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Digital is dominated by the millennials so I felt it was only right to identify the trends that address our audience. Here are five to watch for in 2016:

News

Digital is dominated by the millennials so I felt it was only right to identify the trends that address our audience. Here are five to watch for in 2016:

News
As if we needed any more of a reason to be on social media, here it is. As much as 63% of users on Twitter and Facebook get their news from there, according to Pew Research. Social networks have already adapted to compete with stand alone news apps like Flipboard or Apple News.

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat have been able to break news in real-time and it’s beginning to shift how we find trending stories, especially for millennials.

Twitter Moments allows readers to see a feed of trending news and live events as they happen. As a user you can follow and share moments. Twitter’s Periscope is another acquisition that has helped in the move towards live events.

Facebook’s live coverage engine, Instant Articles, currently has 20 media companies publishing stories directly to the Facebook platform.

Snapchat’s news tends to break straight from the influencers but Snapchat Discover hosts a collection of 19 media channels who curate content specifically for their Snapchat community. Not to mention, Snapchat recently has been trying their hand at live news coverage as well through their promoted stories.

I started Bando, a mobile news platform for the urban culture, because I found that social media was mostly used to discover news on a surface level. Bando delivers real-time news at the speed of a social network.

Major social platforms are covering breaking news as it happens, media publishers can’t mimic the convenience. Exp ect the relationship between the two to continue in 2016.

Virtual Reality
Virtual reality is no longer a fascination of the future, it’s here now. Before, talks of emerging VR products were only depicted by concept images and speculation. Today, there are both developer and consumer facing VR models that have opened the door for alike products and software.

VR is so new that it’s hold. It’s said to be on the brink of emergence by every notable publication but here’s why I think it’ll scale quickly this year:

Since 2014, Google has offered an amaetur VR headsets that uses your smartphone to create different virtual environments. Yet, the premium VR headsets are opening avenues for software developers thus expanding outside of just a product focused industry.

Facebook owned, Oculus Rift took to CES this year to announce their $600 price point and shipping date for their March commercial release. Oculus is more so a video game tailored headset but it’s innovation lends itself to a number of different industries. Much like Microsoft Hololens, the Oculus is versatile in that it provides value to the health care, real estate, and shopping industries. More importantly, it’s still in it’s earlier stages for developers so we can expect a lot of growth as far as content and future hardware.

Video Games
As new gaming consoles introduce more capabilities, like the aforementioned Oculus, video games are soon to adapt.

Consumers are expected to spend $5.1 billion on virtual reality gaming this year, both in product and software according to SuperData Research. That’s a huge leap from the $660 million spent in 2015. Gamers will be able to play in real life environments and physically interact with simulations making gameplay actually immersive.

The video game industry in it’s current state has also already begun its transition to the cloud. In an effort to maximize storage and create bigger games, many consoles are becoming cloud-based.

Most games are currently too big to stream and still need to be downloaded to the console. But you can download them to multiple consoles. Cloud-based games also allow different luxuries like boosted performance or additional gaming effects.

Streaming Services
With the introduction new technologies and platforms, quality content will still be the beneficiary. We’re now beginning to see that battle play out between cord cutting services and cable television.

Sling TV and Sony Vue lead the pack among cable streaming services and they’ve earned their fair share of the market. Sling TV, owned by DISH, offers a viable alternative to cable television. Just $20 a month (no contract) and you get access to 20 basic channels including AMC, A&E, TNT, CNN, the Food Network, ESPN, and ESPN2. Premium upgrades get you HBO and other customizations to Sling’s programming. In 2015, Sling TV was reportedly generating $5 million per month and are fast the 250,000 user milestone. Though many television providers are launching their own app to accommodate the digital viewers who would rather watch TV via the internet.

Products have ties in this race as well. The Apple TV 2, Roku, and Amazon Fire represent the hardware side of the streaming service market.

It’s expected that even more big name players will partner with already active streaming services and the digital ad spend will continue to compete with cable. As web TV services look to build revenue from subscriptions, content providers, and advertisements, they create a bigger market and wider reach for their partners and parent companies.

