We take pride in announcing that GoodWorkLabs recently partnered with PubNub as an Integration Partner. This partnership will enable GoodWorkLabs to deliver innovative high performing real-time web, mobile, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

This partnership will further strengthen our expertise in delivering real-time applications that perform reliably & securely on a global scale.

The Integration Partner Program by PubNub is a global partner program, which enables system integrators and IT consultants to best leverage the PubNub Platform in products and solutions, and ultimately to help grow their business.

With PubNub platform we can solve the 3 key challenges of building & scaling real-time apps:

• Connect: Establishing secure & reliable connections to and between any device, anywhere
• Deliver: Using real-time messaging through the PubNub data stream network (DSN)
• Control: Delivering real-time application control

In today’s fast-moving digital environment, PubNub DSN delivers real-time messaging APIs for mobile, web, IoT, desktops and servers while enabling bidirectional low latency messaging to anywhere on the globe.

Through PubNub, GoodWorkLabs brings to you the best experience of real-time global messaging, consumer IoT, and live community infrastructure. Please reach out to us for any queries.

Tips to improve Automation Testing

As people of the digital age, you realize that the devices you use for everyday functions, including your business run on software. If you are one of those with good enough technical awareness, automation testing will not be a new term for you. However, if you have not heard of it, we will help you out!

Automation testing is a process where an application implements the entire life cycle of software in very less time, providing the testing software with a lot of effectiveness and efficiency.

In this automatic technique, a tester writes a script on its own and then takes the help of appropriate software to test the software. The main intention behind automation testing is to boost the test efficiency and develop the value of software.

Automation testing helps in uncovering those parts of a code which are not getting tested. A low automation code coverage surely has an impact on the product quality, putting irrelevant pressure on testers to manually check it.

There are a lot of hurdles for Quality Analysts that result in low automation coverage-

• Long-running projects also come with a long list of deliverables which leads to heavy pressure. In a bid to fulfill the delivery deadlines, the automation tests get avoided.
• A legacy app which is not suitable for unit testing. It is an issue where the entire logic of the app is in the database queries as it stacks some tests but with very few unit tests.

7 ways to improve Automation Testing

Here are seven tips which will help you out with automation testing and improve the automation coverage:

1. Capture tests at the moment of story creation

You can include your test cases in story cards, along with the acceptance criteria highlighted by Business Analysts. It motivates developers to adapt to a tester’s perspective, helping them understand what tests should go in which layer of the test pyramid. If the testers write test cases in advance, they can plan out easily for story testing.

2. Estimation of Automation Testing efforts

Make a point to include Quality Analysts in estimation sessions and let them be accountable enough to explain the roadblocks like additional data setup requirements or even a change in approach to testing. For instance, a change in code might look small but can have a pretty massive impact on the entire application. It will require more tests which means a 1 pointer story might not be so.

3. Check and run tests in Devbox

Quality Analysts can be instructed to check automation tests which constitute a part of the story, on DevBox. It helps to ensure that all the functionalities are in working order and no existing tests have broken. It is a phase where testers and developers discuss if the written tests are in the appropriate layers of the test pyramid and the data setup is right.

4. Attention to Gits Commits has a dual advantage 

If quality analysts keep an attentive eye on the Github commits of all features and sub-features which have been picked up for testing, a better scenario of API and pending tests can be created. It helps the testers make a note of all impact areas.

For example, if a change of code at a particular area impacts a functionality, automated tests for the affected functionality can be written.

Comparison of the release branch with the master branch is advantageous when automation test coverage inclines a little negatively with the release along with a large manual regression phase. Such a situation does not let the efforts of testers go in vain on the unaffected areas but stays focused on the functionalities affected.

5. Introduction of code coverage tools 

Publishing the code coverage reports of test suites for the full team will put a lot more emphasis on writing tests for automation. Also, if the tool becomes a part of the build pipeline, the pipeline can be failed on a drop which goes below a pre-decided threshold.

For example, an existing coverage of code can be 45% while the benchmark is at 40%. If the development of a new story gets concluded without any tests, the coverage can then come down to 35%, failing the build as it could not meet the criteria. It is a practice which is helpful to all the stakeholders be responsible for automation on equal terms.

