Monolith Takes Further Steps to Augumented Reality

It is now definite, that augumented reality segment goes into limelight of IT world as one of the most promising ones. Despite the fact, that the sector of the industry is relatively young, it has, undoubtedly, beome the new passion for a great number of reputable companies, engaged in IT.

Along with ambitious and well-promoted Google Project Glass, which has been recently officially presented to the open public, there has already been introduced another player, involved in augumented reality projects. In particular, I’m talking about a Croatian startup Monolith offering 3 serapate applications for advertisers, namely Monolith Wardrobe, Monolith Games and Monolith Objects.

In this respect, there can be distinguished several essential peculiarities of products, offered by Monolith, the first and the foremost among which is certainly, the uniqueness of the ideа in the essence of the engine. 

I’m sure that the majority of average users haven’t actually thought of using Kinect elsewhere, other than in their xBox, well, Monolith developers went further. Having built their applications on the basis of Kinect hardware, they have also added their exclusive software solution, enabling to create a movie-like advertising experience, achieving impressive results.

Here, the focus on advertising is, perhaps, another essential feature of Monolith products. Obviously, it’s rather about online and mobile ads being the most popular, effective and profitable ones at the moment, that the live ones. Relatively, innovative online ad platforms, like Epom, for instance, are now getting trendier and trendier today. Yet, the current tendencies doesn’t prove the death of live advertising, so the authors of Monolith have made the right decision to reanimate this niche of the market with their fresh and creative solutions.

In addition to that, what is also special about Monolith augumented reality advertising engine is that it has been founded not in the USA, which is frequently considered the epicenter of IT development, but in Croatia, that hasn’t yet got such reputation.

Does the apperance of Monolith mean that the vector of rapid IT development is moving from the US to Europe, considering that the already-mentioned platform Epom has been also started in Europe as well, namely Poland? In fact, it does more likely mean that the there will soon appear numerous regional IT centers all around the world, all being somewhat unique in their entity.

Well, we’ll see)

Stay cool)

Andy

CloudFlare Widens Horizons for Sites' Improvement

Do you happen to own a site? Even if you don’t at the moment, you will, perhaps, get one, as long as you run the business of your own or are more or less interested in blogging, for instance.

The thing is that the boost in development of Internet technologies and the colossal growth of popularity of online resources force the businesses in almost every niche to maintain their presence on the Web.

Well, there you go. In case you have a business, you must have a site.

Yet, the maintenance of a site, especially if you wish to make it rich and bright in the interface and multifunctional,  is a far more complicated matter, than just the creation of one. In this respect, one of the fresh services on the market CloudFlare happens to offer convenient tool to protect and improve your site’s work.

One of the essential aspects, which CloudFlare enables you to upgrade, is the loading time of your site. It often happens so, that the large sites with complex graphics and sufficient amount of ad content load rather slowly, which irritates visitors and can even make them refuse to ever try the service again.

Well, as the creators of CloudFlare state, their featured optimizer can help your site load really fast, which is incredibly encouraging.

Another essential feature, offered by CloudFlare, is related to the site’s security. It is, actually, one of the most painful aspects of every site’s work, which can either benefit your reputation, or totally destroy it.  Much because of that, the majority of trustworthy companies pay much attention to proving their reliability and safety to clients.

As an example, I’ve recently found the news that 4shared established partnership with McAfee security company to double-check all files in their database. Not bad, or I’d say even grrrreat!

Back to what CloudFlare can provide you with in terms of security, the service enables you to detect hacker attacks, create block lists and trust lists for your visitors, etc. within convenient UI.

The last but not the least…

CloudFlare is also recognized to provide you with traffic analytics for your site, which is one of the most important aspects in terms of sites’ promotion.

Of course, you can stick to using Google Analytics, it won’t be a problem.

All things considered, CloudFlare is, undoubtedly, worth trying, especially if you need to make your site more reputable and popular among users.

