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Year: 2017

Date Night Appetite, Because Writing & Eating are Fun

Just over a year ago, Rachael and I decided that we’d like to combine our love of escaping the house sans-children with our love of writing. Being fans of fine food and environments that enable us to focus on each other during rare, precious date nights, we thought it might be fun to share our experiences in Asheville with other couples who might be looking for a great spot to escape to, if only for an hour, or if for a whole evening. Plus, it would be a team effort that would allow us to collaborate on something we both love: writing and geeking out.

Thus, Date Night Appetite was born and officially launched back in September. To date, we’ve reviewed four local spots, but we also have some Instagram and Facebook posts to help share smaller delights that we find between date nights.

Check it out, and help add your ratings to what we have posted. And let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!

Why You Should Bring Video Gaming To Your Phone

A lot of people like to sit down with a gamepad and tell the XBOX to turn on, and others like to hit the switch on their computer and head straight to using the AMD graphics card they had specially installed. There’s a lot that goes into gaming, and video games are quite an art form in the modern area. However, they’re getting more and more untraditional due to their unusual medium.

Video gaming serves a variety of purposes in the modern world. A relatively new innovation, roughly beginning in the 80s, it can act as a distraction, a hobby, or a way to bring the family together, amongst other things. With the year almost out, let’s take a look at why bringing video gaming, a traditional stationary activity, to your phone is a great idea, and what the future of gaming can bring to the mobile table.

Because it’s Accessible

There’s a lot of porting going around when it comes to games nowadays, and anytime a triple A studio releases we await multiple console use with bated breath. However, if it doesn’t release well on PC and the like, we tend to forget all about it. That’s where iOS and Android ports come in!

So your favorite game decided to hit a niche market and release an app that either complements the game they already have or is a straight up mobile version. For example, if you like legacy games, you can even download them to your favorite devices and carry them around with you at all times. Head to places like https://www.finalfantasyxvapp.com/, and then download it and play to your heart’s content! We can’t all afford those portable consoles in the shape of a Nintendo Switch, and you already have plenty of storage laid out in front of you.

In the most physical sense, mobile gaming is one of the easiest interfaces to get on with. If you can’t handle a gamepad, or a keyboard and mouse are a bit difficult to keep up with, having something handheld and available to use with just one set of fingers is incredible. You can also use voice commands because of the inbuilt microphone in all phone models, and accessibility is made more and more common because of these ready features.

Because Mobiles are Gaming Ahead

Sites like https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com have a lot to say about this! The mobile stage can offer a lot. A whole story can be fit into a mobile app, and that only amounts to about $20 when you go to buy it for your device. That’s about half the price you get in the game stores on the ground!

Similarly, the versatility of a mobile game means 3D features can be included in its UI. Your own movement can dictate what an onscreen icon does, and it adds a whole new level of functionality to a gaming experience. On the other hand, minimalist concepts where you only have to use a finger are really brought into their own, as people don’t expect to be able to do much else and thus are not disappointed by a lack of functions.

Creators can show off level design skills and include a great score, and it’s these elements that players pay attention to more than frustration of not being able to bypass a level or remembering everything they have to do.

It Brings People Together

In a survey of over 20 thousand mobile users, across the five player segments, the most cited reason as to why someone played a game was because friends recommended it. This element of interconnectivity cannot be ignored as a result; alongside following the general trends of the web, using personal recommendations is going to find you the most app customers.

If someone likes a game, they’re going to tell people about it, so word of mouth advertising matters more here than anywhere else. So, get your game on someone’s phone to move your idea up and up.

Gamers the world over can share and share alike in the same game in different formats thanks to mobile gaming. The entire globe has mobile phones, and using them to play on is a universal behavior that keeps us occupied and discovering new things. No longer can you focus on just one demographic when you design a game, as everyone you could think of is involved, so pay attention to that if you’re thinking of trying your hand at gaming app development!

Marketing Automation With SendPulse

SendPulse is a popular email service offering a wide range of features. It suits small and medium businesses the best. With the help of this service, you can send email, web push notifications and SMS, or you can use them all together.

Why did I start using SendPulse?

