute. The robot was programmed to read human emotions, develop its own emotions, and help its human friends stay happy. Pepper goes on sale in the U.S. in 2016, and more sophisticated friendly robots are sure to follow.

6. Improved elder care

For many seniors, everyday life is a struggle, and many have to hire outside help to manage their care, or rely on family members. AI is at a stage where replacing this need isn’t too far off, says Matthew Taylor, computer scientist at Washington State University. “Home” robots could help seniors with everyday tasks and allow them to stay independent and in their homes for as long as possible, which improves their overall well-being.

Although we don’t know the exact future, it is quite evident that interacting with AI will soon become an everyday activity. These interactions will clearly help our society evolve, particularly in regards to automated transportation, cyborgs, handling dangerous duties, solving climate change, friendships and improving the care of our elders. Beyond these six impacts, there are even more ways that AI technology can influence our future, and this very fact has professionals across multiple industries extremely excited for the ever-burgeoning future of artificial intelligence.

Download Google Tez app from Play Store

2018-03-28T20:02:00.001-07:00

Google's digital payment app 'Tez' that was launched in India on September 18 has been downloaded five million times on Play Store.

Within 24 hours of 'Tez' being launched, Google saw nearly 1.8 crore gross merchandise volume (GMV) done with over four lakh active users.

Built on the Indian government-supported Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Tez allows users, free of charge, to make small or big payments straight from their bank accounts.

According to the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), the number of transactions on UPI has crossed three crore in September.

The number of transactions on UPI platform increased to 3.07 crore in September as against 1.66 crore in August -- an increase of 85.32 per cent.

Of the 3.07 crore transactions, BHIM's share was 76.03 lakh -- a market share of nearly 24.7 per cent.

"Tez" app works in partnership with four Banks -- Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and State Bank of India -- to facilitate the processing of payments across over 50 UPI-enabled banks.

The app was built for India, working on the vast majority of the country's smartphones and is available in English and seven Indian languages -- Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu.

Best Programming Languages to Learn for 2018

2018-03-28T19:59:00.006-07:00

There are hundreds of Programming languages exists. It is important to know proper knowledge of languages. Some of the languages are new but a majority are still old. From the last few years, We have seen that there are many changes in the programming field. New languages are taking place of the Old languages. For example, C++ language came after the year 2000. It was much popular even all the projects in the market are based on C++ language. C++ is still used in many projects but the point is demand. Later on, Today, We will discuss in detail about the Top 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn for 2018.

Best Programming languages are based on the demand in the Market. It depends on, What the market’s Projects want? What do the users want?
Why are Programming Languages so Important?

There are many reasons to learn programming languages. Here are the few reasons about learning Programming Languages are so important:
Use the Computers as you Like.
To Improve or to rapidly increase the Technology.
Trained the machines according to you.
Tell Computers What to Do.
Skilled Programmers are great in Demand.
Boost your Sk ill in Coding.
Complete your daily tasks using Robotics.
Programming Languages have demanded great in future.
List of Top 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn for 2018

We have listed the Top 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn for 2018. It includes both new and old languages to learn depending on different Criteria:
Python
C#
Java
R
Swift
C++
Arduino
PHP
Ruby
Go

Each year Top 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn for 2018 are ranked on different criteria. These best programming languages for 2018, Let’s discuss each programming language for 2018 in detail. Before move on, Let’s see How do we know about the trend in Programming Language?
How to know about trends in Programming Language?

This is a question in the mind of many skilled programmers. Also, it is difficult for the Computer Science Students who are learning in Programming Languages that whats the trend? So, we are going to tell you the secret for all Top 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn for 2018. For example, you are professor or student, you don’t know what is going in the market? So here are the few suggestions to know about a trend in Computer or programming languages:
Github is the platform where you can learn more about latest projects in different programming languages. Furthermore, We recommend to connect with this platform and see what kind of projects are doing there?
Join different Communities on google plus or other networks and remain in touch with them. Also, Discussion there with other people about the best programming language.
Fiverr is an international platform, where daily thousands of projects on Python, C++, Java, C#, D, R, Ruby and other Programming languages. Moreover, We recommend to stay in touch with this platform and check what type of orders are going there?
Other Platforms that you have to be in touch are Upwork or Freelancers.

1- Python (A new Programming Language)

Python is basically used for testing different types of Microchip. It appeared in the 1980s. Now Python is used by thousand of people because it is easy to understand and just a general purpose and interpreted language. Python is easy to code than Java and C++. Its code can write in fewer lines rather than Java.

We also recommend starting your coding skills using Python because it is easy to read and you can learn a lot of object oriented concepts. It’s a fun language to run because of Highly simple Concepts and Statements.

2- C# is one of the Best Programming Language

We can make different Web based applications or web related projects in C#. For example, different Desktop applications are a major focus on C# programming language.

New Features in C# language:
Static classes
Partial methods
Delegate inference
Lambda expression
Implicitly typed local variables
Query expressions
Expression trees
Partial methods

It is one of the languages you can use to create applications that will run in the .NET CLR. It is an evolution of the C and C++ languages and has been created by Microsoft specifically to work with the .NET platform. The C# language has been designed to incorporate many of the best features from other languages while clearing up their problems.

Design Goals of C# The Big Ideas
The first “Component Oriented” language in the C/C++ family
Event driven programming
Everything really is an object
Next generation robust and durable software

Component concepts are first class
Properties, methods, events
Design-time and
Integrated documentation using XML

Enables one-stop programming
No external files like header files, IDL, etc.
Can be embedded in ASP pages

3- Java (Different Projects are now java based)
Java has first appeared on 23 May 1995. Java is widely used language in all over the World. It’s major focus on server-side applications, different games, and reliable sensitive applications. The objective of Java is to make all executions of Java good. Projects written in Java have a dishonor because of many reasons like it is slower and consumes more memory/space than other languages like C++. Moreover, Java is not cased touchy language.

Major Principles of Java

There were five essential objectives in the making of the Java language:
It must be “straightforward, protest arranged, and natural”.
Java language must be “more secure and hearty”.
It must be “engineering impartial and compact”.
Java Programs must execute with “elite”.
Coding in Java must be “translated, strong, and dynamic”.

4- R (Best Computing and graphics Language)

R is basically open source Programming language and used for Statistical Computing. Although, the source code for R is written in C and Fortran. Furthermore, there are many front ends available in graphics for R. R has command line interface as well.

We all know that libraries are important to complete the task in a short time. Similarly, R has multiple libraries used for graphics and based on Statistical Computing. Also, it is easy to do make different algorithms in R because it contains more libraries and depends on Statistics graphs.

Important Feature of R Programming Language With Example

As we mentioned above R is interpreted language, so When we enter 3+3 at R Command Prompt and Press Enter. it replies with correct answer 6. As follow below:

> 3+3

6

5- Swift

Swift is included in one of these Top 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn for 2018. Swift is a universally useful programming language constructed utilizing. Furthermore, In a present day, its way to deal with different security system, execution, and programming configuration designs.

