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The rise of Mobile App Industry during the COVID outbreak

Ever since its emergence, the COVID-19 pandemic has been nothing shorter than a nightmare for people and economies across the globe. Apart from infecting many people and claiming the lives of several others, it also led to economic losses spanning into trillions worldwide.

But even in this grim situation, wherein the majority of economic sectors reported losses, there has been a positive outcome for the mobile application development industry. It registered an impressive growth of 9.8% in the United States between 2019 and 2020.  

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7 Reasons Why you should consider Native App Development for building Mobile apps?

On average, a user uses his/her mobile device for at least 4 hours every day. People devote almost 88% of this duration to using mobile applications. From this figure, it stands out that mobile applications play a vital role in popularising smartphones.

Today, using a smartphone refers to the usage of applications. Developers use different frameworks, tools, and techniques to build applications for smartphones. Native app development is one of them. It enables a developer to focus on mobile app development for a single platform. As regards the platform, it can be either for Android or iOS platform as these are two widely used platforms for smartphones.

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Blooming conversation with Moncton based small business Eufloria

Eufloria is a very unique business about plants. The business is all about the plant’s arrangements. The owner of Eufloria is Cassandra Kopetzky. Eufloria opened on the 15th of February, 2021. My inspiration stems from my childhood. My grandmother would teach me about plants and flowers, how to care for them, and the pride of watching something beautiful grow.

We got to know about Eufloria by Cassandra Kopetzky (owner of Eufloria). She has developed her business to its true potential. There are very rare cases where we can find this unique idea of using plants and arranging them in a certain manner to give your house or workspace an elegant look. If any of you need to redo your home or workspace, believe us Eufloria will be the best to consult.

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Two Prairie Doods: The doggy duds that don’t disappoint

Welcome to Two Prairie Doods! This small business is owned and designed by Teagan Graham, a full-time critical care nurse and dog mom with a passion for spoiling her doods. We got to learn how Graham has created a growing online brand in just a few short months.

Two Prairie Doods is based out of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and has been delivering keychains, stickers, and handmade bandanas to dog parents since March, 2021. In this short time, Graham has designed a beautiful Instagram feed and successfully carried it over to the TPD website using Shopify. Graham encourages her customers to personalize their orders to give their pups’ apparel that special touch!

TPD isn’t just for your furry friends! Graham has designed matching scrunchies and face masks that can be bundled with any bandana. And if scrunchies aren’t your thing, she has collaborated with another small business, More Than Clay Co, to design handmade earrings to match with your pup’s favourite bandanas. All Two Prairie Doods products can be found on the website

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Why You Need a Chatbot for Your Site

The internet has brought us into an age of almost instant convenience. Have a problem? Call customer service, send an email, reach out and you’ll be heard. But what happens to businesses that don’t have these services in place? And what happens when your team needs to sleep? Few businesses appreciate the value of the chatbot for their website, but they’re exactly what you’ll need to fix this issue. A chatbot is a simple, programmed AI designed to help field open questions and answers. They interact with customers to assist with minor issues and direct them where to go if it’s beyond their ability.  Below, we’ve compiled some interesting facts and abilities of this still young technology....visit us..https://www.letsnurture.ca/blog/why-you-need-a-chatbot-for-your-site.html

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Using Voice Assistants to Your Business Benefits

Voice assistants are a relatively new technology. You’ve probably seen an Amazon Alexa or a Google Home device at a friend’s house; but did you know these pieces of tech can be highly lucrative for your business? Below are just a few reasons you can start using your voice assistant to maximize your productivity and get more done, faster than ever before...visit us..https://www.letsnurture.ca/blog/using-voice-assistants-to-your-business-benefits.html

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Understanding Google Analytics

What exactly is analytics, and why should your business be using them? Analytics is the process of looking at and understanding who is visiting your website in which amounts, and from which demographics. While this sounds like something every business should be using, many websites do not take analytics into account or may not even use analytic software for this business. This can lead to possible loss of customer engagement by not fixing design flaws or coding issues; which will cost your company both customer engagement as well as giving you a bad reputation...visit us..https://www.letsnurture.ca/blog/understanding-google-analytics.html

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How to be More Productive While Working from Home

The way we go about our jobs has been revolutionized in the past year. Industries have changed completely, and now thousands of former commuters and coworkers get to enjoy the comfort of working from home. But with that comfort can come a slow in productivity; which can be bad both for employers and employees. We’ve compiled a list of methods on how to make the most out of your work from home position, and how to maximize your productivity while getting to enjoy all the benefits of having a home office...visit us..https://www.letsnurture.ca/blog/how-to-be-more-productive-while-working-from-home.html

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When is it the Right Time for your Business to Develop an App?

