Author Archives: amit

This is perhaps one of the most common questions of people interested to pursue a career in the tech industry. Many think that web programmers work on a lot of numbers and mathematical formulas. But the truth is that you don’t really have to be a math wizard to succeed in the world of programming.

Here’s why.

A good grasp of math can help you quickly understand the basics but the actual amount of advanced math you’ll handle at work is not that overwhelming.

If you’re terrible at or don’t have a background in math, you might need to work double time and spend extra effort as you begin to learn how to code. But once you’ve gained a better understanding of coding languages and concepts, the rest should be easier.

An experienced web developer at Bedrock IT explains that except for the routine arithmetic and mathematical concepts, most programming projects don’t rely heavily on math. Not being a genius in math shouldn’t be a hindrance in becoming a successful programmer or pursuing a tech career.

There are two routes you can take to become a programmer. The traditional path is to enroll in a university and get a degree in computer science. If you take this route, you’ll definitely learn math since you’ll have to take a number of advanced math courses.

The other path is self-learning. Some great programmers have learned to code through self-directed learning. The easy accessibility and wide availability of resources have made programming free for all. With just a simple browse, you can find amazing courses from beginner level to advanced levels for all popular programming languages.

In the absence of a traditional college instructor to evaluate your progress, you’ll need a tremendous amount of diligence, focus, and determination to fully understand the coding world. It would also help to have basic math and computing skills.

As you begin working with simple coding projects, you’ll realize what mathematical skills you’ll need. In most web and desktop software development, high-level math is very rarely used.

This is not to say that math-genius-programmers and non-math-genius programmers are just in the same playing field. Of course, those with a high level of math would be able to grasp and learn to programme faster and more easily as compared to those with low or average mathematical abilities. A math genius has higher chances of ending up in career opportunities where those advanced calculations are necessary. This small fraction of highly mathematical programmers can be found in some of the most coveted organizations, such as NASA, where math wizards congregate.

Perhaps by now, it should be clear that math isn’t everything you need to be a successful coder. Oftentimes, our math anxiety hinders us from fully realizing our actual ability. Even if you perceive that you are only mediocre at math, you can still aim to be among the top programmers. According to a study published at Science Magazine, it is not really the ability itself but rather our perception of our own ability that determines success.

Although men dominate math-related careers, this doesn’t mean that men are superior in math compared to women. In fact, the National Council for Teachers in Math noted there is no significant difference between genders in terms of performance in math. Men tend to dominate math-heavy fields because they get more encouragement than women. The preconception that men are better at math is what actually impairs women’s performance and undermines their interest in math.

The same is true in the world of programming. People who think they are mediocre at math and have no future in coding are only limiting themselves. So, if you want to pursue a career in the tech industry, just go ahead!

Don’t let your fear of math hinder you from reaching your full potential. There are skills that you’ll need more than math. Welcome to the world of programming!

My college buddy and I were recent business graduates and having difficulty getting our careers in gear. Therefore, we decided to start a small accounting firm that consisted of two members. In the beginning, we primarily worked with tax preparation for small businesses and other tax work. It was slow going in the beginning and we knew that the majority of small business owners fail in the first year. Still, we kept working diligently and marketing our business to other small business owners in the local community and online. We quickly discovered that an online presence helped to really promote the business in the community. Several organizations contacted us for work and word of mouth helped to drive our business to success.

Successful Start

Smith and Company soon hired several new employees. We were really putting our company out there, really marketing to the community and it was paying off. We were the type of company that always went the extra mile. We were the type of business that worked very diligently to make sure that the client was completely satisfied. We wanted clients to be happy with our service because our honor depended on it, along with making profits and staying afloat in this highly competitive business. We were constantly pitching to our targeted audience and became an integral part of the local small business community.

Reaching Our Goals

We were a company that believed in setting short-range goals and long-term goals. Our short-term goals were to grow our business and double the revenue. Our long-term goals were to expand the business to other areas. For example, working with larger corporations or expanding beyond basic accounting and bookkeeping services. We were really making progress and reaching our goals smoothly with very few problems during those first years. New business clients were rolling in daily, and we were exceeding our quotas. Admittedly, we were on top of the world and thought we were totally in control of our future until the first data breach occurred. The fact is that we never thought about data breaches or managed security.

High-End Security

At this point, it’s kind of frightening to think that our small operation did not even consider the idea that a data breach might occur to our small business. After all, most hackers targeted the large corporations or the Fortune 500 companies. Certainly, those were the companies that were at really high risk. Of course, running a small accounting firm is a challenge and we also protected our client’s personal data. However, we simply did not realize how easy it was for the bad guys to get into our files and steal information. We soon discovered that professional hackers like to target the small business owner because they are more vulnerable and do not have high-end security like most large corporations.