Code covering metrics can also be helpful for teams to identify automated areas and restrict the use of manual regression cycles, thus bringing a stop to manual testing.

6. Make an automation backlog board

Once a coverage report is all set, it is an excellent option to analyze functionalities which correspond to a code. The next step is to create test cards for these functionalities. Getting an automation backlog board ready in the project management tool with test cards lends visibility to the work which is to be completed and ensure product quality.

The backlog will require attention and time for improvements on code coverage.

7. Automation of Backlogs

The moment an automation backlog is ready, these operations can begin:

Quality Analysts and Business Analysts can examine and prioritize on the backlog cards and to automate per iteration and minimize the backlog. Try to include Quality Analysts when it comes to the writing of automation tests, which can be between the iterations or at the time of regression.

Allot the functionalities among the Quality Analysts to inculcate a feeling of ownership and responsibility for closing backlogged cards. Keeping track of ROI in terms of time saved can prove to be an essential record to seek approvals to clear an existing backlog.

Conclusion

Thus, making sure that a developed product is of high quality is a collective priority of a project team. It is important that the entire team has a good understanding of the test pyramid so that the right kind of tests slot into the correct layers of the test pyramid.

All the ways mentioned above if brought at the correct time will help in easing the automation backlog in a project. Quality Analysts can not only a dream but also get to their goal of great automation code coverage.

If you have any queries and are looking for help with automation testing, then let us help you. Contact us here and we will get back to you shortly.

Big Data for Customer Success

If you have stumbled upon this article it means that you are curious about Big Data and its credibility into businesses. Well, the good thing is you hit the right blog post.

Technology is continuously changing how customers get in touch with brands. The customers today demand an experience which is nothing short of a great one. With the help of the internet, phones and even emails- people today are more informed than ever in the digital age.

It is more convenient than ever to quickly research a company and the products that are on offer by browsing and social media. It is also important to note that bad customer experiences spread more quickly to tarnish the image of a brand. A negative image also makes it difficult for companies to compete in this cluttered environment.

Customers are a more significant force than ever in determining the success of any business. Most executives agree that companies that succeed in delivering a great customer experience are ahead as they have a competitive advantage.

Big Data for Customer Experience

Big Data is the key to ensure a great customer experience for most of the companies. The impact you can have on your customers by being accurate about their behaviors across many touch points is unimaginable. To get to this point, however, a lot of understanding of past, present and future trends is required in the context of consumer behavior, which in turn improves their experience.

Companies have access to a lot of internal and external data of customers. But it has been difficult to interpret the quality of such data. The speed at which this data accumulates through social media, web, and sensors often beats the rate by which businesses absorb it for their operations by data intelligence operations.

Big Data analytics provides a way where insights can be used across the customer experience life cycle to assist businesses in a better understanding of customer segmentation, profitability and the lifetime value of customer experience.

The feature to collect and analyze a massive amount of structured and unstructured data by many sources gives a better look in the behavior and needs of customers. Even specific insights tend to be more powerful like the “next likely purchase” or “next best action” for fields of marketing and customer support respectively.

A lot of companies are closer than ever in getting a full understanding of their customers, which is aided by experimentation which is no longer just stuck in theory. Such companies are seeking to use new analytical tools and methods for testing and enhancing the customer experience in every aspect of an organization.

The use of Big Data to customize customer offers has a direct impact on converting new and existing customers. Tailoring content which offers an insight to customer behavior, profile and their preferences can mostly help marketing teams of companies lead the way for customer experience and boost sales.

Know more, Sell more.

As mentioned above, developing a comprehensive view of the customer involves getting as many interactions as possible from a company’s primary system such as systems that support sales, marketing, social media, and others. The next step is to build efficient analytical models to find out relationships hidden within the data.

Once marketers combine traditional database modeling methods with unstructured data, they will get a better understanding of a customer’s intentions. Bringing them together though is a challenge.

Through an examination of both types of data in a non-relational environment, forming and testing hypotheses becomes easier for the companies. It results in newer insights which could have been easily missed. The approach brings adjustments to present processes to get better results.