I looked for a service with the lowest prices and the most features available. I noticed SendPulse because they had free pricing plan which could be used by small businesses. Web push notifications are free forever and that is one of the reason that made me choose this service. Having read more about it, I realized that I can use the email sending service for free. They offer 15,000 emails monthly if your mailing list is not more than 2,500 subscribers. So, I started using SendPulse. I applied personalization, segmentation, used ready-made templates and created my own templates with the drag-and-drop editor. After sending every campaign, I monitored its statistics and it helped to optimize my work. A short time afterwards, my target audience grew and I realized that I needed to find ways and methods to automate my business, and I did it.

Why did I upgrade my tariff to a paid one?

When your business grows, you look for ways to automate your work as it is difficult to send personalized, segmented emails with the special offers for every subscriber. Besides, you can’t use email marketing as a tool for your business without triggered and transactional emails. To establish friendly relationships, you should send a welcome-email after the registration. If you’re engaged in e-commerce, you want to segment your subscribers according to their gender, place of residence or preferences. This data can be requested in the welcome email. After a user makes a purchase, a thanks-email is usually sent. You can send special offers and discounts for loyal customers at this time.

For this purpose, SendPulse has recently developed a new functionality – Automation 360.

Automation 360

As written on the site, Automation 360 is a flexible event-based automation flow. To cut a long story short, this functionality allows to perform advanced email marketing strategies in order to maintain relationships with the clients.

This is the interface of new functionality. As you can see, there are 7 elements to work with. With Automation 360, you can create series of messages taking into account different conditions, filters, actions, goals and personal information about your customers. Besides, you can make your communication multichannel by adding web push notifications and SMS to the series.

How do you create an automation?

There are 7 elements to use:

  • Email
  • Web push
  • SMS
  • Filter
  • Condition
  • Action
  • Goal

Let’s take a quick look at each of these elements.

Email

It stands on the 1st place since you will mostly send emails. After dragging it to the working field, specify when it should be sent, create subject-line and template, and attach files if necessary. Then, click “Apply”.

Web push notification

You can send a web push only if a user allowed to receive them from your website. Web push is a good chance to raise conversions or to inform customers about sales, new arrivals, etc. If a user didn’t open your previous email, send them a web push notification. They are supported almost by all browsers and are convenient to get to know about important things.

SMS

SMS is another good way of informing people. You can use them to tell your customers about their shipping status, for example. Be sure that you have the phone numbers of all the subscribers.

Filter

Filter allows to send personalized and segmented emails according to conditions set. To use it, create and add variable, set condition and its value.
For example, filter your emails by gender. Thus, women and men will get only relevant content. Or, you have special offer for subscribers from different countries, you can also specify it.

Condition

Condition shows what happens next after the predefined action, the following actions depend on the condition. You react to these actions by sending emails, for example. It is shown below.

Action

Action is what happens after following the condition or not. For example, if a subscriber didn’t open your email or didn’t follow the link, you can copy them to another mailing list to send a web push notification or a reactivation campaign.

Goal

Goal is the place where your series can stop. Set the goal to track the effectiveness of your work. You can either stop the series after reaching it or continue it. For example, if your goal is a purchase, you can send a thanks-email after it.

Automation 360 allows to track the conversions of the whole flow and of particular emails.

It is great functionality that will surely bring benefits to your business. SendPulse constantly develops new features to make email marketing easier and much more pleasant.

 

Tech Trends That Could Transform The Health World Next Year

It doesn’t take a genius to notice all the different ways that technology has changed our lives for the better. Thanks to the internet and social media apps, we are now just a click of a mouse button or touchpad away from our nearest and dearest, even if they live on the other side of the world. Sharing information and data has also never been easier and many people and companies are benefiting from secure shared storage platforms such as the cloud. But these aren’t the only ways our lives have benefited from tech. Thanks to various forms of business intelligence, the business world is changing too.

The health world has also been revolutionized by the introductions of some tech developments, including those using machine intelligence. And it looks like many of these tech developments are going to continue to change and advance the various treatments, medicines, and consultations that we receive. In fact, 2018 is set to be the biggest year for tech influences in the world of health and medicine. Here are some of the big ones that many experts are forecasting.

No More Paperwork

For anyone who has ever been seen by a doctor, there can be one obvious issue with the consultation. The doctor has to do two things at once: try and figure out what is wrong with their patient and also keep all documentation and paperwork up to work with all the symptoms and information given by the patient. This can be extremely difficult for the doctor to keep up with and trying to do both jobs at once can be inefficient. However, they simply don’t have the time to keep up with each individual’s paperwork outside of their allocated appointment time. But now it looks like tech is going to iron out all of these issues. Thanks to devices like Google Glass, doctors can use AI software to transcribe what their patient is saying to them. These smart glasses can transcribe what the patient says as they speak. So then the doctor only has to worry about figuring out what is wrong with them.

