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Humans have always been social creatures, so our ongoing national quarantine has been difficult for many. Experts say that prolonged isolation increases our risk of depression and anxiety. Since social distancing and some degree of quarantining will probably be necessary for quite some time, it’s important that we all learn how to find new ways to connect.

Luckily, the internet makes it easier than ever to stay in touch and the amount of online entertainment available even makes it possible to watch movies and play games “with” your friends without leaving your home. Quarantine is a challenge, but here are some tips for staying connected.

Share memories and events friends you can’t see.

Life isn’t the same right now, but we can make every day special in small ways. Go on walks outside with your family, try new arts and crafts, maybe learn a new skill. You can document your quarantine adventures and share them with your friends and family quickly and easily online using a private photo share.

It’s important to find things that are exciting and meaningful about our day-to-day lives, even now. Make the ordinary extraordinary and share the fun with the people who matter to you. Social media, for all its flaws, is crucial now for keeping up with our friends’ lives when we can’t see them. The important thing is to keep living and sharing your experiences with everyone.

Find ways to play together online.

If you aren’t already, it might be time to consider becoming a gamer. It’s not all shooting games and violence if that’s not your thing. Whether it’s Rocket League, Overwatch, or Call of Duty, there’s a game for everyone who wants to play with their friends. You can even purchase your own game server hosting to use for multiplayer gaming with your friends.

You get 24/7 access to your own dedicated server for a monthly fee. Whether or not you and your friends are hardcore gamers, finding a reliable way to play together can be a saving grace when you’re stuck at home for weeks. There are also plenty of ways to play more classic games like Monopoly or Jeopardy digitally, so you can still have Trivia Night even though you can’t hit the bar.

Make plans to “hang out.”

It’s easy to lose track of days or find it hard to keep a schedule when things are so different and we’re all inside much more than we’re used to. Try to make plans with your family and friends the same way you usually would. It’ll restore a little normality in your life, and you’ll be more likely to connect and talk to them if you set a time to do it, rather than just texting about how you should catch up soon for months and then never actually doing it.

Building a schedule for your week is important since it’s so hard to create structure in your schedule when you’re working and spending most of your time at home, and making time for your friends is more important now than ever. Whether it’s just chatting, having a happy hour, or using an app like Netflix Party to watch movies together, there are plenty of ways to “hang out” from afar.

As the country continues to implement varying degrees of quarantine to combat COVID-19, we all need to adapt and find ways to stay in touch with the people we love that we aren’t able to see right now. For many who don’t spend much time on the internet or who don’t engage with much digital entertainment, it might take some effort to learn what kinds of things you’re able to do online now and how we can still socialize from a distance. No matter how you do it, it’s essential to find ways to connect with the people who are important to us during the quarantine.

What is a bounce rate and why should you care?

One of the most important statistics revealed in the Google Analytics report is the ‘bounce rate’.

Bounce rate is the percentage of users who land on your website and decide to leave without going to a second page. Given that we want people to stay and explore our websites, this is obviously not something you want!

A higher bounce rate implies that you couldn’t convince your website visitor to stay and act on your call to action.

If your website takes too long to download or the content is not engaging enough, your bounce rate is likely to be north of 50%.

A viewer can bounce from your site by clicking away from your site – whether on a link to a different website, clicking the back button to leave your website, closing the open window, typing a new URL, or due to a session time out.

The challenge is obviously on how to reduce your website’s bounce rate. Here are a few pointers:

• Keep your page visually appealing without heavy graphics
• Reduce clutter
• Make your content more accessible with smart formatting
• Avoid distracting banner advertisements
• Content should satisfy a search query
• Have a clear call for action
• Implement a site search
• Interactive site map for easy navigation
• The Homepage should download in less than 5 seconds
• Optimize download time on all devices

If you find all this difficult to comprehend, seek professional help.

Let’s Bounce!

Social Distancing has forced people to spend their time online and come up with creative digital experiments. Which is all good news for businesses since they now know where to get the eyeballs!