Operating a business looks much different now than 20 years ago. Business as a whole has become much more digital. Most companies rely on some form of technology to aid in day-to-day operations. These technologies can include websites, social media, software programs, and apps. Businesses of all sizes are investing in apps to keep up with the digitalization of the world.

As apps become more popular, companies are recognizing the perks. By having an app for your company, you can increase customer loyalty, add value, offer a new communication channel, and enhance customer experience. Building an app can be a big project. There are many considerations to account for, so how do you know when it’s a suitable time?...visit us...https://www.letsnurture.ca/blog/when-is-it-the-right-time-for-your-business-to-develop-an-app.html

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HOW CAN DIGITAL FINANCING SERVICES HELP A WORLD COPING WITH COVID-19?

According to the recently released Global Economic Prospects, the global economy will shrink by over 5% due to the pandemic in 2020. Digitized services were already on growth before the out-break of COVID-19, and now it is one of the most needed services for finance.

COVID-19 is not just a health crisis, but a public crisis hampering the financial needs of people. And this has turned out to be an economic crisis for people in developing countries. As reports of distress pour in from individuals, small businesses, and the financial institutions that serve them, it is clear that the financial inclusion community has a vital role to play in supporting the financial services ecosystem as part of the global response to the pandemic.

What is Digital Financing?

Digital finance refers to the transfer of payment or transactions made for any financial arrangements. Online transactions to be done via payment apps, transfer money to your family or friends, pay your bills, recharge your accounts, and many more. With one app, you can do a lot of things.

Digital financial services enable even the most remote areas with a steady internet connection to make financial transactions. There are three key steps for digital financing:

Digital Transaction Platform

Retail Agent

Electronic devices that access the platform

Access to Digital Technology

Technology in finance has made the life of people easier, especially in the current situation when the entire world is fighting with the pandemic. People don’t have to drive to pay their bills or recharge, send money to your friend, or donate – it’s just one tap away.

The question is – How do you get access and use digital services for financial purposes? Your payment app will be the one to let you access these services. Create your account, add your card, and start doing your transaction.

Several key changes that are taking the financial sector by storm as well as the challenges that come along with them;

Fintech

Digital Banking

Digital Disruptors

AI and ML

Blockchain

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REFRESHING MOBILE APPLICATIONS: HOW TO KNOW WHEN A MOBILE APP REDESIGN IS NECESSARY?

When it comes to mobile applications, the design that you launch with will become obsolete eventually. This is because design preference and what is considered efficient, clean, and functional changes as your users’ tastes and needs change. This is why we’ve seen major social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram get completely face lifts in their design. But, how do you know when a mobile app redesign is necessary and if it is, how do you go about approaching the issue?

What Benefits Come From a Good App Redesign?

When a small business redesigns their mobile app and it is done right, with user feedback taken into account, you will see a whole host of benefits. This includes happier customers, increased sales, and increased brand exposure that brings about more loyal customers.

When you give your mobile app a redesign to solve customer pain points, you show them that you are willing to invest in their experience and that you take their feedback seriously. This generates satisfaction and increases conversions.

An up to date design that is intuitive, modern, and easy to use brings in new customers that may have passed on your mobile app in the past due to aesthetic and functional tastes. A beautiful app design encourages new customers to jump on board.

A timely response to customer feedback about your Android or IOS app builds a strong business to customer relationship. This allows customers to feel heard and, in turn, generates loyalty to your brand.

How Do You Know When It Is Time for a Mobile App Redesign?

To help you figure out whether now is the right time to complete a redesign for your mobile app, let’s take a look at some key areas.

1. Your Users Complain. When going through your customer feedback emails, reviews, and support tickets, take a look at what the complaints are about. If you are getting negative reviews on the Android or IOS app store from new users and refreshed reviews from old users, then there’s an issue going on. Also highlight definite problems that customers are laying out for you, pay attention to angry comments on social media, and if your app store rating falls below a 3 or 4-star, this is a good indication.