A common way to integrate unstructured and structured data to make it more accessible for analysis is to merge an existing data warehouse with a platform like Hadoop. The platform supports a relational database as it can store and process a massive amount of non-relational data. It helps companies to create active data archives which make both the structured and unstructured data much more accessible and valuable for a company. In this way, companies can look for new insights and get a competitive advantage.

With more accessible data, teams can take the help of a solution like Oracle Big Data which is powered by Xeon processors to produce sophisticated statistical models that lead a more streamlined segmentation and targeting based on real interests, activities, and behaviors.

Once the insights get captured, it is also imperative to organize them on dashboards which help with the decision making. Oracle Business Intelligence Analytic applications consist of more than 80 industrial segments and more than 800 metrics to assist in fast and regular business intelligence reporting as well as in creating dashboards.

To boost the greater adoption of big data, companies are also looking at applications that feature technology where the database is present inside the memory of the applications itself. They enable quick Google-like searches and make it very easy to understand Big Data by heat map views of customer activity on mobile devices.

Conclusion

Companies and businesses are looking for new ways to enhance customer experience and take in maximum benefits from every single interaction. It is also understandable that getting hold of this value needs better insight and better decision-making as well. Oracle gives many flexible analytical tools which help data scientists use their expertise to make more critically important decisions.

The solutions, both relational and non-relational assist companies derive maximum value from the quickly changing sources of customer data. Companies not only gain more insights from data through such solutions but also drive intelligence at a good pace at the point of impact. To ensure success, companies need to either eliminate or compress the time to a great extent which is lapsed from the data acquisition to the analysis of actions based on these insights.

Thus, Big Data is the edge your business needs to succeed. Let us assist you with customized solutions for your business.

Drop your details here and we will get back to you shortly.

We are super happy to announce that GoodWorkLabs is now a registered Confluent Partner. This partnership with Confluent will enable us to deliver high-quality Apache Kafka and other Confluent Platform projects to our Fortune 500, SME and startup customers across the globe.

We have already proved our mettle in Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning technologies by working with some of the biggest global brands. This partnership will further strengthen our expertise in delivering Apache Kafka related technology solutions by working hand-in-hand with Confluent!

With the confluent platform, we can help businesses harness the power of rapidly changing data and build a new-generation technology architecture based on Apache Kafka, the only event streaming platform that enables enterprises to extract the maximum value of data.

In this digital age of events, it is important that your data systems communicate with each other in the right way!

With an event streaming platform such as Apache Kafka, any organization can capture data into streams of real-time events. Businesses across various industries such as retail, logistics, manufacturing, financial services, technology, and media will be able to respond in real-time to every customer event, transaction, user experience, and market movement whether on-premises or in the cloud.

GoodWorkLabs brings to you its expertise in Apache Kafka through the confluent platform to ensure your data systems and infrastructure communicate the right way! Reach out to us for Apache Kafka requirements.

Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence in Farming

Many of them do not realize it, but data has been an integral part of the lives of farmers since generations. From the general market information to climatic patterns, data plays an important role to take note of the planting cycle, watering as well as treatment plans.

Farmers have adopted the latest technologies for their farming practices, which has only increased the efficiency of getting their work completed. What is not to be missed here is the fact that internet and broadband have created a significant division in the digital domain.

A large number of farmers are yet to get “connected” and leverage the benefits of big data revolution which is a crucial factor driving businesses across the globe. With increasing internet connectivity and data intelligence derived from AI algorithms, devices related to the Internet of Things (IoT) can figure out and react to the environment around it.

With a rapidly increasing population, it is evident that crop yields also will have to be boosted to a large extent for meeting the growing demand. This demand needs to be achieved amidst the challenges of declining water levels, shrinking lands, and damage to the environment. 

Today with the assistance of Internet-connected sensors and the progress in Computer Vision and AI,  it has become easier than ever to figure out how a particular area of land is behaving. Land behavior is an essential element to further understand the methods to optimize the yield and also minimize the use of resources like water and fertilizers.

It will be helpful to eliminate any guesses from the overall scheme of farming operations.

Solving Connectivity Issues 

TV broadcasting is something which is still not available to a vast number of rural regions. A considerable amount of stations still display the familiar white, black and grey static in the name of transmission. Known as the TV white spaces, these can be used for data transmission through wireless networking. It can work as a feasible alternative to Wi-Fi in such areas.