Stay cool)

Andy

Codecademy Opens One More Door to Coding Secrets

Have you ever dreamt of becoming a programmer? I have never thought about such a perspective as a child, but having grown up I realized how interesting and profitable! it can be to be engaged in this niche.

Well, now that I have already become a developer myself I have never questioned the rightness of my former decision, but what about people, who have realized their pure desire to learn programming already being adults? Of course, it’s never late to learn.

Yet, what if you didn’t have a chance to go study in the university at the moment? The reasons may differ, in this respect, either you don’t have enough money to pay for studying, or you don’t have sufficient time to attend classes because of your full-time job. Are there any ways out to have the most convenient learning conditions? Yes, now there are.

People’s opportunity to acquire knowledge of programming or share the already possessed skills is actually the essence of a rather new service Codecademy, enabling to learn and practice Java programming without any payment. What is essential, the choice of language in Codecademy is absolutely justified, as it is now the most widely-used one in the creation of high-quality sites with the best graphics and the most intuitive UI (e.g. TechCrunch, Facebook, 4shared sites are created with the usage of Java). 

As for the specifics of the learning courses, here’s where the benefits for users continue. To start with, each and every exercise is provided with precise instructions, so that you don’t spend hours perusing the same passage for 1, 000 of times. Moreover, you can practice the newly-got knowledge right at the page, where the exercise is being explained with an ability to check FAQ’s, if you happen to be stuck at some point. In this respect, even if you can’t find the answer to your question, you’re free to post it in the section, so that it can be answered a bit later. To be honest, there’re a lot of questions, which haven’t yet been answered, but minor flaws are inevitable, I suppose.

In addition to that, every section of the course is finished with a particular number of points you receive and a sort of the award you also get. Of course, it’s not an actual prize, but works well as motivation.

And it isn’t the end… Codecademy also enables the users to apply for becoming a beta tester in versatile courses, no matter how much knowledge you already have. This might be really beneficial in terms of practicing acquired skills.

In a whole, of course, Codecademy isn’t enough for you to become a superprofessional in programming, but it is seemingly the perfect first step into the world of coding. Not bad, ha?

Stay cool)

Andy

OwnCloud – Peculiarities and Perspectives

Of course, the present-day diversity of cloud storage opportunities and the current number of versatile syncing services have already reached truly outrageous heights.

Well, apparently, the vast range of choice hasn’t scared fresh players in the field, as we have already been introduced the new cloud storage and syncing service ownCloud, which is, similarly aimed at making our life more convenient and enables to get quicker access to our data and synchronize the most essential stuff between our devices.

Pros

The benefits of ownCloud, in particular, are crystal clear. To start with, the solution is available for all platforms in customized formats; therefore you can select the most convenient one for you. Moreover, it is really multifunctional and enables you to upload, download, sync and share any of your files in a few clicks.

In addition to that, the interface is rather plain in design, which proves the point that usability is prior. The commercial solutions acquire the brighter UI pecualities, which have been, perhaps, added to make them more attractive to buyers. 

Cons

Undoubtedly, ownCloud isn’t perfect at all, much because it possesses one essential flaw. The thing is that you won’t be able to use it, unless you’re a pro user: to start working with ownCloud you should at first download .tar.bz2 package and be aware of how to use it further. The whole range of opened possibilities can hardly be understood by people, who aren’t used to programming, working with mySQL databases, PHP, etc., for instance. Therefore, the community of devoted fans of the service won’t probably include such a vast number of people, like the famous 4Sync has got, for example.

Besides, the free ownCloud enables you to get only 7GB of storage space, so the whole free 15GB from 4Sync are yet unbeatable. I heard the news about Dropbox offering simpler ways to get more free space, but as it turns out, these likewise presuppose sending invites to others. It’s really irritating, to be honest.

In a whole, what is unique about ownCloud is that it might be one more useful option at programmers’ disposal, yet, not the best variant for common usage, of course.

Stay cool)

Andy