Zoom social meetups, Skype book clubs, Online bridge games, Periscope jam sessions, Online shopping spree, Cloud clubbing with DJs, Virtual yoga classes, Netflix streaming binges, Instagram Live Gym sessions – are now a way of life. Getting breaking news on Twitter, Facebook and Insta and mobile apps are the new normal.

FaceTime and VPN calls from friends and relatives who are trying to stave off loneliness are at a record high. It is reintroducing people to their families. The COVID-19 crisis is making people more grounded. It helps you reappreciate the wealth we have in a place like home.

If there is a silver lining in this crisis, it may be that the virus is forcing us to use the internet as it was always meant to be used, to connect with one another, share information and resources, and brainstorm collective solutions to common problems.

On average, people spend a staggering 6 hours and 42 minutes online each day. (My screen time is 8 hours 36 minutes!) In addition, more than four million blog posts and 500 million tweets are published every day. Research shows that people who consume social media actively by sending messages, leaving comments or participating in group chats, are happier people compared to couch potatoes who sit and watch TV all day.

As the real world continues to crumble before our eyes, all of us will be forced to embrace the virtual world. What seemed to be a distant reality is suddenly upon us. If you are looking to find solace on the internet, lurking alone won’t cut it, you need to contribute. Be a lead actor in the story or you will just be a character in the story!

Businesses now have an opportunity to deep dive into the web and reimagine their digital strategy. Ensure that you are offering your portfolio of products and services online with complete CRM and payment integration. Aggressive online and social media campaigns are just a few obvious options to consider.

We can either adapt and join the new mainstream of the virtual world or remain passive and left behind in loneliness. The choice is ours!

#StaySafe and #WFM

Sharad Agarwal is CEO of Cyber Gear

If COVID 19 has forced you to work from home, now is a good time to invest in your website audit. You can either do it yourself or hire a professional company to help you rank well in search results. Whether it’s Google, Bing or Yahoo, outsmarting their algorithm takes work.

It is also important to ensure that your website gets quality traffic from authority sites. The metric in off-site SEO that really moves the needle is referring domains.

This metric measures how many sites and domains point to your site. Backlinks let search engines know that other websites actually trust the content on your site.  In turn, they see it as a valuable, relevant website and rank it accordingly. If one site is sending 1,000 backlinks to you, it is still only one referring domain. Referring domains are a stronger signal than backlinks because it’s easier to manipulate a site to give you thousands of links, but it’s much harder to get 1,000 different domains to point to you.

It is clearly wise to secure backlinks from multiple domains. GuestPosts.biz can help you in writing quality articles and then publish them on your niche blogs. They will imbed ‘do-follow’ links which will drive traffic to your website. These backlinks will help your content to start to gain organic visibility within the Google search engine.

It is important to check the links that your competitors have developed and then approach similar domains to build traffic for your business. Not all backlinks and referring domains are the same, so domain rating/authority are good supplementary metrics to add context.

Websites are ranked by their Domain Authority or DA. Domain Authority is a ranking factor used by search engines to help them determine a website’s relevance to a specific subject or industry. So when you are building your backlink profile, you should obtain backlinks from websites that have higher DA scores than your own. In turn, this tells search engines that these high-DA websites trust the content on your website.

There are approximately 3.5 billion searches on Google every day. It is imperative that your web presence stands out from the crowd and helps your business accelerate sales, drive targeted audience, create a brand name among people and become the most trusted and authentic service.

According to Sharad Agarwal, CEO of Cyber Gear, “Digital reputation is important. Invest in it!”

As a writer, you’re bound to use the internet a lot. You need to learn how to secure yourself from malicious activities within the internet. The internet is a source of unlimited information, but it also exposes you to infected ads, sneaky computer viruses, and rogue links.

Due to advancements in technology, computer viruses are more aggressive than ever before. Identity theft and financial fraud are quite rampant because hackers have all they need to hack whomever they want. As a student, work with legit writing services like Ewritingservice.com to avoid dealing with frauds.