The objective of the Swift task is to make the best accessible language.

On the other hand, Swift is expected as a trade for C-based language. Moreover, it incorporates highlights that make the code simpler to peruse and compose. Moreover, Swift and pithy cycle over a range or gathering

Feature of Swift Programming language
Structs that help strategies, augmentations, and conventions.
Useful programming designs, e.g., guide and channel.
Intense blunder dealing with worked in.

6- C++(Famous Programming language)
C++ is a general purpose Language in the list of Top 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn for 2018.

The C++ language has two principal parts:
an immediate mapping of equipment highlights. Also, gave principally by the C subset
Zero-overhead reflections based on those mappings.

C++ basically depends on the syntax of C language. But C++ has more libraries as compared to C language. There are many similarities between C and C++. For example, both C and C++ maintain Memory Management of four types.
Static storage.
Thread storage.
Automatic storage.
Dynamic storage.

7- Arduino (Best Programming language for Networking Devices)

Arduino is a language based on C and C++ functions. There are many libraries of Arduino which are written in C/C++ language. Arduino is an open source Programming language in 2018. It’s basically concerned with hardware implementations. Moreover, Arduino boards are available and you have to do some networking side implementations with Coding in C/C++. Also, learn more about Arduino Here.

Therefore Arduino is one of the Top 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn for 2018.

8- PHP (Best language for handling Databases)
PHP is a general language for web development and server side Applications. PHP is widely used in 2017 and 2018. Almost, all the Work on web development is based on HTML, PHP. If we talk about how much secure is this language, then we have to say that database of PHP is much stronger than any other Programming language.

In Short, If you want to do projects in Web development, for example, medical stores projects then we recommend choosing PHP. It is best ever because it handles the server side in a reliable way than another language. Remember, PHP development was started in 1995.

9- Ruby(Dynamic Programming Language in 2018)
The first word comes in mind, when we hear the word Ruby is “Dynamic”. Ruby is a mixture of Dynamic, object oriented and reflective programming language. Also, Ruby is a 22 years Old Programming Language. It was first shown in 1995. But now it is widely used in 2018. Ruby supports multiple programming paradigms. It includes functional and object-oriented Paradigms.

Different Versions are released of Ruby. Ruby 1.9, 2.0, 2.1 and more. Recently, Ruby 2.1.0 was released in 2013.

10- Go (New Viral Computer Language of 2018)

Go is also a open source Programming language which is freely available. Go is a latest language appeared in 2009.

Feature of Go Language:
It is statically typed.
We can also scalable this language to large systems.
Go is easily readable, without a lot of keywords and repeating.
The main feature is, it does not require IDE(Integrated Development Environments).
Moreover, it supports networking and multiprocessing.
At last, Which Programming language is best to start learning?

Generally, We recommend to start learning programming from Java or C++. There are many reasons for example, you can learn more concepts of Programming of Object oriented in Java and C++. Furthermore, If you want to build strong background in programming language then choose Java or C++ among these Top 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn for 2018.

10 Must-Have Android Apps for 2018

2018-03-28T19:59:00.004-07:00

If you're intimidated about where to start with your new Android device, or you're a long-time Google fan looking to round out your collection of critical tools, this is the list for you. I've spent many hours refining that unmanageable mass of apps to come up with the 100 Best Android apps, but for some that's still too many, so I've whittled the list down to the essentials.

What's Here

I'll admit, this list doesn't have everything. It doesn't even begin to touch the seemingly infinite variety of the Google Play store. What it does cover are the apps that you should install on your Android phone or tablet as soon as it comes out of the box. With these ten apps installed, you should be able to tackle just about anything.

But these are just the beginning. Evernote is an enormously versatile tool, but you might find that it's not meeting your needs for to-do lists and you'll want to move to a refined organizational app like Any.do. Or maybe after reading tons of comics in Comixology, you're curious to read the massive backlog of Marvel titles available for a single monthly fee via Marvel Unlimited. This list of apps is a starting point, or a baseline, that I think any Android user should consider. From here, you'll want to customize and fine-tune the list to your own most essential apps.

How I Choose Android Apps

When I'm not divining the 10 best Android apps, I'm usually testing Android security apps. When I'm finished, I typically wipe the phone in preparation for the next review. That means I spend more time with fresh, empty phones than the average Android user. It also means that I have to fill that phone back up with essential apps for testing and day-to-day use.

When compiling this list—and when rebuilding my phone—my first thought goes to what apps are necessary to get work done, so I turn to Google Drive and LastPass. The former lets me access my files and get important items off my phone with ease. The latter stores all the passwords I'll need to gain access to critical apps and services.

Next I think about what kinds of apps are popular, and how I can fill those categories. Instagram, for example, is a great app for creating miniature masterpieces out of your cell phone pictures. But it's something of a self-contained world. So I choose PicsArt Photo Studio, which is more open and flexible.

As the smartphones have become more powerful, so have the numerous streaming entertainment services. While there are many options for streaming movies and TV, including Google Play, Netflix has the widest-ranging and exciting selection. The company has also upped the streaming media ante with its well-regarded original content and, most recently, the ability to download some of its content to mobile devices for offline viewing. In the music-streaming space Spotify offers a near-peerless experience, and it's a great mobile fitness app, too, smartly integrating features like beat-matching to keep runners on pace, too.

If you'll allow me to don my paranoia cap for a moment (yes, it's made of tinfoil), mobile device security is a sorely ignored subject. Google has done an admirable job of making Android and Google Play a safe platform, but not all threats come from malicious apps. As the network airspace becomes increasingly crowded with wireless networks, so too does the risk of your data being intercepted in transit. A mobile VPN, or virtual private network, like NordVPN is no longer a niche product, and should be required installation for everyone, but especially frequent travelers.

What's Not Here

First, there are no games. I hear you moan, but Android games deserve their own story. There are simply too many of too great a variety. If you want games (and I know you do), you should read our slightly longer guide to the Best Android Games. That'll take care of all your thumb-twiddling, screen-swiping needs.

Second, there are only a few Google apps on here. It's really easy to just default to them since many are, well, default on Android devices. Regarding the Google apps that did make the list, I've carefully balanced their utility against that of competitors in the space to make sure they really are the best. For example, Google Drive also gives access to Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, which is an excellent mobile office suite.

This is just the tip of the Android iceberg here at PCMag. You'll find many, many more excellent apps in our 100 Best Android Apps, and we have many more roundups where that came from. We're all about apps, you see. This list will get you started, but the shimmering world of Android apps awaits! Do you have different suggestions about the 10 most critical Android apps for for entertaining, informing, and enhancing productivity? Let me know in the comments.