Fintech
Technology is making it financial responsibility that much easier and it’s giving banks a run for their money (no pun intended).

According to Goldman Sachs, financially focused startups expected to consume $4.7 trillion worth of annual revenue from traditional financial services. Investors have recognized this trend as well, in 2014 there was $12 billion invested in financial technology.

Fintech startups provide luxuries that banks can’t and they’re capturing emerging markets and millennial audiences.

Companies like WePay, Affirm, and Betterment are making services easy-to-use and inclusive. They’ve successfully addressed problems like processing for online shopping, student debt, and providing support for the 2.5 billion unbanked adults.

Social networks have already adapted to compete with stand alone news apps like Flipboard or Apple News.

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat have been able to break news in real-time and it’s beginning to shift how we find trending stories, especially for millennials.

Twitter Moments allows readers to see a feed of trending news and live events as they happen. As a user you can follow and share moments. Twitter’s Periscope is another acquisition that has helped in the move towards live events.

Facebook’s live coverage engine, Instant Articles, currently has 20 media companies publishing stories directly to the Facebook platform.

Snapchat’s news tends to break straight from the influencers but Snapchat Discover hosts a collection of 19 media channels who curate content specifically for their Snapchat community. Not to mention, Snapchat recently has been trying their hand at live news coverage as well through their promoted stories.

Major social platforms are covering breaking news as it happens, media publishers can’t mimic the convenience. Exp ect the relationship between the two to continue in 2016.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is no longer a fascination of the future, it’s here now. Before, talks of emerging VR products were only depicted by concept images and speculation. Today, there are both developer and consumer facing VR models that have opened the door for alike products and software.

VR is so new that it’s hold. It’s said to be on the brink of emergence by every notable publication but here’s why I think it’ll scale quickly this year:

Since 2014, Google has offered an amaetur VR headsets that uses your smartphone to create different virtual environments. Yet, the premium VR headsets are opening avenues for software developers thus expanding outside of just a product focused industry.

Facebook owned, Oculus Rift took to CES this year to announce their $600 price point and shipping date for their March commercial release. Oculus is more so a video game tailored headset but it’s innovation lends itself to a number of different industries. Much like Microsoft Hololens, the Oculus is versatile in that it provides value to the health care, real estate, and shopping industries. More importantly, it’s still in it’s earlier stages for developers so we can expect a lot of growth as far as content and future hardware.

Video Games

As new gaming consoles introduce more capabilities, like the aforementioned Oculus, video games are soon to adapt.

Consumers are expected to spend $5.1 billion on virtual reality gaming this year, both in product and software according to SuperData Research. That’s a huge leap from the $660 million spent in 2015. Gamers will be able to play in real life environments and physically interact with simulations making gameplay actually immersive.

The video game industry in it’s current state has also already begun its transition to the cloud. In an effort to maximize storage and create bigger games, many consoles are becoming cloud-based.

Most games are currently too big to stream and still need to be downloaded to the console. But you can download them to multiple consoles. Cloud-based games also allow different luxuries like boosted performance or additional gaming effects.

Streaming Services

With the introduction new technologies and platforms, quality content will still be the beneficiary. We’re now beginning to see that battle play out between cord cutting services and cable television.

Sling TV and Sony Vue lead the pack among cable streaming services and they’ve earned their fair share of the market. Sling TV, owned by DISH, offers a viable alternative to cable television. Just $20 a month (no contract) and you get access to 20 basic channels including AMC, A&E, TNT, CNN, the Food Network, ESPN, and ESPN2. Premium upgrades get you HBO and other customizations to Sling’s programming. In 2015, Sling TV was reportedly generating $5 million per month and are fast the 250,000 user milestone. Though many television providers are launching their own app to accommodate the digital viewers who would rather watch TV via the internet.

Products have ties in this race as well. The Apple TV 2, Roku, and Amazon Fire represent the hardware side of the streaming service market.

