#probably an in depth tutorial about how to build things or dogs

[mendelpalace]

GamePro’s SNES Criterion Collection

Back in 2011, the now-defunct GamePro published a piece including Criterion Collection-style covers for a handful of SNES titles, along with descriptions of the hypothetical bonus materials that would come with such deluxe rereleases. Though the cover images are still floating around online, a bunch of the descriptions are probably lost, including those for games like Street Fighter II, Donkey Kong Country, U.N. Squadron, Desert Strike, and Chrono Trigger. 

A few can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine though, so I decided to repost the ones I can still get to:

An old enemy brings bounty hunter Samus Aran back to Zebes, where she discovers that the Space Pirate threat is greater than ever -- and thus begins one of the most evocative games ever made. Thanks to its simple but powerful storytelling; outstanding soundtrack; and massive, lonely world, Super Metroid, created by Nintendo's well-known R&D1; team, is a masterpiece of design that has come to represent the Super Nintendo at its pinnacle.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

DISC ONE

All-new 16:9 transfer optimized for high-definition televisions

Video introduction by writer/director Yoshio Sakamoto

Two Interactive Audio Commentaries: one by Yoshio Sakamoto, Satoru Iwata, and Shigeru Miyamoto; and one by producer Makoto Kano

New Leaderboards: Test your sequence-breaking skills against the best speedrunners in the world

DISC TWO

Return to Zebes (2011): A 90-minute feature documentary on the making of the game

From Zebes to the Bottle Ship (2011): A 30 minute documentary about the history of the Metroid franchise

Deep Red: Scenes from the film that helped to inspire Super Metroid

Sequence Breaking: Noted speedrunners offer a guided tour of sequence breaking in Super Metroid

Into Tourian Base: An interactive map of Zebes with developer commentary and notes

Play the complete, original Metroid for the NES

Illustrated production history with rare behind-the-scenes photos, original press kit, and the U.S., European, and Japanese trailers

PLUS: Complete OST featuring original and remastered tracks from Super Metroid

A party of four child prodigies must band together to fend off a mysterious, malevolent alien force in this cult-classic role-playing game, scripted by influential Japanese copywriter and author, Shigesato Itoi. Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo embark on a fantastic adventure that spans a quirky, contemporary world, with a charming sense of lighthearted humor that shines through to the engrossing story’s awe-inspiring ending.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

DISC ONE

Fully animated opening and ending cinematics from Studio Ghibli.

In-game commentary from director/producer/writer Shigesato Itoi, designer Akihiko Miura, and composers Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka.

Live recording of the “Earthbound Orchestral Experience.”

Excerpts from the new translation of Saori Kumi’s Earthbound novelization, read by the author.

DISC TWO

The Man that Fell to Earthbound – Retrospective Q&A; with Shigesato Itoi about Earthbound’s critical and commercial reception.

It Hurts -- documentary feature chronicling the troubled production of Earthbound 64.

Outgrowing Onett - A short film from director Mamoru Hosoda (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars) that bridges the gap between Earthbound and Mother 3.

Brand new trailer of “Mother 3DS,” the highly anticipated, “definitive” edition of Mother 3.

All-new localization effort overseen by acclaimed director and screenwriter Brad Bird (The Incredibles, The Iron Giant).

Complete HD reimagining of the original Mother.

PLUS: Concept art gallery, and interviews with the game’s development staff.

In a galaxy far, far away, join Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and even Wicket the Ewok as they wage intergalactic war against the evil Empire and the sinister Sith lord, Darth Vader. In this ultimate HD edition of Super Star Wars trilogy, you’ll experience the entire saga, including racing a landspeeder through Tatooine’s wastelands in A New Hope, battling colossal AT-ATs storming Hoth’s rebel base in The Empire Strikes Back, flying the Millennium Falcon through the Death Star’s core in Return of the Jedi, and many more memorable adventures from the classic sci-fi trilogy.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES DISC ONE

All three Super Nintendo classics in their original form: Super Star Wars, Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

Remastered 16-bit visuals and crystal clear audio optimized for high-definition televisions.

New inventory management menu allows you to hang on to your weapons and powerups through all three games.

Save system lets you save your progress at any time.

New beginner-friendly “Apprentice Mode” eases newcomers into some of the most challenging Super NES games ever mad

DISC TWO

Deleted Levels: Two new playable missions previously cut from the games including R2-D2’s battle through Jabba’s palace.

A History of Sculpted Software: A 15-minute documentary chronicling the developer’s daunting task of reenvisioning George Lucas’ epic science-fiction series for the Super Nintendo.

From Giant Scorpions to Frog Dogs: An all-new 10 minute documentary examining the genesis of Super Star Wars trilogy’s most bizarre enemies.

Digital Strategy Guides: Digital versions of the original strategy guides to help you master what are considered some of the toughest video games on the Super NES.

Ladies and gentlemen: Start your engines, and prepare to challenge some of Nintendo’s most famous gaming characters in a high-speed battle of skill, wits...and luck! A huge critical and commercial success, Super Mario Kart is a seminal race-combat game from the 16-bit heyday of the early 90s that is so well loved, it continues to rank highly on “Best Game Ever” lists almost 20 years since its first release. Its key to success is its finely tuned, beautifully balanced multiplayer battle system that feels as fresh and fun as it did nearly two decades ago. Now’s your chance to rediscover the multiplayer magic of one of the best Super Nintendo games in three different forms, including an all-new Director's Cut!

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

DISC ONE

Director’s Cut: Featuring all-new polygonal graphics, the characters and courses are completely reimagined for a stunning, cutting-edge visual experience.

Enhanced Edition: A digitally remastered 16-bit version, with 1080p sprite-graphics taken from the original release, and authentic original gameplay

The First Cut: The completely untouched original version of the 1992 Super Nintendo release

Battle On!: Watch as the game’s original creators challenge one another in multiplayer combat and talk about their favorite weapons and characters

The Kart Legacy: A documentary on the legacy of Super Mario Kart, its numerous sequels and ports through the generations, and how it spawned an entirely new genre of racing games.