Comixology Comics

Free
Getting to the few remaining comic book stores in America is a huge hassle, as is storing all of your bagged-and-boarded treasures. Comics, the excellent app from digital comics groundbreakers Comixology, is the solution to serving both as storefront and long box. You can browse the seemingly endless lists of titles, and then buy new books with a tap. It's wonderfully easy! Depending on the state of your wallet, it may even be a bit too easy. The Comixology Unlimited feature gives all-you-can-read access for $5.99 a month if you're keen for a taster's menu of comics.

Evernote

Free, with premium plans billed monthly
Evernote is your list keeper, note taker, voice recorder, to-do manager, webpage clipper, and all-around digital multi-tool. It's overwhelming at first, but you'll quickly find a vast number of ways to put it to good use. My favorite feature is optical character recognition (OCR), which makes text in photos searchable. Next time you get handed a business card, just snap a picture, and all the critical information will be captured and made searchable between all of your devices and computers, as well as accessible on the Web.

Be sure to read our organization expert Jill Duffy's 5 Tips for Evernote Users.

Facebook Messenger

Free
The trouble with most messaging platforms is that they require you to enlist your friends to join as well. Not so with Facebook Messenger, because most of the living (and even the recently deceased) population already has a Facebook account. Facebook Messenger is loaded with bells and whistles, notably a huge library of stickers, video and voice calling, and the ability to send SMS messages. This app is also surprisingly privacy conscious. You don't need an account to use the app, entering a phone number is optional, and you can send secret messages that use end-to-end encryption so neither the FBI nor Facebook can read them.

Google Drive

Free, with additional costs for increased storage
Google Drive isn't just a cloud storage service. In addition to syncing and storing your files, Google Drive includes a powerful mobile office suite, so you can create and edit files from your phone. Drive can even store your files locally, for offline viewing and editing. It might not replace your desktop office utilities, but it comes surprisingly close.

LastPass

Free
Humans are bad at passwords, and we're bad at remembering things. Thankfully, there are password managers like LastPass. With a password manager, the app generates unique, complex passwords for each site or app that requires one. When you need to log in, LastPass fills in the correct information, even filling it in in other apps. LastPass also securely stores your personal information so you can quickly fill out tedious forms, and includes mechanisms to safely share passwords with other people—even after you've departed this mortal realm. A new pricing structure lets you create an account and sync passwords between all your devices, mobile or otherwise, for free.

Netflix

Free, plans begin at $7.99 a month
When it comes to mobile video streaming, Netflix is hard to beat. It boasts a massive (if unstable) library of TV shows and movies, putting a world of entertainment in your hand. Netflix is also leading the way among streaming services by producing critically-acclaimed original programming like Luke Cage, Narcos, The OA, and Stranger Things, to name but a few. It even offers a decent selection of streaming anime titles. It's an app that's no longer just about killing time. It's also about keeping up with the conversation about the latest hit shows. The fact that it now lets you download (some) shows for offline viewing is a huge recent advance for the service.

NordVPN

Free, $8 per month subscription
Google and mobile antivirus companies have done a great job of keeping Android (mostly) free of dangerous malware. But when you connect to a public Wi-Fi network, it's possible that nefarious individuals could be intercepting all of your information. That's why virtual private networks are so important, and NordVPN is among the best. Other fun tricks you can do with a VPN? Hiding your IP address from advertisers and accessing region-locked content.

PicsArt Photo Studio

Free
When you think of mobile image editing, you probably think of a certain Facebook-owned property modeled after old timey cameras. I'm talking about Instagram, in case you couldn't tell. But where Instagram ends, PicsArt Photo Studio begins, bringing not just filters but many more powerful tools. And if you're already a fan of Insta, you can share your PicsArt creations there to the envy of all your followers.

Pocket Casts

$3.99
Podcast fans, rejoice. Your frustrations have been heard and your prayers have been answered.I bring you good tidings for in Google Play, an excellent podcast app has been created: Pocket Casts. With this app, you can manage all your favorite podcasts and even sync them between devices. And it was good.

Spotify

Free with paid, ad-free plans
There are many ways to listen to tunes on your phone, whether it's from Google Play Music or the human-curated Slacker Radio. Spotify, however, offers a winning combination of clear, crisp audio and a massive catalog spanning every genre you can think of and several you've never heard of. Collaborative playlists let you and your friends enjoy custom mixes, and runners will love the integrated beat-matching workout settings. If you only run one streaming music service on your Android, Spotify is the one to choose.

Get Google Assistant app on iPhones in Europe

2018-03-25T18:30:00.002-07:00

Google MNC based in US announced the introduction of it's Google Assistant App for iOS users in Europe. Further, its app in the United Kingdom, Germany and France, following the launch of Google assistant for iOS users in the United States of America.

However, the iOS version has a series of drawbacks, owing to Apple's API restrictions. It is being said that the functions performed by Siri, the iOS assistant will not be mirrored by Google's flagship, and therefore, users may not be able to perform all functions, such as setting alarms and so on.

Additionally, Google Assistant will not come with a widget for the home screen panel, unlike the others present on the notification center, which work wonders for the users since it gives iOS users easy access, reports The Verge.

Earlier in the year, Google had announced the introduction of Assistant for the iOS consumer base, at its Google I/O annual developer conference, in addition to launching the same for the user base in the USA.

MySQL Master-Slave Replication

2018-03-25T18:21:00.002-07:00

While we do have many blog posts on replication on our blog, such as on replication being single-threaded, on semi-synchronous replication or on estimating replication capacity, I don’t think we have one that covers the very basics of how MySQL replication really works on the high level. Or it’s been so long ago I can’t even find it. So, I decided to write one now.

Of course, there are many aspects of MySQL replication, but my main focus will be the logistics – how replication events are written on the master, how they are transferred to the replication slave and then how they are applied there. Note that this is NOT a HOWTO setup replication, but rather a howstuffworks type of thing.

Replication events

I say replication events in this article because I want to avoid discussion about different replication formats. These are covered pretty well in the MySQL manual here. Put simply, the events can be one of two types:

Statement based – in which case these are write queries
Row based – in this case these are changes to records, sort of row diffs if you will

But other than that, I won’t be going back to differences in replication with different replication formats, mostly because there’s very little that’s different when it comes to transporting the data changes.

On the master

So now let me start with what is happening on the master. For replication to work, first of all master needs to be writing replication events to a special log called binary log. This is usually very lightweight activity (assuming events are not synchronized to disk), because writes are buffered and because they are sequential. The binary log file stores data that replication slave will be reading later.

Whenever a replication slave connects to a master, master creates a new thread for the connection (similar to one that’s used for just about any other server client) and then it does whatever the client – replication slave in this case – asks. Most of that is going to be (a) feeding replication slave with events from the binary log and (b) notifying slave about newly written events to its binary log.

Slaves that are up to date will mostly be reading events that are still cached in OS cache on the master, so there is not going to be any physical disk reads on the master in order to feed binary log events to slave(s). However, when you connect a replication slave that is few hours or even days behind, it will initially start reading binary logs that were written hours or days ago – master may no longer have these cached, so disk reads will occur. If master does not have free IO resources, you may feel a bump at that point.