2. Conversion Rates Are Low. If your user base is unenthusiastic about using the mobile app, sales are extremely low, and you’re seeing very weak growth, then your mobile app needs a redesign. This could be because your design is boring or unengaging, the registration process is too time-consuming, or you don’t have enough interactive elements that keep your user base from logging in every day.

3. Company Has Rebranded. Your mobile app’s design needs to be consistent with your brand’s aesthetic design, voice, and style. If you are rebranding your company, then a new mobile app design needs to be created to match. If you are rebranding the company to launch new products, make sure your mobile app also matches your new products as well. You want everything under one design, one style, and one voice.

4. You Are Changing Your Target Audience. If your small business is changing tactics and your audience along with it, then you need to prepare a new product vision and marketing strategy that includes changes to your app’s design.

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KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (KPI’S) OF ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION

Robotic process automation is a boon to organizations and big industries. It saves on many hours and efforts to give you performance-driven results. RPA technology can completely transform the way you work. It helps to gain productivity and gives you the right results for your business. But, it’s important to monitor key performance indicators of robotic process automation to measure the deployment and also protect its future expansion in the business. Some metrics will give you an insight into company goals regarding the RPA. You can get a thorough understanding of pay and scale with key performance indicators.

Listed are few performance indicators of RPA:

Dependability

This is the main indicator when your business looks up to develop many computer software programs to automate multiple things and tasks. It’s important you research on the RPA tool based on this factor. There should be great reliability and a low percentage of shutting down with this factor. Dependability in business is a great tool that indicates performance.

Speed

Time is money so the efficiency of time plays a key role in productivity. Employees can take time to complete a task on a manual basis. But, automated machines and robotic process automation complete the task faster with the same accuracy. Speed is an indicator of the process of RPA. It lets you know about the time taken by a task. RPA system can optimize your business in a few hours. Speed as an indicator helps to measure the actual time taken by robotic process automation. It lets you know about the actual task that is completed according to set time.

Intelligence

Some robotic automation processes are built on intelligent tools. The tools perform basic tasks along with advanced learning skills. With this indicator, the system can adapt to new circumstances and situations without any issue. The indicator also lets you know about any change in the task according to the structure of the company.

Staff morale

When there is a mundane or hectic task to perform, it does take a toll on the morale of your employees. So, it’s important to have all the automated systems in place so that there is no problem with tasks. Also, RPA can reduce time and energy spend on a task by half, it actually helps to improve the working conditions of your employees.

Quality

Quality is the main concern in any company and the task should be performed well. Most big companies fail when they lack quality over the services they offer. The key performance indicator is measured by the tasks executed on an automated basis. RPA should provide good quality and also deliver accuracy than other manual methods.

Process velocity

Process velocity lets you know about the completion of the process or task. RPA does the work faster if you compare it with human speed. As an indicator, it’s important to measure the process of actual deployment before and after the said task. The work that accounts for off hours should also be included in the process velocity. The correct estimates can rightly make improvements in the RPA process in the future.

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3 CHANGES TO CANADIAN PRIVACY LAW THAT WILL IMPACT BUSINESS, AI, & HEALTHCARE

Whether you are a new Canadian startup looking to break into the healthcare app or artificial intelligence markets, a large enterprise that deals in a lot of consumer data, or a business within the science or education technology sectors, you may find it harder to comply with Canadian privacy legislation. The government of Canada has announced that they will be making several major and minor changes to Canadian privacy law, with 3 of the most important ones impacting several large sectors. Here is what you need to know!

1. Privacy Protections are set to Increase.

The Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development, the Honourable Navdeep Bains has introduced the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, which proposes a new bill to upgrade the Federal Government’s framework for protecting personal information in private sectors.

What does this bill do? This bill looks at enhancing the control over both personal information and corresponding data at the highest level.

Why is this important? It means that companies will need to be aggressive and transparent about the collection of personal information and how it is used and stored. It also introduces a fine for any company that is not compliant with the Customer Consumer Privacy Protection Act. The fine is up to 5% of global revenues or up to $25 million.

What does this mean? If passed, it gives the privacy commissioner the ability to handle Canadian privacy law violation cases without any outside influence.

2. AI Tech will be Regulated.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Daniel Therrien, introduced steps in November 2020 for ways to regulate artificial intelligence. He believes that artificial intelligence has massive potential but that it needs to be implemented with respect to human rights and security policies. With a “rights-based” approach, Daniel Therrien believes that AI Tech can be developed responsibly.