DISC TWO

Beyond F-Zero. The Making of a Two-player Racer: An in-depth interview with creator Shigeru Miyamoto about Super Mario Kart’s multiplayer design philosophies.

Unlocking Mode 7: Tadashi Sugiyama and Hideki Konno talk about the technical aspects of using Super Nintendo’s Mode 7 to deliver a great gaming experience.

Digitally remastered music by composer Soyo Oka

Bios and gameography of each Super Mario Kart character: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Bowser, Donkey Kong Jr., Koopa Troopa, and Toad.

Cities are living, breathing things -- just as much as the inhabitants that walk their streets -- and nowhere is this more apparent than in Will Wright's masterpiece. Providing one of the earliest examples of free-form emergent gameplay, Sim City for the Super Nintendo is a seminal work, grounded in reality but limited only by the player's imagination.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

DISC ONE

Two editions of the game: The original Super NES classic and SimCity+, a specially optimized widescreen edition for modern high-definition televisions.

Social Play: Connect your cities to those of your friends around the world.

Video introduction by Will Wright and Jeff Braun.

Fully voiced tutorial and advice featuring Nolan North as the voice of Dr. Wright.

DISC TWO

Af Wubbas Do (2011): A 60-minute feature documentary chronicling the history of the entire Sim series, from City through Copter to The Sims.

Urban Canvas (2011): A 30-minute exposé of the radical computer artists who use the SimCity series' landscaping and planning tools to produce works of visual art.

The Full, Uncut Raid on Bungeling Bay for Commodore 64: The game that inspired SimCity's creation.

Interactive gallery of real-life cities modeled in the game.

Original press materials and trailers.

Digital copy of "Street Music," an album featuring music from and inspired by the series.

Years ahead of its time, Actraiser was one of the most loved games released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Genre-bending civilization-building simulation with side-scrolling action, the game didn’t continue as a decades-long franchise like some of its other contemporaries, but it was never forgotten. Stepping into the omnipotent shoes of “The Master” to save the land and its people from the evil Tanzra and his six lieutenants is not only many gamers’ first memory of playing a “god game,” for some it is also their fondest memory from the entire 16-bit era.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

DISC ONE

All-new 16:9 remastered transfer optimized for high-definition televisions

Switch between the original 2D art assets and the all-new polygonal art with the push of a button.

Video introduction by director Masaya Hashimoto and writer Tomoyoshi Miyazaki.

Audio commentary track with the game’s designers.

DISC TWO

“The Creation Story” (2011), a forty-minute short documentary on the development of the game.

“Lightning in a Bottle” (2011), a roundtable discussion with Masaya Hashimoto, Tomoyoshi Miyazaki and Peter Molyneux about ActRaiser’s influence on game development and the “god games” genre.

The complete Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

An interactive gallery of over 100 never before seen sketches, concept art, and other design documents.

All that stands between a world’s freedom and its conquest by a ruthless tyrant is the intrepid pilot Fox McCloud and his dauntless friends of the Star Fox Team. Featuring the groundbreaking technology of the Super FX chip, Star Fox brought Nintendo into the world of 3D computer graphics. And flying through the sky and in space in the Arwing starship is perhaps the best way for Nintendo to bring polygons to its consoles.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES DISC ONE

Remastered audio and visuals, featuring Dolby Digital EX surround sound and a 16:7, HD presentation. Game’s original 1992 audio and visuals are also on the disc.

Two audio commentaries: One from the game’s executive producer, Hiroshi Yamauchi, and producer, Shigeru Miyamoto, and another with commentary from the point of view of Andross, the game’s villain.

Updated motion-comic version of the original Star Fox comic that ran in Nintendo Power from February 1993 to December 1993.

DISC TWO

“Defenders of Corneria”: a 90-minute documentary on the making of the original Star Fox.

“Fox Through the Ages”: A look at how Fox McCloud and the series has changed since their 1992 inception.

“Arwing Declassified”: A collection of other designs considered and rejected for the iconic Arwing starship.

“The Art of Star Fox”: Images of Fox McCloud, the Star Fox Team, and the memorable worlds from the franchise.

Original promotional ads from Japan, Europe, and North America.

PLUS: The Complete Original soundtrack.

[rndyounghowze]

Threatened With Good Mime Continues The Techno Mime Hilarity

Can you give an award for “Best Mime Work By A Dog”?

By Ricky and Dana Young-Howze

Sour Grapes Productions @gennyyosco

Venmo:@rndyounghowze

Review 189

Genny Yosco is probably one of the nicest producers with remarkable insight into how small teams of creatives can dominate the digital theatre landscape. She also has a huge heart which is dedicated to building a team of actors created out of love and mutual respect. You can’t go on the Sour Grapes Productions Facebook or watch an episode of Bard Brunch without finding her shouting out the whole team and talking about them. Silent But Deadly the Mime Experience is just one of those many productions of Sour Grapes poised to take over the internet. With their newest video “Threatened With A Good Mime” we see not only her dedication to doing more but the whole team’s dedication to going Bigger and Better! We were stoked to see their work and feel we have a new mission for a team that have become leaders in the digital theatre world.

The parts that we connected to the most are the ones that used the digital format the best. A mime makeup tutorial that goes on forever? Yes please! A scrolling memorial to all the mine actors that have gone on before us? Hell yeah!

However the opposite is true that the ones that we didn’t really connect with completely were the ones that got a little bit more conceptual. Scenes where characters are trying to kiss via digital mistletoe or feel entitled to what’s yours and get punished in a rather violent way rang a bit hollow. Oddly enough (or rather ironically) the mimed violence didn’t hold up. Why are some characters holding real cups to drink out of but are miming eating cookies from a real box that says “Do Not Eat”? They lacked the polish and consistency that we have seen this group have before. In a way those were also the ones that seemed harder to film and edit. We already know that these silent performers are amazing because we’ve seen them so many times. Maybe it’s a good time to start the year off with building a stronger foundation.

We’ve gotten the silent treatment from these guys a lot so I will go out on a limb and say that their solid foundation comes from their branding, their irreverence, and their humor. We have strongly branded characters that are very distinguishable people but they haven’t become characters yet to us. We laugh out loud at their mime jokes but where can those become long form story ideas? They have this absolutely refreshing brand of humor but it doesn’t always come out exactly the way that it should. If this foundation was worked on and made unshakable this group could go from amazing to unassailable in a year.