On the replica

Now let’s see what is happening on the slave. When you start replication, two threads are started on the slave:

1. IO thread

This process called IO thread connects to a master, reads binary log events from the master as they come in and just copies them over to a local log file called relay log. That’s all.

Even though there’s only one thread reading binary log from the master and one writing relay log on the slave, very rarely copying of replication events is a slower element of the replication. There could be a network delay, causing a steady delay of few hundred milliseconds, but that’s about it.

If you want to see where IO thread currently is, check the following in “show slave status\G”:

Master_Log_File – last file copied from the master (most of the time it would be the same as last binary log written by a master)
Read_Master_Log_Pos – binary log from master is copied over to the relay log on the slave up until this position.

And then you can compare it to the output of “show master status\G” from the master.

2. SQL thread

The second process – SQL thread – reads events from a relay log stored locally on the replication slave (the file that was written by IO thread) and then applies them as fast as possible.

This thread is what people often blame for being single-threaded. Going back to “show slave status\G”, you can get the current status of SQL thread from the following variables:

Relay_Master_Log_File – binary log from master, that SQL thread is “working on” (in reality it is working on relay log, so it’s just a convenient way to display information)
Exec_Master_Log_Pos – which position from master binary log is being executed by SQL thread.

Replication lag

Now I want to briefly touch the subject of replication lag in this context. When you are dealing with replication lag, first thing you want to know is which of the two replication threads is behind. Most of the time it will be the SQL thread, still it makes sense to double check. You can do that by comparing the replication status variables mentioned above to the master binary log status from the output of “show master status\G” from the master.

If it happens to be IO thread, which, as I mentioned many times already, is very rare, one thing you may want to try to get that fixed is enabling slave compressed protocol.

Otherwise, if you are sure it is SQL thread, then you want to understand what is the reason and that you can usually observe by vmstat. Monitor server activity over time and see if it is “r” or “b” column that is “scoring” most of the time. If it is “r”, replication is CPU-bound, otherwise – IO. If it is not conclusive, mpstat will give you better visibility by CPU thread.

Note this assumes that there is no other activity happening on the server. If there is some activity, then you may also want to look at diskstats or even do a query review for SQL thread to get a good picture.

If you find that replication is CPU bound, this maybe very helpful.

If it is IO bound, then fixing it may not be as easy (or rather, as cheap). Let me explain. If replication is IO bound, most of the time that means that SQL thread is unable to read fast enough because reads are single threaded. Yes, you got that right – it is reads that are limiting replication performance, not writes. Let me explain this further.

Assume you have a RAID10 with a bunch of disks and write-back cache. Writes, even though they are serialized, will be fast because they are buffered in the controller cache and because internally RAID card can parallelize writes to disks. Hence replication slave with similar hardware can write just as fast as master can.

Now Reads. When your workset does not fit in memory, then the data that is about to get modified is going to have to be read from disk first and this is where it is limited by the single-threaded nature of the replication, because one thread will only ever read from one disk at a time.

That being said, one solution to fix IO-bound replication is to increase the amount of memory so working set fits in memory. Another – get IO device that can do much more IO operations per second even with a single thread – fastest traditional disks can do up to 250 iops, SSDs – in the order of 10,000 iops.

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

How to Back Up MySQL Databases From The Command Line

2018-03-25T18:19:00.001-07:00

While automated backups are important, sometimes you just want to take a quick and dirty snapshot before making a change to your data. When changing files in Linux, you can simply cp a file to another name, and cp it back if your change does not workout. With MySQL, it is not quite that simple, but it is by no means difficult.

Creating A Backup

The mysqldump command is used to create textfile “dumps” of databases managed by MySQL. These dumps are just files with all the SQL commands needed to recreate the database from scratch. The process is quick and easy.

If you want to back up a single database, you merely create the dump and send the output into a file, like so:

mysqldump database_name > database_name.sql

Multiple databases can be backed up at the same time:

mysqldump --databases database_one database_two > two_databases.sql

In the code above, database_one is the name of the first database to be backed up, and database_twois the name of the second.

It is also simple to back up all of the databases on a server:

mysqldump --all-databases > all_databases.sql

Restoring a Backup

Since the dump files are just SQL commands, you can restore the database backup by telling mysql to run the commands in it and put the data into the proper database.

mysql database_name < database_name.sql

In the code above, database_name is the name of the database you want to restore, and database_name.sql is the name of the backup file to be restored..

If you are trying to restore a single database from dump of all the databases, you have to let mysql know like this:

mysql --one-database database_name < all_databases.sql

Restoring Databases From cPanel Backups

There is no special wisdom to pass on to you regarding restoring databases from cPanel backups. If you do not wish to use cPanel's automatic methods of restoring entire accounts, you can open up the individual backup on the command line, find the mysql dump file you wish to restore, and use the above commands to perform the restore.

Get Started With Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

2018-03-25T18:18:00.001-07:00

Google is currently rolling out accelerated mobile pages in its mobile search results, but how can you get in on the action? Columnist Paul Shapiro explains how you can mark up your mobile pages for a better mobile user experience.

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project is being launched today. Are you ready for it? In today’s column, I’ll give you an overview of the offering and show you how to get started with it.

What Is AMP?

This past October, Google announced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), a very accessible framework for creating fast-loading mobile web pages. The open-source initiative is designed to enable publishers to easily improve speed (and consequently, the user experience) for their mobile readership without sacrificing any ad revenue that they may rely upon.

Although experienced developers can often achieve similar results through intensive performance optimizations, publishers often neglect this due to resource constraints. AMP allows these optimizations to be easily achieved without altering the primary mobile web experience.

There’s also the added benefit of its future usage by Google and other prominent web technology companies, who are encouraging its use by integrating it heavily into their respective platforms.

How Does AMP Work?

Essentially a framework for creating mobile web pages, AMP consists of three basic parts:

AMP HTML: A subset of HTML, this markup language has some custom tags and properties and many restrictions. But if you are familiar with regular HTML, you should not have difficulty adapting existing pages to AMP HTML. For more details on how it differs from basic HTML, check out AMP Project’s list of required markup that your AMP HTML page “must” have.
AMP JS: A JavaScript framework for mobile pages. For the most part, it manages resource handling and asynchronous loading. It should be noted that third-party JavaScript is not permitted with AMP.
AMP CDN: An optional Content Delivery Network, it will take your AMP-enabled pages, cache them and automatically make some performance optimizations.

How Will You AMP Your Site?

For starters, you will have to maintain at least two versions of any article page: The original version of your article page that users will typically see, and the AMP version of that page.

Since AMP doesn’t permit things such as form elements and third-party JavaScript, you likely will not be able to have lead forms, on-page comments and some other elements you may be used to having on your page in a standard implementation. (Although there is currently a hack using iframesthat provides a solution to this. Thanks to Conrad O’Connell for helping me verify the hack.)