Every time you encounter a suspicious website, hit the back button before cybercriminals get the opportunity to take advantage of you. Also, be careful where you provide your personal information because it could easily be a case of identity theft.

1. Have Strong Passwords Everywhere
When you use strong passwords, you prevent cybercriminals from hijacking your accounts. Avoid using generic passwords like your date of birth or the name of your pet because this makes your accounts easily hackable.
Ensure your password is at least 12 characters long because the more the characters, the harder it is for hackers to guess the password. The password should include both upper and lower case alphabets as well as numbers and symbols.

2. Avoid Using Open Networks to Access the Internet
If you’re a writer who likes working from cafés and coffee shops, avoid using their Wi-Fi networks to access the internet. There is nothing as cybercriminals-ridden as open networks. Use your own source of internet to protect yourself from hijacks.
Aside from cyberattacks, you never know the kind of virus that might be lurking in such networks. Protect your information by avoiding public Wi-Fi networks.

3. Use Viral Protection Network
If you have a computer you use to access the internet, use a VPN to protect your information. This way, you use a private channel to access the internet. Viral Protection Networks lock cybercriminals out. They cannot record any unencrypted information and use it to their advantage.

Conclusion
Writers are among the people who use the internet the most. Each time you browse the internet, ensure you’re safe from cyberattacks. Cybercriminals can use the smallest loophole to steal your personal information.

Whilst slot machine gambling has only really been a thing for the last century or so, the amount of gamblers who love spinning the reels of their favourite slots these days is second to none. In fact, the slots industry is by far the biggest offshoot of the overall gambling market in the 21st century, and it is funny to think that without a particularly savvy Californian engineer called Charles D. Fey they may not have ever been invented.

He made some crucial alterations to the rudimentary slot machines that were dotted around California in the 19th century, ending up with the Liberty Bell slot, the first of its kind. The main thing that Mr Fey succeeded in changing was the prize mechanism, with prize money actually coming out of the slot machine itself, instead of having to be collected at the bar. This also resulted in the formation of low and high value slot symbols, read on to find out about low value slot symbols from Rainbow Riches Megaways. 

A brief history of slot symbols in general 

Back in the day before Charles D. Fey had created the Liberty Bell machine slot machines didn’t really have high or low value symbols in the same way as we do now. This is mainly down to the fact that there was only a few different icons on the reels back in the 1800s, and so any winning combination tended to have roughly the same value. 

Of course, this all changed when Charles D. Fey first created the Liberty Bell machine, a slot that had a tiered system of symbols for the first time. The Liberty Bell icons that it derived its name from were the high paying icons, whereas a selection of poker inspired symbols were the low paying symbols. 

The first low value symbols 

So, as we mentioned, the first clear low value symbols continued in the poker style icon tradition that was a defining characteristic of the primordial slot machines from back in the day. As the slot machine industry slowly started to grow the low value symbols tended to stick by the same formula, with the poker style icons continuing to be used heavily well into the 20th century. 

In fact, slot symbols in general didn’t really change much throughout the 20th century, mainly because they still had to be painted on to a set of reels by hand, and there was therefore little scope for what developers could do. This all changed in the 1980s with the arrival of video slots, however the low paying icons still centred on playing card symbols. 

Typical attributes of low value slot symbols 

What do low value slot symbols tend to look like these days? Well, one of the main hallmarks of these icons is that they tend to be designed round playing card symbols. Most developers will try and give their own spin on these, with the playing card symbols usually being intertwined with the slot theme in some way, however this isn’t always the case.

There is a hell of a lot that goes on behind the scenes at the world’s largest casinos, and a huge part of that ends up being the various facets of their security operation. In fact, apart from airports and banks, casinos probably have the most extensive and complex security systems in the world. And when you consider the amount of money held in these places there should really be no surprise. 