It’s expected that even more big name players will partner with already active streaming services and the digital ad spend will continue to compete with cable. As web TV services look to build revenue from subscriptions, content providers, and advertisements, they create a bigger market and wider reach for their partners and parent companies.

Fintech

Technology is making it financial responsibility that much easier and it’s giving banks a run for their money (no pun intended).

According to Goldman Sachs, financially focused startups expected to consume $4.7 trillion worth of annual revenue from traditional financial services. Investors have recognized this trend as well, in 2014 there was $12 billion invested in financial technology.

Fintech startups provide luxuries that banks can’t and they’re capturing emerging markets and millennial audiences.

Companies like WePay, Affirm, and Betterment are making services easy-to-use and inclusive. They’ve successfully addressed problems like processing for online shopping, student debt, and providing support for the 2.5 billion unbanked adults.

University is a time of creative, intellectual and personal expression; a time to discover who you are, what interests you, what motivates you, and what gets you up in the morning (or early afternoon). University is a great place to try out everything you have always been meaning to try, and in this process, discover and develop new talents.
The problem is that it goes too fast. Blink and you’ll miss it. So to help, we checked in with students past and present, as well as our current graduates, to hear their experiences, to help us compile our tips for making the most of your student life.

1. Meet new people
Meet as many people as you can. You’ll probably never get a chance like this again, so make the most of it. And remember, everyone is in the same boat. You’re just as likely to meet your future best friend in the queue at the freshers’ fair, as you are to fall in love on the way to the library. And finally, a strong network will support you at University and in your future career. That person you made friends with in the lunch queue that time, they may happen to be hugely successful in 20 years’ time and looking for someone ‘just like you’.

2. Avoid doing the bare minimum
It’s easy to fall in to the trappings of the ‘lazy’ student – but don’t! Now it’s easier said than done, but:
• Try to attend all your classes (no matter how close to 9am they’re scheduled)
• Keep up with the workload and don’t leave it until the very last day to begin a piece of work
• If you need to miss a class or don’t think you can meet an assessment deadline, chat to your lecturer or tutor so that they can provide guidance

3. Try new things
University is a time you can expand your horizons and push your boundaries, so get out and try something new

4. Join a club or society
There are so many clubs and societies out there to join! It’s your chance to try something different. There’s tennis, football, juggling, dance, skiing ultimate Frisbee, competitive ironing, you name it! Give it a go. What’s the worst that can happen? If nothing else, you’ve met a new group of people (see point 1). It has also been shown that there is a strong correlation between a sense of belonging and the feeling of happiness.

5. Take advantage of work experience programs
Many of the skills you’ll need once you graduate aren’t taught in a lecture theatre, and nothing beats real life work experience. These type of programmes aren’t always the easiest to find, and can seem daunting to apply for, but when you do, you’ll reap big rewards.

A good keyboard will get even better… if you have an iPhone.

One of the enduring high points of Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile is the Word Flow software keyboard. It looks good and works well, with a generally sensible autocorrect algorithm and a good implementation of swipe-style typing. Earlier this month it was learned that Microsoft was planning to produce a version of this keyboard for iOS and Android, after e-mailed invitations were sent to some Windows Insiders.

Through The Verge we now have a good idea of what that keyboard will look like, and immediately we can see that it has a rather compelling feature not found in the Windows version of the keyboard: a curved one-handed mode that arcs the keyboard around either of the phone’s lower corners. This neatly tackles a problem that a few of us here at Ars were pondering at lunch: how do you make a swipe keyboard work when the phone screen is so enormous that you cannot possibly reach both sides with your thumb. You’d have to hold the phone in one hand and then use your index finger, or something equally inconvenient.

The solution Microsoft has implemented in Windows 10 Mobile is to allow the keyboard to be scrunched down and pushed closer to one side of the screen or the other. The solution seen in the pictures of the iOS keyboard looks altogether neater: not only does it draw the very furthest keys in, so that they are within reach of the thumb, it also pushes the keys closest to the corner further out, away from the corner, so that you do not need to contort to reach those either.