Why is this important? The current use of AI Tech is to decipher meaningful patterns in historical data to help make predictions about future events. This could be anything from the trend of insurance premiums to how many people qualify for loans. With tech that can use data in this manner, the lives of real people can be truly impacted.

3. There Are Privacy Concerns Around Telemedicine & EdTech.

With the ongoing pandemic, new ways of adopting existing and new technologies have given way to privacy concerns in healthcare and education technology, according to Canada’s Privacy Commissioner.

Why is this important? Canadian Privacy Law currently does not protect Canadians against privacy risks in the telemedicine and education technology sectors. Thus, major changes are being suggested to improve the legislation.

What would be impacted? Businesses running healthcare apps, video conferencing technology, and e-learning platforms will need to comply with new legislation that is passed.

As of right now, platforms in telemedicine, education, and video conferencing capture critical personal information of adults, students, and patients, posing confidentiality risks.

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9 B2B TRENDS SHAPING E-COMMERCE IN 2021: WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses have had to completely and drastically alter how they do business. The demand for in-person interactions between buyer and sellers has fallen off completely, while digital e-commerce has skyrocketed. As we enter into 2021, there are several emerging trends that are going to shape B2B marketplaces and the industry as a whole.

1. A Transition from Physical to Digital Sales.

The preferred sales model for B2B e-commerce is transitioning away from in-person sales to digital, remote sales. This is because the percentage of B2B e-commerce buyers that want to interact with sales representatives is decreasing drastically, with only 30% preferring in-person interactions. With the ongoing pandemic, a remote, digital sales model is not only necessary but is likely to be the preferred method for 12+ months after the pandemic ends. This also signals that the growing demand for online B2B marketplaces is unlikely to slow.

2. Small Vendors Will Move Online.

With lockdowns and stay-at-home orders across many countries, small vendors must shift their focus to online selling in order to stay alive. Small manufacturers must choose to join B2B marketplaces in order to keep the lights on, otherwise, they will have to close up shop and leave the market.

3. Marketplace Creation by Large Manufacturers.

While numerous manufacturers have moved to using large marketplaces like Amazon and Alibaba, many are choosing to forge their own path and create their own long-term marketplace solutions. This helps them stand out against similar manufacturers by providing a competitive advantage over those selling on third-party platforms.

4. Integrating a Wider Range of Payment Options.

Without a doubt, the ongoing pandemic has completely disrupted the flow of cash flow and revenue for many businesses that have been able to keep their doors open through online platforms. This has caused new payment platforms to open up, allowing businesses to either make purchases through payment installments or postpone payments for up to 60-days after receiving an invoice. Businesses that choose to postpone do not have to worry about fees or interest.

5. Dynamic Pricing to Meet Goods & Service Demands.

Top leaders in the B2B marketplace are getting an edge against competitors by using dynamic pricing. According to Bain & Company, these top performers are twice as likely to use dynamic pricing, which protects them against losses caused by changes to the marketplace and helps them take advantage of those changes instead. Here is how.

By analysing the market and prospective customers, businesses can tailor the pricing of their goods to match buyer demands for certain goods and services.

high-value item that is low in stock can be made more expensive, while a low-demand item that is high in stock can have its price adjusted to make it more desirable (E.g decreasing its cost).

Pre-pandemic, all negotiations would be done between the buyer and seller, whereas, the marketplace now looks to address the need of the buyer through vendor to manufacturer negotiations. This builds more transparency between buyer and sellers.

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EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MOBILE APP ANALYTICS

The Why, What, How & Key Terms

If you are planning on developing, launching, and scaling a mobile application, app analytics are going to be your go-to for understanding key milestones in your app’s growth and success. With mobile app analytics, not only can you gain insight into your users’ behaviour, but you can visualize and address obstacles as they occur in real-time, allowing you to accurately optimize your app. If you’re a new developer or someone looking into having a mobile app made, here is everything you need to know about mobile app analytics.

Getting to Know the Basics – Why, What, & How

Let’s dive into the why behind mobile app analytics. These are essential to the development process for several reasons.

They provide you with insights into how users are interacting with your app.

They tell you which parts of the app your users interact with the most.

They tell you what actions your users take in the app.

With these insights, you can create an action plan around improving your mobile app depending on what your goals are. For instance, you may choose to add in new features that your user base is asking for or improve on existing functions if you find that users are frustrated with a particular section of the app. Other than this, you may choose to remove certain features that aren’t used a lot. Finally, mobile app analytics will also give you in-depth information on key performance indicators (KPIs) which are needed for strategy adjustment.