Genome Sequencing

For years now, doctors and health experts have been forecast that we will soon be able to predict the different diseases and health conditions that some people will be predisposed to developing throughout their life. But we are getting ever closer to being able to successfully predict people’s future illnesses by taking a look at their genome sequencing. And that means treatments for illnesses like cancer can be administered at a very early stage of the disease. There are many advancements in cancer treatment, and you can read about it all online. Hopefully, these advancements when coupled with genome sequencing can bring about the end of the disease for good.

More Remote Monitoring

Thanks to the introduction of many new tablet devices, doctors and healthcare professionals are now able to offer remote monitoring to many of their patients. If you have yet to experience this so far from your medical team, you might not have that long to wait anymore as it is expected to be rolled out on a much larger scale in 2018. Patients will be able to monitor their own health in the comfort of their own home, and this will drastically cut down the number of people who need to stay in hospitals. That will, therefore, cut down the number of hospitals that struggle to find beds for those patients who need them most. Not only that, though, but patients’ doctors will be able to also follow the data that they log at home and can intervene whenever they see fit. As well as tracking symptoms and treatments at home, patients will also be able to take advantages of remote consultations. That means that they will be able to use online platforms like Skype, FaceTime and other medical-focused video call software to talk to their doctors and healthcare givers. There will no longer be any need for them to travel while they are unwell just to see their doctor for a checkup.

Non-Traditional Insurers

Before now, there were a select few insurance companies which you could take out your health insurance policy with. These included big-name firms like AXA Strategy Ventures. But now, the market is opening up and a lot more non-traditional insurance companies are coming onto the market. This is highly beneficial to the public as it means they have a wider choice of companies to choose from, which means that companies are now being forced to rethink their pricing strategies and come up with much more competitive prices for their various plans. Lots of these new insurers have come up with creative ways to finance their startup capital. For instance, many have used crowd-funding methods to raise cash from the public. So, it goes to show that the health industry isn’t all about making a quick buck anymore. If an entrepreneur is passionate about creating a company to provide insurance for people with specific disabilities or health conditions, then their passion and dedication are enough to get their company up and running!

Big Health Data

Big data” has been something of a buzzword for the past couple of years now. And it is finally moving into the world of health and helping to transform it for doctor and patients. Thanks to all this data that many doctor’s surgeries and health companies now have stored on their systems, they have a pool of data and information that they can dip into to help inform their decisions, treatments, and consultations. This can be a big time saver for many doctors and nurses. They no longer have to do much research, as they have all the data they need right at their fingertips.

As you can see, the world of health is set to be transformed by so many different technological advancements and developments over the next year. And it doesn’t look like it will stop there. Many experts are predicting that the next decade should see some pretty major changes afoot. Who knows where we will end up in the end?!

Keep Up The Content: A Blogger’s Guide To Success

Blogging and recording your life online is becoming more and more popular. Previously part of twenty-something’s lives; blogging has now been taken up by people of all ages, wanting to write about their interests, expertise, and everyday experiences. There is an audience online for every blogger; it’s just about letting them know that you’re there and growing a steady following of subscribers, followers, and readers. In the last decade; blogging has become a career option for some and presented a plethora of work and lifestyle opportunities from brands and businesses.

Therefore, if you’re starting out on your internet journey, or feel that you’ve hit a slump; it’s time to take action and give your blog the boost it deserves. If you’re passionate about what you’re saying; there’ll be plenty of people who are enthusiastic to read it. However, with so many other internet-based writers out there; it can be easy to get lost and forgotten in the crowd, so keeping up a great level of content is key to your future success. The following are some tips, ideas, and inspiration for those who want to give their blogging life a kickstart or a reboot so that they can continue doing what they love and ensure it’s reaching the right audience.

Give Yourself The Right Tools

When inspiration hits you; you need to be able to record it and get it down as soon as possible for an authentic read. Therefore, it’s always worth investing in the equipment and tools that will help ensure that you can be creating and uploading content wherever you are. If your blog and social media benefit from your photography, and your readers expect a certain style to your pictures; you need to provide them with images on a regular basis.