It wasn’t always like this, however. In fact, during the early days of modern commercial casino gambling in the mid 20th century places like Las Vegas were constantly plagued by casino cheats, and they therefore had to make sure that their casinos were as secure and difficult to cheat on as possible. Over the years these security systems have utilized new technology to make them more and more advanced, and nowadays you would do well to do any kind of cheating in a casino. Read on for an insight into casino security like what Star Slots has. 

24/7 all encompassing surveillance 

One of the main characteristics of modern casino security is an incredibly tense focus on 24/7 surveillance that reaches pretty much all parts of a casino establishment. In fact, casinos are amongst the most heavily watched places on earth, with only airports really have more cameras inside. Casinos do genuinely need this level of surveillance too; otherwise it would be far too easy for people to cheat inside of them. 

But here’s the thing: casino surveillance isn’t something that the average gambler would probably notice during their stay in Las Vegas, because it is all hidden away perfectly. The extent of surveillance is bonkers though, you should see the size of some casino’s surveillance control rooms! It all results in the fact that casinos could easily track a guest’s movements throughout a weeklong stay. 

Strict and hawkeyed pit bosses 

Another essential part of casino security is having a strict and experienced pit boss, as these will be the first line of defence against casino cheats and also gamblers looking to indulge in things like blackjack card counting. Pit bosses generally stand at a high vantage point above the pit in question, and they will be constantly on the lookout for people to eject from the casino.

The muscle 

What is the use of a top quality security system if you do not have the muscle to back it up? This is why most huge casinos will have a remarkably well trained security team, and it is very important that this team also has the muscle required to deal with any problems. 

This is why most casinos will be eager to have at least a few muscular members of security, because not only do they help out with genuine problems when needed, they also provide a warning to gamblers as they walk in. 

Heat mapping 

Modern technology is constantly utilized in casino security, for instance many of them have utilized heat mapping in order to stop gamblers loitering around slot machines.

Almost every other day I am asked, “Do I have to invest in SEO?” The not so smart ones tell me, “I don’t need SEO”.

Here is the truth. Getting professional SEO is the best investment you will make to get the maximum ROI from your web presence. In fact it costs more to drive traffic to your site than to establish a web presence. Seriously!

Investing in growing your business is always a good idea. At Cyber Gear, we never hired a single salesperson in 23 years! We invested in SEO and digital marketing. Maybe, the number one reason why we are growing exponentially. Talk about walking the talk!

For the non-tech savvy people (do they even exist?) SEO, or search engine optimization, is an approach to marketing that helps your business show up at the top of search engine results pages when potential customers are looking for you online.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Google is the single largest traffic driver to websites. Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day. That’s the average figure of how many people use Google a day, which translates into at least 2 trillion searches per year, 3.8 million searches per minute, 228 million searches per hour, and 5.6 billion searches per day.

Bottomline. Google accounts for 57.8% of total referral traffic for the average site (10x the traffic that Facebook drives to the average site).

Here is the no brainer – if you’re going to invest in one online marketing activity, you should invest in SEO.

For those on the fence, consider these facts:

• 72% of online marketers describe content marketing as their most effective SEO tactic.

• 81% of people do some type of online research before making a large purchase.

• 47% of consumers read 3 to 5 pieces of content created by a company before talking to a salesman from that company.

• Leads from search engines have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (ex. cold-calling, direct mail, etc.) have a 1.7% close rate.

• 78% of location-centric mobile searches result in an offline purchase.

To calculate the ROI on SEO, it is worth noting that ranking 1st in organic search results for an important search query will drive x number of qualified visitors to your website every month. Based on a 5-10% conversion rate, it will more than pay for itself. While it’s easier and more accurate to track conversions for e-commerce, it certainly is possible for lead-based businesses.

Based on our 23 years of experience in digital business, I can safely vouch that investing in SEO in the long term leads to exponential growth (and much more affordable customer acquisition).

Finally, a note of caution, there is no magic bullet to activate the magic of SEO. It is a long and painstaking process – SEO often takes 3-6 months to gain traction. Use Google Analytics to measure the ROI of your SEO campaigns.