The white space devices can help to find out those channels which are not used for a particular geographical location. This information helps to transmit signals resembling Wi-Fi on such channels so that there is no interference on the other channels’ transmissions. Despite a low number of channels in rural areas, a lot of data can easily be carried through without trouble.

Microsoft was the first in developing a TV white space radio for enabling connectivity that is as smooth as a Wi-Fi. The technology has also proved its mettle in connecting high schools, hospitals, farms in the US and even the newly emerging economies of India and Africa.

Precise Agriculture with Data – An Aerial Approach 

There is a solution which can benefit the small farmers for analyzing and monitoring soil activity and required microclimates as well. It will help them to avoid investing money into expensive pieces of equipment.

The entire project uses an aerial approach from the ground, taking in essential data from cost-friendly sensors, satellites, and drones and then puts the algorithms of vision and machine learning to design a digital heat map. The heat map provides the farmers with an excellent solution regarding the steps they need to take on soil moisture levels, microclimates and temperature.

Ground sensors have enjoyed their existence since almost a decade within the agricultural community. These sensors are powerful for sure, but they also come with huge price tags. This is where the need to use fewer sensors but soak in more information about a farm’s behavior rose. Drones and cloud technology that use capabilities of Artificial Intelligence like deep learning, as well as other machine learning techniques, offer an efficient solution to it.

Edge computing is the term which facilitates data processing. It happens in close proximity to a device with the motive of eliminating lethargy and boosting the ability to switch over to action from insights quickly. In such scenarios, the camera or drone is essentially an intelligent edge device.

The importance of acting quickly on the resulting images for a farmer cannot be emphasized enough in mere words. There are specific IoT systems that help in efficient data collection in agriculture. We can then use AI and Machine Learning techniques for converting this data into insights which leads to a precise farming process.

The next generation of Digital Farming 

The first aim is to focus on empowering farmers with cost-friendly and affordable digital agriculture techniques for eliminating confusion and guesswork from their daily lives. The next focus should be on increasing the yield for feeding the world. To make this happen, there is a need for scaling the opportunity of connectivity from channel regulators adopting TV white spaces globally.

To make a significant impact on digital farming, a lot more needs to be done. With local governments subsidizing agricultural equipment, the latest and affordable technologies for precision agriculture should also be brought into relevance and supported so that they can be used widely.

There is also an expanding gap between resources and education in emerging markets. A lot of farmers don’t have access to phones, education, and training for interpreting the available data. Advisories need to be created which can help these farmers to not only understand the information but also recommend the measures that need to be taken for better yields.

It is safe to say that the future of farming relies on solving the data problem with connectivity and resources for collecting and interpreting the data. Collective steps need to be taken for tackling the urgency in which there is a need to connect the rural areas and work with governments and technology companies for pulling costs of data collection equipment and software.

There is also the need to provide extensive and advanced education which revolves around utilizing these farming measures globally.

Internet of Things (IoT) Trends – The changing landscape

As you know very well, for a long time now, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been a prevalent medium for transferring data to and from cloud-connected sensors and the software which helps enterprises in performing analytics on the mentioned data. Expect that prices of IoT sensors will see a decline in 2019, empowering more companies to use them and get insights in sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and many others.

There is also a constantly nagging issue which is related not to the technology, but rather concerns the name of it. Many people feel that the term is fundamental and generic, leading to confusion as to what IoT means. It also can be perceived that terms like ‘connected product’ or ‘connected operations’ will be used frequently. Specific and descriptive terms like ‘cold chain monitoring’ and ‘predictive maintenance’ too will be used extensively.

While deciding on a new name is something which will become more evident with time, IoT technology is witnessing development at a great pace, and most of the people agree that it will keep growing all through the year of 2019 as well.

Here are 7 IoT trends which you need to look out for in 2019:

1) Mobile device management will shield IoT from Ransomware 

Proper security is a critical shortcoming of IoT. The issue gathered more traction when 2018 saw a potent ransomware attack which mostly affected ticket payments and also water services in the city of Atlanta.

Experts in the field believe that more such ransomware attacks have the potential to hit smart city projects. Governments will require more investment in their security for taking care of such threats. Such kinds of ransomware attacks are significant threats to amenities like bright lights, public transport, and traffic controls as well.