What we would like to see is more in depth storytelling, more world building, and rounding out the characters. What makes these characters different other than wig color? What are their other personality quirks? How do they react with the world? Silent But Deadly has already shown us that they can get bigger. They’ve already shown us that they are getting better. However focusing on what makes them special and competitive will only guarantee that when they take off they’re never coming down.

We love these wonderful performers and everything Sour Grapes Productions has ever shown us. If it looks like we’re criticizing it’s only because we’re shoving with love and want them to be the best version of themselves that they can be. You should love them too and watch everything that they do on their YouTube. They were one of the first groups to take us in and accept us as digital theatre reviewers and they will always hold a soft spot in our hearts. We hope to see bigger and better things from them as they build the framework for an awesome future. If they help set the standards for this new field the world will have to follow!

Like our review? Take a look for yourself here!

*****A Word From Our Sponsors*****

We have a YouTube Channel. We’re working furiously to get new videos up weekly.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0M6M04VtDpqFzVLxjfrRZA

We have official merch now! Keep us fed and get gifts for the family all at the same time!

https://teespring.com/rnd-younghowze?pid=972

Wanna be a sponsor? Email us for rates at rndyounghowze@gmail.com

Check out our Social Media

Twitter: @rndyounghowze

Instagram: @rndyounghowze

Facebook: Ricky and Dana Young-Howze

[quixol]

10/3/2017 - 12/4/2017: QuixolMC Changelog #20

Winter is nearly here, and 2017 is drawing to a close. It’s probably a welcome end to a remarkably terrible year, for many of us- which is all the more reason to celebrate! The holiday season is upon us, and we here at Quixol are ready as ever.

Our 20th changelog post doesn’t have a whole lot of content to it, but enough to warrant a new one. Some of the biggest things in the past 2 months have been the promotion of our new staff, as well as the halloween party and our 2-year anniversary party. Busy time of the year for us, it has been! Hope you’ve all been enjoying your time on Quixol.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s everything significant that’s changed on QuixolMC since October:

Key:

+ Feature added - Feature removed % Feature changed/bug fix ^ Feature updated (usually plugin updates) # Comment (for… comments.)

Notable changes from 10/3/2017 to 12/4/2017:

% Fixed issue with new players not getting sent to tutorial % Potentially fixed issues with poor player ping/disconnects % Made a few tweaks to Jobs # Miner: #   + hardened clay: 0.15 shells, 0.2 exp # Builder: #   + Glazed Terracotta: 1.5 shells, 1.5 exp #   + Concrete: 1.5 shells, 1.5 exp #   + Concrete powder: 1.5 shells, 1.5 exp #   % Reduced xp from cobblestone, from 1 to 0.5 % You can now enderpearl inside the grove's Hauntyhouse ^ Factions -> 2.13.2 ^ Biography -> 1.5.2 % just fixed an issue with urls here + Added “hauntyhouse” at the grove, and held a spooky halloween event...! + Added Seed to the admin sell shop @ /warp market for 0.10 shells % Made it so all players can now make 5 more quickshops than they could before - Removed RandomTeleport (it was broken anyways... looking for a good replacement) ^ EssentialsX -> 2.0.1 b545 ^ EntityLWC -> 1.9.3 ^ Craftbook -> 3.9u18 + Added Slappy Salmon minigame to the Grove + Promoted 3 new staff members, and celebrated our 2nd anniversary! - Removed permissions for /getpos, /depth, and /compass # nobody ever used them anyways. If this is inconveniencing please let us know (you can just use the f3 menu instead). + Added lockers to Amanita, so we have somewhere to store items from demolished shops. # They are located to the opposite side of the subway, downstairs. If any old unrented shops need clearing out, players' items can be stored here. + Added "secret" backroom to Pipis room at market with more Bepis store slots (to be filled later) + Also added various hints for the puzzles around how to get into the room around the market % Small tweaks to Biography and other scripts

List of known bugs/issues:

! Server has some outstanding lag issues, has gotten better but still needs work ! Dog AI is still broken; only bred/summoned dogs will attack hostile mobs ! Sometimes Factions will have a hiccup and forget what everyone’s usernames are ! Lighting glitches are real bad ! Parrots spawn in jungles very, very, very rarely ! mcMMO considers raw salmon, clownfish, pufferfish as “raw fish” when summoning cats

Things to come: 

• Holiday party! • Building a new Tutorial • Adding some new parkours/minigames to the grove • Releasing custom advancemements • Updating qchat to 1.0.0, making a comprehensive guide/tutorial on how to utilize qchat • Coding a new and improved help menu • Other stuff!

last changelog post (#19)

about changelogs

That about covers it!

It’s been a couple months since our last changelog post, and a lot of stuff has happened! We’ve had multiple parties, projects unveiled, new staff promoted, and many new members have joined recently (hello!). With winter here, many people are very busy with end of semester projects and finals and we’d like to wish everyone good luck with those.

There’s not a lot else to cover here, but we figure we should mention that details on the next large minecraft update, The update Aquatic, was revealed recently at Minecon Earth. This update is planned to be released sometime during the spring of 2018. We’re still in the process of planning out what we will do for this update, so keep your eyes peeled!