Data Breach Risks To The Small Business

Data breaches are on the rise. Statistics show that small business owners are targeted more often than you might think. Hackers discovered that the small business is more vulnerable to attack because the companies simply do not think that hackers would target a small firm, thus leaving the firm very open to attack. In addition, many small companies like ours do not have software or other tools in place to protect their files. Surprisingly, quite a few small business employees do not realize they’ve even been hacked. Here is the deal. A large corporation might be able to weather a data breach; however, even a small data breach might ruin a small business like ours.

How To Prevent Data Breach In A Small Business

Of course, the first step is to make the employees aware of the possibility of a data breach occurring and ways to recognize that one has occurred. Generally, this requires special employee training that is provided by an IT professional or a cyber-security expert. After the data breach that hit our small business, I would suggest that every business owner take the proper precautions to protect their data by bringing in a specialist to protect sensitive data on their network.

The fact is that even a small breach could destroy a company’s credibility and ruin their business. Certainly, managed security is a growing necessity in this day and age, even for the small business owner.

In the era of tolerance, it may seem that physical appearance doesn’t matter. However, when it comes to success, its importance is higher than you can imagine. It doesn’t matter what your skin color, height or weight is, if you don’t take care of your appearance, you are likely to have a hard time succeeding.

While we live in a highly advanced society, we are still human. The first impression doesn’t have anything to do with how good of a person you are inside. You must look your best in order to appear appealing.

We talked to Liana Khutsurauli, success life coach from New York City to find out how much appearance affects success.

1.    Dressing Right

Dressing for success is not just words, it’s imperative for anyone who wants to achieve something impressive in life. Businesspersons wearing provocative clothing or managers sporting sloppy pants make the wrong impression.

Perhaps in the future society will learn how to evaluate the importance of a person just by looking at his or her face. But today, we look mostly at clothing.

Physiognomy is not a science. When people look at portraits of others dressed in suits, they automatically say that they see businessmen, teachers, managers. When they see sloppy clothes and long messy hair, they automatically identify the person as someone unsuccessful.

Sloppy or provocative outfits make an impression of people who can’t get their act together. After all, if an investor can’t choose the right clothing, how will he choose the right investment opportunities?

2.    Making The First Impression

A first impression often dictates the way the relationship develops. If it’s a business relationship, a bad first impression can endanger it substantially. People who try to proclaim their individuality may do great at some job interviews. However, the majority of them fails.
Even though it may seem terribly unfair to judge a person by the physical appearance, that’s the way the world works today.

You only have one chance to make an excellent first impression in order to improve a business relationship. In fact, you have mere seconds. The majority of people make a judgment in just 7 seconds. During that time, you won’t have a chance to speak and show your wits. All you have is your physical appearance.

3.    Feeling Confident

When you look great, you feel confident. Your self-confidence is one of the most important parts of your image and success. It’s not that easy to feel confident when your appearance is not perfect.

Cosmetic surgeons at LaBelleVie share that the majority of people they see in their clinic opt for the operation in order to boost their self-esteem. After the surgery, many patients report experiencing many positive changes in their life, including becoming more successful.

When your makeup is perfect, your hair is styled, and your clothing is impeccable, you are much more likely to feel confident than anyone with ripped jeans, sloppy stained t-shirt, and long untidy hair.

4.    Being An Example

Whether you are a boss or striving to become one, you have to be an example for others. In order to achieve success, looking impeccable is a must. Many success coaches say that if you want to get a promotion, you have to look like you’ve already gotten the desired position.

Looking good at all times allows you to be ready for success opportunities continuously. You never know when you could meet the right person who might become your key to the successful career.

Final Thoughts

Physical appearance and success go hand in hand. It’s important to make an excellent first impression, feel confident, and always be ready for new opportunities. Only a person who takes care of their appearance can achieve all of the above.

Addiction is a serious problem that has been affecting millions of people around the world for decades. Whatever kind of addiction it is, you can’t just tell a person or even yourself to just get over it. Healing and getting over an addiction is a process and each person experiences it differently. That is why it is important that when going through an addiction, the right treatment is provided to a person. But even the fact of looking for the right treatment center can be quite a challenge.

Here are 5 tips for choosing an addiction treatment center by using the Internet.

1.    Search for the nearest treatment centers in your area.

The Internet is the best place to look for the nearest addiction treatment centers in your area. Considering how easy it is, make sure to utilize the search engines when looking for one.  It would be best to go to a treatment center that is near you or the person that needs the treatment so they can easily go there. It will encourage them to seek treatment rather than keep on putting it off.