Microless is one of the leading online computer and electronics stores in the middle east. The company has been established in 2011 to transform the way people buy computers and electronics. Microless has set goals to expand rapidly in 2020 to become the leader in electronics and computer retail online.

Microless has announced that it’s partnering with IT Plus — one of the leading web and mobile app development agency in UAE, to integrate AI / Machine Learning techniques to optimize and automate their business processes. Apart from automation, and increasing the efficiency of existing processes in the company, the partnership is promising to bring new features, such as a smart chatbot that will handle part of the load on the customer service agents. The chatbot will be able to resolve customer inquiries and help customers with their purchases on the platform. The bot will be smart enough to understand your question and help you with the status of your order, item availability and pricing, as well as other queries.

Another interesting aspect of the mutual work will be the smart pricing bot that will adjust the prices on the products several times a day based on the market prices and customer demand. Customers will certainly benefit from this as they will have access to even better prices and unbeatable deals.

Once the work proves to be successful, the companies are planning to work on other important aspects such as intelligent delivery routing, using AI in stock predictions and even workplace gamification, which is a new trend that increases the employees’ productivity, by letting them see their work progress in realtime, get rewarded for achieving targets and compete with their peers.

Nowadays, as the competition is extremely high, the leading companies look for ways to cut the costs by optimizing and automating their business processes. Not only that reduces the costs in the long run, but it also allows the company to process much higher volumes of workload and it decreases the error rate and generates more streamlined results in the end. Machine learning is often used to achieve just that.

Machine learning or AI is the new trend in business. With the latest advancements in technology and new algorithms, computers are now able to recognize speech, detect objects and analyze what is happening in images and videos in real-time, predict sales and demand for products, and much more.

The name TikTok is onomatopoeia for the sound of a ticking clock and represents the short format of the videos

TikTok is an iOS and Android social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. The app was launched in 2017 by ByteDance, for markets outside of China. ByteDance has previously launched Douyin for the China market in September 2016. Douyin was developed in 200 days, and within a year got 100 million users, with more than 1 billion videos viewed every day.
The application allows users to create short music and lip-sync videos of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. It is a leading short video platform in Asia, the United States, and other parts of the world. TikTok is not available in China and its servers are based in countries where the app is available.

The TikTok mobile app allows users to create a short video of themselves which often feature music in the background, can be sped up, slowed down or edited with a filter. To create a music video with the app, users can choose background music from a wide variety of music genres, edit with a filter and record a 15-second video with speed adjustments before uploading it to share with others on TikTok or other social platforms. Its tunes are varied pop, rap, R&B, electro, and DJ tracks serve as backing for its 15-second video clips.

The app allows users to set their accounts as “private”. Such accounts’ content remains visible to TikTok but is blocked from TikTok users who the account holder has not authorised to view their content. Users can choose whether any other user, or only their “friends”, may interact with them through the app via comments, messages, or “react” or “duet” videos. Users also can set specific videos to either “public”, “friends only”, or “private” regardless if the account is private or not.

The videos are tall, not square, like on Snapchat or Instagram’s stories, but you navigate through videos by scrolling up and down, like a feed, not by tapping or swiping side to side.

The platform is said to have an addictive quality and high levels of engagement with its personalized feeds of quirky and creative short videos.

TikTok was downloaded more than 104 million times on Apple’s App store during the full first half of 2018, according to data provided to CNBC by Sensor Tower, an app analytics platform based in San Francisco. It surpassed Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram to become the world’s most downloaded iOS app for that time period.

TikTok recently began testing ads and also makes money on in-app purchases. Users can buy coins to tip their favorite creators on the platform. It has grossed $80 million from in-app purchases globally, according to an April report from Sensor Tower. In Q1 2019, user spending reaching an estimated $18.9 million globally, which was 222% more than the app grossed during the same period last year.

Tiktok is available in over 150 markets, and in 75 languages worldwide.

Source: Hashtag Social