Thanks for reading, ~ Quixol Staff

[tak4hir0]

Gone are the days when programming languages could only be mastered programmers like Bill Gates, who later got to dominate the world by storm. Now everyone holds the same potential, and the chance to learn and even master programming language easily. Today, we will show you 10 interactive websites that will help you do that. That’s right, forget about complicated setups and black, cold command prompts that make you want to quit before you start, and say hi to 10 educational websites with instant and interactive lessons that teach you programming languages like HTML, CSS, PHP, Ruby and even iOS. Pick up tips, screencasts and even best practices from industry professionals. Recommended Reading: Getting A College Degree Or Self-Learning? Kickstart the beginning of your new path into programming today! Codecademy is indisputably the most famous website to teach you to code interactively, thanks to its helpful interface and well-structured courses. Upon visiting the main page, you can already start tasting the programming, with its motivating on-screen console. Pick a course that Codecademy offers from Web Fundamentals, PHP, JavaScript, jQuery, Python, Ruby, and APIs. Inside each lesson is a panel that explains necessary code and instruction. Another panel allows you to get your hands dirty by writing acceptable code, then checking if you are doing the right thing. Don’t worry about making mistakes, as both instruction and code panels will warn you of errors, and provide hints. It is as if there’s a kind teacher right beside you. Code Avengers is designed to make you love programming. The website offers HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and Python as well as web design and development course. Each course is carefully designed to truly entertain you while leveling your programming skills painlessly and at the end of each lesson you also get to play a mini game to release your cumulated stress and keep you going. Code Avengers has a gradual approach to interactive learning. It does not explain too much knowledge that isn’t essential for beginners, just a bit of code and playful instruction, making things very easy to digest. You also get to play with the code, then see the impact of the changes immediately. It is carefully crafted with the beginner’s comfort in mind. After you’ve finished courses in Codecademy or Code Avengers, and you are ready to further expand your capabilities, Plural Sight is the next quality website you should land on. Unlike most interactive learning sites, Plural Sight offers more in-depth courses to train and turn you into an expert with the industry’s best practices. Almost all courses are aggressively polished with impressive design and informative screencasts, though the challenges after the screencast might be a bit hard for amateurs. Luckily, there are hints and answers to refer to. While most of the offered courses are free, certain ones will require you to opt for paid subscription to access the entire course including all screencasts and challenges, and also all other courses in Code School. Treehouse courses are more project-oriented than language-oriented, so they are perfect for novice programmer with a planned purpose, such as building a website, or an application. For example, the Websites course is all about building a responsive website, interactive website or even WordPress theme – a very practical and efficient way to master related languages. Nonetheless, they have released a plethora of foundation courses with a video-then-quiz approach. For Treehouse, every course is divided into different stages or modules, and beyond every first stage the learner will be invited to pay a monthly subscription fee of $25 to access all courses with 650+ videos, and an exclusive Treehouse Members Forum as a bonus. If you are serious about your programming future, you could subscribe the $49 monthly plan to obtain in-depth interviews with leading industry pros and cutting-edge workshops. Udacity is the unification of insightful video lectures and improved quizzes to achieve the interactive feel for students, so it’s ideal for those who don’t like to read but rather get explanations from industry professionals such as Google employees. You will be given a screencast from pros discussing the topics and instructions, then you will take either logic or programming quizzes to strengthen your understanding or forge it into a skill. The good thing about Udacity is it provides more videos than any other site, and the instructors are either real-life professors or industry veterans. The only pitfall here is most courses are not much related to each other, so Udacity is probably not your starting point, but a virtual university to further your study. So far, all websites you read here are mainly dedicated to web development and computer science, but CodeHS is one with simple and fun game programming lessons that involve problem-solving, JavaScript, animation, data structures, game design, and puzzle challenges. The advantage of CodeHS is that it teaches you to think and solve a problem like a programmer with its first course, Programming with Karel. The lessons are fun as you will learn how to use the code to move the dog, Karel to complete given tasks and puzzles like picking up a ball and building a towel. It plants a solid concept of programming and the way it solves the problem systematically in your mind. Other than the course mentioned above, you must sign up for a monthly subscription to continue your learning journey, but it’s a perfect site to learn basic game programming effectively. Although Khan Academy’s courses are not as structured as CodeHS, it does serve as an open playground for both novice and amateurs particularly interested in learning drawing, animation and user interaction with code. It does not preach any specific programming language, but the code pattern it adopts can be applied anywhere, as a majority of languages share the similar programming pattern. You can first join the Programming Basics course to watch and learn basic concepts, then explore the given code after the video tutorial to validate your doubts. With Khan Academy, you can save your modification as a Spin-Off for everyone to enjoy and customize. There have been hundreds of spin-offs just from one lesson in one course, so imagine the community size, and the lesson’s effectiveness. Structured Query Language (SQL) is just a language purely designed to store and retrieve data from a database, so imagine the boredom you will experience when programming a warehouse. Yet SQLZOO wants you to learn SQL happily with its interactive interface and smileys. Since there is really nothing too deep to explain for a straightforward language like SQL, the site will only ask you to replace the variables like city names or population number, and raise the difficulty from that level. One huge let-down will be the shortage of hints, answers and forum, so you are probably doomed if you fail to solve any one of the quizzes, just like old times. FrontendMasters, as the name implies, it mainly focuses on the front-end programming course such JavaScript and SVG as well as the frameworks like Vue.js, React.js, Ember.js. FrontendMasters delivers a new concept in programming courses. Each course a workshop delivered by experts from notable companies such as Microsoft, Adobe, Twillio, Paypal, and LinkedIn. If you’re interested to attend the workshop, you can attend it online or in person in Downtown Minneapolis. This makes FrontendMasters stand-out from the rest as the course feels more alive. You can see the instructors and their interaction with the audience. EggHead course collection is pretty vast ranging from the most basic of the language or framework to the most advanced techniques. Some of the courses are free such as The Beginner’s Guide to React and Getting Started with Redux presented Dan Abramov which is in itself is the React.js core developer. EggHead often delivers the latest programming practices, tools, and languages into their course quicker than any other course channel which makes it a popular channel for developers within the industry to update with their programming skills and practices. TutsPlus course collection is vast. Aside of teaching programming languages like PHP, JavaScript, and Node.js, you can also learn about design, photo and video editing, drawing illustration, and business. It’s a perfect channel if you’re interested multiple discipline than just programming. SymfonyCasts is a course channel that cover specifically on Symfony. Symfony is a PHP framework or, should I say, ecosystem that produces a bunch of popular PHP packages, tools and certification. The course covers the very basic of the PHP language, Symfony itself, and some advanced PHP development techniques such as OOP, so called Acceptance Testing, and security. I think, if you want to be serious with PHP language or specifically in Symfony, SymfonyCasts might be a good place for you to learn. Founded by Jeffrey Way, Laracats course is covering lessons Laravel framework and its ecosystem. He delivers a wide variety subjects and lessons to this channel. Not only Laravel, you’ll also find him covering fundamental PHP, Vue.js, JavaScript, Testing, and Tooling. The way Jeffrey’s deliver this course makes these lessons very easy to follow even to the most novice users who just getting started into programming. I would recommend for any beginners to sign-up to this channel. Comparison Chart Here’s a comparison chart for you to get a bird’s eye view of all these awesome places to learn how to code. Website Course Feature Pricing Difficulty Codecademy HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, Ruby, Python, API Code Interpreter, Progress Saver, Project, Forum Free Easy – Intermediate Code Avengers HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript Code Interpreter, Progress Saver, Project, Note Free Easy Code School HTML5, CSS, CSS3, jQuery, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, iOS Code Interpreter, Screencast, Progress Saver, Forum Free/ monthly subscription Intermediate – Hard Treehouse HTML, CSS, CSS3, JavaScript, jQuery, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, iOS, Android, UX, Database Code Interpreter, Screencast, Progress Saver, Project, Forum Free, $25/month, $49/month Easy – Hard LearnStreet HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Ruby Code Interpreter, Progress Saver, Project, Forum Free Easy Udacity Web Development, HTML5, Python, Java, Computer Science, Algorithm, AI Code Interpreter, Screencast, Progress Saver, Forum Free Intermediate – Nightmare CodeHS Problem Solving, JavaScript, Animation, Game Programming Code Interpreter, Screencast, Progress Saver Free/ monthly subscription Easy – Intermediate Khan Academy Programming Basics, Canvas Drawing, Animation, User Interaction Code Interpreter, Screencast, Progress Saver, Project, Discussion Free Easy – Intermediate SQLZOO SQL Code Interpreter Free Easy – Hard FrontendMasters JavaScript, CSS, SVG, Node.js, React.js, Vue.js, Ember.js, Angular. Screencast Monthly subscription starging at $39 Easy – Hard EggHead JavaScript, Node.js, React.js, Vue.js, Svelte, etc. Screencast, Progress Saver, Discussion Monthly subscription starging at $40 (Some courses are free) Easy – Hard TutsPlus PHP, Ruby, Node.js, JavaScript, CSS, Vue.js, etc. Screencast, Comments / Discussion, Forum Monthly subscription starging at $16.50 Easy – Hard SymfonyCasts PHP, Symfony, and JavaScript. Screencast Monthly subscription starging at $24.99 Easy – Hard Laracats PHP, Laravel, JavaScript, and Vue.js. Screencast Monthly subscription starging at $15 (Some lessons are free) Easy – Hard Have you studied at any website we showcased above? How’s the experience? Or have we missed certain interactive learning sites with rich assets for budding programmers? Let us share our experiences and resources to help and inspire each other then!