While all of these things are good, in order to know what to do with your mobile app analytics, you need to know what your app goals are (the what). Your milestones are going to be different than another developer’s as every app is different and has different target audiences. For instance, a mobile game may focus on increasing revenue by increasing its user base and pushing in-app purchases (microtransactions). On the other hand, a retail mobile app may want to increase store traffic or bring about better brand awareness, while streaming apps will focus on getting their user base to subscribe to music plans.

So, now that you know the why behind mobile app analytics and the what, how do you go about tracking these metrics? With mobile app analytic tools! Some of the top ones include:

Firebase

UXCam.

Localytics.

IOS App Analytics.

Countly.

Flurry.

MixPanel.

It is important to note here that all of these tools are going to give you different features, so be sure to do thorough research into what you need to track.

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USING DEEP LEARNING FOR IMAGE-BASED PLANT DISEASE DETECTION

Introduction

Disease detection in plants plays a very important role in agriculture. Crop diseases serve as a major threat to the food supply. Identifying disease by just looking at images of plants can lead to quicker interventions that can help farmers a lot. We will use neural networks for plant disease recognition in the context of image classification.

Dataset

We can use any public dataset available online for this project like https://www.kaggle.com/emmarex/plantdisease https://www.kaggle.com/vipoooool/new-plant-diseases-dataset

Next thing is to import the necessary packages

Numpy: A library for the Python programming language, adding support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices, along with a large collection of high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays. (Source: Wikipedia )

Sklearn: A free software machine learning library for the Python programming language. It features various classification, regression and clustering algorithms including support vector machines, random forests, gradient boosting, k-means and DBSCAN, and is designed to interoperate with the Python numerical and scientific libraries NumPy and SciPy. (Source: Wikipedia )

Keras: Keras is an open-source neural network library written in Python. It is capable of running on top of TensorFlow, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, or Theano. Designed to enable fast experimentation with deep neural networks, it focuses on being user-friendly, modular, and extensible. (Source: Wikipedia

Matplotlib: A plotting library for the Python programming language and its numerical mathematics extension.

Network Architecture

We split the data-set into three sets — train, validation and test sets.

We tried with pre-trained models like Inception v3. The last layer is used for the classification with softmax as the activation function.

The loss function used is binary cross-entropy and trained the model for 50 epochs.

For this architecture, we’ve used 30 per cent dropouts to reduce overfitting in between the layers and batch normalization to reduce internal covariate shift.

https://www.letsnurture.com/blog/using-deep-learning-for-image-based-plant-disease-detection.html

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SPEECH RECOGNITION AND RESPONSE IN WEB OR MOBILE DIRECTLY WITHOUT ALEXA/GOOGLE HOME DEPENDENCY

In the era of voice-enabled devices like Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa it’s quite obvious that In the near future, there will be more or less support of voice-enabled services in every aspect of our routine life.

As it provides better interactivity and easy accessibility, it’ll be a game-changer for the next generation. There are already smart houses out there where every single thing in your house can talk to you and respond to your command. There is neither GUI nor content needed in voice-enabled devices, the only concerning factor is speed. You can get a faster response compared to all other technologies.

There are so many libraries and API out there, you can use to get started with your voice bot like

Microsoft Bing Speech

Google Web Speech API

Google Cloud speech

IBM speech to text

Wit.ai

We are going to use Google web speech API from speechRecognition library. It’s easy to use as it has a default API key that is hard-coded into the SpeechRecognition library. So that you can get started using it without any configuration and authentication process. Of course like every other API it has a daily limit of 50 requests. And we can’t raise the limit by any chance. so this is the best API you can use for experiment purposes. For production or live scenarios, you’ll have to purchase paid services from the above-mentioned APIs.

There will be a three-step process for every voice-enabled device –

Speech to Text: In this phase, we are going to let our bot understand what we are talking about. We’ll provide either an audio file or a direct stream from our mic. The bot will convert this sound signal into text using our google speech recognition API.

Processing: After converting your voice into a text bot will process your text and respond the same as a text-based bot will do. The process can be either to search a song from the web or can be to set an alarm or reminder.

Text to speech: After the bot completed its processing and ready with your output stream or data, the last step is to give the user that processed response in voice form, which can be achieved using the google TextToSpeech library.