It is also likely that you will have to rewrite your site template to accommodate the restrictions. For example, all CSS in AMP must be in-line and be less than 50KB. Due to loading-intensiveness of custom fonts, they must be loaded using a special amp-font extension, in order to better control that loading.

Multimedia must be handled specially. For example, images need to utilize the custom amp-img element and must include an explicit width and height. (When converting a legacy website to an AMP template, this can be a major pain if the width and height attributes aren’t already being used). Additionally, if your images are animated GIFs, you need to use the separate amp-anim extended component.

Like images, there is a custom tag that must be used to embed locally hosted videos via HTML5, called amp-video. For embedding YouTube video, however — which the majority of web videos are — there is a separate extended component, amp-youtube.

There is also support for things such as slideshows via amp-carousel and image lightboxes via amp-image-lightbox, as well social media embeds for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Vine via their own extended components.

These tag and extended components aren’t difficult to use; they just require some planning in your site design.

In order for Google (and other technologies supporting the AMP Project) to detect the AMP version of your article, you will need to modify the original version of the article page. The original article page must include the following tag, essentially a canonical tag for AMP pages:

<link rel="amphtml" href="http://www.example.com/blog-post/amp/">

The AMP Discovery page also mentions that some platforms that support AMP will require Schema.org meta data to specify the content type of the page. (Currently, “article,” “recipe,” “review” and “video” are listed as page type examples on GitHub.)

Moreover, it also indicates that Schema.org meta data “is a requirement to make your content eligible to appear in the demo of the Google Search news carousel.” So if you’re trying to get a future benefit from Google by implementing AMP, make sure you get your schema right!

How Can I Monetize With Ads In AMP?

The increased rise of ad blockers has made it difficult for publishers to monetize their websites. For some users, improving website load time has been an incentive to use ad blockers, which can aid in improving browsing speed. AMP may be seen as a response to this issue, with the project stating:

A goal of the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project is to ensure effective ad monetization on the mobile web while embracing a user-centric approach. With that context, the objective is to provide support for a comprehensive range of ad formats, ad networks and technologies in Accelerated Mobile Pages.

As a result, a number of the most popular ad networks are currently using the amp-ad extended component (with more compatibility likely on the way):

Amazon A9
AdReactor
Google AdSense
AOL AdTech
Google Doubleclick
Flite
Taboola
Adform
DotAndAds
plista
Smart AdServer
Yieldmo

If you want to see what these look like, examples for each ad network are provided within the .md files on AMP’s GitHub page.

If your monetization is more complex — utilizing paywalls or subscriptions — there is documentation available for implementing it within AMP, as well, using the “AMP Access” extension.

Does AMP Have Analytics?

Yes. In fact, analytics in AMP is very smart. To prevent multiple analytics tracking from slowing down a site, they implemented the philosophy of “measure once, report to many.” There are two paths to enable analytics functionality with AMP for your website:

The Amp-Pixel Element: This is a simple tag that can be used to count page views as a typical tracking pixel would, using a GET request. There are a number of variables that can be passed through it, such as DOCUMENT_REFERRER and Title.
The Amp-Analytics Extended Component: This is a little bit more advanced than the amp-pixel. It is likely what you’ll use to implement analytics on your site because it allows for a greater level of configuration for analytics interactions.

If you aren’t trying to get Google Analytics working, amp-analytics is the way to go. You will need to add the necessary JavaScript library in the <head> and then configure it via some JSON markup in the <body> section of your page.

If you are interested in Google Analytics in AMP, check out the Google’s AMP Analytics section on their developer page. It has several examples of implementations.

What Will AMP Look Like On Google?

Google has provided a demo of what an AMP feature would look like in the SERP. You can try it out by navigating to g.co/ampdemo on your mobile phone (or emulate it within Chrome Developer Tools). Then, search for something like “Mars.” You will see a carousel toward the top with AMP articles.

Click on one for a reading experience embedded in the SERP. You can swipe right or left to read another AMP-enabled article. It’s a different experience from simply navigating to a publisher’s AMP page.

How Do I Get Started With AMP In WordPress?

One of the easiest ways to get your hands dirty with AMP right now is to implement it on a WordPress website. An official plugin is being developed by Automattic/WordPress, and it is frequently being updated on GitHub.

Step 1: Install The Official WordPress Plugin

To get started, head over to the amp-wp GitHub page and click the “Download ZIP” button.

You can install this on your WordPress site just as you would any other WordPress plugin.

Once it’s installed, you simply need to append “/amp/” to an article page (or, if you don’t have nice permalinks, you can alternatively append “?amp=1”).

Step 2: Validate & Tweak

Eventually, the Google Search Console should pick up on the AMP version of your articles via the rel=”amphtml” tag appended by the plugin, allowing easy validation of articles in bulk. The only problem with it, in my experience thus far, is that it doesn’t detect changes very quickly. If you fix something, the correction may not show up for days.

I recommend using a combination of the Search Console and Chrome validation process. To use the Chrome validation process, go to one of your AMP pages in Chrome and append “#development=1”to the end of the URL. Hit Control + Shift + I to open Chrome Developer Tools and head over to Console.

You may need to refresh the page, but once you do, it will either say “AMP validation successful” or give you a list of issues to fix.

More than likely, simply installing the WordPress plugin will not be enough, and you will have to go through and validate all of the pages you’d like to benefit from Accelerated Mobile Pages.

Depending on how your articles are formatted, you may need to make some changes in order to get the AMP pages to validate. The most common problems I personally experienced were with specifying height and width attributes for images and correcting old YouTube embed codes that weren’t using https.

Step 3: Get Schema Markup To Validate

As previously mentioned, it is also important to have valid schema markup on your AMP pages. To test your pages for valid markup, you can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. I had some issues with WordPress not displaying a publisher logo and needed to make the following modification to the plugin.

Edit the class-amp-post-template.php file, either via FTP or within your WordPress Dashboard (go to Plugins > Editor and then select “AMP”) and change:


if ( $site_icon_url ) {
$metadata['publisher']['logo'] = array(
'@type' => 'ImageObject',
'url' => $site_icon_url,
'height' => self::SITE_ICON_SIZE,
'width' => self::SITE_ICON_SIZE,
);
}

to:


$metadata['publisher']['logo'] = array(
'@type' => 'ImageObject',
'url' => 'http://domain.com/wp-content/uploads/logo-60.png',
'height' => 60,
'width' => 170,
);

Make sure to replace the URL with a path to your own publisher logo and to specify height and width in pixels. You can find information for relevant markup here, which specifies that “ideally, logos are exactly 60px tall with width <= 600px.”

Step 4: Getting Google Analytics Working With The AMP WordPress Plugin

What good is a website if you can’t track it with analytics? The AMP WordPress plugin doesn’t enable amp-analytics out of the box, but it’s fairly straightforward to enable.