[roinaochieng-blog]

Google I/O Highlights

Ever had those mental trips when you’re watching a YouTube videos, especially the festival and event highlights and you picture yourself there? In crazy details, I mean what you’d pack, how you’d feel in the plane en route, the pictures, the people, the experiences? I had that moment a while back in my second year about Google I/O after attending Google I/O Extended at my university.  Watching Sundar and all the updates was great but seeing all the developers coming from all over the world coming together, united in their passion for technology took my heart. I got the ticket came in confirming my attendance in April, major déjà vu hit  me (I’m totally underplaying how excited I was here). I’ll definitely update you more in-depth on the more technical aspects of the sessions that I attended during I/O however this post is simply a first timer’s perspective on the event and all the mind blowing moments I had. Hoping this gives all my readers perspective on the event if you’re planning on attending and are wondering, “Is it all it’s pegged out to be? Is it worth the trip to San Francisco?

How to get there?

First thing’s first, tickets!

It’s always great to be on the lookout for the release of I/O tickets anytime from early April, the range for a couple of hundreds to a thousand dollars. This year’s tickets went for around $700 to $1200. It’s a three day event so when you get the dates, go ahead and sort out accommodation. This year’s was at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, so your best bet is to get a hotel in Mountain View or San Jose to avoid the commute you’d take if you were staying in San Francisco, it’s a pretty long drive. Besides, you have plenty of accommodation options, spend some time on Air BnB checking out shared living options especially if you’re on a budget. I’ll be putting up a separate post on finding a great space on Air BnB and the hostel options and experience.

Up, up and Away!

I’d say that simply put, for any developer, enthusiast or designer, Google I/O is our version of the pilgrimage to Mecca, except it’s mountain view. It’s a 8 to 9 hour trip to Amsterdam, Schipol Airport from Nairobi, Kenya for a 2 hour layover  (you already know how essential a neck pillow and a good playlist and book is for this type of trip). It’s a super busy airport so making your way to the other gates is a trip in itself especially if you have to pick up your luggage before the next flight. Then you hop on a flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco for 4 hours. There’s a whooping 10 hour difference between Nairobi and SFO so brace yourself my friend, THE JET LAG IS SO REAL.  Coming from a pretty predominantly hot country, the wind weather was calm but pretty chilly, have a light jumper in your carry on bag just to be safe.

Views at dusk or dawn from NBO to AMS.

Over the antarctic en route San Francisco from Amsterdam.

Checking In.

I was super blessed to have traveled with a large group of my friends and colleagues in the  developer ecosystem in Nairobi and Sub Saharan Africa. We got there two days prior to the main event because of the Global  Google Developer Summit which was luckily at the same hotel that we were staying at. The hotel was electric with hundreds of developers pumped up about the summit and I/O. That aside, checking in for Google I/O is pretty simple, you’re required to get to Shoreline Amphitheater with some form of identification. They give your tag which is NFC enabled. The tag gets you into practically everything. For the keynote, your sitting rows are on your tag and they’re actually super strict at the entrance, but only from the keynote (unless you have great friends like Anie does 🙂 *inside joke). To check in, you’ll need a form of official identification or the ticket that the send you a couple of weeks before the event.

Pro-tip: There’s a whole bunch of events on the night before I/O officially begins, so keep an eye out on email groups for them. Lots of great opportunities to mingle and network.

That Key Note though!