Solutions of mobile device management like Samsung Knox, VMware AirWatch and SOTI MobiControl can prove decisive in avoiding attacks at the end of IoT devices.

2) IoT will be enabling smart cities 

There are many cities which are focusing on developing IoT services as a part of smart city projects. The town of Cary in South Carolina utilizes IoT data for connecting the traffic lights with their CRM platform for initiating alerts if the lights get faulty. San Diego in California uses electronic street meters and intelligent lighting as well.

With such a considerable increase in the number of smart city initiatives, the further introduction of the 5G network is expected to give a significant boost for bright city facilities like parking meters and derive less battery power from such IoT devices.

3) Food will be safer with IoT 

IoT will also be helpful to provide insights for the improvement of food safety. Smart industrial meters and a considerable number of sensors enabled with the Internet of Things connectivity assist food companies to monitor the temperature and humidity in cold storage facilities.

Such implementations are only expected to increase in 2019. Some companies help in efficiently using energy management in the different setting of food storage. They can handle heat maps, alerts and reports to monitor and analyze data on the environment and temperature in food storage units to make sure of excellent standards of food safety.

4) More IoT data will sell and be in demand

The year of 2019 will witness companies selling more IoT data through the practice known as infonomics. Soon, this procedure of selling data will become an essential part of many IoT enabled systems.

Companies that manufacture appliances will not only sell data as a means of extra revenue but will also help to prove that their products are great. This will be made possible with the help of IoT network management data and predictive maintenance as well.

As an example, data from smart water sensors that will be able to detect problems like leaks. This data, in turn, is sold to producers and service companies for their sales and digital marketing campaigns.

5) More IoT in CRM functions

Data from IoT devices will be used more prominently to automate customer service and sales efforts by customer relationship management software. Routine scenes will witness an IoT device providing information to companies when it feels like customers are facing some problem. It can work not only for appliance products but also generic utilities like cable services.

The IoT data can then be entered into the CRM software to be used in sales discussions after some time.

6) Improvement in Workforce Management 

Beacons are devices which have been around since a pretty long time for helping companies convey targeted messages on the smartphones of customers. With falling costs of these devices; however, they can prove to be useful in workforce management as well. The beacons can also be of help for employee monitoring, and the data can also be connected to various performance management software too. 2019 will witness the use of beacons on a larger scale as they have become more economical with prices expected to fall further shortly.  

7) IoT Tech will help to operate smart stores 

Market stores are getting smarter with every passing day. This has been made possible with radio frequency identification tags which provide a lot of useful insights on the product inventory at a particular store. The use of smart lighting can help stores figure out the time where specific customers keep looking around at the products on display.

This data can be analyzed from store video footages and also foot traffic monitoring software with Wi-Fi connectivity, further paving the way for retailers to make changes in their amount of merchandise or store layouts as well.

Conclusion

Just in a few years, IoT has made an enormous impact on the everyday lives of people. The further coming of 5G is sure to alter IoT space in the times to come. From the management of entire cities to the transformation of industries, IoT is trusted and expected to deliver industry altering outcomes in the future.

For any assistance with IoT, we have a great team of IoT experts with us. We will help you assess your requirements and build a suiting IoT solution for it. For more information, contact us here.

Benefits of outsourcing R&D for the Internet of Things

Let’s take a moment to recognize the importance of the R&D department in an organization and how they contribute greatly to the growth of the company by bringing innovations to the table.

Though R&D contributes greatly to organizational growth, it is agreeable that the apparatus that this department requires might be an unaffordable luxury for many businesses.

Also, with this issue identified, shift your focus to the fact that 21% of organizations are already ahead in the run of incorporating the IoT projects in their business while 28% are planning to succeed them in next year, as per a study by Red Hat.

In this race of incorporating IoT in the existing businesses, it will be difficult for companies to acquire appropriate in-house talents who can help them shape their dreams.

There is a single solution for both the aforementioned issues ‘Outsource the R&D for your IoT projects.’

To entail the flexibility of scaling up and down quickly, companies can choose which elements to outsource for an IoT project. In this blog post, we have highlighted the major benefits of outsourcing R&D for IoT projects.