To enable the AMP WordPress plugin to work with Google Analytics, edit the amp-post-template-actions.php (different file from that previously mentioned) file, either via FTP or within your WordPress Dashboard (go to Plugins > Editor and then select “AMP”), and add the following to the end of it:

add_action( 'amp_post_template_head', 'amp_post_template_add_analytics_js' );
function amp_post_template_add_analytics_js( $amp_template ) {
 $post_id = $amp_template->get( 'post_id' );
 ?>
 <script async custom-element="amp-analytics" src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-analytics-0.1.js"></script>
 <?php
}
add_action( 'amp_post_template_footer', 'xyz_amp_add_analytics' );
function xyz_amp_add_analytics( $amp_template ) {
    $post_id = $amp_template->get( 'post_id' );
    ?>
 <amp-analytics type="googleanalytics" id="analytics1">
 <script type="application/json">
 {
   "vars": {
  "account": "UA-XXXXX-Y"
   },
   "triggers": {
  "trackPageview": {
    "on": "visible",
    "request": "pageview"
  }
   }
 }
 </script>
 </amp-analytics>
    <?php
}

view rawamp-post-template-actions.php hosted with by GitHub

Make sure you change UA-XXXXX-Y to represent your website’s Google Analytics property ID.

Now, re-validate your AMP pages, and you should have a basic AMP setup with tracking enabled for your WordPress website.

Conclusion

AMP provides a relatively easy way to improve the speed of mobile websites for publishers. With the end of February approaching, and the Google News Lab conducting regular office hours via Hangouts, we can expect to Google to roll out its integration soon. In what appears to be a response to the AMP Project’s momentum, even Facebook may be reacting. It recently decided to open Instant Articles to all publishers.

Are you a publisher? If so, you need to start thinking about Accelerated Mobile Pages.

Know Your MySQL: 15 Tricks That All Developer Should Know

2018-03-25T18:16:00.001-07:00

MySQL database is the most popular database that already exists to overcome the daily data collection problem. There are countless tricks, options, and functions available for MySQL developers. The developers often are surrounded by many technical and detailed contents which can easily distract them from MySQL's big picture. The problem is that they lack a checklist of all the essential techniques to master. I have developed and normalized many advance MySQL databases (along with IT consulting), which motivated me to write this article. What follows are 15 essential tricks or things that any serious MySQL developer should know:

1. Table Relationships

There are three forms of table relationships: one-to-one, One-to-Many (O2M), and Many-to-Many (M2M). My analogy for O2M is it is a parent-children relationship where one parent can have many children but not the other way around. Thus, always remember putting the Foreign Key (FK) in the children (many) table. For M2M, you just need to create a lookup table.

2. Join Tables

There are many forms of MySQL table joins: INNER, OUTER, NATURAL, LEFT, AND RIGHT. Surprising enough, I use none of them. For example, consider user and user_pic tables where the user is a parent table with many children or pictures. As mentioned before, we put FK (user_id) in the user_pic table and join them together (note that user_pk is the primary key of user table):

"SELECT * FROM user, user_pic WHERE user.user_pk=user_pic.user_id"

Now the two tables are joined together. Except for special cases where you may use other joins (like LEFT join for including NULL values), this approach will handle most of your jobs.

3. InnoDB Engine

If you are fan of MySQL InnoDB engine and normalized database structures, I suggest setting "UPDATE=cascade" and "DELETE=restricted" when creating the table relationships.

4. Cross Database Queries

Big or enterprise level databases require cross-database queries. For example, database one (company_users) has a user table and database two (company_staffs) has a staff table. Here is a one cross database query:

"SELECT * FROM company_users.user, company_staffs.staff WHERE ...."

5. Lovely Aliases

I use aliases a lot mainly in four situations:

1. When joining multiple tables together to avoid confusions and shorter queries

2. When making cross-database queries

3. When there are ambiguous queries (for instance, joining two tables that have at least one field in common)

4. When using the DATE-FORMAT function to distinguish the formatted date from Timestamp one.

6. DATE_FORMAT Function

To deliver more professional applications, you should use the MySQL DATE_FORMAT function wherever needed.

7. IN() Versus BETWEEN ... AND ...

IN() is mainly used for a few options, whereas BETWEEN is used for a range of values as seen in below queries:

"SELECT * FROM user WHERE (age=15 OR age=16 OR age=17) "

"SELECT * FROM user WHERE age IN (15,16,17) "

"SELECT * FROM user WHERE age BETWEEN 15 AND 17"

8. IS NULL or IS NOT NULL

When you want to filter a null or valid values, use the "IS NULL" and "IS NOT NULL" functions respectively. For instance, below, the query returns all users who have the null value for their age:

"SELECT * FROM user WHERE age IS NULL"

9. ORDER BY DESC, ASC, RAND()

It is self-explanatory.

10. LIMIT A, B

It is better to use LIMIT in conjunction with ORDER BY. The LIMIT A, B means start from the row number A and take out B number of rows. Then, return the result set. It is a great tool for a large-scale application (to unload the MySQL processing task), application paginations, and search queries, so make sure to use it.

11. Handy Date Functions

There are a lot of MySQL date functions. Of particular interest (from practical perspective) are DATE_ADD(), DATE_SUB(), CURRENT_DATE(), NOW(), and DATEDIFF(), so lookup the MySQL manual for details.

12. Index, Unique, Primary Keys

The Primary Key (PK) or table identifier can be an auto-increment integer or a custom unique value like the email address. The Unique key is identical to the PK, except that it accepts null values. The Index key is mainly used for speeding up the MySQL processing time, so use it only for very important fields on your table. Otherwise, it may slow down your database response time.

13. Incremental versus Periodic Backups

There are primary two ways by which you can backup a MySQL database: incremental and periodic. For the former, you need to define a binary directory path on your MySQL.ini file. Then, the MySQL will automatically backup from any INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE statements instantly (of course, at the cost of higher processing load), while saving them in the binary log on your server. However, for the latter, you should run MySQL_dump function at different intervals (preferably daily) and save the SQL backup file afterward.

14. Normal Operators

Here are the main MySQL opertators: , != , AND, OR, . When you say A is not equal to B, you can use AB or A!=B

15. Group By

Make sure you understand Group By very well before using it. Otherwise, it may return ambiguous results, especially in multi-table join queries.

There are many other minor things that I did not cover here. However, the discussed 15 tricks would be a good starting point for mastering the giant MySQL database. Last but not least, to handle the MySQL structure designs, you should know the business processes behind the table entities, like user and transaction info, or transaction info and product info, on top of your technical knowledge. Thus, there is a long journey to go.

What happens when file gets deleted from system?