2.    Read on some reviews online.

One of the best ways to choosing the best addiction treatment center is by reading on rehab reviews. The best place to look for reviews is online so in order to narrow down your current list of addiction treatment centers, choose the ones that have a good record and standing based on the reviews of their previous clients. Reading on some reviews will also allow you to know how the treatment center do their work and you will be able to see which ones will work better for you.

3.    Ask for recommendations.

You can easily look for recommendations if you look on the Internet. If you have a friend and family that has already gone through an addiction treatment center, then you will be able to find the best one for you or your loved one. Ask some questions so you will know better and be open to communicate with people to be able to get more recommendations.

4.    Utilize social media.

We now live in a world where almost everyone is on social media. And thankfully, people are now talking about addiction. While a lot of people find it hard to open up about it, it’s good to see that social media has made it possible to raise awareness on this matter. For this very reason, look through some people’s comments and perhaps possible recommendation about the addiction treatment centers they have been in.

5.    Join an online forum.

An online forum about your specific addiction can greatly help you in choosing an addiction treatment center. Think of online forums as your support group if you are still not ready to go out in the open. You can read through people’s experiences and opinions and you will also be able to get some important information that you will need in order to find the best treatment center for you.

Any small business owner acknowledges the complexity in the marketplace they are in. Launching and sustaining a small and successful business can seem easy, but it is tougher. This has become even more competitive today because all of them are trying to get access to the market using the internet. There are many businesses out there that have grown their business and increase their sales by using online marketing, and you can do. There is a lot that goes into an online campaign, but having a great strategy is the most important of them all. Trying to start a campaign with a plan will lead to poor or no results at all.

SEO has proved to be one of the most popular forms of online marketing. There are many reasons why more and more people are choosing SEO as a marketing tool. There have been many changes in the world of SEO over the years, and it has become even more important. If you have not started SEO then you are losing a lot of traffic and customers to your competition. You should try to start as soon as possible because it will not start working overnight, you will need to invest time and effort if you want to see great results. The good thing is that all will be worth it.

When getting started in the world of SEO, many businesses make certain mistakes. In order to see great results, you should try avoiding these mistakes. Below are the 5 common easy to avoid SEO mistakes in small business.

1. Too general audience

If you want to succeed in any online promotion campaign, you will need to have a properly defined audience you can focus on. The internet is very big, and it has a general use. If you want to be able to reach the right type of people, you need to define the target audience of your business in a more specific manner. To know who the “ideal customer”, use your imagination, Start by asking yourself these questions;

– is the customer male or female?

– Where do they live?

– What is their education level?

– What is the financial situation?

– What is it that they want or need?

– What is their biggest problem?

You should keep asking the questions till you are able to perfectly picture your ideal customer. Once you have the image in your head, you can then move to the next step of attracting and targeting traffic to the website.

2. Using the wrong keywords

Keywords are the most important part of SEO, and this will always be the case. Keywords are important for the search engines because it enables them to know what the page is about. The search engine will crawl in the site and will get a rough idea.

There are many small businesses out there that have failed in using the right keywords, and they end up ranking for different keywords and phrases that are not going to help them in any way. Ranking for the wrong audience means you have wasted your resources on something that won’t have any impact on your business, and soon it will negatively affect your SEO efforts. This usually happens because they did not take the time to do proper keyword research, which is an important part of any small business SEO campaign.

Proper keyword research will help you in picking the best keywords that are going to have a positive impact on your campaign and business. The best tool to use is a Google Keyword Planner which can be found in Google Adwords. This tool will go a long way in helping you with your keyword research.

3. No mobile optimization

More people are using their phones to access the internet that PCs. Google has stated the importance of mobile optimization because it is one of the factors used in rankings. Small business neglect this at their own peril. Google wants the best user experience, and this is why they favor sites that are able to load properly on mobiles.

Mobile optimization is a must if you are interested in ranking in the search engine results page. There are some small business owners who have no idea on how this is done, but that should not be a problem. There are many tutorials that you can find online that will be able to guide on how to do it. If you are not interested in doing this, you can hire a digital marketing agency to help you out with the entire campaign.

4. Not having high-quality content

Content is king today. There is a good chance you have heard this before. It is true. The content you provide will be the thing differentiating your business from the rest. Content will be key in helping you with positioning the brand in the market and also defining your value proposition.

Quality content can be in the form of blog posts, informational checklist, video tutorials, calculators, interactive quizzes, and much more. The more quality content you are able to create for your target audience, then the more they are going to follow the brand and visit your website.

A common mistake people make when it comes to content is focusing too much on quantity than quality. This is never a good idea. It is far much to have less content that is of quality. Search engines will be able to differentiate high-quality content from poor-quality content.