We happened to sit really really close to the main stage as GDG Leads so we had a really great view of the keynote. My biggest highlight had to be the animation before Sundar’s speech, the idea. An amazing story about collaboration, hard work and determination in making ideas happen. Super motivational, like Life of Pi kind of motivation. It set the tone for the rest of the day for me.

Biggest highlights from Sundar’s speech for me were:

There are over 2 billion Android users as at the day of the conference and the numbers are growing rapidly

He emphasized the use of machine learning in products such as street-view and smart replies in Google Allo. He announced the release of smart reply on Google Search and Gmail too for over 1 billion users. This was great to hear especially because a lot of local tech communities have redirected their efforts towards machine learning. In Nairobi, the Nairobi Women in Machine Learning and Data Science go all out on interactive sessions in the field. It’s exciting to think how they can use the current libraries and come up with other innovative uses of machine learning to solve African problems.

The improvement of the accuracy of voice recognition even in noisy environments. The use of deep learning to recognize multiple different sounds on Google home. This allows us to create very minimal infrastructure to have very accurate results even in Google photos.

He announce Google Lens, an epic feature on Google Photos and Assistant. It’s a computational vision based functionality that understands what you are looking at and allows you to make decisions on that information. So here’s how it works, let’s say you go to the dog show and see an interesting breed of dog that you don’t know. You can simply point your phone at it and it’ll be able to give you information on what it is and more! I couldn’t help but think how deep learning can be such a useful tool for developers to build accessibility functions and learning tools for communities. The potential is truly limitless.

Here’s the entire keynote, let me know what your favorite part was.

Codelabs.

For anyone who’s been to the Google Developers website, you know that codelabs are step by step tutorial on how to use certain functionalities on different Google technologies. Day 1 is definitely not the best day to do codelabs because the lines are outrageously long. I’d advice to go for office hours sessions and talks on day 1 then go for codelabs on day 2. Office hours are sessions where the amazing Googlers who work on specific technologies, take time to give you feedback on your projects and help on how you can make them better.

The best codelabs for me were the Android things codelab which after completing two, you would get a pico maker kit. The tensorflow codelab was also great. The best part about these codelab sessions is that even if you don’t attend all the ones you wanted to, you can access all of them on the codelabs website. You’d want to attend the codelabs that need special hardware or software to access. It’s also great to go for codelabs because you have professionals who can help you when you’re stuck.

Office Hours and Sandbox sessions.

I’d have to say my favorite sandbox was the Android Auto one and the IoT drink serving robot. There was a real life-sized and functioning car at the Android Auto sandbox where you could go and experience first hand the future of the automobile industry. There was also really nifty robots that used IoT and Machine Learning to make and dispense beverages. I got really inspired by on of the office hours sessions during the second day, thus the birth of my start-up Hypo. If you’re working on a project, you should definitely check out the office hours sessions for help and perspective.

Pro-tip. Download the I/O app on Playstore and the IoS Appstore and make sure your register for the sessions that you want to attend. Most of the talks have really long lines so if you want to be on the fast-tracked line, register in advance. They will turn you away if the sessions are absolutely full, which they are in most cases.

The Freebies.

You’ll have to be up super early if you want to beat the traffic on both days of I/O. Trust me the line can be super long. But worry not, breakfast is covered. There’s loads of coffees and teas when you get to the amphitheater, plus massive amounts of pastries and snacks. During the day, there’s snack stations all over the place so there’s really not a moment that you’ll be starving. Make sure you have your tag at all times. This year, we had NFC enabled tags that they scan when you pick you your freebies. Look at me getting ahead of myself with food when I was supposed to be talking about freebies, smh.

So this year, all attendees got a Google home, a nifty little bag and a steel water bottle. You might want to take your freebies towards the end of day one because it can be bulky carrying it around all day when you’re up and down in sessions.

Back to the food, hehe, if you’re a really picky and healthy eater, I’d advice you to sign up for the kosher meals. The breakfasts are super nutritious and healthy but the list is specific for people who are listed. So  pay attention to the regular emails and sign up for that list.

If you have some extra cash on you, you can bag cool merch there too. There’s a whole lot of other freebies on offer so keep an eye out. There was an Android Pay Givaway where you could get Android bot dolls and so much more.

Fun and Games.

There’s something for everybody at I/O. You’ll probably be exhausted after a long day but a great way to unwind is to stay for the after hours stuff. I can tell you for sure it’s completely worth it. You’ll get to play amazing games at the arcade, dance parties, concerts, live performances and drinks galore. It’s a great place to mingle with people across all fields and it’s just the right atmosphere to make friends for life.

The concert this year was by LCD Sound System and it was so mind blowing some people cried! Tears of joy guys, it was awesome!

Tips for new attendees.

Here’s everything I wish someone told me before Google I/O.

Uber and Lyft don’t take debit cards so either carry a credit card or buy a prepaid card. I used the American Express pre-paid card which was great fro the rest of my trip.

Never leave your valuables in the car. My friends and I had an incident on Folsom Street in San Francisco during a Google Launchpad event. We parked on the street and someone busted out the windows of the car and took my bag that had all my travel documents. Trust me, having to take a trip to the police station in the middle of the night isn’t a great start to the trip. It all turned out well in the end. But that’s a post for another day.

Bright and early. Be up at around 7 am and out by 7:30 am on day 1. I can tell you the traffic will be insane all the way to Shoreline. You can grab breakfast when you get to the venue.

Bring business cards! I had a whole stack of business cards but I left them at the hotel. Big mistake because I was stuck writing down my emails on peoples phones Smh.

Embrace cultural liquidity. It was my first time in such a big conference. I learned so much just by allowing myself to be curious about others careers, cultures and challenges. It’s a great thing to be able to do that in a selfless way, without thinking, “what’s in it for me?”.

Hope this article helps anyone getting ready to attend Google I/O in coming years. I know it’ll be changing every year but I’m hoping it’ll give you perspective.

Check out more highlights.

Thanks for reading.

  This has been on my drafts for quite a while. Hope it helps anyone thinking of attending I/O/ Ever had those mental trips when you're watching a YouTube videos, especially the festival and event highlights and you picture yourself there?