2018-03-19T03:28:00.001-07:00

It happens. You delete a folder or format a memory card without realizing that it contained some crucial file, photo, or document. Fortunately, there are a number of ways you can recover or “undelete” that file. However, it’s not magic and you won’t be able to recover 100% of your file 100% of the time. To understand what affects your chances for a successful file recovery and what you can do to increase those chances, it’s worthwhile to learn what happens when you delete a file. And that’s precisely what we’ll talk about in this article.

Into the Trash Bin
When it comes to removing unwanted files, each of the major operating systems has some sort of “trash” bin. This is a staging area where your files when you first hit “delete.” In Linux, it’s usually called the Trash Bin. For Mac OS X, it’s simply the Trash. And for Windows, it’s the Recycle Bin.

Just like the recycle bin in your kitchen, the stuff you toss in your computer’s Recycle Bin doesn’t disappear immediately. Until it fills up and gets emptied, you can still go in and easily pick your stuff out, pretty much intact. When you do end up “taking out the trash,” recovering your stuff becomes more difficult. But it’s still possible.

Files get purged from the Recycle Bin in one of two ways: when it gets full, the system will start removing them (i.e. “permanently” deleting them) on a first in, first out basis. Or, you can choose to manually empty the Recycle Bin to free up disk space. When this happens, you can no longer restore your file simply by opening your Recycle Bin, right-clicking the file and clicking Restore.

Beyond the Trash Bin
So, what happens when a file gets emptied from the Recycle Bin? With a few rare exceptions, your file does not instantly cease to exist. Instead, the system simply changes a bit in the file allocation table that marks the space occupied by that file as “free.” True to the Recycle Bin’s name, the bits and bytes that make up your deleted file are eventually reused to store other files. But this doesn’t happen until the space is actually needed. Until your file is overwritten by new data, it’s still sitting there on your disk somewhere, wholly intact. The only difference is that the file allocation table is no longer keeping track of it.

Undeleting a File
Considering the above, you’ve probably guessed that it’s not a good idea to start writing new files to your disk if you hope torecover a recently deleted file. The sooner you attempt a file recovery, the better your chances. On the other hand, if you wipe a disk and then fill it to capacity with something else, then you can be almost certain that all traces of the old file are gone. But if the disk or partition is very large and you’ve been conscientious about not writing any new data to it, getting that deleted file back is fairly easy.

The only challenge to recovering a deleted file is finding it. Remember: the file system is no longer keeping track of it. But if you were to track it down, you could flip that “free space” switch back and have the file restored in its entirety. In this way, you’re not really “undeleting” the file. You’re just telling the system, “never mind, don’t overwrite this, and start keeping track of it again.” It’s a little bit like chaining yourself to a bulldozer to stop a condemned building from being demolished (though admittedly not quite as dramatic).

Undelete utilities and file recovery software can help with this task. These tools scan a hard drive for patterns that are recognizable as known file types. These patterns are often referred to as file signatures. Similar to an archaeologist uncovering a femur and then being able to reconstruct or locate the rest of the skeleton, an undelete utility can find the header of a known file type and then piece together the rest of your file from there. Parts of the document, photo, or file can be recovered even if other parts have been lost. In some cases, these missing parts can be repaired. If the physical disk has been damaged or corrupted, you can save the recovered file to another disk.

Summary
That’s file recovery in a nutshell. This has been a very high level discussion of the overall process, but it should help you understand how file recovery works and why certain approaches are better than others. You basically have two chances to undelete a file: (1) by restoring it from the Recycle Bin or Trash Bin and (2) by recovering it before it’s overwritten by new data. Keep this in mind for the next time you accidentally delete an important file.

Testing for HTML Injection

2018-03-19T03:23:00.001-07:00

Summary

HTML injection is a type of injection issue that occurs when a user is able to control an input point and is able to inject arbitrary HTML code into a vulnerable web page. This vulnerability can have many consequences, like disclosure of a user's session cookies that could be used to impersonate the victim, or, more generally, it can allow the attacker to modify the page content seen by the victims.

How to Test

This vulnerability occurs when the user input is not correctly sanitized and the output is not encoded. An injection allows the attacker to send a malicious HTML page to a victim. The targeted browser will not be able to distinguish (trust) the legit from the malicious parts and consequently will parse and execute all as legit in the victim context.

There is a wide range of methods and attributes that could be used to render HTML content. If these methods are provided with an untrusted input, then there is an high risk of XSS, specifically an HTML injection one. Malicious HTML code could be injected for example via innerHTML, that is used to render user inserted HTML code. If strings are not correctly sanitized the problem could lead to XSS based HTML injection. Another method could be document.write()

When trying to exploit this kind of issues, consider that some characters are treated differently by different browsers. For reference see the DOM XSS Wiki.

The innerHTML property sets or returns the inner HTML of an element. An improper usage of this property, that means lack of sanitization from untrusted input and missing output encoding, could allow an attacker to inject malicious HTML code.

Example of Vulnerable Code: The following example shows a snippet of vulnerable code that allows an unvalidated input to be used to create dynamic html in the page context:

var userposition=location.href.indexOf("user=");
var user=location.href.substring(userposition+5);
document.getElementById("Welcome").innerHTML=" Hello, "+user;

In the same way, the following example shows a vulnerable code using the document.write() function:

var userposition=location.href.indexOf("user=");
var user=location.href.substring(userposition+5);
document.write("<h1>Hello, " + user +"</h1>");

In both examples, an input like the following:

http://vulnerable.site/page.html?user=<img%20src='aaa'%20onerror=alert(1)>

will add to the page the image tag that will execute an arbitrary JavaScript code inserted by the malicious user in the HTML context.

Black Box testing

Black box testing for HTML Injection is not usually performed since access to the source code is always available as it needs to be sent to the client to be executed.

Gray Box testing

Testing for HTML Injection vulnerabilities:
For example, looking at the following URL:

http://www.domxss.com/domxss/01_Basics/06_jquery_old_html.html

The HTML code will contains the following script:

<script src="../js/jquery-1.7.1.js"></script>
<script>
function setMessage(){
 var t=location.hash.slice(1);
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It is possible to inject HTML code.

How to Fix a MTP USB Device Driver Problem [SURE WAY]

2018-03-19T03:22:00.004-07:00

I connected my Android phone to my PC and I heard the USB connection sound but my phone’s storages weren’t detected (both Internal and SD card). I checked under Device Manager and noticed that MTP had a warning icon (yellow triangle) on it meaning it had somehow malfunctioned.

The i try solving the problem by Downloading MPT (Media Transfer Protocol) Porting Kit from Microsoft's official website yet it didn't solve the issue!

>>To Fix MTP USB Device Driver Problem

Go to Device Manager, under Portable Devices, right-click on MTP USB Device, and then click on Update Driver Software to update the MTP USB device driver.

>>Select “Let me pick from a List of device drivers on your computer”. The list will show installed driver software compatible with the device.

>>Select the driver you want to install and then click “Next”. Reconnect your mobile phone to your computer.
You will found out that is now working!!! :) don't forget to drop your experience in the comment box....