5. Poor social media presence

Social media has proved to be an effective form of marketing online, but it also helps with SEO. Social media will be part of your SEO strategy because search engines will be able to analyze how people are interacting with the brand on social channels. Having a strong social engagement will go a long way in helping you with your SEO campaign.

Small business can make the best out of their SEO campaigns, provided they are able to avoid these common mistakes. If you are not sure about anything, then consider hiring a digital marketing company experienced in the area of business you are in.

We live in a technological era, and most businesses use online applications to provide specific services to their clients. However, these applications are always susceptible to downtime and can have significant impacts on the user experience. Application performance monitoring involves a set of tools that are used to analyze and check an application’s performance and alert the system administrator of any issues that can affect this. You can find several APM tools today on the internet, and while they vary in reliability, all of them share the same characteristics and perform similar functions. Application performance monitoring is critical to businesses and here are the benefits;

Increased Revenue

The applications used by businesses are supposed to generate some revenue since they facilitate customer transactions. Companies have a set of critical applications that are depended on for revenue generation, and their availability is essential to the business performance. Application performance monitoring ensures that administrators can quickly check on the issues that might affect customers and the way they can use the application, leading to increased revenue for the business. Application downtime for a few minutes means that customers might not be able to buy or transact for this time and they could even look at what your competition has to offer if they need to transact urgently. This way, you will lose revenue, and it could be a lot of it especially if most of your customers rely on this application.

Promotes Business Continuity

In this age, it is no surprise to see most businesses basing their operations on IT systems. Without the assured availability of these services, firms will be faced with frequent downtime that can affect their continuity. Customers expect to access your services all the time, and when they can’t, they could start considering the other options. This way, downtime should not be an option for your business since it can lead to several losses. Not only will you lose money but your reputation will also be tarnished, companies that invest in application performance monitoring notice an enhanced level of business continuity since all their core services will be available to consumers when they need them. They can easily troubleshoot most issues concerned with their IT systems and effect changes to their IT infrastructure that will lead to better services to their consumers. Application performance monitoring gives IT teams an insight that will help them to foresee any potential downtime and act in advance to optimize their operations and promote continuity.

Improves Customer Experience

You can sit on the backend of an IT system and think that everything is working correctly yet there is a small issue about the application that is hindering users from accessing a particular section of the application. Customer experience is a vital thing for any IT system, and these clients are not concerned about what is happening at the back. All they want to see is the application working correctly, and if this makes them happy, they will be loyal. Customers who are derailed by certain features of an application are often disgruntled and end up looking at other firms that offer apps that give them a better experience. Application performance monitoring gives your IT team a clear view of what is going on in the environment. It tells them what they need to do proactively to fix some of the things that might be wrong long before these glitches can have a significant effect on the customer and employee experience.

Reduced Reliance On Experts

IT experts are not cheap and when you contact one to come and check on your systems, be sure to spend some significant amount of money. One peculiar thing about these systems is that they are always having issues and you could find yourself spending a lot of money on these experts. Furthermore, the increased reliance on them is not good since they can work on your systems halfheartedly and leave glitches since they know you won’t have any other option than to call them back again. Having an application performance monitoring system will reduce your dependence on these costly experts. You will save money and have a clear view of the issues affecting your application without having to consult an expert. With the way this software explains the problems, they offer ideas on what things need to be fixed, and even your junior IT personnel can efficiently work on them and restore them to normal operation.

Promotes Innovation

When applications are well managed, IT personnel are not required to deal with so many emergency drills. They can easily predict a potential issue with the system and put in place the needed measures to help solve them. This way, they can collaborate with the other departments and share knowledge in a bid to resolve any imminent issues better. This helps to save time, and your IT team can now focus on developing more innovative solutions for your business that will address the current business challenges and take advantage of any potential opportunities that will foster growth.

Better Google Ranking

Nowadays, Google looks at several technical aspects when ranking websites. One notable one is the site’s speed, and this can be significantly affected by application downtime. If the crawlers see that your website loads fast, it gets a better score as this is understood to be good for the user experience. Furthermore, people will be happy with your website and will visit it regularly, something that will reduce the bounce rates which derail your site’s rankings. If your web application is slow and always down due to various issues, expect it to rank lowly and you will be forced to spend a lot of money to regain your visitors.

Some benefits of application performance monitoring have been mentioned, and it has been seen that it is a valuable part of any business that relies on IT systems. If you do not have an application performance monitoring tool for your systems, look around and find one that will serve you perfectly. This way, you will reduce the instances of having to deal with downtime and disgruntled customers.