1) Expertise and New Avenues for Innovation

It is a misconception that companies outsource R&D projects because it is economical. Companies rather prefer to outsource R&D projects to leverage the expertise of R&D vendors. It is a ready advantage by simply outsourcing and having the best engineers and marketing specialists to collaborate and work on your IoT projects. With their know-how of collecting and combining data, you will be able to bring order out of chaos at a very early stage. They will specifically work around the identified needs of your customers and gather data which is relevant for your IoT project.

It is a great opportunity to have conditioned data scientists to work on your projects at a relatively lower cost than an in-house team. When you outsource IoT project, you can get access to experts, better equipment, and innovative ideas which are otherwise out of your reach. The major achievement is pitched in creative ideas from rather a wide and diverse pool of talent.

2) Faster Lane to Market for IoT Projects

If you have worked on IoT projects before you would be well aware that it takes a lot of time to test your ideas through Proof of Concept (POC) or a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) before finally proceeding towards IoT development. There is one possible way to minimize the efforts and create a faster lane to the market: outsourcing R&D for IoT projects.

We live in a dynamic world where the window of opportunities open for a very short span of time. R&D vendors understand the time constraints involved and allow you a chance to build POC for testing the relevance of your IoT solution to the customers’ needs. This option enables you to analyze, test, and even reject the concept without much investment at your end.

The other option is building an MVP. R&D vendors can assist with that as well. They will build an MVP with the minimum features to cater to the basic requirements and showcase functionality. Also, these MVPs, if approved, can form a solid base for your future IoT project development.

3) Economical Option

Having an in-house R&D lab is a very experience affair, you will know if you own one. There are several overhead expenses involved apart from administrative costs and equipment costs. These overhead expenses majorly involve training costs of R&D engineers to suit their services to your organizational needs. These expenses can be mitigated by hiring R&D professionals and outsourcing the IoT projects to them.

Not only is this option less expensive but also allows you to spend less time and efforts in this area. The market for R&D services is quite developed and is open to all. They have entire departments dedicated to all the emerging technologies that you wish to try your hands on like IoT solutions, robotics, deep learning, and chatbots.

4) Managing Risks

As per the R&D magazine, 84% of outsourcing in the US is done to other US-based manufacturing companies, and in Asian and Europe also the trend of outsourcing is increasing.  Sustaining an in-house team is risky and there might be a lack of experience in the desired field.

GoodWorkLabs can help you conduct R&D services from its offices located in San Francisco and New York. We can help you mitigate these risks and get maximum output for limited and fixed investment. With an experienced team of R&D engineers, we know exactly how the testing of an IoT device should be carried out. The added benefit of assigning the R&D of your IoT project to us is that we can quickly scale up and adapt to the recent updates while pacing up with real-time data.

To Conclude…

Just like the other prevailing technologies, IoT solutions are required to be floated through a tough tunnel of research and development before launching them in the market. A simple loophole can cost you a fortune, hence it’s better to let professionals do the R&D for you.

Being professional IT partners for several organizations, we at GoodWorkLabs can bring value to your IoT project by keeping an eye for innovations and experimenting with alternative solutions. We help you optimize costs while cutting on the overheads of an entire department. Also, with a fast lane to market, you can minimize risks and limit your efforts. Step into the world of optimization with us. For more details, drop your contact details and we’ll have our experts get in touch with you  

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, GoodWorkLabs founder and MD, Sonia Sharma addressed a highly energetic and motivated audience at Affine Analytics.

Sonia Sharma is a well-known tech entrepreneur and under her able leadership, GoodWorkLabs has grown 500% year-on-year. She has always been a true inspiration for all women and in this exclusive event at Affine Analytics, Sonia shared some thought-provoking advice on how companies need to create a gender-balanced workforce that fosters strength, innovation, and creativity. That is the key to business growth in today’s competitive globalized economy.

She also shares how it is important to have more women in leadership roles who can act as mentors to young aspiring women in the workforce. It was indeed a highly engaging and motivational session.

Here are some pictures from the event.