[minnievirizarry]

How to Write a Blog Post Your Audience Can’t Resist Sharing

Content is the lifeblood of social media marketing. If you don’t have anything worth sharing, you’ll never be able to build an audience, earn traffic or maximize your social media ROI.

One of the best places to create content to share is your blog. However, it’s not as simple as jotting down a few hundred words, hitting publish and waiting for the traffic and shares to roll in. Not every blog post will resonate on social media. But not to worry.

We’ve spelled out every step for your below. Here’s how to write a blog post your audience can’t resist sharing:

Find Out What Your Audience Wants to Read

The first step to writing a blog post that gets shared on social media is to find out what your audience actually wants to read.

When you’re writing content to attract search engine traffic, your topic selection is often based on keywords. You use a keyword research tool to find out what keywords people search, then create content targeting those specific phrases.

With social media, target keywords aren’t as important. Instead, you need to look for the topics and types of articles your audience wants to read on social media. Luckily, finding these topics is simple. Here are a few places to look:

BuzzSumo

You can use BuzzSumo to search for the most highly shared content based on a keyword or specific website.

You can even sort the results by network. This is helpful because content that resonates on Pinterest might not work as well on Facebook. You have to know which types of blog posts to create for each network.

Quora, Groups, & Forums

Q&A networks like Quora, social media groups and forums are hotbeds of questions waiting to be blogged about.

On Quora, start by entering in a broad topic. Then you’ll see a list of suggested searches. Pick a topic closely related to what your industry is about.

Then, you’ll see a list of questions people ask. The cool thing about Quora is it has an up-vote system for answers. That means people can vote up answers that they feel are the strongest or most relevant. Look for questions that have answers with a lot of up-votes, because that’s a sign the subject is popular.

Groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as forums on your industry, are also home to people who have questions about the topics that you would want to blog about. Therefore, it’s good to use these sources as inspiration for your next blog post. Best of all, if you are timely, you can come back to these questions and answer them with a blog post link.

Your Social Media Followers

Do your current and potential customers ask your sales and support team questions? If so, have those teams note the questions that are frequently asked. These can make for great blog post topics that will ultimately save time for both your customers and employees.

@AllisonBoatgirl Hey Allison, thanks! Don't have anything on Facebook audits yet. But we might write one on @SproutSocial later this year

— Dominique Jackson (@djthewriter) April 13, 2017

Remember that 61% of consumers research products and services online before making a purchasing decision. Help them get easy answers through your content and save the phone calls for closing sales.

Between these three tactics, you should have plenty of good ideas floating around for blog posts. Best of all, these are topics that your audience has shown they’re interested in and are willing to share on social media.

And just one last note, list articles tend to work exceptionally well on social media. To give you an example, we analyzed the most socially shared articles related to “social media marketing.” List posts are the clear winner for the most average shares.

Now we can move onto the next step.

Spend More Than 30 Seconds on Your Title

It doesn’t matter if you’re writing an article for a newspaper, magazine or in this case, a blog. Your headline needs to be extremely engaging and compelling. Otherwise you’re going to lose potential readers right out the gate.

Think of the articles you click when you scroll through Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. More than likely, something in the headline caught your attention and made you click. Your readers need to do the same thing when they see one of your articles in their feed.

The text you write inside your Tweet or Facebook post is one thing. But social networks will also pull in meta data from your posts, along with a summary card. In this Facebook post from Greatist, the headline “8 Everyday Activities That Totally Count as Exercise” is being pulled directly from the article on their site.

Notice how much the headline stands out nearly as much as the featured image. Needless to say, you shouldn’t treat your headline as an afterthought. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what ends up happening and the result is blog posts with little to no social engagement at all.

The next question is, what makes a headline click-worthy? There’s actually a lot that goes into it, and the folks at Copyblogger have written several guides and tutorial on what works best. According to Copyblogger, a good headline should:

Be useful to the reader.

Create a sense of urgency.

Mention a unique benefit the reader will get from the article.

Ultra specific to the intended audience.

Here’s a quick test to show the effectiveness of these tips. If you saw these articles, which headline would you be more likely to click?

How to Make Your Dog Happier

7 Principles From the Dog Whisperer That Will Transform Your Dog’s Life

While the first one is simple and straight to the point, the second one is intriguing, pokes at your curiosity and pulls you in to want to read the article.

Just be careful not to clickbait readers.

For one, it’s deceptive and will turn off readers. But on top of that, in 2016 Facebook made updates to its news feed algorithm that push clickbait headlines to the bottom of users’ feeds. If you’re curious about what Facebook considers to be clickbait, here are the two key points according to the company’s website:

(1) if the headline withholds information required to understand what the content of the article is; and (2) if the headline exaggerates the article to create misleading expectations for the reader.

For example, we’re sure you’ve seen headlines such as “You Won’t Believe What This Actor Did After Losing His Oscar!” Headlines like this withhold information about what the article is actually about and force people to click through. What generally ends up happening is readers click your headline, then exit back to Facebook after they’ve been disappointed in what they see.

Facebook works that “bounce” into its algorithm. If that keeps happening with your site, your content could start getting buried at the bottom of users’ news feeds.

Follow the tips above and you’ll be able to create headlines that readers want to click without being deceptive and clickbaiting.

If you need some help coming up with good blog titles, here are a couple of tools to help:

Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator

Sumome Headline Generator

Content Ideator

It’s Time to Start Researching

You’ve got your topic picked out and you have a captivating title. The next step is to write the blog post. But before you dive in and start typing away, you need to lay some groundwork. The best bloggers do plenty of research before forming a single sentence.

Start by running a BuzzSumo search again. This time, instead of just looking at the share numbers, we’re going to look at the actual articles getting all the shares. We want to know what they’ve done that compelled so many people to share it.

After you run a search, you can click on any of the articles to visit the site.

Here are some things to look at when examining the articles:

How many words is it? If people are sharing longer articles, your 500 words probably won’t cut it.

How in depth is it? Similar to the first question, if the content goes extremely in depth and covers every aspect of the topic, a broad high level article won’t stand out.

What type of media is in it? Is the article mostly text? Or are there a lot of graphics, videos and other media in the post as well?

When was it published? If the articles with the most social shares are old and out of date, you could score a quick win by publishing something new and fresh.