Top 10 Mind-blowing Upcoming Technologies

2018-03-19T03:22:00.001-07:00

We are living in an era of science and technology, where inventions and innovations are inspiring us each day. Technology is making our life more easier and luxurious. Things which we only imagine today comes in to reality in other day. Science and technology is progressing day by day. Here, below is a list of top ten upcoming technology that may change the world.

The list of top 10 Mind blowing Upcoming Technologies that will take your breath away.

Google Glasses

Google Glasses are a part of Project Glass, a research and development program by Google to develop an augmented reality head-mounted display (HMD). These products would display information in smartphone-like format hands-free and could interact with the Internet via natural language voice commands. The prototype’s functionality and minimalist appearance has been compared to Steve Mann’s EyeTap. The operating system software used in the glasses will be Google’s Android.

Leap Motion

Leap Motion presents an entirely new way to interact with your computers. Put simply, Leap Motion is more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen. For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements.

Google’s Self-Driving Cars

The Google driverless car is a project by Google that involves developing technology for driver-less cars. The project is currently being led by Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View.

Glasses-Free 3D TV

The MIT Media Lab system uses several layers of liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), the technology currently found in most flat-panel TVs. To produce a convincing 3-D illusion, the displays would need to refresh at a rate of about 360 times a second, or 360 hertz. Such displays may not be far off: LCD TVs that boast 240-hertz refresh rates have already appeared on the market, just a few years after 120-hertz TVs made their debut.

Air to Fuel

A British firm based on Teesside says it’s designed revolutionary new technology that can produce petrol using air and water. Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five liters of petrol since August, but hopes to be in production by 2015 making synthetic fuel targeted at the motor sports sector. The company believes the technique could help solve energy supply problems and curb global warming.

Face Cloning

Disney Research has proposed a complete process for designing, simulating, and fabricating synthetic skin for an animatronics character that mimics the face of a given subject and its expressions. This process starts with measuring the elastic properties of a material used to manufacture synthetic soft tissue.

Form 1 3D Printer

The Form 1 combines great design and solid engineering to simplify the entire printing process. It utilizes Stereolithography (SL) technology to achieve the highest resolution available in 3D printing, blowing away plastic extrusion (FDM) performance.

Bio Technology

Bionic Hand controlled by brain signals. It does allow people without fingers to have fully functional hands that can pick up and handle delicate objects. It is completely controlled by the brain and requires no surgery. Touch Bionics, the company the produces the Pro Digits hand, is able to install the hand complete with “living skin,” a plastic covering resembling human skin, for under $50,000. A small price to pay for a new hand I think.

Invisible Bike Helmets

The device is a mobile airbag which will supposedly replace all those unstylish bicycle helmets. It’s contained in a scarf which is worn around your neck, and at the moment of impact it inflates and forms a protective cushion around your head. The Invisible Bike Helmet was created by Hovding, a Swedish technology company.

Face Scanners

The technology was developed by FaceFirst, and even in a crowd you can’t escape their watchful eye: FaceFirst can track each individual face on a camera feed and run matches at the same time – and all of this happens live. Here’s a quote from the CEO of FaceFirst, Joseph Rosenkrantz:
“Within just a couple of seconds whoever needs to know receives an email containing all the evidence and stats about the person identified along with the video clip of them passing the camera so they may be approached then and there.”

How to download a file using command prompt (cmd) Windows?

2018-03-17T04:46:00.001-07:00

If you’re like most Internet users, you download various types of files now and then. You either download these files with your web browser or some download manager software. Have you ever considered downloading files using the command prompt i.e. CMD? If not, we recommend you to try it. It’s quite interesting apart from being very useful as well. In this article, we’ll show you how to download a file using command prompt aka CMD.

How to download a file using command prompt?

There are several useful commands for the Command Prompt and one of them is bitsadmin. Though bitsadmin has several uses, here we shall limit this article to its role in downloading files only. If you want to read the details about bitsadmin syntax, continue reading this section. Otherwise, you can scroll down to the next section – Downloading a file.

The syntax of bitsadmin is :

BITSADMIN [/RAWRETURN] [/WRAP | /NOWRAP] command

As you know, the parts of the syntax inside the square brackets are OPTIONAL. So, we use them only if we need them. In this case, we don’t need to bother ourselves with [/RAWRETURN], [WRAP] and [/NOWRAP]. So, we need to type bitsadmin, followed by the command whose syntax (in this case) is :

/TRANSFER <job name> [type] [/PRIORITY priority] [/ACLFLAGS flags] remote_url local_name

The various parts of this syntax have been explained below :

/TRANSFER – We use this command for transferring files. You can use it to upload/download files. Multiple files may be uploaded/downloaded at a time.
<job name> – We need to provide a name for the transfer job which we are going to perform.
[type] – This part is OPTIONAL. You may use it to specify whether the transfer job is going to upload or download file(s). The default action is download.
[/PRIORITY priority] – This part is also OPTIONAL. However, we recommend that you use it. You may use it to set the priority of the job as LOW, NORMAL or HIGH. For best performance, set it to HIGH.
[/ACLFLAGS aclflags] – This is also OPTIONAL.
remote_url – The URL of the file you want to download. Please note that the URL must have the file’s name at the end, otherwise the job will not start.
local_name – The location of your computer where you want to download the file. It should end in the name of a file, and the file name should be the same as the one at the end of the remote_url.

Example –

bitsadmin /transfer wcb /priority high http://example.com/examplefile.pdf C:\downloads\examplefile.pdf

In the above example, wcb is the name we assigned to the transfer job,http://example.com/examplefile.pdf is the URL of the file to be downloaded andC:\downloads\examplefile.pdf is the location where the file would be saved after being downloaded.

Downloading a file

You can download a file using the following syntax :

bitsadmin /transfer TransferJobName /priority high UrlOfTheFile SaveFileAsName

You need to replace TransferJobName with a word (which could be anything), UrlOfTheFile with the URL of the url of the file to be downloaded and SaveFileAsName with the complete location where the file would be downloaded and saved.

For example, we downloaded a PDF file (1.04 MB) named Agenda21.pdf from UN’s website – http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org. We used the following command for downloading this file –

bitsadmin /transfer wcb /priority high https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf D:\xdown\Agenda21.pdf

The results are displayed in the following screenshots :

How to download a file using Command Prompt – Downloading

How to download a file using Command Prompt – Download Finished

Downloading file(s) using the Command Prompt is a great idea if you’re looking to do some COOL things. It is also useful if you don’t want to use third party programs for downloading files. You can download multiple files using this method. However, it has one drawback. Downloading files using Command Prompt is a slow process. It is slower than a typical file downloader program. So, if speed is important for you, don’t use this method.

We hope you enjoyed this article. Let your friends and colleagues know how to download a file using Command Prompt by SHARING THIS ARTICLE…

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