Angular JS Development

It is a unanimously agreed notion that businesses today have become more digital to facilitate growth. Everybody wants to have fun with a chunk of revenue that gets generated due to a digital presence and wants to be on the Internet. With a massive number of websites already on the web, every passing day only brings additional websites online.

With such intense competition, the need to have user-friendly and interactive web applications is becoming very crucial for driving the success of businesses. Angular JS served as the perfect framework to lead the industry for producing scalable solutions following the needs of people.

Angular JS is known as an open source Javascript framework which first came into development in the year 2009 by Google’s Misko Hevery, who was a developer. The structure based on CSS, HTML, and JS with the motive of making front-end development easier.

Angular JS web applications have garnered such a massive following that more than an estimated 8400 websites are taking the assistance of this framework. Some of these companies include Upwork, PayPal, and Netflix too.

You may also want to read: A beginners guide to Angular JS

9 Reasons why Angular JS is the most popular for development 

There are many reasons why Angular Js technology has become so popular among people-

1) Easy to use

Angular Js has many features that make it pretty easy for web application development professionals to design websites with bare minimum coding. The requirement to write setters and getters to different data models gets eliminated. Less coding helps to save a lot of time and effort.

2) Model view controller architecture 

There are a lot of frameworks in the market for developing mobile applications. None of them, however, divides these apps to the MVC architecture other than Angular Js. It makes careful use of this facility and Angular JS also comes with a lot of potentials to combine application code. A lot of time is spared in the development stage and also decreases the time an app takes for entering the market.

3) Client-side compatibility 

The operations of Angular Js are on the client side. The client-side compatibility makes the app easy to use for both, mobile as well as website browsers. The framework is also very versatile, allowing you to develop the front end of any mobile application without making modifications to the back end.

4) Dual Data Binding 

Double data binding is one of the most amazing features of Angular Js. It means that any change which takes place in the application has a direct impact on the user interface. The same applies from the other end as well. With this framework, user actions and module changes take place together.

5) Modular Advantage 

This is another excellent feature that is offered by Angular Js. Developers get to create some modules in the context of a single application. As the modules are dependent on one another, they can also be combined to run an entire application. Angular Js understands the need to create a new module automatically so that it can then be combined with the other already developed modules of applications.

6) Ease of Filters 

The filters offered by Angular Js provide a lot of help when you require to change the data stored in the responsive design of Angular Js. This directory gives the developers a number of filters for lowercase, uppercase, numbers, currency, date and much more. Angular Js also has the option to create an entirely new filter with the registration of a new filter factory.

7) Community Support

Because Google is regarded with the development of Angular Js, there is a large Angular Js community that involves pretty expert Angular Js developers. The expert developers are skilled enough to make improvements with the open source network of Angular Js. They also host conferences of Angular Js while inviting IT companies from the world over to provide them with insights regarding the changes and new developments in the technology.

8) Easy Testing Process 

Testing becomes a straightforward procedure when it is the Angular Js framework. The measurement becomes easy as manipulating different parts of the application placed into Angular Js is a straightforward process. Also, the feature of module separation empowers the developers to load required services and execute automated testing with an enormous load of ease.

9) Single Page Application (SPA) feature

SPA is the abbreviation for Single Page Application. It closely relates to Angular Js. Together, they help to provide the capability of form validation. This means that if a page makes the use of forms, the form controller monitors their state of performance.

Through this data, developers can easily modify the conduct of HTML elements within the user interface. Angular Js comes with built-in checks that assist in the handling of errors. You also get the liberty of creating a set of your own confirmations. You can also display error messages in the entire form or the separate fields too.

Every individual who starts as a beginner wants to have a general idea whether it is easy to create web applications with Angular Js or not. In response to this, if there is a fair bit of command on Js, HTML and CSS then it becomes straightforward to develop a Single Page Application.

However, even people with a lesser understanding of Angular JS can create pure SPA because of the large number of ready solutions for web applications.

Conclusion

The points above will give you a fair idea about why Angular Js is and will be the most popular choice for the development of web applications. When it is working for web development with the help of Javascript framework, nothing even comes close to Angular Js. Even single page applications for online businesses is a breeze with Angular Js. Want your own SPA?

Let us help you build one! Contact us here with your requirements

Blockchain in Education

Does Blockchain have the potential to transform the education regime as known today?