Make your life easier and look into desktop apps that will allow you to upload to Instagram from Mac computers; rather than taking up valuable time editing pictures and getting them through to your iPhone. It’s not just the big pieces of equipment like your Mac, tablet, and camera that make an impact to your blogging life; little touches like the right apps and software can free your time and help you push forward with your online presence.

Everywhere’s An Office

Part of having an iPhone, iPad, and laptop is the freedom and portability aspect of them; they give you the chance to create content and start blogging in any situation and get it up for your readers and followers instantly. Therefore, once you’ve equipped yourself with the tech, software, and apps; you need to make an effort to utilise them in a variety of situations. Take yourself out to a coffee shop, library, or any public place where you can clear your head and gain inspiration. Don’t sit in bed or a home office all day every day; this will limit your creativity as a content creator, and your blogging will become repetitive. Take your tech on holiday and record the trip with photos, notes, and experiences; the sooner and more often you can get your words and images out there, the more real they’ll be. People will appreciate your authenticity, so keep up the hard work; even on a bad day!

Technology Is Changing The World

Some would even say technology is taking over the world. When you sit and think about it, it truly is. Pretty much everything we do involves technology. It’s hard to escape it, yet we can’t live without it. But if technology good? Yes mostly, technology is the reason we’re finding cures to diseases, saving the planet, discovering new planets etc. It seems that in the last 50 years the amount of technology that is being produced has skyrocketed. The quality is improving hugely as well. So what’s happening all around us that means technology is changing the world? We may not even consider them to be huge advances, but in the grand scheme of things, they’re changing the world. Read on to find out more.

Medicine

If you think back to 100 years ago, medicine would have seemed to be in the stone age compared to how it is now. Due to technology, medicine is a completely different world. New treatments have been developed that have saved lives. Let’s start with drug treatments. In the labs, new medicines are being created each day to cure common diseases or illnesses. Within the lab, there are high tech robots and microscopes being used to aid the workers. Without them, we simply wouldn’t have the capabilities to find the cures we need to. They enable us to understand organisms like we never have before. The research being done outside the lab is also fueled by technology. There is a common belief that cures to all things that ail us are in the environment we live in. So there’s people out there discovery and extracting new plants or rocks, from either the sea or land, to try and help find cures. Within hospitals technology has shaped the way we deliver medicine. Without the research conducted, we wouldn’t understand hygiene and the prevention of germ spreading as we do now. Even the machines used to take scanes such as MRI’s have changed people’s lives by detecting cancer earlier than we’ve ever been able to. They’ve also gave us a deeper understanding of how the body works.

Cities

Cities are constantly evolving. If you look at a picture of the city you live in from 50 years ago, and compare it to one from this year, you’ll be shocked. Technology has seen a huge growth in terms of development. An exciting development at the minute is smart cities. Systems are being put in place to ensure cities are better connected. They’re also ensuring the protection of our environment. If there’s one downside to the rise of technology, it’s the effect it is having on our environment. On a daily basis tonnes of Co2 emissions are being pumped into the earth’s atmosphere by the different buildings and automobiles that we’ve created. The effect this is having on the environment is crippling. This is evident through the rapid acceleration of climate change. But smart cities are being designed with the reduction of energy use and pollution levels in mind. But without the cities that have already been built, we wouldn’t be able to lead the lifestyle we do today. Cities are now booming with things to do, and tourists are coming from far and wide to experience them. Without that, we wouldn’t have the revenue we do to keep new projects alive.

Sports

People don’t often associate sports with technology. But it’s at the forefront of creating better athletes. If you’re going professional, you’ll know how much technology is involved. Professional athletes in particular. Take Conor Mcgregor for example. His life has been well documented over the last year, especially in the run up to his big fight with Mayweather. But did anyone notice the technology that was involved to help him train. He was using high altitude equipment to train his body to work under the most stressful conditions. In theory his body should then perform even better at a lower capacity. It’s not just the technology that helps them train that’s incredible. It’s the technology that allows them to actually be an athlete that is. Take amputee’s for example. They are now able to complete in the olympics and other events due to the amazing prosthetics that have been developed. Technology helped create these. They aren’t just normal prosthetics. They’re designed with their desired sport in mind to give optimum range of movement and performance. There has been a spike in the quality of this equipment in the last 10 years, and as we move through this technological age, it should only improve.