Beyond that, the Verge says that the keyboard is otherwise very similar to the Windows incarnation. The iOS keyboard is expected to be released first, with the Android one following later in the year.

Stay tuned for some more cool stuff…!!!

The “Internet of things” (IoT) is becoming an increasingly growing topic of conversation both in the workplace and outside of it. It’s a concept that not only has the potential to impact how we live but also how we work.  But what exactly is the “Internet of things” and what impact is it going to have on you if any?  There are a lot of complexities around the “Internet of things” but I want to stick to the basics.  Lots of technical and policy related conversations are being had but many people are still just trying to grasp the foundation of what the heck these conversations are about.

Let’s start with understanding a few things.

Broadband Internet is become more widely available, the cost of connecting is decreasing, more devices are being created with wifi capabilities and sensors built into them, technology costs are going down, and smart phone penetration is sky-rocketing.  All of these things are creating a “perfect storm” for the IoT.

So what is the Internet of things?

Simply put this is the concept of basically connecting any device with an on and off switch to the Internet (and/or to each other). This includes everything from cell phones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices and almost anything else you can think of.  This also applies to components of machines, for example a jet engine of an airplane or the drill of an oil rig.  As I mentioned, if it has an on and off switch then chances are it can be a part of the IoT.  The analyst firm Gartnersays that by 2020 there will be over 26 billion connected devices…that’s a lot of connections (some even estimate this number to be much higher, over 100 billion).  The IoT is a giant network of connected “things” (which also includes people).  The relationship will be between people-people, people-things, and things-things.

How does this impact you?

The new rule for the future is going to be, “anything that can be connected, will be connected.”  But why on earth would you want so many connected devices talking to each other?  There are many examples for what this might look like or what the potential value might be.  Say for example you are on your way to a meeting, your car could have access to your calendar and already know the best route to take, if the traffic is heavy your car might send a text to the other party notifying them that you will be late.  What if your alarm clock wakes up you at 6 am and then notifies your coffee maker to start brewing coffee for you? What if your office equipment knew when it was running low on supplies and automatically re-ordered more?  What if the wearable device you used in the workplace could tell you when and where you were most active and productive and shared that information with other devices that you used while working?

The reality is that the IoT allows for virtually endless opportunities and connections to take place, many of which we can’t even think of or fully understand the impact of today.  It’s not hard to see how and why the IoT is such a hot topic today, it certainly opens the door to a lot of opportunities but also to many challenges.  Security is big issues that is oftentimes brought up.  With billions of devices being connect together what can people to do make sure that their information stays secure?  Will someone be able to hack into your toaster and thereby get access to your entire network?  The IoT also opens up companies all over the world to more security threats.  Then we have the issue of privacy and data sharing.  This is a hot button topic even today so one can only imagine how the conversation and concerns will escalate when we are talking about many billions of devices being connected.  Another issue that many companies specifically are going to be faced with is around the massive amounts data that all of these devices are going to produce.  Companies need to figure out a way to store, track, analyze, and make sense of the vast amounts of data that will be generated.

So what now?

Conversations about the IoT are (and have been for several years) taking place all over the world as we seek to understand how this will impact our lives.  We are also trying to understand what the many opportunities and challenges are going to be as more and more devices start to join the IoT.  For now the best thing that we can do is educate ourselves about what the IoT is and the potential impacts that can be seen on how we work and live.

Stay tuned folks w are back

THE WORD blog is a conflation of two words: Web and log. It contains in its four letters a concise and accurate self-description: it is a log of thoughts and writing posted publicly on the World Wide Web. In the monosyllabic vernacular of the Internet, Web log soon became the word blog.

Whether you’re an aspiring blogger or just looking for a little inspiration in your life, here’s a list of 10 inspirational bloggers who all started out as, well… bloggers. Enjoy!

Blogging is an art in itself, some people even do it as a profession , some do it for fun, some do it for fame, but the real blogging advantages are been received by these listed below, go through their profiles and I hope I  helping you at an extent if you are a blogger. 

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/top-10-most-bloggers-the-world.html