The answer to this is affirmative as smart classrooms are shortly going to become an integral part of the schools across the world. The ed-tech market is rocketing and by 2020 it is expected to reach a high fame figure of whopping $93.76 billion.

The other sectors of industry have been benefitted greatly by the Blockchain technology as the underlying processes of these sectors has improved to a great extent. Now, the education industry is following their footsteps and is entering into the new era bestowed upon by the Blockchain industry.

In this blog post, we have outlined some of the exciting possibilities for Blockchain in the education industry and how they can transform the educational landscape.

1) Payment of tuition fees in Cryptocurrency

Few universities have taken the initiative to accept the tuition fees in cryptocurrency already. The examples of these universities are King’s college in New York, University of Nicosia, and Simon Fraser University in BC.

Few other universities announced that the fees will be accepted in Bitcoin from students enrolled in technology-related courses only, which makes sense given the extra infrastructure required to accept this form of payment. Also, till now, relatively very less number of students have paid for their tuition with Bitcoin which so far is equivalent to nearly 2% of the entire student body as reported by Cumbria Institute for Leadership and Sustainability.

This indicates that average college students are slowly adopting alternative modes of payments.

2) Verification of Graduation Certificates

Verification of diploma requires a lot of time as confirmation of credentials is to be requested to the universities by potential employers and graduate programs. Therefore, few universities are experimenting with pilot programs in which diplomas are available on an app which is built on Blockchain technology. Students can share their credentials with anyone then and the forgery is impossible because of inalterability and security of distributed ledger technology.

MIT is already forward in this area and has taken an initiative to develop an app for the above purpose. The app used by MIT’s media lab for such pilot programs is known as Blockcerts. This app majorly aims to facilitate digital self-sovereignty for individuals’ diploma records.

Currently, this app is in pilot version, in case this app is fully implemented, it will eliminate a whole department of officials for verifying graduates’ certifications. Given the formalities required for this process, this app will be certainly a big leap into the future.

3) Academic Credentials on Distributed Ledger

To further the agenda of securely recording education data on a decentralized platform Sony and IBM have taken initiative to create an educational platform which will serve the purpose. The students’ records that will be put on distributed ledger will include attendance records, transcripts, graduation certificates and more.

This technology is equally beneficial to school students as now better records can be kept for student transcripts, school lunch, transfer records, standardized testing scores, attendance and so on. More and more data can be put on the distributed ledger for cutting down paperwork to a minimum level and making school processes more efficient.

The one main challenge that will hinder the process of record-keeping is that every institute will put the information differently on the distributed ledger. This will hamper the comparability of the records and parse desired information at ease. There arises the necessity of a standardized regulation for record keeping in the education sector. With the advancement in technology, the intervention of regulatory authority will be necessary in the times to come.

4) The Lifelong Learning Passport

Next, in line is  Open Badges created by Open University as tokens of affiliation, authorization, and achievement which present details of an individual’s learning experiences all through his life. This will include graduation certificates, official certification, community involvement, participation in an event and likewise.

The usability of these badges is that these badges can be shared with potential employers for obtaining a suitable job offer and also can be shared across social media.

The year 2026 will look a lot different than the world we live in now. With distributed ledger technology anyone will be able to mentor students with the ledger. Also, by teaching forward what you have learned in school, you can pay back your education loan.

The ledger will track your skills and you will get credits for your learning. Based on your credits, employers can approach you with jobs that perfectly match your level of learning. It doesn’t stop here!

There will be a complete record of income that each skill you learned helped you to generate. Surprised? Now, this is what we called a tech reality.

Concluding

The learning passport initiative mentioned above requires a vast change in the educational domain as of now. Blockchain offers a great way to track untraditional learning outside educational institutions. But, the transition and adoption will take longer than expected.

But,  it has to be accepted that Blockchain has the potential to advance the education sector far into the future. The students who are already learning and using Blockchain right now are the hope as they will pave the way for Blockchain in their respective industries. Then the era of e-portfolios, Blockchain based credential system, and a badge-like system are not far away.

At GoodWorkLabs, we have a team of skilled Blockchain professional that can assist you in expanding in the horizon of education by Blockchain-aided solutions. For more information, drop your details here.