In addition to looking at articles with the most social shares, you can also look at content currently ranking on the first page of Google.

While search engine rankings don’t necessarily correlate to a post being successful on social media, the content is showing up for a reason. Google sees some value in it. If you can create a post that attracts social shares and also ranks on Google, you won’t need to rely too much on a single source of traffic.

Pay attention to articles that appear on both your BuzzSumo and Google search. These are good articles to draw inspiration from since they’ve shown they’re favored by search engines and social media users.

How to Write Your Blog Post

Your overall goal when writing your blog post is to make sure that yours is the best resource on the topic. To ensure that your blog post is the best, make sure that it has more of the following:

In-depth information. It doesn’t have to be longer than your competitor’s blog posts, but it should be more comprehensive.

Images and media. If possible, include more screenshots or photographs detailing the process. It’s not possible with all subjects, but it is possible with many. You can really step things up by including custom graphics or even videos.

Data and stats. Content needs a certain trust factor and social proof to be popular on social media. Boost your trust factor with more statistics, case studies and other data so readers know that it is well-researched content. People love to share stats.

With those things in mind, you can start writing your blog post in a couple of ways.

Note: You will add in supplementary content (images, data, etc.) and optimize your content later. Right now, the focus should be on getting the blog post content drafted. Also, everyone has different writing styles and habits. Find what works best for you, but you can use this as a starting point.

Start With an Outline

For some writers, starting with an outline will help you ensure that you cover everything you want to cover in an organized manner. You can start with specific headings you intend to use throughout your post or simply block the main points that will be expanded upon throughout your content.

Start With a Brain Dump

If you have a lot of great ideas for your blog post, but can’t seem to organize them, then your best bet might be to just get them out on paper or in a Word doc first. You can worry about the organization and editing afterward. This will ensure that you are not inhibited to the point that you get stuck trying to write your blog post.

Start With the Easiest, Then the Hardest

Looking at a blank piece of paper or Word document can be extremely discouraging when writing a blog post. If you find yourself with an outline, but not able to write the introduction or first section, feel free to skip around. Often times the intro is the most difficult part to come up with.

Start with the sections you feel will be easiest to write first, and then go back to the tougher parts later. The more you complete, the more encouraged you will be to finish up the rest.

Organize & Format

Writing for the web is significantly different than any other format. Aside from the way text looks on a computer versus print, there’s also the fact that you’re competing with millions of other articles for your reader’s attention. Then writing with the intent of people finding and sharing your content on social media adds another dimension.

So we want to be careful with formatting. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that your article must be easy to skim. Countless studies have shown that most people don’t do a deep dive into content online. Don’t believe us? Check out these stats:

55% of all page views get less than 15 seconds of attention.

The average visitor only reads about 20% of the text on a page.

2-3 letter words get looked over almost 75% of the time.

Visitors only spend 20% of their attention on content below the fold.

It takes people 20-30% longer to read online than it does to read on paper.

In order to appeal to skimmers, write in shorter paragraphs, use bullet/numbered lists and subheadings. Your articles should look more like the example on the right than the left.

Add in Supplementary Content

If you didn’t already, go back through your organized content and add images, video, statistics, case studies and other data or resource links to applicable sections. The more you can backup your content, the more trustworthy it will be for readers. One study found that 58% of consumers trust editorial content, so convince the other 42% to trust yours with some detailed research.

Always link to any sources of data you mention.

Edit

Once your blog post is organized, and supplementary content has been added in, it’s time to edit your content. If you have a content editor to forward your blog post to, that’s great. If you don’t, you can use tools like Grammarly to get the spelling and grammatical errors that Microsoft Word, Google Docs and other word processing tools miss.

We highly suggest saving editing for last. As tempting as it may be to edit as you go along, it will only slow you down.

Add These Elements for Social Success

Alright, now that your article is written, let’s make sure it’s optimized to be shared on social media. Add these elements to your blog post to attract social shares.

Add Social Sharing Buttons

The easiest way to ensure that all of your blog posts get shared on social media is to add social sharing buttons to your blog template. These buttons should appear on each and every blog post page, preferably at the top of the post before the content begins (like you see on this blog post) and at the bottom of the post as soon as the content ends.

Why place it in both spots? At the top of the post, it encourages people to read the post, as they will assume a popular post must be good. At the bottom of the post, it encourages people who just finished reading the post to share it.

Most major blogging platforms support social sharing buttons. AddThis, ShareThis, and Shareaholic are a few major social sharing button providers that will work with most of the top blogging platforms. They will also provide you some great analytics to learn more about your most-shared content.

Add Tweetable Quotes

Whether it’s statistics, witty lines or quotes, having lines that are short enough to Tweet (shoot for under 100 characters) will encourage people to share them. You may have seen this cool little feature on sites like Hubspot or even in some of our posts.

You can use free tools like Click to Tweet to turn text from your blog posts into Tweets. Plus, you can automatically add your Twitter Handle in the Tweet to earn some extra followers.

Mention Influencers

What if you could bait users with large followings into sharing and promoting your content on social media? And without having to send cold emails or pay them for advertising.

All you have to do is mention them within your article. Then send a Tweet and @Mention them.

Looking to grow your Instagram audience with hashtags? Use these tactics from @Sephora @McLarenAuto & @rydercarroll! https://t.co/KWEizVDmpy

— Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) April 23, 2017

People love to see that they’ve been mentioned or highlighted in an article. Naturally they’ll want to show it off by Retweeting or replying to your Tweet.

You can start by identifying influencers you’d like to get a mention from. Look for ways you can incorporate them into your article, then Tweet about it.

Additionally, you can also @Mention any sites where you used stats and data in your article.

In Conclusion

There you have it. Everything you need to know about how to write a blog post your audience can’t resist sharing.

Writing a great blog post can take time, from coming up with great ideas to making sure your blog post is optimized to get the best results in search engines and social media. If you take the time to create high-quality content following this process, you will gain the traffic, engagement and results you want from your content.

This post How to Write a Blog Post Your Audience Can’t Resist Sharing originally appeared on Sprout Social.

from SM Tips By Minnie http://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-write-a-blog-post/